Dear Reggie,
All of the research is not in one place, but the first piece is here on BioLogos. There is no genetic evidence that humans ever lived longer than 120 years. The next piece of research comes from ghost and past life research, together they demonstrate multiple lives and help establish an estimate for the average time between incarnations of around 300 years. The only third party verified research on reincarnation is from Ian Stevenson and his predecessor Jim Tucker. These are all special cases of a violent death followed by a relatively quick reincarnation where the memories are fresh. They are important to verify the process, but do not represent the norm - long time between lives with no memory of the past life.
Message me if you want the full bibliography.
Best Wishes, Shawn
I do personally feel that the Patriarchs lived long lives but he use of the long numbers I leave as a mystery of faith and don’t let it effect me at all. While there could be some symbolism to it I feel there has to be more of some realism to the age numbers.
There does seem to be something strange going on with the age determination. We see the first child recorded being fathered at ages 65 and up to 187in early Genesis, implying that sexual maturity was not reached until those ages, yet Abram laughed when God told him he would father a child at age 100, more in line with expectations. Perhaps it is either an indication that those were mythical times, or major problems with translating ages occurred along the way.
Apeciated. It really is the progressive shortening of life spans that intrigues me. If all the ages were in the 800 to 900 year range, I might easily say that, perhaps, they were reckoning by months and not years, or something like that. Similarly, if there was some sort of numerological code, that would also make similar sense.
But I simply don’t see any explanation for the progressive shortening of life spans in such a consistent pattern, one that would almost fit a statistical curve. It just doesn’t seem consistent with any numerological or even different dating system that I can think of.
Fatherhood ages are also intriguing… even so, I’d be cautious, as a cursory reading of this part makes me doubt there be any reason we should conclude that the offspring named in the genealogy are the first born (and any such direct implication of sexual maturity)? It seems rather the offspring are named as they are in the line of descendants that happened to get to Noah. Noah was the target and presumed purpose of this genealogy (at least in Gen 5), so I’m dubious they were naming the firstborn sons. Noah could have descended from Methuselah’s 29th son for all we know, right?
And for that matter, we would assume the same about the genealogy arriving at Abraham, that those named in the genealogy are those that trace the line from Shem to Abraham, not necessarily firstborn… but your observation still stands and adds to the intrigue… antediluvian fatherhood dates range from ~ 65-160, postdiluvion (after Seth) are almost all in the 20s and 30s, with the notable exception of Abraham’s Father at 70. As such there seems again a deliberate shift, though with the fatherhood dates I don’t see the gradual/progressive decrease you see with the lifespans.
A thread from a few months back had some good stuff on this:
I mentioned an interesting pattern in the ages of the main patriarchs that I came across in a Genesis commentary by Victor Hamilton:
Abraham: 175 = (7)5^2
Isaac: 180 = (5)6^2
Jacob: 147 = (3)7^2
The factors of these ages include a square of 5, 6, 7. Then we get Joseph.
Joseph: 110 = 5^2 + 6^2 + 7^2
The factor apart from the square also has a pattern. For Joseph, it is simply 1 (the squares themselves), then 3 for Jacob, 5 for Isaac, 7 for Abraham. So it builds up to a 7 using odd numbers.
Seeing as these ages are all from the same book, this is hard to write off as coincidence. Since 110 was viewed as an ideal lifespan in Egypt, that was probably the starting point. Since that number contains the three squares, that may have led the author to the right meaningful numbers for the other patriarchs. But who knows.
There’s also a cool checksum of all the ages from Adam to Moses in the Masoretic text that may explain how the Masoretes ensured the numbers didn’t shift further. Since the checksum only works in their text and not the Septuagint or Samaritan versions, it would imply that either the Masoretes adjusted the numbers to make it work or it dropped out of other versions of Genesis/Exodus before it was noted as something important to preserve.
