Page:02.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.A.vol.2.EarlyProphets.djvu/291

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Or if we add the forty years spent in the wilderness, the time that elapsed between the Exodus from Egypt and the building of the temple 573 years. But the interval was not so long as this; for, according to 1Ki 6:1, Solomon built the house of the Lord in the 480th year after the children of Israel came out of Egypt, and in the fourth year of his reign. And no well-founded objections can be raised as to the correctness and historical credibility of this statement. It is true that the lxx have “the 440th year” instead of the 480th; but this reading is proved to be erroneous by Aquila and Symmachus, who adopt the number 480 in common with all the rest of the ancient versions, and it is now almost unanimously rejected (see Ewald, Gesch. ii. p. 479). In all probability it owed its origin to an arbitrary mode of computing the period referred to by reckoning eleven generations of forty years each (see Ed Preuss; die Zeitrechnung der lxx pp. 78ff.). On the other hand, the number 480 of the Hebrew text cannot rest upon a mere reckoning of generations, since the year and month of Solomon's reign are given in 1Ki 6:1; and if we deduct this date from the 480, there remain 477 of 476 years, which do not form a cyclical number at all.^[1]
Again, the Exodus of Israel from Egypt was an “epoch-making” event, which was fixed in the recollection of the people as no other ever was, so that allusions to it run through the whole of the Old Testament. Moreover, the very fact that it does not tally with the sum total of the numbers in the book of Judges is an argument in favor of its correctness; whereas all the chronological calculations that differ from this bring us back to these numbers, such, for example, as the different statements of Josephus, who reckons the period in question at 592 years in Ant. viii. 3, 1, and on the other hand, at 612 years in Ant. xx. 10 and c. Ap. ii. 2.^[2]

↑ Bertheau has quite overlooked this when he endeavors to make the 480 years from the Exodus to the building of the temple into a cyclical number, and appeals in support of this to 1Ch 6:5., where twelve generations are reckoned from Aaron to Ahimaaz, the contemporary of David. But it is perfectly arbitrary on his part to include Ahimaaz who was a boy in the time of David (2Sa 15:27, 2Sa 15:36; 2Sa 18:19, 2Sa 18:22, 2Sa 18:27.), as the representative of a generation that was contemporaneous with David; whereas it was not Ahimaaz, but his father Zadok, i.e., the eleventh high priest from Aaron, who anointed Solomon as king (1Ki 1:39; 1Ki 2:35), and therefore there had been only eleven high priests from the Exodus to the building of the temple. If therefore this period was to be divided into generations of forty years each on the ground of the genealogies in the Chronicles, there could only be eleven generations counted, and this is just what the lxx have done.
↑ Josephus adds together the numbers which occur in the book of JudGes. Reckoning from the invasion of Chushan-rishathaim to the forty years' oppression of the Philistines (inclusive), these amount to 390 years, if we regard Samson's twenty years as forming part of the Philistine oppression, or to 410 years if they are reckoned separately. Let us add to this the forty years of the journey through the wilderness, the twenty-five years which Josephus assigns to Joshua (Ant. 5:1, 29), the forty years of Eli, the twelve years which he allots to Samuel before the election of Saul as king (6:13, 5), and the forty years which he reckons to Samuel and Saul together, and lastly, the forty and a half years of David's reign and the four years of Solomon's up to the time when the temple was built, and we obtain 40 + 25 + 40 + 12 + 40 + 401/2 + 4 = 2011/2 years; and these added to 390 make 5911/2, or added to 410 they amount to 611 years.

[1] Bertheau has quite overlooked this when he endeavors to make the 480 years from the Exodus to the building of the temple into a cyclical number, and appeals in support of this to 1Ch 6:5., where twelve generations are reckoned from Aaron to Ahimaaz, the contemporary of David. But it is perfectly arbitrary on his part to include Ahimaaz who was a boy in the time of David (2Sa 15:27, 2Sa 15:36; 2Sa 18:19, 2Sa 18:22, 2Sa 18:27.), as the representative of a generation that was contemporaneous with David; whereas it was not Ahimaaz, but his father Zadok, i.e., the eleventh high priest from Aaron, who anointed Solomon as king (1Ki 1:39; 1Ki 2:35), and therefore there had been only eleven high priests from the Exodus to the building of the temple. If therefore this period was to be divided into generations of forty years each on the ground of the genealogies in the Chronicles, there could only be eleven generations counted, and this is just what the lxx have done.

[2] Josephus adds together the numbers which occur in the book of JudGes. Reckoning from the invasion of Chushan-rishathaim to the forty years' oppression of the Philistines (inclusive), these amount to 390 years, if we regard Samson's twenty years as forming part of the Philistine oppression, or to 410 years if they are reckoned separately. Let us add to this the forty years of the journey through the wilderness, the twenty-five years which Josephus assigns to Joshua (Ant. 5:1, 29), the forty years of Eli, the twelve years which he allots to Samuel before the election of Saul as king (6:13, 5), and the forty years which he reckons to Samuel and Saul together, and lastly, the forty and a half years of David's reign and the four years of Solomon's up to the time when the temple was built, and we obtain 40 + 25 + 40 + 12 + 40 + 401/2 + 4 = 2011/2 years; and these added to 390 make 5911/2, or added to 410 they amount to 611 years.

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