Hebrew text of 1 Kings vi. 1. Ussher, Marsham, and Euse bius Chron.... 480 It is evident, from the description of our historical mate rials above given, that the true interval cannot be certainly known, unless Scripture, on some other occasion, assigns the precise number of years which elapsed between the Exode and some event subsequent to the accession of David. If such information can be found, the date B. c. of the Exode is known, and consequently the æra в. c. may be adjusted to the æra A. M. § 7. Such a measure seems to be assigned in the following statement (1 Kings vi. 1.): "In the 480th year after the children of Israel came out of Egypt, in the 4th year of Solomon's reign, he began to build the house of the LORD." This measure is adopted by Ussher, who hence deduces as the year of the Exode в. c. 1491: i. e. 1012 в. c. + 479: and hence for the year of the Creation, or 1 A.M., 1491 + 2513 = 4004 B. C.. Petavius however reckons the 480 years current, or 479 complete, from the Eisode, which he therefore dates B. c. 1012 + 479 = 1491 B. C.; whence the year of Exode 1531 B. C.. and 1 A. M. = 1531 B. c. + 2453 = 3984 B. C. Other discrepancies of course will ensue upon the different modes of computing the 430 years of Exod. xii., and still greater upon the adoption of the Greek or Samaritan enumeration of the genealogies; for Petavius and Ussher follow the Hebrew enumeration. = § 8. But the adoption of the statement in 1 Kings vi. 1, as a fundamental measure, is attended with insuperable difficulties. For, 1. The term of 480 years is inconsistent with the sum of the details contained in the history, The wandering in the wilderness To the first servitude (at least) The sum of the years of the Judges to the end of the Philis Years, 40 40 390 40 43 553 which exceeds Petavius's estimate by 34 years, and Ussher's by 40 more. Hence it becomes necessary to reduce the time of the Judges, and this is effected in various ways. The Jewish chronologists count the time of each servitude as part of the time allotted to the judge, wherever the latter exceeds the former; e. g. of the first servitude (8 years) and the time of rest under Othniel (40 years) they make 40 years, instead of 48 years. Ussher advances a still stranger hypothesis: namely, when it is said, "the land had rest 40 years," the meaning is, says Ussher, that "the land rested, was delivered from its servitude (of 8 years) in the 40th year from some preceding epoch, namely, from the peace of Joshua, xi. 23." In like manner, the 80 years of Judges iii. 30, denote the 80th year from the death of Othniel. This hypothesis is now perhaps universally exploded. A third, and the most usual solution of the difficulty, is the supposition (started by Marsham) that some of the servitudes were contemporary, as affecting different parts of the land. On this hypothesis, however, it becomes impossible to arrange the detailed chronology of this portion of the history with anything like precision. 2. The term in question is totally irreconcilable with the chronological outline given by St Paul, Acts xiii. The Apostle's enumeration obviously implies that, between the Exode and David were three periods at least, amounting in all to 530 years; therefore to the fourth year of Solomon must have been, at least, 573 years. 3. The reading of the text, 1 Kings vi. 3, is itself uncertain. The Hebrew and Chaldee read 480, the LXX. 440. Josephus takes no notice of the Hebrew number: he gives, as the length of the interval on various occasions, 592, 612, and 632 years. § 9. As a specimen, and I think the best, of the computa tions in which the text 1 Kings vi. 1. is rejected as corrupt, we will give Mr. Clinton's, from the admirable Essay on Scripture Chronology appended to his great work, the Fasti Hellenici. Ark in captivity 7 months, and at Kirjath-jearim 20 years.. Years of Saul, Acts xiii.. ...B. c. 1056 ..B.C. 1625 Year of David's accession deduced from the ascending reck oning.... Year of the Exode, (about). Mr. Clinton, therefore, distributes St Paul's period of 450 years into and supposes that the three terms of St Paul's enumeration are not continuous: namely, that between the two first lies a chasm which he estimates at about 27 years, and between the two last another of about 12 years. § 10. The scheme which I purpose to establish in these pages differs from that of Mr. Clinton, in the part here described, to an amount of 39 years, which is the sum of the two conjectural terms. I