Some years ago much ado was made by certain sceptics about the chronology of the Bible, as if the discrepancies of a few figures could undo the manifest authenticity of the vast store of facts vouched in the grand collection of Biblical books. These discrepancies are being gradually explained. It may be that we err in properly understanding the Oriental habits of counting genealogies, or that the method of the first transcribers led to inaccuracy, despite the care used in the copying and preservation of the text. When we remember that Hebrew signs, very closely resembling each other, denote often great differences, clear enough, no doubt, at first, but becoming indistinct in the course of time, we cannot wonder that some words and expressions present to the ordinary reader a mystery, or even seeming contradiction. It is not necessary to understand the ancient tongue in order to realize this fact. In the first place, the similarity of Hebrew characters which represent great numerical differences must have easily led to errors by the copyists, which caused difficulty to the later transcribers unless they had a reliable tradition to correct the mistake. Thus the letter [Hebrew: Beth] (_Beth_) represents _two_, whilst [Hebrew: Kaph] (_Kaph_) represents _twenty_. By placing two small dots above either of these two characters you multiply them by a thousand, [Hebrew: Beth with two dots] representing _two thousand_ and [Hebrew: Kaph with two dots] _twenty thousand_. The letter [Hebrew: Vav] (_Vav_) is equivalent to _six_, another letter very like it in form, [Hebrew: Zayin] (_Zayin_), is _seven_, whilst both of these characters represent a variety of meanings: oftenest [Hebrew: Vav] (_Vav_) is a copula, at other times it stands at the beginning of a discourse, or introduces the apodosis, or is simply an intensive, or adversative; sometimes it is prefixed to a future tense, and turns it into an imperfect, etc. Again, there are special reasons why certain combinations of letters stand for numerals, contrary to the ordinary rule. Thus _fifteen_ is expressed by [Hebrew: vav, tet]=9+6, instead of [Hebrew: tav, vav, he, yod], because the name of God commences with the latter characters [Hebrew: ] (Jehovah), etc. Furthermore, many of the signs used as numerals had fixed symbolical significations, and were not meant to be taken as literal quantities.