And by the way, I appreciated what you said about cherry picking data earlier, but I’m afraid this strikes me as a reverse form of the same thing. There is a patently obvious reason why, for my question, it is natural and necessary to start with Noah’s age: because his age was generally consistent with the rest of the patriarchs before him, and from him is where any perceived decrease in average lifespan begins. Thus that is the data from which we are measuring any proposed or suggested reduction.
This is like me measuring geographic formations, and observing that a certain elevation on top of a plateau is remarkably consistent, and then there is a precipitous drop until it eventually curves and levels off, And you object, saying, “it only appears precipitous because you arbitrarily measured the decrease in elevation from the top of the plateau. If you started your measurements halfway down the incline you wouldn’t have detected any so-called precipitous drop!”
Yeah, Acts doesn’t even shift to focusing on Saul/Paul until chapter 8, a quarter of the way through. Placing the whole book into a grouping of Paul’s church teaching is almost as ridiculous as charting how lifespans changed with the flood beginning with someone who lived two-thirds of his life before the flood!
But you gotta admit, with a bit of special pleading for the first point, it’s easy to turn a linear descent into a sweet curve. (In fact, the curve in mine holds up better without Acts than the other one does without Noah. But the first point, in both cases, really makes it sing.)
Fair point, but then you’d want to start with someone who lived their whole life before the flood. But adding Lamech also destroys the curve, since Lamech only lived to 777 (and his life wasn’t cut short by the flood).
I’m not sure anyone is suggesting the ancient Hebrews saw death as non-existence. It was about going to sheol, the grave, a gloomy and sleepy place where earthly distinctions fade and nothing significant happens.
Enoch didn’t die and go to sheol, but was somehow taken by God. To me, it doesn’t look like God vaporised him. I see how one could read “then he was no more” as meaning that, but when that phrase is explained by “because God took him,” it suggests he was no more on earth but instead was in God’s presence. It’s not about his body being destroyed, but moved.
Yes, the Bible authors did not have the math. No, the math does not validate the data. You can always perform regression analysis to fit a exponential function to data showing a general trend. Only the constants will be different. If the standard deviation is too high for your liking, simply eliminate the offending points. The genesis narrative shows declining lifespans. That is all. If you wish to challenge this, please review a text on non-linear regression first.
Mark Twain said it well; “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
I object since Paul didn’t write Acts. It is also a different type of literature. Acts is a historical narrative whereas the rest are letters. Adding Acts means we’re not plotting the same thing anymore. Without Acts you still get a curve but nowhere near as pronounced.
There is a very good reason for including Noah’s age as the starting point since lifespans up to that point showed very little decline. Noah’s age therefore serves as a proxy for the pre flood condition.
Sure, and many would object to me including the pastorals too, or say Philemon is quite a different genre from his church letters. But if someone was going to collect the New Testament material relating to Paul, then Acts (containing some of his speeches and lots of historical detail) and all the letters claiming to be from his hand would naturally fit together.
Remember, I’m not really saying this pattern exists. I do think it’s contrived. That’s the point.
Not really, since Noah also lived after the flood and presumably would already be somewhat affected by the changed atmosphere afterward. As @Daniel_Fisher mentioned above, if we really want to see the effects of the flood on lifespan, we need to start with someone who lived before the flood. That would mean starting with Lamech, whose 777-year lifespan turns the downward slope into a hump.
The shape of the curve is extremely fragile because it is artificial.
I for one am making no connection here between the flood and the decline in ages… that’s your assumption that was brought into this discussion. I am only exploring the sudden decline in ages and trying to explore any and every proposed explanation for such.
As such, Noah will do just fine, being as he is the clear end of the former general pattern before the clear and obvious decline begins.
The point of that curve came from the Genetic Entropy book written by Sanford. He uses that curve as Biblical evidence that the human genome is deteriorating (and all genomes deteriorate, thus evolution can’t be true). So that’s where the flood stuff comes in. I understand that you aren’t arguing that point, but it is where the idea of the curve comes from, as far as I know.
And again, if we extend the data to known ages in the New Testament, we’d have John in his 90’s that completely misses the curve. Instead, they used Roman average lifespan of 45, even though he was NOT plotting average lifespans elsewhere.
