Today’s Scripture Reading (April 10,
2015): Genesis 5
It seems
that every culture has its own longevity myths. It is the foundation of ideas
like “The Fountain of Youth” and of the rumors of inaccessible places, usually
high up in a remote portion of a mountain range, like “Shangri la.” Here people
live, but time refuses to take a toll on their bodies – at least it refuses as
long as the person remains in this location of longevity. And we are still
creating them. There are a number of people who believe that there is no reason
that anyone who reads these words to die. According to these dreamers, medical
science will soon advance to a place where all diseases can be cured and where
aging can be slowed down to an imperceptible crawl. While they are far from the
majority, these people walk among us and share their beliefs with anyone who is
willing to listen. Apparently Shangri la has been found and it is located
throughout the earth.
There seems
to have been a belief in early Christianity that the disciple John would never
die. The thought is written by the apostle himself at the end of his gospel. At
the end of his telling of the Gospel story, John writes these words as part of
a conversation between Jesus and Peter about John –
Jesus answered, “If I want him to
remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” Because of this, the rumor spread among the believers
that this disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say that he would not die;
he only said, “If I want him to remain alive until I
return, what is that to you” (John 21:22-23)?
I have often wondered if this comment might be the real purpose behind the
writing of John’s Gospel. Maybe this was simply a tool that John used to say
goodbye. He had heard the rumors that he was going to live forever, but deep
inside John knew that the rumors were false. He may have survived the attacks
of the power structure around him that were intended to result in his death,
but he also knew that each day the ravages that age was playing on his body.
Maybe his hand shook now as he wrote the end of his story. Death was coming and
the Gospel was just one way of letting them know.
According to the Bible, the person who lived the longest in all of
creation was a man named Methuselah, who died when he was 969 years of age.
Scholars have tried to infuse the ages in Genesis with some kind of meaning –
maybe they were simply indicating the length of certain family dynasties, or
maybe the word that we have translated here as years should read months. If
Methuselah died at the age of 969 lunar months, he would have been about 78
years of age. And that is in a much more comfortable age range for our
disbelieving minds. But the problem with the idea is that if this is to be
applied to all of the ages that we find in the early sections of the Bible,
then Enoch became the father of Methuselah when he was about five.
But if we take Genesis as we find it, if we can find it in our hearts to
admit that maybe God kept these saints alive longer in the early days than he
does now (and this meaning would seem to be supported by what appears to be a
change of heart on the part of God in Genesis 6:3 - Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are
mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”), then Methuselah
died during the same year that the great flood occurred. He was the last of
this list of men, other than Noah himself, to live until the flood. And part of
me has always wondered if God was waiting for Methuselah to die before he
brought the flood, or if Methuselah perished in the flood.
Ancient traditions have sought to answer that very question. According to
the Book of Enoch, a work that dates to about 200 years before the birth of
Christ, Enoch tells his son Methuselah that God is going to, one day in the
future, bring a great flood upon the Earth. This might explain why Noah
accepted the news of the flood so easily from God, the story of the impending
flood had been told in his family for a few generations - and it was a story
that Noah had heard direct from his grandfather, Methuselah.
According to the Book of Jasher, a rabbinic text from the 16th
Century, Methuselah and Noah went around together trying to encourage the
people of the earth to return to God. But they failed. Methuselah lived to see
the building of the Ark, but died seven days before the flood began because God
had promised that this good man would not die with those who were unrighteous –
at the age of 969.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Genesis
6
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