If you are a literalist and believe that every word of the Bible is literally true, then read on, there’s nothing for you here.
If you take the Bible as full of poetry and metaphor, then there is a “magical” or “mystical” numerology involved in the numbers, which we no longer understand. Three and seven and ten were “magic” numbers, imbued with mystic significance, and multiples of those had their own meanings. The number 40 meant generational change, 120 years implies three generations, and so forth.
For instance, take the three Patriarchs:
Abraham lives to 175 = 7 x 5[sup]2[/sup]
Isaac lives to 180 = 5 x 6[sup]2[/sup]
Jacob lives to 147 = 3 x 7[sup]2[/sup]
What does this pattern mean? We don’t know. But there’s such a deliberate pattern, it very likely meant something to the author and earliest readers/listeners.
My point is that there was a concern for numerology underlying the text, and we do not today know exactly what the different expressions meant. If you prefer, think of it as a symbolic poetry, only we don’t know how to interpret it any more.
I’m not sure if dividing the ages by 12 is valid; it’s already been said that it results in people having children absurdly early. A few passages seem to suggest that the people in question really were 105 or 170. For example, Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” (Genesis 17:17, see also 18:11) Abraham was circumsized at 99 and lived to be 175. Isaac lived to 180, Jacob lived to 147, and Joseph, the last person whose longevity is noted in Genesis, lived to 110. So it seems that lifespans decrease gradually from the antediluvians (who often live 800+ years) towards more usual lifespans at the end of Genesis.
I don’t think these lifespans refer to the lifespan of a family or dynasty. Most of the ages include ‘and had other sons and daughters’, which seems to indicate that a single person is being discussed. I think the most likely explanation is that the authors of Genesis only had a few names available to them. They knew the names of the patriarchs, and they knew their order, and they knew roughly how much time passed between the creation and the flood. They probably then assumed that these men lived for a very long time, and also that they bore offspring whose names were not recorded.
These <100-year lifespans do not end with Genesis. But the Pentateuch includes some references to ages that seem to be in keeping with a more familiar lifespan. Leviticus 27:1-7 provides ‘values’ (for dedicating people to the Lord) according to their age and gender. The age ranges given are one month-5 years, 5-20, 20-60 and <60. This seems to address people who do not live to be 180.
Later on, there are still a few very old people in the OT; Job lives to be 140, and ‘saw his children and their children to the fourth generation’. Psalm 90:10 specifies ‘the length of our days’ as 70 or 80 years, and many of the OT kings live about that long.
Pure fantasy and ignorance. The biblical writers did not have actuarial tables at their fingertips, and may have really believed that such long lives were possible. Making an important person have a long life in history would then be akin to making him a saint. Pious redacting strikes again – “Your guy lived to 140? Big deal! I’ll make mine live to 260!”
I know of no archeological evidence anywhere in the world that suggests that any humans lived that long on a regular basis or even at all, considering hygiene and health such as it was.
And any Hebrew scholar should be able to answer the question of the word “year”: is there any ambiguity to the Hebrew word used in the bible for “year”? Could it be mistranslated as “month” or anything else? If not, that settles it.
Gen 26:12. Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year an hundredfold: and the LORD blessed him.
Exodus 23:16. And the feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, [which is] in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.
That does leave open the possibility that the word translated as “year” means different lengths of time, to be inferred from context, and this was not understood by translators. I’ve heard this asserted, in particular, stating that sometimes a lunar cycle (approximately 1 month) and sometimes a solar cycle (1 year) was meant. I’m skeptical of that - in particular, a lot of the assertions about ages don’t make sense read either as years OR months, as has been pointed out. I don’t have the knowledge of ancient Hebrew to say whether the assertion’s BS or not.
There’s no confusion or ambiguity of “year” for “month” in the Old Testament. “Year” is used in conjunction with “month” and “day” often:
Genesis 7:11. In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
Exodus 12:2. This month [shall be] unto you the beginning of months: it [shall be] the first month of the year to you.
