-THE 
 
 JOHN "FRYER- 
 CHINESE -LIBRARY 
 
 JPUtUBMftr 
 

THE 
 
 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 FROM 
 
 ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 
 
THE 
 
 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES: 
 
 FROM 
 
 ADAM TO ABRAHAM, 
 
 SHOWN TO COVER 10,500 YEARS, AND THE 
 HIGHEST HUMAN LIFE ONLY 187. 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. T. P. CRAWFORD, 
 
 OF TUNG CHOW, CHINA. 
 
 RICHMOND, VA.J 
 
 JOSIAH RYLAND & CO., 913 MAIN STREET, 
 1877. 
 
(& 3 4* 
 
 Lib. 
 JOHN FRYER 
 CHINESE LIBRARY 
 
 ENTERED ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS, IN THE YEAR 1877, 
 
 BY JOSIAH RYLANI) & CO., 
 IN THE OFFICE OF THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS AT WASHINGTON, I). C 
 
 WHITTET & SHEPPERSON, 
 
 Printers, Richmond, Va. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 INTRODUCTION, ......... 5 
 
 CHAPTEK I. 
 
 The Length of Life according to the Antediluvian Table of 
 
 Genesis; Average age, 120 years, .... 11 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Length of Life according to the Postdihivian Table ; 
 
 Average Age, 128 years, 30 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Adam, at his Death, appointed Seth his Spiritual Successor 
 and Representative, 45 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Adamic Family and Government Reconstructed, . . 54 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The House of Adam continued 800 years after the Death of 
 Adam, its Founder ; so of the other Patriarchal Houses 
 to Abraham; the whole equal to 10,500 years, . . 70 
 
 747821 
 
4 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Dynastic Scheme of Scripture Chronology in harmony 
 
 with Reason, 93 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Dynastic Theory of Interpreting the Tables in the Fifth 
 and Eleventh Chapters of Genesis, or a Long Chron- 
 ology, in harmony with the General Teachings of the 
 Bible, 100 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Corroborated by History, . . . . . . .124 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 By Science, Tradition, and Mythology, .... 135 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Chinese Uranography ; Astronomy of the Babylonians ; A 
 Chronological Table by different authors ; Dates at which 
 various Eras begin, . . . . . . .151 
 
NOTE. 
 
 The author of this work being resident in China, the Publishers 
 have been obliged to pass it through the press without affording him an 
 opportunity for its final revision. While great care has been exercised 
 to secure accuracy, yet among the numerous references to Chinese 
 ancient history, it is probable that the critical reader may find several 
 inaccuracies, more especially in proper names. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 term of man's existence on the earth is the 
 -L great question of the age. Astronomy and Ge- 
 ology have of late wonderfully enlarged our con- 
 ceptions of time and space. Under their inspiration, 
 the horizon has expanded into a boundless universe, 
 and the "six days of creation," into as many vast 
 periods of duration. 
 
 Ethnology, philology, and other kindred studies, 
 have, in like manner, so extended the bounds of hu- 
 man history as to overthrow all our systems of chro- 
 nology, and leave the public mind without land- 
 marks, or reliable dates for the ages prior to the birth 
 of Abraham. Divines, as well as scientific men, 
 constantly feel the need of more time in which to 
 account for the many evidences of high antiquity 
 arresting their attention than the Hebrew Scriptures, 
 
6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 or even the Septuagint version of them, seem to 
 furnish. 
 
 On account of the painful state of doubt and un- 
 certainty which now prevails on the subject, every 
 sincere effort to discover the truth, to remove the 
 embarrassment that increasing wisdom has produced, 
 and bring faith, reason and facts into harmony, will 
 be welcomed by all honest minds, no matter by 
 whom it may be made, or from what source the de- 
 sired information may be drawn. 
 
 The difficulty, as I shall endeavor to show, is appa- 
 rent rather than real, having grown out of a general 
 misunderstanding of the tabulated names and dates 
 recorded in the fifth and eleventh chapters of the 
 Book of Genesis. 
 
 My attention was first drawn to this fact, over 
 three years ago, while preparing an "Epitome of 
 Ancient History," in the Chinese language. This 
 language, which I have now been using nearly a 
 quarter of a century, presents many thoughts and 
 expressions in striking resemblance to those of the 
 ancient Hebrew. Influenced by this resemblance 
 and a casual remark of an ordinary man, I discover- 
 ed the key, as I confidently believe, with which to 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 unlock the casket, and bring to light the true ages 
 of the patriarchs, and the system of chronology con- 
 tained in those important chapters. I shall, there- 
 fore, attempt, in the present work, to establish the 
 two following propositions: 
 
 I. 
 
 That the antediluvian patriarchs did not live as 
 individual men to the marvelous length of over eight 
 and nine hundred years, but on an average only one 
 hundred and twenty, and the postdiluvians one hun- 
 dred and twenty-eight. 
 
 II. 
 
 That the two tables of Genesis present, in regular 
 succession, nineteen patriarchal houses, dynasties, or 
 governments, covering a term of, at least, ten thou- 
 sand five hundred years duration. Or thus : 
 
 From Adam to the flood, , 7,737 years. 
 
 " the flood to the birth of Abraham, . . 2,763 " 
 
 - 10,500 
 " the birth of Abraham to Christ, . . . 2,000 
 
 12,500 
 " Christ to the present time, .... 1,876 
 
 Making a sum total of ..*... 14,376 
 
8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 for the existence of man on the earth, beginning with 
 Adam, the father of Seth, instead of only six or 
 seven thousand, as generally supposed. 
 
 I am fully aware of the boldness of these propo- 
 sitions, and also of the mighty consequences involv- 
 ed in their establishment. I know they imply a 
 "change of base," among the various learned com- 
 batants now in the field, the modification of many 
 opinions, the fall of many theories, the revision of 
 many books, and liberty for all to believe both in the 
 Bible and in modern discoveries. The field is a very 
 wide one, and I shall not attempt to give all the 
 steps by which my present convictions have been 
 reached, but only a general outline of the proofs and 
 arguments on which they rest, and leave the result 
 to the judgment of others, in the hope that all false 
 notions as to the length of human life in primitive 
 times may be corrected, and a true system of chro- 
 nology spring from my humble efforts. 
 
 TUNG CHOW, Feb., 1876. 
 
THE 
 
 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 FROM 
 
 ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 
 
 PKOPOSITION FIKST. 
 
 THE antediluvian patriarchs did not live, as indi- 
 vidual men, to the marvelous age of over eight and 
 nine hundred years; but, on an average, only one 
 hundred and twenty ; and the postdiluvians, one hun- 
 dred and twenty eight. 
 
 PKOPOSITION SECOND. 
 
 THE two tables of Genesis present a regular suc- 
 cession of nineteen houses, dynasties, or govern- 
 ments, covering a term of at least ten thousand five 
 hundred years. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE LENGTH OF LIFE ACCORDING TO THE ANTEDILUVIAN 
 TABLE. 
 
 npHE human mind naturally arranges all objects 
 -L and events according to their relations to each 
 other in time and space. The multiplication of the 
 former requires a corresponding extension of the lat- 
 ter. During the last half century our knowledge of 
 the facts pertaining to the past has greatly increased; 
 hence the strong desire for a more extended system 
 of chronology than any of those heretofore received. 
 Scholars of various schools have searched most ear- 
 nestly in every direction for reliable data on which 
 to construct it, except the one where it is found the 
 tabulated names and dates in the fifth and eleventh 
 chapters of Genesis. These, beginning with the 
 head of the race, continue the succession of patri- 
 archal governments, along the chosen line of Seth, 
 through the primitive ages of the world down to the 
 birth of Abraham, about 2000 B. C. Then the de- 
 tailed history of himself and posterity opens, and 
 
12 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 dates become more satisfactory. The first or ante- 
 diluvian table reads, according to our English trans- 
 lation and punctuation, as follows: 
 
 1. " And Adam lived 130 years, and begat a sonm 
 his own likeness, after his image; and called his 
 name Seth: And the days of Adam after he be- 
 gat Seth were 800 years : and he begat sons and 
 daughters: And all the days that Adam lived 
 were 930 years ; and he died. 
 
 2. And Seth lived 105 years, and begat Enos: And 
 Seth lived after he begat Enos 807 years, and be- 
 gat sons and daughters : And all the days of Seth 
 were 912 years; and he died. 
 
 3. And Enos lived 90 years, and begat Cainan : 
 And Enos lived after he begat Cainan 815 years, 
 and begat sons arid daughters: And all the days 
 of Enos were 905 years: and he died. 
 
 4. And Cainan lived 70 years, and begat Mahalaleel: 
 And Cainan lived after he begat Mahalaleel 840 
 years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the 
 days of Cainan were 910 years: and he died. 
 
 5. And Mahalaleel lived 65 years, and begat Jared: 
 And Mahalaleel lived after he begat Jared 830 
 years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the 
 days of Mahalaleel were 895 years: and he died. 
 
 6. And Jared lived 162 years, and he begat Enoch: 
 And Jared lived after he begat Enoch 800 years, 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 13 
 
 and begat sons and daughters: And all the days 
 of Jared were 962 years: and he died. 
 
 7. And Enoch lived 65 years, and begat Methuselah: 
 And Enoch walked with God after he begat Me- 
 thuselah 300 years, and begat sons and daughters: 
 And all the days of Enoch were 365 years : And 
 Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God 
 took him. 
 
 8. And Methuselah lived 187 years, and begat La- 
 mech : And Methuselah lived after he begat La- 
 mech 782 years, and begat sons and daughters : 
 And all the days of Methuselah were 969 years,: 
 and he died. 
 
 9. And Lamech lived 182 years, and begat a son : 
 And he called his name Noah, saying this same 
 shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our 
 hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath 
 cursed. And Lamech lived after he begat Noah 
 595 years, and begat sons and daughters: And all 
 the days of Lamech were 777 years: and he died. 
 
 10. And Noah was 500 years old: and Noah begat 
 Shem, Ham, and Japheth." 
 
 The above table, as is well known, has come down 
 to us through the medium of the Hebrew language. 
 The author is unknown, but it bears on its very face 
 all the marks of historic verity, and has always com- 
 manded the highest respect. It is, even in its pre- 
 
14 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 sent form, confessedly a most ancient document. 
 The materials from which it was composed must have- 
 been taken from antediluvian records most proba- 
 bly by some one living in the five hundredth year of 
 Noah, the point of time where it closes. That it was 
 brought by Abraham into Canaan, subsequently 
 passed through the hands of Moses and Aaron, re- 
 ceived their sanction and translation into the then 
 living Hebrew, is, to my mind, the most probable of 
 all suppositions. The ages of which it treats being 
 so remote, the words so few, archaic, and compre- 
 hensive, it becomes necessary for us of these modern 
 days to study its import with the minutest attention, 
 and by the light of all the learning, sacred and sci- 
 entific, now in our possession. We enter upon the 
 investigation with the firm conviction that its state- 
 ments harmonize wdth established facts, and the in- 
 variable laws of nature. 
 
 In the first place, I would call the attention of the 
 reader to the fact that the several sentences compos- 
 ing each of the paragraphs above quoted are, in the 
 original text, all of the same kind, all equally com- 
 plete and independent, all beginning with the con- 
 junction u and," all wanting the nominative pronoun 
 "he," and all but the last requiring the same pause, 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 15- 
 
 and the same punctuation mark, in English, the 
 colon or semi-colon. As the English language re- 
 quires the nominative to be expressed before the 
 leading verb in every such independent sentence, its 
 omission here, in any case, will produce, confusion as 
 to the time and connection of the events recorded. 
 Unfortunately, the translators of our Bible have, ap- 
 parently without reason or discrimination, inserted 
 the u he," in some places and left it out in others. 
 The punctuation is also in the same unsatisfactory 
 condition. 
 
 Thus they have, by uniting certain sentences toa 
 closely to the preceding ones, unintentionally encour- 
 aged false notions, both as to the chronology of the 
 world, and the length of human life in its primitive 
 ages. In this way the inspired document is made 
 to speak contrary to the intention of its author, and 
 becomes responsible for the most remarkable state- 
 ments. For instance, a patriarch is not only made to- 
 live nearly a thousand years, but in one case he be- 
 gat a son instead of dying, and in the next, he begat 
 "sons and daughters," after he is dead. This latter 
 absurdity shows plainly that the sentences are all 
 complete and independent of each other. So far as 
 this particular point is concerned, the first paragraph 
 
16 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 in the table should be rendered and punctuated in 
 the following manner : "And Adam lived 139 years; 
 And he begat a son in his own likeness, after his im- 
 age; And he called his name Seth; And the days 
 of Adam after begetting Seth were 800 years; And 
 he begat sons and daughters; And all the days that 
 Adam lived were 930 years; And he died." 
 
 Now, let us carefully study every thing in this 
 leading paragraph, taking it up sentence by sentence. 
 As it is the model one, its import will be substantial- 
 ly that of all the rest; and therefore it will not be 
 necessary to attend particularly to them. 
 
 The key to the whole question under discussion 
 may be found in the first sentence of each paragraph ; 
 as, "Adam lived 130 years," u Seth lived 105 years/' 
 etc. It is this. These figures mark the length of 
 their individual lives, and not the time when their 
 sons were born, as generally understood. To make 
 this assertion good is the task now before us. 
 
 On the groundless assumption that they are birth 
 dates has been based all the short and unsatisfac- 
 tory theories as to the age of the human race, to- 
 gether with the absurd popular belief in the super- 
 natural longevity of the ancient patriarchs. Divines, 
 infidels, and scholars of every grade, alike taking this 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 17 
 
 for granted, have, one after another, fallen into the 
 same ditch, and also into endless controversies inju- 
 rious to the common cause of truth. Some receiving 
 the Bible with this understanding, reject the teach- 
 ings of history and science as to those points; while 
 others, receiving these, reject the Bible, as if it were 
 responsible for interpretations, or for the difficulties 
 growing out of them. I here take occasion to enter 
 an earnest protest against the course of both these 
 parties, and to urge every one to examine the subject 
 for himself with a mind free from all such prejudices. 
 The testimony of no one of these three witnesses can 
 be rejected by us with impunity. 
 
 That my present understanding of the phrase "Ad- 
 am lived 130 years" is correct meaning he died at 
 that time may be shown by the following facts and 
 arguments : 
 
 I. The Hebrew Scriptures never employ this kind 
 of phraseology, or the verb "lived" with definite 
 numbers, to indicate the age of a man at the birth of 
 a son ; but they invariably say, such an one was a 
 son of blank years, when his son was born unto him, 
 or some other event took place. The Hebrew, like 
 all other languages, has its set forms of expression 
 for turning a point of time, as may be clearly seen 
 
1 8 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 from the specimen passages which I shall present 
 below. For instance": 
 
 Gen. xxi. 5. "Abraham was a son of an hundred 
 years when his son Isaac was born unto him." 
 Or, as our received version renders it, "Abraham 
 was an hundred years old when his son Isaac was 
 born unto him." 
 
 Gen. xvi. 16. "Abraham was a son of four score 
 and six years when Hagar bare Ishmael unto him." 
 
 Gen. xvii. 24. " And Abraham was a son of ninety 
 and nine years when he was circumcised." 
 
 Gen. xxi. 4. " And he circumcised his son Isaac, be- 
 ing a son of eight days." 
 
 Gen. xvii. 25. " And Ishmael his son was a son of 
 thirteen years when he was circumcised." 
 
 Gen. xii. A. " And Abram was a son of seventy- 
 five years when he departed out of Haran." 
 
 Gen. xxv. 20. "And Isaac was a son of forty years 
 when he took Rebekah to wife." 
 
 Gen. xxvi. 34. " And Esau was a son of forty years 
 when he took Judith to wife." 
 
 Gen. xxxvii. 2. " And Joseph, being a son of seven- 
 teen years, was feeding the flock with his brethren." 
 
 Gen. v. 32. "And Noah was a son of five hundred 
 years," (when God commanded him to prepare an 
 ark for the saving of his house. See Gen. vi. 9- 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 19 
 
 19. Also, Heb. xi. 7; 1 Peter iii. 20.) "And 
 Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth. " The ge- 
 neric and specific manner of using proper names 
 will be discussed in another place. 
 
 <ren. vii. 6. "And Noah was a son of six. hundred 
 years when the flood of waters was upon the 
 earth." 
 
 Gen. xi. 10. "And Shem was a son of an hundred 
 years (when the flood began.) And he begat Ar- 
 phaxad two years after the flood." 
 
 Lev. ix. 3. " Lambs and calves are sons of a year 
 when they are taken for sacrifice." 
 
 Josh. xiv. 7. Caleb said, " A son of forty years was I, 
 when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me to 
 Cadesh-barnea to espy out the land." 
 
 1 Kings xiv. 21. " Kehoboam was a son of forty-one 
 years when he began to reign." 
 
 1 Kings xxii.42. " Jehoshaphat was a son of thirty- 
 five years when he began to reign," &c., &c. 
 
 Any one can readily see how awkward it would 
 sound to say, Isaac lived forty years, and took Re- 
 becca to wife ; or, Jehosaphat lived thirty-five years, 
 and began to reign ; he lived thirty years and wrote 
 a book, and the like. Many other passages can be 
 brought forward to show that such is the phraseology 
 
20 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 constantly employed in the Old Testament to express- 
 the age of a man at the birth of a son, or the occur- 
 rence of some other event. The equivalents of our 
 neuter verb was, and the adjective old occur in the 
 first member of the sentence, with the adverb when 
 in the second, in such cases. 
 
 To this rule I have not been able to find a single 
 exception ; and, therefore, to make the received in- 
 terpretation of the text under consideration correct, 
 it should read: "Adam was an hundred and thirty 
 years old when his son was born unto him." Or, 
 " Seth was an hundred and five years old when Enos 
 was born." 
 
 Perhaps it might be said, he was 130 years old 
 when he begat a son; but it cannot be said he lived 
 130 years and begat a son, either in Hebrew or in 
 any other language, living or dead, as far as I am 
 able to judge. The Greek, Latin, German, French, 
 English, and Chinese, all say a man was so many 
 years old, or of such an age, when a son was born, 
 or something else took place no matter how the 
 construction of the words may be varied, the verb 
 "liveth" is never employed in this manner. Does 
 it then, in the catalogues of Genesis alone, form an 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 21 
 
 exception to a universal law of human speech. It 
 cannot be so, it seems to^ne.ia 
 
 But this is not all. It~Ts the very word by which 
 the Hebrew Bible indicates the termination of a 
 man's life, or of existence of some kind, as the follow- 
 ing passages will make abundantly plain : 
 
 Gen. 1. 22. "And Joseph lived an hundred and ten 
 years" a phrase exactly similar to the one, " And 
 Adam lived an hundred and thirty years ;" or, 
 " Seth lived an hundred and five years," &c. Now, 
 we know that Joseph died at that time ; for it is so 
 stated in the twenty-sixth verse below. 
 
 Gen. xxiii. 1. " And the years of the life of Sarah 
 were an hundred and twenty and seven years; 
 these were the years of the life of Sarah." 
 
 Gen. xxv. 7. "These are the days of the years of 
 Abraham's life which he lived, an hundred three 
 score and fifteen years." 
 
 Gen. xlvii. 28. "And Jacob lived in the land of 
 Egypt seventeen years;" at which time we learn 
 he died. 
 
 Gen. v. 5. "And all the days that Adam lived were 
 nine hundred and thirty years." It matters not 
 whether the name Adam has here a generic or a 
 specific sense, the verb " lived," in cither case, re- 
 fers to the end of existence. 
 
 Gen. xi. 11. " And Shem lived after he begat Ar- 
 
 2 
 
22 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 phaxad five hundred years." Nothing is said of 
 his death, or of any other of the postdiluvian 
 patriarchs mentioned in the second table. If they 
 did not die at the end of the time to which they 
 are said to have lived, they would still be alive, 
 and "begetting sons and daughters." 
 
 Gen. ix. 28. "And Noah lived after the flood three 
 hundred and fifty years." 
 
 2 Kings xiv. 17. "And Amaziah lived after the 
 death of Jehoash fifteen years." 
 
 Job xlii. 16. "After this, Job lived an hundred and 
 forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons' sons, 
 even four generations." 
 
 Now, if Job " saw '* his sons and sons' sons of 
 four generations, that were born at various times 
 within the 140 years, and Adam's " sons and daugh- 
 ters" were "begotten" within the 800 years, as is 
 universally understood, then Seth was also born at 
 some unspecified point within the 130 years, and not 
 at their close. The three sentences are of the very 
 same kind, and the births cannot be placed first with- 
 in and then without the given number, according to 
 the reader's arbitrary pleasure ; but they must all be 
 construed alike. 
 
 Since, then, the "130 years" do not specify the 
 time of Seth's birth, they must of necessity specify 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 23 
 
 the time of Adam's death ; for there is nothing else 
 to which they can possibly refer. 
 
 If such be the nature of the language employed in 
 the Tables, then the individual man called by the 
 name of 
 
 Adam 
 
 Seth 
 
 Enos 
 
 Cainan 
 
 Mahalaleel 
 
 Jared 
 
 Enoch 
 
 Methuselah 
 
 Lamech 
 
 Noah (I 
 
 Or, on an average, the term of 120 years, instead of 
 over 800. 
 
 I might now consider the sense of the first sen- 
 tence in the paragraph under discussion as establish- 
 ed, and proceed to the next one ; but, lest some of 
 my readers, through the influence of long custom, 
 may be hard to satisfy, I will add still further proofs 
 and arguments in support of the above interpre- 
 tation. 
 
 II. That the life of the antediluvian patriarchs 
 was on an average only 120 years is substantially as- 
 serted in the third verse of the sixth chapter of Gen- 
 esis itself. It reads thus : "And the Lord said, My 
 
 
 Heb. Text. Sam. Text. 
 
 lived a 
 
 a man, 130 years. As a chief, 130 years. 
 
