Why did the Patriarchs live so long?

[Jebus H. Christ]

Below is a link to a website that graphes the ages of the Patriarchs in the Bible (I link only for the graph, not their reasons). Why were the lifespans of the Patriarchs so much longer? Is it supposed to say something about them?

It seems that modern creationists want to talk about how this relates to the oozone layer or genetics. But these would not be things that the writers of the Bible had knowledge about - assuming they were just men. So what were they trying to say about the Patriarchs?

http://www.biblestudy.org/basicart/longpatr.html

[Mangetout]

Dunno, but it is sometimes suggested that the ages are expressed in months, mislabelled as years.
Trouble is, that doesn't work because the list contains not only their ages at death, but the ages at which they sired children; dividing the age at death might give you more realistic ages, but dividing the ages at fatherhood by twelve makes some of them very much still in short trousers when they got it on.
And if you divide the ages at death by twelve and leave the ages at fatherhood alone, then some of them became parents quite some time after their death; nice work if you can get it.

[Bryan Ekers]

I tried to find a error, but instead uncovered an amusing potential fact. Methuselah is the longest-lived of the patriarchs, as 969 years (Gen 5:27). At the age of 187, he fathered Lamech (Gen 5:25) who at the age of 182 fathered Noah (Gen 5:28), when Methuselah was 369. When Noah was 600, the flood came (Gen 7:6), killing all life on Earth except that in the ark. So Methuselah, who'd lived to be 969, may have died a few months before the flood or he may have died in the flood, which suggests he might have lived to be even older, but for the wrath of God.

I'd thought originally the numbers might suggest Methuselah lived past the flood, but no big deal.

[Lumpy]

Remember that even the earliest possible date for when Genesis was first written down would have been centuries or millenia after the dates all this supposedly happened. At least as long before as the span between today and when King Arthur supposedly lived. Legends, in other words Assuming you don't believe that Genesis is literally true, then the "reason" why enormous longevity is attributed to the Patriarchs is along the general lines of "back in the mystic times of old, magic and wonders were commonplace". Sumerian mythology, which is believed to be at least partly the source of the myths inherited by the Hebrews, routinely attributed vast lifetimes to the god-kings who supposedly ruled the world back then. (A lot of ancient myth reads like comic books without the graphics).

Either that, or you could make an extremely effective youth potion from manticore liver.

[FriarTed]

Originally Posted by Bryan Ekers

I tried to find a error, but instead uncovered an amusing potential fact. Methuselah is the longest-lived of the patriarchs, as 969 years (Gen 5:27). At the age of 187, he fathered Lamech (Gen 5:25) who at the age of 182 fathered Noah (Gen 5:28), when Methuselah was 369. When Noah was 600, the flood came (Gen 7:6), killing all life on Earth except that in the ark. So Methuselah, who'd lived to be 969, may have died a few months before the flood or he may have died in the flood, which suggests he might have lived to be even older, but for the wrath of God.

I'd thought originally the numbers might suggest Methuselah lived past the flood, but no big deal.

Some Bible teachers note that "Methuselah" can be translated as "When he dies, so be it", thus implying that his death would herald some great event.

To address the OP, I've heard theories about the atmosphere of the pre-Flood world being more conducive to health and longevity (such as that the atmosphere
had a water canopy which filtered out harmful radiation). However, it occurred to me that only these people are mentioned as living so long, so perhaps it was only those mentioned in the Genesis 5 & 11 geneologies who reached such advanced age as a mixed blessing (Sure, you live centuries, but you also see many of your loved ones, including descendants, age and die).

[Kimstu]

I think the usual historical explanation is that the authors of the Bible were trying to fill in rather long timespans with a comparatively small number of known names in traditional genealogies. So the lifespans of the individuals got pretty long.

The same phenomenon appears to an even higher degree in the cuneiform lists of ancient kings of Mesopotamia.

[BrainGlutton]

[porgy & bess]

Methusaleh lived 900 years
Methusaleh lived 900 years
But why call that livin'
When no gal will give in
To no man what's 900 years?

[/p&b]

[whole bean]

Originally Posted by Jebus H. Christ

Why were the lifespans of the Patriarchs so much longer? [/url]

Because it is fiction, a myth. This is not meant to be snarky, it's the only sincere and rational answer. The 900 year old is a myth - we have no compelling reason to believe otherwise, or at least no reason more compelling than the reason we have to believe that Zeus lived on Olympus and Arthur pluckled excaliber from a stone. The better question is, why do you believe the patriarchs lived so long?

