The Flood and the King Lists: Which Genesis Numbers to Trust

Genesis 5 and 11 give the age of each father when his heir was born, from Adam to Abram. Add them up and you have a date for the Flood. The numbers survive in three versions: the Hebrew Masoretic Text, the Septuagint (the Greek translation made in Egypt before Christ) and the Samaritan Pentateuch. Those three put the Flood as far apart as 2303 BC and 3183 BC. Egypt's First Dynasty, dated by radiocarbon to about 3085 BC, falls on opposite sides of those two dates.

In one sentence: Tested first by Scripture's own consistency, the Masoretic Text preserves Genesis 5 and 11 best, because the Septuagint and Samaritan numbers carry the marks of scribes solving problems; and since no defensible reading moves the Flood before Egypt's First Dynasty, the conflict with archaeology is real under every text and cannot be solved by changing manuscripts.

This study grew out of What World Population Declares, which relies on the same chronology for its growth-rate arithmetic. The manuscript tables behind it are in Genealogy and Times.

Key Takeaways

(This section follows the Key Takeaways format — see that page for what each part is for.)

Lessons about Jesus

Luke traces Jesus back through every name in Genesis 5 and 11 and ends "the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God" (Luke 3:38, ESV). The three manuscript traditions disagree about ages. They agree on every name but one, the second Cainan. So the line God promised in Genesis 3:15 reaches Jesus through named people in all three texts, whichever numbers turn out to be original. Jesus is the son of Adam in the plain sense a genealogy intends: a real man descended from the first man, come to undo what the first man did (Romans 5:12-19).

Memory verses

✝️ Isaiah 40:8 (ESV)

8 The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

✝️ Romans 3:2 (ESV)

2 Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.

Be Transformed

Think. God's word has come to you through centuries of copyists, and He kept it through them. Comparing manuscripts is how His people hear that word clearly, and doing it is an act of faith in His keeping.
Attitude. Let Scripture judge the copies of Scripture. Choose a reading because it fits the text, and hold it even when a longer or shorter chronology would make an argument easier.
Do. Read Genesis 5:21-27 and Genesis 7:6-23 together, and work out when Methuselah died. Then read Isaiah 40:8 aloud and thank God that "the word of our God will stand forever" (ESV), kept through every copyist who carried it to you.

Prayer

Father, your word stands forever. You gave it to Moses, entrusted it to Israel, and kept it through the hands of copyists who never knew what we would ask of it. Thank you for the long line of names in Genesis that runs down to your Son Jesus, the son of Adam. Give us the patience to read those chapters carefully, the honesty to say what we do not know, and the faith to trust your word when the evidence of the ground is hard to square with it. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Study outline

Three witnesses to one genealogy. What the Masoretic Text, Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch are, and how far apart their Flood dates sit.
What Scripture says about its own numbers. The Flood narrative's test for Methuselah, and what the New Testament does and does not quote.
How each text was changed. A full collation of Genesis, the scribal habits it shows, and what those habits explain in chapters 5 and 11.
The recommendation: the Masoretic numbers. What is settled, what is contested, the Flood date that follows, and why the site adopted it.
Testing it against Egypt and Sumer, then tree rings and varves and Babel's archaeology.
What this shows about God.

Three witnesses to one genealogy

Genesis 5 repeats one formula for each patriarch, three numbers at a time:

✝️ Genesis 5:3-5 (ESV)

3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. 4 The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters. 5 Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.

Genesis 11:10-26 uses the same formula from Shem to Terah. The verb "fathered" is וַיּוֹלֶד (wayyoled, H3205), the causative form of yalad, "to bear". No other passage in Scripture gives this much consecutive chronological data.

Three witnesses carry those numbers:

The Masoretic Text (MT) is the Hebrew text transmitted by Jewish scribes. It underlies the ESV, NIV and nearly every English Bible, and it is the basis of this site's own dating.
The Septuagint (LXX) is the Greek translation. Its Genesis is generally dated to about 250 BC in Alexandria, Egypt. The apostles quote it often.
The Samaritan Pentateuch (SP) is the Hebrew Torah of the Samaritan community, a branch that Sidney Jellicoe dates no earlier than Hasmonean times (second century BC).

