The generations of Adam are the two lines of descent from Adam, both ending in the name Lamech, which are given in Genesis. Lamech, the descendant of Cain, is at the end of one line, and the lamech at the end of the other is described as the father of Noah. According to the Book of Genesis in the Christian Bible and Judaisms Torah, and to Islams Quran, Adam was the first man created by God. ... Genesis (Greek: Γένεσις, having the meanings of birth, creation, cause, beginning, source and origin), also called The First Book of Moses, is the first book of Torah (five books of Moses), and is the first book of the Tanakh, part of the Hebrew Bible; it is also the first book of... Lamech, the descendant of Cain, is the individual at the end of one of the genealogies of Adam, on the line descending from Cain. ... Noah or Nóach (Rest, Standard Hebrew נוֹחַ Nóaḥ, Tiberian Hebrew נֹחַ Nōªḥ; Arabic نوح Nūḥ), is a Biblical figure who according to Genesis built an ark to save his family and a selection of the worlds animals from the Deluge (an example of divine retribution). ...

The lines

One line goes from Adam's son Cain, and the other goes via a son of Adam named Seth. The lines are: William Blakes The Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve Cain and Abel are mentioned in Genesis 4 [1], both sons of Adam and Eve. ...

Cain

• Enoch
  • Irad
    • Mehujael
      • Methusael
        • Lamech

Seth

• Enos
  • Cainan
    • Mehalaleel
      • Jared
        • Enoch
          • Methuselah
            • Lamech

The names and ages

The names, as they appear in the masoretic text, are traditionally given certain translations: The Masoretic Text (MT) is the Hebrew text of the Tanakh approved for general use in Judaism. ...

The Sethite line also gives ages, and dates of birth. These are given, in the ancient manner of dating, in terms of the age of their predecessor. From these details, a rough chronology can be constructed, taking the birth of Adam as year 1. The masoretic text varies in this from the Septuagint, which mostly presents the same age at death, but as having been born 100 years later into their parent's life, except for Enoch, who is unchanged in this matter, and for Lamech, who dies 24 years younger, and whose father is presented as being 20 years younger when Lamech was born: ASS or ass has several meanings: In zoology, an ass is the domestic donkey. ... Saint George versus the dragon, Gustave Moreau, c. ... A boy from an East Cipinang trash dump slum in Jakarta, Indonesia shows his find. ... The Septuagint (LXX) is the name commonly given in the West to the Koine Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh/Old Testament) produced from the third to first century BC. The Septuagint Bible includes additional books beyond those used in the Hebrew Bible. ...

The second century BC Book of Jubilees, regarded as non-canonical except by Coptic Christianity additionally gives wives for the sethite line: The Book of Jubilees expands and reworks material found in Genesis to Exodus 15. ... Jesus Christ in a Coptic icon. ...

Interpretations

Aside from Cain, and Lamech, his descendant, two other names in the lists are traditionally given significance. Firstly, Methuselah has the oldest age appearing in the bible, and so the name of Methuselah has become a general reference to longevity. Most traditional translations interpret the name as man of the dart or man of the javelin, however, some critical scholars have proposed it should simply be read as man of Selah, since Selah is the title of the mesopotamian moon god Sin (also known as Nanna). The question of the correct interpretation of his name is further complicated, as the Septuagint renders Methuselah and Methusael with exactly the same name, the latter meaning champion of God, and by the fact that Methuselah is a very northern (Kingdom of Israel), or babylonian, style name for an otherwise southern (kingdom of Judah) set of names. The age given in the Septuagint for Methusaleh implies that he must have survived the Great Flood, despite not being on Noah's ark. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... In the study of mythology, a lunar deity is a god or goddess associated with or symbolizing the moon: see moon (mythology). ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... The Septuagint (LXX) is the name commonly given in the West to the Koine Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh/Old Testament) produced from the third to first century BC. The Septuagint Bible includes additional books beyond those used in the Hebrew Bible. ... The Kingdom of Israel (Hebrew: מַלְכוּת יִשְׂרָאֵל, Standard Hebrew Malḫut Yisraʼel, Tiberian Hebrew Malḵûṯ Yiśrāʼēl) was the Kingdom proclaimed by the Israelite nation around 1050 BCE. The nation itself was formed as the Israelites left the Land of Goshen, Egypt during the Exodus at an uncertain date, often... The Kingdom of Judah (Hebrew מַלְכוּת יְהוּדָה, Standard Hebrew Malḫut Yəhuda, Tiberian Hebrew Malḵûṯ Yəhûḏāh) in the times of the Hebrew Bible, was the nation formed from the territories of the tribes of Judah, Simeon, and Benjamin after the Kingdom of Israel was divided, and was named after... This article is on mythology involving great floods. ... Noah or Nóach (Rest, Standard Hebrew נוֹחַ Nóaḥ, Tiberian Hebrew נֹחַ Nōªḥ; Arabic نوح Nūḥ), is a Biblical figure who according to Genesis built an ark to save his family and a selection of the worlds animals from the Deluge (an example of divine retribution). ...

