Fair enough. The Jewish commentaries are not “canonical,” as it were. You’re free to disagree. I simply mentioned that this interpretation is brought down.
Probably wouldn’t have been pre-flood, as he lived in the land of Utz. Utz is a son of Nachor, Abraham’s brother; and Abraham was most certainly post-Deluge.
In any event, Jewish tradition teaches that Job was a contemporary of Moses and that Moses wrote the book of Job.
That’s fine and well, but then why didn’t the drop-off in lifespans occur until 11 generations later? Some of Adam’s descendants lived even longer than he did.
It doesn’t. I wasn’t arguing that point with you.
Indeed. Jewish tradition (there I go using that term again) teaches that “good” prophecies are unconditional while “bad” prophecies can be averted by repentence. I don’t think it’s a given that there HAD to be a flood after 120 years.
Furthermore, sometimes “bad” prophecies are given in a way that they can be re-interpreted. For example, take Jonah’s prophecy to Nineveh. The prophecy was that “in three days Nineveh would be overturned.” Well, when we’re talking Bible here and we hear about cities being overturned, we tend to think of Sodom and Gommorah – and that certain could have been an end result of the prophecy. But instead, there was a reinterpretation of it. Nineveh was overturned when Jonah delivered his prophecy - the deeds of the people and there attitudes were overturned, not the actual, literal city.
There are two distinct words in the Hebrew language for year and month, with very different roots and meanings.
The word for month is chodesh. It has the same root as the word chadash meaning “new.” The reason is that each month, the moon (we’re talking about lunar months here) is seemingly renewed.
The word for year is shanah. It has the same root as the word shoneh meaning “to repeat.” This is because the seasons, holidays, astronomical sights, etc. all tend to repeat year after year after year.
As Walloon pointed out, there is no ambiguity regarding these two words. In fact, both of these words are used in the flood story itself. Numerous “events” in the flood are described as happening on X day of Y month; and the whole thing is being described as happening in the 600th year of Noah’s life.
Reading all of the reasoning and debates on how people could have lived to be 900+ in the old days while dying much earlier today has always struck me as reminiscent of trekkies trying to make rational sense out of an episode of Voyager.
(Although I found another guy named Uz that was Noah’s grandson …)
That’s fine and well, but then why didn’t the drop-off in lifespans occur until 11 generations later? Some of Adam’s descendants lived even longer than he did.
Because the flood screwed up nature really really badly, which is what caused lifespans to start decreasing?
But then you’re agreeing that it wasn’t Adam’s sin but the flood, which was the catalyst for the shortening lifespan.
I then pose this question to you: Had mankind not gone on a downward spiral after Adam’s sin and the flood not necessary, would the lifespan of mankind continually shortened?
WTF? Read the other posters and argue with them. Of all the posters I agree with you the most. Do you want me to say I don’t believe in Noah and the flood. No, I don’t, but there are very few persons on this thread that are arguing anything close to that. If I want to comment of Noah and the flood that is my business. Go pick on someone else. :putz:
To be more precise: a very few people are recorded as living longer than that. No other information is given about “normal” lifespans.
Consider “three score and ten, or by reason of strength fourscore.” Yet I know several people who are in their nineties; but I don’t understand that to contradict scripture. It seems to me that the most natural interpretation of the verse is that it refers to a reduction in normal lifespan. The Bible is not written in code; on the whole, attempts to find secrets hidden in the wording don’t work.
Maybe this is a stupid question. Zev, Maybe you can help with this? This might be presumptious as I don’t know if you speak or read hebrew, but in Hebrew there is a natural gematria in that words/letters have numerical equivalents. This works both ways I’m sure. So do the patriarchs’ ages in Genesis have a cryptic word meaning? Are the numbers/letters significant in some way?
Adam lived 930 years
Seth lived 912 years
Enosh lived 905 years
Kenan lived 910 years
Mahalalel lived 895 years
Jared lived 962 years
Enoch lived 365 years.
Methuselah lived 969 years
Lamech lived 777 years
Noah lived 950 years
8675
867.5 average age
(Just for easy reference and because I wanted to know the average age of the 10 generations.)
Intriguingly, there are a couple of references in Genesis to a shadowy figure called “Eliezer of Damascus” who appears to have been a factotum to Abraham. See, for example, Gen 15:2. But just before this, at Gen 14:14, Abraham is said to have taken the men of his household, 318 in number, out as a “commando force” raiding the retreating armies after the Battle of Nine Kings described at the beginning of that chapter. However, 318 is represented in Hebrew notation by LZR, the letters that spell out Eliezer.
There are numerous Midrashim about Eliezer. He is Abraham’s faithful servant. He is the (unnamed in the text) one who goes to find a wife for Isaac and is also one of the two who go with Abraham to the Binding of Isaac.
Many of the Midrashim also point out the same thing that you do, Polycarp that the gematria of “Eliezer” is 318 and suggest that instead of 318 people, he simply took Eliezer.
To my knowledge, there is nothing special about any of those numbers. I always found Enoch’s age of 365 to be a little too coincedental with the number of days in a year (considering he died “prematurely”).
Adam’s age of 930 is accounted for in a Midrash. The verse states that Adam would die on the day he ate from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The same Midrash quotes the verse in Psalms equating a “Heavenly Day” with 1000 years. It then goes on to state that Adam foresaw that King David would die shortly after birth and “gave” 70 years of his life to David as a “gift,” leaving him with 930 years.
Methuselah, as others have pointed out died in the same year as the flood and many Jewish commentators point out that the extra week given was for mourning for Methuselah.
I’m not aware of any other significance to any of the other ages of the people mentioned.
Just for the record, Zev’s post #49 is in response to my post #51 – we got them in very shortly before the shift to the new server, which apparently re-collated them to put response before its referent. (Either that, or Zev is using Kabbalistic powers to know what I’m going to post next! ::: tinfoil hat smiley ::: ;j :eek:
I found this link that makes an argument for the ages being linked to the custom of deification by overinflation of antedeluvian Mesopotamian kings. Musicat’s original contention.
