False dichotomy.
But if you really want to have this discussion, I suggest taking it to Great Debates.
Previous threads on the issue of ages in the Bible:
Did people really live hundreds of years?
If the long lifespans in the Bible aren’t literal, what do they mean?
Why did the Patriarchs live so long?
I don’t post in GQ very often, but does this sort of thing happen much? Where the thread is hijacked into one member’s personal issue without regard for the original poster’s query. Sorry, I just don’t understand what your prolonged hypothesis has to with what I’m asking. I’d think if you wanted to discuss something like this, starting your own topic in the appropriate forum would be the way to go…
ETA: The above was meant to be addressed to UncleRojelio.
shrug Then call me an untrue believer. My skepticism that some ancient man lived umpteen years has no deleterious effect on my faith as I see it. If you want to argue for biblical literacism, you’re probably better off in GD.
And Thudlow beat me to my suggestion. I’m too slow. 
But thanks for the other links. My searching abilities seem to be getting worse over time. I have no idea how I didn’t net those when I looked.
I apologize for pushing your thread off the rails, but in my defense, you admitted that there may not be a factual answer to the question in the OP. I thought most would find my first post here too snarky to merit response. I guess I should have added the appropriate smileys.
My take on ages in the bible is based on whether you believe that the bible is the true word of god or not. If you do, then the ages are what the bible says they are. If you don’t then there is no way to know why the writer of the chapter in question chose to make a particular character that particular age.
That’s not neccesarily true on either count. First off, there are people who are religious and tihnk the bible is the true word of God but still think that portions of it should be read allegorically or non literally.
Second, there are people who don’t believe that the bible is the true word of God, but are able to use their knowlege of ancient Israel, ancient literature, ancient myth and ancient attitudes about numbers and numerology to suggest why those ages were given.
No problem.
Who gets to choose which sections are to be taken literally and which are to be taken as allegory? This is the point which I snarked on. I’m not up for a Great Debate on this because it’s more of a pet peeve of mine, but I just don’t get how people think that you can cherry pick from the bible.
I’m all for interpreting the bible as ancient literature but trying to make sense of the numbers from the bible makes about as much sense and trying to make sense of the numbers from Lost.
We do. And then we argue about it.
Why do you think Jews make such great lawyers? We’ve been arguing about the meaning of the Bible for two thousand years, so we’ve had some practice.
The thing is that the biblical writers had an almost Pythagorean-attitude towards numbers. Numbers are symbolic, and have magic.
Forty is a great example. Forty in the bible is used to mean a generational change or the change of an era, it’s a symbolic number rather than a literal number, it implies “And a new generation arose” or “a new world arose.” Some quick examples:
- Forty days and forty nights of the Flood, means the end of one world and the beginning of another
- Forty days and forty nights that Moses spends on Mt Sinai means the end of one world (slavery) and the beginning of another (the birth of the Israelite nation through giving the Ten Commandments and Laws)
- Forty years of wandering in the desert means the end of one generation (the generation of slavery and of witness to the Exodus) and the beginning of another (the generation of freedom and transmission of the Exodus story)
- In the book of Judges, when a new judge appears, we almost always start with a 40-year time lapse, meaning a new generation.
… and on and on. The New Testament, I believe, takes this on as well – Jesus goes into the desert for 40 days and 40 nights, right?
Similarly 3, 7 and 10 are magic numbers, seven representing completeness, etc. So seven days of creation, seven rivers flowing out of Eden, the Nile turns red for seven days, etc.
So, one interpretation of the ages in the bible is that they had symbolic importance (many of which are lost to us today.) Moses reaching 120, for instance, is surrounded by Joseph who died at 110 before Moses, and Joshua who died at 110 after Moses to make the point that Moses is more important. Kind of like ancient art, where the most important figure is the largest, forget about perspective.
Abraham dies at 175 = 7 X 5[sup]2[/sup]
Isaac dies at 180 = 5 x 6[sup]2[/sup]
Jacob dies at 147 = 3 x 7[sup]2[/sup]
What does that mean? It probably meant something to the people of the time when it was written, but we’ve lost the key to their numerology.
And just “dividing by 4” doesn’t do it. Moses lives to 120, and there is a comment about how remarkably he still had his strength and vigor. That doesn’t make much sense to say if he died at 30. I think the better approach is to say that the numbers are all symbolic, and we don’t always know the key to the symbolism.
Is there any historical (read: non-Biblical) evidence for Moses existence?
Having received a catholic education, it was always made very clear that it would be very silly to take every word literally. The argument given is that then, as now, writers use figures of speech and literary devices such as metaphors. If I write “it was raining cats and dogs”, someone, in three thousand years might read that to mean that cats and dogs were actually falling from the sky, but that’s obviously not what I meant. For this reason, it was argued, the strict literalist view is certainly wrong because it completely forces you to ignore how people actually write. Note that in the catholic tradition, the Bible is not the direct word of God, but the work of fallible men who were divinely inspired. This is a convenient position because you can use it to explain away any inconsistency.
I am certainly not a believer anymore but that is the explanation I was given, and to me it still makes sense, despite the risk of the slippery slope.
(This will be my last post here on this topic.)
UncleRojelio: You’re position is just different from millions of other peoples. That is all. You have one view. Other people have other views. What makes one person’s view correct and another’s wrong? Nothing. Nada. Zip. Such a dichotomy doesn’t exist in comparing religious viewpoints. It’s an “unask the question” situation.
You interpret the Bible. Yes you do. You have a viewpoint, prejudice, etc. Why should anyone believe your interpretation is better than anyone else’s?
Be aware of your own prejudices.
What about the parts where it contradicts itself? For example: Was man created before the animals or after?
I wholeheartedly support this. The same could be said for the individual authors of the chapters in the bible, and the persons that chose which books would be included in the bible, and the persons that translated the various versions in the bible. They all had their own agenda.
Which would be why I mentioned the historian’s suggestion as a “rule of thumb” and not as an absolute “you MUST divide by either four or ten.”
His point, which I think we are in agreement on, is that these are not numbers to be taken literally.
No, there isn’t.
In fact there is NO evidence for a mass exodus from Egypt at all.
Most scholarly thought now agrees that such a thing never took place. It is possible, however, that a small group of Caananite slaves could have traveled from egypt possibly bringing along with them some religious beliefs picked up there and from southern Caanan, but that’s just speculaiton, IMHO. Whether or not that happened, however, it’s thought possible that the biblical god, YHWH, might have emerged from another Canaanite god Yahwuh (yahoo) worshiped in southern Canaan. I believe he was also an internet entrepreneur.