# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1857_S303
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The True Chronology of the Old Testament, etc.   303

since he believed that they would be on earth, and would consist in eating and drinking and Jewish feasts and a glory of a thousand years included in these things."

With this we have set forth the most important utterances of chiliastic views by teachers of the church of the first centuries, with the exception, unfortunately, of Irenaeus, and we hope to have attained the purpose expressed in our introduction. In a following number we will then also communicate the chief testimonies from the ancient church against chiliasm.

The True Chronology
of the
Old Testament,
together with a chronological table for the New Testament.
A little handbook for Christian readers of the Bible
by
G. Seyffarth,
A. A. M. Ph. Th. D. — St. Louis, Mo., 1857.

An incontestably certain and therefore generally accepted biblical chronology, especially of the Old Testament, has thus far been a pium desiderium. Even the most thorough and most conscientious investigators have hitherto diverged not inconsiderably in this matter. While Luther, for example, sets the year of the birth of the Lord at 3960, Calov sets it at exactly 4000, Calvisius at 3947, G. Ch. Hosmann, professor in Kiel (in his Chronol. s. of 1734), at 4249, Gottfried Kohlreif (in his Chronologia sacra of 1724) at 4509. Chemnitz already names in his Harmony 14 different statements about the age of the world at the time of Christ's birth according to the Hebrew text, and declares that he will list only the "insigniores." These figures vary between 3508 and 4697, and thus differ from one another by more than a thousand years. As early as 1720 J. Albert Fabricius lists in his Bibliographia antiquaria 120 different biblical chronologies, of which none agrees with another with respect to the year of creation. Add to this that the most enlightened and most learned theologians have come to the conviction that it is precisely in the statements of dates and numbers that the biblical text has here and there acquired incorrect readings through the oversight of copyists or in some other way. Thus Luther, for example, writes: "The time of the judges from the death of Moses to Samuel is 357 years, Joshua included.. Hence there is a manifest error in the Acts of the Apostles chapter 13 (v. 20).. But the Greek text has been corrupted through the error of the scribe, which could easily have happened, in that he wrote 450 for 350, namely τετρακοσίοις for τριακοσίοις." (XIV, 1179, 1180.) Further Luther writes: "These