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Hello and welcome

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to another episode of the Tyndale House podcast.

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We are in season four of the podcast, which is our second series

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looking at names in the Bible and the ancient world.

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And we are looking today at the question of genealogies,

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of which there are quite a few in the Bible, as you may have noticed.

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So I'm joined again by Caleb, Caleb Howard, who heads up

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our Old Testament research team here at Tyndale House,

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and is an Assyriologist, and James Bejon

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who is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge and a reader here

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at Tyndale House and is also part of the Old Testament research team.

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Good morning, gentlemen. Good to have you with us again.

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J: Again. Yeah it’s good. C: Good morning.

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Another exciting discussion ahead.

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So tell us about genealogies.

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The Bible has quite a few. Do you know how many?

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Ha ha!

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How do you define a genealogy?

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Yeah, alright. I've,

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I've not counted them myself. So it wasn't a trick question.

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I just wonder whether you knew off the top of your head.

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J: I feel like I should know.

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Yeah, yeah. Yeah, right.

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Well, there's a homework for the, for the listeners.

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My understanding is that the Bible has

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an unusual interest in genealogies

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compared to other literature from the ancient world.

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So Caleb, do you want to start us off

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just reflecting a little bit on on that?

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Obviously we don't want to talk about it for too long, but

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but is there a difference between the Bible's interest in genealogies

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and that in, in, say, Assyria?

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And and why might that be?

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Yeah.

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So I think it's worth thinking about, genealogies or lists of things,

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as existing for certain purposes.

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So you don't just produce a list just for no reason.

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And when you look at the list in the ancient world,

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you can often discern the purpose, either because there's

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some note attached to the list saying this is a list of such and such,

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Whatever group of people.

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And so if you bear that in mind, you can see that the different lists

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in the Bible and also in the ancient Near East have different purposes

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and presumably reflect a social context for, for those lists.

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So I agree with you that the Bible has

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a unique interest in genealogy.

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It's possible that we have, let's say,

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less lists than you might imagine per

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given number of texts in the in in Mesopotamia, say,

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because there was less interest in genealogy and family relationships.

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Or it's possible that records like that were kept and we don't have them.

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Okay. They might have been kept through memory.

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People knew their family members and so on and kept them in that way.

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So bearing in mind that the text won't necessarily

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reflect the reality of sort of how people kept track of things.

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If you look at the list of people in the Bible, the genealogies of people

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in the Bible, we can talk about the definition of genealogy in a minute.

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I think it's worth doing.

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I think they are kept for particular reasons.

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And we can we can talk about that in a moment.

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So a good example of that would be, inheritance concerns.

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So if you read the Book of Joshua, for example,

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it's clear that allotments of land were given to certain tribes.

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And if you knew, if you wanted to know

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whether you had a share in that allotment, you would need to know what tribe

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you were from.

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And that issue becomes important too in, in, say, Nehemiah,

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when people are returning from exile and, and, and some people

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can't serve as priests or Levites

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because they can't demonstrate that, that they are in the line.

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Yeah. That's right.

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And in the Jubilee cycle.

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Oh, sure. Yeah.

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In the list of names that I'm aware of in the ancient near

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east, for me, particularly Mesopotamia.

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I'm not thinking so

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much of Egypt or Anatolia.

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They tend to be for, for other reasons.

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So, maybe the best known example from Mesopotamia

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of a list of names or a genealogy would be the Assyrian King List.

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Which gives well at least the impression of an unbroken

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line of Assyrian kings going back to the early second millennium BC.

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Over 100 names.

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And it seems likely that at least from a king

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called Adasi in the first half of the second millennium BC, there was a

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more or less unbroken line of of kings, not from father to son necessarily.

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It's not, it's clear that,

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you didn't have to be the son of the previous king to be king.

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But at least within the same family.

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And it seems that that list was, was meant to, yeah, both kind of project

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that sense of continuity over time, but also kind of keep track of,

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well, it reflects,

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consideration of records from royal inscriptions

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to, lists of years, calendars and so on, of kings

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to establish the number of years that kings reigned and that sort of thing.

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So it had at least partly an ideological purpose, an ideological goal.

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So you can see there that there's a reason for keeping the list.

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And that reason

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appears to be different than the name lists that we have in the Bible.

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Those have different aims they’re driven by different things.

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I think it's important to keep in mind difference as well as

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continuity when we compare these things.

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Just because you see genealogy in the title of an article

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that publishes an ancient tablet

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with lists of names doesn't necessarily mean it's the same thing

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as we find in Genesis or Chronicles. T: Right. Yeah, sure.

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That's a very, very helpful

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introduction.

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You said we should touch on the definition of a genealogy.

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Yeah.

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So, my, you know, my

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very basic definition of a genealogy is that it's a, a

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list of parental parents

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and children, parents and children going down through the generations.

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Is it more complicated than that?

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That's the essence of all of them, isn't it?

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A distinction often made, which I think is a helpful

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one is,

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and this brings us to the difference between the Bible and other sources,

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is the distinction between what people call a linear genealogy,

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and a segmented genealogy.

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So linear I sometimes call vertical A fathered, B fathered, C fathered D

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So you’re just tracing a single family line down.

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So from Adam to Noah or from Noah to Abraham. Whoever.

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Segmented, which

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I sometimes call horizontal is sort of,

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A had six sons who were BCDEFG.

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That was six.

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And then it will zoom in often on one of those,

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or then explore the family tree of B and then next of C T: Right

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Not necessarily doing all of them, but

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the idea of that seems to be, as far as I can tell,

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sort of charting out theologically,

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if you like, how the, how,

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a father is filling out a particular geographical area.

