Adam lived 930 years Methusaleh 969, Noah 600 or so, but the Psalms say a man's age will be 70 or 80. The explanation for shorter live span today is more imperfection, but why would man live so long for the first 2500 years and then drop to 70 or 80 in David's time and then stabilize at that age for the next 3500 years?
Aging
by joelbear 11 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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czarofmischief
Because the Bible is crap. Moses made most of that stuff up. god know why.
CZAR
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peacefulpete
Thomas L. Thompson's book, " The Mythic Past" commented upon this very persuasively. He demonstrates how the chronology was artificially worked into equal blocks of time of equal length sectioning off notable events and charactors in the OT. I don't have the book before me now but the 4000 year long Great Year figures large in the dating and ages of the Patriarcs. (4000 years from Adam to the rededication of the Temple under the Maccabees as I remember). The ridiculous ages attributed to the charactors was the result of the editors needing to retain the popular legends while forcing them to fit this new 4000 year motif. This made it necessary to give exagerated ages to balance the books as it were. This need may have dovetailed well with the ancient legends about an immortal superrace called the Lulu(?) that EL destroyed with a flood after declaring a lifespan limit of 120 years.
I think Czar was joking about "Moses".
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proplog2
"Methusaleh lived 900 years"
"Methusaleh lived 900 years"
"But who calls that livin'
when no gal will give in
to no man who is 900 years"
---Porgy & Bess?
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JH
After the flood, people didn't live as long. And after the next flood(armageddon) people will live long again.
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Panda
Actually, many Bible scholars now conclude that the 900 yrs meant the lunar calendar or 900 moons (which were used to count time before the Roman calendar) which would equal 68.75 years (using the lunar year of 13 months) which would still be an abnormally aged person in antiquity.
Since Moses was not a single real person but a composite of people the books accorded to him were written many centuries later, so it's easily deduced that those characters who inhabit the world of the Sinai are equally mythical. Almost like what we'd call folk heros today.
As for peoples ages today, we are living much longer than our ancestors. In fact according to written history, for the last 16,000 years most humans never made it past age 30 (and that was old).
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Frannie Banannie
I don't believe they knew how to determine a person's age by actual 365-day years, in the beginning...
Frannie B
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willyloman
Panda: Do you have a source for the 900 "moons" theory? Makes sense but I'd like to be able to prove it to someone...
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Panda
WL, I will get that for you. I believe it was from either the Chalice and the Blade or When God was a Woman
FrannieBannanie, The years were accounted for by the 2 solstices and other annual celestial happenings. The Maya did this with the most exquizate accuracy. And primative humans did it with stones at places like stonehenge. The Gregorian calendar has nothing to do with the astronomy of ancient cultures.
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peacefulpete
A lunar month was always differentiated from a lunar year. If you feel the Jewish writer was counting lunar years (12 lunar months adjusted) rather than a solar year the discrepency is negligable. The text in the OT makes clear that a month is not meant when it says year, by the use of "month" in appropriate places and the imposibilties posed by interpreting year as month. Believe it or not the Insight volume effectively destroys this "explanation".