How old was Terah when he died — 205 or 145?

It depends on which Hebrew manuscript tradition you read — and a New Testament sermon turns on the difference.

Three traditions, two numbers

When Moses set down the genealogies in Genesis 11, the original autograph is long gone. What we have is three ancient traditions that preserved the text, and they do not agree on every number.

• The Masoretic Text (MT) — the standard Hebrew Bible — says Terah lived 205 years.
• The Septuagint (LXX) — the pre-Christian Greek translation — also says 205 years.
• The Samaritan Pentateuch (SP) — a parallel Hebrew tradition with extant copies that are medieval but whose underlying recension predates the Christian era — says 145 years.

"And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years, and Terah died in Haran." — Genesis 11:32 (MT)

The MT and LXX agree. The SP reads sixty years lower. Either Terah lived to 205 or he lived to 145. Which is right?

Stephen does the math

In Acts 7, Stephen is on trial before the Sanhedrin, and he tells the whole story of Israel beginning with Abraham. He says something specific about the timing of Abram's move from Haran to Canaan:

"Then he went out from the land of the Chaldeans and dwelt in Haran. And from there, after his father died, God removed him into this land in which you now dwell." — Acts 7:4

Stephen says Abram left Haran for Canaan after Terah died. That is a chronological claim that you can check with arithmetic, and the numbers are right there in Genesis.

"And Terah lived seventy years and fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran." — Genesis 11:26

"And Abram was seventy-five years old when he went out from Haran." — Genesis 12:4

If you read Genesis 11:26 in the simplest direction — Terah was 70 when he fathered Abram — then Abram was born in Terah's 70th year. Abram left Haran at age 75. So Terah was 70 + 75 = 145 years old when Abram left. If Stephen is right that Terah died at that moment, Terah died at 145.

That is exactly the Samaritan Pentateuch's number. Not the Masoretic. Not the Septuagint. The SP preserves the figure that makes Stephen's chronology work without any further explanation.

Could the 205 number still work?

Yes — but it takes more reading-around-the-text. The standard defense of MT/LXX 205 goes like this. Genesis 11:26 says Terah was 70 when he started fathering his three sons, but Abram is named first because of his importance, not because he was the oldest. If Abram was actually born when Terah was 130 (not 70), and Abram left Haran at 75, then Terah's death at 205 lines up with Abram's departure (130 + 75 = 205). This is the same move Genesis 5:32 makes — "Noah was 500 years old, and Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth" — even though Shem was actually born when Noah was 502.

So the 205 reading can be harmonized. It just requires reading Genesis 11:26 against its grammatical default, with Abram born sixty years after the verse seems to say he was.

The simpler reading wins

The principle is straightforward. Stephen reads Genesis 11:26 the way it sounds — Abram born at Terah-70. The Samaritan Pentateuch preserves the number that fits that reading exactly. Both witnesses, taken in their simplest senses, agree.

The MT and LXX 205 can be made to work, but only by adding an unstated assumption (Abram was actually a later son). The SP 145 needs no extra moves. When a New Testament sermon and an ancient manuscript tradition both point the same direction with the simplest possible reading, that is where the evidence weight sits.

The full study lays out all three traditions side by side, shows the lifespan numbers in every cell, traces Stephen's Greek vocabulary back to the Septuagint, and explains why this is one of the cleanest places to see the textual fingerprints of MT, SP, and LXX in From Shem to Terah.