native his age, lie cannot express it by years ; but replies, that his stature vras about so
high (holding out his hand at the elevation, required),/ee ayàm en-Nussàra — “ in the days
of the Christians alluding to Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt, 1798-1802 : or else tells you
that he had not a -white hair in his heard, fee hurrèekut el-Qalâa, “ at the fire of the citadel
” of Cairo, 1825. The second (or Occidental) is, that no Indian, or Negro, in the United
States (save among the paucity that have been educated), can tell you his own age, by
years ; but the one dates either from such a time when “ he and Col. shot that bar f ’
or. the other from when he butted for cheeses against another negro-kephalus at such a
local election.
This introduces a question upon which European biblical commentators, ignorant of
living Oriental customs, have gone sadly astray. Whenever the number of personages, in
a given Hebrew pedigree, has been found insufficient to occupy (that is, to fill up natural^
without improbable longevity), the length of time required to suit the chronologicaLscale a
given commentator may have elected to invent or follow, it has been incontinently assumed,
that the Hebrew mimerais were' right ; and that the anomaly proceeds from the accidental
loss of one, or more, intermediary ancestors, in the genealogical list. Thus, says the
learned Dr. Prichard, (549) adopting the suggestions of the great Michselis: —
“ The result is that the difficulty which seems to have induced some of the ancients to
alter the text requires a different explanation. It can only be solved, as it would seem,
by allowing an omission of several generations in the genealogies of the Israélites. At
present only two generations are interposed between Levi and Moses. It is probable
that several are omitted.”
So again the Abbé Glaire, (550) in respect to the two genealogies of Joseph:—
“ The first (method) is to suppose that these names ( Oehosias, Joas, Amasias) were wAiting
in the genealogical tables the evangelist made use of ; an’hypothesis the more probable that
the names of intermediary persons are often missing in many genealogies of the Old Testament.
. . . Esdras, in his genealogy, omits seven of his ancestors, by jumping from Amarias
to Achitob II, father of Sadoc II. . . . The genealogy of Saul, for a space of 800 years,
namès but seven persons. . . . From Mardocheus to Jemini or Benjamin, who lived 1200
years before, but four are named. . . . From Reuben to Beera, who was carried captive by
Tiglath-pilesar, they give us but 12 generations to fill a space of more than 1000 years.
In the genealogy of Judith, for a space nearly equal, there are but 16 generations. By
fixing, as is commonly done, the generation at 33 years, one perceives that there are a good
many’ degrees omitted in these genealogies. . . . Grotius, upon whose acquirements one
may confide without difficulty, assumes that this happens frequently, as may be seen in
genealogical trees. Scope eodem temporis spatio familias inter se comparaias genefaiiortes halm
unam aut alteramplures etpauciores; quod in omnibus slemmatibus videre est. ‘ Vfeut-on un
example d’une grande inégalité de générations J a n s les différentes branches d’une même
souche? Scripture affords one very striking. The children of Jacob (Numb. i. 3) each
formed a branch or tribe. When, a year after their issue from Egypt, Moses, by the order
of God, caused the numbering of these tribes, there was found among them a prodigious
inequality ; but the most surprising is that which was beheld between the tribe of Levi
and that of Judah: the latter comprised 74,000 males above the age of 20 years, and the
former 22,300 counting (even) those above one month.’ ”
One would suppose, so naïvely does the Abbé accept all these numerals as historical, that
he was actually present ! But these violent statistics are susceptible of more rational solution'
Such attempts at reconcilement have their unique origin in the uncritical ideas Of
eminent scholars upon the true ages of the composition of the^ragments extant of Jerusalem
literature ; which the perusal of our suppressed pages might supersede : and similar
weak explanations would not have been thought of by any Orientalist (Fresnel, Lane, or
Layard, for instance) who had actually resided among Semitic populations, Lepsius (551)
is the first, that we axe aware of, to have placed the matter in its true light.
We know that unlettered Arabian Bédawees do preserve, for centuries, orally from father
to son their individual and clannish genealogies ; and this too for an almost infinite number
of generations. They even thus consecrate, legally, the pedigrees of their blood-
(549) Researches; 1847; v. p. 559.
^5$) Livres Saints Vengés; i i . p p . 284-285, 201-202; q u o t e d c h ie f ly f r o m B u l l e t : Réponses Civiques.
