Ep 356 | Genesis 5; Moses 6, Come Follow Me 2026 (January 26-February 1)

**Bryce Dunford** (0:03)
Hey everybody, welcome to Talking Scripture, a podcast where we illustrate relevance and application of the Scriptures in Come Follow Me.

**Mike Day** (0:10)
We also dive into the history and cultures of the text.

**Bryce Dunford** (0:13)
Thanks for taking the time to share and subscribe to this podcast.

**Mike Day** (0:17)
For show notes, head over to our website, talkingscripture.org. Welcome to Talking Scripture, I'm Mike.

**Bryce Dunford** (0:25)
And I'm Bryce.

**Mike Day** (0:26)
And today we are going to be in Genesis 5 and Moses 6

**Bryce Dunford** (0:30)
And we're going to tackle Genesis 5 in kind of a scholarly look at the genealogy of these patriarchs. Because I think there's some questions that we need to be aware of. And then we'll jump into the contribution of Joseph Smith adding to and producing Moses chapter 6 Now just a reminder as we go through this, Joseph Smith is 24, almost 25 when he produces Moses chapter 6 And when you look at the depth that he's producing, it's incredible. Because I would say that the contribution of Moses 6 is to put the gospel, prophets, and Jesus back into the Old Testament. And we're going to see in Moses chapter 6 that from the very beginning, Adam taught the role of Christ in our lives and the simplicity of the gospel. So we'll get to that, but let's start with Genesis chapter 5, a lineage of the patriarchs. And they lived for hundreds of years, almost a thousand years, which seems a little unusual. So Mike, what's your take on that? What is your take on the age of these patriarchs? What are the different ways we can look at that?

**Mike Day** (1:45)
Well, to start, if you go to Genesis 5, there's ten patriarchs. It's the lineage from Adam to Noah. And Adam lived, you know, 930 years. The person who lived the longest in everyone, you know, they even have a tree called the Methuselah tree, right? Methuselah lived to be 969 years old. And a lot of people read this, and they do take it literally. And in the show notes, we link some of the statements from some of the early brethren that took it literally. But then we have a statement from James E. Talmadge, when he was an early apostle.

**Bryce Dunford** (2:18)
A brilliant apostle.

**Mike Day** (2:19)
Right. And he says that the opening chapters of Genesis and scriptures related thereto were never intended as a textbook of geology, archaeology, earth science, or man science. And so from my reading of this, I look at Elder Talmadge's statement, and this is just my interpretation of what Elder Talmadge is saying, is he's giving us space or room to look at Genesis a little bit differently, that perhaps not everything in here is literal. So what I'm about to present is just a brief overview as to how biblical scholars look at these texts.

**Bryce Dunford** (2:53)
And just to throw something in, it's a common mistake to take scripture as literal when it wasn't intended as literal. For example, Nicodemus comes to Jesus and talks to him at night, and Jesus talks about being born again, and Nicodemus made the mistake that Jesus was speaking literal. How can a man enter his mother's womb and be born again? And the Savior corrects him, I wasn't speaking literal. And then in the very next chapter of John chapter 4, he says to a woman at a well, a Samaritan woman, if you drink of this water, you'll thirst again, but if you drink of the water that I give, you'll never thirst. Well, she again thought it was literal. She said, give me this life-sustaining water, but don't draw this water.
And Jesus, once again, I'm not speaking literal. So there kind of is a tradition in all of religion to maybe take something literal when it wasn't intended to be literal. And so I think there's a door here we can open up and say, well, maybe it wasn't intended to be literal, and what are those possibilities?

**Mike Day** (3:59)
And I want to be really careful. I don't want to say necessarily that it's a mistake to take it literal. I don't want to make it sound like just because what I'm about to share, means that I'm right. Because frankly, I don't know. I wasn't there. But as I read the Bible through the lens of history, I think it gives me a greater appreciation for what the scribes were doing and how the writings of Genesis played a role to help Israel understand their place in the world. And so that's going to be my approach. And I'm certainly not doing this to denigrate anybody from the 19th century in or out of the church who did take it literal. I want to be really careful and make that statement.