Methuselah: Oldest Myth, or Oldest Man?

Abstract — The Old Testament records the age at death of 31 men in the lin-eage from Adam to Jehoiakim. For another 10 men, the Bible gives death ages that can be correlated to generation number. Altogether, the recorded death ages span almost 50 generations. Adam and many of his earlier descen-dants are recorded to have lived over 900 years, whereas Moses is recorded to have lived 120 years. Death ages between these two change gradually, and individual values are very specific. No serious investigation has been made of claims that Adam, Methuselah, and others lived nearly a millennium, per-haps because conventional knowledge (beliefs) make such life spans seem preposterous — and perhaps also for fear that it would appear to be an en-dorsement of creationism or theology. However, open-minded examination of the recorded ages now is warranted because (1) recent discoveries related to telomerase and stem cells (see Section 5, Genetics and Aging Studies for explanation) suggest a biological basis for such “immortality, ” and (2) the recorded ages appear well correlated by genetic equations describing the ef-fects of inbreeding depression. Close inbreeding was a social and legal cus-tom well documented in the Old Testament