Biblical Family Tree

hi this is Matt Baker today I'm going to show you the entire family tree of the Bible all the way from Adam and Eve to the time of Jesus I have done previous videos featuring various sections of this tree but I've never done the whole thing in a single video so that's what I'm going to do today and I'll be using the new version of our Biblical family tree chart which is now available as a poster from our website usefulcharts. com this version includes a lot of new features so I'll be highlighting them along the way [Music] thank you [Music] at the top of the tree is of course Adam and Eve who according to the Bible were the first two humans created by God their first two children were named Cain and Abel but as you probably know Cain kills Abel out of jealousy and therefore Adam and Eve have a third son named Seth and it is through Seth that the biblical story continues now in a previous video I got a lot of questions about who Seth married in order to have his children well according to the Bible Adam and Eve had many other Sons and Daughters even though they aren't named So based on tradition the assumption is that Seth would have married one of his sisters and that subsequent Generations would have married their cousins and so on now I should point out that in this video I'm not going to be discussing whether or not the early parts of this tree are literary or literal history I'll leave that decision up to you if you want to hear my take I'll link to some previous videos in the description where I do dive into that but in this video I'm just going to follow the tree as it is described in the Bible so Seth has a son named enosh and then Seven Generations later we get the next main character in The Bible Noah Noah's the one who built the ark and filled it up with animals in order to escape the great flood at this point everyone on Earth dies except for Noah and his wife and their three sons and their wives so there are eight people in total who then go on to repopulate the Earth the Bible doesn't mention the name of Noah's wife or his daughters-in-law but we do know that his three sons were named Shem ham and jeffith Shem has five Sons ham has four and jeffith has seven for a total of 16 grandsons for Noah in most cases the names of these 16 grandsons match the names of Nations that would eventually form in the near East such as Asher which corresponds to Assyria misrium which corresponds with Egypt and Javen which corresponds to Greece but it is in the line of shem's son arfakshad that the Bible focuses on he has a son named Salah who has a son named Eber which is perhaps the basis for the word Hebrew five generations down from Eber we get a man named Tara who lives in Mesopotamia which is modern-day Iraq and he has three sons named Abraham nahor and haran haran dies in Mesopotamia and sometime after this the rest of the family including haran's son lot decides to move to the land of Canaan which God had promised to Abraham and his descendants Kanan basically corresponds to modern-day Israel and Palestine Tara dies along the way in Syria and this is where nahor decides to settle however Abraham and lot continue on to Canaan Abraham's main wife was a woman named Sarah and eventually we learned that she is also his half-sister so presumably she was a child of Terror through a different mother Sarah has trouble having a child so she gets Abraham to marry her servant Hagar who gives him a son named Ishmael but eventually Sarah has a son as well miraculously at age 90. that sign is named Isaac and becomes Abraham's main Heir after Sarah dies Abraham then marries for a third time to a woman named Keturah and they have several Sons one of whom is named Midian Isaac ends up marrying Rebecca who is the granddaughter of nahor and thus is his first cousin once removed together they have two sons Jacob and Esau Jacob whose name is later changed to Israel becomes the progenitor of the Israelites which is why Abraham Isaac and Jacob are known as the three Patriarchs or fathers however before we look at the Israelites let me point out some other people groups who according to the Bible were distantly related to them later once the kingdoms of Israel and Judah are established their closest neighbors will be the kingdoms of Moab Ammon and Edom according to the Bible the moabites and the ammonites are the descendants of lot whereas the are the descendants of Esau further south are the midianites who as you probably guessed are the descendants of media and then below them are the Arabs who are the descendants of Ishmael According to Islamic tradition Muhammad is a descendant of Abraham's son Ishmael whereas Jesus is a descendant of Abraham's son Isaac which is why Judaism Christianity and Islam are known as abrahamic religions I should also point out job at this point the