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So a classic example

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would be the table of nations, we often call it the table of nations.

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Don't we?

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But actually it's just a

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genealogy, its a list of sons as far as the text is concerned.

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T: Yeah, this is Genesis 10? J: Yes. Sorry. Yeah, yeah.

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And so this is showing how Noah's

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sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth,

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are giving rise to other nations and sort of filling out the world around,

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around the biblical story, you know.

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Right.

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And so that's an example of a of a segmented or a horizontal genealogy,

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because we, we look at each son in turn and their descendants. Yep.

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And that is what, to my knowledge at least, is very unique to Scripture.

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You get it a little bit in late Arabic works and so on with.

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But even there, people are largely trying to reconstruct genealogies

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and you, sorry, reconstruct segmented genealogies.

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And you can do that.

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I've done that with quite a lot of old Arabic inscriptions, taken

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a lot of sort of linear genealogies and compiled them into horizontal ones.

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But the Bible actually sets out to document

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these horizontal genealogies, and that seems very unique to me.

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So what's behind that?

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Well, partly the geographical issue.

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That's Genesis 10.

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But you can see it also in,

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for example, highlighting

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a particular character. So,

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so in Exodus three, for example, sorry, Exodus six, for example,

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we have the, the genealogy of Moses and Aaron.

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Right.

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And it starts out at the beginning of Jacob's sons and goes down to Levi

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and then fleshes out Moses and Aaron's genealogy and stops.

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We don't get the rest of Jacob sons.

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So that seems to be an example of highlighting these characters.

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And then the text continues.

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This was the Moses and Aaron

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who were speaking to Pharaoh and leading the people of Israel out of slavery.

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And so on and so

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the idea in that case is to highlight a character,

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in Genesis,

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pretty much every major character

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gets a genealogy, in Genesis, they're called toledoths right

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the generations of, these are the generations of

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And the book of Genesis is kind of structured around these ten toledoth,

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lists, not always lists, actually.

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Sometimes you get well often you get this is the toledoth,

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This is generations of Terah.

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These are the generations of of Shem or whatever.

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And sometimes those are followed by genealogies.

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In other cases, they're followed by stories about the children

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of that character, about this person.

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So, yeah, this may be

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this is a digression, but but it's one of the curious things

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there is that the first toledoth is, is, Genesis

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2:4

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Referring to the heavens in the earth.

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This is the generations of the heavens and the earth, that doesn't seem

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to be about descendants in an obvious way.

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Yeah.

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I mean, maybe you disagree, but I it seems to me that

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that is an extension of the idea of toledoth to a kind of history

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notion or a story about the past kind of notion. So,

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I mean, there is the descent,

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the fact that Adam descends from God in a sense, he bears the image of God,

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and then he produces Seth, who is in his own image, and so on.

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So well, that's true. That's clear.

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But I think that even with people, when people are given a genealogy

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and it's sort of headed by toledoth

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it's not just the family relationships that matter.

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It's the stories about the family, stories about the people in the family,

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how they relate to the overall plot of Scripture.

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Yeah, great.

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So we have these genealogies for,

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for theological purposes that the Bible is, is not

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just random collection of stuff.

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We believe that the three of us here,

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as we believe in Tyndale House that God is behind Scripture.

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And is the ultimate author of it. So

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God wants us to have these genealogies for some reason,

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yet it can be quite hard work when you hit the beginning of Chronicles or whatever,

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and you've just got all of these people and lists and

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why do we really need this?

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I mean, lots of

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Chronicles is drawing on earlier material, isn't it?

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And so a lot of it already appears in Genesis, some in Exodus,

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some in other books.

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And the Chronicles is bringing that together.

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And in answer to question why we've got it in these earlier books,

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I think part of the point is just the fundamentally interconnected

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nature of the biblical narrative.

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I mean, the Bible is a remarkable book, uniquely in ancient literature.

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It's giving us this coherent narrative,

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a kind of continuous

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flow over time, where you can go all the way from Adam counting years

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if you want to, all the way up, at least till the exile, with no real blank spots

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in it, you know? T: Right

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you've got the odd little

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black box, if you like, between sort of Exodus

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1:1 and what follows, you know,

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where you've got kind of this long period in,

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Egypt where almost a curtain is drawn over it.

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But even that in Chronicles is connected up with genealogies.

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And, and so part of the purpose is that when you meet characters

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in Scripture, you've normally got a background against which we can put them.

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And so when Israel appear in the land and they get raided by the Midianites

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or something, you can say, well,

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I know these people, you know, these descend from Abraham.

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And so they're related to the promised, but not directly

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inheritors of it.

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And so they’re sort of stealing. They’re being numerous rather than Israel,

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and you can put together things.

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And so, yeah, there's a, there's a context to everything isn’t there, in Scripture

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and the genealogies are kind of fundamentally what create that T: that's really helpful

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Do you want to talk about

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some specific genealogies?

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Do you want to talk about some specific genealogies?

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Well, let's pick one that I think is,

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kind of a helpful phenomenon and a surprising

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phenomenon of genealogies, which I was quite surprised at.

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So, I mean, I was looking just before we came at the way

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in which sometimes you can see two people,

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let’s call them people,

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I think they refer to territories, but you can find sort of people who jump

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from one genealogy to another, and that might be odd

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to us, might kind of challenge our notion of a genealogy to some extent.

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So we thought about the table of nations, as I say.

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So this is Genesis 10 and

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they are sons effectively.

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So in where are we?

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10:7, we get the sons of Kush, the sons of Ethiopia.

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We commonly,

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call that and we get this lists, Seba, Havilah, Sabtah and etc.

