Actual history.

“And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. And Adah bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle. And his brother’s name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ. And Zillah, she also bare Tubalcain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron: and the sister of Tubalcain was Naamah.”

When you read these early chapters of Genesis it is obvious that that the writers believed that they were writing the truth. They don’t write in a way that betrays the work of much later generations who tries to reconstruct history for religious or other political reasons. This means that we either have to accept that these pages contain actual history or we have to imagine that there were some unknown people writing at an unknown time, who were extremely brilliant but also extremely humble, who wrote with such technical skill that they were able to write without betraying their existence at all. The second option is often believed by people who don’t believe in God or in miracles, however, the kind of person they imagine must have been some kind of god performing some kind of miracle.

The major issue about this passage is we can see that it was written before the Flood rather than after it. If these history was written after the Flood the writer would not say that certain people were the “father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle...” If it was written after the Flood they writer would have had to say that even though that family line did those things they were all destroyed in the Flood and then a new group of people arose who were descended from Noah. However, this isn’t written there. The fact that these things were written before the Flood and preserved in the ark give added weight to their veracity. All other evidence of any other writing was destroyed in the Flood. People who try to teach otherwise are adding imagination to conjecture superimposed upon prejudice.

These documents were preserved by the godly line that survived the Flood and eventually came into Abraham’s possession and were taken in Egypt by his descendants. When Moses, inspired by God, wrote the book of Genesis he was like a modern scholar and took advantage of the original documents to research his work and then added to these documents the rest of his personal recollections starting in the book of Exodus.

(These statements are properly argued and referenced in the book that is mentioned below if you would like to have more information.)

If you would like to find out more about God's grace at the beginning you might like to visit http://www.lulu.com/content/799024 and buy a copy of my book “The Scarlet Thread”.

(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)