calculated in such a manner, that 65 degrees, and a part of a degree, had passed at the birth of Christ: 65×72=4680; add for a part of a degree 20 years=4700. The principle on which the Samaritan computation is made is pretty clear.
As the Samaritans count[1] 3044 between the flood and Christ, and as they reckon 4700 from the creation to Christ, they must reckon the same time between the creation and flood as Usher, viz. 1656 years.[2] The Julian period begins, the 4 years’ mistake of Usher allowed for, 4709 or 4710 years before Christ. This evidently is meant to coincide with the Samaritan system.
All these periods are correct except the Julian period, which comes sufficiently near to prove very clearly, that what Megasthenes said was true, that the Jews and the Hindoos had the same system of chronology, and we shall see by and by, in a future book, when I come to treat of the Jews, the reason of this.
The Greeks and Romans considered the two numbers 608 and 650 as in a particular manner sacred to Bacchus. Now, when Eusebius was making out his 5200 by deducting from it the years of the precession in the sign Taurus, and then calculating five cycles from the beginning of Aries to Jesus Christ, as the reader has seen, he would naturally inquire, what the other sacred number 650 would do; and he would find, that if multiplied by eight, (the number of cycles stated by Juvenal and Censorinus to have run to Christ,) it would exactly make his number of 5200; so that one made the cycles from Taurus, the other from Aries,—but both coming to the same thing, eight cycles in the whole, and the same number of years. It seems to me to be absolutely impossible, that the coincidence of these numbers can have been the effect of accident.
The cycle of 600 does not appear to have been known as a sacred number to the Greeks and Romans, but only to the Jews and oriental nations. The reason was, because the 608 and 650 came from the East before their error was discovered. I think I need not have desired any thing better to confirm, both my theory of the origin of the sacred solar numbers, and of the eight periods or cycles to the birth of Christ, than that the multiplication of the 650 by eight, should give us the exact number stated by Eusebius to have passed before the birth of Christ.
The following is surely a singular coincidence of numbers:
| Usher’s age of the world | 4004 |
| Usher’s time of the flood | 1656 |
| Flood before Christ | 2348 |
| Add Samaritan correction | 700 |
| 3048 | |
| Add real precession for one sign | 2152 |
| 5200 |
If we suppose, as is the fact, that the sun left the last degree of Aries, and entered Pisces, about the year 380 before Christ, and add the years of the commonly reputed precession for the two signs Aries and Taurus, 2160+2160=4320, we shall have exactly the Samaritan computation 4320+380=4700. If this be accident, it is surely a wonderful accident, that should bring all those numbers which my theory requires to an exact agreement.
- ↑ Asiat. Res. Vol. V. p. 241.
- ↑ See Universal History, Vol. I. p. 147, where the Hebrew and Samaritan chronology, before the flood, are reconciled on the hypothesis of Father Tournemine. In this reconciliation, I think, will be found the trifling error or difference before mentioned, of the ten in the Julian period.
