So Lamech, the 8th generation descendant of Adam and father of Noah, knew the First Man for 56 years or so. This is kinda like the situation between Fry and the Professor in Futurama, except imagine that Fry was awake the whole time making an ass of himself at every family get together and no one can do anything about because he's been the family patriarch for centuries. Incidentally, my number crunching on Old Testament patriarchy also suggests that old man Noah knew young Abraham, who was born in the 1900's. The secrets of Creation could be trasmitted thusly: Adam teaches Lamech, who teaches his son Noah, who instructs Father Abraham. Try to imagine this for a minute from Noah's perspective. Him saying "My dad told me this" is the same thing as "Here's what an eyewitness to the Fall of Man said".
Here's another way of looking at the issue. Below are some historical figures from the 1st millenium AD given longevities identical to the dudes in the first chart.
So Origen spends the better part of 800 years hashing out theology with St. Paul, who runs the church for almost its first thousand years. St. Augustine takes the reins directly from him. Rome never becomes the seat of church power because Alaric sacks it every 50 or 100 years just for fun. In my campaign set in 1139 Mani's faith would still be a threat to Christianity, as he spent almost 900 years organizing his own religion. And who would reign in England? King Arthur (i.e. Riothamus)? Perhaps he retired to devote his time to reading Caedmon's 400 year corpus of poetry, leaving Alfred the Great to contend with Charlemagne always trying to increase his empire.
Only slightly related thoughts: Elves don't sleep each night for the same reason you probably don't nap for 20 minutes of every hour. When you ask an elf "When?" don't expect an answer more specific than "Winter." for the same reason you don't tell people "I'm taking my lunch break at 11:32 and 47 seconds."
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"The secrets of Creation could be trasmitted thusly: Adam teaches Lamech, who teaches his son Noah, who instructs Father Abraham. Try to imagine this for a minute from Noah's perspective. Him saying "My dad told me this" is the same thing as "Here's what an eyewitness to the Fall of Man said".
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, the Freemasons of the early 1700s believed exactly that.
@thwaak Alot of people still do.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, thanks Jeff for this very cool post. I'd never really thought about what being so long lived might mean. I'll have to remember that for elves in my campaign. Nasty things that they are.
From a more "scientific" viewpoint--just how much memory can elvish brains hold (given they seem to be organized essentially like human's)? It would seem that elves might only be able to remember the really important events for the past hundred, maybe two hundred years--maybe only one or two really, really important things from periods farther back than that. Diaries or journals would of essential importance for one's personal history.
ReplyDelete@archaicwonder: No doubt. Being a Freemason, I'm exposed to this concept a lot...this transmittal of unwritten, word-of-mouth, knowledge down through the ages. As recently as the 1960s or so, Freemasons had another name for themselves, Noachidans, meaning they were the people of Noah, precisely because there was a belief that Noah carried with him those secret mysteries from creation and that Freemasons are the current holders of that knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThe geek in me loves it, and I have longed to somehow incorporate the idea into a campaign. Jeff's observation about the longevity of Elves in relation is very cool and a great starting point.
Elves totally wouldn't admit that their memory sucks. Voila! Elven insufferability explained—it's just nostalgia exponentially magnified.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, A college prof once pointed out to me that Methusaleh appears to heve died in the year of the Flood, according to the chronology.
ReplyDeleteAll of those competing memories in an elves brain might be an in-game explanation for the class level limitations of the race - they can't advance as far as a human fighter because they just can't focus the way a human can.
ReplyDeleteMike: I've seen a timeline that has Methusaleh surviving the flood. Which is pretty dang interesting, since he wasn't in the Ark.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how this would alter the power dynamics in the family. Would elves have respect for a father when, as you say, the patriarch is still around? Does this lead to a alternate structure of leadership not built on patriarchy but. Experience?
ReplyDeleteI did a graph a while back while studying this and our math for the timeline is same. I followed the timeline a bit further to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. What is interesting there is that Noah didn't die until Abraham was at least 58 to 60 years old and Shem had another 50 years of life left when Jacob was born. What this means is Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would have been able to receive first-hand accounts of the flood and third hand accounts of the dawn of Adamic history told to them by Noah & Shem.
ReplyDelete@ Jeff and Mike
Regarding Methuselah, the research I did shows that there is a possibility that Methuselah actually lived two years after the flood.
In Gen 5:32 Noah had Shem, Ham and Japheth when he was 500 years old. According to Gen 9:28-29. Noah lived 350 years after the flood for a total of 950 years. Yet if you look in Gen 11:10, it says that Shem was 100 years old - 2 years after the flood when he became a father.
