Abraham's days, about B.C. 2159, as will be shewn hereafter, and came originally from Arabia, according to Manetho, is lowered by Newton to the days of Joshua, above 500 years, and converted into the Canaanites, who fled from Joshua, and retired in great numbers into Egypt, and there conquered Timaus (Thamus, or Thammuz,) king of the lower Egypt, and reigned there under their kings Salatis, Boon, Apachnas, Apophis, Janias, Assis, &c. until the days of Eli and Samuel; when, in the days of the former, they were expelled from Egypt by Misphragmuthosis, &c.; and in the days of the latter, B.C. 1100, the Philistines, strengthened by the access of the Shepherds, conquered Israel, and took the ark. P. 9, 10.

2. The list of Egyptian Kings, furnished by Herodotus, is thus altered by Newton, p. 246, 247 :—

In his first ten kings Newton has strangely dislocated the order of Herodotus; in the last eleven he follows the same. To Newton's list I have assigned the dates collected from his Short Chronicle; to that of Herodotus the results of the ensuing rectification of Egyptian Chronology.

The errors and derangements of Newton in this branch of Chronology are wild and extravagant.

1. He annihilates all Egyptian Chronology before the time of Joshua, though Sacred History testifies that it was a considerable kingdom in the days of Joseph and Jacob, and even of Abraham; and it is represented among "the first of the kingdoms," after the Deluge, by the united voice of sacred and profane history.

2. He leaves a great chasm between the time of Joshua and the accession of Rehoboam, or from the supposed expulsion of the Shepherds to the supposed commencement of the reign of Sesostris, his Sesac.

3. Sesostris, the fourth mentioned by Herodotus, is made the founder of the Egyptian empire, at least 334 years lower than his truer time; and Menes*, the real founder, according to Herodotus, is degraded to the fourth place, and rated above 1500 years lower than his time. Nitocris also, the second noticed by Herodotus, and long before Moris, is thrust down to the tenth place, and rated 940 years below her probable time. The reign of Cheops †, the supposed founder of the first of the great pyramids near Memphis, to whom Herodotus had expressly assigned 50 years, is reduced by Newton to a single year; and that of Cephren, the supposed builder of the second, is reduced from 56, to 16 years.

4. On the other hand, he places Sethon, priest of Vulcan, too high, by 38 years; for his reign is accurately determined from Scripture to B.C. 713; since, according to Herodotus, he reigned in the year of Sennacherib's invasion of Egypt. And in consequence of this mistake, he reckons no less than 96 years from the time of his accession to the sole reign of Psammitichus, who was one of the twelve contemporary kings, and who dethroned the rest; and has given him a reign of 38 years more. So that, deducting the true length of Sethon's reign, 40 years, Psammitichus reigned conjointly with the twelve kings, 56 years; and in all 94 years!-a period equivalent to five reigns, according to his reduced standard, 5 x 19=95 years.

Who now can read, without surprise and wonder, Newton's

* In the Short Chronicle, Menes is dated B.C. 912; and put before Proteus, B.C. 909. P. 28, 29.

† 825. “Cheops reigns in Egypt. He built the greatest pyramid for his sepulchre." P. 32.

final statement of the result of his discoveries in chronology. P. 8.

"I have drawn up the following chronological table so as to make chronology suit (1.) With the course of nature [in the exact lengths of reigns and generations]; (2.) With Astronomy [in the precession of the equinoxes and achronycal risings of the stars]; (3.) With Sacred History, [in the times of the Shepherd invasion of Egypt, and of Sesostris, or Sesac]; (4.) With Herodotus, the father of History, [in the order and times of the Egyptian kings]; and (5.) With itself: without the many repugnancies complained of by Plutarch."

"I do not pretend to be exact to a year: there may be errors of five or ten years, and sometimes twenty; and not much above." -Credat Judæus!

The rest of his chronology relates to the Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, and Persians; it abounds, indeed, with considerable errors and anachronisms, but not of such magnitude or moment as these already described. I shall, therefore, wave them, for fear of protracting this review to a disproportionate length; and conclude with some conjectures on the causes which probably contributed to his deplorable failure in Chronology.

