Restored English Translation of Genesis: Chapter 11

 Here is my Restored English Translation (RET) of the 10th chapter of the Book of Genesis (Hebrew: Beresheet).  As usual, it contains the Hebrew names and a glossary of them after the chapter.  As I don’t believe in the Aleph/Tavs any more, I have included a separate section at the very end showing where the Aleph/Tavs appear in the Hebrew text.
The first half of this chapter contains the infamous account of the Tower of Babel.  The latter half contains a genealogy from Shem to Noah.  Like the Genesis 5 genealogy, the main versions of this genealogy – Masoretic (which in this case agrees with the Samaritan Pentateuch) and the Septuagint – disagree on the ages of the patriarchs.  To make matters worse, the Septuagint – which is widely known to exaggerate the numbers in the genealogies (making its numbers generally unreliable) – includes an extra generation (a Cainan in between Arpachshad and Shelah) not found in the other versions.
IF that extra generation is authentic, then it presents a huge problem for the genealogy: it’s a well-known fact that the Septuagint is somewhat unreliable for ages, and yet if Cainan was real, what does it do for the Masoretic numbers?  Does that age of Arpachshad in the Masoretic when he had his son apply to Cainan?  Is it Cainan’s age when he had Shelah?  Does the number of years Arpachshad lived after fathering his son apply to Arpachshad after he fathered Cainan?  Is it how long Cainan lived after fathering Shelah?

read the rest at https://jmshistorycorner.blogspot.com/2018/08/restored-english-translation-of-genesis_25.html