Biblical Family Tree | Adam & Eve to King David

today i'm going to show you the family tree of the bible from adam and eve to king david i'll be using my brand new biblical family tree chart which can be purchased as a poster from my website usefulcharts.com keep in mind that the sections we'll be looking at today which are the ones at the top of the chart are considered by most historians to fall into the category of myth and legend whereas the sections at the bottom of the chart which i've already covered in separate videos are considered to be primarily historical if you're curious to learn more about the terms mythology legend and history and how they apply to the various parts of the bible you'll definitely want to check out part 1 in my series on biblical genealogy you can find a link to that video as well as all of the videos in this series in the description [Music] [Music] according to the book of genesis the first two humans were named adam and eve and they were created directly by god now according to modern dna research all humans alive today can in fact be traced back to a single male ancestor which scientists have cleverly named y chromosomal atom and a single female ancestor named mitochondrial eve but keep in mind that these two dna ancestors are very different from the adam and eve from the biblical story for one thing y chromosomal adam probably did not live at the same time as mitochondrial eve and even if by some strange coincidence the science showed that they did live at the exact same time they were likely not a couple and they certainly would not have been the only two homo sapiens on earth instead they were simply the male whose y chromosomal dna ended up beating out everyone else's and the female whose mitochondrial dna ended up beating out everyone else's i hope to cover the science behind all of this in a separate video sometime next year but back to the bible according to the biblical account adam and eve were a couple and initially the only two humans on earth eventually though after getting kicked out of the garden of eden they had two sons named kane and abel kane was a farmer and abel was a shepherd but one day cain ended up killing his brother abel out of jealousy now considering that the israelites were originally pastoralists like the good son abel was this story may actually have a basis in some sort of historical conflict between the israelites and some nearby agriculturalists but as i explained in the earlier video in this series the biblical writers were more interested in making theological points than they were about simply recording exact historical details anyway adam and eve went on to have a third son named seth as well as a bunch of other children it is from seth's line that we eventually get the next major character in the bible noah but before i go on i want to point out that both cain's line and seth's line are recorded in the bible and that they have some interesting similarities both contain a series of six names that are almost identical except for one small swap and several alternate spellings so one possibility is that both genealogies share a common origin in other words maybe there was originally one list of ancestors that was passed down orally but over the centuries people in one area remembered the names in a slightly different way and eventually it developed into a parallel tradition then at some later point editors combined the two traditions and made it seem like they were separate genealogies this is not the only example of parallel accounts in the first five books of the bible in fact there are lots of them indicating that these books were pieced together from multiple sources and tradition again this is a topic that i hope to cover in a separate video sometime next year for now let's return to the family tree noah is the guy who built the large boat called the ark and filled it with a bunch of animals this is because god decided to destroy the earth in a flood and then start all over again with noah and his family who were the only survivors now as many commenters pointed out in previous videos flood stories are a common theme found in cultures throughout the world this seems to indicate that there may have been some sort of major flood event that was retained in humanity's collective memory or perhaps there was just a bunch of smaller events you'll notice that on this chart there are two timelines on the left there is one based on the biblical account and on the right there is one based on the secular account using the information that has been gleaned from science and archaeology so you can take your pick as to which one you want to follow but either way it's interesting to compare the two for example on the secular timeline i've noted that around the year 2900 bce there was a devastating yet localized flood in sumer and that this is the most likely candidate for the event that inspired the various middle eastern flood myths according to the bible noah had three sons and therefore everyone alive on earth today would be a descendant of either shem ham or japheth this is where the idea of there being three distinct human races comes from usually named white black and yellow but let me emphasize strongly this idea is not true modern dna research shows us that we can divide people into hundreds of different ethnicities based on regional genetic variation but there is no genetic marker that allows us to then take those ethnicities and group them together into just a handful of categories called races the closest thing would be to group ethnicities by continent but even there the categories would overlap quite a bit and they would not line up very nicely with continental lines but the authors of the bible did not have knowledge of dna or historical migration patterns so according to them the various nations of the earth that they were familiar with could in fact be explained using a simple family tree and that's what the next part of the biblical family tree is a family tree of nations shem had five sons ham had four and jebeth had seven so in total noah had 16 grandsons in most cases the names of those 16 grandsons match perfectly with the names of nations that existed in the middle east during the time when the