of Methuselah 947, 'while four authorities have his generation 165. . . . The whole number
of variations in the case of Methuselah is 60 ; more than half the number in the entire
Antediluvian Chronology. Every one of them but four, or at the utmost five, viz., those
making the generation 165, and codex LXXXII. making the tptal age 965, have reference to the
error in the age of Methuselah. This fact is of course significant ; and at once: reduces,
to nearly one-half, the number of variations tha^ can be supposed accidental. This number
is easily reduced still farther. Codex Arabicus II. has all the Hebrew numbers, in the case
of Lamech. The Chronicon Orientalis has the generation like the Hebrew, and, for anything
we know to the contrary, may have the other periods in harmony with this generation.
Codex CXXYII. has the Samaritan numbers in five instances. The Sclavonic version
gives us both^the Hebrew numbers in the case of Adam, the Armenian edition gives one of
them, and À Ostrogoth version the other. Thus we have 13 more intentional variations,
makiirçç the whole number, thus far, 73 out of 118. Nine manuscripts make the total
age of Mahalaleel 795, instead of 895 ; four make the generation of Adam 330 instead of
23Ò ; four others make the age of Enos after generation 915 instead of 715 ; and four make
the generation of Lamech 180, instead of 188 or 182. Three make the total age of Lamech
755, while three others make it respectively 733, 765, and 768. These make 27
other cases in which the intention is apparent though less obviously than the former. So
that we thus have 99 instances out of 118, which cannot be reasonably attributed to accident.
And even of the remaining nineteen, there are not more than two that have any
unequivocal indications of being accidental. The substitution of 300 for 30 in Codex XVIII.,
in the total age of Adam, is evidently accidental, as is the 805 for 205 in the Coptic version,
of the generation of Seth. Accident may also have occasioned some of the other changes,
but this is not probable. . . . When Origen, in the early part of the Illd century, began to
collate these manuscripts and versions, he was confounded at the clashings which he discovered
in them. Whole passages existed in some [Greek biblical MSS.] for which there
was no counterpart in others, nor in the Hebrew, nor in the Samaritan. . . .
“ The reader will here naturally ask, how is it that the commentators have managed to
confront these hosts of difficulties, and yet avoid the inevitable inferences which a clear
view of them discloses? The answer is simple. They never have fairly confronted them.
They never have classified them, or analyzed them, in a manner likely to lead to the truth.
They would not admit that any conclusion could be true which did not harmonize with their
pre-conceived theory of the entire inspiration of every portion of the Scriptures— of every
portion at least which they severally regarded as canonical. This with them was a,settled
point, from which they neither wished to recede, nor dared to recede. Their works therefore
present us with little more than vain attempts to reconcile^ to soften down, to slur
over these contradictions.
“ Thus, it is evident that this antediluvian chronology, as we now have it, is not the work
of any one person, or of any one era. In its original form [not earlier than b . c . 130 to
420] it was not only contradictory to all human experience, and to the laws of organization,
but also glaringly self-contradictory. It is plain, too, that it has been repeatedly
altered, in various ages, and by various people, and that these alterations have been made
in a perfectly arbitrary manner, and without any reference to facts or historical data bearing
upon the subject. Who can say by whom, or when it was drawn up, or how many
stages it has passed through previously to the changes we have spoken of? Is it not folly,
then, to pretend to regulate history by a series of numbers thus tampered with, to fsay
nothing of their scientific and historic impossibility ? ”
Folly! It is worse than folly: it is an absolute disregard of every principle of rectitude;
an impudent mockery of educated reason; a perpetualized insult to honest understandings
; and a perdurable dereliction, on the part of interested and self-conceited
supernaturalists, of Almighty truth. Ignorance, abject ignorance; is the only plea through
which future sustainers of genesiacal numerals can escape from the charge of knavery.
Let imbecility impale itself, henceforward, on either horn of this dilemma for edification
of the learned ; and with the derisive jeers of men of science, who are now endeavoring
to reconstruct a solid chronology out of the débris of universal and primeval humanity yet
traceable, in their various centres of Creation, upon our planet’s superficies.
The reader of Essay I. in the present work is aware of the conjectural hundreds
of thousands of variants proceeding from what Kennicott, De Rossi, and the Rabbis, qualify
as the “ horrible state” of the Manuscripts of the Old Testament. He also may infer the
historical metamorphoses of alphabets, and the alterations of numbers which, to suit different
schools of theology, the Hebrew and Samaritan Texts, and Septuagint version, underwent
between the third century before c. and the fourth century after. A pledge, too, has been
incidentally made to him, that a future publication shall demonstrate why the “ ten patriarchs,”
from A-DaM to NoaEA, were no more human beings, in the idea of their original
writers, than are the ethno-geographical names catalogued in Xth Genesis. Abler hands,
in another chapter [XI.] of this volume, have set forth what of geology and palaeontology
throws more or less light.upon Types of Mankind.
