Did Enoch really live 365 years, and if so, how can it be explained scientifically? Can people say this was some matter of interpretation? If anyone wanted to say the years were unreal they would have to explain why Enoch had a son at 65 years old. His son lived 969 years. Nothing that science knows about can make a man live that long. One possibility is that this natural world had some fundamental differences that allowed such ages. Since these long lives can’t be waved away as interpretation we are left with the options of beliving. Or not.
Good question. I am sorry, but I have come to believe that the earliest part of Genesis is a cultural treating with the areas around, and not factual.
So I guess the part about Enoch not dying and being taken to be with God instead was a cultural treating as well? That would mean we have to dispose of the new testament as well. Jude confirms Enoch lived. Luke also. And, of course, Paul. Hebrews 11:5
By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.
Before this thread gets underway, I think a preliminary question needs answering. This thread’s author has said: God wrote the Bible. His argument is this:
- Genesis says Enoch lived 365 years and Methuselah 969 years.
- What God says is true.
- Therefore, Enoch lived 365 years and Methuselah lived 969 years.
- Science presently provides no mechanism by which humans could attain such ages.
- Therefore, either the natural world was somehow different then, or science cannot presently explain what happened.
- Treating the ages as nonliteral is not an admissible solution.
- Therefore, the choice is “believing. Or not.”
In other words, the question posed by the thread title has already been answered, and one of the apparent alternatives has been excluded in advance. This thread therefore serves no useful purpose.
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Pretending Enoch is non literal is not believing it. Claiming Enoch did die is not believing it. Not just Genesis but the entire bible as my previous post illustrates.
Good question. I am not comfortable with it, and admit that I have never been comfortable with this, on either side of the opinions I’ve held. I’m not totally sure on the Enoch, but Jude is definitely a questioned book for the canon. It’s thought that Jesus alluding to NT with Jonah also means He was treating the story of the day, not that it meant it was literally true, but by the message.
Wow. I never realized the depths of the doubts of some people on basic bible. You would need to dispose of Jude. Also Luke and Paul as well as Genesis. I think it would be better to believe. Ripping out most of the bible takes a lot of work
Life is not simple. I wish it were. I’m grateful to God that we can believe in His understanding of us as His children, and that he really looks on the heart, not what our accomplishments are.
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Bingo I guess doubting Thomas learned eventually to have more faith
I love how Jesus validated his concerns and listened.
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Right. Good thing Jesus doesn’t strike us with lightning but continues to work on us.
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You are giving us YOUR interpretation and your interpretation can certainly be waved away. Just as you wave away any interpretation that doesn’t match YOURS. So as usual this thread is going to be a pointless back and forth. Which reminds me of this:
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? In what world is Enoch living 365 years my or anyone’s interpretation?
I believe Enoch was a real person, but we don’t know how long he lived. He wandered off to be with God and was never found. His age of 365 years is an outlier from the other patriarchal ages, and is symbolic of there being 365 days in a year. All of the patriarchs ages and when they begot children can be multiplied by 365K years based on 2 Peter 3:8:
- But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years…
Note that Enoch ‘walked with God’ - i.e. was ‘with the Lord’ when he was caught up at age 365. This does not mean that an individual person lived 133.2M years (365 x 365K), but they are types representing an entire species based on the meaning of their names, and when they begot children represents when a new species emerged distinctly from them.
Enoch’s name means “dedicated, trained, disciplined” and so he is a type representing our common decent with all vertebrates (with a skull) which first emerged 531.4 Ma… This is not a number from science but is arrived at by counting back from Isaac, a type for Christ at year zero. Scientific estimates are between 525-550 Ma, so we are right in that range.
Enoch begot Methuselah at age 65, so adding 23.5M (65 x 365K) to 531.4 Ma brings us to 507.7 Ma. Methuselah’s name means “one sent, or man of the dart” which makes me think of migratory animals, and a salmon in particular that is sent upstream to spawn and then die. So I believe Methuselah represents or common decent with all fish which first appear in the fossil record about 460-480 Ma. That is about 7.7% off from the Bible, but doesn’t mean fish didn’t appear earlier than the record shows.
Enoch is then ‘caught up’ at age 365 (or 133.2M years later) which brings us to 398.2 Ma. This timeframe correlates fairly well with the Hangenberg mass extinction event about 370 Ma. Interestingly, armored fish (an early vertebrate) goes extinct, while the first flying insects appear soon after.
In what way do we wave away the age as an ‘outlier’? Was the 65 years he lived till he had a son an outlier also? Was Enoch being taken to heaven and never dying an outlier?
