Normally I would rather trust a card shark, a used car salesman, even a politician than trust any of those Biblical tales. However, there is always the game of ‘what if’, as in ‘what if’ this particular Biblical tale is actually true. ‘This’ in this case is the ripe old age of some of the Old Testament characters. Where does that take us?
The following Biblical characters and their ages at death are listed on Wikipedia, but since there are several versions of the genealogies in the Old Testament (Genesis), the ages do not always agree. Relative to you or me, these good Biblical people are receiving their pensions and other senior benefits and have been for a considerable time, assuming they retired at age 65. If it’s getting close to its expiration date, don’t you wish you were born a Methuselah?
Methuselah = 969 (or 720) years.
Jared = 962 (or 847) years.
Noah = 950 years.
Adam = 930 years.
Seth = 912 years.
Cainan or Kenan (before the flood) = 910 years.
Enos or Enosh = 905 years.
Mahalalel = 895 years.
Lamech = 777 (or 753 or 653) years.
Sem = 600 years.
Arphaxad = 535 (or 438) years.
Eber = 464 (or 404) years.
Cainan (after the flood) = 460 years.
Salah = 460 (or 433) years.
Enoch = 365* years.
Peleg = 339 (or 239) years.
Received = 339 (or 239) years.
Serug = 330 (or 230) years.
Nahor = 304 (or 148) years.
Terah = 275+ (or 205) years.
Abraham = 175 years.
Oldest verified human = 122 years
Reasonable life expectancy = 80+ years.
While there are no theoretical reasons for a human being to die after X number of years, 969 is pushing that limit a bit, even if he had all the right things, inherited good genes, didn’t smoke or drink, ate his vegetables (and a apple a day), got eight hours of sleep and some reasonable exercise every day, avoided stress and all those other things your GP healer keeps telling you to do.
Now one needs to wonder for what purpose these few selected individuals were given, in most cases, more than 900 years instead of three score and ten. I mean it’s not just a small difference from the norm, it’s a big difference. Also, these Biblical retirees are not the ‘over-the-hill-and-without-the-pill’ crowd. I mean, if you want to live to a truly mature biblical age, you’d better be born a boy (which goes somewhat against expectations today, where women tend to live to collect more pension checks than men). ).
Apparently, the Bible itself offers no explanation for these extraordinary lives. Therefore, we have an open space when it comes to speculation about the explanations.
The most likely explanation is that it’s pure Biblical fiction, just more adult myths and fairy tales, but if that’s true, this essay ends now. So indulge my fantasy as I play the ‘what if’ game, as in ‘what if’ a lifespan of 969 was achieved. How and why and what kind of implications are now the stuff of the fun factory and games to speculate on until the cows come home.
One thing I rule out is more time to be fruitful and multiply. Any normal male during any normal life span could potentially sire hundreds and hundreds of offspring. It does not need a useful life of more than 900 years. Reinforcing this are the Gershwin brothers’ remarks in their song “Porgy and Bess” that no girl will give up and pass on her legacy for any man who is 900 years old.
Now, I have speculated elsewhere at length that God is not really a deity, but an extraterrestrial, a Celestial Starship Captain. Furthermore, God and his extraterrestrial colleagues from other starships, the polytheistic ‘gods’, came to Earth with powers and technological abilities far beyond those of mortal men (and women), and experimented on mammalian primates, ultimately , producing, through artificial selection. , the human being (which really was a very serious mistake, but that’s another topic).
Now, perhaps these Biblical long-lived were actually aliens, aliens with naturally long lifespans, part of Captain God’s Starship Heaven crew that did much of the part of being fruitful and multiplying by spawning (some of those ‘children of God ‘chatting about some of those ‘daughters of men’ scenarios recounted in the Bible) designed to improve the stock of the terrestrial species known as Homo sapiens..
