NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. i 47 



the great theologian of his time, took up the subject. He accepted 

 the dominant view, not only of Hebrew but of all other chro- 

 nology, without anything like real criticism ; the childlike faith 

 and simplicity of his system may be* imagined from his summa- 

 ries which follow. He tells us : 



" Joseph lived one hundred and five years. Greece began to 

 cultivate grain. 



" The Jews were in slavery in Egypt one hundred and forty- 

 four years. Atlas discovered astrology. 



"Joshua ruled for twenty-seven years. Ericthonius yoked 

 horses together. 



" Othniel, forty years. Cadmus introduced letters into Greece. 



" Deborah, forty years. Apollo discovered the art of medicine 

 and invented the cithara. 



" Gideon, forty years. Mercury invented the lyre and gave it 

 to Orpheus." 



Reasoning in this general way, Isidore kept well under the 

 longer date; and the great theological authority of southern 

 Europe having thus spoken, the question was virtually at rest 

 throughout Christendom for nearly a hundred years. 



Early in the eighth century the Venerable Bede, the great 

 theological authority of the North, took up the problem. Dwell- 

 ing especially upon the received Hebrew text of the Old Testa- 

 ment, he soon entangled himself in very serious difficulties ; but, 

 in spite of the great fathers of the first three centuries, he reduced 

 the antiquity of man on the earth by nearly a thousand years, and, 

 in spite of mutterings against him as coming dangerously near a 

 limit which made the theological argument from six days to six 

 ages look doubtful, his authority had great weight, and did much 

 to fix western Europe in its allegiance to the general system laid 

 down by Eusebius and Jerome. 



In the twelfth century this belief was re-enforced by a tide of 

 thought from a very different quarter. Rabbi Moses Maimonides 

 and other Jewish scholars, by careful study of the Hebrew text, 

 arrived at conclusions diminishing the antiquity of man still fur- 

 ther, and thus gave strength to the shorter chronology throughout 

 the middle ages : it was incorporated into the sacred science of 

 Christianity; and Vincent de Beauvais, in his great Speculum 

 Historiale, forming part of that still more enormous work which 

 sums up all the knowledge possessed by the ages of faith, placed 

 the creation of man at about four thousand years before our era.* 



* For the date of man's creation as given by leading chronologists in various branches of 

 the Church, see L'Art de Verifier les Dates, Paris, 1819, vol. i, pp. 27 et seq. In this edition 

 there are sundry typographical errors ; compare with Wallace, True Age of the World, 

 London, 1844. As to preference for the longer computation by the fathers of the Church, 

 see Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, vol. ii, p. 291. For the sacred significance of the six days of 



