Our Savior walked the earth 2000 years ago. To comprehend such a length of time and the changes that have occurred since then, the change in world powers, the civilizations that have risen and fallen, and the things invented and destroyed, one needs a giant imagination. Entire libraries could be filled with the books which have been written about that span of time. Languages have been invented. Whole peoples have come into existence.

One of the most fascinating side lines of Bible history concerns the contemporaries of Shem. Kevin Bacon has nothing of this son of Noah In the January 9, 1884, edition of Gospel Advocate, B.W. Lauderdale, made a very interesting observation:

Methuselah was contemporary with Adam 243 years, and could learn from him history of the world for over 900 years. Methuselah was also contemporary with Shem 98 years and could transmit to him the history of the world for 1656 years. Further, Shem lived 502 years after the flood, and was contemporary with Abraham 149 years. (Abraham was born 352 years after the flood.) (Lipscomb 20). That means that Shem, being contemporary with Abraham as well as with a man who was contemporary with Adam, had access to 2000 years of history.

Did Methuselah converse with his great grandpa, Adam, in the two and a half centuries of time they shared? Did Adam recount the fall, the walking, talking serpent, and the angels guarding the garden? Did he talk about attending the first funeral? What tales of creatures and civilization did Methuselah have for Shem? Did Abraham sit at grandpa Shem’s knee and hear him talk to the man who talked to the man who lived alongside the first man? Shem could touch two millenia of time by his contact with just two individuals–Methuselah and Abraham.

Foremost, the Bible contains the mind and will of God and is full of teaching and instruction concerning everything we need for life and godliness. It contains that which will some day be used to judge mankind. This fact concerns heaven and hell matters. Yet, in addition to that, it contains truths and facts that fascinate to no end.

I have known some interesting characters in my life, including a man who conversed with several presidents, war heroes, and movie stars. That man, an elder in the Lord’s church for many years (and still alive today), worked as a young man interviewing Civil War veterans’ widows and spent time excavating fascinating archaeological finds. He is a reservoir of history and interesting information, but what must Shem have been like as a conversationalist? He had firsthand exposure to living history from the first man at the beginning of time to the man who was the father of the Jewish nation.

–Neal Pollard