The exact shape of the curve, sure. And I’m not married to having it need to be some exact correspondence to a decay curve like you’d find with radioactive decay, though I certainly see a resemblance. Perhaps we’re talking past each other by me emphasizing that word…
The obvious facts, though, which are indisputable…
for ~9 generations there is clearly ages which are extremely high, averaging around the 900+ range, from low of 777 to high of 969…
then you have a precipitous drop, such that by merely the fifth generation after Noah, we never get above 250.
At which point, there is a continual, gradual trend toward decline, though far less extreme than those first five generations after Noah until we arrive at (and continue past) Abraham and his descendants.
Can we concur with the above 3 facts, at least?
My only point in calling it something approximating a decay curve is that it is not a simple linear decline, as Chris reminded me. Between the two choices, it closer approximates a decay curve than a linear decline. Can we agree thus far, at least?
After all, If I were, hypothetically, positively arguing here for some kind of postdiluvian environmental effect on lifespan, it wouldn’t impact my argument much one way or the other if the ages declined in a decay curve, or in a linear fashion. I imagine either would superficially support that hypothesis.
What is striking to me is that, if I imagined an ancient redactor, doing his numerology, or trying to combine two disparate traditions of ages, and was trying to connect pre-Noah 900+ ages with the Abrahamic ~175 ages, I would anticipate him inventing a roughly linear decline in ages, the generations between Noah and Abraham showing something like 810, then 770, 707, 632, 575, 510, 385, 330, 260, or something in that ballpark. Instead, he expresses an immediate decline to 600 then down to the first plateau you noted of 3 in the 400s, then immediately to a lower, steady, gradual decline starting at, what, 239? My only observation is that this is clearly not linear, and it resembles a decay curve in the sense that there is a precipitous drop from Noah (who were using as referring as he is the edge of the precipice, as we are not worried about the flood, right?) for the 5 generations after him, (dropping a striking 711 years over just 5 Generations) then we have a slow, gradual decline, dropping merely 64 years over those next 5 generations.
However you slice it, this is a remarkable precipitous decline, followed by an unremarkable but noticeable gradual decline. That sis all I mean in saying it approximates a decay curve. That phenomenon I simply find intriguing, and am trying to make sense of any and every possible explanation for this striking non-linear decline. Can we agree thus far at least?
Psalm 90:10
Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
I was wondering what the data would look like if I plotted the ages against the year of birth. The ages fall into 3 distinct groups. The first 9 generations for a straight line that is actually sloping up. There is a second group of the generations after Noah that form a cluster. And then you have the remaining ages that seem to fall on a straight line with a negative slope. The 500 year difference between Noah’s birth and his first son’s is so striking I thought I had made a mistake in inputting the data. My old version of Excel can’t do a curve fit for a scatter chart, but it isn’t any kind of decay curve. Reminds me of the curves we got tuning rf circuits in the old vacuum tube TVs. I am sure you can do a higher order curve fit but it is kind of pointless. Interesting that the 3 groups sort of match your 3 points above.
In particular it is in contrast to Adam - Noah. Excluding Enoch who didn’t die you get lifespans of 777-962 years with little variation. In fact if you exclude Lamech you get a trend of increasing ages. Just assessing the data visually, which is a pretty good place to start, you could well say there is no significant upward or downward trend. That makes the change after Noah all the more striking.
As Boscopup has pointed out above the ~40 years the Israelites spent in the wilderness would suggest that average lifespans had already declined to about 70 years, so Moses and Aaron lived long lives for that time.
So we have a pre flood period with lifespans generally over 900 years; then a sharp post flood drop that levels out to about 70 years.
The data shows the sort of variation you would expect with real data, not a smooth transition. Either it’s real or the author was particulalry sophisticated in it’s fabrication.
I have no real interest in the lifespans of Genesis. But a like, totally unsophisticated dude could pull these ages out of thin air no problem. As discussed above, there is no statistical case to support otherwise.
To borrow from one of my favorite movies (The Hunt for Red October)…
“Could you launch an ICBM horizontally?”
