74 page printout From page 43 to 116 THE AGE OF REASON. PART II. 1795 PREFACE. I HAVE ment
74 page printout
From page 43 to 116
THE AGE OF REASON.
PART II.
1795
PREFACE.
I HAVE mentioned in the former part of The Age of Reason that
it had long been my intention to publish my thoughts upon Religion;
but that I had originally reserved it to a later period in life,
intending it to be the last work I should undertake. The
circumstances, however, which existed in France in the latter end
of the year 1793, determined me to delay it no longer. The just and
humane principles of the Revolution which Philosophy had first
diffused, had been departed from. The Idea, always dangerous to
Society as it is derogatory to the Almighty, -- that priests could
forgive sins, -- though it seemed to exist no longer, had blunted
the feelings of humanity, and callously prepared men for the
commission of all crimes. The intolerant spirit of church
persecution had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals,
stiled Revolutionary, supplied the place of an Inquisition; and the
Guillotine of the Stake. I saw many of my most intimate friends
destroyed; others daily carried to prison; and I had reason to
believe, and had also intimations given me, that the same danger
was approaching myself.
Under these disadvantages, I began the former part of the Age
of Reason; I had, besides, neither Bible nor Testament [It must be
borne in mind that throughout this work Paine generaly means by
"Bible" only the Old Testamut, and speaks of the Now as the
"Testament." -- Editor.] to refer to, though I was writing against
both; nor could I procure any; notwithstanding which I have
produced a work that no Bible Believer, though writing at his ease
and with a Library of Church Books about him, can refute. Towards
the latter end of December of that year, a motion was made and
carried, to exclude foreigners from the Convention. There were but
two, Anacharsis Cloots and myself; and I saw I was particularly
pointed at by Bourdon de l'Oise, in his speech on that motion.
Conceiving, after this, that I had but a few days of liberty,
I sat down and brought the work to a close as speedily as possible;
and I had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it has
since appeared, [This is an allusion to the essay which Paine
wrote at an earlier part of 1793. See Introduction. -- Editor.]
before a guard came there, about three in the morning, with an
order signed by the two Committees of Public Safety and Surety
General, for putting me in arrestation as a foreigner, and
conveying me to the prison of the Luxembourg. I contrived, in my
way there, to call on Joel Barlow, and I put the Manuscript of the
work into his hands, as more safe than in my possession in prison;
and not knowing what might be the fate in France either of the
writer or the work, I addressed it to the protection of the
citizens of the United States.
It is justice that I say, that the guard who executed this
order, and the interpreter to the Committee of General Surety, who
accompanied them to examine my papers, treated me not only with
civility, but with respect. The keeper of the 'Luxembourg, Benoit,
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THE AGE OF REASON -- PART II.
a man of good heart, shewed to me every friendship in his power, as
did also all his family, while he continued in that station. He was
removed from it, put into arrestation, and carried before the
tribunal upon a malignant accusation, but acquitted.
After I had been in Luxembourg about three weeks, the
Americans then in Paris went in a body to the Convention to reclaim
me as their countryman and friend; but were answered by the
President, Vadier, who was also President of the Committee of
Surety General, and had signed the order for my arrcstation, that
I was born in England. [These excited Americans do not seem to
have understood or reported the most important item in Vadeer's
reply, namely that their application was "unofficial," i.e. not
made through or sanctioned by Gouverneur Morris, American Minister.
For the detailed history of all this see vol. iii. -- Editor.] I
heard no more, after this, from any person out of the walls of the
prison, till the fall of Robespierre, on the 9th of Thermidor --
July 27, 1794.
About two months before this event, I was seized with a fever
that in its progress had every symptom of becoming mortal, and from
the effects of which I am not recovered. It was then that I
remembered with renewed satisfaction, and congratulated myself most
sincerely, on having written the former part of The Age of Reason.
I had then but little expectation of surviving, and those about me
had less. I know therefore by experience the conscientious trial of
my own principles.
I was then with three chamber comrades: Joseph Vanheule of
Bruges, Charles Bastfni, and Michael Robyns of Louvain. The
unceasing and anxious attention of these three friends to me, by
night and day, I remember with gratitude and mention with pleasure.
It happened that a physician (Dr. Graham) and a surgeon, (Mr.
Bond,) part of the suite of General O'Hara, [The officer who at
Yorktown, Virginia, carried out the sword of Cornwallis for
surrender, and satirically offered it to Rochambcau instead of
Washington. Paine loaned him 300 pounds when he (O'Hara) left the
prison, the money he had concealed in the lock of his cell-door. --
Edifor.] were then in the Luxembourg: I ask not myself whether it
be convenient to them, as men under the English Government, that I
express to them my thanks; but I should reproach myself if I did
not; and also to the physician of the Luxembourg, Dr. Markoski.
I have some reason to believe, because I cannot discover any
other, that this illness preserved me in existence. Among the
papers of Robespierre that were examined and reported upon to the
Convention by a Committee of Deputies, is a note in the hand
writing of Robespierre, in the following words:
"Ddmander que Thomas Paine soit decrete d'accusation,
pour l'interet de l'Amerique autant que de la France."
[Demand that Thomas Paine be decreed of accusation, for
the interest of America, as well as of France.]
From what cause it was that the intention was not put in
execution, I know not, and cannot inform myself; and therefore I
ascribe it to impossibility, on account of that illness.
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The Convention, to repair as much as lay in their power the
injustice I had sustained, invited me publickly and unanimously to
return into the Convention, and which I accepted, to shew I could
bear an injury without permitting it to injure my principles or my
disposition. It is not because right principles have been violated,
that they are to be abandoned.
I have seen, since I have been at liberty, several
publications written, some in America, and some in England, as
answers to the former part of "The Age of Reason." If the authors
of these can amuse themselves by so doing, I shall not interrupt
them, They may write against the work, and against me, as much as
they please; they do me more service than they intend, and I can
have no objection that they write on. They will find, however, by
this Second Part, without its being written as an answer to them,
that they must return to their work, and spin their cobweb over
again. The first is brushed away by accident.
They will now find that I have furnished myself with a Bible
and Testament; and I can say also that I have found them to be much
worse books than I had conceived. If I have erred in any thing, in
the former part of the Age of Reason, it has been by speaking
better of some parts than they deserved.
I observe, that all my opponents resort, more or less, to what
they call Scripture Evidence and Bible authority, to help them out.
They are so little masters of the subject, as to confound a dispute
about authenticity with a dispute about doctrines; I will, however,
put them right, that if they should be disposed to write any more,
they may know how to begin.
THOMAS PAINE.
October, 1795.
**** ****
CHAPTER I.
THE OLD TESTAMENT.
IT has often been said that any thing may be proved from the
Bible; but before any thing can be admitted as proved by Bible, the
Bible itself must be proved to be true; for if the Bible be not
true, or the truth of it be doubtful, it ceases to have authority,
and cannot be admitted as proof of any thing.
It has been the practice of all Christian commentators on the
Bible, and of all Christian priests and preachers, to impose the
Bible on the world as a mass of truth, and as the word of God; they
have disputed and wrangled, and have anathematized each other about
the supposeable meaning of particular parts and passages therein;
one has said and insisted that such a passage meant such a thing,
another that it meant directly the contrary, and a third, that it
meant neither one nor the other, but something different from both;
and this they have called undffstanding the Bible.
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It has happened, that all the answers that I have seen to the
former part of 'The Age of Reason' have been written by priests:
and these pious men, like their predecessors, contend and wrangle,
and understand the Bible; each understands it differently, but each
understands it best; and they have agreed in nothing but in telling
their readers that Thomas Paine understands it not.
Now instead of wasting their time, and heating themselves in
fractious disputations about doctrinal points drawn from the Bible,
these men ought to know, and if they do not it is civility to
inform them, that the first thing to be understood is, whether
there is sufficient authority for believing the Bible to be the
word of God, or whether there is not?
There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express
command of God, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea
we have of moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre, by
Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in
the East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we
read in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the
Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as
the history itself shews, had given them no offence; that they put
all those nations to the sword; that they spared neither age nor
infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women and children; that
they left not a soul to breathe; expressions that are repeated over
and over again in those books, and that too with exulting ferocity;
are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the Creator of
man commissioned those things to be done? Are we sure that the
books that tell us so were written by his authority?
It is not the antiquity of a tale that is an evidence of its
truth; on the contrary, it is a symptom of its being fabulous; for
the more ancient any history pretends to be, the more it has the
resemblance of a fable. The origin of every nation is buried in
fabulous tradition, and that of the Jews is as much to be suspected
as any other.
To charger the commission of things upon the Almighty, which
in their own nature, and by every rule of moral justice, are
crimes, as all assassination is, and more especially the
assassination of infants, is matter of serious concern. The Bible
tells us, that those assassinations were done by the express
command of God. To believe therefore the Bible to be true, we must
unbelieve all our belief in the moral justice of God; for wherein
could crying or smiling infants offend? And to read the Bible
without horror, we must undo every thing that is tender,
sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for
myself, if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous, than
the sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone
would be sufficient to determine my choice.
But in addition to all the moral evidence against the Bible,
I will, in the progress of this work, produce such other evidence
as even a priest cannot deny; and show, from that evidence, that
the Bible is not entitled to credit, as being the word of God.
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But, before I proceed to this examination, I will show wherein
the Bible differs from all other ancient writings with respect to
the nature of the evidence necessary to establish its authenticity;
and this is is the more proper to be done, because the advocates of
the Bible, in their answers to the former part of 'The Age of
Reason,' undertake to say, and they put some stress thereon, that
the authenticity of the Bible is as well established as that of any
other ancient book: as if our belief of the one could become any
rule for our belief of the other.
I know, however, but of one ancient book that authoritatively
challenges universal consent and belief, and that is Euclid's
Elements of Geometry; [Euclid, according to chronological history,
lived three hundred years before Christ, and about one hundred
before Archimedes; he was of the city of Alexandria, in Egypt. --
Author.] and the reason is, because it is a book of self-evident
demonstration, entirely independent of its author, and of every
thing relating to time, place, and circumstance. The matters
contained in that book would have the same authority they now have,
had they been written by any other person, or had the work been
anonymous, or had the author never been known; for the identical
certainty of who was the author makes no part of our belief of the
matters contained in the book. But it is quite otherwise with
respect to the books ascribed to Moses, to Joshua, to Samuel, etc.:
those are books of testimony, and they testify of things naturally
incredible; and therefore the whole of our belief, as to the
authenticity of those books, rests, in the first place, upon the
certainty that they were written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel;
secondly, upon the credit we give to their testimony. We may
believe the first, that is, may believe the certainty of the
authorship, and yet not the testimony; in the same manner that we
may believe that a certain person gave evidence upon a case, and
yet not believe the evidence that he gave. But if it should be
found that the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, were
not written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, every part of the
authority and authenticity of those books is gone at once; for
there can be no such thing as forged or invented testimony; neither
can there be anonymous testimony, more especially as to things
naturally incredible; such as that of talking with God face to
face, or that of the sun and moon standing still at the command of
a man.
The greatest part of the other ancient books are works of
genius; of which kind are those ascribed to Homer, to Plato, to
Aristotle, to Demosthenes, to Cicero, etc. Here again the author is
not an essential in the credit we give to any of those works; for
as works of genius they would have the same merit they have now,
were they anonymous. Nobody believes the Trojan story, as related
by Homer, to be true; for it is the poet only that is admired, and
the merit of the poet will remain, though the story be fabulous.
But if we disbelieve the matters related by the Bible authors
(Moses for instance) as we disbelieve the things related by Homer,
there remains nothing of Moses in our estimation, but an imposter.
