Discussion Jumpstarter
Study leader reference - not a definitive answer
Question 6
In Genesis 5 (Methuselah’s age) Adam claims the Septuagint chronology implies Methuselah dies after the flood and therefore conflicts with 2 Peter 2:5’s “eight people”; how persuasive is that argument, what assumptions does it make about chronology and harmonization, and what does it reveal about how we decide “error” in a manuscript tradition?
Another way to ask: Adam says the Septuagint timeline in Genesis 5 would make Methuselah die after the flood, which would conflict with “eight people” in 2 Peter 2:5. How convincing is this, what assumptions does it rely on, and how do we decide when a manuscript tradition has an “error”?
Discussion Jumpstarter
Direct Answer
Adam’s argument is persuasive if you accept his harmonizing assumption that Genesis genealogical numbers should produce a chronology consistent with later biblical statements, and that 2 Peter’s “eight” is meant to exclude anyone else (like Methuselah) from surviving the flood. It shows he is willing to label a reading an “error” when it creates a concrete contradiction with another Scripture.
- He contrasts MT: Methuselah fathers Lamech at 187 and lives 782 more years, with LXX: fathers at 167 and lives 802 more years.
- He says doing the math in the LXX “would have Methuselah dying two years after the flood.”
- He argues this contradicts 2 Peter 2:5 because Peter says Noah was “one of eight people who survived the flood,” and Peter “is not counting Methuselah among those eight.”
- He concludes: “there’s a clear problem here in the Septuagint” where “the math just doesn’t line up with history and what we find in other parts of Scripture.”
- He uses this as a key example that the LXX has “clear errors,” not merely stylistic differences.