 " 
 
 105 " " 
 
 1 105 " 
 
 ii 
 
 " 90 ** " 
 
 1 90 " 
 
 ii 
 
 70 " " 
 
 70 " 
 
 1 " 
 
 " 65 " " 
 
 ' 65 " 
 
 ii 
 
 162 " 
 
 ' 62 " 
 
 " 
 
 " 65 " " 
 
 * 65 " 
 
 ih " 
 
 " 187 " 
 
 i 67 !< 
 
 ii 
 
 182 " " 
 
 53 " 
 
 imatec 
 
 [) " 143 " " ' (143) " 
 
24 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 Spirit shall not always strive (dwell) with man, for 
 that he also is flesh; yet his days shall ~be an hund- 
 red and twenty years." 
 
 In the first place, notice the connection in which 
 these words stand. Second, that the verb "shall be," 
 in oiir Bible, is not the future, but the past tense, in 
 the original text. Third, that the last clause in the 
 verse is not necessarily the words of the Lord, but 
 rather those of the author himself, the statement of 
 an historical fact. 
 
 The author, no matter who he was, writes like all 
 other historians, and records only past events. He 
 can make no assertion as to the future, except by 
 quoting a prophecy already in existence. Having 
 begun with the third verse of the fifth chapter to 
 give a list of the successive houses from Adam in the 
 line of Seth, he continues straight on, without break- 
 ing the thread or turning aside to mention other mat- 
 ters, till he brings it down to his own time in the 
 five hundredth year of Noah's reign, or life, or what- 
 ever you may call it. The table being thus complet- 
 ed, the author then goes back to the beginning in the 
 chapter below (verse 1 to 9,) and gives a very brief 
 but graphic account of the times over which he had 
 before rapidly passed, till he comes again to Noah, 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 25 
 
 in the eighth verse, where he brings his history to a 
 close. Commencing with the ninth verse, the suc- 
 ceeding portions of Genesis seem to have been taken 
 from postdiluvian documents. 
 
 As the first eight verses throw a flood of light on 
 the antediluvian period of the world, it will be neces- 
 sary for us to dwell sufficiently long to show their 
 bearing upon the question in hand. 
 
 The first and second verses read: "And it came 
 to pass when MEN began to multiply on the face of 
 the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that 
 the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they 
 were fair; and they took them wives of all which 
 they chose." The epithet "sons of God," as I take 
 it, designates the Sethites who, from the days of 
 Enos, " called on the name of the Lord," and shows 
 that they were a religious party. The statement here 
 is to the effect that some of them at a very early day 
 began to intermarry, apparently contrary to their 
 law, with the ungodly, or another party, differing in 
 some important sense from their own. This, the au- 
 thor means to say, was the beginning of that corrup- 
 tion of morals among the Sethites which brought on 
 an apostasy from the simplicity of life, piety, and 
 virtue that originally prevailed. This lapse or apos- 
 
26 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 tasy, according to certain Jewish and Arabian tradi- 
 tions, finally culminated in the days of Jared about 
 midway between Adam and Noah, and divides the 
 whole into two distinct periods. The intermarriage- 
 apostasy, or whatever it may be called, formed a dis- 
 tinct epoch in the history of those times. 
 
 The third verse reads : " And the Lord said, My 
 Spirit shall not always dwell with man, for that he 
 also is flesh." Now, to whom did the Lord say these 
 words ? Are they not the death sentence pronounc- 
 ed on Adam in chapter iii. 19, "For dust thou art, 
 and unto dust shalt thou return ?" The two passages 
 are substantially the same in sense. The writer, hav- 
 ing made this quotation as to the origin of the mor- 
 tality of man, adds the clause, " Yet his days," or the 
 average limit of his life, "has been an hundred and 
 twenty years. " But I shall suspend further comment 
 on this last clause till through with the next verse,, 
 the first portion of which reads thus: 
 
 "The Nephilim, or great men, (not "giants," a& 
 in our Bible,*) were in the earth in those days," 
 that is, the patriarchs whose names come first in the 
 table lived in those early and purer days before the 
 intermarrying with the daughters of men prevailed 
 * Giants are not men, but fabulous beings. 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 27 
 
 among them. They were great, I suppose, for their 
 piety and virtues, rather than for their prowess, since 
 they stand in immediate contrast with the Giborim, 
 or "mighty men" of the latter period, as may be seen 
 from these words: "And after that (time,) when the 
 sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and 
 they bare sons unto them, the same became the Gi- 
 borim, or mighty men, who of old were the men of 
 renown." 
 
 Supposing that the writer does not turn aside to 
 tell about giants, barbarians, or hobgoblins of any 
 kind, but confines himself strictly to the line of dis- 
 course, and to those patriarchs whose names, ages, 
 and governments he had recorded in the table above, 
 then by the term " Nephilim," or the great men of 
 the former period, he must refer to Adam, Seth, 
 Enos, Cainan, and Mahalaleel; by the " Giborim," or 
 mighty men of the latter period, to Jared, Enoch, 
 Methusaleh, and Noah, or some such division of them. 
 
 Again, observe that the " 120 years" in the third 
 verse stand connected with these two past periods of 
 time and these two classes of men, even the latter of 
 whom had become the " men of old and renown," 
 prior to the five hundredth year of Noah, or one hun- 
 dred years before the flood. These figures, then, 
 
28 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 either give the general average age of the patriarchs 
 themselves, or the common limit of human life in 
 antediluvian days most probably the former, but 
 the latter view is equally available for my present 
 purpose. 
 
 Historians are accustomed to mention, among other 
 things, the average life of men in the times and na- 
 tions of which they treat, and that such was the in- 
 tention of the writer of this text, I have not the most 
 distant doubt. Every other explanation which I 
 have yet seen is wholly untenable. The first clause 
 of the verse is certainly the words of the writer, the 
 middle portion down to " flesh " as certainly those of 
 the Lord, but whose are the last clause ? They seem 
 to me to be the words of the writer himself. If so, he 
 states an historical fact, and they should be rendered in 
 the past tense. The " and " of the first clause, then, 
 should be taken in the sense of though answered by 
 the "and" of the last in the sense of yet. Thus: 
 " Though the Lord said, My spirit shall not always 
 dwell with man, for that he is flesh (or mortal) ; yet 
 his days have been 120 years." 
 
 Now, vav conversive used here refers back to the 
 verb " said," which is the word of the writer ; and if 
 it converts his past tense into a future, it must also 
 
FKOM ADAM TO ABU AH AM. 29 
 
 convert him from a historian into a prophet, which is 
 not admissible. But take the clause, if you prefer, as 
 the words of the Lord, and in the future tense, the re- 
 sult will be the same; for the question still remains, 
 to whom did he address them, to Adam, or to Noah? 
 
 If to Adam, then they were quoted to show that 
 such, from his time down to the five hundredth year 
 of Noah, had been the average limit of man's life. 
 This interpretation of the text corresponds with the 
 proofs already brought forward to show the compar- 
 atively short lives of the antediluvian patriarchs, just 
 as well as the other. For their average age as put 
 down in the table is 120 years, and agrees with the 
 words of the clause, whether those of the Lord, or 
 those of the writer. 
 
 On the other hand, they could not have been spo- 
 ken to Noah or any of his contemporaries ; for they 
 are in no way associated with his name or his times, 
 but with the times " when men ~began to multiply 
 upon the face of the earth." They stand prior to 
 the days of the "giants," or rather the great men, 
 whose sons "afterwards became the mighty men 
 who of 6>&f were the men of renown." How, then, 
 can they be made to jump over all these days and 
 apply to Noah and the last hundred years before the 
 
30 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 flood ? Such confusion in the order of language is. 
 not to be presumed. If they had been addressed to 
 Noah, they would naturally be found recorded in 
 connection with the seventh or thirteenth verse, in- 
 stead of the third, as any one can see. As the record 
 in the fifth chapter had been brought down to with- 
 in one hundred years of the flood, how can the ex- 
 pression refer to that catastrophe ? Could even those 
 sinners get 120 years out of 100 ? Or, from what 
 point are they to be calculated? The prevailing 
 opinion that Noah was 120 years building the ark is- 
 without support; there being no such statement 
 either in the Old or the New Testament. 
 
 Further, the language of the third verse, " My 
 Spirit shall not always dwell with man, for that he 
 is flesh," or mortal, is not applicable to the sudden 
 destruction of the race in health and vigor by a del- 
 uge, but to death by the ordinary operations of na- 
 ture. That such was the writer's meaning when he 
 penned these words is most evident. 
 
 It would never have received any other explana- 
 tion, if commentators had not first fallen into the er- 
 ror of supposing that the ancient patriarchs were a 
 kind of giants, able to live a thousand years! Such 
 ideas have happily had their day. By the way, the 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 31 
 
 translators of our Bible have rendered several differ- 
 ent Hebrew words by the term " giant !" It may be 
 well for western people to know that the Chinese 
 in common conversation indiscriminately apply the 
 epithet tajin, "big men," to persons of respectabil- 
 ity, age, virtue, office, or unusual size. 
 
 Other desperate interpretations of the text are not 
 worth refutation, and nothing more need be said un- 
 der this head. 
 
 III. Outside of the tables, the meaning of which 
 is now in dispute, there is not in all the Bible the 
 most distant allusion to any such ages as eight and 
 nine hundred years. The idea was not only unknown 
 to Abraham, Isaac, and Moses; but there are pas- 
 sages inconsistent with the existence of such a belief 
 passages even supporting the short-life theory for 
 which I am contending. 
 
 For instance, in Gen. xv. 15, the Lord said unto 
 Abraham, "Thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; 
 thou shalt be buried in a good old age" Now, 
 what did the Lord mean by " a good old age," and 
 how did he fulfil this promise? Chapter xxv. 7, 8, 
 will answer these questions. "And these are the days 
 of the years of Abraham's life which he lived, an 
 hundred and seventy and five years. Then Abraham 
 
32 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old 
 man, and full of years ; and was gathered unto his 
 people." 
 
 Gen. xxxv. 28, 29. " And the days of Isaac were an 
 hundred and eighty years; and Isaac gave up the 
 ghost and died, and was gathered unto his people, 
 being old and full of days." 
 
 How, I ask, could that promise have been given, or 
 these two men be called "OLD and FULL of years," in 
 the face of the fact that their term of life was far be- 
 low that of their immediate ancestors, and not even 
 a third of that which had been allotted to those more 
 remote ? Yerily the writer must have penned these 
 words with the knowledge, or the belief, that the 
 ages of Abraham and Isaac surpassed those of their 
 predecessors; otherwise, I cannot conceive what 
 sense can be made out of such language as the above. 
 
 Again: Gen. xvii. 17. " Then Abraham fell upon 
 his face and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a 
 child be born unto him that is an hundred years old, 
 and shall Sarah that is ninety years old bear ?" 
 Also, xviii. 12. "Therefore Sarah laughed within 
 herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have 
 pleasure, my lord being old also ?" This laugh of 
 unbelief on their part bears its testimony in the same 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 33 
 
 direction. What was the ground of it? It seemed 
 to them contrary to the course of nature, inconsist- 
 ent with their own observation and knowledge of 
 human history. Had they understood these records 
 of Genesis as they have been understood in modern 
 times, and known that many of their ancestors had 
 sons when largely over a hundred years of age, and 
 lived almost to a thousand, they would not have re- 
 garded the announcement that they should have a 
 son as at all strange, or laughed at the thought of it. 
 There is much food for reflection in that laugh of 
 old Abraham and Sarah. 
 
 Let us now take the testimony of Moses on the 
 subject. He says in his prayer placed under the 90th 
 Psalm : " Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place 
 in all generations. Before the mountains were 
 brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth 
 and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting 
 Thou art God. Thou turnest man to destruction ; 
 and sayest, Return (to dust) ye children of men. . . 
 All our days are passed away in Thy wrath. We spend 
 our years as a tale that is told. The days of our 
 years are three score years and ten ; and if by reason 
 of strength they be four score, yet is their strength 
 
34 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly- 
 away. 
 
 Thus he asserts in the plainest terms that seventy 
 and eighty years had been the ordinary limit of hu- 
 man life in all the previous ages of the world. And 
 such it has been from his day to the present. Of 
 all men, Moses is certainly a competent witness, be- 
 ing not only familiar with the history and language 
 of his own people from the beginning, but also with 
 all the ancient lore of Egypt. He was himself most 
 probably over eighty years' of age when he composed 
 this Psalm. Though knowing that some of his an- 
 cestors had lived beyond a hundred years, he might 
 still use such language with propriety; but not if 
 their ages had, without exception, ranged from 133 
 all the way up to 969. 
 
 Lastly, Let us hear the words of Job (xiv. 1, 2, 5.) 
 "Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and 
 full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower and 
 is cut down. He fleeth also as a shadow, and con- 
 tinueth not. His days are determined, the number 
 of his months are with Thee. Thou hast appointed 
 his bounds that he cannot pass." 
 
 The author of Job must have been conversant with 
 the Book of Genesis, for he says, " If I covered my 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 35 
 
 transgression as Adam," in allusion to one of its 
 statements. 
 
 Having shown what was the actual age of each 
 patriarch from Adam to Noah, and the mean term 
 of the whole to be 120 years, we shall continue the 
 Subject in the next chapter, and make it appear that 
 it was of similar length from Noah to Abraham. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE LENGTH OF LIFE ACCORDING TO THE POSTDILUVIAN 
 TABLE.* 
 
 fTlHE ancient Hebrews seem to have possessed two 
 J- distinct copies of Genesis, differing more or less 
 from each other, like the Books of Kings and Chron- 
 icles, or the Four Gospels, but both held as sacred 
 and authoritative. They are now known to us as the 
 " Hebrew and Samaritan texts." Their apparent disa- 
 greement on points of chronology has sorely puzzled 
 many eminent scholars, and various unsatisfactory 
 explanations have been proposed. The view now 
 advocated not only tends to harmonize the Bible 
 chronology with reason and well known facts, but 
 also the Hebrew and Samaritan texts with each 
 other. This is done by supposing that the Hebrew 
 text in the antediluvian table gives the years which 
 the patriarchs lived as men, the Samaritan text the 
 years they lived as chiefs. The order in the post- 
 diluvian table is reversed, the Hebrew giving the 
 *Gen. xl. 10-37 
 
FKOM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 37 
 
 years they lived as chiefs, the Samaritan the years 
 they lived as men. It is highly probable that the 
 verb " lived" would be employed there instead of 
 " reigned," because it better expressed the nature of 
 the patriarchal government. It is also, perhaps, the 
 more ancient term. 
 
 As we are still only concerned with the length of 
 their lives as men, we shall follow the Samaritan 
 text in the postdiluvian catalogue, for the same rea- 
 son that we followed the Hebrew in the antediluvian 
 one. The age of Shem not being recorded, we only 
 know he lived over 102 years, and we can do no 
 better than give him an average number. 
 
 The account in the two texts stands thus: 
 
 Sam. Text. Heb. Text. 
 
 Shem lived as a man, 137 (?) years. As a chief, (?)y rs - 
 
 Arphaxad " " 135 " " 35 " 
 
 Salah '" " 130 " " 30 " 
 
 Heber " " 134 " " 34 " 
 
 Peleg " " 130 " " 30 " 
 
 Beu ' " 132 " " 32 " 
 
 Serng " " 130 '* " 30 " 
 
 Nahor " " 79 ' * 29 " 
 
 Terah " " 145 " " in Ur, 70 " 
 
 Making a mean of 128 
 
 That this is the true solution of the discrepancy 
 3 
 
38 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 between the two texts may be seen, first, from the 
 fact that the lives here in the Samaritan text most 
 strikingly correspond in length with those of the 
 Hebrew text in the antediluvian catalogue ; second, 
 from the fact that their lives, when thus reviewed, 
 both before and after the flood, tally with those 
 found between Abraham and Joshua, which are as 
 follows : 
 
 Abraham lived as a man, . . 1 75 years. 
 
 Sarah " . 127 " 
 
 Ishmael " " 127 " 
 
 Isaac " . 180 " 
 
 Jacob " . 147 " 
 
 Joseph " '. . HO " 
 
 Levi " . 137 " 
 
 Kohath " . 133 " 
 
 Amram " " . 137 " 
 
 Moses " " . 120 " 
 
 Aaron " . 123 " 
 
 Joshua " . HO " 
 
 An average of 135 years for each of these. How 
 striking the similarity all along the line! 
 
 From Adam to Noah, man's mean age is 120 years. 
 " Noah to Abraham, " " 128 " 
 
 " Abraham to Joshua, " " 135 " 
 
 Third, the Hebrew figures in the postdiluvian list 
 are entirely too short for individual lives, and out 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 39 
 
 of all proportion to those both before the flood and 
 after the days of Abraham ; but, on the other hand, 
 they are in striking accord with the ordinary reigns 
 of kings or chiefs 31 years. Fourth, the whole 
 numbers attached to the names in both texts and in 
 both tables are entirely too great for the lives of 
 men, but agree most thoroughly with the duration 
 of dynasties or governments, as Ij shall ^elsewhere 
 make manifest. 
 
 Such, then, is the real teaching of our Scriptures 
 as to the length of human life in the early ages of 
 the world. Their statements, when thus understood, 
 are at once freed from the charge of being mythical, 
 and placed on a firm foundation, being sustained by 
 the voice of history, both ancient and modern, as we 
 will find by attending to what it says on the subject. 
 
 For instance: Manetho begins his thirty-one dy- 
 nasties of Egypt with the reign of Menes, "the first 
 of the mortal kings." The first dynasty, lying back 
 in remote antiquity, had its seat in the city of This, 
 and to it he assigns a period of 253 years duration, 
 under eight successive sovereigns. 
 
 Now, if we allow the usual rate of one-third of 
 their whole lives for reign, the account for the first 
 five dynasties will stand thus: 
 
Length. 
 L Dynasty, 253 yrs. 
 
 Kings. 
 8 
 
 Av. reign. 
 31| yrs. 
 
 II. 
 
 302 " 
 
 8 
 
 38 " 
 
 III. 
 
 214 " 
 
 9 
 
 24 " 
 
 IV. 
 
 284 " 
 
 8 
 
 351 " 
 
 V. " 
 
 248 " 
 
 9 
 
 27| 
 
 4:0 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 Whole life of each king. 
 
 95 yrs. 
 113 " 
 
 71 " 
 106 " 
 
 82 " 
 
 Lenormant and Chevalier, in their excellent " Man- 
 ual of Ancient History," regarding all of the " Thirty- 
 one Dynasties of Manetho" as successive, put Menes 
 (the head of the first) at 5004 B. C. Baron Bunsen, 
 regarding them as mostly successive, puts him at 
 3643 B. C. Mr. Poole, regarding many of them as 
 contemporary, reduces the time to 271 7 B. C. Fol- 
 lowing Bunsen's date as the best for recent re- 
 searches tend to confirm it then these five dynas- 
 ties will cover that which is generally considered to 
 be the antediluvian period of the world, and furnish 
 ages, under the most liberal calculation, not sur- 
 
 O ' 7 
 
 passing 120 years. Even Mr. Poole's date sends 
 Menes full 425 years beyond Usher's flood, and 
 makes the five dynasties cover the times of E~oah, 
 Shern, Arphaxad, Salah, and Heber. Ages range 
 from 71 to 113. Still further, Mr. Goodwin, a cele- 
 brated Egyptologist, has shown that 110 years was 
 the utmost limit of ancient Egyptian life. 
 
 Again, the second Chaldean dynasty, according 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 41 
 
 to Berosus, lasted 234 years, under eight kings, which 
 would give an average of only 88 years to each of 
 them. It began, as estimated by Mr. George Raw- 
 linson, 2286 B. 0., and covers the interval between 
 Salah and Terah, the father of Abraham. Its co- 
 temporary Egyptian ones yield even a shorter term. 
 
 Yao Wong, the head of the first Chinese dynasty, 
 which began 2205 B. C., lived, as stated in the 
 books, 114 years; his successor, Shun, 110. This 
 iirst dynasty itself lasted 439 years, under seventeen 
 different emperors, with an average reign of 26, and 
 whole life of about 77. The second dynasty lasted 
 644 years twenty-eight emperors; average reign, 
 23; whole life, 69. These two dynasties extended 
 from the days of Peleg to those of Solomon. 
 
 In the above calculations the short system, or 
 Usher's Chronology, has been followed, of course, 
 for the sake of argument. 
 
 Such, then, is the testimony of these venerable 
 witnesses, corroborating my interpretation of the 
 tables of Genesis as to the ages of the early patri- 
 archs. These most ancient and reliable histories 
 know nothing of human life reaching 200 years ; 
 neither do those of Assyria, Phoenecia, Greece, Rome, 
 or modern times. Take the following from the New 
 
42 
 
 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 American Cyclopaedia, article Age, for its highest 
 modern range. It says: "Pliny gives some in- 
 stances of longevity taken exclusively from the re- 
 gion between the Apennines and the Po, as found 
 in the census instituted by Yespasian; and within 
 these narrow limits he enumerates fourteen persons- 
 who had attained the age of 110 years, twenty to 
 the age of 125, forty the age of 130, forty the age 
 of 135, thirty the age of 140, and one the age of 150. 
 
 Zeno is said to have lived 102, Democritus 104 t 
 Clovia 115, and numerous other similar cases are 
 found recorded of ancient Greece and Rome, as well 
 as of modern times and nations. Dr. Van Oven 
 gives seventeen examples exceeding 150; and Mr. 
 Bailey, in his Records of Longevity, a catalogue of 
 over three thousand cases verging on to 100 or more, 
 and not a few reaching as high as 150. Many of 
 these may be more or less satisfactorily authenticated ; 
 and there can be no doubt of the comparatively 
 frequent prolongation of human life to the age of 
 100, 110, 120, 130, 140; some even to 150, 160, 
 170; and in one known case to 185 a Hungarian 
 peasant named Petrarch Czartan, who was born in 
 A. D. 1587 and died in 1772. 
 
 Putting all these facts and, arguments together, 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 43 
 
 we come to the conclusion that the Bible joins pro- 
 fane history in declaring that the ordinary limit of 
 human life has always been from 70 to 80 years, 
 the ordinary extreme limit from 130 to 150, and the 
 extraordinary limit from 160 to 187. Of this last 
 class only five individuals are mentioned in the He- 
 brew Scriptures Jared, Methuselah and Lamech, 
 before the flood ; Abraham and Isaac after it. Even 
 these have been equalled in modern times, according 
 to the authority above quoted. 
 