As to the ancient historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, we credit
them as far as they relate things probable and credible, and no
further: for if we do, we must believe the two miracles which
Tacitus relates were performed by Vespasian, that of curing a lame
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THE AGE OF REASON -- PART II.
man, and a blind man, in just the same manner as the same things
are told of Jesus Christ by his historians. We must also believe
the miracles cited by Josephus, that of the sea of Pamphilia
opening to let Alexander and his army pass, as is related of the
Red Sea in Exodus. These miracles are quite as well authenticated
as the Bible miracles, and yet we do not believe them; consequently
the degree of evidence necessary to establish our belief of things
naturally incredible, whether in the Bible or elsewhere, is far
greater than that which obtains our belief to natural and probable
things; and therefore the advocates for the Bible have no claim to
our belief of the Bible because that we believe things stated in
other ancient writings; since that we believe the things stated in
those writings no further than they are probable and credible, or
because they are self-evident, like Euclid; or admire them because
they are elegant, like Homer; or approve them because they are
sedate, like Plato; or judicious, like Aristotle.
Having premised these things, I proceed to examine the
authenticity of the Bible; and I begin with what are called the
five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy. My intention is to shew that those books are spurious,
and that Moses is not the author of them; and still further, that
they were not written in the time of Moses nor till several hundred
years afterwards; that they are no other than an attempted history
of the life of Moses, and of the times in which he is said to have
lived, and also of the times prior thereto, written by some very
ignorant and stupid pretenders to authorship, several hundred years
after the death of Moses; as men now write histories of things that
happened, or are supposed to have happened, several hundred or
several thousand years ago.
The evidence that I shall produce in this case is from the
books themselves; and I will confine myself to this evidence only.
Were I to refer for proofs to any of the ancient authors, whom the
advocates of the Bible call prophane authors, they would controvert
that authority, as I controvert theirs: I will therefore meet them
on their own ground, and oppose them with their own weapon, the
Bible.
In the first place, there is no affirmative evidence that
Moses is the author of those books; and that he is the author, is
altogether an unfounded opinion, got abroad nobody knows how. The
style and manner in which those books are written give no room to
believe, or even to suppose, they were written by Moses; for it is
altogether the style and manner of another person speaking of
Moses. In Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, (for every thing in
Genesis is prior to the times of Moses and not the least allusion
is made to him therein,) the whole, I say, of these books is in the
third person; it is always, the Lord said unto Moses, or Moses said
unto the Lord; or Moses said unto the people, or the people said
unto Moses; and this is the style and manner that historians use in
speaking of the person whose lives and actions they are writing. It
may be said, that a man may speak of himself in the third person,
and, therefore, it may be supposed that Moses did; but supposition
proves nothing; and if the advocates for the belief that Moses
wrote those books himself have nothing better to advance than
supposition, they may as well be silent.
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But granting the grammatical right, that Moses might speak of
himself in the third person, because any man might speak of himself
in that manner, it cannot be admitted as a fact in those books,
that it is Moses who speaks, without rendering Moses truly
ridiculous and absurd: -- for example, Numbers xii. 3: "Now the man
Moses was very MEEK, above all the men which were on the face of
the earth." If Moses said this of himself, instead of being the
meekest of men, he was one of the most vain and arrogant coxcombs;
and the advocates for those books may now take which side they
please, for both sides are against them: if Moses was not the
author, the books are without authority; and if he was the author,
the author is without credit, because to boast of meekness is the
reverse of meekness, and is a lie in sentiment.
In Deuteronomy, the style and manner of writing marks more
evidently than in the former books that Moses is not the writer.
The manner here used is dramatical; the writer opens the subject by
a short introductory discourse, and then introduces Moses as in the
act of speaking, and when he has made Moses finish his harrangue,
he (the writer) resumes his own part, and speaks till he brings
Moses forward again, and at last closes the scene with an account
of the death, funeral, and character of Moses.
This interchange of speakers occurs four times in this book:
from the first verse of the first chapter, to the end of the fifth
verse, it is the writer who speaks; he then introduces Moses as in
the act of making his harrangue, and this continues to the end of
the 40th verse of the fourth chapter; here the writer drops Moses,
and speaks historically of what was done in consequence of what
Moses, when living, is supposed to have said, and which the writer
has dramatically rehearsed.
The writer opens the subject again in the first verse of the
fifth chapter, though it is only by saying that Moses called the
people of Isracl together; he then introduces Moses as before, and
continues him as in the act of speaking, to the end of the 26th
chapter. He does the same thing at the beginning of the 27th
chapter; and continues Moses as in the act of speaking, to the end
of the 28th chapter. At the 29th chapter the writer speaks again
through the whole of the first verse, and the first line of the
second verse, where he introduces Moses for the last time, and
continues him as in the act of speaking, to the end of the 33d
chapter.
The writer having now finished the rehearsal on the part of
Moses, comes forward, and speaks through the whole of the last
chapter: he begins by telling the reader, that Moses went up to the
top of Pisgah, that he saw from thence the land which (the writer
says) had been promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; that he,
Moses, died there in the land of Moab, that he buried him in a
valley in the land of Moab, but that no man knoweth of his
sepulchre unto this day, that is unto the time in which the writer
lived who wrote the book of Deuteronomy. The writer then tells us,
that Moses was one hundred and ten years of age when he died --
that his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated; and he
concludes by saying, that there arose not a prophet since in Israel
like unto Moses, whom, says this anonymous writer, the Lord knew
face to face.
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Having thus shewn, as far as grammatical evidence implics,
that Moses was not the writer of those books, I will, after making
a few observations on the inconsistencies of the writer of the book
of Deuteronomy, proceed to shew, from the historical and
chronological evidence contained in those books, that Moses was
not, because he could not be, the writer of them; and consequently,
that there is no authority for believing that the inhuman and
horrid butcheries of men, women, and children, told of in those
books, were done, as those books say they were, at the command of
God. It is a duty incumbent on every true deist, that he vindicates
the moral justice of God against the calumnies of the Bible.
The writer of the book of Deuteronomy, whoever he was, for it
is an anonymous work, is obscure, and also contradictory with
himself in the account he has given of Moses.
After telling that Moses went to the top of Pisgah (and it
does not appear from any account that he ever came down again) he
tells us, that Moses died there in the land of Moab, and that he
buried him in a valley in the land of Moab; but as there is no
antecedent to the pronoun he, there is no knowing who he was, that
did bury him. If the writer meant that he (God) buried him, how
should he (the writer) know it? or why should we (the readers)
believe him? since we know not who the writer was that tells us so,
for certainly Moses could not himself tell where he was buried.
The writer also tells us, that no man knoweth where the
sepulchre of Moses is unto this day, meaning the time in which this
writer lived; how then should he know that Moses was buried in a
valley in the land of Moab? for as the writer lived long after the
time of Moses, as is evident from his using the expression of unto
this day, meaning a great length of time after the death of Moses,
he certainly was not at his funeral; and on the other hand, it is
impossible that Moses himself could say that no man knoweth where
the sepulchre is unto this day. To make Moses the speaker, would be
an improvement on the play of a child that hides himself and cries
nobody can find me; nobody can find Moses.
This writer has no where told us how he came by the speeches
which he has put into the mouth of Moses to speak, and therefore we
have a right to conclude that he either composed them himself, or
wrote them from oral tradition. One or other of these is the more
probable, since he has given, in the fifth chapter, a table of
commandments, in which that called the fourth commandment is
different from the fourth commandment in the twentieth chapter of
Exodus. In that of Exodus, the reason given for keeping the seventh
day is, because (says the commandment) God made the heavens and the
earth in six days, and rested on the seventh; but in that of
Deuteronomy, the reason given is, that it was the day on which the
children of Israel came out of Egypt, and therefore, says this
commandment, the Lord thy God commanded thee to kee the sabbath-day
This makes no mention of the creation, nor that of the coming out
of Egypt. There are also many things given as laws of Moses in this
book, that are not to be found in any of the other books; among
which is that inhuman and brutal law, xxi. 18, 19, 20, 21, which
authorizes parents, the father and the mother, to bring their own
children to have them stoned to death for what it pleased them to
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call stubbornness. -- But priests have always been fond of
preaching up Deuteronomy, for Deuteronomy preaches up tythes; and
it is from this book, xxv. 4, they have taken the phrase, and
applied it to tything, that "thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he
treadeth Out the corn:" and that this might not escape observation,
they have noted it in the table of contents at the head of the
chapter, though it is only a single verse of less than two lines.
O priests! priests! ye are willing to be compared to an ox, for the
sake of tythes. [An elegant pocket edition of Paine's Theological
Works (London. R. Carlile, 1822) has in its title a picture of
Paine, as a Moses in evening dress, unfolding the two tables of his
"Age of Reason" to a famer from whom the Bishop of Llandaff (who
replied to this work) has taken a sheaf and a lamb which he is
carrying to a church at the summit of a well stocked hill. --
Editor.] -- Though it is impossible for us to know identically who
the writer of Deuteronomy was, it is not difficult to discover him
professionally, that he was some Jewish priest, who lived, as I
shall shew in the course of this work, at least three hundred and
fifty years after the time of Moses.
I come now to speak of the historical and chronological
evidence. The chronology that I shall use is the Bible chronology;
for I mean not to go out of the Bible for evidence of any thing,
but to make the Bible itself prove historically and chronologically
that Moses is not the author of the books ascribed to him. It is
therefore proper that I inform the readers (such an one at least as
may not have the opportunity of knowing it) that in the larger
Bibles, and also in some smaller ones, there is a series of
chronology printed in the margin of every page for the purpose of
shawing how long the historical matters stated in each page
happened, or are supposed to have happened, before Christ, and
consequently the distance of time between one historical
circumstance and another.
I begin with the book of Genesis. -- In Genesis xiv., the
writer gives an account of Lot being taken prisoner in a battle
between the four kings against five, and carried off; and that when
the account of Lot being taken came to Abraham, that he armed all
his household and marched to rescue Lot from the captors; and that
he pursued them unto Dan. (ver. 14.)
To shew in what manner this expression of Pursuing them unto
Dan applies to the case in question, I will refer to two
circumstances, the one in America, the other in France. The city
now called New York, in America, was originally New Amsterdam; and
the town in France, lately called Havre Marat, was before called
Havre-de-Grace. New Amsterdam was changed to New York in the year
1664; Havre-de-Grace to Havre Marat in the year 1793. Should,
therefore, any writing be found, though without date, in which the
name of New-York should be mentioned, it would be certain evidence
that such a writing could not have been written before, and must
have been written after New Amsterdam was changed to New York, and
consequently not till after the year 1664, or at least during the
course of that year. And in like manner, any dateless writing, with
the name of Havre Marat, would be certain evidence that such a
writing must have been written after Havre-de-Grace became Havre
Marat, and consequently not till after the year 1793, or at least
during the course of that year.
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I now come to the application of those cases, and to show that
there was no such place as Dan till many years after the death of
Moses; and consequently, that Moses could not be the writer of the
book of Genesis, where this account of pursuing them unto Dan is
given.
The place that is called Dan in the Bible was originally a
town of the Gentiles, called Laish; and when the tribe of Dan
seized upon this town, they changed its name to Dan, in
commemoration of Dan, who was the father of that tribe, and the
great grandson of Abraham.
To establish this in proof, it is necessary to refer from
Genesis to chapter xviii. of the book called the Book of judges. It
is there said (ver. 27) that "they (the Danites) came unto Laish to
a people that were quiet and secure, and they smote them with the
edge of the sword [the Bible is filled with murder] and burned the
city with fire; and they built a city, (ver. 28,) and dwelt
therein, and [ver. 29,] they called the name of the city Dan, after
the name of Dan, their father; howbeit the name of the city was
Laish at the first."
This account of the Danites taking possession of Laish and
changing it to Dan, is placed in the book of Judges immediately
after the death of Samson. The death of Samson is said to have
happened B.C. 1120 and that of Moses B.C. 1451; and, therefore,
according to the historical arrangement, the place was not called
Dan till 331 years after the death of Moses.