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and then it gets to this, son, Raamah

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And then afterwards, at the end of the verse,

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you get two further sons of Raamah who are Sheba

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and Dedan, now

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those are well known countries.

00:14:08:10 - 00:14:12:18
We call them countries that still exist in South Arabia now.

00:14:12:18 - 00:14:18:03
And so it seems that they are sons of this place: 

00:14:18:03 - 00:14:19:02
Raamah

00:14:19:02 - 00:14:22:23
But then in, now, let’s hope I can find it.

00:14:22:23 - 00:14:25:23
Where is Keturah? Genesis 25.

00:14:26:10 - 00:14:29:10
In Keturah's genealogy,

00:14:32:06 - 00:14:35:06
Abraham . . . Or the writer is sort of going through

00:14:35:06 - 00:14:40:23
we get this initial list of, one, two, three, four, five, six sons Zimran, 

00:14:40:23 - 00:14:43:17
Jokshan, and so forth.

00:14:43:17 - 00:14:46:14
Then we sort of dive into

00:14:46:14 - 00:14:49:14
in verse three, Jokshan’s descendants

00:14:49:14 - 00:14:54:10
and they include these same two, Sheba and Dedan. Now

00:14:55:15 - 00:14:57:22
it seems, therefore, that we've gone from

00:14:57:22 - 00:15:03:04
sort of these two people countries being descendants of Ethiopia,

00:15:03:10 - 00:15:07:02
if you like, to being descendants of

00:15:07:15 - 00:15:10:18
Jokshan and of Keturah and of these

00:15:11:01 - 00:15:15:14
at least associated with these people who Genesis called ‘sons of the East’. And

00:15:16:13 - 00:15:19:20
this is a kind of shift that we see in inscriptions.

00:15:19:20 - 00:15:24:03
So Sabaic inscriptions refer to actually

00:15:24:04 - 00:15:28:02
a region that sounds very much like Raamah as

00:15:28:11 - 00:15:31:23
being in control of the kings of these two places:

00:15:32:01 - 00:15:35:24
Sheba and Dedan and so we do get them associated

00:15:35:24 - 00:15:39:19
with Ethiopia in some very ancient texts.

00:15:40:22 - 00:15:45:01
But then it seems that what's being reflected here is that these two

00:15:46:02 - 00:15:48:18
territories, I'm going to call them or, you know, that

00:15:48:18 - 00:15:52:08
Sheba and Dedan could have been their literal ancestors as well.

00:15:52:08 - 00:15:56:04
You know, I'm not averse to that, but it seems that what the text is

00:15:56:04 - 00:16:00:03
reflecting is a later time where they're more closely

00:16:00:07 - 00:16:05:22
associated with Keturah’s descendants than they are with Ethiopia.

00:16:05:22 - 00:16:08:10
And that kind of makes sense.

00:16:08:10 - 00:16:11:10
I mean, they're situated across the Red sea,

00:16:11:20 - 00:16:16:15
and that area of Ethiopia has very strong links with the areas over in

00:16:17:19 - 00:16:19:13
Saudi Arabia and,

00:16:19:13 - 00:16:23:22
South Arabia, rather, even to the extent of using the same scripts,

00:16:24:00 - 00:16:28:00
having a material cultural connection and so on.

00:16:28:17 - 00:16:31:04
And it seems that at some point

00:16:31:04 - 00:16:34:04
they're becoming more closely associated with kind of,

00:16:35:14 - 00:16:38:23
yeah, the Keturahites than with the Ethiopians.

00:16:40:01 - 00:16:42:01
That's very interesting.

00:16:42:01 - 00:16:44:02
So you're

00:16:44:02 - 00:16:47:02
you're seeing these names

00:16:47:09 - 00:16:50:01
in, in both of these genealogies

00:16:50:01 - 00:16:52:14
as primarily places

00:16:52:14 - 00:16:55:15
rather than people, but those are not incompatible.

00:16:56:04 - 00:16:59:04
But it can't be that,

00:17:00:00 - 00:17:03:00
that Raamah is the father of

00:17:03:04 - 00:17:06:04
of the original Sheba

00:17:06:08 - 00:17:09:08
and Dedan, and that Jokshan is.

00:17:09:17 - 00:17:11:08
So how do we how do we square that?

00:17:11:08 - 00:17:12:06
Yeah, exactly.

00:17:12:06 - 00:17:14:19
And this is a way of squaring it.

00:17:14:19 - 00:17:18:20
And I mean, an interesting thing to note later in that verse, in 25:3

00:17:19:00 - 00:17:22:15
we get that Dedan referred to and his sons

00:17:22:15 - 00:17:27:05
include Asshurites, Letushites and Leummites

00:17:27:05 - 00:17:30:07
So these are plurals, you know, these these

00:17:30:07 - 00:17:34:19
are . . . sound like they’re describing groups of people rather than a individual son

00:17:34:19 - 00:17:38:22
who had the name Asshurim so there’s sort something to think about there.

00:17:38:22 - 00:17:44:08
But I think more generally there's the notion of kin, kinship to think about.

00:17:44:08 - 00:17:48:22
And so we’re going to talk about lists, possibly, if I ever shut up and we get on to it.

00:17:48:22 - 00:17:52:02
But in some lists of Ezra's list,

00:17:52:02 - 00:17:55:16
for instance, people can be Sons of Bethlehem. Yes.

00:17:55:17 - 00:17:59:15
And they're inhabitants of, people could be daughters of Zion.

00:17:59:15 - 00:18:04:03
and they say, this idea of kinship can be used quite flexibly.

00:18:04:03 - 00:18:08:19
Someone could be, a father of Gibeon if they're the founder

00:18:08:19 - 00:18:10:13
of the town of Gibeon.

