The Scopes “Monkey Trial” Revisited – Preface

A Retrospective on the Significance and Legacy of the “Trial of the Century”

— AN OVERVIEW —

PREFACE

• The historical and scientific context for the Scopes Trial of 1925.
• What were the main issues at stake in the trial?

PART 1

• The facts, the myths, and the legacy related to the Trial – and why it was so significant in subsequent American history.
• The value and necessity of Christian apologetics.

PART 2

• A contemporary update: The Sepocs Trial of 2025.
• How has American society and culture radically changed over the past century?
• The case for Intelligent Design.
• The Summa: “Follow the evidence wherever it leads to its logical conclusion.”

— PREFACE —

Prelude: The “Trial of the Century”

This summer marks the 100^th anniversary of the Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial – one of the most high-profile media events of the 20^th century that reputedly confirmed the Darwinian theory of naturalistic evolution as indisputable “settled science” while relegating the biblical account of divine creation to the status of ancient superstition and mythology.

However, the facts behind the Scopes Trial are considerably more nuanced and complex. In reality, the trial did not establish a credible scientific basis for evolutionary theory, nor did it discredit special creation as a rational and defensible alternative. In that respect, this was one of those landmark historical events that all conscientious and thoughtful Christians should know.

A Clash of Worldviews

As an historical event, the Scopes “Monkey Trial” of 1925 was little more than a brief blip on the radar screen and a momentary diversion and distraction in the midst of the “Roaring Twenties.” But in terms of what it signified, and its legacy and impact on subsequent American culture, the trial was one of the most consequential events of the 20^th century. On that basis, it rightly deserves the title, “The Trial of the Century.”

The 1920s was a transitional decade. For the first time since the nation’s founding, rather than living in rural environments generally isolated from all but a few neighbors, the majority of Americans now lived in urban communities – a “city” being defined as an incorporated area with a population of more than 2,500 residents. Urban growth was driven by industrialization, immigration, and remarkable advancements in transportation with the invention of the internal combustion engine and the mass production of gasoline-powered automobiles and trucks. Also, there were exciting developments in mass communication via the new technology of radio. Literacy and general education were gradually increasing as more states mandated compulsory education. Still, at the time of the Scopes Trial, only a little more than 20% of the adult population had graduated from high school, and less than 3.5% had earned a college degree. Not many Americans were well-read in areas such as evolutionary theory and genetics.

Although usually presented as an epic debate between two sources of authority, science or religion – or Darwinian evolutionary theory versus the Biblical account of creation – in essence the Scopes Trial dramatized a classic culture clash between two fundamentally contradictory worldviews: Naturalism and Theism. For more than two centuries, the emergence and increasing influence of a secular/naturalistic worldview have shattered the biblically influenced consensus of the past and sparked the cultural trends that have eroded much of the spiritual and moral foundation of Western civilization. In America, the controversy over special (divine) creation versus naturalistic evolutionary theory has been the front-line issue in the emergence of the culture war that has impacted and divided virtually every area of American society and culture to the present day. As Brenda Wineapple commented in her recent book, Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation, “The [Scopes] trial was symbolic of the deep cultural and political divides that existed in 1925, but it also captures very strongly the cultural and political divide that we are living in right now.” This was the real issue at stake in the Scopes Trial of 1925, and this is why Christians should know and understand this epic event in American history.

The term “worldview” occasionally surfaces in public discourse, but relatively few people understand its meaning and significance. In essence, a worldview is an interpretive framework for making sense of the world – a philosophical, theological and existential matrix by which we assess what is Real and True and Significant – and what is not. In other words, our worldview is the foundation not only for what we believe, but it also conditions how we live – our value system and our priorities in life. [Note: The first philosopher to introduce the concept of “worldviews” was Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who used the term weltanshauung to denote a set of basic beliefs that underlie all human thought and action.]

According to the former UC-Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson: “Our worldview is the window by which we view the world, and decide, often subconsciously, what is real and important, or unreal and unimportant…. Every one of us has a worldview, and our worldview governs our thinking even when… we are unaware of it.” [Quoted in Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth (Crossway Books, 2004), p 11.]

