Genesis tells of people who lived very long lives. Methuselah was the oldest, living 969 years. This chart, and the following table, show each person in the family line from Adam to Abraham. The numbers are taken from Genesis 5 and Genesis 11. While some biblical genealogies are incomplete, listing only prominent people instead of every generation, this list reflects direct father/son relationships.
It’s worth mentioning that Adam was still alive when Methusaleh was born, that Methuselah was alive when Noah was born, and that Noah was alive when Abram (Abraham) was born. This means that Abraham might have sat on Noah’s lap and heard a retelling of first-hand accounts of the lives of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. That would be amazing!
You can grab and drag this section left and right.
- Adam930 years
- Seth912 years
- Enosh905 years
- Kenan910 years
- Mahalel830 years
- Jared962 years
- Enoch365 years
- Methusaleh969 years
- Lamech777 years
- Noah950 years
- Shem600 years
- Arphaxad438 years
- Shelah433 years
- Eber464 years
- Peleg239 years
- Reu239 years
- Serug230 years
- Nahor148 years
- Terah205 years
- Abraham175 years
Here’s a simple list of the information above:
Name
Age at Son’s Birth
Lived For
Adam
130 years old
930 years
Seth
105 years old
912 years
Enosh
90 years old
905 years
Kenan
70 years old
910 years
Mahalel
65 years old
830 years
Jared
162 years old
962 years
Enoch
65 years old
365 years
Methusaleh
187 years old
** 969 years
Lamech
182 years old
777 years
Noah
502 years old *
950 years
Shem
100 years old
600 years
Arphaxad
35 years old
438 years
Shelah
30 years old
433 years
Eber
34 years old
464 years
Peleg
30 years old
239 years
Reu
32 years old
239 years
Serug
30 years old
230 years
Nahor
29 years old
148 years
Terah
70 years old
205 years
Abram (Abraham)
175 years
* Noah’s age at Shem’s birth isn’t listed directly, but is calculated this way:
- Noah was 600 years old during the flood (Genesis 7:6).
- Noah’s son Shem was 100 years old when his son Arphaxad was born, 2 years after the flood (Genesis 11:10).
- When Arphaxad was born, Noah was 602 and Shem was 100. That means Noah was 502 when Shem was born.
** The Death of Methusaleh
If you do the math, it appears that Methusaleh died in the year of the flood. That leaves us with a couple of options: we can believe that he died before the flood, or that he died in the flood. The Bible doesn’t tell us about his death, so we have no strong evidence either way.
One Jewish source says he died just before the flood. That’s plausible.
Another says he died 14 years after the flood, but I’m not sure how they did that math… or why they would make the claim, when Scripture indicates he wasn’t in the ark.
Another tradition says specifically that he died 7 days before the flood, and that God delayed the flood for a period of mourning due to Methusaleh’s righteousness. More specifically, another tradition says that he died on the 11th day of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan (October-November), just before the flood. These two traditions may be related.
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Hi. I’m a seminary student. I wondered what your thoughts were on the Historical Adam. What is your view of genome science?
Thanks.
Hey Rose! I’m happy to hear that you’re in seminary. How are things going? What’s your favorite part so far, and what do you enjoy the least?
Historical Adam, eh? Hmmm.
We have two choices:
Adam, as described in Genesis, was a literal person created individually by God, who combined non-living earth with spirit, somehow… or
Adam, as described in Genesis is a symbol.
There’s a LOT that could be said about this, and is. I’m not sure I can give a thorough response at this time. Still:
My first reaction is that the ‘quest for the historical Adam’ is similar to the ‘quest for the historical Jesus,’ in which people who claim to believe in God and trust the Bible deny that miracles are possible, forcing them to reframe what they read in the Bible to accommodate their doubts. This first reaction of mine is admittedly simplistic. That’s what often happens with first reactions, right?
I would suggest that this simplistic reaction is accurate, though. I’m not aware of anything in the Bible that directly suggests that Moses’ account of the beginning of the universe and humanity is symbolic, metaphorical, truncated by ignorance, or anything else. Were there some Scriptural warrant for reading the creation account as metaphor, I would consider it carefully. Instead, every indication we have is that the people and writers of Scripture spoke of Adam and the creation as if they were literal. While I recognize that really, really ancient Hebrew is difficult to translate, and while I recognize that we understand more details about biology and cosmology than our predecessors, I also recognize that Jesus Himself spoke of Adam in literal terms. One can read his words as if they were metaphor, or parable… but nothing in His actual words suggest that’s the best explanation.
Paul, of course, used Adam to explain our fall and need for redemption. He could have been using Adam as a metaphor for the human condition… but where else in Scripture do we see that kind of abstraction? We see metaphors as parallels all over the place, but I can’t think of any off the top of my head that abstract at that level. That seems like a modern way of thinking, which makes it unlikely that the writers of Scripture employed it as a method.