There is a striking confusion between the historical and the
chronological arrangement in the book of judges. The last five
chapters, as they stand in the book, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, are put
chronologically before all the preceding chapters; they are made to
be 28 years before the 16th chapter, 266 before the 15th, 245
before the 13th, 195 before the 9th, go before the 4th, and 15
years before the 1st chapter. This shews the uncertain and fabulous
state of the Bible. According to the chronological arrangement, the
taking of Laish, and giving it the name of Dan, is made to be
twenty years after the death of Joshua, who was the successor of
Moses; and by the historical order, as it stands in the book, it is
made to be 306 years after the death of Joshua, and 331 after that
of Moses; but they both exclude Moses from being the writer of
Genesis, because, according to either of the statements, no such a
place as Dan existed in the time of Moses; and therefore the writer
of Genesis must have been some person who lived after the town of
Laish had the name of Dan; and who that person was nobody knows,
and consequently the book of Genesis is anonymous, and without
authority.
I come now to state another point of historical and
chronological evidence, and to show therefrom, as in the preceding
case, that Moses is not the author of the book of Genesis.
In Genesis xxxvi. there is given a genealogy of the sons and
descendants of Esau, who are called Edomites, and also a list by
name of the kings of Edom; in enumerating of which, it is said,
verse 31, "And these are the kings that reigned in Edom, before
there reigned any king over the children of Israel."
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Now, were any dateless writing to be found, in which, speaking
of any past events, the writer should say, these things happened
before there was any Congress in America, or before there was any
Convention in France, it would be evidence that such writing could
not have been written before, and could only be written after there
was a Congress in America or a Convention in France, as the case
might be; and, consequently, that it could not be written by any
person who died before there was a Congress in the one country, or
a Convention in the other.
Nothing is more frequent, as well in history as in
conversation, than to refer to a fact in the room of a date: it is
most natural so to do, because a fact fixes itself in the memory
better than a date; secondly, because the fact includes the date,
and serves to give two ideas at once; and this manner of speaking
by circumstances implies as positively that the fact alluded to is
past, as if it was so expressed. When a person in speaking upon any
matter, says, it was before I was married, or before my son was
born, or before I went to America, or before I went to France, it
is absolutely understood, and intended to be understood, that he
has been married, that he has had a son, that he has been in
America, or been in France. Language does not admit of using this
mode of expression in any other sense; and whenever such an
expression is found anywhere, it can only be understood in the
sense in which only it could have been used.
The passage, therefore, that I have quoted -- that "these are
the kings that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king over
the children of Israel," could only have been written after the
first king began to reign over them; and consequently that the book
of Genesis, so far from having been written by Moses, could not
have been written till the time of Saul at least. This is the
positive sense of the passage; but the expression, any king,
implies more kings than one, at least it implies two, and this will
carry it to the time of David; and, if taken in a general sense, it
carries itself through all times of the Jewish monarchy.
Had we met with this verse in any part of the Bible that
professed to have been written after kings began to reign in
Israel, it would have been impossible not to have seen the
application of it. It happens then that this is the case; the two
books of Chronicles, which give a history of all the kings of
Israel, are professedly, as well as in fact, written after the
Jewish monarchy began; and this verse that I have quoted, and all
the remaining verses of Genesis xxxvi. are, word for word, In 1
Chronicles i., beginning at the 43d verse.
It was with consistency that the writer of the Chronicles
could say as he has said, 1 Chron. i. 43, These are the kings that
reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king ever the children of
Israel," because he was going to give, and has given, a list of the
kings that had reigned in Israel; but as it is impossible that the
same expression could have been used before that period, it is as
certain as any thing can be proved from historical language, that
this part of Genesis is taken from Chronicles, and that Genesis is
not so old as Chronicles, and probably not so old as the book of
Homer, or as AEsop's Fables; admitting Homer to have been, as the
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tables of chronology state, contemporary with David or Solomon, and
AEsop to have lived about the end of the Jewish monarchy.
Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author,
on which only the strange belief that it is the word of God has
stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book
of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of
downright lies. The story of Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and
his ark, drops to a level with the Arabian Tales, without the merit
of being entertaining, and the account of men living to eight and
nine hundred years becomes as fabulous as the immortality of the
giants of the Mythology.
Besides, the character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is
the most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he
was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or
on the pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that
infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to
be found in the history of any nation. Of which I will state only
one instance:
When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and
murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi.
13): "And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the
congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses
was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over
thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle;
and Moses said unto them, "Have ye saved all the women alive?"
behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of
Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor,
and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now
therefore, "kill every male among the little ones, and kill every
woman that hath known a man by lying with him; but all the women-
children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive
for Yourselves."
Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world
have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater
than Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher
the boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters.
Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers,
one child murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in
the hands of an executioner: let any daughter put herself in the
situation of those daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers
of a mother and a brother, and what will be their feelings? It is
in vain that we attempt to impose upon nature, for nature will have
her course, and the religion that tortures all her social ties is
a false religion.
After this detestable order, follows an account of the plunder
taken, and the manner of dividing it; and here it is that the
profanenegs of priestly hypocrisy increases the catalogue of
crimes. Verse 37, "And the Lord's tribute of the sheep was six
hundred and threescore and fifteen; and the beeves were thirty and
six thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was threescore and
twelve; and the asses were thirty thousand, of which the Lord's
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tribute was threescore and one; and the persons were sixteen
thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was thirty and two." In
short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many
other parts of the Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read, or
for decency to hear; for it appears, from the 35th verse of this
chapter, that the number of women-children consigned to debauchery
by the order of Moses was thirty-two thousand.
People in general know not what wickedness there is in this
pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they
take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good;
they permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas
they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they
have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good
heavens! it is quite another thing, it is a book of lies,
wickedness, and blasphemy; for what can be greater blasphemy, than
to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty!
But to return to my subject, that of showing that Moses is not
the author of the books ascribed to him, and that the Bible is
spurious. The two instances I have already given would be
sufficient, without any additional evidence, to invalidate the
authenticity of any book that pretended to be four or five hundred
years more ancient than the matters it speaks of, refers to, them
as facts; for in the case of pursuing them unto Dan, and of the
kings that reigned over the children of Israel; not even the flimsy
pretence of prophecy can be pleaded. The expressions are in the
preter tense, and it would be downright idiotism to say that a man
could prophecy in the preter tense.
But there are many other passages scattered throughout those
books that unite in the same point of evidence. It is said in
Exodus, (another of the books ascribed to Moses,) xvi. 35: "And the
children of Israel did eat manna until they came to a land
inhabited; they did eat manna untit they came unto the borders of
the land of Canaan."
Whether the children of Israel ate manna or not, or what manna
was, or whether it was anything more than a kind of fungus or small
mushroom, or other vegetable substance common to that part of the
country, makes no part of my argument; all that I mean to show is,
that it is not Moses that could write this account, because the
account extends itself beyond the life time of Moses. Moses,
according to the Bible, (but it is such a book of lies and
contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe, or
whether any) died in the wilderness, and never came upon the
borders of 'the land,of Canaan; and consequently, it could not be
he that said what the children of Israel did, or what they ate when
they came there. This account of eating manna, which they tell us
was written by Moses, extends itself to the time of Joshua, the
successor of Moses, as appears by the account given in the book of
Joshua, after the children of Israel had passed the river Jordan,
and came into the borders of the land of Canaan. Joshua, v. 12:
"And the manna ceased on the morrow, after they had eaten of the
old corn of the land; neither had the children of Israel manna any
more, but they did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that
year."
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But a more remarkable instance than this occurs in
Deuteronomy; which, while it shows that Moses could not be the
writer of that book, shows also the fabulous notions that prevailed
at that time about giants' In Deuteronomy iii. 11, among the
conquests said to be made by Moses, is an account of the taking of
Og, king of Bashan: "For only Og, king of Bashan, remained of the
race of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it
not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length
thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a
man." A cubit is 1 foot 9 888/1000 inches; the length therefore of
the bed was 16 feet 4 inches, and the breadth 7 feet 4 inches: thus
much for this giant's bed. Now for the historical part, which,
though the evidence is not so direct and positive as in the former
cases, is nevertheless very presumable and corroborating evidence,
and is better than the best evidence on the contrary side.
The writer, by way of proving the existence of this giant,
refers to his bed, as an ancient relick, and says, is it not in
Rabbath (or Rabbah) of the children of Ammon? meaning that it is;
for such is frequently the bible method of affirming a thing. But
it could not be Moses that said this, because Moses could know
nothing about Rabbah, nor of what was in it. Rabbah was not a city
belonging to this giant king, nor was it one of the cities that
Moses took. The knowledge therefore that this bed was at Rabbah,
and of the particulars of its dimensions, must be referred to the
time when Rabbah was taken, and this was not till four hundred
years after the death of Moses; for which, see 2 Sam. xii. 26: "And
Joab [David's general] fought against Rabbah of the children of
Ammon, and took the royal city," etc.
As I am not undertaking to point out all the contradictions in
time, place, and circumstance that abound in the books ascribed to
Moses, and which prove to demonstration that those books could not
be written by Moses, nor in the time of Moses, I proceed to the
book of Joshua, and to shew that Joshua is not the author of that
book, and that it is anonymous and without authority. The evidence
I shall produce is contained in the book itself: I will not go out
of the Bible for proof against the supposed authenticity of the
Bible. False testimony is always good against itself.
Joshua, according to Joshua i., was the immediate successor of
Moses; he was, moreover, a military man, which Moses was not; and
he continued as chief of the people of Israel twenty-five years;
that is, from the time that Moses died, which, according to the
Bible chronology, was B.C. 1451, until B.C. 1426, when, according
to the same chronology, Joshua died. If, therefore, we find in this
book, said to have been written by Joshua, references to facts done
after the death of Joshua, it is evidence that Joshua could not be
the author; and also that the book could not have been written till
after the time of the latest fact which it records. As to the
character of the book, it is horrid; it is a military history of
rapine and murder, as savage and brutal as those recorded of his
predecessor in villainy and hypocrisy, Moses; and the blasphemy
consists, as in the former books, in ascribing those deeds to the
orders of the Almighty.
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In the first place, the book of Joshua, as is the case in the
preceding books, is written in the third person; it is the
historian of Joshua that speaks, for it would have been absurd and
vainglorious that Joshua should say of himself, as is said of him
in the last verse of the sixth chapter, that "his fame was noised
throughout all the country." -- I now come more immediately to the
proof.
In Joshua xxiv. 31, it is said "And Israel served the Lord all
the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that over-lived
Joshua." Now, in the name of common sense, can it be Joshua that
relates what people had done after he was dead? This account must
not only have been written by some historian that lived after
Joshua, but that lived also after the elders that out-lived Joshua.
There are several passages of a general meaning with respect
to time, scattered throughout the book of Joshua, that carrics the
time in which the book was written to a distance from the time of
Joshua, but without marking by exclusion any particular time, as in
the passage above quoted. In that passage, the time that intervened
between the death of Joshua and the death of the elders is excluded
descriptively and absolutely, and the evidence substantiates that
the book could not have been written till after the death of the
last.
But though the passages to which I allude, and which I am
going to quote, do not designate any particular time by exclusion,
they imply a time far more distant from the days of Joshua than is
contained between the death of Joshua and the death of the elders.
