The Age of Reason [46]
Name: Isaiah
Years before Christ: 760
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 172
Observations: mentioned.
Name: Jeremiah
Years before Christ: 629
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 41
Observations: mentioned only in the last [two] chapters of Chronicles.
Name: Ezekiel
Years before Christ: 595
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 7
Observations: not mentioned.
Name: Daniel
Years before Christ: 607
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 19
Observations: not mentioned.
Name: Horsea
Years before Christ: 785
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 97
Observations: not mentioned.
Name: Joel
Years before Christ: 800
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 212
Observations: not mentioned.
Name: Amos
Years before Christ: 789
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 199
Observations: not mentioned.
Name: Obadiah
Years before Christ: 789
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 199
Observations: not mentioned.
Name: Jonah
Years before Christ: 862
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 274
Observations: see the note.[26]
Name: Micah
Years before Christ: 750
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 162
Observations: not mentioned.
Name: Nahum
Years before Christ: 713
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 125
Observations: not mentioned.
Name: Habakkuk
Years before Christ: 620
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 38
Observations: not mentioned.
Name: Zephaniah
Years before Christ: 630
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 42
Observations: not mentioned.
Name: Haggai
Years before Christ: (after the year 588)
Name: Zechariah
Years before Christ: (after the year 588)
Name: Malachi
Years before Christ: (after the year 588)
This table is either not very honourable for the Bible historians, or not very honourable for the Bible prophets; and I leave to priests and commentators, who are very learned in little things, to settle the point of etiquette between the two; and to assign a reason, why the authors of Kings and of Chronicles have treated those prophets, whom, in the former part of the Age of Reason, I have considered as poets, with as much degrading silence as any historian of the present day would treat Peter Pindar.
I have one more observation to make on the book of Chronicles; after which I shall pass on to review the remaining books of the Bible.
In my observations on the book of Genesis, I have quoted a passage from xxxvi. 31, which evidently refers to a time, after that kings began to reign over the children of Israel; and I have shewn that as this verse is verbatim the same as in 1 Chronicles i. 43, where it stands consistently with the order of history, which in Genesis it does not, that the verse in Genesis, and a great part of the 36th chapter, have been taken from Chronicles; and that the book of Genesis, though it is placed first in the Bible, and ascribed to Moses, has been manufactured by some unknown person, after the book of Chronicles was written, which was not until at least eight hundred and sixty years after the time of Moses.
The evidence I proceed by to substantiate this, is regular, and has in it but two stages. First, as I have already stated, that the passage in Genesis refers itself for time to Chronicles; secondly, that the book of Chronicles, to which this passage refers itself, was not begun to be written until at least eight hundred and sixty years after the time of Moses. To prove this, we have only to look into 1 Chronicles iii. 15, where the writer, in giving the genealogy of the descendants of David, mentions Zedekiah; and it was in the time of Zedekiah that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, B.C. 588, and consequently more than 860 years after Moses. Those who have superstitiously boasted of the antiquity of the Bible, and particularly of the books ascribed to Moses, have done it without examination, and without any other authority than that of one credulous man telling it to another: for, so far as historical and chronological evidence applies, the very first book in the Bible is not so ancient as the book of Homer, by more