The Samaritan text is more consistent than the Hebrew with regard to the _centenary decrease_ of the _Antepaidogonian_ ages; all of them but that of Noah, having been submitted to its operation. This alteration alone, however, was found to be totally inadmissible; because, as formerly remarked, the text would then have represented _three_ of the Patriarchs as long surviving the deluge; it was therefore necessary to make a farther alteration, but on what principle it is difficult to divine. We only know that two of the _Antepaidogonian_ ages, those of Methuselah and Lamech, were reduced still more, namely from 87 and 82 years, to 67 and 53 years respectively; thereby occasioning a corresponding _decrease_ in the _Postpaidogonian_ ages of Jared, Methuselah, and Lamech, namely, from 900, 882, and 695 years, to 785, 653, and 600 years respectively, in order to shorten their _whole lives_, and to bring the dates of their deaths to coincide with the _year of the flood_! Moreover, the idea thus conveyed, that these three Patriarchs, either all died within _forty_ days of that event, or were swept away in the common ruin,—is, as we have shown in the case of the Hebrew text, so contrary to nature and to Scripture, that it cannot be entertained for a moment. Whatever, therefore, may have been the object of these complicated alterations in the Samaritan, it is plain that they have been made with much less skill and ingenuity than those of the Hebrew, the clumsy artifice being so easy of detection. Thus, we are forced, by internal evidence alone, to conclude that the numerical statements of the Hebrew and Samaritan texts, with regard to the _Antepaidogonian_ ages,—on which their chronology is considered entirely to depend,—have, with very few exceptions, been manufactured to serve some particular end or design; and that those of the Septuagint are not only entirely free from any appearance of this kind, but being perfectly natural and consistent with themselves, possess all the marks of genuineness and authenticity.