One of the frequently asked questions by our members is about the ages of people mentioned in Genesis. What are we to make of folks living for 600, 700, 800, and 900 years?
A common assumption is that the people of Bible times had different calendars, and so they calculated years differently. That hypothesis doesn't prove helpful for very long, however. After all, how plausible is it that the ancient peoples mistook four months for a year? And yet, even at that rate, Methuselah would have lived for over 320 years! No, the answer must lie elsewhere.
Or perhaps the question lies elsewhere.
Instead of asking why the people back then lived so long, perhaps we should ask why we live so short. In other words, perhaps longevity is not the oddity; death is.
The fact that death was associated with the tree from which Adam and Eve were told not to eat strongly suggests that death was not part of God's perfect plan. And we know from the New Testament teachings about eternal life and the resurrection of the body that death is not part of God's ultimate plan. The real quandary, therefore, is not found in the ancients' long lives, but rather in their deaths.
That, of course, is a theological answer. At a more physical level, perhaps it would be fair to say this: maybe the people of those earliest days lived longer than we do simply because there was less to kill them. The world was nearly pristine, after all, and the human race had not yet multiplied and passed down milennia of genetic problems.
We might think of it this way... Which car is more likely to break down: the brand new one or the very old, high-mileage one? Likewise, which computer, which appliance, which electrical fixture is more likely to give you grief? We know that the older most things get, the more those things deteriorate and malfunction.
We wonder how those earliest characters in the Bible could have lived so long because of what we know about aging. But it may be that the answer lies not in the aging of the individual, but in the aging of the world and of the human race. Perhaps we and everything around us were healthier and stronger when it was all nearly new.
A common assumption is that the people of Bible times had different calendars, and so they calculated years differently. That hypothesis doesn't prove helpful for very long, however. After all, how plausible is it that the ancient peoples mistook four months for a year? And yet, even at that rate, Methuselah would have lived for over 320 years! No, the answer must lie elsewhere.
Or perhaps the question lies elsewhere.
Instead of asking why the people back then lived so long, perhaps we should ask why we live so short. In other words, perhaps longevity is not the oddity; death is.
The fact that death was associated with the tree from which Adam and Eve were told not to eat strongly suggests that death was not part of God's perfect plan. And we know from the New Testament teachings about eternal life and the resurrection of the body that death is not part of God's ultimate plan. The real quandary, therefore, is not found in the ancients' long lives, but rather in their deaths.
That, of course, is a theological answer. At a more physical level, perhaps it would be fair to say this: maybe the people of those earliest days lived longer than we do simply because there was less to kill them. The world was nearly pristine, after all, and the human race had not yet multiplied and passed down milennia of genetic problems.
We might think of it this way... Which car is more likely to break down: the brand new one or the very old, high-mileage one? Likewise, which computer, which appliance, which electrical fixture is more likely to give you grief? We know that the older most things get, the more those things deteriorate and malfunction.
We wonder how those earliest characters in the Bible could have lived so long because of what we know about aging. But it may be that the answer lies not in the aging of the individual, but in the aging of the world and of the human race. Perhaps we and everything around us were healthier and stronger when it was all nearly new.