6. We now have an account of the descendants of Adam, with the statement of their several ages. Upon this statement of ages a chronology has been based, usually called the Biblical Chronology. It is derived from that account which is recorded in the Hebrew, the language in which the history was originally written. But there is another account which was given in the earliest extant translation of the Hebrew history, and this is called the Septuagint Greek, made about 286 B. C.; and the chronology of this old translation differs materially from the Hebrew original. There is yet another authority, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the manuscript of which is kept at Shechem, in Palestine,and is the oldest known manuscript of the Bible in the world, having been written before the Captivity and in the old Hebrew letters.[6]
These are the only three records of any importance,and the variations in these records are seen in the following table:[7]
| Lived before birth of sons. | After birth of sons. | Total. | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HEB. | SAM. | SEP. | HEB. | SAM. | SEP. | HEB. | SAM. | SEP. | |
| Adam | 130 | 230 | 800 | 700 | 930 | ||||
| Seth | 105 | 205 | 807 | 707 | 912 | ||||
| Enos | 90 | 190 | 815 | 715 | 905 | ||||
| Cainan | 70 | 170 | 840 | 740 | 910 | ||||
| Mahalaleel | 65 | 165 | 830 | 730 | 895 | ||||
| Jared | 162 | 62 | 162 | 800 | 785 | 800 | 962 | 847 | 962 |
| Enoch | 65 | 65 | 165 | 300 | 300 | 200 | 365 | ||
| Methuselah | 187 | 67 | 187 | 782 | 653 | 782 | 969 | 720 | 969 |
| Another translation of Septuagint | 167 | 802 | |||||||
| 165 | |||||||||
| Lamech | 182 | 53 | 188 | 595 | 600 | 565 | 777 | 653 | 753 |
| Noah | 500 | ||||||||
It will be seen by the above table that the Hebrew text affords data which give us 1,656 years from the creation of Adam to the Flood, for we must add 100 to Noah’s age of 500, since the Flood began when Noah was 600 years old (Gen. 7:6). The Samaritan text takes away 100 years from the life of Jared, 120 from that of Methuselah, and 129 from that of Lamech, as compared with the Hebrew text, making the Flood occur 1,307 after Adam’s creation, while the Septuagint adds 100 to the lives of each of the first five and to that of Enoch, and six to that of Lamech, making the Flood begin 2,262 years after the creation of Adam, according to one reading of the Septuagint, or 2,242 according to another.
So that the aggregates of time from the Creation to the Flood, as deduced from the Hebrew, the Samaritan, and the Septuagint, severally are 1,656, 1,307, and 2,262. The Samaritan is the oldest manuscript, but it cannot be made certain that the dates as given in that manuscript have suffered no alteration;and hence the Hebrew account has been followed in our entire English version,the chronology of which was arranged by Archbishop Ussher (usually written Usher), A. D. 1580,[8] but it “is of no inspired authority and of great uncertainty.”
7. The subject of Biblical Chronology, as derived from data recorded in the Scripture, is necessarily unsettled; and this is so partly because[9] the sacred writers speak of descendants of a given progenitor as his sons, in accordance with Eastern custom,and partly perhaps from the use of letters, for figures, in the early manuscripts,[10] which have suffered changes in subsequent transcriptions. But although these variations occur, discoveries connected with the remains of other nations than the Jewish, and connected with other histories than the Jewish, are beginning to throw light upon the Scripture history and chronology.
These collateral histories allude to persons and events of Jewish history and afford such data that in many instances we can determine from them the actual year of Scripture events. This aid is particularly important as derived from both Assyrian and Egyptian discoveries, and this we shall have reason hereafter to show.
CHAPTER II.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NAMES.
1. In the earliest periods of human history names, either for persons, places, or things, had meanings which were in some sense applicable to the person, place, or thing named. This was specially true in Hebrew history, and of this we have already had illustrations; for when Eve was brought to Adam “he called her name woman, because she was taken out of man,” but afterwards, because Eve in the Hebrew meant life, he “called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.”