1. By a rare felicity of genius, this great man possessed, in an extraordinary degree, the art of collecting, combining, and amalgamating a great variety of unconnected, and seemingly discordant materials, drawn from widely different sources, History, Mythology, Antiquities, Etymology, and Astronomy, into one common mass of evidence. But his arguments were frequently fanciful and inconclusive, because he was more attentive to their number than to their weight; and he seemed to shut his eyes sometimes against the strongest, when they militated against a favourite hypothesis. Thus the positive and united testimony of the Parian Chronicle, Thucydides, and Herodotus, infinitely out-weighing all his counter-authorities, to determine the true time of Hesiod, were of no avail to change his pre-conceived opinion.

2. By a procedure still more unjustifiable, he did not scruple to wrest evidence, or strain a testimony to a sense foreign from its true import, in order to support his hypothesis. Thus he introduces Scripture to prove the identity of Sesostris and Sesac, from the supposed conquests of the latter to whom, according to his interpretation, "GOD gave the kingdoms of the lands."

2 Chron. xii. 8. pp. 69, 219. But this is a mistake: the text only signifying that to punish the Jews, for their rejection of the Theocracy, or Divine government, GOD gave them into the hand of Sesac; and put them under that severer yoke of human tyranny under which the neighbouring kingdoms or countries groaned: "that they may know [the difference between] my service, and the service of the countries around:" or, as well explained by Josephus, "that they might learn, whether it were less burthensome to serve man rather than GOD."

He is also equally incorrect in his etymological analogy between the names Sesostris and Sesac. The true name of the Egyptian hero was Seth, Sethos, or Sethosis, which the Greeks metamorphosed, according to their fashion, into Sesostris: but, pvw, Sisak, (or pw, Susak, as it is written, 1 Kings xiv. 25) may most easily and naturally be derived from , (in composition, the contraction of WN) qui, and П (Sakah) bibit; it might therefore have been an appellation signifying a "tipler" or "drunkard *" given to the Egyptian king, in derision or contempt. And nothing is recorded of him in Scripture, but his sacrilegious plunder of the temple, and of the royal treasures at Jerusalem, and return home again. How different his name and actions from the noble character and extensive conquests of the ancient Egyptian hero!

By a similar mistake, from those passages of Scripture, that "the Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews: for that was an abomination to the Egyptians;" because "every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians," Gen. xliii. 32; xlvi. 34; he infers that "the Egyptians, in the time of Joseph, were under the government of the genuine Egyptians, and not under that of the Shepherds," p. 198. But he is mistaken in supposing that this happened before the government of the Shepherds; the text plainly proves that it was after; for why, unless from their past sufferings, ending with the expulsion of the Shepherds, about 30 years before, and which therefore were not yet forgotten, should "every shepherd be an abomination to the Egyptians?"

3. But the chief cause of his failure was suppression of

* In this sense evidently, the word TV, "Sesach," is applied to the last king of Babylon, as prophetic of the drunken feast, during which the city was surprised and taken by Cyrus, Jer. xxv. 26; li. 39–57. This anniversary feast was called by the Greeks, Σακεαι ἡμεραι.

evidence. Every time he transcribed the work, he shortened it, by leaving out some of the authorities and references on which he had grounded his opinion. This necessarily rendered his sixteenth and last copy the most imperfect and unsatisfactory of all; for surely in the course of 30 years he must have forgotten or mistaken several of his original documents: we have seen instances of both. Besides it savoured too much of self-sufficiency to attempt to obtrude his own opinions upon the world, without deigning to state or explain the grounds of them.

Thus, in his Egyptian Chronology, the foregoing dates. assigned by him, in the Short Chronicle, to the kings of Egypt, have not even the shadow of proof; not a trace of them remains in the body of the work, if ever it existed there. Several of them appear like the fictions of a disordered imagination; and his ingenious, but visionary system, upon the whole, resembles “the fantastic forms in an evening cloud: we seem to descry castles, and mountains, and gigantic appearances; but while we gaze, the forms die away, and we are soon lost in gloom and uncer tainty." Bryant.

VIII. Chronology of KENNEDY.

This is a most eccentric system, and deserves to be noticed for its singularity. It is purely astronomical; the chronology of it being subservient to the astronomy; whence he denominates the work, Physiological Chronology, as distinguished from Historical. Introduct. p. 11.

He begins à priori from the date of the Creation, which he arbitrarily assumes to have been in the year B.C. 4007, three years higher than Usher, because it possessed some remarkable astronomical characters; namely, that the autumnal equinox, when he supposes the world to have been created, began 1. at noon, 2. at the time of full moon, and 3. on the fourth day of the week: and on these data he frames his system, in a bulky quarto volume of about 750 pages.

The following is an outline of his Sacred Chronology:—