Lampe on Church History: The Antediluvian Church

I.  The first interval of the Church is summed up in three larger periods, the first of which terminates in the flood, the second in the calling of Abraham, and the third in the deliverance of the people of Israel out of Egypt.

II.  The commencement of the first period coincides with the beginning of the world, which, although they are not able precisely to determine it, yet it ascends to a sum not much above four thousand years before the birth of Christ; and so it sinks far beneath the fictions of the Babylonians, Egyptians, and Chinese crying up their prodigious antiquity.  The history of creation pertains to the history of the Church, insofar as the world was founded with this intention, that it might be the habitation of the Church.  Concerning the season of the year, in which the world and Church emerged, the disputation is equally doubtful, although it appears that some preference is to be given to the spring time.

III.  This period is made up of one thousand, six hundred and fifty-six solar Years, as it is indubitably evident from a computation of the years of the Patriarchs noted by Moses.  For, the number of years passing to the birth:

Of Seth                130

Of Enos                105

Of Cainan            90

Of Mahalaleel     70

Of Jared               65

Of Enoch             162

Of Methusaleh     65

Of Lamech           187

Of Noah               182[1]

To the Flood        600[2]

                             1656

For, the difference, which the Greek version exhibits, numbering either two thousand, two hundred and fifty-six years according to Josephus; or two-thousand, two hundred and forty-two, according to Eusebius; or two thousand, two hundred and sixty-two according to Africanus;[3] and the Samaritan codex descending to one thousand, three hundred and seven:  need not delay us very much.

IV.  At this time, God, lest the earth be created in vain, established the Church in it, when Adam and Eve, the First Men (before whom Issac Pererius,[4] risking displeasure, contrived Pre-adamites), clothed in God’s image, and introduced into Paradise, He united to Himself in a covenant of works;[5] and, with that broken through a most lamentable fall,[6] He erected a covenant of grace; they, passing into it by faith, became the root, not only natural, but also spiritual, of the whole seed of the elect.[7]

V.  The propagation of the Church through Patriarchs, whom Moses recounts, was especially undertaken, who steadfastly embraced and passed to posterity the doctrine concerning true righteousness, with the public worship of God through sacrifices and the praise of the Name of Jehovah being added, the performance of which by Enoch[8] and Noah[9] is especially noteworthy.  The longevity of the Patriarchs and the unity of the original tongue, which was likely Hebrew, furnished excellent supports for this.  Whether something was also consigned to writing, we do not know.  For, what things are alleged concerning the columns of Seth,[10] the Book of Enoch, and similar such things, are of slight confidence.  Yet they assert nothing absurd, who affirm it.

VI.  There were enemies of the nascent Church, not only the serpent seducer in Paradise, but also his seed thereafter,[11] especially Cain and his offspring.[12]  His separation from the true Church was after his Fratricide, which is placed in the year of the birth of Seth,[13] which was the one hundred and thirtieth of the world, or at least did not long precede it; when he, with his own led away with him, who in that interval, it is easily gathered, now made up quite a number, first began to build the city of Enoch after the name of his son,[14] so that he might be secure from the violence of others, which he was fearing,[15] and might institute rites for himself.  It is evident from their inventions that the study of various arts flourished among them.[16]  Neither is it doubtful that among them various Kingdoms coalesced, some vestiges of which perhaps occur in the most ancient Kings, whose names one way or another have been preserved by Berosus[17] and Manetho.[18]  Their number was augmented by the Nephilim, sprung from the mixing of the sons of God or Sethites with the daughters of men or Cainites.[19]  It appears that this generational line lapsed, not only unto the denial of true righteousness and by degrees unto impiety and ἀθεότητα/atheism, but perhaps also unto idolatry.  How wicked a life the generational line of Cain lived, the profane words of Lamech the πολυγάμου/polygamist demonstrate.[20]

VII.  On account of the consummate impiety of men, therefore, God sent upon the whole world a flood, which had been foretold over the course of one hundred and twenty years, but in vain;[21] with the flood enduring for five whole months,[22] only Noah with his family, in an ark constructed with marvelous workmanship, escaping from the common calamity, putting ashore on the mountains of Ararat,[23] which are commonly placed in Armenia, landed as if by shipwreck.  The fame of this pervaded the Phœnicians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and is thought to have come all the way to the very Brazilians and Peruvians.

