Old Testament: Did people really live to be 900 years old?

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This question came up in a bible study last night, and I don’t know how to respond! Could it be that humans really lived that long? The lifespans of the key players of Genesis seem to get shorter as we move through this Book; is there a reason or explanation for this?
 
Simply put, Yes. As you read the reason for the shortened life span is given.
 
Isn’t it the flood (or the sinfulness of man preceding the flood) that causes God to shorten lifespans? After Noah, the lifespans start shrinking, but very gradually
 
Here is the great Father and Doctor of the Church, St. Augustine:

“Wherefore no one who considerately weighs facts will doubt that Cain might have built a city, and that a large one, when it is observed how prolonged were the lives of men, unless perhaps some sceptic take exception to this very length of years which our authors ascribe to the antediluvians and deny that this is credible… But the length of an antediluvian’s life cannot now be proved by any such monumental evidence. But we are not on this account to withhold our faith from the sacred history, whose statements of past fact we are the more inexcusable in discrediting, as we see the accuracy of its prediction of what was future.” (The City of God, XV, 9)

So we know by faith that these men lived to these great ages. But it’s very interesting that it turns out that our lifespans are limited by our DNA. The telomeres at the end of our chromosomes control cell division (reproduction) - the longer the telomere, the longer your body will continue to produce new cells. So it could simply be that God began shortening the telomeres around the time of the Flood, and lifespans gradually became shorter, and for very good reason:

"Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.” (Genesis 6:3)

God bless.
 
One of the modern methods of Bible analysis or “criticism” is to look at Genesis, let’s say, as an entire entity, and not to overly dissect it into “pre-history” and “history.”

It was written for us for all its levels of meaning, not just levels of meaning that make us confused. So, take note of your skepticism, but don’t stop there. It wasn’t written to make you a skeptic.

Some very devoted evangelicals have become atheists, getting hung up on things like this.

There’s one guy someplace in www.wimp.com whose video shows his skepticism about the conflicting accounts of the resurrection. One version says the women were afraid and ran away and another account says that they went and told the apostles, etc. We can only note the variances and try to reconcile them OUTSIDE of the texts. I won’t get my head in a knot over stuff like that, actually, but some people DO.
 
Yes they did. But God shortened it. He decided that about 100 years (or less) would be enough for them to have a change to repent and so on. It was also done to limit the evil which could be done. Just imagine what they could do in 900 years! How many plans and evil things could have been done. Anyway, here is a link to an interesting article on the subject:

godandscience.org/apologetics/longlife.html
 
In those days, when an author wanted to tell his audience that a person was important and worthy of honor and praise, they used a literary device common to the time. They gave the person an extremely long live span. The biblical authors were positively parsimonious with such expressions of praise and honor … the other peoples of the middle east had kings living 30,000 years.

Scripture is FULL of such literary devices and if you don’t learn them you will never understand the truth that scripture teaches.

I gotta ask, when did the Fundamentalists invade the Church and hook Catholics into a literalist hermeneutic?

The rant above was not directed at the OP, who at least asked the question.
 
Now if you could accept that Angels appeared and Miracles happened. How it is you would have hard time with extended life?
 
quasimodo said:
In those days, when an author wanted to tell his audience that a person was important and worthy of honor and praise, they used a literary device common to the time. They gave the person an extremely long live span. The biblical authors were positively parsimonious with such expressions of praise and honor … the other peoples of the middle east had kings living 30,000 years.

Scripture is FULL of such literary devices and if you don’t learn them you will never understand the truth that scripture teaches.

I gotta ask, when did the Fundamentalists invade the Church and hook Catholics into a literalist hermeneutic?

The rant above was not directed at the OP, who at least asked the question.
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So… Cain was more “important and worthy of honor and praise” than Abraham? Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph were less worthy of honor and praise than, say, Methuselah? Then why doesn’t the author tell us why Methuselah was so worthy of honor and praise?
 
I was listening to Paul Madrid on I-Catholic radio and I thought he explained it very well.

