Some Pretend the Ages of Patriarchs are Symbolic

For Genesis 5, one can state that the names have a symbolism.

Adam Seth Enosh Kenan — man appointed mortal sorrow
Mahalalel Jared — [but] Blessed-God [shall] come-down
Enoch — teaching [that/and]
Mathusela Lamech Noakh — his-death-shall-bring the afflicted comfort.

But I have not found any symbolism in their ages ... prior to today.

Nr	Patriarch	Age	Nr	Patriarch	Age	Nr	Patriarch	Age
1	Adam	930	10	Noah	950	19	Terah	205
2	Seth	912	11	Shem	600	20	Abraham	175
3	Enosh	905	12	Arpachshad	438	21	Isaac	180
4	Kenon	910	13	Shelah	433	22	Jacob	147
5	Mehalalel	895	14	Eber	464	23	Levi	137
6	Jared	962	15	Peleg	239	24	Kohath	133
7	Enoch	365	16	Reu	239	25	Amram	137
8	Methuselah	969	17	Serug	230	26	Moses	120
9	Lamech	777	18	Nahor	148	TOTAL 12,600

Horisontally from the table, rather than in order
930 + 950 + 205 + 912 + 600 + 175 + 905 + 438 + 180 + 910 + 433 + 147 + 895 + 464 + 137 + 962 + 239 + 133 + 365 + 239 + 137 + 969 + 230 + 120 + 777 + 148 = 12 600

So, the total, which seems to have some kind of Apocalyptic significance .... which it has:

And I will give unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred sixty days, clothed in sackcloth.
[Apocalypse (Revelation) 11:3]

And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she had a place prepared by God, that there they should feed her a thousand two hundred sixty days.
[Apocalypse (Revelation) 12:6]

So, some have pretended the ages of the patriarchs are symbolic.

The only three symbolisms detectable to us are 365, 777 and the total 12,600. Of these, 365 would not have been detectable as a symbolism in the day back then, at least not the same symbolism as it has to us. Then 777 is disputed between the text versions, like the LXX disagrees:

And all the days of Lamech were seven hundred and fifty-three years, and he died.
καὶ ἐγένοντο πᾶσαι αἱ ἡμέραι Λάμεχ ἑπτακόσια καὶ πεντήκοντα τρία ἔτη, καὶ ἀπέθανε.

The total would also be affected by including the second Kenon whom most LXX manuscripts include. And the total would only be known to total geeks and not even all of them.

Confer the meanings of the names. The Genesis is clearly older than the New Testament, one can get that from Qumrân, from the scrolls there. We rightly presume it is way older than the Apocalyptic literature in question. However, there were in the Qumrân scrolls diverse versions, some agreeing with LXX readings in Genesis 5 or 11 or both. The choice Jews made of the reading of Vulgate and Masoretic may have been to get this total. But the choice was made after Christ came and they had rejected him, probably to counter an argument made by St. Paul by presenting Shem as identic to Melchisedec, which is chronologically impossible with a LXX reading for Genesis 11.

I'm not sure that a similar total cannot be reached by adding up LXX or near-LXX figures.

Now, the other symbolism, the names, clearly was unknown to the first redactors of the text. Or known only prophetically. Humanly speaking, the redactor cannot have known the match with Christian theology ...

The total of the ages may be symbolic and if so prophetic or implied in a wrongful text choice. But this still leaves no indication for individual lifespans of Patriarchs having been chosen for symbolic reasons. Anyone who says the six days in Genesis 1 are just symbolism is wrong, but he may have a kind of rhetoric point. Anyone who says that the ages of patriarchs in Genesis 5 and 11 are just symbolism, apart from making a frontal attack on the veracity of the text itself, lacks even an arithmetic point.

So, wikipedia doesn't give the whole context of Jeremy Northcote, "The lifespans of the patriarchs: Schematic orderings in the chrono-genealogy", Vetus Testamentum, pp. 243-257, esp. 245, 247. The following paragraphs, surrounding the table I just quoted, summarise this writing from 2007.

The following table lists all the ages of the patriarchs from Adam to Moses as listed in the Bible. These add up to 12,600.

[table as above]

The value of 12,600 is a variant of the symbolic value of 1,260 known from apocalyptic theology (although may derive from earlier traditions), only multiplied by ten. The patriarchal ages were selected in order to achieve this numerological total. Another example of the numerical schema of 12,600 can be found in the War Scroll discovered at Qumran, where "the Sons of Light shall fight against the Sons of Darkness in the final days for a period of 35 years. Employing the Jewish luni-solar calendar of the 360-day year, 35 years equals 12,600 days."

So, out of fifteen pages, the wikipedians cited mainly two, and condensed them to this. Also:

Variations of the three and a half years result in other numerological values. For example, three and a half years correspond to 42 months or 1,260 days. Thus, both 42 and 1,260 have numerological use in the Bible. The three and a half symbol as appearing in the Bible may derive from the Babylonian calendar.

and:

The apocalyptic numeral derived from the length of 42 months (=3.5 years) is seen in numerous contexts. Northcote writes "In Num xxxiii, forty-two stages are listed between Egypt and the Promised Land, and the LXX version of Josh v 6 states that the Israelites spent forty-two years wandering in the wilderness ... [and] according to Matt i 17, forty-two generations elapsed from Abraham to the birth of Jesus".

So, first, while the paragraphs around the table may suggest a wholesale fabrication of the genealogies for symbolic reasons, it's on Jeremy Northcote's presumable intention more like doing a rounding and then fitting the items to make the rounded total exact. I say this intention is presumable, because I have not actually read the fifteen pages, just the above extracts on the wikipedian article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_numerology

To which I got because some people in the shop presumably wanted to test me for hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia as related to the bar codes. I try to avoid scanning them myself. And before you speak of pathology in a man who simply renounces the merchandise and walks out when a cashier is not available, how about the swastikaphobes who have banded about that man, not because he's actually a National Socialist, but because he has some things in common with them, which to their taste has been too much. A camp survivor may take some kind of measures about the neighbourhood, along with younger folks, but the things I've seen look more like the neighbourhood (with those camp survivors) doing their private investigation on my "National Socialism" and deciding to censor me world wide for common readers, the kind that actually earn an author money.

Meanwhile, this is another fail for a certain NinjaMonkeyPrime or similar minded persons, the named person's youtube account being used to tell me "When observations of reality conflict with the mythology of scripture, an honest person would realize that the mythology wasn't intended to be taken literally." The ages of the patriarchs don't borrow themselves to be read any other way. And especially not as Deep Timers have two different beefs with them. They will both pretend that each patriarch lived, if at all, a much shorter time, and that the total of generations spans a much longer time. Those types of quibbles have as little place for a Catholic believer that the Bible is inerrant, as Methodist pilpuls have for a Catholic banner of contraception.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Margaret of Scotland
10.VI.2026

[16 Novembris] Edimburgi, in Scotia, natalis sanctae Margaritae Viduae, Scotorum Reginae, amore in pauperes et voluntaria paupertate celebris. Ipsius tamen festivitas quarto Idus Junii celebratur.
[10 Junii] Sanctae Margaritae Viduae, Scotorum Reginae, quae sextodecimo Kalendas Decembris obdormivit in Domino.