What I did was to take the numbers of Genesis 5 and throw them into a spreadsheet, just to see how things came out. To get a better look of the results, you should double-click the chart above to open a larger version in a new window. Year zero marks the beginning of Adam's life (I'm guessing when he got kicked out of the garden of Eden). And then I go from there.
For example: Genesis 5:3 tells us that Adam was 130 years old when he begat Seth. And then Genesis 5:8 tells us that Seth lived a total of 912 years. So, on my chart, Seth's line goes from 130 to 1042. And so on ... all the way through Noah.
As a bonus, I marked when the flood occurs. Genesis 7:6 tells us Noah was 600 years old when the floods came, so as per the math, this happens in year 1656.
Now armed with this chart, we can attack a myriad of questions. For starters, why does the Bible say that these people lived over 900 years? Methuselah has the longest life span of 969. As such, I've seen several works of fiction refer to "Methuselah" as some device or project that gives eternal life. Enoch has the shortest of 365 because he "walked with God."
But then after the flood, life spans decrease drastically. Could it be some kind of math mistake? Surely those recording the numbers could correctly identify the seasons and count the cycles. Some suggest that perhaps they were counting months instead of years. If we divide by twelve, Adam only lives to be 77 years. But then he's 10 years old when he has Seth. Well -- I suppose he was already grown.
But wait -- Seth would have been 8 years old when he had Enos. That doesn't make sense.
It also doesn't make sense to us that all these people would wait so long to have children. Tied for the youngest are Mahalaleel and Enoch who were both 65 when they had their mentioned child. Most women today are unable to bear children at 65.
So, perhaps we don't divide by 12, but by some other magical number to adjust the generations? Well, let's take Mahalaleel and say he really had a child at 16 (reckoned by our years). That provides us a factor of 4. But Mahalaleel, after this adjustment, is still living 223 years. So basically -- yeah -- there doesn't exist a factor or adjustment that gives us both a believable time for giving birth, and a believable time for death.
Plus, check out that dotted line at approximately year 927. There are NINE generations alive at the same time! Has that happened even once to any family in any of our secularly recorded history? I picked 927 because Doctrine and Covenants 107:53-57 describes a time (three years before Adam dies) when Adam gathers together the generations listed above from Seth to Methuselah, and blessed them. I note that Lamech was supposedly alive at the time, but was perhaps not old enough to be a high priest?
And get this ... Lamech dies just a couple of years before the flood hits. And Methuselah? He dies the same year as the flood. What? Did they forget to bring him on the ark? Did he go bad in the end? Poor Methuselah! (Perhaps God waited for him to die before releasing the flood waters?)
And lastly -- one more concept. Genesis 5 lists only one son for Adam, and that was Seth. But we know that Cain and Abel were born before that. And Genesis strongly suggests that there were many children born prior to Cain and Abel -- otherwise, who were those other people Cain went off to and got married? The Joseph Smith translation of Moses also seems to indicate that many were born before. Moses 5:2 states they bare sons and daughters. And then verse 16 mentions Cain. And then Abel comes in verse 17.
So, there's no reason to believe that each child in that lineage was necessarily the first born. It could be that Cain and Abel were mentioned above the others because they were the first murder to have occurred.
So -- why is Seth mentioned over all the thousands of other children Adam may have had? And then why Enos? And then why Cainan? Simplest answer -- there's only one lineage that takes us to Noah. Some call this the "righteous lineage." Perhaps each person in this lineage was particularly more "righteous" than his brethren, and thus more likely to pass on righteous teaching to their children.
And again -- all of these numbers could have been made up after the fact or corrupted through oral traditions. Either way, it was fun to make this chart. Enjoy!!
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