There may also have been other periods of timekeeping that may or may not have been based upon regularity. Flooding of a river is an example. It may occur annually, or several times a year, or in some years less often. The writers may have been referring to seasons, for all we know.
It’s important to remember the difference between fact and folklore when discussing the bible. If ‘modern’ humankind can accept that Zeus doesn’t live on Mt. Olympus, throwing lightning bolts down, surely we can agree that there are inconsistencies (to say the least) in the bible.
Suppositions that the term “year” might have referred to some other period than 365 days are not in accord with the fact that the described lifespans decreased gradually with time - Adam 900+, Noah 600+, Abraham a mere 175, and so on. I don’t see why the work “year” would mean one thing when applied to lifespans early in Genesis, while it would mean a period maybe one-fifth or less that later in the very same book.
These ages are surely of a mystical/mythological/numerological significance, rather than simply being miscalculations due to different units of time being applied.
I’m with Colibri, Roches, Dexter and Grimpen, with a nod to Spectre’s simplified-for-the-modern-audience summary. There is no tablet dug up in Mesopotamia that provides the birth and death certificate of Noah. The superlongevous lifespans result from the scribes making the necessary calculations to fit together of multiple stories inherited from oral tradition, while maintaining the intent to to drive home a point about life(*), and likely observing numerological or mystical conventions.
(*)Genesis is both (a) the Israelite people’s origin-story of themselves and their world and (b) an extended allegory of the consequences of doing what God wants or doesn’t want from you.
One lesson I remember my Sunday School teachers beating in my head. The ancients of the bible didn’t write things down and everything that is in the OT was committed to memory. That was meant to impress me that the Bible was absolutely true (go figure). Anyway, whether you depend on my SS teachers or not it is obvious that there were no calendars (lunar or otherwise) before and for some time after Noah. Even if they could keep anything close to exact time, it was left up to memory. Has anyone ever played that game? You know the one, stop acting dumb.
Also, many myths of ancient man tell of ancestors that were three miles tall and lived very long lives. The story of the flood is a carry over from more ancient stories of floods, and so this thing of forefathers living long lives is also a carry over from other myths.
The OT was written some 2600 years ago. If one of our scientists wrote a paper saying his great great grandfather lived to be 715 years old would we believe it?
They did!
For this to be true, that there were no calendars at the time of Noah, you would have to accept: a) Noah was a historical person; b) You know when Noah lived.
Anyone that is asking a question such as this will probably discount my explaination, which uses their facts. Your theory that there was never a Noah and never a Great Flood, will get nowhere fast.
Since I have nowhere else to put this, I saw a sign in front of a church today that said:
[indent][indent][indent][indent][indent]Satan is not an atheist![/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent]
According to noted scholar Jack Chick, prior to The Flood there was a protective bubble of water surrounding the Earth’s atmosphere and shielding the planet from harmful UV rays. This allowed people to live for hundreds of years. God caused all this water to come crashing down to earth in The Flood, so people since that time don’t live as long.
That’s actually one of the less stupid things claimed in the linked tract.
I would suspect, as others have mentioned, that if there’s any real reason behind Biblical Old Dudes then it’s just exaggeration for the purpose of dramatic effect.
Way back when I took a ‘Bible As History’ class, we discussed this very problem. Many people in the class posited that there was some mistranslation of the word year-- until the prof pointed out that everything in the old testament was written in the same language, so there was no place for a mistranslation to pop up.
Some of what I’ve told you is found in the Book of Enoch, which didn’t make it into the canon. The only reason I am comfortable citing it is because the book of Jude quotes it word for word, otherwise I wouldn’t bother.