00:18:10:13 - 00:18:15:04
And so I guess I'm I'm seeing an oddity in these two.

00:18:15:04 - 00:18:15:20
As you're saying,

00:18:15:20 - 00:18:19:03
Raamah can't be the father of them, and Jokshan be the father of them.

00:18:19:03 - 00:18:22:08
So I'm seeing an oddity in the text.

00:18:22:17 - 00:18:26:15
I'm then sort of thinking about some extra biblical references

00:18:26:15 - 00:18:30:06
to these two territories, and then I'm thinking about the kind of

00:18:30:06 - 00:18:34:08
generality of the biblical notion of a kinship, and then putting together,

00:18:35:01 - 00:18:37:11
a possible account of what's happened.

00:18:37:11 - 00:18:40:04
Yeah. Okay. That's very helpful.

00:18:40:04 - 00:18:43:13
I mean, worth thinking about, kind of social structure just a little bit.

00:18:43:13 - 00:18:44:05
Right? They,

00:18:46:11 - 00:18:47:00
they clearly

00:18:47:00 - 00:18:50:00
had this kind of segmented social structure.

00:18:50:02 - 00:18:54:10
Like the ‘house of the father’ was a kind of basic, aspect of that bet av

00:18:55:23 - 00:18:58:23
and then that was part of a, a larger group,

00:18:59:01 - 00:19:03:07
a clan, a mishpacha I think is probably the term

00:19:03:07 - 00:19:07:08
and then kind of above that, you have tribes, mateh, shevet

00:19:07:11 - 00:19:10:11
And, and then you have the people the ‘am

00:19:10:18 - 00:19:12:21
or in this case, or

00:19:12:21 - 00:19:15:21
in many cases, the beney Israel the sons of Israel.

00:19:16:08 - 00:19:19:10
So at every level that's thought about in kinship terms,

00:19:19:10 - 00:19:22:13
not in sort of Nation—, not purely at least in sort of nationalistic

00:19:22:13 - 00:19:25:13
terms or political terms, but in kinship terms.

00:19:25:19 - 00:19:28:04
And this is shot through the whole society.

00:19:28:04 - 00:19:30:15
So when you think about these relationships you can think of it,

00:19:30:15 - 00:19:33:22
it feels like you can think about them corporately as well as individually.

00:19:34:20 - 00:19:36:15
You can see that also in Genesis 10,

00:19:37:14 - 00:19:39:10
in Genesis 10:15, right.

00:19:39:10 - 00:19:43:06
It says Canaan, Canaan brought forth Sidon his first born and Heth

00:19:43:06 - 00:19:47:05
But then in verse 16 it shifts to these Gentilics right.

00:19:47:05 - 00:19:52:04
The Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, and so on.

00:19:52:04 - 00:19:56:00
And it gives the whole list as a series of, what we call Gentilics, right?

00:19:56:01 - 00:19:59:01
‘ites’ ivites, and so on.

00:19:59:04 - 00:20:04:03
Not, not not referring to people as such. Or rather . . . T: Can you just define Gentilics

00:20:04:17 - 00:20:06:19
Yeah. Referring to a people group.

00:20:06:19 - 00:20:07:17
T: Okay. Yeah.

00:20:07:17 - 00:20:10:05
Yeah. Right. Sorry. Carry on. C: So like, yeah.

00:20:10:05 - 00:20:14:24
The Ammonite as opposed to Amon, the Moabite as opposed to Moab and so on.

00:20:15:00 - 00:20:16:08
Yep. Yep.

00:20:16:08 - 00:20:18:09
C: That can be J: Ammonite is actually the beney Ammon

00:20:18:09 - 00:20:20:04
It can be framed as the sons of.

00:20:20:04 - 00:20:21:06
Right. Ammonite. Yeah.

00:20:21:06 - 00:20:24:24
It is often translated as yeah as such, but it's it's it's 

00:20:24:24 - 00:20:27:03
Beney-Ammon 

00:20:27:03 - 00:20:29:15
Whereas in other cases you may have I don't know if you do.

00:20:29:15 - 00:20:30:19
Do you ever have Ammoni

00:20:31:19 - 00:20:32:18
Moabi?

00:20:32:18 - 00:20:34:18
J: I think . . . you certainly have. . . J: You never have an Ammoni.

00:20:34:18 - 00:20:38:08
So you have this ‘e’ on the end that indicates the same thing essentially,

00:20:38:20 - 00:20:40:11
as Benei ‘sons’.

00:20:40:11 - 00:20:42:18
T: Yes C: it indicates membership in a group.

00:20:42:18 - 00:20:43:14
a collective.

00:20:43:14 - 00:20:44:21
You might have an ammonitess.

00:20:44:21 - 00:20:47:16
I think, among Solomon’s wives [1 Kings 11:1].

00:20:47:16 - 00:20:49:23
J: I think that's probably the only exception. C: Yeah.

00:20:49:23 - 00:20:54:01
So all this list in 10:16, Genesis 10:16 has that ending.

00:20:54:02 - 00:20:56:18
Jebusi, the Jebusites, Amori, the Ammonites

00:20:56:18 - 00:20:57:01
Right.

00:20:57:01 - 00:21:01:11
And so on. So it's all kind of related in kinship terms.

00:21:02:00 - 00:21:03:18
And that's part of this genealogy.

00:21:03:18 - 00:21:06:16
So when we read these genealogies,

00:21:06:16 - 00:21:09:04
we have to recognize that their corporate component is there.

00:21:09:04 - 00:21:12:08
However, you kind of work out the mechanics of its

00:21:12:11 - 00:21:15:11
unfolding in history.

