Long, long lives in the Old Testament

Not a debate topic, but more or less a request for info; this seemed like the most appropriate place...The Old Testament gives in-humanly long lives to many of its humans. Why? How does this fit into Jewish mythology? Is this understood in some figurative way by Biblical scholars?I'm not so hopeful that there are interesting answers from extreme literalists on this point, but what do non-literalists make of this?------------------
"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." - Chomsky

Im not sure of this, but I have allways heard that the ancients counted their years in lunar cycles, essentialy months. Divide the years in the Bible by 12 and you get more logical ages.Adam is 900, well, hes actually 75.Noah 600, well, hes actually 50.Get it?

Doesn't work. You end up with them having grandchildren at 12 and stuff like that.

I understand the inflated ages are a literary device. That is, the lifespans of legendary figures would be inflated to suggest great (legendary) prosperity. Like, saying "Adam lived to the ripe old age of 600" is akin to saying "and they lived happily ever after" at the end of a story. Also the ages descend; Adam is the most important human, and therefore lives the longest. His progeny are of decending importance and therefore decending lifespan.It's certainly not the only such literary device in the Bible. You start to get a feel for them if you read the fairy tales of other cultures. (In particular I enjoy the Russian fairy tale ending: "And they were wed, and lived happily, I've been to their house and drank their vodka, but not a drop of it passed my lips.")

In most cultures age was worthy of respect, elders and betters and all that. Thus extreme old ages were attached to figures considered highly worthy of respect.

It just occured to me... what happens if you add up all the ages? I mean if Adam lived 900+ years, how come no one around knew him? "Hey look, that's Adam, he was the first man."You'd think he would have mad respect along the lines of the president or something. So How the heck do nations get outta control? I mean, how can you forget God etc. Adam is standing right over there.Not only that, if you add up all the long ages, I bet you can get them to overlap with certain events you know they couldent have been at.Just a thought.... anyway...[This message has been edited by Yaro, 09-04-2003]

Mark Twain wrote a story or two - I don't remember the title(s) - about exactly that. Funny stuff: the young 'uns sort of regarded Adam as a dingy old geezer.The Sumerians had a bunch of kings back before their flood that lived 30,000 years or so. I've recently had a Biblical literalist point this out as an example of how pagan myth makes things up. Not like good ol' factual Genesis.

The "Biblical Ages" topic also has some coverage of the subject matter of this topic.There is also a link to other relevant discussion, at the "Biblical Ages" message 17.Adminnemooseus

Thanks for pointing those out...

Crashfrog and Mr. Jack:On the face of it, the argument: Respect for Age sounds good but I see no consistency in it. Adam is not given the longest life and the man who is given the longest life is famous for that alone. By this reasoning, Moses and David should have lived much longer, and Abraham should have lived the longest of all.I find it interesting that no New Testament writer makes comment on the seemingly excessive life-spans of the ancestors. One would think that mere mention of their extreme longevity would have been useful in a moral lesson of some sort but the NT writers are silent on the subject.There is an alternative explanation which I find compelling. Extreme Longevity------------------
"I was very unwilling to give up my belief." Charles Darwin

What about the 30,000 year old ancestors claimed by the Sumerians? They cannot be explained by your method, without a reason to treat the vast ages of the biblical myth as a special case I prefer to look for an explanation that explains all mythical extended ages.You are correct that my respect explanation is lacking.I view your explanation as mathematical trickery. Multiple by an arbitary but somehow meaningful number, add a correction factor and you get something reasonable looking. Sorry, but any collection of numbers can be massaged into a meaningful set if you try hard enough.Also:"And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.
And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.
And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen." - Genesis 8:3-5, King James version.If they didn't divide into months and years how is it they refer here to months?"And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry." - Genesis 8:13, King James Version.Again the year is rendered as being the correct length, working from the earlier passage (Gen 7:11) describing the start of the flood, and the passages describing the length of the flood. If they didn't mean year elsewhere, and in describing Noah's age at the start of the flood, how is it that this passage gets it right?

The time span was more like 24,000 years; and it wasn't the age of an ancestor, it was the total time of national sovereignty (of Ur). If you apply the formula {n = "yrs"/12.38} then the time which any given king was on the throne becomes very realistic. One must, however, consider the probability that some of the names listed were those of dynasties rather than individual kings. The practice of naming dynasties by the apellation of their founder was not at all unusual, witness - The House of David which, in the Bible, is frequently shortened to read "David." I do not entirely dismiss your suggestion that great age may be used as a literary device. I suspect that it is used this way in the stories of Abraham and Moses. Most of the objections I get come from people who did not actually read the whole thing. Did you actually read the whole entire little page? Perhaps that would be advisable before offering ill-founded insults. The numbers are not arbitrary at all. Isn't it convenient how the total time works out to exactly one year?There came a time when Hebrews embraced the solar calendar. The timing of that transistion is not clear from the scriptures and there are some instances where both calendars seem to come into play. It is clear, however, that the earliest records utilize the lunar calendar while the latest utilize the solar calendar.One of the benefits of the new calendar was its ability to more accurately predict annual floods. Perhaps the story of Noah reflects this selling point and was thus instrumental in stimulating acceptance of the new calendar. Perhaps that explains why the total number of days works out so neatly. You will note that the ages listed after the flood quickly come into compliance with the solar style of counting time. It is the immediate post-flood period which offers difficulty for either way of counting.------------------
"I was very unwilling to give up my belief." Charles Darwin

I did read the whole thing, and I'm sorry if you took my comment as an insult - it was not intended that way. The problem as I see it is that there are any number of 'significant numbers' one could find and base an argument around. It is not in the least bit surprising to me that a decent set of numbers can be constructed by using some of these numbers, and an intelligent seeming argument constructed around them. I am very, very skeptical of any, and all, kinds of numerological arguments, such is the nature of numbers that you can find significant, or meaningful, patterns in almost anything. Er, it doesn't. It starts on the 17th day of the second month, and ends of the 1st day of the first month of the next year (obvious symbolism). It seems highly unlikely that someone's age should be given as a mix of lunar and solar 'years'.In any case I find even your 'lunarised' ages with many of these people living to their 90s unlikely anyway. It's rare for people to live that long now even with all our modern medicine, how much more unlikely is it for a primitive group of early farmers?

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I am very, very skeptical of any, and all, kinds of numerological arguments, such is the nature of numbers that you can find significant, or meaningful, patterns in almost anything.

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Doctrbill, right or wrong, is not making a numerological argument and it is very unfair to characterize it as such. This is not Bible code stuff. Nor is he using numbers which he finds significant. He is using a number which is significant in Jewish tradition-- the age of maturity-- and a number which represent the lunar cycle. The Jewish religious calender is still a lunar calendar.

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It seems highly unlikely that someone's age should be given as a mix of lunar and solar 'years'.

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It is, however, very common for cultures to use multiple calendars. The authors of the Bible can't keep anything else straight, why expect them to keep the calendars straight?------------------
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I disagree, Doctrbill's argument is numerological. Whether the numbers are significant or not is irrelevant to whether the argument is numerological or not. In fact, it's kind of the point. No matter what the numbers in the biblical myth were there would be, in all likelyhood, be some set of significant looking numbers that could be used to transform them into meaningful looking set.