(551) Op. cit.; p p . 365, 366.
horses. (552) But, as for defining the length of time each tribe, man, or horse, may have
lived, that the BCdawee has no means of doing beyond his own grandfather’s lifetime; and
for which he has no annual calendar. Thus, in ante-Mohammedan history, “ the battle of
Khazaz,” fought by the Mäadd tribes under Koulayb-Wail against the Yemenite confederacy,
is the earliest stand-point of Arabian historical tradition; (553) but the era before
Isldm — 250 — to which such battle is assigned, has been computed, for these wild children
of the desert, by later and highly-cultivated Arab historians, and at best conjecturally.
It would be foolish to deny to the sedentary and somewhat educated Hebrews, of days
anterior to the Captivity, equal faculties of preserving their own genealogies, that we recognize
among cognate Semitish and still more barbarous tribes of Arabia : nor is there any
reason to doubt the existence of genealogical lists, stretching1 backwards for many generations,
from the days of Ezra. (554) These may even have ascended, ancestor by ancestor,
to the times of Abraham. (555) But it was one thing to preserve, through saga, rythme,
song, or oral legend, the names of predecessors in their natural order; and quite another
to guess at the duration of these ancestors’ respective lifetimes, or to infer, through traditionary
events with any of the earlier ancestors cöetarieous, the chronological remoteness
of the age during which they lived, excepting approximately. In consequence, Lepsius
(and we entirely agree with him) sustains, that the genealogies of the Hebrews are probably
right; but that the chronological computations accompanying these lists are certainly
wrong. Indeed, of this last fact'there can be no doubt, when we remember that Rabbi
Hillel, in the fourth century after Christ, was the first to regulate Jewish chronology by
the verbal literalness of the Hebrew Text; independently of fabulous numeration such as
that borrowed by Josephus from an Alexandrian Greek system adopted by the writers of
the Septuagint. The manifest interpolation of an Egyptian “ Sothic-period” of 1460-61
years (so felicitously discovered Mr. Sharpe, supra, pp. 618, *619), obviates further necessity
for recurrence to the spurious chronology of th.e Greek version.
These numerical estimates, we now see, are both modern and erroneous. But, to
convince the reader of the fact; and to prove that the 480 years between the first Temple
and the Exodus are erroneous; we copy Lepsius’s synopsis, after remarking that, just as
in all ancient pictures the artist gave colossal proportions to the figures of gods, or heroes,
while the plebeian classes receive pigmaic stature, so among the antique Israelites, in their
organic absence of “ art,” it was customary to assign to the royal line, or High-Priest
pedigree, the attributes of longevity together with extensively-procreating capabilities;
and to measure such exalted patricians by generations of 40 years ; at the same time that
to the vulgar herd were ascribed generations of only 30!
“ I give here a Table of the principal genealogies, in which the Levitish generations
follow in the same order as they are recorded in 1 Chron. chap. 7 (according to the LXX;
in the Hebrew Text, ch. v. and vii). These are preceded by the genealogical chain from
Levi to Zadok according to Josephus, and also his list of the High-Priests from Aaron to
Zadok. Lastly comes a genealogical table of Judah. Albeit I have excluded some other
genealogies, ex. gr., the three of Ephraim {Numb. xxvi. 35 — 1 Chron. viii. 20; xxi.24-27),
because they were in evident confusion and led to no result.
“ The first column,” says L e p s iu s , (5.56) “ contains the patriarchs from Abraham to
Amram ; next, 12 leaders (chiefs) of the people, beginning with Moses, who seem to have
been regarded as representatives of the 12 generations of 40 years each ; and thus to have
occasioned the calculation of 480 years [as the chronological interval between the Temple
and the Exode]. E wald and also B erth ea u give another list—for the subject, in general,
admits of no precision : albeit, for us, the recognition of the division into 12 parts of this
period is important. But one, likewise, (VIII.) of the aforesaid genealogies (1 Chron. vii.
39-43) contains 12 generations of one and the same family. It might therefore be possible
that this last list, and not the other, had originated the calculation of 480 years. This list
has the peculiarity of beginning with Gersom, the first-born of L e v i. But the most noble
line of the Levites was that of the High-Priests, who descended from A aron and Kahath (I.):
this list, as well as that of Musi (IX.), contains only 11 generations. This may be the
reason why the LXX count but 440 years.”
(5,52) Layaiud: Babylon: pp. 220, 221, 250, 326-331.
(553) F r e s n e l : Arabes avant Vlslamisme; 1st Letter; 1836; p. 16.
(554) Ezi'a ; ii. 59-62; Nehem. vii. 61-64.
(555) Numb. i. 5-18, 26. (556)Chronologie; pp. 367-371.