Adam—Seth—Noah—Shem...
Genesis 10 and 11—The Spread of Nations
Remember, after the fall of man into sin, we are looking for the promised Redeemer God said would come in human form (Genesis 3:15). That is the theme of the rest of the Old Testament. That Redeemer must come from Adam and Eve, of course, and we have learned that He will come through Seth and then Noah. Noah had three sons and the promise will descend through Shem (Genesis 9:26). Where do we go from there?
In the thousands of years following the flood, mankind spread through the world, all descending from Noah’s three sons, Japheth, Ham, and Shem. Genesis 10 and 11 give us a partial recounting of the “spread of nations,” but certainly not a complete one. Moses’s readers had never heard of North America or Australia or Japan, so it would have been totally superfluous for him to have mentioned any of those locations. But humans eventually arrived at all those places and created families, communities, tribes, cities, and countries. There were countless numbers of these families and tribes. We are looking for the Messiah. Through which of these peoples will the Messiah come? Genesis 11 follows the line of Shem down to Abraham. And Abraham, as we shall see in Genesis 12 and our next installment in this series, is one of the most important human beings who has ever lived on this earth.
Before I close this essay, I want to say a word about the genealogies of the Bible. There are 10 generations listed from Adam to Noah, and 10 from Noah to Abraham. If we follow the ages of these patriarchs back through time to Adam, we arrive at Bishop Ussher’s conclusion of the creation being dated at about 4,000 B.C. This would put the flood at around 2400 B.C., and there are indeed some who hold this position. I think it’s a bit untenable.
We need to understand a little about the ancient world. There were no printing presses at the time, of course, thus books were all hand-written, and few and far between. Therefore, most people couldn’t read for the simple reason that there wasn’t anything to read. Many historical events were passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth (with distortions, of course), and the few books that did exist (like Moses’s five books) were subject to much memorization. Often, writers would make their material as easy to memorize as possible (a lot of repetition of events and so forth). Lists like genealogies would often be grouped in similar numbers for ease of memorization. Matthew even did this in the New Testament—14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the Babylonian captivity, and 14 from that time to Jesus. We know there were more than 42 generations from Abraham to Jesus because Luke tells us so. Matthew simply made groups of 14 to make them easier to remember.
Thus, there were often “gaps” in ancient genealogies, and there are very probably gaps in the genealogies in the early chapters of Genesis. I am highly skeptical of the idea that millions of years can be shoved into these gaps, but a few thousand are certainly possible. I have no clue as to the exact date of the flood, but putting it 10 or 15 thousand years ago isn’t out of the question and would allow for the time mankind needed to spread throughout the world—and take modified flood stories with him (this “collective memory of mankind.” We see it in more than just the flood.)
This dating isn’t a major concern but we don’t want to sound historically illiterate and we don’t need to cave to Darwinian mythology (where is the “collective memory of mankind” regarding humans evolving from apes?). The point of the Bible is not to give us pinpoint historical dates (except on occasion; Luke is very good at it), but to direct us to the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, who can save our souls from sin. That is the question that must never be overlooked.
Christ is coming. The unity of the Old Testament is remarkable and can only be explained by the One Mind behind it.