“The critics of the Judeo-Christian tradition and The Bible are quick to refer Bible-believers to references and passages in ancient non-Judeo-Christian writings that appear to contradict the Bible,” related the Reverend J.A. Layman, evangelist with Sterling Ministries, before The Lay School faculty here in Clinton, Tennessee, “but rarely do they cite references and passages in ancient non-Judeo-Christian writings that substantiate even the minutest details of the Biblical record. A case in point, and very interesting to find, is that Herodotus, in The Histories, substantiates what the Bible states about the lifespan of man being 120, 80, and 70 years?
In Genesis 6:3 it is recorded that God limited man’s lifespan to 120 years; sometime between the writing of Genesis 6 and the writing of Psalms 90 God evidently limited man’s lifespan again for the Psalmist states:
10 The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
And Herodotus concurs in these three limits:
In Book I p20 it appears that Tellus, in a conversation with Solon and Croesus states:
‘Seventy years I regard as the limit of the life of man’; which would have been written near the time that Herodotus wrote his history; long after King David penned the 90th Psalm.
In Book III p124 Herodotus records that the Icthyophagi, a group of people from the vicinity of Elephantine, speaking before Cambyses, King of the Persians, inquired what the longest term of man’s life was amongst the Persians, to which King Cambyses answered:
‘eighty years was the longest term of man's life’
In the same conversation, Book III p124, the Icthyophagi explained:
‘a hundred and twenty years old, while some even went beyond that age’
Now while Herodotus, nor any of the stories that he recites, does not concur that man’s life was limited by Almighty God, it is interesting that, of all the possible lengths man’s lifespan could have been limited to, Herodotus’ historical record reveals the exact same three lengths mentioned in The Bible!"
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