It is impossible in the space of this pamphlet to give any statement and analysis of the various hypotheses as to the origin of the human race; that I have done at some length in my volume on “Genesis: its Authorship and Authenticity.” Personally I incline to favor the doctrine of a plurality of sources for the various types of the human race. That wherever the conditions for life have been, there also has been the degree of life resultant on those conditions. My purpose here is not to demonstrate the correctness of my own thinking, but rather to illustrate the incorrectness of the Genesaical teaching. Were Adam and Eve our first parents? On the one hand, an affirmative answer can be obtained from the Bible, which, though in Genesis v, 2, using Adam as a race-name, specifically asserts (ii, 22) Adam and Eve to be the first man and woman made by God, and in the authorised version fixes the date of their making about 6,000 years, little more or less, from the present time. On the other hand, science emphatically declares man to have existed on the earth for a far more extended period, affirms that as far as we can trace man historically, we find him in isolated groups, diverse in type, till we lose him in the ante-historic period; and with nearly equal distinctness denies that the various existing races find their common parentage in one pair. It is only on the first point that I attack the Bible chronology of man’s existence. I am aware that calculations based upon the authorised version of the Old Testament Scriptures are open to objection, and that while from the Hebrew 1,656 years represent the period from Adam to the Deluge generally acknowledged, the Samaritan Pentateuch only yields for the same period 1,307 years, while the Septuagint version furnishes 2,242 years; but a most erudite Egyptologist, states a fatal objection to the Septuagint chronology—i.e., that it makes Methuselah outlive the Flood.¹⁷ The Deluge occurred, according to the Septuagint, in the year of the world 2,242, and by adding up the generations previous to his (Methuselah’s) birth—Adam, 230; Seth, 205; Enos, 190; Cainan, 170; Mahaleel, 165; Jared, 162; Enoch, 165; = 1,287—Methuselah was born in the year of the world 1287. He lived 969 years, and therefore died in 2256. But this is fourteen years after the Deluge. ¹⁷ “Harmony of the Four Evangelists, and Harmony of the Old Testament.”