Notes, Critical and Explanatory, on the Holy Scriptures

admit that the two narratives were originally by different authors, Moses, in adopting them, would not have failed to intimate the change of the mode of counting time. It should not seem wonderful, that whilst human nature was in its original vigor, and the primitive soil yielded wholesome food, and the atmosphere was probably free from noxious vapors, the life of man was extended to a period nine times as great as that which is now its utmost limit The tradition of the long lives of the ancients is common to the heathens. Hesiod, among others, states that they lived a thousand years.