Adam and Eve were made by God to be imortal, so their DNA must have been absolutely perfect to do that. However they commited sin. God has allowed their DNA to slowly degrade to the point that we are where we are now with our life span. It’s not unthinkable that the first ancestors were long lived.
 
Frankr409 said:
I was listening to Paul Madrid on I-Catholic radio and I thought he explained it very well.

Adam and Eve were made by God to be imortal, so their DNA must have been absolutely perfect to do that. However they commited sin. God has allowed their DNA to slowly degrade to the point that we are where we are now with our life span. It’s not unthinkable that the first ancestors were long lived.
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Yup. :yup:
 
I’m going to say no. It isn’t physically possible. Evolution, dinosaurs, etc. basically disprove the creation story and likewise brings doubt to anything else in the early OT.
 
bingbang said:
I’m going to say no. It isn’t physically possible. Evolution, dinosaurs, etc. basically disprove the creation story and likewise brings doubt to anything else in the early OT.
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Your claim is a long life is impossible?
 
bingbang said:
I’m going to say no. It isn’t physically possible. Evolution, dinosaurs, etc. basically disprove the creation story and likewise brings doubt to anything else in the early OT.
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The creation story, and the evolution of plants, animals, reptiles, fish, and everything but unicorns and leprichauns fits well within realm of possibilities. He is God after all!

The fact that we are finding fossils of other things that God created should not surprise anyone.

The part that they have no link for is the link between apes and humans. They call it the missing link. And guess what? It is STILL missing!
 
Frankr409 said:
The creation story, and the evolution of plants, animals, reptiles, fish, and everything but unicorns and leprichauns fits well within realm of possibilities. He is God after all!

The fact that we are finding fossils of other things that God created should not surprise anyone.

The part that they have no link for is the link between apes and humans. They call it the missing link. And guess what? It is STILL missing!
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And the purported 95% similarity between humans and chimps is now around 70%.
 
I believe that the answer is no. I believe that the long lives attributed to the ancients is a rhetorical device meant to emphasize their importance. I don’t think there is necessarily anything wrong with taking their reported ages as literal, but I would caution that getting too hung up on whether this or that fact is literal or not is a rocky path that leads many to either fundamentalism or unbelief.
 
Scaun said:
Yes they did. But God shortened it. He decided that about 100 years (or less) would be enough for them to have a change to repent and so on. It was also done to limit the evil which could be done. Just imagine what they could do in 900 years! How many plans and evil things could have been done. Anyway, here is a link to an interesting article on the subject:

godandscience.org/apologetics/longlife.html
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I just wanted to thank you for posting this link. This is fascinating reading…
 
casey_zia said:
This question came up in a bible study last night, and I don’t know how to respond! Could it be that humans really lived that long? The lifespans of the key players of Genesis seem to get shorter as we move through this Book; is there a reason or explanation for this?
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Maybe people really did used to live a very long time – other traditions tell of ancients living for many years longer than we suppose to be possible, as another poster pointed out.

I studied Oriental Medicine, in which we often learned of the ancient Chinese Masters who devised the system. Some of them supposedly lived to be 300 years old or more. Maybe it is the case that these figures have been exaggerated in their lifespans, to give us proper context in which to appreciate their importance. Maybe it’s also possible they truly did live very long lives!

Thanks to the OP – I’ve always wondered this, re: Methuselah, Noah, etc. Great discussion!😉
 
NotWorthy said:
So… Cain was more “important and worthy of honor and praise” than Abraham? Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph were less worthy of honor and praise than, say, Methuselah? Then why doesn’t the author tell us why Methuselah was so worthy of honor and praise?
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As you know the bible is not a book … it is a library, with all the different sorts of literary styles and types. Genesis is similar. It was not written by Moses or any single man.

In short you cannot rate the relative importance of people by the life spans recorded because it was not one man doing all the recording … it is the compilation of many various traditions. Methuselah? Who knows. Cain … object lesson.
 
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