The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-10-26
AGE or THE ANcIrNrs

cfents Is one that will not down or stay down. but springs up perenniaiiy to bother the student of history. we are told in the Bible that the old pa- triach. Methuseiah, lived to the won- derful age of sss years. and the mod erns cannot understand 1t. They ar gue that in the earliest ages of the world 1t Is reasonable to suppose that men knew little or nothing about diet. medicine or health methods. and. therefore 1t Is hard to understand how people of that day lived many centu- ries while in this day four score years is looked on as old age.
 How did they live So long. and why? One explanation of then long life Is tha; tho early people lived simple and temperate lives. and were not subject to the many ailments and weaknesses that now cut sxistcnce cown t, such comparatively brief pericd. Then 1t has also baen argued that as the world was new and it's population In the be- ginning stage it was necessary for people to live long and bea, many chill dren in order that there should be in- habitnnts In plenty. Eut, 1t may not be amiss to ask, if this argument Is good why was not the game longevity continued sftsr tine de'oRe9 Taking the Bible as 1t reads. we must believe that the flood was general. that it destroyed mankind from the face of tho earth. and that when It was all orA:- there wer- but tiSnt persons left alive. Then. the inquirer will ask, if 1t was necessary for men and womef, to live long in order to multiply and replenish the earth' when 1t was new, why did not the same need exist after the deiuse? We learn that there was an immense reduction in the length of human life after the time of Noah. and wonder why 1t was
 And so the puzzle continues to worry students. and they don't appear able to reach any satisfactory solution. They read fin their Bibles that in the beginning men lived six. eight, and aI- most ten centuries, while now they rarely live one-tenth of the years at- tributed to the ancients, according to recorded history of the early days.
 
 There may be solution. but what Is 1t? The Jewish World. of London, so we are told, ''hasi been addressing itself anew to the always interesting problem of how old really was Mathu. selah. It works out a theory that is somewhat complex, and that on appli- cation works havoc with the reputa- ton for extreme age of some of the early Bible patriarchs. According to 1t. the actual length of the year in the | time of Methuselah was not twelve months as now, but one moonrcycle, or about twenty-nine and one- half days, | This would apply. according to the theory. to the patriachs up to about, the time of Abraham, whose ages are setevariously from 25o-.to $50 years sss, fin the case of the distinguished MT. MethuseIah. who has catechism support for his claim of extremest age. About the time of Abraham or little earlier. 1t Is reckoned, the year was heightened to five months. On this l basis. Methuseiah was a little less than 7s when he died. Noah. second in the running. would have been under 7s. Abraham, who lived to be 175 under the second reckoning. would have been 72 by our count. and so on"
 That might be considere d an in- genious way of disposing of a much discussed problem, but little reflec- ton will make the explanation as diff fcult to understand as the question it is trying to explain. Just why we should admit that a year was one of our lunar months. or why the year should afterwards have been length ened to five of our months, are two problems not easily settled. and can l only be justified on the plea that some way must be found to explain the | length of days of the early inhabi- tants.
 And, if we accept either the lunar | year or the five months-year as the | stardard. we are again at sea, for, as The Norfolk Landmark points out. If | one applies the newly discovered Lon- don key to the Bible ages. he is in trouble right away. Take, for instance, | the grandson of shem and the great grandson of Noah. Shelah. The total of his years was, according to the lit- | eral record, 433. Plainly. he was in | the Methuselah and Noah class. But | discounting his age on the basis of the | single moon-cycle year, it appears that | he was cut of in his youth, as 1t were. | dying at 36. The record makes him | 30 when his first child was born, or. according to the discounting. a little | less than 2 years and months old! If | we allow his years to have been i've | month years. he lived to be 1S0 years | old, but was only 12 years and 6 |