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Untitled Article
extemporary with the patriarch Isaac himself . Moreover , there is reason to . believe that it is accurate as well as ancient ; for in every passage in which we have the opportunity of comparing it with the remains of the Greek text , it is found to render the sense of the original with the most scrupulous fidelity . The plan of the work thus recovered is described by Eusebius himself as follows :
" I shall begin with the chronology of the Chaldeans , and , in succession , of the Assyrians , Medes , Lydians and Persians . The second chapter will be confined to that of the Hebrews . In the third , I shall describe the numerous dynasties of the Egyptian kings with that of the Ptolemies , who , after the death of the Macedonian conqueror , reigned in Alexandria , The fourth will be devoted to the history of Greece . I shall enumerate the kings who reigned in Sicyon , in Athens , in Argos , Lacedsemon and Corinth ; to these I
shall add the several periods when different states obtained the empire of the sea , and shall conclude with the origin and succession of the Grecian Ol yrn ^ piads . The last chapters will contain the kings of Macedon and Thessaly 5 those of Assyria and Asia after the death of Alexander ; the descendants of iEneas who ruled the Latins , subsequently called Romans ; those who sue * ceeded Romulus and were the founders of the Roman city ; the emperors
after Caesar and Augustus , and the annual magistrates with the title of consuls . These divisions will form the first part : and from the materials thus collected I shall compose my general canon of times , in which the several successions will be plaeed in collateral columns , so arranged that , at the first glance , the reader may compare them together , and see who were contemporaries , and what relation of time the sovereigns of different countries , with the principal events of their reigns , bore to each other . "
The first of these chapters consists principally of extracts from the works of Berosus and Abydenus , detailing the Chaldean cosmogony and history of the world before the flood , the history of the deluge , and the escape from it of Xisuthris in an ark , the erection of the tower at Babylon by his children , and the confusion of tongues , and the succeeding dynasties to Semiramis , to Phul , Sennacherib , Samuges , Nabupalsar , Nabucodrosser , &c . Eusebius points out the derivation of this history from the same source as that of
Jvloses disfigured by fables ; he reduces the measure of the generations by contending the Chaldean Saros to have been only a short duration of time , and points to the account of the last race of princes as giving support to the testimony of the Scriptures concerning them . The passages thus preserved , many of which were before entirely unknown , are from the works of authors that perished more than one thousand years ago , and , we need not add , therefore possess the strongest interest for the scholar of the present day .
The second chapter , on the Chronology of the Assyrians , has for its sources the long-lost works of Abydenus , Castor , Cephalio and Ctesias , in addition to those which we still have in Herodotus and Diodorus , and in thia Eusebius solves a difficulty which has sorely perplexed the learned , arising from the supposed identity of the Nimrod of the Scriptures and the Bel o £ profane history , whose son nevertheless was supposed to be TNinus , only the fourth from Noah , yet a builder of cities and leader of victorious armies . Abydenus , however , shews that Ninus was , in the Assyrian chronology , not the son of Bel , but of the second Arbel , the ninth not the fourth from Noah , and about contemporary with Abraham . In the following chapter , on the Chronology of the Hebrews , the first
Untitled Article
Chiynicon of Eusebius . 325
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1827, page 325, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1796/page/13/
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