If the flood happened when Shem was 98, then Noah was 598. So if Noah did live 350 years after the flood as Gen 9:28 says, then that means 948 years not 950 years.
If this is indeed the case it affects Methuselah as well, and would imply that he lived 2 years after the flood instead of dying the year of the flood.
While everything was supposed to be destroyed except for Noah and his family, there are Midrash stories telling that a "good" nephillim (giant) was allowed to hold on to the outside of the Ark, which one way to explain the nephillim being around after the flood. Another being, a new group of angels came down and made more offspring giving rise to Goliath and his ilk.
Anyway, all this makes for a great Testament: Roleplaying in the Biblical Era game.
For an interesting speculation try doing a search on Melchizedek and the Shem connection (Noah's son). Abraham would have been 75 when Shem was 465...
ReplyDeleteThis is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night... Not only am I an RPG Geek, I'm a theological narrative nerd as well...
While everything was supposed to be destroyed except for Noah and his family, there are Midrash stories telling that a "good" nephillim (giant) was allowed to hold on to the outside of the Ark, which one way to explain the nephillim being around after the flood.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure that's a plot point in Gargantua and Pantagruel.
Gargantua and Pantagruel - hadn't heard that one before, looks like some interesting classic literature. I did find the blurb about the giant hanging on the edge of the Ark, at least from an RPG source. Testament the RPG from Green Ronin, gives this blurb from page 187 (thank God for searchable PDFs):
ReplyDeleteAccording to Genesis, before the Flood there where nephilim, semi-divine giants, living through the Fertile Crescent. All life on the Earth was supposedly eliminated in the flood, but the nephilim are described as still being in Canaan centuries later. According to later tradition, one giant, less wicked than the rest, was allowed to ride atop the Ark’s roof (because, at over 13 ft. tall, he couldn’t fit inside), surviving the Flood. He later settled in Canaan and bred with the humans there, producing a race of lesser giants who were still in the land when the Israelites, fleeing Egypt, sent spies into Canaan to determine how strong its defenses were, only to have 10 of the 12 spies say that the country could not be defeated because of the presence of nephilim. The last giants mentioned in the Bible, Goliath and his kin, were over 9 ft. tall; impressive, but no longer so enormous that they wouldn’t be able to fit inside the Ark
Of course now, I wonder if Testament was just quoting Gargantua and Pantagruel. Now to find "the later tradition"...
In Warhammer, elves go into a trance, and they sift what happened since they were last in a trance. Some gets "coded to long term memory" and the rest is discarded. So they have quite literal selective memory. If they did not enjoy your introductory conversation, they quite literally may not remember you upon meeting you again.
ReplyDeleteYou also have to allow for the level of danger and general turmoil in the campaign world, of course. Something semi-equivalent to Noah's flood seems to happen every few hundred years in the average campaign world. Whether it's an orcish invasion, a new dark lord, a falling meteor, a chaos portal, whatever... Not to mention the fact that if you live in a tree village for 400 years chances are good you're going to get brained by a falling branch, or fall off an icy rope bridge, at least a couple of times.
ReplyDeleteI can believe that Tolkien's elves could get away with it (the very fabric of the world conspires to prevent Galadriel from tripping on a carpet and falling out of her Mallorn, it just couldn't happen); but most D&D worlds seem so much more chaotic than Middle Earth...
Hmm...you know, to take this in a fairly on-the-nose direction...
ReplyDeleteWhat if, for purposes of an Earth or Earth-like campaign world, Elves *are* the pre-Great Flood Humans? Depending on the version of the flood you're going with, either a) the men built in the wake of it were built 'less sturdy', or b) the descendants of Noah are your normal humans, but some other people managed to survive the deluge (maybe something to do with the Mark of Cain, I dunno). I don't know how this idea could flow into your typical Elves living in dark woods and secret valleys, or strange, child-snatching Goodly Folk, so it kinda falls apart there. Still, an odd thought tangent.
No way! Mani would have gotten struck down. But otherwise, cool post [per usual]!
ReplyDeletePS Yay Origen!
I've always tried to play-up elven lognetivity, but I hadn't really thought through the same ramifications as you until now. Great post. Very thought provoking.
ReplyDeleteMy elves of an academic bent, always took careful notes (one of my bards even had a magical 750-year diary). But good discussion and things to ponder.
ReplyDeleteNow that puts things into perspective.... Wow... Great post!
ReplyDeleteThe idea that the first men lived to be hundreds of years old is the result of bad translation. They confused months and years. If you divide the ages by 12 you get roughly average human lifespans. In fact the first example comes out to exactly 76.
ReplyDeleteCorey. are you suggesting that Adam fathered Seth, his third son mind you, at 10 years old?
ReplyDelete