Bible is not clear on exactly how he connects to the tree although he is generally thought to fit in sometime during the period of the Patriarchs okay let's now look at Jacob and his 12 sons Jacob marries two sisters Leia and Rachel who are the daughters of Rebecca's brother Laban this makes Laban his uncle and his two wives his first cousins he also has children with Leia and Rachel's two servants bilha and zilpa each of Jacob's twelve Sons becomes the progenitor of one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel out of the twelve the two most important end up being Levi and Judah which is why they get special colors so note that from this point onwards red is used for the tribe of Levi blue for the tribe of Judah and yellow for all the other tribes however before we move on I should point out Joseph the firstborn of Jacob's favorite wife Rachel he's the one who is sold by his brothers and then winds up in Egypt where he becomes second in command under the Pharaoh the Bible doesn't tell us the name of that Pharaoh but the context suggests that the Joseph story might be connected to the 15th dynasty of Egypt which is when a Semitic group known as the hixos ruled the Nile Delta while Joseph is ruling in Egypt there's a famine in Canaan and therefore Jacob's entire family ends up moving to Egypt where they reunite with Joseph note that in Egypt Joseph becomes the father of Ephraim and Manasseh which is why in the Bible the tribe of Joseph is actually considered to be two tribes the tribe of Ephraim and the tribe of Manasseh anyhow while in Egypt the Israelites grow in number and eventually are forced to be slaves which brings us to the next main character in the biblical story Moses from the tribe of Levi he is chosen by God to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and back to the land of Canaan the promised land he does this with the help of his brother Aaron who becomes the first Israelite high priest the story of the Israelites escaped from Egypt is called The Exodus and it involves several famous events such as The Parting of the Red Sea and God giving the Ten Commandments now once again the Bible does not tell us the name of the Pharaoh involved in The Exodus story however the two most likely candidates are tatmos III if you choose to follow the timeline literally or Ramses II if you choose to go by context the Israelites end up wandering in the desert for 40 years during which time Moses dies and therefore it is Joshua from the tribe of Ephraim who ends up leading the Israelites into the land of where they conquer the locals and divide things up among the 12 tribes initially each tribe has its own Leaders with special individuals called judges rising up from time to time whenever a coalition is needed some of the most famous judges include Gideon Deborah and Samson it is sometime during this period that the mernepta stilet was made which contains the oldest reference to the people of Israel outside of the Bible it is named after Pharaoh mernepta the son of Ramses II but returning to the biblical account eventually the Israelites want a king So a leader named Samuel from the tribe of Levi anoints Saul from The Tribe of Benjamin note that Samuel like Moses is called a prophet a prophet being someone who receives messages from God and communicates them to the people so Saul becomes the first king of the Israelites but God ends up being unhappy with him and later instructs Samuel to secretly anoint a boy named David from the tribe of Judah as his replacement as a boy David serves as a musician for Saul and then becomes popular with the people after killing a giant named Goliath eventually Saul gets jealous and David has to go into hiding even though David is best friends with Saul's son Jonathan and also ends up marrying Saul's daughter Michal in the end Saul and Jonathan die in battle and David becomes king although initially he was only king of his own tribe as Saul's son ish boshaph becomes king over the rest of Israel but eventually David defeats ish busheth and becomes king of all 12 tribes David makes Jerusalem his capital and during his Reign he lusts after a woman named Bathsheba having her husband killed so that he can marry her with Bathsheba he has a son named Solomon who goes on to become the next king however before I move on I should point out that the Bible includes an entire book dedicated to one of David's great grandmothers named Ruth she was originally from the kingdom of Moab and is one of only four women mentioned in the gospel of Matthew as an ancestor of Jesus according to the Bible Solomon Reigns for 40 years and is the wisest man to ever live he is credited as having written much of the Book of Proverbs in contrast to his father David Who is credited with having written many of the Psalms however most importantly Solomon is said to