560 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
torical era, the learned have never been able to agree upon the precise dates of 
its cardinal events; while in the Old Testament the authority of distinguished 
names is evenly balanced between schemes which, besides a multitude of minor 
discrepancies, vary in their large ranges by many centuries of difference. And, 
when one looks beyond mere tables, and considers the vast amount of learning 
and thought which must have been bestowed upon their construction, it is 
natural to infer from the wide discrepances of the results, that the elements of 
the problem must needs be very ambiguous or defective. Accordingly the sub- 
ject is commonly pronounced to be one on which further inquiry is not only vain 
— since, if certainty were to be had, the question would have been settled long 
ago — but presumptuous too; for does it not betray an overweening temper to 
think of making discoveries in a matter which men of consummate learning have 
failed to bring to a satisfactory adjustment?" Introduction, page i, sec. i. 
" When we survey the strange variety and discordance of the several sys- 
tems of chronology, scarcely two of them agreeing, even in their fundamental 
dates, and all differing from each other more or less in the principles of their 
construction, and in the application of those principles, sometimes adjusting 
sacred chronology by profane and sometimes the reverse, without any settled 
rule or standard, we may naturally be led to despair of any solid or scientific 
improvement of the subject, especially at this advanced season, after the failure 
of so many of the greatest scholars, historians, mathematicians and astronomers, 
when no fresh documents can be expected, and when many valuable records to 
which the earlier chronologers had access are now lost and swallowed up in the 
abyss of time. A modern chronologer discloses : ' It is easy to pull down the 
system of chronologers ; it is by no means so to build up in their room one that 
can support itself against all difficulties; I do not even believe it possible,' 
Sarcher, Herodite, Tom. i, page 309, ist edition. It is indeed ' easy to pull 
down,' as may appear from the foregoing section; but 'to bui'd up' is most 
difficult." Hale's Analysis of Chronology, vol. i, page 265. 
I have given the above quotations to show that I have undertaken no easy 
task, when I attempt to establish the true time which has elapsed from the date 
of the creation of Adam to the present time. All we can know of the past is 
from what has been recorded by those who have lived in the past. In regard 
to the date of the creation of Adam, the Hebrew writings are almost our sole reli- 
ance ; indeed, with the exception of the Sothiac, or rather Sethic cycle, which 
crosses the Hebrew narrative at two essential points — the Exode and the Flood — 
we have no other record but the Bible to assist us in building up a true chron- 
ology from Adam to the present time. It may be well at the outset of this 
investigation to inform the reader that the Bible, in whole or in part, has been 
preserved to us in three different languages — namely, in Hebrew, Samaritan and 
Greek, and also that scholars differ very widely in their calculations. As they 
form their chronological tables from one or the other of these authorities, this 
difference arises partly from the mistakes of copyists and translators and partly 
from the wilful corruption of the text. We now place before the reader the 
