On the other hand, the longevity of individuals in that period cannot be put to the proof of such material evidence. Nevertheless we should not for that reason call in question the reliability of the sacred narrative. Our impudence in doubting the scriptural record is measured by the certainty of the fulfilment of its prophecies, which we see before our eyes. Apart from this, Pliny also states that there is to this day a nation where men live for two hundred years.52 And so, if it is believed that places unknown to us provide examples, at the present time, of a longevity which is outside our experience, why should we not believe the same of the unknown past? Are we to say that it is credible that something which does not happen here does happen somewhere, but incredible that something which does not happen now did happen at some other time?

  10. The apparent discrepancy between the Hebrew version of the Scriptures and our own translation, on the precise ages of men of old

  On this point, it is true, we observe a considerable discrepancy between the Hebrew text and our version53 in regard to the precise number of years. I do not know the reason for this; but in any case the difference is not enough to cause any disagreement about the fact of the great longevity of the men of that period. For instance, we find in our texts that Adam, the first man, was 230 years old before he begot the son called Seth, whereas in the Hebrew he is said to have been 130. On the other hand, we read in our version that Adam lived another 700 years after the birth of Seth, while the Hebrew gives 800 years.54 Thus both texts agree about the total.

  Thereafter, in subsequent generations, we find the age of the father at the birth of those whose birth is mentioned, given in the Hebrew as a hundred years less than in our version; but the rest of his life, after the birth of the son, is a hundred years less in our text than in the Hebrew. Thus the sum of the two numbers agrees, in both versions. In the sixth generation, however, there is no discrepancy at all in the two texts. But in the seventh (in which the narrative records that Enoch was born and, instead of dying, was translated, because he pleased God55) there is the same discrepancy of a hundred years before the birth of the son there mentioned, and the same agreement in the total. For he was 365 years old before translation, according to both texts.

  The eighth generation certainly shows a certain discrepancy, but it is smaller than the others and of a different kind. For according to the Hebrew text, Methuselah, son of Enoch, was twenty years older than in our version, before he begot the son who comes next in the list, instead of a hundred years younger,56 but, once again, these years are found added in our text after the birth of his son, and so the total coincides in both versions. The only discrepancy in the total sum appears in the ninth generation, in the age of Lamech, son of Methuselah and father of Noah; but the difference is not very large.57 For we find that in the Hebrew version he lived twenty-four years longer than in our text. Before the birth of his son named Noah he is six years younger in the Hebrew than in our version; but after Noah’s birth he lived thirty years longer in the Hebrew text than in ours. Thus, with the subtraction of those six years the remainder, as I said, is twenty-four.

  11. The age of Methuselah, whose life apparently extends fourteen years beyond the Flood

  From this discrepancy between the Hebrew text and ours arises that notorious problem about the fourteen years that Methuselah, by our reckoning, lived after the Flood. Now according to the scriptural account only eight persons, of all those who were then on earth, escaped destruction by the Flood in the ark, and Methuselah was not one of them. According to our text, Methuselah was 167 years old before the birth of the son whom he named Lamech;58 and then Lamech was 188 years old before Noah was born to him.59 These two figures together make 355. Add to these the 600 years of Noah, which was his age at the time of the Flood,60 and the total is 955,61 and this is the period from the birth of Methuselah down to the year of the Flood.

  But all the years of Methuselah’s life are reckoned as 969; for he was 167 years old at the time of the birth of his son called Lamech, and he lived on for 802 years after that,62 which gives, as I said, the total of 969. If we subtract the 955 years from Methuselah’s birth to the Flood it leaves fourteen years; so we assume that he lived for fourteen years after the Flood. For this reason there are some who think that he was alive, though not on the earth, where, it is agreed, all flesh which nature does not allow to live in water was destroyed. They suppose that he was for some time with his father, who had been translated, and that he lived there until the Flood had passed. For they refuse to question the reliability of the text which is accepted by the Church and is thus given a wider authority; and they believe that it is the version of the Jews and not the other text which contains inaccuracies.

  These people will not allow that it is more likely that we have here a mistake on the part of the translators, than that there should be a false statement in the language from which the Scriptures themselves were translated, through the Greek version, into our tongue. They assert that it is unbelievable that seventy translators who made their translation at one and the same time and produced one and the same meaning, could have made a mistake, or should have deliberately uttered a falsehood on a point of no importance to them. But they maintain that the Jews, in their jealousy at the transference to us, through translation, of the Law and the prophets, altered some passages in their own texts to diminish the authority of our version.

  Anyone may accept this idea, or suspicion, as he thinks fit. One thing remains certain: Methuselah did not live on after the Flood; he ended his life in the same year, if the information is true which is found in the Hebrew text about the number of his years. As for the seventy translators, I must insert a more detailed statement of my opinions about them in the appropriate place, when, with God’s assistance, I come to deal with that period as far as the subject of this work demands.63 For the present discussion it is enough that according to both versions the longevity of human beings at that period was such that it was possible for the human race to multiply sufficiently even to establish a city in the lifetime of one man, who was the first child born to the parents who were then the sole inhabitants of the earth.

