125 
supported. I can now show more clearly how easily such errors may have 
arisen. The only difficulty remaining with me is, as to the small number of 
manuscripts which are reported ever to have existed, and that we have no 
authentic account of them. It would be a great boon to literature if such 
an account could be set forth, and if the actual manuscripts which existed 
during the middle ages and before the time of our Lord could be produced 
or described. That there were various manuscripts is quite clear to mv 
mind, from the fact, that the Septuagint version, although it agrees with 
the Hebrew in the main, still does materially differ in some particulars, 
as in the case of the post-diluvian patriarchs. The Septuagint gives 100 
years more to most of these post-diluvians 
The Chairman. — I think you mean the ante-diluvians. 
Mr. James.— No ; I mean post-diluvians* There are seven or eight gene- 
rations in which the Septuagint gives 100 years more to each generation 
than the Hebrew does, and that must have arisen from the fact that the 
manuscript from which the Septuagint was translated differed from the 
manuscript from which our translation has been made. I cannot for a 
moment think that we are warranted in maintaining the absolute integrity 
of all the numbers given to us. No doubt, at one period of time, there was 
only one manuscript existing. In the time of Ezra they had only a single 
copy of the Pentateuch to refer to, and various persons were employed to 
transcribe from the one existing copy, and, no doubt-, in the course of tran- 
scription, errors would naturally arise. The great vice of all those writers, 
such as Dr. Colenso, has been very well pointed out by Dr. Thornton, namely, 
the way in which they insist on one meaning of a particular text, and that 
the worst possible meaning. (Hear, hear.) But there are other meanings 
which bear better authority and which offer no difficulty whatever. Will 
you allow me to remind the meeting of one great case of the kind ? In the 
first chapter of Genesis (v. 20) it is recorded that the fishes were created in 
the water, and it seems in our version as if the birds were also created out of 
the water. But in the second chapter (v. 19), the birds are said to have been 
formed “out of the ground.” Now Dr. Colenso points out these two state- 
ments as involving a discrepancy of great importance, whereas there is no 
discrepancy at all ; because the Hebrew in the first chapter does not properly 
bear the translation which is given in the English version. The correct 
version is given in the Bible margin. Nevertheless Dr. Colenso will insist 
upon it, as an argument against the Pentateuch, simply on the ground of our 
English version, which is acknowledged by all scholars to contain a mis- 
translation of that passage. 
The Chairman. — I should like to ask Dr. Thornton one question, because 
he may have to go away early. He speaks in the 36th paragraph of his paper 
first of the square Hebrew character and of the mistakes which may have 
* It is undoubtedly so likewise in the case of several of the antediluvian 
patriarchs. 
