Times and Seasons

Part 1. The Antediluvian Era

The study of Biblical time periods makes it possible to relate Bible history to the "secular" histories of ancient nations, thus assisting in establishing the veracity of Bible writers and the times at which they lived and wrote. Many an Old Testament story has been dubbed mythical and unhistorical until the researches of archaeologists revealed that such men did live and such things did happen, and the Scripture was right all the time. Whereas present secular historical chronology, built up from the records of ancient nations such as Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians and so on, goes back with tolerable certainty to about fifteen centuries before Christ, and with considerable uncertainty before that only another thousand years, the Bible alone gives a definite time‑scale right to the beginning, a time‑scale which is more and more coming to be accepted by historians as accurate. Particularly is this true for the period prior to King David. Whereas so little as about a hundred years ago the known history of Egypt, Babylon and Sumer, recognised as being the earliest nations, was held to have commenced a thousand years before the Bible indicates it did, the leading historical chronologists of the present day advocate dates which are more or less in line with those implied by the Old Testament.

Jewish chronologists have used the time periods of the Bible to determine the date of the coming of Messiah, and their Christian counterparts to fix the time of the Second Advent. This has been going on since the 2nd century B.C. and the results have often been instrumental in awaking the people of God, Jews or Christians, in certain generations, to the significance of the times in which they were living. This series will not make any such prognostications although some of the data presented may be of use to those engaged in that kind of research.

The first era to be considered is naturally that from Eden to the Flood, the "world that then was" as *St. Peter calls it. The calculation has the merit of simplicity in that its span of years is made up by adding together the ages of the patriarchs at the births of the respective sons who carried on the family line, finishing with the age of Noah when the Flood came. The whole of the necessary data is given in the 5th chapter of Genesis, but right here a difficulty presents itself. The three great texts of the early Old Testaments, the Masoretic, (from which the A.V. and most modern translations are derived), the Septuagint and the Samaritan, present three different sets of figures, resulting in totals of 1656.2262 and 1307 years respectively. The vital question; which is correct?

The answer is of importance to chronologists and historians but it does not affect the validity of the Bible or the Divine oversight of its contents. The ethical teaching of the Bible, its doctrinal and prophetic expositions, its revelation of God in and through Christ, are all under the inspiration and control of the Holy Spirit and are accepted as inviolate. In regard to the historical narratives of the Old Testament, their accuracy depends upon the integrity of their writers and the care with which they have been preserved. It can be taken as certain that the over‑ruling power of the Holy Spirit has seen to it that all that ought to be recorded for future generations has been so recorded and that matters having no conceivable use have been left out. Which of these three periods is the true one is immaterial so far as soundness in the Faith or the conditions of the Christian life are concerned.

The books of the Hebrew Old Testament began to be brought together in what is called the "canon" over a period of several centuries commencing from the days of Ezra. By about 400 B.C. the Old Testament was complete. There was no printing; copies of the books were made by copying existing manuscripts. This was normally done with scrupulous care, so that errors and omissions were rare although they did sometimes occur. Thus a certain amount of difference between various copies began to appear but usually in quite unimportant details. By the 3rd century B.C., however, Hebrew had ceased to be the spoken language and was replaced by Aramaic and particularly Greek. Hence the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek (270‑230 B.C.) for general use and this is what is called the Septuagint (LXX for short). The Hebrew Bible remained in use by priests and rabbis and in the synagogues but the Greek was the one in general use. Hence the many quotations from the Septuagint by Jesus and the Apostles in the New Testament.

At an earlier period, probably about 400 B.C. the Samaritans built a Temple on Mount Gerizim in opposition to Nehemiah's Temple at Jerusalem, and at about the same time produced what is called the Samaritan Pentateuch, a Hebrew text containing only the Five Books of Moses, differing in many minor respects from the other texts but inclining in the main more towards the Septuagint than the Hebrew.

These were the three Bibles, all descended from the original Hebrew of the time of Ezra, which were in use at the time of Christ. Most of the early translations into European languages up to the 16th century were made from the Septuagint, but when the Authorised Version of 1611 was produced the Palestinian Hebrew text—known by then as the Masoretic—was brought into consideration and in consequence the A.V. chronology in Genesis is that found in the Masoretic. To this day, however, the Eastern European and Asiatic translations—Greek, Armenian, Arabic, Coptic, Ethiopian, and so on, are from the Septuagint.

This "Masoretic" text upon which the A.V. is based was fixed about the 8th century A.D. About A.D.100 Jewish scholars had begun to rationalise the many varied Hebrew texts which existed in order to produce a standard text. This process went on for several centuries, the scholars who conducted this work being known as the Masoretes, hence the name of the resultant text, which since the 8th century has been the "Received Text" of Judaism and has not since been changed.

With all this in mind the question of which text contains the original time periods can be approached. The original manuscripts are of course no longer in existence. The oldest Mss of the Septuagint still surviving was made about A.D.350; the oldest Masoretic A.D.916; and the oldest Samaritan A.D.1149. The differences in the time periods arose prior to these dates, at sometime between them and the original divergence from the correct text of Ezra, which could have been as early as the time of Christ.

The solution to the conundrum has been well established and attested by a number of historians and theologians during the early part of the Christian era. For several centuries prior to the First Advent the fixed conviction of Judaism was that Messiah would appear at or about the close of six thousand years of human history, and would then inaugurate his earthly kingdom, the seventh thousand. According to the then Hebrew Bible chronology this period had nearly expired when Jesus was born. Naturally enough, the early Christians seized on this as an indisputable proof of his Messiahship. It is well established that, in consequence of this, the rabbis, endeavouring to refute the claim, consistently altered the text of Genesis whenever new copies were made, by reducing the ages of six of the patriarchs at the birth of their sons by a hundred years each. The effect of this was to postpone the end of the six thousand years to a date six hundred years later. It was the invariable practice that when new copies of the Hebrew Scriptures were made to replace old ones, the old copies were withdrawn from use and eventually destroyed. Hence, over a lapse of time, the new scale of years became universal in the Hebrew manuscripts.