Similarly, in her book, Is Reality Secular?, the academician Mary Poplin notes, “Worldviews are like operating systems on a computer except that they are in our minds…. [Our worldview] is the lens through which we interpret reality and by which we reason.” [Is Reality Secular? Testing the Assumptions of Four Global Worldviews (InterVarsity Press, 2014), pp. 26, 27]

In his standard textbook on worldviews, The Universe Next Door, the erudite Christian scholar James Sire explains it this way: “Few people have… an articulate philosophy [of life]. Even fewer have a carefully constructed theology. But everyone has a worldview.” [The Universe Next Door. Fifth Edition (IVP Academic, 2009), p. 19]

Our worldview conditions not only what we generally believe about theology and religion, but it also influences our basic orientation toward philosophy, morality, the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the arts. As the former atheist philosopher-turned-theist Antony Flew emphasized in his writings, true science cannot be detached from true philosophy. In his words: “When you study the interaction of two physical bodies – for instance, two subatomic particles – you are engaged in science. When you ask how it is that those subatomic particles – or anything physical – could exist and why, you are engaged in philosophy.” Flew might also have added, “… you are engaged in philosophy, and also theology!” [There Is a God (HarperOne, 2007), p. 89]

It is imperative that Christians understand that the Christian faith is not exclusively a personal relationship with God through belief in Jesus Christ and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, but also a comprehensive worldview. As the apostle Paul exhorted the Christians in Rome: “Do not conform any longer to the values and thought patterns of this world [i.e., the worldview of this world], but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to discern God’s good and perfect will for your life” (Rom. 12:2). Likewise, in Colossians 2:8 he warned, “Make certain that no one seduces you through hollow and deceptive philosophies which depend on human tradition and the principles of this world rather than on Christ.” [Note that this is not intended as an indictment of philosophy per se – only the realization that philosophy, like all areas of learning (including theology), is a prime target for Satanic infiltration, corruption and confusion. In fact, due to its innate importance, philosophy is the primary intellectual discipline that has been most exploited by the forces of evil for more than 2,000 years.

To qualify as a worldview, a belief system must address the two most basic components of any comprehensive philosophical system: metaphysics – the nature of fundamental reality (both material and immaterial or conceptual); and epistemology – the standards and processes by which we assess and conclude that something is real (or true) and knowable. In other words, metaphysics is all about what is real, and epistemology addresses how we can know what is real.

There are four basic metaphysical issues that every thoughtful person must ponder in this life:

(1) Prime Reality: What is the ultimate Source (or Cause) of all that is?

• Is it chemical and physical matter, or is it an eternal and transcendent Creator/God?

(2) Origins: Where did everything (including us human beings) come from?

(3) Identity: What is a human being?

• Are humans merely highly evolved mammals, or are we creatures made in the image of God (the imago Dei)?

(4) Destiny: What happens when a person dies?

Correspondingly, every thoughtful person must ponder three basic epistemological issues:

(5) Knowledge: How is it possible to know anything at all?

(6) Morality: Is there an objective standard for determining right and wrong, or are all values merely subjective and relative?

(7) Meaning: What (if anything) is the purpose of human life?

On a personal/existential level, the most fundamental issues of life are these:

(1) Identity: Who (and what) am I?

(2) Origin: Where did I come from?

(3) Meaning: Why am I here (or, what should I be doing here?)

(4) Destiny: Where am I going – or what is my final destination?

Three Worldview Options

Over the past two centuries, many philosophers and theologians have sought to identify and describe the various worldview orientations that underlie the basic beliefs and practices of different philosophies and religions. For example, in his masterly and practical “Basic Worldview Catalogue,” The Universe Next Door, the Christian philosopher and theologian James W. Sire identifies, compares and contrasts seven distinctive orientations:

(1) Christian theism;

(2) Enlightenment-influenced deism;

(3) Naturalism (a.k.a., Materialism);

(4) Nihilism;

(5) Existentialism;

(6) Eastern Pantheistic Monism; and

(7) New Age “spirituality” (or “New Consciousness”).

Reduced to their most basic essence, these seven delineations can be compressed into three fundamental worldview options: Naturalism, Theism, and Pantheism.

