The Ancient Alien Question (11 page)

Seth: 912 years; begetting a son at the age of 105.

Enos: 905 years; begetting a son at the age of 90.

Cainan: 910 years; begetting a son at the age of 75.

Mahalaleel: 895 years; begetting a son at the age of 65.

Jared: 962 years; begetting a son at the age of 162.

Enoch: 365 years before walking with god; begetting a son at the age of 65.

Methuselah: 969 years; begetting a son at the age of 187.

Lamech: 777 years; begetting a son at the age of 182.

Noach: 950 years; begetting a son at the age of 500.

Faced with these superhuman ages, the faithful are often encouraged to accept the veracity of these life spans that far exceed modern man’s life expectancy as well as anything that the archaeological record have uncovered. For Martin Luther, these patriarchs had a better diet and sounder bodies, and experienced a less developed impact of sin on the physical creation, hence allowing them to live longer. Others have proposed that there was a different climate prevalent on Earth that would have allowed for these extended life spans. For those who turn to the Bible for every answer, on this point, it does not provide an explanation as to why these patriarchs lived so long. As to a “less developed impact of sin,” the Fall happened during Adam’s lifetime, so the fact that his descendents still lived long does not seem to have a logical explanation. The Bible furthermore does not attribute anything special to these people—except a long life, and living before the Deluge.

Others, in the quest to understand and make the biblical account acceptable, have tried to reduce these hard-to-imagine life-spans to more mundane possibilities. One of these interpretations is a lunar solution. This would mean that to obtain the “real age,” as we calculate someone’s life-span today—by solar years—their ages need to be divided by 12. This would make Methuselah just shy of 81 years old when he died. Suddenly, the impossible seems not only possible, but likely.

This therefore offers an appealing solution to the problem. However, as soon as one mystery seems solved, a new problem arises: the age at which these people fathered children. The eldest, Methuselah, waited until he was 187 years old to have a child, which in solar years would be 16 years. No real problem there. But the youngest dad, Mahalaleel, would have been just shy of 5 years old when he became a father—rather young, and apparently not an exception, for his father and grandfather had
started at roughly the same time! And that makes the “most logical solution” hard to accept.

When we take the Bible out of its isolation, various parallels once again become apparent. In ancient Egypt and Sumeria, there are known lists of kings. Several of these begin with a series of kings who ruled before a flood or, in the case of Egypt, before the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. Some of these deities lived even longer than Methuselah, to several thousands of years. In Sumerian accounts we read that the kingship descended from heaven to Eridu. In Eridu, Alulim became king and he ruled for a staggering 28,800 years. It seems that if Alulim had heard that Adam had died at the age of 930, he would have said he died in his infancy.

Here is the Sumerian list:

Alulim of Eridu(g): 8 sars (28,800 years).

Alalgar of Eridug: 10 sars (36,000 years).