(6) Dates Before B. C. 700 All Uncertain. This may be asserted positively so far as present research can go; no date prior to B. C lot iS absolutely certain, though many are sufficiently approximate, except 776, 753, 747, which are eras or points from which to reckon. And of these, except 747, there is no certainty that the events they have been held to commemorate occurred just then. The regular establishment of the Olym pic games may, as Mahaffy shows, have been before or after B. C. 776; but that is the era of the Olympiads none the less. Most historians take B. C. 753 as the date of the founding of Rome; yet Roman writers differed to the extent of 28 years as to the founding in fact. The era of Nabonassar, B. C. 747, is fixed by astronomical records; that is sure; and so far as human events can be correlated with those records of the sun, moon, and stars, we can be sure of their date. But even with the aid of astronomy, we may still meet very perplexing problems. Thus the date of the battle between Medes and Lydians, upon the fixing of which many other dates depend, seems easily settled by the fact that the conflict was arrested by the occurrence of a total eclipse in the midst of it ; but the astronomers find several eclipses that answer the conditions of the story, these phenomena ranging from B. C. 625 to B. C. 583. Most historians adopt the eclipse of B. C.61o.
(7) Antiquity of Man. The knowledges which constitute the sciences of geology and archeology are insuperable obstacles to the schemes of chron ology that attempt to fix a date for the creation of the world and the appearance of man upon it. It is now seen that the creation of the world was progressive, indeed, as represented in Genesis but that He to whom a thousand years is as one day neither basted nor tarried; whether from nebular fire-mist or from cosmic confusion, the "tohu bohu" of Genesis i :2, God took myriads of years to shape the earth so that it might be habitable. And it is proved that the human race has been here too long to fit the schemes of Cal met, Usher, and Hales, whose work is summed up in the chronological table given in this work. The very ruins of Egypt indicate a civilization there in full bloom at least B. C. 6000; Maspero says B. C. to,000; and man was on earth long before such progress was wrought out. The best Christian scholarship now recognizes these facts, and ceases to peer into the impenetrable darkness and mystery that covers the beginnings. The literal is the least tenable of the interpretations of Genesis.
2. Chronology of the Old Testament.
(1) From Adam to Noah. The genealogy of Gen. v :1-32 and vii :6, gives basis for this calcu lation. This has come down to us in three forms : the present Hebrew text ; the Samaritan Penta teuch, which was transcribed probably about B. C. 43o, from the Hebrew text of that time; and third, the Septuagint, the translation of which be gan about B. C. 283, and was continued for over a century. These three were discrepant, as ap
pears in the following table: The question arises at once, which of the three. if any one, is to be taken as correct and the stand ard? Naturally, one answers, the Hebrew text, as the original. So thought the translators of 161.1; and they followed that text slavishly, even where corruption in transcription had made non sense, and where there was manifest error, as in the case cited above, 2 Chron. xxii :2, compared with 2 Kings viii :26; and if in this instance both these had concurred in mistake, the text of the LXX (which was good enough for St. Paul and Luke) offered sufficient reason for avoiding an absurdity. But this bibliolatrous regard for the Hebrew text did not arise even among the Jews until long after the final dispersion, when the Masorets fixcd the text. Prior to that, as is shown abundantly by Robertson Smith, in his popular lectures on "The 0. T. in the Jewish Church" changes in the Hebrew text were not uncommon : one chapter of Jeremiah (xxvii) was so changed that his words were in substance reversed, and he was made to prophesy falsely. From these facts it may be seen that the scribes took liberties with the text, especially with what we call the historical books, concentrating their attention and their exactitude upon "The Law." The variations of the three texts above cited imply the taking of liberties which surely would not have been taken if the copyists and translat ors had supposed the genealogies and numbers to rest upon genuine historical documents. They evidently recognized only conjectural and tradi tional narration, shaped long before calendars were devised, the art of writing invented, or rec ords kept. That a Hebrew text or several He brew texts were the original source of the Samar itan and the Septuagint, no one will dispute; but he who says that it was the Masoretic text we now have will find that he has vouched for the unprovable.
The early history of what was to them the Adamite world is thrown into the form of genea logical tables, in the making of which certain purposes appear beyond the giving of history. The number of the patriarchs. ten, is a selected number, to fit into a scheme,. just as in Matthew the number of generations, twice the sacred num ber seven, is forced by the omission of three per sons: so here the patriarchs are found from Adam to Noah, inclusive ; and then a series of ten from Shem to Abraham or Terah as we shall notice below. Whether we take one or the other of the three texts, we do not secure certainty; and among the learned each has its advocates. The calculation of the LXX was that of the Hellenist Jews, of the early Christian church, and of some modern scholars, among whom, in England, are Hales, Poole, and Prof. Rawlinson. These seek to lengthen the time before the Flood, since the antiquity of man requires a period for which even the long ages of the LXX are not sufficient.