terval." To this he adds the testimony of many cele- brated profane historians, who affirm that the ancients lived 1000 years. In the above passage Josephus enu- merates/oMr causes of the longevity of the earlier patri- archs. 1. As to the first, viz., their being dearer to God than other men, it is plain that it cannot be maintained ; for the profligate descendants of Cain were equally long- lived, as mentioned above, with others. 2. Neither can we agree in the second reason he assigns ; because we find that Noah and others, though born so long subse- quently to the creation of Adam, yet lived to as great an age, some of them to a greater age than he did. 3. . If, again, it were right to attribute longevity to the su- perior quality of the food of the antediluvians, then the seasons, on which this depends, must, about Moses's time — for it was then that the term of human existence was reduced to its present standard— have assumed a fixed character. But no change at that time took place in the revolution of the heavenly bodies, by which the seasons of heat, cold, etc., are regulated : heiice we must not assume that it was the nature of the fruits they ate which caused longevity. 4, How far the antediluvians had advanced in scientific research generally, and in as- tronomical discovery particularly, we are not informed ; nor can we. place any dependence upon what Josephus says about the two inscribed pillars which remained from the old world (see A nt. i, 2, 9). We are not, there- fore, able to determine, with any confidence, that God permitted the earlier generations of man to live so long in order that they might arrive at a high degree of mental excellence. From the brief notices which the Scriptures afford of the character and habits of the ante- diluvians, we should rather infer that they had not ad- vanced very far in discoveries in natural and experi- mental philosophy. See Antediluvians. We must suppose that they did not reduce their language to al- phabetical order; nor was it necessary to do so at a time when human life was so prolonged that the tra- dition of the creation passed through only two hands to Noah. It would seem that the book ascribed to Enoch is a work of postdiluvian origin (see Jurieu, Crit. Hist.' i, 41). Possibly a want of mental employment, togeth- er with the labor they endured ere they were able to extract from the earth the necessaries of life, might have been some of the proximate causes of that degen- eracy which led God in judgment to destroy the old world. If the antediluvians began to bear children at the age on an average of 100, and if they ceased to do so at 000 years (see Shuckford's Connect, i, 36), the world might then have been far more densely populated than it is now. Supposing, moreover, that the earth was no more productive antecedently than it was subsequently to the flood, and that the antediluvian fathers were ig- norant of those mechanical arts which so much abridge human labor now, we can easily understand how diffi- cult they must have found it to secure for themselves the common necessaries of life, and this the more so if animal food was not allowed them. The prolonged life, then, of the generations before the flood would seem to have been rather an evil than a blessing, leading as it did to the too rapid peopling of the earth. 'We can readily conceive how this might conduce to that a^vful state of things expressed in the words, " And the wliole earth was filled with violence." In the absence of any well-regulated system of government, we can imagine what evils must have arisen : the unprincipled would • oppress the weak, the crafty would outwit the unsus- pecting, and, not having the fear of God before their eyes, destruction and miserj' would be in their ways. Still we must admire the providence of God in the lon- gevity of man immediately after the creation and the flood. After the creation, when the world was to be peopled by one man and one woman, the age of the greatest part of those on record was 900 and upwards. But after the flood, when there were three couples to re- people the earth, none of the patriarchs except Shem reached the age of 500, and only the first three of hij
LONGINUS
500
LONGLEY
line, viz. Arphaxad, Selah, and Eber, came near that age, which was in the first centnn- after the flood. In the second century we do not find tliat any attained tlie age of 2-10; and in the third century (about the latter end of which Abraham was born), none, except Terah, arrived at 200, by which time the world was so well peopled that they had built cities, and were formed into distinct nations under their respective kings (see Gen. XV; see also Usher and Petavius on the increase of mankind in the first three centuries after the flood).
2. The statements as to the length of the lives of Abraham and his nearer descendants, and some of his later, are so closely interwoven with the historical nar- rative, nol alone in form, but in sense, that their general truth and its cannot be separated. Abraham's age at the birth of Isaac is a great fact in his history, equally attested in the Old Testament and in the New. Again, the longevity ascribed to Jacob is confirmed by the question of Pharaoh and the patriarch's remarkable an- swer, in which he makes his then age of 130 years less than the years of his ancestors (Gen. xlvii, 9), a minute point of agreement with the other chronological state- ments to be especially noted. At a later time, the age of Moses is attested by various statements in the Penta- teuch, and in the New Test, on St. Stephen's authority, though it is to be observed that the mention of his hav- ing retained his strength to the end of his 120 years (Deut. xxxiv, 7) is, perhaps, indicative of an unusual lon- gevity. In the earlier part of the period following we notice similar instances in the case of Joshua, and, in- ferentially, in that of Othniel. Nothing in the Bible could be cited against this evidence, except it be the common explanation of Psa. xc (esp. ver. 10), combined with its ascription to Moses (see title).