The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

128 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
sometimes have heard of people in southern Russia or northern
India who are said to be 150 years old or more. But on close
examination, all such statements have been proved to be false? 79
The oldest known individual in modern times has been a French
woman, Jeanne Calment, who was born on February 21, 1875, and
died on August 4, 1997, at an age of 122 years? 80 This
Frenchwoman’s record would have been equalled by Adadguppi’ ,
had that Babylonian woman been 122 years old when she died,
instead of about 102, as the ancient records indicate.
Considering these cases of exceptionally long age already
presented, we rightly ask if we have any reason to believe that the
life span of people at that time surpassed that of people of today?
The Russian Assyriologist M. A. Dandamaev has examined the
life span of people in Babylonia from the seventh through to the
fourth century B.C.E., using tens of thousands of business and
administrative texts as the basis for his research. His conclusion is
that the life span of people at that time was not different from
what it is now. In his discussion, Dandamaev refers to Psalms
90:10: “As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years. Or if
due to strength, eighty years” (NASB). These words were as true in
the Neo-Babylonian era as they are today. 81
Consequently, the extremely old ages which would be created by
dating the destruction of Jerusalem to 607 instead of 587 B.C.E.
provides one more argument weighing against the Watch Tower
Society’s chronology.
As has been shown in this section, a prosopographical examination
of the cuneiform texts strongly supports the chronology
established for the Neo-Babylonian period. The careers of business
men, scribes, temple administrators, slaves, and others may be
followed for decades, in some cases through almost the whole
Neo-Babylonian period and on into the Persian era. Thousands of
dated documents give a profound insight into their everyday
activities. Notably, however, the lives and activities of these people
never contain reference to any year lying outside the recognized
time frame of the Neo-Babylonian period, never overlap or extend
beyond this at any time so as to point to a single year of the
twenty-year period required by the Watch Tower Society’s
chronology.
79 S. Jay Olshansky et al, “In Search of Methuselah: Estimating the Upper Limits of
Human Longevity,” Science, Vol. 250, 2 November 1990. p. 635.
80 The Guinness Book of Records 2004. According to some media reports, this record
may have been beaten by a woman on Dominica, W. I., Elizabeth Israel, who is
said to have been born on January 27, 1875, and died on October 14, 2003, at an
age of 128 years.
81 M. A. Dandamaev, op. cit. (1980), p. 183.