I occasionally get questions about the remarkably long lives of the patriarchs who lived before the great flood. Consider the ages at which these figures purportedly died:
- Adam – 930
- Seth – 912
- Enosh – 905
- Jared – 962
- Methuselah – 969
- Noah – 950
- Shem – 600
- Eber – 464
- Abraham – 175
- Moses – 120
- David – 70
How should we understand these references? Many theories have been proposed to explain the claimed longevity. Some use a mathematical corrective, but this leads to other pitfalls such as certain patriarchs apparently begetting children while still children themselves. Another theory proposes that the purported life spans of the patriarchs are just indications of their influence or family line, but then things don’t add up chronologically with eras and family trees.
Personally, I think we need to take the stated life spans of the patriarchs at face value and just accept it as a mystery: for some reason, the ancient patriarchs lived far longer than we do in the modern era. I cannot prove that they actually lived that long, but neither is there strong evidence that they did not. Frankly, I have little stake in insisting that they did in fact live to be that old. But if you ask me, I think it is best just to accept that they did.
This solution, when I articulate it, causes many to scoff. They almost seem to be offended. The reply usually sounds something like this: “That’s crazy. There’s no way they lived that long. The texts must be wrong.” To which I generally reply, “Why do you think it’s crazy or impossible?” The answers usually range from the glib to the more serious, but here are some common replies:
- People didn’t know how to tell time accurately back then. Well, actually, they were pretty good at keeping time, in some ways better than we are today. The ancients were keen observers of the sun, the moon, and the stars. They had to be, otherwise they would have starved. It was crucial to know when to plant, when to harvest, and when to hunt (e.g., the migratory and/or hibernation patterns of animals through the seasons). They may not have had timepieces that were accurate to the minute, but they were much more in sync with the rhythms of the cosmos than most of us are today. They certainly knew what a day, a month, and a year were by the cycles of the sun, moon, and stars.
- They couldn’t have lived that long because they didn’t have the medicines we do today. Perhaps, but it is also possible that they didn’t have the diseases we do. Perhaps they ate and lived in more healthy ways than we do today. Perhaps the gene pool later became corrupted in a way that it was not back then. There are many things we cannot possibly know. The claim about our advanced technology (medicine) also shows a tendency of us moderns to think that no one in the world has ever been smarter than we are. While we surely do have advanced technologies, we also have things that make us more susceptible to disease: stress, anxiety, overly rich diets, pollutants, promiscuity, drug use, and hormonal contraceptives. There are many ways in which we live out of sync with the natural world. It is also quite possible that the strains of disease and viral attacks have become more virulent over time.
- Those long life spans just symbolize wisdom or influence. OK fine, but what is the scale? Does Adam living to 930 mean that he attained great wisdom? But wait, David wasn’t any slouch and he only made it to 70. And if Seth was so influential (living to 912), where are the books recording his influence such as we have for Moses, who lived to be a mere 120? In other words, we can’t just propose a scale indicating influence or wisdom without some further definition of what the numbers actually mean.
- Sorry, people just don’t live that long. Well, today they don’t, but why is something automatically false simply because it doesn’t comport with today’s experience? To live to be 900 is preternatural, not supernatural. (Something preternatural is extremely extraordinary, well outside the normal, but not impossible.) In other words, it is not physically impossible in an absolute sense for a human being to live for hundreds of years. Most people today die short of 100 years of age, but some live longer. Certain closely related mammals like dogs and cats live only 15 to 20 years. Why is there such a large difference in life expectancy between humans and other similar animals? There is obviously some mysterious clock that winds down more quickly for some animals than for others. So there is a mystery to the longevity of various living things, even those that are closely related. Perhaps the ancients had what amounted to preternatural gifts.
So I think we’re back to where we started: just taking the long life spans of the early patriarchs at face value.
There is perhaps a theological truth hidden in the shrinking lifespans of the Old Testament. The Scriptures link sin and death. Adam and Eve were warned that the day they ate of the forbidden fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they would die (Gen 2:17), but they did not drop dead immediately. Although they died spiritually in an instant, the clock of death for their bodies wound down much later. As the age listing above shows, as sin increased, lifespans dropped precipitously, especially after the flood.
Prior to the flood, lifespans remained in the vicinity of 900 years, but right afterward they dropped by about a third (Shem only lived to 600), and then the numbers plummeted even further. Neither Abraham nor Moses even reached 200, and by the time of King David, he would write, Our years are seventy, or eighty for those who are strong (Ps 90:10).
Scripture says, For the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23). Indeed they are, especially in terms of lifespan. Perhaps that is why I am not too anxious to try to disprove the long life spans of the patriarchs, for what we know theologically is borne out in our human experience: sin is life-destroying. This truth is surely made clear by the declining lifespan of the human family.
Does this prove that Adam actually lived to be more than 900 years old? No, it only shows that declining life spans are something we fittingly discover in a world of sin. God teaches that sin brings death, so why should we be shocked that our life span has decreased from 900 years to about 85? It is what it is. It’s a sad truth about which God warned us. Thanks be to God our Father, who in Jesus now offers us eternal life, if we will have faith and obey His Son!
How or even whether the patriarchs lived to such advanced ages is not clear, but what is theologically clear is that we don’t live that long today because of the collective effect of sin upon us.
From Monsignor Charles Pope’s blog.