The full tables are in Genealogy and Times. Adding each tradition's numbers, anchored as this site anchors them, gives three Flood dates:

Reading	Flood (year of the world)	Flood (BC)
Masoretic Text	AM 1656	2303 BC
Samaritan Pentateuch	AM 1307	2893 BC
Septuagint (Brenton's edition, with the second Cainan)	AM 2242	3183 BC

The Samaritan year of the world is lowest while its BC date is middling, because the BC date depends only on the years after the Flood (Genesis 11), and there the Samaritan text runs long. The Samaritan date reads Terah on that text's own terms, 70 at Abram's birth and 145 at death. Before 2026-09-28 the site's generator gave the Samaritan chain the Masoretic reading of Terah and printed 2998 BC (on the 1491 BC Exodus then in use).

What Scripture says about its own numbers

Scripture supplies one hard test, and the Septuagint as printed fails it. Noah is 600 when the Flood comes (Genesis 7:6), and only the eight in the ark survive it:

✝️ Genesis 7:23 (ESV)

23 He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark.

Peter counts them: "a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water" (1 Peter 3:20, ESV). In the Masoretic Text, Methuselah is born in AM 687, lives 969 years (Genesis 5:27) and dies in AM 1656, the year of the Flood. In the Samaritan text he dies in AM 1307, again the Flood year. In the Septuagint he fathers Lamech at 167 where the Hebrew has 187, and the chain carries his death to AM 2256, fourteen years after the Flood. A text in which Methuselah outlives the Flood contradicts Genesis 7:23, so on this point it cannot be what Moses wrote. The arithmetic is set out in Genealogy and Times.

The early church noticed. Theophilus of Antioch (To Autolycus 3.24, c. AD 180) copies the Greek numbers with 167 and totals the years to the Flood at 2242. Julius Africanus (Chronography, fragments in Syncellus, c. AD 221) gives Methuselah 187, the Hebrew figure, and totals 2262.

The New Testament uses the Septuagint's wording and never cites a patriarch's age. Hebrews 11:5 says of Enoch that "he was not found, because God had taken him" (ESV). That is the Greek of Genesis 5:24, οὐχ εὑρίσκετο (ouch heurisketo, G2147, "he was not found"); the Hebrew reads "he was not, for God took him" (Genesis 5:24, ESV). Stephen numbers Jacob's family at "seventy-five persons in all" (Acts 7:14, ESV), which the ESV Study Bible notes follows the Septuagint against the Hebrew's seventy. Stephen also says Abram left Haran "after his father died" (Acts 7:4, ESV), which bears on Terah's age (below). None of these quotes a number from Genesis 5 or 11.

Luke 3:36 is the one place the New Testament touches the disputed data, and it carries a name with no number: "the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad" (ESV). Only the Septuagint has this Cainan in Genesis 11. His presence in Luke is itself contested. The earliest manuscript of Luke, 𝔓⁷⁵, lacks him, and so does Codex Bezae; 1 Chronicles 1:24 runs "Shem, Arpachshad, Shelah" (ESV) in the Hebrew and the Greek alike; and the Septuagint gives him exactly the two numbers it gives Shelah. Theophilus and Africanus, both working from the Greek, omit him. Genealogy and Times concludes that he entered Luke by a copying slip and was then written into Greek Genesis to match, with the case on both sides.

So Scripture settles less than one might hope. It shows that the apostles read the Greek as God's word and quoted it freely. It also records that "the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God" (Romans 3:2, ESV), which names the Hebrew custodians without ranking their copies. What it does decide, it decides plainly: the original cannot keep Methuselah alive after the Flood.

How each text was changed

A full collation of Genesis shows each tradition's habits, and those habits explain chapters 5 and 11. Andrew Steinmann (JETS 64/1, 2021) compared all 860 variants among the three traditions across the whole of Genesis and classed each reading as original or secondary. He counted 58 secondary readings in the Masoretic Text, 272 in the Samaritan and 467 in the Septuagint. Most of the Septuagint's are harmonizations, where a scribe smooths a perceived difficulty. The Samaritan and Septuagint share 96 secondary readings; the Masoretic shares 4 with the Samaritan and 2 with the Septuagint. Those shared errors mean the Samaritan and Greek descend from one earlier text type that split from the Masoretic line first. When they agree against the Hebrew, they count as one witness.

