Genesis 5:1-32 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;… Whether we are to think that the original vitality of the human frame faded only by slow degrees, or whether there was something salubrious in the air of the ages after Eden, has often been asked, but can never be answered. Some have fancied that the immense lives ascribed to the antediluvians imply that each name represents a tribe, the lives of whose leading members are added together; others have understood the years to mean only months; while others have sought to prove that from Adam to Abraham the year had no more than three months, from Abraham to Joseph eight, and from Joseph's time twelve months, as at present. But such explanations have no sufficient warrant, and it is perhaps best, on the whole, to keep in mind what Bishop Harold Browne has pointed out, that "numbers and dates are liable in the course of ages to become obscured and exaggerated." It is quite possible that some of the early Rabbis, desirous of emulating the fabled age ascribed by heathen nations to their heroes and demigods, may have added to the Bible figures, so as to secure the patriarchs an equal honour. Our present bodies certainly could not live more than two hundred years, at the very most, from the decay of one part after another, and hence we must either take Bishop Browne's solution of antediluvian longevity, or suppose that exceptional circumstances in the first ages produced exceptional results. (C. Geikie, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; |
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