The Bible in the News: Methuselah & Co.
013
In the memorable survey of Biblical characters that makes up “It Ain’t Necessarily So” (from Porgy and Bess, lyrics by George Gershwin, singing by Sportin’ Life), Li’l David, Big Goliath, Jonah, Li’l Moses and Ol’ Pharaoh’s daughter all set the stage for Methus’lah, who lived 900 years—well, 969 to be exact, according to Genesis 5:27.
A long time indeed—for humans! The Bible records none longer. But what sort of time frame are we looking at when the name, Methuselah, stays the same, but the species changes?
For the sake of an organizing principle of our own, we’ll start from the shortest and move forward from there. Let’s start with a story from the Daily Mail of London with this intriguing title: “Now It’s a Worm’s Turn at Immortality.” Here we learn that “scientists, in their mad pursuit of the elixir of life, have found that by treating lowly, microscopic creatures called nematode worms with drugs, they have been able to double their lifespan from 20 days to 40 days. This is good new for scientists but even better news for [such] Methuselah worms.”
Moving from life spans measured in days to those measured in years, we find a story (from the Ottawa Citizen) that gives away most of its content in the headline: “Build a Better Mouse, Not a Better Mousetrap.” Some details? “The goal of the Methuselah Mouse Prize … is the seemingly humble goal of raising a mouse to live a healthy life lasting seven, eight, or more years.” The current favorite for the prize, valued at more than $60,000, is the snappily named “dwarf mouse GHR-KO 11C [who] wiled away its time in Andrzej Bartke’s lab at Southern Illinois University, living 1,819 days, just a week shy of five years.” If this record stands, it is not clear (at least to me) whether the prize goes to the human researcher or the mouse’s next of kin.
In the fast-paced world of Methuselah-naming, records change hands (or fins) at breakneck speed. Thus a Washington Post story, dated November 20, 2003, affirmed that “Methuselah is definitely the oldest fish in the tank. The Australian lungfish was officially named the oldest fish in an aquarium yesterday. Nobody knows exactly how old Methuselah is. … Methuselah arrived at the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco, California, as an adult … in 1938. That makes Methuselah 65 years old, at least!”
Case closed. Not so fast! Just four days later, a story appeared in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press with this news: “[Steinhart] Aquarium officials had said Methuselah was the oldest fish in captivity but learned they were mistaken. The Shedd Aquarium in Chicago has a lungfish, Granddad, that arrived as an adult in 1933.”
We’d better slow things down at this point, and what better way to do so than to turn to the tortoise? We begin this trek with a story from the Desert Dispatch of Barston, California. It recounts some of the tortoises in the collection of Joyce Warren: “She even had a tortoise named Methuselah who, she estimated, was more than 100 years old. … ‘I never thought I’d be attached, but I miss my old Methuselah,’ she said. ‘He’d come when I’d call him. (And) he dug a hole under a rock and lived there.” Come to think of it, some of Biblical Methuselah’s relatives may well have had similarly evocative memories of their aged ancestor.
And yet for age and pedigree, another tortoise, alas not named Methuselah, easily outlived this competitor: “In 1835 Charles Darwin reached the Galapagos Islands aboard the HMS Beagle. While there, he came across a tortoise. He named her Harriet. She lived for 176 years, finally dying as recently as 2006” (so the Belfast Telegraph). Well, Harriet is, I’m pretty sure, a far more becoming name for a female than Methuselah.
And, after all, who said that Methuselah was necessarily a male. Who? None other than Sportin’ Life himself: “Methus’lah lived nine hundred years//Methus’lah lived nine hundred years//But who calls dat livin’//When no gal will give in//To no man what’s nine hundred years.”
In the memorable survey of Biblical characters that makes up “It Ain’t Necessarily So” (from Porgy and Bess, lyrics by George Gershwin, singing by Sportin’ Life), Li’l David, Big Goliath, Jonah, Li’l Moses and Ol’ Pharaoh’s daughter all set the stage for Methus’lah, who lived 900 years—well, 969 to be exact, according to Genesis 5:27. A long time indeed—for humans! The Bible records none longer. But what sort of time frame are we looking at when the name, Methuselah, stays the same, but the species changes? For the sake of an organizing principle of our own, we’ll start from […]
You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.