QUESTION III. Whether in this computation of years one should stand by the translation of the LXX interpreters, or rather by the Hebrew Scripture.¹

QUAESTIO III. Utrum in hac computatione annorum, standum sit translationi LXX. interpretum, an potius Scripturae Hebraicae.

Augustine, then, writes thus in book 15 of the City of God, chapter 13: But when I have said this, at once the reply will be made that this is a Jewish lie -- a charge already sufficiently dealt with above. For that the Seventy translators, men deservedly celebrated, could have lied is hard to believe. And if I ask which is the more credible -- that the Jewish nation, so far and wide dispersed, could have conspired with one accord to write down this falsehood, and, grudging others the authority, robbed themselves of the truth; or that seventy men, who were themselves also Jews, gathered in one place (since Ptolemy king of Egypt had drawn them together for this work), grudged the very truth to foreign nations and did this by common agreement -- who does not see which is the readier and easier thing to believe? Far be it, then, that any prudent person should believe either that Jews of whatever perversity and malice could have done so much across codices so many and so far and widely scattered, or that those memorable Seventy men shared one plan to begrudge the nations the truth. It is more credible, therefore, that when these texts first began to be copied from Ptolemy's Library, something of this kind could have happened in a single codex -- the one first copied from the source, whence it then spread more widely -- where indeed even a scribe's error could have occurred. And it is not absurd to suspect this in that question about the life of Methuselah, and in that other place where, with twenty-four years left over, the sum does not agree. But in those cases where a like corruption runs continuously -- so that before the begetting of the son who is entered into the line a hundred years are in one place present and in another lacking, while after the begetting, where they were lacking they are present and where they were present they are lacking, so that the total agrees (and this is found in the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and seventh generation) -- the error itself seems to have, if one may say so, a certain consistency, and smells not of chance but of design. And so let that diversity of the numbers, standing otherwise in the Greek and Latin codices and otherwise in the Hebrew -- where there is no such continuous evenness of a hundred years first added and afterward subtracted through so many generations -- be assigned neither to the malice of the Jews nor to the diligence or prudence of the Seventy translators, but to the error of the scribe who first received the codex to be copied from the aforesaid king's Library. For even now, where numbers do not bear on anything that can be easily grasped or that seems useful to learn, they are both carelessly copied and still more carelessly corrected. For who would think he must learn how many thousands of men each tribe of Israel could severally have had, since it is reckoned to be of no use? And how few men are there to whom the usefulness of this appears? But here, where through so many woven generations a hundred years are in one place present and in another lacking, and after the son who was to be commemorated is born they are lacking where they had been present and present where they had been lacking, so that the sum harmonizes -- surely because he who did this, wishing to persuade that the ancients lived such very numerous years because they reckoned them as the shortest, and trying to show this from the maturity of puberty at which sons fit for begetting were engendered, and so thinking that in those hundred years ten of ours were to be suggested to the incredulous, lest men refuse to accept in faith that men lived so long -- he added a hundred where he did not find an age suited to the begetting of sons; and the same hundred, after the sons were begotten, so that the total might agree, he subtracted.⁷

Sic igitur Augustinus libro 15 de Civitate Dei, capite 13, scribit: Sed cum hoc dixero, continuo referetur illud Iudaeorum esse mendacium, de quo superius satis actum est. Nam LXX interpretes, laudabiliter celebratos viros, potuisse mentiri difficile est. Ubi si quaeram quid sit credibilius -- Iudaeorum gentem tam longe lateque diffusam in hoc conscribendum mendacium uno consilio conspirare potuisse, et dum aliis invideant auctoritatem, sibi abstulisse veritatem; an Septuaginta homines, qui etiam ipsi Iudaei erant, in uno loco positos (quoniam rex Aegypti Ptolemaeus eos ad hoc opus asciverat) ipsam veritatem gentibus alienigenis invidisse, et communicato istud tunc fecisse consilio -- quis non videat quid proclivius faciliusque credatur? Sed absit ut prudens quispiam vel Iudaeos cuiuslibet perversitatis atque malitiae tantum potuisse credat in codicibus tam multis et tam longe lateque dispersis, vel Septuaginta illos memorabiles viros hoc de invidenda gentibus veritate unum communicasse consilium. Credibilius ergo quis dixerit, cum primum de Bibliotheca Ptolemaei describi ista coeperunt, tunc aliquid tale fieri potuisse in codice uno, scilicet primitus inde descripto, unde iam latius emanaret, ubi potuit quidem accidere etiam scriptoris error. Sed hoc in illa quaestione de vita Mathusalem non absurdum est suspicari, et in illo alio ubi, superantibus vigintiquattuor annis, summa non convenit. In his autem in quibus continuatur ipsius mendositatis similitudo -- ita ut ante genitum filium qui ordini inseritur alibi supersint centum anni, alibi desint; post genitum autem, ubi deerant supersint, ubi supererant desint, ut summa conveniat (et hoc in prima, secunda, tertia, quarta, quinta, septima generatione invenitur) -- videtur habere quandam, si dici potest, error ipse constantiam, nec casum redolet sed industriam. Itaque illa diversitas numerorum aliter se habentium in codicibus Graecis et Latinis, aliter in Hebraeis, ubi non est ista de centum annis prius additis et postea detractis per tot generationes continuata parilitas, nec malitiae Iudaeorum nec diligentiae vel prudentiae Septuaginta interpretum, sed scriptoris tribuatur errori, qui de Bibliotheca supradicti regis codicem describendum primus accepit. Nam etiam nunc, ubi numeri non faciunt intentum ad aliquid quod facile possit intelligi vel quod appareat utiliter disci, et negligenter describuntur et negligentius emendantur. Quis enim existimet sibi esse discendum quot millia hominum tribus Israel sigillatim habere potuerint, quoniam prodesse aliquid non putatur? Et quotusquisque hominum est cui profundis utilitatis huius appareat? Hic vero ubi per tot contextas generationes centum anni alibi adsunt, alibi desunt, et post natum qui commemorandus fuerat filium desunt ubi adfuerunt, adsunt ubi defuerunt, ut summa concordet: nimirum cum vellet persuadere qui hoc fecit ideo numerosissimos annos vixisse antiquos quod eos brevissimos nuncupabant, et hoc de maturitate pubertatis qua idonea filii gignerentur conaretur ostendere, atque ideo in illis centum annis decem nostros insinuandos putaret incredulis, ne homines tamdiu vixisse recipere in fidem nollent, addidit centum ubi gignendis filiis habilem non invenit aetatem; eosdemque post genitos filios, ut congrueret summa, detraxit.

