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A. M. 1536. A. C. 2468; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2136. A. Ç. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND 6 TO VER. 13.

But I forbear more instances of this kind, and, a refer- | traordinary person. 3 St Jude distinguishes him as a ring the reader, for his farther conviction, to such authors prophet: the Arabians represent him as a great scholar; as have professedly handled this subject, shall only the Babylonians look upon him as the author of their crave leave to make this remark-' that, in all proba- astrology; the Greeks call him their Atlas, and affirm, bility, no small part of the eldest cities, towers, temples, that he was the first who taught men the knowledge of obelisks, pyramids, and pillars, some of which are still the stars; but it was not for thèse rare qualities, so much remaining, and deservedly esteemed the wonders of the as for his singular piety and virtue, that God exempted world, were the structure of these ancient giants; and, him from the common fate of mankind. as they surpass the abilities of all later ages, so they The Jewish doctors indeed will have the words of seem to me to be the visible and undeniable remains, Moses concerning him to import no more, than his sudmonuments, and demonstrations, not only of their exis- den and untimely death, because he lived not near so tence, but of their prodigious stature and strength like-long as the other patriarchs. But the paraphrase which wise; since in an age, ignorant of mechanical powers St Paul gives us of them, "By faith Enoch was transand engines, such vast piles of building could no other-lated, that he should not see death, and was not found, wise have been erected. because God had translated him; for, before his translation, he had this testimony, that he pleased God;' this paraphrase, I say, will not suffer us to doubt of the truth of the Christian interpretation. And indeed, unless the Christian interpretation be true, the whole emphasis of Moses' words is lost, and they become a crude tautology. For, if we say, that Enoch was not, that is, was no longer living, because God took him, that is, God caused him to die; it is the same, as if we should say, God caused him to die, because he took him away by death, which is flat and insipid, a proof of the same thing by the same thing, and hardly consistent with common sense: whereas, if we interpret the words in this manner-Enoch was not, that is, was nowhere to be found, was seen neither among the living nor the dead here on earth, for God took him, that is, because God translated to another place, soul and body together, without undergoing the pains of death; here is a grace and energy in the expression, not unbecoming the style of an inspired penman.

Without concerning ourselves then with the fictions and fables of the poets, or whether the giants of old rebelling against heaven, were able to heap mountains upon mountains, in order to scale it, or to hurl rocks, and islands, and huge flaming trees against it, in order to shake, or set it on fire; all that we pretend to say is, that in ancient days, there were giants, in great numbers, who (excepting the largeness of their stature) were formed and fashioned like other men, and waged no other war with heaven, than what all wicked persons are known to do, when they provoke the Divine Majesty by their crimes and enormous impieties. This is the whole of what the Scriptures assert, and I know no occasion we have to defend the wild hyperboles of the poets.

Amidst the antediluvian corruption, and even while these abominable and gigantic men were in being, Moses makes particular mention of one person of eminent sanctity, and who found a favour extraordinary, for having preserved his innocence, and persisted in his duty, notwithstanding the wickedness of the age wherein he lived. Enoch was certainly, in other respects, an ex

Whiston's Supplement, part 2.

6

The reason which Moses assigns for God's taking him, in this wise, is, that he walked with God:' but if God's taking him means no more than his hasty death, it was far from being a divine attestation of his piety, (because length of days are the promised reward of that ;) and therefore we may be allowed to infer, that his walk

Calmet's Dissertation on the Giants, vol. 2. whose staff was like the mast of a ship, and the forepart of whose skull would contain some Sicilian bushels, which are about a third part of our English bushel.--See Whiston's Supplementing with God was not the cause of his ablation by death, encerning the old giants, in his Authentic Records, part 2.

a That there have been giants in the world admits of no doubt, but probably no nations of such giants as these. Indeed, the enormous bones of most supposed giants have, by subsequent and more accurate observation, been found to be bones of animals, of species which nowhere exist.-Bishop Gleig.

They that desire to see more instances of this kind may find them cited by Huetius in his Inquiries, &c., b. 2.; Augustine on the Government of God, b. 15.; Josephus' Antiquities, b. 1. c. 5, 18.; Pliny, b. 1.; Heidegger's History of the Patriarchs, Essay 11.; Grotius on Truth, b. 1.; Hackwell's Apology, b. 3.; Whiston's Original Records, part 2.; and our Philosophical Transactions, Nos. 234, 272, 274, 346, and 370.

