Genesis 10 - Noah’s Family Tree - Peleg - Dating the Tower of Babel to around 2708 BC
Noah > Shem > Arphaxad > Shelah > Eber > PelegÂ
Peleg is part of the messianic line (Luke 3:35). In total there are 8 references to Peleg, each pertaining to his lineage and/or life spans…
- Genesis 10:25 - “Two sons were born to Eber: One was named Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided; his brother was named Joktan.”Â
- Genesis 11:16Â - “When Eber had lived 34 years, he became the father of Peleg.”
- Genesis 11:17Â - “And after he became the father of Peleg, Eber lived 430 years and had other sons and daughters.”
- Genesis 11:18Â - “When Peleg had lived 30 years, he became the father of Reu.”
- Genesis 11:19Â - “And after he became the father of Reu, Peleg lived 209 years and had other sons and daughters.”
- 1 Chronicles 1:19Â - “Two sons were born to Eber: One was named Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided; his brother was named Joktan.
- 1 Chronicles 1:25Â - “Eber, Peleg, Reu,”
- Luke 3:35Â - “the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah,”
The key verse about Peleg is Genesis 10:25, noting his birth as the time when the earth divided. There are generally two theories regarding what this meant. One is that it refers to the breaking apart of the continents. Given the geologic evidence to the contrary, and the old age of the earth, I belief this one can be dismissed out of hand. It is not that I discount God’s ability to do this in a short time. I simply believe He did not, because the evidence left behind tells a cohesive story that spans billions of years.
The other theory is that this is a reference to the dispersion resulting from the Tower of Babel. This theory is much more likey. Note this excerpt from Genesis 11…
 10 This is the account of Shem’s family line.
   Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father of Arphaxad. 11 And after he became the father of Arphaxad, Shem lived 500 years and had other sons and daughters.
 12 When Arphaxad had lived 35 years, he became the father of Shelah. 13 And after he became the father of Shelah, Arphaxad lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters.
 14 When Shelah had lived 30 years, he became the father of Eber. 15 And after he became the father of Eber, Shelah lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters.
 16 When Eber had lived 34 years, he became the father of Peleg. 17 And after he became the father of Peleg, Eber lived 430 years and had other sons and daughters.
This places Eber’s birth 65 years after the beginning of the flood, and Peleg’s birth 99 years after the beginning of the flood. As we discussed in Genesis 10 - Noah’s Family Tree - Eber, Eber is believed to have been around during the Tower of Babel, but refused to participate in its building. Peleg was born some time after the builders were scattered. Assuming Eber was an adult when he refused to, it creates a 10 to 15 year window during which the tower was begun, Eber refused to help, the remaining people were scattered, and Peleg was subsequently born. This brackets the potential period between approximately 2723 BC and 2708 BC.
It should be noted that Peleg’s entire line back to and including Noah was alive for the scattering. Noah, Shem, Shelah, and Peleg have no specific region attributed to them. Arphaxad and Eber however appear however to be at opposite ends of the Euphrates River’s west bank. Here is the map I have made so far…
It is not clear to me whether this will hold or not, but for what I’ve researched so far, three of Shem’s five sons’ families appear to have scattered as so: Elam went east of the Tigris; Arphaxad went west of the Euphrates; Asshur took the area in between. I haven’t gotten to Lud or Aram yet. However, looking ahead to the family of Peleg’s brother Joktan, according to Genesis 10:30…
 30 The region where they lived stretched from Mesha toward Sephar, in the eastern hill country.
That would be down the western coast of Saudi Arabia, which can only be seen in the lower left corner of the map above. This is consistent with the idea of Arphaxad’s descendents going east of the Euphrates.
As for the validity of the date, there are several events in Babylonian history that might support it. Consider that Babel was Babylon. At the time of the Tower, this would have occurred before the great kingdoms of Bablyon arose later on, but in the midst of the reign of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, which encompassed Babylon at the time.
Babel was another name for Babylon > Babylon was eventually capital of Babylonia > Babylonia was earlier formed from Akkadia > Uruk was annexed by Akkadia. Uruk was a major center of development throughout ancient biblical times. So, looking at Uruk’s history should give us a good pulse on the times of 2700 BC.
According to the History of Sumer, which includes Uruk…
The Early Dynastic IIIa period, also known as the Fara period, is when syllabic writing began. Accounting records and an undeciphered logographic script existed before the Fara Period, but the full flow of human speech was first recorded about 2600 BC at the beginning of the Fara Period.
In other words, full human speech in writing would have occurred 100 years after the Tower of Babel, and the multiplication of language within the region.
In regards to Babylonia’s history…
During the third millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian (and vice versa) is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a massive scale, to syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the third millennium as a sprachbund.
Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken language of Mesopotamia somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC (the exact dating being a matter of debate), but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language in Mesopotamia until the first century.
In relation to our dating of 2807 BC for the flood, and 2708 BC for the scattering, it would seem that people before the flood were mastering language shortly before then. It would make sense that God would confuse them with adding more languages. And with the advent of more languages, I can easily see how people’s mastery of those would have require logographic scripting to arise.
Honestly, reading enough information to come to short conclusions is pretty hard, and it would honestly require years of scholarly work to confirm my conclusions. But, I will press on. At the very least, it’s interesting. What’s most interesting is that something in the Biblicaly time line and map appears to be matching up with secular history beneath the surface. I’m quite fascinated by it all!