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.
Oh sorry, you linked to a pdf… I read the book Generic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome by Sanford. I’ll go look at the pdf now and see if he explains those dates points in his book.
Thanks for the thoughts… I’ve read a few different takes on these numbers… I’m a bit skeptical when various grandiose theories or overly fancy formulas get attached to them… as someone pointed out above, these are a very small sample of people throughout history, so I wouldn’t make too much of that.
At the same time, I can’t help but notice that these numbers do fit the very distinct pattern. Essentially statistically unchanged for 9 generations or so, then fitting into what to all appearances seems an exponential decay pattern (thanks for the term, Chris).
Regardless of the various theories and explanations, it simply is an intriguing pattern, one I have trouble understanding how or why an ancient writer would have invented, even if I were assuming the numbers were strictly numerological in some form or fashion.
Looking at the pdf, he talks about the 45 year average lifespan of Romans. You can’t flip flop between average lifespans and specific lifespans.
This quote from the pdf (explanation under figure 3)
“However, since these individuals were in the same generation as Abram, Isaac, Joseph, and Moses respectively, they confounded the calculation of the trendline, and so were not included in the trendline calculation.”
Is that not cherry picking data?
Figure 3 is what I was talking about from the book. There are only two data points after 20 generations from Noah. They use 45 for the average lifespan of Romans. Aboriginal people in Australia currently have an average lifespan of about 65 years. In developed countries with access to medicine, it’s more in the mid 80’s. Obviously health care increases average lifespans, but the genetic entropy hypothesis should have us with an average in the 30’s. That simply isn’t the case, even in populations lacking healthcare.
Also, they recorded those ages because of some underlying purpose, not just as a statement of fact. The high ages were extraordinary to the original scribe or oral transmitter. They were noted to lend meaning to the passage. Perhaps that meaning was to give stature and prestige, as age was considered honorific, or perhaps it was to place the stories into a different genre, stating that these stories are about a different sort of people in a different place and time.
Yeah, Enoch is the proverbial thorn in my metaphorical side. However, Enoch’s cearly extraordinarily piety aside. I still think that the case drawn from the theological themes of the book still stands, namely, that the purpose of both the long ages and the decline in ages is most probably theological.
Appreciated, but these are the very ideas I’ve entertained and contemplated but that just don’t seem to fit. The honorific ages of those in the past would make sense, but then you have the person most worthy of honor getting significantly short changed.
And if we had nothing but a list of extraordinary long ages, and nothing else, I could entertain that theory. But then you have this progressive, exponential trend downward that organically ties these long ages to a gradual shortening of ages to where they increasingly become close to more “realistic.” 120 is extraordinary, but not mythological. But the 120 lifespan is directly tied to an organic progression right down from the one who lived 950. That is what is intriguing to me.
Or putting those original stories with lifespans of 900sin different genres I could also entertain… again if not for the organic, progressive shortening. What genre does the 900 range communicate? 400s? 200s? 130s? They aren’t two separate genres, the progressive shortening especially in gen 11 organically connects the people who lived 900 years with those who lived 120.
If all we had was the gen 5 list, I would be willing to entertain all the ideas I’ve read here and elsewhere (including these you just mentioned, they are good thoughts, and appreciated, by the way)… Long 900 year life spans, Exaggerated, perhaps honorific, etc., ok, that I could entertain, seems simple or straightforward enough. but what to do with life spans that gradually decay from 950 to 120? What genre does that go into? If 900 year lifespan is honorific, What “honor” is being given to Noah that is increasingly removed from Abraham and Moses? Why weren’t they worthy of similar honor?
Again sounds interesting, the ages had a theological purpose, and the decline in ages perhaps had a theological purpose… but any guesses? what was the theological purpose of having Noah live 950 years, Shem down to 600, and Abraham a mere 175? And what was the theological purpose for calculating the lifespans in the intervening generations so that it makes such a nice reverse exponential trend?
I plugged it into excel, and it easily makes a very nice exponential trend line… with most of the points lining up right on the curve. However you slice it, i find it striking, and I can’t figure a theological purpose for making it so recognizable a statistical trend.
