There is much to be said for Ryle’s conclusion respecting the patriarchs as a whole: ‘ Perhaps we should not be far wrong in regarding them as con- stituting a group of emigods or heroes, whosa names, in the earliest days of Hebrew tradition, filled up the blank between the creation of man and the age of the Israelite patriarchs. Such a group would be in accordance with the analogy of the primitive legends of other races. The removal of every taint of polytheistic superstition, the presentation of these names as the names of ordinary human beings, would be the work of the Israelite narrator’ (Harly Narratives of Gen. p- 81). In such purification of derived material we see inspiration at work.
For more particulars see articles ARPACHSHAD, ete. ii. Longevity of the Patriarchs.—A notable differ- ence between J and P is, that the former (Gn 417. 15). if he furnishes anything beyond a name, connects with it an interesting statement ; whilst the latter (Gn 5. 11) gives the age at which each patriarch begat his firstborn son, and that at which he died. The figures mentioned for the second of these events are so high that, if they had been found anywhere but in the Bible, we should have dis- missed them as inventions. We do not trouble to inquire whether the first seven Egyptian kings reigned in all 12,300 years, or whether any credence is due to Ephorus and Nicolaus, who, as Josephus (Ant. I. iii. 9) says, ‘relate that the ancients lived a thousand years.’ And the attempts hitherto made to vindicate P’s numbers are powerless to carry conviction.
There is no sufficient historical evidence to show that in earlier ages or under more favourable con- ditions human life has been prolonged to anything like 900 years. Delitzsch would have liked to make a point of this, but it is nothing to the purpose when he quotes (New Comm. on Gen. p- 212) Becker’s statement that ‘a lifetime of 150 is not uncommon in the snow mountains of South Dagestan.’ Prichard (Nat. Hist. of Man, p. 653) is inclined to accept Easton’s tables, according to which three Europeans have attained the age of between 170 and 180, two between 160 and 170, and so on. Yet, even if this were so, it falls far short of the mark. The human frame, as men have known it in historical times, is not caleulated to last 200 years, to say nothing of 900. And there is no more reason for believing that its vigour gradually declined during and after the days of the grey forefathers of the race, than there is for accepting the Talmudic absurdity that the first man reached from earth to heaven, but after his sin the Holy One laid His hands upon him and made him little (Chag. 12a). Gn 6 has been adduced as marking a turning-point at which the deterioration began. But this clause is either a gloss, explanatory of the preceding words (Wellh. ), or, more probably, it has been transposed from its original position in the story of the Fall (Budde).
PATRIARCHS
PATRIARCHS 695
In any case it will not serve the a for which it is brought forward. It precedes the account of the Flood. But Gn 11 does not limit the patri- archs after the Flood to 120 years: Shem lives 600 years; Arpachshad, 438, etc.
hen it is said that ‘the numbers 930, 912, 905, etc., designate epochs of antediluvian history, which are named after their chief representatives’ (Del. New Comm. on Gen. p. 213), it must be re- membered, on the other hand, that this was not P’s meaning. individual men who actually attained the age with which he credits them. And under the same head-
To him Methuselah and thefrest were | disa;
ing of arbitrary attempts to vindicate the trust- worthiness of the figures must be classed the sug- ΕΝ that the year was not one of 12 months’ uration, but of lor2or3or4or6. 7j¥ ‘year,’ in the Bible, has only one signification, the ordinary one. Are these desperate attempts necessary? Our answer might conceivably have been in the affirma- tive if there had been no uncertainty about the numbers themselves. But the three authorities, the MT, the Sam., and the LXX, are hopelessly To see this, it needs but a glance at the two following tables, which are reproduced mainly from Holzinger’s Gen. pp. 61, 115 :—
TABLE L From ΟΝ 5.
To the Flood . Year of the Flood
00 600 85 438 80 483 8, 464
{Ball 370 404) 80 | 200 239 82 207 239 80 200 230 29 119 148 70 186 205
Total . . . ° . . From Flood to Birth of Abraham 200
YEAR A.M. IN WHICH BB Diep. ! i
Sam. Lxx.
930 930 1042 1142 1140 1340 1235 1535 1290 1690 1307 1922
887 1487 1307 2256 1807 2227
1170 (Luc. 1174) 1070 years
The slightest inspection of Table I. shows that the discrepancies are not due to accident. The regularity with which the LXX advances the age of the father at the birth of his first son by 100 years betrays purpose. The manipulation οἵ MT and Sam., so that, although they do not agree as zo the year after the Creation in which Methuselah died, they yet, both of them, date his death in the year of the Flood, is eed significant. The date of the Flood in MT, 1656, is obtained by adding the remaining 349 years of Noah’s life to the 1307