1. Naturalism.

• There is no God and no supernatural reality.
• Everything in the universe, including humankind, is the product of random (and purposeless) materialistic processes.
• The implication: Morality and ethics are human constructs.
• There are no absolute standards for right and wrong; all thoughts, words and actions are merely subjective impressions and expressions of opinion.
• Justice is relative, and the world operates according to the law of the jungle: “Might makes right,” and it’s all about “survival of the fittest.”

2. Theism.

• Everything – including humankind – is the product of an eternal, infinite and omnipotent Creator who designed the universe for a purpose.
• God is transcendent – he is not part of the universe.
• The ultimate purpose of the universe was the creation of humankind.
• God is the ultimate source of truth, morality, and justice.

3. Pantheism.

• The fundamental reality and the essence of all things is Brahman – the Universal World Soul.
• This is the essence of monism: “All is One,” and that One is innately spiritual.
• Everything is “God” – including things both material and immaterial.
• The material world is only an illusion (maya) and has no meaning.
• “God” is immanent, but not transcendent.
• We are all “God”.
  • As John Lennon sang in his composition, “I Am the Walrus:”
    “I am he, as you are he, as you are me, and we are all together.”

[Note: Pantheism is irrelevant to the issues at stake in the Scopes Trial of 1925, which focused exclusively on the implications of atheistic naturalism and theistic creationism.]

Darwinian Evolutionary Theory

Darwinism 101.

Charles Darwin (1809-82) was the most influential naturalist and biologist of the past 200 years. His most prominent and influential works were On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871). A religious “free thinker,” he wrote that he “gave up Christianity” at age 40.

Darwin’s basic agenda, and his stated goal, was to “overthrow the dogma of separate creations.” According to him, human beings are not a special creation of God but the products of certain naturalistic processes over time: random genetic mutations that occurred in the genetic code, natural selection that preserved beneficial mutations, and the “survival-of-the-fittest that perpetuated the evolution of the species. Over time, he came to the conclusion that humanity descended from “a hairy quadruped” that itself evolved over tens of millions of years from lower life forms.^[1]

In his Autobiography (published posthumously in 1887), Darwin noted, “the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man… as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting, I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.” However, he wrote that although this conclusion “was strong in my mind about the time when I wrote the Origin of Species, since that time… it has very gradually, with many fluctuations, become weaker.” Therefore, he conceded that he must now “be content to remain an agnostic.” [Ref. John G. West, ed., The Magician’s Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society (Discovery Institute Press, 2012), 130-31.]

According to many of Darwin’s most ardent followers and critics – both in the mid-19th century and currently – the implications of his theory of naturalistic evolution undermined any real basis for belief in God.

• Thomas Huxley, an English biologist and anthropologist known as “Darwin’s Bulldog”: “Teleology, as commonly understood (to mean design and purpose), received its deathblow at Mr. Darwin’s hand.” [Man’s Place in Nature (1864)]
• Julian Huxley (a grandson of Thomas Huxley, an evolutionary biologist and the first president of the British Humanist Association): “Darwinism removed the whole idea of God as the creator of organisms from the sphere of rational discussion.” [Evolution: The Modern Synthesis (1942).]
• Encyclopedia Britannica (1975): “Darwin did two things: he showed that evolution contradicts scriptural legends of creation and that its cause, natural selection, was automatic, leaving no room for divine guidance or design.”
• Ernst Mayr (an evolutionary biologist and historian of science): “The Darwinian revolution was no mere replacement of one scientific theory with another, but rather the replacement of a worldview in which the supernatural was accepted as a normal and relevant explanatory principle by a new worldview in which there was no room for supernatural forces.”
• Richard Dawkins: “Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin described, and which we now know is the explanation for existence and apparently the purposeful form of all life, has no purpose…. It is the blind watchmaker….

“Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” [The Blind Watchmaker (Norton, 1987), p. 6.]

“It is safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that.” [Richard Dawkins, “Put Your Money on Evolution.” The New York Times (April 9, 1989), VII.35.]

