The students of these patriarchal tables, after observing the carelessness of Hebrew genealogies with their frequent omissions, will find himself obliged to say of the genealogies prior to Abraham that in them we have probably only the more im portant names of the lives of descent, the purpose of their transmission not being history in our modern sense, but to show a line of descent. We start from one made of the red earth into whom God poured the breath of physical life and the in spiration of understanding (Job xxxii:8); we reach the Father of the Faithful, the "Faithful Abraham" of the Galatian Epistle (iii:9). That the first man was of earth we know, not by the gross conception of a form made of mud and then made alive; but because the sentence "dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return" is proved by experience, which shows of what we arc made. Nor need we quarrel with the evolutionist for giv ing man a long line of simian predecessors if it pleased the Creator so to develop by slow degrees or by greater steps the final form: Man was cre ated only when the inspiration of which Elihu spoke to Job befell that form, and true life, with intellectual powers not limited to instinct nor heredity, and with "the powers of an endless life" ( I Ieb. vii :t6), became its crown. Was it about such questions as puzzle us here that Paul spoke with fine scorn: "Shun foolish questionings and and vain?" (Titus iii: 9). Who were fighting over genealogies in his day? (2) Long Lives of Patriarchs. Of these four things may be said : (t) We may take them liter ally. We cannot from the fact that few men live now to be a hundred years of age—and none much more—presume to say that it was impossible for men to have lived nine centuries. We may say that if the historical verity of the document is doubtful we may refuse to accept it on that point. Perhaps, as some suggest, the original list was of names only, to which some later scribe added numbers. Possibiliti:s and guesses are endless. (2) We nixy claim that the word years is too vague, occurring in a document in which the ages of creation are called days: that the writer speaks of seasons. or other periods. (3) More plausibly it is suggested that "for the ages before Moses the Old Testamtnt writers made the head of a family group or clan stand for his descendants composing such a community, till a new community of the same kind branched off from it. . . . In the old Semitic languages it was a very common usage to denote such a family or kin by the name of its an ctstral head; and the very designation of such a community was the term (Het).) Choi, 'a life.'" Thus J. W. De Forest (Old and New for t872, •i :497) says Abel is a tribe of shepherds, victims if the first reported war, extinguished by Cain, a fierce predatory clan, which was expelled from the social center of the Adamites. Jared means rul ing; it was a predominant clan; Jared's sons and daughters were its colonies. The reader will find amusement if not instruction in the extremes to which De Forest carries his notion. (4) One nay follow Swedenborg and give to these chapters an inner sense which will atone for the loss of the outward literal verity. Perhaps there are other ways of dealing with these long lives.
(3) The Flood and Civilization. Singularly, the nature and extent of the Flood and the origin and development of civilization become involved in this question of time. hut not in any question of definite chronology. It is said that no scheme yet proposed gives time enough after the Flood for the development of civilization and institutions. Did civilization develop from different origins and various centers? Is it not rather true that there is but one civilization which spread and was planted from a single source, as one torch may light many? It is a favorite theory of some that man has arisen slowly from savagery; hut others claim that savages and barbarians are fallen men.
This article is not The place for discussiiiv 'hose questions; but the reader will see that they in volve demands for :eons of time if all men are to have risen from savagery or simian conditions. Was the flood real or symbolical? Did the flood strip the whole globe of all inhabitants, except the Noahite family? Or was it limited in extent. leaving most of the world untouched, so that in the undevastated regions there was time enough for all the development that is shown to have existed? Have savage or barbarous people risen in civilization or shown tendencies to do so without contact with the civilized? And in China we have an example of what is to us an arrest of civilization, without retrogression. When the chronologer asks for time, many such questions confront him.
(4) From the Flood to Abraham. We have a genealogical table for this period in Gen. xi: to-26, probably from the same source as the former one, and subject to the same difficulties from its triple form.
The age of Shem before the Flood must be sub tracted to get the time from the Flood to Abra ham's birth. Here again are ten patriarchs if we count Cainan and include Terah: then Abraham stands at the head of the new movement in a more definitely historical era. But shall Cainan be included? Reasons for adopting the insertion of the name by the LXX are, first, it is impos sible to account for the presence of the name if it were not in some authentic copy of the Hebrew text in B. C. 283. Second, names are more easily left out than inserted. Omissions in the genealo gies of the Hebrew text are common enough to warn its that counting by generations as they are given is unsafe. Compare Ezra vii:1-5 with t Chron. vi:4-15; there is a discrepancy of eight generations, since two must be put in between Ezra and Seraiah. Jehu is the son of Jehosha phat, the son of Nimshi, in 2 Kings ix :2, t4: but in verse 20 of the same chapter, in t Kings xix :16, and in 2 Chron. xxii:7 he is Jehu, son of Nimshi. Laban in Gen. xxii :20, 23. and xviii: 5, is son of Bethuel; but in xxix :5, he is son of Nahor, the father of Bethuel. In an extreme ease, Shebuel, contemporary of David, is called son of Gershon, the son of Moses (t Chron. xxvi: 24). Third, Cainan is in the genealogy of St. Luke iii:36. The theory that from Luke it was worked back into the text of the LXX is an extreme one. The question is pressing, if this "second Cainan," as he is called, is genuine, how came he to he left out? if not genuine, how came he to be put in? It must be said. how ever, that the general opinion of chronologers is against him. Perhaps Abraham is to be counted as the tenth in this second group.
But to the length of time assigned to these patriarchs, which is in the Hebrew text only 290 years, there is the fatal objection that time enough is not given after the denudation of the earth by the Flood for the growth of the great nations of Abraham's time, the history of some of which is known to run back from 300o to 6000 years before the time of Abraham. Such are Chalckea, Assyria, and Egypt. Even the 1 17o years of the LXX are insufficient. From these two series of ten patriarchs, then, it is im possible to deduce any defensible system of chron ology. The development of the genealogies of the Noahites in Gen. x shows that names of nations, as RA izraim,Sudim, Philistim, Caphtorim, are used as if personal names.