Technical Appendix: Noah and Shem in the Samaritan Pentateuch

This appendix supports Noah and Shem in the Samaritan Pentateuch: Counting the Flood Year. Dates are BC. Nisan is the default seasonal orientation; these tables compare annual positions without assigning an otherwise unstated birthday or fraction of a year.

1. Native SP dates and the comparison setting

The native SP setting uses 215 years in Egypt. Adding 215 to the affected early dates gives the full-430 comparison setting used in the main article. Neither column adds 60 years for Terah or restores second Cainan. The SP’s text includes the ancestors’ residence in Canaan as well as Egypt in its 430-year sojourn; the comparison adjustment is not a quotation of an Egypt-only SP reading.

The preferred genealogical head is a particular comparison position. Creation-week, Adam’s creation day, and a genealogical head remain distinct descriptions even where dates meet. The normal MT anchors remain Creation 4114, Flood 2458, and Abram 2166 BC.

2. Three ways to reach the same Flood start

These paths all run from Lamech’s birth, 3760 BC, to Flood start, 3108 BC. “53rd year” uses 52 completed annual boundary units; the same principle gives 499 for a 500th-year reading and 99 for a 100th-year reading.

52 + 500 + 100 = 53 + 499 + 100 = 53 + 500 + 99 = 652.

Counting Lamech’s endpoint years gives 653. The three paths express a reconstruction of how the cardinal and ordinal readings fit the SP field; they are not three separate textual attestations. Companion Noah 3707 minus a full 600, or companion Shem 3207 minus a full 100, instead reaches Flood close 3107. That numerical landing does not turn the event close into a person’s companion position.

3. Noah and Shem across the three Gears

Each slash-pair is primary / companion. The companion lies one year farther forward. This adjacent distinction applies to SP Noah and Shem only. The two-year Gear comparison is a separate operation.

Matched endpoints preserve Noah’s 950 years, Shem’s 600, and the 500 from Noah’s birth to Shem’s. The G2 companion-Noah / primary-Shem comparison gives 3707 − 3208 = 499. Correctly paired post-Flood spans give 3108 − 2758 = 350 and 3107 − 2757 = 350. Flood start paired with companion Noah’s death gives 351, so that mixed calculation cannot be called 350.

G1 primary Shem is the ordinary Arphaxad-bound position: 3206 − 100 = 3106. G2 primary Shem is instead 102 years from fixed Arphaxad: 3208 − 3106 = 102. These named comparisons retain distinct endpoint roles.

4. Flood starts and closes in MT, LXX, and SP

The table uses the full-430 comparison setting, no added 60 for Terah, MT/SP second Cainan absent, and LXX’s native second Cainan retained. In this LXX setting the normal Creation head is 5494 BC. A Cainan-removed Creation head of 5364 must not be paired with the native-Cainan Flood at 3238.

Each close is one year later than its start. Moving from G3 start to G2 start, G1 start, and finally G1 close gives 2 + 2 + 1 = 5. LXX is 780 years earlier than MT at these Flood and Arphaxad positions. The regular Arphaxad-forward chain stays fixed while Gears are compared at held sojourn, Terah, and Cainan settings. MT and LXX do not inherit the SP adjacent person positions.

5. Inclusive capacity and the selected SP deaths

For Adam through Lamech, capacity to Flood start is birth − 3108 + 1. This counts the endpoint years. It does not create an adjacent birth position for any of these patriarchs. Noah lies outside this cap calculation.

Jared’s 847, Methuselah’s 720, and Lamech’s 653 meet their inclusive capacities. Their selected deaths are at Flood start 3108. Subtracting instead to Flood close 3107 gives the same capacity number, but does not move their deaths there. Transporting birth and Flood start together by two years leaves each capacity unchanged; it does not restore years removed by a cap.

6. Selected numerical relations

The following comparisons state their endpoints. A span between two different Gears is not a replacement lifespan.

7. Book of Jubilees: events and birth positions

The Book of Jubilees (BJ) uses a different chronology. The following dates are the study’s conversion of BJ year positions, with 3856 BC as Year 1 and 1406 BC as the Conquest anchor. Thus BC = 3856 − (AM − 1). The original passages are Jubilees 4:33 and 5:21–32, in R. H. Charles’s translation.

The birth comparison maps positions in the birth order, not the same named person across traditions. The selected SP positions preserve BJ’s 2 + 3 spacing. The ordinary upper SP reconstruction is Japheth 3210, Shem 3208, Ham 3206, with 2 + 2 spacing. In native SP dates, the corresponding offsets are 344 for events and 345 for the selected birth positions. Applying event offset 559 to BJ births would give 3209 / 3207 / 3204, a different result.

I treat BJ as a corroborating or derivative witness to the SP architecture in this project. These numerical correspondences do not prove a historical direction of literary dependence. The SP Ark-preparation boundary remains a conjectural reconstruction, and the shared annual coordinate does not establish the duration of construction to the day.

Sources and further reading

The controlling dates and counting qualifications are in File 18, §§3.1–3.2.1 and Appendix A; the ordinary Gear controls are in File 11. The preserved SP Noah–Shem research register records the study’s development. Its dated editions should be read with the current source qualifications above.

Return to the introductory article.