---
title: "The Flood and the King Lists: Which Genesis Numbers to Trust"
category: "theology"
description: "Genesis 5 and 11 survive in three versions whose numbers put the Flood anywhere from 2303 to 3183 BC. Weighing the Masoretic Text, Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch by Scripture's own consistency first, and only then against Egypt's king lists, radiocarbon, tree rings and varves."
tags: ["genealogy", "apologetics", "genesis", "babel", "young-earth", "septuagint", "method/archaeology", "method/textual-criticism"]
draft: false
zadok_year: 1656
gregorian_year: -2303
primary_passage: "Genesis 5:1-32; Genesis 11:10-26"
bible_references: ["Genesis 5:3-5", "Genesis 5:24-27", "Genesis 7:6", "Genesis 7:11", "Genesis 7:23", "Genesis 11:1-9", "Genesis 11:26", "Genesis 11:32", "Genesis 12:4", "Genesis 17:17", "Genesis 21:5", "Genesis 25:7", "1 Chronicles 1:24", "Isaiah 40:8", "Luke 3:36-38", "Acts 7:4", "Acts 7:14", "Romans 3:2", "Hebrews 11:5", "1 Peter 3:20"]
date_created: 2026-09-26
date_modified: 2026-11-03
ai_provider_models:
  - anthropic/claude-opus-5.5
---

# 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](https://the-way.lewy.au/chronology/world-population-declares-gods-creation-and-biblical-truth/),
which relies on the same chronology for its growth-rate arithmetic. The manuscript tables behind it
are in [Genealogy and Times](https://the-way.lewy.au/chronology/genealogy-times/).

## Key Takeaways

*(This section follows the [Key Takeaways](https://the-way.lewy.au/about/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](#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](#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](#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](#the-recommendation-the-masoretic-numbers).**
  What is settled, what is contested, the Flood date that follows, and
  [why the site adopted it](#why-this-site-follows-the-masoretic-numbers).
- **[Testing it against Egypt and Sumer](#testing-it-against-egypt-and-sumer)**, then
  [tree rings and varves](#tree-rings-and-varves) and [Babel's archaeology](#babels-archaeology).
- **[What this shows about God](#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
<span dir="rtl">וַיּוֹלֶד</span> (*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](https://the-way.lewy.au/chronology/genealogy-times/#the-three-witnesses).
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](https://the-way.lewy.au/chronology/genealogy-times/#methuselah-the-name-the-number-and-the-flood).

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](https://the-way.lewy.au/chronology/genealogy-times/#the-cainan-question)
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](https://the-way.lewy.au/chronology/genealogy-times/#the-contested-counter-and-the-working-position)).
- **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, because each verse dates the birth of the man it names; the case on
  both sides is in [Genealogy and Times](https://the-way.lewy.au/chronology/genealogy-times/#are-there-gaps-in-genesis-5-and-11).
- **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](/timeline/#creation-flood), 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](https://the-way.lewy.au/chronology/genealogy-times/#what-stays-open).

## 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

1. **The language.** Some read the verb <span dir="rtl">וַיּוֹלֶד</span> (*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?
2. **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?
3. **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?
4. **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?
5. **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?
6. **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?

## 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](https://the-way.lewy.au/chronology/genealogy-times/) — the manuscript tables, the Cainan
  question and the Methuselah arithmetic this study relies on.
- [The Prophetic Timeline](/timeline/#creation-flood) — the Flood on this line, with the
  Septuagint and Samaritan readings switchable for comparison.