DID METHUSELAH DIE YOUNG?

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 221, 23 October 1909, Page 4

DID METHUSELAH DIE YOUNG?

There has always existed a certain amount of doubt, even among the believers in the literal truth of the Bible, concerning the great age to which the Jewish patriarchs are recorded as having lived. The problem of reducing these iong periods to something near the allotted span has often occupied the attention of students, and some of vlia theories which have been evolved are dealt with in the current issue of the "Jewish World" (says a Home paper). It is surmised that in the earliest 'times the moon was sued for reckoning time. Counting by months, however, must have grown cumbersome, and a longer division became absolutely necessary. There is a theory that the first years were composed of live months of thirty days each, the limit of live being derived from the fingers of one hand. 11 is also contended that before the livemonths' year there was a one-month year; iu other words, that a mouth, the period of a moon cycle, was termed a year. An endeavor has been made to prove this by working out the great age? of the first men in the Bible.

Thus Adam's 1)30 years of life, calculated at 20'/i days, the period of a "lunation," a year, works outsat 75% year?, which strikes many people as a reasonable period of existence. By this reckoning, be it noted, Methuselah loses his famous record, for his DUO reputed years are whittled down u 78%. Poor Methuselah tiius becanw (quite rejuvenated, a veritable Faust. Excuse for this rearrangement is found in the Psalmist's limit of life to I three score and ten years, and it is maintained that between the times of Noah and David no such extraordinary change could have taken place as to reduce the life of man by eleven-twelfths.

The next stage in the marking of time is supposed to have been the discovery of the equinoxes in spring and autumn, when day and night were exactly of the same length. This 'would give five months of thirty days each. Un ufi's basis of a year of 150 days, Abraham's 175 years work out at 72 and Isaac's 180 at 74.

The twelve months' year began with the (Egyptians, who saw that a complete period was made up of the two "years,' in one of which the days were longer than the nights, and in the other tne nights longer than the days.