The Year of the Flood

Genesis 5 gives the age of each father when the named son is born, and the rest of his years, and his total. Add the first column, Masoretic text, from Adam to Noah's 600th year, and the flood is year 1656 from creation. The steps are in Seth to the Flood. Methuselah's 969 years end in that same year.

Two other ancient counts exist. The Samaritan Pentateuch shortens several of the ages at fatherhood, and its flood falls earlier. The Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, lengthens many of them by about a century each, and its flood falls later, often reckoned near year 2242. A reader who hears "the Hebrew year" needs to know which Hebrew. This timeline uses the Masoretic ages, the text behind the Hebrew Bible read in the synagogue and behind the English Old Testament. It says so on the line.

None of these counts is a date dug out of the side of a mountain. They are genealogies. If you anchor the far end at the temple, about 966 BC on the Assyrian-backed estimate, and you treat every number as a straight serial count with no gaps, the Masoretic flood sits in the third millennium BC. Ussher's famous 2348 BC is one such sum, with his own decisions about the later kings. Change the temple anchor, or allow a gap the text does not advertise, and the BC number moves. The Hebrew year 1656 does not move, as long as you are adding the same column.

Luke's genealogy from Jesus back to Adam includes names this chapter has, and it does not print the ages. Luke 3:36 The New Testament treats Adam as a man at the head of the race, not as a symbol of a tribe. Romans 5:14 That is a different question from whether every begetting in Genesis 5 is a father and his immediate son with no name skipped. The chapter's formula is specific enough, "he fathered," plus an age, that the timeline adds them. It does not then pretend the sum has been confirmed by a stele. There is no stele of the flood year.

So the card says year 1656, counted in the text. The BC line says the third millennium only as what a straight sum does. Estimate, and labeled as a sum.