Genesis 5. The Septuagint adds 100 to the father's age and subtracts 100 from his remaining years for Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel and Enoch, so each total lifespan stays the same. Steinmann's explanation: in the Hebrew, the fathering ages for Enosh through Mahalalel and Enoch (90, 70, 65, 65) are low against the rest, and the Greek evens them out. The Samaritan evens them the other way, lowering Jared to 62, Methuselah to 67 and Lamech to 53. It also shortens their lives, and all three die in AM 1307, the Samaritan Flood year:

	Born (SP)	Lifespan (SP)	Dies
Jared	AM 460	847	AM 1307
Methuselah	AM 587	720	AM 1307
Lamech	AM 654	653	AM 1307

Three deaths landing on the same year read as design. Steinmann's judgement on the Hebrew fits that reading: "It is the irregularity of the ages in MT that recommends it as original."

Genesis 11. Here the Samaritan and Greek agree with each other: both add 100 to the fathering ages of Arpachshad, Shelah, Eber, Peleg, Reu and Serug, and 50 to Nahor's. The Hebrew's short intervals create a crowded family. Using the Hebrew numbers and the site's reading of Terah, Noah dies in AM 2006, two years before Abram is born. Shem, Noah's son, dies in AM 2158, fifty years after Isaac's birth. Eber dies in AM 2187, four years after Abraham himself (Genesis 21:5; 25:7). Yet Abraham laughs at the thought of fathering a child at a hundred (Genesis 17:17). Steinmann argues that a scribe resolved this by lengthening the intervals, which leaves only Abram's nearest ancestors alive in his day. A scribe had a reason to lengthen the Hebrew numbers. It is harder to see why anyone would shorten the longer ones into the Hebrew's crowded family.

The Hebrew has slips too. Steinmann follows Ralph Klein (HTR 67, 1974) in reading Eber's remaining years (430 in Genesis 11:17) as a copying error for 370. He also suspects the Hebrew Methuselah (187 against the Greek's 167) and Lamech (777, echoing the 77 of Cain's Lamech in Genesis 4:24). Those judgements are contested, and together they move the Flood by fourteen years. His conclusion for both chapters: "None of the three textual traditions preserve an unaltered pre-diluvian genealogy." The difference is in kind. The Greek and Samaritan changes are systematic, while the Hebrew ones are scattered errors.

The recommendation: the Masoretic numbers

The Masoretic Text is the most accurate witness to Genesis 5 and 11. That is the conclusion a reader reaches by trusting Scripture first. The Septuagint as printed contradicts Genesis 7:23. It carries a generation that 1 Chronicles 1:24 lacks, in Greek as well as in Hebrew. Its Genesis 5 is a uniform editorial shift. The Samaritan text makes three men die in the same year to keep the Flood clean. The Hebrew keeps irregular numbers that nobody had a motive to create, and in the one place Scripture tests the chain, the Flood, its arithmetic holds exactly. The confidence varies by claim, and each should be read at its own level:

Settled. The Septuagint of Genesis 5 as printed cannot be original, because of Methuselah. The second Cainan is secondary on the balance of the evidence (NA28 still prints him at Luke 3:36, and Helen Jacobus has argued he is original; see Genealogy and Times).
Strong. In Genesis 5, the Hebrew and Samaritan agree on six of nine fathering ages. The Greek's +100 on those six keeps every total unchanged, the fingerprint of an editor.
Contested. In Genesis 11, the Samaritan and Greek agree on six +100s against the Hebrew. Henry B. Smith Jr. makes the case for the Septuagint's numbers (Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism, 2018). Steinmann answers that the agreement counts once, since the two share a parent text, and that the lengthening solves a problem the Hebrew creates. This study follows Steinmann. The stakes are about 600 years.
Contested, and a separate question. Some read "fathered" as "became the ancestor of", which would leave gaps and remove the chronology altogether. The ESV Study Bible allows it at Genesis 5, and Steinmann calls an unbroken chain "a questionable proposition". This study reads the numbers as a continuous chain, as Genealogy and Times does, because Genesis gives an exact age at each birth.
Strong. Terah's lifespan is 205 in the Hebrew and 145 in the Samaritan. The Samaritan figure reconciles Genesis 11:26 with Acts 7:4 without reinterpretation, which is what a harmonizing scribe would produce. Steinmann reads it that way, with Abram named first in Genesis 11:26 for his importance and born when Terah was 130. The difference is 60 years.

