359 
number of subordinate sums — sub-totals — are given, tbe 
aggregate of which makes up the full amount. The numbers 
stand thus : — 
Kcuben 
Simeon 
Gad ... 
Judah ... 
Issachar 
Zebulun 
Ephraim 
Manasseh 
Benjamin 
Ban ... 
Asher ... 
Naphtali 
First Census. 
.. 46,500 
.. 59,300 
.. 45,650 
.. 74,600 
.. 54,400 
.. 57,400 
.. 40,500 
. 32,200 
. 35,400 
. 62,700 
. 41,500 
. 53,400 
Second Census. 
43,730 
22,200 
40.500 
76.500 
64,300 
60.500 
32.500 
52,700 
45,600 
64.400 
53.400 
45.400 
Levi 
603,550 
... 22,000 
601,730 
23,000 
2/. The enumeration, in general, appears not to have pro- 
ceeded lower than hundreds , save in one example in each 
census, in which it went as low as tens. In Levies case 
thousands seem to have constituted the limit of inquest; but, 
as this tribe stood in a distinct category, and was forbidden 
to be numbered with the rest (Numb. i. 49), we may perhaps 
understand the direction in iii. 15, as implying an estimate, 
rather than a precise enumeration. Yet the comparison of 
the 22,000 Levites with the 22,273 first-borns (iii. 43), and 
the special provision for the odd 273, might suggest that the 
one of these numbers was as minutely accurate as the other ; 
m which, of course, there is no impossibility. 
28. This is unimportant. But* I must press the correct 
additions of the constituent figures in the two censuses, and 
the deliveries of the exact totals, as absolutely proving, utterly 
beyond possibility of sane question,-— that these great numbers 
have not suffered from carelessness of honest transcription. The 
7 ^ e u e l ab0rat 1 e tlieor y of T>r. Thornton, often, however, put 
^ i e *i ? um ^ ers having been expressed, in ancient 
x ., by alphabetic characters, modified by superadded dashes 
or dots, the consimilarity of certain of those characters became 
the most fertile source of errors in the text of Scripture as 
i e o^ r s numbers a matter that was so much discussed after- 
wards, and so generally conceded may be admitted as theory. 