00:21:15:22 - 00:21:17:01
C: It's there. T: Yeah.

00:21:17:01 - 00:21:18:19
So there's . . .this is very helpful.

00:21:18:19 - 00:21:23:01
So there's a, a corporate component that we need to include at least

00:21:24:00 - 00:21:25:11
at least sometimes

00:21:25:11 - 00:21:28:11
there may be some genealogies that are

00:21:28:20 - 00:21:31:02
that are much more,

00:21:31:02 - 00:21:33:13
individualistic for want of a better term.

00:21:33:13 - 00:21:34:10
Yeah.

00:21:34:10 - 00:21:38:02
But some of these particularly these earlier ones, are quite corporate.

00:21:38:10 - 00:21:41:14
And the notion of fathering

00:21:42:02 - 00:21:45:09
is a broader term perhaps, or. . .

00:21:45:10 - 00:21:48:18
C: Yes sure, corresponding to the corporate level T: it's evoking kinship

00:21:48:18 - 00:21:52:11
in some sense it’s not necessarily about this person

00:21:52:11 - 00:21:56:06
Is is is this person's biological father.

00:21:56:18 - 00:21:59:18
And we see that don't we, in other places. So,

00:22:01:03 - 00:22:05:13
Belshazzar in in Daniel 6, when the Queen mother comes

00:22:05:13 - 00:22:08:13
in, she talks about your father, the king referring to Nebuchadnezzar.

00:22:09:00 - 00:22:12:04
But we know that Nebuchadnezzar was not Belshazzar’s father,

00:22:12:09 - 00:22:15:09
but he was his predecessor.

00:22:15:15 - 00:22:17:01
You don’t . . .

00:22:17:01 - 00:22:17:07
Yeah.

00:22:17:07 - 00:22:21:13
C: I suppose the I suppose the father idea, can have a broader sense . . . T: Caleb’s looking sceptical

00:22:21:13 - 00:22:23:12
C: Yeah. I mean, that's a tricky thing, but . . . T: Okay.

00:22:24:22 - 00:22:26:07
It’s a vexed example isn’t it?

00:22:26:07 - 00:22:28:08
C: Yeah, it is T: Yeah alright, fair enough, fair enough.

00:22:28:08 - 00:22:32:05
I mean, even in English thinking, you can refer to a sister town

00:22:32:05 - 00:22:34:14
or a sister village or something like that.

00:22:34:14 - 00:22:37:14
And in Chronicles, we get references to,

00:22:38:02 - 00:22:41:13
a particular territory, and then it will say something like

00:22:41:21 - 00:22:46:10
umigrasheha and it's, pasture lands with uvenoteha

00:22:46:14 - 00:22:50:23
and its daughters, which presumably means it's satellite cities?

00:22:50:23 - 00:22:53:06
C: Yeah, exactly. J: Villages, something like that.

00:22:53:06 - 00:22:56:19
There's actually a theory in anthropology and archaeology that talks about

00:22:57:00 - 00:23:00:07
centre and periphery and the idea that there would be a central city

00:23:00:07 - 00:23:04:16
that's often larger, often walled and so on in the ancient world,

00:23:05:01 - 00:23:06:14
and then little villages around it

00:23:06:14 - 00:23:09:17
that are dependent upon it economically and socially and so on.

00:23:10:09 - 00:23:13:07
And so I often take those daughter cities to be a bit like that.

00:23:14:07 - 00:23:15:18
Sennacherib talks about the fact

00:23:15:18 - 00:23:19:02
that he comes to Judah and takes over all these cities,

00:23:19:16 - 00:23:22:20
and then he talks about little ones and big ones, and that sort of thing.

00:23:22:20 - 00:23:25:09
Well, and walled cities as well.

00:23:25:09 - 00:23:27:18
So he's distinguishing between types of cities. But yeah.

00:23:27:18 - 00:23:30:00
So you can have this metaphor extended to all sorts of things.

00:23:30:00 - 00:23:33:24
It's the sort of there's a, there's a book, by David Schloen

00:23:33:24 - 00:23:36:24
called ‘The House of the Father As Fact and Symbol’

00:23:38:04 - 00:23:39:18
And he's getting at this very issue, right?

00:23:39:18 - 00:23:42:09
In the ancient world, it was very common to use kinship

00:23:42:09 - 00:23:45:09
terms and the House of the father as a basic element of that,

00:23:45:09 - 00:23:47:02
as a way to think about all manner of things.

00:23:47:02 - 00:23:50:20
And you could use it to even you could even apply it to a nation state,

00:23:51:03 - 00:23:53:00
kind of a state

00:23:53:00 - 00:23:56:20
where the king is the father of everyone in the, in the country.

00:23:56:21 - 00:23:57:16
Right.

00:23:57:16 - 00:24:00:16
So that yeah, but that metaphor is quite common.

00:24:00:22 - 00:24:04:23
One of the helpful things I think about that is I often used to read Chronicles.

00:24:04:23 - 00:24:06:20
And I would think to myself, well,

00:24:06:20 - 00:24:10:05
there are perhaps almost a million Judahites or something.

00:24:10:05 - 00:24:12:19
Why have we got this list in Chronicles?

00:24:12:19 - 00:24:17:01
And it's just picked out one particular guy who has five sons,

00:24:17:01 - 00:24:20:16
and then it's followed up some of those and not others, like, what's the

00:24:20:22 - 00:24:21:23
purpose of that? And

00:24:23:00 - 00:24:24:22
arguably he's not doing that.

