206 



against the fidelity of the contested text, where it is yet found. 

 But still farther, the period that the temple was building, the 

 year commemorated by its encaenia, or the month of its com- 

 pletion, are not mentioned or even alluded to, in the book of 

 Chronicles, when each is recorded in the parallel history : Is it 

 then, I repeat, inconsistent or extraordinary, that a book so 

 much more precise, accurate, and exact in determining those 

 comparatively unimportant and minute points, should nave 

 been equally so, in marking a more necessary epoch? an sera 

 with which, as we have shewn during the progress of this en- 

 quiry, the whole course, and series, and substance, and com- 

 pleteness of the Scripture chronology, as aifecting the history 

 of religion, and of the national chronology as affecting the 

 history and fortunes of the Jewish state, were intimately con- 

 cerned ; and this when the other great epochs are so carefully 

 recorded, and so exactly limited in the Hebrew writings, (v. 

 Ex. ]2. 40, 41.) Surely, this argument proposed with so 

 much emphasis, and delivered with so much decision, will no 

 longer be insisted on — it is equally futile, inconclusive, and 

 inconsequent. 



2. The next argument is certainly par/ifl/Zi/ true, though it 

 has been improperly enunciated ; and it should appear not 

 altogether ingenuous in the learned author, to produce 

 as an argument, merely a negative proof, derived almost ex- 

 clusivel}' from unacknowledged sources, or from brief notices, 

 scattered through the works of later authors b}' whom they 



were 