The works of this kind which our author reckons up are, 1. The Giants' Dance, upon Salisbury plain in England, now called Stone-henge. 2. The Giant's Causeway in the north of Ireland. 3. The Circular Gigantic Stone at Ravenna. 4. The Tower of Babel. 5. The Two Obelisks mentioned by Herodotus. 6. The Temple of Diana in Egypt. 7. The Labyrinth in Egypt. 8. The Lake Maris, 480 miles long, and dug by human labour, all by the same Herodotus. 9. The Sphinx of Egypt. 10. The most ancient Temple in Egypt. 11. The Agrigentine Temple. 12. The Pyramidal Obelisk, all mentioned by Diodorus Siculus. 13. The Temple of Solomon. 14. The Palace of Solomon at Jerusalem. 15. That at Balbeck, 16. That at Tadmor. 17. The Palace and Buildings at Persepolis. 18. The Temple of Belus at Babylon. 19. The Temple at Chillembrum. And 20. The first Temple of Diana at Ephesus.-'histon's Supplement.

but of his assumption into glory. The truth is, 'about fifty-seven years before this event, Adam, the father of all living, had submitted to the sentence denounced against him, and resigned his breath; and whatever notions his posterity might have of a life immortal in reversion, yet it seemed expedient to the divine wisdom, at this time, in the person of Enoch, to give them, as it were, anticipation of it, and to support and comfort them under the sense of their mortality, with the prospect, and assured hope, that after the dark entry of death was passed, they were to be admitted into the mansions of bliss.

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A. M. 1536. A. C. 2468; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2136. A. C. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND 6. TO VER. 13. him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.' His | find Bacchus assuring Cadmus, that by the help of Mars, errand was to propitiate for our sins; but since, with- he should live for ever in the isles of the blessed; that out shedding of blood there is no remission,' the decree we find Aganympha made immortal by the favour of was, that he should die, which when he had satisfied he Jupiter; and, after the death of her husband, Hercules, rose again; and after forty days' converse with his dis- Alcmena, translated by Mercury, and married to Rhadaciples even while they beheld him,' we are told, hemanthus; with many more allusions of the like nature. was taken up into heaven, and a cloud received him out of their sight.' And, in like manner, if the end of Enoch's assumption was for the conviction of mankind in that great article of faith, the reality of another world, it seems reasonable to believe, that the thing was done publicly and visibly; that either some bright and radiant cloud, guided by the ministry of angels, gently raised him from the earth, and mounted with him up on high, (which seems to be our Saviour's case,) or that a strong gust of wind,' governed by the same angelic powers, in some vehicle or other, resembling a bright chariot and horses,' transported him into heaven, (which seems to be the case of Elijah,) and that, in his passage thither, his body was transformed, his corruptible into incorruption, his mortal into immortality in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,' as we are told it will happen to those who are alive, when the 'last trumpet shall sound.'

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And in like manner, it is far from being a bad argument for the truth and reality of the flood, that we find, almost every where in the Latin and Greek historians, horrid descriptions of the lives of the giants, which occasioned that heavy judgment: that we find Berosus the Chaldean, as he is quoted by 10 Josephus, relating the same things which Moses does, concerning the great deluge, the destruction of mankind by it, and the ark, in which Nochus (the same with Noah) was preserved, and which rested on the tops of the Armenian mountains : that we find Abydenus, the Assyrian (as he is cited by Eusebius) taking notice of the wood of the vessel, wherein Xisuthrus (for so he calls Noah) was saved, and telling us, that the people of Armenia made use of it for amulets to drive away diseases, that we find Alexander Polyhistor, in a passage produced 12 by Cyril, informing us of an Egyptian priest who related to Solon, out of It is an idle conceit therefore of some of the Jewish, the sacred books of the Egyptians, (as he supposes,) that, as well as Christian doctors, that Enoch was not trans-before the particular deluges known and celebrated by lated into the celestial, but only into the old terrestrial paradise, wherein Adam, before his transgression lived. Whether the beauty of that place went to ruin, or no, as soon as our first parents were ejected, and no hand left to dress it, it is certain, it could never withstand the violence of the flood; and consequently Enoch must have perished in it, unless we can suppose, that he was preserved by some such miracle as the Israelites were, when they passed through the Red sea, and that the waves, towering up on all sides, surrounded it like a wall, and kept that particular spot dry; which is by too much bold a supposition, especially when it contradicts that authority, which tells us, that the waters prevailed exceed. ingly upon the earth, and that all the high hills, which were under the whole heavens, were covered.'

