IS IT GOD’S WORD
AN EXPOSITION OF THE FABLES AND MYTHOLOGY OF
THE BIBLE AND OF THE IMPOSTURES OF THEOLOGY
BY JOSEPH WHELESS
Lately Major,
Translator, Civil Code of
Section of Comparative Law: Member of American
Law Institute, etc.
"Behold, the false pen of the Scribes
hath wrought falsely" -- Jeremiah 8: 8 (R.V.)
Though I deeply appreciate Joseph Wheless'
labor, his conclusions concerning the existence of God saddens me.
Nevertheless, his conclusions are a perfect example of the awful harm that is
caused when one's faith is not in God alone as it should be, but is in what men
have said of God. For faith in God and faith in what the Bible has said of God
are not one and the same.
****NOTICE****
Because this copy of "Is it God's
Word's?" was downloaded and converted by OCR there are many grammatical
and spelling errors, a very common one is "be" instead of
"he." Nevertheless, using some common sense one can determine what
letters or words were intended.
"Is it God's Word's?" is freely
distributed by the Bank of Wisdom,
Both "Is it God's Word's?" and
"Forgery in Christianity" were written by Joseph Wheless and can be
purchased from Amazon.
FOREWORD TO SECOND AND REVISED EDITION
Like Saul of Tarsus before he changed
his name -- but not his nature -- the maker of the ensuing search of the
Scriptures, born down in the Bible Belt, was bred "after the straightest
sect of our religion," a Southern Methodist. Nurtured by earnestly
Christian parents, I was heir to their faith and joint heir to salvation with
them. Through youth and into maturer years, like Paul, "so worshipped I
the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in
the prophets" of ancient Jewry, with the heavy increment for faith of the
Wesleyan brand of Protestant Christianity superimposed.
Being so born and taught, so I naturally
believed. For religious belief is all but exclusively a matter of birth and
early teaching, of environment. A man takes and holds, though often most
indifferently, the religion, or brand of belief, of his fathers, of his family.
Born a pagan, a Jew, a Buddhist, a Mohammedan, a Mormon, that he remains,
except one time in many thousands, through life; though, if taken in infancy,
he will as naturally fall heir to and believe the most contrary faith: witness
the famous Janizaries, captive Christian children trained in the Moslem faith,
and Islam's most fanatic soldiers. If born into a Christian family, Catholic or
Protestant, or of one of the many sects of either, he usually remains, at least
nominally, Catholic or Protestant, as he was born and taught. Children believe
anything they are taught; Santa Claus, fairies, goblins, ghosts, and witches
are as real, as veritably true, to a child as Jesus the Christ to a cleric --
often much more so. It is a maxim of the Master of the Christian faith: "Except
ye ... become as little children, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven: ...
for of such is the kingdom" (Matt. 18: 3;
From my earliest years the Methodist Sunday
school and Church were as a sort of home extension of religious atmosphere and
teaching; my earliest initiation was into the "infant class" of that
institution of sacred learning. There my infantile mind was fed and fired with
the venerable verities of our first parents and the seductive wiles of the
talking snake of Eden, of Balaam's loquacious jackass, the anthropophagous
whale of Jonah, the heroic adventures of David with Goliath and with Bathsheba,
of noble Daniel, unscathed in the lions' den and in the fiery furnace, of
Peter's walking on the water, and the devils sent into the pigs, with many
other like articles of holy faith necessary to salvation.
Fascinated with these ancient gems of
inspiration, and deeply imbued with the sense of Christian duty to "seek
first the
Years before my majority I led all others in
old "Tulip Street" in familiarity with Holy Writ; so when a great
Sunday- school Bible verse-quoting bee was held, I was easily the favorite for
winner, and as easily I won both prizes -- Heroes of the Cross and some other
like classic of literature -- for number and correctness of verses quoted from
memory. That Bible-quoting contest of some forty years ago struck the spark
which, long smoldering, flames up now in this book of mine. In its original
form, written some years ago, the chapters which are now headed "Harmony
of the Gospels" and "Sacred Doctrines of Christianity"
reproduced in substance, and yet do in effect, that memorable verse-matching
contest.
From a sense of Christian duty, as well as for
its practical aid in linguistic studies, I read the Bible often, and in several
modern languages, and picked a little at the ancient ones. Later, when writing
this book, I learned sufficient Hebrew for the understanding and honest
rendition of the sacred texts. In such frequent readings of the Bible, and in
more languages than one, I could not but be struck with important differences
of meaning given in different versions to the same verse or text; memory, too,
would go back to the same story told quite differently in other of the sacred
texts; I would search out the parallel passage and find it at right angles or
criss-cross with the one before me. Such adventures roused dangerous trains of
thought, which I devoutly sought to conjure out of mind. My honest mind was
struck, too, and shocked, by many things which, it seemed to me, were absurd or
abhorrent as human actions, and magnifiedly so as the alleged word or deed of
my God. But "he that doubteth is damned"; so faith triumphed over
reason for a long, long time, though I felt myself ever a bit less
"orthodox" as the years went by, and as I read and thought. Yet so
vital was my residuary faith, and so disturbed my conscience over my disregard
of the divine ban, "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers:
... what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?" (2 Cor. 6: 14, 15 )
that upon entering the holy bonds I purposely backslid from my native
Methodism, and took the plunge -- on a cold winter night -- into the Baptist communion,
in the earnest hope of leading my new life partner (whose family were of that
persuasion) into that aqueous fold of Christ with me. My faith and my chill
bath were unrewarded -- then. This book is my tribute of unalloyed admiration
and devotion to her whose beautiful character and soul shine out into my life
with no pale reflected light of storied Calvary, but in their own native warmth
and purity, untinged and untainted by any superstition of unreality. Great now
is my reward; our two minds share cordially now the single thought -- always
hers:
"Do good, for good is good to do; Spurn
bribe of heaven and threat of hell."
Faith, I read, "has for its object the
unknowable." How could the things of faith be unknowable if they were all
inerrantly revealed by God in the "Holy Bible, book divine"? I
determined to know the truth, if it could be found in the Bible. I bought two
copies of that sacred book for what seemed must be the test of truth. My method
was simple and looked sure: from Genesis to Revelation I reread one copy,
pencil in hand; every passage that seemed meet for my purpose I marked, noting
book, chapter, and verse on the margin of each copy for identification. These
sacred and marked volumes I then tore apart, and with scissors cut out every
marked passage. Patiently then I sorted the great mass of clippings, putting
apart into little piles all that told the same tale differently, or treated the
same Christian doctrine at cross- purposes. This accomplished, I read and
carefully "matched" one inspired truth with another. Then, through
several years, at every opportunity which a rather active professional work and
frequent absences from the country permitted, and into the weary hours of many
a night, painstakingly, conscientiously, faithfully, in my quest for truth out
of the fountain of revelation, I carried on the work of creating order out of
the chaos which almost appalled me with its multiplicity and its inconsistency.
The result is here presented; my book speaks for itself. The wayfarer, though a
fool, cannot mistake it.
Thus it was that I took up the challenge of
the Christ to "search the Scriptures," haply to demonstrate to the
seeker after truth "whether these things were so," as in the Bible
related for belief, under the admonition of the Christ himself: "He that
believeth not shall be damned."
No man, priest, parson, or zealot for his
inherited faith, can say with truth that this book of mine falsely or wantonly
"attacks the Bible," or defames the Bible God, or ridicules the
Christian religion. If iconoclastic results follow this candid search of the
Scriptures, the fault is with the Bible, for this my book speaks truly. This
book is based wholly on the Bible; its all but every reference is to the Bible,
faithfully quoted in exact words of inspiration. The Hebrao-Christian God is
depicted in plain words of revelation for every word and deed attributed to him
by the inspired writers. This God "whom therefore ye ignorantly worship,
him declare I unto you," truly. This book is simply the Bible taken by and
large, and thus viewed in a light not shed upon it by pulpit expoundings of
golden texts, or by private readings of isolated choice fragments. Ye
bibliologists cannot impeach or refute the truth herein revealed out of Holy
Writ --
"... nor all your piety nor wit Shall
lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your tears wash out a word of
it!"
The earnest hope is cherished for this book,
that the simple and sincere search here made of the Scriptures for truth's
sake, will serve to make only theology and religious intolerance vain and
ridiculous; that it shame contending Christians from an unfounded faith in the
untrue, and encourage them and all men into the brotherhood of the only
possible true and pure religion -- to
"Do good, for good is good to do."
Then will indeed be realized the burden of the herald angel's song:
"Peace on earth to men of good
will."
CHAPTER ONE
THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIANITY
THE NEW AND THE OLDER RELIGIONS
PAGAN TOLERANCE AND CHRISTIAN INTOLERANCE
THE DEADLY SANCTIONS OF RELIGION
CHAPTER TWO
A SKETCH OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES
THE BIBLE A COLLECTION OF "LITTLE BOOKS"
THE NAME OF THE HEBREW TRIBAL GOD
THE BIBLE ALL COPIES OF COPIES
AND TRANSLATIONS OF TRANSLATIONS
SOME LIGHTS ON BIBLE CHRONOLOGY
FATAL CONTRADICTIONS OF REVELATION
THE "DAYS" AND MATTER OF CREATION
SOME SIGNIFICANT MISTRANSLATIONS
"LIVING CREATURES" AND "LIVING SOUL"
CHAPTER THREE
THE PATRIARCHS AND THE COVENANTS OF YAHWEH
THE PATRIARCHS AND THE COVENANTS OF YAHVEH
THE SPLENDID
CIVILIZATION OF ABRAM'S TIME
A "PIOUS
FRAUD" OF TRANSLATION
THE FEARFUL AND WONDERFUL "PLAGUES OF EGYPT"
CHAPTER FOUR
THE WONDERS OF THE EXODUS
THE HOSTS OF THE LORD
OF HOSTS
FOOD RIOTS --
HEAVENLY MANNA AND QUAILS
WHO PROPOSED THE
JUDGES OF ISRAEL?
THE "BURNING QUESTION" OF FUEL
CHAPTER FIVE
THE FORTY YEARS IN THE WILDERNESS
THE FORTY YEARS IN THE WILDERNESS
THE TWO CENSUSES IN THE WILDERNESS
THE PUZZLE OF "SAME" OR "NOT SAME"
THE TABERNACLE AND ITS ACTIVITIES
MORE OF THE PRIESTS AND LEVITES
THE WONDERFUL LAST
DAYS OF MOSES
CHAPTER SIX
THE "TEN COMMANDMENTS" AND THE "LAW"
THE "TEN COMMANDMENTS" AND THE "LAW"
THE INCIDENT OF THE GOLDEN CALF
CANNIBALISM AND HUMAN
SACRIFICES
THE "LAW" OF LATE PRIESTLY ORIGIN
BIBLE HISTORY
DISPROVES THE "LAW OF MOSES"
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE "CONQUEST" OF THE PROMISED LAND
THE "CONQUEST" OF THE PROMISED LAND
THE ABJECT SUBJECTION OF ISRAEL
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE HEBREW HEATHEN RELIGION.
SEX
WORSHIP AND IDOLS
THE PATRIARCHAL
PHALLIC IDOLATRY
THE PHALLIC SYMBOLS
OF SCRIPTURE
THE
"PILLARS" OR MAZZEBAHS OF YAHVEH
YAHVEH'S PHALLIC
EPHODS AND TERAPHIM
THE SUPERSTITION
OF WITCHCRAFT
THE BIBLE A GREAT "DREAM BOOK"
CHAPTER NINE
THE PAGAN GOD -- AND GODS -- OF
THE PAGAN GOD -- AND GODS -- OF ISRAEL
HA-ELOHIM YISHRAEL --
THE GODS OF ISRAEL
Many "Other
Gods" are Acknowledged
The God of Israel and the Gods of the Nations
CHAPTER TEN
YAHWEH -- THE "TERRIBLE GOD" OF
YAHVEH -- THE "TERRIBLE GOD" OF ISRAEL
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE HOLY PRIESTS AND PROPHETS OF YAHWEH
THE HOLY PRIESTS AND PROPHETS OF YAHVEH
REVELATION OF PRIESTLY MONOPOLY
SAMUEL, DEAN OF THE
PROFESSION
THE PROPAGANDISTS
OF CHRISTIANITY
CHAPTER TWELVE
BIBLE THEOLOGY AND MODERN TRUTH
BIBLE THEOLOGY AND MODERN TRUTH
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE "PROPHECIES" OF JESUS CHRIST
THE "PROPHECIES" OF JESUS CHRIST
The Miraculous
"Virgin Birth" of Jesus
THE "SIGN"
OF A FALSE PROPHECY
"Numbered
among Transgressors"
"For Moses Wrote of Me" (Jesus)
Who Hath Believed? And Why Not?
A Cooking
Lesson as "Prophecy"
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE INSPIRED "HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS"
OF THE LIFE
OF JESUS CHRIST
THE INSPIRED "HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS"
THE "MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS"
THE TEMPTATION IN THE
WILDERNESS
THE SERMON ON THE
MOUNT -- OR THE PLAN
POT-POURRI OF
INSPIRED INHARMONIES
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MORE: "HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS"
THE CLOSING SCENES OF THE DRAMA
THE "LORD'S SUPPER" OR EUCHARIST
THE INCIDENTS AT
THE CRUCIFIXION
BREAKING THE RESURRECTION NEWS
POST-RESURRECTION
APPEARANCES OF JESUS
NOBODY
BELIEVED THE "IDLE TALES"
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE SACRED DOCTRINES OF CHRISTIANITY
THE SACRED DOCTRINES OF CHRISTIANITY
BELIEVE AND BE SAVED
-- OR STAY DAMNED
CIRCUMCISION OR UNCIRCUMCISION?
THE APOSTLES' VIEWS OF EACH OTHER
KNOWLEDGE SCORNED -- IGNORANCE EXALTED
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE CHRISTIAN "PLAN OF SALVATION"
ORIGINAL
SIN AND ETERNAL DAMNATION
THE CHRISTIAN "PLAN OF SALVATION"
THE RIDDLE OF THE
SERPENT SEED
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
REVELATIONS OF THE HEREAFTER
HEAVEN,
HELL, AND PURGATORY
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CESSET SUPERSTITION AND THEN?
CHAPTER 1
THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIANITY
WHAT Is Truth?" asked the mystified
Pilate of Jesus the Christ, as he stood before the Roman governor, accused by
the priests of the Jews of having proclaimed himself King of the Jews and
Messiah, thus "perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to
Caesar, saying, That he himself is Christ a king" (Luke 23: 2 ). Pilate
asked Jesus, "Art thou the King of the Jews?" and a second time he
queried, "Art thou a king then?" After standing some time mute, Jesus
finally, and equivocally, answered: "Thou sayest that I am a king";
and he added: "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the
world, that I should bear witness unto the truth"; but, he averred,
"My Kingdom is not of this world" (John18: 37 ).
Then Pilate's challenging Question, which has
rung down the nearly twenty centuries since, and yet challenges answer
concerning "this just person": Was he Christ? Was he the Son of God,
Virgin- born? Was he the heralded King of the Jews? Was he King of a Kingdom
not of this world? These things recorded of him, were they so?
The system of Christian theology grown up
around this unique Subject, and in current acceptance bound to the concept of a
true religion of the spirit, is wrought upon the basis of an implicit belief in
a composite of two miraculous "revelations of God to Man." Of these
the one is known as the Old Testament or will of God, revealed in olden times
to the Hebrew people; the other, of the century of Jesus Christ, and revealed
through himself and his Jewish propagandists, is known as the New Testament or
will of God. These two revelations are committed to mankind through a
compilation of sixty-six small separate brochures of "Scriptures" or
writings, together called The Bible from the Greek Ta Biblia or "The
Books." This Bible constitutes all that we have or know of the
"revealed Word of God."
Truth, without alloy of possible error, lies
in the inspired and sacred pages of this wonderful "Word of God" --
if full credence be given to its claims for itself, and to the claims made for
it by the theologians.
As for its own claims of inspired and inerrant
truth, they abound: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God" (2
Tim. 3: 16 ); "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man:
but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" (2 Peter 1:
21 ); though the Hebrew Deity himself, as quoted by Jeremiah, avers: "the
prophets prophesy lies in my name" (Jer. 23: 25 ); and this prophet adds:
"The false pen of the scribes hath wrought falsely" (Jer. 8: 8,
Revised Version). John the Evangelist says: "He that saw it bare record,
and his record is true; and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might
believe" (John
The Scriptures Old and New, their verity thus
vouched for, we well know to be a collection of many separate pieces of writing
by many Different "inspired" Hebrew writers, through many ages of
Hebrew history. The Bible has not thus the advantage of unity of authorship, as
have the Sacred Scriptures of some other widespread faiths of the present day.
The Koran of Merbammed is fabled to have been
brought down from heaven to this prophet by the archangel Gabriel, full-written
on the parchment skin of the ram which was miraculously provided in the nick of
time just as Father Abraham was about to cut the throat of his son Isaac as a
sacrifice to Yahweh on Mt. Moriah; the later Book of Mormon, miraculously written
on golden plates, and hidden in a cache on Cumorah Hill, near Palmyra, was
specially revealed to the late Prophet J. Smith, here in New York State, in the
year 1823, by the angel Moroni. As these latter sacred texts were written in an
unknown hieroglyph, the angel loaned to Prophet Smith a pair of patent
spectacles called Urim and Thummim, which had the miraculous faculty of
rendering the strange script into rather faulty English words to the eye of the
seer, and so enabling him, hidden from curious prying behind a kitchen screen,
to translate the mystic manuscript, upon the completion of which pious work the
golden plates and spectacles were taken by the angel back to heaven.
Over 600,000 people in the United States live
and die in the faith of this "revelation"; and the sect has been
considerably persecuted and martyred for its faith by other Americans who
believed other and more ancient Hebrew revelations (though they hate and
persecute the Jews). And more millions of human beings have for 1200 years
believed the "revelations" of Mohammed than ever did believe the
Hebrao-Christian revelations. So much for "revealed" faiths. Before
forgetting Prophet J. Smith, it may be recalled, as a bit of curious American
history, that in 1829, less than one hundred years ago, John the Baptist
himself, he who baptized the Jewish Jesus, came down from heaven to New York
State and publicly ordained Prophet Smith and his confrere Oliver Cowdery into
"the Priesthood of Aaron"; and that the immortal Saints Peter, James
the Brother of Jesus, and John (which one not specified) then and there
conferred upon the two Prophets "the Order of the Priesthood of
Melchizedek," of which Jesus Christ was himself a perpetual member (Heb.
6: 20 ).
We shall examine the truth of the Christian
theology, searching the Scriptures whether the miraculous things therein
recounted for faith can possibly be so. Incidentally we shall catch an
occasional sidelight from sacred or secular history, but chiefly we shall keep
closely in our search to Holy Writ. First we shall take a brief retrospective
look at some of the secular and historic phases of Christianity as it has
prevailed unto the Christian civilization of past and present.
Judea, the birthplace of the Christ, was a small
outlying province of the far-flung Pagan Roman Empire, its turbulent Jewish
fanaticism curbed by Roman law and legions.
The new religion rose there, but met with
little acceptance in its native place, where the Jews could not recognize in
the humble Carpenter of
neighboring pagans, who believed all gods and
had no objection to taking on another; they were familiar with virgin births
and with gods coming to earth in human form. At Lystra the pagan populace even
acclaimed Paul and Barnabas as pagan deities, crying, "The gods are come
down to us in the likeness of men," Barnabas being called Jupiter himself,
and Paul the lesser divinity, Mercury, "because be was the chief
speaker" (Acts 14: 11, 12 ). This greater pagan honor to 'Barnabas seems
to have offended Paul's sense of importance; for shortly afterward they
quarreled, "and the contention was so sharp between them, that they
departed asunder one from the other" (Acts 15: 39 ), in a rather
un-christian humor.
But the proselytizing campaigns continued,
pushed with much zeal, now almost exclusively among the pagans. Naturally the
new faith drifted toward imperial
This new religion, besides being purer and
simpler -- at first -- than some of the older cults, was coupled with some very
effective inducements. Its Founder proclaimed himself as very God; he had come
to establish a kingdom on earth and in heaven. To those who would abandon their
families and their poor possessions, he made the positive promise of immense
immediate reward: "There is no man that hath left house ... or lands for
my sake, but he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses ... and
lands; and in the world to come eternal life" (Mark 10: 29, 30; Matt. 19:
29; Luke 18: 30 ). He proclaimed again and again that in a very short time the
existing world should end, that he would come in glory to establish his kingdom
and a new earth, where he would reign forever. So soon, indeed, would this
great reward be realized, the prospective king asserted, that there were some
"standing here, who shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man
coming in his kingdom" (Matt.
Under the spell of these promises and threats
and of the assurance of a quick end of the earth, the propagandists of the cult
promptly established a strange new scheme of which they were the administrators
-- a scheme of pure communism. As the world would quickly come to an end, there
was no reason and no need to take heed of temporal affairs; they must all watch
and pray and pool all their poor belongings in their leaders' hands for the common
benefit. This the trembling and zealous proselytes did, under the sanction of
supreme fear: "Neither was any among them that lacked: for as many as were
possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the price of the things
that were sold, and they laid them down at the Apostles' feet; and distribution
was made unto every man according as he had need" (Acts 4: 34, 35 ). And
the story of what befell Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5: 1-11 ) for holding out a
part of their substance from the common pool was wholesome warning to any who,
with a cautious eye to a possible hitch in the "second coming," might
be inclined to "lie to the Holy Ghost," who kept the score of the
contributions. The history of Dowie, "Elijah 2," and his New
Such was the intellectual enlightenment of the
classes among which the new faith was propagated, and for which the inspired
Gospel biographies of the Christ and the apostolic epistles were put into
circulation. The chief of the disciples and his associate propagandists were
admittedly "unlearned and ignorant men" (Acts 4: 13 ) the new cult
was that of fishermen and peasants, of the ignorant, the disinherited, the
slave as is proved by many of their acts and sayings, recorded in the New
Testament and in early church history.
Naturally the new religion gained adherents
and slowly spread, as all other religions have done: Mithraism, its closest and
all but successful rival; Mohammedanism, which far outspread it; Mormonism,
Spiritualism, Mother-Eddyism and many another cult and superstition, including
"heresies" combated and persecuted by the new faith from the very
first, several of which (like some entirely "pagan" religions) all
but overthrew the struggling new "orthodox" creed of the Christ. But
by virtue of its superior moral merits, its exceptional system of rewards and
punishments, and the great zeal of its propagandists, it grew and strengthened
and finally gained the upper hold in the centuries-long struggle with paganism.
THE NEW AND THE OLDER RELIGIONS
Christianity was not so new or so novel as we
generally think it. In its essentials it had hardly a new thought in it --
except hell-fire and the oft-repeated and never realized dictum, "The end
of all things is at hand" (I Peter 4: 7 ). In lieu of the plurality of
gods of the pagan religions, it evolved the one pagan god Yahweh, of old Hebrew
mythology, into Three-in-One Christian Godhead. The other pagan gods became, in
effect, the "saints" of the new cult; or, as the Catholic
Encyclopedia has it, "the Saints are the successors to the Gods"
(Vol. 15: p. 710 ) -- though the theory of the Psalmist tallies better with
that of the new theology: "All the gods of the heathen are devils"
(Psalms 96: 5, Vulgate). The incarnation of Gods in human form by virgin birth
was common place myth; their death, resurrection, transition to and fro between
heaven and earth, and the like, were articles of faith of many pagan creeds and
of all mythologies. Monotheism, without idol- worship, is the single essential
difference of the Christian religion from paganism; and when one recalls the
Trinity, and the icons and sacred images of saints, even this difference seems
attenuated.
The death and resurrection of pagan gods is
alluded to specifically by Ezekiel. Yahweh had brought him in his vision to the
north door of the
It would be interesting to develop the records
of the adoption by Christianity of the pagan myths and ceremonies. It is a
large subject, and we cannot go into it at length here, where our task is
limited to a study of the sacred texts for the proofs or disproofs of their own
validity which they so abundantly afford. But some brief extracts from
authoritative works may be included, for their own significance and to point
the way for further inquiry.
True, practically every tenet and ceremonial
of the Christian religion has its counterpart in, and was adapted from, the
beliefs and ceremonies of the pagan religions which preceded it and for
centuries lived alongside it. We have just noticed the "Yearly festival of
the dying and rising God" in the ceremonials of paganism. This is very
like the death and resurrection of the Christian God, Jesus Christ; and it is
the resurrection of Jesus which is the cornerstone of the Christian religion:
"If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is
also vain" (I Cor. 15: 14 ). To be as brief as may be in outlining this
very suggestive subject, I will quote a paragraph from a well-known recent
work, 'The Next Step in Religion,' by Ray Wood Sellars, [Ray Wood Sellers, The
Next Step in Religion: An Essay toward the Coming Renaissance. (New York: The
Macmillan Co., 1918 )] supplemented by extracts from the Catholic Encyclopedia,
the best brief outlines of Christian adoptions and adaptations of paganism.
Says Mr. Sellars:
"The Orphic cults in
Much more comprehensive, and constituting a
very notable admission, are the following passages from the Catholic
Encyclopedia. By way of introductory, it says: "Speaking from the
standpoint of pure history, no one will deny that much in the antecedent and
environing aspirations and ideals of paganism formed, to use the Church phrase,
a praeparatio evangelica of high value. 'Christo jam tum venient1: crede,
parata via est.' sings the Hymn of Prudentius. The pagan world 'saw the road,'
Augustine could say, 'from its hill-top.' 'Et ipse Pitaetus Christianus est.'
said the Priest of Attis; while, of Heraclitus and the old Philosophers, Justin
avers that 'there were Christians before Christ.' Indeed, the earlier
apologists for Christianity go far beyond anything we should wish to say, and
indeed made difficulties for their successors" (Vol. 11, p. 393 ). And
again: "It has indeed been said that the 'Saints are the successors to the
Gods.' Instances have been cited of pagan feasts becoming Christian; of pagan
temples consecrated to the worship of the true God; of statues of pagan Gods
baptized and transformed into Christian Saints" (Vol. 15:p. 710 ).
A few instances out of the great number of
these analogies between pagan and Christian rites follow:
"The Christian ritual developed when, in
the third century, the Church left the Catacombs. Many forms of self-expression
must needs be identical, in varying times, places, cults, as long as human
nature is the same. Water, oil, light, incense, singing, procession,
prostration, decoration of altars, vestments of priests, are naturally at the
service of universal religious instinct. Little enough, however, was directly
borrowed by the Church -- nothing, without being 'baptized,' as was the
Pantheon. In all these things the spirit is the essential: the Church
assimilates to herself what she takes, or, if she cannot adapt, she rejects it.
"Even pagan feasts may be 'baptized':
certainly our processions of April 25th are the Robigalia; the Regation Days
may replace the Ambarualia; the date of Christmas Day may be due to the same
instinct which placed on December 25th the Natalis Invictis of the Solar Cult
(Vol. 11, p. 390 ).
"The Roman Virtues, Fides, Castitas,
Virtus (manliness) were canonized [p. 391]. The Mysteries had already fostered,
though not created, the conviction of immortality. It was thought that
'initiation' insured a happy after-life and atoned for sins, that else had been
punished, if not in this life, in some place of expiation (Plato, Rep. 366; cf.
Pindar, Sophocles, Plutarch). These Mysteries usually began with the selection
of Initiand1: their preliminary baptism, fasting, and confession. After many
sacrifices, the Mysteries proper were celebrated, including tableaux showing
heaven, hell, purgatory, the soul's destiny, the gods. Apuleius (in
Metamorphoses) tells us his thrilling and profoundly religious experiences.
"There was often seen the 'Passion' of
the god Osiris; the rape and return of Kore and the sorrows of Demeter (
"The sacred Fish of Atargatis have
nothing to do with the origin of the Eucharist, nor with the Ichthys Anagram of
the Catacombs. The Anagram -- (Ichthys, the Greek word for Fish), does indeed
represent 'Iesous Christos Theou Uios Soter' -- (Jesus Christ, Son of God,
Savior); the propagation of the symbol was often facilitated owing to the
popular Syrian Fish-cult (from Dagon, Syrian Fish-god). That the terminology of
the Mysteries was largely transported into Christian use is certain (Paul,
Ignatius, Origen, Clement, etc.); that the liturgy, especially of baptism,
organization of the Catechumenate, Disciplina Arcana, etc., were affected by
them, is highly probable. Always the Church has forcefully molded words, and
even concepts (as Savior, Epiphany, Baptism, Illumination (photismos),
Mysteries (teletes), Logos, to suit her own Dogma and its expression. Thus it
was that John could take the expression 'Logos,' mould it to his Dogma, cut
short all perilous speculation among Christians, and assert once for all that
the "Word was made Flesh' and was Jesus Christ" (Cath. Encyclopedia,
Vol. 11, p. 392 ).
The fish anagram above referred to was an
ancient pagan symbol of fecundity, of great vogue and veneration throughout
pagandom, and was adopted by Christendom for the double reason that the
initials acrostically formed the name and title of Jesus Christ and that in
ancient science fish were supposed to be generated in the water without carnal
copulation, and were thus peculiarly symbolic of the virgin-born Christ. The
pagan origin and Christian significance of the symbol are attained by the
authority just quoted: "The most remarkable example of such a poem
[acrostic or anagram] is attributed by Lactantius and Eusebius to the Erythrean
Sibyl, the initial letters forming the words 'Iesous Xristos Theou Uios Soter
(stauros).' Omitting the doubtful parenthesis (cross), these words form a minor
acrostic: Ichthys, fish, the mystical symbol of our Lord" (Cath. Encyc.
Vol. 1:p. 111 ).
The pagan origin of the two greatest Christian
festivals, Christmas and Easter, may be emphasized by brief extracts.
"Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church. The first
evidence of the feast is from
This "baptism" of the most popular
pagan festival of the Sun as the birthday of the Son of God is thus evidently
admitted to be as the secular histories clearly prove it was -- a sop to the
pagan masses to conciliate them with Christianity by permitting them to continue
to enjoy their great festivals and ceremonies the more readily to entice them
into the paganized Christian Church.
As Christmas is a "baptized" pagan
festival of the solar cult, celebrating the birth of the sun at the winter
solstice, so is Easter a pagan solar festivity, celebrated at the spring
equinox in all the Eastern pagan lands as the renewal of vegetal life and the
resurrection of nature from the long death of winter. The name Easter,
according to the Venerable Bede, "relates to Eostre, a Teutonic goddess of
the rising light of day and spring" (Cath. Encyc., Vol. 5: p. 224 ). It is
identically the Jewish passover; "in fact, the Jewish feast was taken over
into the Christian Easter celebration" (
The foregoing is as comprehensive a statement
of the admitted "borrowings" or "adaptations" by
Christianity from paganism as can well be made in brief quotations. They are
authoritative, and they completely prove that there is nothing new in the
Christian religion except Hebrew monotheism, with threats of hell and damnation,
and temporal torture and death for the unbeliever.
It may surprise and grieve many good
Christians to know that all their pious observances, prayers, hymns, baptism,
communion at the altar, redemption, salvation, the celebration of Christmas as
the birth of their God in mid-winter, and of Easter, his resurrection as spring
breaks, all, all, are pagan practices and myths, thousands of years antedating
their Jesus-religion.
The simple truth is that paganism was outworn;
its myths were too childish to be believed by the enlightened minds of those
days. Four centuries before Christ, Socrates was put to death for disbelief in
the gods of
The new religion was at first tolerated
throughout the Empire, and at
PAGAN TOLERANCE AND CHRISTIAN INTOLERANCE
The proselytized emperor decreed: "It
seems to us proper that the Christians and all others should have liberty to
follow that mode of religion which to each of them appears best; for it befits
the well-ordered State and the tranquillity of our times that each individual
be allowed, according to his own choice, to worship the Divinity."
But no sooner had the priests of the new
religion foisted themselves securely into power, and by their threats of hell
fire dominated the superstitious minds of the emperors, than the old decrees of
persecution under which they themselves had previously suffered were revamped
and turned into engines of torture and destruction of both pagans and
"heretic" Christians alike, and religious intolerance became the
corner-stone of the Church apostolic. Without mentioning earlier laws, in which
the new persecutors cautiously felt their way, it was enacted, at priestly
instigation, in the famous Codex Theodosianus, about A.D. 384: "We desire
that all the people under the rule of our clemency should live by that religion
which divine Peter the apostle is said to hive given the Romans. ... We desire
that heretics and schismatists be subjected to various fines. ... We decree
also that we shall cease from making sacrifices to the gods. And if any one has
committed such a crime, let him be stricken with the avenging sword" (Cod.
Theod. 16: 1, 2; 5: 1; 10: 4 ). What a contrast to the Edict of
THE DEADLY SANCTIONS OF RELIGION
But the priests should not alone bear the
infamy of these laws of persecution and death, instigated by them. To the Devil
his due! The "Holy Ghost" itself, it is claimed by the Bible and the
Church, inspired and decreed by positive command all the bloody murders and
tortures by the priests from Moses to the last one committed; and the spirit of
them lives and is but hibernating to-day. The Holy God of
"If thy brother, the son of thy mother,
or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is
as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go serve other gods,
and ... Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall
thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him:
But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him
to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him
with stones, that he die" (Deut. 13: 6--10 )!
Words are inadequate to comment on this
murderous decree of a barbarian God! And not only must all under penalty of a
fiendish death worship the Holy Yahweh of Israel, but listen to this other
fatal, infamous decree of the priests in the name of this God:
"The man that will do presumptuously, and
will not hearken unto the priest, even that man shall die" (Deut.
And the tergiversant slaughter-breathing
persecutor for pay of the early Christians, now turned for profit their chief
apostle of persecution, pronounces time and again the anathema of the new
dispensation against all dissenters from his superstitious, tortuous doctrines
and dogmas, all such "whom I have delivered unto Satan" (I Tim. 1: 20
), as he writes to advise his adjutant Timothy. He flings at the scoffing
Hebrews this question: "He that despised Moses, law died without mercy
...: Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye shall he be thought worthy, who
hath trodden under foot the Son of God?" (Heb. 10: 28, 29 ). All such
"are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal
fire" (Jude 7 ); "that they might all be damned who believed not the
truth" (2 Thess.
Thus "breathing out threatenings and
Slaughter" against all who would not believe their gospel of miracles and
damnation, the founders of the new faith forged and fastened the fetters of the
new superstition upon the already superstitious pagans about them, and gradually
throughout the Roman world. By fear of hell, pagan individuals, and in later
times, by the choice proffered by "Christian" conquerors between the
Cross and the sword, whole pagan peoples fell under the domination of the new
militant faith. Whole tribes and nations were given the choice between
Christianity and death; early history abounds in instances. The Hungarians
adopted Christianity as the alternative to extermination in A.D. 1000; also the
pagan Wends when conquered in 1144, and most of the pagan Teutonic tribes.
Charlemagne required every male subject of the
Following the truism of Isaiah, "like
king like people," very great sections of the people throughout the
Empire, especially the official and subservient classes, hastened to adopt the
name and outward indicia of Christianity, now become official and popular. But
so "joined to their idols" were the masses of pagan
"converts" for convenience, and so addicted to its showy forms and
ceremonies, that the now officially recognized Church of Christ was not slow to
popularize itself with the pagan-Christian masses by taking over bodily and
"baptizing" to itself the temples, idols, rituals, ceremonials, the
whole pomp and glorious circumstance of paganism, as we have just seen admitted
by the paragraphs of church history quoted from the work of Sellars and the
authoritative Catholic Encyclopedia. Christianity became thus scarcely more
than a refined veneer of paganism. A devout pagan becoming, either from
convenience or conviction, a Christian, no doubt felt quite comfortable and at
home in a "baptized" pagan-Christian temple, aglow with all the
trappings and ceremonials and resonant with all the old familiar rituals and
litanies of his just-recanted paganism, with merely the name of Zeus or Jupiter
replaced by that of Jehovah, and of Adonis or Tammuz by that of Jesus, and with
"Mary, Mother of God," for Isis (with the child Horus), as the new
"Queen of Heaven." As the missionaries of Rome carried the new cult
into yet other countries, and various kings and rulers fell to the appeal and
pomp of the priests, whole tribes and nations of heathens followed their leaders
into the Church, veneering their paganism with the name, forms, and ceremonials
of Roman Christianity. This is the testimony of early ecclesiastical and
secular history.
Later instances more generally known, but the
significance of which is as generally overlooked, further confirm Isaiah's
maxim. For a millennium the Western Empire was more or less Roman Christian;
the Eastern Empire had the Greek Church with its own Patriarch, but, with
considerable vicissitudes of constancy, it recognized the supremacy of papal Rome,
and the formulas of faith and creed were the same, with the exception of the
age-long controversy over the "filioque" clause of the Nicene Creed,
and the bitter feuds over image-worship known as iconoclasm. The rancours
engendered from these differences of belief, together with the bigoted
pretensions of patriarch and pope, led to the final rupture between Greek and
But western and northern
England was wholly Romish before the
Reformation; so staunch a supporter of the True Faith was the lecherous Henry 8
that the pope bestowed on him the title Fidei Defensor, Defender of the Faith.
Papal sanction being refused to his scandalous project of divorce from
Catharine, in order to marry Anne Boleyn, Henry broke with the pope and became
Protestant; carried England with him into the Protestant ranks; founded the
Church of England; and became its supreme spiritual head. The old Romish
practice of burning dissenters at the stake was turned against the English
Catholics to suppress that sect entirely. Henry's Romish daughter "Bloody
Mary" succeeded him, and she was in turn succeeded by her Protestant bar-
sinister sister Elizabeth: each in turn kept the fires of
On such chances and caprices of vanity and
spite in
And so, through the long dark ages of faith,
and so long as the priest-prostituted State would use its civil power in
superstitious aid of the Holy Church, the Holy Church has zealously fulfilled
its Bible's commands and has murdered and tortured men, women, and tender
children by fire and sword through its special agency of faith, the Holy
Inquisition. This priest-ordained institution was only abolished by the infidel
Napoleon in
It would appear, from what is quoted below,
that
"Nearly all ecclesiastical legislation in
regard to the repression of heresy proceeds upon the assumption that Heretics
are in wilful revolt against lawful authority; that they are, in fact,
Apostates who by their own culpable act have renounced the True Faith. ... It
is easy to see that in the Middle Ages this was not an unreasonable assumption.
... "No one could be ignorant of the claims of the Church; and if certain
people repudiated her authority, it was by an act of rebellion inevitably
carrying with it a menace to the sovereignty which the rest of the world
accepted. ... "The Canon Law deals very largely with the enunciation of
principles of right and wrong which are in their own nature irreformable; the
direct repeal of its provisions has never or very rarely been resorted to; but
there remain upon the statute book a number of enactments which owing to
changed conditions are to all practical intents and purposes obsolete. ...
"The custom of burning heretics is really not a question of justice, but a
question of civilization (p. 769 ). ... "'The gravest obligation,'"
says Pope Leo 11II in his Encyclical "Immortals Dei" of Nov. 1, 1885,
"requires the acceptance and practice not of the religion which one may
choose, but of that which God prescribes and which is known by certain and
indubitable marks to be the only true, one'"! (p.764 ).
There we have the incubating germs of
potential hell on earth again in the name of God and the Christian religion. It
is not the Roman Church alone which is guilty; now, and throughout this book, I
make no imputations against it as Catholic, but only as Christian; for 1500
years it was the only, as it claims yet to be the only true,
"Christian" Church, -- "fons et origo malorum," of
religious superstitions and persecutions innumerable. Its greater guilt lies
only in its being the father of all these priestly dogmas which have been and
are the blight of civilization. The dissenters were, and well might be again,
their Providence permitting, all that this same article above quoted imputes to
them; for in a typical tu quoque conclusion (which admits its own guilt) Holy
Church thus recites history: "On the other hand, the ferocity of the
leading Reformers more than equalled that of the most fiercely denounced
Inquisitors. Even the 'gentle' Melanchthon wrote to Calvin to congratulate him
on the burning of Servetus: 'The Church, both now and in all generations, owes
and will owe you a debt of gratitude.' And, says Luther, 'Let there be no pity;
it is a time of wrath, not of mercy. Therefore, dear Lords, let him who can
slay, smite, destroy.' John Knox 'thought that every Catholic in
Revolting and truly significant as this is, it
is also a confession which suggests the truth of the assertion often made that
"Christian civilization" is a misnomer, and that such civilization as
the world to-day enjoys exists, not because of the Christian religion, but in
despite and defiance of that religion and its ministers. Only so far as the
world has broken away from the superstition and thrall of the theological
dogmas of this religion and its Holy Church and has caught something of its
better spirit, making "obsolete" the fires of the Church on earth and
in hell, has civilization slowly and painfully progressed, and have human
liberty of thought and conscience and political and civil liberty become
possible and been slowly and painfully realized in some parts of the
"Christian" world.
With the decline an fall of the
During the long dark ages of faith, the
Any who may question the accuracy -- or desire
astonishing details -- of this reference to the miracles and superstitions of
saints and Holy Church, is cheerfully recommended to the exhaustless fount of
authentic lore and accredited vouchers for it all, in the sixteen volume
Catholic Encyclopedia, under the names of the myriad various saints and the
articles Magic, Exorcism, Necromancy, Sorcery, Witchcraft, and scores of other
such, all vouched for under the imprimatur of authority. And none of this, with
such sanction, can possibly be impeached of error; for the same high source
states: "Error is in one way or another the product of ignorance."
The priestly maxim of those dark ages of faith is the accredited axiom of Hugo
of St. Victor: "Disce premum quod credendum est" -- "Learn first
what is to be believed"! -- though amongst the churchmen it is said to
have been a privileged maxim for themselves, that they might "hold anything
so long as they hold their tongues."
Under the sway and dominion of such
"sacred science," genius was dead; the human intellect atrophied;
credulity was rampant. All this followed swiftly upon the grafting of the
Christian religion upon the splendid though decadent civilization of the
Dickens's Child's History of England, in
speaking of the early pagan inhabitants of that island at the time of the Roman
invasion, 55 years before the era of the so-called "Prince of peace,"
says: "The ancient Britons, being divided into as many as thirty or forty
tribes, each commanded by its own little king, were constantly fighting with
each other, as savage people usually do."
That single sentence epitomizes the whole
history of "Christian-civilized"
Without an exception they have all been of one
of three inveterate classes: wars instigated by lust of conquest and power on
the part of "divine right" kings or even more popular rulers, seeking
to rob and steal each other's territories or to force their will upon others;
wars, and the most terrible and brutal of all, incited by this Holy Christian
religion before the Reformation, with the holy purpose of exterminating
unbelievers, as in the Crusades and the Spanish butcheries of the Moors, or
with the pious object of exterminating, at Popish instigation, dissenting
"heretics," such as the Albigenses, Waldenses, Netherlanders,
Cathari, Huguenots, Jews, and scores of
others; and after the Reformation, furious exterminating wars of one fanatical
faction of Christians against another, all blasphemously in the name of God!
Such pious infamies, for a thousand years and more, from its earliest
usurpation of power until skeptic anti-clericalism made it impotent, have been
the chief occupation of the Church Persecutr9: -- that
"... saintly, murderous brood, To carnage
and the Bible* given, Who think through unbelievers' blood Lies their directest
path to heaven." *The original reads "the Koran."
A third, and redeeming, class of European wars
has been those glorious and righteous struggles for liberty by oppressed and
debased peoples, ground to misery and desperation by Holy Church and divine
right kings -- both which institutions are thoroughly Biblical and Christian --
to throw off their galling yokes and to win political freedom and liberty of
conscience for themselves and their posterity. But the Christian religion,
while instigating and waging many of the most cruel wars, has never once
prevented a single accursed war, of which over fifty have plunged "civilized
Christian Europe" into a welter of blood and misery in the past century
alone; while the world to-day yet staggers under the devastation of the
greatest and most destructive war of all history, which desolated humanity and
all but overthrew civilization. And no war has been in which the name of God
was not inscribed upon the bloody banners of the aggressor; assailants and
defenders alike swamp high heaven with frantic and fatuous prayers to God to
give victory to each against the other -- prayers which God has never heard or
attended to, for God, as Napoleon cynically and truly said, "is always on
the side of the heaviest guns" -- or of the deadliest poison-gas and most
ruthless butchery of men.
Until wicked, brutal, damned war is ended on
earth, there is and can be no true civilization; for all war -- unless
defensive -- is uncivilized, brutish barbarism. And to this holy consummation
the Christian religion, as such, will never lead or even contribute. He whom
the Christians fondly call "The Prince of Peace" -- for what reason
and with what reason God only knows -- is not to be counted on to aid; for
himself explicitly avers: "Think not that I am come to send peace on
earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at
variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, And a man's
foes shall be they of his own household" (Matt.
The Christian religion has been the fearful
sanction of human slavery, of "divine right" rulers, of
"God-anointed" priestly domination of the mind and soul of man, of
the imposed inferiority of woman. The deadly dogma of divine right of kings and
of the sin of resistance to oppression is positively ordained: "The powers
that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth
the ordinance of God: and they, that resist shall receive to themselves
damnation" (Romans 13: 1. 2 ). But the Declaration of
The best and most highly civilized portion of
the human race is within the pale of Christendom; but are these peoples so
because they profess the Christian religion? Just as well and truly say that
they are the most intelligent of mind, the fairest of complexion, the most
comely of form and face because they are Christian.
But as pagans, before ever they heard of
Christianity, they were the same: because they were of the Caucasian race,
Aryan -- which means "noble." All know the story of the youthful
priest, later Gregory the Great, seeing a group of "barbarian"
captives exposed for sale in the Christian slave-market of
Not only these greatest civilizations, but the
greatest minds of the ages, the best of men, were pagans: Aristotle, Plato,
Socrates, Epictetus, Demosthenes, Cicero, Seneca, the Plinys, the Antonines,
Marcus Aurelius, the philosophers, the poets, Pilate himself -- the catalogue
is long and illustrious: Justin had to explain it thus -- "there were
Christians before Christ." The Augustan Age, just at the time of the
advent of the Man of Sorrows, was the glorious golden age of the ancient world
-- and purely pagan. And for centuries after Christ the greater part of Europe
remained pagan, and but slowly, and bloodily, gave way to Christianity after
the league of State with Church under Constantine, as we may again notice in
this sketch.
Having given a rapid retrospect of some of the
phases of Christian history, and sought to clear away some popular
misconceptions, I shall proceed, in the following chapters, in all conscience
and truth of statement, easily verifiable by all, to "search the
Scriptures," Hebrew and Hebrao-Christian, whether these things which they
contain for our faith are worthy of faith and credit. This search will truly
"reveal" the Bible and its God in the very words of inspiration. If
they be found inspired of truth, the first and highest duty of man is
reverently to cherish and obey them -- "for therein ye think ye have
eternal life." If inspiration and truth, divine and human, are found lacking,
for God's sake and humanity's, may intelligent people renounce forevermore the
vain priest-imposed "hope to merit heaven by making earth a hell" for
superstition's sake; let us cease wrangling and being intolerant over moronic
myths, and let us have peace from "idle tales" and fables.
CHAPTER 2
A SKETCH OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES
THE Bible, as all must admit, is the only
source of knowledge which we have, of the great questions of miracle and of
"revealed religion" which come to us through its pages. The
authenticity of its remarkable contents, as the word and will of God, can only
be tested and ascertained by itself; by the internal evidences of its own words
must its divine origin and inspired truth be vindicated, or its mere human
origin and want of inspired truth be demonstrated. On a matter of such high
importance to man and to the soul and its destiny, no candid and honest mind
can offer reasonable objection to a candid and honest inquiry, made by a frank
and faithful examination of its own words. To this capital end, therefore, we
will follow the injunction of the Man of
THE BIBLE A COLLECTION OF "LITTLE BOOKS"
What, first, is this Bible? It is not one
single and homogeneous book, in the form in which we see it printed; indeed, it
was first printed, in Latin, in the year A.D. 1452, by Gutenberg, in
The Bible, thus called, is a compilation, or
gathering into one volume, of sixty-six separate "little books," or
fragmentary "sacred" writings, from Genesis to Revelation. These
sixty-six little books were written, or edited and compiled, in very different
ages of the world, by wholly different, and mostly unknown, persons, in
different countries and languages, Hebrew and Greek principally; but, as is
commonly supposed, by Jews invariably. Together they form the "sacred
writings" of the later Hebrews and of the early Jewish and Pagan
Christians-the name given, first at
THE LANGUAGE OF THE BOOKS
The Hebrew little books," thirty-nine in
number according to the accepted Hebrew and Protestant "canon,"
forty-six according to the Catholic, were written, of course, mainly in the
Hebrew language, though Aramaic elements enter into some of the later
compositions. This Hebrew language, like several others of the allied Semitic
languages, was written entirely with consonants, having no written means of
expressing vowel sounds; their words consist mostly of only three consonantal
letters. The whole Hebrew Scriptures is a solid mass of words in consonants
only, with not a single vowel among them. This consonantal mass of words was
written from right to left, without spacing between words, and without a single
mark of punctuation from end to end. To give a visual illustration of the
practical difficulties, and frequent impossibilities, of decipherment and
translation of the Old Testament texts, I present one of the best known
passages in the Hebrew Bible, printed in Hebrew characters as Yahveh himself is
said to have written it:
@@@@ two lines of
Hebrew characters @@@@
(NOTE: My computer
program cannot generate the ancient Hebrew characters)
In type the letters are plain, though even in
type many are much alike and difficult to distinguish, as; @@; and @@ and @@;
@@ and @@; and @@ and @@; and @@; in handwritten Hebrew characters it is in
many cases impossible to distinguish one from another.
Jerome, who made the Vulgate Version of the
Old Testament, says:
"When we translate the Hebrew into Latin,
we are sometimes guided by conjecture." Le Clere says: "The learned
merely guess at the sense of the Old Testament in an infinity of places."
But what they have guessed it to mean we must believe or be damned.
Here is the same passage composed in the same
manner in
English consonants:
Hnrthfthrndthmthrthtthdysmyblngpntlilndwhchthlrdthgdgvthththshltntkllthshltntemmtdltrythshltntstlthshltntbr
flswtnssgnstthnghbr
Who can guess what familiar passage this
printer's pie is?
There were no divisions, as at present, into
chapters and verses, these divisions having been invented only some three
orfour centuries ago to facilitate quotations and references; even now the
chapter and verse divisions differ considerably between the Hebrew text and the
English translations. The Hebrew rabbis and scholars, somewhere between the
fifth and eighth centuries A.D., devised and put into use in their manuscripts
of the Bible a system of so-called "vowel points"-dots and dashes as
in modern shorthand-to express and preserve what they considered to be the
probable ancient pronunciation of the Hebrew words. No wonder there are
infinite doubts and difficulties as to the original words and their
vowelization, and therefore even of their meaning. Many of the Hebrew words are
almost untranslatable, and the same Hebrew word is often given scores of wholly
different meanings in translation. A glance at the index-lexicon to the Old
Testament in Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible, demonstrates the difficulties,
or the ingenuity, of the King James translators. For example, the word abar is
given 88 different meanings; amar, 51; asah, 96; nathan, 94; nephesh (soul),
27; and so throughout the list-many of these renditions being totally unrelated
to each other, as nephesh; soul, appetite, pleasure, fish, heairty, ghost. This
results from the rude nature of the Hebrew language, which has only about 2050
root words, of which only 500 make up the bulk of the Old Testament. (Cath.
Encyc., Vol. 7: p. 177 ).
THE BIBLE LANGUAGE-HEBREW
Such a thing as the "Hebrew
language," as a separate and distinctive speech of the ancient Israelites,
in which they held familiar converse with Yahveh, and in which Yahveh spoke
with Adam and Eve and with the patriarchs and Moses, never existed; no more
than an "American language" now exists as distinct from the mother
speech of England, or than the "Latin" languages of South America are
distinct from the Spanish and Portuguese of the Iberian peninsula. As to the
language of Yahveh and Adam and Eve, says the Catholic Encyclopedia: "The
contention that Hebrew was the original language bestowed upon mankind may be
left out of discussion, being based merely on pietistic a priori
considerations."
Abraham was a native of "
So, if Yahveh, God of Abraham and of Israel,
spoke all these wonderful things to his Chosen People, he spoke them in the
common language of the peoples and gods of Canaan and Assyria, and not in some
choice and peculiar "Hebrew language" as a special idiom of his
Chosen People and of his divine revelations to his people and through them to
mankind. Highly important sidelights on inspiration and the verity of sundry
characteristic Scripture histories flow from this fact, so that its importance
and interest justify this brief paragraph.