VIII.  Moreover, numerous vestiges of the events of this age are visible in the mythical history of the Gentile nations.[24]  Such things are those that occur concerning Kol-piah the productrix;[25] concerning Chnuphis and the Orphic egg;[26] concerning Chaos and Erebos;[27] concerning the gardens of the Hesperides,[28] the Elysian Fields,[29] and the golden age; concerning Apollo the inventor of Music and Vulcan of the iron-working;[30] concerning Prometheus portraying Adam and Janus[31] Noah; concerning the deluge of Ogyges or Deucalion;[32] concerning Iris, the messenger of Jove.[33]

[1] See Genesis 5.

[2] Genesis 7:6.

[3] Sextus Julius Africanus (c. 160-c. 240) was a chronographer, and the first Christian to attempt a history from the creation.

[4] Isaac La Peyrère (1596-1676) was born into a Huguenot family, but later converted to Romanism.  He is most remembered for his Millenarian view and the Pre-Adamite hypothesis.

[5] See Genesis 2.

[6] See Genesis 3.

[7] Genesis 3:15.

[8] Genesis 5:22, 24; Hebrews 11:5.

[9] Genesis 6-9.

[10] This is a reference to the legendary pillars of Seth.  The first Mercury is a reference to the Egyptian god, Thoth, better known as Hermes or Mercury.  Thoth is linguistically and mythologically related to Seth.  The pillars were said to have been erected by Seth to preserve information concerning the ante-diluvian world.

[11] See Genesis 3.

[12] See Genesis 4.

[13] Genesis 4:16, 25.

[14] Genesis 4:17.

[15] Genesis 4:14.

[16] Genesis 4:20-22.

[17] Berosus (early third century BC) was a priest of Belus in Babylon, who wrote a history of Chaldeans, which survives only in the fragmentary citations of other authors.

[18] Manetho (third century BC) was an Egyptian historian.  His Ægyptiaca has been of enduring value in the study of Pharaonic dynasties.

[19] Genesis 6:4:  “There were giants (‎הַנְּפִלִים, the Nephilim) in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

[20] Genesis 4:19, 23, 24.

[21] Genesis 6:3.

[22] Genesis 7:24.

[23] Genesis 8:4.

[24] Euhemerus (late fourth century BC) served in the court of Cassander as a writer of myths.  He treats the myths as echoes of actual historical events.  As soon as Christianity began to spread through the Greco-Roman world, a form of Christian Euhemerism developed.

[25] יה פי קול, the voice of the mouth of Jah.

[26] The Orphic Egg, frequently portrayed as wrapped by the serpent Ananke, is the cosmic egg from which is hatch the primordial hermaphroditic god Protogonus, who in turned created other gods.  Chnuphis is a similar motif of divinity found in ancient Egyptian iconography.

[27] In Genesis 1, the initial creation appears to have been a watery mass, sitting in darkness.  In Greek mythology, Chaos (χάος/emptiness) was the first thing to exist.  Erebos (‎עֶרֶב/evening, Genesis 1:5) was one of the offspring of Chaos, a divine personification of darkness.

[28] In Greek mythology, Hera possessed a garden, wherein was a tree producing golden apples.  Hera gave the Hesperides (nymphs of the sunset) the task of tending the garden, and the dragon Ladon to guard the golden apples.

[29] In Greek mythology, the Elysian Fields were a paradise of the afterlife, located in the far West.

[30] See Genesis 4:21, 22.  Note the similarity of the names.

[31] Janus was the two-faced Roman god of doorways and gates.  It is said that, under his rule, Latium entered into a golden age.

[32] Deucalion was a son of Prometheus, who, being warned of the impending flood by his father, built an ark.  There is some dispute as to whether Ogyges is simply the Athenian Deucalion, or the survivor of a different flood.

[33] Iris was the goddess of the rainbow, and messenger of the gods.