8. After the Exode, the history records 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, and in Josh. xiv. 7-1o, an incidental notice of the age of Caleb, who, 40 years old in the zd year from the Exode, was now 85, brings us to the 47th year. Then oc curs a gap, as the interval between the partition of lands (Josh. xiv.) and the opening of the book of Judges is not recorded. Here, with the history of the heathen oppressions and the deliverers, com mences a series of time-marks, which, if meant to be continuous, make 390 years to the end of the Philistine oppression (Judg. xiii. I). Then another gap between Judges and the 1st book of Samuel, for it is not stated at what conjuncture in the time of the Judges, or how long after it, the 4o years of Eli (I Sam. iv. 18) began. This, which is the first item in I Sam., is followed by a term of 20 years and 7 months, ending with the great de liverance at Mizpeh (vi. I ; vii. 2), with which be gins the undefined term of the rule of Samuel, followed by the reign of Saul, also undefined, and this by the reign of David, 40 years and 6 months, and Solomon 40 years, in the 4th of which he be gan to build the temple (1 Kings vi. I).
9. It appears, then, that the direct narrative furnishes a continuous enumeration of time from Adam to the 47th year after the Exode, subject to three sources of discrepancy, as regards—i. The genuine numbers ; z. Terah's age at the birth of Abraham ; 3. The bearings of the period of 430 years. The tract of years enumerated in the book of Judges is isolated by two chasms ; one of which, extending from the partition of lands under Joshua to the first servitude, may, for aught that appears, he 20 or 5o years, or even more ; the other is the undefined term of the rule of Samuel and Saul, preceded by 40 years of Eli, which may be either altogether detached from the time of the Judges, or may reach up into it to some point not expressed. (The mention of 30o years by Jeph thah, Judg. xi. 26, is too vague and general to have any weight in the decision of the question). But here again the information which is needed seems to be supplied in the statement (1 Kings vi. 1) that the 4th year of Solomon, in which he be gan to build the Temple, was the 48oth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt.' This statement is accepted by Hillel, who makes the 480 years one of the elements for the con struction of his Mundane Era, by Ussher also, by Petavius, who, however, dates the period from the Eisode, and by many others. In more recent times, Hengstenherg, Authentie des Pentatenchs, 23, ff.; Hofmann, in the Studien U. Kritiken, 1838; Thenius on i Kings vi. I ; Tiele, Chronol. des A. T.; Gehringer, fiber die bibarche Acre; M. v. Niebuhr, Gesch. Assurs u. Bab., uphold the statement as historical. But though this measure, by bridging over the interval from Moses to Solo mon, enables the chronologist, when he has formed his mundane series down to the Exode, to assign the A. M. of 4 Solomon and so of i David, or, having traced the reckoning B.C. up to i Solo mon, to give the year B.C. of the Exode, the whole tract of time occupied by the Judges is still loose at either end, and needs much management to define its hearings. For the items actually enu merated, being (even if the entire 40 years of Eli, and the 20 years of the Ark at Kirjath-Jearim, be included in the 390 of the Judges) 47 4-39o+43 = 480, no room is left for Joshua and the Elders, Samuel and Saul. Accordingly, the chronologists
who accept this measure are obliged to resort to violent expedients—the assumption that some of the servitudes were contemporary, and others, which it is clearly impossible to exalt above the rank of ingenious conjectures. But the number 48o is, in fact, open to grave suspicion. The LXX. has instead of it 440. Josephus takes no notice of either, and on various occasions makes the interval 592, 612, and 632 years ; the early Christian chrono graphers also ignore the measure, thus Theophil. Antioch. reckons 498 to i David ; Clem. Alex. to Saul, 490 ; Africanus, 677 years. St. Paul's enu meration in Acts xiii. 18-21, also proves at least this, that Jews in his time reckoned the interval in a way which is inconsistent with the statement in Kings vi. i : he gives from the Exode to i David + + 40 = 530 ; therefore to 4 Solomon, 573 years. Some chronologists accept St. Paul's term of 45o years for the interval from the first servitude to the end of those 20 years of the ark, I Sam. vii. 2 (composed of 39o+ 40+20). Mr. Clinton, Fasti Hell. i. 312, dates the 450 from the partition of lands (47th after Exode), assumes zo years for Joshua and the elders, and another term of 12 years between the zo years of the ark, I Sam. vii. 2, and the 40 years which he gives entire to Saul—thus making the sum 612 years. In Orda Saelorunz the 40 +45o+ 4o are taken as continuous from the Exode to i David, and the detailed items are adjusted to this measure, sec. 24o-269. But here the question arises—What authority is due to a N. T. writer or speaker when casually ad verting to matters of chronology in O. T. times (as here in Acts xiii., and again Gal. iii. 17, and also Acts vii. 4) ? Those who account that such statements are merely the result of the writer's own investigation, or an echo of the rabbinical exegesis of his times, will of course decline to allow them as conclusive. In this case, unless we fall back upon i Kings vi. 1, which, in a measure, is open to the same objection, we are without the means of forming a continuous chronology from Moses to Solomon. The method of genealogies, precarious at best—that is, if we possessed even one demon strably complete in all its descents from Moses to David—fails utterly, from the fact that those which have been preserved, especially those of the sacer dotal and Levitical families, which might have been expected to have been the most carefully registered, are, one and all, demonstrably incomplete. This has been shewn by the writer of this article in an examination of Lepsius on Bible Chronology, Ar nold's Theol. i. p. 59-70. If, then, neither Kings vi. i nor Acts xiii. 18-21 be deemed avail able, nothing remains but that some authentic synchronism from profane, especially Egyptian, annals should be applied, if any such can be ascer tained, to the decision of this question. In what manner, and with what degree of success this attempt has been made, will be shewn in the article on MANETHO.