00:24:24:22 - 00:24:30:18
It's showing the organization of Judah at a given point in time,

00:24:30:18 - 00:24:36:23
and it's showing a five fold division into five major clans, etc., you know, and

00:24:36:23 - 00:24:40:11
and sometimes you will get unusually

00:24:40:11 - 00:24:43:24
conflicting genealogies, in Chronicles—

00:24:44:01 - 00:24:47:17
J: I mean, we could jump into one of them if, if, if we’ve got . . .? T: Feel free

00:24:47:22 - 00:24:49:21
So, I mean,

00:24:49:21 - 00:24:52:21
Benjamin is a nice example. So,

00:24:54:02 - 00:24:54:19
if I can find it.

00:24:54:19 - 00:24:58:03
So, 1 Chronicles 7, is it?

00:25:00:17 - 00:25:02:15
so we're get Numbers 26,

00:25:02:15 - 00:25:08:08
a list of Benjamin's clans, and think that there are seven of them

00:25:08:08 - 00:25:12:20
there, there are two subclans and five main clans,

00:25:13:23 - 00:25:17:12
in, I'm looking for the sons of Benjamin somewhere,

00:25:17:12 - 00:25:20:12
verse 6 of 1 Chronicles 7,

00:25:20:23 - 00:25:23:16
we get the Benjaminites, etc.

00:25:23:16 - 00:25:26:00
Bela, Beker, etc.

00:25:26:24 - 00:25:27:20
Three.

00:25:27:20 - 00:25:30:21
And so we've got sort of three clans mentioned there.

00:25:31:08 - 00:25:34:08
But then if you go on to chapter 8.

00:25:34:14 - 00:25:38:02
You have Benjamin in verse one.

00:25:38:20 - 00:25:42:12
He begets Bela, his firstborn.

00:25:43:05 - 00:25:46:11
Ashbel, his second born, Aharah his third.

00:25:46:11 - 00:25:49:21
So they’re numbered all the way up to a fifth born,

00:25:49:22 - 00:25:53:02
you know, and and so you've got this oddity.

00:25:53:02 - 00:25:56:22
I mean, you can say it includes two extra people, but then why number them?

00:25:56:22 - 00:25:59:24
as 3 in 1 Chronicles 7?

00:25:59:24 - 00:26:01:17
And why do we have different names?

00:26:01:17 - 00:26:05:19
And I think a plausible reason is to say this is showing

00:26:06:06 - 00:26:09:15
the organization of Benjamin's clan, Benjamin's

00:26:09:15 - 00:26:13:11
internal hierarchy, if you like, at two different points in time.

00:26:13:19 - 00:26:16:07
Now, Benjamin's a slight outlier.

00:26:16:07 - 00:26:19:07
Its clan structure changes more than most,

00:26:19:21 - 00:26:23:07
but we've got a nice explanation of that in the narrative.

00:26:23:10 - 00:26:26:13
Benjamin is almost entirely exterminated

00:26:26:13 - 00:26:29:13
in the war with Gibeon.

00:26:29:21 - 00:26:33:22
And, I think there’s 600 people left.

00:26:34:02 - 00:26:37:21
Then they have to get some sort of wives from elsewhere, we won’t go into the

00:26:38:19 - 00:26:39:09
detail of . . .

00:26:40:17 - 00:26:43:05
the dubious details of it all

00:26:43:05 - 00:26:46:00
there might be very good reasons, therefore, why

00:26:46:00 - 00:26:50:07
Benjamin's tribe has gone through these quite different hierarchies

00:26:50:07 - 00:26:53:22
and layouts over its history because its had this major kind of,

00:26:55:00 - 00:26:58:11
reworking, repopulation of its internal divisions.

00:26:58:12 - 00:26:59:16
Interesting.

00:26:59:16 - 00:27:05:01
That view of, a horizontal genealogy as charting out clans,

00:27:05:13 - 00:27:08:09
I think can give some insight into what's going on

00:27:08:09 - 00:27:11:10
here, can and can make it feel a bit less arbitrary, you know?

00:27:11:12 - 00:27:14:12
Yeah, it's not picking out just random people.

00:27:14:20 - 00:27:17:01
I think that was one of the problems that many people have when,

00:27:17:01 - 00:27:20:01
when reading these genealogies, that that it,

00:27:20:23 - 00:27:23:23
it sometimes feels that like they come at a, at a random point

00:27:24:00 - 00:27:25:00
full of random people.

00:27:25:00 - 00:27:27:14
And what do we do with this, so that’s

00:27:27:14 - 00:27:29:09
Yeah, this is very helpful.

00:27:30:12 - 00:27:32:08
one thing to say, maybe, about just

00:27:32:08 - 00:27:36:06
the overall function of these genealogies in, in Chronicles is very interesting.

00:27:36:06 - 00:27:40:10
If, it should be worthwhile for listeners to sit down someday

00:27:40:10 - 00:27:44:05
and just to, can use a Bible software or something like that

00:27:44:05 - 00:27:48:15
and just read through 1 Chronicles 1 to 9 where you get these genealogies

00:27:49:04 - 00:27:52:08
and then find your way back to other parts of the Bible

00:27:53:06 - 00:27:54:21
from which these names come.

00:27:54:21 - 00:27:57:21
So you will see, for example, that 1 Chronicles 1 is

00:27:57:21 - 00:28:01:11
pretty much entirely based on genealogies in Genesis.

00:28:01:11 - 00:28:05:07
It draws on genealogies in Genesis, and it needs to be specifically Genesis,

00:28:05:07 - 00:28:06:16
not some other document,

00:28:06:16 - 00:28:10:15
because it quotes Genesis at various points and modifies it and so on.

00:28:11:03 - 00:28:13:23
Really interesting the degree to which Chronicles depends

00:28:13:23 - 00:28:17:00
on the rest of the Bible for its content.