THE NAME OF THE HEBREW TRIBAL GOD
So obsolete did the "Hebrew
language" become, following the world-conquests of Alexander the Great and
the almost universal spread of the Greek language and culture throughout the
Orient, that several centuries before the time of Christ even the form and
proper pronunciation of the name YHVH of the Hebrew tribal deity were lost and
unknown; though a few Jews, as Philo of Alexandria and Josephus, a generation
after the time of Christ, professed to know it, but held it unlawful to
pronounce or divulge it (Josephus, Antiq., 2: 12: 4; see Cath. Encyc., Vol. 8:
art. Jehovah).
Again the authoritative Catholic Encyclopedia
speaks on this very significant point: "The modern Jews are as uncertain
of the proper pronunciation of the Sacred Name as their Christian
contemporaries. ... The name was not pronounced after the destruction of the
temple" (Vol. 8: p. 329 ). On page 330 it gives a list of the forms of the
name as found in ancient writers, and lists: Jao, Jaoth, Jaou, Jeuo, Ja, Jabe,
Jahb, Jehjeh. It then comments: "The judicious reader will perceive that the
Samaritan pronunciation Jabe probably approaches the real sound of the Divine
Name closest. Inserting the vowels of Jabe into the original Hebrew consonantal
text, we obtain the form Jahweh (Yahweh), which has been generally accepted by
modern scholars as the true pronunciation of the Divine Name" (p. 330 ).
Very remarkably, for an orthodox Christian
authority, this scholarly thesaurus of theology-which so often seems to forget
orthodox theology when engaged in questions of pure scholarship- reviews at
some length inquiries of scholars to discover the origin of the old Hebrew
tribal Yahveh-that is, whence the
The article referred to reviews amply the
suggested origins of Yahveh and his adoption by the
The immense significance of this scholarly
confession that the theory of Egyptian origin of Yahveh may have "a
certain amount of a priori probability," and that this name is said to
have been adopted "to put meaning into the name of the national god"
Yahveh, or that the Hebrews may have adopted or adapted their tribal or
"national god" from Egypt, Chaldea, or some other of their heathen
neighbors, is that such concessions, or their bare possibility as fact, destroy
at once utterly the Bible "revelations" and the pietistic
Hebrao-Christian assertions that YHVH is eternal and "self-revealed"
God since before the foundations of the world. It totally explodes the
pretended "revelation" to Moses at the Burning Bush, soon to be
noticed. In a word, such fact or the admission of it wholly destroys Yahveh
except as a pagan Hebrew myth and a Christian "strong delusion" to
believe ancient primitive myths for revealed truth of God.
The name of the God, too, is often and
variously abbreviated in the Hebrew texts. Dozens of times in Genesis it is
written simply yy, the first time in Gen. 2: 4, the first mention of Yahveh.
Elsewhere it occurs as Yah, or Yehu, Yeho, and as Yah,-Yahveh; often as
Yahveh-Elohim. It is always, as we shall see, falsely rendered in the
translations as "Lord" and "Lord God," for reasons of pious
fraud which will duly appear.
THE BIBLE ALL COPIES OF COPIES
There is not existent in the world a single
original book or manuscript of Hebrew or Christian Scriptures, containing the
inspired Word of Yahveh. The most ancient manuscripts of the Hebrew texts date
only from the eighth century of the era of Christ; while of the Christian
books, said to have been written by the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost
within the first century of the era, all, all are lost, and the oldest
"copies" bear the marks of the fourth century. And even in this
fourth century, so gross was the corruption of text, so numberless the errors
and conflicting readings, that the great St. Jerome, author of the celebrated Latin
Vulgate version of the Scriptures, has left it recorded, as his reason for his
great work, that the sacred texts "varied so much that there were almost
as many readings as codices," or manuscript copies of the text. And for
years past, the papal authorities have been collating all known extant versions
and bits of Scriptures for the purpose of trying to edit them into one approved
version of the inspired Word of Yahveh
Curious indeed it seems that in this inspired
revelation of Yahveh, the Hebrew God, to Man, wherein the awful
destinies of the human soul are said to be revealed to eternal salvation or
damnation, some ten thousand different, conflicting, and disputed readings and
textual corruptions and verbal slips of inspiration admittedly exist in the
inspired texts, with the knowledge and sufferance of the God whose awful will
it all is; while the Providence of that same God, Yahveh, by special miraculous
intervention has preserved wholly "incorrupt" through all the ages of
faith, the cadavers and ghastly scraps and relics of holy saints and martyrs
galore, from the very Year One on, which are yet to-day (or at last reports
were-Cath. Encyc., passim) as fresh, fragrant, and wholly "encorrupt"
of flesh as when alive-which, in very truth, in the case of many saints-as
their lives are recorded by the monks-is not saying very much for either
freshness or fragrance. An instance-e pluribus unum-is that of the pioneer
Saint Pachomius, who, ambitious to outdo in bodily mortification his companions
in filth, left the pig-sty in which he dwelt, and sat himself on the ground at
the entrance of a cave full of hyenas in the pious desire of entering glory via
their bestial maws; but the hyenas, rushing out upon the holy saint, stopped
short of a sudden, sniffed him all over, turned tail, and left him in disgust
uneaten.
AND TRANSLATIONS OF TRANSLATIONS
On the title-page of Bibles in current use is
the statement "translated out of the original tongues"; but this does
not tell the whole or the true story. The first translation of some of the
Hebrew Scriptures (for all were not yet written) was the Septuagint into Greek,
undertaken at the behest of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, of
This Latin Vulgate, Old and New Testaments
alike, with the Apocrypha added, was in its turn translated into English in the
Douai Catholic version of 1609, thus removed three steps of translation from
the Hebrew and two from the Greek. The Protestant versions in English,
including the King James version of 1611, are more directly from the Hebrew and
Greek texts of the respective Testaments. It is reported that the Tennessee
legislator who sponsored the notorious "Anti-evolution" law in that
state was greatly surprised to learn, from the eye-opening revelations of the
Scopes trial, that his cherished King James version of Holy Writ, whose
precious petrified "Sacred science" he sought to protect from the
destroying effects of modern knowledge, was not in the original language of
"revelation," in which Yahveh and the talking snake spoke to Adam and
Eve. Some further anomalies and a number of tricks of translation will appear
in their due order as we proceed.
WHEN THE BOOKS WERE WRITTEN
It will be of signal value to inquire, for a
moment, concerning the periods of time indicated by the Bible, and the times
when the principal books of it were written and by whom they were written-or
rather, as that is the only course possible, to show, negatively, by whom, and
when, they were not written. This inquiry will be confined to the
"internal evidences" of the Bible texts themselves, with a bit of
reference to their marginal editorial annotations. The force of such
"internal proofs" is self-evident.
To assist to an easier understanding, take
this illustration:
If one picks up a book, a newspaper, a letter,
or any piece of written or printed matter which bears no date-mark or name of
some known writer, one may not be able to ascertain exactly when or by whom it
was written or printed. But one can often very readily determine, by the nature
of its contents, that it was not written or published until after such or such
a known time; and hence that it could not have been written by some person
already dead or of one not yet born.
If such a document, for instance, contains the
name of Julius Caesar or of Jesus Christ, this proves at once that it was
written some time within the past 1900-odd years, and not possibly before the
advent of these two personages. If it mentions President Washington or some
incident of his administration, it is evident that it could not have been
written before Washington became President, in 1789; if it mentions Presidents
Washington, Lincoln, and Coolidge, it is proof that it was written as late as
the date the latter became President. So of every factual or fanciful
allusion-it can go no higher than its source. In a word, we know that no
writing can speak as of a matter of fact of any event, person, or thing, until
after such event has become an accomplished fact, or such person or thing has
existed. No one can to-day write even the name of the President of the
With this simple thumb-rule of ascertaining or
approximating the time of production of written documents by what is known as
their "internal evidences" we may gather some astonishing proofs as
to when, and by whom, sundry inspired records of Holy Writ were not written-contrary
to some currently accepted theories.
SOME LIGHTS ON BIBLE CHRONOLOGY
According to the chronology, or
time-computations worked out of the Bible narratives (principally by Bishop
Usaher) and printed in the margins of all well-edited Bibles, Catholic and
Protestant alike, until recent ridicule shamed the Bible editors into quietly
dropping them, the world and Man were created by the fiat or by the fingers of
the Hebrew God Yahveh about 4004 years before the present so-called Christian
Era, not yet two thousand years old; so that the reputed first man, Adam,
inhabited the new-made earth slightly less than six thousand years before the
present time. The revelation of this interesting event-which by every token of
human knowledge outside the Bible is known not to have occurred just when and
how there related-and of many equally accredited events, is recorded (for
wonder of mankind) in the first five books of the Bible Genesis to Deuteronomy,
called the Pentateuch or Five Books, or, as entitled in the Bible, "The
Five Books of Moses." Moses is reputed to have written them at the inspiration
or by the revelation of Yahveh, the God of
According to the Bible chronology, Moses lived
some 1500 years before Christ; the date of his exodus out of
But it is explained that while this is true,
yet Yahveh inspired Moses with a true knowledge or "revelation" of
all those things unknown to him, and so what he wrote was revealed historical
fact. This is a matter which will be noticed a little later.
But the Book of Genesis, and all the Five
Books of Moses, contain many matters of "revealed" fact which
occurred, if ever at all many hundreds of years after the death of Moses. Moses
is not technically "numbered among the Prophets," and he does not
claim for himself to have been inspired both backwards and forwards, so as to
write both past and future history. It is evident therefore, by every internal
and human criterion, that these "five Books of Moses," containing not
only the past events referred to, but many future events-not in form of
prophecy, but as past occurrences -- could not have been written by Moses, the
principal character of the alleged Exodus and of the forty years' wandering in
the Wilderness of Sin, at the end of which he died. The cardinal significance
of this fact, and of others connected with it, as bearing upon the historicity
of Mosaic narrative and revelation, will appear in due course.
Indeed, in the light of modern knowledge, it
is quite evident that Moses and the "Hebrews" of his supposed time
(1500 B.C.) could not write at all; or, if at all, on the theory of their 430
years in Egypt, only in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Not till many centuries later did
the Hebrews acquire the art of writing. Professor Breasted, the distinguished
Egyptologist of the University of Chicago, points out that to the nomad Hebrews
writing was unknown; and that it was not until about the time of Amos (about
eight hundred years after Moses) that the Hebrews were just "learning to
write"; that "they were now abandoning the clay tablet, and they
wrote on papyrus with Egyptian pen and ink. They borrowed their alphabet from
the Phoenician and Aramean merchants." [James H. Breasted, Ancient Times
(Boston: Ginn & Co.), see. 305] These Arameans themselves borrowed the
alphabet from the Phoenicians "about 1000 B.C."; [Op. cit., see.
205.] the Phoenicians had themselves "devised an alphabet drawn from
Egyptian hieroglyphs." [Op. cit., see. 400; see also Andrew Norton, The
Pentateuch, p. 44.]
Moses, as the traditional great leader and
lawgiver of Israel, is worthy of very interested attention. In no accurate
sense was Moses, if he ever lived, a Hebrew at all; indeed, he is expressly
called "an Egyptian" (Ex.
All know the story of "Moses and the
Bulrushes"; how the unnamed Pharaoh sought to destroy all the new-born
male children of the Israelites, commanding the Hebrew midwives to slay them at
birth; how the yet unnamed infant son of Amram was put into an "ark of
bulrushes" and hidden on the bosom of the sacred Nile, watched over by his
sister Miriam, found by the Pharaoh's daughter, drawn from the water by her,
raised by his own mother, and adopted by the daughter of the Pharaoh. All this
is very romantic, but not novel. Other high-born ladies have concealed their
indiscretions by more or less similar shifts.
Sargon, King of Accad about 3800 B.C., as
shown by his monuments yet existing, was also secretly born, was placed by his
mother in an ark of bulrushes, just like Baby Moses, and turned adrift on the
Euphrates, where he was found by a kindly gardener (as were also Romulus and
Remus, born of the god Mars and the vestal virgin, Rhea Silvia), The gardener nurtured
him until his royal birth was discovered; he became beloved of the goddess
Ishtar, and was raised by his valorous deeds to the throne of his country.
Sargon then conquered all western Asia, including the land of Canaan, and set
up his monuments of victory even on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, where
they remained, undisturbed by the floods of Noah, Xisuthros, and Deucalion,
until discovered in recent years, and their records confronted with those of
Holy Writ, in the British Museum in London, and elsewhere, where they may be
seen to-day. The stele of Hammurabi's Code, we may also recall, stands to-day
an eloquent and unimpeachable witness of the mighty past, in the Louvre at
Paris; while Moses's Tables of Stone, writ by the finger of the Hebrew God
Yahveh, are even as the sepulchre of Moses, whereof no man knoweth unto this
day.
To return from the digression. As the story is
recorded in Exodus 2: the princess of Pharaoh spied the ark in the
Because meshethi (I drew) him out of the
waters" (Heb., mashad, to draw). The curious thing about it all is that
the Egyptian princessis represented as speaking in Hebrew, or Chaldee, and
making a pun-name for her protege in that evidently unknown tongue. That it
hardly happened that way is obvious. The birth, rescue, and
"christening" of Moses have every indicium of myth. This evidently
fabled beginning must raise grave doubts as to the historicity of Moses himself
and of all his reputed career. Other indications of the legendary will not be
wanting as we proceed to review the life and times of Moses, and his Five
Books.
The first and most obvious proof that the
so-called 'Five Books of' Moses were not written by Moses, but date from a time
many centuries after his reputed life and death, is very simple and
indisputable. This proof consists of very numerous instances of what are called
post-Mosaics, or "after-Moses" events, related in those books under
the name of Moses as their inspired author; events of which Moses of course
could not have known or written, as they occurred long after his death.
It may be remarked, parenthetically, that
Moses nowhere claims to have written the Five Books, nor does the Bible
elsewhere impute their authorship to Moses. It is only "the law"
which is elsewhere attributed to Moses. Indeed, the books are written
throughout in the third person-Moses did or said this or that; never, in all
the relations of the doings and sayings of Moses does "I did" or
"I said" once occur, except when Moses is recorded as making a
speech.
A singular passage in Exodus vi illustrates
this point and is striking evidence that Moses could not have written the
books. In verse 13 it is related: "And Yahveh spake unto Moses and unto
Aaron, and gave them a charge unto the children of Israel, and unto Pharaoh
king of Egypt, to bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt."
Immediately, in verses 14 to 27, follows a strange interruption of the
narrative by the insertion of a series of family genealogies, beginning
"These be the heads of their fathers' houses," with many names,
including the pedigrees of Moses and Aaron, the marriage of Aaron, and mention
of the names of his offspring; then this careful explanation: "These are
that Aaron and Moses, to whom Yahveh said, Bring out the children of Israel
from the land of Egypt. ... These are they which spake to Pharaoh king of
It is recognized by scholars that all these
elaborate genealogies inserted in the Five Books are post-exilic compositions.
Their exact duplicates are found in the post-exilic Books of the Chronicles,
and some in Ezra. This too is the origin of the use of "Adam" as a
proper name instead of the common noun that it is. Again, if Moses had written
the books, surely be would have at least once written the name of the Pharaoh
of the Exodus.
But several times in the verses cited is it
said, as often elsewhere in the Five Books, "Pharaoh king of
A flood of light on Mosaic authorship of the
Book of Genesis, as well as on "divine revelation" of the most
wonderful of its recorded events, breaks in at this vital point. In this light
we will read a record which will totally destroy the theory of divine
revelation.
The Hebrews claim to "have Abraham as our
father," or tribal founder. The "history" or account of tribal
traditions of the Chosen People as a new or separate-and
"peculiar"-ethnic division, first as nomadic desert Bedouins, later
grown into a Hebrew nationality, begins with the "calling" of Abram
and his departure out of Ur of the Chaldees into Canaan, the "Land of
Promise." This event is related in Genesis 12; from there to the end the
whole of Hebrew Scripture is a miraculous "history" of Abraham and
his descendants as the Hebrew people.
The first eleven chapters of Genesis are not
Hebrew history at all; they deal with cosmic and human-race history, of the
creation of the world and the progress of the gentile races of mankind,
centered around an alleged direct line of personages, non-Hebraic and
pre-Hebrew, from Adam, through Noah and his son Shern, to the immediate
forbears of the Hebrew Father Abraham, who was born a Chaldean (Gen. i-xi). All
the rest of the record deals with the theocratic history of the Hebrews as
"Chosen People" of their god Yahveh, through their whole national
life down to the Babylonian captivity, their restoration to their native land
under Ezra and Nehemiah, by grace of the Persian conquerors of Babylon, and
their subsequent re-establishment of their theocracy.
Note now this capital fact: in the whole
Scripture record, from Genesis 12 to the post-exilic Books of the Chronicles, Ezra,
etc., there is not a word of mention of one of the transcendent wonders of
Genesis i-xi: creation, Father Adam and Mother Eve, Eden, and the serpent, Noah
and his flood, the Tower of Babel- not a hint of any of these great events and
personages preceding Abraham's trek into Canaan in the year 1921 B.C. Does not
such singular silence of all subsequent history, prophecy, and poetry of the
Hebrews excite curiosity or wonder? The explanation is easy and very revealing.
In 586 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar, King of
(Psalm 137: 1-4 ) This proves, too, that David
did not write this Psalm, for it was written after the captivity; and there
they dreamed of the Messiah who should arise to "deliver us from the
Assyrian." There in
From these wonderful records of the past they
learned the Babylonian Epic of Creation, wherein are recorded the fables of
creation, the first parents, the garden, the forbidden trees of knowledge and
of life, the serpent, the temptation, the fall of man, the flood and the ark,
and of the Tower of Babel, the reputed original of which stood there before
their wondering eyes. There they gathered these legends of the ancient past;
and there, or after their return from captivity, they wrote, or rewrote, or
edited their own ancient chronicles and their books of religious lore for use
in the restored homeland.
The thing speaks for itself: they simply
recast the wonders of the Epic of Creation to suit their own notions and so as
to make their own Yahveh the great Creator instead of Marduk. And to show that
Yahveh's Chosen People were of the most ancient and illustrious lineage, they
worked in the marvelous direct descent from the first man Adam, through Noah,
to Terah, father of Abraham, only twenty generations since "in the
beginning." When this product was completed, they tacked it on to their
own tribal chronicles as a sort of introduction, and there it stands today-the
revised Babylonian Epic of Creation as Genesis 1 - 11 -the preface to the
theocratic history of the Hebrews. Later priestly theologians attached the
potent name of Moses to the first five books, and the whole gained credit as
divinely revealed by Yahveh God to the traditional first historian and
lawgiver, Moses.
The instance is well known of the graphic
account, in the last chapter of Deuteronomy, of the death and burial of Moses;
this he could hardly have written himself. Even if he were inspired, as some
people explain, to write of his own coming death and funeral, it would be odd
for him to add (34: 6 ), when he was not yet dead or buried, "but no man
knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day"- which was evidently very long
afterwards, and proves an authorship much later than Moses. And in verse 8 is
the statement: "And the children of
In the same chapter is another similar proof
of much later authorship by some other than Moses; for it is written: "And
there hath not yet arisen a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses"
(verse 10 ) -- a statement which could only have been made after many later
great prophets had arisen with whom Moses could be compared. Moses could not
himself have written that no prophet had arisen "since" himself when
he was yet alive and when no prophet could as yet be his successor.
In Exodus 11: 3 it is stated "the man
Moses was very great"; and in Numbers 12: 3 is the information, "Now
the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the
earth." So meek a man would not probably have made such immodest boasts of
himself. It must have been some later chronicler sounding his praises. This
conclusion is strengthened by the use of "was" and "were,"
in the past tense. And Moses no doubt well knew the name of his own pagan
father-in-law; but the latter is variously named in the Five Books by four different
names: Jethro (Ex. 3: 1 ); Reuel (Ex. 2: 18 ); Raguel (Num. 10: 29 ); Jether
(Ex. 4: 18 ); and in Judges he is given a fifth name, Hobab (Judges 4: 11 ),
all which indicates several different authors, or one very careless one, but
not Moses.
Moses is reputed to have written the Five
Books in the chronological order of the inspired events, and of course he must
have written it all before be died, which was months before the Israelites
entered the promised land. The events of the forty years in the wilderness are
supposed to have been written in the wilderness where they occurred. Yet in
Numbers
Joseph tells the Pharaoh: "I was stolen
away out of the land of the Hebrews" (Gen. 4: 15 ). There was no
"land of the Hebrews" in the days of Joseph, nor of Moses, nor until
some years later when the Hebrews more or less possessed the
"Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them
in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O Yahveh, which thou hast
made for thee to dwell in, in the Sanctuary, O Yahveh, which thy hands have
established" (15: 17 ). This mountain was
In Genesis 14 is the account of the capture of
Lot, nephew of Abram, in a battle; Abram took a posse of 318 of his armed
retainers and went to his rescue, and "pursued as far as Dan" (14: 14
). Now Dan clearly did not exist in those times, nor in the time of Moses. This
name of one of the tribes of Israel, descended from Abraham through his
grandson Jacob, was given to the town (then named Laish) of the Promised Land
which was captured by the tribe of Dan during the conquest (Judges 18: 27-29 ),
some seven hundred years after Abraham and long after the death of Moses.
In Deuteronomy 3: Moses is supposed to tell of
a war which he had with the giant Og, King of
During the forty years in the wilderness the
Hebrews were provided each day, it is recorded, with manna to eat. In Exodus it
is said, "the taste of it was like wafers made with honey" (
But the strangest feature of this inspired
story is this: in Exodus it is averred that the people ate manna for forty
years "until they came unto the borders of the
In Genesis 36 a list of Edomite kings is given
and it is said: And these are the kings that reigned in the
Several of the Five Books abound with the
provisions of the priestly code of sacrifices attributed to Moses in the
wilderness, and are full of accounts of the manifold kinds of sacrifices made
during the forty years in the wilderness. But all this is denied by the later
prophets: "Thus said Yahveh Saboath, Elohe of Israel: I spake not unto
your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land
of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices" (Jer. 7: 21, 22 );
and a chorus of them join in this refrain: "I hate, I despise your feast
days; though ye offer me burnt sacrifices and meat offerings, I will not accept
them" (Amos 5: 21-26; Hosea 8: 13; Micah 6: 6, 7; Isa. 1: 11, et seq.).
All this shows that Moses never received or
wrote the laws attributed to him and did not write the Five Books which relate
all these things; and it confirms the view that this elaborate and intricate
code of sacrificial and ceremonial law was a late priestly invention, unheard
of by Moses, impossible in the wilderness, and unknown in all the intervening
history of Israel, as we shall see in other places.
This same sort of simple but conclusive proof
produces the same result with the succeeding books-Joshua, Judges, Samuel,
Kings, Chronicles, etc., showing that they likewise are of a date many
centuries later than their supposed times and authors, as they relate matters
occurring all the way from David to the Exile (about 500 B.C.). I will mention
but an instance or two.
The Book of Joshua relates the death and
burial of Joshua (Josh. 24: 29-31 ), and records that "
In the Book of Judges it is recorded:
"Now the children of Judah had fought against Jerusalem and had taken
it" (1: 8 ); whereas it was not until King David had reigned seven years
and six months in Hebron that "the king and his men went to Jerusalem unto
the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land," and tried to take the city
and failed. "Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of
A most conclusive proof of post-exilic
composition or editing of these books now appears. In Judges 17 is the account
of Micah and the elaborate idol-worship which he established, and of the silver
phallic ephod which he set up in his house. He hired a Levite to be his
idol-master and priest; then these sacred trophies were captured by the
Danites; and this remarkable historical recital is made: "And the children
of Dan set up for themselves the graven image [Micah's ephod]; and Jonathan, the
son of Gershom, the son of Moses, he and his sons were priests to the Tribe of
Dan until the captivity of the land" (Judges 18: 30 ). Here we have
Moses's own grandson, and his descendants for generations acting as heathen
priests of idol-worship in
In 1 Chronicles 9: 1 reference is made to
"the kings of
As the Hebrew God and religion are principally
to be found in the Five Books of Moses, these instances of the late authorship
of the other books are sufficient for present purposes; other instances will be
noted here and there as they may be pertinent. The purpose of thus pointing out
the internal proofs that the Five Books of Moses and the others are of a date
ages after Moses is to show by the Bible itself that the records of the origins
and development of the Hebrew legends, history, and religion were not written
by Moses, who is accounted to have been the medium through whom the Hebrew God
Yahveh revealed these events and this religion; and hence that these
revelations are not authentic emanations from Yahveh, God of Israel, but are
mere tribal traditions reduced to their present form of writing many centuries
after their misty and mythical origin; and that much of it all and particularly
the law, as we shall more fully see, was the creation of the priests in the
late and declining days of the nation, and after the captivity. These facts
also illuminate the question of the inspiration of the "Holy
Scriptures," on which depends their claim to full faith.
In connection with the question of authorship
of the Hebrew "Scriptures" there is another feature which is
conclusive proof of human workmanship, not divine "revelation." This
is apparent in the books written in the Hebrew language, and is of course known
to all scholars. It is also evident in our English translations, where it can
be readily traced through large portions of the books by the English words
"God," "Lord" and "Lord God," as the original
Hebrew words are therein translated falsely.
In a word, by these proofs it is manifest:
that there were at least two older, independent, and contradictory sources of
the present "Scriptures," that have been very carelessly patched
together by later compilers who have worked them into more or less their
present form. One of the older writers or schools of writers, of the Scripture
records always makes use of the generic words El, Elohe, or Elohim (God, Gods),
to designate the Hebrew tribal divinity; the other school invariably uses the
personal name "Yahveh," or Jehovah.
The first writer or school is thus designated
as Elohist, or by the initial "E"; the latter is called Jahvist,
designated by the letter "J"; these two original sources are together
designated as "JE." As even a cursory perusal of the books will
prove, these two original "Elohim" and "Yahveh" records
were at some later time combined into one record, in more or less its present
form, evidently by reckless and "priestly" editors, who added much
material of their own, designated by the initial "P," for priestly.
This composite product is known as "JEP." Other minor sources and
combinations are also to be discovered; but "E" and "J"
tell the remarkable tale the "twice-told tale"-of revelation and
inspiration beyond all contradiction-but contradictorily, always.
A critical study of the Hebrew Scriptures by
competent scholars reveals that their present form results from much and very
uncritical editing and patching together of ancient traditions, folk lore
tales, and written records, long after the times usually attributed to the
several books; and indicates that the Hexateuch, or Five Books of Moses plus
the Book of Joshua, took its present form about 620 B.C. The older parts of the
composite, by the "Yahveh" writer, or "J," roughly date
from about 800 B.C.; the "Elohist" or "E" document from
about 750 B.C. One is considered to have been composed in
Later, during and after the captivity, to
about 450 B.C., when national longings and aspirations were very strong, and
the tribal Yahveh was being evolved into "one God of all the world,"
the priestly editors, or "P," worked the Yahveh and Elohim documents
into one whole, with fine dramatic skill and much originality, but with total
want of critical sense. Still other editors, designated from their traces as
"J2," "E2," "JE," and "R," worked the
composite "JEP" over from time to time, to suit their own views,
policies, and tastes, very freely making editorial additions and changes. All
this can be followed by the critic's eye through the Hebrew texts almost as
distinctly as the blue water of the Gulf- stream can be distinguished winding
its way through the green waters of the ocean. And so the interested English
reader can readily distinguish the main sources of composition by the different
terms for the Deity, "God" for "El," "Elolic," or
"Elohim"; "Lord" for "Yahveh"; and "Lord
God" for the Hebrew "Yahveh Elohim."
It may not be without interest to mention that
the personal God-name "Yahveh" occurs some 6000 times in the Hebrew
Scriptures; the noun "El," meaning God or Spirit, occurs but two
hundred and sixteen times; "Elohim," which is plural and means
spirits or gods, is found some 2570 times; and the "dual plural" form
"Elobe" is used many times, in composition, as "Yahveh, Elohe
Yishrael." Further on we shall note another highly significant fact
connected with this plural usage.
The fact is very obvious throughout that the
later compilers or editors of the "Scriptures" in their present form
often made use of older written materials, rather than always speaking "as
they were moved by the Holy Ghost"-who is not in those Scriptures revealed
as having existed in their days. This fact is proved by the fact that these
"inspired" writers frequently refer to and quote copiously from
older, uninspired, and now lost books as the sources of information for matters
which they relate. The instances of this editorial use of wholly profane
sources are numerous.
Thus in Numbers 21: 14 it is stated,
"Wherefore it is said in the book of the wars of Yahveh," followed by
the quotation. The famous account of the sun and moon's standing still for
Joshua is related not as original "inspired" matter; the story is
told, and the writer asks, "Is not this written in the Book of
Jasher?" (Josh. 10: 13 ). David's Lament over Jonathan and Saul, in 2
Samuel 1: 17-27, is quoted in full, with the reference, "Behold, it is
written in the Book of Jasher." This Book of Jasher is several other times
quoted, as is the Book of the Wars of Yahveh.
After all that is told of Solomon down to the
time of his death, it is stated, "Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, and
all that he did, and his wisdom, are they not written in the book of the acts
of Solomon?" (1 Kings
Again, "Now the rest of the acts of
Jehoshaphat, first and last, behold, they are written in the book of Jehu, ...
who is mentioned [which is inserted] in the book of the kings of Israel"
(2 Chron. 20: 34 ). And so, as to the other acts of Hezekiah, "they are
written in the vision of Isaiah, the prophet, and in the book of the kings of
That the whole of both books of Chronicles was
written after the return from captivity, is apparent from the plain statement
of the text, following the first eight chapters of genealogies, "So all
Israel were reckoned by genealogies; and behold, they were written in the book
of the kings of Israel and Judah, who were carried away to Babylon for their
transgression" (1 Chron. 9: 1 ). This is true, too, of the Books of Kings,
which, like the Books of the Chronicles, form only a single book in the Hebrew
sacred writings.
The Acts of the Kings of
There are, moreover, numerous passages and
even whole chapters of the Hebrew Bible which are in identical words, showing
that the one was copied bodily from the other, or from a common older source,
as is mostly the case, without giving the customary editorial credit to the
original authors. A god would hardly repeat himself thus. Instances of these
duplications of text may be multiplied; they very materially discount the
theory of original inspiration of the copyists.
A notable instance, because the duplications
immediately follow one another in the English versions (but not in the Hebrew
Scriptures), is the last two verses of the last chapter of 2 Chronicles (36:
22-23 ), which are identical with the first two and a half verses of Ezra (1:
1-3 ). The Hebrew writer puts into the mouth of the pagan King Cyrus the
avowal, "The Lord God [Heb., Yahreh Elohim] of heaven hath given me all
the kingdoms of the earth; and he [Yahveh] hath charged me to build him an
house at Jerusalem" (Ezra 1: 2 ). Cyrus could hardly, as a good Persian
pagan, have thus discredited his own gods in favor of the tribal god of the
captive Jews. The latter half of verse 3 affords a signal instance of conscious
mis-translation on the part of the clergymen of King James. It is recited that
Yahveh "stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of
Several other instances of duplication of long
passages or chapters may be cited out of many others: the "Song of
David" in 2 Samuel 22 and Psalm 16; the battle between the Philistines and
Israelites, in which Saul was killed, in 1 Samuel 31 and 1 Chronicles 10. The
latter account adds two verses (10: 13, 14 ), giving as the reason why Saul was
killed in the battle that he went and inquired of the witch of En-Dor,
"enquired not of Yahveh"; though it is expressly stated as the reason
why Saul had recourse to the witch: "When Saul enquired of Yahveh, Yahveh
answered him not. ... Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek me a woman that
hath a familiar spirit" (1 Sam. 28: 6, 7 ) -- after Yahveh had been
enquired of and refused response. The priest applied to was evidently not friendly
to Saul.
Other whole chapters practically identical are
the accounts of the building of Solomon's temple, in I Kings 5-7 and 2
Chronicles 2-4 (though in 1 Kings 7: 15 and 2 Kings 25: 17, it is stated that
the two pillars Jachln and Boaz were each 18 cubits high, and in 2 Chronicles
3: 15 that they were each 35 cubits high); the making of David king and his
taking of Sion, part of Jerusalem, in 2 Samuel 5: 1-10 and 1 Chron. 11: 1-9;
the removal of the Ark to Jerusalem, in 2 Samuel 6: 1-11 and 1 Chron. 13; the
"finding of the law" by Josiah, in 2 Kings 22-23: and 2 Chronicles
34-35. Other striking instances of such duplications of inspiration may be
found, in 2 Kings 19 and Isaiah 37; 1 Samuel 31, and 1 Chronicles 10 (see verse
10 of each for a contradiction); 1 Chronicles 16: 8-36 and Psalm 105. All these
and many other like duplications, with their many variations and
contradictions, clearly show that the writers used older sources, which they
copied and changed to suit their own notions or purposes, and were not worried
with "inspiration" at all.
The fact of distinct and contradictory sources
worked up into a sort of composite hodge-podge with utter lack of literary or
historical criticism and total disregard of self-contradiction is further very
evident from the many double and contradictory accounts of the same alleged
event. Some minor instances of this we have just noticed. These contradictions
are indeed too many to be even cited here they infest every book and almost
every chapter of Holy Writ from Genesis to Revelation, wherever the same event
becomes a twice-told tale. At this place we shall notice particularly only the
major early instances: the double and contradictory accounts of the creation
and of Adam and Eve; of Noah's Flood; or of the Tower of Babel, and other
lesser legends of Genesis. In other chapters we give special attention to the
notable contradictions of the Exodus, of the ten commandments and the law, of
the conquest and possession of the promised land; of the prophecies, of the
life and career of Jesus Christ; together here and there with such others as
may be incident to the matter at the time in hand. But first we shall note a
highly important consideration to be borne in mind throughout.
In connection with the numerous examples of
flagrant conflicts and contradictions in the inspired revelations of the
"Word of God" as recorded in the Hebrao-Christian Scriptures, I wish
at the outset to call particularly to attention and constant remembrance two
very simple principles of correct judgment, which must govern at all times in
determining what is truth. One is an eternal principle of human thought, the
other an ancient and valid maxim of the law of evidence.
At the base of all human knowledge and
judgment there are three simple rules known as the "three primary laws of
thought." Of these the third in order is this simple proposition, on which
all valid judgment depends: "Of two contradictories, one must be false."
Both of the contradictories may be false; but one must be false inevitably. If
one person says of an object: "It is white," and another says:
"It is black," one or the other statement must of necessity be false.
Of course both may be false, as the object may be red or blue or vari-colored;
but in any event, one or the other statement must be false, for it cannot be
both. This is a fundamental law of thought or correct judgment, or of truth.
The other principle, somewhat complementary,
is a rule of law. Every judge declares it to his juries as the law of every
jury case on trial, for this ancient maxim is the law in every court to-day.
As a Latin maxim it is: "Falsus in uno,
falsus in omnibus"-that is, "false in one thing, false in all
things." Not necessarily so as to the whole; for one part of the testimony
of a witness, or of anything said or written, may be false or mistaken while
the remainder may be quite true and correct. The maxim means, as the court
always explains to the jury, merely that if the jury believes that a witness
"knowingly or wilfully has testified falsely as to any material fact"
in his testimony, they are at liberty to disbelieve him entirely and to reject
all of his testimony as false. The reason is evident; for if a person orally or
in his document or book says one thing which is detected as false; everything
else which he says or writes is at once thrown into doubt, and unless otherwise
corroborated, may well be considered to be all erroneous or false. Often it is
impossible to know with certainty what things, if any, may possibly be true;
all are tainted and discredited by the parts shown to be false. This is
peculiarly true with respect to the Scriptures, said to be in totality inspired
and true: if some parts are proved false, the whole is discredited.
Upon these two simple and fundamental
principles of reason and of law I shall proceed to "search the Scriptures,
whether these things were so," to the end that all may judge of their
inspiration and their truth.
If we find that the "Word of God"
tells the same story in two or more totally different and contradictory ways,
or that one inspired writer is "moved by the Holy Ghost" of Yahveh to
tell his tale one way, and another inspired writer is moved to tell it in
another way, totally different and contradictory in the essence of the alleged
facts of the same event, we are forced to know and confess that one or the
other record at least is wanting in God's inspiration of truth and is
inevitably false. This being so, and there being no possible way of determining
which version is the false and which may not be, both must be rejected as
equally false, or equally uninspired and incredible; and in either event, the
theory of inerrant inspiration and of the revealed truth of the "Word of
God" is irreparably destroyed.
FATAL CONTRADICTIONS OF REVELATION
The first chapter of Genesis declares by
inspiration that creation took place in six days, in this exact order: 1. on
the first day light and day and night were created, (though the sun and moon were
not created until the fourth day); 2. on the second day, the "firmament of
heaven," a solid something "dividing the waters which were under the
firmament from the waters which were above the firmament"; 3. on the third
day, the dry land, the seas, and all manner of plants and trees; 4. on the
fourth day, the sun, moon, and stars; 5. on the fifth day, every living
creature that moveth in the waters, and every winged fowl; 6. on the sixth day,
all manner of beasts, and cattle, and creeping thing: then, afterwards, on the
same sixth day, "God [Elohim] created man in his own image; male and
female created he them." And then (
"Thus the heavens and the earth were
finished; and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God [Elohim] ended
his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day" (2: 1, 2 ).
Thus all creation, including man and woman, was fully made and finished in six
days: no mention is made of any Adam and Eve, or Eden. This is the Elohist
version of the creation.
Then, beginning with the fourth verse of the
second chapter, a totally different "Yahveh" account of creation of
the world and of man, without woman, all in one day, is related: "These
are the generations of the heavens and of the earth. when they were created, in
the day that the Lord God [Yahveh Elohim; i.e., Yahveh of the Gods] made the
earth and the heavens." Then follows this description of the processes
after the earth was thus already created:
"And no plant or herb of the field was
yet in the earth; ... and there was not a man to till the ground. ... And
Yahveh Elohim formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And Yahveh Elohim
planted a garden eastward in
Before proceeding further, to the creation of
the woman, we will note the glaring contradictions already apparent in these
two accounts. First we see a creation of everything by Elohim (Gods) in six
days; then a creation of the heaven and naked earth by Yahveh in one day. In
the first or Elohim account, on the third day, after creating the dry land,
Elohim (Gods) commanded, (Gen. 1: 12 ) "and the earth brought forth grass,
herb yielding seed, and tree bearing fruit," etc. But in the second or
"Yahveh" account, after the earth was all rough-finished and read ,
on the one day, it is declared (Gen. 2: 5 ): "no plant of the field was
yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up." Then
immediately follows the declaration (2: 7 ) "And Yahveh Elohim [
There is another very notable contradiction:
in Gen. 1: 20, 21, on the fifth day, the "living creatures" (Heb.,
nephesh hayyah), and the "winged fowl" were brought forth out of the
waters -- "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the living creatures
Inephesh hayyah] and the winged fowl"; and this, of course, before the
creation of man and woman on the sixth day; whereas, in 2: 19, after the
creation of the man, and when Yahveh was trying to find a "help-mate"
for him among the animals not yet created, "out of the ground Yahveh
formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air, and brought them to
the man."
Another notorious contradiction: in the Elohim
version (
Most notorious of these creation
contradictions is that of the creation of the woman. In the Elohim account, as
we have seen, on the sixth day-after all else was created and done "Elohim
created man in his own image, male and female created he them [i.e., man and
woman]; and Elohim said, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the
earth" (1: 27, 28 ): thus both man and woman were created on the sixth day,
and were sexually equipped and commanded to multiply and reproduce. But in the
second or Yahveh account we have man created all alone, and put into the Garden
of Eden alone.
Afterwards Yahveh considers: "It is not
well for the man to be alone; I will make an help meet for him" (
A peculiar contradiction resulting from these
divergent forms of myth relates to the modus operandi of the creation.
According to the Elohist, it was all the work of divine fiat; the Gods sat
"upon the circle of the earth" (Isa. 40: 22 ), "and Elohim said:
Let there be ... and the earth brought forth ... and it was so" (Gen. 1:
2, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26 ); "he spake, and they were made"-were
brought into existence by his word. But the Yahvist represents the superman God
as coming down bodily to earth and as busily engaged molding the dust of the ground
into man and animals and fowls (but not fishes), planting a garden and trees,
talking to the man, and then artistically carving the rib into Eve; all
creation thus being "the work of his fingers" (Psalm 8: 3 ).
These are two totally contradictory stories of
the creation of the earth, and of living creatures. Hence one is false; the
notion of the inspired truth of God in one or the other of them must be
abandoned as impossible. Of course we know that both are mere fables, equally
false, and wholly disproved by every fact of the sciences of geology and
anthropology and astronomy, which prove that the earth and sun and stars were
countless ages in formation, and that human and animal life has existed for
perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, far beyond the lately discovered
Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon men, who outdated the biblical Adam by tens of
thousands of years. But we will stick to our Bible "facts," and not
appeal to the discoveries of science, nor to the common elements of modern
human knowledge, to gainsay divine inspiration of the Bible. The book and its
truth must be tried by itself. It is also evident on the face of these two
conflicting accounts that two different writers, "E" and
"J," wrote them, and not Moses; and also that the third man, "P,"
who patched them together, did it in a very apprentice-like manner, and without
any inspiration or critical knack at all.
The Garden of Eden had some topographic and
hydrographic features truly notable. Of so limited an area that a single man
was sufficient "to dress and to keep it" (Gen. 2: 15 ), it yet
contained every created species of fauna and of flora; and all this exuberant
growth without water, "for Yahveh Elohim had not caused it to rain upon
the earth; but there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face
of the ground" (Gen. 2: 5, 6 ). So wondrously copious was this mist that
its superfluity created a vast prehistoric river, which "went out of
"and the fourth river is
THE "DAYS" AND MATTER OF
CREATION
A word of comment may be made in passing on a
couple of points which have given occasion to much concern and controversy, by
the attempt to "accommodate" revelation to the everyday facts of
science. It is argued that the "days" of creation may be used
allegorically or figuratively; that, as "a day with Yahveh is as a
thousand years," these Genesis "days" may well denote the
indefinite eons assigned by science to the vast work of universal creation.
(Cath.. Encyc., Vol. 4: p. 473, art. Creation.) But that the old Hebrew writers
of these primitive myths had no such figurative notions, and my yom (day) meant
exactly the solar day of twenty-four hours, is very clear: six times, at the
close of each day's recorded work, it is declared, "and the evening and
the morning were the first day," or the second, or third, day, etc.
The Hebrew word yom (day) is used in the Old
Testament 1153 times; its plural (yammim, days) 811 times. Always the word
means simply the twenty-four-hour solar day; always-can we believe it? Except
in these "six days" of Genesis 1:where, instead of meaning
"day," as plainly written, it is piously expounded as meaning
"countless aeons of time" so as to make Genesis look like a work of
modern science! Quaint double usage is jumbled into a single verse: "And
Elohim called the light yom [day], and the darkness he called layil [night].
And the evening and the morning were the first yom [day]" (Gen. 1: 5 )!
Here the light part of the day is the hours between dawn and dark; the darkness
is only the hours between sundown and the next dawn; but together they form the
"first yom"-countless aeons of the first process of creation! Verily,
the theologians are funny-mentalists!
And if each of the first six "days"
are not days but aeons of time, how about the seventh day? The gods (Elohim)
"rested [Heb., shabath, the sabbath] on the seventh day" (Gen. 2: 2
). If each of the other six days was an unreckonable won, the seventh day
(aeon) of rest must, for proper recuperation from such vast and prolonged
labors, be of more or less like ample duration; so that, as only six thousand
brief years (not even a second of an aeon) have elapsed since all the work of
creation was finished, the gods must be resting even yet-as might be suspected
from some evidence in their creation.
Why "evening and morning" marking
the "day" instead of morning and evening, as is more natural and of
all but universal usage in speech? Simply because the Jewish day began, and yet
begins, in the evening, at sunset, and their "day" is from one sunset
to another; so in writing these myths it was conformable with Jewish customs to
put the evening as the beginning of the day. Moreover, all the eight works of
creation were stuffed into six days, so that Yahveh could rest on the seventh
day, the Jewish sabbath, or day of rest. In order to accomplish this, and
Yahveh thus be made to appear to institute and sanction the sabbath, two
distinct works, the creation of the seas and the dry land and the creation of
trees and plants, are assigned to one, the third day; and two other works, the
creation of the animals, and the creation of man and woman, are crowded into
another day, the sixth-eight distinct works in all.
This obvious conclusion it is pleasing to find
confirmed by the Catholic Encyclopedia -which makes many admissions without
seeming to see their logically fatal effects: "The third day and the sixth
day are distinguished by a double work, while each of the other four days has
only one production assigned to it"; and it adds, curiously for it, but
acutely and correctly: "Hence the suspicion arises that the division of
God's creative acts into six days is really a schemation employed to inculcate
the importance and the sanctity of the seventh day" (Vol. 7: p. 311 )!
From this it is palpably evident that the seven days of the ordinary calendar
week were in the inspired mind of the old Jewish Chronicler who worked up the
Hebrew creation myth from the Babylonian Epic of Creation.
All these material works of creation, the
earth and the seas, the sun, moon, and stars, were not created by the fiat or
by the architectural skill of Yahveh out of nothing, for "ex nihil nihil
fit." From before the "beginning" of creation, or its
constructive works, the material earth itself existed, but simply was
"without form and void," or, in the Hebrew words, thohu (desolation)
and bohu (waste) (Gen. 1: 2 ). And the material waters existed, for "the
spirit [wind] of Elohim moved upon the face of the waters" (1: 2 ); the
waters not being collected together into seas until the third day (1: 9, 10 ).
It is curious how the otherwise intelligent human mind can so struggle through
centuries to "accommodate" sense and science to "what are
patently early myths and naive, childish, primitive folklore," as Charles
P. Fagnani, D.D., frankly calls these tales of Genesis.
SOME SIGNIFICANT MISTRANSLATIONS
Before considering various contradictions in
the Book of Genesis and other sections of the sacred history, it is pertinent
to call particular attention to some very peculiar mistranslations, rather than
errors of translation, which with painful frequency occur in exactly those
passages where they are most significant. As the translators were theologians,
as well as indifferent Hebrew scholars, their scholarship may subconsciously
have been tinged with theological preconceptions in choosing precisely the word
in English to meet the needs of theological translation from the uncritical
Hebrew. Mistranslation began early and is persistent.
It is some very simple instances which I shall
give, such as are apparent to one of very limited knowledge of the Hebrew text
of the sacred books. Any one knowing merely the Hebrew alphabet and comparing a
few Hebrew words with the words used by the theologians to translate them
possesses the whole secret.
The word "Adam" as the proper name
of a man is a deception of the theologian translators of Genesis. The original
Hebrew text, which a schoolboy can follow in the excellent beginner's
text-book, Magil's Linear School Bible, [Joseph Magil, Linear School Bible
(Philadelphia: Joseph Magil Publishing Co. 1915 ).] says, not "Adam"
as a proper name, but "ba-adam," the-man, a common noun. (There are
no capital letters in Hebrew.) We will notice some instances of this.
In Genesis
In chapter 2: it is said in the translations
that Yahveh formed the beasts of the field out of the ground (adamah),
"and brought them unto Adam" (
In Genesis 2: 7, "Yahveh formed ha-adam
[the-man] out of the dust of ha-adamah [the ground]." And so throughout
the Hebrew Bible "man" is "adam" (not "Adam"),
and "ground" is "adamah." Man is called in Hebrew adam,
because he was formed out of adamah, the ground: just as in Latin man is called
homo because formed from humus, the ground, -- "homo ex humo," in the
epigram of Lactantius. It may be instanced that the prophet Ezekiel many times
represents Yahveh as addressing him as "ben adam" (son of man) -- the
identical term Jesus so often uses of himself long after.
As the whole of the "sacred science of
Christianity" is built and dependent upon the factual existence of a
"first man" named Adam, the now attenuated ghost of this mythical
Adam must be laid beyond the peradventure of resurrection. The texts of the
Hebrew books will themselves effectively lay the ghost.
In Hebrew adam is a common noun, used to
signify man or mankind in a generic sense; the noun for an individual man is
ish, and so the sacred texts make manifest. The distinction is exactly that of
Mann and Mensch in the Teutonic languages. A few out of thousands of instances
must suffice.
Chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis afford a number of
these instances, as above seen, but these may be repeated along with the
others, to get a fair view. "Elohim said: 'Let us make adam'" (
"and Yahveh-Elohim formed ha-adam
[the-man]. ... and ha-adam became a living soul" (2: 3 ); and
Yahveh-Blohlm placed in the garden "ha-adam whom he had formed" (2: 8
); and "Yahveh-Elohim took ha-adam" (2: 15 ), and commanded
ha-adam" (2: 16 ); and said "it is not good for ha-adam to be
alone" (2: 18 ); and made the animals and "brought them to ha-adam,
... and whatsoever ha-adam should call them" (2: 19 ); and "ha-adam
called names; but for ha-adam he did not find an help meet" (2: 20 ); and
"Yahveh-Elohim caused a deep sleep upon ha-adam" (2: 21 ), and from
his rib made the woman, and he "brought her unto ha-adam" (2: 22 );
and "ha-adam said, ... and called her woman [Heb., isshah], because out of
man [Heb., ish] was she taken" (2: 23 ); 'therefore shall a man [ish]
leave his father. ... and cleave unto his isshah (
Chapter 3: "And Yahveh-Elohim called unto
ha-adam (3: 9 ); "and ha-adam said, ha-isshah whom thou gavest me"
(3: 12 ); and Yahveh-Elohim said to ha-isshah, thy longing shall be unto thy
ish" (3: 16 ); "and to adam he said" (3: 17 ); and "ha-adam
called the name of his isshah Havvah [life], because she was the mother of all
living" (3: 20 ); and "Yahveh-Elohim made for adam and for his isshah
coats of skins" (3: 21 ). And Yahveh-Elohim said, "Because ha-adam
has become like one of us" (
Thereupon "ha-adam knew his wife Havvah,
and she conceived, and bore Kain; and she said: I-have-acquired [Heb., kanithi]
a man [ish] with Yahveh" (Gen. 4: 1 ). Lamech said to his wives, "I
have killed a man [ish]" (
"LIVING CREATURES" AND
"LIVING SOUL"
Another signal instance of the practice of
false translation at critical points for dogma occurs in these first two
chapters of Genesis. The Hebrew word for soul is nephesh always, and it
properly means nothing else but soul wherever used. Ha-adam called his wife's
name Havvah [life], "for she was the mother of all living."
In chapter one we are given the account of how
the gods (Elohim), on the fifth day, created "the moving creature that
hath life" and "every living creature," out of the waters (1:
20, 21 ); and on the sixth day "the living creature" out of the
ground (1: 24 ); and he gave to ha-adam dominion over "everything ...
wherein there is life" (1: 30 ). All these renditions are untrue: in each
of the four instances the Hebrew is plainly nephesh hayyah-"living
soul"-as is stuck into the margin of the King James Version. The
significance of this appears below.
In chapter two Yahveh-Elobim (2: 7 ) formed
ha-adam out of the dust of ha-adamah, and-in wonderful contrast to these lowly
"living creatures" (nephesh hayyah) -- "breathed into his
nostrils mishmath hayyim [living breaths], and ha-adam became a living soul
[nephesh hayyah]." So here we have the humble "living creatures"
(nephesh hayyah) of the dumb animal world contrasted with "Creation's
micro-cosmical masterpiece, Man," endowed out of hand by Yahveh-Elohim
with a "living soul" (but the self-same nephesh hayyah), and thus the
crowning work of creation, but "little lower than the angels" (Psalm
8: 5 )! And then immediately afterwards Yahveh-Elohim, wanting to provide an
"help meet" for his wonderful "living soul," out of
ha-adamah formed and brought to ha-adam "every living creature"
(again nephesh hayyah), for the-man to choose a she-animal for his wedded wife!