The enigmatic description given to the Enoch in one of the lines, that he ...walked with god, and was not, has lead to extensive esoteric mythology surrounding him, particularly dating from the 2nd century BC, such as the Book of Enoch, which is canonical in Coptic Christianity. The age of Enoch which is given in the masoretic text, 365 years, is noticably similar to the number of days in the solar year, and so some critical scholars have suggested Enoch originally represented the deified sun. In the Book of Genesis, Enoch or Hanokh (חֲנוֹךְ Initiated; dedicated; disciplined, Standard Hebrew Ḥanoḫ, Tiberian Hebrew Ḥănôḵ) is a name shared by two individuals named in the Genealogies of Genesis and subsequent Jewish, Christian, and Islamic writers. ... Etymology Esoteric is an adjective originating during Hellenic Greece under the domain of the Roman Empire; it comes from the Greek esôterikos, from esôtero, the comparative form of esô: within. It is a word meaning anything that is inner and occult, a latinate word meaning hidden (from which... The Book of Enoch is a work attributed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. ... A tropical year is the length of time that the Sun, as viewed from the Earth, takes to return to the same position along the ecliptic (its path among the stars on the celestial sphere). ... The Trundholm Sun Chariot pulled by a horse is believed to be a sculpture illustrating an important part of Nordic Bronze Age mythology. ...

Comparison between the lines

Taking the septuagint rendering of Methusael and Methuselah, and taking the Cainite line back two generations to make up the same numbers as the Sethite line, the following comparison is reached:

The similarity seen in the lines has been noted since ancient times. Traditionally, this is explained by intermarriage between the lines, such as by the daughter of the Cainite Lamech marrying Methuselah, and naming her child after her father. The names of the Sethite line are traditionally interpreted as being more positive than those of the Cainite line, reflecting a negative attitude towards Cain, for example Jared being ruler compared with Irad being dragon, and Mehalaleel being praise of God compared to Mehujael being smited by God. The Tetragrammaton in Phoenician (1100 BC to 300 CE), Aramaic (10th Century BC to 0) and modern Hebrew scripts. ...

In modern critical scholarship, it is explained more simply as the lines being copies of one another, the Cainite line being ascribed to the Yahwist, and the Sethite line being ascribed to the Book of Generations, the only differences being corruption of a few names, and the reversal of the position of Enoch and Mehujael/Mehalaleel. A moderate proportion of critical scholars also believe that the Sethite line was inserted into the torah in such a way as to deliberately attempt to distance Noah, traditionally seen as a hero, from Cain, traditionally seen as a villain, and consequently seperating Lamech into two different people. The factual accuracy of this article is disputed. ...

Some biblical critics have drawn the conclusion that, since Seth appears in the same place that Yahweh takes in the Cainite line, Seth must originally have been a god, with the biblical etymology given for his name (substitute) being a later folk etymology. An obvious candidate for identifying Seth, as a god, is Seth, a major god in Egyptian mythology. Since the Israelites, during their sojourn in Egypt, are usually identified by critical scholars as the Hyksos, this accords with the manner in which the Hyksos chose Seth as their chief deity, replacing the chief deity of their own henotheistic pantheon. Conversely, taking into account the Sumerian king list, the other prominent candidate is identifying the name Seth as a corruption of Shitti (more obvious in the hebrew alphabet), which was an epithet of Marduk, the babylonian chief deity (c.f. the Elamite prince Shitti-Marduk who fought with Nebuchadrezzar). Folk etymology (or popular etymology) is a linguistic term for a category of false etymology which has grown up in popular lore, as opposed to one which arose in scholarly usage. ... Set, in KV34 Set (also Setekh, Seth, etc) was originally a god of strength, war, storms, foreign lands (and foreigners) and deserts in Egyptian mythology. ... Egyptian mythology (or Egyptian religion) is the name for the succession of beliefs held by the people of Egypt until the coming of Christianity and Islam. ... The Hyksos (Egyptian heka khasewet) were an ethnically mixed group of Southwest Asiatic people who appeared in the eastern Nile Delta during the Second Intermediate Period. ... In religion and philosophy, henotheism is a term coined by Max Müller, meaning devotion to a single god while accepting the existence of other gods. ... Marduk and his dragon, from a Babylonian cylinder seal Marduk [märdook] (Sumerian spelling in Akkadian AMAR.UTU solar calf; Biblical Merodach) was the name of a late generation god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon, who, when Babylon permanently became the political center... Elam (Persian:تمدن عیلام) is one of the first civilizations on record based in the far west and south-west of what is modern-day Iran (in the Ilam Province and the lowlands of Khuzestan). ... Nebuchadnezzar (or Nebudchadrezzar) II (ca. ...

