How do we explain the very old ages that people lived to in Old Testament times?

[Holly3278]

Hey everyone. How do we explain the very old ages that people lived to in Old Testament times? For example, the Bible says that Noah was 600 years old when the floods came upon the earth. Did people back then really live this long or is this just a figure of speech or something?

 

[Hokomai]

There is no need to explain the long lives. People do not and cannot live that long. The only thing requiring explanation is whether this is a figure of speech, a mistake, or a deliberate untruth.

 

[Pfaffenhoffen]

Hey everyone. How do we explain the very old ages that people lived to in Old Testament times? For example, the Bible says that Noah was 600 years old when the floods came upon the earth. Did people back then really live this long or is this just a figure of speech or something?

It is an old tale for people who were quite ignorant and could believe that…
God spoke to very, very ignorant people in 2000 before Christ. So the message was for them but to be read today thinking it was intended for them.

 

[itullian]

It is an old tale for people who were quite ignorant and could believe that…
God spoke to very, very ignorant people in 2000 before Christ. So the message was for them but to be read today thinking it was intended for them.

 

[bmullins]

There have been many attempts to explain the longevity in the bible. Fundamentalists have theories ranging from a world in which the oxygen saturation was so high that it extended life, to a world in which there was literally an ocean of water overhead that prevented the suns raise and created a tropical paradise around the globe, etc etc. My favorite theory to be honest is that mankind was in the process of falling further and further, and that his original DNA was better than it is today. (So they lived longer, because they were closer to the original man in his created glory.) There is even the theory that people in that day and age didn’t know what a ‘year’ was so they just counted moons etc, making Methusela roughly 75, not 900.

My favorite theory is that God can do whatever he wants, and if when people walk with him they live longer. We today have trouble believing in God and don’t tend to ‘walk’ with him as Noah, Adam, Abraham etc did.

In the end it really isn’t something we can ‘prove’ or know for certain, and doesn’t really matter in our understanding of scripture. The moral lessons are there to be learnt no matter why, so the age doesn’t need to be explained.

 

[hglundahl]

It is an old tale for people who were quite ignorant and could believe that…

God spoke to very, very ignorant people in 2000 before Christ. So the message was for them but to be read today thinking it was intended for them.

The Council of Trent enumerates Genesis among the books that are the word of God - who cannot make mistakes and who cannot lie. It also makes clear it must be understood according to unanimous interpretation of Church Fathers (i e presumably whenever they are unanimous, their interpretation obliges, when they are not at least their common ground obliges).

Which exact Church Father supports that view, and how is it made clear in Genesis that the old ages come in a passage to be treated as a quote?

Now, first off, to speak seriously, whether God speaks to ignorant or to wise, he is no liar.

Second off, whatever the ignorance of any human society, it was certainly not ignorant of the ordinary lifespan of man.

Third off, the high ages being original and the considerably lower ones we have now, it is those who need explanation: and they are explained as God deciding to shorten human lifespans after the flood.

Which would be the explanation needed.

My favorite theory to be honest is that mankind was in the process of falling further and further, and that his original DNA was better than it is today. (So they lived longer, because they were closer to the original man in his created glory.)

I have recently read that man has a gene for producing vitamin C, but it is turned off, i e men cannot produce vitamin C in their own body. That may be part of the DNA degradation involved. However, I think it happened suddenly, more or less, on a divine decision.

 

[Uriah_Betrayed]

Please don’t tell me we need to put faith that God let the Judeans live up to 600 while the rest of humanity was barely reaching age 30?!

 

[DaveBj]

How long could you live with nearly perfect DNA? That’s my explanation – it took a number of generations for mutations in the DNA to accumulate and for the immune system to deteriorate, among other things.

Oh, and there were no Judeans on those days. “Judeans” is a term that applies to the time of Christ, referring to people living in Judea (as opposed to Samaria, Galilee, etc.)

 

[Akathist]

It may be a mistake in the translation, for example creationists claim the earth was created in six days and actually float on their websites that there are indications in the Bible that Jesus had a pet dinosaur. However, the oldest version of Genesis from the Dead Sea Scrolls doesn’t use the word day, but Yom, which means time period.

“Jewish people do not adhere to a literal six day creation. “Since the Hebrew word for ‘day’, “YOM”, as used in the Hebrew Bible, can represent anything from the daylight ‘day’ (or even part of it), to a 24-hour day, and up to many years. It all depends on the context of the passage where the word is used. This is not so much different from the use of ‘day’ even in English - e.g., ‘today’, ‘nowadays’, ‘days are coming’, etc. The earliest scrolls used similar wording to reflect not a ‘day’, but a period of time or a time frame. Those caught up in the six day creation premise fall victim to myopic thinking, basing their hypothesizes on rudimentary English translations. In his book “The Science of God”, Orthodox Jewish physicist Dr. Gerald Schroeder, using proven science, actually “maps” the six “days” of Creation into the six epochs of the development of the universe, and comes up with a number for the age of the earth that is almost identical to the consensus among geoscientists. Even if you don’t accept this point-of-view, the main thesis of the book is that this universe did not get created by “accident”; rather, that there is a Creator who designed it. Christians who adhere to a six day creation should invest in a copy of Prof. Schroeder’s “The Science of God” - it is available in paperback for less than $10”.”

arguingwithatheists.com/Pages/Bible_References.htm

 

[Carolus_Martell]

A good question, because imo if you can successfully dispute some parts of divinely inspired sacred scripture then what’s next on the slippery slope? the Resurrection perhaps?

