Average life expectancy at birth was pulled sharply downward by high infant and childhood mortality. A person who survived the dangerous early years could live well into adulthood and sometimes old age, so a low average should not be mistaken to mean that everyone died young.
Infectious disease, childbirth complications, malnutrition, parasites, injuries, and the absence of modern medical treatment all contributed to mortality. Risk was especially high among infants and young children.
Families lived with death more frequently than most modern families do. Serious illness in a child or adult could become life-threatening quickly, and households had limited ability to reverse many medical emergencies.
Burial populations from ancient Palestine contain substantial numbers of infants and children. Human remains also preserve evidence of infectious disease, nutritional stress, trauma, and other health problems that contributed to mortality.
Ancient inscriptions, burial records, literary sources, and biblical narratives repeatedly attest deaths in infancy, childhood, adulthood, childbirth, disease, accident, and violence.
Scripture portrays death as a familiar but grievous part of human life. Parents mourn children, families bury loved ones, and biblical writers repeatedly reflect upon the brevity and uncertainty of life.
Several Gospel accounts involve families urgently seeking Jesus because someone is dangerously ill or has died. Jairus' daughter, the royal official's son, Lazarus, and other narratives reflect the reality that sickness could rapidly become a matter of life and death.
Mortality was substantially higher than in modern developed societies, and infant and childhood deaths were particularly important in lowering average life expectancy at birth.
Exact life expectancy figures for every first-century Jewish community cannot be calculated with precision from the surviving evidence, and averages should not be interpreted as a normal age at death for every adult.
The constant presence of mortality gives greater emotional weight to Gospel scenes involving desperate parents, serious illness, healing, death, and restoration to life.