Did Adam really live to be 930 years old?

How could Bible people live hundreds of years?

ADAM, THE FIRST MAN, COULD HAVE LIVED FOREVER (Genesis 3:22). But he sinned by disobeying God and brought death on himself and all humankind.

However, when God created Adam it was before modern diseases had taken hold, so Adam didn't have the harmful health problems we have today (mutant genes, illnesses, and so on).

In fact, the Bible tells us that all the people who lived in the early years after Creation lived long lives, with Methuselah living longer than Adam (969 years).

Life spans gradually decreased as illnesses and mutations accumulated, until they reached today's average of about 70 years.

Another reason for such good health at that time may have been that the whole world's temperature seems to have been sub-tropical to temperate. There is evidence of this because even under the ice in Antarctica and Alaska lush forests and warm-climate trees are known to have once grown.

Were they real years?

Some people who have trouble believing that the years were real years have suggested other alternatives. One is that the years were really months.

Were the years months?

Adam's 930 years, and the hundreds of years lived by the early patriarchs and people mentioned in the Bible's book of Genesis, were real years, not just months as some suggest.

If they were months, then Mahalaleel, who in Genesis 5:15 had his first son at 65 years, and Enoch, who became the father of Methuselah also at 65 years (Genesis 5:21), would have been fathers when they were only five years old!

Thousand years as one day?

Another attempted explanation is that the years weren't real years because the Bible says in 2 Peter 3:8 that “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”

Perhaps some people don't understand that verse, but if one day is as a thousand years then under this theory you would have to multiply the number of days in a year by 930, and you would get a number a lot bigger than 930.

And if you use the other part of the verse you would be in trouble again, because none of the patriarchs lived even one thousand years, so that theory would have them all dying in the first day!

There is no doubt that the years were really years, as the Bible says.

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