the writer seems to refer to individuals, but it is probable that he alludes even to the origin of tribes. In the sixteenth verse we are not left in doubt on the subject, for there he no longer speaks of individuals or generations but of the growth of nations. He immediately adds after the above quotation, “and [begat] the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgasite, and the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite,” etc., etc.[303] The account makes no pretensions at chronology or at furnishing data for any system, and the constructions put upon its condensed account of the origin and growth of nations during an indefinite lapse of time by short-sighted interpreters, are unwarranted and certainly do injustice to the oldest of our histories. When we go back of the birth of Christ two thousand years—to the time of Abraham—this is as far as we can tread with certainty in the light of History. This period has been aptly designated by the Duke of Argyll as “Time absolute.” But when we go back of 2000 B. C., we are compelled to walk in a twilight glimmer, with only the dim rays from occasional cuneiform inscriptions, and the condensed accounts contained in Genesis, falling across our uncertain pathway. This period the above able writer has chosen to call “Time relative,” and the probabilities are that its measure is double if not treble that of the portion of “Time absolute” which precedes the Christian Era. An additional fact in this connection which strengthens the preceding is, that the three most ancient versions of the Pentateuch—the Hebrew, the Samaritan and the Septuagint—vary considerably in their statements as to the ages of many of the patriarchs at the birth of their sons. So wide is the difference in this respect between the Hebrew and Septuagint versions that their chronologies cannot be reconciled at all, the latter allowing a period of eight hundred years more than the former from Adam to Abraham; such being the case, it is impossible to arrive at the time of the flood or the origin of the race. These contradictions in versions, however, do not in any way impeach the historic authority of the Pentateuch, since it is in no sense a chronology any more than it is a work on geographic or astronomic science. The known antiquity of Egypt and China, to say nothing of the facts revealed by geology concerning man’s antiquity, can never be reconciled with Usher’s system, which is in no sense the true chronology of any known version of the Pentateuch.[304]