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Summary
- Adam lived 930 years: “And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died” (Genesis 5:5). The Hebrew text, the Greek Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch all agree on that figure, and the Bible never gives Eve’s age or records her death.
- In the Hebrew text Methuselah lived longest, 969 years, and died in the year of the Flood. On the Septuagint’s numbers he outlives the Flood, and the Samaritan Pentateuch gives him 720 years.
- After the Flood, lives fall generation by generation: Shem 600, Abraham 175, Jacob 147, Moses 120.
- The 120 years of Genesis 6:3 have been read both as a limit on a human life and as the time left before the Flood.
- Augustine rejected the idea that the patriarchs’ years were shorter than ours, and reading the ages as months would make Enoch a father at about five.
- Justin Martyr and others said Adam died within a “day” of a thousand years, as Genesis 2:17 warned.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- King James Version: Genesis 2:17; 3:19, 3:22; 4:25; 5:1–32; 6:3; 7:6, 7:11; 9:29; 11:10–32; 25:7; 35:28; 47:28; 50:26; Deuteronomy 34:7; Job 14:5; Psalm 90:4, 90:10; Romans 5:12; 2 Peter 3:8, BibleGateway; the heading of Psalm 90 from the King James Version at eBible.org.
- Brenton Septuagint Translation (1844), Genesis 5, eBible.org.
- Genesis 5:5 in the Samaritan, Masoretic, Septuagint and other texts, tanakh.info; Samaritan Genesis 5:27, intertextual.bible.
- Flavius Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews 1.3.2 and 1.3.9, tr. William Whiston (1737), Project Gutenberg.
- Augustine, The City of God 15.12–14, tr. Marcus Dods (1887), New Advent.
- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 81, tr. Marcus Dods and George Reith, New Advent.
- Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 5.23.2, tr. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, New Advent.
- Rashi on Genesis 6:3, tr. M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann, Sefaria.
- New American Bible, Revised Edition, notes on Genesis 5 and 6:1–4, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Genesis 5 and Genesis 6.
- The Sumerian King List, tr. The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, University of Oxford, ETCSL t.2.1.1.
- Guinness World Records, “Oldest person ever”, guinnessworldrecords.com.
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