Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Julius Africanus/Extant Fragments of the Chronography/Part 1

by Julius Africanus

On the Mythical Chronology of the Egyptians and Chaldeans.

The Egyptians, indeed, with their boastful notions of their own antiquity, have put forth a sort of account of it by the hand of their astrologers in cycles and myriads of years; which some of those who have had the repute of studying such subjects profoundly have in a summary way called lunar years; and inclining no less than others to the mythical, they think they fall in with the eight or nine thousands of years which the Egyptian priests in Plato falsely reckon up to Solon.^[1]

(And after some other matter:)

For why should I speak of the three myriad years of the Phœnicians, or of the follies of the Chaldeans, their forty-eight myriads? For the Jews, deriving their origin from them as descendants of Abraham, having been taught a modest mind, and one such as becomes men, together with the truth by the spirit of Moses, have handed down to us, by their extant Hebrew histories, the number of 5500 years as the period up to the advent of the Word of salvation, that was announced to the world in the time of the sway of the Cæsars.

Footnotes

1. The text is:…συμπίπτουσι ταῖς ὀκτὼ καὶ ἐννέα χιλιάσιν ἑτῶν, ἃς Αιγυπτιων οι παρὰ Πλατωνι ἱερεῖς εις Σόλωνα καταριθμοῦτες οὐκ ἀληθεύουσι.