“Sure, why would you want to?”
So, in theory, sure, I can imagine an unsophisticated ancient author could come up with ages that showed the pattern we’re talking about. Why would he? To deceive 21st century readers like Chris into believing it was historic when it isn’t? If not that reason, why? That’s the core question I’m asking on this thread.
Well, if you are showing a trend to a decline in lifespan, either you have a linear decay or a non-linear decay, premeditated or otherwise. There is just nothing at all remarkable about the pattern of the numbers. An exponential curve can be drawn through any given set of trending ordered pairs, and non-linear regression will indeed yield the same form of equation, so there is zippo special about these numbers in particular. This is not about the Genesis authors attempting to pull a fast one, this is about 21st century would be apologists making something out of nothing.
Daniel, thanks for that, and that whole post. It helps me see better what you’re focused on. Different people in this thread have argued that (1) Genesis records a decline in the human lifespan (2) that fits a decay curve (3) caused by the flood. I agree with the first point but have challenged both of the other two. In the process, I forgot that you had explicitly set aside (3) and only tentatively accepted (2). I’m sorry for mixing up your view with others.
Of the three “obvious facts” you posted, I agree with the first. I somewhat agree with the other two, but I’m reluctant to use those statements as a starting point. By focusing on those features of the total ages we can calculate, we miss some interesting features in the actual numbers given in the text. So, I’m going to respond to your first post where you asked for other ways of understanding the numbers:
I agree that generally a long life would be some form of honorific. But an even greater honorific (or statement of importance) would be to receive round numbers or a significant number. This is a major difference between our culture and ancient cultures. For us, when we get to something important we tend to use more precision. Round numbers are fine for fluff, but what’s important should be precise. Genesis shows the opposite mindset. For relatively insignificant people, Genesis uses numbers that appear precise. But numbers for important people seem rounded or obviously significant:
Adam: 130 + 800 = 930
Enoch: 65 + 300 = 365
Lamech: 182 + 595 = 777
Noah: 500 (sons), 600 (flood) + 350 = 950
Shem: 100 + 500
Serug: 30 + 200
Abraham: 175 (5 × 5 × 7)
Isaac: 180 (6 × 6 × 5)
Jacob: 147 (7 × 7 × 3)
Joseph: 110 (5 × 5 + 6 × 6 + 7 × 7)
Aside from Lamech and Serug, we probably recognize these individuals as significant. The numbers given to them confirm their significance.
While significant numbers have a purpose in highlighting significant people, the rest – the precise numbers – seem to be chosen to establish wider patterns. In Genesis 5, the overall pattern seems to be lives just under a millennia long. Sons are born between ages 65–187. But the flood, in which Noah and his sons are the only males saved, poses a problem to this pattern. With people living so many centuries after their sons are born, you’d end up with many ancestors alive at the time of the flood. If they are killed by the flood, you’d end up with a pattern of diminishing ages leading up to Noah. It would seem like Noah’s ancestors are among those judged by the flood.
To solve this, Noah lives an astounding 500 years before his sons are born. This moves his sons several generations beyond his ancestors, giving those ancestors time to live long lives and die before the flood. His father, rather than dying in the flood, lives to a numerically significant 777 years to show his shorter life is not a judgement. And the one person who dies in the year the flood also doesn’t seem to be judged by it, since he – Methuselah – has the Bible’s longest lifespan.
After Genesis 5 and its 900+ lifespans, Genesis 6:3 reveals that God set the human lifespan to 120. The Genesis 11 genealogy shows the transition. In this genealogy, with the exception of the endpoints, sons are born between 29–35. Shem needs to have his son much later, since after his sons are born Noah lives 100 more years before the flood comes. Shem’s son at 102 (going by the other numbers) is rounded to 100, since as a significant figure all of Shem’s numbers are rounded.
For whatever reason, total ages aren’t given in this genealogy as they are in Genesis 5. It only gives the age at son’s birth and the years lived afterwards. Since the age at son’s birth stays flat (except the endpoints), this means the decline is portrayed through the numbers for years lived after the son’s birth. Looking at these numbers, there is a clear stairstep descent.
