Meanings of lists of names?

[Dennis1209]

I won't argue the point, but I go to the Hebrew 'root' name / meaning. Just by what's spelled out it can be no coincidence substituting using our own vernacular. If you use the literal meaning it still makes unmistakable sense and spells out a sentence to me. This is how I interpret it substituting modern English to make better English grammar.

"Man (is) appointed mortal sorrow, (but) the Blessed God shall come down teaching (that) His death shall bring (the) despairing rest" 

Just by writing down their name meanings in order you can see that, well me anyway.

What do they call that ink blot thingy you're told to look at and tell the shrink what you see? Maybe that's what I'm seeing 

Adam (man) Seth (appointed) Enosh (Mortal) Kenan (sorrow) Mahalaleel (the Blessed God) Jared (shall come down) Enoch (teaching) Methuselah (his death shall bring) Lamech (the despairing) Noah (rest, or comfort)

Edited January 22, 2018 by Dennis1209

[Dennis1209]

1 hour ago, Persuaded said:

First, I’m a fan of Missler’s, but I believe this is one of his over-reaches. My recollection is that he later regretted this sentence-from-the-names idea. 

It was based on a Hebrew root study, which is notoriously un-scholarly. Basically, it requires breaking large words into 2 and 3 letter assumed roots and then trying to infer a connotative meaning from the alternate meanings of those roots.

The result is at least two rather large conjectural steps removed from the text itself.

 

Setting aside the first step- breaking the words by “best guess” into roots- and to then maybe make a crude example of the next step:

If, in English, I see that one of the roots is to “beat”, noting the word means either to mix (like an egg), or to punish, I can then take a phrase that talks about cake making and suggest it’s alternate meaning is really about Jesus’ lashes.

Another way to express this is that it’s dangerous to try to translate by concordance or lexicon. There are often insights from those resources, but only if used with a knowledge of their limitations.

Humm. I'm a fan of his also. I don't recollect him retracting or correcting his discovery? Short of rereading some of his books I have, I think it was Chuck Missler whom discovered it. If you have any information to the contrary, I'd appreciate it because I'm on old memory mode. 

[Retrobyter]

On 1/6/2018 at 11:17 AM, porton said:

Some Bible passages are of the form "X gave birth to Y, Y gave birth to Z, etc."

It looks like very uninteresting and boring for the readers.

My question: Can you suggest me to read any interpretations of such passages? Preferably on the Net, but a paper book (in English or Russian) on this topic wold be also of interest.

Shalom, porton.

You've been given several answers to your question, but you've missed the real reason for the genealogies. The base reason is to show that all men and women are FAMILY. We all come originally from Adam (the name of both the man and the woman before they were separated). "Adam" means "red" and it stems from the ground (Hebrew: haa'adaamaah), which tells us that the ground from which Adam was made was "red [earth or clay]." EACH name had a reason for being given to that child. Don't fall prey to the folly of stringing the names together. They were never meant to be viewed as a sentence.

A second reason for the genealogies is to show that each person listed had his (or her) own story. Some of those stories are told in the Scriptures, but many more are not. The book of Genesis is a great place to start. Genealogies are listed in chapters 5 and 11, going from Adam down to Noach and then down to Avram, which means "great father," who was later renamed to Avraham," which means "greatest father."

Genesis 17:5 (KJV)

5 Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee.

God took Avram's attempt to satisfy humanly (Ishma'el = "man of God") GOD'S promise of a son (Yitschaq or Isaac = "Laughter") and blessed him with it!