King James Version · Before the nations
Genesis 5
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This is the book of the generations of . In the day that created man, in the of made he him; Male and female created he them; and them, and called their name , in the day when they were created. And lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own , after his ; and called his name : And the days of after he had begotten were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: And all the days that lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he . And lived an hundred and five years, and begat : 7And lived after he begat eight hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters: 8And all the days of were nine hundred and twelve years: and he . And lived ninety years, and begat : 10And lived after he begat eight hundred and fifteen years, and begat sons and daughters: 11And all the days of were nine hundred and five years: and he . And lived seventy years, and begat Mahalaleel: 13And lived after he begat Mahalaleel eight hundred and forty years, and begat sons and daughters: 14And all the days of were nine hundred and ten years: and he . And Mahalaleel lived sixty and five years, and begat : 16And Mahalaleel lived after he begat eight hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters: 17And all the days of Mahalaleel were eight hundred ninety and five years: and he . And lived an hundred sixty and two years, and he begat : 19And lived after he begat eight hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: 20And all the days of were nine hundred sixty and two years: and he . And lived sixty and five years, and begat : And walked with after he begat three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: 23And all the days of were three hundred sixty and five years: And walked with : and he was not; for took him. And lived an hundred eighty and seven years, and begat : 26And lived after he begat seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat sons and daughters: 27And all the days of were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he . 28And lived an hundred eighty and two years, and begat a son: And he called his name , saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which hath . 30And lived after he begat five hundred ninety and five years, and begat sons and daughters: 31And all the days of were seven hundred seventy and seven years: and he . And was five hundred years old: and begat , , and .
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · Before the nations, 2600 BC to 2100 BC ›
The opening chapters, from creation to Babel, told on a scale that covers the whole earth before the story narrows to one family.
- The neighbours' own stories
- Mesopotamia told its own versions of these events. Atrahasis and the eleventh tablet of Gilgamesh tell of a flood, a survivor, an ark, and birds sent out to find land. Enuma Elish tells of a world made from a defeated sea. The resemblances are close enough that scholars have argued about them for a century and a half, and the differences are where the argument gets interesting: Genesis has no quarrel among gods, no accidental humanity, and a flood sent for moral reasons rather than because people were noisy.
- Babel and the ziggurat
- A tower with its top in the heavens, built of brick and bitumen on a plain in Shinar, describes a Mesopotamian ziggurat exactly. Dozens were built, the best known at Ur and Babylon, of mud brick because southern Mesopotamia has no stone. The detail about brick instead of stone is the kind of thing someone writes who has actually seen one.
- The wider world
- If these chapters are placed anywhere in ordinary chronology, the surrounding centuries are the age of the Egyptian pyramids, the Sumerian city-states, the Indus Valley cities, and the first phase of Stonehenge. Writing was a few centuries old and existed in two places on earth.
All of Genesis