The fifth and eleventh chapters of the book of Genesis describe the descendants of Adam, who apparently lived for centuries. These include Adam’s son Seth, who lived to be 920, and Methuselah, who lived a whopping 969 years, making him the oldest person in the Bible.

But don’t these long ages contradict what we know about the average human life span? They certainly are way above average. Being omnipotent, God could have caused these people to live this long, but there is reason to believe these ages are symbolic and not literal.

In ancient Mesopotamia, it was a common practice to ascribe greatness to someone by inflating his lifespan. This is evident in an ancient list of the kings of Sumer (a region in what is modern-day Iraq) that describes rulers who allegedly lived for tens of thousands of years. The earliest king on this list to be confirmed as having an actual historical existence is Enmebaragesi, who was recorded to have lived for 900 years. Another historically verifiable king, Aga of Kish, was recorded to have lived for 625 years.

Since historians don’t discount the existence of these kings despite their inflated lifespans, we should not discount the trustworthiness of the Bible just because it describes people with similar lifespans. These descriptions may be nonliteral ways of ascribing greatness to someone, or, as Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch say, “this may be simply a literary technique used to assert the remarkable age of the human race itself” (Ignatius Catholic Study Bible entry for genesis).