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BOOK XII
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2010
Summary
Yet another book showing that many of the old Pagan writers testify to the antiquity of the divine scriptures uttered through Moses and the prophets. And that the Greeks appear to have learned letters the last of all, and to have their unbelief with regard to the divine scriptures deeply rooted.
In the Chaldaean books of Bêrôsus and certain others it is thus written: that ten kings reigned over the Chaldaeans 2242 myriads of years, but, under their tenth king Xisuthrus, as they called him, there was a great flood, and that Xisuthrus being warned by God embarked in a ship with his wife and kindred and cattle, and that having been brought over in safety, as their story goes, to the mountains of Armenia, he offered sacrifices of thanksgiving to the Gods after the flood. These writers have thus presented in a new form nearly all the account given by Moses; for men continued to live in the earth beyond [the Ocean] 2242 years for a course of ten generations, and, under Noah who was the tenth the flood having occurred, they passed over to this earth by means of the Ark. For Noah is he whom they call Xisuthrus. But by having changed the days into years, they asserted that those ten kings had lived 2242 myriads of years, since the number of years reckoned by Moses to have elapsed from Adam to the deluge of Noah was 2242.
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- The Christian Topography of Cosmas, an Egyptian MonkTranslated from the Greek, and Edited with Notes and Introduction, pp. 374 - 386Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1897