A common false belief
is that, according to the Bible
, Methuselah was the oldest person who ever lived.
Sir Thomas Browne in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica (book 7, chapter 3) says, "For hereof there is no determination from the Text; wherein it is only particular'd he was the longest liver of all the Patriarchs whose age is there expressed; but that he outlived all others we cannot well conclude. For of those nine whose death is mentioned before the floud, the Text expresseth that Enoch was the shortest liver1; who saw but three hundred sixty five years. But to affirm from hence, none of the rest, whose age is not expressed, did die before that time; is surely an illation whereto we cannot assent."
He also dismisses the popular conception that no-one could live a thousand years (one day in the sight of the Lord, according to Psalms 90:4), saying that it had no serious or metaphysical basis, all ages being alike in the eyes of God.
There is an inconsistency in Genesis, in that both Methuselah and Methusael are given as the father of Lamech. If these are alternative names of the same person, there is another inconsistency, in that the father of Methusael was Methujael (Gen. 4:18), but that of Methuselah was Enoch (Gen. 5:21).
A methuselah of champagne holds 6 L, that is eight normal bottles.
Gorgonzola provides me with two more snippets. As the ancient Hebrews used a lunar calendar, a lifespan of 969 months would amount to a quite reasonable 84 years.2 Also; going back to treating them as years; if you do a Bishop Ussher and add up the years mentioned in the Bible, you find that Methuselah and another patriarch both died in the year of the Flood. This conveniently gets them out of the way just in time or they drowned in the flood.
1. Hence Enoch's lament: "What am I, chopped liver?"
2. arieh points out this is of limited help if you're doing a Bishop Ussher, because Lamech bore children at 5 by this reckoning.