agint from the Hebrew as the height of audacity; "eo processerunt audaciæ concinnatores Alexandrini et Samaritani, ut unusquisque textum Hebræum secundum commenta sua chronologica, modo similia, modo sibi invicem opposita, refingere non dubitaverit." Michaelis' is quite abusive of the Septuagint. He shows that according to it Methuselah survived the Deluge fourteen years; for he lived 167 years before the birth of Lamech and 802 after. Now Noah was born when Lamech was 188 years old, and the Deluge took place when Noah was 600 years old, which add, and you have 788. Subtract this from 802 years, which Methuselah lived after Lamech, and you have fourteen years.

Augustine detected this error, and ascribes it to the "mendositas codicum," for some Greek MSS. have differently divided the years of Methuselah's life, and make him out to have been 187 years old at the birth of Lamech, which would leave 782 after, and thus he would have died six years before the Deluge. The Hebrew, says Michaelis, takes a middle and independent course between the Septuagint and Samaritan text, and is supported by the Samaritan where that differs from the Greek. In case three witnesses déposed differently to facts, and one of them should be invariably supported either by one or the other, where they differed from each other, which would you believe? Prof. Stuart says: "the Septuagint chronology cannot compete with the Hebrew as to its claim for credence." We cannot believe that the Hebrew has been interpolated. The Septuagint was far more exposed to it, and it was probably done by the translators.

Having disposed of this difficulty, we meet with still another when we come to the Exodus of the Israelites. In order to determine the date of the Exodus, we must know how long they were in Egypt.

From Abraham to the descent into Egypt was 215 years; for Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 years old; from

1 Michaelis Ante Diluvian Chronology, translated in Biblical Repository, July

1841.

which subtract seventy-five, his age at his call, and there remains twenty-five. Esau and Jacob were born when Isaac was sixty years old; Jacob was 130 years old at the descent, which add 25+60+130-215.

XV.

From the descent to the Exodus the Hebrew and Septuagint are again at issue. In Exodus xii. 40 the Hebrew reads: "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was 430 years;" with this statement, Gen. 13: "They shall afflict them four hundred years,” and Acts vii. 6: "They shall entreat them evil four hundred years, agree." But the Septuagint, Ex. xii. 40, adds: They and their fathers in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan; so also the Samaritan and Josephus. Gesenius remarks on this addition of the Septuagint: "There is another correction of the Hebrew text from the chronological system of later Jewish critics, who cannot bring themselves to believe that there were only four generations for 400 years, as appears from Ex. vi. 15-19, Num. xxvi. 58, 60. With them some modern critics, Morinus, Cappellus, Kennicott, Houbigant and Geddes, fond of emendation, agree. But Simon, Koppe, Michaelis, Jahn, and Vater have seen the truth and maintained the Hebrew text. That the passage Gen. xv. 13: "They shall afflict them 400 years," refers to the descendants of Jacob and to the bondage in Egypt, is unquestionable. In Gen. xv. 16 it is said: "But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again," — which shows that at that period a generation was estimated at 100 years, which agrees with the genealogies in Exodus and Numbers, before referred to, in which only four generations are reckoned from Levi to Moses. Further, who will believe that seventy men, who came down with Jacob into Egypt, would increase in 215 years to 600,000? It has been sometimes said that Paul in Galatians iii. 17, where he says that the law was 430 years after the covenant, endorses the Septuagint chronology. But it may be replied to this that the covenant was not only made with Abraham, but renewed with Isaac and Jacob, and that it is to the renewal with Jacob that Paul refers.

Augustine main

tains that Paul adopts the Septuagint chronology. Calvin follows the Septuagint in his commentary on Gen. xv. 13: "Ex sexto capite colligere promptum sit, non ultra ducentos et triginta annos, vel circiter, elapsos esse, ex quo descendit illuc Jacob usque ad liberationem." Lighfoot (Vol. II, 355) remarks: "From the giving of the promise to Abraham to the deliverance out of Egypt were 430 years." This sum of years divided itself into two equal parts; for half of it was spent before their going into Egypt, and half of it in their being there; for they spent in Egypt ninetyfour years before the death of Levi, and 121 after; for Levi and Joseph were born in Jacob's second apprenticeship. Levi was forty-three years old at the descent, and from Exodus vi. 16, lived 137 years; so that they were there ninetyfour years before his death, and from the genealogies, Exodus vi., 121 years after.