So was his son who lived 966 year symbolic of an old bingo game or..? Adam lived 935 years, that was just symbolic of..?
Having a verse that talks of how time is not the same TO GOD Almighty has nothing to do with our time not being real. And in you make Enoch a thousand years for every day he lived he would have lived millions of years. Not a sound proposition.
As for the claim kids are a new species, get serious.
Hate to be the one to break it to you, but just because there is some sort of association in your head with migrating animals and fish swimming upstream, that is not a reason to reinvent Scripture. Sorry. But that was quite an effort, to try and grasp at straws to align Scripture with your religion.
Maybe outlier is not the right word, but I take it as a clue that we should continue using 365 days in a year to count back from, and not use some other number like 360 from the Hebrew calendar or an adjusted number like 417, which was how many days in a year 400 million years ago. I do use the adjust numbers for counting the creation days though.
Methuselahs death lines up with the beginning of the Flood at the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary.
Adam represents the first metazoans (animals). All of the ages are less than 1,000 years which I believe indicates they are mortals… With a day representing 1,000 years, God said Adam would die in the day he ate from the tree.
Again, this is for an original species, not an individual person.
Numbers rock, they dont lie. My faith is very solid.
The years people lived are never said to tell us how many days are in a year. You don’t get to add that in Enoch’s case. He had a child at age 65, and left this world at age 365. No swimming salmon involved. He did not just go upriver when he left this world. God took Him.
I am glad you feel that you have faith in something, somehow, somewhere, some way. The wild meaningless numbers you have thrown around here have no connection in reality or Scripture. The issue here is not if Enoch reminds some poster of fish swimming upstream or not. The issue is that the recorded lifespan of a man is 365 years. That is not possible today and science can’t tell us how that can happen. So apparently you simply do not believe it. How about God taking Enoch rather than him dying? Do you believe that much?
No, I do not believe a human being has ever lived 935 years or even 365 years, but the numbers still have meaning to me. Logic tells us that something else is going on here and if the Bible is true, we should investigate and seek understanding from God, not just have blind faith and try to discredit scientific observations. I struggled for many years before God opened up Genesis to me… both the Bible and evolution are true. The Bible uses archetypes and goes into great detail about our evolutionary history through the genealogical record… something most people blindly skim over when reading the Bible because it doesn’t have any real meaning to them. It was written thousands of years before modern science, confirms science, and that shows true inspiration.
Yes, I believe Enoch was a real person in history and God took him. We don’t know the details of his life, but there is a mythologized historic account of him as the seventh Sumerian king named Enmeduranki.
AI mode:
The Parallels Between Enmeduranki and Enoch
- The Seventh Position: Enmeduranki appears as the seventh name on the Sumerian King List of pre-flood (antediluvian) kings. Similarly, Enoch is the seventh patriarch in the genealogy from Adam in the Book of Genesis. [1, 2, 3]
- The Solar Connection: Enmeduranki ruled the city of Sippar, which was the cult center of Shamash, the sun god. In parallel, the Bible notes that Enoch lived for 365 years before being taken—a number that perfectly matches the days in a solar year. [1, 2, 3]
What Happened to Enmeduranki?
According to Mesopotamian myth and ritual texts, Enmeduranki did not suffer a conventional human death. Instead, he was summoned into heaven by the gods. [1]
- Meeting with the Gods: The sun god Shamash and the storm god Adad took Enmeduranki into their divine assembly.
- Receiving Secret Knowledge: While in heaven, the gods sat him on a golden throne and taught him the secrets of heaven and earth. He was given the master secrets of divination, including how to interpret oil on water (lecanomancy), read signs in the stars, and understand the liver of sacrificial animals (hepatoscopy).
- Return and Legacy: Unlike Enoch—who remained with God—Enmeduranki was sent back to Earth to pass this sacred, esoteric knowledge down to humanity. He established the line of priests and barû (diviners), making him the mythical founding father of Mesopotamian priesthood. [1]
This mirrors the extra-biblical Book of Enoch, where Enoch is also brought into heaven to receive vast revelations about astronomy, angels, and the future of the world from God before returning to instruct his children. However, while the Sumerian tradition focuses on Enmeduranki returning to establish a priestly guild, the primary biblical account concludes with the famous mystery: “Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him.” [1]
The world where you take a wooden, literal interpretation of a text and add a layer of science fiction to produce a result that makes you comfortable.
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The Jewish calendar is lunar and doesn’t have a fixed number of days in a year. This might be a clue that somebody changed the number when the 365 day year became widely known.