have built the first temple in Jerusalem he is said to have started the construction in the fourth year of his Reign 36 years before his death remember the number 36 because I'm going to come back to it shortly after Solomon dies Israel is divided into two kingdoms his son rehoboam rules over the kingdom of Judah in the South and jeroboam from the tribe of Ephraim rules over the Kingdom of Israel in the north you'll note that it is at this point on the chart that most names start to have a set of dates under them these are not birth and death dates but rather the dates for which a king reigned or in the case of priest for when that priest served so I want you to take note of the Year 930 BCE that's the year that both rehoboam and jeroboam start their reign and it's the earliest biblical date that virtually all biblical Scholars agree on regardless of whether they are religious or secular that's because from this point forward all of the dates on this chart as well as many of the people can be verified using sources both inside and outside of the Bible so for example in First Kings chapter 14 it mentions an Egyptian pharaoh named shishak who Reigns around the same time as rehoboam and jeroboam from Egyptian records we know that there was indeed a pharaoh named Shawshank who reigned from 943 to 922 BCE so that's a match also note that on this chart I use BCE and CE instead of b c and a d basically these two sets of terms can be used interchangeably so whenever I say BCE know that it means the same thing as BC nowadays BCE and CE are the standard terms used in academic publishing so that's why I use them instead of BC and AD okay at this point let me now explain the timeline on the left of the chart the year 930 BCE marks the start of the section labeled historical dates again these are dates that everyone agrees on however above this I've also included some speculative dates which I've labeled Christian literalist dates these are for people who take the Bible literally and or simply want to know what the Bible says internally about when certain events took place so remember the number 36 if we we count back 36 years from 9 30 we get 966 which would be the year in which Solomon started to build the temple we can then count backwards from this state using some other numbers to get other dates so for example in First Kings 6 1 it says that Solomon started to build the temple exactly 480 years after the Exodus if we take this number as being literal that means that the Exodus must have taken place in 1446 BCE we can then refer to Exodus 12 40 which says that the Israelites were in Egypt for exactly 430 years from Genesis 47 verse 9 we know that Jacob was 130 years old when the Israelites went down to Egypt so that means that Jacob was born in 2006 BCE we know that Isaac was 60 when he had Jacob and Abraham was 100 when he had Isaac so this means that Abraham was born in 2166 BCE the next step is to use the numbers given in Genesis chapter 11.

doing this we can conclude that Abraham was born 292 Years After the flood which means that the flood if taken literally would have occurred in the year 2458 BCE Noah was 600 when the flood happened and according to Genesis 5 he was born 1056 years after Adam and Eve so that gives us a final date of 41 14 for the creation of Adam and Eve now some Christian literalists come up with slightly different dates depending on how they do the counting but generally speaking if you take the Bible literally creation is going to be somewhere around 4000 BCE traditionally though Jews have calculated things a bit differently which is why I labeled the this side Christian literalists however if we move over to the other side of the chart you'll note that I've also included the traditional Jewish dates I'll explain those dates nearer to the end of this video so for now let's go back to rehabaum and jeroboam and continue down the family tree I'll start with the Northern Kingdom of Israel according to the Bible jeroboam is followed by his son nadab but then by Au serpent named Basha who in turn is followed by his son Ella but then things get really unstable when Ella is killed by zimmery and then zimmery is killed by Omri at this point a man named Tiffany who was probably a relative of zimri sets himself up as a rival King but in the end Omri is Victorious and goes on to build a new capital city at Samaria now even though Omri is mentioned only briefly in the Bible he is actually quite an important figure for one thing he is the earliest King from either Israel or Judah whose name and accomplishments can be confirmed by using an extra biblical source that source is the Misha stilet which dates to around 840 BCE and was made in the nearby Kingdom of Moab on top of this later Assyrian records use his name to describe the Kingdom of Israel as a whole instead of calling