I agree we cannot read too much into it, but the pattern of the text follows:
When Seth had lived 105 years, he became the father[b] of Enosh. 7 After he became the father of Enosh, Seth lived 807 years and had other sons and daughters. 8 Altogether, Seth lived a total of 912 years, and then he died.
So, we see noted that he had other children after Enoch, but no note of any before, an unusual omission since the later ones are specifically mentioned. The pattern is consistent in others noted, and is in line with the patriarical system they followed.
My thought is that these are details lost to time, and not essential to the meaning, which is probably to link Abraham and Israel to the beginning. I can understand how that causes distress in some who feel it must be historical truth if it is truth at all, and that mirrors my discomfort when observable physical reality is deemed untrue.
Even more curious is how this is also the case for Adam. The genealogy reads as if Seth is his firstborn (or at least firstborn in his image, if that is some kind of distinction).
Some explain this as the genealogy coming from a different source than the Cain & Abel story, while for others it shows the phrasing isn’t necessarily tied to firstborns. This last reading would obviously be the case if the “had other sons and daughters” clause had been placed after the total number instead of the rest-of-life number, such as this:
After he became the father of Enosh, Seth lived 807 years. Altogether, Seth lived a total of 912 years and had other sons and daughters, and then he died.
Linked as it is with the count of years after the named son, it does naturally read as that son being the firstborn.
No, I don’t think so. Before the flood, you have 10 folks from Adam to Noah whose ages ranged from 777-969 (Enoch’s early departure the only exception). This “pattern” is quite well recognized and I think indisputable.
Once you hit Abraham, no one else from his date afterwards ever lives past 200, and even after him and Isaac the ages continue the shortening trend.
The only place you see ages of 200-600 are those very particular generations immediately following the flood.
I’m open to exploring the possibility of some kind of confirmation bias on my part here, but I really don’t think so. If I showed the following chart to any statistician, but removed the specifics of what the data was about, do you think any statistician would doubt that there was some statistically significant, progressive trend going on?
What a great topic @Daniel_Fisher, thanks for kicking off the discussion.
Here is an idea, and bear with me, I’m only developing the thought as I type. Perhaps, biblical theology might provide a piece of the puzzle.
The duel themes are Genesis are God’s desire for people to be fruitful and multiply and the impact of the curse. This is played out in the conflict between (has been called) the line of the woman and the line of the serpent. Eg. Abel and Cain, Shem and Ham, Jacob and Esua, Isaac and Ishmael, the list goes on.
So my thinking is this. Certainly, I think there are illusions to the Sumerian king list going on. But whilst the King List gave the rulers large ages to underscore their greatness and deeds, Genesis gives Adams line great ages to illustrate blessing.
These are men the Lord has blessed, made fruitful, and multiply and so are subduing their corners of the earth. But so that no one is under any illusions, their ages are recorded in decreasing order because they are also men living under God’s curse. Though blessed by God they still await the Son of the Eve who would war against the Serpent and his offspring, liberate God’s people from the curse and restore God’s blessing to the world.
Just some theological reflections for the pot. Let me know your thoughts.
For those looking for a more fuller expression of the blessing/curse interplay of Genesis, look no further than Abraham and Sarah. As a family, Sarah’s tragic infertility means that they feel the full force of living under God’s curse (Gen 3:16), and yet God’s mercy over comes when he promises to bless Abraham with a multiplicity of descendants (fruitful and multiply) and make him into a great nation (subdue and rule).
Dear Daniel,
I have earlier posted the research done by Robert Strauli on Jacob. He suggests that the total years Jacob two lives adds up to the 147 years shown in the Bible, not one lifetime.
Good thoughts, it is complex… I read somewhere recently the apparent oddity that the one person whose (very brief) narrative (Enoch) singles him out as especially blessed of God was rewarded with a lifespan merely a third as long as his contemporaries.
This to me subverts any idea that the long lifespans are supposed to be especially honorific. So you have the longer lifespan of the patriarchs to show they were especially blessed of God… but then the one who was especially and particularly blessed had his lifespan cut especially short…?
