Why, if god limited man's life to 120 years, did people live longer?

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Originally posted by thestickman:
Well my name's Ryan and i'm new and currently consider myself to be agnostic. I am currently reading the bible and was struck, right near the beginning, with what seemed to be a glaring contradiction. In Genesis 6:3 'The the Lord said "I will not allow people to live for ever; they are mortal. From now on they will live no longer that 120 years"'. Now, after this there are examples of people living longer than 120 years (genesis 23:1 'Sarah lived to be 127 years old' being one of them). Now i know there are many believed contradictions in the bible and they are continually refuted (although not always with proper reasoning and fact) and I tried to find reasoning for this seemingly massive contradiction, but couldn't find any. So, any help?

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Hi,Apparently this woman hadn't heard of god's age limit either: BBC - 404: Not Found I'm sure inerrantists will say something about physical and spiritual death in an attempt to hold ontotheir delusions.Brian.------------------
Remembering events that never happened is a dangerous thing!

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Originally posted by Primordial Egg:

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Originally posted by thestickman:
Well my name's Ryan and i'm new and currently consider myself to be agnostic. I am currently reading the bible and was struck, right near the beginning, with what seemed to be a glaring contradiction. In Genesis 6:3 'The the Lord said "I will not allow people to live for ever; they are mortal. From now on they will live no longer that 120 years"'. Now, after this there are examples of people living longer than 120 years (genesis 23:1 'Sarah lived to be 127 years old' being one of them). Now i know there are many believed contradictions in the bible and they are continually refuted (although not always with proper reasoning and fact) and I tried to find reasoning for this seemingly massive contradiction, but couldn't find any. So, any help?

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Isn't a day worth 1000 years in Genesis? That would make 120 "years", about 44 million proper years, which I don't think anyone's quite reached yet, not even in China.

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PE

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edited to add: but it does make Sarah pretty impressive

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LOL it also makes her, at 127 years, a fetus!------------------
Remembering events that never happened is a dangerous thing!

How does this mean that man will not live longer than 120 years?Also, are you saying that the Ark took almost 120 years to build?Brian.Edited by Brian, : No reason given.

But man wasn't eliminated more or less 120 years later, we are still here.If you wish to quote someone if you type the following without spaces [ q s ] then insert the text you wish to quote, then you close the message with [ / q s ], again without spaces. it makes life a little easier.There's also a 'peek' button at the bottom right of the message box, this allows you to see all codes used in a message.Brian.

No probs, anyone who turned Jesus in and then sentenced Him to death isn't all bad. You need to put a / before the final 'qs' at the end of the quote to get the shaded quote box. But the Bible doesn't say this anywhere.I think it is more likely that when this part of Genesis was written down the more mythical life spans of the patriarchal age were becoming more realistic, although 120 years is probably three times as long as the true life expectancy at that time.As we move closer to the end of the first millenium BCE, the life spans become more realistic, with the 70 years of Psalm 90:10 The length of our days is seventy years, being at least historically plausible. Though I think to reach 50 would be quite an acheivement 3000 years ago.This is the thing with the obvious mythical narratives of the Bible, they are quite ambiguous as the theological message and not historical accuracy was more than likely the aim of the writers.Brian.

Hi T,I see somehting here that looks like a contradiction.Your source says:God does not say that the shortening life span will be immediate. However, Stickman's quote says:'The the Lord said "I will not allow people to live for ever; they are mortal. From now on they will live no longer that 120 years"'.So, to me anyway, the words 'from now on'indicate an immediate introduction of this condition.If I said to a group of students, "from now on, everyone will use the Harvard system of referencing " , I would expect all of them to immediately start using the Harvard system, and I am sure that they too would take it to mean straight away.When God says "from now on" how can it be taken any other way? But some biblical authors did, and many so-called 'experts' do as well if they can see a buck.Brian.Edited by Brian, : added 'student' example.

Translated from what?Brian.

What do you assume now?

It wasn't Albright who said this, it was Nelson Glueck.But Glueck didn't take the Bible at face value, he reinterpreted the text to fit the archaeological evidence. For example, 1 Kings 6:1 says that the Exodus was 480 years before the 4th year year of Solomon's reign, placing it around 1446 BCE, yet Glueck looked at the evidence and reinterpreted 1 Kings 6:1 so that it would allow him to place the Exodus in the mid 13th century, which looked a better option than the mid 15th century BCE in an archaeological context.BTW, strictly speaking, Albright wasn't an archaeologist, he described himself as an 'Orientalist'.As it stands though, the Exodus issue is dead, no one is concerned with the historicity of it anymore, such is the weight of evidence against it.

