S4E3: Why do we have genealogies in the Bible?

In this episode, Tony asks Caleb Howard and James Bejon why we have genealogies in the Bible and how we should make sense of them. They discuss how the Old Testament is unique in ancient literature in the way it lays out genealogies. They also explore how it can give us a clear account of the people of Israel from Adam through to the exile, by looking at some genealogies in the book of 1 Chronicles.

Edited by Tyndale House 

Music – Acoustic Happy Background used with a standard license from Adobe Stock.

Transcript

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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

00:13:55:20 - 00:13:58:17
And then afterwards, at the end of the verse,

00:13:58:17 - 00:14:04:02
you get two further sons of Raamah who are Sheba

00:14:04:02 - 00:14:05:05
and Dedan, now

00:14:06:04 - 00:14:08:10
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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