Types of mankind, or, Ethnological researches, based upon the ancient monuments, paintings, sculptures, and crania of races, and upon their natural, geographical, philological and Biblical history / illustrated by selections from the inedited papers of Samuel George Morton and by additional contributions from L. Agassiz, W. Usher, and H.S. Patterson ; by J.C. Nott and Geo. R. Gliddon.

  • Nott, Josiah C. (Josiah Clark), 1804-1873.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Types of mankind, or, Ethnological researches, based upon the ancient monuments, paintings, sculptures, and crania of races, and upon their natural, geographical, philological and Biblical history / illustrated by selections from the inedited papers of Samuel George Morton and by additional contributions from L. Agassiz, W. Usher, and H.S. Patterson ; by J.C. Nott and Geo. R. Gliddon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    713/800 (page 657)
    rica has been compared with that of coetaneous Lutherans and Catholics in Europe. Con- tentions between scramblers for the loaves and fishes may, however, be left to the diverted contemplation of the gatherers of St. Peter’s pence. None of them have real bearing upon the science of mundane chronology, to which our present investigations are confined. Until very recent times, it was customary, among chronologers, to follow the Judaic and post-Christian system in assigning eras to events; viz.: by assuming that a given occur- rence had taken place in such a year (Anno Mundi) of the Creation of the world. This arrangement would have been absolutely exact, if the precise moment of Creation, accord- ing to the “ book of Genesis,” had been previously settled, or even conventionally agreed upon: but, unhappily, no two men ever patiently reckoned up its numerals and exhibited the same sum total; as will be made apparent anon, in its place. Besides, this arrange- ment was found by experience to be theologically unsafe; because, on the one hand, the Christian Fathers, by assuming the Septuagint computation, demonstrated that Jesus, ap- pearing exactly in Josephus’s 5555th year of the world, could be no other than the Xpitfos, “the anointed;” (332) whilst, on the other hand, the Jewish Doctors, proving through computation of the Hebrew Text that the birth of Jesus had occurred in the year of the world 3751, demonstrated that ho could not possibly be their MeSAaiaH. (333) “ There was an old tradition,” says the profound Kennicott, (334) “ alike common among Judaeans and Christians, sprung from the mystic interpretation of Creation in six days, that the duration of the world should be 6000 years: that the Messianic advent should be in the sixth millennium ; because he would come in the latter days. The ancient Jews, there- fore, their chronology having been previously contracted, made use of an argument suffi- ciently specious, through which they did not recognize Jesus: for the Messiah was to come in the sixth millennium; but Jesus was born (according to the computation of time by them received) in the latfer part of the fourth millennium, about the year of the world 3760 (Seder Olam, edit. Meyer; pp. 95 and 111). The very celebrated [Muslim-Arab] Abul-Pharagius, who lived in the XHIth century, in his history of Dynasties, thus proffers a sentence worthy of remembrance; by Pococke so rendered into Latin:—*A defective computation is ascribed by Doctors of the Jews — For, as it is pronounced, in the Law and the Prophets, about the Messiah, he was to be sent at the ultimate times: nor otherwise is the commentary of the more antique Rabbis, who reject Christ; as if the ages of men, by which the epoch of the world is made out, could change. They subtracted from the life of Adam, at the birth of Seth, one hundred years, and added them to the rest of the latter’s life; and they did the same to the lives of the rest of the children of Adam, down to Abraham. And thus it was done, as their computation indicates, in order that Christ should be manifested in the fifth [fourth, K.] millennary through accident in the middle of the years of the world; which in all, according to them, will be 7000: and they said, We are now in the middle of this time, and yet the time designated for the advent of the Messiah has not arrived.’ The computation of the LXX also indicates, that Christ should be manifested in the sixth millennary, and that this would be his time. . . . The old Italic version, which, according to St. Augustine, was ‘ verborum tenacior cum perspicuitate sentential,’ is the foundation of the chronologia major of the Latin Church, to this day (1780); for, ‘ in the Roman Martyrology, which is publicly chanted in church, on the 8th Jan., the Nativity of the Lord is thus announced to the people from the ecclesiastical table: Year from the creation 5099 (5199 in Martyrol. Rom. Antwerp. 1678, p. 388): and from the deluge year 2957 (Hod., p. 447).” A quotation from a Christian work next to canonical will establish the belief of those early communities who lived nearest to the apostles: — the 5500 years, be it noted, had been, by Nicodemus, “ found in the first of the seventy books, where Michael the arch- angel” had mentioned them to “Adam, the first man.” “ 13 By these five cubits and a half for the building of the Ark of the Old Testament, we perceived and knew that in five thousand years and half (one thousand) years, Jesus Christ was to come in the ark or tabernacle of the body; 14 And so our Scriptures testify that he is the Son of God. and the Lord and King of Israel. 15 And because after his suffering, our chief priests were surprised at the signs which were wrought by his means, we opened that book to search all the generations down to the generation of Joseph and Mary the mother of Jesus, supposing him to be the seed of David; \ 83 (332) Hexn'EI.l : Christian Theism; 1845; pp. 82, S3. (33.3) Seder Olam Jtabba, composed about A. d. 130; apud IIales. (334) Dissertatio Generalis; §75, pp. 32, 33, 76.