GENERATION
776
GENESIS
of Adam. The same words, Gen. xxxvii, 2, mean a history of Jacob and his descendants; so also Gen. vi, 'J ; X, 1, and elsewhere. Gen. vii, 1, " In this genera- tion" (HTn "iT^a ; Sept. iv rrj yivi^ rai;ry, Vulg. in ffeneratlone hac) is evidently " in this age." Gen. xv, 0, " In the fourth generation" ("iT^ ; Sept. ytvtci, \ ii\g. fjcneralio) is an instance of the word in the sense of a certain assigned period. Psa. xlix, 19, "The gen- eration of his fathers" (TimnS ^l^'H:^'', Sept. yivtac Trariptijv ctl'Tov) Gesenius renders "the direllinff oi his fathers," i. e. the grave, and adduces Isa. xxxviii, 12. Psa. Ixxiii, 15, " The generation of thj' children" (rp;3 "IT^, Sept. yij'tci twv v'tioi' aov} is "class," "order," "description;" as in Prov. xxx, 11, 12, 13, 14. Isa. liii, 8, " Who shall declare his generation ?" ('"iTH; Sept. rijv ytvsdv aurou rig t(>;7/)0■£^n^, Vulg. f/eneratin') Lowtli renders "manner of life," in trans- lation and note, but adduces no precedent. Some consider it equivalent to S.""iT, ver. 10: ytiid (Sept.) answers to V^}, Estli. ix, 28. Josephus uses TroWiiv ytvtdv, Ant. i, 10, 3 (Kengstenberg, Christology of the Old Testament, vol. i, Washington, 1836-9 ; Pauli, ^»a- lect. Hebraic, p. 1G2, Oxford, 1839). Michaelis renders it, " Where was the providence that cared for his life.'" Gesenius and Rosenmiiller, " 'Who of his contempora- ries I'eflected .'" Seller, " Who can describe his length of life.'" In the New Testament (Matt, i, 17), ytviai is a series of persons, a succession from the same stock; so used hj Josephus (^Ant. i, 7, 2); Philo {Vit. ]\[i)s. i, COS); Matt, iii, 7, yivvijuara l\icvwi\ is well rendered by Doddridge and others " brood of vipci's." ISIatt. xxiv, 34, // ytrta a'i'Tt] means the generation or persons then living contemporary with Christ (see ]Mac- knight's Harmony for an illustration of this sense). Luke xvi, 8, tig Ti'ji'yti'euv ->]v tavriov, "in their gen- eration," etc., wiser in regard to their dealings with the me« of their generation ; Rosenmiiller gives, inter se. 1 Pet. ii, 8, ysrog tfcXf/croj^, is a "chosen people," quoted from Sept. Vers, of Isa. xliii, 20. The ancient Greeks, and, if we maj' credit Herodotus and Diodorus Siciilus, the Egyptians also, assigned a certain period to a generation. The Greeks reckoned three genera- tions for every hundred j'ears, i. e. 33 j years to each ; Herod, ii, 142, ytviai Tptlg dv^niJv ticaToi' tna iari, " Three generations of men make one hundred years." This is nearly the present computation. To the same effect Clem. Alexandrinus speaks {Strom, i, 2) ; so also Phavorinus, who, citing the age of Nestor from Homer (//. i, 250), Tui d' i'lSi] Svo n'tv ytviai, "two genera- tions," says it means that VTCtpifii] tu i^iiKorra t^ri], "he was above sixty 3'ears old." The Greeks, how- ever, assigned different periods to a yti'iri at different times (Perizonius, Orig. yEggpt. p. 175 sq. ; Jcnsius, Fereul. Literar. p. fi). The ancient Hebrews also reck- oned liy the generation, and assigned different spaces of time to it at different periods of their historj'. In the time of Abraham it was one hundred years (comp. (ien. XV, IG, "In the fourth generation they shall come hither"). This is explained in ver. 13, and in Exoil. xii, 40, to be four hundred j'ears. Caleb vr us fourth in descent from Judah, and Moses and Aaron were fourth from Levi. In Dent, i, 35 ; ii, 14, Moses uses the term for thirty-eight years. In later times (Ba- ruch vi, in the Epistle of Jeremiah, ver. 2) ytvtd clear- ly means ten years. In jMatt. i, 17, ytvid means a sin- gle descent from father to son. Homer uses the word in the same sense (//. i, 250) ; also Herodotus (i, 3). (See (ipsenius's and Robinson's I.ericons, under the above Heb. and Gr. words.) — Kitto, s. v. See Gene- alogy.
Generation, Eternal, of the Son of God. See Chhistology ; Sonship-df Chkist.,
Genesis (Sept. Vtrtcng, gen€ration~), the first book of the Law or the Pentateuch, is in Hebrew called
r'^'iX'^il, Bereshith', from the word with which it be- gins. See Law.
I. General Character. — The book of Genesis has an interest and an importance to which no other document of antiquity can pi-etend. If not absolutely the oldest book in the world, it is the oldest which lays an}' claim to being a trustworthj' history. There may be some papyrus-rolls in our museums Mhich were written in Egypt about the same time that the genealogies of the Shemitic race were so carefully collected in the tents of the patriarchs. But these rolls at best contain barren registers of little service to the historian. It is said that there are fragments of Chinese literature which, in their present form, date back as far as 2200 years B.C., and even more (Gfrcirer, Urgeschichte, i, 215); but they are either calendars containing astronomical calculations, or records of merely local and temporary interest. Genesis, on the contrary, is rich in details respecting other races besides the race to which it more immediately belongs ; and the Jewish pedigrees there so studioush' preserved are but the scaflblding whereon is reared a temple of universal history.
If the religious books of other nations make any pretensions to vie with it in antiquity, in all other re- spects thej' are immeasurably inferior. The Mantras, the oldest portions of the Vedas, are, it would seem, as old as the 14th century B.C. (see Colebroke, Asiat. Res. vii, 283, and professor Wilson's preface to his transla- tion of the Rig- Veda). The Zendaves ta, in the opinion of competent scholars, is of very much more modern date. Of the Chinese sacred books, the oldest, the Yih- king, is undoubtedU' of a venerable antiquity, but it is not certain that it was a religious book at all ; while the writings attributed to Confucius are certain!}- not earlier than the Cth century B.C. (Gfriirer, i, 270).