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.
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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.
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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.
You might like to read Genetic Entropy Recorded in the Bible by Sanford and Rupe.
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:
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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.)
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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.
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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.
Thanks for the link. I’d searched earlier to see if this had been previously discussed but did not find anything.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You make good points on the honorific status. I think the idea of different types of stories may have a bit more support. The big change in chapter 11 of Genesis goes along with a transition from mythical (in the best sense) to concrete, with the ages bridging the gap as they change. Clearly, by the time of Psalm 90, it is commonly accepted that 80 is the usual upper range of life for man. Maybe we have increased that a bit now, as it seems a lot make it 85 or so, but for most, around 85, the wheels start coming off.
Hi Daniel, Thanks for your reply.
On the statistics front, I do wonder if you have discovered something which is interesting. However, have you considered it might be a red herring? Would the first readers of Genesis have spotted this curve? Would they have been able to do the calculations? If they did, would they have cared? I’m not saying that in a snobby “I’m smarter because I’m modern” sense, but in “does it reflect the concerns of the first readers?” sense.
As to theological significance, I think I addressed that earlier.
But I am happy to expand on them. In essence, I think it illustrates the growing tension between blessing and curse.
In more detail, I think the theological points of the age decline in Gen 5 (and following chapters) are as follows:
- Humans born after the fall are still in God’s image.
- Humanity is still blessed by God as indicated by great ages, and can even at times experience extraordinary blessing as indicated by the Enoch account.
- However, that blessing is being counteracted by the curse as indicated by decreasing ages.
- In his mercy, God brings the effects curse and the blessing into a sort of tension. People can still know God, even to extraordinary levels of intimacy (cf. Abraham) and live to an age that indicates blessing (cf. Abraham - Moses), but known fruitfulness and multiplying is seen primarily in children and/or livestock (eg. Israel/Jacob, and co.)
- The conclusion to be drawn is that humanity cannot experience the full expression of God’s blessing anymore nor can they escape the full force of the curse on their families, their livelihood, and the lives (ie. everyone dies eventually!). Thus, they await the promised offspring of Eve who would remove the curse and restore God’s blessing to its fullest expression.
This theological themes in mind, I think the simplest answer for the statistical curve is that God is a God of order and so implements this curse-blessing tension in an ordered, mathematical way. 
As always, welcome your (and others’) thoughts.
A red herring? Possibly, but it is too recognizable a pattern for me to think so.
Would the first readers have recognized it? Maybe, maybe not.
Would they have been able to make the calculations? Precise calculations? Who knows. Ballpark guesses that would reflect exponential decay? Apparently the author seems to have done so. I can’t conceive he was just putting random numbers of some sort to gradually reduce from Noah to Abraham and they just happened to Arrive such a predictable decay curve.
So, Would the author, if he”d been inventing figures, have needed to intentionally think about gradually/exponentially reducing the ages? Yes. I don’t think one can come up with a curve like this without giving at least some thought to how the numbers need to fit a certain exponential pattern. If he wanted to demonstrate a “theological decay” or the like by simply gradually reducing ages, I could imagine him doing so by simply reducing each generation by roughly 70 or 90 years or so and arriving at Abraham’s 175 (or Moses’ 120) from Noah’s 950. There seems to require serious thought put into this, assuming these are contrived numbers, to come up with this kind of exponential curve.
Ah right, thank you @Daniel_Fisher, I see what you are getting at now. Thank you for clarifying.
Let me do a bit of revising and adjusting in light of your clarifications.
Firstly, when talking about the ages not being literally it is always hard not to make it sound like I’m saying the human author simply plucked numbers out of the air. That is not what I think at all. I do believe that he most likely took a long time to think carefully about the ages he chose and what their declining ages would indicate. Though it also strikes me that the theological themes which I’ve outlined do not stand or fall on whether the ages are ‘actual’ or not. In fact, the idea of curse vs. blessing and Adam’s line vs the serpent’s line are drawn from work by a YEC Biblical Theologian.
Could he have done it differently? Sure. Could the decay curve have been intentional? certainly! Could I be wrong? Entirely possible! All I am saying is, let’s also consider that the decay curve is an interesting byproduct of the ages he chose (or recorded, depending on how you view it) rather than his express intention (from the human author at least).
Certainly, the decay curve exists, no denying that, but I believe its significance is derived from the theology the text is communicating. Or to put it in another way, the only significance the curve has in Gen 5 and beyond is that which the theology of the book invests in it.
Again these theological perspectives transcend interpretive frameworks, holding true whether one read Genesis 5 as a YEC, OEC, or EC. They also hold true whether one reads the ages leading up to Moses as actual ages, symbolic (for want of a better word) or transition from one to the other taking place after the flood.
I dunno if that makes any more sense. Cheers, Liam 
We have talked about this before.
Assuming there is anything historical about these genealogies, I think a different way of measuring the ages of people is strongly indicated. This is because not only are the ages extra-ordinarily long but the time given before the birth of a son is way too long also. That part, far more than the length of life is what I find impossible to believe. Perhaps at some point in the retelling of this story, some previous way of indicating the ages of people was incorrectly translated to the new method of keeping track of this.
This is also an alternate explanation of the numerical peculiarities pointed out in the Biologos link by HRankin. That rather than indicating a numerological meaning of the numbers, it just means that the numbers were simply not translated correctly at some point.
Here’s figure 3, the key chart in that paper:
The most impressive part of the curve is its tails. The middle is a bit of a mess into which all sorts of different curves could fit, but the initial downward slope and final near-horizontal tail really do fit well. There even seems to be symmetry in that the two tails both have just a few data points rather than the cluster of points in the middle. But really, there shouldn’t be symmetry here. The few points in the downward slope are because there is one data point per generation, and the first couple numbers drop by several hundreds. The few points in the horizontal tail are because after Joshua, the only data points included are David and the average Roman lifespan. These are not the only data points in the Bible (the Roman lifespan isn’t even from the Bible), but are simply cherry-picked numbers to make an impressive curve.
Examples of cherry-picking:
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Including multiple people in the same generation. For instance, adding Ishmael balances out Isaac (the curve is roughly between their two ages), and adding Levi – who almost touches the curve – offsets the way Joseph is significantly below the curve.
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Including exceptions while excluding the rule. For instance, they include Joshua’s age of 110 as the sole representative of his generation, even though, as @Boscopup mentioned, the biblical text states that a couple million other people in his generation died before age 60! Suffice it to say that this data would not fit the curve.
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Excluding biblical figures whose age is given, such as Eli, Job and the other kings after David (many of whom did not die violently).
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Creating the tail they desired by including the average Roman lifespan as the last data point, even though it doesn’t come from the Bible and is only one of many figures that could be added.
That would only be the case if God killed Enoch at 365. While some do read the text that way, it’s more common to see something else going on that cannot be strictly equated with death (after all, the genealogy deviates from its pattern to avoid saying that he died). If it’s something else, then it doesn’t follow that Enoch was short-changed.
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If we used Biblical figures for the Roman time period, we have the apostle John living into his 90’s. That throws off the tail of that curve quite a bit!
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