EXTRAVAGANT CLAIMS TO ANTIQUITY. 
445 
Antiquity OF THE World. 
There hav€ been great disputes concerning the antiquity of the 
world. Aristotle carried it back even to eternity. Parmenides, Py- 
thagoras, and the Chaldeans, were of the same opinion ; and there are 
not wanting philosophers of the present age, who have adopted the 
same idea. Dr. Thompson has published two treatises on this sub- 
ject ; the one entitled the Eternity of the World, and the other the 
Eternity of the Universe. But the generality of philosophers, as w'ell 
as divines and historians, have always held an origin of it j though 
where to fix that origin is the difficulty. The diflferent systems of 
the chronology of the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Jews, the Hebrew 
text, and the Septuagint version, of Scaliger, of Pezron, of Sir Isaac 
Newton, <fec. to say nothing of the Chinese annals, leave the point 
considerably embarrassed. Dion Pezron thought he merited well of 
the public by adding two thousand years to the age of the world, 
which had been taken from it by Scaliger and others; but this did not 
hinder F. Montianay from entering a prosecution against him in the 
archbishop’s court of Paris,, for heresy. His crime was,, following the 
Heathen rather than the Hebrew chronology ; in which, however, he 
was preceded by the generality of the fathers and primitive W riters of 
the church; among whom it appears to have been a common prac- 
tice, to make five thousand five hundred years betw^een the creation and 
the incarnation. In reality, the Jews are charged with having corrupt- 
ed their chronology, by which the moderns have been misled. 
Extravagant Claims of Nations to Antiquity. 
There is scarcely a nation under heaven but lays claim to a greater 
degree of antiquity than the rest of its neighbours. The Scythians, 
the Phrygians, the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, Chinese, &c. pre- 
tend each to have the honour of being the first inhabitants of the earth. 
Several of these nations, lest they should be outstripped in their pre- 
tensions by any of the rest, have traced up their origin long before the 
received account of the creation. Hence the appellations. Aborigines, 
Indigenae, Antebunares, &c. The Athenians pretended to be Autoc- 
tbones ; and, what is remarkable, Socrates himself gave them this 
ridiculous appellation ; w hich, as some other philosophers justly ob- 
served, only put them on a level with ants and grasshoppers. 
The Chaldeans pretend to astronomical observations of four hun- 
dred and seventy thousand, or four hundred and seventy-three thoui- 
sand years; they mention the precise king who reigned over them at 
the time of the deluge ; whose name was Xisuthrus, and attribute to 
him several things which we ascribe to Noah. The Cbaldaic antiqui- 
ties of Berosus are lost, except a few fragments which have been 
collected by Joseph Scaliger, and since more fully by Fabricius. St. 
Augustine laughs at the folly of the Egyptians, who pretend to obser- 
vations of the stars above one hundred thousand years old ; in effect, 
no people appear to have been warmer in the contest for antiquity 
than those of Egypt. They pretend two periods of time ; one shorter, 
during w hich the throne of Egypt had been filled by men ; the other. 
