This series summarizes my previous articles and videos on Methuselah’s numbers (Genesis 5:25–27) in the Septuagint, other extant texts, and external witnesses. Included are additions, corrections, and improvements to my previous research on the subject.1
Introduction
The question of whether Methuselah died before or after the Flood in the Septuagint may initially appear to be a narrow and esoteric issue. Methuselah is famous for being the longest-lived person recorded in Scripture, reaching 969 years according to Genesis 5:27.
The central textual problem concerns Genesis 5:25–26, where Methuselah’s age at the birth of his son Lamech and the number of years he lived afterward are given. In the disputed Septuagint reading, Methuselah is said to have been 167 years old when he fathered Lamech, after which he lived another 802 years. His total lifespan is 969 years. At first glance, those numbers seem internally consistent because 167 plus 802 equals 969. The difficulty arises when those figures are inserted into the larger chronology of Genesis 5 and related to the Flood narrative. If Methuselah was 167 when he fathered Lamech and then lived 802 years after Lamech’s birth, the chronology places his death fourteen years after the Flood. Genesis and other Biblical texts (I Pet. 3:20; II Pet. 2:5) explicitly identify Noah, his wife, his three sons, and their wives as the only eight human survivors of the Flood aboard the ark. Therefore, the LXX chronology is seemingly in error: Methuselah could not have survived the Flood.
This problem is not an obscure curiosity. It has had a significant role in discussions of the reliability of the Septuagint, particularly in the early church. In the modern day, the apparent survival of Methuselah after the Flood often serves as a rationale to discredit the Septuagint’s primeval chronology in its entirety.2
I myself once accepted this argument.
That conclusion changed after further investigation, beginning with correspondence with my friend Jeremy Sexton. Sexton challenged my understanding of the evidence and prompted a deeper examination of the manuscript tradition. The research that followed demonstrated that the simple statement that “the Septuagint says Methuselah lived past the Flood” is overly simplistic and misleading and does not even remotely describe the evidence. There are numerous Septuagint manuscripts and external witnesses to Genesis 5:25–27, and they do not all preserve the same numbers.
The resulting question is therefore not simply, “Does the Septuagint contain a reading that makes Methuselah survive the Flood?” It clearly does. The more important textual-critical question is, “Which reading represents the earliest or original form of the Septuagint?”
The Methuselah issue is often placed within the broader debate over the chronology of Genesis 5 and 11. Three major textual traditions—the Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint—preserve different numbers for many of the patriarchs’ ages at the birth of the named descendant. The textual traditions produce substantially different chronologies. The numerical differences in Genesis 5 and 11 are not isolated variations. In the LXX, they accumulate and produce a chronology significantly longer than the chronology derived from the MT and SP. Consequently, questions about whether the Septuagint preserves original numbers have considerable implications for biblical chronology and early human history.
In my 2023 lecture at Chafer Theological Seminary (video below), I argue that the evidence, taken as a whole, strongly supports an original Septuagint reading of 187 years for Methuselah’s begetting age, rather than the 167 years. With a begetting age of 187 years and 782 remaining years, for a total lifespan of 969 years, Methuselah dies six years before the Flood in the LXX. The resulting antediluvian chronology in the LXX is 2,262 years, a figure supported by other ancient witnesses.
My presentation has two major interconnected objectives. First, it examines the manuscript and external evidence concerning the disputed numbers in Genesis 5:25–26. Second, and more broadly, it challenges the methodological practice of using the Methuselah problem to dismiss the Septuagint’s chronology in Genesis 5 and 11 as a whole.
My investigation also highlights the nature of textual criticism itself. Determining the original reading of an ancient text requires the comparison of manuscripts, translations, quotations, chronologies, and other witnesses. Although external witnesses (such as Josephus or Church fathers) must be used cautiously because they may paraphrase, harmonize, translate, or otherwise modify biblical texts, numerical information, if deemed authentic, provides unusually strong evidence because numbers are less susceptible to many of these literary alterations.
Jerome and the Traditional Treatment of the Problem
One of the most influential early interpreters to discuss the Methuselah problem was Jerome (d. AD 420). We ought to have considerable admiration for Jerome and his enormous importance in the history of the church and his role in translating the Hebrew Scriptures into the Latin Vulgate. Nevertheless, Jerome’s treatment of the Methuselah question reveals a methodological problem. Jerome had a very high view of the Hebrew textual tradition and almost invariably regarded the Hebrew reading in his possession as authoritative by default. This reasoning becomes circular when the authority of the Hebrew reading is assumed rather than established through independent evidence.3
The Septuagint Manuscript Evidence
Septuagint textual criticism can be exceptionally complicated. For Genesis, the work of John William Wevers (1919–2010) is the indispensable starting point. Wevers was a world-renowned Septuagint scholar who collated the known Greek manuscripts of Genesis and documented their readings in an exhaustive critical apparatus. He concluded that the original Septuagint contained the 167 and 802 year readings for Methuselah, yielding a pre-Flood chronology of 2242 years and placing Methuselah’s death 14 years beyond the Flood.
