The Extant Fragments of the Five Books of the…

 III.—The Extant Fragments of the Five Books of the Chronography of Julius Africanus.

 When men multiplied on the earth, the angels of heaven came together with the daughters of men. In some copies I found “the sons of God.” What is mean

 Adam, when 230 years old, begets Seth and after living other 700 years he died, that is, a second death.

 On the Deluge.

 Noe was 600 years old when the flood came on. From Adam, therefore, to Noe and the flood, are 2262 years.

 And after the flood, Sem begot Arphaxad.

 In the year of the world 3277, Abraham entered the promised land of Canaan.

 Of Abraham.

 Of Abraham and Lot.

 Of the Patriarch Jacob.

 From Adam, therefore, to the death of Joseph, according to this book, are 23 generations, and 3563 years.

 From this record, therefore, we affirm that Ogygus, After a break After another break

 1. Up to the time of the Olympiads there is no certain history among the Greeks, all things before that date being confused, and in no way consistent

 Æschylus, the son of Agamestor, ruled the Athenians twenty-three years, in whose time Joatham reigned in Jerusalem.

 And Africanus, in the third book of his History, writes : Now the first Olympiad recorded—which, however, was really the fourteenth—was the period whe

 On the Seventy Weeks of Daniel.

 On the Fortunes of Hyrcanus and Antigonus, and on Herod, Augustus, Antony, and Cleopatra, in Abstract.

 On the Circumstances Connected with Our Saviour’s Passion and His Life-Giving Resurrection.

 For we who both know the measure of those words, and are not ignorant of the grace of faith, give thanks to the Father,

III.—The Extant Fragments of the Five Books of the Chronography of Julius Africanus.

I.1 In Georgius Syncellus, Chron., p. 17, ed. Paris, 14 Venet.

On the Mythical Chronology of the Egyptians and Chaldeans.

The Egyptians, indeed, with their boastful notions of their own antiquity, have put forth a sort of account of it by the hand of their astrologers in cycles and myriads of years; which some of those who have had the repute of studying such subjects profoundly have in a summary way called lunar years; and inclining no less than others to the mythical, they think they fall in with the eight or nine thousands of years which the Egyptian priests in Plato falsely reckon up to Solon.2 The text is:…συμπίπτουσι ταῖς ὀκτὼ καὶ ἐννέα χιλιάσιν ἑτῶν, ἃς Αιγυπτιων οι παρὰ Πλατωνι ἱερεῖς εις Σόλωνα καταριθμοῦτες οὐκ ἀληθεύουσι.

(And after some other matter:)

For why should I speak of the three myriad years of the Phœnicians, or of the follies of the Chaldeans, their forty-eight myriads? For the Jews, deriving their origin from them as descendants of Abraham, having been taught a modest mind, and one such as becomes men, together with the truth by the spirit of Moses, have handed down to us, by their extant Hebrew histories, the number of 5500 years as the period up to the advent of the Word of salvation, that was announced to the world in the time of the sway of the Cæsars.