date. How can the critics account for the corruption of the Hebrew text? It has unhappily efcaped the fagacity of the far greater number. Natural is the conjecture, that fome fcribe or owner of a copy,, without the least, design of an interpolation, might mark on the margin of Gen. xlvi. 21, notes of reference to pa☛ rallel paffages. Another afterwards fufpe&ting a defi, ciency in the numbers, and thinking the correction proper and necellary, might take the grandfons into the text. OTHER inftances of words, numbers, or fentences, left out, interpolated, or changed, by accident, or by officious and unfkilful hands, from the motive of emen? dation, it were cafy to produce. Thofe felected in the enfuing chapters relate folely to the subject of gene. alogy, and are fuch as may be reconciled with the courfe of nature, by reftoring numerical fignatures of a fimilar figure, for which thofe now extant in the ori ginal texts, feem to have been, by mistake substituted. IN notations of number, the facred writings alone are not reprehenfible. Who could imagine that all the Roman hiftorians, in and after the age of Auguftus, fhould, as above remarked, add two full years to the hort space between the birth and death of Tiberius See 1 Chron. vii, 6, and ch. viii.ir. See alfo Num. xxvi. 38-41. and Wall's Note on Gen. xlvi. 21. At the time of the mufter in the wilderness, the number of Benjamin's defcendants might be 46,600, but he could not have one grandfon at the defcent into Egypt. Nero ? Nero? That some of them did take notice of a compartnership in fovereignty; but none made the requifite deduction? That all defined accurately the laft current year of that prince's life, and all miftook that of his nativity and decease? That they left on record the means of ascertaining the true computation? And that the evangelift Luke fhould be the only writer of that age who characterised, with chronological precision, the 15th of that reign from its true commencement ? IN expreffing the degrees of kindred, the facred bif torians, conformably with the idiom of their language, ufe confiderable latitude. Any descendant was not improperly denominated of the first descent. Ezra, after at least four intermediate generations, is defcribed as a fon of Seraiah; and the infirm woman on whom Jefus performed a miraculous cure was, after an interval of thrice 14 generations, called a daughter of Abraham*. Sometimes even a fenior relation, by a political or figu rative sonship, is accounted the immediate defcendant of a junior predeceffor in office, as in the case of Zedekiah, who is promiscuously called the father's brother, the brother, and the fon of Jeconiah t. Among the Hebrews, fucceffion to the fame throne was equivalent to adoption. From the penury of their language the Old Teftament writers could not, with fufficient minutenefs, diftinguifh by one appropriate term every ra mification in genealogy. • Ezra, vii. 1. Luke, xiii. 16. ta Kings, xxiv. 17. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 9 and 1 Chron. iii. 16. So So copious however was the Roman tongue, that every degree of confanguinity and alliance by marriage, both in the transverse and direct line, might have been difcriminated by a proper and feparate word. Yet even their best historians are not exempt from inaccurate notations of relationship. One example shall suffice. The two Tarquins. "TRADITION and hiftory faid, that Superbus was the fon of Prifcus ;-that Superbus fought on horseback at the battle of Regillus; that Collatinus, the husband of Lucretia, was the fon of Egerius, nephew of the elder Tarquin. No, fays Dionyfius, none of these things can be true; for they are not confiftent with the long reigns of the kings. He produces no authority against the facts; nor does he know who was the father of Superbus, or the father of Collatinus. But he reasons from the received chronology, and concludes, contrary to all historical testimony, that Superbus was not the son but the grandson of Prifcus ;—that he did not fight on horseback at the above-mentioned battle; and that Collatinus was not the fon, but the grandson of Egerius." "LIVY, on the other hand, though he durft not openly contradict the received chronology, seems to have been fully perfuaded that it was not fo well vouched as many hiftorical facts, with which it was incompatible. He therefore adheres to the facts, and leaves it to fuch notable critics as Dionyfius to re concile them with the chronology as well as they can *." HERE now is a dignus vindice nodus; a knotty point brought to the tribunal of criticism for decifion. Be it in general obferved, that Hooke grofsly misreprefents Livy, who with his ufual hesitation in matters of very. remote antiquity, expreffes his uncertainty whether L. Tarquin were the fon or grandson of Prifcus, without fignifying either approbation or cenfure of the popular chronology +: nor does this author combat the more decifive opinion of Dionyfius in the fpirit of impartial arbitration, but rather with the violence and skill of an expert gladiator. FOR his determination Dionyfius affigns very appofite reasons, which feem to be founded on the report of authentic history, then but not now extant; and his ultimate inference is deduced with every criterion of conscious fincerity and truth.' THIS Analyfis has exceeded its ideal boundaries. Dionyfius points the whole of his artillery againft Fabius Pictor, whofe Roman Hiftory is long fince loft. The arguments of his opponent (Dionyfius) muft therefore be compreffed into the leaft prolix form of abbre Hooke's Rom. Hift. octavo, Pref. p. 61. Here is no reference to the paffages of the authors whose teftimony is detailed. Confult Dion. Halicarnaff. book iv. ch. vi. vol. ii. p. 153, in Spelman's Tranflation; and T. Livius, lib. i. cap. 46. + Prifci Tarquinii regis filius nepofne fuèrit, parum liquet; pluribus tamen auctoribus filium ediderim. loc. cit.; viation. viation. The introductory fentence it is, however, proper to transcribe at large. "I HAVE fufpended the narration of what follows that I may give the reafons which induced me to difagree with Fabius, and the reft of the hiftorians, who affirm, that the infants Tarquinius (Prifcus) left were the fons and not the grandsons of that prince; for those writers have very inconfiderately and negligently published this account, without examining any of the impoffibilities and abfurdities which destroy its truth; every one of which I fhall endeavour to point out in a few words." THIS author's work, no lefs valuable as a treasury of Roman antiquities than as a regular hiftory from Romulus to the 312th Varronian year, may in this case be admitted to have the authority of a genuine record. It teftifies that Prifcus, with his wife and family, came to Rome, according to Gellius, in the firft, or according to Licinnius in the eighth, of Ancus Marcius, whose reign was 24 years;-that his age, at the latter term, could not be under 25, and all agree that he reigned 38. He muft by this reckoning have died at the age of 80; or by the former, 88. Suppofe his wife to have been five years younger than himself, she Their three fons could not was 75 or 83 at his death. then be infants; for fuppofe the youngest born in the 50th of his mother's life, he was at the least 25 at the death of his father, and the eldeft (Superbus) 27. He is said to have been in the vigour of life when he flew Servius Tullius, after a reign of 44 years; and indeed it required P 2 |