Then you have this: https://godwords.org/timeline-from-adam-to-abraham/. Recently, because I was interested, I put the people in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 into a graph format. I believe that many such listings are truncated, skipping over one or many who weren’t considered noteworthy… but these passages seem very specifically a generation-by-generation account of fathers and sons. Without a historical Adam, these genealogies are meaningless at best, and misleading at worst. By doubting Adam’s historicity, we don’t solve anything… we only push the question forward a generation. If Adam wasn’t real, was Seth? Was Enosh? What about Kenan, or Mahalel, Jared or Enoch? At what point do we end up with a real, historical person?
I find such discussions very interesting. Unfortunately, we don’t have an iron-clad argument either way… but the implications of a non-historical Adam are, for me, untenable.
I’m interested in hearing what you think, and what your professors think. Thanks for asking!
Hi Tony, could you clarify Genesis 25 : 7 These are the days of the years of Abraham’s life, 175 years – instead of 335 years stated above, thanks!
NP Yeo:
Wow… thanks! I made a mistake. The code that made this chart is pretty complex, and I simply wrote in the wrong number. With your help, it’s been fixed. Is there anything I can do for you?
METHUSELAH HAD TO DIE THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD, HIS NAME WAS A PROPHECY IN ITSELF, WHICH MEANT, “AFTER HIM, IT SHALL COME”, THE FLOOD WOULD NOT COME UNTIL METHUSELAH DIED. ACCORDING TO SOME SOURCE, HE DIED 10 DAYS BEFORE THE FLOOD.
Jermaine:
Do you have any evidence that your words are true? I’ve not seen any. In fact, no Hebrew language source I can find suggests that Methusaleh means anything like “after him, it shall come.”
For a meaning of the name Methuselah, Jones’ Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names reads מות (mut) for the first part and translates the whole name with When He Is Dead It Shall Be Sent. NOBSE Study Bible Name List and BDB Theological Dictionary both read מת (mat) for the first part; NOBSE translates the whole name with Man Of A Javelin; BDB proposes Man Of The Dart.
Srscotty:
Do you have any information that leads you to conclude which translation is most accurate?
Tony,
Your reply to Rose is interesting. Question – when was all of this dialogue written? There are no dates. Is this recent or from 5 years ago. (I’m writing on January 2nd, 2023).
I, like Rose, am also a seminary student, working on a PhD in Biblical Studies and I am currently planning to write a dissertation on a topic related to this. I happened to be an old-earth creationist that also believes in a historical Adam that was created by God as an adult anywhere between 10,000 and 100,000 years ago (which is still extremely young and unacceptable to atheist and those that believe we evolved from a common ancestor of other modern primates and mammals.)
I found your website while looking for material to start my research (I really haven’t started yet!) I will look around and see what else you have and if can lead me to some solid academic and/or archaeological material.
Thanks,
–Fuller
Fuller: welcome! Thanks for writing. My comment is from November 2021. The dates are there but, as most theological content is evergreen, dates are often a distraction. On this, not as much… considering recent public conversations about the topic.
I’m also an old-earth creationist who believes in a real Adam and Eve. I’d guess it’s closer to 100,000 than 10,000, but have no way of knowing beyond simple things like the existence of objects of worship in archaeology. I find Darwinian evolution pretty silly, to be honest. Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you… and I wish you well in your studies! I’d love to read your dissertation, if possible. Keep in touch!
Nice chart. (the second one stills shows Abram living 335 years, btw) I’m wondering about the age of Terah when Abram was born. Gen 11:26 is not conclusive, but you seem to accept that Terah was 70 when Abram was born. But Abram left Haran after Terah died at the age of 205. (Acts 7:4) Abram was 75 at that time according to Gen 12:4, when he should have been at least 130. I have not yet seen a good solution to this. The best explanation I’ve come across is that Abram’s oldest brother Haran was born when Terah was 70, and Abram was born 55 years later. Not terribly convincing. Do you know of a better resolution?
Thanks again for catching my 335 mistake, Anders! I’ve fixed it (again).
One might assume that the listing in Genesis 11 is chronological, from first-born to last: Abram, Nahor, and Haran. However: in Genesis 5, Japheth is the oldest but Shem is named first. A better assumption would be that the one named first is the one through whom the Messiah would come. Both fit this pattern. If Abram wasn’t the firstborn, there’s room for the math to fit. We don’t know who was the oldest, in what years of Terah’s life each was born, etc.
Terah lived to be 205. Abram left at age 75, right after Terah died, so it looks like he would have been born when his father was 130 years old. I haven’t changed the number on the chart because it’s speculative. I’m not sure we can be more precise with confidence, so I left the number 70 from Genesis 11.
What do you think?
Yes, Gen 11:26 has evidently created confusion and speculation, even long before Stephen asserted that Abram left Haran “when his father was dead”. Anyone who wants to study this question can find plenty of material online. I don’t believe that this is the kind of “foolish questions about genealogy” that Paul warns Titus about. It is healthy for Christians to wrestle with texts that could cause people to question the inerrancy of the Bible.
I wish Gen 11:26 were more precise. But the best explanation seems to be that Abram was the youngest of the three brothers, and he was born when his father was 130, not 70 years old. The options are that Stephen was mistaken, or that a copyist slipped up and changed the original number in Genesis.
It seems that’s the best explanation. We agree about Titus: wrestling with the text isn’t the same as endless speculation, which is often a substitute for serious study. Have a great day!