These genealogies were viewed as generally accurate sources which might safely be used to reconstruct the history of Israel in the biblical period . This strong faith in the historical reliability of the genealogies persisted until modern biblical criticism rose in the Nineteenth century . When Moses wrote Genesis, he included a detailed list of the exact ages of the people involved, which creates a timeline of how many years passed between each generation . Genesis looks like it is a collection of unrelated stories that get interrupted by seemingly random bouts of genealogies, but current text has been altered to highlight family lineage which starts with Adam and is traced through to Jacob’s sons . Young earth creationists will agree that it is the traditional interpretation—days are to be understood literally, which makes the earth is about 6,000-10,000 years old. The author of Genealogies, Seed and the compositional Unity of Genesis, Alexander Desmond, points out one obvious feature of the book of Genesis in its received forms, which is the repetition of headings used as an introduction for narratives and genealogies that alternate throughout . The commonality in all of the headings is one Hebrew word, which has various meanings, the most common being: descendant(s), generation and history . Those headings served two functions, to deal with the lives of Adam, Noah, Abraham, …show more content…
The genealogy lists in Genesis tend to only include “important people” who are crucial to fully understanding our history, such as the line of Adam. Adam’s family line according to genesis was Adam, Seth, Enoch, Cainan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech and Noah, but out of these men included in the genealogy, there were wives, sons, and daughters left out . Adam was the first person on earth, Seth was Abel’s “replacement”, Enoch was the man who walked with God, and so on. All of the people in Genesis were included because they were an important diverse individual whose existence contributed to one part to the story of Genesis. Even though there were a fair amount of family members not written about in Genesis, the genealogy shows importance of family not only to God, but also to Moses. The foundation of society back then, and today is the family unit, and Moses emphasized the importance of family through each generation he wrote