Re: [asa] Re: Ages of the patriarchs

Dick -- but how do you account for those long ages? It simply isn't
possible for a human body to last that long. Most explanations I've seen
for how these can be literal lifespans -- from the YEC vapor canopy to Hugh
Ross' Vela supernova -- seem absolutely ridiculous to me. Do you propose
that it was a series of miracles relating only to particular patriarchs, or
did they have access to some sort of life-extending biotechnology that has
since been lost, ala John Walton's suggestion about residual effects of
eating from the Tree of Life (my avid science fiction fandom notes that
biotechnological longevity treatments have become a *scenes-a-faire *of the
genre)?

In short: don't the length of these lifespans in themselves, apart from any
other explanations, suggest that the numbers must be fictional, symbolic
and/or reflective of some lost numbering system(s)?

On 2/22/07, Dick Fischer <dickfischer@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Hi Phil, you wrote:
>
>
>
> >>the book by Robert M. Best is _Noah's Ark and the Ziusudra Epic_ ,
> (Enlil Press: Ft. Meyers, Fla, 1999), available through Amazon. I've only
> read his chapter 7 "How Old Was Noah?," which goes through the numerics from
> the actual Shuruppak number system compared to the more common Mesopotamian
> number system.<<
>
>
>
> What puzzles me about Best and Carol Ann Hill is that they both peg the
> flood at 2900 BC, which many others agree on as well, Davis Young, for
> example. Then Bob and Carol try to wrestle the patriarch's ages down to
> normal everyday life spans using different methods. But if they do that
> there is no way to cover the 900 years between the flood and Abraham at 2000
> BC which coincides with the destruction of the city of Ur. In short, the
> advertised ages in the Septuagint match pretty closely with the events and
> other characters in the ancient Near East. For example, Gilgamesh was the
> fifth post flood ruler at Uruk dated *circa* 2650 BC<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2650_BC>.
> Do you see how those dates line up nicely?
>
>
>
> Now take the Masoretic text's ages for the patriarchs from the flood to
> Abraham at 292. Oops, now everything is out of whack. If Abraham's date is
> about right Gilgamesh lived before the flood! If the flood date is correct
> Abraham preceded Gilgamesh. This is only one small example why the MT is
> probably the odd one out. The SP puts 942 years between the flood and
> Abraham, and agrees in lockstep with the LXX on the ages of every patriarch
> but drops out Canaan which accounts for the difference.
>
>
>
> So anyone who derives a marvelous numbers matrix based upon the MT needs
> to reflect on that old IBM adage – garbage in, garbage out.
>
>
>
> Dick Fischer
>
> Dick Fischer, Genesis Proclaimed Association
>
> Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
>
> www.genesisproclaimed.org
>
>
>
>
>

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Received on Thu Feb 22 11:15:46 2007