A New Geology: the reconciliation of Geology and Ancient History

From Sacred Texts Christianity
{From the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. XI, Part 1,
1943, pp. 52-74. The transcriptions of the original texts have been omitted in this version.}
p. 52
an endnote says
3 Presumably the number of years supposed to have passed from the time of Enoch to the beginning of the reign of Vi§tasp. The
date for Enoch was probably calculated with the help of the Jewish
world-era, or the mundane era of Alexandria (beginning 5493 B.C.), or by counting backwards from
the Deluge. Taking 3237 B.C. (but 3251 B.C. according to the Coptic chronology) as the date of the
Deluge (see S. H. Taqizadeh, BSOS., X, 122, under c), and adding 669 ( = from Enoch’s death to the
Deluge according to the Hebrew Genesis), and subtracting the number in our fragment, 3,28[8 ?],
from 3,237 + 669 = 3,906, the resulting date, 618 B.C., agrees perfectly with the traditional
Zoroastrian date for the beginning of Vi§tasp’s reign (258 + 30 years before Alexander’s conquest of
Persia, 330 B.C.; cf. Taqizadeh, ibid., 127 sq.). From this one may infer that the famous date for
Zoroaster: “258 years before Alexander” was known to Mani (Nyberg, Rel. Alt. Iran, 32 sqq., thinks it
was invented towards the beginning of the fifth century).

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