 The Hebrews are a strong, well-built, sober, and 
 peace-loving race. From the beginning they re- 
 sided in a most genial and healthy climate, under a 
 high moral and religious culture. These things, 
 taken together, are sufficient to account for the fact 
 that so great a number of their illustrious chiefs at- 
 tained an age somewhat beyond the average limit. 
 
 The vital force, as well known, is greater in some 
 cases than in others, and it is possible for us to 
 believe that a few favored individuals may have lived 
 the whole of 200 years; but when asked to believe 
 that the patriarchs, or any other men, ever rose to 
 the astounding age of 900 and more, we beg to de- 
 cline till better proofs are presented than an unnat- 
 
44 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 ural interpretation of a few terse passages in the 
 tables of Genesis. 
 
 If the reasons already brought forward be suffi- 
 ciently strong to establish the fact that the patri- 
 archs died as men at the end of the first dates at- 
 tached to their names instead of begetting sons, then 
 the remaining portions of the paragraph under re- 
 view must also be understood in some way differing 
 from the ordinary one; for Adam could not die, 
 first at 130 years of age, and then again at 930, and 
 be the same person ; neither could any of the others 
 mentioned in the lists. 
 
 Having ascertained the real import of the first 
 sentence in otl^ paragraph that is, "Adam lived 
 130 years," we shall in the next chapter take up 
 the second and third ones in order. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 ADAM, AT HIS DEATH, APPOINTED SETH HIS SPIRITUAL 
 SUCCESSOR AND REPRESENTATIVE. 
 
 I. " A ND he begat a son in his own likeness, after 
 -LJ- his image: And he called his name Seth." 
 Notice, in the first place, that I have supplied the 
 nominative he. This is correctly done; for the sen- 
 tence is wholly independent, as to time, of its pre- 
 ceding one "And Adam lived an hundred and 
 thirty years " That such is the case is manifest 
 from the fact that the verbs "lived," of the former, 
 and "begat," of the latter, are non-correlative, or, 
 in other words, they do not answer to each other. 
 
 Correlative verbs form dependent or connective 
 sentences, as to time; non-correlative verbs, inde- 
 pendent or disconnective ones. This is a law of all 
 languages ; and it may be illustrated by thousands 
 of examples. Thus : Mr. Watson wrote a note and 
 invited his friends to breakfast. He threw a stone 
 and killed a bird. He lay down and slept. He 
 lived sixty years and died. He died and was buried, 
 
46 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 &c. These are correlative, and do not, according to- 
 our English, idiom, require the repetition of the 
 nominative. 
 
 Again: Mr. Watson graduated at Yale; and he 
 took his seat in Congress when comparatively young. 
 He lived to a good old age ; and he begat seven 
 sons. "Job lived, after this, 140 years; and he saw 
 his sons, and his sons' sons, even four generations."*" 
 "And Adam lived 130 years, and he begat a son," 
 &c. The verbs in all these being non-correlative, 
 the sentences are disconnective as to time, and re- 
 quire the nominative to be repeated. 
 
 The verb lived so readily suggests its counterpart 
 died that all speakers and writers are in the constant 
 habit of leaving it to be supplied by the mind. 
 Such, I maintain, is the case throughout the cata- 
 logues of Genesis. Notice, in the second place, that 
 the words "a son" and "own" are not in the original 
 text, but have been supplied by the translators, 
 That the verb "begat" should occur here without 
 its object being expressed is very remarkable, and 
 very difficult to see the reason why. It is expressed 
 in an exactly similar passage in the same chapter, 
 (verse 28); "And Lamech lived 182 years: and he 
 * Dr. Conant's translation and punctuation. 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 4:7 
 
 begat a son (ben): And he called his name Noah." 
 It is omitted only in two or three other places where 
 the phraseology is much involved, but here it is 
 quite simple. 
 
 " Beget" is one of those verbs which seems naturally 
 to demand an object after it. Simply to say he 
 begat, without saying son, daughter, child, heir, suc- 
 cessor, or something of the kind, is certainly a very 
 violent ellipsis, and hard to fill with absolute cer- 
 tainty. However, I will accept " a son" as the supply 
 here, and pass on; but I reject "own" both as an 
 unnecessary and an injurious addition. It makes 
 the terms, "likeness and image," refer directly to 
 the personal appearance and moral character of 
 Adam, which, in all probability, is very far from 
 what was intended by the author of the original 
 text. As they occur in a table of dates and succes- 
 sions, is it not much more reasonable to suppose they 
 refer to the fact that this son became Adam's heir 
 or successor and representative in the patriarchal 
 office, than to the irrelevant ones of physical form 
 and moral traits? Not only so, but of what use 
 would such a statement be? The author has no 
 where told us whether Adam was well or ill favoured, 
 white or brown, robust or slender, or anything what- 
 
48 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 ever as to his moral peculiarities. The object with 
 which another is compared must be previously known 
 or described; for otherwise no sort of idea will be 
 conveyed to the mind. "Likeness and image" are 
 synonymous terms in English ; were they necessarily 
 such in the most ancient Hebrew? Or would any 
 writer be likely to employ two words of exactly the 
 same import, in such a very brief record as this, to 
 express nothing? They seem to be here used in a 
 sense of exaltation, as when first met with Gen. i. 
 26 : "And God said, Let us make man in our image 
 after our likeness, and let them have dominion over 
 the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and 
 over the cattle, and over all the earth." By these 
 words, then, man was made the heir of God, and 
 given dominion over His earthly possessions. In 
 similar language Christ is "appointed heir of all 
 things." (Heb. i. 1 to 4.) 
 
 In this sort of sense I conceive Seth was said to 
 be Adam's likeness and image, or successor and re- 
 presentative ; but not in personal appearance or 
 moral character. Was Seth more like his father in 
 these repects than his brothers? If so, then this 
 chosen son was morally the worst of the family, and 
 these terms are used of him in a depreciatory way ! 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 49 
 
 See 1 Cor. xv. 45 to 50. I cannot accept this view 
 of the question. . 
 
 Notice, in the third place, that our verb "begat" 
 is much less comprehensive than its original yolad, 
 which, among other things, means to make, to create, 
 and to constitute. Besides, yolad in this sentence, 
 and everywhere else in both tables, is in the Hipliil, 
 or " Causative form" of the verb, a form that makes 
 or causes its object to be, do, or become something 
 different from that of the root, as will be shown 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Now, we know that Seth was the substitute of 
 Abel, who, by the favor of God, was constituted heir 
 of the promises by faith. So Seth, by taking Abel's 
 place, became the progenitor of the chosen race and 
 Adam's successor as to things of a prophetic and re- 
 ligious nature. The sense of the two sentences, as 
 I suppose, may be expressed about thus : "And he 
 begat a son, whom he made his successor and repre- 
 sentative; and he called his name, The Appointed 
 One." 
 
 However, nothing of all which has been said un- 
 der this head is really essential to my position, ex- 
 cept that the sentence itself is independent of the 
 
50 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 preceding one, and affords no clue whatever to the 
 time of Seth's birth. The next in order reads thus : 
 
 II. "And he called his name Seth," The Ap- 
 pointed One. The leading idea of the sentence, it 
 seems to me, is that this younger son of Adam did 
 not have the birthright ~by nature, but was made 
 the heir of the religious promises by appointment, 
 the name Seth being given him as significant of the 
 fact. 
 
 But when did this important transaction take 
 place at Seth's birth or at Adam's death? I an- 
 swer, at or near Adam's death ; for this view alone 
 is in keeping with the record, and the circumstances 
 of the case. His mother had given him the name 
 at his birth, but she then said nothing about his be- 
 ing the " likeness or image" of his father. But now 
 Adam, the father, priest, and head of the house, 
 gave or confirmed it to him after he had himself 
 lived 130 years (a suitable time to die), an age above 
 the average allotted to man, as I have heretofore 
 conclusively shown. Again, this transaction stands 
 .as the last recorded act in Adam's history, and the 
 name of Seth comes immediately after his in a long 
 list of successions, that continue in an unbroken line 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 51 
 
 down to Christ, the Head, Heir, and Antetype of 
 -all the promises. 
 
 How insignificant is the opinion that Adam, the 
 progenitor and lord of the world, gave simply a 
 name to a new-born infant, which was in personal 
 appearance (for then it could have had no moral 
 character) " the likeness and image of its father !" 
 
 How much more natural and reasonable, consider- 
 ing the place where it stands recorded, the dates and 
 grand series of events that followed in Seth's line, 
 to suppose that his father gave him the name or title, 
 with^all its implied rights, honors, and promises, in 
 a solemn manner, while under the power of pro- 
 phetic inspiration, near the close of his life. 
 
 Perhaps, also, from this early incident began the 
 custom of "blessing,"- which continued down through 
 the patriarchal ages even to the days of David. Look 
 at Noah, as the last mentioned act of his life, pro- 
 nouncing the blessing upon his three sons, and fore- 
 telling their future destiny; at Abraham, sending 
 away the sons of his concubines to the east country, 
 and giving all that he had to Isaac, the chosen heir 
 with himself of the promises; at blind old Isaac, 
 setting Jacob the younger before Esau the elder, 
 and constituting him lord over his brethren ; at Ja- 
 
52 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 cob, assembling his twelve sons around his dying 
 couch, and announcing what should befall each of 
 them in the last days. See him reject Reuben, his 
 first-born, from "the excellency of dignity and the 
 excellency of power," and bestow it upon his fourth 
 son in these memorable words: " Judah, thou art 
 he whom thy brethren shall praise; thy father's 
 children shall bow down before thee; the sceptre 
 shall not depart from Judah, nor a law-giver from 
 between his feet, till Shiloh come.*' See him, as he 
 makes an end of commanding them as to the rank 
 and position of each one in the future kingdom of 
 Canaan, gather up his feet in the bed, and yield up 
 the ghost. Consider well this solemn scene, and 
 you will get something like an adequate idea of what 
 Adam did when he made his younger son his "like- 
 ness and image, and called his name Seth," or the 
 Appointed One appointed apparently in contradis- 
 tinction to some other son who was by birth the ac- 
 tual head of the community, and with sole reference 
 to the future. The "sceptre," given to Judah by 
 Jacob at his death, only came into his hands in the 
 person of his descendant, David, 640 years after the 
 prophetic announcement. 
 
 Lastly, I would here ask, at what time do kings, 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 53 
 
 princes and priests appoint their successors in office 
 at the birth of their sons, or at the end of their 
 own days ? To ask the question is to answer it. 
 
 Having thus suggested the legitimate meaning of 
 the first half of the paragraph, it will be necessary, 
 before proceeding to the next half, to consider for 
 a while the probable conditions of the Adamic family 
 and government during its long existence of 930 
 years ; for, as we have said before, if the founder of 
 it lived only 130 years, then we are compelled to 
 adopt a new interpretation of all that follows through- 
 out the tables. 
 
CHAPTEE IY. 
 
 THE ADAMIC FAMILY AND GOVERNMENT RECONSTRUCTED. 
 
 1. \T7E should see in the term Adam, not only 
 ^' the name of the first man, but also that 
 of the first family or historic government established 
 among men. Under this name it began and con- 
 tinued to develop its own social, political and re- 
 ligious peculiarities during the long period of 930 
 years time more than sufficient for the rise and fall 
 of a mighty empire. 
 
 Let us reflect for a few moments in order to en- 
 large our ideas as to the probable population at its 
 close. But we must here reason, as in mathematics, 
 from the known to the unknown. For instance, the 
 population of the United States has, since 1780, 
 regularly doubled itself every twenty-three years 
 allowing for immigration, in about every twenty-six. 
 Now, adopting the liberal number 33 J as the standard 
 of computation, and counting from the 130th year 
 of Adam's life supposing his family then composed 
 of seventy persons, as in the case of Jacob we shall 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 55 
 
 Lave at the end of this first period one of the great- 
 est nations that ever existed. Not only so, but such 
 could be the case after leaving out the descendants 
 of Cain to form another and independent community 
 half as large. Thus reckoned, the population of 
 Eden would have been at the end of the first 130 
 years, 70; at the end of the next 100 years, 560; 
 at the end of the third, 4,480 ; at the end of the 
 fourth, 35,840 ; at the end of the fifth, 286,720 ; at 
 the end of the sixth, 2,293,760; at the end of the 
 seventh, 18,350,080; at the end of the eighth, 
 146,800,640 ; at the end of the ninth, 1,174,405,120. 
 
 The actual result'doubtless fell far below the vast 
 sum obtained by the above mode of calculation, but 
 then every thing favors the opinion that the primitive 
 ages of the world were civilized, peaceful and highly 
 conducive to the increase of population. The United 
 States can scarcely be regarded as superior in this 
 respect to Eden, Mesopotamia, China, and other 
 favored portions of the globe. At all events we 
 have the right to conclude that Adam became the 
 historical name of a great nation, and after him 
 Seth, Enos, &c. 
 
 II. If we would regard the "land of Eden" as 
 the primitive Canaan or promised land, where the 
 
56 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 Divine culture was begun and maintained during the 
 first epoch of the world's history; the "garden" on 
 the east of it as the original sanctuary; the Cheru- 
 bim as stone images with sword in hand symbolically 
 guarding the way to the Tree of Life, or the Most 
 Holy Place in the "midst" of the garden; the 
 original altar of sacrifice, as placed in front of the 
 Cherubim, whither the people assembled themselves 
 every Sabbath day to worship the Lord ; and suppose 
 that around these gradually arose the national 
 temple and capital city of the empire, then we should 
 come much nearer to the truth, I suspect, than our 
 ordinary contracted notions of a pleasure garden 
 bring us. 
 
 When reading the record of Adam and his times 
 we should not allow a single pair of individuals to 
 fill the mind or fix the attention too long; but we 
 should pass rapidly on, associating with his, and 
 every other name in the list, a nation, dynasty, or 
 government of unusually long duration. 
 
 We should consider them as possessing at least the 
 germs of the laws, customs, institutions, religious 
 faith, doctrines and rites afterwards developed in the 
 tabernacle, in the code of Moses, in the temple of 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 
 
 57 
 
 Solomon, in the synagogue, and finally in the Chris- 
 tian Church. 
 
 We should lay aside the conception of small tribes 
 of rude, ignorant savages; for there is abundant 
 proof in the Bible itself to show that man from the 
 beginning was placed under the most intensely ex- 
 acting moral and religious discipline the very pro- 
 cess by which barbarism is prevented, mental facul- 
 ties developed, population increased, and a high 
 state of civilization attained. The very dates or 
 figures in the tables afford abundant evidence of 
 great advancement ; for savage tribes could never 
 have kept such a record. Many of them are unable 
 to count beyond twenty, and they all lose their 
 history after a few centuries. But I do not propose 
 to discuss this question, as it is not the one under 
 consideration. 
 
 III. There is a good deal of reason for believing 
 that Adam was the father of twelve sons, who be- 
 came twelve tribes in the land of Eden ; that it was 
 apportioned to them for a special inheritance and 
 dwelling-place, where they formed a confederacy 
 similar to the one which the children of Israel after- 
 wards formed in the land of Canaan. 
 
 In proof of this, let us hear Moses. He said to 
 
58 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 his people in the thirty-second chapter of Deuter- 
 onomy : " Remember the days of old ; consider the 
 years of many generations ; ask thy father and he 
 will show thee ; thy eMers and they will tell thee ; 
 when the Most High divided to the nations (or 
 tribes) their inheritance, when he separated the sons 
 of Adam, he set the bounds of the people (in Eden) 
 according to the number of the children of Israel." 
 
 Eden, then, was the original "holy land," the 
 land where the first theocratic confederacy was es- 
 tablished, and where the Divine cultus was em- 
 bodied and perpetuated during the primitive ages of 
 the world. It is the history of this government 
 alone, in its various vicissitudes and changes of 
 dynasty which is recorded in the first portions of 
 Genesis. After the flood it seems to have been 
 transferred to the land of Shinar, having the city of 
 Ur for its principal seat until the days of Abraham, 
 when it was removed to Canaan, Jerusalem becom- 
 ing its distinguished metropolis down to the dis- 
 persion of the Jews. 
 
 From the twelve sons of Adam and their tribal 
 divisions in the original land of Eden, we may ac- 
 count for the fact that the number twelve, at a very 
 early day, became a sacred number among the 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 59 
 
 Hebrews and "various other western Asiatic nations. 
 In the Bible alone we have the twelve tribes of 
 Canaan (including the Perizzites), the twelve tribes 
 of Joktan, of Nahor, of Ishmael, of Israel, and finally 
 the twelve Apostles of Christ, the founders of the 
 Church the last phase of the kingdom of God on 
 earth. 
 
 Says the learned Kitto: "The Persians, as well 
 as other oriental peoples, still have geographical and 
 ethnological divisions according to the number 
 twelve," and he infers from many reasons, " that 
 it was held in so much favor among them that, when 
 possible, doubtful cases were adapted to it." 
 
 Further, Jewish tradition has always assigned to 
 Adam more sons than the three mentioned by name. 
 We know that Cain was the eldest, and had the 
 right by the law of nature or primogeniture to suc- 
 ceed his father in the government of the community. 
 But we learn that " God had respect unto Abel ;" 
 that is, chose him to be heir of the promises by faith, 
 and Adam's successor as to things pertaining to the 
 kingdom to come. 
 
 This prophetic election of Abel did not of itself af- 
 fect the natural rights of Cain, but he so understood 
 it, and in the anger of his jealousy, rose up and slew 
 
60 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 his brother. That he slew him in order to preserve 
 his birthright to the headship of the family after the 
 death of his father, is evident from these words : "And 
 the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth ? And 
 why is thy countenance fallen ? If thou doest well 
 shalt thou not have the excellency f (and if thou 
 doest not well, sin lieth at the door) and unto thee 
 shall be his desire (Abel's submission), and thou 
 shalt rule over him" (Gen. iv. 6, 7.) 
 
 The same kind of difficulty arose in the family of 
 Isaac : "And Esau hated Jacob because of the bless- 
 ing wherewith his father blessed him ; and Esau said 
 in his heart, the days of mourning for my father are 
 at hand ; then will I slay my brother Jacob. He 
 took away my birthright ; and, behold, now he hath 
 taken away my blessing." (Gen. xxvii.) 
 
 Cain, for this act of murder, was banished from 
 the land of Eden, and, like Esau, went beyond its 
 sacred borders to the land of Nod, where he and 
 his posterity established the second great historical 
 kingdom of the world, with the walled city of Enoch 
 for its capital. Its history is given for a few gene- 
 rations in the fourth chapter of Genesis, and then 
 dropped, as is the case throughout the Bible with 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 
 
 61 
 
 all those branches which did not belong to the chosen 
 line. 
 
 Judging from the fact that Cain and Abel were 
 both engaged in their respective occupations of farm- 
 ing and sheep-raising before bringing their " offer- 
 ings unto the Lord" done apparently as their own 
 voluntary acts we infer that they were then mature 
 men, perhaps as much as forty years of age. Then, 
 on the death of Abel, Adam's family, according to 
 the course of human events, would have been about 
 complete, and his third son a full grown man. On 
 the banishment of Cain from the land of Eden, this 
 third son would naturally have succeeded to the 
 forfeited birthright, and at his father's death become 
 the head of the house of Adam. The secular gov- 
 ernment of Eden would descend in the line of his 
 eldest son from one generation to another ; till, from 
 corruption or some other cause, the regular succes- 
 sion was broken up. 
 
 These chiefs, all reigning under one common name 
 or title, constituted the first period of 930 years, 
 the house or dynasty of Adam; which, in brief 
 tabular language, is simply called Adam, as in 
 China, where the various dynasties or reigning 
 families are simply called Hia, Shang, Chen, Tsin, 
 
62 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 Han, &c., without any kind of qualifying epithet. 
 As the mode of using proper names will be discussed 
 in another chapter, let us further continue to ex- 
 amine into the probable conditions of the Adamic 
 family and government. 
 
 Allowing forty years of rule to each of Adam's 
 successors, then the house bearing his name consisted 
 of twenty-one chiefs, including himself. Seth would 
 not be among the number, for we know that he was 
 born after the death of Abel, and was, therefore, not 
 the third, but most probably the youngest son of the 
 family. We may suppose him, like Isaac, born out 
 of due season, since his mother's remarks at his birth 
 show plainly that she regarded him as the special 
 "gift of God," the child of promise "instead of 
 Abel whom Cain slew." He was, then, by substitu- 
 tion made the progenitor of the elect branch of the 
 house, and the heir of the kingdom by faith a 
 kingdom to come. Accordingly, he did not himself 
 enter upon its actual possession, but like Abraham, 
 Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and the other Old Testament 
 worthies, waited in hope for the promised inheritance. 
 Thus eight hundred long years passed away, and 
 generation after generation of his sons died in faith 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 63 
 
 without receiving even the first instalment of the 
 promises. (See Heb. xi., &c.) 
 
 The tribe of Seth during this waiting time were 
 subject to the government of Adam's third son and 
 his successors in office. As it was the elect and 
 most virtuous member of the confederacy, it would 
 multiply more rapidly in wisdom and numbers, 
 while the ruling one would tend to corruption and 
 decay. On the fall of the house of Adam, the 
 prince of the house of Seth, or some other chosen 
 member of the tribe, ascended the throne of Eden, 
 and with him the tribe itself became the ruling 
 people of the land. And thus the original Seth, 
 like Abraham, obtained in his descendants the 
 promised inheritance. 
 
 The government of Eden remained with this latter 
 Seth and the family of his eldest son for 912 years, 
 constituting the second period, or dynasty of Seth. 
 Enos, being the younger and chosen son of this latter 
 Seth the founder of the dynasty, was the heir ex- 
 pectant during its existence. On the fall of the 
 house of Seth, the prince of the house of Enos took 
 possession of the government, which, in its turn, 
 continued with his eldest son's posterity for 905 
 years, constituting the third period, or dynasty o* 
 
t>4 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 Enos, Cainan being heir elect during its reign. 
 The succession was thus transmitted from period to 
 period, the secular government following the law of 
 nature or primogeniture, the religious promises the 
 law of election and faith. 
 
