Summary of the Evidence from Decreasing Life Spans
The actual overall drop in life spans over the 1600 years from Noah’s birth until the birth of Aaron comes out perfectly in line with our thesis. Also, when the descendants of Noah remained determined to build the city and the Tower of Babel so that they would not be scattered, their life spans remained about constant. On the other hand, when God scattered them into the world from Babel, their life spans dropped. They would naturally drop since their mixing with the pre-Adamic race would then have become inevitable. Not only so, they even dropped to a life span very close to a life span that our thesis would predict. When the Levites were in Egypt, Kohath’s and Amram’s life spans held, as might be expected. The life spans of Levi’s descendants down to Aaron, who lived at the time of the writing of the book of Genesis, show an overall decrease that perfectly fits our thesis.
Certain other recorded life spans were really just as we would have expected. Peleg’s life span was greatly reduced; his father Eber must have been displaced from Babel to a place where he felt constrained to marry a pre-Adamite. Reu’s and Serug’s life spans held fairly constant; their parents apparently were determined to hold onto the family’s elevated life span of approximately 250 years. Support for our thesis is found by the fact that Serug’s son, Nahor I, at the time of his death, was much younger than his immediate ancestors were at the time of their deaths. If we calculate the life span for Nahor I and if we assume that his father had married a pure pre-Adamic wife, the expected life span for Nahor I is calculated to be 155.04 years. His actual age at death was 148 years.
Our theory has no problem with Nahor I’s bearing a son Terah who lived 57 years longer than Nahor I himself. This was because, according to our theory, Nahor I had a probable chance of marrying a wife having various potential life spans, one of which was 250.09 years.
Abraham, we know, married his own half-sister; therefore, we would expect the life span of his son to be equal to or near to his father. Isaac’s life span was only five years greater than his father’s or only 2.9 percent higher.
Next we found that Leah and her aunt Rebekah, as arrived at in appendix C, probably had the same potential life span, 119.41 years. Since Rebekah was Laban’s sister and Leah was Laban’s daughter, we would expect them to be similar.
We showed that, in case after case, the actual life spans given in the Bible fall surprisingly close to one of the probable potential life spans arrived at through calculations based upon a dual origin theory. Chart 16 (p. 58) is a summary of the charts shown in chapters 2-4. This chart graphically shows that each of the actual patriarchs’ life spans falls close to one of the probable potential life spans.