# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1857_S307
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The True Chronology of the Old Testament, etc.   307

those now accessible to us have their origin, while yet the true reading, as in 1 John 5:7, has been preserved for us also through a translation. But it is not only known that all orthodox teachers have without hesitation acknowledged that in many passages of Holy Scripture, of the Old as well as of the New Testament, false readings have at times crept into many codices; the plain evidence also teaches this so incontestably that it cannot be disputed at all. Add to this that what is at issue here is not an article of the Christian faith. For the plain evidence indeed also teaches this, that however many the variants in the biblical text may be, divine providence has graciously prevented every such corruption of the text by which any article of the Christian faith would be called into question. All variants rather concern only secondary matters, or such doctrines as are already attested elsewhere to full sufficiency; and finally, through no variant does there anywhere emerge a sense that would contradict an article of faith. Professor Seyffarth too, although his presentation of biblical chronology is the fruit of many years of laborious research, is nevertheless far removed from the opinion that the true light has come only through the correct chronology, and that all salvation depends precisely on the correct chronology. In his Christian humility he rather confesses that here too it is only a matter of "secondary things." Indeed, he writes concerning the fact that the exact chronology had not yet been found 300 years ago: "The Reformers truly had more to do than to trouble themselves with such trifles, on which no man's salvation depends — whether Christ, the Savior of the world, came into the world 1500 years earlier or later than was taught at that time." (P. 39.) But Professor Seyffarth had made the experience of how the unbelieving scholars in particular frequently made much of the claim that the admittedly false chronology of the Bible, as they say, incontestably documents that the Bible cannot be a divine revelation; he had at the same time learned how many weak persons were led astray from Holy Scripture by this brazen assertion of the dictators in the realm of science and suffered shipwreck in faith; finally it had become known to him that the Jews often consoled themselves in their rejection of our Lord Jesus Christ with the thought that this Jesus had not come in the time foretold by the prophets, but more than a thousand years too early, and was therefore a false Messiah. This led him to undertake his chronological researches; he devoted almost his whole life to them, and to this end made studies in oriental philology and oriental antiquities, in astronomy and hieroglyphics — studies, therefore, to which, both because of their toilsomeness and dryness and because of their difficulty, only few scholars devote themselves. He did it solely for the glory of God, for the defense of the Word of God, and for the salvation of his fellow redeemed. His original labor and toil was not