But the "living soul" man refused to be satisfied with a female
"living soul" animal wife; so Yahveh resorted to the rib expedient to
provide a human "help meet" for his masterpiece! So reads in Hebrew
the truth-inspired revelation of Yahveh, spoken by "holy men of old as
they were moved by the Holy Ghost"! And thus we see that all "living
creatures," animals, fishes, fowls, had or were nephesh hayyah (living
soul, exactly like the-man; or the-man, with Yahveh's breath of life in his
nostrils, became a simple "living creature" (nephesh hayyah) like all
the other animals.
It is perfectly evident that the nephesh
hayyah man was regarded by the inspired writer as no higher in the order of
creation than any other nephesh hayyah or animal "living creature."
For he represents Yahveh as creating all the beasts of the field for the
express purpose of providing the-man with an "help meet" from among
them, a female animal consort by which to fulfill the divine command, "Be
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth"!
To return to the contradictions of
inspiration. The history of Noah's Flood shows the same conflicting compound of
Elohist and Jahvist stories. Only one will here be noted. In Genesis vi Elohim
commanded Noah, and told him, "of every living thing of all flesh two of
every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; and
they shall be male and female" (6: 19 ); and in 6: 22, the Elohist assures
us: "Thus did Noah, according to all that Elohim commanded him, so did
he"; that is, he took in two of every kind into the ark.
But in chapter 7 it is Yahveh who speaks, and
it is recorded: "And Yahveh said unto Noah, Of every clean beast thou
shalt take to thee; and they shall be male and female" (6: 19 ) and in 6:
22, the Clean by two, the male and his female" (v2: 2, 3 ) and in 7: 5 the
Jahvist states: "And Noah did according to all that Yahveh commanded
him"-that is, Noah took into the ark seven (or maybe fourteen, seven male
and seven female) of all kinds of clean beasts and of fowls, and two of all the
others. But this enumeration is again contradicted by the inspired Elohist:
"Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of
everything that creepeth upon the earth, there went in by two and two unto Noah
into the ark, the male and his female" (Gen. 7: 8, 9, 15 ); thus is
restored our faith in the scriptural accuracy of the animal rosters of the toy
Noah's arks of our trustful childhood.
It is curious to note that the distinction
between "clean" and "unclean" animals was never heard of
until the Levitical law of kosher was prescribed by Moses, as is alleged, about
a thousand years later (Lev. 11.). How did Noah know the difference?
A remarkable circumstance, illustrating the
great piety, if reckless improvidence, of Noah, may be noted in this
connection. The very first thing Noah did after he and his family and his
animals landed in the neck-deep mud and slime of the year's Deluge was to build
an altar and offer up a thanksgiving sacrifice to the loving God who in his
providence had destroyed all his creation except the little Noah family menage.
It is recorded that Noah took one each "of every clean beast and of every
clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar" to Yahveh there in
the mud (Gen. 8: 20 ). We have noted that it is curious how Noah knew anything
about kosher animals, first defined by Moses. But the prime wonder is, as there
were only two of these different kinds of animals and fowls ("the male and
his female") in the ark, and Noah killed and burnt in sacrifice one
(whether male or female) of each kind, how the species was ever afterwards
replenished on the earth. Revelation-as so often at crucial points-is silent on
this wonder.
A mystery of the ages in connection with the
Flood is how Noah's venerable grandfather Methuselah survived the universal
cataclysm which destroyed all life except the Noah menage and menagerie in the
ark. Methuselah did not die until a year or more after the Flood-fourteen years
after according to the Septuagint. It is recorded that Methuselah was 187 years
old when his son Lamech was born (Gen. 5: 25 ), and he lived for 787 years
afterwards, dying at the ripe age of 969 years (
2. From the birth of Methuselah to the
beginning of the Flood was (187 plus 182 plus 599 years) 968 years; the Flood
ended a year later, when Methuselah was 969, and he died at that good old age.
Or again: 3. From the birth of Methuselah to the death of Noah was (187 plus
182 plus 950 years) 1319 years. As Noah died 350 years after the Flood, from
the birth of Methuselah to the end of the Flood was (1319 minus 350 years) 969
years, the age of Methuselah at his death, after the Flood.
As Noah shut his own aged grandfather out of
the ark, it is a holy wonder where and how Methuselah spent that watery last
year of his advanced old age.
The historical sketch given in Genesis x-xi of
the gathering of the nations in the Plain of Shinar, their ambitious project of
building Bab-el-"a Gate of God"-to reach to heaven (11: 4 ), and the
consequent "confusion of tongues" by Yahveh, is quite as confusing as
the resulting babel of their strange new tongues.
Vainly, it may be remarked, may one seek to
understand why a fatherly God, who would not let a sparrow fall to the ground
without pitying concern, should have wrought this grievous affliction upon the
new population of his earth just at the time when they would seem to need all the
aid and comfort they could render each other in order to repair the devastating
damage wrought by the yet recent Flood, only about 144 years before. But
speculation aside, we will carefully note the recorded facts of sacred history.
Chapter x tells of the families and
descendants of the triplet sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japhet; and how their
prolific offspring, in only about 144 years since the Flood, had grown into
many different nations; and how these nations, of which about a score are
particularly named, with their great cities, were "divided in their lands,
every one after his tongue"-which would imply that each nation already
spoke a different language; that there were, indeed, as many tongues as there
were nations sprung so suddenly from the three sons of Noah.
This inference that there were already as many
different languages as there were nations would seem to be strengthened by the
repetition of that positive statement three times, after the account of the
off-spring of each of the three sons of Noah. For the sacred record, after each
catalogue of off-sprung nations, asserts that thus the several nations
"were divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their
families, in their nations" (Gen. 10: 5, 20, 31 ). And for a final assurance
it is in the closing verse averred: "These are the families of the sons of
Noah, after their generations, in their nations; and by these were the nations
divided in the earth after the Flood" (
And in the same inspired chapter x we read of
the founding by these numerous nations of extensive kingdoms and of their
building of great cities-including Babel itself (10: 10 ), and Nineveh (10: 11
), and a dozen others named in the inspired record. And it is recorded that
these several large kingdoms extended from Assyria on the east unto Gaza, by
the Mediterranean Sea, on the west (10: 19 ), many hundreds of miles; and all
these wonders of nations and kingdoms and cities in 144 years of Bible time
since the Flood. But, then, when one thinks of what the Yankees did in
Had one read this in some less inspired and
sacred chronicle, some more human record, less would be the surprise when one
reads the first verse of the very next chapter: "And the whole earth was
of one language, and of one speech." Next follows a truly remarkable
migration; all the people of the earth, all these widely scattered nations in
their great kingdoms and cities scattered from Euphrates to the sea, suddenly
abandoned home, and city, and kingdom, and strangely journeyed from the east
(though many must have come from the west, from towards the sea) and "they
found a plain in the land of Shinah; and they dwelt there" (11: 2 ) camped
in the open plain, without house or home. "And they said one to another,
Go to, let us make brick; ... and let us build us a city, and a tower, whose
top may reach unto Heaven; lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the
whole earth" (11: 3, 4 ). We need not stop to wonder why these nations had
left their kingdoms and cities to come out in the plain and build one city for
them all; nor how, speaking each a different language, they could talk
understandingly together to concert such ambitious projection.
Yahveh heard of this project, and, with
natural curiosity, he "came down to see the city and the tower" (11:
5 ) which were abuilding. And Yahveh said, to someone not named: "Behold,
the people is one, and they have all one language" (instead of the many
nations and many tongues of the immediately preceding records). "Go to,
let us [who besides Yahveh is not specified] go down [though he was already
come down], and there confound their language, that they may not understand one
another's speech" (11: 6, 7 ). And this Yahveh is said to have straightway
done, and he "scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the
earth; and they left off to build the city" (11: 8 ); and it is further
recorded:
"Therefore is the name of it called
It may be wondered which of them called it
Bab-el, for all their languages now at least were different, and what would be
Babel in one of tem might be a foreign word meaning the Bowery, or Hoboken, or
Hell in some of the others. And it is a little curious that Bab-el should mean
"confusion" (Heb., balel); for already there was a city, built by
Nimrod, the mighty hunter, named Bab-el (Gen. 10: 10 ); and we know that in
Assyrian, Hebrew, Arabian, and other Semitic languages, Bab-el means "Gate
of God," just as Beth-el is "house of God"; and Bab-el is
exactly the native and Hebrew Bible name of what we know as Babylon, the city
or Gateway of the God El, or Bel, certainly there an entirely pagan deity. But
as Moses-if he lived at all-was "an Egyptian man," and probably spoke
only the Egyptian language, his mistaking the philology of Hebrew words may be
excused. What great sin all these new inhabitants of the earth had been guilty
of, to bring on them this new great vengeance, is not revealed: mayhap by
trying to build a tower to reach to heaven, they provoked a "jealous
God" by an effort to reach him in such a direct and unorthodox fashion,
though as yet the world had not received the revelation of the only possible
route to enter heaven, belief.
Notably higher than the abortive
Shortly after Jacob had hoaxed the blessing
and the inheritance from his blind father, Isaac, thus robbing his elder
brother Esau of his dearest rights, Jacob started off to look for a wife, and
was on his way toward Haran. Being overtaken by night, be slept on the wayside,
a stone for his pillow. In his dream be saw the ladder which reached to heaven,
with the angels; and Yahveh appeared to him and renewed the Promise. On
awakening, Jacob recalled his dream, set up the stone pillow for a pillar
(mazzebah), "and he called the name of that place Beth-el; but the name of
that City was called Luz at first" (Gen. 28: 10-19 ).
The event is quite otherwise related in
Genesis 32. Here Jacob had just tricked his heathen father-in-law Laban by the
famous device whereby all the cattle were born "ringstreaked, speckled,
and grizzled" (Gen. 31: 8-12 ); had stolen away in the night with his
wives and the cattle; and after sundry incidents, on his way somewhere (32: 1
), he passed over the ford Jabbok (32: 22 ). Here stopping alone over-night,
"there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day" (32:
21,); and the stranger, who appeared to be Yahveh, changed Jacob's name to
Israel, which means Soldier of God-though Jacob was fighting with God. All this
happened by the ford Jabbok, which name Jacob changed to Peni-el (Gen. 32:
24-30 ). It is a bit mystifying to read a little later that Yahveh met Jacob
somewhere near a place called Padan-Aram, and without any fight at all, and
without any apparent reason at all, changed Jacob's name to Israel; and Jacob,
on his part, set up a stone which he had not slept on, for his wives were along
and he slept with them, and called the name of the place Beth-el (Gen. 35: 9-15
). But the name of the place was already Beth-el, for Yahveh had said to Jacob:
"Arise, go up to Beth-el, and dwell there" (35: 1 ); "so Jacob
came to Luz, that is Beth-el" (35: 6 ); and such had been the name of the
place when Abraham camped there two hundred years before (Gen. 12: 8, 13: 3 ).
A very instructive feature of this biography
of Jacob is the curious instance of his well-known commercial instinct, here
recorded in connection with the last mentioned bit of sacred history. For Jacob
vowed a vow to Yahveh (which in the Bible is a very solemn thing, but which was
coupled here with a bargaining condition precedent), saying: "If Elohim
will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread
to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house, then
shall Yahveh be my God" (Gen. 28: 20, 21 ). This seems to prove that Jacob
had not yet adopted Yahveh. And Jacob makes a peculiar offer of bribe to
Yahveh, saying: "And of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the
tenth unto thee" (28: 22 ), -- which no one can deny was even to a God a
liberal commission in return for wealth bestowed.
In this proposal Jacob anticipated both the
rule and the reason of the law, laid down some five hundred or a thousand years
later: "Remember Yahveh thy God, for it is he that giveth thee power to
get wealth" (Deut. 8: 18 ) -- a reason often suggested for loving Yahveh.
By some it has been thought that this exemplary bargain of Jacob served later
as the approved precedent for the priestly system of tithes decreed by Moses
(Lev. 27: 30-32 ), and everywhere and always since commanded and cajoled from
all the faithful. In any event, the constant ecclesiastical refrain has ever
been the same as that represented in Scripture as of the daughters of the
horse-leech: "Give, give" (Prov. 30: 15 ); and the preferred measure
has been that of Jacob's offered bribe to Yahveh of the tithe.
In addition to these larger contradictions
pointed out in a small part of Scripture and many others which remain yet to
examine, there are numbers of minor flat contradictions, of which a few may be
cited.
It is recorded, "And Yahveh spake unto
Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend" (Ex. 33: 11 ); but
just below, where Moses is reported as asking Yahveh to show himself to him,
Yahveh replied: "Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me
and live" (33: 20 ). But Yahveh evidently desired to be reasonably
accommodating; so he had Moses hide in a cleft of the rock, and Yahveh covered
Moses with his hand; then Yahveh "passed by," and took away his hand,
and let Moses see his "back parts," for, he said, "my face shall
not be seen" (33: 22, 23 ). How Yahveh could "pass by" and still
keep Moses covered with his band is not explained; but it seems to confirm
Yahveh's repeated description of himself as being of "a mighty hand and an
outstretched arm."
There must be some mistake, however, in regard
to the fatal consequences of seeing Yahveh. Holy Writ is full of recorded
instances of "seeing Yahveh face to face." Yahveh celebrated the
making of the covenant by a banquet on Sinai to Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and
the seventy elders, "and they saw the Gods [ha-Elohim] of Israel,"
and "they beheld the Gods, and did eat and drink" (Ex. 24: 9-11 ).
When Joshua crossed over Jordan between the
parted waters, whether with the original hosts of Yahveh or with their
offspring, "an increase of sinful men" (Num. 32: 14 ), Yahveh
commanded him to take twelve stones out of the middle of the river, "out
of the place where the priests' feet stood firm," and to set them up
"in the lodging place where ye shall lodge this night" (Josh. 4: 3 )
for a memorial; and it is stated that Joshua had the twelve stones carried
"over with them unto the place where they lodged, and laid them down
there" (4: 8 ), which was "in Gilgal, in the east border of
Jericho" (4: 20 ). But in the very next verse it is averred:
"And Joshua set up twelve stones in the
midst of Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests which bare the Ark
of the Covenant stood: and they are there unto this day" (4: 9 ), sticking
up out of the waters in the middle of the river. It is curious, that the stones
were piled up in the middle of the river at the place where the priests had
stood; for that is the very place where the stones were to be taken from, as
Yahveh commanded in 4: 3.
In 2 Samuel 24: 1 it is recorded: "Yahveh
moved David to number
In 1 Samuel 16; the first meeting of Saul and
David is related: "an evil spirit from Yahveh troubled Saul," and
music was recommended to him as having "power to soothe the savage
breast"; "a son of Jesse" was also recommended as a good
musician, "cunning in playing, and a mighty man of valor, and a man of
war." So Saul sent messengers to Jesse, saying "Send me David thy
son, which is with the sheep"; and Jesse sent David to Saul, who saw him
now for the first time, and David became Saul's amour-bearer.
But in the next chapter David is introduced to
Saul as if never heard of before, as the youngest of eight sons of Jesse. Three
older sons of Jesse were in Saul's army, while the "mighty man of
war," David, stayed home tending his father's sheep; his father sent him
to the camp to carry food to his soldier brothers.
Here David saw Goliath and heard his braggart
defiance of the "living gods" of
"Thou art not able to go against this
Philistine to fight with him; for thou art but a youth, and he is a man of war
from his youth" (17: 33 ), apparently discounting the immediately
preceding description of David as "a mighty man of valor, a man of
war" himself. But greater surprises follow. Every child in Sunday school
knows the heroic encounter between David and Goliath; how the stripling David
went out unarmed save with a sling and some pebbles against the full-panoplied
giant; how David put a pebble in his sling as he ran forward, "and slang
it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his
forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth" (i Sam. 17: 49 ); and
David took Goliath's sword and cut off the dead giant's head (17: 51 ); and
David took the head "and brought it to Jerusalem; and he put his armor in
his tent" (17: 54 ). David, a country shepherd, just come to camp to bring
dinner, would hardly have had a tent; and surely he did not take Goliath's head
to Jerusalem; for Jerusalem was the stronghold of the Jebusites, and not till
David was seven and a half years king, many years after, did he enter even a
small corner of Jerusalem, Sion.
But the tale is entirely robbed of the romance
and heroics by the flat contradiction of the whole episode; David did not kill
Goliath at all. Some forty years later, when Saul was long since dead, and when
David was king and at war with the Philistines, "there was again a battle
in Gob with the Philistines, where Elhanan the son of Jaareoregim, a
Bethlehemite, slew Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a
weaver's beam" (2 Sam. 21: 19 )! Here the translators slip in another
"pious fraud": the verse is made to read "slew the brother of
Goliath"-the words the brother of being in italics to indicate to the
knowing that they are not in the original; nor are they, as any honest scholar
will admit. The Revised Version fairly omits "the brother of," but
puts these words in the margin, with a reference to 1 Chronicles 20: 5. Here it
is quite differently related that "Elhanan the son of Jair slew Lahmi the
brother of Goliath the Gittite, whose spear staff was like a weaver's beam."
Further confusion is furnished by the duplicated verses about the giant in
Gath, with six fingers and six toes on each hand and foot, who like Goliath
"defied Israel," and "Jonathan the son of Shimeah the brother of
David slew him" (2 Sam. 21: 20, 21, and 1 Chron. 20: 6, 7 ).
As for Saul's death, in 1 Samuel 3i it is
related that in a battle with the Philistines, Saul's army was defeated, and
Saul was wounded and in danger of capture; so Saul ordered his amour-bearer
(clearly not David), to kill him, but the latter refused;
"therefore Saul took a sword and fell
upon it" (31: 4 ); and "so Saul died" (31: 5 ). But in 2 Samuel
i the story is quite otherwise: Saul made this request of a young Amalekite (1:
8 ), who "happened by chance" (1: 6 ) upon the scene of battle at Mt.
Gilboa (therefore not Saul's amour-bearer), and this stranger complied with
Saul's request and killed Saul (1: 10 ), and took his crown and bracelet to
David, who rewarded him by murdering him on the spot (1: 15 ).
This must suffice for the present; many, many
other contradictions abound in the inspired records. But these instances of
patent contradictions suffice to illustrate the constant violation of the two
rules of reason and of law which I have quoted, and to demonstrate that at
least one version of each of these inspired conflicting records is wholly
wanting in truth.
CHAPTER 3
THE PATRIARCHS AND THE COVENANTS OF YAHVEH
IN the year 1996 B.C. according to the
chronology of Bishop Ussher, or just 352 years after Noah’s Flood, there was
born a heathen Chaldee who was christened Abram (Abu-ramu, an ordinary
Babylonian name meaning "exalted father"). Abram’s father Terah was
at that time seventy years old (Gen. 11: 26 ), and the sacred text (Gen. 11: 32
) tells us that he died at the age of 205 years, just as Abram was celebrating
his 75th anniversary. But if Terah was seventy years old when Abram
was born, and died at 205 years of age, in Haran, Abram must have been 135
years old when, immediately after the death of Terah, he left Haran to go into
Canaan (Gen. 21: 4, 5; Acts 7: 4 ). But our text (Gen. 12: 4, 5 ) declares:
"And Abram was seventy and five years old
when he departed out of
The Terah-Abram family were Chaldean nomads,
living in tents, and having some cattle and sheep, which Abram helped tend. On
their own initiative the family had started west, "to go into the
THE SPLENDID CIVILIZATION OF ABRAM’S TIME
At this time, despite Noah’s then recent
Flood, which "destroyed everything from upon the earth" (Gen. 7: 23
), the Chaldean, Assyrian, and Egyptian kingdoms all about him were and for
centuries had been mighty and highly civilized nations, with a culture and a
literature preeminent in the cultured East. Books and libraries abounded, in
which were graven tablets and monuments preserving their most ancient records
and sacred legends, all of which long antedated the sacred Hebrew lore, and
many of which sound suspiciously like the actual prototype and source of the
inspired Bible records of the descendants of Father Abram.
The Assyrian libraries of Abram’s own country
contained riches of the most primitive literature, dating from prehistoric,
antediluvian times, or about 7000 years B.C. Among the ruins of its ancient
cities some 300,000 writings and inscriptions have been discovered, of which
only about one-fifth have yet been published; but even these contain more than
eight times as much literature as the Hebrew Old Testament. One of the famous
Assyrian Books, the Babylonian Epic of Creation, begins very like Genesis:
When the heavens above were not yet named, Or
the earth beneath had recorded a name, In the beginning Deep was their
generator, The Chaos of the Sea was the mother of them all."
Out of this primeval chaos the great god Bel
brought forth Ansar and Kisar, the upper and lower firmaments; in a
death-struggle between Bel-Merodach, the supreme creator god, and the
chaos-dragon Tiamat, the latter was slain, and out of its divided body the
earth and the seas were created by the victorious Bel, who established their
laws and orderly government. The heavenly bodies were next set up to rule the
day and night and to determine the seasons; plants and animals were then
created; and finally, in innocence and purity, the first parents, Adamu and his
wife. Then followed their temptation by the dragon Tiamat, their fall and
curse, the subsequent sinfulness of the people of the earth, and the ensuing
Deluge, which destroyed all except the pious Khasisadra or Xisuthros and his
household, who escaped in an ark which he was warned by the friendly god Ea to
build, and into which he took with him, by divine command, "the seed of
all life," to preserve it for future regeneration. The waters overwhelmed
mankind; the ark stranded on Mt. Nizir in Armenia; the Chaldean Noah sent out,
one after the other, a dove, a swallow, and a raven, the last of which returned
not, having found dry land; whereupon the pious Xisuthros went forth from the
ark and made a thanksgiving sacrifice of some of his animals, but not so
improvidently as did Noah; the repopulation of the earth proceeded; and the
presumptuous people began the building of a great Tower of Babel to reach to
heaven, to the wrath of the great god Anu, the Father.
"In his anger
also the secret counsel he poured out; To scatter abroad his face he set; He
gave command to make strange their speech; Their progress he impeded."
All this has a very familiar and
"inspired" sound to pupils of a modern Christian Sunday school, whom
it is quite unnecessary to warn that this is nothing but crude mythological
fables of the heathen god Bel. It is, of course, only the merest casual
coincidence that it sounds very much like the really true and inspired history
which, a millennium or more afterwards, "holy men of old spake as they were
moved by the Holy Ghost," by way of revelation from their God Yahveh.
Among these venerable records of the past,
too, is the most perfect of the Chaldean monuments yet unearthed from the
debris of the ages, the beautiful black diorite stele of Hammurabi, king of
Abram’s own native country about 2350 B.C., or some three or four hundred years
before the advent of that pagan patriarch. On this pillar of stone is engraved
this monarch’s now celebrated code of laws, a thousand years before Moses got
his famous tables of stone on Sinai, writ by the finger of the jealous God
Yahveh of the Hebrews; on Hammurabi’s stele it is the Babylonian God Bel from
whom, through the sun-god Shamash, Hammurabi’ receives this code of divine
laws. In the preamble of his code he styles himself King of Righteousness, the
self-same title as that of Abram’s Bible friend Melchizedek, the heathen
Jebusite King of Salem, -- "priest of El-Elyon, God Most High" (Gen.
14: 18 ); and the code ends with a series of blessings for those who will obey
the laws, and a long crescendo series of curses against him who will give no
heed to the laws or interferes with the words of the code. All this again
saviours of Biblical Sunday school lore, and is maybe another singular
coincidence.
The noblest of the sciences, astronomy, was a
favorite of Chaldean research at the time, and long before the time, of Abram;
Chaldean libraries contained records showing expert knowledge of the skies,
chiselled on enduring stone or stamped on burnt tablets of clay, dating from the
time of Sargon of Accad, about 3800 B.C., some fifteen hundred years before
Noah’s Flood. The stars were numbered and known by name, and the constellations
were set in their glorious array; eclipses of the sun and moon were accurately
predicted. The mysterious zodiac was invented by the Chaldeans and had assumed
its present order, a millennium before good old Father Abram roamed the
Chaldean plains so uncivilized and superstitious as to make ready to murder his
heaven-sent child at the instigation of an idle dream or an inspired nightmare.
Such briefly was the high state of
civilization which, at the time our review opens, prevailed in the Chaldean
country, and which then or a little later pervaded the
Breasted; Ancient Times, p. 45 ). But the
nomad Abram is not known to have had any schooling or to have been able to read
and write; while some of his actions show him to have been far behind the
culture of his times and country.
THE "PROMISE" TO ABRAHAM
In the year 1921 B.C. Yahveh, who seems to
have been a total stranger to the pagan Chaldean Abram up to that time, and had
not been even mentioned since the Tower of Babel some hundreds of years
previously, of a sudden appeared to Abram, and told him, for some reason not
recorded: "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy
father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee" (Gen. 12: 1 ) -- which
is the very thing that Abram had already started to do of his own motion; for
the whole family several years before "went forth from Ur of the Chaldees,
to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there"
(Gen. 11: 31 ).
Another mistranslation occurs in this
connection. The English text of Gen. 12: 1, reads, "Now Yahveh had said
unto Abram, Get out of thy country," etc., as if this command had been
given before the Terah-Abram family had left Ur "to go into the land of
Canaan," and as if they had set out in consequence of such divine command.
But the Hebrew text simply reads: "And Yahveh said unto Abram"
(v-yomer Yhvh), exactly as in every other instance where the English correctly
reads (as to the verb) "And Yahveh said."
The promise is here
at Haran first made, and it is thus stated: And I will make thee a great
nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a
blessing; ... and in thee shall all the nations of the earth be blessed"
(Gen. 12: 2, 3 ).
So Abram again, disregarding Yahveh’s rather
cruel command to leave his family and kindred (Gen. 12: 5 ), took the trail for
A famine soon occurring, as so frequently
happened in this "land flowing with milk and honey," Abram took his
wife, Sarai, who was about ninety years old, but evidently attractive, and went
to Egypt. The only thing which divine revelation vouchsafes us of this trip is
the amorous passages between Sarai and the Pharaoh of the land (Gen. 12: 14-16
), which is omitted here as bearing a scent of scandal in patriarchal high
life. The same kind of incident occurred afterwards, with Abimelech (Gen. 2 ),
with the connivance and even at the instigation of Abram, which does not speak
well for his concern for the morals of his wife or for his own sense of decency
and dignity, but it was well paid (Gen. 12: 16; 20: 16 ). Isaac likewise, with
his wife Rebekah, some seventy-five years later visited the same good King
Abimelech, where a like sportive incident occurred with great pecuniary profit
to Isaac (Gen. 26 ).
THE EGYPTIAN SLAVERY PROVISO
After Abram’s return from Egypt, enriched with
the reward of Sarai’s sporting with the Pharaoh (Gen. 12: 16; 13: 2 ), Yahveh
came to Abram again and indulged in a bit of pleasant hyperbole, saying:
"Look now toward heaven, and tell the
stars, if thou shalt be able to number them: so shall thy seed be; I give thee
this land to inherit it."
The inspired historian then tells us:
"And he [Abram] believed in Yahveh, and
he counted it to him for righteousness" (Gen. 15: 6 ).
But in the next breath (15: 8 ), Abram
negatives this assurance, for he expresses his doubts and requires proofs,
asking:
"O Lord Yahveh, whereby shall I know that
I shall inherit it?"
—thus seeming to be not quite so believing.
So, while Abram was in a deep sleep, Yahveh gave him a sign, or Abram dreamed
that Yahveh gave him the sign (15: 17 ), which might have proved anything else
or nothing at all just as well, but it is pleasantly related, with
accompaniments of the horror of a great darkness. Then and there Yahveh
radically qualified his former direct and simple promises of inheritance by a
proviso (
The territorial features of the promise were
amplified this time, the boundaries of the promised land being defined with
almost the precision of a modern treaty: "Unto thy seed have I given this
land, from the River of Egypt unto the great River, the River Euphrates";
and Yahveh names ten nations over which they should rule (Gen. 15: 18-21 ),
including the Canaanites and the Jebusites.
We may pass over Abram’s barbarous treatment
of Hagar and his illegitimate Ishmael, in sending them into the wilderness to
die of starvation because of the barren-wifely jealousy of Sarai and by the
personal command of his God; though we may pause a moment at the inspired
picture of Hagar, with the loaf of bread, and bottle of water, and her little
bastard Ishmael all on her shoulder, wandering in the wilderness of Beersheba,
and, when the water is spent, casting "the child under one of the
shrubs," and going aside and weeping, saying: "Let me not see the
death of the child." It is very affecting; but when we look more closely
at the inspired texts of Genesis, we see (16: 16 ) that Ishmael was born when
Abram was eighty-six years old; that both were circumcised when Abram was
ninety-nine years old and Ishmael thirteen (Gen. 17: 24, 25 ), the year before
Isaac was born, when Abram was one hundred and Ishmael fourteen (Gen. 21: 5 );
that it was at the "great feast" which Abram made when Isaac
"was weaned" (Gen. 21: 8, 9 ) several years later that Ishmael was
caught "mocking Sarah," and was cast out into the desert with Hagar,
and thus that the "child," which Hagar carried "on her
shoulder" and held in her hand, along with other impedimenta, was quite
sixteen or nineteen years old, when the angel interposed and provided a well of
water for them, saying:
"Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in
thine hand"; and some time afterwards Hagar "took him [Ishmael] a
wife out of the
THE PROMISE OF ISAAC
In the mean while, Yahveh was pleased to visit
Abram and repeat his promise of "all the land of Canaan for an everlasting
possession," but the promise was burdened this time with what lawyers call
a "condition precedent," and which Yahveh termed an "everlasting
covenant," but evidently of the kind that does not "run with the
land": "Every man child among you shall be circumcised, when he is
eight days old; and the uncircumcised man child shall be cut off from his
people; he hath broken my Covenant" (Gen. 17: 9-14 ). And Yahveh changed
Abram’s name to Abraham, "for a father of many nations have I made
thee." When Abraham supposed that this meant through Ishmael, Yahveh told
him no, but that Sarah his wife should bear him a son, to be named Isaac; at
which statement Abraham fell down in a fit of laughter, taking it all for a
Jahvistic joke; but Yahveh confirmed his assurance and declared that Sarah
should bear that child "at this set time in the next year" (Gen. 17:
17-21 ).
This promise was later confirmed by three angels;
and when Sarah, who was behind the tent-door listening in, heard it, she
laughed out-right, saying: "After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my
lord [Heb., adonai] being old also?" for it had ceased to be with Sarah
"after the manner of women." And when the angels heard her laugh
behind the door, they—no, it is Yahveh who unexpectedly becomes interlocutor,
he not having been as yet identified among the three men-angels. Yahveh asks:
"Wherefore did Sarah laugh?" and Sarah denied it and said, "I
laughed not"; and Yahveh said, "Nay, but thou didst"; and we
know not where this "passing the lie" between the Lord and the Lady
would have led, had not the angel-men suddenly left and Yahveh abruptly changed
the subject (Gen. 18: 10-16 ).
In this connection a subtle suspicion as to
the paternity of Isaac intrudes itself. Yahveh had promised Abraham: "And
Sarah thy wife shall have a son" (Gen. 18: 10 ). But the inspired record
is silent as to any performance or attempt thereat on the part of the aged
patriarch; and Yahveh himself, when Sarah laughed behind the tent door that her
"lord is old also," reassured her, "Is anything too hard for
Yahveh?" (
THE PROMISE RENEWED TO ISAAC
To Isaac Yahveh renewed the promise, saying:
"Unto thee, and unto thy seed, will I give all these countries, and I will
perform the oath which I swear unto Abraham thy father" (Gen. 26: 3 ).
Isaac and his people dwelt for a long time in the country of the Philistines,
enjoying the hospitality of its King Abimelech; so great and many, indeed, are
Isaac’s people said to have been, that Abimelech and the chief of his army went
to Isaac and complained, and said: "Go from us; for thou art much mightier
than we" (Gen. 26: 16 ). This curiosity may be borne in mind when we
notice the migration to Egypt of the Jacob family, but seventy strong,
including women and children, and remember how, after the exodus of the
millions of Chosen out of Egypt, they were time and again conquered and
oppressed by these same Philistines.
THE PROMISE RENEWED TO JACOB
The promise was repeated by Yahveh to Jacob,
in his dream of the ladder, with the same glittering assurances. Yahveh said,
or Jacob dreamed that he said: "The land whereon thou liest, to thee will
I give it, and to thy seed; and thy seed shall be as the dust of the
earth" (Gen. 28: 13, 14 ).
A striking peculiarity of the promise is that
it was given invariably in a dream; we shall see, in the event, that it was in
effect largely of such stuff as dreams are made of.
At Peniel (Gen. 32: 28-30 ), or at Padan-Aram
(Gen. 35: 9 ), Yahveh changed Jacob’s name to
THE MIGRATION TO
In Bishop Ussher’s year 1706, or 215 years
after the original promise to Father Abraham, the Jacob family migrated into
Egypt, having multiplied to only seventy persons [Stephen says:
"threescore and fifteen i.e.,
seventy-five] souls" (Acts
Let us examine the inspired record. Jacob had
twelve sons, each of whom married or "took" women and had children.
The record and genealogies are set forth in Genesis 46: where they are stated
under the caption: "And these are the names of the children of Israel,
which came into Egypt" (46: 8 ) -- "Jacob and all his seed with
him" (46: 6 ); and after naming them all (46: 9-25 ), the record avers:
"All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his
loins, besides Jacob’s sons’ wives, all the souls were three score and six; and
the sons of Joseph, which were born him in Egypt, were two souls: all the souls
of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were three-score and ten,"
or seventy (46: 26, 27 ). Nothing in the Bible is more positively stated.
AMAZING MULTIPLYING
The Jacob family, seventy strong after 215
years since Abraham, went down in the year 1706 B.C. to sojourn in
In
And the Children of
We know through revelation that the
THE "SOJOURN" IN
In Egypt the Chosen People were totally
forgotten by their Yahveh for 215 years, or 350 years, or 430 years, or
whatever other length of time they were there, for here again the inspired
record reads several and diverse ways.
In Genesis 15:as we have seen, when Abram was
in his deep sleep and in the "horror of a great darkness" (Gen. 15:
12 ), Yahveh said to him, or he dreamed that Yahveh said: "Know for a
surety that thy seed ... shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four
hundred years" (15: 13 ); and Yahveh added: "But in the fourth
generation they shall come hither again" (15: 16 ), Yahveh giving the
unique and seemingly irrelevant reason for this four-century affliction of his
Chosen that "the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full" (15: 16 ).
The original promise is dated in the margin,
according to Bishop Ussher, 1921 B.C., and the date of the migration into
THE "FOUR GENERATIONS"
The
These "four generations" are set out
in the inspired record with minute genealogical detail of name and family,
birth and age (Exodus 6: 16-20 ), running down the line of Le6: one of the sons
of Jacob who migrated into Egypt with the seventy, in the year 1706 B.C., by
Bishop Ussher’s chronology. We will examine this genealogy.
Levi was one year older than Judah, and
therefore perhaps forty-three years old when the Jacob family went down into
With the greatest liberality of allowance in
order to "accommodate" the inspired record, if Kohath had been a
yearling infant when his father Levi brought him into Egypt (Gen. 46: 11 ), and
if Kohath had began his sojourn in the last of his 133 years and if Amram had
begotten his son Moses in the last of his 137 years (as is of course possible
in the Bible, although it would have been more remarkable than the
hundred-year-old paternity feat of Abraham, which required a "special
dispensation of providence" to procreate Isaac), yet these extreme
numbers, plus the eighty years of Moses at the time of the exodus, total only
350 years instead of the 430 years of the inspired record of Exodus 12: 40.
Moreover, Amram’s wife, Jochebed, the mother
of Moses, was "the daughter of Le6: whom her mother bare to Levi in
256 years old, somewhat liberally over the
allotted ages of the patriarchs in those degenerate days; and with Sarai, some
six hundred years previously, "it had ceased to be after the manner of
women," in the matter of child-bearing even at 90 years of age.
Whether the ‘Sojourn in Egypt" were 430
years, as the Scripture time and again says, or 215 years as the apologists for
this tangle say, or 350 years, as the inspired figures work out, it is true, as
the inspired record says, that their Yahveh had entirely forgotten his Chosen
People for all this time; until, perchance, at last, he "heard their
groanings, and Yahveh remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with
Jacob" (Ex. 2: 24 ).
And, reciprocally, for all these centuries,
the Chosen People of Israel were heathens utterly ignorant of the Yahveh of
their heathen Father Abraham: for Abraham and all the patriarchs (as we shall
clearly see) all the time "served other gods" (Josh. 24: 2 ), and
they all, while in Egypt and for ages after the exodus, worshipped and
continued to "worship the gods of the Egyptians" (Josh. 24: 14 ).
This total and mutual ignorance of Yahveh and
his Chosen, is proved by the fact that when Yahveh after 430 years finally
"remembered" his people and came down into the burning bush to see
Moses about the exodus business, and introduced himself as "the God
[Elohe] of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (Ex. 3: 6 ),
Moses did not at all know or recognize him, nor had he or his people ever heard
of him, for Moses had to ask, "What is thy name?" (3: 13 ); for, said
Moses: "Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say
unto them, The God of thy fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to
me, What is his name? What shall I say unto them?" (Ex. 3: 13 ) A more
completely "Unknown God" could not be imagined than this of the
Chosen People of Yahveh, the God who had forgotten them; though it seems strange
for a God to forget, particularly his own peculiar and Chosen People for over
four centuries.
THE "INEFFABLE NAME" REVEALED
To Moses’ very agnostic query, "What is
thy name?" the stranger God replied: "I Am that I Am: and be said,
thus shalt thou say unto the children of
But this vague cognomen was evidently not at
all informative to Moses, nor later to the elders, and was puzzling to the
Pharaoh (Ex. 5: 2 ). Indeed Moses did not obey Yahveh, but oddly enough
reported another name. Moses fared ill on his first trip to the elders and to
the Pharaoh; and when he returned to report to the God, he addressed him simply
as Adonai (my Lord—the same exactly as Adonis of the Pagans); and Moses accused
him to his face of "evil entreating" the people, and of not
delivering them at all (Ex. 5: 22, 23 ).
Thereupon the God said, "Now thou shalt
see what I will do to Pharaoh"; and he asserted that his real name was
Yahveh; and he explained that he had always appeared to the good old patriarchs
by the name of El Shaddai (Heb., God my daemon, rendered in the English
translations as "God Almighty"), but that he had not been known to
them by his real name of Yahveh (Ex. 6: 2, 3 ).
A "PIOUS FRAUD" OF TRANSLATION
Let us quote this highly important declaration
of Yahveh in the exact words in which he made it, as it involves another truly
remarkable instance of Jahvistic lapses memority, as well as one of the most
notorious "mistakes of Moses" in all Holy Writ, and the most flagrant
and persistent of the intentional falsifications of the ecclesiastical translators
and editors of the Bible, -- the deceptive motive for which will be made clear:
"And God [Heb., Elohim] spake unto Moses,
and said unto him, I am the Lord [Heb., anoki YHVH = I am Yahveh]:
"And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac,
and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty [Heb., El-Shaddai, God my daemon],
but by my name JEHOVAH (Heb., YHVH) was I not known to them" (Ex. 6: 2, 3
).
This positive assertion from the mouth of the
Hebrew God is belied by scores of contradictory instances, of which a
sufficient number will be cited from the Hebrew texts, concealed as they
purposefully are in the English and other translations.
Here we have the averment of the Hebrew God
himself to the effect that here, for the first time since the world began, is
"revealed" to mankind his "ineffable name" of YHVH, here
printed as JEHOVAH in capital letters in the Bible translations. And in the
Bible translations, from "In the beginning" of Genesis 1: 1 to these
verses of Exodus, and thence to the end of Malachi, the name Jehovah or Yahveh
never (or but half a dozen times) appears: always and only we read the title
"the Lord" or "the Lord God" (for Yahveh Elohim), falsely
used for the actual six-thousand-times reiterated name of the Hebrew deity.
This usage conceals the fact that the personal name YHVH of the God is used
thousands of times in the Hebrew texts, and thus apparently
"harmonizes" the whole Hebrew Bible with the statement (Ex. 6: 3 ),
"By my name YHVH was I not known" to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
To one who can but spell out words by the
Hebrew letters, this "pious fraud" is apparent. "The sacred
name," says the Catholic Encyclopedia, "occurs in Genesis about 156
times; this frequent occurrence can hardly be a mere prolepsis" (Vol. 8:
p. 331 ); and it adds: "in round numbers it is found in the Old Testament
6000 times, either alone or in conjunction with another Divine name" (Id.,
p. 329 ). Beginning with Genesis 2: 4, where it is first abbreviated YY, the
name Yahveh runs throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. Scores of times the three
patriarchs named used the name Yahveh, and speak to and of their tribal deity
by his name Yahveh, as well as by the designations of El, Elohim, Elohe, and by
the title of address Adonai (my Lord), the form in which superiors are always
addressed.
A very few specific instances among many, out
of the Chaldee mouths of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, will serve to expose the
falsity of the translation—and then the motive therefore.
The very first appearance of the strange deity
to Abram is thus recorded: "Now Yahveh had said unto Abram, Get thee out
of thy country," etc. (Gen. 12: 1 ), though the translators make it read:.
"Now the Lord had said." Again: "And Abram said, O Adonali
Yahveh [my Lord Yahveh], what wilt thou give me?" (Gen. 15: 2, 8 ). And
Yahveh says to Abram: "I am Yahveh that brought thee out of
As for Isaac: "And Yahveh appeared unto
him and said, Go down into
As for Jacob: at the ladder the God appeared
and said to Jacob: "I am Yahveh, the Elohe of Abraham, the Elohe of
Isaac" (Gen. 28: 13 ). Again: "And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and
he said, Surely Yahveh has been in this place" (Gen. 28: 16 ). And again: "And
Jacob vowed a vow and said, if Elohim [the Gods] will be with me ... then shall
Yahveh be my God" (Gen. 28: 20, 21 ). Some half dozen times the name
Yahveh is correctly rendered "Jehovah," mostly where this rendering
is forced by the compounding of the name Yahveh with another word or name, as
in Yahveh-nissi (Ex. 17: 5 ); Yahveh-jireh (Gen. 22: 14 ); Yahveh-shalom
(Judges 6: 24 ); where it cannot well be rendered "Lord-nissi," etc.,
and the translators are obliged for any sense at all to render it truly as "Jehovah-nissi,"
etc. And in Psalms and Isaiah, in a few instances, the name appears, as where
David sings: "That they may know that thou alone, whose name is Jehovah
[Yahveh] art most high [elyon] over all the earth" (Psalms l33: 18 ); and
where Isaiah says: "For the Lord Jehovah [Yah Yahveh] is my strength"
(Isa., 12: 2 ); though even here Yah is not rightly rendered "Lord."
However, as some 430 years had elapsed up to
the incident of the burning bush since anybody had used the name at all, or had
even mentioned the God, it is not to be wondered that one’s memory, even
Yahveh’s, was a bit rusty in the matter of names. The real blame, and shame,
rests on the deceptive translators: "The false pen of the scribes hath
wrought falsely" (Jer. 8: 8, R.V.). But it didn’t matter to Moses anyhow,
for he was a heathen who had never heard the name either way, and a fugitive
murderer, his first recorded act being the murder of an Egyptian, for which
crime he fled from justice into the Midian desert (Ex. 2: 12 ), where be
married the daughter of the heathen priest of Midian, by whom he had one (Ex.
2: 22 ), or two (Ex. 18: 3 ) sons, as later we shall notice. But Moses’s
marrying the Midianite is an error, or he became a polygamist; for we are told
that Moses "had married an Ethiopian woman" (Num. 12: 1 ), a Negress,
to the great scandal of his family, and in flagrant violation of his own
prohibitory law against marrying heathen and strangers.
A CURIOUS MUDDLING
The most curious feature of this fable of the
burning bush, betraying the utter childish-mindedness of the inspired
historian, is the muddled use he makes of the divine name of his new-found
deity. It is in exodus 3: 13 that Moses asks the strange new God:
"What is thy name?" and in reply
"Elohim said unto Moses: I Am that I Am"; and he said, "Thus
shalt thou say unto the children of
In Exodus i and 2: and up to 3: 6, the deity
is spoken of as Elohim, ha-Elohim (gods, the-gods); but in verse 7 it is Yahveh
who told Moses about his patriarchal covenant, and ordered him to bring his
people out of Egypt. Then, after telling Moses that he is "I Am" (
"Go, and assemble the elders of
Moses replied that they would not believe or
hearken unto him, "for they will say, Yahveh has not appeared unto
thee" (Ex. 4: 1 ); a curious telepathic knowledge of a name they had never
heard. Some ten or a dozen times the name Yahveh is again used in this chapter;
and in verse 10 Moses uses both his name and the title of address, "my
Lord." "And Moses said unto Yahveh, Adonai [my Lord]"; and
Yahveh replied: "Am I not Yahveh?" (
WHY THIS "PIOUS" FRAUD?
Why this persistent falsification in the Holy
Word of God? First, as pointed out, and as must be apparent, with purpose to
conceal the contradiction of Yahveh’s "revelation" in Exodus 6: 3.
But there are other very signal motives for falsification. These I submit, not
in my own words, but as capital admissions of two high theological authorities.
The distinguished Hebrew scholar, Rev. Charles
P. Fagnani, D.D., Professor of Scripture in Union Theological Seminary, denies
thus the Christian Godhood of Yahveh: "The god who is the hero of these
[Genesis] stories is not the Supreme Cosmic God, the Father of the Lord Jesus
Christ, in whom we live, and move, and have our being, but the tribal god of
the Hebrews, according to their earliest and crudest conception of his character.
"He is known by two names: Elohim,
meaning god, in general, and Yaho. The latter is a proper name, like Asshur,
Moloch, Baal, etc. He is only one god out of many. Every nation and people had
one or more gods. The Hebrews were forbidden to worship any other god but Yaho.
"Yaho is generally but less
correctly given as Yahveh and Jehovah (better Yehovah)."To use the word
God or Lord God instead of Elohim or Yaho is misleading and disastrous. It
conceals from the unsuspecting reader that the un-Godlike sayings and doings
recorded are those of an imagined, primitive deity, not those of the God of the
New Testament." (Fagnani, The Beginnings of History according to the Jews,
pp. 18-19; Boni, New York, 1925 )
This leaves the pagan god Yahveh and his pretended
"Holy Word" a myth and fables.
The learned doctor, after a number of other
significant admissions that revealed Genesis tales are "patently early
myths and naive, childish, primitive folklore" (Id., p. 23 ), with evident
gusto quotes the Shavian epigram, "Fundamentalism is Infantilism,"
and comments: "Whatever we call it, it means complete paralysis of the
intelligence, resulting from irrational surrender to the blight of theological
dogma" (Id., p. 24 ). But it may be in turn remarked that Modernism is
immeasurably worse as a display of arrested development of once-awakened
mentality than ever Fundamentalism was. The Fundamentalists are victims of
their own perfect and correct logic from false premises; their theology is
unimpeachably true if Genesis and the Bible be true. The Modernists, who
repudiate Genesis, Adam, Eve, the fall, the curse, the Virgin-birth, the
resurrection, and hell, either are wholly wanting in the logical faculty, or
have not the courage of their convictions of the fundamental fallacies of their
Bible.
Another scholarly divine says of this habitual
concealment of the name Yahveh in the Bible translations: "Various motives
may have concurred to bring about the suppression of the name. ... An
instinctive feeling that a proper name for God implicitly recognizes the
existence of other gods may have had some influence" (Encyc. Brit., Vol.
15:p. 311-d). But as Yahveh himself and all his book explicitly and a thousand
times recognize the existence, power, and effects of other gods, this apologetic
reason cannot excuse the pious fraud. A more frank admission of the reason for
falsely rendering Yahveh as "Lord" is given as "the preference
[by the Jewish translators of the Septuagint] for a term that should not bring
to mind the old tribal deity after a more transcendental conception had been
gained" (New int. Encyc., Vol. 12:p. 625 ). But a "conception,"
however transcendental, is merely a human mental process, not a divine
revelation. It is only a refinement of previous myth and remains mythological.
A PECULIAR TEST OF PROPHECY
At the burning bush Yahveh commanded Moses:
"Go, bring the
And Yahveh gave Moses a very peculiar ex post
facto kind of proof of the validity of his present commission, assuring him:
"Certainly I will be with thee; and this
shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth
the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain" (Ex. 3: 12
); which mountain was Horeb, or Sinai, the shrine of the pagan moon-god Sin,
somewhere in the Arabian wilderness, where Moses then was, tending the sheep of
his heathen father-in-law (Ex. 3: 1 ).
And Yahveh thereupon told Moses of his promise
to the fathers, and told him to report it to the elders of
"And I have said, I will bring you up out
of the affliction of Egypt, unto the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites,
and the Amorites, and the Perizites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites"
(Ex. 3: 17 ); which peoples, as Yahveh himself and Moses several times assert,
were "seven nations greater and mightier" than all Israel (Deut. 4:
38 ). The Pharaoh is quoted as complaining four hundred years before: "Behold,
the people of the children of
SOME ASSURANCES OF SUCCESS
Yahveh God of
"Let us go three days’ journey into the
wilderness, that we may sacrifice unto Yahveh our God" (Ex. 3: 18 ); and
added that he knew that Pharaoh would not let them go; and that Yahveh would
then smite Egypt with all his wonders—the plagues—after which the Pharaoh would
let them go. And the same God of Israel told Moses that he, God, would help the
Chosen to cheat the Egyptians and enable them to steal all their jeweler and
clothes—"and ye shall spoil the Egyptians" (Ex. 3: 22 ). This would
be wicked enough on the part of Ali Baba and his forty thieves, or of Barbary
pirates, and under any ordinary code of human law would be common crime, and
the instigator would be criminal "accessory before the fact"; but
this is the Holy Bible, and Yahveh is called holy and just.
This advice did not at once appeal to Moses,
who had been well brought up in the court of Egypt, although now a fugitive
murderer; and he objected that the elders would not believe that Yahveh had
appeared to him and told him these things. So the mighty Yahveh resorted to
conjure, turning a stick into a snake and the snake back into the stick—a trick
that the conjurors of
So Moses was persuaded, and he took his
heathen wife and two sons (Ex.
CONJURING CONTESTS
Having escaped this assassination, Moses went
on to the elders and told them what Yahveh had said; and he performed all the
wonder-works which Yahveh had taught him so that the people should believe, and
they believed. Then Moses and his spokesman or publicity man, Aaron, went to
the Pharaoh, and repeated to him Yahveh’s ingenuous plea for a three days’
holiday in the wilderness to worship the new-found Yahveh. But the Pharaoh had
never heard of Yahveh; and he said: "Who is Yahveh, that I should obey his
voice and let
The elders and the people thereupon complained
to Moses of the evil case which had befallen them on his account, and said to
Moses: "Yahveh judge you" (Ex.
THE FEARFUL AND WONDERFUL "PLAGUES OF
Almost skeptical wonder is caused, in these
modern times, by the series of inspired narratives of the famous plagues of
The next wonder recorded is Aaron’s stretching
out his rod that had been a snake but was now a rod full of other rods that had
been snakes and causing every drop of water in all
The same curious phenomenon occurs with
respect to the third plague, Aaron’s conjuring up frogs out of the waters,
which were not waters but blood. The frogs came "and covered the
Like miracles on the part of Yahveh and Aaron
were performed in the plagues of the lice (8: 17, 18 ) and of the flies (8: 24
), to the utter suffering of the Egyptian people, but all the glory this time
was Yahveh’s and Aaron’s, as this was more sorcery than the Egyptian magicians
had at their command on such short notice. So the enchanters and magicians all
dropped out of the contest and left the field undisputed to Yahveh’s and
Aaron’s plagueful miracles. This was just as well, for a few days afterwards
they all got boils and blains (Ex.
A plague of very remarkable consequences is
next recorded in the inspired story. The Lord God of the Hebrews turned his
attention to afflicting the dumb animal kingdom, which seemingly had little or
nothing to do with the controversy between the King of Heaven and the Pharaoh
of
But the very next plague showed that an
unrecorded miracle must have intervened overnight, for all the dead animals are
recorded as come to life. The proof of this unrecorded miracle is clear and
logical: for Moses announced, after all the animals had died of the murrain
(Ex. 9: 6 ) and then had been infested with boils and blains (9: 9 ), that on
the next day he would bring on a "very grievous hail" (9: 18 ); and
he considerately, this time, gave ample notice and chance of escape, and warned
the Egyptians to gather up their cattle at once and get them under cover; for
upon every man and beast which was left out in the open the hail should come
down, and they should die; and some of the cattle were herded in, and some were
left out in the fields (9: 19-21 ). So those cattle killed of the murrain must
have been resurrected overnight, or there would have been none alive to be
herded in or left out to be killed again. The hail came as scheduled, mingled
with fire, and smote man and beast and every herb of the field, and broke every
tree of the field, and destroyed
The plague of the locusts comes next in the
sacred text; terrible swarms of these scourges blew up on the evil-laden east
wind, so "that one cannot be able to see the earth" (Ex. 10: 5 ), and
"covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened"
(10: 15 ); and "they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of
the trees which the hail had left" (10: 15 ). As every herb and tree in
all
One is puzzled by the famous plague of
Egyptian darkness which Yahveh next in his providence sent upon the doomed
land—"even darkness which may be felt" (Ex.
