for falsifying in the matter.-This point settled, there remain but two small chasms in the Hebrew chronology to fill up, and one doubtful point to settle, arising from a difference between an Old Testament statement and one in the New Testament, in order to the completion of our chronological table. The chasms are, 1st, that from Moses' death to the first servitude; 2ndly, that between Samson's death and Saul's election to the kingdom: 3 of neither of which could the length be much longer or shorter than thirty or forty years. The doubtful point alluded to concerns the same period of the Judges: it being whether the reckoning given in Kings vi. 1. of the

serve attentive perusal, has put this point very strongly. Which, says he, is most credible: that the Jews, dispersed over all the world, should have conspired together to defraud their scriptures and themselves of truth, the exclusive pos session of which is so much their boast; or that the seventy Greek translators, united together in conclave by King Ptolemy, should have managed to falsify the numerals? He adds, as his own solution of the matter, that it was after all probably not the translators, but the first transcriber of the manuscripts from the original in the Royal Library, that introduced the error; "Scriptoris tribuatur errori qui de Bibliothecâ supradicti Regis codicem describendum primus accepit:" and concludes thus; "Ei linguæ potiùs credatur unde est in aliam per interpretes facta translatio."-Augustine's testimony is the more valuable and remarkable because he was himself originally (see the Note in Vol. i. p. 373.) a Septuagintarian in chronology. At the conclusion of the C. D. however he measures the six periods of the world preceding its septenary period, or sabbath, by æras, not millennaries: the 1st to the Flood, 2nd to Abraham, 3rd to David, 4th to the Babylonish Captivity, 5th to Christ, and 6th that after Christ. C. D. xxii. 30. 5.

It is to be observed, as Mr. Clinton remarks, that the question is not an indefinite one, from want of testimony, so as in the case of the early chronology of Greece. The uncertainty is one arising from two different distinct testimonies. We have only to decide which is the genuine and authentic copy. Either the space before the flood was 1656 years, or it was 2256. Either the period from the flood to the call of Abraham was 352 years, or it was 1002. "These periods could not be greater than the greatest of them, or less than the least."

2 This period is that comprehended in Josh. xxiv. 31; "And Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that overlived Joshua, and which had known all the works of the Lord that he had done for Israel."

3 Compare Judg. xv. 20, xvi. 31, and 1 Sam. iv. 1, vii. 13, xii. 2.

4 Mr. Brooks, in the Preface to his late history of the Jews, p. xiii, argues that the interval from Moses' death to Joshua's must probably have been longer, because of Joshua being called, a young man in Exod. xxxiii, 11 and Numb. xi. 28, with reference to the second year after the Exodus. But this Hebrew word is used to designate servants also (compare Gen. xxii. 3, &c.); and Joshua is so called in the places above cited as the servant of Moses. (So Kimchi explains this appellative of Joshua, in Zech. ii. 7: and so, I may add, Ambrose comments on Gen. xxiv. 2; "Etiam senioris ætatis servuli pueri dicantur à dominis.") Thus the appellation can no more be argued from than the French word garcon, or English postboy.-Moreover, at the time of the division of the land, seven years after Moses' death, (Josh. xiv. 10,) Joshua is said (ibid. xiii. 1) to have been "old and stricken in years."-Thus Mr. Clinton seems fairly to have estimated Joshua's age at the time of the spies at about forty; it being

1

interval from the Exodus to the building of Solomon's temple at 480 years be the correct one, or that by St. Paul, in Acts xiii. 18-22, at about 580.2 Mr. Clinton, not without reason, as it seems to me, prefers the latter.3 And thus, completing his table, he makes the

the then age of his associate Caleb also, who overlived him. See Judg. i. 1, 9-12. If so, as Joshua was 110 years at his death, (see Josh. xxiv. 29,) the interval must have been 110—(38 + 40) = 32.

1 1 Kings vi. 1; "It came to pass in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, that he began to build the house of the Lord.

2 Acts xiii. 18; "Forty years suffered he their manners in the wilderness : and when he had destroyed seven nations in Canaan, he divided their land to them by lot and after that, he gave unto them judges about the space of four hundred and fifty years, until Samuel the prophet. And afterward they desired a king and God gave them Saul."

