Inerrancy Requires Gaps in the Genealogies of the Bible

James Ussher famously calculated that the earth was created in the year 4004 B.C.. He did this through the use of the genealogies found within Scripture. Simply add the lengths of years lived by the individuals and follow the genealogy backwards to creation. Simple as that, right? 

Not really. Leaving aside other important interpretive questions such as the length of time between Genesis 1:1 and the start of the creative week, as well the best way to interpret Genesis 1-11 as a whole, Ussher’s method of calculating the age of the earth through use of scripture’s genealogies is simply indefensible. 

Inerrancy Requires Gaps

Throughout the last few centuries there has, of course, been some debate regarding the date of human origins. The genealogies are often ground-zero for this. Many who are eager to defend a young earth view of creation jump on the chance to do some calculations. As has already been hinted at, at most, even if successful, all these calculations could do would be to establish the date of human creation, other interpretive battles would have to be fought to ground a date for the age of the earth, as well as a separate battle for the age of the universe.

All that said, one of the most fundamental questions about the biblical genealogies is this: Are there gaps within them?

The answer to this is a resounding and necessary yes. Anyone committed to inerrancy has to affirm this. Let’s look at an example provided by Old Testament scholar, C. John Collins:

The genealogies in the Bible have gaps: for example, in the genealogy of Jesus, Matthew tells us that “Joram fathered Uzziah” (Matt. 1:8, using the Greek equivalent to the Hebrew word in Genesis 5). However, if you read 2 Kings, you see that Uzziah was actually Joram’s great-great-grandson. Apparently, “A fathered B” may mean “A fathered an ancestor of B.”¹ 

I’d prefer to say that Matthew knew what he was doing. The fact that his genealogy follows a patterned 14+14+14 literary purpose further demonstrates that.

The Function of Genealogies

Clearly, Matthew had no problem with inserting a large gap into his genealogy. Why? Because, his purpose, and the purpose of all the genealogies in the Bible, is not to provide a chronological timeline, but rather to demonstrate a line of decent. 

As the famous ancient Egyptian scholar K.A. Kitchen put it in reference to the genealogies in Genesis 1-11:

Thus, in the formal, representative genealogies of Gen. 4, 5, 11, “A fathered B” can be literal; or it may equally stand for “A fathered [P, who fathered Q, who fathered R, who fathered S, who fathered T, who fathered…] B.” Or in short, for “A fathered (the line culminating in) B.” So no exception can legitimately be taken to this view.²  

To properly understand and interpret anything in Scripture, we must interpret with respect to the author’s intent. This is true of all human communication. It is critical to recognize how modern many of our interpretive impulses are. Indeed, as Christian philosopher James Smith put it, “There is nothing more modern than Young Earth Creationism.”³ Ironically, the movement that often claims that all others have succumbed and compromised to the pressures of modern science is all too often blind to just how infected with enlightenment thinking it can be.

This is once more demonstrated by the Ussher impulse for using the genealogies for methods beyond the author’s intent. Collins again reminds us of this:

If we use a biblical genealogy to compute a length of time, we are failing to cooperate with the kind of communicative act that these genealogies perform. Their communicative purpose is to give the line of descent and to emphasize historical continuity.⁴

We simply cannot forget the intention of the genealogies and must interpret them with respect to this intent. If the intent is to demonstrate a historical continuity from Adam to Christ, this must be our focus. Going beyond the intent of the type of text is sure to lead to error. 

Creating Space For Adam and Eve

In my estimation, this last point is the most critical for our current debates about faith and science. When the genealogies are misused beyond their intent to try to calculate the time of human origins, it creates an unnecessary barrier and stumbling block for those seeking to believe in a historical Adam and Eve. Of course, we ought to recognize the incomparable increase in the theological stakes involved when dealing with the debate about Adam and Eve being real people in human history compared to the debate about the date of human origins. 

Additionally, skeptics readily jump on these miscalculated dates as easy fodder for attacking the truth about Adam and Eve as having existed. To be fair, many young earth creationists will recognize gaps in genealogies but hardly ever push the possible date for the creation of the earth (and humans) beyond 10,000 B.C. Nevertheless, these dates (especially the later ones—that is, closer to our present day), create tremendous scientific barriers for defending the historicity of Adam and Eve. As Collins states:

Part of the motivation for disagreeing with this position [Adam and Eve as the parents of all mankind] is the idea that Adam and Eve, as presented in the Bible, are far too recent to be the parents of all mankind, in view of what the sciences have shown. But that presupposes a position on what the Bible presents, including how the genealogies are to be read and what we are to make of the descendants of Cain. We will take up those topics in the next chapter; but it will be enough here to say that the Bible does not commit itself to a too-recent Adam and Eve.⁵

Not only may a bad reading of what the genealogies say lead to a denial of Adam and Eve, it may even cause more Christians to unnecessarily embrace a more evolutionary account for human origins. Old earth creationists like myself, generally prefer very few limits on the time frame for when God created Adam and Eve, as this avoids a commitment to Adam and Eve having come from some kind of earlier (not fully human) hominid. Of course, I am revealing my own bias here, but our biblical interpretation should happen prior to our application of natural history. Nevertheless, I believe any believer should allow the two to have a conversation.

Inerrancy vs. Inerrant Interpretation

We shouldn’t overcommit the Bible to things it does not say. We should be especially careful to avoid this when doing so would put Scripture at odds with very demonstrable facts revealed within God’s book of nature. Both books require interpretation. Both books require us to interpret with respect to something. And, both books were written by God, meaning that if there is a contradiction between them, it surely must be due to a misinterpretation. However, that misinterpretation could be from either book, especially when not dealing with matters central to the faith. As Galileo made clear centuries ago, when dealing with science and faith questions believers should assume inerrancy, not inerrant interpretation. 

Notes: 

1. C. John Collins, Science and Faith: Friends or Foes? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003), 108
2. K.A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 440-41
3. James K.A. Smith, How (Not) to be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014),
4. Collins, Science and Faith, 206-07  
5. C. John Collins, Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary, (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2006), 167; emphasis mine

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