On the Hebrew numbers the Flood falls in AM 1656: 2303 BC on this site's anchor (an Exodus at 1446 BC), or 2348 BC on Ussher's 1491 BC Exodus.

Why this site follows the Masoretic numbers

On 2026-09-28 this site adopted the Masoretic Text for every number in Genesis 5 and 11, Terah included, as its working chronology. The timeline, its family tree and every published year of the world now follow it. The reasons, with their confidence:

Scripture's own test (settled). Genesis 7:23 and 1 Peter 3:20 leave no one alive after the Flood outside the ark. The Septuagint as printed keeps Methuselah alive fourteen years past it. The Masoretic arithmetic lands his death in the Flood year.
Scribal habits (strong). Steinmann's collation of Genesis counts 860 variants among the three traditions: 58 secondary readings in the Masoretic, 272 in the Samaritan and 467 in the Septuagint, with 96 secondary readings shared by the Samaritan and Greek. These figures were checked against the article itself (pp. 26, 29 and 34) on 2026-09-28. Where the Samaritan and Greek agree against the Hebrew, they count as one witness.
The patterns (strong in Genesis 5, contested in Genesis 11). The Septuagint's +100 in Genesis 5 leaves every lifespan unchanged. The Samaritan makes Jared, Methuselah and Lamech all die in its Flood year. The shared +100 in Genesis 11 thins the long-lived ancestors the Hebrew leaves around Abraham. All three read as solutions to problems, and the Hebrew is the text nobody had a motive to create.
Acts 7:4 and Terah (strong). Stephen says Abram left Haran after Terah died. The Masoretic 205 satisfies that with Abram born when Terah was 130; the Samaritan 145 satisfies it by harmonizing. The site therefore retired its earlier synthesis, harmonized_v1, which had taken the Samaritan Terah, and moved its working Flood date from 2288 BC back to 2348 BC (both on the 1491 BC Exodus then in use; 2303 BC since the anchor moved to 1446 BC).

The Exodus anchor is a separate decision, settled on 2026-10-01 at 1446 BC from 1 Kings 6:1; see Genealogy and Times.

Testing it against Egypt and Sumer

Only now does the outside evidence come in, to test the reading already chosen.

On the Hebrew numbers, Egypt's early dynasties run straight through the Flood.

Event	Date	Against a 2303 BC Flood
Egypt, accession of Aha (First Dynasty)	3111–3045 BC (radiocarbon, 68%)	about 780 years earlier
Sumerian Early Dynastic I	c. 2900 BC	about 600 years earlier
Djoser's accession (step pyramid)	2691–2625 BC (radiocarbon)	about 355 years earlier
Khufu's Great Pyramid	c. 2560 BC	about 255 years earlier
Sargon of Akkad	c. 2334 BC	about 30 years earlier

The radiocarbon dates carry the weight. Michael Dee and colleagues (Proceedings of the Royal Society A 469, 2013) put Aha's accession at 3111–3045 BC (3218–3035 BC at 95%). Christopher Bronk Ramsey and colleagues (Science 328, 2010) ran 211 short-lived plant samples through a Bayesian model and put Djoser's accession at 2691–2625 BC. Both models use the historical order of kings as a prior, but their absolute dates come from the carbon.

The king lists are weaker witnesses than their reputation. Manetho's Aegyptiaca, the framework of Egypt's thirty dynasties, is lost. It survives only as quoted by Josephus, Africanus, Eusebius and Syncellus, who disagree with one another on the figures. The Turin Royal Canon (c. 1245 BC) survives in more than 160 fragments with roughly half the document missing, and it lists gods and demigods among the kings. Seti I's Abydos list leaves out Hatshepsut, the Amarna kings and the whole Second Intermediate Period. The Sumerian King List gives eight kings before its flood a combined 241,200 years in the Weld-Blundell Prism; the ESV Study Bible notes reigns of 28,800, 36,000 and 43,200 years. Thorkild Jacobsen (The Sumerian King List, 1939) showed that dynasties it presents in succession ruled at the same time. It too divides history at a flood: "After the flood had swept over, the kingship descended from heaven."

Egyptology already treats whole dynasties as concurrent: the 9th and 10th with the 11th, the 15th with the 17th, and the 22nd to 25th. Those overlaps sit in the Intermediate Periods, though. The Old Kingdom, the period in conflict with the Hebrew Flood date, is a single line of kings at Memphis, and radiocarbon dates it independently of Manetho.

