The first of these conquests relates to the antiquity of man
on the earth.
The fathers of the early Christian Church, receiving all parts
of our sacred books as equally inspired, laid little, if any,
less stress on the myths, legends, genealogies, and tribal,
family, and personal traditions contained in the Old and the New
Testaments, than upon the most powerful appeals, the most
instructive apologues, and the most lofty poems of prophets,
psalmists, and apostles. As to the age of our planet and the
life of man upon it, they found in the Bible a carefully
recorded series of periods, extending from Adam to the building
of the Temple at Jerusalem, the length of each period being
explicitly given.
Thus they had a biblical chronology--full, consecutive, and
definite--extending from the first man created to an event of
known date well within ascertained profane history; as a result,
the early Christian commentators arrived at conclusions varying
somewhat, but in the main agreeing. Some, like Origen, Eusebius,
Lactantius, Clement of Alexandria, and the great fathers
generally of the first three centuries, dwelling especially upon
the Septuagint version of the Scriptures, thought that man's
creation took place about six thousand years before the
Christian era.
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