This fatal climax of plagues is indeed
terrible to contemplate. The angel of Yahveh, God of heaven, swept through the
land of Egypt with a flaming sword dripping human and animal blood, and
slaughtered the first-born of every family of Egypt, from the palace of the
Pharaoh to the very prisons (Ex. 12: 29 ). And what is more curious, the angel
slaughtered also the first-born of all cattle, although the cattle were already
dead of the murrain (9: 6 ), of the boils and blains (
One may well wonder why it was that after each
terrible plague the God of the Hebrews "hardened Pharaoh’s heart,"
even when he was very eager to let the people go; and why this God,
"long-suffering and plenteous in mercy," did not use his influence to
soften the Pharaoh’s heart to let the children go in peace and in a hurry; for
several times, after a peculiarly harrowing plague, the Pharaoh urged Moses and
Aaron: "Go, and serve your God"; but every time the God said: "I
have hardened his heart, that I might shew these my signs before him."
After the plague of darkness and a stormy
passage between Pharaoh and Moses and Aaron (Ex. 10: 24-29 ) the latter doughty
plague-invokers left the presence of the Pharaoh with a direful threat of what
was to come (Ex. xi), and went forth to prepare for the great massacre of the
first-born and for the exodus of the people from blood-stricken Egypt.
CHAPTER 4
THE WONDERS OF THE EXODUS
The exodus is so wonderful, and so humanly
impossible that its accomplishment by
"IN THE FOURTH GENERATION"
The exodus took place in the "fourth
generation" from the time of the original migration into
Watch the
Assuming that all the 55 male descendants of
Jacob who came into Egypt married and had only sons for children, or sons to
the average of 4 ¼, and that this average held through the four generations,
the Hebrew population in Egypt would naturally augment in about the following
manner: The first generation (offspring of the twelve) that came into Egypt was
55 males; liberally allowing five male children each, the second generation,
sprung from these, would number 275; the third generation, offspring of the
second, would number 1375; the fateful "fourth generation," that of
Moses and the exodus, would reach the sum total of 6875 male persons. This
liberally estimated natural increase is obviously exaggerated;
it allows five male children to each male of
the four generations, and takes no account of females, who would naturally be
quite half of each generation, to furnish wives for the contemporary generation
and mothers for the next. Moreover, it errs in discounting mortality and
assuming that each male of each generation would live at least until he was
married and had his five male children. Thus the actual total of males must be
less than the 6875 above allowed. Even on the impossible hypothesis that not
one died throughout the four generations of 215, or 350, or 430 years, so that
all would be living at the time of the exodus, the grand total would be but
8580 persons. But we know, of course, that this assumed immunity from death is
not true, for "Joseph died, and an his brethren, and all that [first]
generation" (Ex. 1: 6 ); and it is a safe assumption that most of the
first three generations died before the exodus.
Any rational rearrangement of these obvious
vital statistics, allowing anything short of fabulous increase, could make no
appreciable increase in the totals stated. Even if we begin the count of the
"four generations" with that succeeding the original 51 sons and four
grandsons of the 12 sons of Jacob, and count their 275 assumed offspring as the
first generation, we should then have: first, 275; second, 1375; third, 6875;
fourth, 34,375 altogether. But this would be a fifth generation to
"sojourn in
THE HOSTS OF THE LORD OF HOSTS
Hear now what "holy men of old spake as
they were moved by the Holy Ghost" to tell us about the numbers of this
exodus. The inspired record, after relating the "spoiling of the
Egyptians" by the Chosen says: "And the Children of Israel journeyed
from Rameses to Succoth, about 600,000 on foot that were men, beside children.
And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very
much cattle" (Ex.
Only about a year later (Num. 1: 1 ), at
Sinai, the formal census of this warrior host was taken, of every male
"from 20 years old and upwards, all that were able to go forth to war in
Israel; even all that were numbered were 603,550" (Num. 1: 45, 46 )! Even
in this host the Levites were not numbered (
SOME PREGNANT FIGURES
If the sacred historian had taken his stylus
and a scrap of papyrus and calculated a bit, be would have figured out that in
order to accomplish this prodigy, each of the 55 males of the first generation
in Egypt must have had 40-odd children each, about equally divided between
males and females; each of these 20-odd males must have had again 40-odd
children, male and female, and so on to the fourth generation, in order to have
produced 603,550 soldier-men twenty years of age and over, or the total of
2,414,200 (or more) children of Israel who set out from Egypt.
But the inspired history nowhere
indicates any such prodigious prolificness among the
The mothers of Israel were also evidently of
the Hebrew race; it is hardly probable that the Hebrew slaves were permitted to
marry the free native women; if this had been customary, the Syrian "seed
of Abraham" would have been sadly mixed in 430 years. Indeed, that the fact
was otherwise is implied by the inspired statement (Ex.
But we will not discount the inspired
arithmetic, and will accept its figures, which lead to some highly interesting
considerations. Where and how did these children live, and move, and have their
being in
Let us look the sheep in the face. Moses told
the children, in instituting the passover, on the eve of the Exodus: "Take
you a lamb according to your families, and kill the passover" (Ex.
THE AMAZING PASSOVER
All Scripture, besides being "given by
inspiration of God," is said to be "profitable for instruction";
we find other curiously instructive features of this exodus passover. In Exodus
12 we have the tangled and marvelous story. Yahveh tells Moses that "in
the tenth day of this month" the people should "take every man a
lamb, ... and ye shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month; and
the whole congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening"—of the
fourteenth day; and "of the blood, strike it on the two side posts and on
the upper door post of the houses wherein they shall eat it." For the
ceremony he gives particular directions: "And thus shall ye eat it: with
your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye
shall eat it in haste" (
THE MARCHING ORDERS
But this is not all of this bit of Scripture,
given for our instruction. That same night "at midnight Yahveh smote all
the firstborn in the land of Egypt, and the firstborn of the cattle," of
the Egyptians (Ex. 12: 29 ), though these same cattle had already been killed
by each of several prior plagues: "all the cattle of Egypt died" of
the murrain (Ex, 9: 6 ); then these dead cattle had boils (9: 9 ); then they
were all killed over again by the hail (9: 25 ). As soon as this fatal decree
of Yahveh was executed, that midnight, "Pharaoh rose up in the night [that
same night] ... and he called for Moses and Aaron by night [that same night,
after midnight], and said, Rise up, and get you forth from among my people,
both ye and the children of Israel; and go, serve Yahveh as ye have said; and
be gone" (12: 31 ) -- "and bless me also" (12: 32 ), he added,
maybe ironically. As "the Egyptians were urgent upon the people, that they
might send them out of the land in haste; for they said, We be all dead
men" (12: 33 ), haste became the order of the day, or rather of that same
night.
As soon as the royal leave was thus granted to
Moses, after
First, from all
THE HOSTS ON THE MARCH
The hosts of Yahveh went not like a straggling
rabble of fugitive slaves, hastening to escape, but proud in formal marching
array, as armies march. If they marched in close order, as many as fifty
abreast, with an interval of only one yard between their serried ranks, there
would have been 48,284 ranks, which would form a column twenty-eight miles
long! But the truth is even more remarkable, if the Bible is accurate on the
point; for the Hebrew text says: "And the children of Israel went up by
five in a rank out of the land of Egypt" (Ex. 13: 18; see marginal note)
-- which would make the column 280 miles long! Such a multitude, with all its
encumbrances, could not possibly march through the desert sands very many miles
a day—say ten, fifteen, or twenty at the most. (The American army of chosen
foot-troops marches only twelve to fifteen miles a day under average
conditions.) Moreover, the front ranks must march the whole 28 (or 280 ) miles
before the rear ranks could even start. So hardly half of the "hosts of
Yahveh" could even get away that first day, even if they had started
early. But they had first to gather at Rameses from all over Egypt— several
hundreds of miles in length—and we know not how much of that wonderful day they
occupied in the rendezvous; the whole host could not possibly reach Succoth,
somewhere, according to the text, "Out of the land of Egypt," till
the second or third day, or the next week, or the next month, even if they
could all have mobilized at Rameses on that "selfsame day," as they
are said to have done. How many interminable miles the column was stretched out
by the millions of sheep and cattle, not marching in close battle array, of
course, unless divinely herded, we have no revelation, nor adequate data to
compute.
What the millions of cattle fed upon in the
prolonged hike to the Red Sea, across the desert sands, with scant vegetation,
divine revelation does not tell. Nor were the children much better provided
for; they had only a little unleavened dough on their shoulders, "because
they were thrust out of
A remarkable circumstance may be noted here:
these fugitive slaves are represented as having slaves of their own which they
carried away with them. Their provident Yahveh, in his ordinance of the
passover, the very first law he ever gave them, as they fled from slavery in
Egypt, made provision for the observance of that pious ceremony by "every
man’s servant that is bought for money," after the bloody violence of
circumcision had been perpetrated upon him (Ex. 12: 44 ).
THE HOSTS AFRAID OF WAR
Wonders such as these never cease in the
providence of Yahveh to his
Where did these fleeing slaves get their
arms—swords, spears, shields, bows and arrows, armor, for 603,550 soldiers?
Slaves are not usually allowed to keep arms, nor to be so trained that on one
day’s sudden notice they can, presto, change from a horde of slaves to soldiers
who march out "by their armies" full panoplied for war. And if they
were armed soldiers going forth to conquest, under the personal command of
their God, a notable "Man of war," why should they "repent if
they see war," between other peoples, and wish in fright to return to
slavery? Revelation is silent on these mysteries. And despite of all Yahveh’s
concern for his warriors "lest they see war," they had not been three
months out of Egypt before they had war with the Amalekites at Rephidim, when
Aaron and Hur had to hold up the hands of Moses all day before the Israelites
could finally win the battle (Ex. 17: 8-13 ).
THE RED SEA MASSACRE
Yahveh was not yet satisfied with plaguing the
Egyptians and with showing off his terrible and holy wonders upon them. He had
bloodily baited Pharaoh into letting his slaves go; half a dozen times Pharaoh
in terror had "inclined to let the people go," but Yahveh had
interfered and "hardened Pharaoh’s heart that he should not let them
go." And when the Israelites finally got away and Pharaoh was happily rid
of them, Yahveh devised another wholesale destruction, to his own honor, and
said: "I will harden Pharaoh’s heart that he shall follow after them, and
I will be honored upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host, that the Egyptians may
know that I am Yahveh" (Ex. 14: 4 ). The tragedy of the Red Sea and the
death by drowning of the hosts of Pharaoh do not concern us now; but it is
interesting to note that as soon as the valiant warriors, 603,550 strong, saw
the hosts of Pharaoh, also very suddenly mustered, appear in pursuit,
"they were sore afraid; and the children of Israel cried out unto
Yahveh," and they cravenly said:
"Let us alone, that we may serve the
Egyptians; for it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we
should die in the wilderness" (Ex. 14: 10, 12 ) -- a different cry, this
of 603,550 armed warriors of Yahveh, from that of one later patriot who fired
his country’s heart with the words: "I know not what course others may
take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" And through their
whole sacred history the people of Yahveh blubbered and wailed at every trial
and in every time of danger, real or fancied.
THE CHILDREN WAIL FOR WATER
Only three days after this Red Sea massacre
Yahveh’s Chosen People got further into the wilderness of Shur, and "found
no water" (Ex. 15: 22 ); whereupon they wailed again and started an
insurrection; then moved on to Marah, the waters of which were so bitter they
could not drink, and they wailed again, and cried:
"What shall we drink?" (
SMITING THE ROCK FOR WATER
After leaving the twelve wells of Elim, the
Israelites came into the wilderness of Sin, in the middle of the second month
after the passover, and started a bread riot, which was quieted by the miracle
of quails and daily manna (Ex. 16 ). Then they marched on to Rephidim, and at
once rioted because "there was no water for the people to drink," and
they were about to stone Moses to death.
Yahveh here came to the rescue, and told Moses
to take his wondrous rod and "smite the rock in Horeb" and bring
water from it; and Yahveh stood upon the rock to watch the performance. Moses
smote the rock, the waters gushed out, and the people drank; and Moses
"called the name of the place Meribah, because of the chiding of the
children of
But in Numbers 20: under the marginal date
1453 B.C. (that is, 38 years later), the same or a very similar story is told
again, but differently. For "then came the children of
But now Yahveh was angry with Moses and Aaron,
and he said to them: "Because ye have not believed me, therefore ye shall
not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them"; and
the sacred writer informs us: "This is the water of Meribah; because the
children of
FOOD RIOTS—HEAVENLY MANNA AND QUAILS
As for human food and cattle-feed, this
mystery of the ages has never been satisfactorily solved by revelation or
speculation.
The children of
However, when the Israelites started their
food riot, Yahveh was merciful, and said he would "rain bread from
heaven" (Ex. 16: 4 ) for his children; but Moses misinterpreted or
exaggerated the message, and reported to them: "Yahveh shall give you in
the evening flesh to eat, and in the morning bread to the full" (16: 8 ).
Yahveh graciously amended his promise to conform to the version which Moses had
reported. And this is the way that Yahveh fulfilled his bounteous promises:
that evening "quails came up, and covered the camp" (Ex. 16: 13 ),
and in the morning heavenly manna, which had very peculiar qualities, and
tasted "like wafers made with honey" (Ex. 16: 31 ) or else "the
taste thereof was like the taste of fresh oil" (Num. 11: 8 ), but whether
olive oil, castor oil, kerosene oil, hair oil, or oil of saints is not
revealed. Anyhow the children of
Passing strange was this danger of starvation
in the presence of several million sheep and cattle, unless, indeed, the poor
beasts were so starved themselves as to be not fit to eat. And Moses explicitly
had these cattle in mind; for when Yahveh promised him flesh for the children
of Israel to eat, he reasoned thus with Yahveh: "The people, among whom I
am, are six hundred thousand footmen; and thou hast said, I will give them
flesh, that they may eat a whole month. Shall the flocks and the herds be slain
for them, to suffice them? or shall all the fish of the sea be gathered
together for them, to suffice them?" (Num. 11: 21, 22 ) To starve to death
under such circumstances! And "the anger of Yahveh was kindled
greatly"; and he graciously promised: "Ye shall not eat one day, nor
two days, nor five days, neither ten days, nor twenty days; But even a whole
month, until it come out at your nostrils, and it be loathsome unto you"
(Sum. 11: 19, 20 )!
So, in his loving-kindness and bounteous
providence, Yahveh provided a quail feast on prodigious scale; for "there
went forth a wind from Yahveh, and brought quails from the sea" (perhaps
flying-fish, for sea-quail are not known on the market, at least in these
days); and note this: those quails fell and were stacked up on the face of the
earth "as it were a day’s journey round about the camp, and as it were two
cubits high upon the face of the earth" (Num. 11: 31 )! This simple
inspired narrative, related in one Bible verse, and about which I never beard a
single sermon in my life, is the most stupendous miracle of Divine bounty in
all sacred history, and peremptorily challenges our admiring attention.
MIRACLE AND MATHEMATICS
Let us figure a bit on this astonishing fall of
quails, and see how far figures, which do not lie, may be an aid, or a
handicap, to faith. The quails were stacked up "two cubits high" for
a distance of "a day’s journey round the camp." A Bible cubit is 22
inches; two cubits are therefore 44 inches. A biblical "day’s
journey," according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, is 44,815 meters (1 meter
is 39.37 inches, or 1.1 yards), which equals 49,010 yards, 27.8 miles. Now, the
camp of
Around this camp, twelve miles square, on all
its four sides, lay heaped these miraculous quails, piled 44 inches high.
Assuming, for the sake of a minimum of miracle, and therefore of strain on
faith, that this stack of quails began close to the four sides of the camp and
extended for 27.8 miles in every direction, we have a solid square of quails
measuring from one outer edge to another 67.6 miles, deducting of course the
twelve-mile square occupied by the camp in the center. The solid mass therefore
covered 4569.76 square miles, from which deducting the 144 square miles of the
central camp leaves us 4425.76 square miles of quails piled 44 inches high.
This stack of quails thus covered an area by 500 square miles larger than the
whole states of
One linear mile contains 5280 feet; one square
mile therefore contains 27,878,400 square feet. The whole area of 4425.76
square miles would equal 123,383,107,584 square feet. Each square foot being
covered 44 inches, or 3.66 feet, high with quails, each quail occupying 27
cubic inches of space, with 64 quails to the cubic foot, the total would be
452,404,727,808 cubic feet of quails. A bit of ready reckoning, on this
conservative basis, gives us just 28,953,902,579,712 quails in this divine
prodigy of a pot-hunt! Ever soul of the 2,414,200 of the "hosts of
Yahveh" therefore had the liberal allowance of 11,993,167 quails. We can
well believe, if the Children of
It was a prodigious task to harvest all those
quails; indeed, inspiration tells us, "the people stood up all that day,
and all that night, and all the next day, and they gathered the quails: ... and
they spread them all abroad for themselves round about the camp" (Num.
Devoutly conjuring away all these trifling
speculations, let us behold the climax of tragedy which capped this miracle of divine
bounty. Yahveh had promised his flesh-famishing Children flesh to eat for
"even a whole month," until they should be so gorged with eating
quail that it should come out loathsomely at their nostrils; and Yahveh’s
divine word would seem to be inviolable. But when each of the children of
THE MOSES FAMILY
When Moses started on his divine mission
extraordinary to the Pharaoh of
A very few months later, when Moses had led
the children of
"the name of the one was Gershom; for, he
said, I have been an alien in a strange land: and the name of the other was
Eliezer; for the God of my father, said he, was mine help, and delivered me
from the sword of Pharaoh" (Ex. 18: 3, 4 ). The name of the first son thus
commemorated the sojourn of Moses in the
WHO PROPOSED THE JUDGES OF
Another incident of inspired narrative is also
connected with this visit of Jethro, as related in Exodus 18. Moses was very
much over-worked with the strenuous task of trying to run the whole encampment
alone and to hold in the "stiff-necked and rebellious people," and be
"sat to judge the people from the morning unto the evening"; for
Moses said: "I judge between one and the other, and I do make them know
the statutes of Yahveh and his laws." But this was at Rephidim, before the
"hosts of Yahveh" came to Sinai, where the "statutes and laws of
Yahveh" are said to have originated; so Moses is mistaken in talking about
making known such statutes and laws even before he knew them himself, which, as
we shall see, he never did. Moreover he admits that he was very unsuccessful in
his teaching, for forty years later he complains to his followers: "Yet in
this thing ye did not believe Yahveh your God" (Deut. 1: 32 ).
However, his good pagan father-in-law felt
sorry for Moses, and said to him: "The thing that thou doest is not good.
Thou wilt surely wear away. ... for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art
not able to perform it thyself alone." And Jethro further said:
"Hearken now unto my voice, I will give
thee counsel"; and this was his advice to Moses: "Provide out of all
the people able men. ... and place such over them, to be rulers" over
different sections, "and let them judge the people at all seasons. ... So
Moses hearkened to the voice of his father-in-law, and did all that he had
said. And Moses chose able men, ... and they judged the people" (Ex.
THE TENTS OF
In Egypt the Chosen, though slaves, lived in
houses: they escaped the passover massacre by smearing blood on the "door
posts of their houses"; the Egyptians, being highly civilized, with great
cities, lived also in houses, not in tents. Yet we find the 2,414,200
The encampment of spreading tents must have
presented a beautiful and impressive spectacle, for, when he saw it,
"Balaam lifted up his eyes, and he saw
"How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and
thy tabernacles, O
If the Israelites were in the wilderness at
all, and lived in anything, it was in tents. So for a moment we will consider
these tents, and the holy camp, and several curious features connected with
their encampments. Where did the
The inspired history tells us that they fled
in such haste that they carried only unleavened dough and their kneading
troughs bound up in their clothes on their shoulders, without even any victuals
(Ex. 12: 39 ); there is not a word about heavy and cumbersome tents. Tents are
heavy, with canvas or hair-cloth, ropes, poles, and pegs; in the
And how many tents must they have had? To
crowd indecently ten persons, male and female, old and young, sick and dying,
into each tent would have required at least 241,420 large and heavy tents, to
be lugged in their first flight, and for forty years wandering in the
wilderness. We are nowhere told that the children of Israel had horses, or knew
how to ride; it seems that 750 years later the Chosen could not ride horses
even if they had had them, for Rab-shakeh offered them, on behalf of the King
of Assyria, "two thousand horses, if thou be able on thy part to set
riders upon them" (2 Kings 19: 23 ). And while it is said (Deut. 29: 5 )
that in the whole forty years "your clothes are not waxen old upon you,
and thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot," yet we are not told that
tents were thus providentially preserved. How the clothes and shoes of the
little children who started on the forty-year tramp sufficed for them as they
grew larger, unless the clothes and shoes expanded along with their skins from
year to year, has become an old joke. No such
THE GREAT ENCAMPMENTS
As for their encampments, who shall justly
estimate their size and extent, for a host of two and a half million people,
with all their slaves and camp-followers, and with more than that number of
sheep and cattle? The question would be of no concern if it did not involve
some further strains on faith. Every one of the forty-two times the camp was
pitched (Num. 33 ), there must be suitable space found for some 250,000 tents,
laid out (Num. 2 ) regularly four-square around the holy tabernacle, after that
was constructed, and with the necessary streets and passages, and proper spaces
between the tents. A man in a coffin occupies about twelve square feet, six
feet by two. Living people would not be packed in their tents like corpses or
sardines; they must have at least, say, three times that space, thirty-six
square feet or four square yards each. A tent to house ten persons with minimum
decency must occupy therefore an average of forty square yards.
If the 241,420 such tents were set one against
another, with no intervening space or separating streets, they would occupy
9,656,800 square yards, or over 1995 acres of ground; a little more than three
square miles. But the desert was vast, there was no need for such impossible crowding;
ample room was available for seemly spacing of tents, for streets and areas,
for the great central tabernacle and its court, and for the 22,000 Levites, not
counted in the soldier-census, who must "pitch round about the
tabernacle," as well as space for the rounding up of the millions of
cattle.
These allowances for order, decency, and
comfort would much extend the circuit of the camp, and make more reasonable the
accepted estimate that "this encampment is computed to have formed a
movable city of twelve miles square," or an area of 144 square miles,
which is certainly modest for a population equal to that of Chicago, which
covers 198 square miles. The tabernacle stood in the center, thus six miles
from the outskirts of the camp in either direction.
SOME FEATURES OF CAMP-LIFE
So much for the lay-out of the sacred
encampment. What is the point of faith involved? Whenever a sacrifice of
sin-offering was made by the priest, a daily and constant service, "the
skin of the bullock, and all his flesh, ... even the whole bullock shall he
carry forth without the camp unto a clean place, where the ashes are poured
out, and burn him on the wood with fire" (Lev. 4: 11, 12 ). This was the
personal chore of the priest himself, of whom there were oddly three, Aaron and
his sons Eleazar and Ithamar. And there were thousands upon thousands of
sacrifices, for every imaginable thing and occasion; and the carcasses and
offal of the slaughtered cattle must always be taken "without the
camp" and burned, by these three poor priests, and Father Aaron was over
80 years old. So these chores would keep them going, time after time, six miles
out and six miles back, lugging heavy and bloody carcasses and offal through
the main streets of the camp, incessantly, and leave them no time for their
holy, bloody sacrifices of myriads of animals, as described in Exodus 29, and
all through Leviticus. Moreover, the entire garbage, refuse, ashes, and filth
of every kind of two and a half million people and millions of cattle must be
constantly and with extreme care carried outside the camp, practically under
the awful threat of annihilation; for "Yahveh. thy God walketh in the
midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee;
therefore shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in thee, and
turn away from thee" (Deut. 23: 12-14 ); and everybody who reads the Bible
knows what the Chosen’s enemies used to do to them whenever their Yahveh wasn’t
looking closely after them.
These inspired verses enshrine, too, for our
admiration, material details: even the ordinary personal necessities of nature
must be relieved "without the camp," and covered up by digging with a
paddle (Deut.
Moreover, as Yahveh got angry with his Chosen,
whom he had repeatedly promised to bring into Canaan, and as he caused every
one of them, except Joshua and Caleb, to die in the wilderness, there were on
the average 1700 deaths and funerals per day for forty years, at the rate of 72
per hour, more than one for very minute of every day and all the corpses must
also be carried "without the camp" for burial, an average of six
miles going and returning. And as the census taken at the end of the forty
years shows but a slight decrease in numbers from that taken at the beginning,
the entire host was renewed by a birth-rate of over one a minute for forty
years; and all the debris must be lugged without the camp and disposed of.
Verily the
THE "BURNING QUESTION" OF FUEL
There is also the question of fires and fuel.
The myriads of sacrifices and burnt offerings at the tabernacle, besides the
wasteful burning "without the camp" of practically entire animals,
and that too when the children of
CHAPTER 5
THE FORTY YEARS IN THE WILDERNESS
IN the third month after the hegira from
Mt. Sinai is said by the Bible dictionary,
with a marvelously developed bump of locality, to be "156 miles southeast
of Cairo, Egypt"; but the Encyclopedia Britannica says that the sacred
writers locate the place "only by aid of the imagination" (Vol. 25:
p. 138 ), and that the "Mount of Yahveh" has never been identified.
Even the identification of Sinai, however, would prove none of the stories of
Yahveh to be true, any more than
But if anywhere,
"When thou hast brought forth the people
out of
After these remarkable precautions for mystery
and secrecy, the Chosen were required to be "sanctified," an
operation consisting of washing their clothes (Ex. 19: 10 ) -- though where in
the wilderness they got the water for laundering when they were rioting for
water to drink is not revealed—and of three days’ mortification of the flesh by
abstaining from their one and only recorded pleasurable pastime in the
wilderness the carnal knowledge of their women (19: 15 ). These mystic
directions were given by Yahveh to Moses on the day of arrival at Sinai, when
Moses, without being invited, and apparently without knowing that Yahveh was
there, made two informal calls on Yahveh (19: 3, 8 ). On the second Yahveh said
that he would "come down in sight of all the people" on the third day
thereafter. But it was not Yahveh alone whom Moses visited on these occasions;
the Hebrew text distinctly says: "And Moses went up to the Gods
[ha-Elohim], and Yahveh called unto him from the mountain" (19: 3 ).
Just how these things did pass at that
mysterious place, the different appearances of Yahveh and the numerous
errand-boy trips of eighty-year-old Moses up and down the steep mountain during
a year’s time, is a veritable Chinese puzzle, which we need not try to work
out. In any event, Moses went down and "sanctified the people" in the
manner and form indicated, and built the fence. On the third day, Yahveh, amid
thunders and lightnings, descended in fire upon the mountain, which "was
altogether on a smoke"; and Moses went up for the third visit (
When Moses had hardly got to the top of the
mountain, Yahveh, without so much as "Good morning, Moses," told him:
"Go down, charge the people" about washing up and sanctifying and
making the fence around the mountain (19: 21, 22 ). Moses expostulated that
this had already been done (19: 23 ); but Yahveh cut him short, saying:
"Away, get thee down" (19: 24 ); so, meekly enough, "Moses went
down unto the people, and spake unto them" (19: 25 ), though apparently he
did not tell them of Yahveh’s peculiar command to do what had already been done
three days before, as Moses had reported to him (19: 23 ).
THE MISTAKE ABOUT THE PRIESTS
Before seeking to unravel what next is
related, we may note another big mistake that Yahveh made. In sending Moses
back to do what had already been done, Yahveh expressly commanded: "And
let the priests also, which come near to Yahveh, sanctify themselves" (19:
22 ); and he told Moses that Brother Aaron might come up with him next time;
but, said Yahveh, "let not the priests and the people" try to come up
(19: 24 ). This is a remarkable slip on the part of Yahveh, for there were no
priests at that time; the priesthood was not instituted until later in the
Sinaic proceedings, when Aaron and his four sons were designated to be the
first priests (Ex. 28: 1 ), and it was made death for any one else to presume
to act as priest. As further proof of there being no priests yet, we find
Moses, after delivering the first batch of "law" (Ex. 24: 4, 5 ),
himself building an altar under the hill, twelve phallic mazzeboth, and sending
"young men of the children of Israel" to do the priestly job of
making burnt offerings and sacrificing peace-offerings unto Yahveh; for all the
Chosen were at that time "a kingdom of priests" (Ex. 19: 6 ) -- every
man his own priest. And Brother Aaron, as a priest, during Moses’ next
forty-day sojourn up on the mountain, made gods of the golden calves, and
sacrificed to them, thus again proving that there was no "law" as to
"priests of Yahveh," and that "Thou shalt have no other gods
before me" was not yet law.
The puzzles of the giving of the law, and the
ten commandments, here at Sinai, we reserve for consideration in another
chapter, and will proceed with the wonders of the wanderings in the wilderness.
THE TWO CENSUSES IN THE WILDERNESS
Before leaving Sinai, in the beginning of the
second year of the exodus (Num. 1: 1 ), Yahveh ordered a census to be taken of
"every male from twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go
forth to war in Israel" (1: 3 ); and they were so numbered by Moses and
Aaron. If the all-knowing Yahveh, who is reputed to number even all the hairs
of the head, had simply stated the number himself, it would have saved his
inspired recorder much trouble besides some suspicions of padded returns.
Indeed, this is exactly what we are surprised to find is revealed as having
happened, in very curious anticipation of the formal and tedious census
enumeration. For, at Sinai, some months before the taking of the first census,
Yahveh ordered assessments to be laid on the people for the expenses of making
and outfitting the holy ark and tabernacle; and he commanded: "When there
thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall
they give every man a ransom for his soul unto Yahveh, that there may be no
plague among them when thou numberest them" (Ex. 30: 11, 12 ) -- a very
persuasive argument to pay up. Consequently there was levied upon every soldier
of Israel "a bekah for very man, that is, half a shekel, ... for every one
that went to be numbered, from twenty years old and upward, for 603,550
men" (Ex. 38: 26 ) -- the exact number disclosed by the first census when
it was later taken. So the whole labor was unnecessary.
The census was taken by tribes, and curiously
enough, every single tribe polled even numbers of hundreds except one, Gad,
which had an odd fifty in its tally.
Again, at the end of the forty years’
wandering in the wilderness, and just after the massacre of the plague of fiery
serpents, another like census was taken in the plains of Moab, near Jordan; and
here the inspired total is rightly given as 601,730 (Num. 26: 51 ). Evidently
the birth-rate had not quite kept pace with the natural mortality and the
frequent large massacres by Yahveh of his
SOME CENSUS ODDITIES
Several curiosities of these two censuses may
be briefly noticed. We have seen how extraordinary are the inspired vital
statistics which serve as the basis of the accepted figures showing that
seventy persons had expanded in only four generations into quite two and a half
millions or more. The editor of the Self-Interpreting Bible appends a note to
the first tabulation of returns, saying: "If to this number (603,550 ) we
add the Levites, and all the women and children below twenty years of age, it
will make about three millions of Israelites, besides the ‘mixed multitude’"!
But in order not to impose upon
One of the sons of Jacob migrating into
THE LEVITES
As the sons of Le6: or the Levites, came early
into prominence, we may briefly follow their family genealogy. In Genesis,
"the sons of Levi: Gershon, Kohath, and Merarill (46: 11 ), are among the
70 Jacobites who migrate to
THE MOTHERS OF
We have noted already the returns of the first
census, at Sinai, giving 603,550 warriors over twenty years of age, 22,000 male
Levites, and an estimated total of nearly 2,500,000 the hosts of Yahveh. Now
the credit of this whole story is impeached by another inspired contradiction.
Yahveh had first claimed to himself, as sanctified, or devoted, "all the
firstborn, whatsoever openeth the womb among the children of
Now, the male sons of all order of birth,
"from twenty years of age and upward, able to bear arms in Israel,"
(who of course included many first-born sons), are averred to have been
603,550: the other males, those under twenty years of age and over military age
and the unfit for service, would bring the total males to approximately
one-half of the total host of 2,414,200, or about 1,207,100 males; all of whom
must of course have had Hebrew mothers. For 22,273 mothers to have 1,207,100
sons would require every mother in
THE PUZZLE OF "SAME" OR "NOT SAME"
When Yahveh first spoke to Moses in regard to
the
Now for the performances. We pass to the Book
of Numbers. The hosts left Sinai and marched forward promptly and without much
incident to very near the borders of the promised land, quite ready to enter
it, and camped at Kadesh (Num. 13: 2,3 ). Kadesh (Heb., holy) is thus the first
station of the forty-two in the wilderness; but in the list of stations in
Numbers 3i3: Kadesh is the last, just before
Yahveh had now one of his frequent bursts of
anger, and said:
"I will smite them with pestilence,"
and kill them all; but Moses cajoled Yahveh out of his fatal purpose by an
argument to his divine vanity, saying: "Now, if thou shalt kill all the
people as one man, then the nations which have heard of the fame of thee will
speak, saying, Because Yahveh was not able to bring this people into the land
which he swore unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness"
(14: 16 ). Yahveh, seeing the force of this, compromised by swearing: "As
I live. ... surely they shall not see the land which I swore unto their
fathers, ... save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun. But
your little ones, ... them will I bring in; ... but as for you, your carcasses,
they shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall wander in the
wilderness forty years" (
We need not here follow their unhappy rambles
of nearly forty years, until "in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month,
on the first day of the month" (Deut. 1: 3 ), we find the "hosts of
Yahveh" -- Yahveh only knows where. According to verse 1, "These be
the words which Moses spake [at this time] unto all
Moses begins (Deut. 1: 6 ) as if he were
speaking to the identical host which left Egypt forty years before and encamped
under Sinai: "Yahveh our God spake to us in Horeb"; "And I spake
unto you at that time" (1: 9 ); "And I commanded you at that time all
the things which ye should do" (1: 18 ); "And when we departed from
Horeb" (1: 19 ) we did this and that, and ye suggested, and I sent spies
to spy out the land; and "ye murmured in your tents" (1: 26 ) and
"Yahveh heard the voice of your words, and was wroth, and swore, saying:
Surely there shall not one of this evil generation see that good land" (1:
34 ); and "Moreover, your little ones, they shall go thither, and unto
them will I give it" (1: 39 ); and so on through this and the next
chapter; "we" and "ye" did this and that, until "the
space in which we came from Kadesh-Barnea, until we were come over the Brook Zered,
was thirty-eight years; until all the generation of men of war were wasted out
from among the host, as Yahveh swore unto them" (2: 14 ). First,
"ye" and "we" are the same host that left Egypt; then that
host is all dead, and "ye" and "we" are a different host
altogether: id est, the now-grown-up "little ones" of the original
host and the after-born. Later (5: 2, 3 ) in the same harangue, it is
positively stated that the host to whom Moses was then and there speaking was
the identical host whom he had led out of Egypt, and who hadn’t died off at
all: "Yahveh our God made a covenant with us in Horeb [at Sinai,
thirty-eight years before]. Yahveh made not this covenant with our fathers, but
with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day"! Either these are
bald contradictions, or there was an unrecorded resurrection of all the dead
whose "carcasses fell in the wilderness" to hear this swan-song of
Moses, and his review of their manifold sins and shortcomings.
Again (8: 2, 4 ) in the same harangue the
inspired historian contradicts his former story of the death of the original
hosts during the forty years, and explicitly admits that they are alive:
"And thou shalt remember all the way
which Yahveh thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness. ... Thy
raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty
years." The original host must have survived, for the clothes and shoes of
the original children, which were miraculously preserved and enlarged with the
growth of the wearers, would hardly have comfortably fitted, as hand-me-downs,
the bodies and feet of the deceased original wearers’ children. Again (Deut.
11: 2, 3, 5, 7, 10 ) the assertion of identity is made in unequivocal terms:
"And know ye this day: for I speak not with your children which have not
known, and which have not seen the chastisement of Yahveh your God, ... And his
miracles, and his acts, which he did in the midst of Egypt unto Pharaoh; ...
And what he did unto you in the wilderness, until ye came into this place; ...
But your eyes have seen all the great acts of Yahveh which he did. ... For the
land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the
THE TABERNACLE AND ITS ACTIVITIES
Yahveh and Moses spent a good part of forty
days on Sinai, again without eating or drinking (Ex. 34: 28 ), engaged in
framing plans and specifications for the tabernacle or sanctuary, in which were
kept the holy altar and the wonder-working ark, and in devising the whole
system of priests and priestly services. The tabernacle, as described in Exodus
26: was a portable tent about 18 feet broad by 54 feet in length, with a door
in one end. It and the ark, with their furnishings, must have been marvels of
luxurious beauty (or the product of remarkable imagination) -- with gold, and
silver, and brass, and blue and purple and scarlet fine linen cloths, and
precious stones galore. One may wonder where all this finery—the property of
slaves—came from, in the wilderness, unless it was a part of the spoils
"borrowed" from the Egyptians; but we are told that the children of
Israel hurried off with nothing except their bundles of clothes and
kneading-troughs and a little dough (Ex. 12: 34 ).
The tabernacle was to stand in the center of a
court, or yard, about 180 feet long by 90 feet broad (100 X 50 cubits; Ex. 27:
11, 12 ), surrounded by silver-fellated pillars about 71/2 feet high. It was
known as the tabernacle of the congregation, and was the central point of the camp.
The area of the court-yard was 1800 square yards, and that of the tabernacle
108 square yards. Deducting the area of the tabernacle from that of the
court-yard leaves a free space within the court-yard of 1692 square yards. Why
all these details? All Scripture is important, and several wondrous tales hang
thereby.
In Leviticus 8: 3-5, as in many similar
passages, Yahveh said unto Moses: "Gather thou all the congregation
together unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And Moses did as
Yahveh commanded him; and the assembly was gathered together unto the door of
the tabernacle of the congregation." This congregation, or assembly, as
appears in scores of places, was the whole people, the entire "hosts of
Yahveh," more than 2,414,200 strong, as is also proved by the verses to be
cited below. It is needless to calculate; the millions of the
Here as often elsewhere, it is said: "And
Moses said unto the congregation"; in Deut. 1: 1, it is more explicitly
stated: "These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel"; and
in 5: 1: "And Moses called all Israel and said unto them"; and, most
explicitly, in Joshua 8: 35: "There was not a word of all that Moses
commanded, which Joshua read not before all the congregation of Israel, with
the women, and the little ones, and the strangers that were conversant among
them." A wayfaring man, though a fool, need not be told that Moses could
not speak nor Joshua read so that the hundred-thousandth part of "all
Israel" could hear them, or get anywhere near the door of the tabernacle:
unless, indeed, the truth is that the total horde of fugitive slaves, if it
ever existed at all, was no more than the three to five thousand to which
nature would have increased the original seventy in four generations.
SACRIFICES
The Book of Leviticus is almost wholly a code
of most elaborate and burdensome regulations of priestcraft and bloody
sacrifices. One grows dizzy and nauseated in simply scanning the sanguinary
catalogue of burnt-offerings, meat-offerings, peace-offerings, sin-offerings,
trespass-offerings, of superstitious and blood-reeking butchery, which fills
these pages. Nearly every act of life and of death involved some propitiatory
sacrifice, thousands of them every day, on the part of these more than two
millions of poor victims of their Yahveh. Whole regiments of priests would seem
to be required for these holy services. How many priests does divine revelation
afford us for these millions? Three!
"Thou shalt appoint Aaron and his sons,
and they shall wait on their priest’s office: and the stranger that cometh nigh
shall be put to death" (Num. 3: 10 ); a murderous priestly monopoly in the
Moses family, limited to Brother Aaron and his sons in perpetuity, under
penalty of death.
Skipping all the other multitudinous kinds of
sacrifices which kept this holy trinity busy (if they ever got time to make
them at all), let us take one species, upon which we can calculate with some
probability from our inspired data. If Yahveh kept his awful word of wrath and
killed off the entire original millions who set out with Moses from Egypt, with
the exception of the "little ones, your children, which in that day had no
knowledge between good and evil," (Deut. 1: 39 ), and if the balance of
the millions who reached the promised land were born during the forty years in
the wilderness, then, as we have seen, these births must have averaged some
1700 for every day of the forty years.
Now, according to the Holy Law of God,
child-bearing was the worst of defilements: the mother was "unclean"
for forty or eighty days according as her child was a boy or a girl; for forty
or eighty days she must undergo a humiliating "purification"; she
must "touch no hallowed thing, nor come into the sanctuary, until the days
of her purifying be fulfilled"! Then, at the end of that God-imposed
penance, "she shall bring a lamb of the first year for a burnt offering,
and a young pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering, unto the door of the
tabernacle of the congregation, unto the priest, Who shall offer it before
Yahveh, and make an atonement for her; and she shall be cleansed from the issue
of her blood" (Lev. 12: 6, 7 ). A sin-atonement and purification for
obedience to Yahveh’s very first command: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and
replenish the earth"! But it was good "graft" for the priests
who ordained it.
These lambs and turtle-doves must be slain,
cleaned, washed, burnt, the blood smeared on the bloody holy altar, and the
offal and feathers "carried without the camp" (Lev.
But, the divine law of compensation was
strikingly exemplified here: the laborer was indeed worthy of his hire. These
three poor over-worked bloody drudges of priests were bounteously rewarded, in
the matter of eating, if they ever really found time to eat. Out of many
bounteous provisions of Yahveh’s law for his monopolist priests, one (Num. 18:
9-11 ) may be cited to show the munificence of Yahveh to his holy servants:
"This shall be thine of the most holy things, reserved from the fire:
every oblation of theirs, every meat-offering, [etc., etc.,] which they shall
render unto me, shall be most holy for thee and for thy sons. In the most holy
place shalt thou eat it; every male shall eat it." All this and much more
"I have given [unto Aaron and his sons], by a statute forever,"
Yahveh decrees. Aaron at first had four sons, but two of them, Nadab and Abihu,
were early slain by Yahveh because they put "strange fire." into
their censers (Lev. 10: 1, 2 ); this left but Aaron and two sons and their
families to enjoy the daily offerings of the 2,414,200. And as Yahveh had
commanded, he must be obeyed: these countless thousands of offerings daily must
be eaten, by the three and their families, and "in the most holy place of
the sanctuary."
Moses must have suspected that they were
violating this divine edict and not eating all they ought to eat: the remains
of a goat sin-offering were missing from the sanctuary larder, with no signs
that Aaron’s sons had done their duty by it. So "Moses diligently sought
the goat of the sin-offering, and, behold, it was burnt: and he was angry with
Eleazar and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron which were left alive, saying, Wherefore
have ye not eaten the sin-offering? ... ye should indeed have eaten it in the
holy place, as I commanded" (Lev.
MORE OF THE PRIESTS AND LEVITES
A like munificence towards his holy priests is
shown by the allotment to them a little later (Josh. 21: 19 ) of "thirteen
cities, with their suburbs," when there were but two sons of Aaron, who
was now himself dead, and only one of them, Phineas, had a son. The priests
were thus as bountifully supplied with residences as with victuals. The
Levites, too, received their full share of the bounties of Yahveh. They were
the
For this pious service, the Levites were not
numbered among the common tribes, but separately; they were then appointed
"over the tabernacle of testimony, and over all the vessels thereof, and
over all things that belong to it: they shall bear the tabernacle, and all the
vessels thereof; and they shall minister unto it, and the stranger that cometh
nigh shall be put to death" (Num. 1: 47-51 ). At the first census, as we
have seen, these Levites, "from thirty years old and upward even unto
fifty years old, every one that came to do the service of the ministry ... in
the tabernacle of the congregation, even those that were numbered of them"
were 8580 -- a whole army brigade to do the kitchen-police work and tend the
pots and kettles of this little 18-by-54,-foot tent in the wilderness, and to
lug it and its holy ark from place to place, while only three priests were
provided to do all the heavy work of the service. And the Levites were made
perpetual pensioners on the bounty of all
SOME JAHVISTIC MURDERINGS
All the miseries, and rebellions, and
abominations of the
Two sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, just
consecrated priests, and possibly not yet skilled in their new functions, put
the wrong kind of fire into their sacred incense-burners, and there came forth
ire from Yahveh and devoured them. The compassionate God commanded their
bereaved father not to mourn for his murdered sons, "lest ye die, and lest
wrath come upon all the people" (Lev. 10:
1-6 ). The son of a widow swore, and Yahveh
ordered the congregation to stone him to death (Lev. 24: 11-14 ); and then,
wholly ex post facto, for the first time decreed a law against the offense (24:
15, 16 ). The people murmured, saying: "Who shall give us flesh to
eat?"; and when Yahveh heard of it, "his anger was kindled, and the
fire of Yahveh burnt among them throughout the camp" (Num. 11: 1 ); and
later, for a like offense, he smote his people with a very great plague. How
many were massacred by the fire and the plague Yahveh, who committed it, only
knows. A man gathered sticks on the tabooed sabbath; Yahveh was speedily
consulted as to his fate, and he commanded all the people to stone the culprit
to death.
Again, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and 250
"princes of the assembly" in this "kingdom of priests and an
holy nation" wished to act as priests against the monopoly of Aaron and
Sons, saying to Moses and Aaron: "Ye take too much upon you, seeing all
the congregation are holy." Moses retorted that Yahveh would show them
"who is holy." So the "jealous God" caused them all to
stand aside "in the door of their tents, and their wives, and their sons,
and their little children"; and at his potent word, "the earth opened
her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses [but they were only tents],
and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods. They ... went
down alive into Sheol, and the earth closed upon them; and they perished from
among the congregation. ... And there came out a fire from Yahveh, and consumed
the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense" (Num.
Just before entering the land of promise, some
of the Chosen took to loving some of the daughters of Moab, "and the anger
of Yahveh was kindled against Israel, and Yahveh said unto Moses, Take all the
heads of the people, and hang them up before Yahveh against the sun, that the
fierce anger of Yahveh may be turned away from Israel" (Num. 25: 4-7 );
and 24,000 of Yahveh’s children were murdered and their heads strung up, to
appease the angry God.
THE RAPE OF MIDIAN
The most revolting villainy in history, sacred
or profane, if it were not attributed to so merciful a God, and one of the
biggest fables extant, but for being related in the Holy Word of Yahveh, which
is alleged to be unexceptionably true, is recorded in Numbers 31, when Yahveh’s
valiant warriors warred with Midian, the land, be it remembered, of one of
Moses’ wives, and of Jethro, his father-in-law, where Moses had lived many
years as a fugitive murderer. Midian, as shown on Bible maps, was far away beyond
Sinai, in the Arabian desert; the hosts of Yahveh were at this very time,
immediately before the death of Moses (31: 2 ), in "the camp at the plains
of Moab, which are by Jordan near Jericho"— therefore several hundred
miles from Midian, with all the great wilderness of their forty years’ misery
stretching between. Of a sudden Yahveh said to Moses: "Avenge the children
of
These are the wonderful accomplishments of the
12,000, which quite pale the exploits of the celebrated 10,000 of Xenophon.
They marched across the hundreds of miles of wilderness, "warred with
Midian," slew all the male Midianites, slew the five kings of Midian
(rather numerous royalty for a small desert tribe), and slew poor old Balaam,
him of the talking ass (though be lived hundreds of miles away at Pethor in
Mesopotamia); they took all the women of Midian captives, with all their little
ones, and took all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods;
they burnt all their cities, and all their goodly castles, with fire (it is a
question how many "cities" and how many "goodly castles" a
tribe of Bedouins living in a corner of the desert would have); and they took
all the spoil, and prey, both of men (but they had already slain "all the
males"; 31: 7 ), and of beasts; and they brought the captives, and the
cattle, and the spoils back hundreds of miles across the wilderness into the
camp near Jericho, and delivered all to Moses. And, if anything could be more
wonderful, all this was achieved without the loss of a single warrior.
These 12,000 wonderful soldiers of Yahveh
took, according to the inspired account, about 100,000 human captives, women
and children, over 675,000 sheep, more than 72,000 beeves, and over 61,000
asses (31: 32-34 ), 9, total of over 808,000 head of live animals, and brought
them all across the deserts, "where there was no water," for some
three hundred miles to the sacred camp. Yet with this addition of live-stock to
their already great flocks and herds, "until they came unto the borders of
the
When the meek and holy man of God saw the
multitude of female captives alive, "Moses was wroth with the officers of
the host," and in his holy wrath he demanded: "Have ye saved all the
women alive?" (Num. 31: 14, 15 ). Then, in the name of his God, the
Merciful, he gave this bloody order, which if given by an Apache war-chief
crazed by Christian fire-water, would have damned him and his tribe and the
"Great Spirit" of his tribe to execration forever: "Now
therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath
known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a
man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves" (31: 17 )! So records the
Holy Word of Yahveh, writ by "holy men of old as they were moved by the
Holy Ghost." The
THE WONDERFUL LAST DAYS OF MOSES
Let us pause here a moment, while we recover
as best we may from this inspiring revelation of Yahveh’s Holy Word, and cast a
rapid glance at the rush of divinely appointed events to their great
consummation, the triumphal entry of Yahveh’s Chosen—this "kingdom of
priests and an holy nation"—into the promised land. Surely, after keeping
his
On the "first day of the fifth month of
the fortieth year" after the memorable exodus from Egypt, Aaron died in
Mount Hor (Num. 20: 28; 33: 38 ); though Moses himself, in amazing
contradiction, elsewhere records that Brother Aaron died in Mosera, just after
leaving Sinai, thirty-nine years before (Deut. 10: 6 ). However this may be,
Moses uttered his last harangue "in the fortieth year, in the eleventh
month, on the first day of the month" (Deut. 1: 3 ), and died promptly
thereafter, "on Nebo’s lonely mountain, this side of
MOURNING FOR AARON
1. Upon the death of Aaron, "all
WAR WITH
2. Then,
TEN ENCAMPMENTS
3. Then the children of
WAR WITH AMORITES
4. From the last encampment, at Pisgah, in the
land of Moab (Num. 21: 20 ), farther north of Edom and more distant from the
Red Sea, the children sent messengers to Sihon, King of the Amorites, to
negotiate passage through his lands, which was refused. The two peoples
thereupon went to war;
WAR WITH JAAZER
5. Then Moses sent spies to Jaazer, fought
against it, took all its villages, and drove the inhabitants out (
WAR WITH
6. Next the hosts of Yahveh "turned and
went up by the way of Bashan," engaged in a war with the redoubtable giant
King Og, "smote him, and all his sons, and all his people, until there was
none left him alive: and they possessed his land" (21: 33-35 ).
This episode is recorded more in detail in
Deuteronomy 3: 3-6:
"We took all his cities, ...
But we are surprised to find several more
chapters of this History of Numbers filled with exploits recorded to have taken
place after the conquest of Bashan and before the swan-song of Moses—events
which must have occupied many weary months or years of any history but that of
Yahveh.
THE EPISODE OF BALAAM
1. In the very next chapter, Numbers 22: the
hosts "Set forward, and pitched in the plains of
Balaam may have been a Midianite. The
Midianites, as we have seen, inhabited the extreme southeast of the
When they arrived and delivered their message,
"God [Elohim, gods] came unto Balaam" (Num. 22: 9 ), and had a
dream-talk with him, and asked: "What men are these with thee?"—as if
an all-knowing God ought not to know without asking; and God commanded Balaam
not to go (
SPORTING WITH
2. After this failure of strategy, King Balak
and Balaam went their respective ways; the hosts of Yahveh entered
CENSUS TAKING
3.Then "it came to pass after the
plague"—how long after is not revealed—that Yahveh commanded Moses (Num.
26: 2 ) to take a second census of the hosts of Yahveh, "all that are able
to go to war in Israel, from twenty years old and upward." As the time
required to take the census of 601,730 soldiers is not stated, we will not
count it in this score.