[Jebus H. Christ]

Originally Posted by whole bean

Because it is fiction, a myth. This is not meant to be snarky, it's the only sincere and rational answer. The 900 year old is a myth - we have no compelling reason to believe otherwise, or at least no reason more compelling than the reason we have to believe that Zeus lived on Olympus and Arthur pluckled excaliber from a stone. The better question is, why do you believe the patriarchs lived so long?

I don't know why they lived so long. Even assuming it is a totally fictional myth, the question is why did the writers make them live so long. The idea that they were trying to relate the amount of time to the known generations make sense. Looking the Torah it does seem that these ages come from the R text and R was using the Book of Generations as a framework. In fact, I can't find any Patriarch's age in any part of the Torah other than R.

Does anyone know if R added the ages to the Book of Generations or if the ages were already there? At the time of the redaction was the age of the Earth a known thing?

[Bippy the Beardless]

Maybe they were Zombies?

More seriously, many ancient legendary figures have their longevity exagerated.
Sumerian
China

[Frank]

Originally Posted by Jebus H. Christ

At the time of the redaction was the age of the Earth a known thing?

No, it was not. Bishop Ussher did not publish until 1650 C.E.

[Jebus H. Christ]

Originally Posted by Frank

No, it was not. Bishop Ussher did not publish until 1650 C.E.

I am sure why that has anything to with whether ancient Jews had a tradition of the known age of the Earth. The current Jewish claendar dates back to Hillel II (C.E. 359). I am not sure if this calendar had years at that time (I think it did) or if there was a prior calendar that had years. But the Jewish clendar did have a year date (that goes back to creation) before the Ussher-Lightfoot Calendar.

[Frank]

Originally Posted by Jebus H. Christ

I am sure why that has anything to with whether ancient Jews had a tradition of the known age of the Earth.

Next time I'll put a [joke] tag around my post.

[The Great Sun Jester]

Because they were more closely related to the immediate (and perfect) creations of Adam and Eve. One argument I've heard is that inbreeding was not so problematic for A&E's offspring because there were no harmful mutations that would be concentrated. We today are tainted through generations bad living that we are lucky to see 1/10th the lifespan of our perfectly engineered counterparts.

Either that or the wriers were simply doing what ancient historians did best: exaggerating in order to magnify the greatness of our predecessors relative to ourselves so we hold our past in awe and reverence, and strive for a greatness we are supposed to have once known.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

It was a mythological convention in imitation of the Sumerian Kings List. They were not real people anyway.

[C K Dexter Haven]

The question of reality or myth doesn't really enter into it. At some point, an author or editor deliberately used those ages, and we can ask why from a literary perspective without regard to any underlying reality.

From that perpsective, one generalization is that the ages tend to decrease. The more ancient patriarchs live longer than the more recent ones, down to Joseph living for 100 years (I'm doing this from memory, I don't have a bible handy), Moses for 120, and Joshua for 100. Thus, Joseph and Joshua bracket Moses who is regarded as exceptional, having lived to 120 and not be diminished in strength.

And then you have "magic" numbers: 120 = 40 x 3, and 40 is an oft-recurring number in the bible (signifying generational change) and 3 is an oft-recurring number, so the product had symbolic significance to the author(s)/editors/readers way back when, lost to us now.

[C K Dexter Haven]

OK, I also note that:
Abraham lives to be 175 = 5² x 7
Isaac lives to be 180 = 6² x 5
Jacob lives to be 147 = 7² x 3

So there's some sort of pattern. What does it mean? No one today knows.

[Jebus H. Christ]

C K Dexter Haven, I noticed you wrote some staff reports on the writing of the Bible.

Do you know if the redactor added the ages to the Book of Generations? Was there a known age of the Earth or date of creation that the redactor had to deal with when using the Book of Generations to give structure to Torah if he added the ages?

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by Bippy the Beardless

Maybe they were Zombies?

Gospel According to John, Chapter 20:

24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.
25 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.
26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.
27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.
28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.
29 Jesus saith unto him, BBRRRRAAAAIIIIIIIHHHHNNNNZZZZ! And there was much wailing, and gnashing of teeth, and spraying of bodily fluids.

[saoirse]

I was taught that, for the earliest patriarchs, it expressed how close to perfection they were. 1000 years would have been perfect, so Methuselah was the holiest of them. After the flood, they were given shorter lifespans to kind of ease us into the more modern, believable era.

