Chapter XVI: Part II: of the “Fulness of the Times,” p. xv., the author has placed

the inconsistency of Usher’s scheme in such a clear light, that further argument on the subject is needless; the following is his unanswerable conclusion:—“the greatness of Abraham’s faith, in believing that he should have a son at 100, is every where spoken of in the Scriptures” as miraculous, “while he himself, on this scheme, is procreated by his father at 130!” The author has, moreover, shown in this work, that “the whole chronology of the Seventy is arranged in various parallel series of Astronomical time, Jubilees, Metonic cycles, and the larger cycles of the universe;” and, that these “depend upon the _exclusion_ of the 60 years added to Terah’s generation by Usher; for if that period be _inserted_, they are all destroyed. This, then, is complete evidence that the _framer_ of the Septuagint chronology, did not consider the 60 years as any part of the chronology of the book of Genesis, which is utterly incredible, had it then existed. _Therefore, it did not exist._” On the other hand, he has shown that “in the formation of the Hebrew chronology, the _insertion_ of the 60 years was essential to the preservation of a Jubilean character; therefore, since there was a time when” this period was “not a part of the chronology, the unavoidable and necessary inference is, that the _Greek_, and _not_ the _Hebrew_, is the _original chronology_.”

From the Postdiluvian tables, it appears that the birth of Abraham took place, according to the Masorete text, 292 years after the flood; but, according to Usher’s interpretation of it, 352 years. The Samaritan text gives 942, and the Septuagint 1072 years; the latter number being that given by Eusebius, at the beginning of his Chronicon, translated by Jerome, as testified by Scaliger in his “Thesaurus Temporum,” p. 10, and referred to by Usher, in his “Chronologia Sacra,” cap. vi. p. 97; although in some of the finest copies, we have seen it absurdly printed 1720 years, by an unaccountable transposition of the figures! See the edition by H. Stephans, in 1542. The following table exhibits the whole amount of the discrepancies of the three texts, in the first two ages of the world:[16]—

TABLE VII. AGES OF THE WORLD. HEBREW. USHER. SEPTUAGINT. SAMARITAN. Years. Years. Years. Years. Years. Antediluvian Age 1656 1656 2262 1307 Postdiluvian Age 367 427 1147 1017 ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── FIRST TWO AGES 2023 2083 3409 2324