The tree is a Bristlecone Pine and is 4, years old as of National Parks Service , Bristlecone Pine, Penny Noyes, M. You can follow Penny on her blog and on Instagram pennynoyes.
Share this. Who Was Methuselah in the Bible? Penny Noyes Author 24 Apr. On this latter point, I should note that our acceptance of science does not at all imply that we think God never performs miracles. If God wanted to make Methuselah live to be years old, we certainly believe that God could intervene in the natural order of things and make that happen.
The question rather—as it should be for all biblical interpretation—is whether that is really the message of the text. Genesis 5 gives very specific numbers for the genealogy from Adam to Noah. But of course Genesis was not written in 21st century English, so our concern is not with what these words would mean if they were written by us today. In answering this question, the first thing to point out is that, in the records we have from the ancient Mesopotamian culture, sometimes numbers were used like we use them today, as the way of counting and measuring—like in this receipt for sale of a slave and a building from about BC.
But other times in the ancient literature numbers are used numerologically. Different versions of the Sumerian King List are found in several ancient documents, and these use outlandishly large figures for the number of years some kings supposedly reigned in various Mesopotamian city-states e. The numbers there came to have a role in legitimizing certain dynasties, and no one thinks they are simply historical reports of true numerical values. So, since there are clear examples of numbers being used numerically and of numbers being used numerologically, when we see some numbers in literature from the ancient Near East like in Genesis , we must consider in which way they were being used.
A casual look at the numbers in Genesis 5 seems to suggest a fairly random distribution of ages: Adam lived to be , Mahalalel to , Jared to , and of course the granddaddy of them all, Methuselah lived to be Well it turns out that these numbers in Genesis 5 do have some peculiar characteristics when you dig a little deeper. This gets a little technical, so hold on tight!
There are 30 age numbers we can get from Genesis chapter 5—three numbers for each of ten patriarchs: the age when a son was born, the number of years the patriarch lived after the son was born, and the total number of years the patriarch lived.
The first thing more careful observation reveals about these 30 numbers is that all of them end with the digits 0, 2, 5, 7, or 9. You might not think that is too remarkable until you realize that it eliminates half of the possible numbers. The Chronology given largely follows that of Rev. For when Adam was years old he begat Seth.
Seth being years, begat Enos. Enos, being 90 years, begat Cainan. Cainan, being 70 years, begat Mahaleel. Mahaleel, being 65 years, begat Jared. Jared, at the age of , begat Enoch. Enoch, being 65 years, begat Methuselah. Methuselah, at the age of , begat Lamech. Lamech, being years, begat Noah. Noah, at the coming of the flood, was years old, as appeareth in the 7th chap. For the said flood continued one whole year and ten days. Arphaxad begat Salah when he was 35 years old.
Salah, being 30 years old, begat Eber. Eber, at the age of 34, begat Peleg. Peleg, being 30 years, begat Reu. Reu, being 32 years, begat Serug. Serug, being 30 years, begat Nahor. Nahor, being 29 years, begat Terah. Terah, being years, begat Abram. And Abraham departed from Chaldea when he was 70 years old. Isaac begat Jacob, when 60 years old.
Israel was in Egypt years. There are also theories that Methuselah served as a priest or prophet of some sort, since prophets of God later would sometimes take on, or be given names at birth, that were symbolic, significant, or prophetic.
Methuselah lived after he fathered Lamech years and had other sons and daughters. His long lifespan is what makes him stand out amongst the other patriarchs. Methuselah appears in other religious texts outside of the Bible. He is a figure in Jewish works as well. He takes a more prominent role in some of the Rabbinic texts. These do not deviate greatly from the Genesis account, instead, adding to the narrative.
They will include details such as Methuselah and Noah trying to correct the behavior of the wicked world around them. In Islam, he is counted as one of the pre-Islamic prophets. Many of the prominent figures of the Old Testament are recast as Muslims or Islamic prophets in the Quran. Ibn Ishaq, a Muslim historian, includes him in the genealogy of Mohammad. He also makes appearances in the Apocrypha, a collection of books that have been debated as to whether or not they should have been included in the Biblical canon.
Most theologians agree the correct decision was to leave them out, though there are a few who would argue that some or all of them should be included; the Book of Enoch is generally considered to have some of the strongest claims for canonicity, but some of the content and timelines contradicts books with stronger historicity.
The premise of this apocryphal text is that Enoch was given visions, preserved by his son. Methuselah is a prophet as well. When Enoch ascends to heaven, it says Methuselah and his brothers made an altar and worshipped God. One of the enduring questions about these early days after Creation, but before the flood, is how and why did people live so long?
Firstly, sin had only just entered the world. While there were sins, problems, and repercussions, many theologians point out that it has taken a stronger grip on people through time. While they died eventually, they were closer to Creation, and the way things ought to have been.
There is also speculation that because the world was different before the flood, with higher barometric pressure and greater vegetation, that perhaps the climate was well-suited to longevity.
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