> One item that has been bothering me lately is the great ages achieved by
> the people in the Old Testament. I haven't seen any discussion about
> this here before. Maybe you all settled it before I came along.
>
> What explanations do we have for the apparent longevity of the
> patriarchs?
>
The significance can be seen in Gen. 6:3 in which God shortened the lives
of man because of their sin. The longevity of the patriarchs were allowed
before the flood because of God's mercy as well as man's sinfulness has
not yet reached the stage of judgement by the flood.
Also in Gen. 6 concerning the sons of God and the daughters of man, there
are 3 interpretations given forth traditionally. The sons of God can mean
the angels, the descendants of Seth and the royal aristocrats. Then the
daughters of man will mean the earthlings, the descendants of Cain and the
commoners respectivley. Most people favor the second interpretation
because the angels do not marry and there was no kingdom established by
man as this time. The strongest support of the second interpretation is
the genealogy of Jesus in Luke which traces the lineage of Seth to Adam
being the son of God. Also the contexts of Gen. 4,5,6 suggest that the
sons of Cain and Seth were contrasted in morality and then Gen. 6 suggests
that the sons of God SAW the daughters of man were BEAUTIFUL, the same
words were used in Gen. 3 about Eve SAW the fruits tobe PLEASING to the
eyes, suggesting that the authors were using similar literary genre to
compare the First Fall to Noah's generation which is to incur the wrath
of God.
-------------------------------------
Dr. Pattle Pun
Professor of Biology
Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL 60187
eMail: Pattle.P.Pun@wheaton.edu
Phone: (630)752-5303
FAX: (630)752-5996