Why did people in the bible live so long?

Why would there be no disease? Everything that is known about the past indicates that diseases existed. Besides, people don't necessarily die from dieseases, old age on its own can kill a person.

Nesolithic humans led very short lives that was before the bible.

I think it has something to do with the Flood (which has been proven to have happened btw).

Before the flood, the earth was watered by a mist coming up from the ground (Genesis 2:6).

Also note that the 120 years bit came from Genesis 6:3--And the LORD said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

I've heard some people say that God was giving man 120 more years to repent before the Flood. In fact, when the ark was complete, God allowed an extra seven days--a last call, if you will. And there were no takers.

It's been suggested that climate changes after the Flood are what shortened man's lifespan.

The Ark was discovered on Mount Ararat in 1916 by Russians. They had sent word to Czar Nicholas II that they'd found it--and they'd also found rooms big enough for dinosaurs! Unfortunately by the time they were able to get proof back to Russia, the Russian Revolution had started up, and the messenger was supposedly killed.

Originally posted by Amethyst
I think it has something to do with the Flood (which has been proven to have happened btw).

This is patently untrue and a complete falsehood. 'The Flood' has been, if anything, shown to absolutely not have happened. There are no global flood sediments of the type it should've left, there is a biogeographic distribution of animals that is completely incompatible with pre and post flod distributions, there is no where for this water to have existed and to have gone, the ark as described is absolutely not big enough to hold the requisite animals for any lenght of time, and furthermore there is an orderly arragnement in the fossil record, not a mish mash of drowning victims. The Flood, and nothing like what is attributed to it in the bible, never happened.

Before the flood, the earth was watered by a mist coming up from the ground (Genesis 2:6).

Is this supposed to be an attempted reference to the discredited and rejected 'vapour canopy'? And the absurd notion that people lived longer back then because there was less UV light?

It's been suggested that climate changes after the Flood are what shortened man's lifespan.

'climatic changes' would not change lifespan from several hundred years to several dozen.

The Ark was discovered on Mount Ararat in 1916 by Russians. They had sent word to Czar Nicholas II that they'd found it--and they'd also found rooms big enough for dinosaurs! Unfortunately by the time they were able to get proof back to Russia, the Russian Revolution had started up, and the messenger was supposedly killed.

Yes, I read 'Indiana Jones and Noah's Ark' too. The pre-soviet russians did not discover noahs ark. This is a fairy tale. No one has been able to find 'noahs ark'. This is because it did not exist. And not matter how big any rooms on the ark were, the ark itself was not big enough to carry all these animals.

The one thing that can be determined from Genesis 1, is that those who wrote the story did so not because God or his messenger told them how creation occurred, but because they tried to find a way to explain why the heaven was above the earth. In other words, as far as they were concerned there was a top; Heaven, a bottom; earth, and above Heaven...more water.

Gen.1:6:7 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.

What that leaves is a layer of three: water, firmament, water.

Gen1:8 And God called the firmament Heaven...

Thus far we have: water, Heaven, water.

Gen 1:9:10 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear...And God called the dry land Earth;...

Now we have: water, Heaven, our planet, as the layers. Obviously because whenever the people back then looked up, they saw what they call Heaven or the firmament. Had they known the world was round, then they would not have described the firmament as being above the earth, unless of course the firmament does not in fact surround the earth, so to speak, in which case we live on a flat earth.

The age of man back then was because they either had no idea how to measure time, or as all fables go, they tell tall tales. However, the 120 year life which God stated, was obviously not followed through. Believers ascribe the statement to relating that beginnning with Moses, who lived for 120 years.

One theory I've heard/read is that before the flood the entire earth had a much more tropical environment possibly blocking out more of the sun's radiation and as such was much less harmful to humans.

For the complete "essay" visit the "What Do the Scriptures Say" website at...

www.scripturessay.com...

Hi to all of you -- say to me; what mean the word CALENDAR ???

Example: 1 december 2000= Julian day # 36860 . Do you know how many

calenders we have on the Earth ????

PS . MERCI POUR LA REPONCE chapo

Originally posted by shrubber
blocking out more of the sun's radiation and as such was much less harmful to humans.

And why exactly would such a slight reduction lead to a life span of hundreds of years? Why aren't people in lo UV regions of the planet living that long?

There is traditional remembrance of antediluvian longevity associated with the ten original fathers.

