gillianseed

Hey everyone,

It's been a while since I've posted on the board. I have a question. I'm starting to read the Bible again (I'm an atheist -- I've been an atheist for 10 years now) and I'm trying to gain as much of an understanding about its construction as humanly possible.

For the most part, I've viewed the construction of scripture as this: Folklore that's intended to be folklore initially; fables that are intended to be fables initially. It makes sense to me the most if I put things in this context when it comes to the construction of scripture. It doesn't seem rational to me that someone would legitimately lie. I can't imagine someone sitting down and legitimately writing out the Flood story as a lie, intending to mess up people's train of thought thousands of years down the road (ex., Christians believing in the Flood and the Genesis account for creation).

This method of viewing the construction of scripture seems to work for mostly everything, but what about the parts in Genesis where it's literally laying out the exact amount of YEARS that people lived? It's easy for me to imagine grandpa telling children the 'story of the Flood' over a campfire dinner and that ending up as literal 'truth' in a Bible, but what about the notion of people actually recording the lengths of lives in Genesis chapter 5? My interpretation of everything so far has been that people honestly believed in the fables because, after enough time, fables get translated into truth... but whenever I try to imagine someone writing down Genesis chapter 5 for the first time, I get a headache.

How could they legitimately write that chapter and intend it to be truth? It's not just one life with a ridiculous length of years... it's MANY lives with ridiculous numbers of years. ... all at exact ages, as though someone was there, pronouncing them dead... surrounded by people at a funeral who KNEW that the person lived to that specific length in years. That's literally how it's written. My theory for scripture construction kind of breaks down here to a certain extent. Why would a grandpa figure over a campfire tell the children the lengths in years and how could someone, with 'moral integrity' (surely, they believed in 'morality' then) sit down and record those lengths of lives like they were TRUE? It blows my mind when I try to tackle this issue.

So, I'm coming to the forum. What, in your opinion, is the explanation for this part of Genesis? Is it just 'campfire stories' that eventually found their way to being recorded as 'truth'? Is that the best answer we have?

Another example is the entire myth of Jesus and his miracles. My explanation for that is that it was, again, intended to be a story with moral value, told as a story initially...and then, after enough people died (specifically, the people that said it was a fable to begin with), it was interpreted as truth. This is all fine and dandy... and it's what I basically accept for the Jesus phenomenon, but when it comes to writers putting out stuff as detailed as the lengths of lives, again, I just want to cry... because either these people were really stupid (stupid enough to sincerely believe what was told to them from some lost book of fables from their grandpa) or they were specifically lying (which I, again, find hard to believe).

Thoughts, please.

outhouse

this was influeneced by previous mythology that migrated with the migrants to Israel

Israelites could not make their mythical figures any less, then previous cultures

Sheshbazzar

The folktales had been passed down through generations of the Semitic peoples, it was only after the tribes that comprised 'Israel' developed political cohesiveness that there came a need to finally write down their national 'history' in the form of the 'Torah' which the writers attributed to Moses of their folklore (if these writers did not create 'Moses' out of whole cloth)

The written Torah itself is a political /religious propaganda construct far newer than these old legends, (8th-5th century BCE)
The numbers of years of the Patriarch's lives were supplied by these latter writers to conform to an impressive but entirely imaginary national historical 'time-line'.

The 'New Testament' beliefs are very much founded upon these old conceptions of divisions into precise numbers of generations, The messiah had to appear at a particular point in this artificial system of history.




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PhilosopherJay

These stories were probably invented and first written down in the 7th or 6th Century B.C.E.

There was very little record keeping and no scientific collection of data at this time. People were 98% illiterate and could not have known actual life expectancies. If an old man whom you did not know said he was 100 or 200 or that his father had lived till 500, there was no way of checking to see if he was lying or fantasizing. A few of the more observant people might have realized that only a handful of people made it to 70 years old, perhaps 5%. Probably nobody in antiquity made it to 100. This study could only identify 3 or 4 people who probably lived to be 100 between the years 1580 and 1800 out of 22-25 million people in all of England. In Judea/Israel around this time, we have to consider that the total number of living people had probably been under one million over the previous five hundred years and conditions of life much harsher. Probably no more than one out of thousand reached 90. Out of the less than one thousand people who reached 90, probably no one reached 100.

However, there is a big difference between how long people actually lived and how long they believed people to live. What people believed was based on what they were told and what they observed. Based on observation of their own village or small city (typical populations - 5,000 -10,000). There were no way of knowing if the people of the next village or city really lived to 100 or 200 or 300 years. If people were told so, and they were, almost all believed it.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

shadowfox

Neither stupid nor lying, just telling stories. Consider a millenia from now what might become of the fiction tale of Paul Bunyan and the Blue Ox. He might become as much a mythic hero as Hercules, or Moses, or Sampson. And that's even with all our recorded history which they didn't have all those couple of millenia or so back.

aeebee50

I always wondered what happened with the length people's lives. They started out with long lives of 120 years, but now people can not even get close. Moses must of messed up living for people.

Horatio Parker

Thomas Thompson says that the final version of Genesis was put together for the dedication of the temple in 164 BCE. The time from creation to 164 BCE was supposed to be a Great Year (4868 years or something), and the life spans fill that in.

I haven't checked that, so YMMV.

Adam

These stories were written down hundreds, thousands of years after they occurred. In my agnostic youth it seemed to me that the great ages of the first men must have been counted in months. It's not obvious in the Masoretic text, but the Septuagint has the age of of the child one hundred years later than in the Masoretic. Gen. 5:6 would read that Seth had Enosh when he was 205, not 105, thus if in months he would have been about 16 at the birth of Enosh. Thus even Methuselah did not live much beyond 70. Noah probably lived more than 500 months, however--by his time the lunar calendar was being replaced by solar.

By the time of Moses the ages of death are much reduced, but would work better (in such a tropical climate as Egypt) where each year count as two, probably keeping score at each solstice (or equinox). The prime life changes for Moses thus occurred at age 20 (a young man killing someone), 40 (returning to Egypt), and 60 (when he died still in his full strength).

semiopen

Thompson's book is:

The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel (or via: amazon.co.uk)

The significance of 4868 years would be a great mystery but actually Thompson says it is 4000:

There is no question that the various lifespans of the patriarchs were adjusted here and there. At some point, they had to come out as 1000 years until Noah, 2000 until Abraham which in both cases also included 10 generations.

My Rabbi was asked whether the actual number of years were significant and he nodded sagely.

In my opinion, to paraphrase Butch talking to Esmeralda in Pulp Fiction -

The ages of the Patriarchs don't mean shit either.

Yellum Notnef

The people back in Genesis times lived so long because they ate dinosaur eggs.