This is utterly brilliant. Sin also has a physical dimension. That is, as our personal and societal worlds become more sinful, our bodies cannot adjust because sin, like, well, radiation, can only take so much wounding. Just think of what St. Paul said: “For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood: but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.” Ephesians 6:12.
When we sin we hurt ourselves. When we live in a society that adores and celebrates sin, we hurt ourselves. Its like trying to be healthy by smoking a carton of unfiltered Camels every day.
So then why does Hugh Hefner get to live so long and in such good health if sin wounds the body physically? It is difficult to think of a more deplorable, unrepentantly vile man than Mr. Hefner, a man who has devoted his entire adult life to sinful liaisons in his personal life and the glorified, ostentatious promulgation and celebration of evil within American society and around the world.
If one were to stick to the actual question [“How old were the patriarchs, really], the only answer free of gratuitous assumptions and interpolation of theological doctrine, such as the effect of original sin on longevity, is: WE JUST DON’T KNOW. No point in clouding what is a historical-fact question with pieties, no matter how well intentioned.
I total agree with Msgr. Pope , we should take the Bible literally, remember Almighty God didn’t write it to trick us but to inform us.
Your interpretation of Biblical inerrancy doesn’t square with the Church’s. That is, that Sacred Scripture should not be read as a treatise on history or science, but rather as containing the truths necessary for salvation. The actual age of the patriarchs is not one of those truths.
Msgr Pope’s argument is as ridiculous as those who persecuted Galileo. And the result is that people who investigate the science, and from it can make a reasonable extrapolation, would conclude that whatever the theological lessons are to be had, the meaning of years in the old testament accounts are not literally earth cycles around the sun. If it were, we’d have evidence from archaelogy that there were humans, or even human relatives, that at least occasionally lived so long. Instead, the evidence suggests that people generally lived into their thirties or early forties. Which is why the paleo diet is so crazy. The argument is we should follow the diet of paleolithic humans because they never died of cancer or heart disease. Hello!…
Galileo didn’t have evidence that proved his theory. Ecclesiastical authorities who insisted that sufficient evidence to prove heliocentrism be provided, and that Galileo be more restrained in his claims until such evidence was provided, were more knowledgeable about astronomy than modern pseudo-intellectuals give them credit for. For example, it wasn’t until telescopes were powerful enough to measure stellar parallax that there was finally evidence to prove that the earth moved in a large orbit around the sun. Such telescopes were not available during Galileo’s life.
Galileo was not condemned for lack of evidence but for promoting an idea that the Church found repugnant regardless of whether there was any evidence or proof. Wikipedia: The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, which concluded that heliocentrism was “foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture.”[10][11][12
I doubt you know much about the events and arguments because you cite Wikipedia. You just assume what most pseudo-sophisticates regard as common knowledge about the Galileo affair, which is why you made the claim that Galileo was condemned by the Church for ridiculous reasons. Let me school you:
The Church was well aware that Scripture could be interpreted figuratively. However, evidence that the plain sense of Scripture was wrong was needed to justify departing from plain sense. There was no such evidence that the sun was the center of the solar system.
Tycho Brahe had developed a modified geocentric model in which the earth was at the center and the sun orbited the earth while the other planets orbited the orbiting sun. That was able to account for such things that Galileo observed as the phases of Venus. Brahe himself thought the Copernican (heliocentric) system was absurd.
Heliocentrism was regarded as philosophically foolish because the earth felt and appeared stationary. No evidence presented by Galileo overcame the direct perception that the earth on which everyone was standing seemed and felt stationary. Galileo had arguments for why it seemed stationary, but he didn’t have proof it wasn’t stationary.
Galileo’s proposal was regarded as formally heretical because it contradicted the plain sense of Scripture without providing sufficient evidence to prove that the plain sense was incorrect. In asserting heliocentrism as fact, Galileo was guilty of going beyond the evidence. After all, Tycho Brahe’s geocentric model explained Galileo’s observations. There wasn’t sufficient evidence to prefer one or the other.
In fact, the evidence was against Galileo/Copernicus at the time he was living.
Not until 1830 was there sufficient evidence, in the form of observing annual stellar parallax, to prove that the earth orbited the sun.
One excellent book to read about this very subject is “Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo”, by Christopher M. Graney, University of Notre Dame Press, (c) 2015.
If you read that book you will gain a much better understanding of what the arguments were, why the Church wasn’t foolish to maintain agreement with geocentrism for so long, and that Galileo can be faulted for arrogantly maintaining a stance that could not then be proven by available evidence.
Or you can just go on believing that the Church was full of ignoramuses who illegitimately used their authority to hold back a genius.
Now, having said all that, I agree with you that Msgr. Pope’s argument is unconvincing. But even Msgr. Pope admits that his argument doesn’t prove anything (read his last two paragraphs), so it wasn’t necessary to even state the point, much less to use a caricature of the Church’s response to Galileo to buttress your criticism of Msgr. Pope’s column.
If, as you write in the last of your series of posts, “Msgr. Pope admits that his argument doesn’t prove anything” why, pray tell, did he write the article? Is there no better use of his time?
Let me say again: Galileo was condemned not because of scientific evidence, but because he held to a scientific theory that contradicted a theological point. He was prohibited from publishing anything for the rest of his life, even if it were to prove his scientific point, or didn’t even relate to his scientific point. Your belittling the fact that I went to Wikipedia for a quick quote, or your disputation of my rhetorical use of Galileo to demonstrate that faith and science don’t have to be at odds with each other, do not change the facts.