Bulletin Q&A Article, published 10-29-23:
In the Bible where it states that individuals lived to be hundreds of years old, is that accurate?
In the 90th Psalm we hear: “Seventy is the sum of our years, or eighty, if we are strong; Most of them are toil and sorrow; they pass quickly, and we are gone.” Apparently, at the time of David, lifespans were not much different than what we experience today. In the Book of Genesis, we hear about how Isaac was born to Abraham and Sarah when he was 100 and she was 90, but this is presented as a miraculous intervention by God. Can you imagine if that happened today? You would be going to parent-teacher conferences when you were 115.
But the earliest characters in the Bible are reported to have incredibly long lives. For example Adam lived to be 930, his son Seth lived to be 912, his son Enosh lived to be 905. Methuselah, who represents the 8th generation of creation, and who was the grandfather of Noah, has the longest reported lifespan. He died at the age of 969.
But then things changed. Fallen man became even more evil. We hear in Chapter 6 of Genesis: “When human beings began to grow numerous on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw how beautiful the daughters of human beings were, and so they took for their wives whomever they pleased.” There are mythical stories about angels or gods coming down and taking human wives. But this passage is understood by many to mean that the descendants of Seth (sons of God) took for their wives descendants of Cain. God goes on to say in the next verse: “My spirit shall not remain in human beings forever, because they are only flesh. Their days shall comprise one hundred and twenty years.” It is interesting to note that Moses lived to be 120 years old.
God punished the new evil, the moral decline in the world, by sending the great flood. After the flood, Noah reportedly lived to the age of 950. But after Noah, reported lifespans start to gradually decline.
So getting back to the original question, after reviewing many commentaries and references, it seems that the general consensus is that these reports of long lives are symbolic. The argument for symbolism is that, in ancient culture, kings also had long lifespans attributed to them as a symbol of their greatness. Some claim, however, that long lives are a possible reality. Anything is possible for God. But it is interesting that, whether we consider them symbols or reality, the reasons why the ancient character had long lives are similar.
A biblical scholar, Rev. George Leo Haydock, published a comprehensive Bible commentary based on the Douay-Rheims Bible in 1859. He gives several reasons why the early Bible characters had long lives. He writes: “God prolonged the lives of the patriarchs to a more advanced age, that the world might be sooner filled. Their constitution was then more excellent, the fruits of the earth more nourishing. But the sole satisfactory reason for their living almost a thousand years, while we can hardly arrive at 70, is, because so it pleased God, in whose hands are all our lots.” The commentary in the Navarre Bible argues for symbolism and states: “We can see that the ages of the people reduce, the further away they get from the earliest time of human life, that is, the further they get from God; there is a process of degeneration at work due to the presence of evil.” This can be a reason why symbolism was used, or it can also be a reason it actually occurred.