Question On Really Old Ages In Bible

[midniterider]

"Sorta makes you wonder why people in rainy/foggy areas like say, London don't live hundreds of years."

 

They do.  Look at the royal family.  They're just smart enough not to advertise so everybody doesn't move there.

 

Yeah, I forgot, Queen Elizabeth must be 8 or 900 years old at least. :-)

[deconverted]

When I was a Christian, this was always an "easy" rationalization.  I figured Adam and Eve were about as perfect as could be for any human...physically that is.  Since God created them originally, and were almost perfect specimens, and it was sin that started their downfall, I just figured it took generation and generation for the "flaws" to appear in humans as they multiplied and populations grew.  Eventually though, things started getting "deluted" in our DNA (how scientific eh?) and what started out as top quality slowly erroded to less and less "perfectness".  This used to always make good sense to me. 

[miekko]

 

What's up with people's really old ages in the bible?  Are there any official xian "explanations"?  They get mentioned so casually all the time in sermons -- "Abraham and Sarah had Issac when Abraham was 100 and Sarah was 90 . . . blah blah blah"  Nobody bats an eye.

 

I asked my parents that question when I was a child and they said: "There was no pollution back then so people could live hundreds of years."  I thought it made sense and never questioned it again.

 

I have read other ancient texts where they mention people aged hundreds of years, sometimes reaching very close to 1,000 but very seldom above that number.  I never studied biology or genetics so I have no idea how aging works, so I actually think it was possible for humans to live much longer than we do today at some points in history, and that it might actually be possible again in the future.  The aging process does not seem to be well understood, even today.

 

Here's and interesting article on the subject:  Can the Human Lifespan Reach 1,000 Years - Some Experts Say "Yes"

 

There's a thing called entropy. We know that in any closed system, the entropy will increase. Ageing, to a large extent, is entropy in action - throughout your life, quite naturally, there's wear on a cellular level. The body has mechanisms to repair this wear, and every day, such repairs happen. But even the things that carry out this repair are subject to entropy. It would be possible to construct things that might withstand entropy way better, but nature doesn't have to do that, and has no specifically good reason to do that in animal species. (Some plants have better systems for that, though, but probably also have somewhat different wear and tear happening to them in the first place.) There's of course another thing as well - evolution - that uses entropy to creative purposes, essentially. 

 

The aging process is fairly well understood - there are naturally questions, but it's in the nature of science to find questions and try to answer them.

[★ Citsonga ★]

Someone told me that there was a lot of cloud cover back in those days so a lot less UV rays to age your body. :-) It's funny that people even attempt to explain this stuff.

 

That's from the creationists' "Water Vapor Canopy Theory." The argument serves two purposes, first to answer where the flood water came from, and second to answer for the long ages in the manner you mention. The claim is that in the Genesis 1 story about God separating the waters, the water that's said to be above the firmament was a thick canopy of water vapor around the earth, but the canopy was depleted by raining down on the earth for the flood in Genesis 7.

 

Of course, there's no scientific basis for this "theory," but rather it's just a flimsy attempt to explain away some problems with the Bible. However, not only is it not scientific, but it is also refuted by the Bible itself. Genesis 1 calls the firmament "heaven," so the "waters which were above the firmament" would be water above the heavens. Therefore, if the so-called "water vapor canopy" was rained down in the flood, then the water above the heavens would not exist after the flood. Yet Psalm 148, which came long after the alleged flood, clearly speaks of "waters that be above the heavens." The water above the heavens would not have existed anymore at that time if the "water vapor canopy theory" was true.

[mymistake]

 

Before the Great Flood most of the water in the ocean and all of the water in the ice caps was up in the sky giving up a protective layer of fog called a "firmament".  So people could live for 400 to 900 years no problem at all.

 

-Science class in my Christian middle school.

 

Sadly at the time I assumed this was the truth.  I just accepted it without questioning it.

 

Sorta makes you wonder why people in rainy/foggy areas like say, London don't live hundreds of years.

 

 

Somehow we were not encouraged to think about it.  Stop questioning God.  Move along!!!