Whatever therefore some may fancy to themselves, we acknowledge now no other paradise, than what is represented in the Scriptures, as a place in which God gives the brightest evidence of his presence, and communicates his glory with the utmost majesty: a place which St Paul calls the third heaven,' whereunto Elijah was translated, and wherein our blessed Saviour is now "'preparing mansions for us, that where he is, we may be also.' Into this happy place we suppose Enoch to have been conveyed, and it is no mean confirmation of the truth of the Mosaic account, that we find, among the heathen world, notions of the like translation: that we

'Heb. ix. 22. 32 Kings ii. 11.

2 Cor. xii. 2.

Acts xix., and Luke xxiv. 51.
1 Cor. xv. 52.
5 Gen. vi. 19.

7 John xiv. 2, 3.
a Bonserius says,
"that it was probable that paradise had
been preserved free from rain, the waters having raised them-
selves completely around its borders, and become consolidated like
a wall, similar to the waters of the Red Sea during the passage
of the Israelites. But in this case, no probability is requisite, where
a certainty may be averred. When no trace of a miracle is ap-
parent, we are not to support its having existed by any probable
assumption of our own."-Heidegger's Lives of the Patriarchs,
Essay on the Ablation of Enoch.

the Grecians, there was of old an exceeding great inundation of waters, and devastation of the earth: and (to mention no more) that we find 13 Lucian giving us a long account of an ancient tradition, which the people of Hierapolis had of the deluge, varying very little from

Grotius on Truth, b. 2. sect. 16.

Huetius' Inquiries, &c., b. 2. c. 10.

"Evangelical Preparation, b. 9.

10

Against Appion, b. 1. 12 Against Julian. 13 Concerning the Syrian Goddess.

b M. Le Clerc, in his notes upon Grotius on Truth, b. 1. sect. 16, seems to intimate, that Xisuthrus, Ogyges, and Deucalion, are all names signifying the same thing in other languages, as Noah does in Hebrew, wherein Moses wrote; and that the thought to be different, were in reality one and the same. deluges which are said to have happened in their times, and are

c The account, though somewhat long, is not unpleasant, and deserves our observation. This race of men (says he) which now is, was not the first: these are of a second generation, and from their first progenitor Deucalion, who increased to so great a multitude as we now see. Now of these former men they tell us this story. They were contentious, and did many unrighteous things; they neither kept their oaths, nor were hospitable to strangers; for which reason this great misfortune came upon them. All on a sudden the earth disembowelled itself of a great quantity of water, great showers fell, the rivers overflowed, and the sea swelled to a prodigious height; so that all things became water, and all men perished. Only Deucalion was left unto the second generation, upon the account of his prudence and piety; and the manner in which he was saved was this:-He had a

great ark or chest, into which he came with his children and the women of his house, and then entered hogs, and horses, and lions, and serpents, and all other animals which live upon the earth, together with their mates. He received them all, and they did him no harm; for by the assistance of heaven there was a great amity between them, so that all sailed in one chest as long as the water did predominate. This is the account which all the Greek historians give of Deucalion. But what happened afterwards (as it is told by the people of Hierapolis) is worthy our observation, namely, That in their country there was a chasm, into which all this water sunk, whereupon Deucalion built an altar, and erected a temple over it, which he consecrated to Juno; and to verify this story, not only the priests, but the other inhabitants likewise of Syria and Arabia, twice every year, bring abundance of water which they pour into the temple, and though the chasm be but small, yet it receives a prodigious quantity of it; and when

A. M. 1536. A. C. 2468; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2136. A. C. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND 6. TO VER. 13.

what our sacred historian relates: when we find all this,
I say, we cannot but acknowledge, that these, and the
many more historians who are usually produced upon
this head, are a strong testimony of the truth and author-
ity of Moses; and therefore, to conclude this reply, or |
vindication of him, with the reflection of the learned
Scaliger upon the agreement he perceived between
Moses and Abydenus, in the account they both give of
the dove and the raven which Noah is said to have sent
out; "Though the Greek historians," says he, "do not
always agree in particulars with the sacred one, yet they
are rather to be pitied for not having had the advantage
of true and authentic antiquities and records to set them
right, than to forfeit their value and authority, from such
slips and deviations from the truth of the story as render
their testimony and confirmation of the truth of the sacred
history much stronger, because much less to be suspected
than if they agreed with it in every circumstance.'

CHAP. III. Of the Heathen History, the Chronology,
Religion, Learning, Longevity, &c., of the Antedilu-

vians.