EXPEDITION TO MIDIAN
4. After several chapters of new laws said to
have been handed down by Yahveh through Moses, we have the inspired history
(Num. 3i) of the fearful expedition, already described, of the twelve thousand
against Midian, three hundred miles away across the wilderness, and the utter
destruction of the Midianites, including the luckless Balaam, who was now
evidently in Midian instead of at Pethor of Mesopotamia. Surely such a great
military achievement as this, including a march of six hundred miles through
scorching deserts, a return trip with thousands of women and children and
nearly a million cattle, and the destruction of a whole nation, must have taken
a month or six weeks at a minimum allowance,
"MOPPING UP"
5. After all this, time was found for the very
elaborate parcelling out and settling of the whole
"the kingdom of Sihon king of the
Amorites, and the kingdom of Og king of Bashan, the land, with the cities
thereof in the coasts, even the cities of the country roundabout," all to
the east of the river Jordan—upon the tribes of Reuben and of Gad, and the
half- tribe of Manasseh, who did not want to go west over the river (Num. 32:
16-42 ). Moses stipulated with them for their military aid in the further
conquest, and gave them the land; and they "built" (probably rebuilt,
as all the cities of these two kingdoms are said to have been "utterly
destroyed") fifteen "fenced cities," named in the text (32: 34-38
), and a number of "sheep-folds" for their "very great multitude
of cattle." Moreover, what is more remarkable (for every city had been
utterly destroyed when they captured the kingdoms), they made military
campaigns against Gilead, "and took it, and dispossessed the Amorite which
was in it" (32: 39 ) -- though every inhabitant had already been
massacred; and they captured a number of villages and small towns, and settled
their families in all these places throughout the eastern borders of the Jordan
before making ready, as they had agreed with Moses, to "go armed before
the children of Israel" to help conquer the promised land west of Jordan
(32: 32 ). Such operations of allotment, city-building, family-settling, and
further conquest must have consumed considerable time, a month, six months, a
year—how can one tell, when "the ways of Yahveh are past finding
out?" and we have no revelation on the point, except that it was all
within the six months already replete with notable events. There was a long
delay in order to "build cities," and not only cities, but walled,
armed cities, although sixty of them had just been captured (Deut. 3: 3-5 );
and such defended cities were necessary for defense against the inhabitants of
the land of Og, King of Baslian—of whom "none was left him alive"
(Num. 21: 35 ); for the warriors of the tribes who were going to settle in
these eastern districts asked time, before crossing Jordan to the conquest, to
build walled cities to leave their families in, so that "our little ones
shall dwell in the fenced cities because of the inhabitants of the land"
(Num. 32: 17 ).
The closing cantos of Numbers are largely
devoted to detailed plans for the allotment and settlement of the territories
east of Jordan, among the remaining warrior tribes and the kitchen-police
Levites—when the hosts of Yahveh, captained by Joshua and, convoyed by an angel
and the hornets, should have triumphantly possessed the land which Yahveh had
so often promised to go before and prepare for them. Just how all these divine
promises and covenants were performed. we shall soon see. First we pause to
consider briefly but wonderingly the Puzzling problem of the giving of the law
at Sinai, in the first year of the exodus.
CHAPTER 6
THE "TEN COMMANDMENTS" AND THE "LAW"
EVERYBODY in Christian communities knows,
supposedly, and many can even quote the "ten commandments" given by
God to Moses on Sinai, and hung neatly framed in all well-conducted Sunday
schools, Christian and Jewish alike, for here the two faiths are at one. But to
discover the genuine "ten commandments" in the Hebrew Scriptures is
an exercise for the ingenuity of Aristotle. Even more intricate and hopeless is
the task of unravelling the mysteries of the "law of God by the hand of
Moses," said to have been delivered amid the clouds and thunders and lightnings
of Sinai. An examination of the texts of the "Five Books of Moses"
demonstrates that Moses did not promulgate these commandments and laws; and
even cursory review of the religious history of
DIVERGENT DECALOGUES
There are generally recognized to be two, but,
as we shall see, there are actually three, versions of the "ten
commandments"; and the giving of the "law" is quite variously
reported by the Elohist and Jahvist scribes. As the decalogue is for the most
part reported in the same language in the two usually recognized versions, 1
shall call attention only to the points of material difference in their texts,
and then consider the third version.
It is first set out in Exodus 20: 2-17, and is
repeated in Deuteronomy 5: 6-21. The first verse of the Elohist version begins:
"And Elohim spake all these words, saying"; then follow the reputed
"ten words"; and this is the first law recorded in the Book of
Exodus, except as to the Passover and slavery in chapter 12. The fourth
commandment, regarding the Sabbath day, contains several important differences
in the two versions. In the Elohist version (Ex. 20: 8 ) it begins.
"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." The Yahweh version
(Deut.
The Elohist continues (Ex.
"in it thou shalt not do any work, thou,
nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy
cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates."
But the second version, instead of simply
"nor thy cattle," adds (Deut.
"nor thin ox, nor thine ass, nor any of
thy cattle"; and after the words "thy stranger that is within thy
gates," adds:
"that thy manservant and thy maidservant
may rest as well as thou."
This is not all. In the Exodus version, after
the words "within thy gates," the reporter adds, as the "reason
for the rule" (Ex.
"For in six days Yahweh made heaven and
earth. ... and rested the seventh day: wherefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath
day, and hallowed it."
But the second version, after adding the words
"may rest as well as thou," gives an entirely different statement of
the "reason" (Deut. 5: 15 ) thus:
"And thou shalt remember that thou wast a
servant in the
There are several other noticeable differences
between these two versions. In the first (Ex.
In Exodus the four commandments, "Thou
shalt not kill, commit adultery, steal, and bear false witness," are
stated in four separate verses (13-16 ) in both the English and the Hebrew
texts; and each begins: "Thou shalt not"; in the English version of
Deuteronomy the four commandments are stated in separate verses (5: 17-20 ),
though they are all in one verse (5: 17 ) of the Hebrew text, and each, after
the first, reads: "Neither shalt thou." The commandment "Thou
shalt not covet" begins in Exodus (20: 17 ): "Thou shalt not covet
thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife"; in
Deuteronomy (5: 21; in the Hebrew, 5: 18 ) it begins: "Neither shalt thou
covet thy neighbour's wife; neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour's house,"
and adds "his field," which is not in the Exodus version. These may
seem small differences, but they are differences. Yahweh is not reported as
having given two sets of "ten words"; and what he said only once, he
could not have said in two ways; Yahweh himself asserted that he did
"write upon these [second] tables the words which were in the first
tables, which thou breakest" (Ex. 34: 1 ). Revelation should at least be
consistent and accurate. But now to the origins and substance of the "ten
commandments," if we may discover them.
Yahweh, as we have seen in Exodus 19, sent
Moses immediately back down the mountain after their third conference, with a
few curt words about sanctifying the non-existent priests and building the
already built fence; and with not a word as to any law or commandments or
tables of stone. "So Moses went down unto the people, and spake unto
them" (
Then immediately follows chapter 20, headed by
the Bible editors "The Ten Commandments," and beginning with the words:
"And Elohim spake all these words, saying" (20: 1 ); and what the
Gods spake was the ten commandments, first or Elohist edition! Moses was not on
the "Mountain of the Gods" at that time at all, but had just come
down to report about the priests and the fence.
And "all these words" which Elohim
"spake" were not only the so-called "ten words" of the
decalogue (Ex. 20: 3-17 ), but four whole chapters (Ex. 43 ) of law on many
subjects, much of it very puerile and barbarous. And as Elohim "spake all
these words, saying" (Ex. 20: 1 ) them to Moses, clearly they were not
written by the finger of Yahweh on two tables of stone -- not at this time
anyhow.
These four chapters of other "law"
immediately following the Elohist version of the ten commandments begin (Ex.
20: 22 ) with the words: "And Yahweh said unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say
unto the children of Israel"; and chapter 21 begins: "Now these are
the judgments [laws] which thou shalt set before them?' (21: 1 ). It is
explicitly recorded that "Moses came and told the people all the words of
Yahweh" -- the whole four chapters of law told to the entire 2,414,000 of
them; "and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words
which Yahweh hath said will we do" (Ex. 24: 3 ), though they never did, in
all their idol-worshipping Bible history.
Divine revelation then informs us that, after
thus telling them to all the people, "Moses wrote all the words of
Yahweh" -- evidently during that night, for he then "rose up early in
the morning" (24: 4 ), and he "took the book of the covenant [which
he had just then written], and read in the audience of the people" and the
people again promised to perform it all (24: 7 ). And Moses immediately, after
receiving orally, repeating orally, writing into a Book of Covenant, and
promulgating the law forbidding the making of "any likeness of
anything" in heaven, earth, or hell, and the bowing down to the gods of
the heathen -- "but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break
down their images" (mazzeboth; Ex. 23: 24 ) -- rose up and builded his
altar under the hill, "and twelve pillars" (mazzeboth, Ex. 24: 4 ).
This is more evidence that the law denouncing this very thing was not given
through Moses the very day before, and did not yet exist.
THE TABLES OF STONE
Evidently now the whole thing had been
finished -- the so- called ten commandments, followed by four whole chapters of
"law" (Ex. 43 ), had been duly spoken by Yahweh, while apparently
Moses was down in the camp, after his abrupt dismissal from his third visit to
Yahweh. And not yet a word about any tables of stone.
Here occurs an odd episode, a dinner-party or
banquet given by the Gods to celebrate, apparently, the giving of the divine
law. For as soon as the last words were spoken, Yahweh extends this invitation:
"And unto Moses he said: Come up unto Yahweh, thou, and Aaron, Nadab, and
Abihu, and seventy of the elders of
During this celebration of the "giving of
the law" Yahweh very unexpectedly turns to Moses and summons him for a
fifth conference, saying: "Come up to me into the mount, and be there:
and," said Yahweh, here for the first time referring to this matter,
"I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I
have written; that thou mayest teach them" (Ex. 24: 12 ); though all these
commandments are already on record as having been dictated by Yahweh and
written in a book by Moses and taught to the people several chapters earlier,
following his third mountain-climb and return to camp.
THE FIFTH MOUNTAIN TRIP
So Moses went up again, for the fifth time,
into the Mount of the Gods, and Yahweh kept himself hidden from Moses for six
days in a cloud (Ex. 24: 15, 16 ), while Moses had to pass the time as best he
could in the dark. On the seventh day Yahweh called Moses into the cloud,
"and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights," without
anything to eat or drink (Ex. 24: 15-18 ). The next seven chapters (25-31 ) are
entirely taken up by the almighty Architect of the universe in dictating
minutest details of drafting plans, of carpentry, upholstering, tailoring, and
general handicraft for making a most holy tabernacle and ark, gaudily adorned
with, evidently, stolen Egyptian finery, for that is all they had. Full
instructions are given for all the sacred ceremonials, such as killing a ram
and putting some of its blood upon the tip of the right ear of Brother Aaron,
and upon the tips of the right ears of his four sons, and upon their right
thumbs and right big toes, and then sprinkling the blood on the holy altar of
Yahweh (Ex. 29: 19, 20 ), and such like holy mysteries. And the Mighty God
concocted a special kind of patent perfumery which should be "holy unto
Yahweh," and laid down the fatal penalty: "Whosoever shall make like
unto that, to smell thereto, shall even be cut off from his people" (Ex.
30: 34-38 ) -- murdered for the glory of the God.
All this was the work of Infinite Wisdom for
forty days -- instead of teaching these holy ones civilization and humanity,
and common decency and honesty, and, most of all, to tell the truth, instead of
the atrocious things they say about God in what they presumptuously call his
Holy Word. Four times amid the awful fires and thunders of Sinai the fateful
injunction was reiterated by the God: "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its
mother's milk"; and reams of stone tablets, or whatever other writing
material was used, were covered with childish medicine-man hocus-pocus for
telling whether a poor victim had leprosy, or some other loathsome infection,
with maudlin incantations for his "purification," if by chance he
recovered from it, all alone and unattended, in the filthy lazaretto outside the
holy camp; but there is never a single word from the All-Wise God, the
"Great Physician," who calls himself "the Lord who healeth
thee," about how to cure leprosy and other diseases, or how to prevent
them; nor a word anywhere of hygiene, sanitation, useful sciences, or any of
the common humanities. If a few of these things had been laid down for the
Chosen, they might have been, to their lasting advantage, somewhat less of a
"peculiar people" and have escaped the ravages of some of the plagues
which have devastated their promised land from that time to the present time.
THE FIRST TABLES OF STONE
At the end of these forty days, Yahweh, we are
told, "gave unto Moses two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written
with the finger of Elohim") Ex. 31: 18 ); and presumably containing all
the "law and commandments which I have written" (Ex. 24: 12 ), about
which Yahweh spake when he invited Moses up for this fifth meeting, and which
Moses had already written in his book of the covenant (Ex. 24: 4 ) after his third
mountain trip.
It is evident, if anything can be evident from
these muddled records, that these first tables of stone did not contain the
"ten commandments" of chapter 20; but contained only, if anything,
the building plans and specification for the tabernacle and the ark (Ex. 25: 40
), and the other matters set out, drawn up during the forty days of the fifth
trip up the "Mountain of the Gods" and detailed in chapters 25-31, as
we have seen.
THE INCIDENT OF THE GOLDEN CALF
While Moses dallied forty-six days on the
"Mount of the Gods" conning all those precious revelations of
Yahweh's holy will, the Chosen got restless, and "wot not what has
become" of Moses, and they demanded of Brother Aaron that he "make us
Gods, which shall go before us" (Ex. 32: 1 ). Aaron took their jewelry,
probably that stolen from the Egyptians several months before with their
Yahweh's help, and melted it up and made the celebrated golden calf, designed
no doubt after the sacred bull Apis of the Egyptians. And Aaron, high priest of
Yahweh, proclaimed: "These be thy Gods [Elohim], O
Yahweh, looking down from the Mount of the
Gods, saw this and got very angry, and said to Moses: "Now let me alone,
that my wrath may wax hot against them and that I may consume them." But
Moses cajoled the Lord Yahweh, saying that the Egyptians would mock Yahweh
about it; and he reminded Yahweh of his promise, and asked him to "repent
of this evil against thy people" (32: 12 ). So Yahweh, who "is not a
man that be should repent," thereupon (repented of the evil which he thought
to do unto his people" (32: 14 )).
Moses thereupon rushed down the mountain into
the camp, and in his own righteous wrath wilfully threw down and broke his two
tables of stone (first edition), and smashed up the golden calf, ground it to
powder, mixed the gold dust with water (where he got the water in the
wilderness not being revealed), and made the 2,414,000 Chosen drink the very
diluted mixture (32: 15-20 ). The breaking of the two tables "written by
the finger of God" is the greatest loss to humanity which all history records;
the only specimen of the very handwriting of God ever in existence -- the most
wonderful treasure of archaeology -- was irretrievably lost to mankind by this
one peevish act of Moses. Yahweh next commanded the sons of Levi to
"consecrate yourselves this day to Yahweh, that he may bestow upon you a
blessing this day" (32: 29 ), and to take their swords, and "slay
every man his brother, his companion, and his neighbour" (32: 27 ),
throughout the camp and 3000 [The Vulgate reads: "about 23,000."] of
the naked Chosen (32: 25, 28 ) were murdered. This is the second wholesale
massacre attributed to the God "whose name is Jealous" (Ex. 34: 14 ).
This fearful punishment was inflicted for the
pretended offense of making a "graven image" of Yahweh himself, as to
which there was as yet no law if we accept the tables of stone as containing
the "ten commandments"; for Moses, according to that theory, was yet
on Sinai receiving the law, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven
image," when the golden calf was set up; and he rushed down from the mount
and broke his tables of stone containing that very law before he had
promulgated it. This was a case, therefore, not only of ignorantia juris on the
part of the people, but of lex post facto on the part of the God. And, as we
have seen, this was not a case of idolatry to "other gods before me,"
for the golden calf expressly represented the great Yahweh, whom the whole
people, naked as in Baal worship, proclaimed: "These be thy Gods [Elohim],
O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt" (32: 4 ); and
"Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to Yahweh"
(32: 5 ), proving their belief that they were worshipping their Rescuer from
Egypt, and that they had no idea that Yahweh was any different from any other
god, either in identity or in his form of worship.
But these first tables, broken by Moses,
assuredly were not the "ten commandments" of Exodus 20 and of the
Sunday schools. The ten commandments are short; these first tables of stone
broken by Moses, which Yahweh declared contained "two tables of
testimony" (Ex. 31: 18 ), whatever that was, were evidently rather
lengthy. For when Moses rushed from the mount down into the camp to destroy the
golden calf, "the two tables of the testimony were in his hand: the tables
were written on both their sides; on the one side and on the other were they
written" (Ex. 32: 15 ). As Hebrew writing is very abbreviated, consisting
entirely of consonants in words mostly of only three letters each, two stone tables
written on both sides would not have been required to contain the brief ten
commandments, but might rather have been for the extensive
"testimony."
THE SECOND TABLES OF STONE
Chapter 33 of Exodus forgets all about the
broken first tables; and in it Yahweh breaks his promise and tells Moses that
Yahweh will not go with his Chosen into the promised land, but will send an
angel along instead, together with other matters immaterial to the subject in
review.
Chapter 34 returns to the tables, and opens
with the command of Yahweh to Moses: "Hew thee two tables of stone like
unto the first: and I will write upon the tables the words that were in the
first tables, which thou brakest" (34: 1 ). Moses was ordered to bring
them up into the mountain the next day (34: 2 ). Moses went up, for the sixth
time, and took along the two new stone tables that he had made; and Yahweh
talked at length, giving the substance of previous "law," but not
saying a word of the "ten commandments" reported in Exodus 20 or
Deuteronomy 5. These commandments wind up with the awful and wonderful command
of the God: "Thou shalt not seethe [boil] a kid in his mother's milk"
(34: 26 )
But even these commandments Yahweh did not
write on the second set of stone tables; but Moses did the work. They begin
with the words (Ex. 34: 10 ): "And he [Yahweh] said, Behold, I make a
covenant." Yahweh then states it orally (Ex. 34: 12-26 ); and then
"Yahweh said unto Moses, Write thou these words [commandments]: for after
the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with
THE ACTUAL "TEN WORDS"
Now, if there were ever any
"commandments" written on tables of stone, these fifteen verses of
Exodus 34 (12-26 ), contain them: it is expressly declared by Yahweh: "I
will write upon these [second] tables the words that were written in the first
tables, which thou brakest" (34: 1 ); and when Yahweh had finished the
dictation, and told Moses: "Write thou these words," he verified
their identity with the first tables by averring: "For after the tenor of
these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel" (34: 27 ).
The so-called "ten commandments" in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 are
therefore not the genuine ten commandments written on the first and second
tables of stone, nor was either set "written by the finger of God";
they were both, first and last edition, dictated to and written down by Moses.
They were strikingly different from the so-called "ten commandments"
of much later date. The original "tables" will be seen to contain
only a ceremonial ritual, with but two commandments: the prohibition of
"other gods," and the observance of the Sabbath, which are contained,
among other things in the versions of Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5: in entirely
different form and words. It is curious to note how nearly all the "laws
of Moses," like many other ancient laws, run in series of tens -- the
number being evidently derived from counting the fingers of the two hands -- as
may be verified by checking them up in the Books of Exodus and Leviticus. The
"ten commandments" most nearly resemble the "ten highest laws of
Buddha"; there are also the "ten virtues of Brahma," enumerated
by Manu.
We need not puzzle ourselves further with
these inextricable tangles of inspiration. It suffices to show that the
"ten commandments" as we are taught them in the Sunday schools are
not the "ten words" of the two fabled tables of stone, and to
demonstrate that the whole muddle of the "giving of the law" to and
by Moses is a thing apocryphal and impossible.
THE LAW OF THE DECALOGUE
The very first avowal of the popular "ten
commandments," reveals what in any other, "false" religion would
be no doubt a terrible and iniquitous deity: "I Yahweh thy God am a
jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the
third and fourth generation of them that hate me" (Ex. 20: 5 ). A more
hateful and diabolic character could not be drawn even by an inspired pen: the
same implacable Deity who, according to the inspired fable of Eden, damned all
humanity through the ages because an inexperienced woman, seduced by a talking
snake, ate an apple in disregard of a whimsical prohibition, and then drowned nearly
all creation in a fit of wrath over the misconduct of his own progeny,
"the sons of the gods" (Gen. 6: 4 ), now writes in stone his
stony-hearted decree that the unborn innocent shall pay the penalty of those
guilty of not loving such a God! Thus Yahweh "repayeth them that hate him
to their face, to destroy them" (Deut.
The other enactments of the decalogue are
mainly such as existed for ages in the codes of all the nations of antiquity
and ever since, and needed no God to enact them; simply prohibitions against
murder, adultery, theft, false testimony -- precepts common to all systems of
even primitive law. The Babylonian code of Hammurabi, dating from about 2350
B.C., nearly a thousand years before Moses, may have been and probably was a
model of them all. The only special feature of the reputed Mosaic code is that
it was never obeyed, except in its most cruel and vicious precepts. In the
supplementary legislation that followed, death was made the penalty for the
slightest work on the voo-dooed seventh day (Ex. 31: 15; 35: 2 ).
LAWS OF SLAVERY AND MURDER
The very next law after the decalogue is a
brutal one of human slavery for this nation but three months escaped from four
hundred years of slavery -- just as the very first edict after their escape
treated of slaves of these fugitive slaves (Ex. 12: 44 ). Saith Yahweh:
"Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them: If thou buy
an Hebrew servant," so and so; if the slave be married and have children,
they may be torn apart and separated; if the slave loves his wife and children
and does not want to be torn away from them, "his master shall bore his
ears through with an awl," and hold him in perpetual slavery. A man may
sell his own daughter to be a slave (Ex. 21: 7 ), and it is broadly hinted that
her master might indulge his lusts upon her with impunity. If a child of Yahweh
kills his slave, "he shall not be punished, for he is his money" (
The bloody code, with its key-stone lex
talionis -- "life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand,
foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe"
(Ex. 21: 23-25 ) -- reads as if dictated, not by a just and merciful God, but
by the spirit of devils incarnate or of Apache Indians. Every man was made his
own avenger: "The revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer: when
he meeteth him, he shall slay him" (Num. 35: 19 ); there was no criminal
court known among these barbarian children of their barbarous God. And dice, or
sanctified craps, were the God-prescribed method of detecting the unknown
criminal (Ex. 25: 3, 30; Lev. 7: 8; Num. 25: 2, 21; 1 Sam. 14: 41 ), as well as
for deciding civil lawsuits (Num. 25: 1, 55, 56; Prov. 16: 33 ). The "law
of God" superstitiously and wickedly commands the murder of harmless old
women: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Ex.
CANNIBALISM AND HUMAN SACRIFICES
The most execrable and diabolic of the divine
laws of Yahweh are the repeated enactments condemning his
Text after text of the inspired word of God
relates to the custom of burning children as living human sacrifices to this
Hebrao-Christian Moloch. True, some texts forbid the practice, but they are
very late in Hebrew history, and testify by their iteration to the inveterate
cult of human sacrifice. The instance of the God's command to Abraham to murder
his God-engendered Isaac to the whim of the Monster of Hebrew mythology is too
well known to need narrating; it is no palliation of the barbarity that a
billy- goat was substituted just as the deluded votary of Yahweh
"stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son" (Gen.
22: 10 ); the god who would command a father to do such a thing and the poor
obsessed fool who would obey are alike beneath contempt.
Jephthah was himself the "goat" of
his God, as well as "a son of a harlot" (Judges 11: 1 ), when
"the Spirit of Yahweh came upon Jephthah" (
Here is the ordinance, the divine law of
Yahweh, which commanded these sacrificial murders:
"When a man maketh a singular vow ... he
shall not alter it, nor change it, a good for a bad, or a bad for a good. ...
No devoted thing, that a man shall devote unto Yahweh of all that he hath, both
of man and beast ... shall be sold or redeemed: every devoted thing is most
holy unto Yahweh. None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be
redeemed; but shall surely be put to death" (Lev. 27: 2, 10, 28, 29 ).
Commenting on this abhorrent law of God, the
pious editors of the Biblical Encyclopaedia, [New York, George H. Doran Co.,
1907. 5 vols. (This is not the Encyclopaedia Biblica.)] betraying the
prostitution of mind of bibliolaters seeking to "justify the ways of God
to man," far from venting their loathing, thus slavishly display their
maudlin exegetical wit: "(28 ) Devoted -- anything which by the law
belonged to the Lord could neither be sold ... nor be redeemed by the vower.
(29 ) surely ... death, in extreme cases, where death was proper and right,
there was no alternative" (Vol. 1, p. 344 ).
Yahweh vengefully sent one of his frequent
famines upon his Holy Land, "flowing with milk and honey," and it
grievously afflicted his Chosen for three years, until the "man after
Yahweh's own heart," David, "enquired of Yahweh" what it was all
about. "And Yahweh answered, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house,
because he slew the Gibeonites" (2 Sam. 21: 1 ), heathen enemies whom
Yahweh had ordered to be exterminated. David cast about for a form of sacrifice
potent enough to conjure away the wrath of his benign God, and to this Yahweh
divinely guided him. He took two sons of Saul by Rizpah, and five sons of
Michal, Saul's daughter and David's own wife, "who loved him" -- and
"they hanged them in the hill before Yahweh; and they fell all seven
together, and were put to death. ... And after that God was intreated for the
land" (2 Sam. 21: 8, 9, 14 ); glutted with the butchery of human sacrifice
to him, he graciously ended the famine. But what heart will not be wrung by the
mother's woe of Rizpah, who "took sack-cloth and spread it ... upon the
rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of
heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor
the beasts of the field by night" (21: 10 ); the heart-broken mother of
the God's victims despairingly lying over the rotting bodies of her loved sons
for several months under the open skies, fighting off the scavenger birds and
beasts from the poor carcasses of the human sacrifices to the Christian's
loving Heavenly Father.
Rizpah disobeyed her God's repeated commands
to eat her dead sons. The holy God of
Cannibalism and its abhorrent, though vicarious,
practice are still enjoined by this God on the morons of his Son Christ:
"Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have
no life in you" (John
OTHER DIVINE MOSAIC LAWS
The Holy Law is a reeking priestly code,
decreeing death and maiming for every violation of its superstitious voodoos.
Abject subjection to the priest is rivetted upon the people by this inspired
ukase. "The man that will do presumptuously, and will not harken unto the
priest, even that man shall die" (Deut.
These priests were supreme and final judges of
all crimes and civil controversies: "by their word shall every controversy
and every stroke be tried" (Deut. 21: 9 ); though this seems to contradict
the "lex talionis" and adjudications by sacred dice before noticed.
Beautiful women captives of war might be forced to shave their heads and become
the lust-slaves of their holy captors; if these holy ones did not find the
expected "delight in her," she might be turned out of doors after
being "humbled" (Deut. 21: 10-14 ). Of a stubborn son, a glutton or a
drunkard, it is commanded that his father accuse him to the elders, "and
all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die; ... and all
If one of the Israelites finds a bird's-nest,
Yahweh ordains that the mother bird and her eggs or young must not be taken
together, but she may be robbed of eggs or young with divine approval (Deut.
22: 6, 7 ). If a man marry a woman and "go in unto her," and is
disappointed, and reports: "I found her not a maid," the father and
mother of the young woman must hale her before all the elders in the public
gate of the city, bringing along "the tokens of their daughter's virginity"
(the words "the tokens of" are not in the Hebrew text). These holy
wise-acres must there hold a sort of solemn ogling inquisitio de ventre
inspiciendo on her person, and if the "tokens" incite their
condemnation, "the men of the city shall stone her with stones that she
die" (Deut.
Yahweh established trial by ordeal for cases
of suspected infidelity of a woman to her husband. The priest before whom the
woman was accused was to make up a horrid concoction of "holy water,"
filthy dust from the floor of the tabernacle, and barley meal, mixed up with
"bitter water that causeth the curse" into a "jealousy
offering"; the priest then should make some conjurations "unto the
woman, if no man hath lain with thee," and "charge the woman with an
oath of cursing," saying: "Yahweh make thee a curse and an oath among
thy people, when Yahweh doth make thy thigh to rot and thy belly to swell; And
this water that causeth the curse shall go into thy bowels, to make thy belly
to swell and thy thigh to rot." To all this holy incantation the woman
shall complaisantly say: "Amen, Amen." The holy priest then makes the
woman drink the loathsome concoction; "then it shall come to pass, that if
she have done trespass against her husband, that the water which causeth the
curse shall enter into her, and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and
her thigh shall rot. ... But if the woman be not defiled, then she shall be
free, and shall conceive seed. This is the law of jealousies" (Num.
Whole chapters of the "law of
Yahweh" are filled with the incantations, purifications, and bans of
fetishistic magic, such as conjuring sin and disease out of persons into
animals. The inspired "law for leprosy and scall," in Levicitus 14 is
a perfect jumble of twaddle for the "purification" of a cured leper
and his clothes, house, and belongings. The priest is to take two live birds,
cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop; kill one of the birds "in an earthen
vessel over running water"; dip the live bird and the other things into
the blood of the killed bird; sprinkle the leper seven times; and "let the
living bird loose into the open field," charged with the disease. Then the
leper, rid of the disease, must "shave all his hair off his head and his
beard and his eyebrows" (Lev. 14: 9 ), and bring two he-lambs to the
priest for a "trespass offering." The priest kills one of the lambs,
takes the blood and some oil, smears them on the tip of the right ear, the thumb
of the right hand, and the big toe of the right foot of the leper, pours what
remains of the oil over the leper, and presto, "he shall be clean."
The poor live bird that has the dread disease is thus a sort of scapegoat for
the sins, or misfortune, of the human victim. Chapters 12 and 15 are similar
gems of maudlin incantations for the "purification" of the
"uncleanness of women."
One of the strangest of the laws of Yahweh is
that of the scapegoat sacrifice to the devil, as enacted in Leviticus 16. The
word "scapegoat" is another false translation to hide what the New
Standard Bible Dictionary calls "a vestige of primitive Semitic
demonology"; the word used in Hebrew, and inserted in the margin of the
Authorized Version, but frankly rendered in the Revised Version, is Azazel, a
Hebrew name for the devil. The "sin offering" to Yahweh must also be
offered to his great rival Satan. It is decreed that "the priest shall
take two goats, and present them before Yahweh; ... And Aaron shall cast lots
upon the two, goats; the one lot for Yahweh, and the other lot for Azazel"
(Lev. 16: 7, 8 ); and on the scapegoat must the sins of the people be laid, and
the goat then turned loose into the wilderness "to Azazel" (16: 10,
21, 22 ). This shows that the people of Yahweh also worshipped the devil. They
continued to do so commonly at least as late as Rehoboam, who "ordained
priests for the devils" (2 Chron.
Later a more dramatic scheme of ridding the
holy people of sin was adopted by Yahweh. Two winged women, with "wings
like the wings of a stork," gathered up all the sin they could get hold
of, kneaded it into a "talent of lead," and passed it to "a
woman that sat in the midst of the ephah" (a sort of big bushel-measure).
Then the two winged females "lifted up the ephah between the earth and the
heaven," and flew away with it to the
Such are samples of the holy laws of the
Infinite Wisdom of Yahweh. For enlightened legislation some might prefer even
the
MOSES NOT THE "LAW-GIVER"
From the innumerable "internal
evidences" in the Hebrew Bible itself which we have pointed out here and
there, it is demonstrated that Yahweh did not "give the law" to Moses
on Sinai, or anywhere else, and that Moses did not write the "Book of the
Law"; that Moses never even heard of the "law" attributed to
him; in a word, that the books containing the "law" were not written
until framed by the priests many hundreds of years after the time in which
Moses is supposed to have lived, if he ever lived at all outside of legend. We
have abundantly seen that the so-called "Five Books of Moses" relate
many supposed historical facts which occurred, if they ever occurred at all,
hundreds of years after the traditional time of Moses, who is said to have died
in 1451 B.C. And we have seen many other such anachronisms in the other books
of the Hebrew Scriptures, such as Joshua, Judges, Samuel, proving that they
were not written until after the alleged facts had occurred, long after the
times of the supposed writers. Better proof than that so plentifully furnished
could hardly be desired to refute the claims of "inspired," or of
very ancient, origin of these books.
THE "LAW" OF LATE PRIESTLY ORIGIN
What is true of the books containing the
"law" is equally true, by internal evidences in the Bible, of the
late and priestly origin of the "law" itself. The "Book of the
Covenant," we are first told, in Exodus 24: 4, was written by Moses;
later, in Deuteronomy, Moses several times (29: 20, 21, 27, 29 ) calls down
upon the Chosen people "all the curses of the covenant that are written in
this book of the law" -- because they had "served other gods."
Then, just before his death, he seems to have got out a new edition of his
"compiled laws" for permanent record: "And Moses wrote this law,
and delivered it unto the priests the sons of Levi which bare the ark of the
covenant of Yahweh, and unto all the elders of Israel" (31: 9 ); and he
commanded them: "Take this book of the law, and put it in the side of
[inside] the ark of the covenant of Yahweh your God, that it may be there for a
witness against thee" (31: 26 ).
Moses also particularly commanded them to
assemble all the people every seven years, and read to them all the words of
this law (31: 10-13 ). This "Book of the Law" was evidently a very
sizable tome. And, as if foreseeing a time when the
It was at Sinai, in the first year of the
exodus, that Moses, it is recorded, wrote the first edition of his Book of the
Covenant; and forty years later that he made his revised edition and ordered
the bulky tome laid up as a testimonial against the people in the Ark of the
Covenant. Yet, when next we hear of it, Joshua built an altar unto Yahweh, of
unhewn stone, "over which no man hath lift up any iron"; and on this
very rough surface, "he wrote there upon the stones a copy of the law of
Moses" (Josh. 8: 32 ) ; and "afterward he read all the words of the
law, the blessings and cursings, according to all that is written in the book
of the law" (8: 34 ), to all the people. This is about the last word in
all the Hebrew Scriptures, for about a thousand years, until Josiah, of this
famous "law of Moses." When Solomon had built the temple, he put into
it the ancient Ark of the Covenant, made by Moses; and it is said: "There
was nothing in the Ark save the two tables of stone, which Moses put there at
Horeh, when Yahweh made a covenant with the children of Israel" (1 Kings
8: 9; 2 Chron. 5: 10 ). And of this Solomon more explicitly says: "The
ark, wherein is the covenant of Yahweh" (1 Kings
THE "FINDING" OF THE LAW
All are familiar with the "finding"
by the late lamented Joseph Smith -- led thereto by the angel
This is further proved by the positive
statement of King Josiah, to whom the book was at once taken and read:
"When the king had heard the words of the book of the law, be rent his
clothes" (22: 11 ); and he sent to "enquire of Yahweh ... concerning
the words of this book that is found: for great is the wrath of Yahweh that is
kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of
this book, to do after all that is written in this book" (2 Kings 22: 13
). Huldah the priestess, who was consulted, reported that Yahweh was very
angry, "because they have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto other
gods" (
Josiah at once began a great series of
"reforms," related in 2 Kings 23 and in 2 Chronicles 34: each one of
which corresponds exactly with the various commands of the Book of the Law, as
may be verified by consulting the marginal references and the texts referred
to. Even the great celebration of the Passover, purporting to commemorate the
exodus from Egypt, was quite unknown; the king specially ordered: "Keep
the Passover unto Yahweh your God, as it is written in the book of this
covenant"; and it is added: "Surely there was not holden such a
Passover from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of
the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah" (2 Kings 23: 22 ).
THE LAW AND THE REFORMS
Among the reforms made by the king he
destroyed the idols, the "pillars and groves," the "high
places," [See Chapter 8.] which filled the land, the places where children
were sacrificed to Moloeb, the chariots of the sun, and all the accessories of
the worship of the sun, moon, and stars. "He brought out the Asherah from
the house of Yahweh [Solomon's temple] ... and he brake down the houses of the
sodomites, that were by the house of Yahweh" (23: 6, 7 ); he destroyed
even the holy altar which Jacob himself had erected to Yahweh at Beth-el (23:
15 ); and he removed the wizards, and those that had familiar spirits, and the
teraphim, and all such; in each instance carrying out the detailed commands of
the "law" as contained in the book just "found" by the priest,
"that he might confirm the words of the law which were written in the book
that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of Yahweh" (23: 24 ). This
tallying of "reforms" with the new-"found" law may be
verified at a glance by checking the laws against the reforms, as set out in 2
Kings 23. The verses cited of chapter 23 show the reforms corresponding to the
laws of the Book of Law in Deuteronomy: 2 Kings 23: 7, as to sodomites, in
Deut. 23: 17, ct seq.; 2 Kings 23: 8, 9, as to high places, in Deut. 12: 2; 2
Kings 23: 10, as to passing through fire, in Deut. 18: 10; 2 Kings 23: 11, as
to horses and chariots of the sun, in Deut. 17: 3; 2 Kings 23: 14, as to
phallic images and groves, in Deut. 16: 21, et seq.; 2 Kings 23: 21, as to the
Passover, in Deut. 16: 5, 6; 2 Kings 23: 24, as to wizards, etc., Deut. 18: 11.
In a word Josiah essayed to destroy at a blow the ancient religion and worship
of the people, and to introduce quite a new system of worship devised by the
priests, as described in the new book, a system never known or practiced in all
the history of Israel from the days of Abraham, some 1500 years previously.
Now, it is quite impossible that this
wonderful "law of Yahweh," said to have been given to Moses on Sinai,
should have been in existence, right there in the Ark of the God, in the great
temple, in the constant custody and care of the priests, and never have been
known by any of the good judges, kings, or prophets of Yahweh for over eight
hundred years. And the Hebrew Scriptures are full of conclusive proofs that
every precept of this "law" was totally unknown to and unobserved by
all the holy "men of God," prophet, priest and king, from Moses to
Josiah, every one of whom continuously violated some or all of the most
dreadfully prohibitory articles of the so-called Mosaic code.
POSITIVE PROOFS AGAINST MOSES
We will very briefly pass in review some of
these proofs that this "law" was not instituted by Yahweh "by
the hand of Moses," but was a priestly scheme written up about the time
the Book of the Law was "found" by the high priest of Josiah, a
millennium after the time of Moses. The first and most cogent proofs are to be
found in the "Book of the Law" itself, said to have been laid down by
Yahweh on
In the first place, the Book of the Law itself
implicitly declares there was no such body of law in existence during the forty
years' wandering in the wilderness, though it is supposed to have been given at
Sinai in the very first year of the exodus from
But there are a couple of other specific
instances of the non- existence of the "law" which may be cited for
further proof. Notice first the words introducing the first instance: "And
while the children of
While in the wilderness, "they found a
man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day. And they ... brought him unto
Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation. And they put him in ward
[jail], because it was not declared what should be dome unto him. And Yahweh
said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation
shall stone him with stones without the camp" (Num. 15, 32-36 ), and so
they did. God never ordered a man to be murdered for picking up sticks, sabbath
or no sabbath; and especially by a barbarous law which was not in existence
when the offense was committed. The Constitution of every state in this
Again, a man "blasphemed the name of
Yahweh"; he was put in ward, "that the mind of Yahweh might be showed
them"; Yahweh decreed: "He that blasphemeth the name of Yahweh, he
shall surely be put to death"' by stoning; and he was stoned (Lev. 24: 16
). This shows there was no "law"; though the stone tables of Sinai
decreed: "Thou shalt not take the name of Yahweh thy God in vain"
(Ex. 20: 7 ).
BIBLE HISTORY DISPROVES THE "LAW OF MOSES"
That the "law of Moses" was not
given on Sinai and preserved in a book kept by the high priest in the Ark of
the Covenant, and that it did not exist until "discovered" by the
priests of Josiah, and was in fact unknown and unobserved by all the holy "men
of God" from Moses to Josiah may be further instanced. We will briefly
review some of these manifold proofs.
Idols and idolatry were terribly forbidden in
the "law of Moses." We may take the word of the prophet Ezekiel for
proof of unbroken idol-worship of the Chosen People from the day they left
Egypt with Moses to his own time -- all in violation of the pretended but
non-existent "Mosaic" law. Ezekiel thus testifies: "Neither did
they forsake the idols of
In the next chapter we shall see in detail
that the patriarchs, from Abraham to Moses, were ordinary idolaters and phallic
worshippers of Yahweh and Baal, with their teraphim, ephods, mazzebahs,
asherahs, high-places of Baal-worship and Moloch child-sacrifice and their
simple earth or stone altars, where Yahweh "put his name" as a local
Baal or Lord. Never once, until the Book of the Law, pretended to be given to
Moses on Sinai, was "found," is there the slightest hint against all
these popular heathen practices. After Moses and the pretended "law"
of Sinai, the identical practices continued unabated and unrebuked, though the
Book of the Law denounced them one and all in scathing terms, and threatened
every imaginable woe for disobedience to them.
The first thing Moses himself did after
descending from Sinai and writing the "law" in his book and swearing
the people to it was to erect the twelve phallic "pillars," or
mazzebahs, for the twelve tribes of Israel, and send young men to offer
sacrifices on earth- made altars (Ex. 24: 4, 5 ), though the very
"law" he is said to have that day revealed enacts: "Thou shalt
not plant an asherah nor set thee up a mazzebah, which Yahweh thy God
hateth"; (Deut. 16: 22 ) and time and again decrees that no sacrifice
shall be offered except by the holy monopoly of priests, and upon the sacred
altar in the tabernacle of the congregation. His successor Joshua erected
phallic pillars of stone, and built an altar of unhewn stone, on which he is
said to have written the very "laws of Moses" forbidding such
practices, and although Joshua was not a priest, he "offered thereon burnt
offerings unto Yahweh, and sacrificed peace offerings" (Josh. 8: 30, 31 ),
in violation of the "law." Joshua conjured the people to "put
away the gods which your fathers served beyond the river [
The story of Gideon and the fleeces (Judges 6
), and the contest between Baal and Yahweh, are further proof of the popular
cult persisting, contrary to "law." Even the "good" judges
continued the forbidden sacrifices, as well as private persons, such as Manoah,
father of Samson; and Yahweh sent down fire from heaven upon the altars to
consume the acceptable sacrifices (Judges 13 ). Micah's golden ephod was a god
in Israel, served by Levites for priests, "until the day of the captivity
of the land" (Judges 18 ).
The great and good Samuel, when first met by
Saul as he was hunting lost asses, was going "up to the high place,"
where the phallic "pillars and groves" were set up and Baal was
worshipped, and where, on that day, the people were holding a sacred feast;
"and the people will not eat until he come, because he blesseth the
sacrifice" (1 Sam. 9: 13, 14 ); practices utterly banned by the
"law" of Moses. Samuel sent Saul to meet and join "a band of
prophets coming down from the high place [of Baal on the "hill of the
gods"]; and they shall be prophesying [raving], and the spirit of Yahweh
shall come mightily upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy [rave] with them"
(10: 5, 6 ); thus showing the unity of the worship of Baal and Yahweh, and the
entire "orthodoxy" of high-places and phallic worship. And all the
days of his life, Samuel "went from year to year in circuit" to the
principal high-places, or Baal- altars of the country, and judged all
Saul, made king over the Chosen People by
Yahweh's own special selection, continued the same practices (1 Sam. 13: 9, 10;
For many years during the time of David,
Yahweh's special delight, "the tabernacle of Yahweh, which Moses made in
the wilderness, and the altar of the burnt offering," and presumably the
holy Ark containing the "law" banning all such things, were "in
the high place at Gibeon" (1 Chron. 21: 29 ), in charge of "Zadok the
priest, and his brethren the priests" (16: 39 ). David built an altar on
the threshing-floor of Ornan, or Araunah, and offered sacrifices to Yahweh,
which were so acceptable that Yahweh sent down fire from heaven upon the altar
of burnt offering (21: 26 ). David christened it: "This is the house of
Yahweh ha-Elohim [Yahweh of the Gods], and this is the altar of the burnt
offering for Israel" (22: 1 ); all of which is forbidden in the Book of
the Law, which was required to be copied and read by every king: but no king of
all Jewry, until Josiah read the new-found book in his eighteenth year, ever
saw or heard of "the Book of the Law of Yahweh." It was clearly not
in existence.
Solomon was a worthy chip off the old block;
he "loved Yahweh, walking in the statutes of David his father: only he
sacrificed and burnt incense in high places" (I Kings 3: 3 ); and he
"loved many strange women," besides his seven hundred wives and three
hundred concubines, all heathen. He built high-places and sacrificed to all the
gods of his women, though Yahweh was "jealous" about all this, and
threatened him trouble. And Solomon built the famous temple of Yahweh, erected
by the heathen Hiram King of Tyre, which was adorned with the two notable
phallic pillars, Jachin and Boaz, hung about with the phallic pomegranates, and
surrounded with houses of sodomites and temple-whores, and abundantly provided
with "pillars and groves" in the very house of Yahweh; and there they
remained and were worshipped by all Israel till temporarily removed by Josiah,
in accordance with the new-found Book of the Law, at the end of the period of
Hebrew national existence.
The great prophet Elijah himself built up the
ruined heathen altar at
While other prophets, Amos, Hosea, Micah,
deplored the Canaanitish Baal practices performed at the altars of Yahweh,
never once did they declare them illegal, as contrary to the "law of
Moses," or seek to abolish them. Their efforts were solely directed toward
bringing the
All this could not have been rationally
possible if any sort of monotheistic worship of "one God Yahweh,"
sole God of all the earth, had been the anciently established religion of
Israel, decreed in a God-given "Book of the Law" to Moses, a holy
legacy to the people, sanctioned by the fearful threats it contains against
disobedience to its dread and holy commands.
It is needless to remark, with respect to the
elaborate and intricate system of priestly functions and sacrifices contained
in the Book of the Law and said to have been practiced in the forty- year
wandering in the wilderness, that all this would have been utterly impossible
in such surroundings, and during the centuries of struggling warfare and
incomplete conquest of the promised land. It was all a priest-devised system,
adopted late in the history of the kingdom, and given authority by being
attributed to the direct command of "Yahweh by the hand of Moses."
Many other nations and peoples have had sacred
books of law, revealed by gods or angels to pretended Prophets; the Koran of
Mohammed and the Book of Mormon may be mentioned as more modern instances. This
should suffice to demonstrate that the religion of the Hebrew Bible was none
other than the universal phallic pagan worship, centered to a certain extent
around a "jealous" Yahweh as the special, tribal El of his Chosen
Israel, and forbidden by no extant 'law of Yahweh" given to Moses on
Sinai.
CHAPTER 7
THE "CONQUEST" OF THE PROMISED LAND
HAVING been duly impressed with the promises
reiterated by Yahveh to his
"Behold, I send an angel before thee, to
keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place, which I have
prepared...
"For mine angel shall go before thee, and
bring thee in unto the Amorities, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the
Canaanites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites; and I will cut them off; ...
thou shalt utterly overthrow them. ...
"I will send my fear before thee, and
will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine
enemies turn their backs unto thee.
"And I will send hornets before thee,
which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before
thee.
"I will not drive them out from before
thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field
multiply against thee.
"By little and little I will drive them
out before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land.
"And I will set thy bounds from the Red
Sea even unto the Sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river:
for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt
drive them out before thee.
"Thou shalt not make no covenant with
them, nor with their gods.
"They shall not dwell in thy land, lest
they make thee sin against me: for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be
a snare unto thee" (Ex.
Under both the old and the new "dispensations,"
promises are always coupled with threats of penalties. There is a difference in
favour of the old: its punishments are always temporal; those of the new are
eternal as hell fire. It is the earthly body alone that suffers according to
Yahveh's Old Will, and that has an end with life; in the New Testament of the
gentle and loving Jesus, the penalty only attaches when life ends, and the
immortal soul writhes out its expiation through all eternity. But even the Old
is not wanting in picturesque detail of torture that does credit to a God
distinguished for long-suffering, forgiveness, and mercy. Here is one typical
hint to the
"If ye will not hearken unto me, and will
not do all of these commandments. ... I also will do this unto you; I will even
appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume
the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart. ... And I will set my face against you,
and ye shall be slain before your enemies. ... Then I will punish you seven
times more for your sins. ... I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth
as brass: And your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not
yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits. ...
"I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins. I
will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and
destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your high ways shall be
desolate.
"And if ye will not be reformed by me by
these things, but will walk contrary unto me; then will I also walk contrary
unto you, and ... will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the quarrel of
my covenant: ... I will send the pestilence among you; and ye shall be
delivered into the hand of the enemy. ...
"And I will walk contrary unto you then
also in fury; and 1:even 1:will chastise you seven times for your sins. And ye
shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.
And I will cast your carcasses upon the careases of your idols, and my soul
shall abhor you" (Lev. 26: 14, 16-25, 28-30 )
Verily the old priests of Yahveh were fit
prototypes of those of the new dispensation of love and mercy. "It is a
fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Heb.
Encouraged by the promises, and thus lovingly
admonished to the fear of Yahveh, at last, after 685 long Years since Abraham
of hopeful waiting, slavery and affliction, of suffering and of destruction,
the Chosen People of Yahveh, in Yahveh's own leisurely way, finally
"On
Now might they have some reason to expect,
from the explicit terms of the divine covenant, that the Almighty Grantor would
put them into immediate, peaceable possession of the long promised land. He had
covenanted to send an angel and hornets on before them, to put "the fear
of Yahveh" into the rightful inhabitants, and to drive them out well in
advance of the arrival of the new and "peculiar" occupants. But now
it appeared that the place was not "prepared" at all; the old
inhabitants were still tenaciously in their walled cities and by their domestic
vines and fig-trees undisturbed. The newcomers must yet do their own "preparing,"
driving out, and cleansing the land, by fire and sword, before they could even
begin to possess and enjoy it. And the possession must be thorough; this was
Yahveh's motto: "When I begin, I will also make an end" (I Sam.
The task which confronted the newcomers, six
hundred-odd thousand soldiers of Yahveh, all mighty men and valiant, armed with
scavenger-paddle-spears (Deut. 23: 13 ), and with impedimenta of a couple of
million or more old men, women, children, and camp-followers, was a war of
extermination against "seven nations more and mightier" than they;
seven highly civilized and powerful peoples, aggregating, according to the
Mosaic estimate, at least twenty-odd millions, inhabiting a country of about
11,000 square miles, about the size of Belgium, practically the most densely
populated country in the world, with its less than 8,000,000 people.
Yahveh, Man of war, the merciful God, as
generalissimo of the armies of Israel, issued these notable orders of the day:
"When Yahveh thy God shall bring thee
into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations
before thee, [naming again the "seven nations greater and mightier]; and
when Yahveh thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them and
utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy
unto them: ...
"And thou shalt consume all the people
which Yahveh thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon
them" (Deut. 7: 1, 2, 16 ).
These divine war orders, possibly even more
drastic and diabolic than the brutal ones issued by a modern war-lord, are
repeated time and again in the inspired texts. These were about the only
commands of Yahveh which his
A little later the original orders were
modified so as to give play to the holy lust and greed of Yahveh's Chosen, it
being ordered: "Thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the
sword; but the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in
the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself" (Deut.
20: 13, 14 ).
The
Joshua succeeded to the command next under
Yahveh; and he proceeded to cross over
Here we may begin to see in what fashion the
glittering, sweeping promises of Yahveh were kept. A brief retrospect will
recall to us the original simple promise of 685 years before to Abram, to give
to him and his seed "the land to possess it." Later the
"covenant of circumcision" was superimposed as a single condition;
then 400 years of abject slavery in a strange land was imposed as a dismal
preliminary, lengthened into 430 years by a bit of forgetfulness on the part of
Yahveh. At last he "remembered" his people and his covenant, and he
commanded Moses to lead the hosts of
Yahveh repeatedly promised to accomplish this
annihilation of the nations, and to help his
But after a number of preliminary massacres of
extermination as above noticed, Yahveh and his Chosen seem to have slacked
their murderous zeal, or to have failed in their ability to perpetrate their
purpose, or else the exaggeration of their chroniclers was toned down. Joshua
did not exterminate the Hivites, but made peace with them and spared the lives
of the people, in direct disobedience of orders, and made them "hewers of
wood and drawers of water to Yahveh" (Josh. 9: 27 ). He then helped these
Hivites in a war made against them by the five kings, on the occasion when the
sun stood still upon Gibeon and the moon in the valley of Ajalon (Josh. 10: 12,
13 ) so that the massacre might be completed. Then the kings of the Canaanites
(already totally exterminated, Num. 21: 3 ) Amorites, Hivites (already enslaved
"unto this day") Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, and others, leagued
and went to fight against
This sounds like the thorough fulfillment of
Yahveh's sacred promise and covenant. And for further assurance, inspiration
itemizes the muster-roll of conquered lands and kings:
"And these are the kings of the country
which Joshua and the children of Israel smote ... which Joshua gave unto the
tribes of Israel for a possession according to their divisions;
"In the mountains, and in the valleys,
and in the plains, and in the springs, and in the wilderness, and in the south
country; The Hittites, the Amorites, and the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the
Hivites, and the Jebusites" (Josh. 12: 7, 8 ).
