Finished Reading “Heretics”

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  "G. K. Chesterton, the "Prince of Paradox," is at his witty best in this collection of twenty essays and articles from the turn of the twentieth century. Focusing on  "heretics" - those who pride themselves on their superiority to Christian views - Chesterton appraises prominent figures who fall into that category from the literary and art worlds... those who hold incomplete and inadequate views about "life, the universe, and everything." He is, in short, criticizing all that host of non-Christian views of reality, as he demonstrated in his follow-up book Orthodoxy. The book is both an easy read and a difficult read. But he manages to demonstrate, among other things, that our new 21st century heresies are really not new because he himself deals with most of them." (Goodreads)

"Is Enoch the 6th or 7th from Adam? The Bible Is Clearly Wrong!"

Question: Jude 14 says that Enoch was the 7th from Adam but when we count the fathers mentioned in the genealogies of Genesis 5:3-18, 1 Chronicles 1:1-2 and Luke 3:37-38, we find Enoch is the sixth and not the seventh. The Bible is clearly wrong.

Answer: We do count six, yet Jude says there are seven. Perhaps Jude knows something that we do not and since he is quoting what we call "The Book of Enoch," perhaps we could find a clue there. Noah (supposedly writing) describes his “ancestor who was man, from Adam the first of men, whom the Lord of spirits made.” (1 Enoch 58:9).

Following this lead, Jude is correct to say that Enoch is the seventh men from Adam, who is counted as the first of men. This means the genealogies and Jude are both correct and the Bible remains without error:
  1. Adam, the first of men;
  2. Seth, the second of men (note that Jude draws a contrast between Godly and ungodly men and has already counted Cain in a different category);
  3. Enos, the third of men;
  4. Cainan, the fourth of men;
  5. Mahaleleel, the fifth of men;
  6. Jared, the sixth of men; 
  7. Enoch, the seventh of men.

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