Archaeology Sticks It Up The Bible's Ass Again

[Polaris]

The number 40 was a popular estimate number used in Canaanite cultures (not just limited to the Israelites). To us, it would be like a cross between the numbers 7 and 10.

Also for Westerners, a generation is seen how long it takes for one generation to beget the next. For them, it was how long the average people were on the earth...in early times in the Bible, the generations were considerably longer.

I realise that, I was just curious as to how you arrived at the number forty. Your calculation appeared to me to be reverse-engineered, in the sense of taking the number from the bible passage and shoe-horning the twelve generations into it to arrive at forty, but if the number was indeed a popular estimate number at the time I can accept that. However, just as with the notion that biblical generations were longer than today's, "citation needed", as a wise man once said.

I have no idea what your second sentence means.

Genesis 15:16

In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.

That was roughly four centuries later.

Min. Tel Aviv is roughly 30 miles north of Jerusalem, which is considered Northern Canaan (aka Israel)....kind of like how San Francisco is Northern California.