Note 322 — THE HEBREW TRADITION. (continued 2)

We have already seen above, that neither the Apostle Paul nor Josephus recognised the calculation of the 480 years. Africanus just as little, who reckoned 748 years. (Routh, Reliqu. sacræ, vol. ii. p. 313, ff.) Eusebius (reckons 600, or even 610 years; Præp. Ev. x. 14, compare Routh elsewhere; but in his Canon he calculates 480), Clemens Alexandr. (Strom. p. 386, Pott. 567), Syncellus (p. 175, 659), and others. Among modern scholars, Des Vignoles (Chronol. de l’hist. sainte, t. i. p. 172) has especially treated the question in detail. He finally decides upon the acceptation, that the period consisted of 648 years, but that the number 480 arose from a mistake in the text (p. 184), as others before him had declared. Böckh lastly says, that the number appears to him to have been inserted at a later period. (Manetho, p. 190.) Several other numbers of the Old Testament, especially all indeterminate numbers, as the 40 and its multiplicates, as well as the greater sums, e. g. Exodus xii. 40; Judges xi. 26; 1 Kings vi. 1; and in other places, and the whole uninterrupted chain of numbers, originating in them, appear to me to have been for the first time adopted since that early part of the Old Testament was last combined and revised, at all events for the first time after the exile. The opinion also adopted by Bertheau (Richter, p. 34), that this revision proceeds from Ezra, appears to me to be very probable.