Genesis Years Written December 15, 2013   Author's Note:  It's a problem as old as Methuselah:  anyone who quotes the fifth and eleventh chapters of Genesis has some explaining to do.  Did each patriarch really live for many centuries?  The human lifespan is not nearly that long. Here’s one possible explanation, for which I’ve invented — with no evidence whatsoever — some additional “facts” about seasons and feasts and a scroll and an editor called Atad.  The fictional account is told by a Hebrew living in the land of the Pharaohs.   While our people are sojourning here, Atad is assembling a book about our origins.  He calls it our Genesis.  Perhaps it will be of interest if, God willing, the day arrives when we leave Egypt and return to the Promised Land. One of his sources is a small papyrus scroll that he found in the tribal archives.  It chronicles the 20 generations of patriarchs from Adam through Abraham.  Atad is using it to compose the “begat” sections of his book. In the ancient list, each patriarch has an entry that follows a set formula.  For example: Atad wanted to modernize the language, so he shortened “had attained an age of 162 seasons” to “was 162 years old.”  He changed “celebrated 800 feasts” to “lived 800 years.”  He also did the arithmetic, adding 162 years before Enoch’s birth plus 800 years afterwards to get a total lifespan of 962 years.   The result looks like this:   When I saw what Atad had written, I was appalled.  Someday the old parchment may disappear, all knowledge of it may be lost, and Atad’s rewrite may become the official version of our history. I reminded him, “The days of our years are but threescore years and ten.  It is said: Our days may come to seventy years, Or eighty if our strength endures. Yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow. They quickly pass, and we fly away. “However,” I went on, “you claim this patriarch lived almost a thousand years!  Almost fiftyscore!  That’s simply impossible.” “I don’t believe it’s impossible,” he replied.  “It seems only appropriate that the great men of the past lived for a great span of time.  Don’t you agree?  And the sacred texts cannot lie.  There you see the numbers, written in ink.” I studied the old parchment for a few minutes.  Then I announced, “I have three objections.  I disagree with all three time spans.  In Jared’s case, those are 162 years and 800 years and 962 years. “First, the scroll says that at fatherhood, Jared ‘had attained an age of 162 seasons.’  You’ve changed that to say he ‘was 162 years old.’  What makes you think that 162 seasons equals 162 years?” “What could it mean otherwise?” Atad replied.  “How else do we measure a person’s age, but by years?” “Perhaps by weeks.  We speak of a six-week-old baby.  Or perhaps by seasons; you know, winter, spring, summer, fall.  I’ve heard that before Noah’s Flood, a child’s age was indeed counted by seasons.  It was easier to say ‘my son is one season old’ than ‘my son is one quarter of one year old.’  And my mother used to repeat what her mother told her:  ‘After four seasons, a boy will walk.  After six seasons, a boy will talk.  And after ten seasons, a boy will walk and talk and make sense.’” “I never heard that,” he said.  “You’re just making things up.” But I continued.  “Now in the case of Noah himself, the scroll seems to be confused about the facts.  It says Noah was 500 seasons old, or 125 years, when his son Shem was born.  It also says he was 500 seasons old when his son Ham was born, and again the same age when his son Japheth was born.  It does not say the sons were triplets nor born of different mothers.  Something is wrong here. “However, we know that Noah’s Flood changed the world.  The rainbow appeared as a sign there would never be another such deluge, with the promise: As long as the earth lasts,      Seedtime and harvest,      Cold and heat,      Summer and winter,      Day and night — They will never cease. “Those famous words persuaded us that there are not four seasons in a year but only two, seedtime and harvest.  Or summer and winter, if you will.  After the Flood, a boy of 15 years who had lived 60 of the old antediluvian seasons was now considered to have lived only 30 of the new seasons.” “That’s ridiculous,” he scoffed. I wasn’t finished.  “Here’s my second objection.  The ancient scroll says that after his son was born, Jared ‘celebrated 800 feasts,’ and you’ve changed that to say he ‘lived 800 years.’  How can you do that?  Don’t you know about the feasts?  When a boy’s firstborn arrived, the boy became a man, a father, a patriarch.  Thereafter, as the head of his clan, it was his duty to offer the monthly sacrifice celebrating the feast of the new moon.  There are 13 new moons in a year.  A patriarch who had celebrated 800 feasts had been a father for almost 62 years. “Finally, I object to your arithmetic.  Just as we can’t add apples and oranges, you can’t add seasons and feasts.  And you certainly can’t call the result ‘years.’ ” I worked on the numbers for about an hour and came up with these two tables.   FOUR SEASONS PER YEAR (Genesis chapter 5, before the Flood)   Age when son was born: Seasons 130 105 90 70 65 162 65 187 182 500 Years 33 26 23 18 16 41 16 47 46 125 . . . . . . . . . . . . Thereafter: Feasts 800 807 815 840 830 800 300 782 595 450 Years 62 62 63 65 64 62 23 60 46 35 . . . . . . . . . . . . At death: "Years" 930 912 905 910 895 962 365 969 777 950 Years 95 88 86 83 80 103 39 107 92 160   TWO SEASONS PER YEAR (Genesis chapter 11, after the Flood)   Age when son was born: Seasons 100 35 30 34 30 32 30 29 70 100 Years 50 18 15 17 15 16 15 15 35 50 . . . . . . . . . . . . Thereafter: Feasts 500 403 403 430 209 207 200 119 205 75 Years 38 31 31 33 16 16 15 9 16 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . At death: "Years" 600 438 433 464 509 509 230 148 275 175 Years 88 49 46 50 31 32 30 24 51 56   I noted, “If we add up the ages of these 20 patriarchs when their successors were born, by my reckoning this table spans 512 actual years.  But by your reckoning, it’s 1546 seasons, which you claim are ‘years.’  So Adam lived more recently than your book of Genesis suggests — a thousand years more recently! “Enoch reached only the age of 39, but that’s because he didn’t die.  He vanished, and it’s said that God took him directly into heaven. “Some of the patriarchs did die young, three centuries later, when they were dwelling in Ur of the Chaldees.  Conditions must have been bad there, because Peleg, Reu, and Serug perished in their early thirties, and Nahor survived only to the age of 24.  He left a 9-year-old son named Terah.  It was this Terah, once he became a man, who led the family out of Ur.  They moved first to Harran and then to Canaan. “Finally, if we discount Noah because the numbers don't make sense, Methuselah still holds the record as the oldest patriarch.  By my reckoning he died at 107.  That’s an extremely old age, but unlike your ‘969 years’ at least it’s believable.” “All very clever,” Atad admitted.  “But it never has been my aim to make all of Genesis believable.  Have you read the part about the talking snake?” Second Author's Note, 2021:  According to author Gary Greenberg (right), my idea was actually used by early Christians to "correct" implausibly long time periods, not in the history of the Israelites but in the history of the Egyptians. "During the reign of Ptolemy II, an Egyptian priest named Manetho wrote a history of Egypt that included a chronological record of Egyptian dynasties down to the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great.  Manetho's chronology shows a much longer history of civilization than the bible does. "We know this troubled the Christian writers because they try to reconcile Manetho's long history with the biblical chronology in the Septuagint, which, as I explain in Genesis Chronology and Egyptian King-Lists, led them to come up with all sorts of theories to shorten the Manetho chronology.  Among the tactics was to describe the years in the early long periods as the equivalent of months or seasons rather than full solar or lunar years."