bible was written so on this map are five sons of shem shown in red four sons of ham shown in yellow and seven sons of jepeth shown in blue let's look at ham first from this map it's clear that ham was primarily associated with africa in fact up until recently the term hamidic was still used to refer to language groups from north africa nowadays the term afro-asiatic is used instead the most important hamidic nation was mitzrayim this was and is the hebrew word for egypt but it was also the ancient babylonian word for egypt so keep in mind that most of these names are not the names of people they are quite clearly place names kanan and kush being two more good examples turning our attention to the red section representing the descendants of shem there are also several recognizable place names here too arum being an ancient name for syria asher being an alternate name for assyria and ilam being a nation that existed on the iranian plateau prior to the rise of persia the only one that stands out as being a personal name rather than a place name is ar-faksad which as we'll see is the person from whom abraham from ur of the chaldeans descended i should also point out that it is from the name shem ancestor of all these red areas that we get the term semitic and anti-semitic finally let's talk about jephth shown in blue these names are more obscure and uncertain as they are all names given to places much farther away from the land of israel javen is usually associated with the greeks and madai with the medes but when it comes to the other five it's mostly guesswork during the medieval period it was thought that some of these nations in particular gomer spread into europe if we return to the family tree chart you'll notice that gomer had a grandson named ashkenaz who was thought to be the ancestor of the germans it is for this reason that jews who lived in germany and then migrated to eastern europe came to be called ashkenazi jews so when it comes to the three sons of noah very roughly you could say that ham represented africa shem represented west asia and japheth represented europe and this is exactly what certain medieval christian thinkers promoted which in turn led to the idea of three races which unfortunately was used to promote a heck of a lot of racism but we don't need modern dna research to conclude that the classification system offered by the bible is at the very least incomplete you'll notice that the people living in india china australia the americas sub-saharan africa etc were not included in this classification system that's simply because the biblical writers weren't aware that those people even existed what they were doing was simply painting a picture of the world as they knew it okay let's continue down the tree our foxhod had a grandson named eber and this is probably where the term hebrew comes from from there if we go down another five generations we get a man named tara who had three sons abraham nahor and haran of these three abraham was by far the most important in fact the book of genesis is really a book about abraham his son isaac and isaac's son jacob together known as the three patriarchs everything in the bible that comes before abraham like the adam and eve story and the flood story is really just a prologue abraham is said to be the father of three major world religions judaism christianity and islam and it is because of this that these religions are often called the abrahamic religions so let's look at his family tree abraham was married to his half-sister sarah but sarah had difficulty having children so abraham married her handmaid hagar as well who was egyptian and had a son by her named ishmael but as the story goes god promised that sarah would miraculously have a child in her old age and indeed she did naming the child isaac shortly thereafter hagar gets banished and winds up in arabia where according to islamic tradition ishmael became the ancestor of the northern arabic tribes a lot of people forget this but abraham actually had a third wife as well named keturah according to the bible the people who later became the midianites are the descendants of abraham's son named midian from his marriage to keturah one last thing to mention about abraham it is curious that the name abraham is comprised of the exact same consonants as the name of the hindu god brahma who is the father of several other important hindu gods and who happens to have a wife named sarah swati so maybe the two oldest religions on the planet judaism and hinduism both have links to a similar even earlier tradition that includes a couple named something like braham and sarah it's a very big maybe but it's fun to think about so abraham's son isaac ended up marrying a relative named rebecca she was the granddaughter of abraham's brother nahor thus making isaac and rebecca first cousins once removed together they had two sons esau and jacob esau was the eldest and therefore entitled to the main inheritance but through trickery jacob managed to get esau to pass his birthright onto him so jacob becomes the next big character in the story he falls in love with his cousin rachel you can see here that her father laban was rebecca's brother but laban tricks him into marrying his other daughter leah instead in the end he ends up marrying both sisters but has to work for laban for 20 years in total jacob whose name is later changed to israel has twelve sons and one daughter named dinah the twelve sons eventually end up becoming the twelve tribes of israel but before we move on let's quickly look at a map of the biblical land of israel to the east in what is today jordan there were three nations that were on and off enemies of the israelites ammon moab and edom well according to the bible these three nations were actually relatives of the israelites the moabites and ammonites were the descendants of abraham's nephew lot and the were the descendants of jacob's older brother esau okay the twelve tribes of israel out of the twelve there are two that are the most important levi from which the priestly line comes shown in red and judah from which the royal line comes shown in blue now the other tribes are shown in yellow and if you count them you'll notice that there are actually 11 meaning