But the same result was arrived at with equal empiricism by omitting the episodes of heathen dominations (Jabin and the Philistines), and only adding up the years assigned to the Judges, and the four years of Solomon's reign before he began to build the Temple, thus:—Othniel forty years, Ehud eighty years, Barak forty years, Gideon forty years, Tola twenty-three years, Jair twenty-two years, Jephthah six years, Ibzan seven years, Elom ten years, Abdon eight years, Samson twenty years = two hundred and ninety-six.
Eli forty years, Samuel twenty years (1 Sam. vii. 15), David forty years, Solomon four = one hundred and four. Add to the four hundred the two generations of the wanderings and Joshua, and we again have four hundred and eighty; but quite as arbitrarily, for the period of Saul is omitted.[792]
The problems of early Hebrew chronology cannot yet be regarded as even approximately solved.
[FOOTNOTES:]
[1] "Scriptura est sensus Scripturæ."—St. Augustine.
[2] For a decisive proof of these statements I refer to my Bampton Lectures on the History of Interpretation (Macmillan, 1890).
[3] Bacon.
[4] How closely these documents are transcribed is shown by the recurrence of "unto this day," though the phrase had long ceased to be true when the book appeared.
[5] It is inferred from 1 Kings viii. 12, 13, which have a poetic tinge, and to which the LXX. add "Behold they are written in the Book of the Song," that in this section the "Book of Jashar" has been utilised, and that the reading הישר has been confused with השיר (Driver, p. 182).