[mwc]

 

That's from the creationists' "Water Vapor Canopy Theory." The argument serves two purposes, first to answer where the flood water came from, and second to answer for the long ages in the manner you mention. The claim is that in the Genesis 1 story about God separating the waters, the water that's said to be above the firmament was a thick canopy of water vapor around the earth, but the canopy was depleted by raining down on the earth for the flood in Genesis 7.

 

Of course, there's no scientific basis for this "theory," but rather it's just a flimsy attempt to explain away some problems with the Bible. However, not only is it not scientific, but it is also refuted by the Bible itself. Genesis 1 calls the firmament "heaven," so the "water which were above the firmament" would be water above the heavens. Therefore, if the so-called "water vapor canopy" was rained down in the flood, then the water above the heavens would not exist after the flood. Yet Psalm 148, which came long after the alleged flood, clearly speaks of "waters that be above the heavens." The water above the heavens would not have existed anymore at that time if the "water vapor canopy theory" was true.

 

     It makes total sense.  On the day that god rested he took a piss.  It swirled around for awhile.  Then it flushed.  That's obviously the canopy that allowed people to live longer and the flood.  Of course on the 8th day god went back to work and finished his bathroom and uses that otherwise we'd all be a whole world of trouble the next time he decided to "rest."

 

          mwc

[amateur]

Oh, all this shit, all these explanations that people have to come up with to explain this shit, all the reality people have to ignore to explain this shit, it's all just crazy making!

[miekko]

 

Joseph Campbell found some interesting parallels with Berossus' history of Babylonia:

 

The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion

 

P. 9-12 

 

"For example, in the Hindu sacred epics...the number of years reckoned to the present cycle of time, the so-called Kali Yuga, is 432,000; the number reckoned to the "great cycle", within this Yuga falls is 4,320,000. But then reading one day in the Icelandic Eddas, I discovered that in Othin's warrior hall, there were 540 doors, through each of which, on the "Day of The Wolf" (that is to say at the end of the present cycle of time), there would pass 800 divine warriors to engage the antigods in a mutual battle of annihilation. 800 x 540 = 432,000.

 

...In Babylon, I then recalled, there had been a Chaldean priest, Berossos, who c. 280 BCE., had rendered into Greek an account of the history and mythology of Babylonia, wherein it was told that between the rise of the first city, Kish, and the coming of the Babylonian mythological flood (from which that of the bible is taken), there elapsed 432,000 years, during which antediluvian era, ten kings reigned. Very long lives! Longer even than Methuselah's (Genesis 5:27), which had been of 969.

 

So I turned to the Old Testament (Genesis 5) and counting the number of antediluvian patriarchs, Adam to Noah, discovered, of course, that they were ten. How many years? Adam was 130 years old when he begat Seth, who was 105 when he begat Enosh, and so on, to Noah, who was 600 years old when the flood came: to a grand total, from the first day of Adams creation to the first drop of rain of Noah's flood, of 1,656 years. Any relation to 432,000? ...it was shown that in 1,656 years there are 86,400 seven-day weeks. 86,400 divided by 2 equals 43,200.

 

And so it appears that in the book of Genesis there are two contrary theologies represented in relation to the deluge. One is the old tribal, popular tale of a willful, personal creator god, who saw that "the wickedness of man was great in the earth..." (Genesis 5:6-7). The other idea, which is in fundamental contrast, is that of the disguised number, 86,400, which is a deeply hidden reference to the Gentile, Sumero-Babylonian, mathmatical cosmology of ever-revolving cycles of impersonal time, with whole universes and their populations coming into being, flowering for a season of 43,200 (432,000 or 4,320,000) years, dissolving back into the cosmic mother-sea to rest for an equal amount of years before returning, and so again, and again, and again.

 

It is to be noticed, by the way, that 1+6+5+6=18, which is twice 9, while 4+3+2=9: 9 being associated with the goddess mother of the world and it's gods. In India the number of recited names in a litany of this goddess is 108. 1+0+8= 9, while 108 X 4 = 432. ...It is strange that in our history books the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes should be attributed to Hipparchus, second century BC., when the magic number 432 (which when multiplied by 60 produces 25,920) was already employed in the reckoning of major cycles of time before that century).