A long list of countries and their kings which
Joshua took and smote, of which thirty-one were on the west side of
And time and again the inspired historian
repeats the refrain, reckless of its verity: "And Yahveh gave unto
BUT NOT CONQUERED
What is then our legitimate surprise to read,
in the very next chapter of the sacred history that Yahveh himself negatives
this whole Solemn record? In Joshua 13: 1, Yahveh says to Joshua: "Thou
art old and stricken in years, and there remaineth yet very much land to be
Possessed"; and a good part of chapter 13 is taken up with an account of
"the land that yet remaineth" to be possessed -- being precisely the
lands and cities just recorded as taken. Nor had a single one of the seven
nations been destroyed and driven out, as so often promised, commanded, and
proclaimed to have been totally accomplished. ~~
It is a number of times expressly declared:
"Nevertheless, the children of Israel drave not out" the very several
peoples named, "but they dwell among the Israelites unto this day"
(e.g., Josh. 13: 13; 15: 63; 16: 10; 17: 12, 13 ). Even under the judges they
"could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had
chariots of iron" (Judges
This admission that the children of
For these several nations quickly took their
turn in conquering and subjecting
Thus the performance of the reiterated promise
of complete inheritance is seen to be a dismal failure. The covenant of quiet
and peaceable possession was equally illusory and unperformed. War between the
soldiers of Yahveh and the seven nations was continuous under Joshua, was
hardly interrupted during the four hundred-odd years of the judges, was Saul's
chief occupation and the occasion of his death, and was so incessant and
sanguinary during David's whole reign that he had no time and was too
bloody-handed to build the phallic temple of Yahveh. As late as Solomon, six
hundred years after the "conquest" of extermination by Joshua, these
nations still dwelt in "thy land"; Solomon levied tribute on six of
these same nations (I Kings 9: 15-23 ).
THE ABJECT SUBJECTION OF
The sacred record contains many instances, of
which but a sample or two will be cited here, of the desperate straits to which
Yahveh's heroes of the "conquest" were reduced by their exterminated
enemies. In the days of Samuel the judge, the Philistines beat the Chosen so
badly that the latter sought recourse to miracle or magic, and brought up the
wonder-working Ark of the Covenant of Yahveh out of Shiloh, so that, they said,
"when it cometh among us, it may save us out of the hand of our
enemies" (1 Sam. 4: 3 ). It is recorded that the Philistines were afraid
when they heard of the advent of the
When Saul was king, the Ammonites besieged
Jabesh-Gilead, a city of the Benjaminites, and the
How the Israelites could do this, an unarmed
mob, as the following account proves, is one of the standing wonders not
revealed. It will be noted that Saul's threat of death could raise in all Jewry
but 330,000 men, about one-half of the alleged armed host that crossed the
"The Philistines gathered themselves
together to fight with
"When the men of
And Saul numbered the people that were present
with him, about six hundred men. ...
"Now, there was no smith found throughout
all the land of Israel: for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them
swords and spears: But all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to
sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his mattock. ...
"So it came to pass in the day of battle,
that there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people
that were with Saul and Jonathan" (I Sam. 13: 5-7, 15, 19, 20, 22 ).
From bad to worse the
Only sixty years later, in 957 B.C., in the
civil wars following the death of Solomon, Abijah, successor to Rehoboam as
king of Judah, in one battle is said to have had 400,000 "chosen
men," and Jeroboam, King of Israel, to have had 800,000, all "being
mighty men of valor" (2 Chron. 13: 3 ); and in this single fight
"there fell down slain of Israel five hundred thousand chosen men"
(13: 17 ), the casualties of Judah not being recorded. That these figures are
also "inspired" there is no doubt. There is no other such battle in
all history.
In the brief space of fifty-six years yet
later, these vast armies of Yahveh's Chosen had vanished like the hosts of
Sennacherib; and when Benhadad King of Syria came against Israel with armies
that "filled the country," "the children of Israel pitched
before them like two little flocks of kids"; Ahab "numbered all the
people, even all the children of Israel, being seven thousand" (I Kings
20: 27, 15 ).
Thus we see the
CHAPTER 8
THE HEBREW HEATHEN RELIGION
SEX WORSHIP AND IDOLS
THE first that we know of the Hebrew Yahveh,
after the fabled Flood of Noah and the fabulous Tower of Babel, is his
appearance to the Chaldean heathen Abram at Haran, telling him to move on west
to the land of Canaan, which Yahveh then and there promised to give to Abram
and his descendants as an inheritance and possession forever (Gen. 12: 1-3 ).
With Abram we get our first Biblical initiation into the religion of the
Semitic peoples and knowledge of the forms and ceremonies of their worship of
El, Bel, or Baal, as the same deity might be called in their closely allied
vocabularies.
In the Hebrew language, and throughout the
Hebrew Scriptures, there is no word meaning "religion." The nearest
approximation to the concept is the oft-repeated phrase "the fear of
Yahveh." This priest-inspired fear was the only basis for the hated Yahveh
-- cult which the priests strove to impose on the Baal-worshipping Israelites,
who "feared Yahveh, and served their own gods" (2 Kings
It is important to fully understand this
common Semitic religion and its forms of worship, which we shall see continued
unchanged all through Bible times down to the end of the Hebrew record. The
Hebrew Scriptures, in this respect, are certainly a revelation, in a sense all
too little known to the casual reader or hearer of the Word of God.
PHALLISM, OR SEX-WORSHIP
The first notion of a supreme creator among
early peoples was the great and glorious sun, giving light and heat and life;
all early peoples, including the Hebrews, worshipped the sun, the beautiful,
visible, shining agency of creation, as they did to the end, and as some
primitive peoples do to this day.
Life was a wonderful thing to them, and
creation the great miracle. Man discovered in himself the power to reproduce
this miracle of creation, to recreate life; and the organ of procreation became
from the earliest times an object of veneration and of worship, as the human
representative of the divine Creator and Life-giver. The woman, too, or "womb-man"
(as the derivation of the Anglo-Saxon word suggests), was an indispensable
cooperator in this work of wonder, and almost equal veneration was paid to the
organ by which she participated in the creative work and brought forth life.
"Eve" was "Life" from the beginning of the human species.
"And the man called his wife's name Havvah [Eve], because she was the
mother of all living (Gen. 3: 20 ).
Hence, the human organs of life, symbolized as
the "staff of life" and the "door of life," through which
life entered and issued, were all through ancient history, Biblical and
profane, and are at present among many peoples, sacred objects of worship.' Not
only was it the soul of the Semitic religion, but of the religions of
We have many early Biblical illustrations of
this ancient, Hebraic, Semitic, universal phallic worship. All the ancient
monuments, as well as Hebrew Scripture, testify to the same customs. In
Genesis, of the reputed sons of Shem, son of Noah, one was Asshur (Gen. 10: 22
). This phallic name signifies, more or less, happy, fortunate, upright, erect
-- unus cui membrum erectus est, vel fascinum ipsum. Asshur went forth, we are
told, out of that land, "and builded
THE PRIMITIVE TRINITY
The Assyrians, no less than the Egyptians, the
Hindus, the Canaanites, the Israelites, the Christians, and many other
religious peoples, had and have their Trinity, purely phallic in origin and
significance. The phallus was noted to be not alone efficient in the work of
procreation; its creative labors were shared by two coefficients, the two
testes, or tests of efficient manhood. Hence these were likewise honored,
personified, and deified, with distinctive names: the right one, supposed to be
prepotent in the generation of a man-child, was named Anu, or On -- that is,
"strength, power"; the left, or female-producing test was called Hoa
or Hea. When Jacob's youngest son was born, his mother Rachel with her dying
breath "called his name Ben-oni [son of strength]: but his father called
him Benjamin [son of my right hand] (Gen 35: 18 ). Thus Anu and Hea completed
the Assyrian, and Hebrew, Trinity, side by side with Asshur. This triad of the
miracle of human procreation was represented by the triune symbol of the
phallic cross in its most primitive, and natural, form:
HE-A-NU
S
S
H
U
R
A universal religious symbol, perpetuated
under many variations of form, but always with the identical phallic
significance: Its most conspicuous adaptations to-day are the sacred cross of
Christ, and the Christian temple with its towering steeple and lateral
transepts.
The Assyrian supreme masculine creator, Bel,
was manifested in this male triad of Asshur-Anu-Hea, with the female creative
consort, Ashtoreth, the whole symbolized and worshipped under the Symbolic
Asherah. Bel, Ashtoreth, and the Asherah were integrally part and parcel of the
fervent worship of the Hebrews in the land of Canaan, just as they had been in
the land of Chaldea whence they came, and so continued to be from first to
last, as their Scriptures vividly show.
The Assyrian Asshur was not the only one of
the name to whom the Hebrew Scriptures introduce us. One of the sons of Jacob
and of his wife Leah was given the name of his old Semitic ancestor; "and
she called his name Asher, for, she said, "Happy am I" (Gen. 30: 13
); and this Asher gave his phallic name to one of the twelve tribes of
A few more instances of identity with other Semitic
peoples may be noted briefly. Of the offspring of the reputed triplet sons of
Noah set out in Genesis 10:from Cush came the Ethiopians; from Mizraim the
Philistines and the Egyptians; from Canaan the Canaanites; from Shem the
Hebrews, the Assyrians, the Ishmaelites or Arabians, the Elamites, etc. From
PHALLIC EMBLEMS
The universality of the phallus worship and
the peculiar significance and sanctity of its emblems, especially the cross,
the triangle, the spire. and the oval, are indicated in the universality of the
use of these sacred emblems in nearly all lands and among nearly all peoples,
both ancient and modern. The Christian emblem, the cross of Christ, is simply
the ancient conventional emblem of the phallus and testes, and of the phallus
in conjunction with the female "door of life," represented in every
land and age, and especially in almost every hieroglyphic Egyptian record,
where the "ankh" -- cross (cross and oval) is the emblem of life.
This is exemplified in the name of Tut-ankh-amen, or "Life- image of
Amen." The cross, in diverse forms, but with always the same phallic
significance of "life," antedates Christianity by ages, and is found
on the ancient religious monuments of many far- scattered peoples, even in
prehistoric
Another favorite Hebrew and universal emblem
is the triangle, the perfect representation of the pubic hairs on man and
woman. The famous six-pointed star of David, the national emblem of
Of like origin and significance are the Jewish
manner of holding the hands in priestly blessing, the oval windows of Gothic
churches, the heaven-pointing spires of Christian temples; all purely phallic
devices, though to-day seemingly formal or conventional, as the pagan phallic
origins are forgotten. We shall now observe some other phallic devices of
universal heathen, and Hebrew, usage, out of the Scriptures.
THE PATRIARCHAL PHALLIC IDOLATRY
Abraham, the Chaldean of Ur, and the
patriarchal family and tribes which he is said to have established were, in
common with all their Semitic kindred, Semitic idolaters; he and his
descendants worshipped phallic idols; and they retained and worshipped these
same common Semitic idols through all their history down to the times of the
last of the prophets, as the Hebrew Bible makes amply evident. We shall make
some review of this phallic cult, so that the interested reader may appreciate
what was this Hebrew religion and its God, now taken over by the Christian
religion.
THE PHALLIC SYMBOLS OF SCRIPTURE
Principal among the idols or images of their
Yahveh were, throughout Hebrew history, the phallic objects of worship
mentioned a thousand times in the sacred pages under the euphemistic and
misleading terms "Pillar" and "grove." These so popular and
venerated emblems were nothing more or less than the phallic reproductions of
the erect male organ of procreation, the symbolic "staff of life, and the
receptive and fecund female "door of life," to euphemize them
ourselves. In the English translations the term "pillar" is used for
the representation called in Hebrew "mazzebah," of the male organ;
and "grove" for the "asherah" or female organ of
reproduction. For public and outdoor worship these images were of large size
and bold design, often actual, sometimes conventional or symbolic,
representations of the sex-organs. Smaller idols of the same nature, more for
household worship, were images of Yahveh, the peculiarly sacred alias of the
Hebraic El, with an enormous phallus, or male organ, erect in situ. The names
given to these household images were "ephods" and
"teraphim," words constantly occurring together throughout the Hebrew
Bible to as late as Hosea 3: 4. These phallic idols were used for worship, and
for the purposes of divination or oracular consultation with the God Yahveh, in
seeking his advice and receiving his awful decrees.
Thus the religion and worship of the Hebrews
and their Semitic neighbors were frankly and purely phallic. I shall illustrate
this fact by a few instances from among hundreds in the Hebrew Scriptures. And
first of the "pillars" and "groves" of almost universal
worship.
THE "PILLARS" OR MAZZEBAHS OF YAHVEH
The first mentioned mazzebah, or
"pillar," as it is deceptively rendered in the English translation,
is the one piously set up by Jacob at the place where he dreamed of the ladder
(Genesis 28 ); that he "took the stone he had put for his pillows, and set
it up for a pillar [mazzebah], and poured oil upon the top of it. And he called
the name of that place Beth-el -- the house of God (28: 18, 19 ); and he said:
"This stone, which I have set up for a mazzebah, shall be God's
house" (28: 22 ). The same or a similar incident is recorded of Jacob at
Padan-aram, when his name was changed to
Again, following the hot family quarrel
between Jacob and Laban over the stealing of Laban's phallic gods (teraphim) by
Rachel, as an emblem of peace, "Jacob took a stone, and set it up for a
mazzebah. ... And Laban said, This heap is a witness between me and thee this
day"; and he called it Mizpah, "for he said, Yahveh watch between me
and thee when we are absent one from another" (Gen. 31: 5, 48, 49 ). This
mazzebah was a representative of the sacred phallus, for which a tall or
pointed stone, or even a heap of stones, was used when nothing else was
available.
When Rachel died, in pious grief "Jacob
set up a pillar [mazzebah] upon her grave: that is the mazzebah of Rachel's
grave unto this day" (Gen. 35: 20 ). Moses, when he came down from flaming
Sinai, where he is said to have received the fearful law of Yahveh,
straightway, in celebration, "builded an altar under the hill, and twelve
mazzeboth [plural], according to the twelve tribes of Israel" (Ex. 24: 4
). This proves that Moses did not receive the law there, for, but a few verses
before, that law expressly declares: "Thou shalt utterly overthrow them,
and quite break down their mazzeboth" (
So all through the Hebrew Scriptures occurs
mention of this popular phallic practice as perfectly proper and orthodox. A
thousand years later the raptured vision of the great prophet Isaiah foresaw
the glory of Yahveh in the heathen lands, and this is his ideal of the supreme
emblem of that glory: "In that day shall there be an altar to Yahveh in
the midst of the land of Egypt, and a mazzebah at the border thereof to
Yahveh" (Isa. 19: 19 ). This is a further proof that there was yet no
"law" of Yahveh condemning this phallic cult of the mazzebah, which
Yahveh is quoted as having so fearfully denounced through Moses: "Neither
shalt thou set thee up any mazzebah; which Yahveh thy God hateth" (Deut.
16: 22 ). Hosea speaks of the "goodly mazzeboth" (Hos. 10: 1 ); and
laments that the
These phallic "pillars" or mazzeboth
were regarded as the actual abiding-place of the deity who "put his
name" on them; he verily lived in the stone, and it became sentient and
possessed of faculties of sight, hearing, understanding, protecting. We have
noticed the mazzebah which Jacob set up "for God's house" (Gen. 28:
22 ); and the mazzebah and stone heap which Jacob and Laban set up as a
"witness" and "watch tower" between them, saying "this
heap be witness and this pillar [mazzebah] be witness," to keep them from
harming each other (Gen. 31: 45-52 ). And Joshua set up a great stone, and said
unto all the people: "Behold, this stone shall be a witness unto us; for
it hath heard all the words of Yahveh which he spake unto us" (Josh. 24:
26, 27 ). Samuel set up a "stone of help" (Ebenezer; I Sam.
And not only did the deity reside in the
stones, but "stone" or "rock" was, and yet is, a favorite
appellation of the Deity: Jacob calls Yahveh "stone of Israel"; Moses
"the rock of our salvation," "the rock that begat me,"
"he is a rock"; and so says Samuel; and David says: "Yahveh is
my rock; Elohim is my rock; my high tower, in whom I trust." Jesus says:
"On this rock will I build my church," etc. All these inspired
allusions are purely phallic in terms and in signification; and so is our
"Rock of Ages, cleft for me." There could be no clearer evidence that
the phallus, and the stone representation of it, were regarded religiously as
the emblem of deity.
THIS "
The "grove" (asherah) or graven
representation of the female "door of life" also makes a very early
scriptural appearance, and runs hand in hand or, in phallic parlance,
"linga in yoni" with the mazzebah, through the whole Hebrew Bible. In
Genesis 21: 33 it is recorded: 'And Abraham planted a grove [asherah] in
The idea of planting a grove of trees, besides
being actually false, is negatived by so many expressions in sundry passages
even in the English version of the Bible that the attempt to hide it becomes
absurd. A few instances suffice to illustrate this: "And Ahab served Baal,
and made a grove" (1 Kings 16: 33 ); under Jehoahaz "there remained a
grove in Samaria" (2 Kings 13: 6 ); the children of Israel "set them
up images and groves in every high hill, and under every green tree" (2
Kings, 17: 10 ); the Prophet Ahijah had already declared: "Yahveh shall
smite Israel ... because they have made their groves, provoking Yahveh to
anger" (1 Kings 14: 15 ). A grove of trees could not be planted under a
tree, nor would such innocent and useful work of forestation provoke the Lord
Yahveh to anger to the extent of smiting his chosen
The proof in the concrete is close at hand and
easy of verification. In the entrance hall of the Mercantile Library at
It is this selfsame phallic device, the
asherah, which, not in wall-carvings but in practical altar-form, filled the
holy temple of Solomon at Jerusalem, for the worship of Ashtoreth, Baal, and
Yahveh, and there remained in constant and fervid orthodox Hebrew worship until
Josiah "cleansed the temple," and brought "forth out of the
temple of Yahveh all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the grove
[asherah], and for all the host of heaven" (2 Kings 23: 4 ). The
Encyclopedia Biblica says: "The Asherah-post was esteemed divine -- a
fetish, or a cultus-god -- as no one doubts that it was in Old Testament
times" (Vol. 1:col. 332 ).
YAHVEH'S PHALLIC EPHODS AND TERAPHIM
Besides the mazzebahs and asherahs which
abounded in orthodox Hebrew worship, the ephods and teraphim, before described
as being smaller household idols of Yahveh with great standing phalli, were
popular objects of the worship of Yahveh, very potent for conjuring and
oracular prophecy.
The first mention of "teraphim" is
in the interesting passage in Genesis 31: concerning Jacob and his pagan
father-in-law Laban, and involving the modest Rachel, Jacob's wife and Laban's
daughter. Inspiration tells us that "Rachel had stolen the teraphim that
were her father's" (Gen. 31: 19 ); and Laban was very wroth and asked
Jacob (31: 30 ): "Wherefore hast thou stolen my gods [elohim]." But
Jacob protested and said: "With whomsoever thou findest thy gods, let him
not live. ... For Jacob knew not that Rachel had stolen them" (31: 32 ).
Laban searched through all the household tents, and finally came into Rachel's
tent. "Now, Rachel had taken the teraphim," says verse 34, "and
sat upon them." The manner in which these idols were ornamented, with the
erect male phallus, is suggestive of the form and manner of devotion that
Rachel was engaged in, "sitting on" the gods, and explains the naive
excuse which she gave to her father for not rising politely when he came into
her tent (31: 35 ). Laban "searched, but found not the teraphim" (31:
35 ).
Gideon, the man of the gods, "made an
ephod [of gold] and put it in his city, even in Ophrah: and all
In Judges 17 and 18 is the account of the
idols of Micah the Ephraimite, which became famous: "The man Micah had an
house of gods, and made an ephod, and teraphim, and consecrated one of his
sons, who became his priest" (17: 5 ). Afterwards he secured a Levite for
this office, and said: "Now know I that Yahveh will do me good, seeing I
have a Levite to my priest" (
When David was on a foray against Saul, and
had no weapon, he went to Ahimelech, the high priest (miscalled Abiathar by
Jesus Christ in Mark
That these teraphim were idols used in
divination or in oracular consultation with Yahveh is plain from the passage of
the prophet Zechariah: "For the teraphim have spoken vanity, and the
diviners have seen a lie, and have told false dreams" (Zech. 10: 2 ). The
Authorized Version in English uses the word "idols"; but the Hebrew
and the Revised Version, more honestly, both use the word "teraphim."
THE SACRED DICE OF YAHVEH
The pious Hebrews had another sacred device,
common to the heathen peoples of those regions, which is said to have been
revealed by Yahveh himself to Moses on Sinai. This was the sacred oracular
dice, urim and thummim, by which Yahveh revealed his holy will to his
Some random instances of the use of these
sacred dice may be cited. Moses dedicated first Aaron (Ex. 28: 30 ), and later
Joshua (Num. 27: 21 ), to use the urim and thummim; later still, he consecrated
the sons of Le6: the Levites, for this office in perpetuity (Deut. 33: 8 ).
Joshua used these dice as lots to detect Achan for his theft at the taking of
Ai (Josh. 7 ). Samuel used them to select Saul to be king (I Sam. 23: 9 ). Saul
said unto Yahveh: "Shew the right; cast lots between me and Jonathan my
son"' to detect the person who had eaten during a battle with the
Philistines, and the lot fell upon Jonathan, who then confessed (I Sam.
The pious King David "enquired of
Yahveh" several times through the dice urim and thummim and by the phallic
ephod of Yahveh. When he wished to know whether be should attack Saul, "he
said to Abiathar the priest, Bring hither the ephod," and David inquired
of it, saying: "O Yahveh God of
As late as the prophets Ezra (Ezra 2: 63 ) and
Nehemiah (
OTHER HEATHEN RITES OF YAHVEH
Besides all the phallic worship and idolatrous
practices above noticed, which were throughout their history associated with
the cult of Yahveh, as a sort of special Hebraic Super-El or Baal, the Chosen People
never even for a season gave up the common heathen idolatry into which they
were born and bred and with which they were everywhere surrounded among their
kindred peoples. We remember that Aaron made the golden calf at the very foot
of Sinai while Moses was with the new-found god Yahveh (if he ever was); and
Aaron proclaimed to the people, then but three months out of Egypt: "These
be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt."
The golden calf was perhaps a reproduction of the sacred bull Apis of Egypt,
though it is said that it was the symbol of Baal, derived from the Canaanites,
and changed by the Hebrews into "a representation of Yahv'e" (Encyc.
Bib., Vol. 1, col. 632 ). The Chosen People had known no other gods or forms of
worship than those of Egypt for 430 years, and were common Chaldean idolaters
before that time; and ever after leaving Egypt they followed the practices of
their kindred peoples among whom they lived, and refused to pay any very
particular attention to the new "jealous God" Yahveh.
Moses himself, in addition to the "twelve
mazzeboth" which he set up just after receiving a "law" against
them, also made the famous brazen image of the fiery serpent, which healed the
plague- stricken Israelites, and was preserved and worshipped as a god by them
until it was finally destroyed by King Hezekiah; "for unto those days the
children of Israel did burn incense to it" (2 Kings 18: 4 ).
Gideon, as we have seen, also encouraged
idolatry; his nickname was Jerubbaal, showing his dedication to the Canaanite-
Hebrew Baal. The holy King David worshipped Baal religiously, and as the custom
was in Baal-worship, danced the Baal-dance in public and naked, "with all
his might" before the holy Ark of the Covenant of Yahveh; and his wife
Michal, "looked through a window and saw king David leaping and dancing
before Yahveh; and she despised him in her heart" (2 Sam. 6: 14-16 ).
Absalom "reared up for himself a mazzebah [phallic "pillar"].
... for he said, I have no son to keep my name in remembrance: and he called
the mazzebah after his own name" (2 Sam.
These heathenish practices were not confined
to sundry "bad kings" who backslided from Yahveh; they were universal
and constant throughout the rank and file of the Chosen, part and parcel of the
orthodox worship of Yahveh: "For they also built them high places, and
mazzeboth, and asherim, on every high hill, and under every green tree. And
there were also sodomites in the land: they did according to all the
abominations of the nations which Yahveh cast out before the children of
The Books of Kings and Chronicles, and of the
prophets are filled with these records of continuous idolatry under the
successive kings of
This recital of instances must end; and will
be brought to a close with some panoramic views of idolatry throughout the
history of the
"And the children of
Notwithstanding they ... did not believe in
Yahveh their God. ... And they ... made them molten images, even two calves,
and made asheroth, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. And
they caused their sons and daughters to pass through the fire [to Moloch], and
used divination and enchantments."
This picture is drawn just at the close of the
national existence, in the year in which the Children were first carried away
into captivity. It is declared: "Yet Yahveh testified unto
This clearly proves that the few prophets; who
"raved" against the "gods of the nations," which were also
the gods of the
THE
Just before the captivity we find the
"good King" Josiah, he who "found" the Book of the Law,
making a crusade against the idols. Solomon's great temple to Yahveh was the
consecrated shrine of Hebrew idolatry and sex-worship. Josiah brought forth
"out of the
This is a graphic description of the
polytheistic and phallic idolatry of the Hebrews, identical in every respect
with that of all the other Semitic peoples among whom they lived. These records
demonstrate that the Hebrew people never at any time before the return from
captivity, knew or worshipped any such God as we are taught in modern Sunday
schools was the "one true god" of Israel; but that they worshipped
exactly the same El or Baal, and the same Elohim, or gods, as all the
neighboring heathen nations. It is preposterous to pretend that the Hebrews as
a nation were not heathen or pagan, like all their kindred and neighbors. We
shall presently study the Hebrew "revelation" of their Yahveh at
close range.
THE
There remain several aspects of Hebrew phallic
worship which we shall briefly notice. One feature common to all the ancient
religions was the consecrated women, or priestess-prostitutes, who were always
in attendance in the temples and at the asherah ("groves"), to
participate in the worship with the true believers who had the price of
oblation. Their earnings in this sacred calling went into the "treasury of
Yahveh," and were a large part of its legitimate income. True, the
"law" prescribed: "There shall be no whore [qadeshah] of the
daughters of
The first Bible mention of this cult is some
five hundred years before the time of Moses, when the fair young widow Tamar,
despairing of getting the man so often promised her, dressed herself in the
garb of a "qadeshah" or temple-harlot, with a veil over her face, and
went and "sat in an open place" where she knew that her father-in-law
Judah would pass by; and Judah came by, and fell into her trap, with
interesting sequel, related in Genesis 38. Later Moses, in instituting the
religious observances of the
When Solomon erected the
PHALLUS HOMAGE
Of another phallic practice of the Hebrew
religion, of universal sanctity among them and their Semitic neighbors, we have
frequent testimony, from first to last, in their Scriptures. This was the
solemn phallic form of oath prevalent among them. As the phallus was the object
of most sacred reverence in Israel, as everywhere else, the most solemn oaths
and vows were taken upon it; the form of ceremony being for the person to be
obligated to take in his hand the member of the person to whom he swore (euphemistically
translated "put hand under the thigh"), and register thus his oath.
As stated by a recent authority, "In exceptional cases the hand might be
placed under the thigh of the person imposing the oath (Gen. 24: 2; 47: 29 ),
as a sign of regard for the mystery of generation, whose source was God."
[New Stand. Bible Dict., p. 630, art. Oath. The Encyclopedia Biblica says:
"'Thigh' refers to the generative organ" (Vol. 3: col. 3453, art.
Oath). Josephus, Antiq., 1, 16, 1, describes how the ceremony was performed.]
Thus, Father Abraham called his majordomo, and said to him: "Put, I pray
thee, thy hand under my thigh: and I will make thee swear by Yahveh. ... And
the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his master, and swear to
him concerning that matter" (Gen. 24: 2, 9 ). So Jacob, when he came to
die in
This phallic practice was not confined to the
ancient patriarchs; it prevailed throughout Bible history. When Solomon was
crowned king over all
SANCTITY OF THE PHALLUS
The sanctity attached by the Hebrew religion
to the male organs of generation is clearly recognized by various passages of
the law. These phallic organs must not be profanely touched or injured, and the
injury or loss of any part of them wrought an excommunication from the worship
of Yahveh. In Deuteronomy 25: 11, 12, the rigorous law enacts that when two of
the Chosen are engaged in a street fight together, "and the wife of the
one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth
him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: Then thou shalt
cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her." In chapter 23: 1,
excommunication is pronounced against the unfortunate one: "He that is
wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into
the congregation of Yahveh." These two barbarous laws discredit the theory
that a true and merciful God had anything to do with their enactment, or with
the barbarous "Scriptures" which attribute them to him. But the One
True Church of Yahveh to-day still holds to this phallic prohibition; and while
it pretends to deny to its asexual ministers the natural exercise of these
organs, its canons decree that its consecrated ones, from Yahveh's Vicar down,
must be "perfect in all their parts"; and before the ceremonial
"laying on of hands," it exacts a private and thorough examination,
to satisfy Yahveh's and Peter's phallic requirements.
THE SUPERSTITION OF WITCHCRAFT
A brief reference to some other superstitions
of the Hebrew Bible religion may be permitted. Witches, wizards, familiar
spirits, and demons were as plentiful and popular as angels and devils in
modern Christianity -- and as real. Yahveh, on Sinai, enacted (Ex.
Hundreds of years after Saul, old Isaiah
vapoured about the "familiar spirits" and the "wizards that
peep, and that mutter" (Isa.
THE BIBLE A GREAT "DREAM BOOK"
As for dreams, it is idle to examine into any
of them; the whole Bible, Old and New Testaments, is little more than a
superstitious "dream-book," from Abram's dream that he should sacrifice
his only son Isaac, to the apocalyptic nightmares of John on Patmos. One of
these latter was indeed a vision unique in Scripture: "Behold, there
appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman" (Rev. 12: 1 ).
Most of the principal inspired events in the Hebrew
Scriptures were dreamed -- all its miraculous happenings were of such stuff as
dreams are made of. Abraham dreamed the promise and the covenant, as did Jacob
at the ladder; Joseph was a "Baal of dreams." Yahveh himself
prescribes dreams as the preferred medium of revelation of his awful will:
"If there be a prophet among you, 1:Yahveh, will make myself known unto
him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream" (Num. 12: 6 ). David
dreamed, Solomon dreamed, Ezekiel dreamed, Daniel was the premier dreamer of
them all. Jeremiah derides the whole horde of self-styled prophets gadding
about the land crying: "I have dreamed, I have dreamed," and who
prophesy [Heb., rave] lies (Jer.
The superstition that dreams were sent by gods
as a revelation of their will was not limited to the Hebrew
"revelation" of Yahveh; it pervaded antiquity, and prevails yet among
low-civilized tribes. Zeus lay awake all one night on high
"At last, this counsel seemed the best,
-- to send A treacherous Dream to Agamemnon, son Of Atreus. Then he called a
Dream, and thus Addressing it with winged words, he said: Go, fatal Vision, to
the Grecian fleet, And, entering Agamemnon's tent, declare Faithfully what I
bid thee. ... At his head the Dream Took station in the form of Neleus' son.
... In such a shape The Heaven-sent Dream to Agamemnon spake ... He spake, and
disappearing, left the King Musing on things that never were to be"
(Iliad, Bk. 2: 1-47 ).
This false dream from Jove for the undoing of
the Greek hero has a counterpart in the "lying spirit" sent by Yahveh
falsely to "entice Ahab king of
CHAPTER 9
THE PAGAN GOD -- AND GODS -- OF
THERE is (it may be) a God, the Supreme
Architect, the Creator of the earth and of the fullness thereof, and of the
wondrous "finite but unlimited" universe. Lord Bacon has said:
"I had rather believe all the fables of the Legend, of the Talmud, and
Al-Koran than that this universal frame is without a mind." Beautifully
has the Psalmist sung: "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the
firmament sheweth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto
night sheweth knowledge." The works of God
In the later Hebrew Scriptures, there are many
sublime outbursts of the highest and noblest concepts of Yahveh, as Creator
God, as the Supreme Being, infinitely great and infinitely good. These, all of
them, will be found to be simply fervid pious declamations; the occasional
visions of a few ecstatic souls, denouncing the prevailing idolatrous practices
of the whole people, and thundering their unheeded appeals for the worship of
this ideal and "one true" God. This concept of Yahveh as "one
only God" developed very late, however, in the history of
This Yahveh, this God -- or plurality of gods
-- as revealed in the Hebrew sacred writings, will now be examined as revealed
in the inspired texts, For the purpose of clearly distinguishing between the
Hebrew tribal deity and the ideal but "unknown" God of our more
refined concept, the Hebrew words El, Elohim,, and the name Yahveh are used in
all references to the "revealed Deity of the Hebrew Scriptures, and in the
quoted passages where the name Yahveh has been falsely rendered "Lord
God."
PAGAN ORIGINS OF THE HEBREWS
Whatever they may have become later,
indisputably the people known as Hebrews were a derived people, not always
Hebrews, and not always votaries of the God Yahveh: both people and religion
had a beginning. It is needful to go back to this beginning in order to get a
proper perspective.
The name "Hebrew" is derived from
Heber, a reputed descendant of Noah and ancestor of Abraham; just as the
appellation "Semite," applied to the whole family of peoples of whom
the Hebrews are one branch, derives from Shem, one of the triplet sons of Noah,
and reputed common ancestor of the Semitic nations.
Abraham, when he first comes to our knowledge,
was, as we have seen, a nomadic Chaldean Semite, of "
These peoples, the Babylonians, the Assyrians
(originally a Babylonian colony), the Syrians, the Canaanites, the Hebrews, and
later the Arabians, and the peoples generally of
The Hebrews were also called Israelites,
because Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, after fighting all night, according to
their legend, with the God, had his name changed to
In keeping with their religion, the Hebrews,
throughout their history, were simply a nation of fighters or semi-barbarous
soldiers, with Yahveh as their war-lord, and with primitive instincts of
humanity or culture. They took their characteristics from their notions of
their God, for like all primitive peoples they were very religious in their
way; or else their notion of God took its form from their own characteristics:
it is the same either way. Isaiah had the idea when be said: "Like people,
like priest; like servant, like master; like maid, like mistress" (Isa.
24: 2 ); and he could exactly as well have added, "like God, like
people," or "like people, like God" -- the terms are
convertible. Goethe aptly hits off the truth:
"As anyone is, So is his God; And thus is
God Oft strangely odd."
It is wrong to say "the God of the
Hebrews," for El or Yahveh was but one of their many gods; the Hebrews had
the same gods as their kindred and neighboring nations, and never in Bible
times abandoned their "false gods" for the worship of any "one
true and living God of all the earth," as Yahveh was ultimately
"evolved" by some of the later prophets of Israel, after the
captivity. This is abundantly proved by all the scripture writers and prophets
without exception.
THE HEBREWS WERE HEATHENS
That the Hebrews had the same God and gods as
the peoples around them, and were thus pagan idolaters or "heathen,"
their own Scriptures declare many times. Up to the reputed times of Moses this
fact is indisputable, on the face of the record. Until the traditional
"giving of the law" to Moses on Sinai, there is not the slightest
hint in the Hebrew Scriptures, covering a space of 2500 years, that the El or
Yahveh of the patriarchs was different from any other El, or had or claimed any
different cult or form of worship. He never made any such intimation in all his
reputed appearances and talks with men, from Adam to Abraham, and from Abraham
to Moses.
That the patriarchs down to the time of Moses
were ordinary idolatrous heathen is perfectly apparent from the inspired texts.
As we have noted, Father Abraham was of Ur of the Chaldees, "the land of
his nativity" (Gen. 11: 28 ); and presumably from the silence of the
record had never heard of Yahveh until the God appeared to him at Haran and
told him to emigrate to Canaan (Gen. 12: 1 ), though he had already voluntarily
done so (Gen. 11: 31 ). The Chaldeans were Syrians, certainly not
"peculiar" votaries of the God Yahveh, but ordinary idol-worshipping
heathens, as naturally were also the ancestors and family of Abram, and all
their fellow Syrians, as they are expressly called. Laban, the father-in-law of
Isaac, is called "Laban the Syrian" (Gen. 31: 20, 24 ), and he and
his family worshipped teraphim (Gen. 31: 30-35 ). Laban was "son of
Bethuel the Syrian" (Gen. 28: 5 ); the name Bethu-el shows that
"El" was a common Syrian or Chaldean god, who continued as God of the
three patriarchs. Abram's grandson Jacob is called "a Syrian about to
die" (Deut. 26: 5 ) when he migrated to
In a word, until the Book of the Law was
promulgated, in the time of Josiah, there was never a hint even that Yahveh was
a "jealous God," nor that "thou shalt have no other gods before
[i.e., in preference to] me," though this commandment admits the fact of
"other gods." That whole part of the world, in other words, had the
same gods and one common form of religion and worship; and the Israelites were
identical in this respect with all the other kindred peoples, and persisted in
being so until the return from captivity, as the record proves.
"EL" -- "BEL" AND "BAAL"
The word usually applied by the Hebrews to
designate god, -- any god, true or false, Hebrew or heathen -- was the common
noun El. By the Babylonians the word for god in general was Ilu, or Bel; with
the Canaanites the form of the name was Baal. They are identical, the same
common noun for the same idea of god or lord. It was simply a Semitic word
meaning "Lord." This word for deity (El, god, spirit, lord; plural,
Elohim, gods, spirits, lords), persists to-day: more millions of Mohammedans
than there are millions of Christians and Jews combined prostrate themselves to
the earth five times a day and cry the Arabian words: "Lo Illah, il
Allah" -- "there is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his
prophet." This is the selfsame El, Ilu, Bel, Baal, of the Hebrews,
Canaanites, Babylonians, and Assyrians. The Arabians are reputed to be
descended from Ishmael ("God heareth"), the bastard son of Abraham
and Hagar, and half-brother of Isaac; they to-day hold Abraham as their father,
and speak the language nearest to the Hebrew; their "Allah," the
Aramaic "Elah," is the Hebrew "El" or "Ilu," God,
Lord. And yet the Hebrew-God Christians say that Allah is a false god, and Bel
and Baal heathenish abominations.
But God is God in whatever language his name
is named. We in English say "God"; the Teutons and their kindred call
him "Gott"; the French call him "Dieu"; the Spanish
"Dios"; the Italians "Dio"; the Portuguese "Deus"
-- exactly the Latin word for God, which in its turn came from the Greek
"Theos," and it from the Sanskrit "Dyaus"; but all are
words for the same mythic God. The Hebrew, again, was "El" or
"Ilu," the Babylonian-Assyrian "Bel," the Canaanite
"Baal," the Arabian "Il"; all again the same god-name.
These names were all only the common or generic name applied to deity, any god,
even to departed spirits, or even as a title of respect, "lord" or
"master," to living persons, by these kindred peoples, though the
Bible and the Christians say that the El Yahveh was the only true God. But the
Bible usage is quite to the contrary.
"BAAL" IS "LORD"
In the Hebrew Bible the ancient Semitic word
baal, like the Hebrew adon, or the English "lord," in every sense, is
constantly employed as a common noun meaning "lord,"
"master," or owner of this or that. Joseph is called by his brothers
"this baal [master] of dreams," translated "this dreamer"
(Gen. 37: 19 ); and again of Joseph it is said: "the archers [baalim of
arrows] have ... shot at him" (Gen. 49: 23 ). A man is called baal or
"master of the house" (Ex. 22: 7 ); again the "owner" of
the house is baal (Ex.
YAHVEH IS BAAL
As the term is applied to deity, the word
Baal, which is then always used with the definite article -- the-Baal,
the-Baalim -- retains its idea of lordship or ownership. The-baal was the local
deity or "lord" who had "put his name" in this or that place,
as the-Baal of Tyre, to whom Solomon's friend Hiram built a magnificent temple
in his capital; the-baal of Lebanon, the-Baal of heaven; also often Baal-zebub,
lord of flies; Baal-peor, the Lord hymen-breaker. Jerub-baal, "who is
Gideon," died, "and the children of Israel ... went a whoring after
the-Baalim, and made Baal-berith [the Lord-of-the-covenant] their gods
[elohim]" (Judges 8: 33 ); and it is revealed that the hosts of Israel
went into the house of this their Lord of the covenant -- now called Beth-El-Berith
(Judges 9: 46 ). This clearly shows El and Baal to be identical and
interchangeable terms. David's son Beeliada (i Chron. 14: 7 ) elsewhere appears
as Eliada (2 Sam.
It was so exactly with the other word
"El" Yahveh as the local lord or baal of sundry places or things
rendered sacred by his "putting his name" thereon. On Sinai, Yahveh
said to Moses: "In all places where I record my name I will come unto
thee, and I will bless thee" (Ex.
The pagan Jebusite Melchizedek ("king of
righteousness"), was "priest of El-elyon [most high God]" (Gen.
14: 18 ) -- which proves again that El was a common term for deity, pagan and
Hebrew alike. Yahveh himself is frequently called El-Elyon -- "God Most
High" -- the word elyon being an adjective simply meaning "high"
or "lofty." Yahveh tells Moses that he is El-Shaddai (God my Daemon;
Ex. 6: 3 ), as he is often peculiarly called; and in Joshua he is called
Yahveh-El-elohim, translated "the Lord God of gods" (Josh. 22: 2 ),
and so scores of times, proving that Yahveh was merely one El or God of or over
the other gods or spirits which abounded in the Hebrew and neighboring pagan
mythologies.
Gradually, towards the close of the Hebrew
sacred history, particularly after the return from captivity, out of all this
jumble of confused local baalim and elohim, evolved a more or less definite
idea of the Hebrew Yahveh as a higher or super-el or baal above all the others;
then as a supreme El or Baal or Lord of heaven and earth; and then as the One
and Only True God, to the exclusion of all others as "false gods" or
worse -- "all the gods of the heathen are devils" (Ps. 96: 5,
Vulgate).
HA-ELOHIM YISHRAEL -- THE GODS OF
This brings us to the climax of
"revelation" of the Hebrew Scriptures, which to many good Christians
and Hebrews alike, brought up on professional translations, may well seem
startling; but which will now be fully proved by the literal words of the Hebrew
Scriptures -- the patent plurality of Hebrew gods in their revelation to man.
The English, Latin, Greek, and other versions
"diligently compared and revised" by professional
"divines," to which texts the acquaintance of the vast majority of
people is confined, diligently and persistently conceal this cardinal fact
under a form of translation designed to give us a belief in an Only One God of
Israel from "the beginning," who created heaven and earth, and
performed the many wonders related as revealed. But this is a pious fraud; for,
according to the texts of the Hebrew Scriptures, in their original language,
all the works of creation and the many acts appearing in translation and in
theology as of a One and Only God are attributed not to any One God, but to
"the gods."
THE ORIGINAL HEBREW WORDS
It is no work of pedantic erudition but a
simple and easy accomplishment for any one who will take the pains to learn the
twenty-two consonantal letters of the Hebrew alphabet to recognize by sight and
distinguish between four Hebrew words applied to the Hebrew God and gods,
plainly printed in the texts of the "Word of God": first, their word
El (Heb., S$ ), meaning God or spirit- shade; the plural forms of that word,
elohim (Heb., nli'l?14 ) and elohe (Heb., 6$'lg& ); then their name-word
Yahveh (Heb., L%*#!| ), or Jehovah, which is persistently falsely concealed and
rendered in translation simply by the title "Lord"; and then the
actual Hebrew- Chaldean word for "lord," which is "adon"
(Heb., J'I$ ). Equipped with this easy and elementary learning, we shall
proceed to pick out and examine these four words in some of the principal
instances where they occur in the Hebrew texts, and ourselves "diligently
compare" them with the pious mistranslations of the English versions --
asking any scholarly "Doctor of Divinity" to deny the result if he
truthfully can.
"THE GODS CREATED"
In the very first sentence of Genesis, the
Book of Beginnings, we find the "revelation" of the plurality of gods
-- elohim: In- beginning created ELOHIM [gods] the-heavens and-the-earth"
(Gen. 1: 1 ). The forms of the sentences show the order of the Hebrew words,
and the hyphens indicate the combination of the particles "and,"
"the," etc., which are joined to the noun in Hebrew and written as
one word; e.g., "theheavens," "andtheearth."
"And-the-spirit [ruach, wind] of-elohim [gods] moved upon-the-face
of-the-abyss" (1: 2 ); "And-said elohim [gods], let-there-be
light." And thus, for thirty-three times in the first chapter of Genesis,
we read "ELOHIM" (gods) -- always plural, always "gods,"
but always translated "God."
There is proof of plurality which even
translation cannot in this instance conceal: "And-said ELOHIM [gods],
Let-make-us man [adam] in-image-our, after-likeness-our" (
Not one God, but a plurality of gods, from the
very beginning of Hebrew Scripture is further proved by the familiar dialogue
between the serpent and the woman: "And the serpent said unto the woman,
Ye shall not surely die; for elohim [gods] do know that in the day ye eat
thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods [elohim],
knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3: 5 ). And the serpent spoke true; and when
Yahveh-Elohim heard that the- man and the-woman had eaten the forbidden fruit
of the tree of knowledge, he (they) said., "Behold, the man is become as
one of us, to know good and evil" (
In the second, or Jahvistic, chapter, we first
encounter the variants Yahveh and "Yahveh Elohim"' (Yahveh being here,
as often, abbreviated: "yy"), which distinguish the use of a second
and very often conflicting source, as is elsewhere pointed out. The Elohist
account of creation, using the word "elohim, ends with Genesis 2: 3;
immediately the totally different "Jahvistic" narrative begins:
"In the day [not the six days of the Elohist version] that Yahveh Elohim
made the earth and the heavens" (2: 4 ). We find Yahveh Elohim thirteen
times in the second chapter, doing a totally different work of creation --
always Yahveh Elohim, always plural, always "gods," but always
misrendered "Lord God."
YAHVEH ELOHIM is the ordinary Hebrew
"construct" form used to express the genitive, or possessive, case,
there being no equivalent for "of" in Hebrew. "The relation of
the genitive is regularly expressed by attaching the genitive noun to the
preceding nomens regens in the construct state" (Gesenius, Hebrew Grammar,
see. 114 ). The reader is already familiar with examples: beth-el, house of
god; beth-ha-elohim, house of the gods; ben-adam, son of man, or of men;
beni-ha-elohim, sons of the gods; Yahveh elohe- yishrael, Yahveh god of Israel;
"Yahveh your God is elohe ha- elohim, and adonai ha-adonim, ha-el haggadol
[God of the gods, and Lord of the lords, the great God]" (Deut. 10: 17 ).
Yahveh-elohim therefore is simply "Yahveh-of-the-gods," "Yahveh
God-of-gods"; precisely, "Yahveh one of, chief of, the gods." In
the same way elohe is used in the "construct state" for singular and
plural, followed by the genitive of the governed noun, as in the examples just
cited; for example, elohe yishrael, God of Israel; elohe ha- elohim, God of the
gods; Yahveh elohe-ka, Yahveh thy God.
Chapter 3 is composite, and we find sometimes
Elohim, sometimes Yahveh Elohim; but always the plural; and so in chapter 4.
Even more explicit are the words of chapter 5, where it is twice recorded:
"And Enoch walked with THE-GODS [ha-elohim]; and (gods) [elohim] took
him" (22, 24 ). And so of Noah, in chapter 6: "And Noah was a just
man; he walked with the-gods" (ha-elohim; 6: 9 ). Chapter 6 is a veritable
medley of composition, and of plurality of deity, beginning the fable of the
Flood: "The SONS of the GODS [beni ha-elohim -- a Hebraism for 'the gods']
saw the daughters of men" (6: 2 ), and (6: 3 ) "Yahveh said." And
again (6: 4 ): "The sons of the GODS [beni ha-elohim] came in unto the
daughters of men, and they bore children unto them"; and (6: 5 )
"Yahveh saw." "The earth was corrupted before THE GODS
[ha-elohim]" (
"The sons of the gods" (beni ha-elohim
-- a synonym for Gods) are frequently mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures:
"the sons of the gods came to present themselves before Yahveh" (Job
1: 6; 2: 1 ); and "all the sons of the gods shouted for joy" (Job 38:
7 ). The God of the Hebrews was thus plainly not one God, but a plurality of
gods and goddesses, who themselves, [Eneye. Bib., Vol. 4: cols. 4690-91; art.
Son of God.] or whose children were of so sportive a nature that they corrupted
the earth and brought on its fabled destruction by the Flood of Noah.
Now we have a singular confirmation of the
plurality of the Hebrew elohim (gods), and of their identity with the elohim
(gods) of the other heathen tribes and peoples thereabouts. In Genesis 20,
Abraham takes Sarah, his wife, and journeys to Gerar, in the Philistine
country, of which the king was Abimelech, whose name signifies "Moloch (or
the king) is my father" -- certainly a heathen who knew not the supposed
One-God, Yahveh, of Abraham. Abimelech, according to a jovial custom of the
country, took Sarah and slept with her, thinking she was Abraham's sister, as
he had falsely stated. Lo, "Elohim [gods] came to Abimelech in a
dream" (20: 3 ) and warned him of the error of his way; and "the gods
[ha- elohim] said unto him in the dream" (20: 6 ). Being a heathen,
Abimelech would hardly dream of foreign Hebrew gods; they were clearly the same
elohim with which he was familiar. Abimelech was scared sick; but Abraham
"prayed unto THE GODS [ha-elohim], and elohim healed Abimelech" (
In Genesis 22: 1, "it came to pass that
the gods [ha-elohim] tempted Abraham" -- as he dreamed -- to offer up
Isaac as a sacrifice; and Abraham (22: 3 ) rose up and took Isaac and
"went unto the place which THE GODs [ha-elohim] told him"; but fortunately
at the critical moment (22: 11 ) "an angel of Yahveh" called out and
checked his hand from the human sacrifice. When Isaac came to die, and Jacob,
disguised to feel like Esau, came in to receive the stolen blessing, Isaac
said: "You smell like a field which Yahveh has blessed" (27: 27 );
"may THE GODS [ha-elohim] give thee," etc. (27: 28 ). Then, in
chapter 28:Isaac further says to Jacob: "And El-shaddai [God my Daemon]
bless thee" (28: 3 ); "mayst thou inherit the land which elohim [gods]
gave unto Abraham" (28: 4 ). Here, again, throughout, is the plural,
"THE GODS," (always rendered "God") and a fairly clear
distinction is always made between the particular El, Yahveh, and the plural
Elohim, gods in general.
Yet a little more, "to make assurance
doubly sure" that the God of the Hebrews was "THE GODS" of the
other heathens among whom they lived. Jacob had played his notorious
cattle-breeding tricks on his heathen father-in-law Laban, who got angry and
broke up the family arrangements. Thereupon "an angel Of THE GODS [ha-elohim]"
(Gen. 31: 11 ), spoke to Jacob in a dream; and said: "I am THE GOD of
Beth-el [ha-el-Beth-el]" (31: 13 ), and advised him to take secret leave
of Laban, and return to his own country; and Jacob's wives, who were plain
Chaldee heathens, said to him, "all that elohim [gods] said unto thee,
do" (31: 16 ). Then Rachel, one of his heathen wives, daughter of the
heathen Laban "stole the teraphim [phallic idols] which belonged to her
father" (31: 19 ) and the Jacob family fled. Laban pursued after them for
a week before he caught them; and "elohim [gods] came upon Laban the
Syrian in a dream, and said," etc. (31: 24 ). And Laban said to Jacob:
"Why hast thou stolen my GODS [elohim]?" (31: 30 ); and Jacob told
Laban to search for them, and said: "Whoever hath THY GODS [elohim] shall
not live" (31: 32 ). Laban searched, but Rachel had hidden the idols, and
Laban could not find them. After a quarrel between them, Jacob invoked
"THE GODS" (elohe) of his father Abraham for making peace between
them; and he set up a phallic mazzebah ("pillar") for a testimonial
(31: 45 ), and invoked the GODS (elohe) of Abraham, Nabor, etc., to "judge
between us" (31: 53 ). Then Jacob went on his way, "and angels Of THE
GODS met him" (32: 1 ), and Jacob called them "the hosts of THE
GODS" (32: 2 ). Thus all through these chapters and following ones, we
find nothing but elohim, ha-elohim and elohe (gods) for heathen Laban's
teraphim-gods and Jacob's gods alike.
