Comparing the Hebrew figures with those of the Septuagint, it seems plain that one set or the other has been altered _by design_. It should be borne in mind that the Septuagint is a translation from Hebrew into Greek, made about 285 B. C., which is not far from 1500 years prior to the date of our oldest Hebrew manuscripts. Also that Josephus wrote in the latter part of the first century after Christ, giving Jewish history quite faithfully _as then understood_.――――In the first table Josephus sustains the Septuagint with only the one slight exception of making Lamech 182 instead of 188 at the birth of Noah――his total being thereby six years less. The reader will note carefully how these main differences between the Hebrew and the Septuagint stand. In the first five names and in the seventh, the years in the first column――_i. e._ the age of the father at the birth of his son, are less by 100 in the Hebrew than in the Septuagint, or (what amounts to the same thing) greater by 100 in the Septuagint than in the Hebrew. To correspond, the years in the second column are greater by 100 in the Hebrew than in the Septuagint, so that the totals as they appear in the third column come out the same in both texts.――――These are the only important variations. The other is a slight one――the Septuagint adding six years to the age of Lamech at Noah’s birth, or the Hebrew taking six years off from the number as in the Septuagint. In this case Josephus is with the Hebrew text.――――It may be noted also that in the cases of Jared and Methuselah, the figures agree.――――Now the question is――_Which text is pure, and which has been corrupted?_ A better view perhaps of the whole question will be obtained if at this point we study the corresponding table for the period from the birth of Arphaxad (two years after the flood) to the call of Abram, made up from the Hebrew text, from the Septuagint and from the Samaritan text of Gen. 11:10–26: B.