As far as Methuselah’s death a week before the flood thing, that is Jewish tradition and also the belief of most Bible scholars I’ve seen today, not that I think tradition or the beliefs of scholars necessarily proves anything. We do know that Methuselah did NOT die in the flood, because his name meant that AFTER he dies, something will happen. Scholars believe God gave Noah a week to bury his grandfather and mourn him; one of the reasons being that God didn’t want Methuselah’s body floating around with the bodies of the heathens when the flood hit. Chapter 7 shows us that Noah and his family were hanging out in the ark 7 days before the flood began. It could be that Methuselah was buried the very day he died and then God told Noah to get in the ark that day as well.
We can tell from scripture that Methuselah died no more than 6 weeks before the flood, though. The book says the flood started on the 17th day of the 2nd month of the year, or about 7 weeks into the year. We already know that a week before the flood, Noah and his family were already in the ark, so that knocks out a week. If Noah was in the ark, he wasn’t burying Grandpa, so 6 weeks would be the max.
I personally don’t think it’s important either way, since we can’t tell for certain from scripture. I think the important part is that yes, Methuselah died and his name meant such and such and lo and behold, right after he died the world was judged. Prophecy fulfilled, yay.
The “120 years” verse can be taken one of two ways. Let’s look:
God was saying that from then on, man could only live 120 years max.
God was saying that man’s days were numbered, and in 120 years something was going to happen.
#1 is not possible. Why? A full 10 generations after Noah, Abraham lived to be 175, and that’s not to mention how old some of his descendants were. There are tons of people that lived after the flood mentioned in the Bible that made it past 120, not to mention the rare modern day examples we see today. Either God got confused and accidentally let those people live too long, or He lied, both of which we know can’t happen.
#2 was a prophecy that in 120 years, that was it. Considering He says four verses later that He is going to wipe out mankind, I think it’s a safe bet that God was not declaring that He would not allow anyone’s lifespan to go past 120, but that He was declaring a judgment that would happen in 120 years.
Actually Jewish tradition brings down both takes on the matter.
As to your objection, you’ll note that the lifespans of people did get shorter and shorter to the point where by Moses’ time, it was that way (Moses lived to 120). It doesn’t necessarily represent an literal, absolute limit, but a theoretical limit, which can, on occasion be exceeded (Job, for example, lived past 140). That would allow for those rare individuals who do exceed that limit.
As to the second interpretation, Jewish tradition teaches that Noah was told to begin building the Ark 120 years before the Flood began, to give people a chance to repent. As to why it took 120 years to build an Ark, the reason can be found here .
I would think that if God was being theoretical, He would have told us. And while I love learning Jewish tradition, on this point I’ve gotta go with what scripture says. The verse said man’s days would be 120 years, and yet after the flood people kept living longer than that, thus God was not setting a time limit on lifespan.
Also, we don’t know when Job lived. It’s the oldest book of the Bible, no? He may have been pre-flood (probably not but you never know).
As far as the lifespans thing goes, it could be that as time goes on, mankind is breaking down physically. Adam sinned, but he was still created perfect. It probably took a while for DNA to get corrupted, plus he lived in a perfect world where there was no toxic waste and holes in the ozone layer.
I could definitely see it taking 120 years to build the ark. I don’t, however, see how this “brings down” the idea that the verse was a prophecy that in 120 years something was going to happen.
God will give people chance after chance after chance to repent, and it’s possible that the flood never would have happened if the people HAD repented (I could make an argument that the flood would have happened anyway for a totally different reason, but I’m not going to hijack), but I think it’s unlikely. Some prophecies in scripture are conditional: “if X does/doesn’t happen, then Y will/won’t happen” – and then some prophecies are just flat out “this is going to happen and there’s nothing you can do about it but get ready.” As God sees the end from the beginning, He already knew that the people wouldn’t repent, knew it would take Noah a while to build the boat so He gave him plenty of time to do it. When God said “I’m going to wipe out mankind” He didn’t qualify it by saying “unless they repent” which makes me think it was one of those “set in stone regardless” prophecies.
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