No problem, it happens. I am afraid you are misquoting again, accidently of course, because you have left out a very important word from the end of the sentence you have quoted. The actual quote is from Albright's Archaeology and the religions of Israel John Hopokins Press, Baltimore. (1956) "There can be no doubt that archaeology has confirmed the substantial historicity of Old Testament tradition." So it is the plausibility of the tradition that Albright is on about not the evidence to support the Exodus and Conquest.In my studies I must have read over 50 books/journal articles by Albright, you really cannot study this subject and not read Albright, just as today you cannot approach this subjecy and not read dozens of books/articles by Bill Dever. What Albright was saying is that while there is nothing to substantiate the historicity of the Exodus and Conquest, there was nothing found to date that made the basic background of Israel's entry on to history's world stage (as described in the Bible) impossible.Remember though that Albright did write this over 50 years ago, well before the rise of New Archaeology when 'archaeologists' interpreted every find in the Holy Land through the Bible stories, since the mid 70's, with the rise of New Archaeology, this was seen as bad practice. It was seen as bad practice before by a minority but they were essentially ignored by the public. Well I feel that I am qualified to. Glueck reinterpreted the texts because of the wealth of contradictory evidence that he found, or in the case of the Edomites, didn't find. But his quote from the last post is exactly along the same lines as Albright, they aren't actually saying that there's evidence to support the Bible's version of the Exodus and Conquest (in fact at one time Albright thought that there were two Exoduses) they are saying that nothing has been found to make these events implausible.You should read a range of Albright's writings, you can trace how his opinion of the evidence changes over time. Although Albright was a racist and religious bigot, I do have some respect for him because he did move away from a literal reading of the text when faced with overwhelming contrary archaeological evidence. There's dozens of threads here about the Exodus, I don't know if Admin would allow another one. Most definitely not, despite what fundy websites say. I would avoid saying 'most definitely' when speaking about the motivations of an acient people, you really don't know what the Egyptians would do. And to put another fundy myth to bed, the Egyptians did record defeats, the Hyksos is probably the best example of this.But, as has been said, do you think that a massive defeat of the Egyptians would go unnoticed by their neighbours?Let me turn this around a little. In an archaeological context, what would you expect to find in Egypt if a nation of 2-3 million had been living there for centuries and then just up and left one day?Try and be objective, and think about it logically, what would we reasonably expect to find?We may need to take this to another thread for discussion since it is off-topic here. So let me know if you wish to pursue this and I'll ask if we can open another thread on it. But if you are not genuinely interested then let me know, I have wasted enough time with people whi have already made their mind up about something that they really don't know that much about (I am not saying this applies to you).

Hi Paul,I think maybe your population estimate may have been for the whole Empire, because it seems a bit high.I have a couple of sources right now and can get more if you would like them.Hassan, Fekri A. (1999) The Dynamics of a Riverine Civilization: A Geoarchaeological Perspective on the Nile Valley, Egypt World Archaeology, Vol. 29, No. 1, Riverine Archaeology (Jun., 1997), pp. 51-74 Taylor & Francis, Ltd. The population of Ancient Egypt that could be supported by basin irrigation and cereals is estimated at 1.2 million during the Old Kingdom (3000-2200 BC), 2.1 million in the New Kingdom (1550-1070 BC) and 3.2 million in the Graeco-Roman period from 332 BC to AD 395 (Hassan 1993:170). Although these figures are dramatically below the modern population size of 60 million, they are consistent with estimates of 2.5 million in the seventh century AD and 3.4 million during the late thirteenth century. Population increase during the Old Kingdom is estimated at 0.13 per cent per year, analogous to esti- mates in Neolithic contexts, slackening to 0.057 per cent for the New Kingdom. The rate was still lower from the New Kingdom to the Roman period at 0.024 per cent per year. The population of Egypt did not exceed the Graeco-Roman peak of 3.4 million until the nineteenth century. Rapid population increase was possible only after the adoption of perennial irrigation in 1820. The period we are looking at is the new kingdom, where you will see that the population was around 2.1 million, which is fractionally more than the lowest estimates for the Hebrew population and about a million less than the high estimates for the Hebrew population.Plus, I have posted these here before:Mendenhall, G.E. (1958) ”The Census lists of Numbers 1 and 26 JBL 77, 52-66. ''Such a number would have, indeed, caused Egypt's Pharaoh consternation, for not only would there have been very little room for them in Egypt, but a group of this size could likely have taken over Egypt with or without weapons they would hardly have to fear Pharaoh’s army, which was probably at most about 20,000 men'' (64-65).And, of course, there's the study done by A Lucas in The Palestine Exploration Quarterly 76, in which he uses early 20th century population growth for Egypt and applies it to the group that entered Egypt fpr a period of 430 years and gets a population estimate for the Hebrew Exodus group of just over 10 000, which is far more sensible but still has no evidence to support it.

An unmentioned niece?

Hi Twiga,I'm not sure we can harmonise these two creation myths, if you are saying there existed a pool of people that Adam was chosen out of and placed in the garden then it may contradict Genesis 2:5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground This does suggest that Adam was the first man created.But, I don't think we can harmonise the two different accounts of creation given in Genesis.Remember that these ancient philosophers were not writing for a critical audience, and were only inventing a story to explain the unknown.Genesis 2:5 claims that there were no shrubs or plants had yet appeared on the Earth yet in Genesis 1:11-13 we have: Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morningthe third day. So there's lots of plant life in Genesis 1, yet none in Genesis 2, and in Genesis 2 it suggests that Adam was created before plants, so this doesn't jive at all with Genesis 1.I'm afraid that on this occasion perhaps we need to accept that these two accounts are incompatible.

I read in Gen. 2:5 that there was no plants at all for two reasons, because the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground. I read this as being no people existing yet, and that Adam was the first man.What we may need to consider is that although the creation of Adam immediately follows the 'no man to work the ground' text, Adam does not appear to be specifically created to work the ground, it isn't until after the Fall that Yahweh tells Adam that he will have to till the land.Genesis 3:23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

I had meant to say that he wasn't created to live off the land, a bit careless of me (either that or the dihyrocodeine i working well ).However, on thinking about it, I don't think it is really that clear why Adam was created. Gen 2:7-8 has Adam created before the Garden of Eden, but I don't think it specifically says that Adam was created to look after the GofE, although he was given that job. I need to think a bit more about this. Yes, Yahweh could have just taken an existing man into the Garden. Well, I think we have mentioned this before, there is a Jewish myth (Lillith) that claims that Eve was not the first woman, and there does seem to be some textual back up for this.Gen 1:27 has male and female created at the same time, yet we read in Gen 2 that Eve was created well after Adam, from one of his ribs, so perhaps there was a woman there before Eve?