No defensible manuscript clears Egypt's First Dynasty.

Reading	Flood	Against Aha (3111–3045 BC)
Septuagint, Brenton's edition, with Cainan	3183 BC	before
Septuagint without Cainan, Nahor 179	3053 BC	level with
Septuagint without Cainan, Nahor 79 (Göttingen)	2953 BC	after
Samaritan Pentateuch	2893 BC	after
Masoretic Text	2303 BC	after

The older claim that the Septuagint puts the Flood before Egypt's First Dynasty depends on the 130 years of the second Cainan. With him removed, even the Greek puts the Flood level with Aha or after him. So the choice of manuscript moves the problem by up to 750 years, and it remains a problem under every reading. Choosing a text because it eases the archaeology would reverse the order this study has followed. The text was chosen on Scripture's own evidence. The archaeology shows what that choice has to answer, and the answer lies in the dating of the ground.

Tree rings and varves

Two more records run past every biblical Flood date under every tradition. The IntCal20 radiocarbon calibration curve (Paula Reimer and colleagues, Radiocarbon 62, 2020) is built in its younger part from tree rings counted year by year from overlapping timbers, back beyond twelve thousand years. The sediment of Lake Suigetsu in Japan is laid down in annual layers, or varves, and Christopher Bronk Ramsey and colleagues (Science 338, 2012) used them to extend radiocarbon calibration to about 50,000 years.

Neither record distinguishes between the Masoretic, Samaritan and Greek texts. Each is longer than all three. Whether a ring or a layer always marks one year, and whether a year-by-year count can run unbroken through a global Flood, are questions about the physical record. Young-earth researchers contest them, and this study leaves them unresolved. What the study can say is that they have no bearing on which manuscript to trust.

Babel's archaeology

Etemenanki, the ziggurat at Babylon usually associated with the tower of Genesis 11:1-9, is a structure of the second and first millennia BC. Those who defend the identification argue it was rebuilt on older foundations. The Sumerian epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta describes a time when "the whole universe in unison spoke to Enlil in one tongue" before speech was changed. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible judges that "nothing else in this account parallels the tower of Babel," and takes it as evidence that the confusion of language by a god was a known theme in the ancient world.

What this shows about God

This shows that God keeps His word through ordinary means. He let scribes make errors, and He kept enough copies, in enough hands, that the errors can be found by laying the copies side by side, and Scripture's own consistency judges between them. The Methuselah test is Genesis correcting its own copyists. That is why this site's statement of faith places inerrancy "in its original writing": what God breathed out, the church recovers by careful reading, and it stands (Isaiah 40:8).

It also shows that God's promise ran through real history. Every tradition carries the same names from Adam to Abram, and Luke carries them on to Jesus. The dates are argued over, and all three traditions carry the same line. So you can read Genesis 5 and 11 as the record of a promise kept through centuries of actual births and deaths, and you can face the hard evidence of Egypt's tombs without editing the text to fit it. Where the ground and the text disagree, this study has said so and left the question open, and the text has not been changed.

Discussion questions

The language. Some read the verb וַיּוֹלֶד (wayyoled, "fathered") in Genesis 5 and 11 as "became the ancestor of". If those chapters skipped generations, what would the exact ages at each birth be there for?
The text in its context. Genesis 7:23 and 1 Peter 3:20 rule out a Methuselah who outlives the Flood. What other checks does Scripture give for judging between copies of itself?
Christ. Luke's genealogy ends "the son of Adam, the son of God" (Luke 3:38, ESV). What does it mean for your faith that Jesus descends from Adam through named people?
The hard part. Luke 3:36 reads "the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad" (ESV), where 1 Chronicles 1:24 runs "Shem, Arpachshad, Shelah" (ESV). How do you hold these two genealogies together?
The apostles' Bible. Hebrews 11:5 quotes the Greek of Genesis 5:24, and Stephen follows the Greek count of Jacob's family (Acts 7:14). What does the apostles' use of the Septuagint's wording commit us to about its numbers?
Be transformed. Isaiah 40:8 promises that "the word of our God will stand forever" (ESV), yet the Flood falls after Egypt's First Dynasty under every defensible text. How do you hold that promise alongside evidence you cannot yet answer?

