Some nuggets from the "Begats"

Some time ago, as part of my regular Bible reading, I read from the "begats" from 1 Chronicles. These are not usually considered to be very inspiring, although some people think that the Prayer of Jabez, which is found in this part of the Bible, is inspiring.

Here is some of what I found.

The Israelites were occasionally commanded to preserve racial purity, but clearly there were exceptions. There were at least two Egyptians who were part of the Israelite congregation, both of them married to members of the tribe of Judah.
1Chronicles 2:34 Now Sheshan had no sons, but daughters. And Sheshan had a servant, an Egyptian, whose name was Jarha. 35 And Sheshan gave his daughter to Jarha his servant to wife; and she bare him Attai. (All scripture quotations in this post are from the King James Version.)

1Chronicles 4:17 And the sons of Ezra were, Jether, and Mered, and Epher, and Jalon: and she bare Miriam, and Shammai, and Ishbah the father of Eshtemoa. 18 And his wife Jehudijah bare Jered the father of Gedor, and Heber the father of Socho, and Jekuthiel the father of Zanoah. And these are the sons of Bithiah the daughter of Pharaoh, which Mered took.
It is interesting that one of the two Egyptians was a servant, and the other was apparently from the Egyptian royalty.

1Chronicles 6:1 The sons of Levi; Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. 2 And the sons of Kohath; Amram, Izhar, and Hebron, and Uzziel. 3 And the children of Amram; Aaron, and Moses, and Miriam. The sons also of Aaron; Nadab, and Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar.

Some have tried to use genealogies in the Bible to establish dates, such as Ussher's chronology. These verses cast doubt on the validity of doing that. According to Exodus 12:40, the Jews were in Egypt 430 years. The only person in that list who could have spent his entire life in Egypt was Amram. By this time, people were not living much longer than they were today, so there aren't enough people to fill a 430 year time span. (Exodus 6:16-20 says that Levi lived 137 years, Kohath 133 years, and Amram lived 137 years.) Almost certainly, some people were left out. Francis Schaeffer, for one, did not believe that the genealogies were meant to be used to develop a chronology, or could be used to develop an accurate one. (Genesis in space and time: the flow of biblical history. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1972, pp. 122-125. See also here.) He cites a number of other verses which indicate the unsuitability of the genealogies for developing a chronology.

In chapter 7, I discovered that a woman is given credit for building some towns:

1Ch 7:22 And Ephraim their father mourned many days, and his brethren came to comfort him. 23 And when he went in to his wife, she conceived, and bare a son, and he called his name Beriah, because it went evil with his house. 24 (And his daughter was Sherah, who built Bethhoron the nether, and the upper, and Uzzensherah.)

That was remarkable. Since two of these villages are mentioned in Joshua 10:10-11, which was before the division of the land among the tribes, it seems possible that Sherah rebuilt the two Bethhorons, after they were destroyed by Joshua and his army. The Bible doesn't say if she did the planning and the physical labor involved, if she financed the building, if she supervised the building, or some combination of these. Two of these villages are still in existence.

Do I have all the answers? Certainly not. Neither do you. But the Bible seems always capable of introducing us to new nuggets of truth. Thanks for reading. Read the Bible.

Ussher's chronology

I received an e-mail query, asking if I had a copy of Ussher's chronology on file. I don't, and hadn't really thought about having one, before the query. (For any who don't know, Ussher believed that the earth was created in 4004 B.C., based mainly on his interpretation of the genealogies in the Bible.)

I did some research on-line, and haven't discovered any such file. Perhaps some reader has, and can point me to one? If so, please do.

I did find what seem to be excellent Wikipedia articles on the Ussher-Lightfoot Calendar (Lightfoot also published a chronology at about the same time as Ussher.) and on Ussher, himself. Answers in Genesis has an article on Ussher, which indicates that that organization has re-published Ussher's history, and offers it for sale. I hoped that Project Gutenberg had re-published something by Ussher, but they have not. (He seems to have written entirely in Latin.)

As the Wikipedia articles indicate, there is considerable controversy over Ussher's date of 4004 B. C. for the age of the earth. Conservative, Bible-believing scholars of the 19th and early 20th centuries did not believe that the genealogies used in Genesis could legitimately be put to the purpose of determining dates. Neither did Francis Schaeffer, and many others, in the 20th century. However, there are Bible scholars living today who disagree, and think that they were meant to be so used.

The most complete Ussher's chronology I have ever seen is in a bible given me by my maternal grandmother, over a half-century ago. It has dates, based on Ussher's chronology, for many biblical events, as part of its center-column reference system. I don't know if all these dates were based on Ussher's work.

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On February 9, 2015, I added the material in parenthesis to the first paragraph.  Thanks for reading!