Why did man live longer in the Old Testament than today?

Answer 1

The question comes down to whether people really lived longer than people do today, or whether they only lived longer in the Old Testament. Some, who believe in the literal truth of a creation just a few thousand years ago, say that man was more perfect, with few of the DNA faults that have evolved, and therefore lived so much longer. However, this should apply equally to the ancestors of the Hebrews and the ancestors of other peoples, yet it seems that only the ancestors of the Hebrew people lived such impressively long lives, with no suggestion that other people lived so long. It is also interesting that the earliest people in the Old Testament never seem to have died acidental deaths or from the diseases that we are nowfamiliar with; these causes of death are surely independent of our DNA.

It is also instructive to look at the biblical evidence for the lifespans of the Hebrew patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Bible says that:

1. Abraham lived to 175 (5 X 5 X 7)
2. Isaac lived to 180 (6 X 6 X 5)
3. Jacob lived to 147 (7 X 7 X 3)

• Each lifespan involves a perfect square (5, 6, then 7 in a numeric series),
• the third factor also forms a series (7, 5, 3)
• and in each case the sum of the factors is 17.

In addition to the patriarchs, Joseph, Levi, Moses and Joshua were other great leaders revered by the Jews. The priestly tribe of Levites was said to be descended from Levi, great grandfather of Moses who, along with Joshua, fulfilled the covenant that God gave to the patriarchs. We find a similar fascination with elegant series and the number 17 in the lives of:

1. Levi, who lived to 137

   (7 X 5 + 6 X 17)

2. Amran, Moses' father, who also lived to 137

   (therefore also 7 X 5 + 6 X 17)

3. Moses, who lived to 120

   (7 X 5 + 5 X 17)

4. Joshua, who lived to 110

   (5 X 5 + 5 X 17)

5. Joseph, who lived to 110

   (also 5 X 5 + 5 X 17).

The number 17, in turn, is a factor of the age at which the Bible's oldest human, Methuselah, had his first son (187 = 17 X 11 years) and at which he died (969 = 17 X 57 years).

As you can see, 17 is a particularly auspicious number in early Hebrew numerology. There is probably less than one chance in a million that the lives of just these four people would so exactly fit these sequences. We should then realise is that whether or not persons such as Methuselah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were real, historical people, they did not live to such great ages. We do not need pseudo-scientific explanations for something that did not happen. We do need to understand that numerology was important in the beliefs of the ancient Jews.

Extensive archaeological and fossil evidence shows that people never lived so much longer than people do today.