 In the Scriptures, the eldest is never the " chosen 
 son." From Abel to David he is, when mentioned, 
 invariably a younger son of the patriarch, and waits 
 in faith and hope for the promised blessing. On 
 the other hand, the eldest son is always the one 
 " born after the flesh," and finally cast out. Such, 
 in short, is the Divine method of teaching the great 
 doctrine that the "gifts and callings of God are not 
 of works, but of grace, not to those born after the 
 flesh, but to those born after the Spirit." 
 
 Before leaving this section, let me remind the 
 reader that the above supposed mode of transmitting 
 the secular government, together with the religious 
 promises, from one period or chief patriarch to 
 another, claims for itself only a certain kind of 
 probability and consistency with the general teach- 
 ings of the Scriptures. It is only designed to show 
 that, after the received interpretation of the tables 
 shall have been overthrown, there remains this, or 
 -some other allowable way of understanding them; 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 65 
 
 and that we are under no necessity whatever either 
 to reject their historic value, or to accept a mass of 
 absurdities. 
 
 II. Neither the Jews nor any other nation ever 
 did, or ever could reckon time by the ages of fathers 
 at the birth of sons. Such a thing has always been. 
 a moral impossibility. Genealogy is far too com- 
 plicated a matter for such a purpose. In a few 
 generations it would become hopelessly involved. 
 Dates are attached to the reigns of kings, to the rise 
 of dynasties, or to prominent events of some kind, 
 not to the birth of children. Births are private 
 affairs, and in no way attract the attention of a com- 
 munity, or affect its social and political status. Be- 
 sides, births and deaths in royal households, es- 
 pecially among polygamists, are constantly occurring 
 so constantly as to render it impossible for the 
 reigning sovereign to determine much before his own 
 death which son should ascend the throne, even if 
 he wished to do so. Supposing he did so, how then 
 could he announce the fact to all his subjects, and 
 require them to keep their dates accordingly ? Such 
 a mode of procedure would certainly presuppose a 
 magnificent system of post offices, if not of tele- 
 graphic wires! "Would any king like to have his 
 
66 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 subjects keeping their dates in the name of his son 
 rather than in his own ? 
 
 Again, if the death of the heir appointed should 
 often happen, or the father often change his mind 
 as to his successor, would not his people soon become 
 disgusted with such an ever fluctuating standard of 
 time, and adopt some more permanent one for their 
 own convenience ? 
 
 Men of our days are unable to remember the ages 
 of their grandfathers at the birth of their own fathers ; 
 why, then, should we regard the memories of the 
 ancients as so much better than that of the moderns, 
 or attribute to them such mental feats, even impos- 
 sibilities ? Why consider them so unlike known 
 humanity, and perpetually subject to a course of 
 most stupendous and contradictory miracles ? True, 
 miracles have their place in the economy of Divine 
 revelation, but have we the right to manufacture 
 them in order to get over difficulties ? Mankind in 
 all ages have followed the same mental laws, been 
 under the same necessity of dividing time into periods, 
 and preserving the relation of current events by 
 comparing them with some other more prominent 
 ones. 
 
 Dates become fixed by a community or nation con- 
 
FKOM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 67 
 
 stantly using them in their conversation and business 
 transactions, and so the most important ones are 
 transferred to written history and handed down to 
 future generations. 
 
 The Chinese are the most remarkable people in 
 the world for preserving ancient customs and forms 
 of speech, as well as family registers. Many of these 
 registers go back for hundreds, some even for 
 thousands of years ; but they never note the ages of 
 fathers at the birth of sons only the birth and death 
 of individuals according to the date of the Emperor's 
 reign. In common conversation they frequently 
 speak of so many "generations of men or generations 
 of dynasties," but they never date their documents 
 or their histories according to generations of any 
 kind. They invariably keep time by reigns, dynasties, 
 and cycles. Such, from its naturalness, would seem 
 to have been the case among all civilized nations 
 since the beginning of man upon the earth. The 
 Jews, whose ancestors preserved the chronological 
 tables in the book of Genesis, did not constitute an 
 exception in any sense to this rule ; for they also 
 reckoned by the reigns of their judges and kings in 
 ordinary matters; in those of a general nature, by 
 important events in their history, as the call of 
 
68 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 Abraham, the exodus, the building of the temple, 
 the captivity, &c. Every one knows that their 
 chronology does not run according to the birth of 
 sons. To their many genealogical registers, both in 
 the Old and New Testaments, no dates or figures of 
 any sort are attached. They simply say such an 
 one begat such an one, or was the son of such an 
 one. In all the Bible the ages of but three men at 
 the birth of their sons are specified, to wit: Shem, 
 Abraham, and Isaac and this apparently, not for 
 chronological purposes, but to show the power of 
 God, as they were unusually old at the time. 
 
 From these various considerations, may we not 
 lawfully conclude that the figures in the registers 
 from Abraham to Adam are also not birth dates, but 
 death dates, first of the chief patriarchs themselves, 
 and then of the governments going under their 
 respective names ? 
 
 In these ancient bits of history, we have genealogy, 
 chronology, and election, all combined in language 
 most remarkable for brevity and comprehensiveness 
 giving in less than two short chapters the rise and 
 fall of nineteen successive houses, surpassing in 
 duration the most favored ones known to have ever 
 existed. All are the lineal descendants of one chosen 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 69 
 
 progenitor, and one after the other, founded by a 
 chosen head. How meagre, unsatisfactory, and full 
 of difficulties is the common understanding that 
 makes them a mere succession of individual men, 
 unconnected with any kind of government, national 
 life, or public incident whatever ! History with 
 history left out ! Men noted only for three things : 
 1st, For living a marvelously long life ; 2nd, For 
 begetting a certain son when disproportionately 
 young ; 3rd, For then waiting over seven hundred 
 years and begetting other "sons and daughters" in the 
 year of their death ! We shall in another place 
 expose these inconsistencies; for it is a sad fact that 
 men will, without examination, adopt the most 
 absurd opinions, or reject the most certain truths. 
 
 We must now return and take up the remaining 
 portion of the paragraph with which we set out. 
 But before doing so, allow me to suggest that the 
 facts and arguments already offered are entitled to 
 their full weight in determining its meaning ; for it 
 is not allowable to suppose that the two parts are 
 inconsistent with each other. The same person 
 could not die at 130 years of age, then live 800 
 more and beget sons and daughters, or die again 
 at 930. 
 
 5 
 
CHAPTER Y. 
 
 THE LATTER HALF OF THE PARAGRAPH. THE HOUSE 
 
 OF ADAM CONTINUED EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 THE first two sentences in the latter half of the 
 paragraph, which is now to come up for discus- 
 sion, read thus in our English translation: "And 
 the days of Adam after he begat Seth were eight 
 hundred years ; and he begat sons and daughters." 
 
 Notice that in this place only the nominative "he" 
 has been inserted before this oft-repeated statement. 
 It is correctly supplied here, and should have ap- 
 peared in all the others. The ambiguity which has 
 produced most of the difficulty, and led scholars 
 astray in their chronological reckonings, lies in the 
 first member of this verse. It has caused them, on 
 the one hand, to make the life of individual men far 
 too long ; and on the other, the life of the race far 
 too short . The ambiguity is found in the Hebrew 
 manner of using the proper names Adam, Seth, Enos, 
 , and also in the verb yolad, here rendered in- 
 
PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES. 71 
 
 variably by the verb " begat." To make this ap- 
 pear will be the tmrden of the first two sections of 
 this chapter, taking up first the names, then the 
 verb. 
 
 I. Proper names, with us, are now divided into 
 several classes, among which are Personal, Family, 
 National, and Ethnographical; but the book of 
 Genesis knows nothing of such divisions. It was 
 written before the origin of these distinctions, and 
 in it one name only fills the office of these four. 
 This fact must be kept constantly in mind, otherwise 
 we may make the most serious mistakes, by putting 
 our own modern ideas on to the ancient text. 
 
 All are familiar with the fact that the Old Testa- 
 ment calls families, tribes and nations after the 
 names of their founders; that each of those men- 
 tioned in the tenth chapter of Genesis is the name 
 both of a man and of a nation. This is apparent, not 
 only from the fact that many of them have a plural 
 termination, but also from the closing words of every 
 paragraph, and of the chapter itself. Thus: 
 
 " By these (sons and grand sons of Japheth named 
 above) were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their 
 lands ; every one after his tongue, after their families, 
 in their nations." 
 
72 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 " These are the sons of Ham after their families, 
 after their tongues, in their countries, and in their 
 nations." 
 
 "These are the sons of Shem, in their families, 
 after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations." 
 
 " These are the families of the sons of Noah, after 
 their generations, in their nations: and by these 
 were the nations divided in the earth after the flood." 
 
 The tenth chapter of Genesis is the great ethno- 
 logical chart of the world ; hence Josephus is very 
 particular to tell us how all the postdiluvian nations 
 bore the names of their progenitors, the immediate 
 descendants of Noah, and also how some of them, 
 through the influence of time, had lost their original 
 designations. The Hebrews, we know, called the 
 Medes, Madai; the Greeks, Javan, from sons of 
 Japheth; the Ethiopians, Gush; the Egyptians, 
 Mestre ; the Phoenecians, Canaanites, from sons of 
 Ham ; others, Elam, Asshur, Aram, &c., from sons 
 of Shem. In fact, those personal names got a place 
 in that short chapter because they had become 
 national, and therefore of historical importance. 
 Otherwise we should never have heard of them. 
 The same peculiarity is continued through the more 
 modern books of the Bible, Edoin, Ammon, Moab, 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 73 
 
 Midian, Israel, Judah, and scores of others, being 
 indiscriminately the names of a man and also of a 
 nation. 
 
 Now, if the names mentioned immediately after 
 the flood, as well as those more remote from it, all 
 have this double sense and application, why should 
 not the same be true of those mentioned before it ? 
 In the very nature of things it must be so. The 
 book, the language, and the people who preserved 
 them, all exhibit, from first to last, a striking con- 
 sistency, and therefore Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, 
 and the other antediluvian names in the catalogue 
 severally indicate either the progenitor himself, the 
 family, nation or government which sprang from 
 him, as the context and subject matter of the record 
 may require. Had not those persons become some- 
 thing more than mere individuals their names would 
 not have been honored with those accompanying 
 figures and dates, or remained to this late day. 
 
 Did ever private persons leave behind them such 
 a register with so many dates attached ? Never, 
 and never will ; for it is a moral impossibility. 
 Figures despise a plebeian name, but rush to score 
 the years of royal fame. How very far from the 
 truth of the case is the common conception that these 
 
<* PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 patriarchal titles correspond to our given names 
 Peter, James, John, and Charles ; yet this lies at 
 the foundation of the received interpretation! If 
 there were any such names, in those early days they 
 have not come down to us. 
 
 Again, it is the constant habit of the Old Testa- 
 ment to use its personal names first in a specific, 
 then in a generic sense, without the least reserve or 
 notification of the change. This is done sometimes 
 in alternate verses, sometimes in the same verse. 
 Hundreds of examples in illustration of the fact may 
 be readily produced; but a few 'specimen passages 
 must suffice. For instance, it is said in Genesis xlvii. 
 27: "And Israel dwelt in the land of Goshen" 
 meaning both Jacob and his whole family. 
 
 Genesis xlvii. 29 : "And the time drew near that 
 Israel must die" meaning only Jacob. 
 
 Genesis xlix. 24 : " From thence is the Shepherd,, 
 the Stone of Israel " meaning the nation. 
 
 Judges vi. 6: "And Israel was greatly impover- 
 ished because of the Midianites ; and the children of 
 % Israel cried unto the Lord." Here the name Israel 
 means first the nation, second the father of the 
 nation. 
 
 Judges x. 9, 10: "Moreover, the children of Am- 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 75 
 
 mon passed over Jordan, to fight against Judah and 
 against Benjamin, and against the house of Ephraim; 
 so that Israel was sore distressed; and the children 
 of Israel cried unto the Lord." Observe how the 
 word "house" is left off before Judah and Benjamin, 
 and written before Ephraim ; also how it is first " Is- 
 rael" then "the children of Israel." In both forms 
 of expression the sense is the same. 
 
 Exodus ii. 1: "And there went a man of the 
 house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi." 
 Now, had the word "house" been omitted before 
 Levi, in the first case as in the second, it would have 
 made no difference in the meaning ; for " Levi " and 
 "the house of Levi," "Israel" and "the house of 
 Israel," " the children of Israel," " the kingdom of 
 Israel," "Judah," "the house of Judah," or "king- 
 dom of Judah," and the like, are used one for the 
 other indiscriminately. Finally the name Adam 
 itself is also used in this interchangeable manner, 
 as in 
 
 Genesis iv. 25: "And Adam knew his wife again, 
 and she bare a son." Here it is specific, personal, 4 
 and masculine gender. 
 
 Chap. v. 2 : " Male and female created he them, 
 and called their name Adam." Here it is the ge- 
 
76 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 neric name of mankind, and both masculine and 
 feminine. 
 
 Chap. v. 3 : "And Adam lived an hundred and 
 thirty years." Here it is again specific and personal. 
 
 Chap. v. 4 : " And the days of Adam after he be- 
 gat Seth were eight hundred years " Here it is 
 again generic, being equivalent to the "house" of 
 Adam, as I conceive. 
 
 Chap. v. 5 : "And all the days that Adam lived 
 were nine hundred and thirty years." Here the two 
 senses are united into one, becoming the name of 
 both the founder and the house, or government. 
 After these nine hundred and thirty years the nation 
 ceased to be styled Adam. The dynasty being 
 changed, it was next called Seth, then Enos, and so on 
 down to Abraham, where tabulated history closes, and 
 detailed history begins. 
 
 The reader must be content with this mere outline 
 of what might be said on the Bible mode of using 
 its proper names, and allow me to pass on to the 
 verb "begat." 
 
 II. The Hebrew verb yolad is a generic or very 
 comprehensive term, requiring several English ones 
 to translate it through all its various changes of form 
 and signification. On the other hand, beget is spe- 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 77 
 
 cific, having but one definite sense through every 
 form, mood, and tense. 
 
 Gesenius gives, among the active meanings of 
 yolad "1st. To bear, or bring forth as a mother; 
 also, to take effect. 2d. To beget as a father; to 
 create, to produce, to constitute, to appoint. 3d. 
 To declare one's pedigree, or to give one's name to 
 be enrolled in the registers, as in Numbers i. 18; to 
 
 cause to bring forth; to make fruitful." 
 
 SSJ*V 
 Papie : " To be born, to be brought forth, to be 
 
 created, as the mountains in Psalms xc. 2." 
 
 Parkhurst gives "become" as among its mean- 
 ings, citing Job. xi. 12, in illustration " Yain man 
 would be wise ; though a wild ass's colt, he would 
 become a man !" 
 
 Gesenius quotes Job xxxviii. 8, 9, 28, 29, and 
 Deut. xxxii. 18, to show that it has the sense of to 
 create, to produce; and Psalms ii. 7, to show that it 
 is used for constitute, or appoint "I have set my 
 king upon iny holy hill of Zion. I will declare the 
 decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my 
 son, this day have I begotten thee (constituted thee 
 as king)." 
 
 Observe here how the "'decree" of the Lord made, 
 created, or constituted his son king of Zion. The 
 
78 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 same idea is similarly expressed by St. Paul in the 
 first chapter of Hebrews. 
 
 We thus see how much more varied are the shades 
 of signification in yolad than in the English word 
 begat, or any one similar verb in our language; and 
 how it may require several of them for its translation. 
 In fact yolad strikingly resembles the Greek geno^. 
 or the Latin gigno in its uses. These, it is well 
 known, express not only parentage, but also the act 
 of elevating persons to rank or office. Moreover,, 
 the New Testament writers, for the purpose of exalt- 
 ing persons, constantly employ the words beget, 
 born, son, child, heir, and the like; and these writers 
 were all Hebrews, and wrote with Hebrew concep- 
 tions in their minds. We create, make, or appoint 
 earls, dukes, and bishops. 
 
 Let the reader also be careful to notice that yolad 
 is repeated three times in every paragraph of both 
 tables, and that they are all of the hiptiil or causa- 
 tive form of the verbal root the first and third one& 
 being in the indicative mood, future tense; and the 
 second in the infinitive. Each form of the Hebrew 
 verb has its own appropriate name ; as, kal, hiphil, 
 hophul, &c., with its own peculiar shade of mean- 
 ing. 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 79 
 
 Gesenius in his grammar says that, "From the 
 stem are produced, according to an unvarying 
 analogy in all verbs, the various derivative forms, 
 each distinguished by a specific change in the stem, 
 with a corresponding definite change in its signi- 
 fication" He then gives several examples to show 
 how the sense of the verb changes in passing from 
 one of these forms to another; among which are the 
 the following, under the head Hiphil: " Kal or stem, 
 to go forth ; Hiphil, to lead forth. Kal, to be holy ; 
 Hiphil, to make holy, or sanctify. Kal, to perish ;. 
 Hiphil, to destroy. Kal, to be heavy; Hiphil, to 
 make heavy. Kal, to be rich; Hiphil, to become 
 rich" To these let me add a few taken at random 
 from the Old Testament ; as, David came to Hebron ; 
 they brought Joseph into Egypt. To trust ; to make 
 one trust. To eat; to cause him to eat. To re- 
 member ; to make mention of. To live ; to save or 
 restore life. 
 
 Thus it is plain that the hiphil form of the verb 
 yolad the one used throughout the tables makes 
 or causes persons and things to do, or become some- 
 thing other than that expressed by the kal, its root. 
 Hence, it appears that each of the patriarchs made 
 or caused one of the sons whom, he begat to become 
 
80 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 an heir, a prince, successor, representative, or some- 
 thing more than a mere son. This peculiarity of 
 the hiphil form of the verb is well shown in Genesis 
 xvii. 20 : "As for Ishmael, I have heard thee: twelve 
 princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great 
 nation." That is, he should beget twelve sons, who 
 should become twelve princes sons are T)orn or 
 begotten, princes are made or become such. It is 
 also worthy of note that the kal form, past tense, is 
 employed for giving the pedigrees in the fourth and 
 tenth chapters, rendered thus in our Bible : "And Irad 
 begat Mehujael: and Mehujael begat Methusael: 
 and Methusael begat Lamech." In tenth chapter : 
 "And Gush begat Nimrod: and Mizraim begat 
 Ludim: and Ganaan begat Zidon: Arphaxad begat 
 .Salah ; and Salah begat Heber." 
 
 How, then, is it, let me ask, that though in the 
 tables of the fifth and eleventh chapters the form of 
 the verb is changed from the kal past to the hiphil 
 future, nothing is said by our translators indicating 
 the accompanying change in its signification ? 
 They have rendered both forms by "begat," as if 
 they were the very same in sense. Did the original 
 writer make this marked difference without design 
 or perception of any distinction in their import ? It 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 81 
 
 cannot be so ; for what then would become of the 
 law laid down so confidently by Gesenius in the 
 words before quoted "The various derivative forms 
 of the verb are each distinguished by a specific 
 change in the stem, with a corresponding definite 
 change in its signification?" Why was not the 
 English reader given the benefit of this "definite 
 change of signification?" Doubtless because our 
 word begat is wholly incapable of expressing the 
 causative idea contained in the hiphil form of yolad. 
 For it seems to have the double sense of both a 
 lineal and official descent in all the registers of the 
 chosen branch of Adam a conception which no one 
 word in our vocabulary can fully express. 
 
 Yet this is nothing unusual or strange; for there 
 are words in every language which cannot be per- 
 fectly rendered into another. As our version of the 
 Bible brings out only the lineal sense of the verb, I 
 shall endeavor to bring out the official, and the 
 reader, by putting the two together, will get its full 
 import as used in the table. Thus : " And the days 
 of Adam, after the appointment of his son Seth, 
 were 800 years." By being particular to observe 
 that the previous verse closed with the words, " He 
 called his name the Appointed One" we will readily 
 
: 82 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 see how our .sentence, by keeping up this, leading 
 idea of its antecedent, counts the 800 years, not from 
 the time of Seth's birth (which is not specified), but 
 from the time he was called or made the Seth. If 
 this be so, then the 800 years indicate the period 
 that elapsed between his elevation to the heirship of 
 the promises and their realization, or the days of the 
 house of Adam after the death of its founder. 
 
 By the aid of Hebrew concordances I have traced 
 the verb yolad through the whole of the Old Testa- 
 .ment, and carefully studied the reasons for its 
 changes of form, especially from the kal to the 
 hiphil ; and I noted the following interesting facts : 
 
 1st, In the genealogies of ordinary persons, of 
 sons of concubines and rejected branches, the kal, 
 or some other mode of expression other than the 
 hiphil of begat, is invariably employed. 
 
 2nd, The hiphil is used in all of the regular 
 registers of the chosen line from Adam to David. 
 
 3rd, It is used of the princes of the leading 
 families in the honored tribes of Judah, Joseph, and 
 Benjamin, but never of the others. 
 
 4th, Also always of the High Priests, from Aaron 
 .till after the "restoration." 
 
 5th, The sudden, even abrupt, change of form 
 
FKOM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 
 
 83 
 
 when one or the other of these classes comes in the 
 lists, is frequently very marked, and indicative of 
 evident design. 
 
 6th, The hiphil seems to be the form of honor or 
 elevation, by which both the blood and dignities of 
 patriarchs, prominent chiefs, kings, and high priests 
 are transmitted. 
 
 7th, Outside of the registers it frequently, though 
 not always, implies something of the same kind. 
 
 Our verb beget, being a sensuous one in its mean- 
 ing, fails to express these shades of thought, and, 
 -consequently, 'they are entirely lost to the readers of 
 the English version of the Scriptures. In our! demo- 
 cratic language, patriarchs, kings, and priests are 
 born, eat, drink, live, and die like common mortals ; 
 but such is not the case in most Asiatic nations. 
 With them almost every act of their sovereigns and 
 high functionaries must be set forth in other than 
 ordinary vulgar terms in what is called "the of- 
 ficial style." This peculiar custom is also known to 
 be very ancient. 
 