Such is the passage, x. 14, where, after giving an account that the
sun stood still upon Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon,
at the command of Joshua, (a tale only fit to amuse children)
[NOTE: This tale of the sun standing still upon Motint Gibeon, and
the moon in the valley of Ajalon, is one of those fables that
detects itself. Such a circumstance could not have happened without
being known all over the world. One half would have wondered why
the sun did not rise, and the other why it did not set; and the
tradition of it would be universal; whereas there is not a nation
in the world that knows anything about it. But why must the moon
stand still? What occasion could there be for moonlight in the
daytime, and that too whilst the sun shined? As a poetical figure,
the whole is well enough; it is akin to that in the song of Deborah
and Barak, The stars in their courses fought against Sisera; but it
is inferior to the figurative declaration of Mahomet to the persons
who came to expostulate with him on his goings on, Wert thou, said
he, to come to me with the sun in thy right hand and the moon in
thy left, it should not alter my career. For Joshua to have
exceeded Mahomet, he should have put the sun and moon, one in each
pocket, and carried them as Guy Faux carried his dark lanthorn, and
taken them out to shine as he might happen to want them. The
sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is
difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime
makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the
sublime again; the account, however, abstracted from the poetical
fancy, shews the ignorance of Joshua, for he should have commanded
the earth to have stood still. -- Author.] the passage says: "And
there was no day like that, before it, nor after it, that the Lord
hearkened to the voice of a man."
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The time implied by the expression after it, that is, after
that day, being put in comparison with all the time that passed
before it, must, in order to give any expressive signification to
the passage, mean a great letgth of time: -- for example, it would
have been ridiculous to have said so the next day, or the next
week, or the next month, or the next year; to give therefore
meaning to the passage, comparative with the wonder it relates, and
the prior time it alludes to, it must mean centuries of years; less
however than one would be trifling, and less than two would be
barely admissible.
A distant, but general time is also expressed in chapter
viii.; where, after giving an account of the taking the city of Ai,
it is said, ver. 28th, "And Joshua burned Ai, and made it an heap
for ever, a desolation unto this day;" and again, ver. 29, where
speaking of the king of Ai, whom Joshua had hanged, and buried at
the entering of the gate, it is said, "And he raised thereon a
great heap of stones, which remaineth unto this day," that is, unto
the day or time in which the writer of the book of Joshua lived.
And again, in chapter x. where, after speaking of the five kings
whom Joshua had hanged on five trees, and then thrown in a cave, it
is said, "And he laid great stones on the cave's mouth, which
remain unto this very day."
In enumerating the several exploits of Joshua, and of the
tribes, and of the places which they conquered or attempted, it is
said, xv. 63, "As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
the children of Judah could not drive them out; but the Jebusites
dwell with the children of Judah AT JERUSALEM unto this day." The
question upon this passage is, At what time did the Jebusites and
the children of Judah dwell together at Jerusalem? As this matter
occurs again in judges i. I shall reserve my observations till I
come to that part.
Having thus shewn from the book of Joshua itself, without any
auxiliary evidence whatever, that Joshua is not the author of that
book, and that it is anonymous, and consequently without authority,
I proceed, as before-mentioned, to the book of Judges.
The book of Judges is anonymous on the face of it; and,
therefore, even the pretence is wanting to call it the word of God;
it has not so much as a nominal voucher; it is altogether
fatherless.
This book begins with the same expression as the book of
Joshua. That of Joshua begins, chap i. 1, Now after the death of
Moses, etc., and this of the Judges begins, Now after the death of
Joshua, etc. This, and the similarity of stile between the two
books, indicate that they are the work of the same author; but who
he was, is altogether unknown; the only point that the book proves
is that the author lived long after the time of Joshua; for though
it begins as if it followed immediately after his death, the second
chapter is an epitome or abstract of the whole book, which,
according to the Bible chronology, extends its history through a
space of 306 years; that is, from the death of Joshua, B.C. 1426 to
the death of Samson, B.C. 1120, and only 25 years before Saul went
to seek his father's asses, and was made king. But there is good
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reason to believe, that it was not written till the time of David,
at least, and that the book of Joshua was not written before the
same time.
In Judges i., the writer, after announcing the death of
Joshua, proceeds to tell what happened between the children of
Judah and the native inhabitants of the land of Canaan. In this
statement the writer, having abruptly mentioned Jerusalem in the
7th verse, says immediately after, in the 8th verse, by way of
explanation, "Now the children of Judah had fought against
Jerusalem, and taken it;" consequently this book could not have
been written before Jerusalem had been taken. The reader will
recollect the quotation I have just before made from Joshua xv. 63,
where it said that the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah
at Jerusalem at this day; meaning the time when the book of Joshua
was written.
The evidence I have already produced to prove that the books
I have hitherto treated of were not written by the persons to whom
they are ascribed, nor till many years after their death, if such
persons ever lived, is already so abundant, that I can afford to
admit this passage with less weight than I am entitled to draw from
it. For the case is, that so far as the Bible can be credited as an
history, the city of Jerusalem was not taken till the time of
David; and consequently, that the book of Joshua, and of Judges,
were not written till after the commencement of the reign of David,
which was 370 years after the death of Joshua.
The name of the city that was afterward called Jerusalem was
originally Jebus, or Jebusi, and was the capital of the Jebusites.
The account of David's taking this city is given in 2 Samuel, v. 4,
etc.; also in 1 Chron. xiv. 4, etc. There is no mention in any part
of the Bible that it was ever taken before, nor any account that
favours such an opinion. It is not said, either in Samuel or in
Chronicles, that they "utterly destroyed men, women and children,
that they left not a soul to breathe," as is said of their other
conquests; and the silence here observed implies that it was taken
by capitulation; and that the Jebusites, the native inhabitants,
continued to live in the place after it was taken. The account
therefore, given in Joshua, that "the Jebusites dwell with the
children of Judah" at Jerusalem at this day, corresponds to no
other time than after taking the city by David.
Having now shown that every book in the Bible, from Genesis to
Judges, is without authenticity, I come to the book of Ruth, an
idle, bungling story, foolishly told, nobody knows by whom, about
a strolling country-girl creeping slily to bed to her cousin Boaz.
[The text of Ruth does not imply the unpleasant sense Paine's words
are likely to convey. -- Editer.] Pretty stuff indeed to be called
the word of God. It is, however, one of the best books in the
Bible, for it is free from murder and rapine.
I come next to the two books of Samuel, and to shew that those
books were not written by Samuel, nor till a great length of time
after the death of Samuel; and that they are, like all the former
books, anonymous, and without authority.
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To be convinced that these books have been written much later
than the time of Samuel, and consequently not by him, it is only
necessary to read the account which the writer gives of Saul going
to seek his father's asses, and of his interview with Samuel, of
whom Saul went to enquire about those lost asses, as foolish people
nowa-days go to a conjuror to enquire after lost things.
The writer, in relating this story of Saul, Samuel, and the
asses, does not tell it as a thing that had just then happened, but
as an ancient story in the time this writer lived; for he tells it
in the language or terms used at the time that Samuel lived, which
obliges the writer to explain the story in the terms or language
used in the time the writer lived.
Samuel, in the account given of him in the first of those
books, chap. ix. 13 called the seer; and it is by this term that
Saul enquires after him, ver. 11, "And as they [Saul and his
servant] went up the hill to the city, they found young maidens
going out to draw water; and they said unto them, Is the seer here?
"Saul then went according to the direction of these maidens, and
met Samuel without knowing him, and said unto him, ver. 18, "Tell
me, I pray thee, where the seer's house is? and Samuel answered
Saul, and said, I am the seer."
As the writer of the book of Samuel relates these questions
and answers, in the language or manner of speaking used in the time
they are said to have been spoken, and as that manner of speaking
was out of use when this author wrote, he found it necessary, in
order to make the story understood, to explain the terms in which
these questions and answers are spoken; and he does this in the 9th
verse, where he says, "Before-tune in Israel, when a man went to
enquire of God, thus he spake, Come let us go to the seer; for he
that is now called a prophet, was before-time called a seer." This
proves, as I have before said, that this story of Saul, Samuel, and
the asses, was an ancient story at the time the book of Samuel was
written, and consequently that Samuel did not write it, and that
the book is without authenticity,
But if we go further into those books the evidence is still
more positive that Samuel is not the writer of them; for they
relate things that did not happen till several years after the
death of Samuel. Samuel died before Saul; for i Samuel, xxviii.
tells, that Saul and the witch of Endor conjured Samuel up after he
was dead; yet the history of matters contained in those books is
extended through the remaining part of Saul's life, and to the
latter end of the life of David, who succceded Saul. The account of
the death and burial of Samuel (a thing which he could not write
himself) is related in i Samuel xxv.; and the chronology affixed to
this chapter makes this to be B.C. 106O; yet the history of this
first book is brought down to B.C. 1056, that is, to the death of
Saul, which was not till four years after the death of Samuel.
The second book of Samuel begins with an account of things
that did not happen till four years after Samuel was dead; for it
begins with the reign of David, who succeeded Saul, and it goes on
to the end of David's reign, which was forty-three years after the
death of Samuel; and, therefore, the books are in themselves
positive evidence that they were not written by Samuel.
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I have now gone through all the books in the first part of the
Bible, to which the names of persons are affixed, as being the
authors of those books, and which the church, styling itself the
Christian church, have imposed upon the world as the writings of
Moses, Joshua and Samuel; and I have detected and proved the
falsehood of this imposition. -- And now ye priests, of every
description, who have preached and written against the former part
of the 'Age of Reason,' what have ye to say? Will ye with all this
mass of evidence against you, and staring you in the face, still
have the assurance to march into your pulpits, and continue to
impose these books on your congregations, as the works of inspired
penmen and the word of God? when it is as evident as demonstration
can make truth appear, that the persons who ye say are the authors,
are not the authors, and that ye know not who the authors are. What
shadow of pretence have ye now to produce for continuing the
blasphemous fraud? What have ye still to offer against the pure and
moral religion of deism, in support of your system of falsehood,
idolatry, and pretended revelation? Had the cruel and murdering
orders, with which the Bible is filled, and the numberless
torturing executions of men, women, and children, in consequence of
those orders, been ascribed to some friend, whose memory you
revered, you would have glowed with satisfaction at detecting the
falsehood of the charge, and gloried in defending his injured fame.
It is because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel
no interest in the honour of your Creator, that ye listen to the
horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference.
The evidence I have produced, and shall still produce in the course
of this work, to prove that the Bible is without authority, will,
whilst it wounds the stubbornness of a priest, relieve and
tranquillize the minds of millions: it will free them from all
those hard thoughts of the Almighty which priestcraft and the Bible
had infused into their minds, and which stood in everlasting
opposition to all their ideas of his moral justice and benevolence.
I come now to the two books of Kings, and the two books of
Chronicles. -- Those books are altogether historical, and are
chiefly confined to the lives and actions of the Jewish kings, who
in general were a parcel of rascals: but these are matters with
which we have no more concern than we have with the Roman emperors,
or Homer's account of the Trojan war. Besides which, as those books
are anonymous, and as we know nothing of the writer, or of his
character, it is impossible for us to know what degree of credit to
give to the matters related therein. Like all other ancient
histories, they appear to be a jumble of fable and of fact, and of
probable and of improbable things, but which distance of time and
place, and change of circumstances in the world, have rendered
obsolete and uninteresting.
The chief use I shall make of those books will be that of
comparing them with each other, and with other parts of the Bible,
to show the confusion, contradiction, and cruelty in this pretended
word of God.
The first book of Kings begins with the reign of Solomon,
which, according to the Bible chronology, was B.C. 1015; and the
second book ends B.C. 588, being a little after the reign of
Zedekiah, whom Nebuchadnezzar, after taking Jerusalem and
conquering the Jews, carried captive to Babylon. The two books
include a space of 427 years.
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The two books of Chroniclcs are an history of the same times,
and in general of the same persons, by another author; for it would
be absurd to suppose that the same author wrote the history twice
over. The first book of Chronicles (after giving the genealogy from
Adam to Saul, which takes up the first nine chapters) begins with
the reign of David; and the last book ends, as in the last book of
Kings, soon, after the reign of Zedekiah, about B.C. 588. The last
two verses of the last chapter bring the history 52 years more
forward, that is, to 536. But these verses do not belong to the
book, as I shall show when I come to speak of the book of Ezra.