Or perhaps this gift of extended longevity is yet another case of God and/or the polytheistic gods doing a bit of biological manipulation through bioengineering, medical technology, and/or genetic engineering on real humans, some of God’s chosen. So maybe if our veterans were human through and through, then you really have to conclude that clearly, some advanced bio, genetic or medical technology/engineering was employed, and by elimination, the only beings capable of employing such technologies. they would be extraterrestrials, extraterrestrials that for the humans who lived at the time of the mythological deluge were considered deities.
So, assuming Methuselah and the rest of the super pensioners listed above increased genetically or medically with all those extra years, what’s the point?
One of the reasons for a long service life is if you need to take a long trip. Now that rules out Planet Earth, since a normal human lifespan is long enough to get from Point A to Point B, even before the invention of the automobile and the airplane, especially given the rather limited geography that was known in Biblical times. .
The only voyages that make sense in terms of Methuselah would be a voyage to the stars, where Captain God (the ET) and the crew of Starship Heaven originally came from; call it a sightseeing tour for God’s chosen few.
Today, modern humanity with its advanced high-tech civilization cannot reach even the nearest stellar neighbors. Our spaceships are too slow; our life expectancy is too short. But how far could you go if you lived to be over 900 years old and had advanced alien technology to transport you?
Now, when it comes to interstellar distances, things are measured in light years. A light year is the distance light travels in one year. The speed of light is approximately 186,000 miles per second; A light year is about 6 trillion miles.
If you could travel at 1% of the speed of light, you would travel one light year every 100 years. So if you lived a little over 900 years, you could get to about 9 light-years one way or 4.5 light-years round-trip. That would take them to our nearest stellar neighbor, the Alpha Centauri system, and back home again within their 900+ year allotment.
If you celebrated more than 900 birthdays and could travel at 10% of the speed of light, you would travel one light year every 10 years. So it could get to about 90 light-years one way or 45 light-years if it wanted to make landfall again on its territory before turning it off. A radius of 45 light-years takes it to distances that incorporate a few stars and star systems, some of which are quite similar to the Sun and are prime candidates for harboring some form of extraterrestrial life.
But if you could travel at close to the speed of light and taking special relativity into account, you would boldly go outward at just under one light-year per year. The problem here is ‘special relativity’. It works in your favor if you want to explore new and strange worlds, etc. far from home.
So another possible explanation is that Methuselah (and the others) actually lived normal human lives, but their interstellar travel was at such speeds, close to the speed of light, that Einstein’s special relativity came into play. The result is that the faster you travel, the slower you age. And so the case of the ‘twin paradox’ where the stay-at-home twin ages normally (one second per second; one year per orbit around the Sun) according to our standards, but the daring traveler, flying like a rocket near light speed twin, ages much more slowly. Therefore, when the bold twin returns home and meets the stay-at-home twin, there will now be huge differences in their ages. The stay-at-home twin has aged a lot compared to the bold twin. In fact, the stay-at-home twin may have already turned it off, dying of natural causes, old age, before a reunion ever occurs.
So if Methuselah were to go boldly, he could return to a home now hundreds of years after his Earth birth date, but for the stay-at-home guys, knowing nothing of special relativity, Methuselah would be a super-pensioner, having obviously spanned those hundreds of years. Those bodies left at home would record that Methuselah lived to a super ultra mature old age when he actually aged normally and had a normal life: no biological, genetic or medical technology/engineering, just special relativity physics.
And so, in conclusion, the age of Methuselah, and his super ultra pensioner type, can be explained by 1) assuming the story is total nonsense (and if you were a gambling person, that’s the way to bet); 2) they were aliens with naturally long lives; 3) they were humans who were artificially augmented by various technological means to keep those gray hairs and wrinkles at bay for hundreds of years; or 4) they had normal Earth lives, of the kind you or I expect, but were subject to the strange physics associated with the Special Theory of Relativity.
*Enoch did not return from his interstellar excursion to die a peaceful and natural death on Terra Firma. Apparently, God removed him from his earthly abode for unknown reasons: kidnapped, kidnapped, killed on the voyage, he joined the crew, whatever, so we don’t really know when Enoch turned him off.