Sacred Theory of the Earth: Book II: Chapter IV

Lastly, as Nature and Profane History do disown and confute this opinion, so much more doth Sacred History; not indeed in profess’d terms, for Moses doth not say that he useth Solar Years, but by several marks and observations, or collateral Arguments, it may be clearly collected, that he doth not use Lunar. As first, because He distinguisheth Months and Years in the History of the Deluge, and of the life of Noah; for Gen. 7. 11 he saith in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, &c. It cannot be imagin’d that in the same verse and sentence these two terms of Year and Month should be so confounded as to signifie the same thing; and therefore Noah's Years were not the same with Months, nor consequently those of the other Patriarchs, for we have no reason to make any difference. Besides, what ground was there, or how was it proper or pertinent to reckon, as Moses does there, first, second, third Month, as so many going to a Year, if every one of them was a Year? And seeing the Deluge begun in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, and in the second Month, and ended in the six hundredth and first Year (Chap. 8. 13) the first or second Month, all that was betwixt these two terms, or all the duration of the Deluge, made but one year in Noah's life, or it may be not so much; and we know Moses reckons a great many months in the duration of the Deluge; so as this is a demonstration that Noah's years are not to be understood of Lunar. And to imagine that his years are to be understood one way, and those of his fellow-Patriarchs another, would be an inaccountable fiction. This Argument therefore extends to all the Ante-diluvians; And Noah's life will take in the Post-diluvians too, for you see

A Table of the Ages of the Post-diluvian Fathers, from Shem to Joseph

From these Tables we see that Mens Lives were much longer before the Flood, and next after it, than they are now; which also is confirm’d undiniably by Jacob's complaint of the shortness of his life, in comparison of his Fore-fathers, when he had liv’d one hundred and thirty years, Gen. 47. 9. The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years; few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my Fathers. There was then, ’tis certain, long-liv’d men in the World before Jacob's time; when were they, before the Flood or after? We say both, according as the Tables shew it: But if you count by Lunar years, there never were any, either before or after, and Jacob's complaint was unjust and false; for he was the oldest Man in the World himself, or at least there was none of his Fore-fathers that liv’d so long as he.

The Patrons of this opinion must needs find themselves at a loss, how or where to break off the account of Lunar years in Sacred History, if they once admit it. If they say, that way of counting must only be extended to the Flood, then they make the Post-diluvian Fathers longer liv’d than the Ante-diluvian; did the Flood bring in Longævity? how could that be the cause of such an effect? Besides, if they allow the Post-diluvians to have liv’d six hundred (common) years, that being clearly beyond the standard of our lives, I should never stick at two or three hundred years more for the first Ages of the World. If they extend their Lunar account to the Post-diluvians too, they will still be intangled in worse absurdities; for they must make their lives miserably short, and their Age of getting Children altogether incongruous and impossible. Nahor, for example, when he was but two years and three months old must have begot Terah, Abraham's Father: And all the rest betwixt him and Shem must have had Children before they were three years old: A pretty race of Pigmies. Then their lives were proportionably short, for this Nahor liv’d but eleven years and six months at this