Biblical Genealogies, Lists, and Catalogues

Lists and catalogues are vehicles for capturing, classifying, and retaining information and knowledge. They are among the most common types of texts from the ancient world. Lists were used for administrative purposes, such as accounting, dating, and census taking; royal propaganda, including king lists, wartime conquests, body and booty counts, and tribute; and religious purposes, such as lists of gods, festivals, and offerings. They also had scientific and educational functions. Mesopotamia has left us astronomical observations (lists of predicted lunar eclipses and the risings and settings of Venus), omen lists, grammatical lists, glossaries, lexical lists, and catalogues of objects (e.g., trees, precious metals and gems, literary works) and social phenomena (e.g., kinship terms, professions, psychological qualities). From Egypt, we have the “Onomasticon of Amenemope,” an extensive list of the major phenomena in the world; it is characterized in its introduction as a “teaching for clearing the mind, for instruction of the ignorant, and for learning all things that exist.”

The Bible contains a surprising number of lists embedded in its writings. Especially notable are its genealogical lists, prominent in Genesis and Chronicles and also found elsewhere. Genealogy was important to ancient Israel, for a person’s primary identity was as a member of a family line, which in some cases was traced back for many generations. Although most biblical genealogies are family trees, or branches of them, the genealogies in Genesis 5, 10, and the end of 11 are unique with their universal perspective, comprehending all of humanity as a large family and situating Israel within it. After the return from exile, Ezra and Nehemiah are concerned with priestly genealogies in order to ensure that the priests who would serve in the Second Temple were authentic descendants of priestly families.

Many other types of lists are found in the Bible. Census lists record the number of people, often grouped by tribe, sometimes in order to calculate the number of potential soldiers or to apportion land holdings in the promised land. Generally, only adult men are listed in the census, but occasionally a woman’s name appears (e.g., Serach, Asher’s daughter, in Numbers 26:46). There are lists of places and borders, officials and personnel. The Ten Commandments and the legal collections in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy are lists. Lists and catalogues may serve as the structure on which literary works, or parts of them, are built. The story of creation in Genesis 1 is structured on the days of the week. The narratives of the wanderings in the wilderness in the book of Numbers are structured around a list of places where the Israelites encamped or through which they passed, like itineraries or travelogues.

The book of Kings and much of Chronicles read like a list of kings, expanded by narratives. The books are arranged chronologically according to the reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah. There was no continuous dating system—that is, starting with a given point and continuing indefinitely— until the Seleucid era. (The Seleucid calendar began in 312 BCE.) Before that, dating in the ancient Near East was generally according to the year of the king’s reign and the count began afresh with each new king. The book of Kings, therefore, presents its chronological survey through the sequence of kings, correlating the year of the king of Judah with the year of the king of Israel—for example, “In the fifteenth year of King Amaziah son of Joash of Judah, King Jeroboam son of Joash of Israel became king in Samaria—for forty-one years” (2 Kings 14:23).

There are also numerous extrabiblical lists of names, such as men receiving rations or groups of men in military units, and a list of donors to a temple. One extrabiblical inscription, the Gezer Tablet, is a list of agricultural activities and the number of months that each lasts.

Lists lend themselves to literary, especially poetic, elaboration because they are a way to paint a large picture or to intimate totality or infinity. An example is Amos 1:3–2:8, which rehearses the transgressions of Israel’s neighbors, culminating with those of Judah and Israel. Extended metaphors may be modeled on lists of items—parts of the body, elements in a sequence or process, attributes, geographic descriptions, and so forth. See, for example, the love poems listing and praising the different parts of the beloved’s body in Song of Songs 4 and 5, the attributes of the righteous person in Psalm 15, and the list of “times” for everything in Ecclesiastes 3:1–8. On occasion, they focus attention on a particular point. For instance, the lists connected with the Tabernacle and the Temple reflect concern for the sanctity of the place where God dwells among the people and the belief that God is to be worshiped precisely in accordance with his own prescriptions. A rather different effect seems intended in the list of Haman’s dead sons in Esther 9:6–9, where the reader can revel in the destruction of the enemy and the total eradication of his line. Lists also create a rhythm through their repetition, which is welcome in poetry. We find them in modern literature as well as in ancient writings, as, for example, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet “How Do I Love Thee?” Finally, lists may be mnemonic devices, especially when their items are numbered, as in Proverbs 30:21–28.