My memory may be faulty about this, but here goes. I read/listened to a lot of Bible stories when I was a kid, and in college, I had to read a lot of the Bible (as literature). IIRC, it seems that in the Old Testament, people were healthy as anything. They lived for hundreds of years, women gave birth to thriving baby after thriving baby, and unless there was a plague or someone was being tested, like Job, people didn’t seem to get sick much.
Then, in the New Testament, elderly people were noticeably feeble, and you had your lepers, your blind, your lame, your generally afflicted. All needing to be healed, of course. But what caused the downward shift in heath and lifespan?
Very hard to answer that because of the obviously fictious nature of the bible (sorry).
Like trying to ask whether Pinocchio has sinus issues.
I surpose that … when the OT was written that the authors were not interested in the smallest facts … how could they, they were not there. Hence health unless it was the main part of the story was not important.
IN the NT JC got his repby helping/healing the sick so in this story health was more an issue.
Very hard to answer that because of the obviously fictious nature of the bible (sorry).
Like trying to ask whether Pinocchio has sinus issues.
I surpose that … when the OT was written that the authors were not interested in the smallest facts … how could they, they were not there. Hence health unless it was the main part of the story was not important.
IN the NT JC got his reo by helping/healing the sick so in this story health was more an issue.
Very hard to answer that because of the obviously fictious nature of the bible (sorry).
Like trying to ask whether Pinocchio has sinus issues.
I surpose that … when the OT was written that the authors were not interested in the smallest facts … how could they, they were not there. Hence health unless it was the main part of the story was not important.
IN the NT JC got his rep by helping/healing the sick so in this story health was more an issue.
Generally, I would agree with trader’s observation.
Aside from Peter’s mother-in-law and Lazarus, few people who are principles of the stories get sick. If the Gospels are portraying the ability of Jesus to heal, they are going to make more of the presence of sick people.
The only time that minor characters in the old Testament are mentioned as sick are on the occasions when they are being healed by a prophet. There are simply more stories with nation-wide plot lines in the OT, so the illnesses of the non-principle characters are not mentioned, much (unless it is a plague on the nation-wide scale).
Theory on proposed explanation. ( on a scientific level - no religion involved …sorry)
If you want to say the Hebrew Language is 3000 years old - give or take 1000 years
They technical started keeping count of what year it was when Moses freed the slaves/received the 10 commandments.
The last great monument was built in 2,500 BC ( cheops pyramid) so we know that the people in the old testament are AT LEAST this old.
Being this is 4500 years ago,
In Europe the life expectancy was around 35
In Egypt it was 52 years for a man, 54 for a woman - which would indicate an advanced understand of medicines disease and health.
Now with this information - could it be that the fall of Egypt is a bases for the rapid decline in health in the next 2000 years ?
( Oddly enough for the majority of this information i consulted a Jew and a Orthodox Catholic)
An explanation for those lifespans might lie in faulty translation, rather than flights of fancy on part of the authors. Earlier cultures sometimes counted in lunar cycles as well as solar cycles. They might have used either one, depending on context. It might well have been more proper to translate some of those extraordinarily long sounding ages as 900 MONTHS, not 900 years. Other more reasonable sounding numbers may well have been solar years.
In addition, you probably DO have exaggeration and simple misreportage on part of the authors. Sarah’s childbirth at 90 is hard to reconcile as an accurate number in either months or years - a 90 year old woman conceiving, or a 7 year old crone are both improbable. More likely, an exaggerated case of, say, a 50 year old woman giving birth.
While the last great pyramid was built then, it was HARDLY the last great monument. Kings in Egypt build huge monuments (although not quite as huge as the pyramids) up to and including the Ptolemaic times.
As far as I know, the closest guess any ancient historians have to the date of the Exodus would be during the reign of Ramses II (roughly 1279 - 1213 BCE), during which, by the way, the temple at Abu Simbel was built.
Just so there is not too much confusion: as LaurAnge pointed out, the period of the Hebrew enslavement was a long time later than the building of the pyramids. The Hebrews were most likely forced to work as farmers, growing and harvesting grain, rather than building monuments.
Lots of accounts of people being sick in the OT, reams of laws on what to do when people got sick, how to diagnose them, which diseases made people unclean, what afflictions made it impossible to enter the temple, what responsibility society and families had to cripples who couldn’t work etc. Sickness was clearly commonplace. Often these diseases were considered to be a curse from God, but they were mentioned frequently enough. In the NT the diseases are less frequently deemed to be direct punishment from God, although Saul was truck blind temporarily. They are attributed to the actions of evil spirits though.
Another point to note is that society had changed between the OT and the NT. The NT takes place almost exclusively in urban areas. The OT takes place a lot on battlefields and nomad camps. The crippled and blind aren’t likely to exist in OT settings and so aren’t mentioned. They may have died, or moved to the cities, but they aren’t going to turn up herding goats or attacking the Moabites. Added to this the main characters of OT stories were often healthy to a great age, but then they were almost always kings and patriarchs who could expect the best food and medical care. Despite this Isaac went blind with age,
In all I suspect that there are at least as many cases of disease being reported in the OT as in the New, they are just less personal. Whole families or cities or nations succumb to plague rather than individuals being afflicted.