Methuselah

This article is about the Biblical character. See Methuselah (disambiguation) for other uses.

Methuselah or Metushélach (Hebrew: מְתוּשֶׁלַח / מְתוּשָׁלַח, Modern Mətušélaḥ / Mətušálaḥ Tiberian Məṯûšélaḥ / Məṯûšālaḥ, "Man of the dart", or alternatively "when he dies/died, it will be sent/has been sent") is the oldest person whose age is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. 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 human link between Adam and Noah (Assuming Methuselah died at the time of the flood). The name Methuselah has become a general synonym for any living creature of great age.

Using Bishop Ussher's Bible chronology from the creation to Nebuchadrezzar II provides the following dates: [1]

• 4004 BC - Creation
• 3317 BC - Birth of Methuselah
• 2348 BC - Death of Methuselah and Noah's flood

Biblical mentions

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 indicate if the cause of his death was by drowning. 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.

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 his lifespan as 720 years. Other versions of the Septuagint give dates which would have him surviving the Flood. Some Bible scholars have suggested that the age has been adjusted in order to exactly match the flood.

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 and of a future Messianic kingdom.

The Great Flood was 3800 years older than the birth of Noah Source: The Vatican Archives

Lifespan

Modern science puts the natural limit on current human longevity below 130 years. This would support the Biblical reference in Genesis 6:3, where God placed a limit of 120 years on man's lifespan. 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. Biblical literalists, on the other hand, have proposed several reasons that might explain a drastic decrease in the human lifespan after the Noachian deluge. The most compelling, however, is the fact that Gen. 6:3 says, "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.'" In other words, man's lifespan would be gradually shortened over time, as punishment for sin. Even the idea of death came from sin (i.e. the Fall) at the Garden of Eden), before which man could potentially have lived forever (according to Genesis chapter 2).

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 Sumerian king lists; Best calculates that Methuselah's actual age would have been 85, and that he would have had his first son at age 17 (as opposed to after age 100). 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; this calculation also gives ages for Methuselah and his contemporaries that resemble those of modern humans. Objections to such life-shortening calculations, however, may be 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.

Many Creationists, meanwhile, accept the ages recorded in the Bible, and have speculated on reasons for the dramatic decrease in lifespans following the Great Flood of Noah's time. One reason claimed is that conditions before the flood caused much less ultraviolet light from the sun to impact the earth, and that this allowed for longer life spans. The Institute for Creation Research has posited that a vapor canopy surrounded the earth before the Flood, and that it was the source of the floodwaters. Such a canopy would also have protected humankind from the aging effects of the sun's ultraviolet rays. After the dissipation of the canopy during the Flood, according to this theory, lifespans dropped rapidly to what they are today. Mainstream scientists have rejected the vapor canopy "theory", asserting that it does not stand up to scientific analysis.

Young Earth creationist Carl Wieland alternatively speculates that the decline in lifespan is because of the drastic reduction in population due to the Flood, causing a genetic bottleneck in which the genes that coded for longevity were lost.

For some Bible believers, the cause of the decrease in human longevity is that God sets a specific lifespan for human beings, as in Genesis 6:3: "Then the Lord said, 'My Spirit will not contend with [or "remain in"] man forever, for he is mortal [or "corrupt" (NIV)] ; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.'" Witness Lee's "Four Falls of Man" hypothesis holds that man's life span was shortened four times, due to sin: from everlasting to 1,000 (first fall--the fall of Adam;) 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..

See also

• Ageing
• Back to Methuselah a set of plays by George Bernard Shaw
• Longevity
• Longevity myths
• Maximum life span
• Methuselah Mouse Prize
• Methuselah (tree)
• "Requiem for Methuselah", an episode of Star Trek
• 2000 Year Old Man, a recurring Methuselah comedy routine by Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks.
• Methuselah's Children a work of fiction by Robert A. Heinlein about long lived humans as a result of genetic selection.
• The Methuselah Factor, a book by Vernon Eric Bridges, a farfetched story of longevity.

External links

• Complete Bible Genealogy Family tree of Methuselah