Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Chris Watts <dekruidnootjes AT eircom.net>]

Dear Jim,

On 23 Jul 2013, at 12:58, jimstinehart AT aol.com wrote:


When Abraham is said to live to age 175 shanah, thenrealistically,  
the method of counting that Hebrew’s age must be #3.  Abraham had  
witnessed the first day of 175New Years:  88 civil New Years and  
87religious New Years.  Abraham thus livesto stated age 175 shanah,  
meaning that Abraham is portrayed as having lived tothe realistic age  
of 87½ years in 12-month years.

=====Chris reply:====There were no feasts instituted at the time of  
Abraham and all years in the scriptures must be consistent, so when  
one speaks about the 70 years captivity in Babylon, just to take one  
of many dates for example, this was not 70/3 = (have not got my  
calculator handy)!


“shanah”.  All person’sages in the Patriarchal narratives are set  
forth in terms of 6-month periods,per the archaic meaning of shanah.   
Forexample, Ishmael is not portrayed as living a miraculously long  
life, dying atage 137 years in 12-month years.  What wouldbe the  
point of that?  No, Ishmael issaid at Genesis 25: 17 to live 137  
shanah, meaning that during Ishmael’s life,the first day of 137 total  
New Years, both religious New Years and civil NewYears, had been  
observed.  Thus Ishmaellived to age 68½ years in 12-month years,  
which is a realistic lifespan.

=====Chris reply:====Actually we must never judge ages by our present  
day standards of hygeine nutrition disease and longevity, there are  
some very good reasons why these people could live to very old ages,  
it is presumptuous to impose modern day social and cultural and  
biological contexts onto thousands of years ago; if it does not fit  
into our knowledge base and social understandings, it has to be  
misleading? We always look at the past with an immense cultural and  
social eclipse, naturally, but in our haste to lighten up that which  
is darkened should not be at the expense of the mature intelligent  
fact-keeping records of the ancients, the last 50 years of archeology  
and literary insights, history has often proved them more right than  
us.  Only last night I was watching a simple documentary about the  
vikings in England and how in the last 5 years alone some of the  
literary writings from the saxons and norse poets that were thought  
improbable have been shown to be quite an accurate account of viking  
culture and viking workmanship with regard to their advanced steel  
making that was not discovered or used in the modern day until the  
industrial revolution.

Yes these men did live as long as the bible said, they had no reason  
to lie, and the year was counted according to the cycle of the sun,  
long before there were feasts instituted.

chris watts
Ireland