The 120-year Puzzle of
Man’s Days
in Gen6:3
Unprecedented Exegesis
with Refutation of Common Opinions
P. Eng. Deacon Basil
Lamie, aka Christopher Mark
Abstract
“And Jehovah saith, `My Spirit doth not strive
in man--to the age; in their erring they are flesh:' and his days have
been an hundred and twenty years.” (Gen6:3)
The 120 years assigned as the days of man in
Gen6:3 are the ultimate effective age of the genital power of human beings
individually. The ability of reproduction has actually dropped from few
hundreds of years before the meant prophecy down to 120 years starting
immediately after the very mention of the prophecy from Shem, to later on
degenerate further!
This unprecedented exegesis is the only one
that agrees with everything, biblically, contextually, linguistically, as well
as logically speaking. Other common exegeses suffer from fatal mistakes. Read
on to make sure of that,,,
So,
It is NOT about the Longevity, but about
the Reproductive Energy!!!
The First Exegesis:
A Reprieve for Repentance before the
Flood!
The 120 year prophecy is a
prophecy on the coming flood, and the 120 years were, in one hand, a reprieve given
by God to allow for repentance as well as it warned on the other hand that God
would not be tolerant with wickedness forever!
This is the most accepted
opinion. The real problem in this view is not that it takes place between Gen
5:32 and Gen 7:6 (which allows a time of only 100 years at most). Actually the
prophecy on the 120 years comes in retrospect and delayed until finishing the
line of genealogy up to Noah’s sons. Then the allusion to the 120 years is
inserted as parentheses between the background of humanity status and the
turning into details of God’s interference through Noah and Noh’s ark. Time
order is not followed here clearly. So, it is an adequate assumption that the
time between God’s decision and the occurring of the flood is NECESSARILY 100
years at most rather than 120 years.
The problems of this popular
opinion lie in different points!
-
Actually the real problem is that the scripture
tells about an internal divine self-talk. Logically speaking God knows His
works from eternity, as it is ‘Known unto God are all his works from the
beginning of the world.’ (Act15:18). God is above time,
and His thought is only put into chronology when they interact with human
world. However, there is no mention of any chronological specific point in time
the declaration of the divine decision fits in! The missing of determining a
specific point in time may work in general events as a declaration of god’s
opinion or reaction toward specific status, but NOT WITH THE DETERMINATION OF
120 years. The 120 years, being a period of time call for a starting point in
time which is not there!
-
Also, the divine decision, being lacking a public
declaration, does not work for a warning or a reprieve at all.
-
The period of 120 years is loose. It has no fixed
starting point. As such it goes meaningless of any implication. Had this
opinion been true, it would have started when Noah was 480 years old, an opaque
point in time that carries no implication whatsoever.
The most popular opinion is the
most dummy one!
The Second Exegesis:
Maximum Human Lifespan!!
The 120-year period is the
maximum of human lifespan.
Some defend it by clearing out
the apparent contradiction with people living more than that in the coming
generations after the mentioning of the prophecy, by suggesting that the prophecy
meant to foretell how things will end up finally.
The cons against this exegesis
are not weak:
-
The referring to a far stage in history lacks a
direct link to the prophecy, making it out of context.
-
Even though, the assumed maximum age is not
common, and is so scarcely reached that it makes nonsense to be marked at all
as apparent sign of anything. When The Psalter of Psa90 wrote about the maximum
age he said, ‘‘Days of our
years, in them are seventy years, and
if, by reason of might, eighty years…’ (Psa90: 10) The psalm is
attributed to Moses who lived 120 years himself.
-
It also has some actual case in contradiction. I
will put aside such a debatable case of Elizabeth Israel of Dominica,
said to have lived 128 years, and allude to Jeanne Louise Calment of 122
years of age. (Some of the literary ‘apologists’ who adopt this interpretation
accuse the case of the French lady Jeanne Louise Calment (21 February 1875 – 4
August 1997) of fakeness or forged history. However, the case is well
documented and has been put into scrutiny to come out with multiple evidences
in approval.)
The Third Exegesis:
Cells Maximum Lifespan!!!
It is the overall average of
human lifespan that is set to 120 years.
That is nonsense at all, for:
-
That standard deviation of it is very high. It is
above any reasonable notion.
-
Besides its being an unproven mere assumption, it
could not be shown in the first place that it works for a divine sign.
The Fourth Exegesis:
Cells Maximum Lifespan!!!
Human cells have a maximum span
of 120 years of life.
That cannot be a biblical
exegesis, because God’s prophecies care about the souls of persons not about
individual cells.
However it may be accepted as a
subsequent result, as a reflection of the prophecy on the biological level, in
accordance of how the whole age of men got shortened in turn of shortening the
age of reproduction power.
The Fifth Exegesis:
They are 120 Jubilees Cycles
The 120 years refer to 120
Jubilee cycles. The Jubilee cycle is 50 year long, ‘A jubilee shall that
fiftieth year be unto you’ (Lev25: 12).
The empirical verification of
this idea should wait until the fourth millennium A.D., granted that the
starting point of calculation is the flood year, which it is a mere assumption
in itself.
However, there is a much more
difficult objection against it, which is the whole idea is entirely out of
context, as lacking any clue.
In brief, all other exegeses
ignore the difficulties they themselves raise.
The idea of the average age
makes a very high standard deviation, besides it suffers from the
non-verifiability, all make it nonsense at all.
