The Zoologist — July, 1871. 2669 



chronology in a very off-hand, free-and-easy manner; he proposes 

 to extend the periods between biblical events in order to prove 

 that man may have existed on the earth longer by five thousand 

 eight hundred and seventy-five years: he succeeds in showing 

 great discrepancy between the dates and computations of various 

 authorities, but he fails in the application of these discrepancies to 

 any such extension of time as geological evidence seems to require. 

 His work would seem by its title to be especially directed against 

 such volumes as those of Sir Charles Lyell and Sir John Lubbock ; 

 but the gist of the argument, if so it may be called, is against the 

 conclusions of Mr. Huxley and Mr. Darwin, concerning which 

 I have already said enough, and perhaps more than enough, in the 

 preceding number of the ' Zoologist.' 



On the amount of reliance to be placed in Bible chronology, 

 Mr. Lucas writes thus : — 



" Our present object is to show that the Bible itself does not absolutely 

 fix the date of man's creation. All that it affirms is, that it was at the 

 beginning of the present epoch, and dates from the commencement of the 

 existing flora and fauna. And I need not remind the intelligent reader 

 that the Divine authority of the Bible is in no direct way connected with 

 our present systems of biblical chronology. AVhether these systems are 

 tme or false does not at all affect the question of the Divine inspiration of 

 the sacred Scriptures. The systems themselves are utterly uuharmonious, 

 and widely diverge from each other : a conclusive proof that the date on 

 which they profess to be based is neither clear nor decisive. According 

 indeed to the opinion of our biblical writers, in nothing has the Bible 

 suffered so much from change, and from the mistakes of transcribers, as it 

 has from its dates and numbers. In fact, owing to these and similar 

 causes, the chronology of Scripture, and especially in its earlier histories, 

 appears to be thrown into inextricable confusion ; and hence the endless 

 disputes of the authors of different chronological systems. In reading, 

 some years ago, a long discussion on this subject that appeared in the 

 pages of the ' Quarterly Journal of Sacred Literature,' I could come to no 

 other conclusion than that the whole matter was hopelessly uncertain ; and 

 as a proof of this, in his ' Scripture Chronology,' Kennedy affirms ' that 

 there are some three hundred different opinions as to the length of time 

 that elapsed between the creation of man and the Incarnation of Christ.' 

 Then, as is well known to all who have paid any attention to the subject, 

 there is the same discrepancy between the different texts and versions 

 of the sacred Scriptures themselves. Thus, according to the Samaritan 

 text or version, the period from the creation to the deluge was only thirteen 



SECOND SERIES — VOL. VI. 2 L 



