76 
the Pyramid was built, and looking out to the north aspect, would see 
the polar star of the period. This theory has been elaborately calculated 
by Professor Piazzi Smyth, the Astronomer Royal of Scotland, who has dis- 
covered that there is only one period in 10,000 years which would answer all 
the conditions of the problem, and which accords with the date B.C. 2170 ; 
and it is satisfactory to know that other things, particularly the duration of 
the Pharaohs, as shown by the recently discovered tablet of Abydos, tend 
to confirm that view. Then, with regard to the date of the Exode, two 
speakers have touched upon that question, which has been much contro- 
verted by many Scriptural commentators, as to the meaning of that famous 
text in Exodus, giving the date of the sojourn in Egypt. I have quoted 
in my paper the learned Dr. Kennicott, who published the best text of the 
Hebrew Bible in the last century, and who was firmly convinced that the 
true reading of that text is not confined to a “sojourning” in Egypt 
exclusively, as our Chairman considers, of 430 years, but to a sojourning 
in Canaan as well as in Egypt. That is in the text. 
The Chairman. — Not in the Hebrew. 
Mr. Savile. — Yes ; Kennicott gives it in the Samaritan Pentateuch. 
The question is as to the authenticity of the Samaritan Pentateuch. I only 
quote his evidence on the point, but cannot go into it. I would ask your 
attention to section 29 of my paper : — 
The testimony of the early Christian writers is to the same effect. 
Eusebius distinctly says, that it is “ by the unanimous consent of all 
interpreters” that the text should be so understood. Augustine, in his 
47th question on the book of Exodus, as well as in his work On the City of 
God, taught that the 430 years included the sojourn in Canaan as well as in 
Egypt. And the historian Sulpicius Severus says, “ from the entrance of 
Abraham into Canaan until the Exode were 430 years.” These Christian 
interpreters of the Old Testament doubtless understood an argument which 
some in the present day have strangely overlooked, that if the 430 years is to 
be counted only from the time of Jacob’s descent into Egypt until the Exode, 
the mother of Moses would have borne him 262 years after her father's death, 
according to the Biblical computation, which all admit is a physical impossi- 
bility. On which Clinton has justly observed : — “ Some writers have very 
unreasonably doubted that portion of the Hebrew chronology, as if it were 
uncertain how this period of 430 years was to be understood. Those who 
cast a doubt upon this point refuse to Moses, an inspired writer — in the 
account of his mother, and father, and grandfather,— that authority which 
would be given to the testimony of a profane author on the same occasion.” 
To me, this seems to be a conclusive argument in favour of the view 7 that 
the sojourning “in Egypt” only lasted for half the period of 430 years. 
Then Mr. Allen put a question which I expected would be asked ; namely, 
— how it was that I reckoned the length of a generation at thirty- 
eight years ? We have a monument belonging to the age of Nebuchad- 
nezzar, referring to the confusion of tongues and the building of the Tower 
of Babel, as having occurred forty-two ages or generations before his time. 
Herodotus gives three generations to a century, making each between 
