Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the creation of life and biological diversity, Part 17.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

Last time we looked at the genealogies in Genesis 1 to 11 and saw the way in which they

serve to provide a chronological framework for the primeval narratives that turned them into

a primordial history. But I argued, despite the interest in history that these genealogies events,

we shouldn't press them too hard for their literal interpretation. We saw, for example,

that in the genealogy in chapter 10, the so-called table of nations, that despite

words of begetting and son of and so forth, that these are not actually lines of blood

descent but group people on the basis of geography, ethnicity, political considerations

and so forth so that this isn't a literal genealogical table. Moreover, we saw that the

artificial symmetry between the antediluvian and the post-deluvian ancestors suggests that this is an

artificial construction, arranged so as to have 10 antediluvian ancestors from Adam to Noah

and then 10 post-deluvian ancestors from Shem to Abraham.

And finally I argued that the abnormally long lifespans of the antediluvians

suggests that these are not to be taken literally but but on the pattern of the fantastic reigns of the

ancient Sumerian kings, I have some other purpose than to give a literal historical

account.

Now just this past week, I was at a conference at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School on the

creation project and had a chance to talk with a few Old Testament scholars about some of these

issues.

I spoke at some length with John Collins, who is a professor of Old Testament at Covenant Seminary

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