  12. Concerning the opinion of those who refuse to believe in the longevity of the human beings in the early ages, as recorded in Scripture

  Not the slightest attention should be given to those who fancy that years were differently reckoned in those times, that is, that they were of such short duration that one of our years should be assumed to include ten of theirs. Therefore, they maintain, when anyone hears or reads that someone lived for 900 years he should interpret this as ninety, since ten of their years equal one of ours, and ten of ours make a hundred of theirs. According to this reckoning, Adam was twenty-three when he became the father of Seth, and Seth for his part was twenty years and six months old when Enos was born to him. Scripture, to be sure, ascribes to Seth 205 years; but on the speculative theory we are examining one year such as we now have was then divided into ten, and each of those divisions was called a year. Each of those parts contains the square of six, because God completed his works in six days so that he might rest on the seventh day (I have discussed this topic, to the best of my ability, in Book XI).64 Six times six, the square of six, is thirty-six days; and that multiplied by ten comes to 365 days, that is, twelve lunar months. That leaves five days to be supplied to complete the solar year, plus a quarter of a day (hence the introduction, every fourth year, of one day, called bissextus);65 and that is the reason why, in antiquity, days were later added to make the number of years tally. These are the days called by the Romans ‘intercalary’.

  On this assumption Enos, the son of Seth, was nineteen years old when his son Cainan was born, though Scripture gives his age as a hundred and ninety.66 And after that through all the generations, among the men whose ages are mentioned before the Flood, no case is found in our version of a man’s having a son when he was a hundred years old or less, or even 120 or a little more. In fact the earliest age of any father is recorded as 160 or more. For no one can beget children (as those who hold this theory maintain) at the age of ten, or, as those people would call it, a hundred. Puberty is fully developed and capable of procreating children by the age of sixteen, which in antiquity was called 160.

  To reduce the incredibility of the supposition that the year was differently reckoned in those days, those theorists adduce evidence from a number of historians that the Egyptians had a year of four months,67 the Acarnianians of six, and the Lavinians of thirteen. Pliny the Elder mentions reports in written documents that one man lived 152 years, another for ten years more than that, others for 300 years, while some attained the age of 500, 600, or even 800 years.68 But he decides that these reports were based on ignorance of chronology. ‘For some people’, he says, ‘used to treat summer as a complete year, and winter as another, while others treated each of the four seasons as a whole year, like the Arcadians, who had years of three months.’ He adds that the Egyptians (whose short year of four months I have mentioned above) sometimes ended the year with the final phase of each moon; ‘and so’, he says, ‘we have reports among the Egyptians of people who lived a thousand years.’

  Some people advance these as being plausible arguments, seeking not to undermine the credibility of this sacred narrative but doing their best to support it, and to reduce the difficulty of believing the tradition of the longevity of men in antiquity. Thus they have persuaded themselves, and consider that they need not be ashamed to try to persuade others, that what was then called a year was so short a time that ten of those years were equal to one of ours, and ten of ours the same as a hundred of theirs. That this theory is utterly erroneous can be proved by the clearest evidence.69 But before I do so, I think that I should not pass over a suggestion which may be more worthy of credence.

  We could certainly have refuted and overthrown this contention by the evidence of the Hebrew text, where Adam is found to have been 130, instead of 230 years of age at the time when he became the father of his third son.70 If this means thirteen of our years, he was undoubtedly little more than eleven years, at most, when his first son was begotten. But can anyone become a father at that age, according to the established laws of nature with which we are so familiar?

  But let us pass over Adam. It may well be that he could have procreated children at the time of his creation, for we cannot suppose that when he was made he was as small as our infants are. His son Seth was not 205, as we find in our version, but 105 when he became the father of Enos.71 This means that he was not yet eleven, on the theory we are examining. And what of his son Cainan? Although he appears as 170 in our version, the reading of the Hebrew is that he was seventy when he became the father of Mahalaleel.72 But – if we assume that ‘seventy years’ meant at that time ‘seven years’ – who can become a father at the age of seven?

  13. Whether we should follow the authority of the Hebrew text rather than that of the Septuagint, in the reckoning of the years

  But when I have said this, the response will be that this is a falsehood of the Jews – a point which I have sufficiently dealt with above.73 The assertion is that the seventy translators, men of well deserved renown, could not have lied. Now let us suppose these two possibilities: either the Jewish people, scattered so far and wide, were able to unite in a planned conspiracy to write this false account and thus deprive themselves of the truth because they grudged others a share in the authority of their Scriptures, or else it was the seventy men who grudged foreign nations a share in this scriptural truth and carried out their purpose by following an agreed plan. Now these seventy (who were themselves Jews) had been assembled in one place, because Ptolemy, king of Egypt, had appointed them to this task.74 If I should ask which is the more credible alternative, could anyone fail to see which can more easily and readily be believed?