The text doesn’t tell us the years-after-sons for Noah or Terah, the endpoints. But starting with Shem, the numbers given are 500, 403, 403, 430, 209, 207, 200, 119. This is a pretty obvious stepwise decrease by hundreds, ending right around the magic number of 120. The biggest jump is right in the middle with Peleg (reinforcing a theme from the text about the earth being divided in his day).
Of course, when you add the age before the son’s birth, the total ages no longer hover just above the century lines or end close to 120. Also, Shem’s unusual 100 years before his son (to keep the males on the ark to 4) bumps his total age higher, creating a steeper decline at the beginning. But if we’re looking for patterns, I find the numbers given in the text more significant than numbers we can calculate.
In sum, the rounded/significant numbers mark out important characters, and the remaining numbers flesh out patterns that reinforce messages given in the narrative: the longevity of Seth’s godly line, a decline in lifespan to 120, a division at Peleg. Given the apparent willingness of the author to mold the numbers into patterns, I see their truth value in reinforcing themes from the text, not revealing historical facts.
I’m not sure how one “somewhat” agrees with a fact. Either it is true or not. If true, you might call my supposed use or context of said fact irrelevant, or misleading, or the like, but one doesn’t “somewhat” agree with facts. The “fact” remains that if you divide the genealogy in half between Noah an Abraham with Peleg as the halfway point (as you seemed to suggest), the decline in ages reflected in the first half is 1,111% of the decline reflected in the second half.
To me, this is “remarkable”, Ron’s (@rsewell) protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. If an anthropologist studied increasing lifespans across 11 generations across say the 17th - 19th centuries, and found a >1000% (>10X) difference in rate of change between the first and second half of his data, he would probably describe that as, what is the word… “remarkable”?
I find this to be an obvious and striking phenomenon of the ages recorded. Your and others’ response simply seems to be the proverbial, “move along, nothing to see here.” If so, we’ll have to simply “move along” as we’re at an impasse. I find that contrast in rate of decline striking, obvious, and remarkable. I noticed this as a child just from reading the raw numbers in Genesis before I’d ever heard of creationism, how fast those ages dropped right after Noah but then they steadied out to a pretty consistent but gradual decline. If you really don’t see something there, like I said, I can’t make you. But for purposes of this discussion, I’m afraid, we have nothing further to discuss there. It would feel like arguing you should be able to see a vase while you insist there are only two faces.
Very much appreciate your larger discussion, I see the potential numerological affinity for rounded or multiples of multiple numbers, rather interesting and very appreciated. But it doesn’t address either of my major questions:
Why the decrease in ages at all? The affinity for multiple or round numbers, in itself, has nothing to do with increasing, decreasing, or maintaining trends. Those numbers and considerations were presumably present across the ages recorded from Adam to Noah, and they didn’t require any decline, precipitous or otherwise. Noah could have been 950, and Abraham could have been recorded as living until 970(9x10x10 + 7x10) or 972 (9x9x12), showing he was special with such fancy numbers and older than methuselah! Blessed indeed! Or why not even 3,024 (9x8x7x6) for that matter,and this would have both shown honor by having a fancy multiple and by increasing his age, showing far more honor than his ancestors. Why any decline? What was the purpose of the author/redactor inventing a decline at all?
If the long ages reinforce Seth’s godly line, does the decline from Noah to Abraham reinforce decrease in godliness? Is Abraham’s relatively short age supposed to reflect his inferiority to Seth? If relatively short ages for Abraham have nothing to do with his godliness, why then do longer ages reinforce godliness in Seth?
if the 120 years in gen 6 refers to a reset maximum lifespan, why does the gen 11 narrative progress listing generation after generation maintaining lifespans far above 120? Why not until Moses?
Even if we establish some reason the author wanted to decrease ages, combining two traditions (the ancient 900+ and the newly imposed 120 maximum), I’m still curious why the precipitous drop followed by the gradual decline. Ok, Peleg was the halfway point because, why? All the numerological insight has nothing to do (so far as I can see) with why said author would make a precipitous decline followed by a gradual decline.
