How Many Years Were Between Adam and Noah?
The short answer
By the genealogy of Genesis 5, Noah was born 1,056 years after Adam’s creation. Adam lived 930 years (Genesis 5:5), so he died 126 years before Noah was born — and from Adam’s creation to the flood, in Noah’s 600th year, was 1,656 years.
“And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth… And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.”
The verse-by-verse math from Genesis 5
Genesis 5 records the age of each father at the birth of his son, from Adam down to Noah. Adding those ages gives the span exactly:
| Father | Age at son’s birth | Reference | Year (from Adam’s creation) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adam → Seth | 130 | Genesis 5:3 | 130 |
| Seth → Enos | 105 | Genesis 5:6 | 235 |
| Enos → Cainan | 90 | Genesis 5:9 | 325 |
| Cainan → Mahalaleel | 70 | Genesis 5:12 | 395 |
| Mahalaleel → Jared | 65 | Genesis 5:15 | 460 |
| Jared → Enoch | 162 | Genesis 5:18 | 622 |
| Enoch → Methuselah | 65 | Genesis 5:21 | 687 |
| Methuselah → Lamech | 187 | Genesis 5:25 | 874 |
| Lamech → Noah | 182 | Genesis 5:28–29 | 1,056 |
So Noah arrives 1,056 years after Adam’s creation. The flood follows in Noah’s 600th year (Genesis 7:6) — year 1,656 from Adam.
Was Adam still alive when Noah was born?
No. “And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died” (Genesis 5:5). Adam died in year 930; Noah was born in year 1,056 — 126 years after Adam’s death.
But the overlaps in this genealogy are still remarkable. Adam was alive for the first 56 years of Lamech, Noah’s father. And Methuselah, the longest-lived man in Scripture at 969 years (Genesis 5:27), died in year 1,656 — the very year of the flood.
Why do some sources give different numbers?
These figures follow the Hebrew (Masoretic) text, which underlies the King James Version and most English Bibles. The ancient Greek Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch record different begetting ages in Genesis 5, which yields larger totals. Whichever text is followed, the method is the same: the chapter is written so the span can be added directly from the text.
What that world was like
The centuries between Adam and Noah are summarized in Scripture by one grim verdict: “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth” (Genesis 6:5). John Wesley preached on exactly this stretch of history:
“These must be immensely multiplied, while men begat sons and daughters for seven or eight hundred years together. Yet, among all this inconceivable number, only “Noah found favour with God.” He alone (perhaps including part of his household) was an exception from the universal wickedness, which, by the just judgment of God, in a short time after brought on universal destruction.”
Answers on this page are drawn from the King James text and from public-domain sermons in the Classic Sermon Library.