Finally got around to researching my own question: Methuselah’s father was Enoch, famous for reportedly having been caught up into Heaven rather than dying. This reportedly happened after only about 365 years, when those who came before and after were dying after eight hundred or nine hundred years. So neither he nor anyone before him saw the Flood. Methuselah’s son = Noah’s father Lamech died five years before Methuselah.
I’m admittedly still a long ways away from converting. I’m taking Intro to Judaism classes right now, but I haven’t actually started the process with my local rabbi yet. I don’t intend on broaching the matter with him until at LEAST next year, because I want to pay off some debts and be in a position to become a dues-paying member of the temple before I try to take that step.
The name I have picked for myself at this time is “Yochanan Akiva”, because Yochanan is the Hebrew version of John, and because Rabbi Akiva started studying at the age of 40, whereas I was 41 when I found myself on this path. I’m more wedded to the second part than the first. I suppose I could be “John Akiva” just as easily, considering that I’m gonna be joining a Reconstructionist community on the far-left end of the spectrum. Time will tell.
Lamech is one of those characters in the primeval history who gets two backstories, because of the intermingling of the J and P sources. He’s either the father of Noah and the son of Methuseleh, descendant of Seth, or he’s the son of Methusael, descendant of Cain, and father of Jabal, Jubal, Tubal-Cain, and Namaah, all of whom presumably perished in the Flood.
I’m inclined to believe that the Flood story was a late insertion into the primeval history, because frankly, a lot of the narrative makes more sense if there isn’t an extinction event that happens in the middle of it.
To be fair, everyone calls be “Josh”, both Hebrew and English speakers. although the vowel is pronounced differently: in English, it’s more like “Jah”, while in Hebrew, it’s something between
“Joe” and “Juh”. Like Brazil, Israel is very much a one-name country: everyone goes by either their first name, their last name or their nickname, and to most Israelis, “Josh” is just a nick. Many of them don’t know my name is actually Yehoshua, and don’t make the connection to Josh.
Now my dad, he was called “Jonathan” or “Jon” growing up in New Jersey, and after he moved to Israel at 23, people started calling him “Yonatan”. His entire life, his English-speaking friends would call him Jon while his Hebrew-speaking friends would call him Yonatan, sometimes even in the same conversation (may parents had a very bilingual circle of friends). The only exceptions would be his army buddies, who would call him “Yoni”, and my smartass of a father-in-law, who would call him “Jonatan”.
Wikipedia seems to think that the two are entirely separate characters who happen to share a name. Certainly the two accounts seem completely different.