A Few Words About the Devil, and Other Biographical Sketches and EssaysBradlaugh, Charles
Religion
A Few Words About the Devil, and Other Biographical Sketches and Essays
Bradlaugh, Charles
Free thought
The Rev. Dr. Lightfoot, who wrote about 1,644, fixes the month of the
creation at September, 5,572 years preceding the date of his book,
and says that Adam was expelled from Eden on the day in which he was
created.* In the London _Ethnological Journal_, for which I am indebted
to the kindness of its Editor, an able ethnologist and careful thinker,
the reader will find a chronology of Genesis ably and elaborately
examined. At present, for our immediate purpose, we will take the
ordinary. English bible, which gives the following result:
From Adam to Abraham (Gen. v and xi)............. 2008
From Abraham to Isaac (Gen. xxi, 5)............... 100
From Isaac to Jacob (Gen. xxv, 26).................. 60
From Jacob going into Egypt (Gen. xlvii, 9)......... 130
Sojourn in Egypt (Exod. xii, 41)..................... 480
Duration of Moses* leadership (Exod. vii, 7; xxxi, 2). 40
Thence to David, about............................. 400
From David to Captivity, fourteen generations (27),
about twenty-two reigns..........................478
Captivity to Jesus, fourteen generations, about...... 593
4234 Less disputed 230 years of sojourn in Egypt......230
4004 From Adam to Abraham the dates are certain, if we take the bible
statement, and there is certainly no portion of the orthodox text,
except the period of the Judges, which will admit any considerable
extension of the ordinary Oxford chronology.
* Harmony of the Four Evangelists, and Harmony of the Old
Testament.
The book of Judges is not a book of history. Everything in it is
recounted without chronological order. It will suffice to say, that the
ciphers which we find in the book of Judges, and in the first book of
Samuel, yield us, from the death of Joshua to the commencement of the
reign of Saul, the sum total of 500 years, which would make, since the
exode from Egypt, 565 years; whereas the first book of Kings counts but
480 years, from the going out of Egypt down to the foundation of the
temple under Solomon. According to this we must suppose that several of
the Judges governed simultaneously.*
* Munk's Palestine, p. 231.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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