134 
That brings ns to the first of the Judges ; and then it goes on to say 
“And after that he gave unto them judges about the space of four hundred 
and fifty years, until Samuel the prophet.” 
In the clearest way, therefore, St. Paul says that the Judges reigned 450 
years until Samuel 
Mr. Reddie. — With the qualification of “ about.” 
Admiral Halsted. — I feel very grateful to Mr. Titcomb, for he has appre- 
hended rightly that there are many laymen here to whom this paper has 
given great pain. It has broken up, but it has not resettled, and I do not 
find any comfort or consolation from anything stated in the concluding 
portions of the paper. Far more comfort may be derived from what has been 
stated by Mr. Titcomb. As to the question of all these discrepancies or 
incredibilities of numbers with regard to arms, being tested by the circum- 
stances of modern warfare, that is simply childish and ignorant. 
The Chairman. — I do not thuik this subject is altogether a novel one, for 
I think that all the objections of Dr. Colenso against the Pentateuch are very 
old ones revived, and they have been answered over and over again. These 
discrepancies of numbers have long been known by students of Hebrew 
and of the Scriptures generally ; and the very points which Dr. Thornton 
has given us as showing how these discrepancies are to be accounted for, have 
also been given so far back as Dr. Kennicott’s time. When we come to the 
history of the Pentateuch, we are astonished how marvellously that text has 
been preserved for us. We have that text which is used by the Jews now, 
as handed down by jealous tradition ; and we have another text which they 
have guarded most jealously for 2,000 and more years. We have a trans- 
lation of that text commenced, if not completed, well nigh three centuries 
before the time of our blessed Lord Himself, and we have that version in 
Greek jealously preserved by the Alexandrine Jews as against the other Jews 
up to the time of our Lord, containing a very important preface, which, if it 
had not been for that Septuagint, would have been said to have been con- 
cocted after the time of our Lord Himself. And in addition to that we have 
the Pentateuch jealously guarded by a class of people in opposition to the 
Jews of Samaria, and they have preserved it for us up to the present day. 
The Prince of Wales, when in the East, was shown one jealously guarded 
copy, and we are told of the superstitious reverence and fear with which the 
old priests unrolled that, which was one of the oldest copies, for they dared 
not venture to bring out the oldest of all. Those copies were preserved by 
a sect who were in complete antagonism to the Jews long before the time of 
our Saviour. Then we have the Septuagint, for 1,800 years and more, jealously 
guarded by Christian sects, the heretics fighting one against the other, and the 
Jews watching them. Then we can trace the passage of the Pentateuch from 
the Samaritan version into the Sinaitic version, for that is only the Hebrew 
Pentateuch written in the old character which they used on their coinage, a 
different character from that in use by the J ews themselves since the Captivity, 
but showing that the Pentateuch before the time of the Babylonish captivity 
