Methuselah

This article is about the Biblical character. See Methuselah (disambiguation) for other uses.

Methuselah or Metushélach (Hebrew: מְתוּשֶׁלַח / מְתוּשָׁלַח, Modern Mətušélaḥ / Mətušálaḥ Tiberian Məṯûšélaḥ / Məṯûšālaḥ, "Man of the dart", or alternatively "when he dies, it shall be sent") is the oldest person whose age is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. He allegedly reached the age of 969 years. According to the Book of Genesis 5:27: "And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died" (American Standard Version). The name Methuselah has become a general synonym for any living creature of great age.

Biblical mentions

Methuselah is mentioned in Genesis as the son of Enoch and the father of Lamech (father of Noah), whom he fathered at the age of 187. A close reading of the dates in the Old Testament reveals that Methuselah is said to have died in the year of the Great Flood, but the Bible does not indicate if the cause of his death was by drowning. Some have interpreted his name as a prophecy: when he dies, the Flood will come. In that case, the long life has an allegorical dimension, showing that God withheld judgment on humankind for a very long time.

Methuselah is also mentioned in the Book of Enoch as being the son of Enoch and as having brothers. The writer tells Methuselah of the coming Deluge and of a future Messianic kingdom.

Lifespan

Modern science puts the natural limit on current human longevity well below 150 years. This being the case, Methuselah's lifespan has been a source of much speculation. Some resolve the issue by suggesting that Methuselah's long lifespan is not meant to be taken literally, while others attribute it to translation errors inflating a shorter lifespan. Biblical literalists, on the other hand, have proposed several reasons that might explain a drastic decrease in the human lifespan after the Noachian deluge.

One solution involving translation error is proposed by Robert Best, who suggests that inaccurate conversion between various ancient Sumerian numerical systems produced the ages of Methuselah, Noah, and kin out of Sumerian king lists; Best calculates that Methuselah's actual age would have been 85, and that he would have had his first son at age 17 (as opposed to after age 100). Another theory suggests lunar cycles were mistaken for the solar ones; if this is the case, each lifespan from Genesis would be shortened by a factor of 12.37; this calculation also gives ages for Methuselah and his contemporaries that resemble those of modern humans. Objections to such life-shortening calculations, however, may be raised on the grounds that, if reductions by these factors are carried out, several biblical fathers would have had children while they themselves were approximately five years old.

Creationists, meanwhile, accept the ages recorded in the Bible, and have speculated on reasons for the dramatic decrease in lifespans following the Great Flood of Noah's time. One reason claimed is that conditions before the flood caused much less ultraviolet light from the sun to impact the earth, and that this allowed for longer life spans. The Institute for Creation Research has posited that a vapor canopy surrounded the earth before the Flood, and that it was the source of the floodwaters. Such a canopy would also have protected humankind from the aging effects of the sun's ultraviolet rays. After the dissipation of the canopy during the Flood, according to this theory, lifespans dropped rapidly to what they are today. Mainstream scientists have rejected the "vapor canopy" theory, asserting that it does not stand up to scientific analysis.

Young Earth creationist Carl Wieland alternatively speculates that the decline in lifespan is because of the drastic reduction in population due to the Flood, causing a genetic bottleneck in which the genes that coded for longevity were lost.

For some Bible believers, the cause of the decrease in human longevity is that God sets a specific lifespan for human beings, as in Genesis 6:3: "Then the Lord said, 'My Spirit will not contend with [or "remain in"] man forever, for he is mortal [or "corrupt" (NIV)] ; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.'"

See also

• Longevity
• Longevity myths
• Maximum life span
• Methuselah Mouse Prize
• Ageing
• 2000 Year Old Man, a recurring Methuselah comedy routine by Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks.

External links

• The Methuselah Mouse Prize: is the premiere effort of The Methuselah Foundation; a scientific competition designed to draw attention to the ability of new technologies to slow and even reverse the damage of the aging process, preserving health and wisdom.
• Complete Bible Genealogy Family tree of Methuselah
• Immortality International