If you really claim you really cannot see a precipitous drop in these numbers followed by a gradual decline, I don’t know what to say. It is there by any objective measurement. If you see it, but think it entirely irrelevant, or random, or incidental, or unintentional, I likewise don’t know what to say. It is so striking a contrast that - if we lay aside the creationist decay theory or any consideration of any kind that these were simply recording actual historic numbers - it seems very intentional on the part of the author. If so, what was that intention?
Hence I’d certainly entertain any speculation about any recognizable pattern, such as you noticed of “steps.” Noah then Shem then a step with 3 in the 400s, then a final “step” (leaning slightly downward) in the low 200s-high 100s. But again, why, specifically? Why did the author intend the steps at all, if thats what they are? Those 3 after Shem were twice as godly as Abraham and his more immediate ancestors, but less than half as godly as those before Noah? The author didn’t know half of them half as well as he should have liked; and liked less than half of them half as well as they deserved?
Yes, in Genesis 1 the fit to the work week climaxing with the Sabbath does seem unmistakably intentional. And since other texts anthropomorphize God to stress the pattern, such as speaking of God being refreshed on the seventh day, it seems the authors are quite willing to take liberties in order to make the pattern clear. I really appreciated the recent BioLogos article that shows how things like this happen elsewhere in the Pentateuch.
With the compound statements you gave, it’s quite possible to only somewhat agree. For instance, the steep decline after Noah disappears if you plot by time and turns into a bump if you add Noah’s father. Further, your statement implied it’s a steep decline over 5 generations. It’s actually a steep decline between Noah and his son followed by a linear descent (with stairsteps, as I mentioned). After the initial drop to Shem, no other point goes down more than the gap at Peleg in the middle. I agree there’s a big drop, and last post I explained why I think it arose.
That “fact” is a great example of how to mislead with statistics. The 1,111% decline is entirely based on subtracting Peleg’s age from Noah’s and Abraham’s age from Peleg’s. This supposedly helps us understand what is happening in the Genesis 11 genealogy, but that list goes from Shem to Terah and doesn’t even include Terah’s age. In other words, in order to show a trend in this genealogy, this calculation only used one person from the genealogy. The other two happen to be significant people given meaningful, high ages. And, by including Peleg with the first half, the calculation obscures the genealogy’s most significant feature: the big drop right in the middle, underscored by a three-generation plateau on each side.
One could as easily look at the period from Lamech (last person before the flood) to Abraham with Eber right in the middle. Then the decline in the second half is only 8.3% smaller than the decline in the first half. A bit less impressive than 1,111%! That number is meaningless and cherry-picked, and I hope you can see why I hesitate to affirm “facts” like that.
The ages in Genesis show a 350-year drop from Noah to Shem (presumably showing the importance of the flood) and a 225-year drop from Eber to Peleg (presumably showing the importance of the division that took place in his day). Aside from those two points, there is a stairstep decline by hundreds in Genesis 11 and a continuing decline in later ages that moves the numbers into the realm of actual experience the nearer one gets to the time of those hearing/reading the text.
Even as the degree of elevation given to significant people decreases, it still goes beyond what people knew was the actual human lifespan. While I have no problem accepting God miraculously increased a few lifespans, the widespread pattern of inflated, significant ages for significant people leads me to a literary rather than miraculous cause. As @Boscopup noted, even though Moses was given a lifespan of 120, he knew that “the days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong.”
Appreciate the thoughts, and I do know what you’re saying about statistics… but to me this is in the category of, “if you didn’t measure the decline from the edge of the cliff, but from the bottom of a well some 1000 yards back from the edge, the “precipice” you’re think you’re seeing wouldn’t seem so steep.”
I think we’ll just have to leave it there and acknowledge the impasse.
Yes, but to know where the edge of the cliff is, we’d need to know what mechanism is at work to shorten lifespans, and that’s a topic you wanted to leave aside. If it’s a genetic mechanism, then Shem would be the edge of the cliff, since he’s the last one in the list born before the flood. If it’s an environmental mechanism, then Lamech would be the edge of the cliff, since he’s the last one to live his entire life unaffected by the flood.
Choosing Noah makes no sense if you’re one is trying to tie the pattern to something real.