it Israel they simply call it the land of the House of Omri Omri is followed by Ahab who the Bible does have a lot to say about mostly negative things his evil Deeds are mostly blamed on his wife Jezebel who is a Phoenician princess it is during their reign that the Prophet Elijah is active also around this time the kingdom of Aram Damascus in what is today Syria comes into conflict with Israel we know about this conflict from both the Bible and from other sources one of the most important archaeological finds in terms of the Bible is the tel Dan stilet it was commissioned by King zile of Aram Damascus and describes how he defeated jehoram the son of Ahab but also ahaziah from the House of David so far this is the only extra Biblical reference we have that mentions David although note that it doesn't give any biographical information about him it simply mentions that one of his descendants ahaziah was defeated by his isile returning to the Kings of Israel we know from the Bible that jehoram was followed by jehu who may have been a member of the House of Omri from a different branch he holds the distinction of being the only king of either Israel or Judah for whom we have a contemporary depiction an Assyrian record called the black Obelisk shows him bowing down to shelmaniser III which indicates that Israel became a vassal of Assyria Syria at this point probably in return for Assyria helping them to defeat zile jehu is followed by four of his descendants before things start to go downhill there's a series of five final rulers before Samaria is completely destroyed in 722 by the Assyrians according to the Bible it is King shalmaniser V who conquers them it also mentions a king So of Egypt who Reigns around the same time this is almost certainly osorkin the fourth the last Pharaoh of the 22nd Dynasty who rules just before the cushite Pharaohs take over let's now go back and look at the kings of Judah unlike in the north the southern kingdom is ruled the entire time by a single Dynasty the House of David although there is at least one intermarriage with the house of Omri rehaboam's great-great-grandson jehoram marries athalia the daughter of King Ahab after the deaths of both jehoram and their son ahazaya a Thalia claims the Throne of Judah for herself having all other claimants killed however someone manages to save a hasaya's infant son joash and keeps him in hiding until he reaches the age of seven at this point the high priest helps overthrow athalia and places joash on the throne thus saving the House of David from Extinction five generations down from joash we get Hezekiah who is one of the most important Kings of Judah he reigns shortly after Samaria Falls and therefore he has to face the Assyrians who want to conquer Judah next by this point it is sanakrib who is the king of Assyria but sennacherib fails to conquer Judah in part due to the rise of a powerful Pharaoh in Egypt named taharka who is mentioned in the bible as terhaka king of kush but it also boils down to hezekiah's careful planning the Bible mentions the construction of new walls and an underground tunnel to bring water into the city of Jerusalem both of which have been found by archaeologists also active during this time is the prophet Isaiah who is himself a member of the royal family as well as the father-in-law of Hezekiah Hezekiah is followed by Manasseh and Ammon who are described in the Bible as being evil before we get another young boy who has made King named Josiah Josiah sets things right and during his Reign Judah really flourishes this is partly due to the fact that by this point Assyria is in Decline soon to be replaced by Babylon the high priest during the reign of Josiah is a man named hilkiah he is a descendant of zadok the original high priest of the first temple who served during the days of Solomon the oldest copy of a Biblical text ever found dates to around the time of Josiah Angel Kaya it is part of the kataf hinom Scrolls and includes the verses from Numbers chapter 5 verses 24 4-26 Josiah's story comes to a tragic end when he is killed by Pharaoh Neko of Egypt who in other sources is known as Neko II by this point Assyria has fallen to Babylon and therefore Babylon starts to interfere in the politics of Judah three of Josiah's Sons reign as king as well as one of his grandsons before Jerusalem including the first temple is completely destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in 586 BCE the final high priest of the first temple is helkaya's grandson Soraya and the two main prophets during this period Jeremiah and Ezekiel are priests as well Ezekiel jeconiah a nobleman named Daniel and many other Elite members of the kingdom of Judah are exiled to Babylon but eventually the kingdom of Babylon is conquered by Cyrus the Great of Persia Cyrus allows the Exiles now known as Jews