 Is it not then far more probable that the verb yo- 
 lad should have this sort of compound and elevating 
 sense in the pedigrees of those most noble and illus- 
 trious patriarchs, than that they should have lived 
 
84 
 
 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 as men to the great age of over 900 years ? Con- 
 sidering all the serious difficulties which such lon- 
 gevity involves, is it not putting far too much strain 
 on reason and faith? But I cannot discuss thi& 
 point further, lest my work should swell .beyond the 
 bounds fixed for the whole question. I have said 
 sufficient to suggest a train of thought and research 
 for all who may be inclined to investigate it for 
 themselves. 
 
 In conclusion, I feel fully justified in saying that 
 this sentence puts us under no verbal or grammatical 
 necessity to believe that Adam begat Seth when 
 130 years old, and then lived 800 more; but leaves 
 us at full liberty to hold that, having appointed him 
 his spiritual heir at the former date, he died ; while 
 the community bearing his name continued to exist 
 as a government of some sort till the end of the 
 latter, when it was succeeded, according to the 
 record, by the house of Seth. 
 
 II. The next sentence in order is: "And he begat 
 sons and daughters." 
 
 The " he" occurring here, as said before, though cor- 
 rectly supplied, is not in the original, and there is no 
 more reason for inserting it in this than in the other 
 parallel cases, which are all without it. Now, if ^ 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 85 
 
 one is bold enough to contend that the first two 
 sentences in the paragraph are connected in time, and 
 Seth was, therefore, born at the end of the 130 years, 
 then he is bound to hold that those additional " sons 
 and daughters" were born at the end of the 800. 
 And what monstrous absurdities it involves ! Adam 
 begat three sons in the first 130 years of his life, 
 then after skipping 800 more, has an indefinite 
 number of them in the year of his death ! ! But 
 not only so ; all the other patriarchs, one after, the 
 other, performed the same strange and wonderful 
 feats ! ! ! If to get out of this difficulty he should 
 say they were born, not at the end, but during that 
 term, then he admits the truth of my position, that 
 the time of Seth's birth is not specified, and with 
 the admission his short chronology goes by the board. 
 "That which proves too much proves nothing," is 
 an axiom in logic. 
 
 Some may ask who were these "sons and 
 daughters ?" I unhesitatingly answer, the kings and 
 queens who, in succession, ruled over the house of 
 Adam during the 800 years that followed his death. 
 There is no mention whatever here made of the 
 common people. This table was doubtless taken 
 from the royal registers of the nation, like all other 
 6 
 
86 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 documents of the kind, and because of its chrono- 
 logical, religious and other uses, was very carefully 
 preserved and handed down from age to age. 
 Ordinary men leave no such records behind them, 
 for the very good reason that, being of no public 
 utility or concern, they soon disappear. 
 
 III. The last two sentences in the paragraph are: 
 "And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred 
 and thirty years; and he died." 
 
 These are but the summing up of what had been 
 stated above. No additional information whatever 
 is given. Any one can add the two preceding 
 numbers together and obtain the 930. This, in all 
 probability, was done by some later hand, for the 
 sake of convenience; but still at a very early date. 
 No objection, however, can be offered to it on this 
 account, for it is mathematically certain, and that 
 kind of certainty is of the highest grade. 
 
 The postdiluvian table is left in its original condi- 
 tion, with the numbers unadded up, nothing being 
 said about the death of the later patriarchs. The 
 last sentence reads: "And he died." It is as proper 
 to say this of a nation, dynasty, or government, ac- 
 cording to the Bible style, as of an individual; for 
 the pronoun "he" often stands either for the one or 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 87 
 
 for the other; while "die" is also so employed, as 
 may be illustrated by the following passages: 
 
 Numbers xxiv. 20 : "And when Balaam looked on 
 Amalek he took" up his parable, and said, Amalek 
 was the first of the nations ; but his latter end shall 
 be that he perish for ever." 
 
 Yerse 24: "And ships shall come from the coast 
 of Chittim, and shall afflict Asshur, and shall afflict 
 Heber, and he also shall perish for ever." 
 
 Hosea xiii. 1 : " When Ephraim spake trembling, 
 he exalted himself in Israel; but when he offended 
 in Baal, he died" That is, the nation of Israel, now 
 going under the name of Ephraim, died as a nation 
 or government, though millions of the people con- 
 tinued to live. If we did not have the origin of the 
 name Ephraim, with the modifications of meaning 
 through which it afterwards passed, we should 
 certainly understand this passage of the individual 
 son of Joseph and how wide it would be of the 
 mark! But not wider than the one-man interpreta- 
 tion of the patriarchal names of which we have 
 been treating. 
 
 "We are now through with all the various state- 
 ments in the first paragraph in the antediluvian 
 table. It is not necessary to treat of those which 
 
88 
 
 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 follow it, as they are substantially the same; the 
 import of the model being ascertained, we have it of 
 all the others. 
 
 We may sum up the matter thus: First comes 
 the name of the founder of each dynasty, with the 
 length of his life ; then the name of the son appointed 
 as heir and successor to the promises by faith; then 
 the number of years intervening between the giving 
 and the fulfilment of the promise ; then the whole 
 period of the national existence under the denomina- 
 tion oi Adam ; and lastly, its termination, fall, or death 
 as a government; then comes its successor, the 
 house of Seth, which is in turn treated in the same 
 manner. 
 
 I have thus endeavored briefly to show how the 
 book of Genesis is to be understood as giving a list 
 of houses or dynasties, following each other in chro- 
 nological order, rather than a succession of individual 
 men. Consequently the whole numbers under the 
 several patriarchal names must be added together 
 in order to ascertain the length of time between the 
 days of Adam and the birth of Abraham a term 
 at least equal to 10,500 years. 
 
 What mighty issues hang on this question ! 
 Viewed in this manner, those venerable tables of 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 
 
 Genesis open up for us a highway through what is 
 .generally called the pre-historic ages of the world, 
 and at once become the most important documents 
 of the kind in the possession of man. 
 
 The remaining portion of this little work will be 
 -devoted to showing how its long chronology is sus- 
 tained by reason, by other parts of the Bible, and 
 by facts from various sources. 
 
THE CORRECTNESS OF THE DYNASTIC THEORY OF IN- 
 TERPRETATION, WHICH ASSIGNS A SHORT LIFE TO 
 INDIVIDUALS AND A LONG LIFE TO THE RACE, is 
 ARGUED FROM ITS REASONABLENESS, GENERAL 
 AGREEMENT WITH THE T BACKINGS OF THE BIBLE, 
 HISTORY, SCIENCE, TRADITION, AND MYTHOLOGY. 
 
CHAPTER YI. 
 
 THE DYNASTIC SCHEME OF CHRONOLOGY IN HARMONY 
 WITH REASON. 
 
 1. TT is reasonable to suppose that the facts and 
 J- events regarded by men of modern times as of 
 first importance and worthy of public record, are 
 the ones most likely to have been preserved from 
 the beginning. Among these, as all experience 
 shows, are the doings of kings, the length of reigns, 
 the duration of dynasties, and the rise and fall of 
 nations; but never the ages of fathers at the birth 
 of sons. 
 
 2nd, It is the custom of historians to divide the 
 national life of which they treat into periods accord- 
 ing to the various dynasties or governments under 
 which it had existed, and, at the end of their books, 
 to add a brief summary or chronological table. In 
 these they frequently only mention the general name 
 or title of the royal family, with the years of its 
 duration, the number of its sovereigns, &c. Such 
 tables, from their great utility and convenience of 
 

 94: PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 form, are very tenacious of life; and such, it is 
 natural to conclude, are those found preserved in 
 the book of Genesis, and not a mere list of individual 
 births and deaths. 
 
 3ra, Our theory assigns a reasonable age for the 
 birth of children, the death of men, and the fall of 
 ruling houses in ancient times; while the common 
 one is far otherwise. According to the latter, the 
 the antediluvian patriarchs, leaving out Noah, lived 
 on an average 803 years, and had their sons as early 
 as 117 the one mentioned by name being most 
 probably not the oldest ; whereas, if there be any 
 truth in the opinion that those who live long mature 
 slowly, they should have had them from 275 to 300 ; 
 or men now should become fathers at six to ten 
 years of age ! 
 
 Then, all of a sudden, the case is reversed, and 
 Noah is regarded as disproportionately old, and 
 made to beget his three sons, Shem, Ham, and 
 Japheth in his 500th year ! But this is not all. In 
 the third chapter of Luke there are fifty-five genera- 
 tions of men from Christ to Abraham say in a 
 space of 2,000 years. 
 
 Fortunately, we have ample information as to 
 what was the common limit of life in that period, 
 
FKOM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 95 
 
 and know it was about seventy. By calculation we 
 find that sons were born to them at an average of 
 36 J years of age; but from Abraham to Noah, when 
 life, as currently held, reached the high mean of 
 313 years, it was only 31 1, and beyond the flood, 
 still more out of proportion a perfect inversion of 
 the whole course and order of nature, without any 
 apparent cause or assignable reason ! ! The dynastic 
 mode of interpretation, on the other hand, performs 
 no such feats, encounters no such difficulties, carries 
 no such weight, but glides smoothly through the 
 whole stream of time. 
 
 4:th, Still further, the common theory, when 
 worked out, presents other most remarkable facts 
 and figures. Thus, if the sons of the antediluvian 
 
 o ' 
 
 patriarchs succeeded their fathers in the government,, 
 as stated by Josephus, and held by commentators^ 
 then they would have had to wait, on an average, 803 
 years, in order to reign comparatively very few 
 similar to kings of our day ascending their thrones 
 one after another at about sixty-four, and dying of 
 old age at seventy. Even on their accession they 
 would have been too old, feeble, and inefficient 
 generally for the discharge of the public duties. 
 Surely no people ever did submit to such an arrange- 
 
96 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 ment. In more recent times, kings have reigned 
 about one-third of their whole lives ; but these only 
 an eighth of theirs, while two of them never reached 
 the throne at all ! The account stands as follows : 
 Adam reigned 930 years, Seth 112, Erios 98, Cainan 
 95, Mahalaleel 55, Jared 132, Enoch fell short of 
 the throne, having gone to heaven in his youth, 435 
 years before the death of his father; then Methuselah 
 reigned 669, and Lamech died five years before his 
 father ! Does not this kind of succession seem rather 
 strange and freaky? But, as such things were the 
 order of the day in those ancient times, it doubtless 
 seemed all natural enough to them ! 
 
 5^A, Again, men who were the contemporaries 
 of Adam himself for more than 175 years were 
 drowned in the flood, and mankind, except eight 
 persons, were destroyed in less than two lifetimes 
 from their origin ! How God seems in haste, con- 
 trary to His revealed character of long-suffering and 
 patience, to exterminate a race whom He had just 
 created, and to whom, as individuals, He had granted 
 the most remarkable longevity ! He cannot even 
 wait till His word of promise is fulfilled, but cuts 
 them off twenty years before the term allotted for 
 their repentance had expired ! ! How could man be- 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 97 
 
 come so utterly corrupt, " every imagination of the 
 thoughts of his heart only evil continually, the earth 
 filled with violence," and the patience of a merciful 
 God exhausted in so short a time as 1,656 years? 
 Such has not been the ordinary course of providence. 
 On the contrary, the dynastic scheme of chronology 
 furnishes 7,737 years for their growth and consum- 
 mation, and brings all into harmony with the ways 
 of man and God. 
 
 6^A, Could men, especially patriarchs, kings, and 
 chiefs, pass through such a state of corruption and 
 violence as this, one after another for ten generations, 
 and reach the high average of more than 800 years 
 without getting killed in some way ? Then, if those 
 days were as full of wars, murders, accidents, and 
 nameless dangers as ours, they must have been, 
 like Achilles, invulnerable. If our constitutions had 
 sufficient vital force within them to send us up to 
 that great age, the most of us would fall by some 
 kind of violence or accident long before reaching it. 
 
 It is indeed doubtful whether the rulers of any 
 nation have ever escaped for half that period. The 
 English sovereigns, beginning at A. D. 946, have 
 been killed at the intervals of 33, 37, 50, 21, 13, 99, 
 128, 158, 166 years the last 228 having now passed 
 
'98 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES. 
 
 without a violent death. In Germany, the intervals, 
 as far as examined, have been 36, 19, 188, 120. In 
 France, rather better, about 500 years once coming 
 together without such an incident; but as I have 
 mislaid the statistics I cannot give the details. In 
 China, reckoning from A. D. 589 to the present 
 time, the matter stands thus: Two emperors were 
 slain in 31 years, five in 287, two in 16, one in 13, 
 one in 11, one in 2, four in 176, three in 88, three 
 in 276, and none in the last 232. The rate in the 
 kingdoms of Israel and Judah is about the same as 
 those above given ; while, as every one knows, in 
 Greece, Home, and Persia, natural death was the 
 exception rather than the rule. 
 
 7^A, Were all the laws of nature reversed some- 
 where between the present and the patriarchal ages ; 
 and if so, where is the proof ? Are we at liberty to 
 interpret the Bible, or any other historical document, 
 so as to confuse the whole order of things? Are 
 we not wrong when one difficulty after another can 
 be piled upon us like " Ossa on Pelion ?" Can we 
 rest comfortably under such a pressure? A horse 
 whose bones are all out of joint is useless as a horse; 
 and such is the condition of the usual interpretations 
 of the catalogues of Genesis, together with all the 
 
FKOM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 99 
 
 systems of chronology based upon them. They 
 should be abandoned at once, and one more con- 
 sistent with probability and the general teachings 
 of the Scriptures themselves put in their place ; some 
 of which will be presented in the next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE DYNASTIC THEORY, OR A LONG CHRONOLOGY, IN 
 
 HARMONY WITH THE GENERAL TEACHINGS 
 
 OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 I. rpHE Bible, outside of the places in dispute, as 
 J- I have already said, nowhere assigns a great 
 age to individual men, but contains passages opposed 
 to such an idea. I am now prepared to say that it 
 never assigns a short term of existence to the human 
 race, but, on the contrary, has various passages im- 
 plying a long one, both before and after the flood. 
 
 1st, The "six days of creation," mentioned in the 
 first chapter of Genesis, as now universally under- 
 stood, stand for six successive epochs, or great cycles 
 of time. Hence, if the first chapter calls a geologi- 
 cal epoch after a day, the fifth chapter of the same 
 book, to be consistent in style, should call a dynastic 
 epoch after its founder; or, in other words, if a day 
 become an epoch without changing its name, so a 
 man may become a nation without changing his. 
 As scholars now add the epochs together to ascer- 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 101 
 
 tain the age of the earth, so in like manner we 
 should add the dynasties together to ascertain the 
 age of man upon it. If the first chapter describe a 
 series of material changes of vast duration, why 
 should not the fifth chapter describe a series of po.- 
 litical changes of vast duration also? T^sifltfsi kix* 
 chapters are but a multum in parvo <?f 'wjiat is&p^ 
 pired between the creation and the flood. ' The field 
 of the record was so wide, the time so long, the ob- 
 jects so many, and the conditions so varied, that a 
 hint was made to stand for an explanation, a day 
 for an epoch, an individual for a race, a species for 
 a genus, a father for a family, a chief for a nation, 
 and a type or symbol for things of a moral and spi- 
 ritual character. Evening, morning, day, night, herb, 
 tree, fish, fowl, cattle, beast, serpent, Adam, Eve, 
 Cain, Seth, Enos, and many others that might be 
 mentioned, all seem to partake more or less of such 
 peculiarity in the first chapters of Genesis. 
 
 2nd, In the fourth chapter, Cain's line is run to 
 within two generations of JSToah, and it is there said 
 that Jabal, Jubal and Tubal-Cain were the fathers 
 or progenitors of such tribes or nations as had be- 
 come distinguished for cattle-raising, music, and the 
 mechanical arts prior to the five hundredth year of 
 7 
 
102 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 Noah. These nations are spoken of in the present 
 tense,* as if then in existence and the contemporaries 
 of the writer himself. For the descendants of the 
 last named of the line to accomplish all this, and 
 become so different in their respective habits of life, 
 require far more time, it seems to me, than can pos- 
 sibly be gotten out of two generations of men at 
 least 1,277 years, or the lives of Lamech and Noah 
 together, considered as consecutive dynasties. If 
 this be correct, then how many years would it take 
 to carry us back to Cain, their great ancestor? 
 
 3rd, As heretofore said, the first nine verses of the 
 sixth chapter return to the " days when men began 
 to multiply upon the earth," and pass rapidly over 
 nearly the whole interval covered by the table in 
 the fifth. They have, as every one can perceive, 
 a very ancient flavor, and require long ages to 
 thoroughly fill the measure of their demands. At 
 a verv early day the sons of God intermarried with 
 the daughters of men; the giants, or great chiefs, 
 lived in or before "those days;" for, "after that," 
 the offspring of these marriages found time to be- 
 come the " mighty men, who were of old the men of 
 renown." If these latter persons were the ancients, 
 * "Such aa' m dwell in tents, and twndle the harp." 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 103 
 
 or the men of old, to the author one hundred years 
 prior to the flood, how far into the past would it 
 send the "giants," or great chiefs, who had, ap- 
 parently, flourished and passed away before the first 
 of them were born ? Does not the reader feel that 
 such language demands the most of the 7,737 years 
 appropriated by me to the antediluvian period of the 
 world ? 
 
 4:th, The deep rooted, universal, and terrible cor- 
 ruption attributed to the race at that time, together 
 with the exhausted patience of a long-suffering and 
 merciful God, conspire together in testifying that 
 ages on ages had been devoted to the rise, growth, 
 and maturity of such extreme wickedness. 
 
 II. This section will be devoted to the period be- 
 tween the deluge and the birth of Abraham, or the 
 departure of his father Terah from Ur of the 
 Chaldees. 
 
 1st, The tenth chapter of Genesis is a universal 
 history or general outline of what the descendants 
 of Noah had accomplished prior to the " division of 
 the land" in the days of Feleg, the point where the 
 account closes. 
 
 From the nature and magnitude of the things ac- 
 complished we may infer the length of the^interval. 
 
104 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 The first paragraph says: "Now these are the gen- 
 erations of the sons of Noah : Shem, Ham, and 
 Japheth ; and to them were sons born after" the flood. 
 The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, 
 Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. The sons of Gomer : 
 Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah. The sons of 
 Javan: Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. 
 By these" or rather the descendants of these 
 " were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands ; 
 every one after his tongue, after their families, in 
 their nations." The thing to observe here is the 
 fact that, by the days of Peleg, the posterity of 
 Japheth had spread themselves from Scythia to 
 Spain,* had gotten possession of all the islands or 
 maritime regions along the northern coast of the 
 Mediterranean Sea, and already become separated 
 into different ''languages, families, and nations" 
 What ages must have been consumed in producing 
 these results ! They are not those of leaps, bounds, 
 or miracles, but the steady operations of natural 
 causes. 
 
 The second paragraph says : " The sons of Ham : 
 Gush, Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan. The sons of 
 Gush: Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Kaamah, and Sab- 
 * See Josephus. 
 
FKOM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 105 
 
 tecliah. The sons of Raamah: Shebah, and Dedan. 
 And Gush begat Nimrod" that is, was the ancestor 
 of Nimrod. "He began to be a mighty one in the 
 earth. He was a mighty hunter (conqueror) before 
 the Lord. Wherefore it is said. Even as Nimrod 
 the mighty conqueror before the Lord. And the 
 beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and 
 Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of 
 that land he went forth into Asshur (Assyria) and 
 builded Nineveh, the city of Rehoboth, Calah, and 
 Resen, between Nineveh and Calah; the same is a 
 great city." See what the Cushite branch of the 
 Hamitic family have accomplished: what a mighty 
 empire they have established apparently by conquest ; 
 what a number of great walled cities they have built; 
 and what a reputation Nimrod, one of their emperors, 
 has obtained, all before the end of Peleg's day. I 
 need not quote the doings of Mizraim and Canaan, 
 the founders of the ancient kingdoms of Egypt and 
 Phoenecia, for all the sons of Ham have before that 
 date become "families, tongues, countries, and 
 nations." 
 
 Paragraph third says: "Unto Shem also, the 
 father of all the children of Heber, the brother of 
 Japheth the elder (of the two), even to him were 
 
106 PATKIAKCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 children born. The children of Shem: Elam y 
 Asshur, Arphaxad, Lnd, and Aram. And the 
 children of Aram: Uz, Hul, Gether, and Mash." 
 These have also become distinct nations in their re- 
 spective countries. Arphaxad was the " chosen" son 
 of Shem. His family settled in the land of Ur, 
 below the junction of the Tigris and the Euphrates,, 
 and became the Chaldees. "And Arphaxad begat 
 Salah, and Salah begat Heber. And unto Heber 
 were born two sons; the name of one was Feleg; 
 for in his days the land was divided" that is, the 
 confederacy of the chosen people was divided. His 
 elder brother, Joktac, taking off twelve tribes of it, 
 established an independent nation between Mesha 
 and Sephar, a mountainous region of the east; while 
 Peleg's tribe remained in their original home, and 
 continued the succession. How much this reminds 
 us of the division of the kingdom of Israel between 
 the rival houses of Judah and Ephraim, or their 
 chiefs, Rehoboam and Jeroboam. The former,, 
 though retaining but two tribes, held the holy city, 
 the temple, the law, and preserved the national life 
 and religion ; while the latter, taking off ten tribes,, 
 or the body of the nation, organized the semi-idola- 
 trous kingdom of Samaria, which, after a few 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 107 
 
 centuries, came to an end. Let this "division of 
 the land" mean what it may, it occurre d in the days 
 of Peleg, and the important point is, that the tenth 
 chapter gives the history of a grand series of events 
 which all transpired previous to it events which, 
 from their very nature, seem to require the whole of 
 the 1,867 years claimed by the dynastic scheme of 
 interpretation. 
 
 Having thus prepared the way, let us now see 
 how the matter stands. 
 
