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the children of Israel," (1 Kings, 6-1), he produces the same 

 texts as Petaii, (Deut. 4-4-5, Ps. 114-1-3), and to authorize 

 his actual epoch for the commencement of the 480 years, he 

 subducts them, from 598, and thence deduces 1 18 years after 

 the real exod, for the final settlement in the land. 



To say nothing of the propriety with which he first assumes 

 an arbitrary interval, (598 years) and then strains the meaning 

 of unambiguous expressions, to impress the sacred text into the 

 service of his theory, I would ask, what are we to think, in ge- 

 neral, of an hypothesis which affords such a facility to system, 

 and such an inlet to conjecture, unsupported, and contradic- 

 tory; which, in a word, will afford to Petau a latitude of 40 

 years as the meaning of the term Exodus, and on the same 

 grounds, extend the same interpretation to 1 18, in favour of 

 Codoman ? The force of this oljijection was so evident and 

 irresistible, that many authors, though adopting the sentiment, 

 refused to support it by so loose an intc'rpretation of the sacred 

 text, and invented other grounds to justify their computation, 

 Avhich would assign a more enlarged interval between the exod, 

 and the building of the temple, alledging, that the author of 

 the Book of Kings has expressly neglected the periods of 

 servitude, and anarchy, which afflicted, and oppressed, the 

 Jewish nation, and has not included them in his calculus; 

 " Quia tristia ^ inauspicata, mortua ^ infausta sunt," as Isaac 

 Vossius expresses it; and he produces some degree of evidence 

 that this was the custom of other nations, and of the Asiatics 



in 



