A Facebook exchange today between Vadim Temkin and me, on biblical spans of life (among other things):
— AZ > VT [reacting to the news that the upcoming year in the 12-year cycle of the lunar calendar is a Year of the Dragon] I am in fact a dragon, born in the dragon year 1940 [so I’m 83 years old; this is signficant below].
— VT > AZ: You are a veritable menagerie: penguin, wooly mammoth, and a dragon as well! Here is for the other 12 years, and while we are at it, let’s wish for a traditional Jewish 120!
— AZ > VT: [about my animal identities] Oh, and for a brief period, an aardvark (Zot, from the B.C. comic).
[about the 120-year span of life] I cannot, alas, quote from the Torah; but I know how it came out very much later in the KJV (I’m a nonbeliever, but the Lutherans and the Episcopalians gave me a good religious education): his days shall be a hundred and twenty years (Genesis 6:3). But then there’s a contraction from the times of Genesis to those of the Psalms (Psalm 90: The days of our years are threescore years and ten). 70 years, maybe 80 if we’re strong.
Whoops, my boat is already sailing to the underworld (I picked up some Greco-Roman myth stuff too).