 The common mode of reckoning time is based on 
 the Hebrew text as found in our English translation. 
 It counts the figures as birth-dates, and allows only 
 131 years from the flood to the days of Peleg at the 
 birth of his son Reu. The descendants of Noah, on 
 the most liberal estimate, could not have then ex- 
 ceeded 900 persons, and the great majority of them 
 would have been children. 
 
 How could they have divided into so many 
 "families, tongues, and nations," settled in such 
 distant portions of the earth, built great cities, and 
 produced such a famous conqueror and monarch as 
 Nimrod ? AVhence came the subjects of his kingdom ? 
 Another plan of reckoning is to follow the Samari- 
 tan text, which adds 100 years to the Hebrew in 
 
108 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 each case, making the sum of 531 years. This is 
 much better than the other, but still falls far short of 
 the time required for such grand results. The popu- 
 lation descended from Noah could not have equalled 
 one million of souls even at that date. Still another 
 plan is to adopt the figures of the Septuagint version, 
 which adds 200 years, and makes these patriarchs 
 over 230 at the birth of their sons. But this is so 
 forced, so unnatural, and so wanting in authority as 
 to be unworthy of belief or attention. 
 
 If the names be taken as those of successive houses, 
 then we shall have an interval between the flood 
 and the "division of the land" of 1,867 years not 
 one year more, it seems to me, than the events of 
 the tenth chapter of Genesis require. 
 
 I leave the intelligent reader to judge of this for 
 himself, and proceed with the argument. 
 
 2nd. The eleventh chapter of Genesis does not be- 
 gin its story where the tenth left off, but goes back 
 to a point of time apparently very near to the de- 
 luge, to a time when the whole posterity of Noah 
 formed only one community. The first nine verses 
 of the chapter are confessedly obscure; the famous 
 4 < confusion of tongues and dispersion of mankind," 
 of which they speak, probably refer to the utter 
 
FKOM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 109 
 
 breaking up of the community or government of 
 Noah, 350 years after the flood, the time when he is 
 .said to have died (Chap. ix. 28). At all events, these 
 things can be readily explained in the following 
 manner : 
 
 As the patriarchal names were also dynastic titles, 
 the man Noah, who built the ark, was neither the first 
 nor the last of his house ; perhaps he was the eighth, 
 as he is so styled in 2 Peter ii. 5. We must sup- 
 pose the length of his life corresponded to that of 
 his ancestors, and we therefore put it down at 180 
 years, 130 before and 50 after the flood. We 
 would divide it thus, because his son Shem was 
 then 100 years old, and because it is reasonable to 
 reckon him about thirty years younger than his 
 father. 
 
 Thus Noah, the builder of the ark, was the patri- 
 arch or head of the house for fifty years subsequent 
 to the flood. On his death-bed he would naturally 
 hand it over, title and all, to his eldest son,* whose 
 family retained it for the next 300 years. Now, 
 during those 350 years "the whole earth was of one 
 
 * Ham, we infer, as the curse fell on his house through Canaan, 
 most probably his eldest son and representative. " Younger son" 
 Gen. ix. 24 refers to Canaan. 
 
110 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 language and one speech" that is, of one mind, one 
 heart, and one enthusiasm. "And it came to pass, 
 as they journeyed from the east, that they found a 
 plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. 
 And they said one to another, Come on, let us make- 
 brick, and burn them thoroughly, and let us build 
 us a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto 
 heaven ; and let us make us a name, lest we be scat- 
 tered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." 
 The wording shows that they were possessed with a 
 burning zeal for concentration and union, a zeal car- 
 ried beyond the bounds of reason. "And the Lord 
 came down to see the city and the tower which the 
 children of men builded. And the Lord said, The 
 people is one, and they have all one language (or 
 purpose), and this they begin to do; and now no- 
 thing will be restrained from them, which they have 
 imagined to do. Go to, let us go down and con- 
 found their language, that they may not understand 
 (or give heed to) one another's speech. So the Lord 
 scattered them abroad from thence .upon the face of 
 all the earth. And they left off to build the city. 
 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because 
 
 * 
 
 the Lord did there confound the language of all the 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. Ill 
 
 earth; and from thence did the Lord scatter them 
 abroad upon the face of all the earth." 
 
 Thus fell the union; and thus fell the dynasty or- 
 government of Noah, after a long and glorious reign 
 of 950 years. Here bursts the first grand mania of 
 the new world. They undertook a task too great 
 for their ability. After the cooling down of their 
 first enthusiasm, they divided into different parties 
 and opinions, as to the manner of conducting the 
 work, till, falling into a general quarrel, in which 
 one would not listen to the language or proposals of 
 another, they finally broke up in utter confusion. 
 
 The heads of the several parties or tribes now led 
 forth their adherents, and by degrees established 
 themselves in the surrounding regions, where they 
 became the various "families, tongues and nations" 
 mentioned in the tenth chapter of Genesis. 
 
 The family of Arphaxed settled in the vicinity of 
 the Persian Gulf, and became the great Chaldean 
 nation, having the " sacred city of Ur for its capital," 
 according to Mr. George Rawlinson and other 
 writers." 
 
 3rd. The age of Shem is nowhere given; but the- 
 table beginning with chapter xi. 10, goes back and 
 counts time from his birth, 100 years before the 
 
112 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 flood. Taking this view of the question, Shem and 
 family were 150 years subject to the government of 
 Noah, his father, 300 to the government of his eldest 
 brother (ruling under the title of J^oah till the fall 
 of the house at the dispersion from Babel), and 150 
 as an independent community; in all, 600 years, 
 when the house of Shem was succeeded by that of 
 the chosen Arphaxad. Thus 
 
 To the house of Shem (after the flood) are assigned 502 years. 
 
 " " Arphaxad are assigned . . 438 " 
 
 " " Salah " " . . 433 " 
 
 " " Heber " " . 464 " 
 
 Peleg " . . 239 " 
 
 " " Keu " " . 239 " 
 
 Serug " . . 230 " 
 
 " Nahor '* " 148 " 
 
 " " TerahinUr " " . 70 " 
 
 2,763 " 
 
 At this time another historic epoch occurred. 
 The patriarch Terah broke up, at the command of 
 God, and departed, with his infant son Abraham, 
 from the ancient seat of the family, in Ur of the 
 Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan. For some 
 reason he tarried by the way in the region of Haran, 
 where he finally died, at the age of 145 years, as 
 says the Samaritan text, which is undoubtedly the 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 113 
 
 correct one in this particular. Then Abraham arose, 
 being 75 years old, and came into the land of Canaan. 
 
 th. The kingdom of N imrod must have flourished 
 prior to the " division of the land in the days of 
 Peleg," yet long after the futile attempt to build 
 the city and tower of Babel; for, though the "con- 
 fusion" broke up the work on the wall and tower, 
 and gave name to the place, it still became a city 
 before the time of Nimrod, as we see from Gen. x. 
 10, 11, 12. There it is said, "The beginning of his 
 kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad and Calneh, in 
 the land of : Shinar," as if those cities were in ex- 
 istence before he took possession of them, while it 
 is immediately added that he went out of that land 
 into Asshur and ljuilded Nineveh, Kehoboth, Calah, 
 and Resen." This kingdom of !Nimrod was doubt- 
 less the first Cushite monarchy in Babylonia, but 
 not the last. 
 
 6th. There are also certain other statements and 
 circumstances mentioned in Genesis which give un- 
 mistakable evidence of much more than 367 years 
 from the deluge to Abraham's entrance into Canaan. 
 Gen. xii. 6, says: "And Abram passed through the 
 land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of 
 Moreh; and the, Canaanite was then in the land." 
 
PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 We know from this, and various other allusions, 
 that the inhabitants were then very numerous, and 
 dwelling in walled towns; that the cities of Sodom, 
 Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, Belah, &c., were capi- 
 tals of Canaanitish States, with their kings residing 
 in them ; that these had been for twelve years tribu- 
 tary to Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, who was also 
 confederate with three others reigning in the distant 
 regions of the Euphrates; and that they were then 
 sufficiently powerful to push their conquests west- 
 ward to the plain of the Jordan, "Mount Seir, and 
 the wilderness" of Arabia. 
 
 We also know that the Canaanitish people had 
 already reached their full development, and were 
 beginning to enter on that stage of decline which 
 invariably follows idolatry and corruption of morals. 
 The cup of iniquity of the cities in the plain was 
 already full to the brim, and God, in His wrath, 
 overthrew them with fire and brimstone from hea- 
 ven. For them to have become so exceedingly cor- 
 rupt and lascivious, we infer that they must have 
 been very old, wealthy and luxurious communities 
 long before that fearful destruction which was wit- 
 nessed by the eyes of. Abraham himself. 
 
 When then, we ask, did the descendants of Canaan 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 115 
 
 settle in Palestine and give their name to it ? In 
 what force did they come, and what was its condition 
 on their arrival ? We know it was not a wilderness, 
 but occupied by the numerous tribes of the Re- 
 phaims, Zuzims, Emims, and others. Where did 
 they come from, when did they arrive, and how long 
 had they dwelt there before being dispossessed by 
 the Canaanites ? These are some of the questions 
 which must be satisfactorily answered by those who 
 contend that the chronology of the Hebrew Scrip- 
 tures is short. Lenonnant and Chevalier, earnest 
 Christian men, in their recent most excellent Manual 
 of Ancient History, say: " Palestine when entered 
 by the Canaanites, 2,400 or 2,300 B. C., was not a 
 wilderness. The greater part of its towns were 
 already built, and the country around them inhabited 
 by a numerous population culled the Rephaim, who 
 were either exterminated or forced to emigrate by 
 the Canaanites." 
 
 Mr. George Rawlinson, in his Ancient MOD archies, 
 says : " The establishment of a Cushite kingdom in 
 lower Babylonia dates probably from, at least, the 
 twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth century before our 
 era."* That is, four or five hundred years before 
 * Not under Nimrod, but a later one, I suppose. 
 
116 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 the birth of Abraham, or the removal of Terah from 
 Ur of the Chaldees. Further on he also says, that 
 " these Cushites appear to have been a colony which 
 came by sea, and whose conquests in Babylonia were 
 followed rapidly by a Semitic emigration from the 
 country an emigration which took a northerly 
 direction. The Assyrians withdrew from Babylonia, 
 which they still always regarded as their parent 
 land, and occupying the upper non-alluvial portion 
 of the Mesopotamia!! plain, commenced the build- 
 ing of great cites in the tract upon the middle 
 Tigris. The Phoenicians, or Canaanites, removed 
 from the shores of the Persian Gulf, and, journey- 
 ing towards the northwest, formed settlements upon 
 the coast of Canaan, where they became a rich and 
 prosperous people. The family of Abraham, and 
 probably other Aramean ones, ascended the Eu- 
 phrates, withdrawing from a yoke which was oppres- 
 sive, or, at any rate, unpleasant. Abundant room 
 was thus made for the Cushite emigrants, who 
 rapidly established their preponderance over the 
 whole of the southern region." 
 
 The quotations from these learned authors are 
 substantially sustained by statements found in the 
 book of Genesis and other early portions of the 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 117 
 
 Bible, and there are several ways of approximating 
 the length of time which must have elapsed between 
 the flood and Abraham's entrance into Canaan. 
 
 ls, If the Canaanites, on arriving there, five or 
 six centuries before him, found the land " not a 
 wilderness, but the greater part of its towns already 
 built, and the country round about them inhabited, 
 by a numerous population of Rephaim and other 
 tribes, it is evident that these original inhabitants 
 must have found time, either there or elsewhere, to 
 become a "strong and numerous people." 
 
 2nd 9 The early Cushites must have been members 
 of the community which attempted to build the city 
 and tower of Babel. After the "dispersion," they 
 seem to have settled on the upper Nile and along 
 the borders of the Red Sea, where they finally be- 
 came a powerful nation, at least powerful enough to 
 send off a colony by water in sufficient force to drive 
 both the Elamite and Canaanite inhabitants from 
 the regions of lower Babylonia and the Persian 
 Gulf, about 2,500 B. C., or 500 years before the 
 birth of Abraham. 
 
 3rd, When "Abraham went down into Egypt to 
 sojourn," because of the famine in Canaan, he came 
 in contact with "Pharaoh and his princes," and 
 
118 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 found the country flourishing under a regularly or- 
 ganized government, with a powerful priesthood at 
 the head of an elaborate religious ritual. Hiero- 
 glyphic writing had long been in existence, and some 
 of its largest pyramids standing both as monuments 
 and silent witnesses of its great wealth, power, and 
 antiquity. All these things, taken together, pre- 
 suppose, not four centuries only, but the whole of 
 the 2,763 years claimed in this work. 
 
 But some may say the flood was partial, being a 
 punishment inflicted on the people of God then 
 dwelling in the land of Eden, and should not be 
 understood as destroying the inhabitants in other 
 parts of the world. Very well. Both the truth 
 and force of this objection may be fully admitted, 
 but it will not at all help the matter; for all the 
 mighty achievements above referred to, except those 
 of the Bephaim tribes, were performed by the de- 
 scendants of Noah himself, and it would have re- 
 quired more time and force for their accomplishment 
 in populous regions than in vacant ones. 
 
 4A, The posterity of the patriarch Noah was, 
 according to Genesis itself, most evidently very 
 great on Abraham's entrance into Canaan; but ac- 
 cording to the received mode of reckoning the table 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 119 
 
 of the Hebrew text, it was only 367 years after the 
 flood. Now, calculating the population on the same 
 principles as was done in the case of Adam, it then 
 consisted of less than 30,000 souls, a sum not equal, 
 I suppose, to a third of the inhabitants of the one 
 city of Sodom ! This sum multiplied into itself, or 
 900,000,000, will very probably come much nearer 
 the truth. Even China was then full of people. 
 
 5th, And in general, let us take the perception 
 of David as to the number of generations which had 
 passed prior to his day. He composed a historical 
 psalm, to be sung on the happy occasion "when 
 the Ark of God was brought from Obed-edom, and 
 set in the midst of the tent which he had prepared 
 for it." It is found both in the sixteenth chapter of 
 1st Chronicles, and also in the one hundred and 
 fifth Psalm, with some verbal differences. I under- 
 stand the Psalmist as recounting the dealings of God 
 with His people from the beginning of the world 
 down to his own times. He says Ps. cv., 1 to 11 
 " O give thanks unto the Lord; call upon His name : 
 make known His deeds among the people. Sing 
 unto Him, sing psalms unto Him : talk ye of all His 
 wondrous works. Glory ye in His holy name: let 
 the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord. Seek 
 
120 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 the Lord, and His strength : seek His face evermore. 
 Remember the marvelous works that He hath done ; 
 His wonders, and the judgments of His mouth ; O 
 ye seed of Abraham His servant, ye children of 
 Jacob His chosen. He is the Lord our God : His 
 judgments are in all the earth. He hath remembered 
 His covenant for ever, the word which He commanded 
 to a thousand generations. Which He made (ratified) 
 with Abraham : and His oath unto Isaac ; and con- 
 firmed the same unto Jacob for a law, and to 
 Israel for an everlasting covenant." 
 
 The Psalmist, it seems to me, here goes back in 
 mind, like St. Paul in Hebrews xi., and looks upon 
 the Lord as having remembered or kept His covenant 
 of mercy and the word of His law during all the 
 past ages of man. These appear to him so long and 
 many that he does not hesitate to call them a 
 "thousand generations." Though not to be taken 
 literally, but poetically, both the conception and 
 the language are in the past tense, and far too grand 
 for the fourteen generations between Abraham and 
 himself. Even poetry cannot call fourteen a thou- 
 sand. He must then have counted them from the 
 beginning of God's "judgments, covenants, promises, 
 and commands to the children of men." On the 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 121 
 
 authority of the Apostle Paul we know that, by faith 
 in the covenant and promises of God, the "Elders, 
 or ancient worthies, obtained a good report." "By 
 that faith Abel offered unto God a mure excellent 
 sacrifice than Cain ; Enoch was translated that he 
 should not see death; Noah, being warned of God, 
 prepared an ark to the saving of his house, con- 
 demned the world, and became heir of the righteous- 
 ness which is by faith ; and Abraham, when he was 
 called to go out into a place which he should after 
 receive for an inheritance, obeyed and went out, 
 not knowing whither he went," &c. See Heb. xi. 
 
 David regarded the word and promises which the 
 Lord had given and remembered for a thousand 
 generations, as ratified with Abraham, as renewed 
 with an oath to Isaac, as confirmed unto Jacob for a 
 law, arid to Israel for an everlasting covenant. From 
 this last point his thought embraced the future, and 
 not when he mentioned the covenant in connection 
 with the name of Abraham ; for if so, would there 
 not be a glaring tautology in the language ? 
 
 Now, there are only thirty-four generations from 
 David to Adam, according to the third chapter of 
 Luke, and even these are far too few to be called a 
 thousand, under any kind of license whatever. 
 
122 PATKIAItCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 Then, if my view of the psalm be correct and of 
 this every one can judge for himself David con- 
 ceived of the human race as having existed at least 
 as long as that for which I am contending. 
 
 I am now through with my argument from the 
 Bible, and the conclusion to which I come is, that a 
 short race-life, as well as a long individual-life, are 
 both alike foreign to the Hebrew Scriptures. Their 
 authors seem never to have dreamed of such ideas,, 
 but everywhere take the reverse for granted. Hence 
 all objections to them on such grounds are wholly 
 gratuitous, and made in ignorance of their contents. 
 To reject the Bible, or any other grave book, with- 
 out studying it, is, to say the least, unscholarlike, 
 and can never secure the respect of thoughtful men. 
 
 The prevailing notions of the Jews on the subjects- 
 of patriarchal life and chronology cannot be shown 
 to have existed, I suppose, previous to the Babylon- 
 ish captivity. Theirs, like ours, have grown out of 
 a misunderstanding of the tables in Genesis. These,, 
 since the captivity, have been as dead to them as to- 
 ns, while their sources of information were never 
 equal to ours of the present day. Moreover, it is- 
 perfectly plain, from their Talmud and other writ- 
 ings, that they are peculiarly inclined to misinterpret 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 123 
 
 their own sacred books. Notwithstanding all this, 
 Christians have, till very recently, simply followed 
 their lead in these matters. But times are now 
 changing, and as we have been compelled to abandon 
 their views of the six days of creation, so we shall 
 also be compelled to abandon their views of Scripture 
 life and chronology. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY. 
 
 I. TT IS TORY shows that man has been long on 
 JL-L the earth, and in several ways corroborates 
 our scheme of Scripture chronology. 
 
 1st, As the six successive epochs of creation, and 
 the nineteen successive periods of human history in 
 the book of Genesis, have each an appropriate name, 
 so the twenty-five imperial houses or dynasties of 
 China have each an appropriate name also a 
 resemblance which is very striking and suggestive. 
 
 Hanetho also gives specific numbers to his thirty- 
 one Egyptian dynasties which serve the purpose of 
 names ; while Berosus gives both names and numbers 
 to his Babylonian kingdoms. Such, it would seem, 
 has always been the course pursued by historians ; 
 for they instinctively arrange their epochs, periods, 
 and dynasties according to their relations in time. 
 They also name, number, epitomize, and tabulate them 
 after a common mental law ; and by the light of this law 
 all such documents must be read and interpreted ; and, 
 
PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES. 
 
 125 
 
 2nd, Every one will be struck with the fact, when 
 he sees how the years under the several patriarchal 
 names correspond to those of dynasties, empires, 
 kingdoms, and special forms of government, in 
 various nations of the world. 
 
 A comparison with some of the principal ones will 
 make this correspondence sufficiently manifest. 
 
 HOUSE OR 
 
 DYNASTY OF AD, 
 
 ^.MAK/i 
 
 
 Hebrew Text. 
 
 Samaritan Text. 
 
 Adam, 
 
 930 years, 
 
 930 years. 
 
 Seth, .... 
 
 912 " 
 
 912 " 
 
 Enos, 
 
 905 " 
 
 905 " 
 
 Cainan, 
 
 910 " 
 
 910 " 
 
 Mahalaleel, 
 
 895 " 
 
 895 " 
 
 Jared, 
 
 962 " 
 
 847 <4 
 
 JEnoch, 
 
 365 " 
 
 365 " 
 
 Methuselah, 
 
 969 " 
 
 720 " 
 
 Ijaniech, 
 
 777 " 
 
 653 " 
 
 Noah (to the flood), 
 
 600 " 
 
 600 '* 
 
 Shem (after the flood), 
 
 502 " 
 
 502 " 
 
 Arphaxad, 
 
 438 " 
 
 438 " 
 
 Salah, 
 
 433 " 
 
 433 " 
 
 Heber, 
 
 464 " 
 
 404* " 
 
 Peleg, . . . 
 
 239 " ' 
 
 239 " 
 
 Beu, 
 
 239 4 ' 
 
 239 ' 
 
 Serug, 
 
 . ' 230 " 
 
 230 " 
 
 Nahor, 
 
 148 " 
 
 148 " 
 
 Terah in Ur, 
 
 70 " 
 
 70 " 
 
 10,988 " 10,440 " 
 
 Or, following the Samaritan text in the antedilu- 
 yian, and the Hebrew in the postdiluvian tables, 10,500 " 
 
 * Supposed to be a clerical error for 464. 
 
126 
 
 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 CHINESE DYNASTIES.* 
 
 Hea, 
 
 439 years. 
 
 Liang 2, 
 
 70 years.. 
 
 Shang, . 
 
 644 " 
 
 Ck'an, 
 
 32 " 
 
 Cheu 2, . 
 
 876 " 
 
 Sui, 
 
 30 " 
 
 T'sin, 
 
 40 " 
 
 T'ang 2, . 
 
 . 300 " 
 
 Han 4, . 
 
 474 " 
 
 Yuen, 
 
 88 " 
 
 Tsin 3, . 
 
 173 " 
 
 Ming, 
 
 . 276 " 
 
 Sung 3, . 
 
 320 " 
 
 T'sing, 
 
 232 " 
 
 T'si, 
 
 23 " 
 
 
 
 
 EGYPTIAN 
 
 DYNASTIES. 
 
 
 L, . 
 
 253 years. 
 
 XVIII. , . 
 
 241 years. 
 
 II., . . 
 