Group study sheet for a 40-minute group: two A4 sheets, or one with the guided path

The point, the passage, the questions and the response, from this study. Print on both sides of two A4 sheets, flipping on the long edge. While this block is open, printing the page prints the sheet; close it to print the study.

Black & white for a black-only printer Two pages one sheet: each step of the study with its questions

Group study · 40 minutes

The Flood and the King Lists: Which Genesis Numbers to Trust

Genesis 5:1-32; Genesis 11:10-26

The point Tested first by Scripture's own consistency, the Masoretic Text preserves Genesis 5 and 11 best, because the Septuagint and Samaritan numbers carry the marks of scribes solving problems; and since no defensible reading moves the Flood before Egypt's First Dynasty, the conflict with archaeology is real under every text and cannot be solved by changing manuscripts.

0–5min

Ask: what comes to mind when you hear The Flood and the King Lists? Hear a few answers before anyone reads.

5–12minRead it aloud BSB

Genesis 5:1-32 ¹This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, He made him in His own likeness. ²Male and female He created them, and He blessed them. And in the day they were created, He called them “man.” ³When Adam was 130 years old, he had a son in his own likeness, after his own image; and he named him Seth. ⁴And after he had become the father of Seth, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. ⁵So Adam lived a total of 930 years, and then he died. ⁶When Seth was 105 years old, he became the father of Enosh. ⁷And after he had become the father of Enosh, Seth lived 807 years and had other sons and daughters. ⁸So Seth lived a total of 912 years, and then he died. ⁹When Enosh was 90 years old, he became the father of Kenan. ¹⁰And after he had become the father of Kenan, Enosh lived 815 years and had other sons and daughters. ¹¹So Enosh lived a total of 905 years, and then he died. ¹²When Kenan was 70 years old, he became the father of Mahalalel. ¹³And after he had become the father of Mahalalel, Kenan lived 840 years and had other sons and daughters. ¹⁴So Kenan lived a total of 910 years, and then he died. ¹⁵When Mahalalel was 65 years old, he became the father of Jared. ¹⁶And after he had become the father of Jared, Mahalalel lived 830 years and had other sons and daughters. ¹⁷So Mahalalel lived a total of 895 years, and then he died. ¹⁸When Jared was 162 years old, he became the father of Enoch. ¹⁹And after he had become the father of Enoch, Jared lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. ²⁰So Jared lived a total of 962 years, and then he died. ²¹When Enoch was 65 years old, he became the father of Methuselah. ²²And after he had become the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. ²³So Enoch lived a total of 365 years. ²⁴Enoch walked with God, and then he was no more, because God had taken him away. ²⁵When Methuselah was 187 years old, he became the father of Lamech. ²⁶And after he had become the father of Lamech, Methuselah lived 782 years and had other sons and daughters. ²⁷So Methuselah lived a total of 969 years, and then he died. ²⁸When Lamech was 182 years old, he had a son. ²⁹And he named him Noah, saying, “May this one comfort us in the labor and toil of our hands caused by the ground that the LORD has cursed.” ³⁰And after he had become the father of Noah, Lamech lived 595 years and had other sons and daughters. ³¹So Lamech lived a total of 777 years, and then he died. ³²After Noah was 500 years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

The Flood and the King Lists: Which Genesis Numbers to Trust

The study in brief

Three witnesses to one genealogy. What the Masoretic Text, Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch are, and how far apart their Flood dates sit.
What Scripture says about its own numbers. The Flood narrative's test for Methuselah, and what the New Testament does and does not quote.
How each text was changed. A full collation of Genesis, the scribal habits it shows, and what those habits explain in chapters 5 and 11.
The recommendation: the Masoretic numbers. What is settled, what is contested, the Flood date that follows, and why the site adopted it.
Testing it against Egypt and Sumer, then tree rings and varves and Babel's archaeology.
What this shows about God.

Notes

The Flood and the King Lists: Which Genesis Numbers to Trust

12–17minStep 1 · Three witnesses to one genealogy

1The language. Some read the verb וַיּוֹלֶד (wayyoled, "fathered") in Genesis 5 and 11 as "became the ancestor of". If those chapters skipped generations, what would the exact ages at each birth be there for?

17–30minStep 2 · What Scripture says about its own numbers

2The text in its context. Genesis 7:23 and 1 Peter 3:20 rule out a Methuselah who outlives the Flood. What other checks does Scripture give for judging between copies of itself?