[Skald the Rhymer]

Originally Posted by Jebus H. Christ

Below is a link to a website that graphes the ages of the Patriarchs in the Bible (I link only for the graph, not their reasons). Why were the lifespans of the Patriarchs so much longer? Is it supposed to say something about them?

It seems that modern creationists want to talk about how this relates to the oozone layer or genetics. But these would not be things that the writers of the Bible had knowledge about - assuming they were just men. So what were they trying to say about the Patriarchs?

http://www.biblestudy.org/basicart/longpatr.html

Like Superman, they had the advantage of being fictional characters and thus being unconstrained by the laws of physics.

[David Simmons]

Originally Posted by C K Dexter Haven

OK, I also note that:
Abraham lives to be 175 = 5² x 7
Isaac lives to be 180 = 6² x 5
Jacob lives to be 147 = 7² x 3

So there's some sort of pattern. What does it mean? No one today knows.

Other than the signficant number forty, aren't numerological connections in the early books of the Bible pretty speculative? I'm under the impression that the Israelites were pretty weak in mathematics before the Exile. And also that the Bible was mainly committed to writing during the Exile so mathematical references would most likely have been in the Babylonian counting system. That system used 10 as the number base for numbers up to fifty nine and then 60 as another base for numbers above that.

The "pattern" you have described seems to be based strictly on a base 10 counting system.

[Jebus H. Christ]

Originally Posted by David Simmons

Other than the signficant number forty, aren't numerological connections in the early books of the Bible pretty speculative? I'm under the impression that the Israelites were pretty weak in mathematics before the Exile. And also that the Bible was mainly committed to writing during the Exile so mathematical references would most likely have been in the Babylonian counting system. That system used 10 as the number base for numbers up to fifty nine and then 60 as another base for numbers above that.

The "pattern" you have described seems to be based strictly on a base 10 counting system.

All these numbers come from text associated with the redactor who is considered an Aaronid priest of the Second Temple. Whether the redactor added the numbers or whether they were a part of the Book of Generations is something I don't know.

[Jebus H. Christ]

Originally Posted by Jebus H. Christ

All these numbers come from text associated with the redactor who is considered an Aaronid priest of the Second Temple. Whether the redactor added the numbers or whether they were a part of the Book of Generations is something I don't know.

I meant to add the redaction was around 450 BCE.

[foolsguinea]

Originally Posted by whole bean

Because it is fiction, a myth. This is not meant to be snarky, it's the only sincere and rational answer. The 900 year old is a myth - we have no compelling reason to believe otherwise, or at least no reason more compelling than the reason we have to believe that Zeus lived on Olympus and Arthur pluckled excaliber from a stone. The better question is, why do you believe the patriarchs lived so long?

a. We know it's a myth. The question is why invent that myth? This isn't Dada. These stories were put forth as truth. What was the reason? Just saying, "it's a myth," doesn't answer the question, it merely shows your lack of comprehension.

b. Besides, it may not be pure fiction; it could be an artifact of a society changing from measuring age by months to measuring age by years. The strangely early ages of fertility that gives us are not as hard to explain as lifespans suddenly shortening to a tenth their previous length.

c. Or, it could be a rather confused example of a forgotten ancient Near Eastern custom of exaggeration when dealing with the "mythic past." For comparison, Plato's tale of Atlantis could be derived from an actual disaster on Crete if you divide the distances & times by ten.

d. Arthur received Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, after he was grown up & important & stuff. It's not the sword from the stone. Am I the only one who remembers Malory?

[Bippy the Beardless]

Originally Posted by foolsguinea

d. Arthur received Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, after he was grown up & important & stuff. It's not the sword from the stone. Am I the only one who remembers Malory?

Glad you pointed that one out, the mistake annoys me as well. The sword in the stone was King Uther's sword, which was not excalibur. Even the film Excalibur which follows Malory quite well doesn't get that right.

I still contend that exagerating the achievments/powers of your ancient heros is done by every culture on earth. Any culture which considers longevity to be a virtue will naturally exagerate the ages of their mythical heros. What is left is the question as to why such particular ages were chosen for particular heros.

[a 10 u us]

How did they live so long?
The same way the Greek gods were immortal, except those that died.
It's science fiction. (Although I'm told that in before Dracula the term was just fiction)

[Staggerlee]

I am very ignorant of the Bible - could the ages refer more to the longevity of the extended family/dynasty of each person, rather than the individual?

[Mangetout]

Originally Posted by foolsguinea

b. Besides, it may not be pure fiction; it could be an artifact of a society changing from measuring age by months to measuring age by years. The strangely early ages of fertility that gives us are not as hard to explain as lifespans suddenly shortening to a tenth their previous length.

so... can you explain them?

