Now every one knows that when a long catalogue of names and numbers is copied and recopied from age to age, errors are very likely to creep in and be perpetuated. And so it has been in the present case. The three earliest versions of the Pentateuch are the Hebrew, the Samaritan, and the Septuagint: and between these three versions there is a very great discrepancy with regard to the figures in question; so great, indeed, as to make up, on the whole, a difference of 1500 years, or more, in the age of the human race. In the table that appears on the following page, for which we are mainly indebted to the work of a modern writer,[110] this diversity of reading is set forth in a very simple and intelligible form. It is plain that of these three different versions, one only can represent the true age of the human race when Abraham went forth, at the command of God, from his country and his kindred and his father’s house, to go into the land of Canaan: and at this distance of time, it is impossible to determine with anything like certainty, which of the three has the greatest claim on our acceptance. The Church has not pronounced upon the subject; and the question is freely discussed among Biblical scholars. But the details of this controversy have little to do with our present argument. Enough it is for us to know that, from the Creation of Adam to the Birth of Christ, cannot have been more than six thousand years at the highest computation, nor much less than four thousand at the lowest. Adding 1869 years of the Christian Era, the present age of the Human Race according to the data of the Bible would seem to lie between six and eight thousand years. GENEALOGIES OF GENESIS. LIST OF AGE OF EACH WHEN THE NEXT PATRIARCHS. WAS BORN. ACCORDING TO Septuagint. Hebrew. Samaritan.