Also maybe water is what is changing. The water back then may have been more of what they call heavy water - carrying an extra neutron. There is a theory that heavy water taken in low doses can slow the aging process.

I skimmed through the last 21 pages and I don't believe that I saw this answer in any of the previous posts.

A friend at one time explained the numbers in the bible to me. He knew hebrew and studied the bible relentlessly. His theory was that the numbers all had a hebrew meaning. For example the number 40 meant cleansing. So when the bible states it rained for 40 days and nights, it didn't truly rain that long it means the earth went through a cleansing period.

Based on his theory people did not truly live that long, but the stated age meant certain characteristics based on the Hebrew meaning of that number.

I don't remember some of those meanings but basically if the bible stated that someone lived to the age of 980, it could mean that number represented something. Such as - 980 could translate to mean godlike knowledge or something.

Hope that this makes sense. I haven't talked to that friend in ages. I will try and search for a link to back this up. It all seemed to make sense to me at the time.

Originally posted by nixie_nox
I have always been told it is because they considered one season or a month a year.

Think about it.... 900 years is 80 years times 12 months.

Like PP said, they had a different method of time keeping.
[edit on 16-2-2009 by nixie_nox]

There are 3 natural ways to measure time: days, months and years. A day is well defined but not suitable for measuring long time periods. A year is good for long time spans but difficult to measure exactly when you are part of a nomadic society without observatories.

But the month is well defined and long enough to measure life spans. Many calendars use it as a basic reference and even our calendar is influenced by it. The jewish calendar includes both moon and sun. The islamic calendar is based on the cycle of the moon.

Most old calendars are based on the moon. Wikipedia has nice lists and details.

When a society goes from nomadic to agriculture, the seasons suddenly get important. You need to know when to sow and build observatories to monitor the path of the sun. Now the most important time span is the year with the important harvest once a year. Thus people will start to measure their life spans in years.

The transition between month and year based reckonning may have been confusing. The old numbers may have gained numerical importance and become a fixed part of tradition. Maybe there was some confusion when translating the texts. Maybe the old texts did not even include the word month, but only listed the numbers.

I really think that the theory of a month/year confusion is a plausible explanation for the biblical life spans.

This question is not for unbelievers. You can not justify the Genesis account according to the evolution concept. Evolution states man has been living the same life span as his ape relative. The biblical account states the first man was intended to live forever, before his rebellion. All of Adam's contemporaries lived great live spans. After the deluge the life span rolled off to 70-80.

Originally posted by lostinspace
This question is not for unbelievers. You can not justify the Genesis account according to the evolution concept. Evolution states man has been living the same life span as his ape relative. The biblical account states the first man was intended to live forever, before his rebellion. All of Adam's contemporaries lived great live spans. After the deluge the life span rolled off to 70-80.

Howdy LIS

I'd disagree, everyone is human. One of the main reasons (if you actually needed one) to not beleive in the biblical long lives, is the teeth.

Middle eastern people of the late stone age to well into modern era ate grains that were ground up with stones - and there was a great deal of grit and associated tooth wear (abrasion), most of grains of that period also had high levels of silica - much more than modern varieties. Most people past middle age had severely worn down teeth - which led to abcesses and blood poisoning.

In the 19th century it was proposed that this problem could be addressed by biblical dudes growing new teeth.......

A few months ago, i ased af reind at work this same question.. ahve started reading it again, becasue tis beena while, and its how i bought up. MY frined at wor , is a deovted church goer , cool person as well. HE said, becuase in those days, thats how god made man..man lived up too 800 years. This was when giants waled the earth as well. Its unclear, why we dont live long anymore..most likely it was simply gods will, thats all. Lok at Sodom and Gemmorah, or as Noah was building his ark..god was VERY displeased with how humans acted...same sex partys, muder, rape and incest was ratehr rampant..he was so full of disgrace over man for this, he showered brimstone and fire on Sodon and Gemmorah, and flooded everything, Noahs ark.
Or, it could simpy be tha as man made mroe chemicals, his intake of them shorted his lifespan. It is possible, many angels in heaven were jealous of humans, and felt and thought they(humans) had no right to live so long..

Because it's a fairytale

2nd ________

sitchin says (and i think this is possibly credible) that the nefilim came from a planet (twelth planet of our solar system he says called nibiru) but this planet (or in my opinion, whatever planet they came from) had a very long orbit round the sun (3600 years) so, whereas our earth year is 365 days, their nibiru year was 3600 earth years. So assuming that biological life forms on a planet develop in correspondence to the planets orbit; gravity and other attributes; you might have a nibiruan turning 1 when they are actually 3600 earth years old. So living on earth, a nibiruan would seem to be almost immortal - hence the gods being called immortals... 'a thousand ages in thy sight are like an evening gone' etc.

and maybe if their planet had different gravity etc, they could be giants, or they could run really fast, or be really strong (like superman) on our planet, in different gravity conditions,e tc.
there are many tales of ancient gods having superhuman abilities: achilles could run/fight really fast; ajax was a giant; chinese gods came from the land of snow and could run as fast as a train; see the american indian stories of skinwalkers (and modern sightings) who are beings who can supposedly keep up with a car driving fast on a freeway...
(just to freak you out..)

alternatively, maybe our planets magnetic field was different at one time in the earth's past, and maybe this explains why animals and trees and insects were a lot bigger in ancient times - dinosaurs; giant sharks; giant crocs; giant mammals; giant insects; huge trees... (giant humans??? 'there were giants on the earth in those days.." the bible; david and goliath; hercules and tiryns; etc) and perhaps this also explains why before the flood (a catastrophic global event that maybe affected our planets magnetic field???), humans lived a long time; but after the flood, acc to the bible, the ages of humans starts to decrease from 900 years to around 120 years.

?

But note that the 'gods' are still 'immortals' - poss cuz they come from another planet?

to an ant or a butterfly, we probably seem immortal, as they only live a few days. Maybe to a lifeform on a fast rotating, small planet close to the sun, we would seem to live forever and be called immortals?

... alternatively, the 'gods' (aliens) really did crack the secret of immortality; or at least staying young for a very long time...
they do seem to 'confer' immortality on people (noah) if the legends are accurate.

gilgamesh (who's a giant btw, and also covers vast distances in very short time) goes in search of immortality from the gods, and gets told to look for a thorny plant that grows in the ocean (some type of coral/seeweed??) which he finds but then loses...? to a snake? oddly reminscient of hte tree of life/apple incident in the garden of eden...

the "gods" took the women of men and through this mix the life span was shortened i would think.

von daniken's explanation (which is also quite credible) is time dilation - in a space ship traveling at (or beyond?) the speed of light - time flows differently for hte astronauts on the ship than it does on earth (einstein's theory). So ten years pass for the astronauts, then they come back to earth, where thousands of years have slipped by. this is just science, and could explain the apparant 'immortality ' of hte gods..

alternatively, with wormholes, you could explain the rip van winkle/fairy syndrome where someone is abducted by 'fairies' and goes down a hole usually to live in a different land (dimension? wormhole to another planet?) where time passes slowly compared to on earth; and when they return to earth, everyone they know is dead...

read Alan F. Alford his book called Gods of the new millenium.

read Alan F. Alford his book called Gods of the new millenium.

read Alan F. Alford his book called Gods of the new millenium.