The point is that people a few millennia ago thought that the maximum human lifespan was in the ballpark of 120yr, not that they were exactly correct or incorrect.
It's interesting the a similar way that Eratosthenes calculating the dimensions of the earth was interesting.
I don't follow you. Bible isn't written through oral tradition. It's probably written/revised by bunch of people. It needs more assumptions to think that that prediction would reflect what people a few millenia ago thought that to be maximum lifespan. It'd be more interesting to find that information in a legend/ballad etc which are written through oral tradition. Since Bible isn't oral, the author(s) necessarily added their artistic personality to the work (it's possible 120 "made sense" or "sounded good" to the author of that line or is an important number for them etc)
Ostensibly agree, but as someone who is far from a Biblical scholar, can't we "trace" at least to a limited degree the lineage of these translations?
Said more simply: If the 120 years bit popped up first in the King James version then yes, that's only 420 or so years old so it makes sense that their expectations for maximum life expectancy might be closer to ours.
But what if we have examples from 1000+ years back?
Why is the oral tradition part so important? Wouldn't transcribed versions of "the Bible" (or at least this fragment) that are millenia+ years old be just as valid?
Probably showing my Biblical ignorance here so apologies in advance if this is a poorly conceived question.
Oral tradition part is important because otherwise I don't think "people a few millennia ago thought that the maximum human lifespan was in the ballpark of 120yr" follows. You can say "the authors of Bible thought that the maximum human lifespan was in the ballpark of 120yr" or that they're influenced from the public, but that needs further evidence.
One thing I always thought was interesting about that is it happened during Noah's lifetime, when he was probably already older than 120 and lived a few hundred more years after. He's lucky the new rule wasn't retroactive to those who were already alive!
Also, there's some debate about whether that line means the obvious (maximum lifespan of around 120 years), or whether it's actually saying that people have 120 years left until the great flood comes. Most people (and me personally as well) think the former but the latter does make some sense as an interpretation in context. Well, except for the fact that it does mark a point in the Bible where people's reported lives stopped being ridiculously long.
There is absolutely no reason to believe that Noah was already older than 120 or that he lived longer than a normal life span. There is every reason to believe that nearly everyone's body falls apart between 50 and 120 if disease or malice hasn't gotten them prior.
When you fabricate its better if the fabrications concern things either long ago or far away and if the present situation is different from that described you have to explain why if you don't want your audience comparing present reality to prior and seeing through the hoax.
Example if you wanted to posit that insert legendary figure here was 30 feet tall and came from a village where most were 20' and up you can't set the story in the next village last year because someone has probably been there and noticed that people just aren't that tall.
If it was a thousand years prior across an ocean you can claim that people became less mighty as the years went by and lost touch with their gods which plays to people's tendency to filter the past through nostalgia.
If a 30 foot tall giant seems less likely than a 900 year old man then you may need to apply critical thinking skills.
Just because its still socially OK to believe nonsense doesn't mean its true.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply it was all true. I'm not Christian either. When I say "Noah lived for hundreds of years" (950 in fact!) I just mean according to the Bible. Same way I'd say Darth Vader ruled the Empire.
Many people who were born after the flood are listed in the Bible as living longer than 120 years. It's just not a very internally consistent book (probably because it has multiple authors).
Edit: I was wrong about the part below.
As for it being 120 years until the flood, if my memory serves me right, that passage is clearly after the flood (and as a reaction to the 'wickedness' before the flood).
That passage is before the flood. Flood planning starts just after.
I don't remember anyone living hundreds of years in the Bible after that proclamation (unless they were already alive, like Noah) but you might be right. I see Jacob was apparently 130 or older and that was later on. Is there anyone who lived a really long time that was born after Genesis 6:3? Seems like a good place to spot an obvious "plot hole".
You're right about the flood planning, I just checked. It's worth noting that the chapters in the Bible are likely modern too.
Abraham lived for 175 years, Moses suspiciously lived for exactly 120 years, some medieval commentators claim the genesis verse is a reference to him (although there is no other proof).
I read some speculation that because of the importance of lunar calendars at the time, ages may have sometimes been tracked in months instead of or in addition to years, and that those very long Biblical ages may be due to an age in months accidentally getting mixed up with an age an years.
That would, for example, put Methuselah at a much more plausible 80 years.
That theory would assume the men from Adam to Noah are actually historical persons with recorded timespans, and there was just some mistake in interpreting the numbers. But consider that Noah is similar to a character known from much older Sumerian flood myths - except in the Sumerian version he is immortal. It is common to ascribe impossibly long lifespans to legendary figures from past ages - the Sumerian list of kings lists their early kings as having reign of tens of thousands of years.
I think it is a fools errand to try to find rational explanations for implausibilities in mythology. After all, the length of lifespan is kind of the least problematic thing about the account of Adam, if you want to understand it as historical.
That has been speculated, but it then means some of those people are giving birth at age 6, which is why it is not universally accepted as an explanation. There is another version of the text that adds another 100 years to age-of-fatherhood, which makes this explanation more plausible if the extra 100 year variant is the correct one, but there are still some ages which are way too young if measured in months and way too old if measured in years.
I think this is pretty interesting even if you're not religious.