much longer, the rapid increase of the population, which the HEBREW copy supposes, between the flood and Abraham, is really accounted for. "In the present state of mankind it is calculated that the numbers of a people, under favorable circumstances, may be doubled in 10 years. It has been proved by other calculations, that the numbers have actually doubled in periods of 12 and four-fifth years, for short periods. In parts of North-America it is acknowledged that the people there doubled their numbers in 15 years. The Israelites in Egypt doubled their numbers in periods of something less than fifteen years. Now the first families after the flood were placed in circumstances more favorable to rapid increase, than in any other period of mankind. They were not gradually emerging from barbarism, but possessed all the arts and civilization of the Ante-diluvian world. They had unoccupied land before them, and their lives were extended to 500, 400, and 200 years. If we assume then, that the population doubled itself in periods of 12 years, the population of the earth, beginning from six parents, would at 226 years arrive at more than 50,000,000 of persons, and in 300 years would amount to 200,000,000. If we take only the actual rate of increase which we know to have occurred in Egypt, and suppose fifteen years to be the period of doubling, still the numbers of mankind would attain 50,000,000 in 345 years, and would reach 200,000,000 in 373 years from the flood. calculation the most probable; I think the former but, even in the latter case, "The circumstances of the dispersion of mankind received the command to separate, and prepared to inhabit one city, would exceed 50,000 persons; and this number thus certainly would have reached within 160 years of the flood. "As to the third objection, it is not wonderful that idolatry should have sprung up during the lives of Noah, and Shem, when we consider the multitudes of mankind, and that after the dispersion they were widely scattered over the face of the earth. We know that the Israelites fell into idolatry even in the presence of the holy mountain, during the life-time of MOSES, and afterwards in the midst of the warning of the prophets. The influence of Arphaxad, and Salah, and Heber in Chaldea, would not be greater than that of Moses and Elijah over the children of Israel. Besides, it is not affirmed in Scripture, that all the patriarchs between Arphaxad and Terah were HOLY men, and never deviated into idolatry. III. As to motives for the adulterations of the true numbers," Jackson allows, that though the reasons are plain which induced the Jews of the second cen tury to corrupt the prophecies relating to Christ, their reason for shortening the patriarchal genealogies is not so plain. On the other hand, the first translators of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, had an obvious motive for enlarging the Chronology. The Chaldeans and Egyptians (whose histories were about this time published by Berosus and Manetho) had claim to a remote antiquity. Hence the translator of the Pentateuch might be led to augment the amount of the generations by the centenary additions, and by the interpolation (as Hales himself allows that it is,) of the second Cainan, in order to carry back the epochs of the Creation and the Flood to a period more conformable to the high pretensions of the Egyptians and Chaldeans." On the whole Mr. Clinton concludes, that the HEBREW computation of the genealogies may be safely received. The following important observation may be here added. "They who with Clavier imagine themselves at liberty to enlarge the period between the FLOOD and ABRAHAM to an indefinite amount, mistake the question. The uncertainty is not an uncertainty for want of testimony, like that which occurs in the early Chronology of Greece, &c.; where the times are uncertain because no evidence was preserved, and an approximation of the truth is to be made by a comparison of different particulars. The uncertainty here is of a peculiar character, belonging to this particular The evidence exists, but in a double form; and we have to decide which is the authentic and genuine copy. But if the one is rejected, the other is esta-. blished. Either the space before the Flood was 1656 years, or 2256. Either the period from the flood was 1002 years to the call of Abraham, or 352. These periods could not be greater than the greatest of them, and it could not be less than the least." The conclusion is, that the Hebrew is CORRECT in both; that from the CREATION to the FLOOD case. was 1656 years, from the FLOOD to the CALL 427 years.* I. In the confidence, therefore, that we have now placed the authority of the Hebrew text as our guide in the matter of chronology beyond all reasonable doubt, we pass at once to the following table of the first period as above, from the creation and fall, to the flood. II. From the deluge to the vocation of Abraham, the chronology is continuous through the line of the Patriarchs from Noah, thus: * The preceding, from page 195 is taken from a brief outline of Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, in his "Appendix on the early Scripture Chronology," by an able correspondent of the Investigator Vol. iv., pp. 334-339. |