Biblical tree

Ridiculous.

why is that nonsense?

Is the Biblical Tree for real? Well, yes and no. It most certainly contains errors. But the Bible teaches that all humans find their common ancestry in Adam and Eve. That is true. This family tree is just the best guess that modern and ancient genealogical research can come up with. I am hopeful there will be many corrections from time to time.

I agree with Douglas.

If anyone can identify an erroneous parent-child connection on Geni, regardless of whether it's in the Biblical Tree, he should remove the connection or, failing that, post a request for that connection's removal in the latest "ATTENTION Curators, please assist" discussion (currently https://www.geni.com/discussions/178003?page=133) and be prepared to justify the request.

Thank you, John. I think Geni.com is a good place to address historical parent-child issues. Even in Holy Scripture there are parallel genealogies that are not in perfect agreement. And there are extra-biblical efforts to reconcile them. Let the same efforts be exercised on Geni.com.

I believe Ancestry is centered in Salt Lake City. Geni.com is centered in Israel. This is a great forum for "Biblical Tree" research. Where people identify "nonsense" let them expose it and all of us deal with it.

I am interested in knowing the "'errors" in the biblical tree and what the proofs are?

I don't object to identifying Cain and Abel as children of Adam and Eve, since this is professed to be a Biblical tree, and if that is what geni wants to show, that is your right. If you run the lineage from Adam and Eve down to the end of the Biblical record, fine. If you run my family tree up to the earliest historical record, fine. I object to showing Adam and Eve as my 118th ggp. That number of generations is contrary to all known facts about human existence, such as farming in the Fertile Crescent 9,000 years ago and the archaeology of Jericho to its existence 8,000 years ago. If I call the purported ascent from me to them as nonsense, tell me what you would call it. The "error," Rabbi, is the connection between the Biblical tree and the world family tree, wherever its connection can be located. The curator has already assured me that connecting the Biblical tree to living persons is not geni's intent.

See this project

https://www.geni.com/projects/Testing-for-Fake-Medieval-and-Ancient...

Other ways to help

-Follow this project and read the discussions. You might be able to help someone who is struggling.
-Suggest other profiles to be included here. The ideal profiles should (a) be famous or semi-famous people, (b) who are often falsely claimed as ancestors, (c) but who have no known descendants alive today.
-Suggest other shortcut rules that will help other users identify problem areas.

As mentioned, a difficulty is identifying the “wishful thinking” profiles that make the unproven connections. Once that’s done, curators can disconnect and lock down the two tree ends.

Another difficulty is educating each other so false connections aren’t re introduced. You will find reports on the internet, for instance - “my lineage to Adam and Eve!” And they get copied in.

Rabbi Yoseph Spira, I am not disputing whether there are errors in the biblical tree, only that there are differences in the genealogies in holy scripture and biblical scholars try to reconcile those differences. Likewise there are differences in the millions of genealogies of living and deceased people which Geni.com is designed to address. Finding errors and reconciling them is what Geni is all about.

Jerome F. Weber, I don't think geni.com is a good place to debate young earth theories. I do think that science and religion can agree that all human beings can be traced back to a single source.

I find it interesting that Geni.com already traces my genealogy back to a time when myth and history meet. According to Geni Balder is my 60th great grandfather. Do I believe that? No. but I find it interesting that some of my ancestors made extravagant claims.

The proofs of the age of things is open to dispute for lots of reasons [and if anyone wants I can spend time to discuss the issue but that isn't the issue for us here,
the issue is whether the documentation of lineage in the bible is acceptable as factual and scientifically accepted or is it just some story book/ myth etc.
how would you want to go about that issue do we have to prove it to be true and reliable or do we have to prove it as unreliable? is it guilty until proven innocent or innocent until proven otherwise? how much proof would we need to credit it and how much to discredit would any proof credit or discredit all of the 24 volumes?
as far as Jewish orthodox people are concerned we accept the bible as a credible source even more then we would accredit anything else listed in geni because the passing of these volumes for the past 2000 years has been near perfect and the reason for that is the rules by which all scribes had to abide by, and for 2000 years they have been therefore we may assume that was so up until the to, so to come and say that these documentations are less acceptable than anything that anyone else writes into geni doesn't sound right to me? I think that these documents are acceptable until you can prove 100 % otherwise!

Rabbi Yoseph Spira, I am not interested in debating "proofs of the age of things." What I am interested in is reliable documentation of genealogical lineage. Like you, I accept the genealogies written down in holy scripture. But I know much less about genealogical data between the first century and the 20th century. I'm hoping for help from Geni.com to help me draw the lines that can be verified.

Erica Howton, Thank you for your posted link: https://www.geni.com/projects/Testing-for-Fake-Medieval-and-Ancient... I think it offers reasonable caution. The "general rules of modern genealogy" may have no documentation, but probably represent the collective experience of genealogists who know a lot more than I do.

We all have pockets of knowledge and study, and bring that to the world family tree. For example, I think the Old Testament contains valuable genealogies, refined by Biblical scholars, historians, archeologists, etc. So for those of us who aren’t that kind of expert, we look to where our trees connect to Biblical figures, and my inexpert understanding is that it shouldn’t (on paper).

I believe there’s a line to modern times through Exilarchs & perhaps an Arab line. But I leave those to scholars.

Shalom all,
as the Curator nominally "in charge" of the "Biblical Tree" on Geni, I'll throw in my opinion.

1. The Number #1 priority of ours is keeping this tree as consistent as possible to the sources. The timeline of the Jewish Bible ends around 2500 years ago, with Zerubbabel 3rd Exilarch / זרובבל. The Christian Bible ends around 2000 years ago.

2. Past that point there are NO LINES that connect this ancient tree with present times. NONE. There are dozens of lines that CLAIM to make this connection, but none of them are nearly complete enough or otherwise based in reality. These "lines" include all sorts of connections to European nobility and such, and from there to modern times. There are also some Jewish lines. All of these lines tend to be AT LEAST 20-30 generations too short.

3. Despite that, these lines are EXTREMELY popular, and new users keep on adding them, and much of the Bible tree itself. So it's a full time job, just tracking down these lines and cutting them. Again and again. So yes, it's extremely frustrating.

For more details read the project description.
https://www.geni.com/projects/Biblical-Tree/38

To all who have contributed, I want to reiterate:
I am not raising the question of the accuracy of the Biblical tree.
I don't know who thinks the earth is "young," presumably meaning Adam was created 6,000 years ago. How do the archaeological findings at Jericho fit in with a "young earth"?
I thank Rabbi Kam for agreeing that the problem is connecting the Biblical tree with modern lines, making (as I began this discussion) Adam my 118th ggf. Even if, Erica, you can find such lines, they cannot be as short as such a count indicates. The count of 118 generations cannot be accepted.

There should be no (paper) connection at all from anyone in the Bible to anyone living in the current era. And if such can ever be proved, it will be much longer than 118 gens.

As Schmuel says, the problems are:

* tracking down the connect points in Geni, separating them, and locking so they can’t be re connected without public discussion and evidence vetting

* educating the naive that in serious genealogy such connections are not accepted, so don’t enter them.

The latter is the harder task.

I have found all of these posts very interesting. I think a skeptical but curious mind is very useful in serious research. I hope all of you (an more) can work together to gather genealogical information.