[Sampiro]

When I was a kid I was told by one Bible school teacher that the great ages were so the people would live to testify to the Garden of Eden's existence and the Flood and the greatness of God to people who came long after. (I believe that by the timelines you'll find that Shem, ancestor of the Hebrews and ark veteran, either outlived or died well into the lifetime of Abraham and that there was once a story of Abraham seeking him out almost identical to the story of Gilgamesh/Utnapishtim.)

Makes as good a sense as any.

There are extrabiblical legends about the death of Methuseleh. One is that he was so beloved of heaven that God agreed not to destroy the world during his lifetime, and most others testify to his goodness. I noticed his death at the time of the Flood a long time ago also and looked this up to find out what the deal was (i.e. too coincidental he died the year of the Flood).

I always thought it was interesting that the Bible tells who the father/ancestor of those who make musical instruments was and who the father/ancestor of those who dwell in tents is, etc., and yet all of these peoples descendants were wiped out in the flood, save of course for Noah, who would thus be the father of everybody, so why specify?

[Maastricht]

In our culture an old geezer is just an old geezer, but in those days, an old guy was the guy to look up to; he had made it and supposedly had all the answers. Especially if he wasn't a feeble old man, but still in charge and potent enough to be fathering kids.
So, I think the myth about the longivity was to make these patriarchs, and by proxy their teachings and doings, a sought after example. Their function is basically advertising: "follow Jahweh and live to be nine-hundred in such health and power that you're still able to impregnate young chicks!" The reason the patriarchs finally stopped being hundreds of years old was that this idea got out of vogue and was replaced by: " follow Yahweh and smite thousands and thousands of enemies!"

In contrast, nowadays, we only follow the examples of guys who appear youthful.

Oh, and has anyone noticed that all the explanations about ozone don't explain why there are no women who lived to be a thousand? Even Sarah lived a pitiful handfull of years compared to Abraham; there's somewhere in the bible that after Sara's death Abraham married again and fathered another generation of kids.

[Bippy the Beardless]

Originally Posted by Maastricht

I
Oh, and has anyone noticed that all the explanations about ozone don't explain why there are no women who lived to be a thousand? Even Sarah lived a pitiful handfull of years compared to Abraham; there's somewhere in the bible that after Sara's death Abraham married again and fathered another generation of kids.

I susspect death during childbirth could be used to counter that objection.

[Musicat]

When I asked this question of one scholar, he said, "the more important the person was, the more inflated his conquests/age/accomplishments, etc." although there doesn't seem to be a 1:1 correspondence.

I am going to assume that bone, fossil, or mummy records do not support such ages for any bibical contemporaries, but I would like to hear that from someone who knows.

I also assume that the various writers had a limited outlook, and didn't know how preposterous such ages really were. After all, they claimed that there were monsters, giants and various supernatural beings then, too, and we don't take most of those as reliable eyewitness accounts.

I am curious...do other religious or semi-historical documents in other societies describe their patriarchs as similarly long-lived, or is this just a jewish tradition?

[Musicat]

Originally Posted by Musicat

I am going to assume that bone, fossil, or mummy records do not support such ages for any bibical contemporaries, but I would like to hear that from someone who knows.

Or biblical or booblical contemporaries, even.

[Sampiro]

Tack-on to my earlier post:

Noah himself was still alive when Abra(ha)m was born. It's not known for certain how old A's father Terah was when he was born, but presumably he was younger than 70 because Nahor, presumed to be Abra(ha)m's younger brother, was born when he was 70, which would put A's birth at around 1948 A.C. (After Creation). Noah did not die until 2005, when A would have been a young adult by anybody's reckoning.* Shem lived until 2158 AC, surviving his son Arphaxad by 60 years and his and actually survived great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson (patrilineal) Abraham by about 35 years (and surviving Arphaxad, son of Shem, by about 60 years).

Something I've thought was interesting in the begattings is the similarity of names in two sections. From Genesis 4:

17 Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch. 18 To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech.

19 Lamech married two women, one named Adah and the other Zillah. 20 Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock. 21 His brother's name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play the harp and flute. 22 Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of [g] bronze and iron. Tubal-Cain's sister was Naamah.

