From Adam To Noah: A Reconsideration Of The Antediluvian Patriarchs’ Ages -- By: R. K. Harrison

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 37:2 (Jun 1994)
Article: From Adam To Noah: A Reconsideration Of The Antediluvian Patriarchs’ Ages
Author: R. K. Harrison


From Adam To Noah:
A Reconsideration
Of The Antediluvian Patriarchs’ Ages

R. K. Harrison*

* The late R. K. Harrison was professor emeritus of Old Testament at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, Canada.

The narrative material of Gen 5:3–32, which catalogued the ages of the principal descendants of Adam through the line of Seth, has long been a matter for debate, if only because of the apparently exaggerated lifespans attributed to the individuals listed there.

Until the rise of rational Biblical criticism in the eighteenth century the lengthy ages were accepted much as they stood, out of deference to the sanctity of the divinely-revealed Hebrew tradition. But when literary critics disregarded the concepts of revelation and inspiration and began to treat the Hebrew Scriptures as nothing more than a collection of national records, often of uncertain provenance and riddled with mythology, a vastly different set of interpretative criteria came to the forefront.

Following certain European principles of literary criticism and influenced by the notion of supposed human biological evolution, the hypothesis developed by Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) envisioned the growth of Biblical material from rudimentary beginnings until it attained its climax in the late postexilic period (about the second century BC). As far as the Pentateuch was concerned, this approach was worked out in great and often conflicting detail, resulting in the recognition of four supposed basic literary components.1

The developed hypothesis was entirely subjective in nature and, as was the case with Darwin’s evolutionary views, was entirely untroubled by the exercise of any objective control. Nevertheless external data began to appear in the nineteenth century, and when archeological discoveries brought an entirely new perspective to bear upon ancient Near Eastern studies it became possible for literary-critical procedures to be scrutinized rigorously and to be shown to possess serious flaws in important areas.

It is now seen to be no longer appropriate to dismiss the early materials in Genesis as either legendary or mythological. Instead it has become important for investigators to recognize these sources as being in consonance with analogous Mesopotamian social traditions and records and to assess them accordingly in the light of what is now known about that cultural background.

For the literary record that preserved data about the antediluvian Hebrew patriarchs (Gen 5:3–32) the most...

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