On the one hand, Wevers considered the BA of 167 to be original to the LXX. On the other hand, he seemed to intuitively understand that the LXX translators would have easily recognized the chronological problem created by that figure. Wevers writes, “[T]he original long chronology must have been slightly different; either Lamech was 14 years older at the birth of Noe or Methuselah lived 14 years less after Noah’s birth.”4 Wevers’s proposed alternatives would either reduce Methuselah’s lifespan to 955 years or change Lamech’s begetting age to 202 years and his remaining years to 551. These conjectural emendations have no evidential support from LXX manuscripts or external witnesses. Nonetheless, Wevers touches upon the correct solution when he discusses the 2264{2] year antediluvian chronology of Demetrius of Alexandria (ca. 220 BC) in the same context.5 Indeed, his critical apparatus itself demonstrates that the manuscript tradition contains a relatively even mixture of both the 167/802 and 187/782 year readings.
Given Wevers’s considerable scholarly contributions, challenging his conclusion is not trivial. Nevertheless, I propose that the evidence deserves reconsideration and that Wevers was incorrect.
The Göttingen LXX critical apparatus for Genesis 5:24–27. Image source: John William Wevers, ed., Septuaginta: Vetus Testamentum Graecum: Genesis, vol. 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974), 106.
Codex Alexandrinus
The original text of the fifth-century Codex Alexandrinus contained the 167/802 readings. A corrector altered the numbers to 187/782, writing over the original text. The corrector obviously intended to directly address the Methuselah problem. If Methuselah was 167 when he fathered Lamech, the remaining years needed to produce his total lifespan of 969 were 802. If the begetting age is changed to 187, the remaining years need to be 782. Changing the first number therefore required a corresponding change in the second.
Above: Codex Alexandrinus with the yellow boxes highlighting the corrections made to the original text. In Wevers’ critical edition, the readings are designated as Ac. Image source: The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts.
Below: A reconstruction of Genesis 5:25–27 in Codex A. The first box under the original version heading is “60,” followed by the “7” digit (= 167). The second box reads “800” and “2”. Under the corrected version, the first box reads “80” followed by “7” (= 187). The second box is an abbreviation for “700” (ἑπτὰκοσια). In the manuscript above, one can see the corrector wrote ἑπτὰκ beyond the right margin of line five. Box number three reads “82,” the last two digits of 782. (Thanks to Peter Gentry for guidance with this reconstruction).
The Cotton Genesis and Codex Coislinianus
Codex Cottonianus (D; Codex Cotton Otho B VI ), better known as “The Cotton Genesis,” is dated to the late fifth or early sixth century.6 This richly illustrated manuscript was severely damaged in a fire in 1731.7 Thankfully, Johann Ernst Grabe had documented variants in the manuscript and collated them in 1703. Grabe compared the readings in the Cotton Genesis to those in Codex Vaticanus (B). However, the original text of Genesis 1:1–46:28 in B is lost. These chapters were added in the 15th century by a scribe who copied the text from a 12th-century minuscule which included 167/802.8
According to Grabe, Codex D contained 187/78[2]. Wevers relied on Grabe’s collation (noted as DG in the apparatus). An extensive 1986 study and reconstruction by Weitzmann and Kessler recorded 187/782.9 The Cotton Genesis therefore provides an important point of comparison with Codex A since the two manuscripts are approximately contemporary.
Above: Grabe’s collation of the Cotton Genesis prior to the 1731 fire. On the left are readings in B which were added in the 15th century to the codex. On the right in boxes, Grabe records 187 and 78[2] from verses 5:25–26. Image source: Johann Ernst Grabe, Collatio Codicis Cottoniani Geneseos Cum Editione Romana, ed. Henry Owen (Oxford University, 1778), p. 3.
Below: A drawing from a 1986 study of the Cotton Genesis by Weitzmann and Kessler. The illustration was of Enoch’s translation to God. Beneath the lost artwork is the reconstructed text of Genesis 5:25–27 with 187/782. Image source: Archive.org
Codex Coislinianus (Coislin. 1; M) is dated to the seventh century and is presently stored at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris and can be viewed online. Codex M preserves Genesis to II Samuel along with I Kings.10 It preserves 187/782/969, matching the Cotton Genesis and the corrector of Codex A.
Above: Genesis 5:25 in folio 7V of Codex M. Note how ΚΑΙ is abbreviated as Κ– by the scribe after ΕΠΤΑ (7) at the end of line two, and after ΟΓΔΟΗΚΟΝΤΑ (80) in line 3. The Greek literally reads “7 and 80 and 100 years.”
