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Show 47G 'l' II F. 1lt 0 N 0 (; EN 1ST S AND THE POLYGENISTS. 477 Mr. Sharpe hence infers, that" tho Book of Judges ends in the year B. o. 1100, and begins with Joshua's <loath, about n. c. 1250; and. tho Exodus took place about n. o. 1300. In this way, from tho Exodus to the building of tho Temple, in tho fourth year of olomon's reign, is 289 years. If, instead of considering tho periods of time in par.t contemporaneous, we had added them all together [as d£d tlte unknown wr'ite1·s of ](£ngs], we should havo had about tho 480 year!:! mentioned in 1 Kings vi, 1. But tho above calculation is fully confirmed by tho genealogies," &c. In tho topographical and cootancous tabulation of those juuO'es, few students will disagree with tho learned author; but, in a later portion of his valuable work, Mr. Sharpe himself indicat s the vagueness inbor nt in aU those Jewish attempts at rostoriug their lost chronology: 23a "The events, indeed, in the history, from tho ExoduA to Solomon's death, can bar·dly occupy more than throe centuries, if we observe that tho times mentioned arc mostly in round num.be1·s of f01·ty yea1·s eaalt, which we arc at liberty to consider indefinite, and only to moan seve1·al years." Thus, if; on the one hand, now evidences from the monuments and tho alluvial doposi ts of the Nile constrain I~gyptologists to claim, for man's occupation of that valley, cpocl1as so far beyond all ltistoria chronology (and no other deserves the name), as to eliminate the subject, henceforward, from any computation of the contradictory elements contained in llobrew, Samaritan, Greek, or Latin, biblical codices: on the other, the parallel advance in Scriptural exegesis has curtailed to rational limits tho preposterous antiquity formerly claimed for tho Israelitish nation. Whether Usher (in the margin of king James's version) takes, with Marsan, 480 years as tho interval between the exoue and Solomon's temple; or Bossuet, 488; or Buret do Longchamps, 495; or Pozron, 837; bas now become a matter of no consequence. "Three centuries," a little more or less, is the average between Mr. Sharpe's estimate and that of Lcpsius, at about 314-322 ycars.zll To reach nearer than that supputation is a hopeless task, upon existing MSS. of tho Old Tostamcnt,-cach one being faulty. Si nee it has been discovered that, before Habbi Ilillol, son of.:[ uda, the Jews had ma lc no scieuti fie attempts (whatever the Alexandrian Greeks may have dono) to establish a "chronology" for their own nation, no further dopClldoncc can be placed upon llebrcw numeration. llillel died about 310-12; and in such repute was his autho- 23!1 lii8toric Notes, p. 82. Lopsius's 1\rgument to tho sa.mo effoot is oitod in Typu of Manlcitld, pp. 706-12. ¥3' Chronologie dcr ./li:gyp/er, I, 336-7. |
