Did you know that the oldest person ever lived for 969 years? Sure, his name was Methuselah, and he was the grandfather of Noah (yeah, THAT Noah). The average age of the 9 Patriarchs leading up to Noah was 912, which means that everyone back then supposedly lived for a really, really long time.
The argument that I have heard most is that since man originally had everlasting life, his life span was much longer at the beginning and slowly dwindled down to the 80-100 years that we have today. There is also the argument of the water vapor canopy that surrounded the Earth blocking out much of the harmful radiation of the Sun, thus allowing us to live longer.
But, according to Genesis 6:3:
So according to the Bible itself, Man can only live for up to 120 years. Why the discrepancy?
If you use months instead of years, Methuselah lived 80 years and 8 months (969/12=80.75). 80 years old in those days was ancient. They didn't have the health care system that we do, so the average life span was probably in the mid 30s to early 40s (based on life spans in much of modern day Africa).
There are numerous ways to determine his age, and the above is using the Gregorian Calender in use today by the Western world (aka Christianity). Lunar months would make him 78 1/2, but would have made his father, Enoch, 5 years old when Methuselah was born. But regardless of how you determine it, the age comes out to what we know of today as the average life span for a healthy human being.
The argument that I have heard most is that since man originally had everlasting life, his life span was much longer at the beginning and slowly dwindled down to the 80-100 years that we have today. There is also the argument of the water vapor canopy that surrounded the Earth blocking out much of the harmful radiation of the Sun, thus allowing us to live longer.
But, according to Genesis 6:3:
3 And the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”
So according to the Bible itself, Man can only live for up to 120 years. Why the discrepancy?
If you use months instead of years, Methuselah lived 80 years and 8 months (969/12=80.75). 80 years old in those days was ancient. They didn't have the health care system that we do, so the average life span was probably in the mid 30s to early 40s (based on life spans in much of modern day Africa).
There are numerous ways to determine his age, and the above is using the Gregorian Calender in use today by the Western world (aka Christianity). Lunar months would make him 78 1/2, but would have made his father, Enoch, 5 years old when Methuselah was born. But regardless of how you determine it, the age comes out to what we know of today as the average life span for a healthy human being.
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