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Comment by mthwsjc_ | Hacker News Reader

I haven't read the complete paper, only the abstract, but it's fascinating to me that the authors find a limit of 120 to 150 years.

I remember reading in Genesis (first book of the bible) that the maximum age was limited to 120 years (chapter 6, verse 3).

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While very old, Genesis' stories were told by bronze age folks to each other and by an area's local priests for a variety of reasons, much like stories of Odin, Thor, Ea, Zu, Zeus, and Neptune. A broken clock may be correct twice a day, but I wouldn't take it a proof that the clock is predictive sometimes.

Indeed, the stories of Enoch and Methuselah show that any hard bound was clearly violated within a tiny group of humans it claims are originators.

> the stories of Enoch and Methuselah show that any hard bound was clearly violated

you're taking things a little literally here; that's perfectly explainable, and is also paralleled in the other mythos you mentioned: a group of people would raise their own status by claiming to be descended from gods or demi-gods or something else extraordinary. Probably the most approachable example of this in western literature is the figure of Herakles/Hercules.

it is not a stretch to imagine that the people responsible for writing certain books of the hebrew bible raised their own status by claiming to be descended from extremely long-lived ancestors.

Additionally, methusaleh's obtained age was recorded as 969 years; this should be understood not literally, but figuratively: 969 is a looooooong time, and a mystical number. It means "this is important, pay attention to this. this person is special". It helps the narrative in an oral tradition.

Alternatively, you could notice that the abnormally-long lifespans match a pattern of exponential decay towards a new equilibrium. This would be consistent with a hypothesis that there was a lifespan-extending factor involved, which effects grew weaker from generation to generation. The factor could perhaps have been environmental, or genetic.

I don't subscribe to this view, because I no longer believe the stuff described in the Bible actually happened as described - but if I were trying to treat the Genesis stories as real, this would be the approach I'd take to reconcile them with scientific knowledge.

Or some decaying that reduced lifespan and made marrying your close relatives not ok :)

But I don't think there's any point trying to reconcile the naratives.

Yeah... we're getting to angels on a head of a pin dancing here.

My fundamental point is that a broken clock isn't predictive, even when it happens to be right.

Is it also not possible that they were counting lunar cycles, seasons, or something else as years? In the case of lunar cycles 969 would be about 80.

Were years even the same kind of years?

2000 years ago but even the King James Version wouldn’t have been using a gregorian calendar yet

And usually when talking about the Bible there has some greek or hebrew translation liberty

Before we all decide it’s open to interpretation anyway

Well I had your whole conversation for you, let me know

A different calendar doesn’t necessitate mean a different year length. We still measure a year as a complete solar cycle, and that hasn’t changed.

There are many nuances in how a year is and was determined

"nuances" as in ... seconds? minutes? days?

The Roman calendar was just a lunar month times ten until being fixed to a solar year around like 500 BC

I don't know if there are retroactive fixes to what years were which and if that coincides with the Bible or universal acceptance of their solar calendar

Let me know

> Roman calendar was just a lunar month times ten

Plus the winter, which was unassigned until it eventually became January and February. I don't see anything about it counting the entire year as anything other than a solar year.

yes, years were the same... keep in mind that "year" (but also "season") were of the most importance for agricultural people.

> Methuselah show[s] that any hard bound was clearly violated...

Not quite. Methuselah died in the Flood, and it was only _after_ the flood when God decreed that humans' lifespan would be limited to 120 years.

Fine. Abram.

Look, I absolutely encourage questioning religion and the Bible, but this particular hill is not one I suggest you die on.

Genesis chapter 11 (allegedly) recounts the lineage of Abram. Shem (who was on the ark) lived to be 600. His son Arphaxad lived to be 438. HIS son (Shelah) died at 433. Et cetera. Abram is only eight or nine generations after the Flood, depending on how you count.

To my eye, there's a clear dampening effect on ages after the Flood. Within a dozen or so generations, mostly everybody dies before age 120.

Some of us have actually studied the Bible in depth. It has its contradictions, but IMO this isn't one of them. :)

In the Jewish culture when someone has a birthday you say "ad meyah esrim". Which basically translates as "until 120". 120 is considered to be the max lifespan if not literally then certainly figuratively.

In Polish it is "sto lat" (a hundred years). More pessimistic, it seems. :)

Given the military history of Central Europe, it is actually very optimistic :)

Except people lived to be older than that in the Bible

“Notice that Sarah lived to be 127 years (Gen. 23:1), Abraham lived to 175 years (Gen. 25:7), and Jacob lived 147 years before dying (Gen. 47:28).”

https://www.neverthirsty.org/bible-qa/qa-archives/question/t...

All of whom are clearly portrayed in Genesis as being supernaturally sustained in their old age as exceptions to the rule (similarly, Moses and Joshua).

The Dragon in My Garage

http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/110/Sagan.pdf

This isn't so much of someone trying to explain away bad data, it's just you doing a misreading of the story, which people have explained.

This isn't a debate about the object level "is this story true", this is people saying "that's not what the story is".

I also had read this verse as capping human lifespan to 120 years, but someone pointed out to me that what may be referred to here is a duration of time before destruction of the earth, that might have been the countdown to the flood.

Genesis doesn't say people's lives are limited to 120 years. What it says is that the flood would occur in 120 years time.

That said the numbers in Genesis were incorrectly translated from cuneiform into Hebrew. If you translate them back into cuneiform and then forward again correctly, you get smaller numbers that match up with the ages people have children or die today.

Source: Noah's Ark and the Ziusudra Epic: Sumerian Origins of the Flood Myth by Robert M. Best

Wait, this is asuming that they have the same notion of a year as we have now.

Unless some changes were made in modern translations.

Very valid questions and I had asked the same

What other notion of year would people use? There's clearly a repeating cycle of that takes approximately 360 days. The seasons cycle, the stars come back to their same spots. I don't think there is any evidence that ancient people used a different version of year. In fact, given that we still have Babylonian influences like 360 degrees in our circle, I'd argue that we have continued in their tradition.

Someone on the equator might divide the orbit of the Earth around the sun into two halves, a north-sun "year" and a south-sun "year".

I have absolutely no evidence that any group did so, of course, but it wouldn't be totally absurd.

The "comfortable" limit is set in Psalms to 70 years I think.

I wonder what Harry Potter says about the maximum age?

There's a lot of numerical symbolism in the bible, and 12 or powers of 12 (144, etc) really means 'a lot'

The reason for the twelves is that the numbers were incorrectly translated from cuneiform into Hebrew. Sumerians used 12 and 60 (5x12) in their numbering systems, thus modern clocks have 24 hours and 60 minutes, and circles have 360 degrees. If you translate the numbers back into cuneiform and then correctly translate them again, the ages are all similar to the ages people live today.

Source: Noah's Ark and the Ziusudra Epic: Sumerian Origins of the Flood Myth by Robert M. Best

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