We are now arrived at a period, where it may be convenient to take some notice of such heathen writers as have given us an account of the times before the flood, through which we have hitherto been tracing Moses: and those that are esteemed of the best credit and repute, are only three; Berosus, who wrote the history of the Chaldeans; Sanchoniatho, who compiled that of the Phoenicians; and Manetho who collected the antiquities of Egypt.

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statue for him with a golden tongue, a good emblem of his history, says one, which made a fair and specious show, but was not within what it pretended to be, especially when it attempts to treat of ancient times. cannot be denied, however, but that some fragments of it which have been preserved from ruin by the care and industry of Josephus, Tatianus, Eusebius, and others, have been very useful, not only for proving the truth of Scripture history to the heathens, but for confirming likewise some passages relating to the Babylonish empire.

After a description of Babylonia, and a strange story concerning a certain creature, which, in the first year of the world, came out of the Red sea, and, conversing familiarly with men, taught them the knowledge of letters, and several arts and sciences, he proceeds to give us a short account of ten kings which reigned in Chaldea before the flood, and these corresponding with the number which Moses mentions, Alorus, the first, is supposed to be Adam; and Xisuthrus, the last, Noah; and of this Xisuthrus he pursues the story in this manner.

'Cronus, or Saturn, appearing to him in a dream, gave him warning, that on the fifteenth day of the month Dæsius, mankind should be destroyed by a flood, and therefore commanded him to build a ship; and, having first furnished it with provisions, and taken into it fowls and four-footed beasts, to go into it himself, with his friends and nearest relations. Xisuthrus did as he was ordered, built a vessel, whose length was five furlongs, and breadth two furlongs; and having put on board all that he was directed, went into it, with his wife, children, and friends. When the flood was come, and began to abate, he let out some birds, which finding no food, nor place to rest on, returned to the ship again. After some days, he let out the birds again, but they came back with their feet daubed with mud; and when, after some days more, he let them go the third time, they never came back again, whereby he understood that the earth appeared again above the water, and so, taking down some of the planks of the ship, he saw it rested upon a

The Chaldeans were certainly a nation of great and undoubted antiquity. In all probability they were the first formed into a national government after the flood, and therefore were more capable of having such arts and sciences flourish among them as might preserve the memory of eldest times, to the latest posterity: and yet, even among these people, who enjoyed all the advan-mountain. This is the substance of what we have in tages of ease, quiet, and a flourishing empire, we find Berosus, who varies very little from our sacred historian no credible and undoubted records preserved." Berosus, during this period." their historian, was, (as Josephus assures us) a priest Sanchoniatho is highly recommended both by Porof Belus, and a Babylonian born, but afterwards flour-phyry, the great adversary of Christianity, and by his ished in the isle of Cos, and was the first who brought the Chaldean astrology into request among the Greeks; in honour of whose name and memory, the Athenians (who were great encouragers of novelties) erected a

3

1 Notes, &c., for the Correction of Dates. *Stillingfleet's Sacred Origins, b. 1. c. 3.3 Against Appion, b. 1. they do this, they relate how Deucalion first instituted this custom in memory of that calamity, and his deliverance from it.

:

translator into Greek, Philo Biblius. Theodoret is of opinion, that his name, in the Phœnician tongue, signifies Qinanýtns, a lover of truth; which name, as Bochart imagines, was given him when he first set himself to write history but how faithful he has been in transcribing his account of things from his records, we cannot determine, unless we had the books of Taautus, and the sacred inscriptions and records of cities, from whence he pretends to have extracted his history, to compare them together. If we may judge by what remains of his writings, which

The common opinion that they were the descendants of Chised, the nephew of Abraham, is at once unsatisfactory and indefensible, for they were a nation before the call of that patri-is only his first book concerning the Phoenician theology arch when he dwelt with his father Terah in Ur of the Chaldees. extant in Eusebius, we shall hardly think him deserving They are mentioned in the book of Job, not a very great portion so large a commendation: but be that as it will, the of time after the call of Abraham, and if the hypotheses of Dr method wherein he proceeds is this. After having deHales and the astronomical calculations of Dr Brindley be true, the era of Job carries their antiquity still higher, as it is fixed by livered his cosmogony, or generation of the other parts both these gentlemen at upwards of 400 years before the call of of the world, he tells us, that the first pair of human Abraham. If, with Josephus and some of the rabbins, we sup-creatures were Protogonus and Eon, (as Philo, his pose, that the Chaldeans are the progeny of Arphaxad, they may have been a nation long before the call of Abraham.-Bell's edition of Rollin's Ancient History, p. 161.