The two books of Kings, besides the history of Saul, David,
and Solomon, who reigned over all Israel, contain an abstract of
the lives of seventeen kings, and one queen, who are stiled kings
of Judah; and of nineteen, who are stiled kings of Israel; for the
Jewish nation, immediately on the death of Solomon, split into two
parties, who chose separate kings, and who carried on most
rancorous wars against each other.
These two books are little more than a history of
assassinations, treachery, and wars. The cruelties that the Jews
had accustomed themselves to practise on the Canaanites, whose
country they had savagely invaded, under a pretended gift from God,
they afterwards practised as furiously on each other. Scarcely half
their kings died a natural death, and in some instances whole
families were destroyed to secure possession to the successor, who,
after a few years, and sometimes only a few months, or less, shared
the same fate. In 2 Kings x., an account is given of two baskets
full of children's heads, seventy in number, being exposed at the
entrance of the city; they were the children of Ahab, and were
murdered by the orders of Jehu, whom Elisha, the pretended man of
God, had anointed to be king over Israel, on purpose to commit this
bloody deed, and assassinate his predecessor. And in the account of
the reign of Menahem, one of the kings of Israel who had murdered
Shallum, who had reigned but one month, it is said, 2 Kings xv. 16,
that Menahem smote the city of Tiphsah, because they opened not the
city to him, and all the women therein that were with child he
ripped up.
Could we permit ourselves to suppose that the Almighty would
distinguish any nation of people by the name of his chosen people,
we must suppose that people to have been an example to all the rest
of the world of the purest piety and humanity, and not such a
nation of ruffians and cut-throats as the ancient Jews were, -- a
people who, corrupted by and copying after such monsters and
imposters as Moses and Aaron, Joshua, Samuel, and David, had
distinguished themselves above all others on the face of the known
earth for barbarity and wickedness. If we will not stubbornly shut
our eyes and steel our hearts it is impossible not to see, in spite
of all that long-established superstition imposes upon the mind,
that the flattering appellation of his chosen people is no other
than a LIE which the priests and leaders of the Jews had invented
to cover the baseness of their own characters; and which Christian
priests sometimes as corrupt, and often as cruel, have professed to
believe.
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The two books of Chronicles are a repetition of the same
crimes; but the history is broken in several places, by the author
leaving out the reign of some of their kings; and in this, as well
as in that of Kings, there is such a frequent transition from kings
of Judah to kings of Israel, and from kings of Israel to kings of
Judah, that the narrative is obscure in the reading. In the same
book the history sometimes contradicts itself: for example, in 2
Kings, i. 17, we are told, but in rather ambiguous terms, that
after the death of Ahaziah, king of Israel, Jehoram, or Joram, (who
was of the house of Ahab, reigned in his stead in the second Year
of Jehoram, or Joram, son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah; and in
viii. 16, of the same book, it is said, "And in the fifth year of
Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Jehoshaphat being then king
of Judah, Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat king of judah, began to
reign." That is, one chapter says Joram of Judah began to reign in
the second year of Joram of Israel; and the other chapter says,
that Joram of Israel began to reign in the fifth year of Joram of
Judah.
Several of the most extraordinary matters related in one
history, as having happened during the reign of such or such of
their kings, are not to be found in the other, in relating the
reign of the same king: for example, the two first rival kings,
after the death of Solomon, were Rehoboam and Jeroboam; and in i
Kings xii. and xiii. an account is given of Jeroboam making an
offering of burnt incense, and that a man, who is there called a
man of God, cried out against the altar (xiii. 2): "O altar, altar!
thus saith the Lord: Behold, a child shall be born unto the house
of David, Josiah by name, and upon thee shall he offer the priests
of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones
shall be burned upon thee." Verse 4: "And it came to pass, when
king Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God, which had cried
against the altar in Bethel, that he put forth his hand from the
altar, saying, Lay hold on him; and his hand which he put out
against him dried up so that he could not pull it again to him."
One would think that such an extraordinary case as this,
(which is spoken of as a judgement,) happening to the chief of one
of the parties, and that at the first moment of the separation of
the Israelites into two nations, would, if it,. had been true, have
been recorded in both histories. But though men, in later times,
have believed all that the prophets have said unto them, it does
appear that those prophets, or historians, disbelieved each other:
they knew each other too well.
A long account also is given in Kings about Elijah. It runs
through several chapters, and concludes with telling, 2 Kings ii.
11, "And it came to pass, as they (Elijah and Elisha) still went
on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire and
horses of fire, and parted them both asunder, and Elijah went up by
a whirlwind into heaven." Hum! this the author of Chronicles,
miraculous as the story is, makes no mention of, though he mentions
Elijah by name; neither does he say anything of the story related
in the second chapter of the same book of Kings, of a parcel of
children calling Elisha bald head; and that this man of God (ver.
24) "turned back, and looked upon them, and cursed them in the name
of the Lord; and there came forth two she-bears out of the wood,
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and tare forty and two children of them." He also passes over in
silence the story told, 2 Kings xiii., that when they were burying
a man in the sepulchre where Elisha had been buried, it happened
that the dead man, as they were letting him down, (ver. 21)
"touched the bones of Elisha, and he (the dead man) revived, and
stood up on his feet." The story does not tell us whether they
buried the man, notwithstanding he revived and stood upon his feet,
or drew him up again. Upon all these stories the writer of the
Chronicles is as silent as any writer of the present day, who did
not chose to be accused of lying, or at least of romancing, would
be about stories of the same kind.
But, however these two historians may differ from each other
with respect to the tales related by either, they are silent alike
with respect to those men styled prophets whose writings fill up
the latter part of the Bible. Isaiah, who lived in the time of
Hezekiab, is mentioned in Kings, and again in Chronicles, when
these histories are speaking of that reign; but except in one or
two instances at most, and those very slightly, none of the rest
are so much as spoken of, or even their existence hinted at;
though, according to the Bible chronology, they lived within the
time those histories were written; and some of them long before. If
those prophets, as they are called, were men of such importance in
their day, as the compilers of the Bible, and priests and
commentators have since represented them to be, how can it be
accounted for that not one of those histories should say anything
about them?
The history in the books of Kings and of Chronicles is brought
forward, as I have already said, to the year B.C. 588; it will,
therefore, be proper to examine which of these prophets lived
before that period.
Here follows a table of all the prophets, with the times in
which they lived before Christ, according to the chronology affixed
to the first chapter of each of the books of the prophets; and also
of the number of years they lived before the books of Kings and
Chronicles were written:
TABLE of the Prophets, with the time in which they lived
before Christ, and also before the books of Kings and Chronicles
were written:
Years Years before
NAMES. before Kings and Observations.
Christ. Chronicles.
Isaiah.............. 760 172 mentioned.
(mentioned only in
Jeremiah............. 629 41 the last [two] chapters
of Chronicles.
Ezekiel.............. 595 7 not mentioned.
Daniel............... 607 19 not mentioned.
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Hosea................ 785 97 not mentioned.
Joel................. 800 212 not mentioned.
Amos................. 789 199 not meneioned.
Obadiah.............. 789 199 not mentioned.
Jonah................ 862 274 see the note.*
Micah................ 750 162 not mentioned.
Nahum............... 7I3 125 not mentioned.
Habakkuk............. 620 38 not mentioned.
Zepbaniah............ 630 42 not mentioned.
Haggai
Zechariah all three after the year 588
Mdachi
[NOTE * In 2 Kings xiv. 25, the name of Jonah is mentioned on
account of the restoration of a tract of land by Jeroboam; but
nothing further is said of him, nor is any allusion made to the
book of Jonah, nor to his expedition to Nineveh, nor to his
encounter with the whale. -- Author.]
This table is either not very honourable for the Bible
historians, or not very honourable for the Bible prophets; and I
leave to priests and commentators, who are very learned in little
things, to settle the point of etiquette between the two; and to
assign a reason, why the authors of Kings and of Chronicles have
treated those prophets, whom, in the former part of the 'Age of
Reason,' I have considered as poets, with as much degrading silence
as any historian of the present day would treat Peter Pindar.
I have one more observation to make on the book of Chronicles;
after which I shall pass on to review the remaining books of the
Bible.
In my observations on the book of Genesis, I have quoted a
passage from xxxvi. 31, which evidently refers to a time, after
that kings began to reign over the children of Israel; and I have
shown that as this verse is verbatim the same as in 1 Chronicles i.
43, where it stands consistently with the order of history, which
in Genesis it does not, that the verse in Genesis, and a great part
of the 36th chapter, have been taken from Chronicles; and that the
book of Genesis, though it is placed first in the Bible, and
ascribed to Moses, has been manufactured by some unknown person,
after the book of Chronicles was written, which was not until at
least eight hundred and sixty years after the time of Moses.
The evidence I proceed by to substantiate this, is regular,
and has in it but two stages. First, as I have already stated, that
the passage in Genesis refers itself for time to Chronicles;
secondly, that the book of Chronicles, to which this passage refers
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itself, was not begun to be written until at least eight hundred
and sixty years after the time of Moses. To prove this, we have
only to look into 1 Chronicles iii. 15, where the writer, in giving
the genealogy of the descendants of David, mentions Zedekiah; and
it was in the time of Zedekiah that Nebuchadnezzar conquered
Jerusalem, B.C. 588, and consequently more than 860 years after
Moses. Those who have superstitiously boasted of the antiquity of
the Bible, and particularly of the books ascribed to Moses, have
done it without examination, and without any other authority than
that of one credulous man telling it to another: for, so far as
historical and chronological evidence applies, the very first book
in the Bible is not so ancient as the book of Homer, by more than
three hundred years, and is about the same age with AEsop's Fables.
I am not contending for the morality of Homer; on the
contrary, I think it a book of false glory, and tending to inspire
immoral and mischievous notions of honour; and with respect to
AEsop, though the moral is in general just, the fable is often
cruel; and the cruelty of the fable does more injury to the heart,
especially in a child, than the moral does good to the judgment.
Having now dismissed Kings and Chronicles, I come to the next
in course, the book of Ezra.
As one proof, among others I shall produce to shew the
disorder in which this pretended word of God, the Bible, has been
put together, and the uncertainty of who the authors were, we have
only to look at the first three verses in Ezra, and the last two in
2 Chronicles; for by what kind of cutting and shuffling has it been
that the first three verses in Ezra should be the last two verses
in 2 Chronicles, or that the last two in 2 Chronicles should be the
first three in Ezra? Either the authors did not know their own
works or the compilers did not know the authors.
Last Two Verses of 2 Chronicles.
Ver. 22. Now in the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia, that
the word of the Lord, spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be
accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of
Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and
put it also in writing, saying,
23. Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, all the kingdoms of the
earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me
to build him an house in Jerusalem which is in Judah. Who is there
among you of all his people? the Lord his God be with him, and let
him go up. ***
First Three Verses of Ezra.
Ver. 1. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that
the word of the Lord, by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be fulfilled,
the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he
made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in
writing, saying,
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2. Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven
hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me
to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
3. Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with
him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build
the house of the Lord God of Israel (he is the God) which is in
Jerusalem.
*** The last verse in Chronicles is broken abruptly, and ends
in the middle of the phrase with the word 'up' without signifying
to what place. This abrupt break, and the appearance of the same
verses in different books, show as I have already said, the
disorder and ignorance in which the Bible has been put together,
and that the compilers of it had no authority for what they were
doing, nor we any authority for believing what they have done.
[NOTE I observed, as I passed along, several broken and senseless
passages in the Bible, without thinking them of consequence enough
to be introduced in the body of the work; such as that, 1 Samuel
xiii. 1, where it is said, "Saul reigned one year; and when he had
reigned two years over Israel, Saul chose him three thousand men,"
&c. The first part of the verse, that Saul reigned one year has no
sense, since it does not tell us what Saul did, nor say any thing
of what happened at the end of that one year; and it is, besides,
mere absurdity to say he reigned one year, when the very next
phrase says he had reigned two for if he had reigned two, it was
impossible not to have reigned one.
