The same kind of estimating is now being done from the Assyrian tablets and their records. We must remember these old kings were great boasters and liars, too. We don't know the basis of their calculations. Perhaps Assyria also had three month years. If their method was like Egypt's, and they were connected as we know by much intercourse and literature, we may expect like inaccuracy. The ancient dates given in the inscriptions found in Nuffar recently, are already suspected by scholars. The date for the temple uncovered there was 3,200 B. C. This number is the product of forty multiplied by eighty; evidently a round number for eighty generations, and not at all a careful or exact chronological statement.
However, let us compare the two accounts, the Bible and the Assyrian. The one precise in statement, accurate in ten thousand points as demonstrated, with us for thousands of years, trusted and tried. The other inexact, mythical in its legends, having all the marks of inaccuracy, just discovered, made by people we know nothing of and having no character to speak of, and full of vain boastings and absurd claims. Which is the true and which the false? Let the jury decide. We will abide the verdict.
Prof. A. H. Sayce of Oxford, writes: "The light that has come from the remnants of the past has been fatal to the pretenses of critical skepticism. The discoveries of Abydos have discredited its methods and results. They have shown that where they can be tested they prove to be absolutely worthless. It is only reasonable to conclude that methods and results, that thus break down under the test of monumental discovery, must equally break down in other departments of history where no such test can be applied. It is not the discoveries of the higher critics, but the old traditions which have been confirmed by archaeological discovery." (Homiletic Review, March, 1901.) This statement is made by one of the most able archaeologists and semitic scholars in the world.
The age of man on earth has much testimony from science agreeing with the Bible account. From many the following are cited:
Dr. J. A. Zahm, the distinguished scholar, says, "I am disposed to attribute to man an antiquity of about ten thousand years. It seems likely that the general consensus of chronologists will ultimately fix on a date which shall be below rather than above ten thousand years as the nearest approximate to the age of our race." (The Bible, Science and Faith, p. 311.) He quotes many other authorities.
Prof. Winchell tells us, "The very beginnings of our race are still almost in sight." (Sketches of Creation.) Dawson thinks man has been on earth about seven thousand years. Geology agrees that man did not exist before the ice age. The stone age is fixed at about seven thousand years ago by others.
Professor George Frederick Wright tells us, "The glacial period did not close more than ten thousand years ago. This shortening of our conception of the ice age renders glacial man a comparatively modern creature. The last stage of the excessive unstability of the earth was not so very long ago and continued down to near the introduction of man." (Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1902.)
S. R. Pattison, F. G. S., tells us, "Science shows to us a number of converging probabilities which point to man's first appearance along with great animals about 8,000 years ago." (Age and Origin of Man Geologically Considered, Am. Tr. Soc., p. 29.)
Dr. Friedrich Pfaff, professor of natural science in Erlangen, thus sums up the evidence from geology as to man: "(1) The age of man is small, extending only to a few thousand years. (2) Man appeared suddenly: the most ancient man known to us is not essentially different from the now living man. (3) Transitions from the ape to the man, or the man to the ape, are nowhere found. The conclusion we are led to is that the Scripture account of man, which is one and self-consistent, is true.... This account of man we accept by faith, because it is revealed by God, is supported by adequate evidence, solves the otherwise insoluble problems, not only of science and history, but of inward experience, and meets our deepest need.... The more it is sifted and examined the more well founded and irrefragable does it prove to be." (Age and Origin of Man, Am. Tr. Soc., pp. 55-56.)