The latest video by Genesis Apologetics is “Did Adam and Noah Really Live Over 900 Years?” It makes the claim that the Genesis genealogy after the flood (combined with some later numbers) shows a “biological decay curve,” something the authors couldn’t fabricate, so the ages must be accurate and Genesis must contain accurate history from eyewitnesses.
We’ve discussed this quite a bit on the forum. Here are some problems, with links to posts that go into more depth. (I’m sorry that most of these posts are mine, but they are the ones I know where to find.)
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The “decay curve” uses cherry-picked values values to make it seem far more impressive than it is. It generally uses biblical figures, but throws in the average Roman lifespan to give the curve a good tail. It ignores average lifespans given in Scripture, such as the 70–80 years Moses mentions, or how it only took 40 years for almost every Israelite over 20 to die in the wilderness.
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It’s easy to make a set of numbers that plot a curve without fancy math. Start with a big number and halve it or take a tithe away from it – each will give you a pretty curve. Nothing about such a curve means it is caused by “decay” or necessarily connected to recording actual history. The Sumerian King List also shows a curve in ages, though using much higher numbers. One can even find a “decay curve” in Paul’s material in the New Testament! Curves are natural when dealing with numbers that span a large range. It’s intuitive to see a drop from 1000 to 900 as about the same as a drop from 100 to 90 (a curve), not 100 to 0 (linear).
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Different manuscript lines of Genesis preserve different numbers. For instance, the Masoretic Text, Samaritan Penteteuch and Septuagint massage different numbers in the genealogies to achieve a similar goal: making sure almost everyone’s dead by the year of the flood. This shows the plasticity in these numbers before they solidified into accurately copied texts. (It also suggests the genealogy existed on its own before it was connected to the flood.)
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There appears to be meaning in some of the specific numbers given. If the numbers simply recorded history, we would expect extra precision for the important people for whom there were more records, and rounded numbers for less well-known individuals. Instead, Genesis shows the opposite. Significant people are given special numbers – multiples of hundred or ten, 777, 365, or a series of squares. The numbers that look precise and not artificial tend to be for minor characters.
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There are also patterns in the Genesis 11 genealogy as a whole. Rather than a decay curve, there are stairstep declines that spotlight the importance of both the flood and the division in Peleg’s day. The two shorter lives in Genesis 5 also correspond to the two big gaps in the Genesis 11 ages.
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Taking the long lifespans literally leads to absurdities nobody would expect based on a plain reading of the surrounding narratives. Natural death seems to be flowing through the generations, not starting just before Noah is born. Although his father lived past 200, the Bible views Abraham at 100 as being “as good as dead.” Nobody would expect Noah to be one of those building the tower of Babel, or Abram’s departure from his father’s house to include saying goodbye to Shem, or Eber to outlive his great-great-great-great-grandson Abraham, or Shem to be sending baby gifts when Jacob’s kids are born. The narratives assume the generations don’t overlap this much.
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Overall, the long ages seem to underscore how we are peering deep into a foggy past. Legendary figures are made to look larger than life, not only by their ages but by how their paragraphs are weightier and take longer to read than the shortened form used for later figures. To make sense of the ages, it helps to dig into how ancient cultures understood genealogies rather than assuming it is the same as our first impression.