Really Old People in Old Testement

[EWright]

The Bible refers to people living to be many hundreds of years old, in the Old Testement. How and why did they live so long? Could there be some error in translation, so that it was meant to be months and not years? I mean the length of time they lived in months instead of years would make sense.

[kazbadan]

Thats an interesting question that i thought about at some time ago.

i am not christian or religious (maybe a little buddhist) but i like some of the things write in the bible (i like it in a historical/social view).

Anyway, it possible that the "year" they refer its a different kind of year. Maybe a year for them (the ones that writed the "Pentacle") its 3 months or something like.

I would like to hear an expert speaking about that problem of the old ages.

[Mr. Potato Head]

Could we live longer if the upper atmosphere was different and protected us better from weird discovered and undiscovered space life degenerators (ie. radiation)?

[HydrogenBond]

Science is creating longer life expectancy, eventually it might approach the predictions of the bible; Adam and Noah living 1000 years.

My theory for aging is connected to nervous tissue. Nervous tissue is everywhere in the body, near almost all the cells. They are not there just to fill in space, but rather play a role in cellular differnetiation. If the nervous input around a cell changes, the local cell will changevand stop working properly. With all the nerves wired into the brain, it follows that if the brain was organized just right so it could maintain all the nerves, one could live for hundreds of years.

[lindagarrette]

Originally Posted by EWright

The Bible refers to people living to be many hundreds of years old, in the Old Testement. How and why did they live so long? Could there be some error in translation, so that it was meant to be months and not years? I mean the length of time they lived in months instead of years would make sense.

It doesn't matter so much how long people lived. Geneologically speaking. The important measurement is the childbearing period for women. If they could have babies every year or so for hundreds of years, the population would be explosive. Otherwise, there would just be a lot of really old people hanging around.

[EWright]

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

Science is creating longer life expectancy, eventually it might approach the predictions of the bible; Adam and Noah living 1000 years.

My theory for aging is connected to nervous tissue. Nervous tissue is everywhere in the body, near almost all the cells. They are not there just to fill in space, but rather play a role in cellular differnetiation. If the nervous input around a cell changes, the local cell will changevand stop working properly. With all the nerves wired into the brain, it follows that if the brain was organized just right so it could maintain all the nerves, one could live for hundreds of years.

I don't believe Adam and Noah lived to be 1000 years. I believe the oldest person lived to be just short of 1000 years. (Methusalah???) It also doesn't make sense to me that they'd live longer and something degraded how long they live. It seems that if anything, they'd live a shorter life, because they didn't have the means to deal with illnesses like we do now. But then, maybe God hadn't put these illnesses in place as of yet, becasue he needed people to live longer at the time. Or perhaps the various illnesses hadn't evolved yet???

[HydrogenBond]

Perhaps the bible should not to be taken literally. The thousand years of Adam may mean the spirit of the times, like the bronze age or the iron age. Too many humans engaging in unhealthy, unsanitary, and unnatural behavior probably accounts for much of disease. The old timers of the bible had a big world with few people.