False Assumption #3 of Young Earth Creationists

Dr. Alice C. Linsley


This continues the series on "False Assumptions of Young Earth Creationists." To date we have considered False Assumption 1: Genesis is history and should be read as a chronological account, and False Assumption 2: The Genesis “begats” list the first people living on Earth

False Assumption 3:  Bishop Ussher's timeline is reliable and can be used to calculate the age of the Earth. 

Ussher did not recognize that the Genesis genealogies are regnal, not generational. The begats cannot be used to count generations because they are king lists and some kings ruled simultaneously.

Ussher was unaware of the marriage and ascendancy pattern of the Hebrew rulers whereby the ruler had two wives and two firstborn sons. Ussher's timeline is flawed because he failed to take this into consideration.

The early Hebrew marriage and ascendancy pattern was well established among these powerful rulers, indicating that they had been in power long before Noah's time. The oldest known site of Horite Hebrew religion at Nehken dates to about 4200 B.C. and reflects a high level of technological and cultural achievement. This is 6200 years ago, the time when the earth was created according to Ussher.

Menes is credited with first uniting the Upper and Lower Nile peoples into one Kingdom. He wore the double crown to show that he was sovereign over both regions. The serekh surrounding his name is surmounted by the falcon, the totem of HR (Horus). Horus was called “son of God” and in ancient Egyptian HR means "Most High One".

At the Horus temple of Nekhen, votive instruments were ten times larger than the mace heads and bowls found elsewhere, suggesting that this was a very prestigious shrine. Horite priests placed invocations to the Creator at the summit of the fortress as the sun rose. Likely, this is the origin of the sun blessings in Hinduism (the Agnihotra morning ritual) and in Judaism (the Birka Hachama, or “Sun Blessing” ritual performed every 28 years).

Young Earth Creationists are wrong to use Archbishop James Ussher’s chronology to date the age of the Earth. Ussher assumed that the "begats" of Genesis chapters 4 and 5 refer to the first people on earth and he concluded that the earth's age is between 6000-8000 years. Today the anthropological tool of kinship analysis reveals the flaw in Ussher's approach. The diagram below shows that the lines of Cains and his brother Seth intermarriage according to a long-standing marriage and ascendancy pattern that is characteristic of the early Hebrew ruler-priest caste.

Cain and Seth married patrilineal cousins who were the daughters of a ruler named Enoch. These wives named their firstborn sons after their father, according to the cousin bride's naming prerogative. Lamech the Elder's daughter Naamah married her cousin Methuselah and named their firstborn son Lamech after her father.

This shows that the historical Adam had a contemporary called Enoch, which is a royal title referring to one who ascends to the throne of his father. 

Ussher did not take into consideration is that Kushite rulers, like Egyptian rulers, did not name their biological fathers in their king lists. This explains why many of the names that appear in the Genesis 4 and 5 lists are titles of royal persons rather than proper names.

The Kushites believed that the ruler-priest was the son of Re whose emblem was the sun. (Re in ancient Egyptian means "father".) The Pharaoh was called "son of Re" which is why Egyptian texts never mention the king's earthly father. Kingship was a manifestation of the High God's overshadowing of noble women. 

Sargon the Great claimed not to know his father. He based his authority to rule on the suggestion that he was conceived according to the Horite Hebrew myth of miraculous virginal conception. However, any ruler could make that claim. The true proof of the ruler's deity was resurrection from the dead.  Sargon stayed dead, as did all the rulers of Egypt and Mesopotamia. However, Jesus Christ, a descendant of their royal lines, did indeed rise from the dead and his rising was verified by many eye witnesses. 

Dating more accurately

The early Hebrew rulers of Genesis 4 and 5 lived and reigned within the periods of early Egyptian history.


First Intermediate Period
2475-2445 BC: 7th - 8th Dynasties Noah, Shem, Ham, Japheth and Kush

2445–2160 BC: 9th -10th Dynasties Nimrod, Arpachshad, Salah, Eber and Peleg and Joktan


Middle Kingdom
2160-2000 BC: 11th Dynasty Nahor, Terah and Abraham

2000-1788 BC: 12th Dynasty Jacob, Esau, Joseph


The early Kushite expansion into ancient Sumer/Chaldea has been well-documented. In Sumerian inscriptions the Kushites were called Meluha Kasi. The dispersion of the early Hebrew out of the Nile Valley is evident in Genesis 10 which speaks of the Kushite kingdom builder Nimrod who built a great empire in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. 


The Pattern of Two Wives and Two Sons

Horite and Sethite Hebrew rulers maintained two wives in separate households on a north-south axis. The ruler's first wife was a half-sister (as was Sarah to Abraham) and the second wife was a patrilineal cousin (as was Keturah to Abraham). The firstborn son of the half-sister wife ascended to the throne of his biological father. As Abraham's proper heir, Isaac ruled over Abraham's territory in ancient Edom (Idumea).

The firstborn son of the patrilineal cousin wife served as a high official in the territory of his maternal grandfather after whom he was named. Joktan, Abraham's son by his cousin wife Keturah, served in the kingdom of Joktan the Elder, his maternal grandfather. The Joktanite clans resided in Arabia.

There was a hierarchy of Hebrew chiefs, vassals, and kings. Analysis of the kinship pattern of the early Hebrew rulers indicates segmentary lineages. The first loyalty is to the lineage of father and his principal (half-sister) wife and their son, the heir. The second loyalty is to the father and his second (cousin) wife and their son who belongs to the household of his maternal grandfather. The third loyalty is to the household and clan of the cousin.

A Bedouin proverb summarizes the philosophy behind segmentary lineages:

I against my brother
I and my brother against my cousin
I, my brother, and my cousin against the world

 
Sons who were not the firstborn were given gifts of camels, jewelry, flocks, herds, and servants and sent away to establish settlements of their own. The importance of these "sent-away sons" as a driving factor in the Kushite expansion out of the Nile Valley.

This pattern is evident in the case of the Kushite kingdom-builder Nimrod. Nimrod, one of Abraham's ancestors, was sent away from his older brother Ramah whose territory was in northern Arabia. After numerous conquests, Nimrod’s territory was far greater than his brother’s. It extended the length of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, and the principal cities were Babel, Erech, and Akkad (Gen. 10:10). The language of Nimrod’s empire was Akkadian, the oldest known Semitic language. It has close affinity to the languages of the Nile Valley.


Related reading:  The Hebrew Were a Caste; Hebrew Rulers with Two Wives; Horite and Sethite Mounds; Abraham's Kushite Ancestors; Kushite Kings and the Kingdom of God; Hebrew Names and Titles; The Welcome Demise of American Fundamentalism