METHUSELAH

also spelled Methushael, Old Testament patriarch whose life span as recorded in Genesis (5:27) was 969 years; he has survived in legend and tradition as the longest-lived human. Genesis tells nothing about Methuselah beyond sparse genealogical details: he was the great-great-great-great-grandson of Seth, the child of Adam and Eve begotten more than a century after Cain. He was the father of Lamech and the grandfather of Noah. By the Biblical account he came of hardy stock: all his forebears lived for between 895 and 962 years except for his father, Enoch, who lived to be 365. The enumeration of Methuselah in Genesis is his only appearance in the Old Testament save for a mention in I Chronicles 1:3, where he is cited in the lineage of Saul. In the New Testament he is mentioned once in the Gospel of Luke. There, at 3:2328, the lineage of Joseph, whom people supposed to be the father of Jesus, is traced back 75 generations, through David and Saul, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to Methuselah and thence to Seth and Adam.