I 



135 



concur in the amendment. This is evidently subducting the 

 20 years of Samson, wiiich I restore by supposing tliem, as the 

 text necessitates, contemporary and parallel — the one exer- 

 cising jurisdiction in Shiloh, in the tribe of Judah, the other 

 avenging Israel in the camp of Dan, as we have shewn that 

 Dan resisted the invaders. But there is an objection usually 

 urged against this hj'^pothesis, that must not be forgotten or 

 unanswered. It is, that many suppose an interregnum after 

 the taking of the ark, which they assign according to their 

 different principles — Josephus, 20 years, some more, or less; 

 whereas, my system obliges me to place the jurisdiction of 

 Samuel as immediately succeeding that of Eli. The answer 

 is obvious, and I hope will be satisfactory. 



1st. Josephus is obliged to conclude this, from a supposi- 

 tion originally false — that Samuel was but 12 years of age at 



VOL. XI. " T the 



tlie 20 years, which Eusebius declares the Greek versions of his time allot to the juris- 

 diction of Eli, (and with which the Sixtine edition of the Septuagint agrees) to the forty 

 of the Hebrew copies, it is necessary to suppose, that the years of Samson, are included 

 in ihe latter; but it is particularly worthy of remark, that the copies of the Septuagint, 

 to the time of Nicephorus, appear generally to have retained the reading noticed by 

 Eusebius, which we now find only in the Sixtine edition, and in the Polyglott of London. 

 To what are we to attribute the modern variation ? The discussion of this might lead to 

 some interesting results. The passage in the Sixtine edition is express, and the error, 

 if any, could not have arisen from the casual mistake of a transcriber copying one cha- 

 racter for another resembling it, as the years are written at length. 1 Saml. i. 8. " Ix^ttc 

 To» l(r^%r,\ iixoTiv irt).'' The note of Nobilius is important, " Ita vetusti codices ; & sic 

 Eusebius in Chronicis affirmat scripsisse 70 & ita Lucifer Sed in Lnpressis Graecis iss-ja- 

 janona quadraginta quemadmodum etiam in Vulgata." (Vide edition of Paris, 1628, 

 with Vulgate Translation item Romse Zanetti, 15S7, only Greek.) 



