p. 206 | Chinese Chronology

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 13, 1870

Chinese Chronology.

Some of the enemies of the cross of Christ, who would be glad to overthrow the Bible, have got hold of some statements concerning the fabulous chronology of the Chinese, and are trumpeting it around, saying the Chinese Empire has stood for some fifteen or twenty thousand years; and, consequently, the Mosaic account of creation must be false, as well as the account of the flood. For the benefit of those who may be attacked by these enemies of the Bible, we give the following historical extracts from standard historians and chronologers:—

“Nearly all the Eastern nations have legends of times when gods ruled on the earth for many thousands of years, giving way to demigods, and these, to men; but these claims are considered by chronologists to be undeserving attention, and to have arisen simply from difficulty of conceiving an abrupt commencement to the existing order of human events.”—New Amer. Cyclo., Vol. 5, p. 202.

“It is . . . manifest that the high antiquity of the Chinese Empire must be deemed little better than a fiction.”—Universal History, Vol. 20, p. 7.

“Their original . . . savors strongly of fable, as does also the history of several of their first emperors.”—Univer. Hist., Vol. 20, p. 109. “In fine, that the Chinese annals cannot be depended upon, may be inferred even from Confucius himself, who more than hints the inaccuracy of them; nay, that many of the oldest materials for such annals had been destroyed before he wrote.”—Univer. Hist., Vol. 20, p. 155.

“In the memoirs concerning the history, arts, etc., of the Chinese, extracted from the grand annals, and lately published by the missionaries of Pekin, it is asserted, that all the relations of events prior to the reign of Yao, or You (as differently pronounced by different writers), which they date B. C. 2057, ‘are fabulous, composed in modern times, unsupported by authentic records, and full of contradictions. And that neither the Cho-king or Xu-king, their most ancient and authentic record, nor the books of Confucius (who died B. C. 479), or of his disciples, make mention of any genealogies, or princes, before Yao. It is also proved that the origin of the Chinese Empire cannot be placed higher than one or two generations before Yao.’”—Dr. Hales’ Chron., Vol. 1, p. 296.

Grecian Chronology:

“A little after the death of Alexander the Great, they began to set down the generations, reigns, and successions, in numbers of years; and, by putting reigns and successions equivalent to generations, and three generations to a hundred, or a hundred and twenty (as appears by their chronology), they have made the antiquities of Greece three or four hundred years older than the truth.”—Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms, by Sir Isaac Newton, p. 3.

Egyptian Chronology.

“The priests of Egypt told Herodotus that Menes built Memphis and the sumptuous temple of Vulcan, in that city, and that Rhampsinitus, Mœris, Asychis, and Psammitichus, added magnificent porticoes to that temple. And it is not likely that Memphis could be famous before Homer’s days, who doth not mention it, or that a temple could be above two or three hundred years in building. The reign of Psammitichus began six hundred and fifty-five years before Christ, and I place the founding of this temple by Menes, about two hundred and fifty-seven years earlier; but the priests of Egypt had so magnified their antiquities before the days of Herodotus, as to tell him that from Menes to Mœris (who reigned two hundred years before Psammitichus), there were three hundred and thirty kings, whose reigns took up as many ages; that is eleven thousand years, and had filled up the interval with feigned kings, who had done nothing. And before the days of Diodorus Siculus, they had raised their antiquities so much higher, as to place six, eight, or ten, new reigns of kings between those kings, whom they represented to Herodotus to succeed one another immediately.”—Chron. of Ancient Kingdoms, by Sir Isaac Newton, p. 6.

The Egyptians held that on the account of the rich soil, the first men were formed in Egypt,” or grew up out of the ground.—Diodorus Siculus, Vol. 1, pp. 18, 19.

“From Osiris and Isis, to the reign of Alexander the Great, who built a city after his own name, the Egyptian priests reckon above ten thousand years, or (as some write) little less than three and twenty thousand years.”—Diodorus Siculus, Vol. 1, p. 29.

How did they make out so many years?

“In their fabulous stories, they say that the most ancient of their gods reigned twelve hundred years . . . apiece.” The Egyptian priests, in their computation of time, do reckon above three and twenty thousand years from the reign of Sol to the passage of Alexander the Great in to Asia.”—Diodorus Sic., Vol. 1, p. 32.

It is said they had lunar years of thirty days each. Diodorus Siculus says:—“The priests have fabulously reported” that “the gods and demigods reigned in Egypt for the space almost of eighteen thousand years.” “Afterward, they say that men reigned there the space of fifteen thousand years, to the one hundred and eightieth Olympiad, at which time I myself came into Egypt, in the reign of Ptolemy, who took upon him the name of Dionysius the Younger.”—Diod., Vol. 1, p. 50.—World’s Crisis.