[Age of Ignorance]

Originally Posted by onion

If you read through Genesis 1 through the flood you see why people lived longer. A lot of scholars conclude that maybe it was a lunar cycle or one month that was considered a year. But look at this

Genesis 5:21
"Enoch lived sixty-five years, and became the father of Methuselah."

So if Enoch was 65 years old, and a year is 1 lunar cycle, that means he lived 65 months (technically). If Enoch is 65 months that means he is a little less than 5 and a half years old.

There is no biblical evidence to say that the years or days were longer or shorter. Look here:

Genesis 1:3-5
"Then God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day."

By these verses we can conclude that one day is equivalent to our days.

Genesis 1:8
"God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day."

This means it was a literal 6 day creation. Day and Night = 1 day.

Now going back to the years being longer. If you read through Genesis 1 through the flood, before the flood in Genesis 2:6 "But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground." it says that there was a water vapor that covered the earth's ground to provide vegetation. Some believe that this may have been some what of a canopy that it would have prevented against radiation from the sun. Which I don't know if I believe to be true or not, but it makes sense. The reason I don't know if it is true is because in Genesis 1 it talks about being signs in the sky for the seasons, days, months and years, if a canopy were to cover the earth it is possible that the heavens were blocked and could not be seen. However, pre-flood, many things changed, which in my personal belief I think that although the canopy is logical, these people back then had a closer relationship with God. God would walk among them, they all had a true relationship with their Creator. And God if He wanted to could keep them alive longer if that's what he pleased. Take a look at these charts though:







its clear that after the flood life decreased and God ceased to be in their lives more and more.

"After the flood the earth was completely different than the earth before. There were widespread global differences. These would include changes in the climate, composition of the atmosphere, hydrologic cycle, geologic features, cosmic radiation reaching the earth, ozone concentration, ultra violet light, background radiation, genetics, diet, and a host of other subtle and/or profound chemical and physiological changes. These changes caused a rapid decline of the longevity of post flood humanity."


"Now when Noah had lived three hundred and fifty years after the Flood, and that all that time happily, he died, having lived the number of nine hundred and fifty years. But let no one, upon comparing the lives of the ancients with our lives, and with the few years which we now live, think that what we have said of them is false; or make the shortness of our lives at present an argument, that neither did they attain to so long a duration of life, for those ancients were beloved of God, and [lately] made by God himself; and because their food was then fitter for the prolongation of life, might well live so great a number of years: and besides, God afforded them a longer time of life on account of their virtue, and the good use they made of it in astronomical and geometrical discoveries, which would not have afforded the time of foretelling [the periods of the stars] unless they had lived six hundred years; for the great year is completed in that interval."
--Jewish Historian, Flavius Josephus

The bible is not fact, don't treat it as such.