A TABLE exhibiting the progressive Astronomical Ante Hebr. Her- Jos. Sam. LXX LXX Sam. Trad. Clem. Mod. Systems derived trative of the from and illusforegoing. Jose-Africa- Eusephus. nus. bius. A SCALE exhibiting the proportionate Elevation and Depression of the Her- Jos. Sam. LXX LXX Sam. Trad. Clem. Mod. Ante Cor- Ratio Hebrew Chr. rup. of Error. maic. Numb. Hebr. .. : Deluge .. : : .. : : Deluge 243 838 1882 2002 44 deg. 10 min. 54 sec. 3159-243 2016 2051 2082 2206 2238 2460 Corrup. 3159 813 813 This Diagram unintentionally furnishes the idea of a Pyramid, having the true Diluvian Era for its apex, and each descending stage exhibiting the progress of increasing corruption; till the Modern Jewish Compilers, in severing the baseless errors of the Ancients, also severed the apex or true Diluvian Era. The idea well illustrates the subject. The first division of each stage contains the Equinoctial Precession from the Deluge to the æra of Corruption; the second, the True Period between those æras on the left, with the excess of the corrupted Diluvian Æra on the right; the third, the Corrupted Period from the Deluge to the date of Corruption. A. D. 114 Clem. Numb. the times of the Patriarchs. But the 590 years from the Exode to the temple is not only the sum of the servitudes (111 years added to the 479 complete years of 1 Kings vi. 1, as adopted by the earliest corrupters), but is the period of Josephus himself (who sometimes computes it at 590, at others 591), and therefore precisely what ought to result from the computation of the first Jewish corruption grounded on the patriarchal number afterwards adopted by him. This accurate coincidence of the minor periods of which the diluvian years of the several corruptions are composed, verifies the deductions from the numbers of Josephus, and the Roman and Alexandrine Codices of the LXX. Another coincidence is, that the original Hebrew æras of the creation and deluge, as estimated by the first Jewish corrupters and by the compilers of the Alexandrine numbers-whence both deduced their protracted computations at the interval of 200 years-come out in either case the same to a year; each exceeding the true Hebrew dates by precisely half a century. But this fifty years, added to the sixty of Terah's generation, by which nearly all ancient chronographers raised the birth of Abraham, produce the required period of the servitudes, whereby the true judicial interval of 1 Kings vi. 1 was increased by the Seventy and Josephus. Another curious fact is, that although Josephus-being resolved to adopt the protracted scriptural reckoning, in order to outdo his antagonists, Apion, &c. in regard to his nation's antiquityjudiciously selected the most ancient elongated computation of the Jews as the least liable to question, he raised that computatation still eighty years higher, by adopting the Alexandrine æra of the deluge, B. c. 3177, instead of that of the first corruption, B. c. 3097: for so much had the astronomical error raised that æra during the two centuries that interposed between these two corruptions; and so much does the Alexandrine addition to the postdiluvian generations, 780 years, exceed the first addition of 700 used by Josephus. But this historian, instead of inserting the eighty years where the Jewish interpreters had placed them, left the original addition as he found it, and added forty-five years to the times of the kings of Judah, and thirty-five to those of the Persian empire; and thereby set the first example of corrupting the times of known history;-an example followed by Theophilus, Clemens, Africanus, and many of the early Christian writers, and by the Jews in more modern ages. Josephus may possibly have had a view, also, to invalidate Daniel's prophecy in reference to the coming of our Lord. (To be continued.) |