B. F. Bonnell, of Geyserville, Cal., has encountered a little chronological puzzle in Genesis which very frequently calls careful Bible readers to a halt. He presents it very compactly in the following lines:
According to Gen. 5:32, Noah was five hundred years old when Shem was born. According to 7:11-13, he was six hundred when he entered the ark. According to 11:10, Shem was one hundred when Arphaxad was born. How, then, could Arphaxad have been born, as stated in 11:10, two years after the flood?
Again:
Noah was six hundred years old (Gen. 7:11-13) when he entered the ark. He lived, according to 9:28, 350 years after the flood. The flood, according to 7:11 and 8:14, lasted one year and ten days. How could Noah, as stated in 9:29, be 950 years old at the time of his death?
In your critical review of Harper's lectures, March 2, 1895, you say, "Shem's real age at the time of the flood was ninety-eight years," but you do not say how you reached that conclusion.
In attempting an explanation, let us begin at the beginning of this list of figures. [294] First, then, it is not correct to say that, "according to Gen. 5:32, Noah was five hundred years old when Shem was born." The text does not say so. It says this: "And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham and Japheth." Here are two distinct facts asserted, not connected by an adverb of time to show that they were simultaneous. If they were simultaneous, notwithstanding the omission of the adverb, then Shem, Ham and Japheth were triplets. But we know that they were not triplets, because Ham, in 9:24, is called Noah's "youngest son," which he could not be if all three were born at one birth. What is the meaning, then, of 5:32? It means, that at the close of the period contemplated in the genealogy of which it is the closing verse, Noah was five hundred years old; and that, either earlier or later, the text does not determine which, Noah begat these three sons.
If now we wish to ascertain the exact time when Shem was born, the key is given us in the statement that "Shem was one hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood" (11:10). But if Shem was one hundred years old two years after the flood,
he was ninety-eight at the time of the flood. And as he was ninety-eight at the time of the flood, when his father was six hundred, he was born when his father was five hundred and two. We have no figures by which to determine the exact ages of his two brothers; but it is clear from the fact of Ham being the youngest, that he was born still later.
Now, we turn to the first statements about the age of Noah. The text does not say, with Bro. Bonnell, that "Noah was six hundred years old when he entered the ark." The statement is that "Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth," [295] and this means, not merely when the flood began, but during nearly the whole continuance of the flood. By Hebrew custom a man would be six hundred years old all the time from the day he entered his six hundredth year till the day he reached his six hundred and first year; and this custom grew out of their other custom of counting any part of a year at the close of a series as if it were a whole year. Our own custom is similar, but not the same. When a man asks me now, "What is your age?" I answer I am sixty-nine; and I will continue to answer thus till I become seventy. If I should live to Noah's age I would not call myself six hundred till I had completed my six hundredth year; but he called himself six hundred when he began that year. It is in this sense then that Noah was six hundred years old when the flood was on the earth. But if we inquire his exact age when the flood began, it is given in 7:11, which says: "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, in the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of the heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights." Noah's age, then, was five hundred and ninety-nine years, one month and seventeen days. Nothing could be more exact than this; and this exactness when exactness was called for, combined with a peculiar Semitic inexactness when exactness was not called for, is no mean evidence that the writer knew perfectly the facts in the case and described them precisely as they were.
We are now ready to understand the statement about Noah's entire age. When he came out of the ark his age was six hundred years, one month and twenty-seven days ( 8:14). If he lived through the rest of that year, [296] and three hundred and forty-nine years longer, he was nine hundred and fifty when he died; for the Hebrews counted a piece of a year at the beginning of a series, as well as at the end of it, as if it were a whole year. According to this method of counting, if he lived to any point within the three hundred and forty-ninth year afterward, he would still be said to have lived, after the flood, three hundred and fifty years, and his whole life, on either supposition, was nine hundred and fifty.
In conclusion I will remark, that young people and older brethren, who have not had opportunity to familiarize themselves with the peculiarities of early Hebrew style, may be excused for becoming confused on some points of Biblical chronology; but those trained scholars who take advantage of these peculiarities to make out a series of contradictions, and thus to assail the credibility of the sacred narratives, are without excuse, and must be held accountable for the evil which they are doing.
[SEBC 294-297]
[June 4, 1898.]
ABBOTTISMS.