 

That's probably one of the best reasons I've found for the exaggerated life span thing - a nearly direct copy and mimic by the late Biblical writing periods as they used the Babylonian myth as a framework from which to spin Jewish mythology. The long ages have no real meaning other than to outline a cyclical time method popular in eastern and near eastern mythology. They needed to stretch out the lives of 10 mythological Patriarchs to mirror the 10 Babylonian Kings from the rise of Kish to the deluge. They were playing around with numerology, and cosmological astro-mythology, and trying to bring them into a Judaized framework by the looks of things.  At least that's one reasonable explanation for the ridiculously long mythological lives. 

We don't have a Berossus to check back from, in fact, the only thing on Berossus we have, are quotes of quotes made by Christian writers. So I'd caution against using him as evidence. Not that there aren't obvious similarities between the sumerobabylonian and hebrew theologies, but because there are many, deeply interrelated, instrinsic similarities. Though the Sumerian Kings List gives that number at "241200 years" And there were 9 kings, but only 8 are listed on the kings list. The final one being Ziusudra/Utnapishtim/Atrahasis, the son of Ubaratutu. Though he sometimes is listed on kings lists:

http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section2/tr211.htm

 

Though other texts give:

Five cities; eight kings ruled for 385,200^sic years.

http://www.livius.org/k/kinglist/sumerian.html

 

But I never saw the figure you give. Though I have seen some lists that had Ziusudra as seperate, some assume he is the same and not the son of Ubaratutu. Depends on which tradition in which sumerian or other mesopotamian city.

I don't know about that from the Hindu System, so I can't really comment on that.

 

The school of thought whose ideas Joshpantera quotes here relies just as much on its readers not checking the sources as Christianity does. It's sad, but credulity is common in the world.

[midniterider]

 

Someone told me that there was a lot of cloud cover back in those days so a lot less UV rays to age your body. :-) It's funny that people even attempt to explain this stuff.

 

That's from the creationists' "Water Vapor Canopy Theory." The argument serves two purposes, first to answer where the flood water came from, and second to answer for the long ages in the manner you mention. The claim is that in the Genesis 1 story about God separating the waters, the water that's said to be above the firmament was a thick canopy of water vapor around the earth, but the canopy was depleted by raining down on the earth for the flood in Genesis 7.

 

Of course, there's no scientific basis for this "theory," but rather it's just a flimsy attempt to explain away some problems with the Bible. However, not only is it not scientific, but it is also refuted by the Bible itself. Genesis 1 calls the firmament "heaven," so the "water which were above the firmament" would be water above the heavens. Therefore, if the so-called "water vapor canopy" was rained down in the flood, then the water above the heavens would not exist after the flood. Yet Psalm 148, which came long after the alleged flood, clearly speaks of "waters that be above the heavens." The water above the heavens would not have existed anymore at that time if the "water vapor canopy theory" was true.

 

 

Thanks for the explanation. :-)

[midniterider]

 

 

Before the Great Flood most of the water in the ocean and all of the water in the ice caps was up in the sky giving up a protective layer of fog called a "firmament".  So people could live for 400 to 900 years no problem at all.

 

-Science class in my Christian middle school.

 

Sadly at the time I assumed this was the truth.  I just accepted it without questioning it.

 

Sorta makes you wonder why people in rainy/foggy areas like say, London don't live hundreds of years.

 

 

Somehow we were not encouraged to think about it.  Stop questioning God.  Move along!!!

 

 

Yep. Switch on the emotions, switch off the rational thought.

[gall]

Gandalf lived longer than any of those Bible chumps.  Mithrandir said, "Three hundred lives of men I've walked this earth and now I have no time."

He was not a man in this particular fictional story he just looked like one. He was Istari a entity sent by the Valar to aid the people of middle earth against sauron. They were outside of time and space basically. In fact they were of the same "order" the Valar were just of lesser power. I think...It has been a while since I read the Silmarillion.

 

He was a protector or middle earth and its free people. A champion and hero for them to sacrifice himself for them if he had to.

 

I know more about middle earth than I do about the old testemant world in the fictional book called the bible. I find Tolkiens world a lot more entertaining