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Since writing Jesus Showed Mercy when He Made Eve on God’s Sabbath, it has dawned on my that God’s Sabbath, if it indeed was from Adam’s birth to Methuselah’s bar mitzvah, was just full of mercy.  Recall Jesus’ justification for his “working” on the sabbath in Matthew 12:7, that God desires mercy, not sacrifice.  In other words, instead of sacrificing the benefits and convenience of “working” on the Sabbath, God would rather we spend the sabbath being merciful than being martyrs of sacrifice.  For a modern, if trivial example: God would rather I move my car from the street on the sabbath so that kids can play, rather than accepting the odd reputation it gets me for refusing to move …

In Does my Date for the Flood Hold Water? (Conclusion) - Yes, it does!, I was (miraculously?) able to put together a timeline that uses the precise numbers in the Bible, Science, and History.  Here is the timeline:

2807 BC - Flood Begins (established with science)
2806 BC - Flood Ends
2380 BC - God’s covenant with Abraham (Gen. 11:10-32, 12:1-4)
2165 BC - Israel lived in Canaan 215 years
2092 BC - Israel lived under Joseph’s protection and rule for 73 years
1877 BC - Israel lived in peach in Egypt for 215 years
1477 BC - Israel spent 400 years enslaved
997 BC - Solomon started building temple 480 years after leaving Israel
960 BC - Completion of the Temple (secular dating)

There are several important …

In  Does my Date for the Flood Hold Water? (Part 2), I attempted to show that with a flood date of 2807 BC, I could make reasonable assumptions about the dates in the Bible, and I could arrive at the independent, secular dates computed for the building of Solomon’s Temple.  However, I made a mathematical error.  I failed to notice that the traditional date for starting the temple was 135 years more recent than computed at http://www.creation-science-prophecy.com/, not less recent. Here is a modification of the timeline with that blind correction, but no analysis:

2807 BC - Flood Begins
2808 BC - Flood Ends
2380 BC - God’s covenant with Abraham (Gen. 11:10-32, 12:1-4)
2185 BC - Joseph moved to Egypt …

As I wrote in Does my Date for the Flood Hold Water? (Part 1), the website http://www.creation-science-prophecy.com/ places the building of the Solomon’s temple at 967BC, and computes this date quite convincingly from a starting point of Creation, 4000 BC.  However, this creates a disparity of 463 years between my dating of the flood and his.  Can I account for those years?

Let’s start at the end.  While secular sources would appear to agree with a dating of the temple around 960 BC, that date would appear to be the completion of the temple, not the beginning of it.  So when was the temple begun? Well, Jewish tradition places the beginning of the temple at 832 BC, 135 …

The last thing I want to do before leaving my series on the dating of the flood, the Jewish Calendar, and Adam’s birth, is to explore the ramifications of other dates.  I have found the website http://www.creation-science-prophecy.com/ very useful for studying the dates in the Bible.  The author’s charts and explanations of the charts are quite clear, and provide one with much to think about.  The reason I chose to use that author’s research as a starting point for this post is because he and I have different conclusions regarding the age of the earth.  He believes the earth is young.  Though we disagree, his attitude appears admirable, and his approach reflects the PhD he claims on his site.

The primary …

In Dating the Flood (Conclusion) - God’s Sabbath, I list all of the actions God is recorded doing on His sabbath.  Here is the list again:

Making the Garden of Eden
Putting Adam in it
Leading the animals to Adam
Putting Adam to sleep
Creating Eve from a rib
Interrogating Adam and Eve for their sin
Making clothes from fig leaves
Expelling them from the Garden
Accepting Abel’s sacrifice
Interrogating Cain
Putting the mark on Cain

Based on God Walks on the Sabbath, I should also add one item:

 12.  Walking with Enoch.

Of all of these actions, the one that jumps out at me the most is #5.  I feel like I can leave all of the others alone, as reasonable actions for God to take during His Sabbath.  …

I keep noticing more subtleties in the scripture.  I love this actually, even while it forces me to revisit things.  Okay, here we go…

If we pull the Jewish Calendar back by 700 years, to line it up with the Flood, then the Calendar doesn’t start until 700 years after Adam was given life. (What kind of life? We’ll get back to that later)

In contrast, Enoch started walking with God the year his son Methuselah was born, which was 687 years after Adam was given life, according to Genesis 5.

If those these years before the calendar are God’s sabbath, then we have a 13 year disparity between two potential indicators of when that sabbath ended.  Does it end 700 years after Adam is given …

As I said in God’s Sabbath Lines up with His Seeming Absence, God did appear to walk with Noah’s ancestral line.  However, I want to be more specific.  Jesus Himself walked in the Garden.  I believe it was Him who talked with Adam, and potentially the Holy Spirit who brought the animals to Adam.  God the Father was in Heaven (Jesus always refers to the Father as His Father “Who is in Heaven”).

After Adam was expelled from the garden, God was physically absent from Adam’s life.

Later on, Abel was born and sacrificed to God a lamb.  God the Father smelled the sweet aroma in Heaven, and accepted the …

In Dating the Flood (Part 7) - Methusalah’s Bar Mitzvah was After God’s Sabbath, I pointed out evidence that the Jewish Calendar begins between Genesis 2:3 and Genesis 2:4, and on Methuselah’s birthday.  The determination of these conclusions from scientific and historical evidence suggesting the flood was around 2807 BC, 702 years off the Jewish Calendar.  By tradition, the Jewish Calendar starts at Adam’s beginning, which begins traditionally at Genesis 2:4, and is thought to be 5771 years ago.  But then, adding up the generations in Genesis 5 pushes the flood out 2105 BC.  Supposing the Jewish year to be correct, supposing the …

It is an interesting question asked, in Dating the Flood (Part 6) - Is Methuselah’s Birth the Beginning of the Jewish Calendar? However, if you add up the years in Genesis 5 leading Methuselah’s birth, it only adds up to 687 years.  The Jewish calendar’s prediction for the flood is off by 700.  What of the other 13?  Well, if we are really onto something, then perhaps the calendar begins when Methuselah was 13 years old.  Why then? Well by Jewish tradition, the age of 13 is when a Jewish boy becomes a man.  But why him? Hmmmm… let’s put off answering …