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Why Did the Patriarchs Live so Long?

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 12, 1871

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 38, No. 13.

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Why Did the Patriarchs Live so Long?

By Dr. Jackson

I HAVE always been greatly interested in the narratives given in the Bible, of the lives and deaths of the patriarchs. Let me enumerate some of their characteristics:
  1. Their habits in all respects were simple.
  2. They lived—dwelt in tents—in the open air.
  3. They ate food simply cooked.
  4. They were tillers of the soil and herdsmen.
  5. They retired early to rest.
  6. They slept sweetly all night.
  7. They rose early in the morning.
  8. Their medicines, at most, were simples.
  9. They instinctively knew the value of abstaining from food on occasion, and they enjoined it from generation to generation till at last it came to be a religious ceremony.
  10. Their children were scarcely ever sick, and when they were they did not die.
Begin at Genesis and see how far into the world's life one has to penetrate before the death of children is a given fact, stated without surprise.
From such causes as these, men lived to old age, not our limit of human life, but a greatly advanced life over ours.—Dr. Jackson.