Methuselah
Methuselah (Hebrew: מתושלח Meṯūšélah "Man of the Javelin", Greek: Μαθουσάλας Mathousalas) is a character from the Bible, his life and antediluvian, son of Enoch, father of Lamech and grandfather of Noah (who was the last of these patriarchs). Methuselah is the oldest person in the Bible at 969 years.
Mentions
Methuselah is mentioned in the passage 5:21-27 of Genesis, as part of the genealogy connecting Adam to Noah. This is repeated, without the chronology, in 1 Chronicles 1:3, and also appears in Luke 3:37. The following comes from the translation of the Reina-Valera Bible (1960):
Enoch lived sixty-five years, and begat Matusalén. And Enoch walked with God, after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. And it was all the days of Enoch three hundred and sixty-five years. So Enoch walked with God, and vanished, because God took him.
He lived Matusalén a hundred and eighty-seven years, and begat Lamec. And Matusalén lived, after he begat Lamech, seven hundred and eighty and two years, and begat sons and daughters. So they went every day of Methuselah nine hundred sixty-nine years; and he died.Genesis 5:21–27
These verses are found in three traditional manuscripts, the Masoretic Text, the Septuagint, and the Samaritan Torah. These three traditions do not coincide with each other. The differences in this regard can be summarized as follows:
| Text | Age at birth of your child | Life | Age of death | Date of death |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Masoretous | 187 | 782 | 969 | Die in 1656 Anno Mundi, the year of the Flood, with 969 years. |
| Septuagint (Alexandrinus) | 187 | 782 | 969 | Die in 2256 AM, six years before the Flood (2262 AM). |
| Septuagint (Vaticanus) | 167. | 802 | 969 | Die in 2256 AM, fourteen years after the Flood (2242 AM). |
| Samaritan | 67 | 653 | 720 | Die in the year of the Flood (1307 AM). |
There have been numerous attempts to explain these differences: the most obvious is accidental corruption by copyists and translators. Some errors may be the result of attempts to correct previous errors. Gerhard Larsson has suggested that the rabbis who translated the Septuagint from Hebrew into Greek in Alexandria around the 3rd century BCE. noted that the Egyptian historian Manetho had not mentioned the Flood at all, increasing the ages of the patriarchs to push back the time of the Flood before the first Egyptian dynasty. Another possible error was a mistranslation confusing solar years with months. polka dots, supposedly that would be 72 years old.
Pop Culture
Because of the longevity of this character, popular expressions have arisen to denote by way of exaggeration (and sometimes sarcastically or as a mockery) a very old person or something that is very old: «to be older than Methuselah », «to be older than Methuselah», «to have the gift of Methuselah», etc.