Köppen' maintains that the residence in Egypt was 215 years; for Joseph lived seventy-one years after the descent, being thirty-nine years old at that time, and he died at the age of 110 years. From Joseph's death till Moses's birth was sixty-four years; from Moses's birth to the Exodus, eighty years, which add, 71+64+80=215. But how do we know that it was sixty-four years from Joseph's death to Moses's birth? It is said, Exodus i. 6, that the oppression began after Joseph died and all that generation. Kohath (Gen. xlvi. 11) was dead. He was 133 years old at his death, and survived Joseph sixty years. Moses, Köppen assumes, was born very soon after, when the oppression was at its height, say four years.

In summing up the authorities on both sides, we find Gesenius, Michaelis, Scaliger, Petavius, Usher, Newton, Kennedy, Playfair, Koppe, Jahn, Vater, Stuart, Jost, Millman, have adopted the Hebrew reckoning of 430 years as the length of the residence in Egypt; while Walton, Vossius, Houbigant, Hales, Pezronius, Calvin, Lightfoot, Hudson, Whiston, Kennicott, Jackson, Hammond, Whitby, Pat

1 Köppen, Bibel, Vol. I. p. 203.

rick, Doddridge, Geddes, have held to the shorter period of 215 years.

The most difficult of all chronological questions, according to Houbigant, now remains. How long was the period from the Exodus to the building of Solomon's temple? In 1 Kings vi. 1 we read: "And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, he began to build the house of the Lord." But in Acts XIII. 20 it is said: "God gave them judges for the space of about 450 years, until Samuel, the prophet." If the last statement is correct, then we must add to the 450 years the age of Moses and Joshua, sixty-five years, and the reigns of Saul and David, each forty years, and four years of Solomon's, eighty-four years, which will give us 599 years as the period from the Exodus to the temple. If we subtract the age of Moses and Joshua and reigns of David and Saul from 480, we have only 331 years for the time of the judges. If we add up the number of years each of the judges ruled, we have 500 years. So great are these difficulties that Hales, Kuinoel and others have regarded the Hebrew in 1 Kings vi. 1 as an error of the transcriber. In favor of this, Josephus computes the same period at 592 years. The Chinese Jews' who emigrated to China, A. D. 73, have the reading 592.

Lightfoot thus reconciles Kings and Acts: "The Judges were for 299 years; the oppressors 111 years, and Eli's administration was forty years, until Samuel, the prophet." We might add that the Septuagint, 1 Kings vi. 1, reads 440, and Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, 490.

We come now to the era of the nativity of our Lord; and here we find a surprising diversity of opinions. We subjoin a table of these differences :

The Christian era was introduced by Dionysius Exiguus, a Roman abbot, and Scythian by birth, who flourished in the reign of Justinian. Before his time the era of Diocletian was in use; as his memory, in consequence of his persecutions, was abhorred by Christians, Dionysius was led to change the era. He was led to date the year of the nativity A. U. C. 753, four years too late, from Luke's account that John the Baptist began his ministry in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, and that Jesus at his baptism "was beginning to be about thirty years of age." For Tiberius succeeded Augustus at his death, U. C. 767; his fifteenth year was then U. C. 782, from which subtract the year of the nativity, 753, and the remainder is twenty-nine years complete. But Jesus was born, according to Matthew, before Herod's death, which took place, according to Josephus, just before the passover, U. C. 750. Some have maintained that the fifteenth year of Tiberius was to be reckoned from his admission by Augustus into the partnership of the government with him. But Ideler and Hengstenberg1 have shown that history knows no other mode of reckoning than from the beginning of his actual reign, after the death of Augustus.

In the ninth chapter of Daniel it is predicted that from the issue of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem to Messiah's public appearance would be sixty-nine sevens of years, 483 years. The terminus a quo of this prophecy has been shown by Hengstenberg to have been 455 B. C. or 299 U. C., to which add 483, and we have 782 U. C. as the year of Christ's public appearance. Hengstenberg remarks: "Among all the current chronological opinions of this period, not one differs over ten years from the prophecy. The

1 Hengstenberg's Christology, Vol. II. 393, 394. Stuart on Prophecy, p. 81. Winer, Real-Lexicon, Art. Jesus.