# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1856_S136
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

136 Dr. Seyffarth's Corrections, etc.

in number, order, and meaning (apart from minor matters), and thus point to a common origin. Although 15 trillion different alphabets could be formed by permutation of the 25 letters, only the same one is found everywhere. Furthermore, it is handed down that the alphabet was so arranged at the time of the Flood that, through the position of its letters, it indicates the places of the planets. The 7 planets correspond to the 7 vowels of the ancients, as the ancients themselves attest, and the consonants to the signs of the zodiac; the position of the vowels in relation to the consonants indicates the position of the planets in the zodiac. There are actually only 16 consonants specifically distinct from one another, and yet their number has been brought to 25 in order to fill out the 24 ancient divisions of the zodiac. The first letter falls on the same point as the last. Even today in Persia the signs of the zodiac are expressed by the alphabet. All the ancient alphabets agree from a to u; one completes the other, and thus one finds again, of itself, the 25 letters of the primordial alphabet. If one now places these 25 letters, including the vowels, into the zodiac — the first two being referred to the first sign of the zodiac, and so on — one obtains a constellation that occurred only in the year 3447 B.C., on September 7. Our alphabet thus confirms, by simple calculations grounded in ancient traditions, that the Flood took place in the year 3447 B.C. — the very date to which Scripture, the Egyptians, and others have assigned it. Here the author adds the following words, worthy of being taken to heart: "Should anyone, on the other hand, go so far as to declare all these traditions to be lies and deception, or even to hold them up to ridicule, merely because they do not agree with his preconceived opinions, this would be fresh proof that to frivolous superficiality nothing is sacred except what it imagines for itself."

From the Creation to the Flood there result, according to the LXX, 2242 years (according to one variant, 2262). But since Methuselah would then have survived the Flood, a copying error must have crept into the text. Only in the lifespan of Methuselah are there major variants, so the error must lie there. Here the correction must be made so that 849 years (instead of 187) are reckoned from Methuselah's birth to Lamech's birth, and 620 years (instead of 782) from there to his death. Then there result 2424 years from the Creation to the Flood, and the year of the Creation is 5871 B.C. This is confirmed by many traditions of the ancient peoples.

The world-era of 36,000 years already mentioned rests on the precession of the equinoxes, which was known to all the ancient peoples — the Egyptians, Babylonians, Hebrews, Phoenicians, Indians, Persians, Greeks, Etruscans, Romans, and others. They reckoned, in round numbers, 3000 years for the shift of a sign of the zodiac of 30 degrees, and 1000 years for the shift of a decan of 10 degrees (precisely, it is