[…] I empathize with what he’s saying. It’s unfortunate that the “good news” of the Gospel and story of God’s amazing grace can be overshadowed by an intrusive and arrogant approach too often taken. Apologizing and explaining what it does NOT mean to be a follower of Christ can be a good start - as was my intent with this experiment last year. […]

Remember that the biblical life span is 3 score + 10=70 years. Life spans have been remarkably consistent through out all recorded history. It is life expectancy that has changed but that is something different. Today, very few women (in our country) will die in childbirth. They died in horrible numbers earlier on. Men, likewise, if they survived military service and dodged serious disease also lived to ripe old ages.

That is a common misconception. People lived to ripe old ages in those days too, just not as many as do today. There are certain milestones ages that we know about. I can’t remember and am too lazy to look it up but I think I recall that if a child lived to be 5 he made it past the first hurdle. There are other markers along the way but you get my drift. If you made it past them, you generally lived to a fine age.

“Besides which, 60 years still means that there were likely people alive who actually witnessed the events in question.”

jahrta: The problem with your stance is that it destroys the basis for believing that we know anything about the past. Tacitus most certainly did not rely on word of mouth! Writing had been invented, you know. Letters, state documents, official histories, etc all existed and are well known to historians. It is simply nonsense to suppose that “decades” had passed before the story reached Tacitus or anyone else. Besides which, 60 years still means that there were likely people alive who actually witnessed the events in question.