  But in fact it is unthinkable that any sensible person should suppose either that the Jews, whatever their perversity and malice, could have achieved such a feat in so many texts, so widely dispersed; or that those seventy men of renown should have united in a common plan to deprive the Gentiles of the truth, because of jealousy. It would be more plausible, therefore, to suggest that when the text began to be transcribed for the first time from the copy in Ptolemy’s library, some inaccuracy of this sort might have happened in one copy. Now if that was the original transcription it might have been the source of widespread error, starting with a simple mistake on the part of a scribe. There is no implausibility in this supposition in respect of the problem raised by Methuselah’s life, or in the other instance75 where the totals do not agree, and show an excess of twenty-four years. But in some places the identical error is displayed time after time, with a hundred extra years appearing in the one version, before the birth of a son who is included in the list, while after the birth the same number of years is subtracted in that version, to make the total agree with the other text. This happens in the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and seventh generations. Here the error seems to have, if I may so put it, a certain consistency which smacks of design rather than accident.

  In these instances, then, we find that a century subtracted is balanced by the subsequent addition of a hundred years, and the procedure occurs in a number of successive generations. In the other cases, the divergence of the numbers given in the Latin and Greek versions from those appearing in the Hebrew, should not be ascribed either to Jewish malice or to a carefully thought-out plan on the part of the seventy translators. It should be put down to the mistake of the scribe who first received the text from the library of the aforesaid King Ptolemy to transcribe. For even in these days, numbers are carelessly copied and even more carelessly checked when they do not direct the reader’s attention to something which can be easily understood, or which is evidently useful to learn. Would anyone consider that he ought to learn how many thousand men each of the Israelite tribes might have had? It is not thought that such knowledge offers any advantage, and few people see in it any practical importance or deep significance.

  But we have a different problem when in successive generations one text gives a hundred years which are missing in the other version, and then after the birth of the son next to be mentioned we find the missing hundred years added in the one, and the excess subtracted from the other, so that the totals agree. No doubt the discrepancy is due to someone who wanted to establish the point that the reputed longevity of men in antiquity was based on the extreme brevity of ‘years’. He also sought to support this theory with regard to the development of puberty necessary for procreation; that was why he thought that the incredulous should be informed that ten of our years equalled a hundred of the ancient years, so that they should be willing to believe those reports of great longevity. Thus he added a hundred years where he did not find the age suitable for begetting children, and subtracted the same number after the birth of the sons, to make the totals agree. For his purpose was to make the ages credible and appropriate for procreation, without defrauding the individuals of the total number of years of their lives.

  The fact that he did not do this in the sixth generation is in itself a further indication that he did it when it was demanded by the situation I have suggested, since he did not do it when it was not so demanded. For he found in that generation, according to the Hebrew,76 that Jared was a hundred and sixty-two when he became the father of Enoch; and this age, on this short-year theory, becomes sixteen and something under two months. Now that age is already suitable for procreation, and therefore there was no need to add a hundred short years, to make his age twenty-six in our years, or to subtract them after the birth of Enoch, since he had not added them before his birth. So it came about that there was no divergence here in the two texts.

  But to return to the problem of the eighth generation. What is puzzling is that before Lamech was born, his father Methuselah was 182 years old, according to the reading of the Hebrew text;77 whereas in our version, instead of the usual addition of a hundred years, we find twenty years less.78 These are put back after Lamech’s birth to complete the total, which is the same in both texts. Now if our short-year advocate intended us to interpret 170 years as meaning seventeen, to give the necessary sexual development, there was no need for any addition or subtraction, because he was presented with an age suitable for procreation, which was the reason for his addition of a hundred years in places where he did not find the age suitable. To be sure, we might be justified in supposing that the twenty years were the result of an accidental mistake, if it were not that he took pains to restore the subtraction afterwards, so that the total sum should agree with the other version. But should we perhaps think that there was a more cunning purpose here? He may have intended to conceal his practice of first adding and then subtracting a hundred years by following the same procedure in a case where it was not necessary. It is true that in this case it was not a matter of a hundred years; but still a number of years, however small, was first subtracted and then restored.

  However, it matters little what line of interpretation is adopted. The main point is that whether my explanation is believed or not, whether, in fact, this is the truth of the matter or not, I should certainly not be justified in doubting that when some difference occurs in the two versions, where it is impossible for both to be a true record of historical fact, then greater reliance should be placed on the original language from which a version was made by translators into another tongue. There are, in point of fact, three Greek texts, one Latin, and one Syriac, which agree in showing Methuselah as having departed this life six years before the Hood.79

 

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