"Methuselah's age": the meaning of phraseology and the history of appearance in the Russian language

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:54

For the first time Mafia Methuselah is mentioned in the biblical Old Testament. According to the Book of Genesis, Methuselah reached the longest age of all mentioned in the Bible. It is believed that he lived for almost a thousand years, which served as the birth of the famous phraseologism "Methuselah age".

Mentioning Methuselah in history

Jewish legends tell of Methuselah as a patriarch and protector of humanity from evil spirits, driving away death with the power of his life-giving prayers. Prayer here is like a weapon in the fight against death, a kind of spiritual sword. The story mentions that the name Methuselah comes from the words "shalah" and "mavet", which means "send away death". Methuselah was the grandfather of Noah, the one who built the ark of the same name.

It was believed that when the prayers of Methuselah and Noah were united, they were able to delay the onset of the Flood. And, no matter how surprising it may sound, but the flood began seven days after the death of the patriarch, as soon as the week of mourning ended. The Bible says that the old man lived to be 969 years old.and no one else could overtake him in life expectancy. The numbers seem absolutely implausible, and linguists have long made various assumptions about the Hebrew system of chronology. It is believed that the ancient Jews considered one full lunar month to be a year. Based on this assumption, it follows that the real age of Methuselah was a little over eighty years. If we draw a parallel with modern centenarians, then the antediluvian elder is inferior to many by twenty or thirty years.

The meaning of the phraseologism "Methuselah's age"

The expression about Methuselah got its meaning due to the number of years lived by the great old man, a direct descendant of Adam and Eve, one of the few antediluvian patriarchs. The word “antediluvian” is used here in the literal sense, it refers to those who lived before the time of the Great Flood, and from the clan of Adam and Eve, only Noah and his family survived after the Flood. In modern colloquial speech, the phrase "Methuselah's age" is used to refer to extraordinary longevity, life to a ripe old age and certainly more than a hundred years, because only an age exceeding a hundred years will be considered a lived century.

The appearance of phraseology in Russian

The phrase "Methuselah's age", the meaning of which we consider in this material, was first used in Russian literature by the educator and bishop of Peter I - Feofan Prokopovich in 1721 in the manuscript "Spiritual Regulations". In it he writes: “Direct teachingan enlightened person never has satiety in his knowledge, but he will never stop learning, although he has survived the Methuselah age. Later this popular expression is mentioned in the work of Mikhail S altykov-Shchedrin. We are talking about the "Diary of a provincial in St. Petersburg": "Well, how will I live the Methuselah age?" In Russian, there is a similar phrase "aredovy eyelids", which has a similar meaning. Jared was the grandfather of Methuselah and lived 962 years, which is 7 years less than his grandson. Apparently, for this reason, the phrase took root less successfully, although, according to linguists, the difference between them is only a little more than six months.