Doug Shaver

Unless they're inerrantists, the Christian view is pretty much the same as everybody else's. The extended ages represent some kind of folklore or legend that people in the early days of earth's history lived a lot longer than they did later.

Inerrantists don't usually worry much about it. They accept the long lifespans as factual but don't think it worthwhile to spend a lot of mental energy trying to figure out why or wherefore. If they think about it at all, they typically speculate that the decline in lifespans between the beginning and end of Genesis had something to do with a progressive effect of sin. I think it saw it pointed out once, during my believing days, that there was marked drop in longevity after the flood -- not immediately to what is now normal, but still a drop. Noah himself lived to be 950, according to the story, but a few generations later Abraham's father, Terah, made it only to 205. Abraham died at 175, and if memory serves, everybody after him had to settle for threescore-and-ten or thereabouts.

jeffevnz

I see the ridiculous lifespans as a dead-giveaway that the stories are not true.

WishboneDawn

If the talking serpent wasn't a dead giveaway.

k_smith123

I am surprised that no one has yet suggested that the ages were inflated in order to bring the literal Bible accounts somewhat in line with the history of surrounding nations. Otherwise it might appear that countries such as Egypt existed prior to the creation. I seem to remember that some Old Testament transcripts actually had lower ages for the pre-flood patriarchs than those used for our current translations.