Though Methuselah’s age seems pretty extraordinary to modern people, it pales in comparison to some other ancient tales of long-lived people outside of the Bible. Yet, that may well have been a specific response to tall tales of very old or even immortal people who were supposedly walking around in the ancient world. According to Encyclopedia.com, Babylonian stories often claimed to tell the legends of kings who lived for thousands of years. That would have then elevated them to godlike status for people who were surely living much shorter lifespans in the often-harsh world of ancient Mesopotamia and beyond.

It could be that Methuselah’s comparatively paltry 969 years was meant to act as a contrast to the quasi-immortal ancient kings of other cultures and belief systems. He did not reach even a thousand years old, yet the Bible (or Biblical literalists, anyway) would have you believe that Methuselah was a real and very human man. Sure, he lived for a long time, but the truth of the matter is that Methuselah still died in the end, just like any man. As the theory goes, only the true God can really lay claim to immortality — Methuselah was there in part to prove that. But, in an effort to have their ancient cake and eat it, too, the originators of the Genesis lineage list may have still wanted to boost all those ages for the sake of inducing awe and wonder.

Though Biblical literalists will disagree, some scholars thinks that the Bible’s “years” may be more accurately translated as shorter units of time. If you’re willing to take on a more flexible approach to the Bible’s math (and how things are translated from archaic Hebrew and Aramaic), then this could make much more sense.

For one, as Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith notes, Babylonian and Sumerian cultures tended to use a sexagesimal numbering system with the number 60 as its primary base. That combined with key ambiguities in the way that they wrote down numbers (like how sometimes a blank space meant zero, and sometimes it was simply a blank space) could have trickled down to the way Jewish writers did their own math. That, combined with some miscalculations and mistranslations later on, could have led to the idea of a man living 969 years.

Others think that the great ages of Genesis could have been meant as metaphors, too. Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith also argues that the original Hebrew text’s writers may have been more interested in establishing a general sense of a lineage, rather than a genealogy with a strict accounting of years (not unlike earlier Babylonian king lists, perhaps). And BioLogos notes that the numbers themselves may have had a deeper symbolic meaning for ancient readers. Or it could more simply be because the “years” reported in Genesis are actually more like months.

In more purely scientific circles, it’s pretty de rigueur to dismiss the idea of a 900-year-old human out of hand. However, more recent research has produced some interesting insights.

First, some practicalities that nonetheless should be laid out. The journal Risks reports that, while it’s pretty darn hard to predict mortality rates to a super accurate level. However, with modern data, it’s reasonable to conclude both that people are typically living longer than their predecessors in previous generations and also that the prospect of living as long as Methuselah reportedly did is, in the study writers’ words, a “pipe dream.”

Yet the Journal of Scientific Exploration takes a more moderate approach, arguing that it’s time for a more “open minded examination.” That’s in part because there’s more information out there now about the role that genetics plays in aging. Then there’s also telomerase, an enzyme that dictates how quickly the telomeres (essentially, the genetic bits at the ends of your chromosomes) degrade over one’s lifetime. The breakdown of telomeres contributes significantly to aging as the chromosomes themselves begin to break down. Understanding how this enzyme works, how its activity may differ according to genetics, and how we might manipulate it could have significant effects on modern human lifespans. However, given that we don’t have much reliable information about ancient peoples’ genetics and lifespans yet, much less that of a potentially fictional Methuselah, there’s still plenty of work to be done.

While, for some people at least, there is still plenty of room for debate as to just how old people can really get, we do know that certain non-human animals and plants can reach some serious ages. According to Live Science, plenty of sea animals can exceed two centuries. Individual Greenland sharks, for instance, have been estimated to live around 272 years at the lower end, with some researchers suggesting that they could even break 500 years at the upper end of that age scale. Some species of coral can easily break into millennia, with deep water black corals living for over 4,000 years. Some invertebrates, like select jellyfish species, might even be functionally immortal.

It’s hard to keep track of individual sharks or jellyfish, however. But, when it comes to plants, it’s a bit easier for scientists to track some of the oldest specimens around. Most famously, the “Methuselah” bristlecone pine located somewhere in California’s Inyo National Forest is believed to be one of the oldest known living organisms in the world (via USDA). Core samples taken in the 1950s confirmed that the slow-growing pine tree in question was over 4,700 years old, making it one of the oldest confirmed living organisms on the planet. However, if you want to make the trek to nearly 10,000 feet to see the pine, you may be disappointed. The New York Times reports that the US Forest Service keeps the exact location a secret.