By the late 1800s, most scientists had converted from belief in special divine creationism to some form of evolutionary theory. Darwinism seemed to offer a natural “scientific” explanation for the origins of contemporary life forms without reliance upon supernatural intervention. Naively, many Christian scholars, including leading conservative theologians and clergy, accepted some form of theistic evolutionary theory virtually without question. For example, several articles in The Fundamentals (1905-15), including those written by editors A. C. Dixon and R. A. Torrey, tacitly endorsed theistic evolution. [For more information, see Jefrey D. Breshears, “Science and Fundamentalism,” in Dictionary of Christianity and Science (Zondervan, 2017), pp. 599-602.]

Social Darwinism and Eugenics.

Darwinian evolutionary theory impacted not only biological science but also great social and cultural trends. In the 1860s, a cousin of Darwin, Francis Galton (1822-1911), was the first to propose the new “science” of eugenics, including selective breeding, so as to promote a “survival-of-the-fittest” agenda and thereby accelerate the process of human evolution. According to Galton and his successors, “defective” humans should be sterilized so as to reduce “inferior” offspring. Darwin was also an avid proponent of eugenics, and his son Leonard would later become the president of the national Eugenics Education Society in England. In fact, the full title of Darwin’s first book was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.[!]

In the fifteen years between Margaret Sanger’s founding of the pro-abortion American Birth Control League in 1921 (the predecessor to Planned Parenthood) and 1935, more than thirty states enacted laws to compel the sexual segregation and sterilization of persons designated as eugenically unfit – in particular the mentally ill and retarded, habitual criminals, and epileptics. As George William Hunter stated in his Civic Biology textbook (see Part 1: Prelude to the “Monkey Trial”), “If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading.” [Cited in Larson, Summer for the Gods, p. 27.]

A few years later, of course, the ultimate legacy of the eugenics movement would culminate in Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime’s mass extermination of “undesirables” – the “mentally retarded,” the physically handicapped, homosexuals, Jews and Gypsies. Modern eugenics and the denial of the sanctity of human life have resulted in the greatest mass murder of innocent human beings in history. As the historian Richard Weikart explains in his books, From Darwin to Hitler and Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism:

Eugenics was a movement that aimed at improving human heredity…. Indeed, long before the Nazis came on the scene, Darwinian biologists, anthropologists, and other scholars – including Darwin himself – were insisting that Darwinism provided intellectual support for racism and even racial extermination….

One of the most important features of Darwin’s theory was his proposed mechanism for evolution: natural selection through the struggle for existence. Darwin argued that the population of any species, including humans, grew faster than the food supply, leading to competition for scarce resources in which the fit – those better adapted to their environments – survived and reproduced, while the unfit perished.”

Regarding race relations, Darwin was seemingly a proponent of pseudo-“scientific racism.” As Weikart writes, “Darwin thought that some races – black Africans, Native Americans, and others – were intellectually inferior to Europeans…. Thus, many Europeans in the 19th century construed Darwin’s theory as justification for annihilating other races.” [Richard Weikart, “Darwinian Racism: How Evolutionary Theory Shaped Nazi Thinking.” https://evolutionnews.org/2022/02/darwinian-racism-how- evolutionary-theory- shaped- nazi-thinking/]

In terms of his social, cultural and political influence, Darwin was an integral part of modernism’s “secular trinity” along with Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. Together, the legacy of these three cultural titans in terms of their influence in both the natural sciences and the social sciences has largely defined most of the radical secular trends of the past 175 years.

The Origin of Everything: Two Views

There are two alternatives regarding the essence of the existence of all the natural world, including human beings.

1. Naturalistic Evolution [a.k.a. “Darwinian” and “Neo-Darwinian” evolution]. The implications of naturalistic/materialistic/unguided evolutionary theory include:

• We live in a self-existent (and uncreated) universe that had no beginning. Matter is eternal and is all there is. To quote the celebrity astronomer and media star Carl Sagan: “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”

[Note: All ancient pagan cosmologies assumed that the universe was eternal – i.e., it had no creative beginning. Only the Bible posited creatio ex nihilo – “creation out of nothing” – Gen. 1:1.]

• Matter is all that matters. Supernaturalism is essentially superstitionism. Teleologically, the universe had no purpose: it just is. Likewise, the laws of nature have no explanation: they just are.

