Why did people in the bible live so long?

Errmm...they DIDN'T live that long. Simple answer really. It's just an attempt in the bible to give it's heroes 'supernatural' traits, thereby legitimising the rest of the content in a religious context.

J.

Originally posted by GildedHammer
The reason they lived so long is due to the earth being more stable than it currently is. The earth is losing it's magnetic field in which all living organizisms use for life itself. When astronauts go to space the space engineers are trying to find away to prevent celluar break down. NASA has been working on this for the purpose of space travel. There are cases where living life forms have been placed in a compression chamber with coiled wire inside in tune to mimic the magentic field. The scientist increased the magentic field by more than what we currently live off of and for example fruit flys were used for the experiment since they have a life span of a week in a natural setting lived in this chamber for 60 days and grew twice as large in size. Think how much more brain power you'd have if you increase the engery level of the magnetic field and increase the atmospheric pressure for oxygen. The body could heal itself more rapidly. This also helps explain a few things for me like how dinosaurs grew so big with such little brains and how giants like the ones from the Incas grew to be 9 feet tall.

Cheers,
Gilded Hammer

Thats a pretty interesting theory. Do you have any links on it at all? Id love to find out more.

-fm

I don't remember if it was a church or a video in the church, but it was explained to me once.

In the past, before the flood, the world was much different. There was a thick layer of water that surrounded out planet. This blocked more of the radiation from the sun. After the flood, there was less to block it, and this is why you see a rapid drop off of ages after that point. Coincidentally, they also talked about dinosaurs being real, and the reason carbon dating is off is similar. The atmosphere was much different in the past. They believed in 'e'volution, not 'E'volution. There was a lot of less restrictive ideas from them and the speakers they listened to.

It has been so long since I been there and I can't remember the details.

Once again, church and science don't have to be completely separate.

You could also argue, another reason was our continuing to sin is bad for us.

Another is, we are slowly devolving from out perfect creation over generations of muddying the blood ... through incest ... which created some bad things in the OT.

Oh well, what can you do

Originally posted by FreeThinkerIdealist

Another is, we are slowly devolving from out perfect creation over generations of muddying the blood ... through incest ... which created some bad things in the OT.

Oh well, what can you do

I thought they were all incest in the old time.
Caen + Eve, Habel + Eve, Set + Eve.
And then they have sons and daughter who slept with each other to make a tribe.

They even did some double action incest.

Lot's 2 daughters once slept with their father one after another, take turn.

what would be very weird is if the bible and all that were handed down through the galaxy like stargate aliens force the bible and religion down our mouths to make us belive

I learned in school (???) can't remember, at least for those who lived up to 400 years, that they lived so long because they did not count years, but seasons.

Originally posted by Cibai

I thought they were all incest in the old time.
Caen + Eve, Habel + Eve, Set + Eve.
And then they have sons and daughter who slept with each other to make a tribe.

They even did some double action incest.

Lot's 2 daughters once slept with their father one after another, take turn.

It never said there weren't other people created. What is left out doesn't mean isn't there.

Lot was in Sodom ... what happened to Sodom? It was destroyed. Now, think of a term used in today's society ... is it a good thing? It deals with sexual abuse/immorality.

Thank you for making a point for our side! Your rock!

I had to skip most the posts but here lies the truth:

Time has sped up since Biblical times and before that, simple. Earth was a "melting pot" of creation of living creatures. The Earth is only 10,000 years old in our modern time measurements. Before recorded times, time moved much slower for the enviroment to prepare for the creation of man. The Earth got populated by humans, time then started to speed up and mess up any science measurement, especially carbon-dating. By the way, there was no moon or rain ever mentioned in any recorded history until after "Noah's Flood". Think about it, but that's another topic. Xenongod

Originally posted by xenongod
I had to skip most the posts but here lies the truth:

Time has sped up since Biblical times and before that, simple. Earth was a "melting pot" of creation of living creatures. The Earth is only 10,000 years old in our modern time measurements. Before recorded times, time moved much slower for the enviroment to prepare for the creation of man. The Earth got populated by humans, time then started to speed up and mess up any science measurement, especially carbon-dating. By the way, there was no moon or rain ever mentioned in any recorded history until after "Noah's Flood". Think about it, but that's another topic. Xenongod

Oh great thought.
So before this recorded time, actually the earth was moving slower? say 500 hours per revolution?
And there was no moon, and suddenly God installed a moon on top of earth?
And great, no rain whatsoever before the Noah, it must be hard time for Cain to do soil work. No water also? What did they drink, oh I know, they have rivers where the water flows never ending from nowhere?

I didn't go to university, you must graduated from university, right? Did you go to church to get your degree?

Not recorded does NOT mean it never existed!
Record is a human work. And nobody can record everything. So did bible, it didn't record many things, it is not a complete book, and it is a human work.

