49 
upon a different mode of computing the event, concludes that 
“ the year B.C. 1014 is proved to be the year of the building of 
the temple on coherent critical grounds, and differs very little 
from the ordinary computation.”* 
22. Having thus ascertained the date of the building of 
Solomon’s Temple, I proceed to point out the remarkable 
synchronism it affords to the chronologies of Israel and Egypt. 
The first step in this investigation is to ascertain the exact date 
of the Exodus of the Israelites under Moses, from their Egyptian 
bondage. If we accept the authorized version of 1 Kings vi. ], 
as the correct reading, all dispute amongst those who believe in 
the infallibility of Scripture must be at an end ; for in this verse 
(the sole instance of any mention of an era, alluded to or hinted 
at in Holy Writ) it is stated that “ in the 480th year after the 
children of Israel were come out of Egypt, in the fourth year of 
Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Zif, he began to 
build the House of the Lord.” 
23. Counting 480 years from the year B.C. 1014, the date of 
building Solomon’s Temple, we are brought to B.C. 1494, as the 
time of the Exode, according to what appears to many to be 
Scripture authority. But we have conclusive evidence that the 
words “ in the 480th year,” etc., are an interpolation as late as 
the third or fourth century of the Christian era. For, first, it 
does not agree with the summation of years given in the Old 
Testament, especially a passage in Judges xi. 26, which shows 
that in the time of Jephthah, the children of Israel had then been 
occupying the land of promise upwards of “ 300 years,” which 
would leave only fifty-six veai’sforthe interval between Jephthah 
and Saul, in place of between one and two centuries, such as 
the book of Judges teaches. Nor does it agree with the chro- 
nology of the New Testament, as we find St. Paul distinctly 
declaring that the rule of the Judges ailone until Samuel, lasted 
“ about the space of 450 years ” (Acts xiii. 20). Secondly, None 
of the Jewish writers, such as Demetrius or Josephus, nor of the 
Christian fathers, such as Theophilus of Antioch or Clement of 
Alexandria, could have known of such a passage, for their chro- 
nology of that period is essentially different. Thirdly, Origen, 
probably the best authority of the true text of Scripture of his 
own age, in his “Commentary on St. John,” quotes Kings vi. 1, 
without the disputed clause as follows: “They prepared timber 
and stones to build the house; and in the fourth year of Solomon’s 
* Bunsen’s Egypt's Place in Universal History , book iv, part v. § 1 , 
A. IV. 
VOL. IX. 
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