that in total we actually have 13 tribes not 12. let me explain jacob's most famous son was joseph who was given the multicolored coat but wound up being sold to egypt where he became advisor to the pharaoh he was the firstborn son of jacob's favorite wife rachel so he was given a double portion in terms of inheritance therefore the tribe of joseph is usually split into two tribes based on his two sons ephraim and menasha and since the tribe of levi were appointed to be priests they didn't get any physical inheritance so once we take them out we're back to 12. anyway jacob and his family ended up moving to egypt where joseph was living and it is there that they grew into a nation but as the story goes after a few generations the egyptians forced them to become slaves which brings us to the exodus story and the story of moses the most important prophet in judaism according to the second book of the bible called exodus moses was placed in the nile river as a baby and then discovered by one of the pharaoh's daughters who adopted him and raised him as her own but as an adult he sees an egyptian beating an israelite and kills the perpetrator he then escapes to midian to avoid punishment where he meets jethro and marries jethro's daughter zipporah it is in midian that god appears to moses in the form of a burning bush and tells him that he has to go lead his people out of egypt and into the promised land which was back where abraham isaac and jacob had lived moses gets help from his brother aaron and after god gives egypt a series of ten plagues pharaoh eventually lets the israelites go although as the story goes the pharaoh then changes his mind and traps the israelites near the red sea where god then performs a great miracle causing the sea to part and the israelites to escape for good they end up wandering in the desert for 40 years though at the end of which moses passes on the torch to a man named joshua from the tribe of ephraim who then leads the israelites to conquer the land of canaan where they end up dividing the land amongst the twelve tribes with the descendants of aaron being appointed as priests now as i mentioned in part one of this series according to secular historians the leading theory is that the israelites were actually just one of the many canaanite tribes and that they never did live in egypt as a nation not in the main part of egypt anyway during this period canaan was actually a part of the egyptian empire so it's possible that some of them were in fact egyptian slaves and that they were somehow able to throw off that yoke of slavery but in canaan not in egypt the exact details are not known but this is yet another topic that i hope to come back to and explore in more detail at a later date according to the biblical account the period between the conquest of canaan and the rise of the davidic monarchy was a period in which the israelites were ruled by a series of military leaders called judges among these judges are several famous bible characters such as samson gideon and the female judge deborah deborah is important because according to biblical scholars a portion of the book of judges called the song of deborah is thought to be the oldest layer of text in the entire bible the last major character before the monarchial period is the prophet samuel who was a levite it was samuel who initially appointed saul to be king and then later david is followed by his son solomon and then after solomon the israelites split into two major kingdoms the kingdom of judah in the south and the kingdom of israel in the north judah of course was mostly comprised of the tribe of judah whereas israel was comprised of all the remaining tribes if you want to see the rest of the tree you can check out my video on the kings of ancient israel and judah which i've already posted and which you can find a link to in the description but before i go let me explain one more thing it is said that there were 10 northern tribes but who exactly those 10 tribes were sometimes differ there are actually three different ways we can come up with the number 10. one way is to leave the levites to the side as i've suggested earlier and to count the tribe of benjamin as part of the kingdom of judah because their allotment of land was very close to judas and they were usually thought of as being on the judah side of the border but another way is to include simeon with judah instead this is because according to the bible simeon like levi was not given a separate land allotment and this was because of a special punishment that was given to those two brothers which is mentioned back in genesis 34. but a third way is to go ahead and count levi but to combine ephraim and menasha back together as the tribe of joseph this is the way that jews usually count the 12 tribes as evidenced by these stamps from the modern state of israel but no matter which way you divide the tribes again you usually end up with 10 that are considered to have made up the northern tribes and this has led to all sorts of speculation and pseudo-historical theories you see as i mentioned in the next part in this series the northern kingdom gets destroyed first leaving only judah behind where the people become known as jews so some people like to talk about these so-called lost 10 tribes of israel who are supposedly distinct from the jews and about whom there are all kinds of crazy theories once again i hope to cover that topic at some point next year okay be sure to check out the description for the other parts of this series and take note that the final part of the series which will focus on the genealogy of jesus is scheduled very appropriately for christmas day so if you're not yet subscribed make sure you hit the subscribe button now so you don't miss it thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: UsefulCharts

Views: 1,848,070

Rating: 4.7378149 out of 5

Keywords: bible family tree, adam to jesus, bible genealogy, biblical genealogy, biblical family tree 1

Id: I6Oj-HyHIAY

Length: 23min 41sec (1421 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 30 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/CA2US]

Something that I ran across, and watching it I remembered listening to Matt talk about parts of it.