The Outlook continues to teem with eccentric sayings from its eccentric editor-in-
chief. In the number for May 14, I find two questions and answers, which are fair specimens:
"1. What did Jesus teach about 'signs and miracles'?"
He taught that they had a certain evidential significance, inferior to that given by his own personality and character, and, therefore, to be presented to the spiritually undeveloped whom the higher evidences did not impress (Luke 11:29; John 4:48; 10:38; 14:11). Here it is affirmed that Jesus taught two things: First, that the evidential value of miracles was "inferior to that given [297] by his own personality and character;" and second, that this inferior evidence was to be presented "to the spiritually undeveloped whom the higher evidence did not impress." Four passages are cited to prove that he taught this--just four times are many as are necessary if any one of them contains this teaching. Let us look at them, instead of being content with the figures which represent them. In the first it is said: "And when the multitudes were gathering unto him, he began to say, This generation is an evil generation; it seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah." The hearers in this instance are some of the "spiritually undeveloped;" but instead of presenting them with some of the inferior evidence, Jesus refuses to give them the sign which they demand. This is a curious way of teaching what Mr. Abbott says he does, but perhaps he teaches it in the next passage, which reads thus: "Jesus, therefore, said unto him [the nobleman], Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will in no wise believe." But this remark, instead of being addressed to a man "spiritually undeveloped," was addressed to one who, as soon as he heard what Jesus said, believed that his sick son, for whom he made request, and who was more than twenty miles away, was healed (see John 4:49, 50). Neither the person nor the facts in this case suit the editor's proposition. The third reads thus: "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not; but if I do them, though ye believe not me, believe the works, that ye may know and understand that the Father is in me and I in the Father." Here the Lord assigns such evidential force to his miracles as to say that his hearers need not believe him at all unless he performs them; and by saying, "though ye believe not me, believe the works," he gives the superior place to [298] his works. He teaches the reverse of the proposition to prove which the passage is cited. If Dr. Abbott were trying to prove by the Scriptures that black is white, he would hunt for a few passages in which it is said that black is not white.
The fourth passage suits the proposition no better. It says: "Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me; or else believe me for the very work's sake." Here again it is implied that his works furnished more conclusive evidence than his word. And this agrees with what he says in another place: "If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not
true" (i. e., valid). And just below he adds: "The works which the Father hath given me to accomplish, the very works that I do bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me" ( John 5:30-36).
I wonder why, in answering the query, Dr. Abbott did not quote or cite this passage, "If I had not done among them the works which none other did, they had not had sin; but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father" (John 15:24). How would they have been without sin in rejecting him, had he not done the works which he did? Only because his word and person without his miracles would have been insufficient to make unbelief a sin. And why did not our sage editor quote this passage: "Many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye may have life in his name"? When a man has a bad answer for a question, he is apt to quote in support of it the passages which have the least bearing upon it; or, rather, to cite them without quoting them.
In the same issue the editor is asked by a [299] correspondent: "What is the rationale of the miracle?" And this is his reply:
The exceptional powers of various sorts that are manifested by some exceptionally constituted persons suggest the true rationale of the subject. Miracle, or what may conventionally be called so, is the peculiar outcome of peculiarly endowed life. Life is the mother of all wonders. On the degree and reach of life, on its intensity and range of power, it will depend whether its natural working will be restricted to, or will rise above, the plane of the common and the familiar. In virtue of a life of peculiar intensity and extraordinary range, what was supernatural to common men was natural to Jesus.
I hope that the querist understood all this; but it is too foggy for me. All that I can get out of it is, that "miracle, or what may be conventionally called so," was natural to Jesus. I suppose, then, that it was natural to Peter, Paul, Philip, Judas Iscariot, and the many others who wrought miracles; and that all that miracles prove is the "peculiar intensity and extraordinary range of the life" of those who wrought them.
To another query, "Please tell us whether you believe in a personal second coming," the editor answers in these words:
Yes, a personal coming, not in form, however, but in power; not in show, but in spirit; and that this coming in the power of the Spirit is now in progress from more to more of efficiency, until the Spirit of Christ shall have thoroughly regenerated the present world.
How delightfully this harmonizes with Christ's own words when he says: "But when the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory, and before him shall be gathered all the nations, and he shall
separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep [300] from the goats: and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left."
Dr. Abbott ought to write out a new account of the words and works of Jesus; for he certainly believes very little of the account given in our four Gospels.
[SEBC 297-301]
[June 11, 1898.]