suppose the three terms in St Paul's enumeration to be continuous, and consequently that the measure of the period from the Exode to David is 530 years. I take this to be the most obvious sense of the passage in Acts xiii.; the sense in which every one would have understood it, but for a supposed difficulty in adjusting the detail of numbers in the history to that measure. In this sense some of the ancients understood the passage, e. g. perhaps S. Clement of Alexandria, and certainly S. Cyprian, or whoever else, unquestionably a contemporary, was the author of the Computus Paschalis, appended to Bp. Fell's edition of S. Cyprian's works. As for the supposed difficulty, it disappears, as I shall shew in the proper place, upon a just view of the connexion between the Book of Judges and the First Book of Samuel. That connexion I take to be as follows:-the 40 years of the Philistine oppression (Judges xiii. 1) are made up of the 20 years of Samson (Judges xv. 20), and the 20 years of the ark's continuance, after its capture and restoration, at Kirjath-jearim (1 Sam. vii. 2). These 40 years therefore, and the 390 years of the Judges end together, at the day of the great deliverance at Mizpeh, which is the epoch of "Samuel the Prophet." Now the date of the accession of David, according to Mr. Clinton, hereafter to be verified by us, is the year B. c. 1056. It follows that the date of the Exode should be 1056 + 530 = 1586 B. C., and of the day of Mizpeh 1056 + 40 = 1096 в. c. § 11. This then was the scheme which lay before me, as deduced from the outline of St. Paul taken in its obvious sense. It seemed to me to explain all that was difficult in this portion of the Chronology: and originally this was all that I sought; for I had no intention of pursuing the enquiry any further. It chanced, however, that some figures on my paper caught my eye it struck me that the periods of Old Testament history, as thus arranged, had in them a rather remarkable parallelism, which perhaps might not be altogether accidental, and was at least worth the trouble of a slight investigation. In the issue, what was at first little more than a feeling of curiosity, grew into a high degree of interest, when it appeared, namely, that the parallelism extended much further than what first took my eye. I will state the facts in the order in which I discerned them. (1.) From the Exode to Samuel, St. Paul numbers 490 years, and from thence to David, 40 more. But the time of the kings, from the accession of David to the beginning of the 70 years of the Babylonian exile, amounts to just 450 years; that is, if Mr. Clinton, and other chronologists, have rightly identified the fourth year of Jehoiakim with the year B. c. 606, and the first of David with 1056 B. C. Here then is the parallelism which first presented itself to my notice : 70 years of Captivity: the seventh part of the preceding period: the time during which "the land keeps her sabbaths." At the close of these seventy years, the Prophet Daniel received a revelation concerning a period of seventy times seven years, which was yet to elapse before the coming of Messiah the Prince. We need not stop at present to consider the actual adjustment of this prophetical period; it is sufficient simply to notice the fact that such a period is revealed as part of the Divine Plan, in connexion, as the preceding parallelism would seem to imply, with a system of periods of the same numerical form. (2.) This remarkable parallelism becomes still more interesting when we notice this further arrangement: § 12. The date of the Exode resulting from the application of St. Paul's outline to the known date of David's accession, is the year B. c. 1586. The entire length, in years, of the Mosaic Dispensation, from the Exode to the conflagration of the Second Temple (August A. D. 70), is therefore 1655 years and some months. Now the sum of the antediluvian genealogies in the Hebrew text is 1656, or rather 1655 years; for it appears from Gen. vii. 11. viii. 13, that the flood began in the 600th year current of Noah's life'. Hence it seems that the times of the antediluvian world are exactly symmetrical with those of the Mosaic Dispensation. § 13. (3.) Nor does the parallelism stop here: but the intermediate period, viz. from the Flood to the Exode, is bisected, or very nearly so, at the time of the promise made to Abraham. For the sum of the years noted in Gen. xi. from the Flood to the death of Terah is 427: and it is |