From Genesis 5 comes the generations of Cain's brother Seth (I've deleted some of the years and stuff):

6 When Seth had lived 105 years, he became the father [b] of Enosh.
9 When Enosh had lived 90 years, he became the father of Kenan.
12 When Kenan had lived 70 years, he became the father of Mahalalel.
15 When Mahalalel had lived 65 years, he became the father of Jared.
16 And after he became the father of Jared, Mahalalel lived 830 years and had other sons and daughters.
18 When Jared had lived 162 years, he became the father of Enoch.
21 When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah.
25 When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he became the father of Lamech.
28 When Lamech had lived 182 years, he had a son. 29 He named him Noah

So from the first genealogy:

Methujael begat Methusael who begat Lamech, who had two wives, uttered an odd statement to his wives repeated for no apparent reason, and had a daughter named Naamah.

From the second genealogy, Methusael begat Lamech, who begat Noah, and while her name is not given in the Bible Noah's wife is traditionally known as Naamah. Also a lot of the other names in both short genealogies are extremely similar, especially in the absence of vowels (Irad and Jared, Enosh and Enoch [plus there's an Enoch in both], Methujael and Mahalalel) and again there's the "father of them that [do so and so]" when it's referring to a line that was wiped out save for Seth's descendant Noah and his sons and grandchildren.

Was this two versions of the same genealogy? Was this the same Lamech and (Noah/Naamah)? Are there existing theories on the similarities?

*While it's true that dividing the really ancient patriarch's ages by 12 doesn't work, by the time you get to Abraham and on through well into the OT (by the end of which ages are "normal") dividing them by two works quite nicely. This makes Abraham and Sarah approximately 50 and 45 when Isaac was born, an age at which a couple would have given up any hope of a son, but at the same time an age when one is (no pun intended) quite conceivable. It means that instead of the standard equal division of 40/40/40, Moses was 20 years old when he killed an overseer (which sounds like the act of a rebellious young buck), spent 20 years wondering the wilderness and settling down and raising a family (the age when most men settle down and take a wife), and then 20 years wandering it again with the Israelites (a "more reasonable" period of time for a migration).

Now I'm not saying that there's truth in all these (though I suspect at least some of the names and perhaps an event or two mentioned may have had some basis in fact) but it does sound like somebody could have taken real people and doubled the ages to make it believable, or perhaps there was a translation error in which dry/wet seasons were counted as 2 years instead of 1, etc..

Or not.

[foolsguinea]

Originally Posted by Mangetout

so... can you explain them?

Sure. Small populations -> More nutrition per person -> Early onset of puberty. Not a problem.

The problem is that there are both a gradual descent of age ranges from Shem to Joshua, & a serious overlap of lifespans. So, there's not a clear break between month-ages (if that's what they are) & year-ages, you get weirdness like Shem outliving lots of his descendants, & you get ages which appear too big to be year-ages & too small to be month-ages if lifespans remained constant. So, in any case, the version of the text we have assumes a loss of lifespan post-flood. There's a line in Genesis about man "only having 120 years" which some take to be God shortening human lifespans out of disgust--maybe.

[Mangetout]

Early onset of puberty accounting for Enoch and Mahalalel becoming fathers at 65 months; that's less than five and a half years old!? Too much of a stretch.

To reiterate:

If you divide both ages by 12, you get Enoch and Mahalalel becoming fathers at a little over age 5; Kenan waiting until a few months before his sixth birthday and Enosh waiting until the ripe old age of seven and a half before he gets his end away.

If you divide age at death by 12, but not age at fatherhood, you get folks like Lamech becoming a father at age 182; that's 118 years after his own death at age (777/12=) 64

[C K Dexter Haven]

Attempts to explain the phenomenon by dividing by 12 (months, not years) have always failed in the past. And there is nothing in archaeological records that would confirm these large ages. They are usually understood by scholars to be of some literary significance that is lost on us today, aside from the notion that, in the Golden Past, people lived longer than they do in our (degenerate) generation.

The idea of the more important people living longer is not uniform with the ancient Genesis text, but does appear in Exodus, with Moses (120) bracketed by Joseph (110) and Joshua (110.) (This corrects my earlier memory failure.) Moses is more important, so lives longest.

[Sampiro]

Originally Posted by foolsguinea

There's a line in Genesis about man "only having 120 years" which some take to be God shortening human lifespans out of disgust--maybe.

Genesis 6:3. Full chapter (also the chapter about the Nephilim).

[foolsguinea]

Originally Posted by Mangetout

Early onset of puberty accounting for Enoch and Mahalalel becoming fathers at 65 months; that's less than five and a half years old!? Too much of a stretch.

Must...check...text...before...blithely saying it works....