See Universal History, and Shuckford's Connection, b. 1.
Ibid.

6 Stillingfleet's Sacred Origins, b. 1. c. 2.

A. M. 1536. A. C. 2468; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2136. A. C. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND 6. TO VER. 13.

translator, calls them,) the latter of whom found out the food which is gathered from trees: that their issue were called Genus and Genea, who were the first that practised idolatry; for, upon the occasion of great droughts, they made their adorations to the sun, calling him Beelsamen, which, in Phoenician, is the Lord of heaven; that the children of these were Phos, Pur, and Phlox, that is, light, fire, and flame, who first found out the way of generating fire, by rubbing pieces of wood against one another that these begat sons of vast bulk and stature, whose names were given to mount Cassius Libanus, Antilibanus, and Brathys, whereon they seized: that of these were begotten Memrumus, and Hypsuranius, the latter of whom was the inventor of huts made of reeds and rushes, and had a brother called Usous, the first worshipper of fire and wind, in whose time women became very abandoned and debauched: that many years after this generation, came Agreus and Halieus, the inventors of the arts of hunting and fishing: that of these were begotten two brothers, the first forgers and workers in iron; the name of one is lost, but Chrysor (who is the same with Vulcan) found out all fishing tackle, and, in a small boat, was the first that ventured to sea, for which he was afterwards deified: that from this generation came two brothers, Technites and Autochthon, who invented the art of making tiles; from these Agrus, and Agrotes, who first made courts about houses, fences, and cellars; and from these Amynus, and Magus, who showed men how to constitute villages, and regulate their flocks. This is the substance of what Sanchoniatho relates during this period; and how far it agrees with the account of Moses, especially in the idolatrous line of Cain, our learned bishop Cumberland has all along made his

observations.

Manetho Sebennita was high priest of Heliopolis in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, by whose order he wrote his history; but that which destroys the credit of it, (though it gave him an opportunity of invention,) is, that he professes to transcribe his Dynasties from inscriptions on the pillars of Hermes (whom the Egyptians, out of veneration, call Trismegistus) in the land of Seriad, which land no one knows any thing of, and which pillars being engraven before the flood, can hardly be supposed to escape undefaced.

The plain truth is, the LXX translation was, not long before this time, finished; and when the Jewish antiquities came to appear in the world, the Egyptians (who are mighty pretenders this way) grew jealous of the honour of their nation, and were willing to show, that they could trace up their memoirs much higher than Moses had carried those of the Israelites. This was the chief design of Manetho's making his collections. He was resolved to make the Egyptian antiquities reach as far backwards as he could; and therefore, as many several names as he found in their records, so many successive monarchs he determined them to have had; never con

'See Stillingfleet's Sacred Origins, b. 1. c. 2. No. 11.

2 Shuckford's Connection, part 1. b. 1.

a Allowing the thirty dynasties, which he described from memoirs preserved in the archives of the Egyptian temples, to be successive, they make up a series of more than 5,300 years to the time of Alexander the Great, which can be nothing but a manifest forgery.-Roliin, p. 20.

sidering that Egypt was at first divided into three, and afterwards into four sovereignties for some time, so that three or four of his kings were many times reigning together: which, if duly considered, will be a means to reduce the Egyptian account to a more reasonable compass.

a The substance of the account however (as it stands unexplained in Manetho) is this:-That there were in Egypt thirty dynasties of gods, consisting of 113 generations, and which took up the space of 36,525 years; that when this period was out, then there reigned eight demigods in the space of 217 years; that after them succeeded a race of heroes, to the number of fifteen, and their reign took up 443 years; that all this was before the flood, and then began the reign of their kings, the first of whom was Menes.

Now, in order to explain what is meant by this prodigious number of years, we must observe, that it was a very usual and customary thing for ancient writers to begin their histories with some account of the origin of things, and the creation of the world. Moses did so in his book of Genesis; Sanchoniatho did so in his Phonician history; and it appears from Diodorus, that the Egyptian antiquities did so too. Their accounts began about the origin of things, and the nature of the gods; then follows an account of their demigods, and terrestrial deities; after them came their heroes, or first rank of men; and last of all, their kings. Now, if their kings began from the flood; if their heroes and demigods reached up to the beginning of the world: then the account which they give of the reigns of their gods, before these, can be only their theological speculations put into such order as they thought most philosophical.