to return to Jerusalem and gives them permission to rebuild the Temple in what is now called Judea it is during the Babylonian and Persian periods that most of the Hebrew Bible is written on the bottom right of the chart you'll find a timeline that shows when each book was most likely written according to Modern critical scholarship going back to the family tree the governor of the first wave of returnees is shesh Bazaar the son of King jeconiah and the first high priest of the second temple is Joshua grandson of Soraya the Bible also mentions a governor named zerubbabel who leads the second wave he is either the son of shieltiel or padaya both sons of jeconiah I'll come back to him a bit later when discussing the ancestors of Jesus there is also a third wave led by a priest slash scribe named Ezra and a fourth wave led by a governor named Nehemiah both of them are appointed by the Persian king artaxerxes the first how Esther fits in is a bit more complicated because the Persian king in that story is named ahazorus but this doesn't match with any of the known Kings of Persia however zores is usually assumed to be Xerxes the first it is at this point that the Hebrew Bible known to Christians as the Old Testament comes to an end we thus enter the inter-testamental period which we can learn about by using the apocryphal books as well as extra biblical sources for example we know that eventually the Persians are defeated by the famous Greco Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great and that after his death his generals fight over the Empire and it is eventually split into four main parts two main dynasties are formed consisting of the descendants of Ptolemy the first and seleucus the first initially the ptolemies who were based in Egypt rule Judea but later it is the seleucids based in Syria by using Jewish sources we can get the names of every high priest from Joshua up to the maccabean Revolt this Revolt occurs when the seleucid King Antiochus IV stops the usual Jewish sacrifices and replaces them with sacrifices to the Greek gods Zeus the Revolt is initially led by a man named matathias but after he dies it is his son Judah who successfully recaptures the temple and and restores the usual sacrifices with himself as the new high priest he is nicknamed Maccabee which means the hammer and this is why his entire family becomes known as The Maccabees eventually The Maccabees also known as the hasmoneans end up serving not only as high priests but also as monarchs first as princes under Simon and herkiness the first but then later as kings starting with aristobulus the first during this period a legislative body known as the Sanhedrin is also formed led by a pair of leaders known as the zoo goat this consists of the Nazi who was sort of the president and the of bait Dean who was sort of the vice president eventually however there's a Civil War in Judea between two hasmanian brothers herkines II and aristobulus II Rome intervenes and in the process Judea becomes a client state of the Roman Republic in addition to this the hasmanian Dynasty is eventually replaced with the herodian dynasty Herod the Great being the husband of one of the last has beenan princesses at this point the monarchy and the high priesthood is split with the high priests now getting the job by appointment instead of by inheritance it is during the reign of Herod the Great that Jesus is born the New Testament tells us that he is related to a fellow preacher named John the Baptist through their mothers Mary and Elizabeth according to Catholic tradition Mary's mother's name was Anne and presumably Ann and Elizabeth's mother were sisters making Mary and Elizabeth first cousins and Jesus and John the Baptist second cousins genealogically speaking the New Testament has more to say about Jesus's adoptive father Joseph according to the gospel of Matthew Joseph was the son of Jacob whereas according to the Gospel of Luke Joseph was the son of heli a different set of ancestors is given for these two individuals leading most Christians to assume that one line must actually be the line of Mary usually Luke's account is considered to be based on Mary's ancestry whereas Matthews is considered to be based on Joseph's although there are those who argue for the opposite in both cases though Jesus's ancestry is traced back to zerubbabel although note that Matthew provides half as many names between zerubbabel and Jesus than Luke does meaning that Matthew may have left out some generations we know for a fact that he does Skip Generations elsewhere in his genealogy for example he leaves out ahaziah joash and amaziah jumping straight from johoram to Isaiah the this is probably for stylistic reasons so that his entire list can be divided into three sets of 14 names Matthew also replaces ASA with Assaf and Ammon with Amos