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THE LINES


One line goes from Adam's son Cain , and the other goes via a son of Adam named Seth . The lines are:

Cain

Seth



THE NAMES AND AGES


The names, as they appear in the Masoretic Text , are traditionally given certain translations:



The Sethite line also gives ages, and dates of birth. These are given, in the ancient manner of dating, in terms of the age of their predecessor. From these details, a rough chronology can be constructed, taking the birth of Adam as year 1. The Masoretic text varies in this from the Septuagint , which mostly presents the same age at death, but as having been born 100 years later into their parent's life, except for Enoch, who is unchanged in this matter, and for Lamech, who dies 24 years younger, and whose father is presented as being 20 years younger when Lamech was born:

The second century BC Book Of Jubilees , regarded as non-canonical except by Coptic Christianity , additionally gives wives for the Sethite line:


Interpretations


Aside from Cain, and Lamech, his descendant, two other names in the lists are traditionally given significance. Firstly, Methuselah has the oldest age appearing in the bible, and so the name of Methuselah has become a general reference to longevity. Most traditional translations interpret the name as ''man of the dart'' or ''man of the javelin''; however, some critical scholars have proposed it should simply be read as ''man of Selah'', since ''Selah'' is the title of the Mesopotamian Moon God Sin (also known as ''Nanna''). The question of the correct interpretation of his name is further complicated, as the Septuagint renders Methuselah and Methusael with exactly the same name, the latter meaning ''champion of God'', and by the fact that Methuselah is a very northern ( Kingdom Of Israel ), or Babylonian, style name for an otherwise southern ( Kingdom Of Judah ) set of names. The age given in the Septuagint for Methusaleh implies that he must have survived the Great Flood , despite not being on Noah 's ark.

The enigmatic description given to Enoch in one of the lines, that he ''...walked with God, and was not'', has led to the extensive Esoteric mythology surrounding him, particularly dating from the 2nd century BC, such as the Book Of Enoch , which is canonical in Coptic Christianity. The age of Enoch that is given in the Masoretic text, 365 years, is noticeably similar to the number of days in the Solar Year , and so some critical scholars have suggested Enoch originally represented the Deified Sun .

Other interpretations of the names of the Sethite line from the traditional english renderings may better convey the words meaning from their etymological derivations.


COMPARISON BETWEEN THE LINES


Taking the septuagint rendering of Methusael and Methuselah, and taking the Cainite line back two generations to make up the same numbers as the Sethite line, the following comparison is reached:

The similarity seen in the lines has been noted since ancient times. Traditionally, this is explained by intermarriage between the lines, such as by the daughter of the Cainite Lamech marrying Methuselah, and naming her child after her father. The names of the Sethite line are traditionally interpreted as being more positive than those of the Cainite line, reflecting a negative attitude towards Cain, for example Jared being ''ruler'' compared with Irad being ''dragon'', and Mehalaleel being ''praise of God'' compared to Mehujael being ''smitten by God''.

In modern critical scholarship, it is explained more simply as the lines being copies of one another, the Cainite line being ascribed to the Yahwist , and the Sethite line being ascribed to the Book Of Generations , the only differences being corruption of a few names, and the reversal of the position of Enoch and Mehujael/Mehalaleel. A moderate proportion of critical scholars also believe that the Sethite line was inserted into the torah in such a way as to deliberately attempt to distance Noah, traditionally seen as a hero, from Cain, traditionally seen as a villain, and consequently separating Lamech into two different people.

Some biblical critics have drawn the conclusion that, since Seth appears in the same place that Yahweh takes in the Cainite line, Seth must originally have been a god, with the biblical etymology given for his name (''substitute'') being a later Folk Etymology . An obvious candidate for identifying Seth, as a god, is Seth , a major god in Egyptian Mythology . Since the Israelites, during their sojourn in Egypt, are usually identified by critical scholars as the Hyksos , this accords with the manner in which the Hyksos chose Seth as their chief deity, replacing the chief deity of their own Henotheistic pantheon. Conversely, taking into account the Sumerian king list, the other prominent candidate is identifying the name ''Seth'' as a corruption of ''Shitti'' (more obvious in the Hebrew Alphabet ), which was an epithet of Marduk , the Babylonian chief deity (c.f. the Elam ite prince ''Shitti-Marduk'' who fought with Nebuchadrezzar ).


COMPARISON WITH THE SUMERIAN KING LIST


While, in the story of Cain and Abel, Cain is presented as being forever condemned to being a Nomad , in the Cainite line, he is described as being a city builder. This has led biblical critics to suggest the two accounts of Cain derive from different sources, and even though the Documentary Hypothesis still places them both as the Jahwist source, it is nethertheless believed that the Jahwist inserted the list into his work from another source.

Upon the discovery of the antediluvian portion of the Sumerian King List , its striking similarities with the Sethite line have been noted by critical scholarship. Several surviving inscriptions of this list predate the biblical text by at least a millennium. On the Sumerian king list, identical to the biblical manner, the kings have significantly larger reigns before the deluge than after it, roughly by a factor of 20. The Sumerian list in fact measures the reigns of the kings in ''sar''s, units of 3,600 years (the Sumerians primarily used Base 60, so this is merely the next unit up - 60x60).

There are several different copies of the list, each mostly listing the same antediluvian kings, in the same order, but with differing amounts of sars for their reigns. Over time the names became more corrupted, resembling the originals only vaguely by the time of Berossus ' 3rd Century BC copy of the list. The significant feature of the list, as far as the biblical Sethite genealogy goes, is in the translation of the names and attributes of the kings it lists:

Many of the connections are readily apparent, but two require non-traditional etymologies for the two corresponding Sethite names. The first is Methuselah, which as mentioned before can be interpreted as ''Man of Selah'', a reference to the moon god, Sin. The second is Lamech, which linguists who specialise in ancient Akkadian , have proposed is derived from the Akkadian ''Lamaga'', meaning ''priest''. This would accord with the greater likelihood of association with the Akkadian version of the king list, which mostly used 10 names, than an association with the original Sumerian list of 8. The correspondence then appearing are:

As the Sumerian king list has several correspondences with the Sethite line, even featuring the matching names in the same order, it is possible to tentatively associate the missing connection to Alalgar with Seth, the only missing name, though the interpretation of such an association would currently be a mystery. The alternative order between of Enmendurana and Ensipadzidana, present in some versions of the Sumerian king list, also accords with the order of the Cainite line, though the mystery surrounding Alalgar is unhelpful in explaining how the Cainite line can correspond to the first two positions of the Sumerian list.