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Methuselah
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Methuselah or Metushélach is the oldest person whose age is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. The name Methuselah has become a general synonym for any living creature of great age.
uselah is mentioned in Genesis as the son of Enoch and the father of Lamech (father of Noah), whom he fathered at the age of 187. A close reading of the dates in the Old Testament reveals that Methuselah is said to have died in the year of the Great Flood, but the Bible does not say that he was among those who died in the flood.
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Methuselah or Metushélach is the oldest person whose age is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. The name Methuselah has become a general synonym for any living creature of great age.
Summary
Methuselah is mentioned in Genesis as the son of Enoch and the father of Lamech (father of Noah), whom he fathered at the age of 187. A close reading of the dates in the Old Testament reveals that Methuselah is said to have died in the year of the Great Flood, but the Bible does not say that he was among those who died in the flood. Some have interpreted his name as a prophecy: when he dies, the Flood will come. In that case, the long life has an allegorical dimension, showing that God withheld judgment on humans for a very long time.
According to the Bible, he reached the age of 969 years. Genesis 5:27 states, "And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died" (American Standard Version). Genesis 5:5 states, "So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died." (American Standard Version). Assuming Adam's life began at the time of creation, Adam was alive when Methuselah was born. This makes Methuselah the only human link between Adam and Noah.
The end of Methuselah's life is described in a midrash version of The Book of Jasher, the English translation in the Harvard Divinity School's collection which purports to have been made from a Hebrew manuscript, Sefer haYashar. According to The Book of Jasher, Methuselah accompanied his grandson Noah in attempting to persuade the people of the earth to return to godliness. (Jasher 5:7) All of the other long-lived people died, and Methuselah was the only one of the very long-lived people left. (Jasher 5:21) God planned to bring the flood after "all the men who walked in the ways of the Lord had died." (Jasher 4:20) Methuselah lived until the ark was built, but died before the flood since God had promised he would not be killed with the unrighteous. (Jasher 5:21) The Book of Jasher gives Methuselah's age at death as 960. (Jasher 5:36)
However, in the ancient texts from which the English Bible was translated, there are variations of the ages of the patriarchs in different versions. The Samaritan Pentateuch gives ages adjusted to exactly match the flood. The Septuagint differs from the Hebrew in most of the patriarchal ages, generally giving higher numbers, but in the case of Methuselah, it has an age of 969 years just like the Hebrew.
Methuselah is also mentioned in the apocryphal Book of Enoch as being the son of Enoch and as having brothers. The writer tells Methuselah of the coming Deluge (the Deluge of the flood) and of a future Messianic kingdom.
Using Bishop Ussher's Bible chronology from the creation to Nebuchadnezzar II provides the following dates:
- 4004 BC - Creation according to Bishop Ussher
- 3317 BC - Birth of Methuselah
- 3000 BC - Approximate building of the Great Pyramids of Giza
- 2348 BC - Death of Methuselah and Noah's flood
Lifespan
Modern science puts the natural limit on current human longevity below 130 years; the oldest person documented beyond reasonable doubt, Jeanne Calment, died at 122. This being the case, Methuselah's lifespan has been a source of much speculation. Some resolve the issue by suggesting that Methuselah's long lifespan is not meant to be taken literally, while others attribute it to translation errors inflating a shorter lifespan.
Witness Lee's "Four Falls of Man" hypothesis claims that man's life span was shortened four times, due to sin: from everlasting to 1,000 (first fall: Adam's), from 1,000 to 500 (second fall: the Earth around the time of Noah), from 500 to 250 (third fall) and finally from 250 to 120 (fourth fall brings in the law with Moses).
Notably, in the times of King David, when actual ages were recorded, the ages of the kings generally were in the range of 40-70 years old.
If one assumes that the age of 969 indicates months (it says years in the bible) instead of years (indicating a mistranslation), Methuselah's age is calculated as 80.75 years which is a more realistic lifespan, but this requires that months be in the modern twelfths of a year. Another theory suggests lunar cycles were mistaken for the solar ones. If this is the case, each lifespan from Genesis would be shortened by a factor of 12.37 and give an age or 78 for Methuselah which resembles the lifespan of modern humans. However, objections to such life-shortening calculations have been raised on the grounds that, if reductions by these factors are carried out, several biblical fathers would have had children while they themselves were approximately five years old.
One solution involving translation error is proposed by Robert Best, who suggests that inaccurate conversion between various ancient Sumerian numerical systems produced the ages of Methuselah, Noah, and kin out of archaic Sumerian numerals. Best calculates that Methuselah's actual age would have been 85, and that he would have had his first son at age 17 (instead of age 187) When a thousand years was the limit for lifespan it would be like a 120 years now people have lived very close to the age just like methuselah. .
See also
External links
- Family tree of Methuselah
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