# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1857_S306
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

306   The True Chronology of the Old Testament, etc.

Professor Seyffarth thus holds himself firmly assured that nothing has been lost even of that part of the inspired Word which reveals to the church the time since which the world has existed, but that it has only been withdrawn from us here in the West and has been preserved for us solely in an ancient translation. The aforesaid author does not assume arbitrarily that incorrect readings, which find their correction in the LXX, have entered into a few passages of the Hebrew text; nor does he assume it merely because without this assumption biblical chronology, so far as the time before Christ is concerned, stands in contradiction to the chronology of all ancient peoples; but above all because the New Testament in several such passages agrees not with the Hebrew text but with the LXX. *)

Accordingly it would be unfair to place Professor Seyffarth in one rank with the Romanists, who declare the original text corrupted in such a way that they prefer a translation to it. The former rather acknowledges the incorruptness of the Hebrew original text and its sole canonical authority, and maintains only that a few passages in it have been altered by the hand of a wanton man, and indeed not in all, but only in those manuscripts from which

will come to light which have this verse (1 John 5:7) and which are still now hidden away in the secret bookcases of divine providence. We will be content with the light that is given us, and in the twilight not so much demand the noonday sun as await it." Apparatus critic. p. 770. Glassius holds that that the passage 1 John 5:7 was expunged from the biblical text by the heretics. Philol. sacra, p. 187.

*) The blessed Glassius, to be sure, proceeds otherwise in this case. He believes that the Greek translators, for the sake of a tradition concerning the age of the world, inserted Cainan, and that Luke, unconcerned about the correctness of the genealogy, took over in Luke 3:36 the erroneous reading of the Septuagint then in use! He writes: Ego ita sentio, interpretes istos certum annorum mundi usque ad sua tempora numerum, ex traditione quadam sibi proposuisse, quam cum textui hebræo minus conformem esse viderent, numeros annorum vitæ patriarcharum Gen. 11. in versione sua varie mutarunt, uti collatio ostendit; atque insuper ad complendum propositum sibi numerum τὸν Cainan cum suis, quos vixit, annis inseruerunt." "Quidam quarto non Gen. 11., sed hoc in loco Luc. 3, 36. errorem esse volunt commissum, non vel ex Lucæ ἁμαρτήματι μνημονευτικῷ, vel ex librariorum incuria, sed ex eo, quod Evangelista, ut in cæteris, ita etiam in hoc secutus est editionem LXX suis temporibus toto orbe receptissimum.. Quarta (haec) non omnino improbanda videtur sententia, pro qua facit et hoc, Lucam generationes non exacte numerasse, sed scopo suo satisfactum existimasse, si genealogiam istam ad Adamum usque Protoplasten deduceret, quam ex LXX interpretibus eo etiam deduxit." Philol. s. p. 71, 231, 232. The objection that in that case the Holy Spirit would have let Luke err, Glassius seeks to turn aside with Titus 3:9. The difference between Glassius and Professor Seyffarth accordingly consists here in this, that the former, in order to allow no corruption of the text of Gen. 11, lets Luke write something erroneous along with the Septuagint, while Seyffarth assumes that something was omitted from Gen. 11 by copyists, so that Luke may be in the right, and thus that no error need be assumed as original either in the Old or in the New Testament.