Another instance occurs in Joshua v. where the writer tells us
a story of an angel (for such the table of contents at the head of
the chapter calls him) appearing unto Joshua; and the story ends
abruptly, and without any conclusion. The story is as follows: --
Ver. 13. "And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he
lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold there stood a man over
against him with his sword drawn in his hand; and Joshua went unto
bim and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?"
Verse 14, "And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the Lord
am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did
worship and said unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant?"
Verse 15, "And the captain of the Lord's host said unto Josbua,
Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou
standeth is holy. And Joshua did so." -- And what then? nothing:
for here the story ends, and the chapter too.
Either this story is broken off in the middle, or it is a
story told by some Jewish humourist in ridicule of Joshua's
pretended mission from God, and the compilers of the Bible, not
perceiving the design of the story, have told it as a serious
matter. As a story of humour and ridicule it has a great deal of
point; for it pompously introduces an angel in the figure of a man,
with a drawn sword in his hand, before whom Joshua falls on his
face to the earth, and worships (which is contrary to their second
commandment;) and then, this most important embassy from heaven
ends in telling Joshua to pull off his shoe. It might as well have
told him to pull up his breeches.
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It is certain, however, that the Jews did not credit every
thing their leaders told them, as appears from the cavalier manner
in which they speak of Moses, when he was gone into the mount. As
for this Moses, say they, we wot not what is become of him. Exod.
xxxii. 1. -- Auther.]
The only thing that has any appearance of certainty in the
book of Ezra is the time in which it was written, which was
immediately after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian
captivity, about B.C. 536. Ezra (who, according to the Jewish
commentators, is the same person as is called Esdras in the
Apocrypha) was one of the persons who returned, and who, it is
probable, wrote the account of that affair. Nebemiah, whose book
follows next to Ezra, was another of the returned persons; and who,
it is also probable, wrote the account of the same affair, in the
book that bears his name. But those accounts are nothing to us, nor
to any other person, unless it be to the Jews, as a part of the
history of their nation; and there is just as much of the word of
God in those books as there is in any of the histories of France,
or Rapin's history of England, or the history of any other country.
But even in matters of historical record, neither of those
writers are to be depended upon. In Ezra ii., the writer gives a
list of the tribes and families, and of the precise number of souls
of each, that returned from Babylon to Jerusalem; and this
enrolment of the persons so returned appears to have been one of
the principal objects for writing the book; but in this there is an
error that destroys the intention of the undertaking.
The writer begins his enrolment in the following manner (ii.
3): "The children of Parosh, two thousand one hundred seventy and
four." Ver. 4, "The children of Shephatiah, three hundred seventy
and two." And in this manner he proceeds through all the families;
and in the 64th verse, he makes a total, and says, the whole
congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and
threescore.
But whoever will take the trouble of casting up the several
particulars, will find that the total is but 29,818; so that the
error is 12,542. What certainty then can there be in the Bible for
any thing?
[Here Mr. Paine includes the long list of numbers from the
Bible of all the children listed and the total thereof. This can be
had directly from the Bible.]
Nehemiah, in like manner, gives a list of the returned
families, and of the number of each family. He begins as in Ezra,
by saying (vii. 8): "The children of Parosh, two thousand three
hundred and seventy-two; "and so on through all the families. (The
list differs in several of the particulars from that of Ezra.) In
ver. 66, Nehemiah makes a total, and says, as Ezra had said, "The
whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three
hundred and threescore." But the particulars of this list make a
total but of 31,089, so that the error here is 11,271. These
writers may do well enough for Bible-makers, but not for any thing
where truth and exactness is necessary.
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The next book in course is the book of Esther. If Madam Esther
thought it any honour to offer herself as a kept mistress to
Ahasuerus, or as a rival to Queen Vashti, who had refused to come
to a drunken king in the midst of a drunken company, to be made a
show of, (for the account says, they had been drinking seven days,
and were merry,) let Esther and Mordecai look to that, it is no
business of ours, at least it is none of mine; besides which, the
story has a great deal the appearance of being fabulous, and is
also anonymous. I pass on to the book of Job.
The book of Job differs in character from all the books we
have hitherto passed over. Treachery and murder make no part of
this book; it is the meditations of a mind strongly impressed with
the vicissitudes of human life, and by turns sinking under, and
struggling against the pressure. It is a highly wrought
composition, between willing submission and involuntary discontent;
and shows man, as he sometimes is, more disposed to be resigned
than he is capable of being. Patience has but a small share in the
character of the person of whom the book treats; on the contrary,
his grief is often impetuous; but he still endeavours to keep a
guard upon it, and seems determined, in the midst of accumulating
ills, to impose upon himself the hard duty of contentment.
I have spoken in a respectful manner of the book of Job in the
former part of the 'Age of Reason,' but without knowing at that
time what I have learned since; which is, that from all the
evidence that can be collected, the book of Job does not belong to
the Bible.
I have seen the opinion of two Hebrew commentators, Abenezra
and Spinoza, upon this subject; they both say that the book of Job
carries no internal evidence of being an Hebrew book; that the
genius of the composition, and the drama of the piece, are not
Hebrew; that it has been translated from another language into
Hebrew, and that the author of the book was a Gentile; that the
character represented under the name of Satan (which is the first
and only time this name is mentioned in the Bible) [In a later
work Paine notes that in "the Bible" (by which be always means the
Old Testament alone) the word Satan occurs also in 1 Chron. xxi. 1,
and remarks that the action there ascribed to Satan is in 2 Sam.
xxiv. 1, attributed to Jehovah ("Essay on Dreams"). In these
places, however, and in Ps. cix. 6, Satan means "adversary," and is
so translated (A.S. version) in 2 Sam. xix. 22, and 1 Kings v. 4,
xi. 25. As a proper name, with the article, Satan appears in the
Old Testament only in Job and in Zech. iii. 1, 2. But the
authenticity of the passage in Zechariah has been questioned, and
it may be that in finding the proper name of Satan in Job alone,
Paine was following some opinion met with in one of the authorities
whose comments are condensed in his paragraph. -- Editor.] does
not correspond to any Hebrew idea; and that the two convocations
which the Deity is supposed to have made of those whom the poem
calls sons of God, and the familiarity which this supposed Satan is
stated to have with the Deity, are in the same case.
It may also be observed, that the book shows itself to be the
production of a mind cultivated in science, which the Jews, so far
from being famous for, were very ignorant of. The allusions to
objects of natural philosophy are frequent and strong, and are of
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a different cast to any thing in the books known to be Hebrew. The
astronomical names, Pleiades, Orion, and Arcturus, are Greek and
not Hebrew names, and it does not appear from any thing that is to
be found in the Bible that the Jews knew any thing of astronomy, or
that they studied it, they had no translation of those names into
their own language, but adopted the names as they found them in the
poem. [Paine's Jewish critic, David Levi, fastened on this slip
("Detence of the Old Testament," 1797, p. 152). In the original the
names are Ash (Arcturus), Kesil' (Orion), Kimah' (Pleiades), though
the identifications of the constellations in the A.S.V. have been
questioned. -- Editor.]
That the Jews did translate the literary productions of the
Gentile nations into the Hebrew language, and mix them with their
own, is not a matter of doubt; Proverbs xxxi. i, is an evidence of
this: it is there said, The word of king Lemuel, the prophecy which
his mother taught him. This verse stands as a preface to the
proverbs that follow, and which are not the proverbs of Solomon,
but of Lemuel; and this Lemuel was not one of the kings of Israel,
nor of Judah, but of some other country, and consequently a
Gentile. The Jews however have adopted his proverbs; and as they
cannot give any account who the author of the book of Job was, nor
how they came by the book, and as it differs in character from the
Hebrew writings, and stands totally unconnected with every other
book and chapter in the Bible before it and after it, it has all
the circumstantial evidence of being originally a book of the
Gentiles. [The prayer known by the name of Agur's Prayer, in
Proverbs xxx., -- immediately preceding the proverbs of Lemuel, --
and which is the only sensible, well-conceived, and well-expressed
prayer in the Bible, has much the appearance of being a prayer
taken from the Gentiles. The name of Agur occurs on no other
occasion than this; and he is introduced, together with the prayer
ascribed to him, in the same manner, and nearly in the same words,
that Lemuel and his proverbs are introduced in the chapter that
follows. The first verse says, "The words of Agur, the son of
Jakeh, even the prophecy: "here the word prophecy is used with the
same application it has in the following chapter of Lemuel,
unconnected with anything of prediction. The prayer of Agur is in
the 8th and 9th verses, "Remove far from me vanity and lies; give
me neither riches nor poverty, but feed me with food convenient for
me; lest I be full and deny thee and say, Who is the Lord? or lest
I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God in vain." This has
not any of the marks of being a Jewish prayer, for the Jews never
prayed but when they were in trouble, and never for anything but
victory, vengeance, or riches. -- Author. (Prov. xxx. 1, and xxxi.
1, the word "prophecy" in these verses is tranrinted "oracle" or
"burden" (marg.) in the revised version. -- The prayer of Agur was
quoted by Paine in his plea for the officers of Excise, 1772. --
Editer.]
The Bible-makers, and those regulators of time, the Bible
chronologists, appear to have been at a loss where to place and how
to dispose of the book of Job; for it contains no one historical
circumstance, nor allusion to any, that might serve to determine
its place in the Bible. But it would not have answered the purpose
of these men to have informed the world of their ignorance; and,
therefore, they have affixed it to the aera of B.C. 1520, which is
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during the time the Israelites were in Egypt, and for which they
have just as much authority and no more than I should have for
saying it was a thousand years before that period. The probability
however is, that it is older than any book in the Bible; and it is
the only one that can be read without indignation or disgust.
We know nothing of what the ancient Gentile world (as it is
called) was before the time of the Jews, whose practice has been to
calumniate and blacken the character of all other nations; and it
is from the Jewish accounts that we have learned to call them
heathens. But, as far as we know to the contrary, they were a just
and moral people, and not addicted, like the Jews, to cruelty and
revenge, but of whose profession of faith we are unacquainted. It
appears to have been their custom to personify both virtue and vice
by statues and images, as is done now-a-days both by statuary and
by painting; but it does not follow from this that they worshipped
them any more than we do. -- I pass on to the book of
Psalms, of which it is not necessary to make much observation.
Some of them are moral, and others are very revengeful; and the
greater part relates to certain local circumstances of the Jewish
nation at the time they were written, with which we have nothing to
do. It is, however, an error or an imposition to call them the
Psalms of David; they are a collection, as song-books are now-a-
days, from different song-writers, who lived at different times.
The 137th Psalm could not have been written till more than 400
years after the time of David, because it is written in
commemoration of an event, the capitivity of the Jews in Babylon,
which did not happen till that distance of time. "By the rivers of
Babylon we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We
hanged our harps upon the willows, in the midst thereof; for there
they that carried us away cartive required of us a song, saying,
sing us one of the songs of Zion." As a man would say to an
American, or to a Frenchman, or to an Englishman, sing us one of
your American songs, or your French songs, or your English songs.
This remark, with respect to the time this psalm was written, is of
no other use than to show (among others already mentioned) the
general imposition the world has been under with respect to the
authors of the Bible. No regard has been paid to time, place, and
circumstance; and the names of persons have been affixed to the
several books which it was as impossible they should write, as that
a man should walk in procession at his own funeral.