The Chaldeans believed there were ten antediluvian kings whose lives were prolonged thousands of years. The Hindu writings mention ten wonderful men as the ten fathers, whose lives were of incredible length. The Persian sacred books state that the Iranian or Aryan race began with the reign of ten men of the ancient law who lived on Homa, the pure water of life, and preserved their sanctity. The Chinese begin their history with the lives of ten divine men who were the ten emperors. The Scandinavians believed in the ten ancestors of Odin; and the Arabs that ten kings ruled over the Adites, the primordial people of their country.

-From Dawn to Sunrise (1876)

Its because they wernt eating mcdonalds !

maybe they just measured shorter years? Or their lives were so dull it seemed like 900 years!

You are relying on a religious text, an expression of faith, and a creation myth as a representation of fact.

If you want to discuss why people live to be 900 years old, then you better come with some hard proof that they did live this long. In any serious discussion, if all you have is a single literary reference, especially a religious or political work, you will not be taken seriously.

According to mainstream biblical scholar thought, Genesis actually entails 2 separate creation myths. I am rusty because it has been a whilesince my old testament courses in undergrad. At any rate, the myths are very similar to other creation myths of the region and of the times. Whether they are true or not, these are versions of tales that exist in other religions with diefferences lying in the details. I would focus more on the overall story and not on the particulars of details.

IF you still want to speculate that people lived to 900 years old, well the only eplanation can be mutation or divine intervention. The modern Homo Sapien is genetically unable to live to 900 years regardless of environmental factors (medicine, diet, lifestyle, etc). If man lived to 900 years, he was genetically different or you have to throw science completely out the window and chalk it up to God playing a direct hand. I personally find it a much simpler explanation that the old testament is not accurate in this particular detail.

Please note I am not commenting on the religious validity of the old testament as it pertains to Judaism or Chiristianity, but on the historical validity of the document. I personally belive that historical validity and religious validity need not coincide.

Well, there is also the old mathematical look at it, the suggestion being that when the account was actually written sometime between 300 and 800BCE, the scribes had to find some way to populate what they knew of the earth at that time. Can't do it if two people live say 50 years maximum, where the woman is pregnant for 9 months and infertile by 35. Even marrying at 14 which they did, after 10 children that's 7.5 years of gestation.

A cursory look at the ages of the forefathers when they first gave birth and when they died, except for Methuselah, will show how the scribes used multiples of 5 and added the occasional 7, to come up with their numbers.

Its a common misconception [ as everything in the bible ]. The used lunar calendar [ based on the moon ], its just that in the midle ages people were stuped and thought everyone is like them

12 lunar years are 12 months.

Originally posted by Pavel
Its a common misconception [ as everything in the bible ]. The used lunar calendar [ based on the moon ], its just that in the midle ages people were stuped and thought everyone is like them

12 lunar years are 12 months.

Then Mahalalel would have been 5 years 5 months (65 Lunar years?) old when his son Jared was born. I don't think the sex glands mature that early.

Genesis 5:15

Adam lived 930 years, his son Seth lived 912 years. Lamech was his son, he lived 777 years. Noah was his son, he lived 950 years. Shem was his son, he lived 600 years. Shem's son (Arphaxad) lived 438 years. Arphaxad's son Salah lived 403 years. Jump a few generations to Abraham, he lived 175 years. Skip a few more generations to Moses, he lived 120 years. His age brings us down to the age some people live in our own time. There is a woman living in France today that is 126!

if the reason for the flood destroying some part of our atmosphere that made us live a shorter life then why does the legth of life go down slowly, rather than seeing people living at 900 years before the flood and then after the flood only up to 120 years old, which it should be if your excuse is the flood destroyed part of the atmosphere that used to lead us to a 900 year life.

Maybe we did live that long ,so long ago. It may be part of our evolutionary path. huge lifespans would mean severe overpopulation. The more the populations grew the shorter we lived as a result.

On the other hand, lifespans were on average 30 to 40 in the middle ages and twice that now due to social, and medical advances.

perhaps 30-40 years is for humans the natural lifespan, now that medical advances have doubled that we are facing overpopulation and starvation occures in parts.

What them might be the ideal lifespan for a creature such as us, given our number of offspring, gestation period etc. Every lifeform has a corresponding lifespan, at the shortest end of the spectrum you get insects which give birth to huge numbers in short time. At the other end you get things like elephants which give birth to only one young at a time and have a 2 year gestation, and may live 60-70 years or land tortise may live 200 years and produce few young.
The difference being that every other creature adapts to nature, we adapt nature to us!

Just food for thought!