The Samaritan Jews, at the same time or probably a little earlier, also began to alter their texts, but they deducted a century from each of all the nine patriarchs so that their postponement was that much longer and their figure for the length of the antediluvian era the shortest of the three.

The Septuagint copies in circulation, not being under the control of the rabbis and being much more widely diffused, were not affected and retained the original time‑spans.

The first witness is the Jewish historian Josephus. Writing about A.D.90, he says in his work "Contr. Apion" 1‑1, "The Antiquities contain the history of 5000 years and are taken out of our sacred books, but are translated by me into the Greek tongue". In this latter work, "Antiquities of the Jews", he gives the ages of the patriarchs and the chronology from Creation to Abraham as it is now presented in the Septuagint but by his own assertion he translated from the Hebrew, which infers that in his day the Hebrew was identical with the Septuagint. And there is one interesting point which clinches this fact. Lamech in the Hebrew (Masoretic) is given 777 years of life with Noah born to him at 182. The Septuagint gives him 753 years with Noah born at 188. Josephus, in this one instance, follows the Hebrew. It seems evident that in Josephus' time this one difference between the two versions existed and that Josephus, following the Hebrew, had thus adopted the figure he did.

Thirty years after Josephus came Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, who produced the first Christian chronology, which agreed with the Septuagint. About this time the rabbis began their work of standardising the text and here the alterations apparently begin to be made. In A.D.148 Justin Martyr, notable Palestinian Christian, accused the rabbis of tampering with the Scriptures; Origen in A.D.230 gave a number of instances in which alterations had been made. Eusebius of Caesarea, A.D.320, says in his writings that in various Hebrew Bibles to which he had access he found differing accounts of the chronology, some following the longer and others the shorter. He himself advocated the longer. Another famous Christian scholar, Ephrem Syrius* of Nisibis, at about the same time said "The Jews have subtracted 600 years from the generations of Adam, Seth and so on, in order that their own books might not convict them concerning the coming of Christ, he having been predicted to appear for the deliverance of mankind after 5500 years." The celebrated theologian, St. Augustine.4th century, refers in his work "The City of God" to "the great discrepancy between the Hebrew Mss and our Bible" (i.e. the Septuagint) "especially on the matter of the ages of the patriarchs, which savours not of accident but design". Georges Syncellus, A.D.800, Greek writer, remarks "it is with reason that in our chronology we follow the version of the Septuagint, which was made, as it appears, from an ancient and uncorrupted copy."

* also known Ephrem the Syrian

There are plenty of evidences that the Church during the early centuries of this present era held to the Septuagint chronology. One of the most notable is the so‑called "Gospel of Nicodemus", produced at some time between the 2nd and 4th centuries. This work contains statements on chronology which are in line with the Septuagint. Hippolytus, Bishop of Rome A.D.220, Ambrose of Milan A.D.370, Lactantius, tutor to the son of the Emperor Constantine A.D.300, all said that since 5500 years had elapsed at the birth of Christ—which the Septuagint chronology indicates approximately—the Second Advent could be expected in A.D.500. Louis Golding, in his book "In the steps of Moses the Lawgiver" (1937) tells of his visit to the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, where he saw, fixed to the Monastery wall, a marble plaque commemorating its founding. The plaque states that it was placed there by the Emperor Justinian and bears the date "in the year 6021 after Adam, the 577th year after Christ" which again is in accord with the Septuagint chronology.

In making the alterations, the perpetrators created some anomalies which had to be put right. One may ask why, in the case of the Masoretic text, only six patriarchs were made subject to the hundred years' deduction; the apparent reason is that if Methuselah and Lamech were thus treated they would then have been shown surviving the Flood. In the case of Jared the answer probably lies in Jewish legend. It was believed that, with the exception of Abel, Adam was the first man to die and this is consistent with the Septuagint chronology. Had 100 years been taken from Jared as from the others, the effect would be that his son Enoch was "translated" 43 years before Adam's death, which was not acceptable and so Jared was left untouched.

The Samaritan text, in deducting 100 years from each of the nine patriarchs, were faced with the result that Jared, Methuselah and Lamech all survived the Flood. They overcame this difficulty by altering the total lengths of these three lives from 962,969 and 753 to 847.720 and 653 respectively, so making each of these three to die in the actual year of the Flood.

It is for these reasons that the Septuagint chronology for the period before the Flood is now generally accepted as representing the original Hebrew text of the O.T. One edition of the Septuagint, the Sixtine, made in Latin in the 17th century, has 167 for Methuselah instead of 187, but the Sixtine was made from the Greek Vaticanus Mss which has no Genesis. This figure must have been obtained from some other late Mss and is probably a copyist's error. It may therefore reasonably be taken that the length of the antediluvian era as given in the original Bible of Ezra is 2262 years.

There are, of course, no independent histories of that era which could be used to check the figure. It is of interest, though, that some Babylonian tablets, written in the 17th century B.C., which have been in the British Museum for the past hundred years, were deciphered in 1967 and found to comprise an account of legendary events between the creation of man and the great Flood. According to the story the antediluvian era comprised two periods, each enduring "a little less than 1200 years", terminated, the first by a great plague, and the second by the Flood. That this legend, written several centuries after Abraham's departure from Ur but probably derived from histories current in his time or earlier, should give "just under" 2400 years for the period stated in Genesis as 2262 years is at least an intriguing coincidence and could suggest a common origin.

The following table compares the relevant figures from the Masoretic, Samaritan, Septuagint and Josephus..