The idea of ‘120 years before
the flood’ means that the prophecy determines a point in the middle of nowhere,
as 120 years before the flood there was no specific event, nor the prophecy
itself was told to Noah directly in order that it may help convey any further
info.
The suggested Unprecedented Exegesis:
Only One Sound Interpretation Survives!
It is NOT about the Longevity, but about
the Reproductive Energy!!!
One looks now for a meaning
that has got to be of relative reference with respect to individual man age,
rather than absolute time period. And that is it: The ‘120 years’ are the
maximum age at/under which man may have the power of reproduction. It is a divine
decree issued that man’s reproductive power will be put to 120 year maximum.
·
To begin with, a strong clue is in the very
sentence. It is the ‘FLESH’ alluded to in the scripture, related to which the
120-year period is mentioned. The ‘flesh’ is obviously highly related to the
genital energy.
·
The closest chronological point is Noah's
giving birth to his sons! It makes sense to think that if this exegesis is
true, then the prophecy started off in effect from the generation of the sons
of Noah. Fortunately enough data is given on Sem. We know about him such enough
data with which the suggested exegesis could be put into scrutiny. Shem, to
begin with immediately after the flood gave birth to only five baby boys
(mounting following the average to 10 babies as a whole.) Giving two years
between each (the maximum time of weaning) give a maximum of 20 years after Shem’s
turning 100 years of age. 100 + 20 = 120. Shem stopped
giving birth at 120 years of age. The calculation is straightforward,
Shem gave birth to his first son at the age of 100 years. He gave birth
to 5 baby boys, mount in average to 10 babies (+ 5 baby girls). Each in-between
interval is a couple of years in average..
The whole calculation mounts up to 120 years when Shem
stopped giving birth.
·
The remarkable drop in the starting point in
age at which consequent generations would give birth after the flood (starting
immediately from the first generation after the flood) makes up for the drop of
the maximum age of the genital energy of man. The drop is not only in the
absolute values but in percentage as well, and that is of more implication. Selah.
Son of Arphaxad, was born when Arphaxad was at 35 age (Gen11: 12), and
Arphaxad lived 438 years of age (Gen11: 13). Shem begat his first son at
the age of 100 years (Gen11:10) and lived 600 years (Gen11:11). Noah
started to beget Japheth, Shem, and Ham at the age of 500 years (Gen5: 32)
and died at the age of 950 years (Gen9:29). The ratios of
age-of-giving-birth to longevity are: Arphaxad 438/35, Shem 1/6, Noah ~1/2.
So, the drop in birth age is as large as the absolute drop of the
reproduction-energy maximum age. That can only be interpreted as a natural
balance designed by God to sustain the multiplication overall rate. The issue
again is the drop in the reproduction energy age.
·
Further, the question of how the prophecy
came to be known is clear: Ancient generations were keen to keep records of
ages and genealogies. They remark the remarkable drop of the bio maximum age.
They could easily spiritually link it to the wickedness that had proliferated
before the flood. Finally Moses wrote the consistent tradition. Other scenario
is that Moses was inspired directly to write the reason behind that
genital-activity age drop.
·
Finally to make it a case close, here is a
typical biblical usage of the word ‘dead’ describing human beings after their
genital activity is entirely over due to age:
+ ‘and not having been
weak in the faith, he did not consider his own body, already become dead,
(being about a hundred years old,) and the deadness of Sarah's womb’
(YLT: Rom4: 19).
+ Also, ‘wherefore, also from one were begotten--and that of
one who had become dead--as the stars of the heaven in multitude,
and as sand that is by the
sea-shore--the innumerable.‘ (YLT: Heb11:12).
So, linguistically, biblically, and factually speaking, the
non-thought of exegesis of the maximum productive energy age stands sound and
working!
&
Only one objection has to be cleared out, that is the fact that Abraham was
born when his father Terah was 130 years old. (Considering that: Terah died at
205 years of age (Gen 11:32), that Abraham entered first the land of Canaan
after the death of Terah (Act 7:4), and that Abraham left Haran and
moved to Canaan when he was 75 years old (Gen 12:4). The answer is as
simple as that it is a miracle. Yes: A MIRACLE. That simple! Abraham himself
gave birth to Isaac by a miracle. Isaac begot Jacob by a miracle, as his wife, Rebecca,
was barren (Gen25:21). That makes the birth of the three main patriarchs
is the fruit of a triune consecutive miracles series
In the
light of the new suggested solution, other suggested exegeses can be well
evaluated:
Now, the present fact that
the maximum longevity of man does not exceed, but very rarely, 120 years, as it
does not most probably reach 90 years in the first place, such a fact is a
naturally correlated fact of that of the drop of the productive age. The
longevity of human beings, in general, started to suffer from exponential
decay.
The cell lifetime is a
subsequent microscopic explanation in the under layer of the story.
In all cases, the first one
of the pre-flood reprieve is meaningless. It is only an illogic premature
apologetic fabrication.
Links to Related Articles and Posts:
English Version at the Main Site
Draft of an Arabic Version of this Article
Again, a Post at Facebook with a Collection of Links
A Post in a well known site, Introducing the Solution for the First Time Ever
Referring to this Page in the Aforementioned Site
Terah’s
Miracle of Giving Birth to Abraham
The
Ages of Patriarchs of Genesis’ Era
P. Eng. Deacon Basil
Lamie, aka Christopher Mark
