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In the Bible, the Patriarchs may broadly apply to the 20 men in the ancestral line between Adam and Abraham, or it may specifically refer to the Prophets Abraham, his son Isaac, and Isaac's son Jacob. All of these men's stories are found in the book of Genesis, and this ancestral line can even be traced through both the Old and New Testament to Jesus, through figures such as David, Solomon, and Zerubbabel, to both family lines of Mary and Joseph.

Oldest person ever

The first 10 patriarchs in Genesis are referred to as the antediluvian as their stories are largely told before the Great Flood, and most of these men are said to have lived for over 900 years, with Methusela often cited as the oldest man in history, at 969 years old. After the Flood, lifespans of the patriarchs tend to grow shorter, but they are still longer than any of those recorded in recent history. The lifespans of the patriarchs in the Bible is in stark contrast to estimates for average life expectancy before the industrial era, which was usually around 24 years, or around 50-60 years for those who survived into adulthood.

Significance

Most of the numbers given in this genealogy are stated in Chapters five and eleven of Genesis, where three numbers are generally attached to each patriarch - their age at the time of their son's birth, their lifespan thereafter, and their total lifespan. These figures can then show how much overlap there was between the lives of each patriarch, and depending on the bible's translation, this gives a timeframe of somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 years. When combined with the subsequent events spread across the Bible, this is a large part of why many adherents believe that the earth is somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 years old (5783 in the Hebrew calendar), in contrast to the figure of 4.54 billion years that is generally accepted among the scientific community.