Below: Genesis 5:26 in folio 8R of Codex M. In this case, the scribe wrote ΚΑΙ in full, thus: ΔΥΟ ΚΑΙ ΟΓΔΟΗΚΟΝΤΑ ΚΑΙ ΕΠΤΑΚΟΣΙΑ ΕΤΗ (2 and 80 and 700 years). Image Sources: Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Thus, before turning to Papyrus 911, we already have multiple manuscripts preserving 187/782, including a correction in Codex A and readings preserved in the Cotton Genesis and Codex M. Our next question is whether the earliest extant LXX manuscript of Genesis, Papyrus 911, provides evidence that can further clarify the matter.
Changing My Mind: The Berlin Genesis (Papyrus 911)
Dated to the late third-century AD, papyrus 911 is written in a cursive Greek script containing Genesis 1:16–22 and 2:5–35:8. It is mutilated with extensive lacunae. The Berlin Genesis was designated as consisting of two major portions. 66 I is presently housed in the Department of Papyrology at the University of Warsaw. Beautiful, high resolution images are available for viewing online.
66 II includes portions of Genesis 5:25–27 and can be seen in a facsimile published in 1927 by Henry Sanders of the University of Michigan. His colleague, Carl Schmidt, had obtained the papyrus in 1906 and subsequently donated it to the Berlin State Library. Upon contacting the librarian there, I discovered the folio II original was destroyed during the second World War. Folio I had made its way to the university of Warsaw and somehow survived the war.
Plate 9, Column A of the facsimile of Papyrus 911, the Berlin Genesis. This fragment preserves elements of Genesis 5:24 to 6:1. Note the extensive lacunae and the somewhat unusual and often difficult to read Greek script. The text runs continuously with little to no spacing.
This image and those below have been enhanced for visual clarity. Original source: Henry A. Sanders, Facsimile of the Washington Manuscript of the Minor Prophets in the Freer Collection and the Berlin Fragment of Genesis (University of Michigan, 1927), p. 101.
In their analysis and reconstruction of verses 5:25-27, Schmidt and Sanders reconstruct Methuselah’s begetting age as 167 years, as seen in the left image below (lines 3 and 4). The letters in the brackets are conjectured, while the rest are visible.11 The “6” in “60” is not extant, [ἑξ]ήκοντα (line 4). Only ήκοντα ἑπ[τὰ] is noted as visible. The ending, ήκοντα, is the “tens” digit for Greek numbers, so the number could therefore have read something other than 60.
The remaining years (802 or 782) from 5:26 are not fully extant either. Only “two” (δυο) in line 8 of column A is certain. Schmidt and Sanders reconstruct three letters before δυο as σια and surmise they are the end of ὀκτακο]σια, “800.” The letter before δυο in line 8 of the right image is an alpha (α). The letter before the alpha (α) may be an iota (ι) or possibly a tau (τ), but it is difficult to be certain. The sigma (σ) is not extant at all, as far as I can tell. Instead of [σ]ια, which is at the end of any hundreds number such 800 or 700, the text could also have been [ν]τα, which is the end of a tens digit, such as 80. (The black line represents the approximate left margin of the fragment).
In my 2023 video presentation, I argued that line 4 could have originally read either ὀγδοήκοντα ἑπ[τὰ] (87) or ἑξήκοντα ἑπ[τὰ] (67) because there is adequate room for either reading. Moreover, if [σ]ια is the correct reading at the beginning of line 8, I also thought that the extant alpha could be the end of 800 (ὀκτακοσια), as Schmidt and Sanders conjecture, or the end of 700 (ἑπτὰκοσια). At that time, I concluded that the evidence concerning Methuselah’s numbers in the Berlin Genesis was indeterminate.12
I had not thoroughly considered the space required in the manuscript for the remaining years to be 782 (ἑπτὰκοσια ὀγδοήκοντα δυο) instead of 802 (ὀκτακοσια δυο). The latter requires only 11 letters, while the former requires 22. So, the question is: Could the letters for 782 have fit into this section of the papyrus?
