hey everybody what's going on with these Patriarchs in the Book of Genesis that are living to be 7 8 900 years old was there something in the water was the environment cleaner back then did they say years when they meant months is there something else going on the reality is much simpler and much more disappointing these years are simply fictional they're just made up they have a chronology they have these ancient important figures and they're fiddling with the years to have them fit in ways that they want but this is not novel this is following in a more ancient tradition that we find in the Samaran King list that go back to uh around 2,000 BCE and in those versions We have Kings reigning Before the Flood who are reigning from like 28,000 to 43,000 years each and then we have Kings reigning After the flood who are reigning from around 300 to 1500 years each so as in the Book of Genesis there's a significant drop off uh with the flood now I want to point out some interesting differences between the way these Patriarchs are represented in Genesis 4 and Genesis 5 and then point out how later editors of Genesis 5 further fiddled with ages in order to serve their rhetorical goals in Genesis 4 we have two different lineages that are presented we have a wicked lineage that goes from Cain to lch where we have Cain is the first murderer and then lch is murdering people and saying say if Cain is going to be Avenged I'm going to be Avenged even more and we also have in that lineage someone named irod which is just one letter different from Jared and we have somebody named methus which is very close to Methuselah uh we also have Enoch as the son of Cain in that line and then the other lineage is the righteous lineage from Seth to Noah now in Genesis 5 we only have one lineage it's just Seth to Noah but the characters from Genesis 4 are worked into Seth's lineage so irod goes to Jared methusael goes to Methuselah we have Enoch who is moved from the second position into the seventh position which is a position of prominence so we have 10 Patriarchs Before the Flood with Enoch in the seventh position who is explicitly mentioned along with Noah as being righteous Walks With God is taken by God at 365 years of age now interestingly this Arrangement seems to match a version of the Samaran King list that was in circulation in the second half of the first millennium BCE particularly as we find in the book babylonica by the historian barus which also has 10 anti- delvian Kings and the seventh is in a position of prominence seven was an important number and this figure ascends to the heavens and has an audience with the Mesopotamian sun god interestingly Enoch is taken at 365 5 years the number of days in a solar year according to the calendar at this time period so there are Scholars who argue that Genesis 5's rearrangement is reflecting what's going on in the surian king list at this time but there's something even more interesting about how later editors change Genesis 5 because remember we've got four characters from the evil lineage from Genesis 4 worked into Seth's line in Genesis 5 we have Jared Enoch Methuselah and lch now Enoch is explicitly mentioned as righteous and does not die in the flood but in the version of Genesis 5 that many scholars think reflects the earliest version the one found in the Samaritan pentat the ages of the Patriarchs indicate that Jared lch and Methuselah died prematurely the same year as the flood in other words they were killed by the flood so in probably the earliest version of Genesis 5 these Wicked Patriarchs from Cain's line that were worked into Seth's line were identified as wicked because they were being killed off by the flood but then we have the sepagan translation of this chapter and we have the later Matic version of this chapter that fiddle with these ages so that those three don't die in the flood which indicates the editors of Genesis 5 quickly decided they wanted all of the Patriarchs to be considered righteous rather than to have have three of them identified as wicked and as being killed in the flood