Journal of Creation - 2017 Volume 31 Issue 1

periods from before the Tower of Babel. Biblical archaeologist Doug Petrovich noted: “They can’t just go away. They can be shortened, but they have to be counted into the equation.” 40 Thus, the “rather continuous archaeological record” to which Morris and Whitcomb referred deserves a place in time, but not the authority to nullify the historically superior biblical record from either the MT or LXX.

Finally, geneticist John Sanford demonstrated that the MT-based post-Flood declining lifespan pattern over many generations fits the hypothesis that increased mutational load caused systematically diminishing lifespans. 41 Figure 2 replicates his patriarchal lifespan chart and includes the LXX numbers. The best fit power curve for the LXX data followed the formula y = 946.21 x 10–0.702. The best fit power curve for the MT data followed the formula y = 726.71 x 10–0.617. Both sets reveal similarly systematic declines and show no clear mutational basis for adjudicating between the two texts.

Ongoing research may more firmly establish or unfasten the LXX Genesis 5 and/or 11 chronologies. Until then, two Flood ages present themselves. The LXX Genesis 11 lists 780 more years than the MT. However, as Sarfati showed, later copies of it show an extra ‘Cainan’, and thus an extra

130 years. 36 Subtracting those 130 from 780 gives 650 years
to add to the MT-based Flood age estimate of 2518 BC to
produce a LXX-based Flood date of circa 3168 BC.

Conclusions

An outline of three steps to assigning biblically and historically responsible BC age estimates for Noah’s Flood has been presented, and it suggests several conclusions. First, the idea that Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies have gaps is increasingly difficult to support and irrelevant in light of the internal textual evidence for complete, gapless chronogenealogies. Second, one can construct a tight year-to-year chronology using just the Bible, though it has taken several generations of chronologists to settle key questions like the web of numbers in the Kings. Third, recent scholarship has reawakened interest in the Septuagint’s early Genesis chronology, which adds about 650 years to the Masoretic text’s span between Noah and Abraham. Thus, instead of a continuum of age possibilities from ~2500 BC to ~3170 BC and maybe beyond, historical evidence suggests that the Flood occurred at either one or the other tight time frame. Fourth, the fifth millennium BC Flood age estimate that Morris and Whitcomb allowed in The Genesis Flood lies beyond the age estimates given here and beyond those of Hardy and Carter, Johnson and Ice, and Sarfati, as cited