The Book of Proverbs. These, like the Psalms, are a
collection, and that from authors belonging to other nations than
those of the Jewish nation, as I have shewn in the observations
upon the book of Job; besides which, some of the Proverbs ascribed
to Solomon did not appear till two hundred and fifty years after
the death of Solomon; for it is said in xxv. i, "These are also
proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah,
copied out." It was two hundred and fifty years from the time of
Solomon to the time of Hezekiah. When a man is famous and his name
is abroad he is made the putative father of things he never said or
did; and this, most probably, has been the case with Solomon. It
appears to have been the fashion of that day to make proverbs, as
it is now to make jest-books, and father them upon those who never
saw them. [A "Tom Paine's Jest Book" had appeared in London with
little or nothing of Paine in it. -- Editor.]
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The book of Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher, is also ascribed to
Solomon, and that with much reason, if not with truth. It is
written as the solitary reflections of a worn-out debauchee, such
as Solomon was, who looking back on scenes he can no longer enjoy,
cries out All is Vanity! A great deal of the metaphor and of the
sentiment is obscure, most probably by translation; but enough is
left to show they were strongly pointed in the original. [Those
that look out of the window shall be darkened, is an obscure figure
in translation for loss of sight. -- Author.] From what is
transmitted to us of the character of Solomon, he was witty,
ostentatious, dissolute, and at last melancholy. He lived fast, and
died, tired of the world, at the age of fifty-eight years.
Seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines, are worse
than none; and, however it may carry with it the appearance of
heightened enjoyment, it defeats all the felicity of affection, by
leaving it no point to fix upon; divided love is never happy. This
was the case with Solomon; and if he could not, with all his
pretensions to wisdom, discover it beforehand, he merited,
unpitied, the mortification he afterwards endured. In this point of
view, his preaching is unnecessary, because, to know the
consequences, it is only necessary to know the cause. Seven hundred
wives, and three hundred concubines would have stood in place of
the whole book. It was needless after this to say that all was
vanity and vexation of spirit; for it is impossible to derive
happiness from the company of those whom we deprive of happiness.
To be happy in old age it is necessary that we accustom
ourselves to objects that can accompany the mind all the way
through life, and that we take the rest as good in their day. The
mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age; and the mere drudge
in business is but little better: whereas, natural philosophy,
mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of
tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests,
and of superstition, the study of those things is the study of the
true theology; it teaches man to know and to admire the Creator,
for the principles of science are in the creation, and are
unchangeable, and of divine origin.
Those who knew Benjaman Franklin will recollect, that his mind
was ever young; his temper ever serene; science, that never grows
grey, was always his mistress. He was never without an object; for
when we cease to have an object we become like an invalid in an
hospital waiting for death.
Solomon's Songs, amorous and foolish enough, but which
wrinkled fanaticism has called divine. -- The compilers of the
Bible have placed these songs after the book of Ecclesiastes; and
the chronologists have affixed to them the aera of B.C. 1O14, at
which time Solomon, according to the same chronology, was nineteen
years of age, and was then forming his seraglio of wives and
concubines. The Bible-makers and the chronologists should have
managed this matter a little better, and either have said nothing
about the time, or chosen a time less inconsistent with the
supposed divinity of those songs; for Solomon was then in the
honey-moon of one thousand debaucheries.
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It should also have occurred to them, that as he wrote, if he
did write, the book of Ecclesiastes, long after these songs, and in
which he exclaims that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, that
he included those songs in that description. This is the more
probable, because he says, or somebody for him, Ecclesiastes ii. 8,
I got me men-singers, and women-singers (most probably to sing
those songs], and musical instruments of all sores; and behold
(Ver. ii), "all was vanity and vexation of spirit." The compilers
however have done their work but by halves; for as they have given
us the songs they should have given us the tunes, that we might
sing them.
The books called the books of the Prophets fill up all the
remaining part of the Bible; they are sixteen in number, beginning
with Isaiah and ending with Malachi, of which I have given a list
in the observations upon Chronicles. Of these sixteen prophets, all
of whom except the last three lived within the time the books of
Kings and Chronicles were written, two only, Isaiah and Jeremiah,
are mentioned in the history of those books. I shall begin with
those two, reserving, what I have to say on the general character
of the men called prophets to another part of the work.
Whoever will take the trouble of reading the book ascribed to
Isaiah, will find it one of the most wild and disorderly
compositions ever put together; it has neither beginning, middle,
nor end; and, except a short historical part, and a few sketches of
history in the first two or three chapters, is one continued
incoherent, bombastical rant, full of extravagant metaphor, without
application, and destitute of meaning; a school-boy would scarcely
have been excusable for writing such stuff; it is (at least in
translation) that kind of composition and false taste that is
properly called prose run mad.
The historical part begins at chapter xxxvi., and is continued
to the end of chapter xxxix. It relates some matters that are said
to have passed during the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah, at
which time Isaiah lived. This fragment of history begins and ends
abruptly; it has not the least connection with the chapter that
precedes it, nor with that which follows it, nor with any other in
the book. It is probable that Isaiah wrote this fragment himself,
because he was an actor in the circumstances it treats of; but
except this part there are scarcely two chapters that have any
connection with each other. One is entitled, at the beginning of
the first verse, the burden of Babylon; another, the burden of
Moab; another, the burden of Damascus; another, the burden of
Egypt; another, the burden of the Desert of the Sea; another, the
burden of the Valley of Vision: as you would say the story of the
Knight of the Burning Mountain, the story of Cinderella, or the
glassen slipper, the story of the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood,
etc., etc.
I have already shown, in the instance of the last two verses
of 2 Chronicles, and the first three in Ezra, that the compilers of
the Bible mixed and confounded the writings of different authors
with each other; which alone, were there no other cause, is
sufficient to destroy the authenticity of an compilation, because
it is more than presumptive evidence that the compilers are
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ignorant who the authors were. A very glaring instance of this
occurs in the book ascribed to Isaiah: the latter part of the 44th
chapter, and the beginning of the 45th, so far from having been
written by Isaiah, could only have been written by some person who
lived at least an hundred and fifty years after Isaiah was dead.
These chapters are a compliment to Cyrus, who permitted the
Jews to return to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity, to
rebuild Jerusalem and the temple, as is stated in Ezra. The last
verse of the 44th chapter, and the beginning of the 45th [Isaiah]
are in the following words: "That saith of Cyrus, he is my
shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure; even saying to
Jerusalem, thou shalt be built; and to the temple thy foundations
shall be laid: thus saith the Lord to his enointed, to Cyrus, whose
right hand I have holden to subdue nations before him, and I will
loose the loins of kings to open before him the two-leaved gates,
and the gates shall not be shut; I will go before thee," etc.
What audacity of church and priestly ignorance it is to impose
this book upon the world as the writing of Isaiah, when Isaiah,
according to their own chronology, died soon after the death of
Hezekiah, which was B.C. 698; and the decree of Cyrus, in favour of
the Jews returning to Jerusalem, was, according to the same
chronology, B.C. 536; which is a distance of time between the two
of 162 years. I do not suppose that the compilers of the Bible made
these books, but rather that they picked up some loose, anonymous
essays, and put them together under the names of such authors as
best suited their purpose. They have encouraged the imposition,
which is next to inventing it; for it was impossible but they must
have observed it.
When we see the studied craft of the scripture-makers, in
making every part of this romantic book of school-boy's eloquence
bend to the monstrous idea of a Son of God, begotten by a ghost on
the body of a virgin, there is no imposition we are not justified
in suspecting them of. Every phrase and circumstance are marked
with the barbarous hand of superstitious torture, and forced into
meanings it was impossible they could have. The head of every
chapter, and the top of every page, are blazoned with the names of
Christ and the Church, that the unwary reader might suck in the
error before he began to read.
Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son (Isa. vii. I4),
has been interpreted to mean the person called Jesus Christ, and
his mother Mary, and has been echoed through christendom for more
than a thousand years; and such has been the rage of this opinion,
that scarcely a spot in it but has been stained with blood and
marked with desolation in consequence of it. Though it is not my
intention to enter into controversy on subjects of this kind, but
to confine myself to show that the Bible is spurious, -- and thus,
by taking away the foundation, to overthrow at once the whole
structure of superstition raised thereon, -- I will however stop a
moment to expose the fallacious application of this passage.
Whether Isaiah was playing a trick with Ahaz, king of Judah,
to whom this passage is spoken, is no business of mine; I mean only
to show the misapplication of the passage, and that it has no more
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reference to Christ and his mother, than it has to me and my
mother. The story is simply this:
The king of Syria and the king of Israel (I have already
mentioned that the Jews were split into two nations, one of which
was called Judah, the capital of which was Jerusalem, and the other
Israel) made war jointly against Ahaz, king of Judah, and marched
their armies towards Jerusalem. Ahaz and his people became alarmed,
and the account says (Is. vii. 2), Their hearts were moved as the
trees of the wood are moved with the wind.
In this situation of things, Isaiah addresses himself to Ahaz,
and assures him in the name of the Lord (the cant phrase of all the
prophets) that these two kings should not succeed against him; and
to satisfy Ahaz that this should be the case, tells him to ask a
sign. This, the account says, Ahaz declined doing; giving as a
reason that he would not tempt the Lord; upon which Isaiah, who is
the speaker, says, ver. 14, "Therefore the Lord himself shall give
you a sign; behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son;" and the
16th verse says, "And before this child shall know to refuse the
evil, and choose the good, the land which thou abhorrest or
dreadest [meaning Syria and the kingdom of Israel] shall be
forsaken of both her kings." Here then was the sign, and the time
limited for the completion of the assurance or promise; namely,
before this child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the
good.
Isaiah having committed himself thus far, it became necessary
to him, in order to avoid the imputation of being a false prophet,
and the consequences thereof, to take measures to make this sign
appear. It certainly was not a difficult thing, in any time of the
world, to find a girl with child, or to make her so; and perhaps
Isaiah knew of one beforehand; for I do not suppose that the
prophets of that day were any more to be trusted than the priests
of this: be that, however, as it may, he says in the next chapter,
ver. 2, "And I took unto me faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the
priest, and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah, and I went unto the
prophetess, and she conceived and bare a son."
Here then is the whole story, foolish as it is, of this child
and this virgin; and it is upon the barefaced perversion of this
story that the book of Matthew, and the impudence and sordid
interest of priests in later times, have founded a theory, which
they call the gospel; and have applied this story to signify the
person they call Jesus Christ; begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom
they call holy, on the body of a woman engaged in marriage, and
afterwards married, whom they call a virgin, seven hundred years
after this foolish story was told; a theory which, speaking for
myself, I hesitate not to believe, and to say, is as fabulous and
as false as God is true. [In Is. vii. 14, it is said that the
child should be called Immanuel; but this name was not given to
either of the children, otherwise than as a character, which the
word signifies. That of the prophetess was called Maher-shalalhash-
baz, and that of Mary was called Jesus. -- Author.]
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But to show the imposition and falsehood of Isaiah we have
only to attend to the sequel of this story; which, though it is
passed over in silence in the book of Isaiah, is related in 2
Chronicles, xxviii; and which is, that instead of these two kings
failing in their attempt against Ahaz, king of Judah, as Isaiah had
pretended to foretel in the name of the Lord, they succeeded: Ahaz
was defeated and destroyed; an hundred and twenty thousand of his
people were slaughtered; Jerusalem was plundered, and two hundred
thousand women and sons and daughters carried into captivity. Thus
much for this lying prophet and imposter Isaiah, and the book of
falsehoods that bears his name. I pass on to the book of
Jeremiah. This prophet, as he is called, lived in the time
that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, in the reign of Zedekiah,
the last king of Judah; and the suspicion was strong against him
that he was a traitor in the interest of Nebuchadnezzar. Every
thing relating to Jeremiah shows him to have been a man of an
equivocal character: in his metaphor of the potter and the clay,
(ch. xviii.) he guards his prognostications in such a crafty manner
as always to leave himself a door to escape by, in case the event
should be contrary to what he had predicted. In the 7th and 8th
verses he makes the Almighty to say, "At what instant I shall speak
concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to
pull down, and destroy it, if that nation, against whom I have
pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent me of the evil that
I thought to do unto them." Here was a proviso against one side of
the case: now for the other side. Verses 9 and 10, "At what instant
I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to
build and to plant it, if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not
my voice, then I will repent me of the good wherewith I said I
would benefit them." Here is a proviso against the other side; and,
according to this plan of prophesying, a prophet could never be
wrong, however mistaken the Almighty might be. This sort of absurd
subterfuge, and this manner of speaking of the Almighty, as one
would speak of a man, is consistent with nothing but the stupidity
of the Bible.