In Table 1 below, the number of letters per line is listed for the reconstruction in which the original text read 167/802. The average reconstructed line length is approximately 22.44 Greek letters per line, with a range of 20 to 24 letters. The standard deviation of these nine reconstructed line counts is approximately 1.51 letters, indicating a relatively tight distribution within this particular passage. The 22.44 figure should not be treated as a manuscript-wide average. Sanders and Schmidt describe substantial variation in line length and note that the lines generally became longer as the scribe progressed through the manuscript. Accordingly, 22.44 letters per line is best understood as a local average for the reconstructed text of Genesis 5:25–27, not as a universal capacity for every column of Papyrus 911.
| Table 1: Greek Letters Represented in the Reconstructed Text | Number of Greek letters |
| εζησεν μαθουσαλα ετη εκατον | 24 |
| εξηκοντα επτα και εγεννη | 21 |
| σεν τον λαμεχ και εζησεν | 20 |
| μαθουσαλα μετα το γεννησαι | 23 |
| αυτον τον λαμεχ ετη οκτακο | 22 |
| σια δυο και εγεννησεν υιους | 23 |
| και θυγατερες και εγενοντο πα | 24 |
| σαι αι ημεραι μαθουσαλα ως εζ | 24 |
| σεν ετη εννακοσια εξηντα | 21 |
Compare this to the results in Table 2 when 782 is conjectured.
| Greek Letters Represented in the 782 Reconstruction | Number of Greek letters |
| εζησεν μαθουσαλα ετη εκατον | 24 |
| εξηκοντα επτα και εγεννη | 21 |
| σεν τον λαμεχ και εζησεν | 20 |
| μαθουσαλα μετα το γεννησαι | 23 |
| αυτον τον λαμεχ ετη ἑπτὰκοσια | 25 |
| ὀγδοήκοντα δυο και εγεννησεν υιους | 30 |
| και θυγατερες και εγενοντο πα | 24 |
| σαι αι ημεραι μαθουσαλα ως εζ | 24 |
| σεν ετη εννακοσια εξηντα | 21 |
Simply stated, there does not appear to be enough room for the number to fit. After this additional examination, I have concluded that it is highly likely that 167 and 802 were once fully extant in Papyrus 911. Although a begetting age of 187 could easily fit within the available space, the full 782-year reading appears unable to do so.
In my next post, I will examine and document a few additional manuscripts, summarize the evidence, and then turn my attention to the external witnesses to Genesis 5 and 11 from Antiquity.
Endnotes
- See: “Methuselah’s Begetting Age in Genesis 5:25 and the Primeval Chronology of the Septuagint: A Closer Look at the Textual and Historical Evidence,” Answers Research Journal 10 (August 2017): 169–79. Also: “The Case for the Septuagint’s Chronology in Genesis 5 and 11,” in Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism, ed. John H. Whitmore (International Conference on Creationism, Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship, 2018), 117–32. ↩︎
- Ruth Beechick, “Chronology for Everybody,” TJ 15, no. 3 (2001): 68; Floyd Nolen Jones, Chronology of the Old Testament: A Return to the Basics, 15th ed. (KingsWord Press, 2002), 13; Jonathan Sarfati, “Biblical Chronogenealogies,” TJ 17, no. 1 (2003): 14; R. K. Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testament, Reprint (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004), 149; Lita Cosner and Robert Carter, “Textual Traditions and Biblical Chronology,” Journal of Creation 29, no. 2 (2015): 99, 102. More could be added to this list. ↩︎
- For more on Jerome’s treatment of the problem, see: “Setting the Record Straight on the Primeval Chronology of the Septuagint: A Response to Cosner and Carter.” Bible and Spade 31, no. 4 (Fall 2018): P. 121–22. ↩︎
- John William Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Genesis, Septuagint and Cognate Studies, ed. Leonard J. Greenspoon, vol. 35 (Scholars Press, 1993), P. 73. ↩︎
- Ibid., P. 72-74. ↩︎
- TM 62082 / LDAB 3242 ↩︎
- For more on these events and the history of the Codex, see: Brent Nongbri, “The Cotton Genesis,” Variant Readings, May 10, 2020. Codex Alexandrinus was saved from this very same fire! ↩︎
- Rahlf’s LXX Online Catalogue; John W. Wevers, Text History of the Greek Genesis (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974), p. 33. ↩︎
- The final digit in 782, two (δύο), is not documented by Grabe. Even though Wevers relied on Grabe’s collation, he recorded δύο as extant (pp. 11–12; 106). A later in-depth study (Kurt Weitzmann and Herbert L. Kessler, The Cotton Genesis: British Library Codex Cotton Otho B. VI (Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 138) also reconstructs δύο as extant. ↩︎
- Karen H. Jobes and Moisés Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint, 2nd ed. (Baker Academic, 2015), p. 15. ↩︎
- Carl Schmidt and Henry A. Sanders, The Minor Prophets in the Freer Collection and the Berlin Fragment of Genesis, University of Michigan Studies: Humanistic Series 21 (Macmillan, 1927), p. 279. ↩︎
- In my 2017 article, “Methuselah’s Begetting Age” (p. 174), I asserted that Papyri 911 and 961 preserved 187. I am uncertain of the origin of these two mistakes, but it is likely due to a misreading of the Göttingen critical apparatus, which is rather complex and almost entails learning a new language. I apologize for these errors. ↩︎
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