again probably for stylistic reasons Amos was a prophet and Asaf was a writer of Psalms so this is probably a nod to the two sections of the Hebrew Bible that follow the Torah the prophets and the writings Luke on the other hand gives a completely different set of names between David and zerubbabel whereas Matthew has Jesus descending from David through Solomon and the subsequent Kings of Judah Luke has him descending from a previously unknown son of David named Nathan followed by a bunch more previously unknown names the final thing to note about Luke's account is that he adds an extra generation here between hezron and aminidab and also here between arfoxshad and Selah like with Matthew this may have been done for stylistic reasons overall Luke's list of ancestors has 77 names which is 7 times 11. let's now go back to Herod the Great when he dies his kingdom is divided into four parts each ruled by a tetrarch however his son Herod archalayas gets the main part which is Jude yeah he rules for 10 years after which the monarchy is abolished with Judea becoming a Roman province instead ruled by a governor this is why by the time that Jesus is crucified the person who sentenced him to death is Pontius Pilate who acts on behalf of the Roman Empire also take note that the Herod mentioned in connection with the beheading of John the Baptist is neither Herod the Great nor Herod archalayas but rather Herod Antipas who married his niece herodias about a decade after the death of Jesus the Judean monarchy is briefly restored with herod's grandson Agrippa the first being placed on the throne followed by a grip of the second in the New Testament book of Acts a group of the first is called Herod whereas Agrippa the second is simply called Agrippa another person mentioned in the book of Acts is a Jewish teacher named Gamaliel according to the Bible Paul studied under Gamaliel before his conversion to Christianity from Jewish sources we know that Gamaliel was the grandson of Hillel who was another important Jewish scholar who lived just prior to the time of Jesus in Jewish literature the teachings of Hillel are often contrasted with the teachings of shemai who lived at the same time Hillel served as Nasi of the Sanhedrin whereas shamai served as the off-bait Deen the final event I want to point out on this chart is the destruction of Jerusalem including the second temple in 70 CE the leader of the Sanhedrin at this point is Simon the son of Gamaliel both he and the final high priest are murdered during the destruction and afterwards the oversight of Jewish law passes to a man named johannan Ben zakai who sets up the first rabbinical School in the nearby town of yavne I also want to point out the Babylonian exalarks these were a line of men living in Babylon and later Baghdad who led the Jewish Community there as the senior Heirs of the House of David like Jesus they traced their descent from zerubbabel and thus to the final Kings of Judah as well records of their existence extend all the way to the year 1258. okay the last thing I want to do is explain why the Jewish traditional dates shown on the top right of this chart differ from the Christian literalist dates shown on the top left basically the Jewish calendar is based on the year 70 CE which as I just mentioned was the year that the second temple was destroyed according to Jewish tradition the second temple stood for 420 years and the first temple for 410 years with 70 years in between this gives us a total of 900 years which places the construction of the temple in the year 830 BCE which is more than 100 years off the date I mentioned earlier if we count back 480 years from 8 30 we get the date 1310 which is the traditional Jewish date for The Exodus again more than a hundred years off the date that most Christian literalists use but it's the next part where the Jewish counting really differs as I mentioned earlier Exodus 12 40 mentions that the length of time that the Israelites lived in Egypt was 430 years however according to the rabbis the original verse read the length of time that the Israelites lived in Egypt and Canaan was 430 years this means that if we count back 430 years from The Exodus we come to the year that Abraham went down to Canaan rather than the year that Jacob went down to Egypt this cuts a further 215 years off the timeline and puts the birth of Abraham at 1815 BCE from here we can use Genesis 5 and 11 to go back 390 years to the birth of Seth another 500 years to go back to the birth of Noah and an additional 1056 years to reach the date of of creation which Jews traditionally place at 3761 BCE okay so that was a look at the entire family tree of the Bible all the way from Adam and Eve to the time of Jesus once again if you want to buy a copy of this chart as a poster you can do so right now by visiting usefulcharts.