As to the authenticity of the book, it is only necessary to
read it in order to decide positively that, though some passages
recorded therein may have been spoken by Jeremiah, he is not the
author of the book. The historical parts, if they can be called by
that name, are in the most confused condition; the same events are
several times repeated, and that in a manner different, and
sometimes in contradiction to each other; and this disorder runs
even to the last chapter, where the history, upon which the greater
part of the book has been employed, begins anew, and ends abruptly.
The book has all the appearance of being a medley of unconnected
anecdotes respecting persons and things of that time, collected
together in the same rude manner as if the various and
contradictory accounts that are to be found in a bundle of
newspapers, respecting persons and things of the present day, were
put together without date, order, or explanation. I will give two
or three examples of this kind.
It appears, from the account of chapter xxxvii. that the army
of Nebuchadnezzer, which is called the army of the Chaldeans, had
besieged Jerusalem some time; and on their hearing that the army of
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Pharaoh of Egypt was marching against them, they raised the siege
and retreated for a time. It may here be proper to mention, in
order to understand this confused history, that Nebuchadnezzar had
besieged and taken Jerusalem during the reign of Jehoakim, the
redecessor of Zedekiah; and that it was Nebuchadnezzar who had make
Zedekiah king, or rather viceroy; and that this second siege, of
which the book of Jeremiah treats, was in consequence of the revolt
of Zedekiah against Nebuchadnezzar. This will in some measure
account for the suspicion that affixes itself to Jeremiah of being
a traitor, and in the interest of Nebuchadnezzar, -- whom Jeremiah
calls, xliii. 10, the servant of God.
Chapter xxxvii. 11-13, says, "And it came to pass, that, when
the army of the Chaldeans was broken up from Jerusalem, for fear of
Pharaoh's army, that Jeremiah went forth out of Jerusalem, to go
(as this account states) into the land of Benjamin, to separate
himself thence in the midst of the people; and when he was in the
gate of Benjamin a captain of the ward was there, whose name was
Irijah ... and he took Jeremiah the prophet, saying, Thou fallest
away to the Chaldeans; then Jeremiah said, It is false; I fall not
away to the Chaldeans." Jeremiah being thus stopt and accused, was,
after being examined, committed to prison, on suspicion of being a
traitor, where he remained, as is stated in the last verse of this
chapter.
But the next chapter gives an account of the imprisonment of
Jeremiah, which has no connection with this account, but ascribes
his imprisonment to another circumstance, and for which we must go
back to chapter xxi. It is there stated, ver. 1, that Zedekiah sent
Pashur the son of Malchiah, and Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah the
priest, to Jeremiah, to enquire of him concerning Nebuchadnezzar,
whose army was then before Jerusalem; and Jeremiah said to them,
ver. 8, "Thus saith the Lord, Behold I set before you the way of
life, and the way of death; he that abideth in this city shall die
by the sword and by the famine, and by the pestilence; but he that
goeth out and falleth to the Clialdeans that besiege you, he shall
live, and his life shall be unto him for a prey."
This interview and conference breaks off abruptly at the end
of the 10th verse of chapter xxi.; and such is the disorder of this
book that we have to pass over sixteen chapters upon various
subjects, in order to come at the continuation and event of this
conference; and this brings us to the first verse of chapter
xxxviii., as I have just mentioned. The chapter opens with saying,
"Then Shaphatiah, the son of Mattan, Gedaliah the son of Pashur,
and Jucal the son of Shelemiah, and Pashur the son of Malchiah,
(here are more persons mentioned than in chapter xxi.) heard the
words that Jeremiah spoke unto all the people, saying, Thus saith
the Lord, He that remaineth in this city, shall die by the sword,
by famine, and by the pestilence; but he that goeth forth to the
Chaldeans shall live; for he shall have his life for a prey, and
shall live"; [which are the words of the conference;] therefore,
(say they to Zedekiah,) "We beseech thee, let this man be put to
death, for thus he weakeneth the hands of the men of war that
remain in this city, and the hands of all the people, in speaking
such words unto them; for this man seeketh not the welfare of the
people, but the hurt: "and at the 6th verse it is said, "Then they
took Jeremiah, and put him into the dungeon of Malchiah."
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These two accounts are different and contradictory. The one
ascribes his imprisonment to his attempt to escape out of the city;
the other to his preaching and prophesying in the city; the one to
his being seized by the guard at the gate; the other to his being
accused before Zedekiah by the conferees. [I observed two chapters
in I Samuel (xvi. and xvii.) that contradict each other with
respect to David, and the manner he became acquainted with Saul; as
Jeremiah xxxvii. and xxxviii. contradict each other with respect to
the cause of Jeremiah's imprisonment.
In 1 Samuel, xvi., it is said, that an evil spirit of God
troubled Saul, and that his servants advised him (as a remedy) "to
seek out a man who was a cunning player upon the harp." And Saul
said, ver. 17, " Provide me now a man that can play well, and bring
him to me. Then answered one of his servants, and said, Behold, I
have seen a son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite, that is cunning in
playing, and a mighty man, and a man of war, and prudent in
matters, and a comely person, and the Lord is with him; wherefore
Saul sent messengers unto Jesse, and said, Send me David, thy son.
And (verse 21) David came to Saul, and stood before him, and he
loved him greatly, and he became his armour-bearer; and when the
evil spirit from God was upon Saul, (verse 23) David took his harp,
and played with his hand, and Saul was refreshed, and was well."
But the next chapter (xvii.) gives an account, all different
to this, of the manner that Saul and David became acquainted. Here
it is ascribed to David's encounter with Goliah, when David was
sent by his father to carry provision to his brethren in the camp.
In the 55th verse of this chapter it is said, "And when Saul saw
David go forth against the Philistine (Goliah) he said to Abner,
the captain of the host, Abner, whose son is this youth? And Abner
said, As thy soul liveth, 0 king, I cannot tell. And the king said,
Enquire thou whose son the stripling is. And as David returned from
the slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him
before Saul, with the head of the Philistine in his hand; and Saul
said unto him, Whose son art thou, thou young man? And David
answered, I am the son of thy servant, Jesse, the Betblehemite,"
These two accounts belie each other, because each of them supposes
Saul and David not to have known each other before. This book, the
Bible, is too ridiculous for criticism. -- Author.]
In the next chapter (Jer. xxxix.) we have another instance of
the disordered state of this book; for notwithstanding the siege of
the city by Nebuchadnezzar has been the subject of several of the
preceding chapters, particularly xxxvii. and xxxviii., chapter
xxxix. begins as if not a word had been said upon the subject, and
as if the reader was still to be informed of every particular
respecting it; for it begins with saying, ver. 1, "In the ninth
year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the tenth month, came
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and all his army, against
Jerusalem, and besieged it," etc.
But the instance in the last chapter (lii.) is still more
glaring; for though the story has been told over and over again,
this chapter still supposes the reader not to know anything of it,
for it begins by saying, ver. i, "Zedekiah was one and twenty years
old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in
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Jerusalem, and his mother's name was Hamutal, the daughter of
Jeremiah of Libnah." (Ver. 4,) "And it came to pass in the ninth
year of his reign, in the tenth month, that Nebuchadnezzar king of
Babylon came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, and pitched
against it, and built forts against it," etc.
It is not possible that any one man, and more particularly
Jeremiah, could have been the writer of this book. The errors are
such as could not have been committed by any person sitting down to
compose a work. Were I, or any other man, to write in such a
disordered manner, no body would read what was written, and every
body would suppose that the writer was in a state of insanity. The
only way, therefore, to account for the disorder is, that the book
is a medley of detached unauthenticated anecdotes, put together by
some stupid book-maker, under the name of Jeremiah; because many of
them refer to him, and to the circumstances of the times he lived
in.
Of the duplicity, and of the false predictions of Jeremiah, I
shall mention two instances, and then proceed to review the
remainder of the Bible.
It appears from chapter xxxviii. that when Jeremiah was in
prison, Zedekiah sent for him, and at this interview, which was
private, Jeremiah pressed it strongly on Zedekiah to surrender
himself to the enemy. "If," says he, (ver. 17,) thou wilt assuredly
go forth unto the king of Babylon's princes, then thy soul shall
live," etc. Zedekiah was apprehensive that what passed at this
conference should be known; and he said to Jeremiah, (ver. 25,) "If
the princes [meaning those of Judah] hear that I have talked with
thee, and they come unto thee, and say unto thee, Declare unto us
now what thou hast said unto the king; hide it not from us, and we
will not put thee to death; and also what the king said unto thee;
then thou shalt say unto them, I presented my supplication before
the king that he would not cause me to return to Jonathan's house,
to die there. Then came all the princes unto Jeremiah, and asked
him, and "he told them according to all the words the king had
comenanded." Thus, this man of God, as he is called, could tell a
lie, or very strongly prevaricatc, when he supposed it would answer
his purpose; for certainly he did not go to Zedekiah to make this
supplication, neither did he make it; he went because he was sent
for, and he employed that opportunity to advise Zedekiah to
surrender himself to Nebuchadnezzar.
In chapter xxxiv. 2-5, is a prophecy of Jeremiah to Zedekiah
in these words: "Thus saith the Lord, Behold I will give this city
into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will burn it with
fire; and thou shalt not escape out of his hand, but thou shalt
surely be taken, and delivered into his hand; and thine eyes shall
behold the eyes of the king of Babylon, and he shall speak with
thee mouth to mouth, and thou shalt go to Babylon. Yet hear the
word of the Lord; O Zedekiah, king, of Judah, thus saith the Lord,
Thou shalt not die by the sword, but thou shalt die in Peace; and
with the burnings of thy fathers, the former kings that were before
thee, so shall they burn odours for thee, and they will lament
thee, saying, Ah, Lord! for I have pronounced the word, saith the
Lord."
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
79
THE AGE OF REASON -- PART II.
Now, instead of Zedekiah beholding the eyes of the king of
Babylon, and speaking with him mouth to mouth, and dying in peace,
and with the burning of odours, as at the funeral of his fathers,
(as Jeremiah had declared the Lord himself had pronounced,) the
reverse, according to chapter Iii., 10, 11 was the case; it is
there said, that the king of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah
before his eyes: then he put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and bound
him in chains, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison
till the day of his death.
What then can we say of these prophets, but that they are
impostors and liars?
As for Jeremiah, he experienced none of those evils. He was
taken into favour by Nebuchadnezzar, who gave him in charge to the
captain of the guard (xxxix, 12), "Take him (said he) and look well
to him, and do him no harm; but do unto him even as he shall say
unto thee." Jeremiah joined himself afterwards to Nebuchadnezzar,
and went about prophesying for him against the Egyptians, who had
marched to the relief of Jerusalem while it was besieged. Thus much
for another of the lying prophets, and the book that bears his
name.
I have been the more particular in treating of the books
ascribed to Isaiah and Jeremiah, because those two are spoken of in
the books of Kings and Chronicles, which the others are not. The
remainder of the books ascribed to the men called prophets I shall
not trouble myself much about; but take them collectively into the
observations I shall offer on the character of the men styled
prophets.
In the former part of the 'Age of Reason,' I have said that
the word prophet was the Bible-word for poet, and that t