At Jabbok Jacob fought with a stranger, who
asked him his name; and the stranger changed Jacob's name to Israel, for
"thou hast fought with GODS [elohim] and with men" (Gen. 32: 28 );
and Jacob called the place Peni-el ("face-of-God"; 32: 31 ), for, he
said, "I have seen GODS [elohim] face to face." Jacob erected an
altar and called it El-Elohe-Israel (33: 20 ) -- "GOD OF THE GODS of
In chapter 3v the plurality of GODS, Hebrew
and "strange" is further clearly shown: "Elohim [gods] said to
Jacob, Go to Beth-el, and make there an altar unto THE GOD [ha-el] who appeared
to thee when thou fleddest" (35: 1 ); then "Jacob said unto his
household, Put away the strange Gods [elohe] which are in your midst" (35:
2 ); and "I will make there an altar to THE GOD [ha-el] who," etc.
(35: 3 ); and "they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods [elohe]"
(35: 4 ); and Jacob came to Beth-el and built an altar which he called
"El-bethel, because there the gods [ha-elohim] appeared [Heb., were
revealed] unto him" (35: 7 ). Thus distinction is clearly made between a
particular el (god), and the generality of elohim or elohe, (gods) common to
the heathen peoples of those parts.
Pharaoh dreamed a dream, and called on Joseph
to interpret it. This "baal of dreams" (dream-master), as his
brothers called him (Gen. 37: 19 ), said to Pharaoh: "What ha-elohim [the
gods] is about to do, he has told Pharaoh" (Gen. 41: 25 ); and "the
thing is settled by ha-elohim" [the gods; 41: 28]; and "ha-elohim
[the gods] is hastening to do it" (41: 33 ). Pharaoh certainly knew of no
Hebrew only-one God, but all the gods of
That the Egyptian Pharaohs by elohim meant
only their own myriad gods is made evident by the incident of 430 years later,
when the Pharaoh of that time commanded the Hebrew midwives to kill all the
male Hebrew children as they were born; and it is twice said, "but the
midwives feared ha-elohim" (the gods; Ex. 1: 17, 21 ). Surely these were
none other than the gods of Egypt, for after 430 years in Egypt the Hebrew
slaves knew of no other gods; even Moses knew not Yahveh and had to ask his
name; and for centuries, down to the time of Ezekiel, "they did not
forsake ha-elohim [the gods] of Egypt" (Ezek. 20: 8 ). It cannot be gainsaid
that elohim is plural, and means and reveals more gods than one, wherever used
either of Hebrew ha-elohim or of ha-elohim of
PLURALITY OF GODS BETRAYED
Plural Nouns and Plural Verbs
All through the Book of Genesis we see
"the-gods" of the ancient Hebrews, who are throughout just like
the-gods of their heathen neighbors. It is but fair to say, for what it is
worth, that the verbs used, for the most part, in the Hebrew texts with this
plural elohim are generally in the singular number. The verb- forms
"am," "is", "are," "was,"
"were," and such forms of the present and imperfect tenses of the
verb "to be" are not used in Hebrew, as any one may see by glancing
down any page of the Authorized Version of the Old Testament, where these words
are always written in italics, signifying that they do not occur in the
original.
But the actual verb plural-form (which in
Hebrew is the tiny vav -- "u" -- tacked on the end, as we add
"s" in English to form the plural of nouns), although mostly missing,
is a number of times to be found, and is undeniable proof of the plurality of
ha-elohim. Father Abraham himself avows this plurality: "When elohim
[gods] caused [plural: hith-u] me to wander from my father's house" (Gen.
20: 13 ). Jacob built an altar at Luz, "and called the place El-
bethel"; because there ha-elohim were revealed [plural: nigl-u] unto
him" (Gen. 35: 7 ). And David makes the selfsame open avowal of the plural
gods of
The law says: "At the mouth of two
witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be
established" (Deut.
The "Plural of Dignity"
The apologists for the use of the plural,
elohim and elohe, reason that this is a "plural of dignity" -- a sort
of divine "editorial we"; they even go to the length of saying that
elohim connotes the awful sense of "Godhead." If so, there were
scores of pagan god-heads-elohim.
But when the Hebrew Deity Yahveh alone speaks
or is particularly spoken of, there is no hiding behind the anonymous
"editorial plural," but always forthright "I" (Heb., ani,
anoki), or the singular El (God), or the personal name "Yahweh." A
few instances out of many hundreds must suffice.
Time and again the chief tribal Baal says,
"Anoki El" and "Anoki Yahveh," "Anoki El-shaddai"
(Gen. 17: 1; Ex. 3: 6 ); "Anoki ha-el beth-el (I am the God of
Beth-el)" (Gen. 31: 13 ); "Anoki El, and there are no other
elohim" (Isa. 46: 9 ); "I am El" (Isa. 45: 22 ). Yahveh descended
in a cloud upon Sinai and proclaimed: "Yahveh, Yahveh El" (Ex. 34:
5-6 ). Moses often quotes Yahveh as saying: "Thou shalt worship no other
El: for Yahveh, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous El" (Ex. 34: 14; 20:
5; Deut.
This usage of El for a particular God, Hebrew
or other, and of elohim and elohe for gods indiscriminately, as in hundreds of
instances in this chapter and elsewhere, quite explodes the pious notions of an
"editorial we" and "plural of dignity," and demonstrates
the common polytheism of Israel and their neighbor heathens.
YAHVEH -- "
Many "Other Gods" are Acknowledged
Hundreds of times in the ancient Hebrew sacred
books the actual existence of the gods of the surrounding peoples is declared
and vouched for by Inspiration; no one thing in Holy Writ is more frequent or
more positive than the affirmation and recognition of "other gods" as
actual living beings, save only the existence and the asserted superiority of
Yahveh God of Israel. So numberless are the inspired texts voicing this
unquestioned fact that sundry instances only, picked almost at random, can be
cited here.
Yahveh was only God of Israel, as time and
again is averred; his holy covenant, as it was first made with Abraham, was:
"I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee
in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to
thy seed after thee" (Gen. 17: 7 ); and ever after he called himself and
was simply called: "The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob," as, for example, he declared himself to Moses at the burning bush
(Ex. 3: 6 ). Yahveh chose the "seed of Abraham" to be his
"Chosen people"; he was to be their special, national God: "For
thou [Israel] art an holy people unto Yahveh thy God, and Yahveh hath chosen
thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon
the earth" (Deut. 14: 2 ) -- as to whom Yahveh made no claims at all. But
the Hebrew Yahveh, though a "jealous God," demanding that his Chosen
People worship him preferably or alone, and claiming superiority over all
"other gods," yet admits the existence and divine personality of
these "other gods," and recognizes their rights and powers, all but
equal to his own.
On Sinai Yahveh solemnly commands: "I am
Yahveh thy God, which have brought thee [
The holy law of Yahveh, promulgated amid the
fires and thunders of Sinai, commanded reverent respect for all other gods. It
is enacted by Yahveh: "Thou shalt not revile the Gods [ha- elohim], nor
curse the ruler of thy people" (Ex.
Moses, "the man of the gods [ish
ha-elohim]" (Deut. 33: 1 ), himself, in his famous song of triumph,
asserts only superiority for his Yahveh, and proclaims vauntingly: "Who is
like unto thee, O Yahveh, among the gods"? (Ex. 15: 11 ). His father-in-
law, Jethro, pagan priest of the gods of Midian, seeing some of the wonders of
Sinai, admits to Moses: "Now I know that Yahveh is greater than all the
gods" (Ex. 18: 11 ). Again, in his last speech, Moses exults to
The Psalmist takes up the refrain, making it
the burden of many a sweet song: "O give thanks unto the God of gods
[elohe ha- elohim] O give thanks to the Lord of lords [adonai ha-adonim]"
(Psalm 136: 2, 3 ); "For Yahveh is a great God [El]; he is to be feared
above all gods [elohim]" (Psalm 96: 4 ); and "Thou. ... art Yahveh,
exalted far above all gods" (Psalm 97: 9 ). Again he sings: "For
Yahveh is a great God [El], and a great King above all gods [elohim]"
(Psalm 95: 3 ); "Among the gods [elohim] there is none like unto thee, O
Adonai [Lord]" (Psalm 86: 8 ); "All the gods [elohim] of the nations
are Devils [elilim]; but Yahveh made the heavens" (Psalm 96: 5 ). But gods
or devils, they are living actualities; and David calls on them as immortal
beings to render homage to the Yahveh of
So a thousand times the tongue and pen of
Inspiration declare the living verity of "all the gods of the
nations," Yahveh is simply a god "e pluribus unum" -- a
"God above all the other gods"; not "One God of all the
earth," until the later idea and dogma of Judaism evolved out of the
tribulations of the captivity. But "out of nothing, nothing is made."
In view of the reiterated admissions above noted and hundreds of others in the
sacred texts, to contend otherwise is ostentation of unscriptural theology.
THE GOD OF
That Yahveh was only, and claimed only to be,
the tribal god of
Ahaziah, King of Israel, was sick: and he sent
messengers, and said unto them, Go, enquire of Baal-zebub the god of Ekron
whether I shall recover of this disease. But the angel of Yahveh said to Elijah
the Tishbite, Arise, go up to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria, and
say unto them, Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that ye go to
enquire of Baal-zebub the god of Ekron?" (2 Kings 1: 2, 3 ). Elijah
repeated the query about the God of Israel, adding a message from Yahveh to
Ahaziah: "Thus saith Yahveh, Forasmuch as thou hast sent messengers to
enquire of Baal- zebub the god of Ekron, is it not because there is no God in
Shalmanezer, King of Assyria, destroyed the
nation of Israel, or Samaria, in 721 B.C., and carried away bodily the whole
ten tribes into perpetual captivity, leaving their land bare; he then
re-peopled Samaria with colonies of other nations subdued by Assyria (2 Kings
17: 24 ). Yahveh, who had not saved his Chosen People, took it upon himself, as
local Baal of the land, to harass the newcomers by sending "lions among
them, which slew some of them" (
Here it is recorded, that "every nation
made gods of their own" (17: 29 ); the colonists from each nation,
Babylon, Cuth, Hamath, and others, established the worship of the gods of their
respective countries, now acclimated in Israel. As in the days of Moses the
Jeremiah complains that "the women ...
make cakes to the queen of heaven, and ... pour out drink offerings unto other
gods" (Jer.
Time and again Inspiration couples and
distinguishes the rival deities: "I am Yahveh thy Elohe; fear not the elohe
of the Amorates" (Judges
Allegiance could be transferred from one
territorial god to another upon removing from one country to another; when Ruth
would go with Naomi, she said: "Thy people shall be my people, and thy God
my God" (Ruth
Regular tournaments or contests of power were
staged between Yahveh of
Moses even credits Yahveh with having brought
Israel up to be his own "people of inheritance," while he
"divided [i.e., set apart] unto all nations under the whole heaven,"
to be their gods, "the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host
of heaven" (Deut. 4: 19, 20 ), establishing this form of idolatry in order
to appropriate Israel to himself alone.
From the foregoing inspired
"revelation," the conclusion is obvious and inevitable: all these
"other gods" were, or were regarded by the inspired authors of the
"Word of God" to be, as actually real and existent as was Yahveh
himself; Yahveh was no more real and existent than any other of the "gods
of the nations." All actually existed as gods of their respective nations,
or else none of them had any existence outside the superstitious beliefs of
their respective votaries. The "Word of God" inspiredly vouches
equally for them all; with respect to all it is equally either true or not
true. This conclusion is unescapable.
If these gods ever once existed, they all yet
exist, for according to all accounts, gods are immortal. To deny the existence
of Baal, Chemosh, or Dagon is to deny the existence of Yahveh; to admit Yahveh
is to confess "all the gods of the nations." The same inspired record
vouches for the one and the others.
It may be here suggested, in anticipation of a
later chapter, that, since Yahveh, simply the tribal god of Israel, no more
real and existent than Baal, Chemosh, Dagon, and all the "other gods of
the nations," never himself existed except in imagination and Hebrew
mythology, Yahveh could not have had a son, Joshua or Jesus; and therefore
Josliua-Jesus, as Son of Yahveh, is a mythological personage. This too is
unescapable.
PAGAN BIBLE NAMES
All through the Old Testament the two names El
and Yahveh appear, some preferring one, and some the other; and both
inextricably connected with the Canaanitish form "Baal." The names of
the Bible worthies are the clearest proof of this preference and combination of
titles of their deity. The votaries of El bore his name:
The names of Baal and Bel shared the same
honors: Gideon was nick-named Jerub-baal, which seems to combine Jehovah and
Baal. The name of Abimelech, a son of Gideon, who set himself up briefly,
during the days of the judges, as first king over
That Baal, Bel, and El were equivalent terms
for "Lord," but that Yahveh preferred the figurative term "my
husband" to the more formal "Lord," and that a customary name
for Yahveh was "Baal," he himself is quoted as declaring: "And
it shall be at that day, saith Yahveh, that thou shalt call me Ishi [my
husband]; and shalt call me no more Baali [my Lord]" (Hosea 2: 16 ).
Not only the Hebrews, but all the Semitic
peoples had this custom of compounding their names with that of their favorite
deity, in the desire thus to secure the protection of the local Baal for their
children. We may recall such names of Belshazzar, Hasdrubal, Hannibal. In more
modern, Christian lands the names of saints, often a long string of them, are
fondly bestowed on helpless infants with the like motive; just as others are
named after rich uncles and other important relatives -- in the hope of
favours, divine or human. The names cited and their significance are none of
them fanciful; all but the last two are taken from among many others in the
"Dictionary of Scripture Proper Names," printed in the back of every
well-edited copy of the Holy Bible. They serve to prove further that the El or
Yahveh of the Hebrew Bible was nothing more or less than a heathenish Semitic
deity or local god, or "Baal," and was not in any sense a "One
God of Israel" or of the whole earth.
CHAPTER 10
YAHVEH -- THE "TERRIBLE GOD" OF
THE revelation which is made in the inspired
pages of the Hebrew Scriptures of the personality and characteristics of the
Hebrew God, cannot but be amazing and even revolting to those whose concept of
the God of the Bible is that of a God of mercy and truth. The portrait of their
Deity which the Chosen People draw in the sacred pages will be here exposed to
candid view, in the very words and lines in which it is drawn by inspired pens;
the reader must be left to formulate his own convictions of the result. The
revelation is written by inspiration of this selfsame God, and not by this
reviewer of the record.
YAHVEH AS A SUPERMAN
First of all, the Hebrew God was to his
His human, or anthropomorphic, form and
functions appear unequivocally from the beginning: "Elohim created man in
his own image, in the image of elohim created he him." It is added:
"Male and female created he them, ... and said unto them, Be fruitful, and
multiply, and replenish the earth" (Gen. 1: 27, 28 ). This would imply an
hermaphroditic sexuality in the person of Elohim (as a single deity), or a
female consort, or a plurality of Elohim, male and female, like the gods and
goddesses of
This primitive Hebrew God-man, named Yahveh,
used to come down to the earth and walk about, and talk to the people he had
created; and he made coats of skins for Adam and Eve. He came down as a man and
watched the
Yahveh came down as an angel and had an
all-night wrestling- match with Jacob; and Jacob named the place Peni-el,
"for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved" (Gen.
32: 30 ).
But there would seem to be some mistake about
all this somewhere. For we have the positive assurance of John that "No
man hath seen God at any time" (John 1: 18 ); though St. John the Divine
contradicts this by his own claim to have made a visit to highest heaven, where
he saw both God himself and his Son (two wholly distinct Persons), sitting side
by side on the throne of glory, circled by a rainbow (Rev. 3: 21, 4: 2, 3 );
and John gives minute personal description of one or the other, or both -- it
is all mixed and fairy-talelike: "His head and his hairs were white like
wool; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; And his feet like unto fine brass;
... and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword" (Rev. 1: 14-16 ) --
very much like a grotesque image in a Hindu temple. This description must be
intended for Yahveh himself, as it is very like that given by Daniel when he
too visited Yahveh (Dan. 7: 9 ), when the Son was not recorded as present.
Daniel does not mention the two-edged sword sticking out of his mouth, but he
does tell us that Yahveh "had wheels," which were as burning fire
(Dan. 7: 9 ). Isaiah also either visited heaven or had a good long-distance
view into it, for he assures us: "I saw also Yahveh sitting upon a
throne" (Isa. 6: 1 ); and he reports that "the breath of Yahveh, like
a stream of brimstone" kindles the fires of Tophet (Isa. 30: 33 ). Job (a
heathen) says: "Now mine eye hath seen thee" (Job 42: 5 ). Amos saw
him in quite a belligerent mood: "I saw Yahveh standing upon the altar:
and he said, ... Cut them in the head, all of them; and I will slay the last of
them with the sword" (Amos 9: 1 ). Ezekiel also toured Jerusalem with
Yahveh, whom he calls a man, measuring the city, Yahveh being in his usual form
of man: "The man [Yahveh] stood by me" (Ezek. 43: 6 ); and "Then
said Yahveh unto me" (Ezek. 44: 2 ); the arrangement of the texts
identifying the man with Yahveh.
All this certainly proves, so far as any
wonder in the Bible may be taken as proved, that many of the
Yahveh is throughout the Book credited
explicitly with human body and all its parts: head, hair, face, beard (which he
shaves), eyes, ears, lips, mouth, tongue, nostrils, breath, shoulders, arms,
hands, horns on his hands, fingers, legs, feet, loins, heart, bosom, bowels,
"back parts," even "wheels; " he has voice, uses words, and
speaks: "We have this day seen that God doth talk with man" (Deut. 5:
24 ). He sees, hears, smells, eats, drinks, reads, writes, blots out, touches,
sits, rises, stands, walks, rides, wrestles, works, is weary, rests, plants a
garden and trees, builds, wears garments and makes them for our first parents,
makes shoes, teaches, cures, judges; he begets, forgets, remembers, he laughs,
cries, shouts, sleeps, wakes, loves, hates, fears, is pleased, delighted,
angry, in wrath, in fury, takes vengeance, is grieved, jealous, promises,
threatens, repents, changes his mind, swears, takes oaths, deceives, lies,
swears he will not lie, has a soul. He is a "man of war," and blows a
trumpet, bends a bow, whets a sword, shoots, slays, throws down stones from
heaven (Eke Jove), fights with a sword, bow and arrows, has a quiver full of
arrows, and a whole armory of weapons with which to equip himself for war. He
marches; "he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: and he was seen upon the
wings of the wind"' (2 Sam.
If Yahveh was not anthropomorphic, or of
man-form, then the whole frame work of the Old Testament is wrecked, and every
recorded appearance of Yahveh to the Bible historians, and all the talks of the
God with man, from Adam to the end, including the giving of the Law to Moses,
did not occur, and the stories of the appearances and the talks, which compose
the bulk of the Hebrew Scriptures, are fabulous and meaningless.
Throughout this Hebrew "revelation"
of their God, El or Yahveh is conceived as a man in all his form and parts,
actions and passions; although, like Zeus and the gods of Olympus, he could and
often did change himself into other forms, appearing as an
"atmospheric" divinity, as in the burning bush, in the pillar of
cloud and of fire, in thick clouds, in darkness, in smoke, in storms and winds,
as a still small voice.
And throughout the New Testament, the
Hebrew-Christian Yahveh is still represented as in form and act of a man. The
evangelist Mark, who is the only one to mention the circumstance, says that at
the ascension, Jesus was received up into heaven, "and sat on the right
hand of God" (Mark
The "Apostles' Creed" likewise is
inspired to advise us that Jesus, after rising from the dead and ascending into
heaven, "sitteth on the right hand of God the Father, from whence he
[Jesus] shall come to judge the quick and the dead" evidently leaving his
Father Yahveh in heaven. This sounds to the ordinary understanding very much
like two Gods instead of one God. The evangelist John, alone of all the Bible
biographers (except for a passing remark of Paul in 2 Corinthians 3: 17 ), is
unique in declaring that "God is a Spirit" (John 4: 24 ); but his
notion must be doubted as contrary to all the rest of the inspired authority from
Genesis to Revelation inclusive; even the Creed does not follow him.
EX NIHIL NIHIL
The God "revealed" in the Bible is
therefore, by its every text and test, altogether a sort of magnified man,
created by his votaries -- as were all the "gods of the nations"
about them -- in their own form and image, with all their own traits and
qualities, but magnified. There is, consequently, nowhere to be found a word of
Biblical authority or precedent for the article of faith of all the great
Christian creeds affirming, in their full knowledge of things unknowable, that
"God is a Being without form, parts, or passions, and invisible" (see
the Westminster Confession; Calvin's French confession; the thirty-nine
Articles; the Methodist Articles of Religion.; the Baptist Declaration of
Faith; et id omne genus) -- and therefore, a perfect Nonentity or Nothingness,
if it be possible to conceive such a Being; the antithesis of Milton's
shapeless "Shape, if Shape that can be called which shape hath none.
If these Protestant creeds appear to reduce
the "Revealed" Godhead to nihility, they may be perfectly matched
with these incomparable, and incomprehensible, mystic dogmas of the One True
Faith, admitted to be directly inspired and revealed by Yahveh himself for our
faith and wonder:
"Transcendentally one, absolutely free
from composition, the Divine Being is not, and may not be conceived as, a
fundamental substrate in which qualities or any other modal determinations
inhere." (Cath. Encyc., Vol. 2: p. 63 ).
If this be considered a bit difficult for
ordinary lay minds to grasp, relief may be found in this simpler affirmation of
Nonentity: "God is a simple being or substance excluding every kind of
composition, physical or metaphysical" (Cath. Encyc., Vol. 6: p. 614 ).
Or in the Divine assurance, from the same
source: "The Three Persons of the Trinity are distinguished from all
creatures by the three following characteristics: Absolute immateriality;
Omniscience, and Substantial sanctity" (Id., Vol. 11:p. 309 ).
If this does not spell NOTHING, the human mind
may despair of reconciling "absolute immateriality," which is one
ineffable "quality" or "characteristic," with
"sanctity of substance," which is another and a "material"
one; or unravelling how one "Person" of an absolutely immaterial
Triad of Nothing can be "consubstantial" with two other fractions of
the same "Absolute Immateriality" -- to say nothing of the famous
"homoousian" muddle, or of transsubstantion, whereby the faithful eat
and drink the material body and blood of "Absolute Immateriality."
But this is a question for the learned divines who invented it all; common
mortals may find comfort in their assurance: "It is manifest that a dogma
so mysterious presupposes a divine revelation." One and all, however, True
Faith and heretic, are in this particular totally un-Biblical. The God of the
Bible, El or Yahveh, is, upon all Bible revelation and authority, a man-god
exactly like Bel, Baal, Osiris, Zeus, or Thor, in the pagan mythologies.
YAHVEH A LOCAL DEITY
Like Zeus and the other gods of
On Sinai Yahveh himself declared: "In all
places where I record my name I will come unto thee and I will bless thee"
(Ex.
YAHVEH A KING ELOHIM
The Hebrew El or Yahveh was also in a vague
sense conceived as a sort of king-spirit, or king of departed spirits -- the
"El of the elohim." Yahveh was known and worshipped by the patriarchs
as El Shaddai (El my Daemon; translated "God Almighty"), as he calls
himself (Gen. 17: 1, Ex. 6: 3; et passim). This seems very curious, for the
word means, or is often used as meaning, demon or devil: "They provoked
him [Yahveh] to jealousy with strange gods [elohim]; ... they sacrificed unto
devils [shaddim], which were not gods [elohe]; to gods [elohim] whom they knew
not, to new gods [elohim) that came newly up" (Deut. 32: 16, 17 );
"They sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils
[shaddim]" (Psalm c6: 37 ); "And he ordained him [Rehoboam] priests
... for the devils [shaddim]" (2 Chron. 11: 15 ). Ezekiel speaks of the
"voice of the Almighty [kol shaddai -- kol el-shaddai]" (Ezek.
Moses and Aaron address the Deity Yahveh
directly as El Elohe -- "O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh"
(Num.
Oracles, supposed declarations of Yahveh's
will, were pretended to be received from these "familiar spirits,"
subject to the King El, Yahveh, and elohim, as in the case of the witch of En-
dor, and as is recognized by Isaiah: "And when they shall say unto you,
Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards: ... should not a
people seek unto their God [Elohe]?" (Isa. 8: 19 ). Frequently the King-El
sent "evil spirits from elohim" on this or that mission; as when
"the evil spirit from elohim came mightily upon Saul, and he prophesied"
(1 Sam.
YAHVEH AS A WAR-GOD
The celestial Yahveh was also par excellence
El Sabaoth -- "the Lord of [the starry] Hosts." These, personified,
were considered as his personal retinue; and they "fought on high for
YAHVEH, WAR-GOD OF
These latter references introduce what was the
most definite and dominant concept of Yahveh found in the Hebrew Scriptures
from Exodus until the end of the inspired record. Yahveh was par excellence
their War-God, as was Zeus of the Greeks, and Thor and Odin of the barbarian
Teutons, and as was their Gott till recently. Moses tells the fleeing soldiers
to hold their hands off the pursuing Egyptians (of whom they were scared nearly
to death; Ex. 14: 10 ), for "Yahveh will fight for you" (14: 14 ); and,
jubilant over the destruction of the Pharaoh and his army, drowned in the Red
Sea, he sings: "Yahveh is a man of war: Yahveh is his name" (15: 3 ).
Miriam, sister of Moses, and the women take up the exultant refrain: "Sing
ye to Yahveh, for he hath triumphed gloriously" (
When David went out to fight Goliath, be
called upon "Yahveh Sabaoth [the Lord of (starry) hosts], the Elohe of the
armies of
Nehemiah encourages the returning exiles with
the assurance: "Our Yahveh shall fight for us" (Neh.
PERSONAL TRAITS OF YAHVEH
This Hebrew El-Elohe-Yishra-el, as he is
dubbed by Jacob (Gen. 33: 20 ), is beyond all odds the most hateful and
execrable character in all literature, sacred or profane, according to the
attributes of his Godhead ascribed to him by his own inspired biographers. The
pagan gods of
"Gods artial, vengeful, changeable,
unjust, Whose attributes were rage, revenge, and lust."
The Hebrew-pagan God Yahveh has all the gods
of
Every particular of this, maybe to many
shocking, description, is out of the inspired Bible. It is wholly out of the
question, in this sketch, to review a tithe of the proofs of these divine
attributes of Yahveh; his Holy Word is replete with them. But I promise to
produce amplest "proofs of Holy Writ" for each one of these
attributes, picked almost at random. Many instances of these several attributes
of Yahveh have already been recounted, or will appear in other connections.
Listen first to some generalities glittering with fiery terror.
YAHVEH A DEITY OF TERROR
Moses, who had occasion to know him quite
intimately, if he is to be believed at all, declares: "Yahveh thy God is a
mighty God and terrible" (Deut. 7: 21 ); and "Yahveh is a great God,
mighty and terrible" (Deut. 10: 17 ), a description repeated in nearly
every book of Hebrew Scripture: by Nehemiah (Neh. 1: 5 ); by Isaiah many times;
by David very often; by Jeremiah, as "a mighty, terrible one" (Jer.
20: 11 ); by Daniel, as the "great and dreadful God" (Dan. 9: 4 );
and so times without number.
In fierce and fatal wrath Yahveh surpasses
gods and men: one of the most iterated phrases in the whole "Word of
God" is "and the anger of Yahveh was kindled." Yahveh's own
solemn words and acts belie altogether his vainglorious boastings, as when, for
instance, Yahveh paraded himself on Sinai, before Moses, and proclaimed:
"Yahveh, Yahveh El, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in
goodness and truth" (Ex. 34: 6 ).
But at the very first encounter between Yahveh
and Moses, at the burning bush, when Moses asked to be excused from going to
Egypt and heading the fugitive slaves, "the anger of Yahveh was kindled
against Moses" (Ex. 4: 14 ); and a little later, as he reluctantly went,
Yahveh ambushed him behind a wayside inn "and sought to kill him" (4:
24 ). This incident scores one for Yahveh as an assassin. Long before that, to
say nothing of
A GOD OF BLOODY MURDER
The alleged atrocities which Yahveh wilfully
and maliciously perpetrated by the universal destruction of the Flood, and on
the Egyptians with his inhuman Plagues, the wholesale massacre of the
first-born of Egypt, and the drowning in the Red Sea of the Pharaoh and his
army, also score for his inhumanity and murders. David, a "man after
Yahveh's own heart," extols the feat: "O give thanks unto Yahveh. ...
To him that smote
Just after the departure from Sinai, the
people for some reason murmured, "and Yahveh heard it, and his anger was
kindled; and the fire of Yahveh burnt among them, and consumed them that were
in the uttermost parts of the camp" (Num. 11: 1 ). A little later, when
the people lusted for meat to eat, "the anger of Yahveh was kindled
greatly; Moses also was displeased" (
Because Achan kept out a few of the spoils at
the battle of Ai, "the anger of Yahveh was kindled against the children of
These ebullitions of Jahvistic temper and
terror, and their trains of frightful murder, might be multiplied indefinitely;
but these suffice to prove our point of constant rage, terrorism, and murder
against the Hebrew Yahveh.
YAHVEH THE VENGEFUL
As for vengeance "Vengeance is mine, I
will repay," is the crown-jewel of Yahveh's gorgonian Godhead.
"Yahveh, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God" (Ex. 34: 14 ),
"jealous for my holy name" (Ezek, 219: 25 ). Again, "Yahveh he
is an holy God; he is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions,
nor your sins" (Josh. 24: 19 ); "Yahveh is jealous, and Yahveh
revengeth" (Nahum, 1: 2 ). One must not dare even to dislike him:
"Yahveh repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them"
(Deut.
THE CHANGEFUL YAHVEH
There was no fulfilment of these brutal
threats, which no kind of idolatry could justify; and this chronic
"crime" of
Four or five hundred years before Solomon,
Yahveh had declared his patience to be exhausted: "And Yahveh said unto
the children of Israel, Ye have forsaken me, and served other gods: wherefore I
will deliver you no more" (Judges 10: 13 ); but we find this same Yahveh
saying through Samuel: "Yahveh will not forsake his people for his great
name's sake: because it hath pleased Yahveh to make you his people" (1
Sam. 12: 22 ); adding, however, from force of savage habit: "But if ye
shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed" (12: 25 )! They continued
to do the same as ever, and were not consumed. Yahveh gave his plighted word to
David, referring to Solomon: "He shall build an house for my name, and I
will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever; ... my mercy shall not depart
away from him" (2 Sam.
This was not because the
The truth is that
This idolatry is admitted to have been
continuous from first to last, some seven hundred years: "Because they
have done that which was evil in my sight, and have provoked me to anger, since
the day their fathers came forth out of Egypt, even unto this day" (2
Kings 21: 15 ), therefore, says Yahveh -- in total disregard of his
"everlasting covenant" with Abram, and the iteration ad nauseam of
"I will not forsake my people for my great name's sake" -- therefore,
said Yahveh, "I will forsake the remnant of mine inheritance, and deliver
them into the hand of their enemies; and they shall become a prey and a spoil
to all their enemies" (21: 14 ).
And yet the farce goes merrily on; in the last
chapter but one of the old Jewish folk-book, the curtain is rung down to this
same old tune: "For I am Yahveh, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob
are not consumed. Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine
ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you,
saith Yahveh of hosts" (Mal. 3: 6, 7 ) -- though to an unprejudiced
observer it might seem that both parties would be glad for a mutual good
riddance. And Yahveh takes this humorous loathing, longing, fickle, parting
fling at his "lying children": "Ye are cursed with a curse; ...
prove me now herewith, saith Yahveh of hosts, if I will not open you the
windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing; ... and all nations shall call
you blessed" (Mal. 3: 9, 10, 12 )! All this and much more of the
truth-inspired record proves the fickle inconstancy of Yahveh.
YAHVEH REPENTANT
This same and some other points may be further
illustrated by Numbers 23: "Yahveh is not a man, that he should lie;
neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not
do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?" (
THE FATHER OF LIES
Of bald lies attributed to Yahveh by his
inspired biographers and votaries and lies instigated by this soi-disant God of
Truth we have several edifying instances. The first lie on record is told by
Yahveh; he threatened Adam: "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou
shalt surely die" (Gen. 2: 17 ). Adam ate the apple, and died of old age
930 years later. Yahveh told Moses to lie to the Pharaoh, as a pretext for
escape, by saying that the people wanted to go "three days' journey into
the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to Yahveh our God" (Ex. 3: 18 ); but
as Yahveh was a total stranger to the people and to the Pharaoh, the latter,
when the inspired lie was repeated to him, was skeptical, and failed to take
the bait. This hypocritical religious excuse seems to have been a favorite with
Yahveh, or with the holy men who wrote his biography, for Yahveh suggested the
same lie to Samuel, when he told this prophet to go to Bethlehem and find
Jesse, and pick one of his sons for king. "And Samuel said, How can I go?
if Saul hear it, he will kill me. And Yahveh said, Take an heifer with thee,
and say, I am come to sacrifice to Yahveh" (1 Sam. 16: 2 ). In Exodus
Yahveh tells Moses that the fleeing Hebrew slaves should lie to the Egyptians
about "borrowing" their finery as a trick to rob their masters of all
their jewellery and clothes; "and ye shall spoil the Egyptians" (Ex.
Because of the majority report of the spies,
Yahveh swore at his children, and in violation of his myriad promises avowed:
"Doubtless ye shall not come into the land, concerning which I swore to
make you dwell therein. ... and ye shall know my breach of promise" (Num.
His own prophet Ezekiel attributes all
prophetic lies directly to Yahveh, and quotes Yahveh as shamelessly declaring:
"If the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I Yahveh have
deceived that prophet" (Ezek. 14: 9 ). With outrageous injustice Yahveh
inflicts this punishment upon the deluded prophets whom he himself has
deceived: "I will stretch out my hand upon him, and will destroy
him." Several times Jeremiah frankly taxes Yahveh to his face with deception
and lies: "Then said 1:Ah, Yahveh! surely thou hast greatly deceived this
people and
In Genesis, when Yahveh is enraged and
threatens a general destruction, Abraham expostulates with him: "Wilt thou
destroy the righteous with the wicked? ... "Shall not the Judge of all the
earth do right?" (18: 23, 25 ). But this is a constant form of the
injustice of Yahveh, if we believe his Book.
THE LUSTS OF YAHVEH
There is not much detail in the sacred record
in regard to the "sportive tricks" of the Hebrew Jove, but what there
is reveals the frequent practice. Yahveh had so many "sons" (beni
ha-elohim) who were enamored of the fair daughters of men that this is given
expressly as the reason for the monstrous injustice of Yahveh in destroying the
whole of his creation in the Flood, instead of keeping his lustful sons at home
in heaven.
But more explicit instances of Jahvistic
paternity are recorded. Yahveh had promised a son to Abraham by his wife Sarah;
but she laughed when she heard it, and said to Yahveh: "After I am waxed
old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?" Yahveh replied:
"Is any thing too hard for Yahveh?" (Gen. 18: 12, 14 ) "And
Yahveh visited Sarah as he had said, and Yahveh did unto Sarah as he had
spoken. For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son" (21: 1, 2 ). The
favorite phrase, "and so-and-so begat" is not spoken of Abraham. The
barren wife of Manoah was visited by Yahveh "as she sat in the field: but
Manoah her husband was not with her." And Yahveh told her: "Behold,
thou shalt conceive, and bear a son"; and in due course "the woman
bare a son, and called his name Samson" (Judges 13: 71 91 24 ). In another
instance, five offspring are credited to Yahveh by one human woman: "And
Yahveh visited Hannah, so that she conceived, and bare three sons and two daughters"
(I Sam.
YAHVEH THE WHITE-SLAVER
As a procurer Yahveh is a shining example for
the white- slavers of all time. After first commanding that all men, woman, and
children of the peoples of the promised land should be massacred and their
property and cattle destroyed, Yahveh withdrew this proviso of his barbarous
rules of war, and substituted: "Thou shalt smite every male thereof with
the edge of the sword: But the women, and the little ones. ... and all that is
in the city, even all the spoil thereof shalt thou take unto thyself"
(Deut.
I call attention to the lying sophistry of the
inspired "justification" for this particular wholesale rape. When
Moses saw the women and little ones brought captive into camp, "Moses was
'Wroth with the officers of the host. ... And Moses said unto them, Have ye
saved all the women alive? Behold, these caused the children of
His brutal order is, however, naively
sophistical, and knavishly diabolic: "Now therefore kill every male among
the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep
alive for yourselves" (Num. 31: 17, 18 )! Note the inspired devilish
illogicality of Yahveh: Ye have sinned against me by whoring with the Moabitish
women; ergo, after killing all the male little ones, and their mothers, and
"every woman that hath known man," keep the others, the best of them,
the fresh and yet virtuous young Midianite maidens, 32,000 of them, for your
holy selves! Verily, as the Psalmist sang, "the commandment of Yahveh is
pure, enlightening the eyes" (Psalm 19: 8 )! And Job pertinently queries:
"Shall mortal man be more just than Yahveh? shall a man be more pure than
his maker?" (Job. 4: 17 ). With such an example as Yahveh to enlighten
human eyes, and piously to imitate, the wonder is that there are any saints in
the calendar or virgins left alive. We shall notice later how Yahveh kindly
acted as go-between for his holy prophet Hosea.
L'ENVOI
Here, astonished reader, hangs before you a
pen-and-ink outline sketch of the Bible Yahveh. Every line of it is drawn, it
is pretended, by a divinely inspired pen, at the infallible dictation of the
Great Subject himself, and it is said to bear his own sacred seal of accuracy
and authenticity. That there may be no mistaking it for a lurid portrait of the
Devil, read Yahveh's own signature upon it: "I am Yahveh which exercise
loving-kindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth: for in these things I
delight" (Jer.
"Here, see, if Hell, with all its powers
to damn, Can add one blot to the foul thing I am!"
True, the braggart words of the certificate,
and many others scattered through the sacred biography, sing praises of him as
"the Holy God," "glorious in holiness" and in
righteousness, and ascribe manifold goodnesses and mercies to him. But these
are mere words of exaltation by fervid partisans --
"Deeds are bigger things than words are;
Actions mightier than boastings"; and from "In the beginning" of
Genesis, to the closing blast, "Lest I come and smite the earth with a
curse," of Malachi, there is not to be found -- I challenge its production
-- one single good, honest, true, faithful, decent, or righteous action which
it is even alleged that this Hebrew Yahveh ever did or thought of doing. If the
Veiled Prophet could make publicly the confession quoted above, may not a
Christian, when now he has come to know his God, in contrition confess to
himself:
"What a thrice-doubled dupe was I To take
this Ogre for a God And worship this foul fiend!"
CHAPTER 1I
THE HOLY PRIESTS AND PROPHETS OF YAHVEH
TURNING from the self-portrait of the Hebrew
chief God, let us view the holy priests and prophets of Yahveh, the votaries of
this Hebrew war-god. This examination will show the vague and shadowy notions
of pagan deity which they held, as well as the cardinal characteristics of the
whole priestly and prophetic hierarchy of
The system of priests will be seen to have
been founded on the basic principle of idle life and greedy graft; while that
of the prophets was in most cases the same, plus a crazed fanaticism such as
distinguishes the holy fakirs of India and the howling dervishes of Arabia up
to the present time. This priestly-prophetic gentry existed from the earliest
times, always and in all ancient countries the object of special privilege and
rapacious graft. When Joseph, son of Jacob-Israel, organized the first
"corner" in food- stuffs, during the grievous seven-year famine in
Egypt, be extorted all their money from the people, by profiteering, and all
the lands in Egypt from their starving owners in exchange for food, until
"the land became Pharoah's; ... except the land of the priests only, which
became not Pharoah's" (Gen. 4v2: 20, 26 ). And priests have escaped all
fiscal obligation to the civil state ever since.
PRIESTS BEFORE MOSES
The earliest scripture mention of a priest is
a curious instance of confused theology, and illustrates the fact, already
proved, that the Hebrew El Yahveh was common property of the Semitic
heathenism. Abram, during his wanderings into Canaan, came to the heathen
Jebusite city of Salem, which later became Jerusalem; and there he met
Melchizedek, King of Salem, who is described as "priest of El-Elyon [the
most high God]" (Gen. 14: 18 ). The name Melchizedek signifies "king
of righteousness." He was a Canaanite heathen, and of course no priest of
the Hebrew El-Yahveh, knowing nothing of any special El or Yahveh of Abram.
Yahveh himself had first become known to Abram at
This same Melchizedek was the most original of
recorded personages; like the government mule, he was "without pride of
ancestry or hope of progeny," according to the anonymous scribe the
Epistle to the Hebrews. Here the Holy Ghost, speaking through the sacred
writer, assures us that this pagan prototype of the Christ was born and lived
"without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning
of days, nor end of life" (Heb. 7: 3 )! It is added, for confirmation of
faith, that he was "made like unto the Son of God" and "abideth
a priest for ever." This comparison is not borne out in all details, for
the Christ is said to have had a Ghostly Father and a carnal mother, and to
have gone back to heaven alive after death, while Melchizedek, prototype, too,
of the Wandering Jew, must still be serving somewhere as priest.
A "KINGDOM OF PRIESTS"
During the patriarchal times, down to the
traditional "giving of the law" on Sinai, and for a thousand years
afterwards, every man who pleased was his own priest and made his own bloody
sacrifices: Cain, Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Aaron, before
and after the "law"; and Joshua, Gideon, and all the judges, Samuel,
David, Solomon, and other kings, after the "law"; not one of them was
specially ordained a priest. No sooner had the fleeing Chosen arrived at Sinai
than Yahveh himself is recorded as proclaiming: "Ye shall be unto me a
kingdom of priests, and an holy nation" (Ex. 19: 6 ); that is, every man
should be at liberty to act for himself as priest and make his own altars and
sacrifices "for the atonement of his soul" unto Yahveh.
And under the very shadow of Sinai, the day
after the first giving of the law to Moses, Moses himself "builded an
altar under the hill, and twelve pillars [phallic mazzebahs] according to the
twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which
offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto
Yahveh" (Ex. 24: 4, 5 ).
REVELATION OF PRIESTLY MONOPOLY
But Moses had been brought up in the
royal-priestly court of Egypt and was "learned in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians" (Acts 7: 22 ). Consequently Moses received a
"revelation" from Yahveh that Brother Aaron should be high priest, and
the four sons of Aaron should be priests: "It shall be a statute for ever
unto their generations" (Ex. 27: 21; 28: 1 ) -- just as Mohammed
afterwards reserved the priesthood for his own family. Yahveh complaisantly
again decreed: "And thou shalt anoint them, as thou didst anoint their
father, that they may minister unto me in the priest's office: for their
anointing shall surely be an everlasting priesthood throughout their
generations" (Ex. 4: 15 ).
Having got this divine commission in
perpetuity for Brother Aaron's family, it was necessary to sanction it with
awful Jahvistic pains and penalties, to prevent sacrilegious meddling with the
monopoly. The penalty of death was therefore decreed for any interference with
the priestly monopolists: "Thou shalt appoint Aaron and his sons, and they
shall keep their priesthood: and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to
death" (Num. 3: 10 )! And it was repeated: "The man that will do
presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest, ... even that man shall
die" (Deut. 17: 12 ). The priests of Yahveh were as jealously exclusive as
was their God whose name was Jealous; and they were protected in their monopoly
by the fatal enactment on Sinai: "He that sacrificeth unto any god, save
unto Yahveh only, he shall be utterly destroyed" (Ex. 22: 20 ); and these
deadly penalties were enforced by their beneficiaries.
Of course, none of this ever historically
happened; it was put into the mouth of "Yahveh by the hand of Moses"
many centuries later, by Ezra or his priestly successors after the return from
captivity, when the ritualistic priestly system was established in the restored
remnant of the Jews to give sanction and sanctity to their exclusive system.
None of the many priests named in the whole history after Aaron, from Eli to
Hulda, the priestess who officiated at the "finding of the law," was
of the monopolistic priesthood of Aaron; and none of them, nor of the many
non-priestly sacrificers, Gideon, Saul, Samuel, David, and the kings of Judah
and Israel, who sacrificed to many "other gods" besides Yahveh, was
ever "utterly destroyed" or put to death for either of these flagrant
violations of "the law." This is good proof that "the law"
prohibiting these practices under penalty of death was not existent through all
those centuries. The recorded instances of infliction of these penalties were
therefore clearly anachronistic and apocryphal, related only to terrify the
"strangers who should come nigh" to question or to meddle with the
"restored" priesthood.
Two of the sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, who
seem not to have been well initiated into the mysteries of their new office,
put strange fire into their censers, "and offered strange fire before
Yahveh"; and, lo, "there went out fire from Yahveh, and devoured
them, and they died before Yahveh" (Lev. 10: 1, 2 ). Moses commanded
Brother Aaron, in the name of Yahveh, that he and his family should not mourn
for the murdered sons, "lest ye die, and lest wrath come upon all the
people" (10: 6 ). Thus decreed the God of all Compassion -- "even as
a father pitieth his children."
We are given a horrible example of the
jealousy of Yahveh in favor of his priestly monopolists which it is worth while
to cite somewhat fully. Yahveh declared, as we have seen, that the whole holy
nation of
Yahveh at first told Moses and Aaron to stand
aside, and threatened to smite and consume all the rest of the millions of the
holy congregation in a moment. But Moses evidently reflected that there would
be nothing to the priestly monopoly if all the faithful were consumed; so he
expostulated with Yahveh, saying: "O El, Elohe of the spirits of all
flesh, shall one man sin, and wilt thou be wroth with all the
congregation?" Yahveh-El-Elohe saw the point, and told Moses to have all
the congregation keep away from the tents of "these wicked men"; and
he put a taboo upon all their possessions, saying: "Touch nothing of
their's, lest ye be consumed" (16: 26 ). Such taboos, of the perfect
Hottentot type, riot throughout the holy pages of the Hebrew Bible.
The contest of incense-burning to which Moses
had first challenged the anti-monopolists was called off; and Yahveh, after the
people had stood aside, caused "these wicked men" to stand forth in
the doors of their tents, with "their wives, and their sons, and their little
ones," all doomed to a common massacre by the merciful Yahveh, who
benignly avows that he visits "the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children unto the third and fourth generation." Then Moses stood forth and
proclaimed: "Hereby ye shall know that Yahveh hath sent 'Me to do all
these works" (16: 28 ); and -- behold the righteous judgments of Yahveh --
"the ground clave asunder that was under them: And the earth opened her
mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained
unto Korah, and all their goods." So they "went down alive into the
pit [Sheol], and the earth closed upon them: and they perished from among the
congregation" (16: 31-33 ). The wrath of Yahveh being not yet satiated,
"there came out a fire from Yahveh, and consumed the two hundred and fifty
men that offered incense" to their compassionate God. At the further
command of Yahveh, and as a fearful warning for all who should dare to meddle
with the priestly monopoly, the censers in which these "wicked men" had
offered their incense were beaten out into a brazen covering for the bloody
altar of Yahveh, "to be a memorial unto the children of Israel, that no
stranger, which is not of the seed of Aaron, come near to offer incense before
Yahveh" (16: 40 ).
Even yet the wrath of Yahveh was not appeased.
For on the morrow all the congregation of the Children of Yahveh murmured
against Holy Moses and Brother Aaron, saying: "Ye have killed the people
of Yahveh." Then Yahveh ordered Moses to stand aside, "that I may consume
them as in a moment" (16: 46 ); and he sent a plague and killed 14,700
more of them (16: 49 ). Yahveh is indeed a merciful and a jealous God. One
admission of the falsity of the record mitigates this wholesale murder; for
inspiration elsewhere flatly contradicts the inspired assertion that "all
their households" were swallowed up alive: "Notwithstanding the
children of Korah died not" (Num. 26: 11 ).
To confirm the priestly monopoly of the Aaron
family, Yahveh resorted to a rod-conjuring contest reminiscent of the contests
in Egypt. He ordered Moses to take twelve rods, according to the twelve tribes,
and write the name of the chief of each tribe on the respective rods, putting
Aaron's name on the rod of the tribe of Le6: and to lay the rods up overnight.
"And it shall come to pass, that the man's rod, whom I shall choose, shall
blossom: and I will make to cease from me the murmurings of the children of
Israel, whereby they murmur against you" (Num. 17: 1-5 ) -- though their
murmurings never did cease. So Moses took the twelve rods, representing the
phallic "staff of life," and laid them up overnight in the tent where
the Ark of the Covenant was housed; and, lo, on the morrow, "the rod of
Aaron for the house of Levi was budded ... and yielded almonds" (17: 7, 8
)! Thus vindicated, 'Yahveh told Moses: "Bring Aaron's rod again before
the testimony, to be kept for a token against the rebels; and thou shalt quite
take away their murmurings from me, that they die not" (17: 10 ). Who
would not love such a benign Deity? The Chosen were filled with godly fear,
saying unto Moses: "Behold, we die, we perish, we perish all. Whosoever
cometh any thing near unto the tabernacle of Yahveh shall die" (17: 12, 13
). To cap the climax of divine sanction for the priestly monopoly, and
everlastingly secure the priests in their power and profit, Moses cajoled from
Yahveh on Sinai this fatal and priestly decree: "The man that will do
presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest, ... even that man shall
die" (Deut. 17: 12 ). Thus were the priestly fetters firmly riveted on the
neck of the superstitious people, where they have galled humanity until this
very year of his Son Christ. But humanity is coming to know the truth, and the
truth shall make men free.
THE PRIESTLY PERQUISITES
A large part of the "Five Books of
Moses" is taken up with sacred prescriptions by Yahveh for the holy
incantations and bloody ceremonials of the sect of priests, and for the
enforcement of their sacred perquisites. Yahveh himself fully initiated Moses
into the sacred mysteries of smearing the blood of victims on the right
ear-tips and big toes of Brother Aaron and his sons, and in teaching them to
dip their fingers in the blood of the victims (Ex. 29: 20; Lev. 14 ). But,
naturally, the most important feature of the holy ministry was the rules and
regulations of their divinely ordained spoils from all Israel.
This was a gigantic guerdon; for when the
priestly assistants (the Levites) were "numbered at the commandment of
Yahveh, all the males of the Levites were twenty and two thousand" (Num.
It would be impossible, in this outline, to go
into the details of the priestly system of tribute. Every act of life, from the
cradle to the grave, must be accompanied by sacrifices and offerings, at which
the priests must officiate, and for which receive their holy pay. There 'were
sin-offerings, peace- offerings, trespass-offerings, and other
revenue-producing offerings too numerous to catalogue. In most instances,
Yahveh got the "sweet savor" of the burnt smell of them, and the holy
priests got the solid nourishment which the sacrificed animals afforded. These
offerings were frequently simply "waved before Yahveh." After this
ceremony, "it shall be thine, and thy sons' with thee, by a statute for
ever; as Yahveh hath commanded" (Lev. 10: 15 ).
Chapter 7 of Numbers, with 89 verses, is a
marvellous account of rich donations made to the priests by the principal
leaders of the Chosen; these just-escaped slaves could only have stolen them
when, a few weeks before, they "spoiled the Egyptians" -- unless
indeed, it never happened at all, or occurred ages later, when the priestly
system was well established and the "law" was "found" by
Hilkiali the priest. Numbers 18 gives a precious view of this whole scheme of
priestly rewards ordained to Aaron and his kin. A few lines must suffice:
"All the best of [everything] have I given thee. And whatsoever is first
ripe in the land ... shall be thine. ... Every thing devoted in Israel shall be
thine. Every thing that openeth the matrix in all flesh, which they bring unto
Yahveh, whether it be of men or beasts, shall be thine: nevertheless the
firstborn of man, ... and the firstling of unclean beasts shalt thou
redeem" (Num. 18: 12-15 ), for a fixed price, which the priests got. All
the gold and silver spoils of war are declared "consecrated unto Yahveh:
they shall come into the treasury of Yahveh" (Josh. 6: 19 ), for the
priests. "And, behold, I have given the children of Levi all the tenth in
Israel for an inheritance" (18: 21 ). Every time the people were
"numbered," every one of them over twenty years old had to pay a
half-shekel for "a ransom for his soul unto Yahveh, ... that there be no
plague among them, when thou numberest them" (Ex. 30: 12 ) -- a very
fruitful source of income.
