It's not universally accepted that they had extra longevity.? In fact,?I claim that there is no reliable data at all implying they had extra longevity.
1.?The ages given in the Patriarch list have the funny statistical feature that they almost never use any numeral other than a 0, 2, 5, or 7 in the one's place value.? It is extremely unlikely to have happened by chance in so many numbers.? The only one (or two) exception(s) is where?a subsequent editor would have been motivated to change a 0 into a?9 to make the math add up (2+7 = 0 would have been changed into a 9).? The almost certain implication is that the?one's digit was not reporting years, but quarters. I.e.,? 0 = no quarters, 2 = 2.5 tenths (one quarter), 5 = 5 tenths (2 quarters), and 7 = 7.5 tenths?(3 quarters).? This is one strong piece of evidence that the ages of the patriarchs are simply a mis-translation from some archaic number system.?
2.? The second piece of evidence is that the Masoretic MSS, Septuagint MSS, and Samaritian Pentateuch have disagreements on these numbers, and not just random disagreements:??there is clear evidence of editing to make the numbers internally consistent within each manscript family (especially as pertains to ensuring everyone but Noah was dead prior to the flood).??It seems that one of the major problems faced by those editors was to make the 100's digits add up properly.? Because the numbers were mis-translated from some number system, they no longer added up properly in the base-10 system.? The editors who produced the Masoretic and Septuagint families of manuscripts came up with two different solutions to this problem.? The Samaritan represents a hybrid solution to the mis-translations.? Hence, there tend to be a difference of 100 years in most of the ages when comparing the different families of manuscripts.? Note that editors would have no motivation to change these number
s unless there actually was a problem in the translation of the numerals.?
3.? The third piece of evidence, which really ought to give everyone some pause, is that base-10 did not even exist at the time that the Patriarch list would have been recorded.? Therefore, we know for sure that the numbers reported in the bible could not possibly be their original form.? They simply MUST have been translated from something else.
4.? Put that together with the important point that nowhere in the Bible did anybody refer to the Patriarchs as having unusually long ages.? The Bible is such a big book with such a long history that most things get referred to again at some later time.? But nobody either in antiquity or more recently ever confirmed that the Patriarchs?lived unusually long lives.? Most importantly, the author of Genesis himself failed to comment on their lifespans, which is a notable omission.? He seems to be oblivious to anything out of the ordinary about them.? This tells us that maybe when he wrote it down, there wasn't anything out of the ordinary about them.
5.? Finally, we have evidence of exactly the same thing occurring in the Sumerian King List.? It was a compilation of the rules of kings in many cities in Mesopotamia.? Since in the period before Sexagesimal was developed, every city-state used different number-systems, the compiler of the SKL mis-translated the number systems of the various cities.? What we end up with is a list of kings in which every city and era has a different average value and a different standard deviation.? I compiled the data from the SKL and computed the mean and deviation for each city, and you discover exactly what you would expect if there were numeral-system mis-translations:? The mean value is exactly proportional to the standard deviation in each city.? Furthermore, when you plot the biblical Patriarchs onto the same graph, the data point falls exactly on the same curve as all the cities of the SKL.? It's mean is proportional to its own deviation by the exact same proportionality constant that
we find in the SKL.? This is significant because in the SKL the mis-translation occurs over many orders of magnitude.? The Bible is within that same range, so it is not any different than the types of numeral mistranslations that were occurring in the SKL from one city to the next.?
6.? The apparent "tapering" of the ages after the Flood is really a series of three stair-steps indicating three different number systems, again exactly like we see in the SKL.
7.? Finally,?it is not biologically plausible that they could have lived that long.? There are too many things that would break in the body long before 1000 years of age, and there is no biological evidence of radical changes in our genome to support the massive changes that would have been necessary.
Considering these things, it is not likely (or even plausible) that the Patriarchs lived long life spans.? On the other hand, we have very strong evidence that the text is actually an ancient text handed down faithfully by the Hebrews, with the one problem that they forgot the original number system and then made the mistake of trying to translate it and edit it, probably a few hundred years before Christ (to explain the branching of the MSS).? But this mis-translation was IMO a very good thing, because it "locked into" the MSS the evidence of the antiquity of the text.
Phil Metzger
-----Original Message-----
From: Dick Fischer <dickfischer@verizon.net>
To: 'David Clounch' <david.clounch@gmail.com>
Cc: ASA <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 11:17 am
Subject: RE: [asa] Two questions... (bottlenecking)
Hi David, you wrote:
?
It's also possible you meant that Adam and Eve both had mutations that set them apart as the first truly modern humans. But along with this goes the idea that they were special and their mental capabilities were distinct from the pre-existing population.
?
The only thing we know from the biblical narratives in Genesis that was truly special about Adam and Eve of a biological nature was longevity which carried through multiple generations, even Abraham lived to 175.? If Adam was specially created that would be understandable.? If he had natural parents then a genetic mutation would be required somewhere either at that generation or up the line at an earlier point.
?
Dick Fischer, GPA president
Genesis Proclaimed Association
"Finding Harmony in Bible, Science and History"
www.genesisproclaimed.org
?
?
-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of David Clounch
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 5:23 PM
To: David Campbell
Cc: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] Two questions... (bottlenecking)
?
I have a question.
?
> If you go back far enough, you should have a single ancestral pair for
> all modern humans.
?
1. Would that be true of all phyla that require sexual reproduction?
?
Another question:
?
2. Why is a pair of biological human bodies? related to the? origin of
a pair of human minds (souls)?? I mean, don't some people believe that
the human physiology was? a sufficient substrate to support the mind
(and/or soul)? but that the actual infusion of the soul was a separate
event in history?? I mean, could not there have been a large
pre-existent population of? homo sapiens into which God breathed life
(where life here means not bio but zoe)?
?
I'm not saying I subscribe to the idea. But? I vaguely remember
reading about it.? On this list there has been discussion of the idea
that the human mind itself is actually supernatural, not of natural
origin at all.?? The idea that when you look at? a human and it's
ability to recognize design - that you are looking at something that
originates not from nature or physics but from outside the universe -
well,? I'm not saying I subscribe to this idea - in fact I object to
it. But it seems some ASA members believe this and if thats true then
I fail to see why they would not also accept the idea that human
evolution prepared a repository.? A repository into which was at some
point in history deposited an intelligence from outside nature.? And
this intelligence does not originate from the genes.? It's sort of
like like pre-Adamic humans are analogous to a computer with no
operating system. If you download an O/S into them then you have a
computer system (or a pc). Until then you just have what it takes to
support a computer system.?? Humans as a pre-Adamic species could have
been like that.? The idea seems? consistent with thinking of humans as
?being supernatural beings.
?
> I think Adam and Eve as representatives out of an existing human
> population is the easiest way to reconcile Genesis and genetics, but
> it is not absolutely impossible to have a single pair ancestral to all
> humans if you go far enough back in time.
?
Ah, perhaps that answers my question.? If one believes that humans
minds are a supernatural phenomena then one can certainly believe that
Adam and Eve are the pair that "got the download" and the rest of the
existing population did not.
?
But I am not sure this is what you meant. It's also possible you meant
that Adam and Eve both had mutations that set them apart as the first
truly modern humans. But along with this goes the idea that they were
special and their mental capabilities were distinct from the
pre-existing population. This theory would be congruent with a view
that human minds are of natural origin, and not supernatural at all.
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Received on Wed Feb 11 15:44:08 2009
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