By the 1820s, most naturalists had come to believe that the Earth was millions of years old, and that human life had existed far longer than the 6,000 years that biblical genealogies seemed to indicate in Genesis 5 and 11.^[2]

The emerging consensus among scientists in the late 19^th century was that all life forms evolved from a common primordial origin over millions (or billions) of years. The implications:

• Human beings are merely highly evolved mammals.
• Human beings are complex psycho-chemical machines, products of random material and chemical forces that are evolving toward higher states of consciousness.
• There is no explanation for the reality of consciousness.
• There is no explanation for the reality of morality.
• There is no explanation for the reality of human creativity.
• Mankind has no supernatural essence or “soul.”
• Human history has no overarching purpose or goal.
• Death is the extinction of human personality and consciousness. As the philosopher of science Ernest Nagel declared: “Human destiny is [merely] an episode between two oblivions.” [Cited in David Gooding and John Lennox, Being Truly Human: The Limits of Our Worth, Power, Freedom and Destiny (2018), pp. 240-242.]

In his younger years, C. S. Lewis was somewhat skeptical regarding the claims of Darwinian evolutionary theory, but over time, he became increasingly critical of the theory. Lewis addressed the topic of evolution in several of his books and essays, and in private letters.

John West: In Lewis’s book, Miracles, he emphasized that “the birth of modern science and its belief in the regularity of nature depended on the Judeo-Christian view of God as Creator: ‘Men became scientific because they believed in a [supreme and divine] Legislator’” who created the physical laws that govern the universe. However, “Throughout his life, Lewis displayed a healthy skepticism of claims made in the name of science… even before he was a Christian.”

Lewis was a vociferous critic of “scientism” – the belief that modern science should be the ultimate authority on all matters, both physical and conceptual – including not only moral and religious matters but also in terms of cultural values and even political policies.

Likewise, Lewis had no tolerance for “evolutionism” – the idea that “matter magically turned itself into complex and conscious living things through a blind and undirected process.” In a letter to his father in 1925, Lewis opined that Darwin’s theory was built on “a foundation of sand.”

Lewis picked up on Darwin’s doubt regarding the reliability of the human mind given the evolutionary process: “If my own mind is a product of the irrational… how shall I trust my mind when it tells me about Evolution?” As Lewis explained, “By treating human beings as products of blind non-rational forces, scientific reductionism eliminates man as a rational moral agent…. [which would) open the door wide to the scientific manipulation of human beings.”

Obviously, Lewis treated “scientism” and “evolutionism” as major forces in the spiritual and moral deterioration of Western civilization. “It is significant that Lewis spent World War II writing not about the dangers of Nazism or communism (even though he detested both), but about the dangers of scientism” and its efforts to undermine humankind as spiritual and moral creatures made in the image of God.

In books such as The Abolition of Man and “That Hideous Strength, Lewis also warned against the troubling prospects of the emergence of “scientocracy” and “technocracy” – the undue power and influence that elite scientists and technocrats increasingly exerted in government, education and the media both in totalitarian and democratic nations. [Ibid., pp. 11, 12, 21, 26, 27, 31, 32, 109ff.]

In his final book, The Discarded Image (1964), Lewis observed that “Real biologists” [rather than propagandists] recognize that evolution is simply a hypothesis, not a dogmatic truth, and that scientific theories are suppositions, “not necessarily facts.” With rare perceptivity, he also observed that “Each [theory] reflects the prevalent psychology of [its] age.” [The Discarded Image (1964). Also see John West, The Magician’s Twin, p. 140ff.] Furthermore, if humanity – and the human mind in particular – was the result of an evolutionary process, it certainly was not in keeping with mindless and unguided Darwinian evolutionary theory but rather evolution via intelligent design – a form of “theistic evolution.” [For a critique of theistic evolution, ref. John West, The Magician’s Twin, p. 132ff.] Even more problematic, of course, would be the reality of the human soul, including our moral and imaginative consciousness and our conception of beauty.