00:28:17:19 - 00:28:20:19
And if you continue reading, then in Chronicles and then into Ezra

00:28:20:19 - 00:28:23:19
and Nehemiah, you can see how important it was for,

00:28:24:12 - 00:28:26:13
these would be people in the post exilic-period,

00:28:26:13 - 00:28:29:01
People who had been in exile were coming back and so on.

00:28:29:01 - 00:28:32:07
This is the period in which Chronicles and Ezra, Nehemiah were written.

00:28:33:11 - 00:28:36:03
It was really important to to have these lists of people.

00:28:36:03 - 00:28:39:09
They were central to the whole return endeavor.

00:28:39:16 - 00:28:42:16
So you mentioned earlier in Ezra, Nehemiah, the importance of being able

00:28:42:16 - 00:28:46:12
to establish one's family relationships, to be involved in the, the temple work,

00:28:47:14 - 00:28:49:21
among the Levites.

00:28:49:21 - 00:28:51:16
I assume that the basis

00:28:51:16 - 00:28:54:21
for that kind of search to go and find out who you were related

00:28:54:21 - 00:29:00:06
to, would be the exact sorts of things you find in Ezra and in 1 Chronicles 1–9

00:29:00:06 - 00:29:04:11
And in fact, it's really interesting in, in, 1 Chronicles 9,

00:29:04:12 - 00:29:08:23
in the end, of the genealogies which go through the tribes

00:29:08:23 - 00:29:13:04
of Israel for the most part, and then key figures like, like Saul

00:29:13:04 - 00:29:16:06
and the, the tribe of Judah leading to David and so on.

00:29:17:03 - 00:29:22:11
It says there in [1 Chronicles] 9:1 all Israel was was registered in the genealogies.

00:29:22:11 - 00:29:25:08
And behold, they're written on the book of the kings of Israel

00:29:25:08 - 00:29:25:22
and Judah.

00:29:27:21 - 00:29:29:01
And then these people were

00:29:29:01 - 00:29:32:06
taken off to Babylon in exile for their unfaithfulness.

00:29:32:06 - 00:29:34:14
And, that's just really important.

00:29:34:14 - 00:29:39:18
It seems like that's referring to to pre-exilic texts that contain these genealogies

00:29:39:18 - 00:29:43:00
and on which these exilic-period people were drawing when they were,

00:29:44:05 - 00:29:46:03
I suppose, composing this book and,

00:29:46:03 - 00:29:49:21
and also returning to the land. That matters historically

00:29:49:21 - 00:29:52:23
because these people needed to return to the land under certain circumstances.

00:29:52:23 - 00:29:55:22
But it also matters textually in how the text comes together

00:29:55:22 - 00:29:57:13
when we think about the relationship between them.

00:29:57:13 - 00:30:00:22
I remember someone said to me once, why do we even have Chronicles in the Bible?

00:30:00:22 - 00:30:01:20
We already have Samuel,

00:30:01:20 - 00:30:05:00
Kings, which is an utterly ridiculous thing to say.

00:30:06:22 - 00:30:09:10
It's terrible thing to say,

00:30:09:10 - 00:30:13:17
if you feel like saying that, ever just assume you're wrong and ignorant

00:30:14:20 - 00:30:16:23
and just read the Bible again.

00:30:16:23 - 00:30:19:04
Because it's there for a reason. T: Tell us what you really think about this.

00:30:19:04 - 00:30:22:00
yeah, yeah, I want to do the same thing.

00:30:22:14 - 00:30:23:22
But like, they are different.

00:30:23:22 - 00:30:25:23
One of the ways that they're different is that Chronicles

00:30:25:23 - 00:30:27:10
draws in these genealogies.

00:30:27:10 - 00:30:29:24
Yeah, it's really important. So I think part of it

00:30:29:24 - 00:30:32:24
is probably establishing continuity between the pre-exilic

00:30:34:14 - 00:30:36:01
people of Israel, as it should have been.

00:30:36:01 - 00:30:39:15
So Chronicles is very intent on calling Israel Israel, not Israel and Judah.

00:30:40:09 - 00:30:40:20
Yeah.

00:30:40:20 - 00:30:44:05
It does raise that sometimes and use that Israel, Judah distinction term,

00:30:44:20 - 00:30:45:23
terminology sometimes.

00:30:45:23 - 00:30:50:03
Most of the time it just wants to talk about Israel as a reunified people group,

00:30:50:22 - 00:30:54:11
presumably in fulfilment of the rest of the Old Testament

00:30:54:11 - 00:30:56:16
and how God called his people.

00:30:56:16 - 00:30:58:23
And how his people came about.

00:30:58:23 - 00:31:00:24
But the genealogies establish that.

00:31:00:24 - 00:31:01:12
Right, yes.

00:31:01:12 - 00:31:04:11
C: In very concrete terms. J: Yeah, and in different ways.

00:31:04:11 - 00:31:04:20
Don't they?

00:31:04:20 - 00:31:09:03
So fulfilment is the word you used as its a good word, isn't it?

00:31:09:03 - 00:31:12:03
You know, I mean, you could think of 1 Chronicles 3

00:31:12:12 - 00:31:16:11
particularly, the long list of Israel's kings.

00:31:16:11 - 00:31:18:19
You know, that's a fulfillment of God's

00:31:18:19 - 00:31:23:02
promise to give David a man on the throne, you know, and it continues

00:31:23:14 - 00:31:27:20
through the exile at the end of, so after the exile, the line continues.

00:31:27:20 - 00:31:30:03
And so that's one of God's promises.

