#biblicaldiscrepancies

How Old Was Abraham When He Left Haran?

By Bible Researcher Eli Kittim 🎓

The Apparent Contradiction

There’s a seeming contradiction in the Bible concerning Abraham’s age when he left Haran. The apparent contradiction is as follows. If Terah died when he was 205 years old, but fathered Abram when he was 70, then Abram must have been 135 years old when his father Terah died (as Gen. 11.26, 32 suggest), not 75, as Gen. 12.4 indicates. For the story to work without any discrepancies, Terah would literally have to be 130 years old when he fathered Abram. But it seemed as if he were only 70 years old. Hence the apparent contradiction. Below are the relevant citations that appear to contradict each other.

—-

Genesis 12.4 (ESV):

So Abram went, as the LORD had told him,

and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-

five years old when he departed from

Haran.

Acts 7.2:

And Stephen said: ‘Brothers and fathers,

hear me. The God of glory appeared to our

father Abraham when he was in

Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran.’

Acts 7.4:

Then he went out from the land of the

Chaldeans and lived in Haran. And after his

father died, God removed him from there

into this land in which you are now living.

Genesis 11.26:

When Terah had lived 70 years, he fathered

Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

Genesis 11.32:

The days of Terah were 205 years, and

Terah died in Haran.

—————

Apologetic Exegesis

The key passage is Gen. 11.26. The Hebrew text doesn’t explicitly say that *when* Terah was 70 years old he begat Abram. Rather, it puts it thusly (Gen. 11.26 KJV):

And Terah lived seventy years, and begat

Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

Nowhere is it explicitly mentioned that Terah had all 3 children when he was 70 years old. Nor is there any direct evidence that these children were triplets, or that they were born on the exact same date, month, or year. The verse in Gen. 11.26 merely indicates that after Terah reached a certain age——namely, 70 years old——he began to father children. But exactly when these children were actually born is unknown. The only thing that’s clear from Gen. 11.26 is that they were born after Terah had reached a certain age.

It’s quite possible, for example, that some of his children could have been born when Terah was 130 years old. Nothing in the text would contradict the timing of such a birth. As long as Terah fathered at least one child after he was 70, the rest could have been born anytime between Terah’s 70th and 205th birthday.

The order in which the names of Terah’s sons are listed may not reflect the precise chronological order in which the children were actually born. The text is simply indicating their order of importance. Given that Abram is a key figure in the Old Testament and the common patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, he’s obviously mentioned first:

there is yet a question whether Abram was

born first as listed, or perhaps he is listed

first because he was the wisest similar to

Shem, Ham, and Jafeth where Shem was

not the oldest, but was the wisest. … the

Talmud leaves the above question open.

(Wikipedia)

—————

Conclusion

Actually, Abram could have been 75 years old when he left Haran, as the text indicates (Gen. 12.4). And maybe he did leave Haran “after his father died” (Acts 7.4) at the age of 205 (Gen. 11.32). There is no contradiction with regard to the dates. The assumed contradiction is actually based on fallacious reasoning and speculation. It’s based on an eisegesis, that is, a misinterpretation of the text. Readers often assume that the text is telling us that Abram was born *when* Terah was 70 years old. But that’s a conjecture. The text doesn’t say that at all. All the text says is that once Terah reached a certain age, he began fathering sons. But exactly when each and every son was born is unknown.

How to Reconcile Apparent Contradictions in the New Testament

Eli of Kittim

Unlike the English language which uses verb forms to indicate time, Koine Greek is widely considered an aspectual language, meaning that the verbal system primarily expresses how an action is viewed rather than when it occurs. A narrative that does not give us the element of "time" is not giving us history, because history is fundamentally about events happening over time. This explains why some of Jesus's sayings are misinterpreted by time-bound readings and, consequently, misattributed to imminent eschatology or its offshoot, Preterism. Thus, Koine Greek is an aspectual language that is primarily not interested in giving us “time” or “history” but aspect. And in that sense, given that it was originally penned in Greek, the language of the New Testament is primarily aspectual! Therefore, since different New Testament authors present their varying accounts while emphasizing different aspects, these texts cannot be considered contradictory, in the strict sense of the word. If their accounts were classified as “historical,” then the differences in their reports would be considered, technically speaking, contradictory. But since the accounts are aspectual, not historical, the accounts cannot be considered contradictory. It’s simply the way each author chose to depict his particular narrative. In that sense, one can hold that the Bible is inerrant in how it presents its narratives in the original texts. That’s because New Testament Greek is basically aspectual, not temporal, in its verbal system.