[edit on 063131p://31016 by instar]

yeah it seems to go from a long life span (900 years) all the way down until i would say around 1800/1900, when the average age started to level off and since then it has started to rise to how ever long the lifespan average is today (about 70). so in very early times we see that with no where near as good science/medicine/knowledge of cures, they lived to 900, 600, 400ish etc. now at 1 AD to around 1800/1900 AD you see a general mixture with the odd person living until 80, but the average probably being around 30 to 40...because of the frequent child birth deaths of mother and child. Now most of us with poor diets and fantastic medical knowledge the average age is 70ish depending on where you live and your diet. nowhere else in the world do we see this age transformation. nowhere in old books are monkeys thought to have lived for 900 years, nowhere have lions lived for 100s of years. the animal kingdom seems to have a steady lifespan, yet ours is very unstable. the only death we see in the wild is if an animal gets eaten, or gets too old to defend itself, hence get eaten...very rarely in the wild will you get animals dying of natural causes (i.e not being eaten). it also seems like diseases in the wild aren't actually very frequent, this is because most animals are extremly fit and healthy...our ignorance for eating many mcdonalds has led us to having heart attacks, obese problems, smoking causing cancer, alcohol causing drink driving. we rarely die from natural causes or being eaten...our nemises is killing ourselves whether it be from diseases brought on by our lifestyles or accidents such as car crashes, murders etc.

Originally posted by GriBiT
I've always been intersted in the long life spans spoke about in the bible. Life spans of 100's of years. Over 900 in the case of Adam. Then they slowly decrease over time. After "Noas flood" they decreased even more until they reached the average age that we have now (70 years give or take). Whenever I think of this I recall a book by Irwin Ginsburgh, Ph.D. and his book "First, Man. Then Adam!". He reviews Genisis from a different perspective. Implying that travelers (with long life spans) crashed and were marooned here and mixed with humans here on Earth, then over time the "Alien" age span decreased as it was diluted over the many generations until modern times. He also goes into other aspects of Genesis like that when God said l"let there be light" it may have refered to the big bang. Also passages such as something refering to old scripture saying Adam came to the third planet from the sun, as if from outside out solar system. My excerpts don't do his thesis justice, but you get the general idea.

Wanted to get this started while I continued research on this.

This link shows a chart of ages in the bible as a start.
On this site they have a different hypothethis, but I don't fully agree with it. They talk about the age dropping after "Noas flood" but it took quite a while for the life span to slowly decrease. I really added this link just to show a visual of the life spans in the bible in a chart.

Bible Life Span Chart

I really want to find something online to link to about the book "First, Man. Then, Adam!" I'll keep searching. In the mean time....Your thoughts?

Gene mutation ..
"My spirit shall not always strive with man for also he is flesh ..."

Before a gene will mutate enough to change a species that gene becomes cancerous and will die ...(This is WHY we know beyond a doubt that man did not evolve from an ape)

When I read Genesis and the story of Adam and Eve it seems very clear that the eating of the tree of knowledge and the ensuing death was not meant in the singular sense.

you eat, you die ...

I believe the story speaks towards humans as a species ....

Eating of the tree and then dying after living 1,000 years is not so bad of a fate ...

Eating of the tree and dooming your species would be far more serious of a problem ..

This leads me to believe that procreation is somehow playing a role in the reduced life span ....

I also believe this has something to due with the rumor that tells us that Jesus was not born via procreation but of immaculate conception ....
But that is getting off topic...

U2U any reply because I seldom come back into threads and I would hate for a good bash to fall on deaf ears ...lol

~peace

Originally posted by instar
Maybe we did live that long ,so long ago. It may be part of our evolutionary path. huge lifespans would mean severe overpopulation. The more the populations grew the shorter we lived as a result.


[edit on 063131p://31016 by instar]

You brought something to mind that I read awhile back.

A guy had created a cpu program. He devised a single cell organism and programmed it to split thereby creating a double cell organism. From there the double cell organism was to split and so on and so on.... Well, there was only so much space in the program and the guy figured the thing would bog down when space ran out(not unlike a calculator).
Lo and behold , DEATH entered his program univited and started preying on the weak and the old and created space for the program to keep running ....

I cannot recall all the details but it lends merit to what you speak ....Seeing how the first organisms created knew nothing of death until death was somehow mandated into the program,

~peace

GrBRIT,....I think one of the reasons man lived so long back in the time frame you are talking about is it could be related to the food they ate as compared to the food we consume today. Back then, they did not have all of the food preseritives and additives aas we have today. Another reason could be that God did not want man to live longer. I noticed Adam lived to be about 900 yrs./old Maybe God realized that it was not good for man to live this long and through all the years he altered our DNA in ways we do not understand to reduce our age. Just my guess

[edit on 9-1-2005 by FLYIN HIGH]