Comparison with the Sumerian king list

While, in the story of Cain and Abel, Cain is presented as being forever condemned to being a nomad, in the Cainite line, he is described as being a city builder. This has lead biblical critics to suggest the two accounts of cain derive from different sources, and even though the documentary hypothesis still places them both as the Jahwist source, it is nethertheless believed that the Jahwist inserted the list into his work from another source. Kazakh nomads in the steppes of the Russian Empire, ca. ... The documentary hypothesis is a hypothesis proposed by many historians and academics in the field of linguistics and source criticism that the Five Books of Moses (the Torah) are in fact a combination of documents from different sources rather than authored by one individual. ...

Upon the discovery of the antediluvian portion of the Sumerian king list, its striking similarities with the sethite line have been noted by critical scholarship. Several surviving inscriptions of this list predate the biblical text by at least a millenium. On the Sumerian king list, identical to the biblical manner, the kings have significantly larger reigns before the deluge than after it, roughly by a factor of 20. The sumerian list in fact measures the reigns of the kings in sars, units of 3,600 years (sumerians primarily used base 60, so this is merely the next unit up - 60x60). The Sumerian king list is an ancient text in the Sumerian language listing kings of Sumer from Sumerian and foreign dynasties. ...

There are several different copies of the list, each mostly listing the same antediluvian kings, in the same order, but with differing amounts of sars for their reigns. Over time the names became more corrupted, resembling the originals only vaguely by the time of Berossus' 3rd Century BC copy of the list. The significant feature of the list, as far as the biblical sethite genealogy goes, is in the translation of the names and attributes of the kings it lists: Berossus (also Berossos or Berosus) Greek: Βεροσσος was a Hellenistic Babylonian writer who was active at the beginning of the 3rd century BC. // Life and work Berossus published the Babyloniaca (hereafter, History of Babylonia) some time around 290-278 B.C.E. for the Macedonian/Seleucid king, Antiochus I. Certain astrological...

Many of the connections are readily apparant, but two require non-traditional etymologies for the two corresponding Sethite names. The first is Methuselah, which as mentioned before can be interpreted as Man of Selah, a reference to the moon god, Sin. The second is Lamech, which linguists who specialise in ancient Akkadian, have proposed is derived from the Akkadian Lamaga, meaning priest. This would accord with the greater likelyhood of association with the Akkadian version of the king list, which mostly used 10 names, than an association with the original Sumerian list of 8. The correspondence then appearing are: Adapa was an Ancient Sumerian king. ... Folk etymology (or popular etymology) is a linguistic term for a category of false etymology which has grown up in popular lore, as opposed to one which arose in scholarly usage. ... Tammuz or Tamuz (Arabic تمّوز Tammūz; Hebrew תַּמּוּז, Standard Hebrew Tammuz, Tiberian Hebrew Tammûz; Akkadian Duʾzu, Dūzu; See also Tammuz (month). ... In Sumerian mythology, Utu is the offspring of Nanna and Ningal and is the god of the sun and of justice. ... Shamash in his trone from the tablette of Sippar ca. ... Adad in Akkadian and Ishkur in Sumerian are the names of the storm-god in the Babylonian-Assyrian pantheon, both usually written by the logogram dIM. The Akkadian god Adad is cognate in name and functions with northwest Semitic god Hadad. ... Akkadian language city of Akkad or Agad Akkadian Empire Sargon of Akkad the Amarna letters and Amarna Letters EA 296(Yahtiru) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

As the Sumerian king list has several correspondences with the sethite line, even featuring the matching names in the same order, it is possible to tentatively associate the missing connection to Alalgar with Seth, the only missing name, though the interpretation of such an association would currently be a mystery. The alternative order between of Enmendurana and Ensipadzidana, present in some versions of the Sumerian king list, also accords with the order of the Cainite line, though the mystery surrounding Alalgar is unhelpful in explaining how the Cainite line can correspond to the first two positions of the Sumerian list.