The Second Age.
[1 Pet. iii. 21,] " The like figure whereunto, even baptism, doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God." He shows that baptism is typified in the water of the deluge, the church and her faithful children in the ark and the things which it contained, and by the number, eight souls, the mystery of our Lord's resurrection in whose faith we are baptized.
A.M. 1658 [2244].
B.C. 2346. Shem lived 100 years and begat Arphaxad, two years after the deluge. Jerome writes that the Chaldseans derived their origin from Arphaxad. Shem lived after the birth of Arphaxad 500 years, i. e. till the 50th year after the birth of Jacob.
A.M. 1693 [2379].
B.C. 2311. Arphaxad lived 35 years and begat Salah. The Septuagint makes one generation more than the Hebrew verity; for they say that Arphaxad, at the age of 135, begat Cainan, who, when he was 130 years old, begat Salah. The Evangelist St. Luke seems to have followed their translation in this passage. But the Grecian chronologists, in correcting the series of generations by the authority of the Hebrew text, have taken away the generation of Cainan, but have not taken care to correct, on the same authority, the number of years in the generations which they had in common with them, and so have, on their own authority, assigned to this age a sum total, less by 130 years than the Seventy Translators; but longer by 650 years than the Hebrew verity: in fact 942 years. But Arphaxad lived 303 years after the birth of Salah, though the Septuagint says he lived 430 years after the birth of Cainan, and Cainan 338 years after the birth of Salah.
A.M. 1723 [2639].