2. Theistic Creation. “Big Bang” cosmology, modern astronomy and astrophysics all confirm a universe that had a beginning about 13.8 billion years ago, and the consensus in the field of geology estimates that planet Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old. At certain times in the evolution of planet Earth, God created new life forms to inhabit the planet – most notably during the Cambrian “explosion” circa 540 million years ago.

Human beings were a special creation of God: they did not evolve from lower life forms and earlier hominids. According to the Bible, humans were created “in the image of God” (the imago dei), and like all other species, they then reproduced “according to their kind as in Genesis 1:24-27. The creation of humanity was God’s ultimate plan as set forth in the “anthropic principle” [see Part 2: “The Cult of Scientism.”] The universe and planet Earth have precisely the exact physical constants and properties necessary for human life to exist and flourish. Also, the laws and constants of physics are not random – and if they were not so precisely fine-tuned, no life – especially, no intelligent life – would exist. Regarding the creation of humanity, estimates vary from about 50,000 years ago or longer. In their book, Who Was Adam, co-authors Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross emphasize that “the archaeological record does not display a gradual evolutionary emergence of modern human intellectual and artistic capabilities. At 50,000 years ago, advanced human culture appeared out of nowhere. The archeological record reveals a veritable explosion of human culture – anthropology’s “big bang” – which marks the appearance of God’s image.” The authors add that “At no other time in human history has the biblical account of humanity’s origin held greater scientific credibility than it does today.” [Who Was Adam? pp. 253ff.]

1. Darwin was not the first to promote a theory of organic evolution. In the early 1800s the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) argued for the spontaneous generation of life and the “transmutation of species” (i.e., macro-evolution) – even theorizing that humans eventually evolved from Orangutans (great apes). Lamarck’s theory of “progressive development” was based on the transmission of acquired characteristics (sometimes referred to as “soft evolution”). Each succeeding generation progresses beyond the level of complexity of its ancestors and then passes these traits on to its offspring. In contrast to Darwinian evolution theory, this was a natural process rather than being driven by an aggressive (and predatory) “survival of the fittest” ethic. Later “neo-Lamarckians” attributed this developmental process to “the wisdom and goodness of the Creator.” [Edward J. Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion (BasicBooks, 1997), p. 19.]
   A generation after Lamarck, the Scottish geologist Charles Lyell (1797-1875) sought to reconcile his religious faith with Darwinian evolution theory. Gradually over the years, Lyell came to accept the theory of the “transmutation of species,” arguing that such a concept was as much a “remarkable manifestation of creative Power” as creating each species separately, and that humans were different from other animals only in their unique “intellectual and moral qualities.” However, he struggled to square his religious beliefs with evolution, and it was only late in life that he finally committed to the theory of natural selection. In the final edition of Principles of Geology, Lyell noted that it still remained “a profound mystery” how the huge gulf between man and beast could be bridged.” [Ref. Wikipedia, “Charles Lyell.”] ↑
2. The 6,000-year-old chronology, along with other narratives in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, poses a hermeneutical challenge. Many Bible scholars argue that this “young earth” interpretation of early Genesis is based not on a “literal” reading and interpretation of the text but rather a “literalistic” approach that fails to consider the particular literary genre and intent of the pre-historic Genesis narratives prior to chapter 12 and the calling of Abram (Abraham) – at which point the narrative transitions to real recognizable “history” based on the essential factors of time and place. As mentioned below in Part 1: “The Climax,” even the Scofield Reference Bible of 1909, a favorite among Fundamentalists (and in later years, many Evangelicals), noted that the word “day” (Hebrew: yom) can refer to an unspecified “period of time” as in the “day/age theory.” This view holds that the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 are not exhaustively complete but rather are intended to communicate great theological and transcendent truths.Just as yom has multiple meanings, likewise the Hebrew terms for “father” (ab) and “son” (ben) can mean “ancestor” and “descendant.” As Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross explain in Who Was Adam?, “Bible authors organized genealogies according to patterns…. For example, Matthew 1 uses three sets of 14 names while omitting some of the names listed in I Chronicles 1-9.” Similarly, in Genesis 5 and 11 the genealogies have theological rather than chronological intentionality. [Ref. Who Was Adam? (RTB Press, 2015), pp. 50-51.] ↑