One of the greatest mysteries of the Bible is the lifespan of its characters. Indeed, is man capable of living for more than nine hundred years, like Adam or Seth? The Bible says nothing is impossible. But is it?
Imagine that in our days such a long-liver is found - the year of his birth would be … one thousand one hundred and fourteenth, that is, our hero would have been born one hundred and twenty-three years before the campaign to the Russian lands of Khan Batu! And if he suddenly turned out to be a long-liver, having celebrated his seven hundredth anniversary, then the year of his birth would have been one thousand three hundred and fourteenth - in Russian history, even the Battle of Kulikovo has not yet happened! Is this possible? Believers say firmly: Perhaps the Bible is not lying. But what does science say?
Patriarchal Eternity
If we take the Bible and look at the life expectancy of the first people, we really get incomprehensible and incredible figures from the point of view of logic. So, we read: Adam, the ancestor of mankind created by God, lived for 930 years, gave birth to his firstborn when he turned 130. Seth lived 912 years, gave birth to his firstborn when he was 105 years old. Enos lived for 905 years, gave birth to his first child at 90. Cainan lived for 910 years, gave birth to his first child at 70. Methuselah lived for 969 years, gave birth to his first child at 187. Noah lived for 950 years, gave birth to his first child at 500!
This is in the modern version of Holy Scripture. And if you use the Septuagint, that is, a translation from Hebrew into Greek, which was made in the 3rd century BC by the then learned men, you can rejoice and admire even more: Adam lived the same 930 years, but gave birth to his first child when he was already 230 Seth - the same 912 years old, but gave birth to his first child when he was 205 years old. Noah, as in the modern text, lived for 950 years, and gave birth to his first child at 500 …
Life expectancy is practically the same, but the birth of children with such superlongevity begins even later than we know - well after a hundred years. Where did such numbers come from in the Bible? It is unlikely that the Jewish God, in whom the followers of all three religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) believe, dictated nonsense to people incompatible with common sense.
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It is unlikely that the Jewish Talmudists deliberately invented such a length of life and such a late puberty for their antediluvian ancestors! But how can this be explained?
This biblical version of longevity is suspiciously close to the Sumerian-Akkadian epic, in which the years of the reign of the kings there are even longer than the total length of the lives of all the Old Testament patriarchs. For example, the period of the kings in the city of Eridu is characterized by the following figures: Allulim ruled for 28,000 years, Allalgar - 36,000 years, Enmenluanna - 43,200 years.
Let's not bore the reader with such fantastic figures, especially since their lives were even longer than their stay at the head of state!
Yes, there were people in our time …
And here is how the priests explain this fact to the dull parishioners: they say, in antediluvian times, until mankind was mired in sins, the righteous (and the patriarchs belong to the righteous) lived happily ever after. And the dates of their lives must be taken literally. And do not be surprised and look for mistakes. Or even say that these are some kind of fabulous or monstrous dates. Noah, to whom God determined the salvation of mankind, lived even longer than Adam - 950 years - and gave birth to his first child, unlike others, at 500 years!
By the way, it will be explained to you, notice that after the flood, life expectancy plummeted. If Adam lived for 930 years, then Noah's grandson Arphaxad lived for 465 years, and Abraham's brother Nahor - and at all 148. After the flood, there were no more such long-livers as Noah.
And why, by the way, did it happen? Maybe God realized that it was not possible to correct vicious humanity, and decided not to give sinners a long earthly life - after all, the longer these sinners live, the more they sin?
Some Bible scholars are convinced that in antediluvian times, people differed not only in life expectancy, but also in height. Otherwise, why would Noah build residential apartments four meters high on his rescue ark? This is the height of the decks that Noah built one above the other. The four-meter ceilings are still understandable in the palace, but not on the ship. This is not even a luxury, but a sheer excess.
Unless … people were not significantly taller than today's. Dinosaurs, too, were larger than the modern Komodo dragon or crocodile, and even larger than an elephant. Here our researchers are in solidarity with the seekers of the remains of giants. Not only is the Bible itself written about the giants, which came from the cohabitation of angels with the daughters of people, but the bones of people of high and very tall stature are also periodically found.
Someone from the apologists of the giants calculated the height of Goliath mentioned in the Bible - it turned out to be about three meters. Incidentally, not so high. Even today, some individual individuals reach two meters and seventy centimeters. True, unlike the ancient long-livers, they die as soon as they reach thirty, or even earlier. Why?
Is it all about the climate?
The answer to the problem of growth and longevity, researchers find in climate change. True, it is not clear what time period we are talking about, since the climate even ten thousand years ago did not differ so much from the modern one. In the pre-glacial period and even earlier - yes, everything was different there. And the carbon dioxide content was many times higher, and the heat was incredible, and the plants and animals reached very large sizes.
But in the era when man appeared, this was already over. Huge lizards and giant insects became extinct long ago. Glaciers have crept deep to the south. It got much colder. But in those areas, supporters of biblical longevity, where humanity was born, interrupt my objection, there was neither a sharp change in temperature, nor even a significant change of seasons, radiation then did not worsen living conditions, and because of the higher content of carbon dioxide, people differed from modern … They lived much longer and reached sexual maturity much later. And this is due to their growth. With late maturation and slow development, the growth of people should increase.
So the four-meter ceilings in Noah's Ark and other oddities of the biblical story are quite natural?
Nothing of the kind, say scientists who study the number system in ancient states. There was no longevity! It was just that when the text of the Bible began to be brought together, they brought it together using very old notes. Some of them were made even before the Babylonian captivity, and many during this captivity. Considering that the Jews lived among the Babylonians for a long time, they could not help but use the number system and the system of noting numbers that were used in Babylon.
And there was a specific sixty-decimal number system with positional and non-positional notation of numbers. And both were used at the same time, but for different needs. With the positional recording system, the numbers were strictly entered by digits and from left to right. The smallest number of ones is in the far right row, the highest place is in the left.
With a non-positional recording system, special signs were put, thanks to which it was possible to distinguish ten from one. This sign had the appearance of an oblique stroke. If we were talking about one, then the stroke was made smaller and thinner, if about ten - thicker and larger. It was very difficult for the untrained eye to distinguish the signs. And in the times that followed the return of the Jews to their homeland, and at all, probably, is problematic.
This is how the years of the patriarchs' life began to grow rapidly. Ninety-three years turned into nine hundred and thirty, ninety-one into nine hundred and ten. True, it is impossible to explain the date of birth of the firstborn by such a mistake. Otherwise, it will turn out that Adam became a father at thirteen years old, Enos - at the tenth year of life, and Arfaxad - at the fourth.
And most likely, it is in the peculiarities of the recording that one should look for the reason for the longevity of antediluvian people. Moreover, even nowadays one can encounter errors in recording the date of birth and death. An employee of the passport office issued a wonderful document to a resident of a small town in Siberia, where everything was correct, except for the date of birth - 1675! Why not a long-liver?
Nikolay KOTOMKIN