3The hard part. Luke 3:36 reads "the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad" (ESV), where 1 Chronicles 1:24 runs "Shem, Arpachshad, Shelah" (ESV). How do you hold these two genealogies together?

4The apostles' Bible. Hebrews 11:5 quotes the Greek of Genesis 5:24, and Stephen follows the Greek count of Jacob's family (Acts 7:14). What does the apostles' use of the Septuagint's wording commit us to about its numbers?

Step 3 · How each text was changed

Step 4 · The recommendation: the Masoretic numbers

Step 5 · Testing it against Egypt and Sumer

Step 6 · What this shows about God

30–35minTalk it over

5Christ. Luke's genealogy ends "the son of Adam, the son of God" (Luke 3:38, ESV). What does it mean for your faith that Jesus descends from Adam through named people?

The Flood and the King Lists: Which Genesis Numbers to Trust

35–40minBe transformed

6Be transformed. Isaiah 40:8 promises that "the word of our God will stand forever" (ESV), yet the Flood falls after Egypt's First Dynasty under every defensible text. How do you hold that promise alongside evidence you cannot yet answer?

Think. God's word has come to you through centuries of copyists, and He kept it through them. Comparing manuscripts is how His people hear that word clearly, and doing it is an act of faith in His keeping.
Attitude. Let Scripture judge the copies of Scripture. Choose a reading because it fits the text, and hold it even when a longer or shorter chronology would make an argument easier.
Do. Read Genesis 5:21-27 and Genesis 7:6-23 together, and work out when Methuselah died. Then read Isaiah 40:8 aloud and thank God that "the word of our God will stand forever" (ESV), kept through every copyist who carried it to you.

Memory verse

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

Isaiah 40:8 (ESV)

Pray together

Father, your word stands forever. You gave it to Moses, entrusted it to Israel, and kept it through the hands of copyists who never knew what we would ask of it. Thank you for the long line of names in Genesis that runs down to your Son Jesus, the son of Adam. Give us the patience to read those chapters carefully, the honesty to say what we do not know, and the faith to trust your word when the evidence of the ground is hard to square with it. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Notes

The whole study, with every verse a tap awayhttps://the-way.lewy.au/chronology/flood-and-the-king-lists/

Group study · step by step

The Flood and the King Lists: Which Genesis Numbers to Trust

Genesis 5:1-32; Genesis 11:10-26

Open Ask: what comes to mind when you hear The Flood and the King Lists? Hear a few answers before anyone reads.

Read it aloud Genesis 5:1-32; Genesis 11:10-26

Step 1Three witnesses to one genealogy — What the Masoretic Text, Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch are, and how far apart their Flood dates sit.Key verses: Genesis 5:3-5

1The language. Some read the verb וַיּוֹלֶד (wayyoled, "fathered") in Genesis 5 and 11 as "became the ancestor of". If those chapters skipped generations, what would the exact ages at each birth be there for?

Step 2What Scripture says about its own numbers — The Flood narrative's test for Methuselah, and what the New Testament does and does not quote.Key verses: Genesis 7:23

2The text in its context. Genesis 7:23 and 1 Peter 3:20 rule out a Methuselah who outlives the Flood. What other checks does Scripture give for judging between copies of itself?

3The hard part. Luke 3:36 reads "the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad" (ESV), where 1 Chronicles 1:24 runs "Shem, Arpachshad, Shelah" (ESV). How do you hold these two genealogies together?

4The apostles' Bible. Hebrews 11:5 quotes the Greek of Genesis 5:24, and Stephen follows the Greek count of Jacob's family (Acts 7:14). What does the apostles' use of the Septuagint's wording commit us to about its numbers?

Step 3How each text was changed — A full collation of Genesis, the scribal habits it shows, and what those habits explain in chapters 5 and 11.

Step 4The recommendation: the Masoretic numbers — What is settled, what is contested, the Flood date that follows, and why the site adopted it.

Step 5Testing it against Egypt and Sumer — , then tree rings and varves and Babel's archaeology.

Step 6What this shows about God —

Talk it over

5Christ. Luke's genealogy ends "the son of Adam, the son of God" (Luke 3:38, ESV). What does it mean for your faith that Jesus descends from Adam through named people?

Be transformed

6Be transformed. Isaiah 40:8 promises that "the word of our God will stand forever" (ESV), yet the Flood falls after Egypt's First Dynasty under every defensible text. How do you hold that promise alongside evidence you cannot yet answer?

