Genesis 5
The Lost Centuries
Numbers changedSame fathers, nearly the same lifespans. Yet almost six hundred years vanish before the flood.
Side by Side
The Older Text
Septuagint, translated before Messiah
Adam was 230 when his son was born. Seth 205. Enos 190. Cainan 170. Mahalaleel 165. Jared 162. Enoch 165. Methuselah 167. Lamech 188. (Creation to flood: about 2,242 years.)
The Later Text
Masoretic, finished about 1,000 years after the cross
Adam was 130 when his son was born. Seth 105. Enos 90. Cainan 70. Mahalaleel 65. Jared 162. Enoch 65. Methuselah 187. Lamech 182. (Creation to flood: 1,656 years.)
Your KJV reads: the short numbers of the Masoretic text.
See what changed and why ↓What Your Bible Says
And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth.
Genesis 5:3 KJV
Genesis 5 lists the fathers from Adam to Noah. Add up the KJV numbers and the flood comes 1,656 years after creation.
What the Older Text Says
And Adam lived two hundred and thirty years, and begot a son after his own form, and after his own image, and he called his name Seth.
Genesis 5:3, Septuagint
In the Greek, most of the fathers are a hundred years older when the son is born. The flood comes about 2,242 years after creation.
What Changed
For almost every man, the whole life is the same in both texts. Adam still dies at 930. Only the age at his son’s birth moved: a hundred years taken from before the birth and added after it.
Six of the fathers each moved by exactly a hundred years. Nearly six hundred years drop out of the time before the flood. A tired copyist does not do that six times.
Which One Is Right?
The Greek Bible has the long ages.
Josephus, the Jewish historian of the first century, gives the long ages too: Adam 230, Seth 205, Enos 190.
Early believers such as Julius Africanus and Hippolytus counted about 5,500 years from creation to Messiah. That count rests on the long ages.
The Samaritan Torah does not side with the Greek here. Before the flood its numbers are even shorter, about 1,307 years.
The Masoretic text has 1,656 years.
Why the Count Mattered
On the long count, the early believers placed Messiah’s birth about 5,500 years after creation. On the short count, He came about 4,000 years in, or less by the Jewish calendar. The world was made about fifteen hundred years younger at His coming, and the old reckoning no longer fit.
Purpose of the Change
Likely, not proven: the effect of the short count is that the reckoning early believers used to place Messiah’s coming no longer works.
The Bottom Line
Same men, nearly the same lifespans. Only the birth years moved, and nearly six centuries left the clock.
The One who set the years will also end them. In Revelation the angel “sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are… that there should be time no longer” (Revelation 10:6).
Dig Deeper The evidence, for anyone who wants it
The Numbers Side by Side
From creation to the flood:
Greek: about 2,242 years.
Masoretic: 1,656 years.
Samaritan: about 1,307 years.
The three texts disagree before the flood. After the flood, in Genesis 11, the Greek and Samaritan stand together against the Masoretic.
Josephus
In his history of the Jews, written about 93 AD, Josephus walks through the fathers one by one and gives the long ages for Adam through Enoch. A Jewish writer of the first century, writing for Jewish and Gentile readers, saw nothing strange in the long numbers.
After the Flood
Genesis 11 shows the same hundred-year cuts for six fathers after the flood, along with the missing Cainan of Luke 3:36; see the page “The Priest They Tried to Bury.”
An Honest Note
The Greek has its own problem. With Methuselah at 167, he would outlive the flood by fourteen years, though he was not in the ark. Some Greek copies read 187, as the Masoretic does, which fixes it and makes the total about 2,262. Lamech’s whole life also differs a little (753 in the Greek, 777 in the Masoretic). Scholars still argue which text is original; some think the Greek translators lengthened the ages. The purpose given on this page is a likely one, not a proven one.
Enoch the Seventh
Every count keeps Enoch seventh from Adam, as Jude says (Jude 14). Enoch prophesied, “Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints.” The fathers’ years may be argued over; the coming they pointed to is not.