The Bible doesn’t tell us exactly how tall anyone is, whether it’s Adam and Eve or Jesus. Only in a few instances does it describe the stature of someone (e.g Zacchaeus).
So we cannot accurately state the height of Adam and Eve. But we can make some educated guesses based on Biblical, historical and fossil evidence.
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How Tall Were People In The Bible?
With few exceptions like in the case of Goliath, authors of the Bible never specify the height of anyone. It’s understandable since someone’s stature is of no consequence in their faith.
I could only track down one instance where the Bible explicitly mentions someone’s height.
1 Samuel 17:4 And there came out from the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.
Other than Goliath, there’s no one else whose height is stated. But the Bible does reference the stature of certain figures like Zacchaeus and King Saul.
Luke 19:2-3 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd.
1 Samuel 9:2 Kish had a son named Saul, as handsome a young man as could be found anywhere in Israel, and he was a head taller than anyone else.
While we can’t be sure, many scholars theorize that people in the Old Testament were generally taller than the average height of humans today.
In several instances, the Bible talks about giants. When Moses sends men to scout Canaan, they report meeting the descendants of Anak who are large and mighty.
Numbers 13:32-33 “…All the people we saw there are of great size…We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”
Goliath is also described as a giant. His height, six cubits and a span, translates to over 9 feet in height.
In Amos 2:9, the Amorites are described as being as tall as cedars.
In Deuteronomy 3:11, the King of Bashan has a huge bed that suggests he is very tall.
Og king of Bashan was the last of the Rephaites. His bed was decorated with iron and was more than nine cubits long and four cubits wide.
Nine cubits long is about 13.5 feet. If the King was close to this height, then he would have been taller than Goliath.
Either that, or the King just wanted a majestic bed.
How tall were people in the New Testament?
What about people in the New Testament? Were they also unusually tall?
Probably not. You have to remember that not a lot of time has passed between the birth of Jesus until present – only about 2000 years.
That’s very little time in the bigger picture of human evolution. The average height of humans has stayed steady over that period – about 1.7m or 5’7”.
If anything, humans are actually getting taller in almost all countries as health, nutrition and standards of living increase.
Even Jesus, the most important figure in the New Testament and the Bible, was likely on the shorter side. Based on fossil remains from the same period, he was probably 5ft 5in tall.
How Tall Were Adam And Eve?
Based on the above, we can now try to estimate the height of Adam and Eve.
We’ve mentioned that people in the Old Testament were likely taller than today. After all, they also lived a lot longer than people in the New Testament and presently.
According to the Bible, Noah lived for 950 years. Methuselah, the oldest person in the Bible, lived for 969 years. So it’s not surprising that they could also have been different in other ways like height.
One theory suggests that Adam and Eve were 15 feet tall, meaning they were supergiants. But this is not based on any factual evidence. It is, at best, just a guess.
The only thing we can say is that they were probably pretty tall based on the fact that giants and tall people were common in the Old Testament.
In the end though, we really have no idea how tall Adam and Eve were. Even if there were giants then, I’m sure there were also people of average height and Adam and Eve could have been among them.
Maybe God created Adam and Even with an average height and they looked like most people today; or maybe they were supergiants.
What do you think?
It is possible they were created taller than any other tallest giants we know of in the old testament reason being if they were created with the average height of these days, the human species would have disappeared over that long time period. Humans get shorter as time goes on and this is basically the effect of sin which affected every creation. Like wise giant animal and tree species possibly existed back then compared to the ones we have these days.