Maybe back in the day of life and death subsistence farming, maybe, I dunno, they tracked time by the harvest cycle. A close friend with an Ag background was once stationed in Turkey he came back amazed at how productive their Agricultural was there. He often was quoted saying …‘why they have 3 harvest cycles there’…

At the time that meant little to me, eventually it did did get me to thinking about early life in the fertile crescent. Perhaps back in the day before record keeping the harvest cycle was the critical element in everyday life and that was a year to them?

We do know from scripture harvests were so important that watch towers were erected and guards posted. So from that we can imagine how many times more important the harvest time was before the common era in Noah’s time and more importantly…a calculator of time.

Keep in mind time is something man invented for his convenience to track things important to man.

 

[itullian]

“It may be a mistake in the translation, for example creationists claim the earth was created in six days and actually float on their websites that there are indications in the Bible that Jesus had a pet dinosaur.”

really?:whacky:

 

[Armor_of_Light]

“It may be a mistake in the translation, for example creationists claim the earth was created in six days and actually float on their websites that there are indications in the Bible that Jesus had a pet dinosaur.”

really?:whacky:

Here Rexxie!! Good boy…Who’s a good dino? Whoa,whoa there boy…Ahhhh!!!

 

[Bob_Crowley]

Hey everyone. How do we explain the very old ages that people lived to in Old Testament times? For example, the Bible says that Noah was 600 years old when the floods came upon the earth. Did people back then really live this long or is this just a figure of speech or something?

I don’t take much notice these days, but one thing that did intrigue me early on in my protestant days is that if you take the starting point of their ages based on their genealogies, they all end abruptly at the same time ie. when the flood was supposed to have hit.

Go ahead if you don’t believe me and work it out.

 

[Robertanthony]

Please don’t tell me we need to put faith that God let the Judeans live up to 600 while the rest of humanity was barely reaching age 30?!

I don’t know how you came up with 30 but bear in mind it is but an average and child mortality rate goes a long way toward explaining the “30”.

 

[Publisher]

Longevity of life is believed to be a “sign” of God’s favor…the opening chapters of Genesis are sacred myth…not meant to be “historical fact”.

 

[hglundahl]

Please don’t tell me we need to put faith that God let the Judeans live up to 600 while the rest of humanity was barely reaching age 30?!

Adam through Noah were not Judeans. They are ancestors of all humans that live today.

The fact that they have Hebrew names only depends on Hebrews keeping the original language and other peoples getting lots of new fancy ones, including quite a few indoeuropean ones, or possibly an ancestor language for them.

But these people were not from Judea, they were not from the tribe of Judah, they were not from Judah’s eleven brothers either, people like Henoch are ancestors of all men that there are.

Longevity of life is believed to be a “sign” of God’s favor…the opening chapters of Genesis are sacred myth…not meant to be “historical fact”.

I take it you are not Catholic - Quaker, was it? Well, you guys do not deal with Church Fathers or with Trent like we do.

 

[Publisher]

Adam through Noah were not Judeans. They are ancestors of all humans that live today.

The fact that they have Hebrew names only depends on Hebrews keeping the original language and other peoples getting lots of new fancy ones, including quite a few indoeuropean ones, or possibly an ancestor language for them.

But these people were not from Judea, they were not from the tribe of Judah, they were not from Judah’s eleven brothers either, people like Henoch are ancestors of all men that there are.

Exactly…there were no “Jews” until the return from Exile around 600BCE

 

[hglundahl]

Please don’t tell me we need to put faith that God let the Judeans live up to 600 while the rest of humanity was barely reaching age 30?!

“Barely reaching age thirty” - is that from Cro-Magnon finds?

I have considered the possibility that Dordogne might have been a kind of Scout Camp, so that people dying under age 30 there really died accidentally, older people dying much older back in Nod east of Eden.

there were no “Jews” until the return from Exile around 600BCE

There was the kingdom of Judah and the division with Samarians of North Kingdom, reaching back to after Solomon, around 1000 or 900 BC.

It may be a mistake in the translation, for example creationists claim the earth was created in six days and actually float on their websites that there are indications in the Bible that Jesus had a pet dinosaur. However, the oldest version of Genesis from the Dead Sea Scrolls doesn’t use the word day, but Yom, which means time period.

As far as I know, Yôm means usually day. Yôm Kippur is Day of Atonement, for instance. It does not mean year, as year is Rosch, confer Rosch Ha-Schana.

That God may have used dinos as pets of a sort is kind of indicated by the book of Job. If you interpret Behemoth and Leviathan as species or kinds of dinos, that is.

That dinosaurs, if truly biological creatures who truly died, lived after the sin of Adam is indicated in Romans chapter five. Any creature dying before Adam sinned would contradict that chapter. But of course, Schroeder was a Jew, he did not have to deal with St Paul.

In some places in the Bible, however, day is used for longer periods. “To God a day is like a thousand years anbd a thousand years is like a day” - and Adam died “the same day” - i e the same millennium - that he ate the apple. This way chapter 2 in Genesis indeed does use “day” to mean something longer than 24 hours:
Genesis:

2:16 And he commanded him, saying: Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat: [17] But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death.

 

[Holly3278]

You know, I am beginning to think that maybe we just flat out don’t know whether or not people lived for hundreds of years back then. I suppose that if they had pure or almost pure DNA it could have been possible. But then again, maybe they were counting years differently than how we count them?

So yeah, I think maybe we just simply don’t know the answer to this question.

 

[CHRISTINE77]

Biblically the explanation is that Adam and Eve would have lived forever had they not sinned. The first people in Genesis lived very long lives, but gradually people lived shorter and shorter lives, especially after the Flood, due to thier sinfulness.

Our appointed lifespan these days is 3 score and 10, or 70 years. If you live longer, you are on borrowed time. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.