Saturday, January 29, 2022

Craig Olson on the Ages of the Patriarchs

  

Problems Inside the Bible: Long Lifespans

 

First, the statement that “Abraham breathed his last and died at a good old age, an old man and full of years” (Gen 25:8, NIV) is clearly false if the ages of his ancestors are literal numerical values. If the pre-Abrahamic ages are assumed to be a gapless chronology, then all of Abraham’s post-flood ancestors were his contemporaries and four of them—Shem, Arphaxad, Shelah, and Eber—were still alive when Abraham entered Canaan, with Eber and Shem outliving him (Gen 11:10-32). Yet the text treats these men as respected ancestors, not contemporaries. There is no hint that these men were living at the same time as Abraham, and the narrative would not make sense if they were. Why would God choose Abraham to be the father of the Hebrews if their namesake—Eber—were still alive? Abraham is the first man in Scripture who is called an old man and is said to have lived a full life, but, how can that be when he lived a much shorter life than his ancestors?

 

The concordist solution for this dilemma is to posit that the genealogies are “open” rather than “closed.” But this does not solve the problem. Abraham’s paltry lifespan of 175 cannot be described as “a good old age . . . full of years.” It pales in comparison with Shem (600), Eber (464), Methuselah (969), Noah (950) and even the relative youngers Enoch (365), or Terah (205). If those ages were intended as numerical values, whether there are gaps in the genealogies or not, Abraham did not die an old man, he was a mere youth.

 

Second, Abraham’s disbelieving laughter at the possibility of fathering a child at 100 year old (Gen 17:15-19) clearly indicates that he did not believe his ancestors fathered children at 130 (Adam and Terah), 187 (Methuselah), or 500 years old (Noah). Sarah also laughed at the propsect of bearing a child when she was ninety (Gen 18:9-15). Jeremy Sexton says, “Abraham’s laughter, whatever it means, does not imply that 100 years old was an unusual age for a man to have children” (“Who Was Born when Enoch was 90?: A Semitic Reevaluation of William Henry Green’s Chronological Gaps,” Westminster Theological Journal 77 [2015], 217). However, that is exactly what the text not only implies but explicitly states. Abraham’s incredulous questions are, “Shall a child be born to a man who is one hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” (Gen 17:17). Similarly, the narrator spells it out by saying, “Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age; and Sarah had passed the age of childbearing”( Gen 18:11). Sarah’s disbelief is reflected in her reference to both herself and her husband being old (Gen 18:12). Even Yahweh’s response assumes that it is impossible for someone so old to bear a child (Gen 18:13-14).

 

The major point in the passage is that Isaac’s conception and birth was a miracle, not a normal occurrence. Yet the face value reading of the patriarchal ages seem to remove the miraculous element from Isaac’s birth. (Craig Olson, “How Old was Father Abraham? Re-examining the Patriarchal Lifespans in Light of Archaeology,” pp. 11-13. Part 2 of this article can be found here)

 

Further Reading

 

Ben Stanhope on the Ages of the Patriarchs in Genesis

 

D&C 107 and the longevity of the Patriarchs