...subtracted. For thus he wished to make the fitting begetting-ages credible, yet so as not to defraud the individual lives of any of their total years. But that in the sixth generation he did not do this is the very thing that more strongly shows he did it deliberately when, as we said, the matter demanded it -- because he did not do it where it was not demanded. For he found that in that same generation among the Hebrews Jared lived, before he begot Enoch, one hundred sixty-two years, which by that reckoning of short years come to sixteen years and a little less than two months -- an age already fit for begetting; and so there was no need to add a hundred short years to make ours twenty-six, nor after Enoch's birth to subtract those he had not added before it: thus it came about that here there was no variance between the two texts. But again it gives pause why in the eighth generation, before Lamech was born of Methuselah, whereas among the Hebrews one hundred eighty-two years are read, twenty fewer (or as another reading has it, twenty-two) are found in our codices, where a hundred is rather usually added; and after Lamech is begotten they are restored to complete the sum, which does not differ in the two texts. For if he wished the hundred seventy years to be understood, on account of the maturity of puberty, as seventeen, then just as he ought to add nothing, so now he ought to subtract nothing, because he had found an age suited to the begetting of sons -- for which reason in other cases he added those hundred years where he did not find it. This matter of the twenty years we might rightly suppose could have happened by chance corruption, were it not that he took care afterward to restore them, as he had first subtracted them, so that the integrity of the total should agree. Or is it rather to be thought done more cunningly, so that the design by which a hundred years are usually first added and afterward subtracted might be concealed -- since even there where it had not been necessary, not indeed by a hundred years but by however small a number first subtracted and afterward restored, some such thing was done? But however this be taken -- whether it be believed to have been done so or not, whether finally it be so or not so -- I should in no way doubt that it is rightly done that, when something different is found in the two codices, since for the credit of the events both cannot be true, credence should rather be given to the language from which the translation into the other was made by the translators. For in certain codices too -- three Greek, one Latin, and one Syriac agreeing among themselves -- Methuselah is found to have died six years before the flood. Thus far the words of Augustine.⁸

detraxit. Sic quippe voluit credibiles facere idonearum generandae prolis convenientias aetatum, ut tamen numero non fraudaret universas aetates viventium singulorum. Quod autem in sexta generatione id non fecit, hoc ipsum est quod magis movet illum ideo fecisse, cum res quam diximus postulavit, quia non fecit ubi non postulavit. Invenit namque in eadem generatione apud Hebraeos vixisse Iared, antequam genuisset Henoch, centum sexaginta duos annos, qui secundum illam rationem brevium annorum fiunt anni sexdecim et aliquid minus quam menses duo, quae iam aetas apta est ad generandum; et ideo addere centum annos breves, ut nostri viginti sex fierent, necesse non fuit, nec post natum Henoch eos detrahere quos non addiderat ante natum: sic factum est ut hinc nulla esset inter codices utrosque varietas. Sed rursus movet cur in octava generatione, antequam de Mathusalem nasceretur Lamech, cum apud Hebraeos legantur centum octoginta duo anni, viginti (vel ut alia lectio habet vigintiduo) minus inveniantur in codicibus nostris, ubi potius addi centum solent; et post genitum Lamech complendam restituuntur ad summam, quae in codicibus utrisque non discrepat. Si enim centum septuaginta annos propter pubertatis maturitatem decem et septem volebat intelligi, sicut nihil addere ita nihil detrahere iam debebat, quia invenerat aetatem idoneam generationi filiorum, propter quam in aliis centum illos annos, ubi eam non inveniebat, addebat. Hoc autem de viginti annis merito putaremus casu mendositatis accidere potuisse, nisi eos, sicut prius detraxerat, restituere postea curaret, ut summae conveniret integritas. An forte astutius factum existimandum est, ut illa qua centum anni prius solent adici et postea detrahi occultaretur industria, cum et illic ubi necesse non fuerat -- non quidem de centum annis, verumtamen de quantulocumque numero prius detracto post reddito -- tale quid fieret? Sed quomodolibet istud accipiatur, sive credatur ita esse factum sive non credatur, sive postremo ita sive non ita sit, recte fieri nullo modo dubitaverim ut, cum diversum aliquid in utrisque codicibus invenitur, quandoquidem ad fidem rerum gestarum utrumque esse non potest verum, ei linguae potius credatur unde est in aliam per Interpretes facta translatio. Nam in quibusdam etiam codicibus, Graecis tribus et uno Latino et uno etiam Syro inter se consentientibus, inventus est Mathusalem sex annis ante diluvium fuisse defunctus. Hucusque sunt verba Augustini.