“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Some in your society feel that the young are kept out of life’s mainstream also, denied purposeful work, their adolescence prolonged unnecessarily. As a consequence some young people die for the same reason: They believe that the state of youth is somehow dishonorable. They are cajoled, petted, treated like amusing pets sometimes, diverted with technology’s offerings but not allowed to use their energy. There were many unfortunate misuses of the old system of having a son follow in his father’s footsteps, yet the son at a young age was given meaningful work to do, and felt a part of life’s mainstream. He was needed.

I checked several Bibles, a Biblical almanac, and a Biblical dictionary. But one has only to read Chapter 5 of Genesis to learn what great ages are given to Adam and nine of his descendants up to Noah, or the time of the Flood. Did Adam really live for 930 years, or Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve, for 912? (Why isn’t Eve’s age given in the Bible?) Enoch, the fifth elder listed after Seth, lived for a mere 365 years, but sired Methuselah, who at 969 years is the oldest individual recorded in the Bible. Methuselah was the father of Lamech (777 years), who was the father of Noah (950 years).

In Genesis 11, the listing of Abraham’s ancestors begins after the Flood with the oldest son of Noah, Shem, living some 600 years. Generally, Abraham’s forebears didn’t live as long as Adam’s descendants had, although after Shem their ages still ranged from 148 years to 460. Abraham himself was “only” 175 years old at his death.

During the little time we’d spent thinking about such matters, Jane and I had considered the Biblical accounts of such great ages to be simply wrong, badly distorted, or perhaps epochal—that is, Abraham’s ancestors may be listed in the correct genealogical sequence, but with many gaps among the individuals named. Also, a given father-son relationship may have actually been one between a father and a great-great-grandson, for example. There are other epochal lists in the Bible.