@Tau I agree. Dan's post is all about creating a new rule however and my answer was simply intended to reject that, not to dilute the standards we already hold.
@PaulVargas Hi, Paul. I left that comment for Frank but should have sent it to you. I'm not sure what we begin with. Please let me know.
One other factor to consider is that Noah lived 350 years after the flood, to die at 950 years old. If he were 600 at the start of the flood, he didn't like 350 after all was dry again.
@PaulVargas I believe that being a "son of 600 years" is not the same as 600 years old. With life and parenthood beginning at conception, the baby is a son at conception.
@PaulVargas I'm just seeing a difference(s) between Noah being 600 years old when the flood began and YLT's "Noah [is] a son of six hundred years, and the deluge of waters hath been upon the earth."
@PaulVargas So far the chart makes sense. I especially agree with the bottom line, as long as those are the 600th and 601st years of his "life". Some think of that as his being 600 years old when the floodgates were opened. I believe he was only 598 years (+4 months & days) old when the floodgates were opened. That's after adjusting for the "th's,"nd". Next, about 9 months needs to be deducted since he was alive in his mother's womb.
> In the six hundredth year; either complete, or rather current or begun; otherwise he had lived three hundred and fifty one years after the flood, not three hundred and fifty only, as it is written, Genesis 9:29. "Matthew Poole's Commentary", from http://biblehub.com/commentaries/genesis/7-11.htm
@PaulVargas I think I'm agreeing. Since he lived 350 years after the flood and died at 950 years old, we could say he would have been (in total years) either 599 or 600 when all was dry again. (We can deal with the months later).
@Caleb I'm seeing a difference(s) between Noah being 600 years old when the flood began and YLT's Gen 7:6 of "Noah [is] a son of six hundred years, and the deluge of waters hath been upon the earth." Do you see any difference in time with those?
@JohnMartin But, John, did the ancients count conception and pregnancy as a year of life? That is the question. Childbirth is rarely the exact day predicted. It is very difficult for any woman to know exactly when she got pregnant.
The idioms "a son of X years" and "xth year of life" mean the same thing.
@FrankLuke I don't know if the ancients counted conception at part of life. What I'm saying is that the math within the Bible does. I agree birth is only about 9 months after conception.
@JohnMartin Technically, 8.5 months from conception for a full term. The prediction date is calculated from the onset date of the mother's last period. Conception would be (most likely) 10-14 days after that period begins.
@JohnMartin Where does the Bible count the time in the womb as part of a person's age?
@FrankLuke The last verses says Joseph died at the age of 110, yet four verses back it says his "life" was 110 years. That isn't shown for anyone else. The age and life can both have a total of 110 years. If he'd just become 110 years old, he would still have had only 110 years of life.
@FrankLuke Those last verses led me toward finding that life and age are two different things.
And if you ask them what is my age, they'll say 38 years. They are three ways of saying the same thing. If you ask them, "how many years is he a son of?" you'll get weird looks because that isn't an idiom in English. If you ask one of my Hebrew professors, they wouldn't know my age off hand, but they'd get the idiom.
@FrankLuke Let me try this...I'm saying that a child's life, childhood and being a son begin at conception, but his years old/age don't. The latter we begin counting at birth.
But that isn't how the idiom "a son of" works. It's simply used synonymously with a person's age. It's when you try to make it different that you get problems.
@FrankLuke I agree that's how we say "a son" works. I say the Bible per the math is saying something else.
@FrankLuke Let's say my wife will be giving birth to another child in 2 months.
@FrankLuke While we say I'll be a father again in 2 months, that's not correct. I became a father again about 7 months ago. At least that's what the math from the Bible is saying.
@FrankLuke I see why you would. The visible math that shows that is not within Joseph's story. It's within the very detailed Great Flood story that takes things to the day.
Analyzing Noah and the Great Flood story, there appear to be 3 math problems, each with its own set of factors and calculations, that aren’t easy to resolve.
First is the “2 years after the flood” problem; in combining three specific verses and checking the math there end ups being a 2 year di...
@JonEricson I'm seeing a difference(s) between Noah being 600 years old when the flood began and YLT's Gen 7:6 of "Noah [is] a son of six hundred years, and the deluge of waters hath been upon the earth." Do you (or anyone) see a difference in time between those?
@JohnMartin First thing we should remember is that Gen says that Noah was 500 when he begat them, but we also know that Ham was the youngest, and he's listed in the middle. That tells us that the three aren't listed oldest to youngest but by importance.
I believe that Shem is actually the middle child with Japeth the oldest.
I also do not read that as they are triplets, merely that Noah became a father for the first time. That is, Japeth was born that year, but Shem and Ham came later.
With Ham being the youngest but listed in the middle, that shows they are listed in order of importance to the story. It also shows that Shem may not be the oldest.
Consider if Japeth were the one born when Noah was 500 years old and Shem was born 2 years later. The numbers work.
No problem.
I believe a similar setup of multiple sons being listed to a father while only one age is given is seen with Abraham's father.
"Gen 11:26 And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran." No reason to assume they are triplets. Just that these three were born after that year and Abram was the most important of the three.
@FrankLuke Re: Noah and his only 3 sons, I don't see how there could be an age difference of more than one year. "When Noah was 500 years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth".
That's something else to consider. What if the flood in those verses with numbers refers to only the time when the rains were falling? He was 600 when the rains started and 600 when the rains ended, but the waters prevailed for several months more.
You are reading the three brothers as the same age. I'm not. Let's just follow the odds and say that the three boys were born single births. Then Japeth was born first when Noah was 500. If Shem was born 2 years later, then he is 100 two years after the flood begins. If you make him born when Noah is 503, then he is 100 two years after the flood ends.
@FrankLuke Ok. Thanks. I'm just not seeing how if it says Noah "became the father of" all three when he was 500, one may have been begotten 2 years later.
@FrankLuke You're correct; I had been reading the 3 sons were probably the same age. Let me leave this for now. One thing I had was Shem being older than Japheth per Gen 10:21. Thanks.
@FrankLuke Specifically I had Shem born before Japheth yet them being the same age.
Analyzing Noah and the Great Flood story, there appear to be 3 math problems, each with its own set of factors and calculations, that aren’t easy to resolve.
First is the “2 years after the flood” problem; in combining three specific verses and checking the math there end ups being a 2 year di...
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