Metu-Shalach (Methuselah) 969
No'ach (Noah) 950
Yared 962
Shet 912
Kena'an 910
Enosh 905
Mahal-El 895
Lamech 777
Shem 600
Ever 464
Arphachshad 438
Chanoch (Enoch) 365
Peleg 239
Re'u 239
Serug 230
Terach 205
Nachor 148
Shelach 133
These are rather longer than the normal expectation of a human life - which is not, by the way, three score and ten years; that is yet another of the multitude of mis-quotations from the Tanach which have come to be accepted as accurate. The text of Psalm 90:10 states:
"YEMEY SHENOTEYNU VAHEM SHIV'IM SHANAH VE IM BI GEVUROT SHEMONIM SHANAH"
יְמֵי-שְׁנוֹתֵינוּ בָהֶם שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה וְאִם בִּגְבוּרֹת שְׁמוֹנִים שָׁנָה
"Seventy years are given to us! Some even live to eighty. But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble; soon they disappear, and we fly away."
Is there any connection between the longevity of the patriarchs and the Babylonian magic numbers 432 et cetera (the answer can be found on another page of TheBibleNet, but don't go there yet)? A fun exercise for middle school students - to count the total of patriarchal years, and then compare them with the list below. Because the longevity has nothing at all to do with diet, and everything to do with the system of numbering that was in use at the time. If I were to give you the distance from London to Paris as the number 518,848, you might be surprised. But I am calculating in yards, not miles or kilometres. 518,848 yards divided by 1,760 (the number of yards in a mile) equals 294.8, which is the distance we in Britain would give for that journey (the French would give 470,400, in metres, or 470.4 in kilometres). So the trick now is to work out, using the ages of the patriarchs as the solutions, what was the numbering system in use at the time. We know it wasn't the sexigesimal, which Babylon used for every other purpose.
The idea of the long life stems from these Babylonian myths in which, for example:
Alulim reigned 28,800 years
Alalar 36,000
Enmenluanna 43,200
Enmenluanna the second 43,200
Dumuzi the shepherd 36,000
Or are these the ages of the great trees, as in the great ages of some European myths? Or calculations based on astrological observations?
For more details, and possible answers, you may now go to the "Time and Calendar" page.
Copyright © 2015 David Prashker
All rights reserved
The Argaman Press
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