Why do Christians believe people lived for 100's of years in past?

Question

Its impossible to live the length of time that the bible says people lived between Adam and Eve and Noah. They were still humans. I've heard some religionists say they lived longer then because they didn't have disease back then but the bible never says that and no evidence that was true. Anyway, even without disease the joints wear out quickly after about a 100. No way the human body could last 500+ years. So isn't this more proof the bible is not literal? History shows that average human lifespans rarely exceeded 40-50 years before modern medicine and sanitary conditions. Life was hard back then. Frequent wars too. Seems totally impossible.

Answer 1

The first humans had better bodies. Generations of sin lead to bodies which were less and less resistant to the aging process. Another factor could be the earth was spinning faster 6,000 or so years ago making the days and nights pass more quickly then the current 24 +hours we currently experience. There was no man made pollution either which shorten lives. 8:)

Answer 2

If you believe that the bible is the word of God, you must believe it. I'll even take it a step further. If only one word in the bible is wrong, that would make God a liar. By the way, God can't lie.
Having said that, the world was a very different place back then. I'll remind you that the time where people lived hundreds of years was before the flood. We can find plenty of evidences for that.
The theory goes that the atmosphere was much more dense than it currently is.
Dr Carl Baugh has created a hyperbaric biosphere chamber to test Biblical claims regarding pre-flood atmosphere and magnetic conditions based on Genesis.
Look it up. Lots of interesting info there. The link I posted makes your question sound very possible.

Answer 3

Great Question!

You have to remember that times were also different back then. They didn't have the Global warming issues, the toxic problems, radiation issues . . . so on and so on.

We brought a lot of the problems that the race is enduring right now on to ourselves.

Greed, innovation, production . . . the need to always succeed in being bigger and better than the next person, country . . .

But, people in the Biblical days did out live modern man by hundreds of years. Their bodies were designed at that time to sustain and last longer than they are now.

Genesis 6:3 - Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not put up with humans for such a long time, for they are only mortal flesh. In the future, they will live no more than 120 years."

See, God made it so that Man wouldn't live any longer than 120 years, if the man-made obstacles don't get us first!

God Bless You

Answer 4

Because we take the Holy Bible at its "face value". Its very clear that from the time Adam and Eve was driven from the garden of Eden until the time of the flood judgement of Noah (The first 2,500 years of man's recorded history, people during those time lives almost a thousand years) Until God pronounced upon Noah that He will shorten man's life to 120 years. Of course meat was ordered by God to be eaten after the flood which is one major cause of man's shorten life. Not like the first 2,500 years where man traditionally follow what Adam and Eve eat which are only purely fruits as originally ordered in the garden of Eden.

Answer 5

Steve,

The length of man's life began to decrease dramatically after the flood.

The bible teaches that Adam lived to be 930 years old. Noah was 600 years old when the flood came. Abraham lived to be 175 years old. ( A thousand years after the flood) Moses lived to be only 120 years old. (400 years after Abraham).

By the time the Psalms were written - about 1000 years after Abraham) - the span of life would be between 70 and 80 years.

Seems impossible? not at all

god bless

Answer 6

How long do you think you could live IF you didn't wear out? It's not about biology - it's about believing. It's about faith. Faith is ...... "certain of what we do not see." (Hebrews 11:1)
I fought God on this one for years!
When I came to realize the answer to - "why is there dirt?" it changed my life. Working in biology I strove to find all these answers to "life." Take a look at the statistics of scientists who are believers in God. I heard it was about 75% and the numbers are climbing everyday. In any profession that is searching for answers - most of the time the answer comes back around to God. Deny it and you will not find the truth.
Why did people live 500+ years back then? Because God told me they did.
I will stand on faith that God is not a liar. I will stand in faith that God did EVERYTHING He says in the Bible. You cannot pick and choose your way through scripture. When I came to believe and I put my trust in God, I started seeing the miracles that are from His hand almost everyday.
As an unbeliever, you will not understand and you will not see. You are blind to the truth of this life. I submit that without faith you will not and cannot every understand this.
Keep up the arguments. You're thinking about it. I'm proud of you.