 303 
 
 XIX., 
 
 . 174 " 
 
 III., 
 
 214 
 
 XX., 
 
 . 178 " 
 
 IV., 
 
 284 " 
 
 XXL, 
 
 . 130 " 
 
 V., . . 
 
 248 
 
 XXII. , 
 
 170 " 
 
 VI., 
 
 203 " 
 
 XXIII., . 
 
 89 " 
 
 VII.? 
 
 75 " 
 
 XXIV., 
 
 6 " 
 
 VIII. , . 
 
 142 
 
 XXV., 
 
 50 '" 
 
 IX., 
 
 109 " 
 
 XX VI., 
 
 . 138 " 
 
 X., 
 
 185 " 
 
 XX VII., . 
 
 . 121 " 
 
 XL and XII., 
 
 213 
 
 XXVIII. , . 
 
 7 " 
 
 XIII., 
 
 453 
 
 XXIX., . 
 
 21 " 
 
 XIV., 
 
 184 
 
 XXX., 
 
 38 " 
 
 XV. XVI. XVII., 
 
 511 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 8 " 
 
 Ended 339 B. C. 
 
 ASSYKIAN EMPIRES. 
 
 I., . . . 526 years. II., . . . 122 years. 
 * Those bearing the same title are thrown together. 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 
 
 127 
 
 THE BABYLONIAN DYNASTIES OF BEROSCS, AS RE- 
 STORED BY RAWLINSON. 
 
 I. Chaldean, ? years. V. Arabian, 245 years. 
 
 II. Median, 234 " VI. ? 526 " 
 
 III. ? 48 " VII. 122 " 
 
 IV. Chaldean, 458 " VIII. 87 " 
 
 JEWISH PERIODS. 
 
 The Pilgrimage, 545 years. The House of Israel, 254 years. 
 The Judges, 400 " The Captivity, 70 " 
 
 The House of David, 468 " The Restoration, 590 " 
 
 ROMAN FORMS OF GOVERNMENT, 
 
 The Kingdom, 244 years. The Republic, 481 years. 
 
 The Empire, 504 years. 
 
 FRENCH DYNASTIES. 
 
 Merovingian, 241 years. Orleans line, 91 years.. 
 
 Capetian, 341 " Bourbon branch, 260 " 
 
 Valois branch, 107 " 
 
 RUSSIAN DYNASTIES. 
 Romanoff, 41 years-. Holstein, 114 years. 
 
 GERMAN DYNASTIES. 
 
 Carlovingian, 119 years. Luxemburg line, 129 years. 
 
 Saxon line, 105 " Hapsbnrg " 205 " 
 
 Salic " 114 " Lorraine " 134 " 
 
 Hohenstaufens, 170 " 
 
128 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 ENGLISH HOUSES. 
 
 Saxons, 190 years. York, 24 years. 
 
 Danes, 50 " Tudor, 118 " 
 
 Normans, 88 " Stuart, 111 " 
 
 Plantagenets, 245 " Hanover, 162 " 
 
 Lancaster, 62 " 
 
 Choo Foo Tsz, a celebrated Chinese philosopher 
 and historian of the twelfth century, has well re- 
 marked that, "In the revolutions of time human 
 affairs are not stable more than two or three hundred 
 years." 
 
 By examining the duration of the above govern- 
 ments, we will readily perceive that the patriarchal 
 names, even when considered as those of dynasties, 
 are still abreast of any that have ever existed. They 
 were perhaps religious rather than political com- 
 munities; and since religious organizations are the 
 most permanent of all human institutions, this may 
 be sufficient to account for their surpassing length. 
 
 The present royal family of China is believed, by 
 competent judges, to have transmitted the throne 
 without break, from father to son, longer than any 
 other in the annals of history, showing a regular 
 -descent of 231 years. 
 
 Ordinarily breaks frequently occur; sons are 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 129 1 
 
 adopted, a brother, uncle, nephew, or some member 
 of a collateral branch comes in to continue the 
 government (sometimes more than once) before the 
 final overthrow and change of title takes place. 
 Tables have neither time nor space for these details ; 
 hence we frequently find the figures increasing with 
 the brevity of the catalogue or the remoteness of 
 the dynasties mentioned. 
 
 II. Some of the above named governments began 
 in the remote depths of antiquity ; but even beyond 
 them appear the dim outlines of still more remote 
 ones. For instance, at the beginning of the Hia, 
 2,205 B. C., China was occupied by aboriginal 
 tribes, who brought tribute to its rulers. Then 
 beyond the Hia were the "Five Sovereigns," with 
 Fuh-he at their head, whose united reigns covered a 
 space, according to Dr. Williams, of 647 years; ac- 
 cording to Professor Kidd, of 1,164. The exact date 
 of Fuh-he's reign cannot be fixed, but it is generally 
 supposed to be in the neighbourhood of 3,000 B. C. 
 Some traditions say his posterity reigned for fifteen 
 generations, over a period of 17,78 7 years. 
 
 Still beyond him comes the "Jin Wong" or fabu- 
 lous King of Men, whose dynasty lasted 45,000 years 
 under nine brothers. In those days, says the story, 
 
130 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 " The hills and rivers were divided into nine regions. 
 The people occupied but one territory, observed re- 
 spectful manners, and pure customs. The kingly 
 office was not a pageantry, nor were the functions 
 of state ministers empty titles. Good government 
 was established by the rulers, and correct institutions 
 diffused among the common people." 
 
 Again, this golden age was preceded by " Te 
 Wong" or the King of the World, whose rule con- 
 tinued 18,000 years under eleven brothers. Prior 
 to him was " Tien Wong" or the King of Heaven, 
 who reigned 18,000 years; and still beyond him was 
 " Pwan Koo" the first man, who spent 18,000 more 
 years in " chiseling out the earth, cutting passages 
 through the mountains, teaching navigation, and 
 otherwise preparing it for the habitation of men." 
 
 These things, though fables, show plainly that the 
 origin of the Chinese people lies concealed in the 
 depths of a remote past. Such stories and dates 
 would be unworthy of attention were it riot for the 
 fact that they contain shadowy glimpses of the gov- 
 ernments and history of those lost ages. It will be 
 a difficult task to convince intelligent Chinamen that 
 man has existed no more than 6,000 years. 
 
 2nd, The Chaldean empire presents a similar 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 131 
 
 record. According to Rawlinson, the Second 
 Dynasty began 2,286 B. C. He says: "Berosus 
 declared that six dynasties had reigned in Chaldea 
 since the great flood of Xisuthrus, or Noah. To the 
 first, consisting of eighty-six kings, he allowed the 
 extravagant period of 34,080 years. Evechous, its 
 founder, had enjoyed the royal dignity for 2,400, 
 and Chomasbelus, his son and successor, 300 longer 
 than his father. The other eighty-four kings had 
 filled up the remaining space of 28,980 years, their 
 reigns thus averaging 345 apiece." 
 
 Unfortunately the works of Berosus have been 
 lost; only a mutilated outline of his chronological 
 scheme being preserved to us through extracts by 
 Eusebius, and one or two others. It is clear that 
 something is wrong with the numbers above given. 
 Through frequent transcription, they may have be- 
 come dislocated; for they seem to bear marks of 
 this on their face. I venture to suggest that the 
 34,080 years were meant to cover the period before 
 the flood of Xisuthrus, 2,400 years, and the eighty- 
 .six kings that of the first Chaldean dynasty after it.* 
 This would require an average reign of only twenty- 
 
 * This was probably the kingdom of Nimrod. 
 
132 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 eight years for eacli of these kings, which is clearly 
 within the bounds of reason. 
 
 Then, on this supposition, if we add the 2,400 
 years to the 2,286 B. C., the commencement of the 
 second dynasty, we shall have 4,686 B. C. for the 
 great flood of Xisuthrus. The date of Noah's flood, 
 according to our scheme of interpreting the tables 
 of Genesis, is 4,763 B. C., leaving a difference be- 
 tween the two dates of only seventy-seven years, 
 which is a fraction of no importance in a question 
 of this kind. Berosus certainly regarded men as 
 having dwelt a long time in the region of Babylonia, 
 both before and after the flood ; but as I have not 
 his "fragments" at hand, I touch on the matter with 
 great reserve, and beg not to be held responsible 
 for any errors which may have crept into my re- 
 marks. 
 
 Modern researches in the valley of the Euphrates 
 tend to confirm the truth of Berosus' convictions. 
 The account of the flood, recently found at Nineveh, 
 was translated from a dead language into the cunei- 
 form character for the library of Sardanapalus, ac- 
 cording to the opinion of Mr. Smith, the distin- 
 guished Assyrian scholar. The story, even in the 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 133 
 
 original, had become highly mythological, which is 
 an unmistakable sign of great age. 
 
 3/v7, Both the history and monuments of Egypt 
 give proof of the highest antiquity. On any theory 
 of explaining Manetho's thirty-one dynasties, it is 
 very high. M. Lenormont, regarding them as all 
 consecutive, fixes the date of the first at 5,004 B. C. 
 Baron Bunsen, regarding them as mostly consecutive, 
 fixes it at 3,643 B. C. Mr. Poole, maintaining that 
 they were largely contemporaneous, puts it at 2,717 
 B. C. Even after every effort to bring them within 
 the bounds of the received Scripture chronology, he 
 is compelled to place their beginning 425 years 
 prior to Usher's deluge. 
 
 The "'List of Kings' recently discovered in the 
 Temple of Abydos, represents Seti I, accompanied 
 by his son Rameses II, in the act of paying homage 
 to seventy-six of his ancestors, beginning with 
 Menes." Xow, the end of the reign of Rameses 
 is fixed by Egyptologists at about 1,340 B. C. By al- 
 lowing twenty-three years as the average reign of each 
 of these seventy-six kings of Egypt, and multiply- 
 ing the two together, the sum of 1,748 years will 
 be produced, which, added to the 1,340 B. C., will 
 place Menes, the head of the first dynasty, at 3,088 
 9 
 
134: PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES. 
 
 B. C. Again, if the seventy -five ancestors of Christ, 
 given in the third chapter of Luke, cover a period 
 of 4,004 years, certainly the seventy-six ancestors of 
 Rameses should do the same; and this would send 
 Menes full 3,000 years beyond Usher's flood. I 
 however regard Bunsen's date as decidedly preferable 
 to all others ; and I have also seen it frequently 
 stated that the most recent discoveries in Egypt tend 
 to confirm it. We thus see that our scheme of 
 Scripture chronology exactly meets the wants of the 
 case, by placing the flood 1,120 years beyond Bun- 
 sen's date, which allows Menes sufficient time to be 
 the descendant of ISToah, and the founder of a State 
 on the banks of the Nile. 
 
 Manetho, notwithstanding the very high point to 
 which he carried the history of Egypt, still believed 
 that kingdoms flourished long previous to the reign 
 of Menes, as he assigns 12,843 years to " heroes and 
 the gods." He was not so wide of the mark after 
 all, it would seem, as the Bible is now shown to sup- 
 ply 8,857 of them, counting from Bunsen's date. 
 
 <yA, I need only mention the belief among the 
 people of India of many eras of human existence, 
 the last of which began 3,100 years before the birth 
 of Christ. 
 
CHAPTER IX . 
 
 ARGUMENT FROM SCIENCE, TRADITION, AND MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 OUR fathers, only a few centuries ago, accepted 
 less than 6,000 years as the term of human ex- 
 istence without the least misgiving ; but modern re- 
 searches in various departments of history and science 
 have exploded this opinion, and put in its place some 
 vast indefinite number. This may be farther from 
 the truth than that which it has supplanted. Yet it 
 cannot be less than the 14,376 years above claimed, 
 as I shall still proceed to show. 
 
 1st. ARGUMENT FROM GEOLOGY. 
 
 The argument from geology may be briefly stated 
 thus : It holds that, during the ages which have al- 
 ready run their rounds in connection with our earth, 
 a long lease of life has been allotted to each of the 
 many extinct species of animals, but comparatively 
 only a very short one to separate individuals. The in- 
 ference is, that such has been the case with man also. 
 
136 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 Again, "the present rate of deposition on the 
 earth's surface must be taken as the normal or stan- 
 dard rate for the recent formations." Now, human 
 remains and implements have been found in great 
 abundance in beds of gravel and other deposits, as- 
 sociated with animal bones, under such conditions as 
 to make it impossible to suppose that they had been 
 there less than 14,000 years. Many say much more. 
 
 2nd. ARGUMENT FROM ARCHAEOLOGY. 
 
 Of late years great attention has been given to 
 this department, and most interesting discoveries 
 have been made in almost every portion of the globe. 
 The mounds and other monuments that man lias 
 left behind him are acknowledged on all hands to be 
 most hoary with age ; so much so, that Mr. Ban- 
 croft does not hesitate to attribute to some of those 
 found in America even " thousands of ages." I 
 have seen them in great numbers myself, and I feel 
 safe in saying that the Mississippi valley must have 
 been inhabited in very ancient times by a powerful 
 and civilized people. If the Chinese race should be 
 swept away, they would not leave behind them mon- 
 uments equal in size and workmanship to those of 
 America. 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 137 
 
 3 rd. ARGUMENT FROM ETHNOLOGY. 
 Ethnology maintains the unity of mankind, and 
 requires fully as much time as my theory claims to 
 "bring all its varying tribes and races back to a com- 
 mon ancestry. It holds that the three most strongly 
 marked races are exceedingly tenacious of their dis- 
 tinguishing characteristics the negro having un- 
 doubtedly remained unchanged for the last 3,000 
 years, with the fair inference of three times that 
 amount. 
 
 th. ARGUMENT FROM PHILOLOGY. 
 
 Philology teaches that languages are of slow 
 growth, and, like the races of man, are also very tena- 
 cious of their own peculiarities ; that the differences 
 existing among them are very great, and known to 
 have been so from the beginning of the historic age. 
 Yet they all, whether monosyllabic, agglutinate, or 
 amalgamate, present certain features in common 
 which prove, or strongly suggest, a common origin. 
 Many of them rose, nourished, and passed away be- 
 fore the Christian era ; while those which now pre- 
 vail retain certain " survivals," or fossil forms and 
 significations, indicative of a long career. In words 
 are found the most ancient of human remains ; and 
 
138 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 though, it is impossible to assign to their origin any 
 definite date, it must, beyond all doubt, be put very 
 high in order to meet the requirements of the case. 
 Baron Bunsen claims for the origin, growth, and 
 divisions of language a term of 20,000 years. Prof. 
 Whitney, and other philologists, still more. E~o one, 
 I venture to say, with even a tolerable knowledge of 
 the subject, can believe that they were all one under 
 14,000 years ago. The Chinese language has a his- 
 tory of its own covering a third of that time ; and 
 we may well ask, when were the English, Greek, 
 and other amalgamates the same with it ? If these 
 wide differences were produced by a sudden " con- 
 fusion of tongues" at the building of the Tower of 
 Babel, then that event must be placed a great way 
 off. But if it was, as some maintain, not a confu- 
 sion of articulation, but a confusion of talk a grand 
 quarrel that broke up the work, and caused the dis- 
 persion so graphically described in the eleventh chap- 
 ter of Genesis, then it did not directly affect the 
 course of linguistic development. Let this question 
 be decided as it may, it matters not as to the sub- 
 ject in hand, for philology says it has been a very 
 great while since all the languages of the world 
 were the same. 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 139 
 
 6th. ARGUMENT FROM TRADITION. 
 
 The traditions found in Babylonia, Egypt, China, 
 India, and elsewhere, all point to the unity and re- 
 mote origin of the human race. 
 
 In studying these traditions we should remember 
 that associated objects, when viewed from a distance, 
 lose their identity and blend into one. So the doings 
 of a whole nation or age may become associated 
 with the name of some prominent individual, strik- 
 ing emblem, or national soubriquet, and thus em- 
 bodied, be handed down to future generations. 
 
 In this way, the whole history of England may, 
 in the progress of ages, when some " JSTew Zealander 
 shall stand on the ruins of London bridge," and try 
 to decipher the past from bits of stone, be ascribed 
 to an ancient giant called John Bull. His wife, 
 Britannia, may then be the goddess of the sea, and 
 their son, Jonathan, the Hero or Hercules of North 
 America. Then their temples, statues, and worship 
 may prevail through all the present Anglo-Saxon 
 portions of the globe. But we hope for better things 
 in the future. When events become too grand, num- 
 erous, and complicated in their relations for the 
 ready grasp of the mind, it begins instinctively to 
 concentrate, individualize, or personify them; and 
 
MO PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 thus the stories of the creation of the world, the fall 
 of man, the flood, the long life, and wonderful ex- 
 ploits of certain ones of the olden times, show 
 clearly that they lived in ages far away, fully far 
 enough for nations to become individual men, for 
 men to become giants, heroes, and gods, before the 
 dawn of authentic history. 
 
 Thus we see that these traditions, when properly' 
 considered, also join their testimony with the other 
 witnesses in supporting our views of Biblical chron- 
 ology. 
 
 o/ 
 
 6^. ARGUMENT FROM MYTHOLOGY OR RELIGION. 
 
 Mythology or religion, as a science, treats of the 
 fundamental ideas of the human race, together with 
 the various systems which they have produced. At 
 first these ideas, according to the most ancient re- 
 cords and evidences, were monotheistic. But peo- 
 ples, in their migrations from their central home and 
 worship, met with wars, floods, earthquakes, famines, 
 pestilences, and other trying conditions. These de- 
 veloped leaders of remarkable wisdom, skill, virtue, 
 or prowess. The people, seeing these, gradually, 
 but naturally, gave personality to the forces able to 
 produce such results; clothed them with Divine at- 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 14:1 
 
 tributes; associated with them the creations of their 
 own excited imaginations; and so finally made them 
 images, shrine sand temples; adopted in their honor 
 certain observances and rites, which imperceptibly 
 multiplied and grew into all the various systems of 
 false worship found among men. 
 
 In this way mythology becomes a record of facts, 
 and, to some extent, contains within it J^e history 
 and chronology of the race. 
 
 Nothing human is so slow of growth, and so slow 
 of decay, as religious systems. Now Monotheism, 
 the original form of worship, had arisen, flourished, 
 and decayed ; then Polytheism had succeeded to it, and 
 grown into full blast in Babylonia, Egypt, and China, 
 all before our first acquaintance with those nations. 
 
 " The religion of Chaldea," says Mr. Rawlinson, 
 "from the earliest times to which the monuments 
 carry us back, was, in its outward aspect, a Poly- 
 theism of a very elaborate character. Various 
 deities, whom it was not considered at all necessary 
 to trace to a single stock, divided the allegiance of 
 the people, and even of the kings, who regarded with 
 equal respect, and glorified with equally exalted 
 epithets, some fifteen or sixteen different personages. 
 Next to these principal gods were a far more mini- 
 
142 
 
 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 erous assemblage of inferior or secondary ones, less 
 often mentioned, and esteemed as less worthy of 
 honor, but still recognized generally through the 
 country." " Finally," says he, " the Pantheon con- 
 tained a host of mere local gods or genii, every 
 town, and almost every village of Babylonia being 
 under the protection of its own particular divinity. 
 But it would be impossible to give a complete ac- 
 count of this vast and complicated system. The 
 subject is still but partially worked^out by cuneiform 
 scholars, and the difficulties in the way of under- 
 standing it are very great." 
 
 Not only so; both the "Book of Funeral Kites," 
 and all the monuments of Egypt, declare the same 
 thing as to the state of religion in the region of the 
 Kile, at the remotest date to which students have 
 been able to go. 
 
 In China, the system of ancestral worship, even 
 during the Chen dynasty, which began 1,122 B. C., 
 was most elaborate and minute, being as thoroughly 
 crystalized at that time as at the present day. 
 
 It will not be necessary to speak of the religions 
 of India, Greece, Mexico, Peru, and other ancient 
 nations, as they all seem to have passed through 
 very similar stages. 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 143 
 
 In view of such facts, may we not most confi- 
 dently hold that thousands of years must have been 
 required for the primitive Monotheism to die out, 
 and these varied systems of Polytheism to rise, de- 
 velop, and become elaborate and complicated, even 
 crystalized, in nations so many and remote from 
 each other ? 
 
 Lastly, though physiology is silent as to the age 
 of the race, it is not so as to the length of indivi- 
 dual life which is an essential part of this discus- 
 sion and, therefore, it may also come forward with 
 its testimony. 
 
 Physiology treats of the organs of animal life, 
 their functions, growth, and decay. The laws 
 governing these things, so far as ascertained, seem to 
 forbid the idea that men were ever able to live be- 
 yond two hundred years. Generally, in less than 
 half that time, the vital organs lose their vigor, the 
 best eyes become blind, the best ears deaf, and the 
 best teeth that ever grew worn clown to the roots. 
 Then, unless we suppose some wonderful change to 
 have taken place in the material or construction of 
 our bodies, those glorious old antediluvian patriarchs 
 would have been over six or seven hundred years of 
 their lives u sans eyes, sans ears, sans teeth, sans 
 
144 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 everything," burdens to themselves, and objects of 
 pity to their people! 
 
 Familiarity with an idea does a great deal towards 
 reconciling us to it, but it is in reality as easy for us 
 to conceive of men extraordinarily large as of men 
 extraordinarily old. Let us now present the propo- 
 sition to ourselves in this unfamiliar manner, and 
 see what will be the result. It is a simple question 
 of proportion. We will take ninety years as the 
 age of men now, and six feet as their height. Then 
 as ninety is to nine hundred and thirty, the age of 
 Adam, so is six feet to his height, equal to sixty-two 
 feet! Keeping up the symmetry of his person, his 
 waist was thirty odd feet around, and his foot eight 
 feet long requiring one hundred yards of cloth for 
 a suit of clothes, four ox hides for a pair of boots, 
 and a wagon load of provisions for a dinner ! ! If 
 such were the ordinary men of "those days," what 
 were the " giants ?"* 
 
 I here close my arguments with the profound con- 
 viction that our venerable Scriptures furnish a solid 
 foundation on which we may rest in regard to the 
 
 * Dcmble the ordinary size, age, weight, or strength, would be 
 marvelous, much beyond that, supernatural. Eleven feet is the 
 highest man of whom I have any reliable information. 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 
 
 age of man, both as individuals, and as a race. 
 Though my scheme of interpretation may not be 
 entirely free from difficulties and mistakes, it is in the 
 main correct, and can never be overthrown by bring- 
 ing objections against particular parts ; but it must 
 stand or fall as a whole. 
 
