ANTEDILUVIANS, a general name for all mankind who lived before the flood, and so includes the whole of the human race from Adam to Noah and his family.

As Moses has not set down the particular time of any transaction before the flood, except only the years of the fathers’ ages in which the several descendants of Adam in the line of Seth were begotten, and the length of their several lives, it has been the business of chronologcrs to endeavour to fix the years of the lives and deaths of those patriarchs, and the distance of time from the creation to the deluge. In this there could be little difficulty, were there no varieties in the several copies we now have of Moses’s writings; which are, the Hebrew, the Samaritan, and the Greek version of the Septuagint; but as these differ very considerably from one another, learned men have been much divided in opinion concerning the chronology of the first ages of the world.

That the reader may the better judge of the variations in the three copies in this period, they are exhibited in the following table, with the addition of those of Josephus as corrected by Dr Wells and Mr Whiśton.
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[table]

As to the customs, policy, and other general circumstances of the antediluvians, we can only form conjectures.

The only thing we know as to their religious rites is, that they offered sacrifices, and that very early, both of the fruits of the earth and of animals; but whether the blood and flesh of the animals, or only their milk and wool, were offered, is a disputed point.

The antediluvians seem to have spent their time rather in luxury and wantonness, to which the abundant fertility of the first earth invited them, than in discoveries or improvements, which probably they stood much less in need of than their successors. Some authors have supposed astronomy to have been cultivated by the antediluvians, though this is probably owing to a mistake of Josephus; but it is to be presumed that the progress they made therein, or in any other science, was not extraordinary; it being even very doubtful whether letters were so much as known before the flood.

As to their politics and civil constitutions, we have not so much as any circumstances whereon to build conjecture. It is probable that the patriarchal form of government, which certainly was the first, was set aside when tyranny and oppression began to take place, and much sooner among the race of Cain than among that of Seth. It seems also that their communities were but few, and consisted of vastly larger numbers of people than any formed since the flood; or rather it is a question, whether, after the union of the two great families of Seth and Cain, there were any distinction of civil societies, or diversity of regular governments at all. It is more likely that all mankind then made but one great nation, though living in a kind of anarchy, divided into several disorderly associations; which, as it was almost the natural consequence of their having in all probability but one common language, so it was a circumstance which greatly contributed to that general corruption which otherwise perhaps could not have so universally overspread the antediluvian world. And for this reason chiefly, as it seems, so soon as the posterity of Noah were sufficiently increased, a plurality of tongues was miraculously introduced, in order to divide them into distinct societies, and thereby prevent any such total depravation for the future.

One of the most extraordinary circumstances which occurs in the antediluvian history, is the vast length of human lives in those first ages, in comparison with our own. Few persons now arrive at eighty or a hundred years, whereas before the flood they frequently lived to near a thousand. Some, to reconcile this with probability, have imagined that the ages of those first men might possibly be computed, not by solar years, but months; an expedient which reduces the length of their lives rather to a shorter period than our own. But for this there is not the least foundation; besides, many absurdities would thence follow,—such as their begetting children at about six years of age, as some of them in that case must have done, and the contracting of the whole interval between the creation and the deluge to considerably less than two hundred years, even according to the larger computation of the Septuagint.

Josephus, the Jewish historian, and some Christian divines, are of opinion, that before the flood, and some time after, mankind in general did not live to such a remarkable age, but only a few beloved of God, such as the patriarchs mentioned by Moses. They reason in this manner: Though the historian records the names of some men whose longevity was singular, yet that is no proof that the rest of mankind attained to the same period of life, more than that every man was then of a gigantic stature because he says in those days there were giants upon the earth. Besides, had the whole of the antediluvians lived so very long, and increased in numbers in proportion to their age, before the flood of Noah, the earth could not have contained its inhabitants, even supposing no part of it had been sea. And had animals lived as long, and multiplied in the same manner, as they have done since, they would have consumed the whole produce of the globe, and the stronger would have extinguished many species of the weaker. Hence they conclude, that for wise and good ends, God extended only the lives of the patriarchs, and a few besides, to such an extraordinary length. But most writers maintain the longevity of mankind in general in the early world, not only upon the authority of sacred, but likewise of profane history.

The antediluvian world was in all probability stocked with a much greater number of inhabitants than the present earth either actually does, or perhaps is capable of containing or supplying. This seems naturally to follow, from the great length of their lives, which exceeding the present standard of life in the proportion at least of ten to one, the antediluvians must accordingly in any long space of time have doubled themselves, at least in about the tenth part of the time in which mankind do now double themselves. Upon these points the reader may consult Cockburn’s Treatise upon the Deluge, Shuckford’s Connections, Faber’s Horce Mosaicae, and the A n ' cient Universal History.