Originally posted by xenongod
I had to skip most the posts but here lies the truth:

Time has sped up since Biblical times and before that, simple. Earth was a "melting pot" of creation of living creatures. The Earth is only 10,000 years old in our modern time measurements. Before recorded times, time moved much slower for the enviroment to prepare for the creation of man. The Earth got populated by humans, time then started to speed up and mess up any science measurement, especially carbon-dating. By the way, there was no moon or rain ever mentioned in any recorded history until after "Noah's Flood". Think about it, but that's another topic. Xenongod

Buddy, you better do lots of thinking before saying something is the truth...which you obviously have not. Tell me, how does "time speed up" when time is simply a record of events? Time doesn't have a speed.

The Bible does mention the moon at the point of creation in fact; read Genesis 1:16:

And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day...

reply to post by xenongod


Hi!
Firstly can I say that Im not an Astro-Physicist or scholar of ancient Hebrew.but here goes.A friend told me that the explaination for the longevity in the Old Testament came about by copyist error.The main problem was that ALEPH (A) was mistaken for ALUPH (10).
Apparently,even a small dot of ink accidentally dropped near/over/under a written word within a Hebrew manuscript can radically alter the original meaning.Thus the incredible age these people were supposed to live to were 10x what had been originally recorded.Divide these ages by 10 and you get a much more realistic period of life.

I also heard that no life on earth (human or otherwise) could have existed more than 10,000 years ago.apparently this is due to the lack of evidence for a vital component of the atmosphere that supports life,called Helium 9.This can be traced back 10,000 years in rock strata.After that it cannot be found.

Very simple. They believe in god and prayed everyday. God rewards those who are good to him.

I was hoping for a more scientific reply.

If everyone were to have longer life spans, would the population rapidly increase fast or decrease?

Okay, I have read about a third of this thread, so if I'm repeating something, please excuse me.

Solar rays are not responsible for aging, they are responsible for skin cancer.

Aging in creatures that producing energy via aerobic respiration is caused by oxygen damage to cells. Simple as that. Each one of your cells, at all times, has a tiny amount of oxygen in it.

Oxygen is highly corrosive. Everyone knows that it causes iron to rust. Oxygen is used to etch glass.

Constant exposure to oxygen damages the cells in your body (and I'm sure someone more clever than me can dig up the relevant articles on some science website), which eventually causes your death, assuming some outside factor isn't responsible first.

On average, the French have longer lifespans than anyone else in Europe. They also consume the most red wine. Red wine is high in anti-oxidants.

Just based on what I know about magnetism from A level physics, I would have to say the earth's magnetic field is an unlikely candidate for anything to do with human longevity.

My funny reply (opinions may vary here) is because it was written before they invented math!

Pausing for laughter to die down...

My real opinion is that alot of the timelines in the old testament point to a problem in calendar reconciliation. There is a huge debate about the world created in 7 days bit as well. I always just assumed that those are meaningless numbers. I read it as lived a long time or the world was created 'really fast'. I think it is also telling that the closer in time to the 'present' the shorter life spans people had. I wonder if it isn't just some allegorical prop up meant to make Moses et al seem even more holy. On the other hand Jesus only lived to 33 and I think Mary had a regular lifespan as well.

Something I noticed on the age chart is that the first 9 generations of biblical people lived nearly into their thousands. Lamech died the youngest at 800 years.

Now from what fundamental jewish and christian scholars say, the earth is only some 5000 years old. I don't know how they got this number, but that's the one I've seen being touted.

However, if we add together the ages of the pre-flood patirachs, the number comes to around 8200! Even giving some 2000 years total of wiggle room for a father surviving into his son's generation, that's still 6000 years. And of course, we're not adding to that number the years of the post-flood generations, of which we can conservatively say is at least 3000 years up to present day.

So thus, the ages of the biblical patriarchs prove that the world is not 5000 years old in the least bit.

i am not to sure sure on why they lived for those amounts of time but the decrease might have something to do with aliens as a couple of threads in the UFO section does state but not to sure which ones to look at

Originally posted by pineappleupsidedown
I think because God just started, and since he lives forever, he didnt think having them live that long was too long. However, after having seen them and how they act, he decided that men were living too long, and that his "years should be 120"

And to my knowledge, no man has ever lived more than that since (however, there is a woman recorded in Guinness to have lived 122 years)

you are dumb...

whatever it was, it happened around the same time as the flood.

that is, the thing which causes men to live shorter than they did before the flood.

each man after Noah, including his sons and their sons, had dramatically shorter lifespans, each generation.

I've heard some say that the atmosphere was the culprit; that men lived longer because they were getting less amounts of harmful rays which cause cancer and "aging" & so forth.