No, I’m afraid I must disagree. My research indicates that Jacob actually lived 133 separate reincarnated lifetimes… each was exactly 1 year long, except for his 58th and 59th reincarnation, each of which was 7 years long, which correspond to the two periods he spent working to acquire his two wives, (each married to him during a different reincarnation). These 133 separate reincarnations add to the 147 years recorded in the Bible.
What I see is a division not based on the flood but on written vs unwritten history. If you look at the ages starting with Abraham you will notice that they do not follow a smooth downward curve. And the link I posted above shows some of the problems with assuming the ages are correct.
What is of interest is that it’s not nearly linear but instead follows a decay curve of the form y = 1064.7x^0.766, R^2=0.9605. While I believe the Bible authors were just as intelligent as we are I don’t think they had yet developed the mathematics to fabricate data like this.
Concur, i should have said that. That is what is especially intriguing - not even linear but in some sort of reverse exponential (something at least not unlike the positive side of a 1/x plot) curve. There is a striking drop of age that steadies out, though continues to decrease. First 600, then 3 in mid 400s, then 3 in mid 200s, an outlier at 148, then the last one above 200 at 205. Then the next 8 continue to decrease, but at a much slower proportion, from ~180 to 120. If I graphed the trend, there would be a decrease over the first 8 generations dropping relatively precipitously yet consistently from 600 through 400 to 200; then, the next 8 generations still consistently decreased but from 175 through 140s & 130s down to 120, then 110.
I’m putting aside discussing any correlation with the flood for the purpose of this discussion, but the numbers themselves are simply intriguing… but I’m trying to examine all the alternate hypotheses… If these aren’t actual ages, then you have some ancient author(s) who is claiming:
the most ancient, and relatively insignificant patriarchs (about whom we know nearly nothing) consistently lived in the 900s. (And Bucking the trend of exaggerating lifespans to suggest particular blessing, you have the one guy called out for his godliness living a mere ~300 years.)
Then, continuing to buck the “exaggerate ages for our greatest ancestors” trend, the most famous and presumably important figure in Israelite history, by contrast, lived “merely” 120 years.
But then to top it off, this author(s) came up with the idea of connecting these very divergent ages not merely with some kind of linear, stepwise progressive decrease between the ancient ancestors and Moses, but with something that resembles… I guess an exponential decay curve is the best description. The numbers seem to approximate the numbers you’d get from calculating progressive half-lives.
This phenomena immediately nullifies any simple explanation I can think of or have heard or even read recently. We can’t claim they were calculating months for years, it doesn’t make sense to me to say they were exaggerating for honor only to progressively “unexaggerate” as the timeline progressed. If the author was hypothetically trying to combine or redact two disparate traditions, one with 900 year old patriarchs, one with a 120 year old Moses, why a decay curve of sorts between them, rather than simply progressively shortening. Why this author went to the effort to make the earlier ages drop precipitously and then steady out?
However one looks at it, it is intriguing, far more than the “simple” problem of the ancient patriarchs living to 900, and more than i erroneously suggested earlier by calling it a linear shortening. Yes, it certainly follows an exponential decay pattern. Thanks for catching that.
I’ve read it. He lied about the Kimura study in chapter 2. I don’t really trust any of what he says after that. And on his plot of ages in the Bible, it’s not even clear who all is being plotted on the right side of the graph. The left side has that nice statistical looking curve, but the right side has very few points. (I’m saying all this from memory… I returned the book after reading it)
Also, ages of specific people does not get you an average age. It seems that typical age by the time of Moses was 70-80 years on average, and that is pretty similar to today. The fact that specific people lived longer means nothing, as specific people live longer today as well.
Think about the exodus… Anyone 20 and over didn’t get to enter the promised land. They wandered 40 years until that generation was dead. So the younger crowd would have been about 60 at death. If the average age was 120, they would have needed to wander closer to 100 years to wait for natural death.
I personally don’t know what to think about the super long ages pre-flood. I’m ok with Moses living 120 years.
