The ages of the Patriarchs in Genesis 5

Faith & Science Conversation
21

I have read that in the ancient culture of Middle East attributing great age to a person was a way of honoring them.

The relative ages of later patriarchs also supports that assertion.

@jpm great point on the teeth. The old knees and hips would also make it hard to go get that food to gum.

22

Here’s another article:

And this Carol Hill journal article is cited in the link above and has more detail and references:

23

I once thought it might have referred to seasonal cycles instead thus dividing all cycles by 4 or lunar by 12 which left me with reasonable lifespans but unrealistic ages of age at paternity.
https://hcommons.org/deposits/objects/hc:32764/datastreams/CONTENT/content gives you a much more complicated analysis, but it is likely that it is more complicated

24

Exactly.

The simplest true sexagesimal system would use

0-9 (10), a-z (26, 36), A-X (24, 60)

So 125 would be 25.

782 → c2 (60x13+1x2)

25

They had no symbol for 0. So the symbol for 1 and 60 is the same. Which was determined by context.

26

Indeed, but we do, and ‘my’ system uses the minimal symbols, but they’re meaning is not obvious unless one knows one’s 60 times table…

I like the cuneiform symbolic here.

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