Leaving the Deluge, its universality or its fabled reality, to,professional reconcilers;(350)
the chronological bearings of this hypothetical event compel us not to dodge, at the same
time that it is far from our intention to dwell upon, its passing consideration. No Hebraist
disputes that, according to the literal language of the„Text, the flood was universal. To
make the Hebrew Text read as if it spoke of a partial or local catastrophe may be very
harmonizing, but it is false philology, and consequently looks very like an imposture.
“ The waters swelled up (prevailed) infinitely over the earth; all the high mountains, beneath
all the skies, were covered: fifteen cubits upward did the waters rise ; the mountains
were covered.” (351)
The level of the flood was, therefore, 22£ feet above the Dhawalaghiri (28,074 feet) and
over the Sorata (25,200 feet); according.to Humboldt.(352.) Equivalent to some ¿wo miles
above the line of perpetual snow must, therefore, have been the level whereupon the Ark
would have been frozen solid but for an universal thaw. This is what the Hebrew chronicler
meant by KuL HaHeRIM, HaGiBuHIM — all the high mountains; even if Hindostan and
America were as alien to his geography, as such an aqueous elevation is to the physicist.
“ If there is any circumstance,’’ declares Cuvier, “ thoroughly established in geology,
it is, that the crust of our globe has been subjected to a great and sudden revolution, the
epoch of which cannot be dated much further back than five or six thousand years ago ; that
this revolution had buried all the countries which were before inhabited by men and by the
other animals that are now best known.” (353)
Science has found nothing to justify Cuvier’s hypothesis, conceived in the infancy of geological
studies; whether in Egypt, (354) in Assyria, (355) or on the Mississippi: (356) whilst,
without delving into the wilderness of geological works for flat contradictions of this oft-quoted
passage of the great Naturalist, here are three extracts by way of arrest of judgment: —
“ Of the Mosaic Deluge I have no hesitation in saying, that it has never been proved to
have produced a single existing appearance of any kind, and that it ought to be. struck out
of the list of geological causes.?’ (357)
“ There is, I think (says the President of the London Geological Society, 1831), one
great negative fact now incontestably established; that the vast masses of Diluvial Gravel,
scattered almost over the surface of the earth, do not belong to one violent and transitory
period. . . . Our errors were, however, natural, and of the same kind which led many excellent
observers of a former century to refer all secondary formations to the N o a c h i a n
D e l t jg e . Having been myself a believer, and, to the best of my power, a propagator of
what I now regard as philosophic heresy, . . . I think it right, as one o f my last acts before
I quit this chair, thus publicly to read my recantation.”
A later President of the same illustrious corps, 1834, uses similar language: —
“ Some fourteen years ago I advanced an opinion . . . that the entire earth had . . . been
covered by one general but temporary deluge . . . I also now read my recantation.” (358)
Were it not for such denials of Cuvier’s six-chiliad doctrine (to which hundreds might be
added of the whole school of true geologists at the present day), then, it would be evident
to archmologists that “ geology” must-be of necessity a false science: and for the following
reason:—It has been shown [supra, p. 562], that the first chapter of the “ book of Genesis”
is ah ancient cosmogenical ode, with a “ chorus ” like the plays of Grecian dramatists; -rr
that its authorship, if entirely unknown, .is not Mosaic; — that its age, the style being
(350) Such as, the Rev. Dr. P ie S m ith , the Rev. Dr. H itchcock, or “ The Friend of Moses.”
(351) Genesis; vii. 18,19 ;^ - Ca h e n ’s Text; i. p. 21.
(352) Cosmos; Otte’s trans., 1850, i. p. 28, 31, 330-332.
(353) Essay on the Theory of the Earth; 1817»; p. 171.
(3 5 4 ) G lid d o n ; Otia AEgyptiaca; p p . 6 1 -6 9 .
(355) A in sw o r t h : Assyria, Babylonia, and Chaldcea; London, 1838; pp. 101,104-107.
(356) Dowler: Tableaux o f New Orleans; 1832; pp: 7-17.
(357) McCullooh: System of Geology; I. p. 445.
(358) Rev. Dr. J. Pye Sm it h : Relation, &c.; 1841; pp. 138,139,141.