Wherefore no one who considerately weighs facts will doubt that Cain might have built a city, and that a large one, when it is observed how prolonged were the lives of men, unless perhaps some sceptic take exception to this very length of years which our authors ascribe to the antediluvians and deny that this is credible.
And so, too, they do not believe that the size of men's bodies was larger then than now, though the most esteemed of their own poets, Virgil, asserts the same, when he speaks of that huge stone which had been fixed as a landmark, and which a strong man of those ancient times snatched up as he fought, and ran, and hurled, and cast it,--"Scarce twelve strong men of later mould That weight could on their necks uphold."(1)thus declaring his opinion that the earth then produced mightier men.
And if in the more recent times, how much more in the ages before the world-renowned deluge? But the large size of the primitive human body is often proved to the incredulous by the exposure of sepulchres, either through the wear of time or the violence of torrents or some accident, and in which bones of incredible size have been found or have rolled out.I myself, along with some others, saw on the shore at Utica a man's molar tooth of such a size, that if it were cut down into teeth such as we have, a hundred, I fancy, could have been made out of it.But that, I believe, belonged to some giant.For though the bodies of ordinary men were then larger than ours, the giants surpassed all in stature.And neither in our own age nor any other have there been altogether wanting instances of gigantic stature, though they may be few.The younger Pliny, a most learned man, maintains that the older the world becomes, the smaller will be the bodies of men.(2) And he mentions that Homer in his poems often lamented the same decline; and this he does not laugh at as a poetical figment, but in his character of a recorder of natural wonders accepts it as historically true.But, as I said, the bones which are from time to time discovered prove the size of the bodies of the ancients,(3) and will do so to future ages, for they are slow to decay.But the length of an antediluvian's life cannot now be proved by any such monumental evidence.But we are not on this account to withhold our faith from the sacred history, whose statements of past fact we are the more inexcusable in discrediting, as we see the accuracy of its prediction of what was future.And even that same Pliny(4) tells us that there is still a nation in which men live 200 years.If, then, in places unknown to us, men are believed to have a length of days which is quite beyond our own experience, why should we not believe the same of times distant from our own? Or are we to believe that in other places there is what is not here, while we do not believe that in other times there has been anything but what is now?
CHAP.10.--OF THE DIFFERENT COMPUTATION OF THE AGES OF THE ANTEDILUVIANS, GIVEN BYTHE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS AND BY OUR OWN.(5)Wherefore, although there is a discrepancy for which I cannot account between our manuscripts and the Hebrew, in the very number of years assigned to the antediluvians, yet the discrepancy is not so great that they do not agree about their longevity.
For the very first man, Adam, before he begot his son Seth, is in our manuscripts found to have lived 230 years, but in the Hebrew mss.130.But after he begot Seth, our copies read that he lived 700 years, while the Hebrew give 800.And thus, when the two periods are taken together, the sum agrees.And so throughout the succeeding generations, the period before the father begets a son is always made shorter by 100 years in the Hebrew, but the period after his son is begotten is longer by 100 years in the Hebrew than in our copies.And thus, taking the two periods together, the result is the same in both.And in the sixth generation there is no discrepancy at all.In the seventh, however, of which Enoch is the representative, who is recorded to have been translated without death because he pleased God, there is the same discrepancy as in the first five generations, 100 years more being ascribed to him by our mss.before he begat a son.But still the result agrees; for according to both documents he lived before he was translated 365 years.In the eighth generation the discrepancy is less than in the others, and of a different kind.For Methuselah, whom Enoch begat, lived, before he begat his successor, not 100 years less, but 100 years more, according to the Hebrew reading; and in our MSS.
again these years are added to the period after he begat his son; so that in this case also the sum-total is the same.
And it is only in the ninth generation, that is, in the age of Lamech, Methuselah's son and Noah's father, that there is a discrepancy in the sum total; and even in this case it is slight.For the Hebrew MSS.represent him as living twenty-four years more than ours assign to him.For before he begat his son, who was called Noah, six years fewer are given to him by the Hebrew MSS.
than by ours; but after he begat this son, they give him thirty years more than ours; so that, deducting the former six, there remains, as we said, a surplus of twenty-four.
CHAP.11.--OF METHUSELAH'S AGE, WHICH SEEMS TO EXTEND FOURTEEN YEARSBEYOND THE
DELUGE.