Answer 7

well your talking about what was in the bible. Remember at that time, there was no calender that we have to day, showing, showing months, days and year. what we call a month today, could of been let say 1/5 of a year so five months could of been a year, so if a person lived to be 100 in our time he was in 20's , or something like that. But your right no one lived that long.

Answer 8

different 'sects' in christian believe in a pretribulation rapture,..this is wrong only b/c the interpretation is off, like evolution,..

science refuses to take into account or maybe can not take into account the atmospheric difference between then and now, magnetic pulls, oxygen content, the halo of water around the earth b/4 the flood, petrified trees standing straight up through the geological column, the grand canyon,..the bible is accurate and that just digs in your secular humanistic aspirations of grandpa microbialfishamphibianreptilianmammalian squishnotinamillionyears,..the bible is explicit in telling us that after the flood people live for such and so many years,..there will be dragons in our mansion, hopefully,..

i e a e,..
avatar of the unification,..

Answer 9

Hello,

This Christian does not.

I think the way years were measured was different than today.

"The Bible contains many accounts of long-lived humans, the oldest being Methuselah living to be 969 years old (Genesis 5:27). Today some maintain that the unusually high longevity of Biblical patriarchs are the result of an error in translation: lunar cycles were mistaken for the solar ones, and that the actual ages being described would have been 12.4 times less (a lunar cycle being 29.5 days). This makes Methuselah's age only 78.

A more commonly accepted explanation[attribution needed] is that such stories are longevity myths; age exaggeration tends to be greater in "mythical" periods in many cultures; the early emperors of Japan or China often ruled for more than a century, according to tradition. With the advent of modern accountable record-keeping, age claims fell to realistic levels. Even later in the Bible King David died at 70 years; other kings in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.

Futhermore:


W.J. MacLennan and W. I. Sellers investigated aging through the ages and published their findings in the "Proceedings of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh" in 1999. Their report started with Neanderthals.

The Neanderthals were the first hominids that intentionally buried their dead. Archeologists found four adults buried in the Shanidar Cave in the Middle East. They had flowers placed over them (as detected by pollen analysis) and lived until the ages of 24, 36, 40, and 41.

The Bronze Age (2,000 to 700 B.C.) folk of Northern Europe placed their dead in pits, sometimes with a large mound marking the spot. These people arranged corpses, curled lying on a side, men on their left and women on their right, both facing south. Archeologists discovered seven such skeletons in a storage pit in Slillfried/March, lower Austria. These Bronze Age peoples died at the approximate ages of 3, 6, 8, 9, 30, 40, and 45 years.

The Scots from the Iron Age (700 to 0 B.C.) buried their dead in cists or stone chests. Recently scientists excavated nine skeletons in Scotland from the Iron Age (700 to 0 B.C.). These people died at ages of about 10, 19, 30, 35, 40, and 45. Three, however, lived past 45.

Anglo-Saxons back in the Early Middle Ages (400 to 1000 A.D.) lived short lives and were buried in cemeteries, much like Englishmen today. Field workers unearthed 65 burials (400 to 1000 A.D.) from Anglo-Saxon cemeteries in England and found none who lived past 45.

Kings did better. The mean life expectancy of kings of Scotland and England, reigning from 1000 A.D. to 1600 A.D. were 51 and 48 years, respectively. Their monks did not fare as well. In the Carmelite Abbey, only five percent survived past 45.

The royal court, however, managed about as well as their kings, according to the UK & Ireland Genealogical Information Service. The 23 men reported on lived an average of 49 years; only one lived into his 70s (71). All of these men, by the way, lived past adolescence so infant mortality does not bring the average down.

Another royal court (20 men), born later (from 1600 to 1899 A.D.) lived an average of 62 years. These men also lived past adolescence (earliest death at 36). Five men lived into their 70s but none into their 80s although John Pitt, the Earl of Chatham, lived to 79.




Mike k

Answer 10

I think they try to get around that one by saying that time had different measurements in the Bible, and other things like "1 minute could be 100 years- In the bible"
yeah.