 The argument is accumulative, one, and indivis- 
 ible, having the verb lived for its pedestal. 
 
 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 The following objections are here given as speci- 
 mens of those which may be brought against my 
 scheme of interpretation : 
 
 1st, " Was the dynasty of Enoch translated ?" 
 By no means. Enoch, the head of the house, 
 "walked with God" sixty-five years, when God took 
 him ; after which, his house, or regular successors, 
 walked with God three hundred more, when it was 
 succeeded by that of Methuselah. I see no special 
 difficulty here. 
 
 2nd, "Did the whole dynasty of Xoah enter the 
 ark f Xot at all. Only the Koah who was its chief 
 at the time of the flood. 
 
 3rd, u If the verb lived implies death, as used in 
 the tables, then did not Terah die in Ur at seventy 
 
14:6 
 
 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 years of age, instead of in Haran?" Genesis xi. 
 26 to 32. 
 
 ANSWER. He ceased to live in Ur at that time. 
 Only this first part of his life was on the registers 
 of Ur. His headship terminated at seventy, which 
 is all that is demanded of the verb. 
 
 4:th, " Could scholars of every grade overlook all 
 these things for so many ages, and such important 
 truths remain concealed till discovered by yourself?" 
 This objection makes truth a monopoly, stops all 
 progress, and upholds every error that ever existed. 
 It is scarcely worth a serious reply. Facts and ar- 
 guments are everything in a question of this kind; 
 authority nothing. Study has corrected many po- 
 pul/ar notions, and is destined to correct many more. 
 
 5th, " The Septuagint version supplies all the 
 time required by established facts, and its dates are 
 followed by many eminent men." I answer, it is 
 wanting in authority, and produces more confusion 
 in the main, if we count by births, then the Hebrew 
 text. It relieves its adherents somewhat as to the 
 duration of the race, but plunges them into inextri- 
 cable difficulties in other respects. 
 
 62A, "The Bible does not pretend to furnish data 
 for chronological purposes, and, therefore, every 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 147 
 
 system based upon it is fallacious." I deny the as- 
 sertion. Why, then, does it give a regular series of 
 dates from Adam to the Captivity, or burden itself 
 with so many figures ? 
 
 7 th, " The dynastic scheme, which allows only 
 14,376 years for the existence of man, fails to meet 
 the case ; for modern discoveries claim hundreds of 
 thousands." I deny the claim. It is as yet an as- 
 sumption only; the proof is still wanting. On the 
 contrary, I assert that the 14,376 years fills every 
 demand of history and science. Again, it should be 
 remembered that the chronology of the Scriptures 
 begins, not with the creation of man (chap. i. 27), 
 but with Adam, the father of Seth (chap. v. 3.) All 
 the history of the race prior to him, if any, is left 
 dateless, and opens a question into which I have not 
 pretended to enter. On this point, I wait for fur- 
 ther light. Neither is it my province to reconcile 
 the Bible with modern discoveries, but to show its 
 teachings as to the ages of the ancient patriarchs, 
 together with the period of time which elapsed be- 
 tween the father of Seth and the birth of Abraham. 
 I have laboured to correct a general misapprehension 
 as regards these two points alone, without turning 
 aside to other things. Truths reconcile themselves. 
 
148 
 
 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 
 
 8^A, "The dynastic mode of interpretation is too 
 complicated, and not in accordance with the first 
 impression or obvious meaning of the language em- 
 ployed in the tables." 
 
 ANSWER. There is a dangerous fallacy in this fa- 
 miliar axiom. It holds good only of things in them- 
 selves plain or simple ; but as to such complex mat- 
 ters as the creation, the flood, geology, astronomy, 
 chronology, history, and the like, first impressions, 
 obvious meanings, and popular opinions, are invari- 
 ably wrong, and have to be corrected by a careful 
 collection of facts, and scientific processes of reason- 
 ing. According to the obvious meaning of the re- 
 cord, the heavens and the earth were created in six 
 ordinary days, the whole globe was submerged to 
 the top of the highest mountains, and every living 
 thing outside of the ark was drowned in Noalrs 
 flood. According to first impressions the sun rises 
 and sets, the earth is flat or square ; light and dark- 
 ness, heat and cold, are equally forces of nature ; 
 but the learned know better. 
 
 When mountains seem to revolve, trees to walk, 
 or men to live 1,000 years, we should at once suspect 
 an optical illusion. Again, our scheme of chron- 
 ology is not particularly complicated; not more so 
 
FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 149 
 
 than the nature of the subject requires. It is only 
 new and startling; a little familiarity with it will 
 relieve the difficulty. 
 
 9th, " Could God have allowed the world of man- 
 kind to remain without the Saviour and the gospel 
 for such a long time as twelve thousand five hundred 
 years ?" 
 
 ANSWER. On the same principles that He could 
 leave it four thousand. Men have walked with God 
 in all ages ; He has never "left Himself without wit- 
 ness," and "is no respecter of persons; but in every 
 nation and age he that feareth Him and worketh 
 righteousness is accepted of Him." I have no means 
 of satisfactorily answering this and many like ques- 
 tions, and I am, moreover, unable to see how they 
 bear on points relating to matters of fact. To study 
 the Bible not less, but history and the sciences more, 
 might remove this class of difficulties from pious 
 minds. 
 
 10^, To those infidels who object to the Bible 
 because of the length of the patriarchal life and the 
 shortness of its chronology, I would recommend this 
 little book. After they have read it carefully, their 
 respect for the Bible may increase, and they may feel 
 more inclined to study it for themselves. If so, they 
 10 
 
150 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES. 
 
 will find it a very different book from what they 
 have supposed, and be greatly benefitted by it. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 I here bring my labors to a close. I have studied 
 and written in the interest of truth alone. I give 
 the result to the public in the hope that it may 
 profit all classes. It is only an outline of a vast 
 picture. The filling up I leave to other arid abler 
 hands, to the mighty host of earnest workers now 
 in the field. 
 
 Columbus showed us the New World, the Bible 
 shows us the Old and a grand Old World it is 
 with a history stretching across a space of at least 
 ten thousand five hundred years. 
 
 In process of time, the nations contemporaneous 
 with its patriarchal dynasties in all parts of the earth 
 will come forth from their long sleep of oblivion, and 
 take up their positions on the huge canvas with every 
 limb and muscle standing out in bold relief, the 
 heritage of future generations. May a rich reward 
 await every one who aids in its completion. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 THE following extract is taken from a review of 
 Dr. Gustave Schlegel's recent great work on 
 Chinese Uranography, published in the November- 
 December number of the "Chinese Recorder and 
 Missionary Journal," Shanghai, 1875 : 
 
 "A sonorous title is perhaps a fit prelude to a re- 
 markable book, and such we think the work before 
 us may fairly claim to be. The gifted author is 
 known by reputation to many China residents from 
 his able contributions to the local periodicals. The 
 present is no ephemeral production, being the out- 
 come of continuous investigation, prolonged through 
 a series of years. The object of the work may be 
 stated in brief to be to trace to their source the 
 facts of Uranography, and to give some account of 
 their raison d? etre." 
 
 Dr. Schlegel is not the first who has attempted 
 an interpretation of the quaint figures with which 
 
152 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES. 
 
 western science has been pleased to tapestry the 
 starry vault above our heads; but in the theory 
 which he has put forward in elucidation, we believe 
 he is quite original. 
 
 In developing this theory, it is very evident he 
 has not been unduly influenced by consequences ; 
 but following it up to its legitimate result, he has 
 arrived at the notable conclusion, that the names 
 of the constellations on the Chinese sphere indicate 
 an antiquity of nearly 17,000 years before the Chris- 
 tian era. Where all preceding theorists may be 
 said to have failed, it is but fair that we should give 
 a hearing to an authority of Dr. SehlegePs standing. 
 "We venture, therefore, to trace the steps by which 
 he has arrived at this result; and preliminary to 
 this we may state his four cardinal propositions : 
 
 1$, The names on our celestial globes, as derived 
 from the Egyptians and Greeks, are, with some few 
 exceptions, utterly inapplicable to. the circumstances 
 of the ancient nations to whom they have been 
 generally attributed. 
 
 2n<:7, The names of the constellations on the 
 Chinese sphere correspond exclusively to the condi- 
 tion of the Chinese. 
 
 3rd, Nearly all the names of the Chinese asterisins 
 
APPENDIX. 153 
 
 being found on our western globes, they must have 
 been borrowed from the Chinese by western nations, 
 which have since added some new constellations of 
 their own. 
 
 tk, The antiquity of Chinese Uranography is 
 corroborated by the testimony of Chinese tradition 
 and history, as also by the researches of European 
 geologists. 
 
 The first of these propositions we may pass over 
 without much misgiving; or at least take it for 
 granted, and proceed to the consideration of the 
 second. Here we are met by an anomaly at the 
 outset, which has proved a sore puzzle to all Dr. 
 Schlegel's predecessors. We may state it more 
 intelligibly to Europeans by using our familiar signs 
 of the zodiac rather than the Chinese names. Thus 
 with us Capr'icornus represents the winter solstice, 
 Aries the vernal equinox, Cancer the summer solstice, 
 and Libra the autumnal equinox; corresponding in 
 rotation with the north, west, south, and east. 
 
 The Chinese on the contrary are unanimously per- 
 sistent in giving the rotation thus: Capricornus for 
 winter in the north ; Libra for spring in the west ; 
 Cancer for summer -in the south; and Aries for 
 autumn in the east. 
 
154 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES. 
 
 This arrangement is no modern institution with 
 the Chinese, for the very earliest astronomical notices 
 they have handed down to us are in the same (to us) 
 grotesque attitude. In the infancy of society, when 
 they first began rudely to divide the sphere into four 
 parts for the convenience of agriculture, these were 
 termed KFCEI, the "Tortoise," roughly covering our 
 Sagittarius, Capricornus and Aquarius, and assigned 
 to the north, or winter; Hov, the "Tiger," standing 
 for Pisces, Aries, and Taurus, assigned to the east, 
 or autumn ; NEAOU, the "Bird," for Gemini, Cancer, 
 and Leo, assigned to the south, or summer ; and LUNG, 
 the "Dragon," for Virgo, Libra, and Scoiyno, as- 
 signed to the spring and the east. 
 
 It will be seen that the great difficulty here is, 
 that while Capricornus and Cancer hold their natural 
 positions, those of Aries and Libra are mutually 
 reversed. As astronomical observations advanced, 
 and each of these quarters became subdivided into 
 seven parts, thus forming the zodiac of twenty-eight 
 constellations, the same theory was still preserved, 
 as it is to the present day. An able Sinalogue re- 
 marks on this question : " This discrepancy does not 
 seem, however, to trouble the minds of the Chinese 
 at all, and we may safely leave it unexplained." 
 
APPENDIX. 155 
 
 Another indication of the signs of the seasons i& 
 found in the beginning of the Shoo King, one of the 
 oldest Chinese documents extant. We read there 
 that the emperor* (?) "commanded the second bro- 
 ther, Ho, to reside at the Bright Valley, and there 
 respectfully to receive as a guest the rising sun, and 
 to adjust and arrange the labors of the spring. He 
 said, 'The star is in Neaou ; you may thus exactly 
 determine mid-spring.' * * * He further com- 
 manded the third brother, Hie, to reside at Nan- 
 Jceaou, and arrange the transformation of the sum- 
 mer, and respectfully to observe the extreme limit 
 of the shadow. * * * * He said, i The star is 
 Ho; you may thus exactly determine mid-summer.' 
 He separately commanded the second brother, Ho, 
 to reside at the West, and there respectfully to con- 
 voy the setting sun, and to adjust and arrange the 
 completing labours of the autumn. He said, ' The 
 star is Heu; you may thus exactly determine mid- 
 autumn.' He further commanded the third brother, 
 Hie, to reside in the northern region, and there to 
 adjust and examine the changes of the winter. He 
 said, 'The star is Maou; thus you may exactly de- 
 termine mid- winter.'" 
 
 * Yaou, as heretofore supposed ; but Dr. S. disputes this, and 
 regards' these commands as an ancient tradition. 
 
156 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES. 
 
 In this extract we find the names of four stars 
 given i.e., Neaou, Ho, Heu, and Maou, or, sub- 
 stituting the more modern names for Neaou and Ho, 
 we have Sing, Fang, Heu, and Maou, pointing out 
 respectively the equinoxes and solstices. But how 
 these stars indicate the terms in question in what 
 position or at what hour has hitherto baffled all 
 expositors, both native and foreign, satisfactorily to 
 explain. 
 
 After a summary view of the various theories that 
 have been proposed, Dr. Schlegel proceeds to ex- 
 pound his own, which amounts to something like 
 this : The inadequacy of every scheme that has been 
 proposed to make this legend synchronize with the 
 reputed time of the Emperor Yaou, shows it to be 
 not a contemporary record, but a tradition handed 
 down from remote antiquity. As to the manner in 
 which the four stars above named are to point out 
 their respective terms, he professes to follow lite- 
 rally the guidance of Yaou's commission. At spring, 
 the astronomer is told " respectfully to receive as a 
 guest the rising sun," implying sunrise as the time 
 for observation ; at the autumn term, the orders are 
 " respectfully to convoy the setting sun," implying 
 eunset as the time of observation; mid-summer was 
 
APPENDIX. 157 
 
 to be determined by "the extreme length of the 
 shadow," implying noon as the time of observation ; 
 and mid-winter was to be determined by the culmi- 
 nation of the star Jfaoti, thus implying midnight as 
 the time of observation. Having fixed on the mode 
 of operation, it is obvious that the secular displace- 
 ment of the seasons by precession, will not vitiate 
 the theory; and it only remains to ascertain how 
 the year stood in regard to the sidereal sphere, at 
 the time the constellations were named. This Dr. 
 Schlegel professes to have done by an elaborate and 
 critical analysis of the names of all the asterisms 
 known to Chinese astronomy. 
 
 The conclusion to which he is led by this investi- 
 gation, is that the cradle of astral science was, in 
 China, somewhere about the 35th degree of north 
 latitude and that the star Heu, or /9 Aquarii, culmi- 
 nated at midnight on the winter solstice, and the star 
 Fang, or TU Scorpion is, consequently marked the 
 vernal equinox. 
 
 By calculation he finds that when these events 
 took place, the equinoctial colure intersected the 
 equator about 250 degrees in arrear of its present 
 position. The star Fang would then rise due east 
 at 5 a. rii. on the morning of the vernal equinox ; 
 
158 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES. 
 
 and Mdou, or the Pleiades, would set with the sun,, 
 being consequently invisible, on the evening of the 
 autumnal equinox. There is a curious phenomenon 
 attendant on this position, which Dr. Schegel does 
 not fail to press into his service; that is, on the 
 vernal equinox in question, the star x Librae, which 
 would rise with the sun, bears the Chinese name 
 Jih, or the "sun" star; while A Tauri, that would 
 set with the sun on the day of the autumnal equinox, 
 bears the Chinese name of Yue, or the " Maou 
 star." 
 
 The next step was to ascertain at what period the 
 above phenomena took place, which is a simple 
 question of calculating the precession of the equi- 
 noxes. Thus, 250 degrees = 90,000 seconds, which 
 divided by 50,2563" (the annual precession,) gives a 
 quotient of 17,908 years, since the vernal equinox 
 was in the neighborhood of Antares. But this is 
 not all; for it is found that the precession is more 
 rapid now than it was in the days of yore; which re- 
 quires 808 years to be added to the above number, 
 making altogether 18,716 years. Then deducting 
 the eighteen centuries of the Christian era, the re- 
 sult will be 16,916 B. C. as the date of the founda- 
 tion of Chinese Uranography. " We have thus en- 
 
APPENDIX. 159 
 
 deavored," says the reviewer, "to give, as concisely 
 as practicable, an outline of the system to the 
 elucidation of which Dr. Schlegel has devoted some 
 94:0 quarto pages. The work is a perfect thesaurus 
 of information regarding the astrology and astro- 
 nomy of the ancients, illustrated by a profusion of 
 interesting matter relating to the history, habits and 
 customs of the Chinese. That he has brought a 
 vast amount of learning to bear on his subject, is 
 apparent to the most superficial reader; that he has 
 discovered many curious ( facts, is beyond dispute ; 
 and that he has succeeded in pulling to pieces the 
 various schemes that have been thought out for the 
 explanation of the anomalies of Chinese astronomy 
 is perfectly true; yet we confess the evidence ad- 
 duced is of such a voluminous and complex character, 
 that we have not gone over it with that care neces- 
 sary to render a decided opinion of any great value." 
 The work is just issued, in French. Only that por- 
 tion of the review w T hich gives the contents is tran- 
 scribed above, for the purpose of showing the kind 
 of questions that constantly arise out of Chinese 
 antiquities. I have myself formed no opinions as to 
 the merits of Dr. Schlegel's theory, and, of course, 
 am not responsible for those of the reviewer. 
 
160 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES. 
 
 The following extract is taken from "LitteWs 
 Living Age," No. 1641, November 20, 1875: 
 
 THE ASTRONOMY OF THE BABYLONIANS. 
 
 "The astronomical science of the ancient Baby- 
 lonians and their pupils, the Assyrians, was neither 
 so profound nor so contemptible as has often been 
 maintained. Now that we are able to read the 
 native records written in the cuneiform or wedge- 
 shaped character, we find that the progress made at 
 a very early period in mapping out the sky, in com- 
 piling a calendar, and above all, in observing the 
 phenomena of the heavens, was really wonderful, 
 considering the scanty means they possessed of effect- 
 ing it. Certainly their astronomy was mixed up 
 with all kinds of astrological absurdities ; but this 
 did not prevent them from being persistent and 
 keen observers, whose energy in the cause of know- 
 ledge is not undeserving of imitation even in the 
 present day. 
 
 " The originators of astronomy in Chaldea, as in- 
 deed of all other sciences, art and culture there, w r ere 
 not the Semitic Babylonians, but a people who are 
 now generally termed Accadians, and who spoke an 
 agglutinative language. They had come from the 
 
APPENDIX. 161 
 
 mountains of Elam, or Susiana, on the east, bringing 
 with them the rudiments of writing and civilization. 
 They found a cognate race already settled in Chal- 
 dea, and in conjunction with the latter they built 
 the great cities of Babylonia, whose ruins still attest 
 their power and antiquity. 
 
 " Somewhere between 3000 and 4000 B. C., the 
 Semites entered the country from the east, and grad- 
 ually contrived to conquer the whole of it. It is 
 probable the conquest was concluded about 2000 B. 
 C. At all events, Accadian became a dead language 
 two or three centuries later; but as the Semitic in- 
 vaders owed almost all the civilization they possessed 
 to their more polished predecessors, it remained the 
 language of literature, like Latin in the middle ages, 
 down to the last days of the Assyrian empire. 
 
 "Astronomy was included in the branches of science 
 borrowed by the Semitic Babylonians from the Ac- 
 cadians. Consequently their astronomical records 
 contain many words which belong to the old lan- 
 guage, while most of the stars bear Accadian and 
 not. Semitic names. Even where the Assyrio-Baby- 
 lonians had a technical term of their own, like kas- 
 ritu, "conjunction," they continued to write the old 
 Accadian word ribanna, of which kasiitu was a 
 
162 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES. 
 
 translation, though they probably pronounced it kas- 
 ritUj just as we pronounce viz. 'namely.' 
 
 " The oldest Chaldean astronomical records of which 
 we know anything are contained in a great work called 
 ' The Observations of Bel,' in seventy books, compiled 
 for a certain king, Sargon of Agane", in Babylonia, 
 before 1700 B. C., and of which we possess later 
 -copies or editions, made for the library of Sardana- 
 palus at Nineveh. The catalogue of this work shows 
 that a great part of it was purely astrological ; other 
 books, however, were more scientific. Thus, there 
 was one on the conjunction of the sun and moon; 
 another on comets, or, as they are called, 'stars 
 with a corona in front and a tail behind;' a third 
 on the movements of Mars; a fourth on the move- 
 ments of Venus, and a fifth on the pole star. The 
 catalogue concludes with a curious intimation to the 
 student, who is told to write down the number of 
 the tablet or book he wishes to consult, and the lib- 
 rarian will thereupon hand it to him. The larger 
 portion of the work itself has been recovered, though 
 some of the tablets belonging to it still lie under the 
 soil of Kouyunjik, and a good part of the details 
 which follow is extracted from this primitive Baby- 
 lonian treatise. The Accadians seem to have begun 
 
APPENDIX. 163 
 
 their astronomical observations before they left 
 Elam, since the meridian was placed in that country, 
 while the old mythology made "the mountain of 
 the east " the pivot on which the sky rested. This 
 will account for the large number of eclipses re- 
 corded in the " Observations of Bel," which imply 
 a corresponding antiquity for the commencement of 
 such records. These records were carefully kept, 
 as there were state observatories in most of the 
 Babylonian and Assyrian towns at Ur, Agane\ Nin- 
 eveh, and Arbela, for instance and (at all events in 
 later times) the astronomers royal had to send fort- 
 nightly reports to the king. It is to the Accadians 
 that we owe both the signs of the zodiac and the 
 days of the w r eek. The heaven was divided into 
 four parts, and the passage of the sun through these 
 marked the four seasons of the year," etc., etc. 
 
164 
 
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FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 165 
 
 Dates at which different era* Iwyin. 
 
 Julian Period, . 4713 B. C. Alexandria, . B. C. 5503 
 
 Olympiad, . . 776 " Antioch, . . " 5-t!)3 
 
 Eome, . . 753 " Chinese Cycle, . " 2277 
 
 Jewish, . . 3761 " Indian last Kaliyug, " 3101 
 
 First Canicular, . 2785 " Hegirah, . . A. D. 022 
 Constantinople, . 5509 " 
 
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