To make this more plain, we must observe farther, that the first and most ancient gods of the Egyptians, and of all other nations, (after they had departed from the worship of the true God,) were the luminaries of heaven; and it is very probable, that what they took to be the period of time in which any of these deities finished their course, that they might call the time of his reign. Thus a perfect and complete revolution of any star which they worshipped, was the reign of that star;

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a The accounts of Munetho seem at first sight so extravagant omit attempting to say any thing concerning them; though other that many great writers look upon them as mere fictions, aud learned men (and more especially our countryman Sir John Marsham, in his Canonical Chronology, p. 1.) not well satisfied with this proceeding, have undertaken an examination of them and with some success. The misfortune is, we have none of author that properly gives us any sight or knowledge of them. the original works from whence they were collected, nor any one The historians Diodorus Siculus and Herodotus, did not examine these matters to the bottom; and we have no remains of the old Egyptian Chronicon, or of the works of Manetho, except some quotations in the works of other writers. The Chronographia of Syncellus, wrote by one George, an abbot of the monastery of St Simeon, and called St Syncellus, as being suffragan of Tarasius, patriarch of Constantinople, is the only work we can have re

course to.

From these antiquities Syncellus collected the quo tations of the old Chronicons of Manetho, and of Eratosthenes, as he found them in the works of Africanus and Eusebius; and the works of Africanus and Eusebius being now lost, (for it is known that the work which goes under the name of Eusebius' Chronicon is a composition of Scaliger's) we have nothing to be depended upon but what we find in Syncellus above mentioned. -Shuckford's Connection.

A. M. 1536. A. C. 2468; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2136. A. C. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND 6. TO VER. 13.

and as a period of 36,525 years is what they call an entire mundane revolution, that is, when the several heavenly bodies come round to the same point, from which all their courses began; so is it very remarkable, that they made the sum total of the reigns of all their several gods, to amount to the self-same space of time. This I take to be a true state of the Egyptian dynasties : and if so, it makes their history not near so extravagant as has been imagined, and sinks their account of time some hundred years short of the Jewish computation.

The Jewish computation indeed is not a little ambiguous, by reason of the different methods, which men find themselves inclined to pursue. The three common ways of computing the time from the creation to the flood, are, that which arises from the Hebrew text, from the Samaritan copies, and from the LXX. interpretation.

THE COMPUTATION OF MOSES.

3. According to the Septuagint.

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The difference between the Hebrew and Samaritan computation is easily perceived, by comparing the two former tables together; nor will it be any hard matter to reconcile them, if we consider what St Jerome informs us of, namely, that there were Samaritan copies which made Methuselah 187 years old at the birth of Lamech; and Lamech 182 at the birth of Noah. Now, if this be true, it is easy to suppose 62 (the age of Jared at the birth of Enoch) to be a mistake of the transcriber, who might drop a letter, and write 62 instead of 162; and thus all the difference between the Hebrew and Samaritan copies will entirely vanish.

But it is not so between the Hebrew and the Septuagint. The Hebrew, according to the highest calculation, makes no more than 1656 years before the flood, but the Septuagint raises it to no less than 2262; so that in this one period (without saying any thing of the wide difference between them in subsequent times) there is an addition of above 600 years, which can a hardly be accounted for by any mistake of transcribers, because all the ancient and authentic copies, both of the Hebrew and Septuagint, agree exactly in their computation. And therefore the generality of learned men, despairing

1 In his Inquiries on Genesis.

a Lud. Capellus, in his Sacred Chronology prepared by Walton for the Polyglot Bible, attempts to reconcile this difference by telling us from St Austin, On the Government of God, c. 13, that this edition was not made by the LXX. themselves, but by some early transcriber from them, and probably for one or other of these two reasons. 1st, Perhaps, thinking the years of the antediluvians to be but lunar, and computing, that at this rate the six fathers (whose lives are thus altered) must have had their children at five, six, seven, or eight years old (which could not but look incredible;) the transcriber, I say, finding this, might be induced to add one hundred years to each in order to make them of a more probable age of manhood at the birth of their respective children: or, 2ndly, If he thought the years of their lives to be solar, yet still he might imagine, that infancy and childhood were proportionably longer in men who were to live seven, eight, or nine hundred years, than they are in us; and that it was too early in their lives for them to be fathers at sixty, seventy, or ninety years of age; and for this reason, might add one hundred years, to make their advance to manhood (which is commonly not till one-fourth part of life is over) proportionable to what was to be the term of their duration.-Shuckford's Connec tion, c. 1.

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130 105

807

912 1042

Enos..

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