Think. God's word has come to you through centuries of copyists, and He kept it through them. Comparing manuscripts is how His people hear that word clearly, and doing it is an act of faith in His keeping.
Attitude. Let Scripture judge the copies of Scripture. Choose a reading because it fits the text, and hold it even when a longer or shorter chronology would make an argument easier.
Do. Read Genesis 5:21-27 and Genesis 7:6-23 together, and work out when Methuselah died. Then read Isaiah 40:8 aloud and thank God that "the word of our God will stand forever" (ESV), kept through every copyist who carried it to you.

The Flood and the King Lists: Which Genesis Numbers to Trust

The point Tested first by Scripture's own consistency, the Masoretic Text preserves Genesis 5 and 11 best, because the Septuagint and Samaritan numbers carry the marks of scribes solving problems; and since no defensible reading moves the Flood before Egypt's First Dynasty, the conflict with archaeology is real under every text and cannot be solved by changing manuscripts.

The whole study, with every verse a tap awayhttps://the-way.lewy.au/chronology/flood-and-the-king-lists/

References & Recommended Reading

Primary texts, queried from this site's bible-text.db: Westminster Leningrad Codex (morphhb-wlc, MT), Brenton's Septuagint (ebible-grcbrent), Samaritan Pentateuch (scrollmapper-SP); ESV text and the ESV Study Bible notes on Genesis 5:1-32 and Acts 7:14 via study-notes.db; NA28 at Luke 3:36. The Dead Sea Scroll corpus in this repo preserves no reading of Genesis 5 or 11 (bible_variants, checked 2026-09-28).
Andrew E. Steinmann, "A Comparison of the Text of Genesis in Three Traditions: Masoretic Text, Samaritan Pentateuch, Septuagint," JETS 64/1 (2021): 25–43. The collation and the analysis of Genesis 5 and 11 this study follows. Also his "Challenging the Authenticity of Cainan," JETS 60/4 (2017): 697–711.
Ralph W. Klein, "Archaic Chronologies and the Textual History of the Old Testament," HTR 67 (1974): 255–63, and Ronald S. Hendel, The Text of Genesis 1–11 (Oxford, 1998), as cited by Steinmann.
Henry B. Smith Jr., "The Case for the Septuagint's Chronology in Genesis 5 and 11," in Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism, ed. J. H. Whitmore (Pittsburgh: Creation Science Fellowship, 2018), 117–32. The strongest case for the other side.
Lita Sanders, "The Textual Superiority of the Masoretic Text of Genesis 5 and 11," Answers Research Journal 18 (2025): 183–87.
Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 3.24, and Julius Africanus, Chronography fragments III–VIII, in Ante-Nicene Fathers vols. 2 and 6 (Roberts and Donaldson).
Michael Dee et al., "An absolute chronology for early Egypt using radiocarbon dating and Bayesian statistical modelling," Proceedings of the Royal Society A 469 (2013): 20130395.
Christopher Bronk Ramsey et al., "Radiocarbon-Based Chronology for Dynastic Egypt," Science 328 (2010): 1554–57.
Paula J. Reimer et al., "The IntCal20 Northern Hemisphere Radiocarbon Age Calibration Curve (0–55 cal kBP)," Radiocarbon 62 (2020): 725–57.
Christopher Bronk Ramsey et al., "A Complete Terrestrial Radiocarbon Record for 11.2 to 52.8 kyr B.P.," Science 338 (2012): 370–74. The Lake Suigetsu varves.
Manetho, Aegyptiaca (c. 280 BC), lost; fragments collected by W. G. Waddell (Loeb, 1940).
Turin Royal Canon (Papyrus 1874, Museo Egizio, c. 1245 BC), with Kim Ryholt's 1997 re-reading; Abydos King List (temple of Seti I, c. 1290 BC).
Sumerian King List, Weld-Blundell Prism (WB 444, Ashmolean Museum); Thorkild Jacobsen, The Sumerian King List (Oriental Institute, 1939).
NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible (Zondervan), note on Genesis 11:1.
Genealogy and Times — the manuscript tables, the Cainan question and the Methuselah arithmetic this study relies on.
The Prophetic Timeline — the Flood on this line, with the Septuagint and Samaritan readings switchable for comparison.