# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1857_S305
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The True Chronology of the Old Testament, etc.   305

sheets contains so much, in simple language so much that is profound, and (at least for us) so much that is new for the defense of the old Bible — since we ourselves recognize that we are altogether incompetent for that.

The reverend author proceeds from the presupposition that into the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, as we have it here in the West, certain incorrect readings affecting chronology have crept in, whence it has come about that hitherto no complete agreement in the results of biblical-chronological research has been attainable; but that in the old Greek translation of the Septuagint, which was made as early as the year 280 before Christ, and from which the holy evangelists and apostles for the most part cite the Old Testament passages, the correct readings in question have been preserved. Perhaps this may prejudice many a Christian reader against the whole writing from the outset and fill him with the misgiving that thereby faith in the incorruptness of the original text is made to totter. Every Lutheran theologian knows, indeed, how this too has always been and still is an important point of controversy between the Lutheran and the Roman church: that not any translation, but the Hebrew (and in the New Testament the Greek) original text is the proper rule and norm of all doctrine, where the Christian always has to seek the final decision in all disputes. But Professor Seyffarth is far from wishing to deny this important principle. With all decisiveness he rather declares on page 14: "that where the two texts (the Hebrew and that of the Septuagint) diverge from each other, always and on principle the readings of the Hebrew text must be preferred." Without, therefore, wishing in the least to touch the integrity and sole canonicity of the original text, immediately inspired by the Holy Spirit, the author maintains only that, like some other biblical texts, so also some containing chronological data have been corrupted. Nor is it his opinion that a general corruption of these passages has taken place, but that it has affected only those editions which happen to be accessible to us now in the West, and that it is therefore only a particular one. He writes on p. 16: "I am convinced that manuscripts will yet be found in Asia or Africa which, with regard to the patriarchal ages, agree with those manuscripts which the seventy translators, the Sanhedrin at Alexandria, received from Jerusalem, and which in the time of Josephus, until the destruction of Jerusalem, were in general use." Cf. p. 68. *) Mr.

*) The situation here is the same as that which Bengel once took toward the passage. 1 John 5:7. Since up to that time the passage was found in no reliable Greek manuscript, for which reason, as is well known, Luther did not take it into his German Bible, into which it was received only from 1576 onward, the great critic Bengel contented himself with admitting the passage chiefly on the ground of the old Latin translation in a multitude of patristic citations, and added: "One may certainly still hope that, if not the Johannine autograph, yet other very ancient Greek codices will in his time

20