The deluge occurred, according to the Septuagint, in the year of the world 2,242, and, by adding up the generations previous to Methusaleh's—
Adam..............................................230
Seth..............................................205
Enos..............................................190
Cainan............................................170
Malaleel..........................................165
Jared.............................................162
Enoch.............................................165
.................................................1287
* Sharpe's History of Egypt, page 196.
—we shall find that he was born in the year of the world 1,287. He lived 969 years, and therefore died in 2,256. But this is fourteen years after the deluge.
The Rev. Dr. Lightfoot, who wrote about 1,644, fixes the month of the creation at September, 5,572 years preceding the date of his book, and says that Adam was expelled from Eden on the day in which he was created.* In the London Ethnological Journal, for which I am indebted to the kindness of its Editor, an able ethnologist and careful thinker, the reader will find a chronology of Genesis ably and elaborately examined. At present, for our immediate purpose, we will take the ordinary. English bible, which gives the following result:
From Adam to Abraham (Gen. v and xi)............. 2008
From Abraham to Isaac (Gen. xxi, 5)............... 100
From Isaac to Jacob (Gen. xxv, 26).................. 60
From Jacob going into Egypt (Gen. xlvii, 9)......... 130
Sojourn in Egypt (Exod. xii, 41)..................... 480
Duration of Moses* leadership (Exod. vii, 7; xxxi, 2). 40
Thence to David, about............................. 400
From David to Captivity, fourteen generations (27),
about twenty-two reigns..........................478
Captivity to Jesus, fourteen generations, about...... 593
4234 Less disputed 230 years of sojourn in Egypt......230
4004 From Adam to Abraham the dates are certain, if we take the bible statement, and there is certainly no portion of the orthodox text, except the period of the Judges, which will admit any considerable extension of the ordinary Oxford chronology.
* Harmony of the Four Evangelists, and Harmony of the Old
Testament.
The book of Judges is not a book of history. Everything in it is recounted without chronological order. It will suffice to say, that the ciphers which we find in the book of Judges, and in the first book of Samuel, yield us, from the death of Joshua to the commencement of the reign of Saul, the sum total of 500 years, which would make, since the exode from Egypt, 565 years; whereas the first book of Kings counts but 480 years, from the going out of Egypt down to the foundation of the temple under Solomon. According to this we must suppose that several of the Judges governed simultaneously.*
* Munk's Palestine, p. 231.
In reading Alfred Maury's profound essay on the classification of tongues, I was much struck with the fact that he, in his philological researches, traces back some of the ancient Greek mythologies to a Sanscrit source. He has the following remark, worthy of earnest attention: "The God of Heaven, or the sky, is called by the Greeks Zeus Pater; and let us here notice that the pronunciation of Z resembles very much that of D, inasmuch as the word Zeus becomes in the genitive Dios. The Latins termed the same God Dies-piter, or Jupiter Now in the Veda the God of Heaven is called Dyash-pitai." What is this but the original of our own Christian God, the father, the [———] (Jeue) pater of the Old Testament? I introduce this remark for the purpose of shaking a very commonly entertained opinion that the Hebrew Records, whether or not God-inspired, are at any rate the most antique, and are written in a primitive tongue. Neither is it true that Hebrew mythology is the most ancient, nor the Hebrew language the most primitive; on the contrary, the mythology is clearly derived, and the language in a secondary or tertiary state.