Spanky

This thread is too damn amusing to be closed. On a scale of 1-10 I give it a 9! You guys are great!

As far as the OP is concerned I would like to add that if the only source of proof for the 900+ year age of these people is found only in the Old Testament and not anywhere else, I would doubt that it is true. I doubt it ever happened. If you believe it's true then surely you believe in talking snakes, being swept up to the heavens in a chariot, the sun stopping, men being swallowed by wales, etc. All these things slap "reality" in the face (not just science).
To quote Josephus as someone who furthers this line of thinking is circular reasoning at best. This is what he believed, of course he would "perpetuate the myth (as all good apologists do)."
As far as REAL evidence to be found, if it's there I/we would like to see it. But, as I said, it just slaps reality in the face. Our longevity is finally growing thanks to modern medicine. As stated before, people had less of a life span in the past. It all just seems really unlikely and frankly worthless to pursue in a true, reality grounded way.

The Evil One

Roger, I am puzzled.

If I assert that everyone who lived before the year 1900 was a pathological liar incapable of telling the truth about anything in writing, would you thereupon be happy to abandon everything you thnk you know about ancient Rome based on written records?

for instance, how would you respond if I claimed there never was any such entity as "the Roman Empire", because all the people who report such an empire are liars? Would you abandon any claim to knowledge about the past? Or would you, perhaps, cite textual evidence against my claim?

Doing the latter would assume that ancient authors were roughly as honest, on average, as modern authors.

And so I could respond......... statements of this kind have no content, since no-one questions that the ancient liars under discussion were not like us, if only because the point was that they have this inhuman compulsion to lie. People who always lie in writing are not like us. I'm not sure that I can put that more simply. Merely reiterating that modern science knows of no such people today merely indicates unwillingness to read.

Now, if you can see why that would be a ridiculous argument, hopefully you'll understand why your own argument is ridiculous.

The inability of any party in any debate to disprove universal scepticism does not constitute an argument for or against anything.

shirley knott

And Dave, dearie, here's a bit of a conundrum, based soley on historical documents and your assertions.
Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that I buy your flood story and extended human age story without reservation. And that I am firmly committed, as you claim to be, to evaluation of the documentary artifacts, the texts, left from past ages.
Now I see a huge problem.
How do you account for the documentary evidence of the Egyptian pantheon, many and varied, and syncretic, as it was? How do you account for the children and grandchildren of Noah, during Noah's lifetime, creating one of the most vast and elaborate polytheims known to humanity, with no faintest trace of Yahweh, a world-encomassing flood, demonstrable recent experience of the wrath of god, and with no mention of monotheism, Yahweh, or even a rejection of 'the god of our father(s)'?
How is this non-trivial discrepancy to be handled?

no hugs for thugs,
Shirley Knott

deadman_932

To begin, Roger: "Antediluvians" do not exist at all at this point in the discussion. See, that would require evidence of a Biblical-global flood that they could antedate. Got any, Roger?

<smile> This willingness of theists to parrot nonsense has always amused me. How any of this weird but obviously second-hand rhetoric of yours establishes "Antediluvian" anything is beyond me, Roger.

Lucretius

I had an inkling that I had not fully thought this through ,in my defense I did say that I had no "real evidence"
And yes I do accept that Methuselah was a purely mythological character as one possibility alongside it possibly being stories of a real "long lived" individual if only "long lived" in terms of being in his 80's or 90's .

Dave Hawkins

MORE LITERARY EVIDENCE FOR LONG LIVED PRE-FLOOD PATRIARCHS

George Stanley Faber has written a very interesting tome (around 1500 pages across 3 volumes) called The Origin of Pagan Idolatry Ascertained from Historical Testimony and Circumstantial Evidence (or via: amazon.co.uk), published in 1816 in London, reprinted by Kessinger Publishing House. Faber surveys the extant traditions, myths and fables of many nations and makes a strong case that many of them spring from certain original facts of history which actually occurred. Faber covers many interesting items about the Flood, the Tower of Babel, Sir William Jones' view that there were three original languages in the Babel area, and the idea that many of the "gods" in the various traditions were actually men who were later "deified" by later writers, and in many cases were the same people. For example, the Biblical Noah is probably one and the same as Xisuthrus of the Babylonians, Deucalion of the Greeks, Menu-Satyavrata of the Hindus, Manawyd of the Celtic Druids, and Fohi of the Chinese. Faber also has an entire section in Vol. 2 entitled "Respecting the Sacred Books" which is fascinating. All this makes a good read, but let us see what he says about the long lived patriarchs.

Faber mentions the Josephus passage already discussed, then he goes on to mention a work by Father Philip Couplet who mentions the Emperor Hoang-Ti, who, by the chronology of China, must have been contemporary with the patriarch Reu when when the life of man was shortened to about three hundred years, proposed an inquiry, in a medical book of which he was the author, 'Whence it happened, that the lives of their forefathers were so long compared with the lives of the then present generation?'

Faber also references Horace who mentions that the life of man began to be shortened from the days of Iapetus [Rather cryptic citation ... "Horat. Carm. lib. i. od. 3"] He also mentions the doctrine of the Burmas(?) who said that in the course of every mundane revolution the life of the human species becomes shorter and shorter ... The first man, they say, attained an almost inconceivable age; but his children and grandchildren had successively shorter lives as they became less virtuous. [Another cryptic reference, maybe someone more learned than me can decipher this ... "Asiat. Res. vol. vi, p. 181, 182" ... I don't know what "Asiat. Res." means] He records a similar tradition among the Buddhists of Ceylon. (Faber, Vol. 2, p. 51-52)

So I think there is much evidence out there to be had. I just think that many modern academics are not looking for it. Why that is I can only speculate. Perhaps they don't want it to be true.

deadman_932

This implies you've gone beyond your normal routine and actually read this 3-volume work, Dave. Have you? Or are you merely parroting things as roger Pearse was?

Spanky

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Stanley_Faber

This is not evidence. This is imagination.

Dave Hawkins

Some scholars, apparently including Petrie regarding Egypt, believe that Monotheism is the oldest form of theology. See this link http://www.bloomington.in.us/~lgthscac/monotheism.htm

Why do you suppose that it takes very long for a civilization to reject monotheism and adopt an elaborate system of polytheism? How long did it take for the scientific community to reject Creationism and adopt Darwinism? Not very long.

Dave Hawkins

You don't know that until you read his book like I have. You're the one with the imagination. Stop pretending you know things that you don't.

***********************

PS Evil One ... You are right about Josephus' (not) 11 sources. As we discussed earlier, they probably only amount to about 5 independent sources. But that is still significant.