00:31:30:03 - 00:31:35:10
1 Chronicles 4 then looks to be far more geographical,

00:31:35:16 - 00:31:39:15
you know, it's it's charting out the various ways in which

00:31:39:15 - 00:31:44:05
the people fill the land of Judah, the territory that God has given them.

00:31:44:05 - 00:31:46:21
And you can see in certain places,

00:31:46:21 - 00:31:51:05
I'm not sure if I can find one now, but what looks to be the fathering

00:31:51:05 - 00:31:55:02
of towns and looks to be the kind of the,

00:31:56:01 - 00:31:56:13
where are we?

00:31:56:13 - 00:31:58:02
Where do we get the reference to T: Um, [chapter 4] verse 5?

00:31:58:02 - 00:32:02:17
T: ‘Ashhur the father of Tekoa’ So we see Tekoa coming up later on don’t we? J: Yeah, right.

00:32:02:17 - 00:32:06:21
And so it's looking, it's charting out something different there,

00:32:06:21 - 00:32:11:02
and they're answering it in a, in a sense, to two different types of promise.

00:32:11:02 - 00:32:12:18
The promise to give Israel the land

00:32:12:18 - 00:32:15:24
and the promise to give David a man on the, on the throne.

00:32:16:11 - 00:32:17:06
Yeah.

00:32:17:06 - 00:32:20:06
Which all looks ahead to the New Testament, too, doesn't it?

00:32:20:13 - 00:32:23:01
We need to draw this, conversation to a close.

00:32:23:01 - 00:32:26:01
Any final thoughts on

00:32:26:01 - 00:32:27:12
on genealogies?

00:32:27:12 - 00:32:30:24
Any final words for people who,

00:32:31:15 - 00:32:34:02
when they're reading the Bible tomorrow,

00:32:34:02 - 00:32:36:13
run into a genealogy

00:32:36:13 - 00:32:39:04
and we want them to keep on going

00:32:39:04 - 00:32:41:16
rather than skipping it?

00:32:41:16 - 00:32:43:17
Well, I a thing that comes to mind

00:32:43:17 - 00:32:47:04
is just the censuses in, in, is that how you say the plural census?

00:32:47:22 - 00:32:50:15
T: Yeah, that’s fine C: Censai? T: No censuses

00:32:50:15 - 00:32:51:24
See, I've just wasted time doing that.

00:32:53:09 - 00:32:54:04
In in Numbers.

00:32:54:04 - 00:32:54:12
Right.

00:32:54:12 - 00:32:59:10
And you have, kind of clan leaders in that text, which may give some insight

00:32:59:10 - 00:33:03:04
into how this kind of family relationship thing works.

00:33:04:05 - 00:33:06:21
And then those are picked up on in later on in the genealogies

00:33:06:21 - 00:33:11:15
in, in 1 Chronicles, so Nahshon, for example, is a, a leader and

00:33:12:06 - 00:33:15:00
and Judah and he's cited as a chief leader,

00:33:15:00 - 00:33:18:00
a ruler in, in, in Judah.

00:33:18:12 - 00:33:20:06
So, so there are times

00:33:20:06 - 00:33:24:02
where you can infer something of how the, the house of the father

00:33:24:02 - 00:33:27:20
and the whole family relationship and how that's corporate and individual,

00:33:28:22 - 00:33:32:01
works out in individual cases, like that.

00:33:32:18 - 00:33:33:16
Yeah.

00:33:33:16 - 00:33:38:07
I think I'd say dig around in genealogies, see what you can find.

00:33:38:07 - 00:33:40:11
You will find some just interesting things.

00:33:40:11 - 00:33:46:02
I mean, taking the numbers census as an example, if you put Genesis 46,

00:33:46:02 - 00:33:50:17
so where it lists Jacob's 70 sons, grandsons, a lot of them.

00:33:51:16 - 00:33:53:04
And if you put it next to Numbers

00:33:53:04 - 00:33:56:19
26 with the census, you'll find that

00:33:57:06 - 00:34:01:03
not every son has gone on to be the head of a clan.

00:34:01:03 - 00:34:04:08
And so Benjamin might have ten sons in Genesis.

00:34:04:10 - 00:34:09:05
He does have ten sons in Genesis 46, but only seven of them become clans.

00:34:09:05 - 00:34:13:00
And if you divide the clan,

00:34:13:12 - 00:34:20:06
the number of sons by the census number so you know, 41,000 or something.

00:34:20:06 - 00:34:23:06
So the total number for each

00:34:23:07 - 00:34:26:01
tribe of Judah, let's say,

00:34:26:01 - 00:34:29:16
if you sort of divide and work out the average size of a clan,

00:34:29:22 - 00:34:32:22
then clans can be shown to be,

00:34:33:02 - 00:34:36:06
likely to survive according to their size.

00:34:36:06 - 00:34:37:23
So basically the

00:34:37:23 - 00:34:41:18
the larger clan, the more likely it is to preserve its name over time.

00:34:41:18 - 00:34:44:18
And you can find just a perfect correlation.

00:34:44:18 - 00:34:47:10
The way it works out and just digging around like that

00:34:47:10 - 00:34:51:02
with numbers and list of names, you'll find some nice things.

00:34:51:10 - 00:34:52:15
Brilliant. Gentlemen.

00:34:52:15 - 00:34:54:17
Thank you very much, James, Caleb

00:34:54:18 - 00:34:55:19
And come and join us again soon

00:34:56:22 - 00:35:00:07
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00:35:00:07 - 00:35:01:18
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00:35:01:18 - 00:35:02:17
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00:35:02:17 - 00:35:05:19
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00:35:05:23 - 00:35:07:04
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