:

4 Because the servitudes must be included in the periods of rest, on the shorter system; which inclusion seems directly contrary to the tenor of the Scripture statements. (But for this the Hebrew might reasonably be deemed of the greater weight; and St. Paul's 450 years be explained either, as Whitby prefers, by reference to the then current Septuagint chronology; or possibly, not probably, as Usher, by supposing it the measure of the time from Abraham to the division of the lands, not from the division of the lands to Samuel.)*-A chronological table of this period, formed from the express declarations in the Book of Judges, is given below:-it being premised that Chusan's oppression followed (Judg. iii. 7) on Israel's first apostacy to the worship of Baalim, on the death of the elders

This last Philistinian servitude of forty years appears to have included the judgeships of both Samson and Eli: the former being said (xv. 20, xvi. 31) to have judged Israel "in the days of the Philistines ;" and the latter to have died from

* So too Calmet, quoted to that effect by Dr. A. Clarke. In order to this construction of the passage from near the beginning of verse 17, to the end of verse 19, in Acts xiii. must be construed parenthetically thus:

‘Ο Θεός τ8 λας τοτε Ισραηλ εξελέξατο τες πατερας ἡμων. (Και τον λαον ύψωσεν εν τῇ παροικία εν γῇ Αιγύπτῳ, και μετα βραχίονος ύψηλο εξηγαγεν αυτές εξ αυτής.

130 yrs. Gen. v. 3. "Adam lived 130 years and begat a son.

. and called his

name Seth.'

5974 years, since the Creation of Man.

date of the creation to be about 4138 B.C.;' and consequently the end of the 6000 years of the world, and

grief at their defeat of Israel, and capture of the ark. Their supremacy continued until Samuel's defeat of them near Mizpeh, of which the stone Ebenezer was the record, 1 Sam. vii. 12: after which Israel had rest "all the days of Samuel;" (ib. 13;) until he was old, (viii. 1,) and anointed Saul king.

Thus the time of the Judges, exclusive of Joshua and Samuel, appears from these numbers to have been 390 years and if we add 30 years for Joshua and the Egypt-born elders that over-lived Joshua, reckoned from after the time of the conquest and division of Canaan, (about 7 years having intervened between that event and Moses' death), and 30 years more for Samuel's judge-ship after the Philistines' defeat, it exactly makes up St. Paul's "about the space of 450 years." Add 7 for the conquest of Canaan, 40 for the wilderness, 40 for Saul, and 40 for David: and then the 4th year of Solomon comes to about the 580th year from the Exode; instead of the 480th, as the Hebrew text defines it in 1 Kings vi. 1. -And therefore the only solution of the difficulty that I see is by supposing a mistaken reading in our Hebrew copies of 480 for 580.

On the fly-leaf is appended in illustration a Tabular Scheme of this Scripture

Και ὡς τεσσερακονταετη χρονον ετροποφορησεν αυτές εν τη ερημω. Και καθελών εθνη έπτα εν γη Χανααν, κατεκληροδότησεν αυτοις την γην αυτων.) Και μετα ταυτα ώς ετεσι τετρακοσίοις και πεντήκοντα, εδωκε κριτας έως Σαμεηλ τε προφητε. In order to make out the 450 years on this view, the chronological epoch of God's choosing the fathers of the Jewish people, referred to in verse 17, is fixed at the birth of Isaac; from which to the division of the land by lot is by some chronologists (not by Mr. Clinton) made 452 years. But it seems to me that the necessity of dating from Isaac's birth, instead of Abraham's call, in order on any chronological system to make out the time from the "choosing of the fathers," to the division of Canaan not more than 450 years, constitutes a strong objection to this solution of the passage. Besides that the μera TAUTA, after these things, in the plural, seems to make it imperative on us that we should date the 450 years from the end of the succession of events that the apostle had just been particularizing, not from the one event of the choice of the fathers first mentioned.

I am informed by the Rev. Mr. Squire, who was some time in China, that there is on two important epochs of early mundane chronology, a considerable correspondence between the Chinese and the Scriptural Chronology; viz. that of the Deluge, and of the seven years of general famine under Joseph. The Chinese date the Deluge, A.M. 1713, and the seven years of famine, B.C. 1729. So, he says, in Morison's View of China, and a work by Professor Kidd.-As to the seven years of famine, many of my readers may have seen the very interesting apparent reference to it in one of the ancient Hamyaritic inscriptions on the