/2/
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2. So Noldeke in the Jahrbb. fuer protest. Theol., 1875, p. 344.
Genesis xv. 13-16 expressly states that the generation is reckoned
as 100 years in this period.
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Such a chronology is totally at variance with the simplicity of the
legend. /1/ It is also evident, that if even in the case of the
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1. "Exact chronological dates are a sure sign of later working up
of old poetical legends." Buttmann, I. p. 181.
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historical books the systematic chronology is no older than the
period of the exile, that of the Pentateuch must be of still later
origin. For the historical period there were certain fixed points
for chronology to lay hold of; it cannot have begun with the
patriarchs and gone on to the kings, it must have begun with the
kings and then gone higher up to the patriarchs; it must have
begun at the lower end, where alone it had any firm ground to stand
on. The belief that the men of the early world lived to a great
age is no doubt old, but the settled chronology, based on the years
in which each patriarch begat his son, is an artifice in which we
manifestly see the doctrinaire treatment of history which was coming
into vogue for later periods, attempting to lay hold of the earliest
legends as well.
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