and asteriscizing the versions of Scripture, after the manner of Origen', was become very general; but is as good as positively contradicted by the silence of Jerome, spoken of at pp. 188, 194, as well as by the evident ignorance of Africanus and Eusebius as to his existence, which could not have been the case had he been in the Hexapla. And when we add to these considerations, that Origen himself says positively, and without any qualification, of Abraham, that he was the twentieth from Adam, Ἀβραὰμ εἰκοστός γεγέννηται ἀπὸ τοῦ πρωτοπλάστου δέκα γὰρ γενεαὶ ἀπὸ Ἀδὰμ ἐπὶ Νῶς, καὶ δέκα ἀπὸ Nwe ni 'Aẞpadu; Comment. in Joann. Tom. xx. ἐπὶ where, it is to be observed, Origen had the Septuagint Version before him, and quotes from it ἤλπισεν ἐπικαλεῖσθαι κ.τ.λ. and Ενωχ εὐαρέστησε τῷ Dew...čтn diakóσia not, annis trecentis, as in the Vulgate from the Hebrew-and as, by the way, is

in which it is attempted to prove that Procopius flourished under Theodosius I. But the later date is that usually received.

This fashion adopted, if not invented by Origen, was followed also by Jerome who, in the preface to his Latin translation of the LXX. version of the books of Solomon, describes himself as 'vel antepositis lineis superflua quæque designans, vel stellis titulo prænotatis, ea quæ minus habebantur interserens. Oper. (Ed. Bened.) Vol. 1. p. 1419. St Augustine too, says, 'In Codicibus Græcis, qui a diligentioribus conscripti sunt, quædam obeliscos habent, et significant ea quæ in Hebræo non inveniuntur, et in Septuaginta inveniuntur; quædam asteriscos quibus ea significantur quæ habent Hebræi, nec habent Septuaginta. Quæst. in Gen. 155. Nor was the fashion confined to the Greek codices; for Augustine adds, (De Civ. Dei. XVII. cap. xliii.) 'Et multi codices has notas habentes usquequaque diffusi sunt et Latini.'

substituted in the Latin Version of Origen's Commentary by Ferrarius: and again εἶτα αἱ δέκα ἀπὸ τοῦ Νῶς ἐπὶ τὸν Ἀβραὰμ γενεαὶ καταλήγουσαι ἐπὶ Tov Aßpaáu Comment. in Matt. Tom. xv., and also reckons Jacob as the twenty-second from Adam (4th Homil. on Numb.); I do not think it is too much to say that Procopius's testimony is demolished1.

And as regards the Gospel of St Luke, though the evidence of the MSS. and versions is admitted to be very formidable, yet it does not seem of sufficient weight to counterbalance the extreme improbability of St Luke having inserted a name in our Lord's genealogy, which was not found either in the Hebrew or Septuagint copies of the Bible. Beza's very ancient MS. and Irenæus's testimony come in very opportunely to strengthen the conviction, founded upon probability, that Cainan has no right to a place in the genealogy; and the reflection that a long list of proper names constitutes the passage, where, of all others, the addition or the loss of a word or two might most easily be

While these sheets have been passing through the press, I have consulted the original of Procopius, and find my remarks fully borne out; indeed much beyond my expectation. There is not the remotest allusion in Procopius to Origen or the Hexapla. He merely says, 'Hebraica veritas habet Salam genitum esse ab Arphaxad. Quæ deinde in medio ponuntur obelisco signata visuntur.' Comment. in Genes. xi. While on the subject of Procopius I may add, with reference to p. 83, that he alludes to the difficulty about Terah's age, and solves it exactly as Usher did, by considering Abraham as not the eldest, but named first on account of his patriarchal dignity.

effected, and with the greatest facility be generally propagated, goes far to mitigate our wonder that such an error should have crept into all the existing copies of the Scriptures.

Lastly, we must not forget, what has been observed by Bochart, Huetius upon Origen's Comment. on St. Joh. Tom. xx., and others, that besides the external evidence, there are two or three circumstances which on the score of internal probability make the second Cainan very suspicious. The first Cainan was the fourth from Adam: he is the fourth from Noah. The number of years ascribed to the second Cainan before he begat Salah, is precisely the same as the number ascribed to Arphaxad before he begat Cainan. The addition of this one. name made Abraham the twenty-first generation. (3x7 or 3 hebdomads, corresponding to the three double hebdomads of St Matthew), and also made up the seventy-seven generations, from which Augustine extracted such wonders; all these circumstances are sufficient of themselves to throw doubt upon the authenticity of Cainan.

On the whole, then, it seems certain, that for the first three, or nearly four, centuries, after Christ, the Septuagint version agreed with the Hebrew in But towards the close of the omitting Cainan. fourth century, either for some chronological purpose, or for the sake of obtaining some mystical number, or because the name had been introduced into the list of our Lord's ancestors in St Luke's Gospel by accident or design, and it was thought

necessary to bring the Septuagint genealogies into harmony with it, for some one or more of these reasons, or for some other of which we are ignorant, the name of Cainan was introduced into the Septuagint at first, probably, into some codex of note and authority, and thence into all subsequent copies. How the name got into St Luke it is perhaps impossible to discover. It may have been a mere accident arising from the method of writing the genealogy in double columns, either with the names consecutively in the same column, or with the consecutive names opposite to one another, the adoption of which two methods led, as Mill tells us, to infinite confusion, (see Mill's N. T., note on Luke iii.) Or it may have been added on some conjectural ground, to make up the famous number seventy-seven, which is, in point of fact, the connexion in which we have the earliest evidence of its existence. But that it was not always in St Luke's list we may be pretty sure, both from the testimony of Irenæus, and from the improbability of St Luke's introducing a name into his genealogy which was not either in the Hebrew or Greek Scriptures of the Old Testament, as well as from the evidence of Beza's very ancient MS. For in spite of all the arguments used to disparage that MS., it is an invaluable evidence of the non-existence of Cainan in the older copies. For we know of no conceivable motive which should have induced a copyist of that age to leave out the name if it had been there while the motive for its insertion into

all the more modern MSS., from which our present text is derived, is manifest, viz. to bring St Luke into harmony with the received text of the Septuagint, which was, what we may call, the Authorised Version through Christendom, till the Vulgate partially superseded it. And thus much must suffice on this complicated question. We conclude that, at all events, Cainan has no right to a place among the ancestors of Jesus Christ.