How the sum is made. Genesis 5 gives the age of each father at his son's birth from Adam to Noah, and Genesis 11 does the same from Shem to Abram. Adding those ages along the chain, and adding Noah's age at the Flood, produces a total. This is the arithmetic behind every claim that the Bible dates the world to about six thousand years.
The two chains, from the two hosted texts.
| Hebrew (ASV) | Greek (Brenton) | difference | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adam to the Flood (Genesis 5 + Noah's 600) | 1,656 | 2,242 | 586 |
| The Flood to Abram's birth (Genesis 11) | 292 | 1,172 | 880 |
| Adam to Abram's birth | 1,948 | 3,414 | 1,466 |
⭐ A named reference work reaches the same two Genesis 5 figures independently, and supplies a third text we do not hold. ISBE 1915 states that "the time that elapsed between the creation of man and the Deluge was 1,656 years according to the Hebrew text, 1,307 according to the Samaritan text, and 2,242 according to the Septuagint" (ISBE article: Antediluvian Patriarchs). The Samaritan Pentateuch is not hosted here, so its 1,307 is reported on ISBE's authority and was not checked here.
⚠️
One figure in the table depends on how a sentence is read. Genesis 11:10 says Arphaxad was born "two years after the flood" (ASV). Counting those two years gives 292 for the Hebrew chain; counting only the fathers' ages gives 290, which is the figure ISBE prints, "1,656 years elapsed from the Creation to the Flood, and 290 years from the Flood to Abraham's birth" (ISBE article: Chronology of the Old Testament). The two years are the whole discrepancy, and because they fall in both chains alike the differences in the right-hand column are unaffected.
What the totals are not. They are sums of the numbers as printed. They are not a date: turning them into a year BC needs a fixed point at one end, which the text does not supply. Archbishop James Ussher supplied one in 1650 and reached 4004 BC for creation, the reckoning printed in the margins of many old King James Bibles. ⛔ No year is given here for the Greek, because no anchor for it has been sourced.
Sources: Genesis 5 and 11 (ASV and Brenton, read verse by verse); Genesis 11:10 (ASV); ISBE 1915, article Antediluvian Patriarchs and Chronology of the Old Testament.
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