The first-fruits of all the land, and the best
of everything else, "Without spot or blemish," and a tenth of
everything were, in a word, the perpetual income of these holy servers of
Yahveh. It is stated that a common resort of shiftless loafers of Israel shall
be to come to a priest and bow down to him for a piece of silver and a loaf of
bread, saying,: "Put me, I pray thee, into one of the priests' offices,
that I may eat a piece of bread?' (1 Sam. 2: 36 ). The custom has ever since
been popular.
THE HOLY FAKIR PROPHETS
The prophets, as described by Inspiration,
were a precious set of lazy and worthless vagabonds of Israel, the exact
counterpart of the howling dervishes and divination-mongers of their cousin
Ishmaelites. In speaking of prophets one thinks naturally of Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, and such reputed "holy men of God": these are but a few
signal ones out of thousands of unkempt and unclean loafers, who went publicly
naked -- as did Aaron, Saul, Samuel, David, Isaiah -- or wore old bran-sacks
for clothes -- like John the Baptist and others -- and wandered about begging,
and selling sorceries and magic, and talking in a wild sing-song jargon of
which they themselves did not know the meaning. The usual term to describe them
was in the Hebrew language meshuggah (frenzied); they wandered about
"prophesying," or, as the Hebrew word actually signifies (see the
Revised Version) razing through the land. Their current Hebrew name was Nabi,
which "signified to speak enthusiastically, 'to utter cries, and make more
or less wild gestures,' like the pagan mantics" (Cath. Encyc., Vol. 12:p.
477, art. Prophecy, Prophet, and Prophetess). They were "seers,"
fortune-tellers, and diviners, through pretended dreams and trances, and by the
use of sacred dice and arrows, and phallic images of Yahveh.
The job of a prophet was a free-for-all
occupation, which any one who pretended to feel the divine afflatus, or was a
fluent liar, could take up at will and without license. The prophet Amos
frankly states his own case, which was typical and has passed into a proverb:
"I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son; but I was an herdsman;
... and Yahveh took me as I followed the flock, and Yahveh said unto me, Go,
prophesy unto my people Israel" (Amos 7: 14, 15 ). Elisha, the baldpate,
was a farmer, who when Elijah passed by, dropped his plough and ran after him,
and became a prophet too. After this manner are many modern "divines"
self-"called."
Jeremiah describes their single qualification:
"Every man that is mad [ish meshuggah], and maketh himself a prophet"
(Jer. 29: 26 ). Hosea also declares the same truth: "The prophet is a
fool, the man that hath the spirit is mad [meshuggah]" (Hos. 9: 7 ).
Elisha is called "this mad fellow [meshuggah]" (2 Kings 9: 11 ). A
thousand instances prove the truth of these candid admissions that the prophets
were a rabble of frenzied fakirs. We have seen the example of Saul, when
"the spirit of Yahveh came mightily upon him, and he prophesied"
(Heb., raved), along with the whole band of howling, naked prophets (1 Sam. 19:
6 ); and frequently afterwards it is related of him: "The evil spirit from
the gods came upon Saul, and he prophesied" (raved; 18: 10 ). Like the
devils that came down from among the tombs, their name was Legion; they
infested the land like the locusts of the Egyptian plague. Jeremiah describes
them gadding about the country, crying: "I have dreamed, I have
dreamed," and, saith Yahveh, "prophesying [raving] lies in my
name" (Jer. 23: 25 ).
THE FRENZIED PROPHETS
The word "prophet," as a name for
these nomadic conjurers and fortune-tellers, is a late Biblical term; they were
originally called -- just as the fortune-tellers and trance- mediums of to-day
describe themselves in their advertisements -- "seers"; people who
"see things" in their imaginations, or pretend for pay to see them.
Samuel, who well describes the grafting practices of this gentry, testifies to
this: "Before- time in Israel, when a man went to enquire of the gods [ha-
Elohim], thus he spake, Come, and let us go to the seer [roeh]: for he that is
now called a Prophet [Nabi] was beforetime called a Seer [Roeh)" (1 Sam.
9: 9 ). We may note here another sidelight on Bible editorship: as the word
"Roeh" ("Seer") is used throughout the Books of Samuel and
elsewhere, it is evident that these books were compiled long afterwards, when
"Nabi" ("raver," hence "prophet") was the word in
current use, so that the original and then obsolete word, "Roeh," had
to be explained.
THE DIVINE TEST OF PROPHECY
The ear-marks and badge of authenticity of a
prophecy-manger are prescribed in the law, in terms of sufficient vagueness to
allow considerable latitude of practice in the craft: "If there be a
prophet among you, I Yahveh will make myself known unto him in a vision, and
will speak unto him in a dream' (Num. 12: 6 ) -- a test obviously lending itself
to the objection afterwards made by Yahveh himself, through Jeremiah: "I
have heard what the prophets said, that prophesy lies in my name, saying, I
have dreamed, I have dreamed" (Jer. 23: 25 ). Again, the credentials are
thus prescribed by Yahveh: "If there arise among you a prophet, or a
dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, And the sign or the
wonder come to pass. whereof he spake unto thee, saying [things idolatrous and
mischievous]; Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that
dreamer of dreams: for Yahveh your God proveth you, to know whether ye love
Yahveh your God. ... And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put
to death" (Deut. 13: 1-5 ). Certainly an odd sort of roving commission and
a barbarous punishment for the poor dupe of Yahveh.
But a more comprehensive and soul-satisfying,
though precarious test of the authenticity and veracity of the prophet is again
laid down by Yahveh:
"And it shall come to pass, that
whosoever will not hearken unto my words which [the prophet] shall speak in my
name, I will require it of him.
"But the prophet which shall presume to
speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall
speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.
"And if thou say in thine heart, How
shall we know the word which Yahveh hath not spoken?
"When a prophet speaketh in the name of
Yahveh, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which
Yahveh hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou
shalt not be afraid of him" (Deut. 18: 19-22 )!
That this latter is the real, though negative,
test of true prophecy, is not only thus averred by Yahveh, but he gives a
remarkable example of its efficiency. When from the burning bush Yahveh ordered
Moses to bring the Children of Israel out of Egypt, and Moses demurred, Yahveh
reassured him: "And this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent
thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve the
gods [ha-elohim] upon this mountain" (Ex. 3: 12 ). Though, by the same
divine token, Isaiah prophesied "presumptuously" and falsely when be
told Ahaz that the two kings would fail before Jerusalem (Isa. 7 ), for the
city was captured by them and nearly destroyed (2 Chron. 28 ).
This same safe test of prophecy is stated in
its affirmative form by the shifty Jeremiah: "When the word of the prophet
shall come to pass, then shall the prophet be known, that Yahveh hath truly
sent him" (Jer. 28: 9 ). For how long, O Yahveh, must the expectant and
impatient votary wait to know whether the "man of the Gods" [ish
haelohim] has missed his guess or not, and his message was or was not of Thee?
Isaiah prophesied a "sign" in the Virgin-born son Immanuel (Isa. 7: 14
), and not till 750 years later, as Matthew says, was it "fulfilled which
was spoken of Yahveh by the prophet" (Matt. 1: 22 ); whereas Jesus himself
prophesied that his second coming would be in the lifetime of those hearing him
speak (Matt. 16: 28 ) -- and in nearly two thousand years the event has not
proved the truth of the prophecy. Full faith and credence may, however,
charitably be awarded to these prophecy-mangers, at least until the event
proves that "they speak lies in my name." Having thus satisfied our minds,
if not our souls, as to the official character and tests of veracity of
prophets, we will return to the revelations of their inspired methods of plying
their sacred trade.
SAMUEL, DEAN OF THE PROFESSION
The great "meshuggah" Samuel was
stark frenzied, like all of the howling bands of fakir-prophets with whom he
paraded naked up and down the land. A graphic picture of them is given by
Samuel himself, or whoever wrote his biography. David had fled from the wrath
of Saul, and Saul "sent messengers to take David"; but as each squad
of messengers came upon "the company of the prophets prophesying [raving],
and Samuel standing as appointed over them, the spirit of the Gods was upon the
messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied [raved]." After three details
of messengers had "failed" in this way, Saul himself went on his own
mission; and as he went, "the Spirit of the gods was upon him also, and he
went on, and prophesied [raved], until he came" to where all the others
were assembled. The whole outfit were stark naked and raving; and Saul
"stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied [raved] before Samuel in
like manner, and lay down naked all that day and all that night" (I Sam.
19: 14-24 ). And by this token of rank insanity and phallic idolatry, was
"Saul also numbered among the prophets," to the derision of the
public.
Samuel himself was a well-known
"seer," or fortune-teller and prophecy-monger, as appears from 1
Samuel 9. It is related, by divine inspiration, that Kish, the father of Saul,
had several asses which had strayed, and he sent young Saul and one of the
family servants to "go seek the asses." After beating the
country-side for several days without success, when Saul was on the point of
giving up and returning home, the servant said: "Behold now, there is in
this city a man of the gods [ish-ha- elohim], and he is a man that is held in
honor; all that he saith cometh surely to pass: now let us go thither;
peradventure he can shew us" where to find the lost asses. But Saul
replied -- showing that he well knew the raison-d'etre of the fortune- telling
craft -- that he had no money, nothing with which to pay, -- "there is not
a present to bring to the man-of-the-gods" [ish- ha-elohim].
But the servant rescued him from this
difficulty: "Behold, I have here at hand the fourth part of a shekel of
silver: that will I give to the man of the gods, to tell us our way" (9: 8
).
As they went into the city, they met some
girls, and asked them: "Is the seer [Heb., roeh] here?" And the girls
told them that Samuel was in town that day, having come to town expressly to
attend a big picnic sacrifice held by the people of the town in the Baalic
high-place of the city, "for the people will not eat until he come,
because he doth bless the sacrifice" (9: 13 ). This, incidentally, proves
the heathenish practices of this holy man of the gods, and of all the people;
and proves that the "law" pretended to have been promulgated by Moses
long before did not yet exist; for this "law" a thousand times
denounces the "high places" as a heathenish abomination, and
prohibits under penalty of death the performance of sacrifices by any but the
holy monopoly of priests.
Saul and his servant started on their search
for Samuel; and as they went along, they met a man to whom Saul said:
"Tell me, I pray thee, where the seer's house is." The man replied:
"I am the seer." Samuel then invited them to dinner; and without
waiting to be asked about the asses, he said: "As for thine asses that
were lost three days ago, set not thy mind on them; for they are found."
After several other matters which need not be related, Samuel told Saul a
number of things which he should see as he returned along the road, among which
was a "company of prophets coming down from the high place" (of
phallic Baal-worship), playing a diversity of musical instruments, "and
they shall prophesy [rave]" (10: 5 ). This proves precisely the wild and
incoherent nature of "meshuggah" practice. And Samuel said to Saul:
"The Spirit of Yahveh will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy [rave]
with them" (10: 6 ). And so it came to pass; and when the people who knew
Saul saw that he "prophesied [raved] among the prophets," they said:
"What is this that is come unto the son of Kish." Is Saul also among
the prophets?" (10: 11 ). Then they all went up to the phallic high-place
together. All this I have stated at some length, in order to give a graphic
idea, from the Sacred Scriptures, of what manner of men were these holy prophets
of Yahveh, and what was the manner of their practices.,
ELIJAH
Elijah the Tishbite was a typical
"meshuggah"; he was "an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of
leather about his loins" (2 Kings 1: 8 ); he lived in deserts and caves,
and angels and ravens fed him; he saw and talked with Yahveh in great and
strong winds which rent the mountains and brake in pieces the rocks, in
earthquakes, in fires, and in a still small voice. He had a wonder-working
phallic staff, with which he parted the waters of rivers so that he could walk
across dry-shod; and he is said to have raised a dead child to life by laying
the stick upon him (2 Kings 4: 29 ).
Elijah murdered two companies of fifty
soldiers and their captains by calling down fire from heaven to consume them in
order to prove "if I be a man of the gods" (2 Kings 1: 12 ); and he
murdered the 450 priests of Baal and the 400 "priests of the groves"
(asherah), for the same purpose. As Elijah himself admits: "I, even I
only, remain a prophet of Yahveh" (1 Kings 18: 22 ); and as there were at
that time only seven thousand persons in all Israel who "bent not the knee
to Baal" and kissed not the Baalic phallus, as the sacred text says (I
Kings 19: 18 ), it would seem that this mighty "meshuggah" of Yahveh
used drastic means to vindicate his very minor dignity and importance.
ELISHA
Even old Elisha, who had a double portion of
the spirit of his partner Elijah shed upon him, could not get his prophetic
conjuring up until he was put into a trance by music -- the instrument of
prophetic trance being preferably (and appropriately) the lyre, as is instanced
in 2 Kings 3: 15. Elisha had Yahveh murder forty-two little children because,
in their childish simplicity and want of good manners, they said: "Go up,
thou bald head." As these two old cronies, Elijah and Elisha, walked along
and talked one day, "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" -- something more than a million light years distant. How these
fiery objects could have come so close to Elisha without burning him or the
mantle of Elijah, which fell from him as he went up, is not explained. Elisha
organized a posse and beat the woods for Elijah for three days (2 Kings
Elisha continued to go about alone and do much
potent magic, such as making an ax-head swim, "healing" water that
tasted bad, by casting salt into it, and going into a weird trance until
"the hand of Yahveh came upon him," in order to be able to
"prophesy" to the kings, during a drought, that they could get water
by digging the low valley of the Jordan full of trenches -- a trick that any
farmer's prentice could have told them just as well.
ISAIAH
The great Isaiah was a "meshuggah of the
meshuggahs." He admits it himself, and everything which he uttered attests
it: he appears never to have had a lucid interval. He was certainly stark mad
when, as he says, at Yahveh's dread command, he took the old bran-sack from off
his loins and the shoes from his feet, and "walked naked and barefoot,
three years for a sign and wonder [as indeed it must have been!] upon Egypt and
upon Ethiopia" (Isa. 20: 2, 3 ); and he had not recovered when he wrote
about it, or he would never have told it.
Isaiah had chronic intestinal trouble, which
may have been what caused him to be so "meshuggah"; for he groans
"my bowels shall sound [or, Revised Version, "will boil"] like
an harp" (Isa. 16: 11 ), and he says his loins are "filled with pain:
pangs have taken hold upon me, as the pangs of a woman that travaileth. ... My
heart panted, fearfulness affrighted me" (Isa. 21: 3, 4 ); and he
despairingly avowed: "I will weep bitterly, labor not to comfort me"
(Isa. 22: 4 ). No wonder he saw and said things which even Aristotle could not
unriddle. His dream- book is entitled "The Vision of Isaiah"; and his
raving "prophecies" are divided into paragraphs headed, in the
English translation, "the burden of Jerusalem," of Egypt, of Babylon,
etc. The Hebrew word of the original means "the oracle concerning"; like
the "prophecies" of all the "meshuggahs," they are just as
pellucid in style and innocent of intelligent meaning as the incoherent jargon
of the Greek oracles of Apollo or of the Pythoness.
In the year in which King Uzziah died, Isaiah
says he "saw Yahveh sitting upon a throne. ... Above it stood the
seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with
twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly," and the whole place
was filled with smoke, until Isaiah cried: "Lord, how long?" (Isa. 6:
1, 2, 11 ). Afterwards he saw Yahveh riding upon a swift cloud going to Egypt;
it was on this trip that Yahveh was to be received triumphantly with an
"altar to Yahveh in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a mazzebah
["pillar"] at the border thereof" -- a phallic device which he
says "shall be for a sign and for a witness unto Yahveh Sabaoth in the
land of Egypt" (Isa. 19: 19, 20 ).
In His frenzy, Isaiah calls upon the ships of
Tarshish to howl (Isa. 23: 1 ); and says that the earth shall reel to and fro
like a drunkard, and the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed; that
Yahveh with a great and strong sword shall punish Leviathan the serpent, and
shall slay the dragon that is in the sea. He displays his inspired notions of
cosmical geography by speaking of the "ends of the earth" (Isa. 4:
28; 41: 5 ) and the "four corners of the earth" (Isa. 11: 12 ) -- a
bit of inspired ignorance which held the world benighted for centuries, to the
great credit of inspired infallible church and its holy Inquisition, until
heretical Columbus proved that uninspired pagan Pythagoras, Aristotle, Seneca,
and Ptolemy were better diviners of the truth than was Yahveh's own Prophet.
Burns sang of "rapt Isaiah's wild seraphic fire"; it is all that, and
something less poetic besides.
But Isaiah, as is well known, did not write
the Book of Isaiah, or wrote only fragments of it; the book is a patchwork of
various authors and editors, covering two centuries and more after the death of
Isaiah. The book describes itself as "The Vision of Isaiah" (Isa. 1:
1 ), and thus, according to the definition of the term "vision" in
Numbers 12: 61 is confessedly a "dream-book" rather than a chronicle
of actual happenings. The "visions" are supposed to have been seen
"in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah,"
between the years 760-700 B.C., the latter year being accepted as that of
Isaiah's death. But they include the story of the murder of Sennacherib by his
sons (Isa. 37: 37, 38 ) which occurred in the year 681 B.C. More notorious anachronisms
are the references to Cyrus: "Babylon is fallen, is fallen" (Isa. 21:
9 ) -- captured by Cyrus in 538 B.C.; "That saith of Cyrus, He is my
shepherd" (Isa. 44: 28 ); "Thus saith Yahveh to his messiah, to
Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden" (Isa. 14: 1 ); "I will direct
all his ways, he shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives"
(45: 13 ). This relates to the return from captivity, nearly two centuries
after the death of Isaiah. Large portions of the book are post-exilic. Chapter 23
howls over the destruction of Tyre, which was wrought by Alexander the Great in
332 B.C. Some portions (e.g., chapter 63 ) are assigned by the scholars to a
period as late as the Hasmonean, about 165 B.C. Consequently our prophet must
be acquitted of many of the absurdities orthodoxy attributed to him, as well as
robbed of the halo of ultra- sanctity ascribed to his "prophetic"
oracles.
JEREMIAH
The Wailing Prophet, Jeremiah, was little less
"meshuggah" than Isaiah himself. He says: "Since I spake, I
cried out, I cried violence and spoil" (Jer. 20: 8 ). He also was
diseased: he agonizes and cries out: "My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at
my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me" (
EZEKIEL
The most perfectly frenzied of the whole
troupe of prophets, so far as the record goes, is Ezekiel. His regular diet
seems to have been bread made of human dung; but for some unrevealed reason,
Yahveh indulgently gave him a substitute of cow's dung, and commanded him:
"Lo, I have given thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt prepare
thy bread therewith" (Ezek. 4: 15 ). And he assures us that Elohe Yahveh
"put forth the form of an hand, and took me by a lock of mine head; and
the spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven" (8: 3 ); and
that "the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of Yahveh" and
things unspeakable.
Neither man nor beast, before or since, except
maybe in heaven, ever looked like what Ezekiel tries to describe: "Every
one had four faces, and every one had four wings. [Isaiah says (6: 2, 11 ),
each one had six wings; but probably he couldn't see to count because of the
smoke]. ... They four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the
right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four
also had the face of an eagle: Thus were their faces.
Their appearance was like burning coals of
fire, and like the appearance of lamps; and the fire was bright, and out of the
fire went forth lightning." They had wheels (or perhaps it was Ezekiel
himself), and works inside like "a wheel in the middle of a wheel";
and they had four rings "full of eyes round about" (Ezek. 1: 6-18 ).
Ezekiel too had cramps of the stomach, even
worse than Jeremiah's, if possible, for Yahveh made him eat the roll of a book,
and fill his belly with it (3: 1-3 ); and it tasted in his mouth "as honey
for sweetness." The apoplectic John of Patmos had to eat a similar book
(or maybe it was the same one rehashed), which also tasted like honey, but
which, says, made his belly bitter (Rev. 10: 10 ). Both instances are proof of
the Shaksperian remark: "Things sweet to taste are to digestion
sour." Their dyspepsia must have been something awful, to judge from the
nightmare visions they had and the excruciating things they saw and uttered.
DANIEL
The greatest dream-book extant is that of
Daniel, to which those of Isaiah and Ezekiel are only close seconds. Daniel
avows that Yahveh endowed him with "understanding of all visions and
dreams"; so that he was "ten times better than all the magicians and
astrologers" in all the king's realm (Dan. 1: 20 ). He several times
relates (e.g., in 8: 18 ) that "as [Yahveh] was speaking with me, I was in
a deep sleep on my face toward the ground," -- his favorite attitude for
wooing nightmare revelation.
He certainly saw some fearful and wonderful
things: he describes his "control" as having a "face as the
appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his
feet like in color to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice
of a multitude" (10: 6 ). It is no wonder that all Daniel's
"comeliness was turned ... into corruption" within him, all his
strength left him (10: 8 ); and he had abdominal disorders, and pains in his
head. He says: "I was grieved in my spirit in the midst of my body, and
the visions of my head troubled me" (7: 15 ).
Poor Daniel spent much time in "prayer
and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes" (9: 3 ), and
would mourn for three full weeks at a time, without eating or making his toilet
(10: 2, 3 ). It was enough to derange anybody. He would hear the terrible voice
of Yahveh as he was in his deep sleep on his face, with his face towards the
ground; and Yahveh would "set me upon my knees and upon the palms of my
hands" (10: 9, 10 ); and while he was in this graceful but uncomfortable
posture, on all fours, Yahveh told him many incomprehensible things, as Daniel
himself frankly admits: "I heard, but I understood not" (12: 8 ). Nor
has anyone else understood ever since. These visions' which he had, of
"all the wonders' that would be," were very explicitly scheduled to
come to pass within the very precise period of "a time, times, and a
half" (12: 7 ) -- whenever that is. I remark only that among the myriads
of Babylonian monuments and records which have so far been unearthed and
deciphered, thanks to modern science, the one which records how good old King
Nebuchadnezzar, a heathen special friend of the Yahveh of Israel, by whom he
was given the dominion of the earth (Jer. 27: 6-8 ), turned ox and ate grass
for seven years has not yet appeared, nor is the name of the prince regent
during that interregnum yet recovered. And no monument preserves the name of
the inspired prime minister Daniel, or records the incidents of the lions' den
or the fiery furnace. Perhaps all this will be found on the next monument or in
the next court record to be translated by the scholars. Let us hope so, for the
sake of dear old Daniel's veracity.
So far as profane history has yet discovered,
however, none of these inspiredly related events happened as recorded.
Nebuchadnezzar had no son and successor of the name of Belshazzar; there was no
such king as Daniel's hero of the "handwriting on the wall," his last
King of
YAHVEH'S HOWLING DERVISHES
The so-called prophets, major and minor, are
one and all typical examples of the howling dervish of the desert. Hear them
howl! What a string of howls from the great howl-master Isaiah: "Howl ye,
for the day of Yahveh is at hand" (Isa. 13: 6 )! "Howl, O gate; cry,
O city" (14: 31 )! "Every one shall howl" (16: 7 )! "Howl,
ye inhabitants of the isle" (23: 6 )! "Ye shall howl for vexation of
spirit" (65: 14 )!' Jeremiah swells the refrain: "Lament and howl:
for the fierce anger of Yahveh" (Jer. 4: S)! "All the inhabitants of
the land shall howl" (47: 2 )! Ezekiel, he who saw things inexplicable,
joins in: "Cry and howl, son of man" (Ezek. 21: 12 )! "Howl ye,
Woe worth the day!" (30: 2 ). And the "minor league" joins the
chorus: "Howl, ye inhabitants!" cries Zephaniah (Zeph. 1: 11 );
"Howl, O ye oaks of Bashan!" bellows Zechariah (Zech. 11: 2 );
"The songs of the temple shall be howlings!" howls Amos (Amos 8: 3 ).
Joel not only howls himself, but wants everybody else to howl: "Awake, ye
drunkards, weep and howl! Lament, ye priests! Howl, ye ministers of the altar!
Alas, for the day of Yahveh is at hand! How do the beasts groan! Yahveh also
shall roar out of Zion!" (Joel, passim). Poor Job -- but then he was not a
prophet but a pagan, and it is not known how he got into the Bible. Job is the
only one who does not howl; be wails: "My bowels boiled; ... the days of
affliction prevented me" (Job 30: 27 )! Micah exults in his frenzy,
crying: "I will wail and howl; I will go stripped and naked: I will make a
wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls" (Mic. 1: 8 )
PROPHETIC EROTICISM
These prophets had other peculiarities which
are not overmuch to their credit or to that of their Yahveh. Hosea was
apparently the subject of neuropathic erotomania. His induction into prophecy
was a vision in which Yahveh commanded him: "Go, take thee a wife of
whoredoms" (Hos. 1: 2 ), as he proceeds to do without any recorded
reluctance. He has by her a couple of children, without being married. He has
to make these children "plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my
wife, neither am I her husband"; begging her to "put away her
whoredoms ... and her adulteries" (2: 2 ), so as to indulge in them only
with this holy one, who threatens to "strip her naked" (2: 3 ), if
she doesn't quit them. But she kept it up; for Hosea tells us, she "went
after her lovers and forgat me"; and Yahveh tried to help him win her
back, for Yahveh says: "Behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the
wilderness" (2: 14 ). This kindly divine Go-between seems to have failed
of success, for Yahveh tells Hosea: "Go yet, love a woman beloved of her
friend, yet an adulteress" (3: 1 ). This also he does without delay. This
new lady-love seems to have highly pleased the amorous Hosea, for he tells her:
"Thou shalt abide for me many days; thou shalt not play the harlot and
thou shalt not be for another man; so will I also be for thee" (3: 3 ).
The erotic visions of Hosea quite rival the amatory Canticles of Solomon, and
take all the romance out of Don Juan Tenorio.
Amos had visions likening Yahveh to a choleric
fisherman, swearing unto his people by his holiness, "that he will take
you away with hooks, and your posterity with fish-hooks"; and while they
didn't wear trousers in those days, he swears (perhaps of the posterity in
pants), "and ye shall go out at the breaches" (4: 2, 3 ). He promises
that Yahveh shall break out like a fire and devour Israel, and there will be
none to quench it; and he says that Yahveh says he will command the serpent and
it shall bite them (9: 3 ).
Jonah should be passed with a sympathetic
tear; for surely he had great disappointment, after all his vicissitudes, in
Nineveh's being spared after all, and had some reason to complain to Yahveh,
"It is better for me to die than to live" -- as nobody these days
doubts. He should not be expected to tell us about his experiences with much
calmness of reason.
The rest of the herd of "minor"
prophets likewise gadded about, with their various "burdens" sore
upon them, preaching divine wrath and destruction in like frenzied and
incoherent fashion, dealing damnation round the land. Malachi reaches the
climax of low-comedy vengeance with the holy Yahveh's picturesque threat:
"I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces" (Mal. 2:
3 ); and he winds up with the promise or threat of the "great and dreadful
day of Yahveh," that shall burn as an oven, and shall burn up as stubble
all those who do wickedly, and Yahveh shall "smite the earth with a
curse" (4: 6 ). As if the infliction of the whole of Yahveh's dread and
holy Word upon humanity were not curse enough already.
This ends the unprofitable tale of the
prophets, told in their own frenzied, incoherent, fury-breathing jargon, and
proves their just right to their title of meshuggah. All the foregoing is
inspired revelation of what "prophesying" was among the holy
fraternity of Hebrew prophets. We have an awesome idea of "prophecy"
as the speaking by divine inspiration of the truths of God and the inspired
revealing of the hidden things of the future, for so our Sunday schools teach,
and pious "divines" preach. But "God's Word" reveals
something quite different. All the frenzied fakirs whom we have seen wandering
up and down, naked and crazed and "raving," were not
"prophesying" truths of God nor revelations of the future. Crazed to
start with, and worked into a howling frenzy by wild "jazz" music of
a barbarous kind (I Sam. 10: 5; 2 Kings 3: 15; et passim), they truly
"raved" frothy and incoherent non-sense.
PROPHETIC LYING FACTIONS
With the division of the kingdom after the
death of Solomon, followed by constant civil war and partisan hatreds, the
prophets split into factions filled with hatreds -- just like some Christian
churches at the time of the American Civil War; and they prophesied lies
against each other patriotically. At one time Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, and
Ahab, King of Israel, made common cause against the common enemy's the king of
Syria; a story which illustrates several tricks of the prophetic trade (I Kings
22 ). Jehoshaphat asked Ahab to "enquire at the word of Yahveh
to-day" about the expedition; and Ahab "gathered the prophets
together, about four hundred men, and said unto them, Shall I go ... to battle,
or shall I forbear? And they said, Go up." But these four hundred were
prophets of
Jehoshaphat insisted, however, and Micaiah was
sent for. The messenger told him that all the other prophets had "declared
good unto the king with one mouth," and asked him to speak good likewise.
But Micaiah replied that he would speak only "what Yahveh saith unto
me." So when Micaiah came before the kings, he prophesied also: "Go
up, and prosper; for Yahveh shall deliver the city into the hand of the
king." Then Ahab, mistrusting, said to him: "How many times shall I
adjure thee that thou tell me nothing but that which is true in the name of
Yahveh?" (22: 16 ) Micaiah then retorted with this lying prophecy of
conspiracy, which is a blasphemy against any real God of heaven: "Hear
thou therefore the word of Yahveh: "I saw Yahveh sitting on his throne,
and all the host of heaven standing by him. ... And Yahveh said, Who shall
persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead? ... And there came
forth a spirit, and stood before Yahveh, and said, I will persuade him. And
Yahveh said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a
lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, Thou shalt persuade
him, and prevail also: go forth, and do so"! And, said Micaiah, "Behold,
Yahveh hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and
Yahveh hath spoken evil concerning thee" (22: 19-23 ). What precious
revelation of God!
It is curious that after Yahveh had framed
this conspiracy, and inspired four hundred of his prophets to lie and entice
Ahab to his death, Yahveh should be so careless as to let another of his holy
prophets "spill the beans" by revealing the conspiracy. All that
Micaiah got for his word of truth was the kingly order:
"Put this fellow in the prison, and feed
him with the bread of affliction and with water of affliction" (22: 27 ).
As Micaiah was led away to his doom, be fired this Parthian shot at Ahab:
"If thou return at all in peace, Yahveh hath not spoken by me" (22:
28 ). And this time the event proved the case for Micaiah, for Ahab was struck
by an arrow shot at a venture, and was killed (21: 35-37 ), and the other four
hundred prophets of Yahveh were proved wholesale liars by the "lying
spirit from Yahveh."
This scene is not the only instance of unbecoming
jealousy and tribal hatred between these holy ones of Yahveh. The kings of
Judah and Israel together besought the "word of Yahveh" from Elisha,
and this venerable baldpate, being of the faction of Judah, scorned to deal
with the king of Israel, saying: "What have I to do with thee? get thee to
the prophets of thy father, and to the prophets of thy mother" (2 Kings 3:
13 ). But after expostulation by the king of Israel, Elisha spit back: "As
Yahveh liveth, before whom I stand, surely, were it not that I regard the
presence of Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, I would not look toward thee, nor
see thee" (3: 14 ).
An interesting instance of personal
altercation and recrimination between two of the holy men of Yahveh is related
by Jeremiah. This holy wailer had prophesied that the king of Babylon, in the
pending war, would finish the destruction of Jerusalem; while a rival prophet,
one Hananiah, had declared: "Thus speaketh Yahveh Sabaoth, the Elohe of
Israel, saying, I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon" (Jer. 28: 2
). The altercation proceeds through the chapter to this comical and fatal
climax: "Then said the prophet Jeremiah unto Hananiah the prophet, Hear
now, Hananiah; Yahveh hath not sent thee; but thou makest this people to trust
in a lie. Therefore thus saith Yahveh; Behold, I will cast thee from off the
face of the earth: this year thou shalt die. ... So Hananiah the prophet died
the same year" (28: 16, 17 )! An edifying instance, this, of post hoc,
ergo propter hoc; and a first-class illustration of prophetic ethics, and the
inodus vivendi of the whole holy class.
It is impossible to relate all the trumperies
and lies and false prophecies of these inspired prophets of Yahveh; the Holy
Bible is too full of them. Elisha told a bare falsehood, saying: "This is
not the way: ... follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom ye seek"
(2 Kings 6: 19 ); and he led the blinded messengers astray to capture and all
but death. The false prophecy of Isaiah as to the outcome of the war between
the kings of Israel and Syria against Judah, warped into a foretelling of Jesus
Christ, will in due order be fully shown (Isa. 7 ). Jeremiah tells several
patent lies and makes false prophecies, besides being a traitor to his country;
for instance, he agreed with the king to make a false report about their
conference together (Jer. 3 . win, 25 ); and he prophesied falsely to Zedekiah
that he should die in peace (34: 2-5 ), though he himself unblushingly relates
that the King of Babylon captured Zedekiah, put out his eyes, and kept him
languishing in prison until the day of his death (52: 10, 11 ). Every one of
these "prophets" seems to have considered himself the only one who
spoke the truth of Yahveh, and all the others impostors and liars, as they unanimously
and eloquently testify in the only truthful utterances which grace their
gibberish.
CONFESSIONS OF THE PROPHETS
The confessions of the Prophets of
Isaiah denounced the
Hear the word of Yahveh out of the mouth of
his holy prophets, each telling the truth about all the others. The
master-"meshuggah" Isaiah makes this confession of their drunkenness
and befuddled wits: "The priest and the prophet have erred through strong
drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong
drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment" (Isa. 28: 7 ).
Jeremiah confesses the rapacity, mendacity, and fraud of the whole fraternity:
"From the least of them even unto the greatest of them every one is given
to covetousness; and from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth
falsely" (Jer. 6: 13 ); and chapter 23 entire is an inspired invective
against them for the whole teeming catalogue of their crimes: "For both
prophet and priest are profane; yea, in my house have I found their wickedness,
saith Yahveh. ... And I have seen folly in the prophets of
In Lamentations (
The revolting record does not close with the
Hebrew Scripture, but continues into the gentile era; it was the priests of
Yahveh and the elders of the people who (it is said) delivered the Christ to
the martyrdom of the cross.
THE PROPAGANDISTS OF CHRISTIANITY
That doughty pillar of Christianity, Simon
Peter, he whose "ministry" was founded on the hope of exceeding great
reward: "Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we
have therefore?" (Matt. 19: 27 ); he who like a braggart swore that
although all others should desert his Lord, he would stay by him to the end;
who like a bully carried a sword to the place of prayer and smote off the ear
of one of the Lord's captors, and then cowardly ran away from the scene of
capture, and like a thief in the night sneaked along far behind to the place of
trial; then like a craven thrice lyingly denied his persecuted Master; and then
hypocritically wormed himself into the highest seat in the new priestly
propaganda, and falsely wrested a self- serving meaning out of several
meaningless mummeries of pretended "prophecy" -- this Peter delivers
himself of a solemn bit of inspiration: "Prophecy came not in old time by
the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy
Ghost" (2 Pet. 1: 21 )! Oh, Innocence!
This seems highly inept in view of the many
inspired definitions and characterizations of prophecy we have just heard from
those who were professional prophets, and who knew a good deal more about it
than Fisherman Peter did. There was no Holy Ghost on record in those days; but
the old "meshuggahs" confessedly "followed their own spirit,"
as Ezekiel avers (Ezek. 13: 2 ), and Jeremiah confirms: "They prophesy
unto you a false vision and divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit
of their heart" (Jer. 14: 14 ); so that Yahveh himself declares, through
Jeremiah: "I will bring an everlasting reproach upon you, and a perpetual
shame, which shall not be forgotten" (23: 40 ). This book helps Yahveh to
that end. Thus Peter is seen to have erred in his interpretation of scripture;
which is not to be marveled at, but rather excused, seeing that he was an
"unlearned and ignorant man" (Acts 4: 13 ).
This Peter, this "rock" upon which
the Christ punningly said that he would build his Church, was later expressly
and scathingly repudiated by the Christ: "He turned, and said unto Peter,
Get thee behind me, Satan: Thou art an offence to me: for thou savourest not
the things that be of God, but those that be of men" (Matt. 16: 23 ). It
was this same Peter who scoffed at the reports of the resurrection as
"idle tales," and "believed them not" (Luke 24: 11 ); yet
later, and to this day through his self-styled "successors," Peter
himself is the prime sponsor for the alleged truth of these same idle tales.
Such are confessedly the Holy Prophets of
CHAPTER 12
BIBLE THEOLOGY AND MODERN TRUTH
BEFORE essaying frankly, for the sake of
truth, to "search the scriptures" of the New Testament, wherein, says
the Christ, "ye think ye have eternal life" (John
The
This same dogmatic assertion of plenary
inspiration and total infallibility of scripture -- which sounds oddly assured
after the examination in the preceding chapters -- is more anciently expressed
in a couple of precious excerpts from the Fathers: "Nothing is to be accepted
save on the authority of scripture, since greater is the authority of scripture
than all the powers of the human mind [major est Scripturce auctoritas quam
omnis humani ingenii capacitas," says St. Augustine in his work De Genesi.
Equally credible and more graphic is the assurance of the great
Credulous as may be all four of these dogmatic
assertions, their conclusions are of the highest logical validity and truth --
if their scriptural premises be true. This is orthodox faith; it is essential
Christian belief; and departure from it by one iota is not only heretical in
faith, but un-Christian in fact. "Whosoever rejects anything is
shipwrecked in the faith."
The modern "Liberalists" are sadly
errant in their vaunted liberalism. They hold to Jesus as son of Yahveh and to
his mission to "redeem mankind from the sin of Adam," while they deny
that Adam existed and repudiate the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus and
throw hell into the discard. This is scriptural anarchy, and its votaries
cannot be Bible Christians, however good as citizens.
An edifying instance of this straddling
theology, which strives to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds, is
afforded by an eminent metropolitan "divine" who conducts a daily
column in one of the newspapers. In a recent instalment (June 12, 1926 ) a
truth-seeker in the Bible Belt asks: "Do not chapters one and two of
Genesis give the only origin of the universe which can be accepted by any one
professing Christianity?" Instead of replying boldly that the conflicting
accounts are inspired Bible truth in toto, or of frankly stating that both are
fables, the "divine" executes this specious bit of deceptive legerdemain:
"The first chapters of Genesis contain a poetical account of the origin of
the universe which any one who professes Christianity, or, for that matter,
Judaism, can accept as a noble and beautiful treatment of the theme. But it is
no more historic or scientific than Milton's Paradise Lost or Shakespeare's
Hamlet. Your persistency in allying Christianity with the acceptance of the
Genesis account can do little, as I see it, except injure the cause. ... A
Christian is a follower of Jesus Christ who seeks to obey Him in all matters.
... The Bible shows us the Divine Creator at work. Modern science reveals His
methods of creation. Why endeavour to confuse the issue?" The great Dr.
Conman's reply is, of course, a gem of disingenuous ingenuity, illumining and
solving, rather than confusing, the issue -- and is a typical utterance of the
trimmers and reconciliationists of theological Modernism.
These Modernists decry and deride what they
term "medieval theology"; but medieval theology is Bible theology and
the only orthodox and true theology -- if theology could be true at all.
"Modern" theology can repudiate medieval theology with no more
logical truth and reason than could medieval theology logically accept
Copernicus and Galileo, and the long brilliant line of God's true prophets whom
the inspired Church has persecuted and martyred through the past ages of faith
for daring to proclaim God's truths which have impeached and destroyed its
dogmas of the inspired truth of Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.
Briefly, and inadequately, I am going to
recall here a few of the precious things of God "poured out through the
mouth of Moses" to which the Church, fatuously but with unimpeachable
logic has clung through the ages of faith, and with which the Church has
opposed every revelation of God in nature through the powers of the human mind.
These are only a few of the manifold phases of the eternal and triumphant
"conflict between science and religion" -- between knowledge and the
outpourings of God through Moses. Hu4ey puts it in an aphorism: "Every
path of Natural Science is closed with the sign: 'NO THOROUGHFARE,
MOSES.'"
Moses, inspired by Yahveh, declared that
heaven and earth, and all the fullness thereof, were created by Yahveh out of
nothing in six days (or in one); that Adam ate the forbidden fruit of knowledge
in Eden, whereby "sin and death entered into the world," and damned
all humanity. Father Luther, with all the assurance of an eye-witness, asserts:
"Moses spoke properly and plainly, and neither allegorically nor
figuratively; and therefore the world with all creatures was created in six
days." The Westminster Confession of Faith -- in full force and effect
to-day -- specially lays it down as "necessary to salvation to believe
that all things visible and invisible were created not only out of nothing but
in exactly six days." The Catholic Father Peter Martyr clinched the whole
matter by declaring, and with inexorable logic and truth: -- "So important
is it to comprehend the work of creation that we see the creed of the Church take
this as its starting point. Were this Article taken away, there would be no
original sin; the promise of Christ would become void, and all the vital force
of our religion would be destroyed."
This is, indeed, the enormous fatal
significance of the six days and the Fall, emphasized and explained by the
alarmed outcries of the Church against the wonderful discoveries of the human
mind in the fields of astronomy, geology, anthropology, and natural science,
which wholly disproved their cherished dogmas of revelation, and discredited
forever the basic tenets of the whole fabric of the Christian religion. Calvin,
in his "Commentary on Genesis," argues that the Genesis account of
creation is literally true, and warns those who dare to believe otherwise, and
thus "basely insult the Creator, to expect a Judge who will annihilate
them."
But modern knowledge, science, has proved
beyond all contradiction of inspiration that these inspired truths out of the
"infallible annals of the Spirit of God" are contrary to the facts;
and makes it impossible for Adam and Eve and Eden to have ever existed. So here
alone, with one great crash, the whole Christian plan of salvation, founded on
the fable of Adam and the forbidden fruit, collapses to utter ruin.
Moses again, by inspiration of Yahveh, asserts
this goodly earth to be flat and square, with "four corners," and all
its vari- colored inhabitants to be directly descended from his first man,
Adam, through Noah and his three sons. The great pagan philosophers, by the
power of their genius of reason, happily untrammelled by Hebrew revelation and
Christian inspiration, declared with true inspiration God's truth that the
earth was round, and that the antipodes could be and were inhabited by races of
men. Centuries before Christ and before
Seneca, who died in 65 A.D., in his Naturales
Questiones,, asks how great a way it is from the furthest shores of Spain to
India, and answers that it is a space of a very few days if a fair wind drives
the ship, One of his great tragedies gives striking expression to his prophecy:
"Venient annis, saecula seris, Quibus
Oceanus vincula rerum Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus, Tethysque novos detegat
orbes; Nec sit terris ultima Thule." (Medea, 2: 375.)
"There will come a time," he says,
"in later years, when Oceans shall loosen the bonds of things, and a huge
land shall lie revealed, and Tethys shall disclose new worlds, and Thule shall
no longer be at the end of the earth." This is one of the most notable
un-"inspired" prophecies on record. In a copy of the Tragedies of
Seneca, belonging to Ferdinand Columbus, now in the Biblioteca Colombina, there
is attached to these prophetic verses this marginal note: "Haec prophetia
expleta et per patrem meum Cristoforo Colon, Almirante, anno 1492."
But no, this is impious heresy, contradictory
of Holy Moses, and destructive of the Holy Church! "Scripture," avers
the all- knowing Father St. Augustine, "speaks of no such descendants of
Adam as the Antipodeans. Men could not be allowed by the Almighty to live
there, since if they did they could not see Christ at his second coming
descending through the air"; and, he says, the supporters of this
geographical heresy "give the lie direct to King David and to St. Paul,
and therefore to the Holy Ghost!" The Antipodeans, argues Father
Procopius, according to a text of Luke, are theologically impossible. "If
there be men on the other side of the earth, Christ must have gone there and
suffered a second time to save them; and therefore there must have been, as
necessary preliminaries to his coming, a duplicate Adam, Eden, serpent, and
Deluge!" We see again, how the Christian "plan of salvation"
depends confessedly and utterly upon Adam, the garden, and the talking snake!
Father St. Boniface appealed to Yahveh's
Vicar, Pope Zaebary, to combat this heresy of the antipodes, of men who were
beyond the appointed means of salvation; and the Pope, inspired of the Holy
Ghost, issued his bull, embellished and fortified with passages from Job and
the apocryphal "Wisdom of Solomon," against the heretical doctrine,
declaring it "perverse, iniquitous, and against the soul" of whoever
maintained it. And the Holy Ghost, speaking further through this bull, harshly
condemned the good Saint Vergilius, who heretically held the earth to be round;
declaring that such doctrine involved errors as to original sin and the
universality of redemption; for, averred the Holy Ghost, if there were
antipodes, the "other race of men" could not be descendants of Adam
and were not redeemed by Christ. In this conclusion I must confess that the
Holy Ghost and His Holiness are right for once.
The holy Council of Salamanca solemnly decided
against Columbus's theory of the rotundity of the earth and the antipodes,
declaring that texts of Scripture and "the Fathers" were opposed to
such an idea; that, as Father St. Augustine said, "If there were any
antipodes, the Bible would have said so"; that the earth was actually a
flat disk with a dropping-off place; and that if the world were round they
would slide off! But Columbus persisted in his heresy; and his epochal voyages,
and the circumnavigation by Magellan, proved once again that it is not safe to
trust the Scriptures and the Fathers for inspired scientific knowledge.
Shortly after the return of Columbus from his
first faith- shattering voyage, the Holy Church set itself up as the self-
appointed dispenser of the New World which it had just declared through the
Holy Ghost never existed; and God's Vicar, Pope Alexander 6: of savory memory,
perpetrated his celebration bull "Inter coetera Divinoe Majestati,"
in May, 1493, partitioning the New World between Spain and Portugal. As this
touches a highly interesting event in American history, of far-reaching
consequences, I shall quote from the notable bull, quite fairly turned into the
vernacular from the original Latin, published in Volume I of "American
Charters, Constitutions, and Organic Laws," published by the United States
government. From page 42 I translate the papal grantor's inspired claim to
divine power and infallibility in making the partition:
" ... Out of Our mere liberality, and of
Our certain knowledge, and the plenitude of Apostolic power ... and by the
authority of Omnipotent God to US in Blessed Peter granted, and the Vicarship
of Jesus Christ which we exercise on earth ---- "
by these plenipotentiary credentials and
divine powers of attorney, his Holiness granted to Spain all the new lands
discovered and to be discovered west of a line, dictated by the Holy Ghost, drawn
one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands. But
Even after Magellan's triumphant voyage of
1519 around the globe had proved the errancy of Scripture, Fathers, and
infallible Church, such redoubtable churchmen as Luther, Melancthon, and Calvin
stuck to scriptural "revelation" and roundly denied sphericity, as do
the holy followers of "Elijah II" Dowie at Zion City, Illinois,
to-day. Another bit of geographical Bible lore may be mentioned here. Calvin,
in 1553, persecuted and burned to death Serviettes because, among other things,
in his edition of Ptolemy's "Geography," he spoke of the Holy Land as
not a "land flowing with milk and honey," but mainly barren and
inhospitable; Calvin declared that such language "necessarily inculpated
Moses, and grievously outraged the Holy Ghost!"
But "the infallible annals of the Spirit
of God" were not only discredited by geography and geology and the other
sciences named; the science of astronomy gave the Holy Ghost a blow under which
it has writhed for three centuries, and from which only the fatuous faith which
reasons not nor doubts enables it yet to sustain a precarious credit among
those who do not think adequately. The Holy Ghost, through a bull of Yahveh's
Vicar, Pope Alexander 3: in 1163, forbade to ecclesiastics "the study of
physics or the laws of the world," and decreed that any one violating this
inspired command of Yahveh "shall be avoided by all and excommunicated."
There were immortal heroes of science who
dared defy such inspired ignorance. Copernicus, truer prophet of God than Moses
or pope, wrote his inspired revelation of God in the heavens, "The
Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies," which in terror of Yahveh's Holy-Ghost-inspired
Church he withheld from publication till the day of his death, May 24, 1543.
Then with his dying breath he gave to the world the revelation that the sun is
the center of the solar system, and that the earth and other planets revolve
around it; and from the security of the border of the grave he defiantly
dedicated his immortal work to His Holiness the Pope.
The inspired Roman Church quickly denounced
the work as heresy, and condemned it to suppression "until his statement
should be corrected" to conform to the Bible and to Ptolemy, who was a
pagan, but whose geography and astronomy were held almost inspired by the
Church. Luther screeched at Copernicus, calling him "an upstart
astrologer": "This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of
astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand
still, and not the earth." Melanchthon, another great luminary of reformed
inspiration, declared: "It is a want of honesty and decency to assert such
notions publicly, and the example is pernicious." Calvin, in his
"Commentary on Genesis," condemned all who asserted that the earth is
not the center of the universe, and triumphantly appealed to Psalm 18: 1:
"The world also is established, that it cannot be moved!" defiantly
asking: "Who will put the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy
Spirit?" The founder of Methodism, John Wesley, declared that these new
ideas "tend toward infidelity"; and a whole chorus of eminent
"divines" -- Melanchthon, Cardinal Bellarmine, Father Lecazre, and a
swarm of other luminaries of the Church, both "reformed" and hopeless
of reform -- launched their unanimous, bitter anathemas against the impious new
discovery. With acute logic they demonstrated unanswerably how the dogmas of
the Christian religion must perish before this one stupendous revelation of God
in science.
"His pretended discovery vitiates the
whole Christian plan of salvation. It casts suspicion on the doctrine of the
incarnation. It upsets the whole basis of theology. If the earth is a planet,
and only one among several planets, it cannot be that any such great things
have been done for it as the Christian doctrine teaches. If there are other
planets, since God makes nothing in vain, they must be inhabited; but how can
their inhabitants be descended from Adam? How can they trace their origin back
to Noah's ark? How can they have been redeemed by the Savior?" [Andrew D.
White, History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, (New York: D. Appleton
& Co., 1925 ) Vol. 1:p. 134. From this great treasures much of the material
of this chapter is taken.]
Upon what a string of "silly
fancies" the whole "sacred science of Christianity" and the
so-called "Church of God" dangle!
In 1618 and 1619 God's prophet Kepler
published his immortal works "Epitome of the Copernican System" and
"The Harmonies of the World." He lived in a Protestant country, where
the Roman Church couldn't get at him. But the Protestant Consistory of
Stuttgart solemnly warned him "not to throw Christ's kingdom into confusion
with his silly fancies," and ordered him to "bring his theory of the
world into harmony with scripture" -- as if truth could be harmonized with
ignorant fables! A direr fate befell the illustrious Giordano Bruno, an apostle
of learning and of the Copernican system. In the face of Holy Church he flung
his immortal satire ridiculing it, "Lo Spaccio della Bestia
Trionfante" ("The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast"); and after
he had been confined seven years in its foul dungeons, the "Beast"
threw his heroic but heretic body and his books to the flames of its Holy
Inquisition, in Rome, 1600; but his soul and truth go marching on!
All the world knows and blushes in shame at
the ignominious spectacle which the inspired Church made of the venerable,
truly inspired Galileo, haled before the Holy Inquisition, dressed in the
sackcloth robe of a repentant criminal, there forced upon his knees before
God's Vicar and his assembled cardinals, laying his hands upon the "Holy
Evangels," and invoking divine aid in "abjuring and detesting the
infamous doctrine of the earth's motion and the sun's stability!" This
Holy Inquisition, specially convoked by Yahveh's Vicar, Pope Paul 5: after a
month's deliberations in solemn session with the Holy Ghost, in 1616, rendered
its inspired unanimous decision: "The first proposition, that the sun is
the center and does not revolve around the earth, is foolish, absurd, false in
theology, and heretical, because expressly contrary to Holy Scripture. The
second proposition, that the earth is not the center but revolves around the
sun, is absurd, false in philosophy, and from a theological point of view at
least, opposed to the true faith." Galileo was therefore commanded,
"in the name of His Holiness the Pope and the whole Congregation of the
Holy Office [i.e., the Inquisition], to relinquish altogether the opinion that
the sun is the center of the world and immovable, and that the earth moves; and
henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatsoever, verbally or
in writing." A couple of weeks later the Congregation of the Index, at the
instigation of the pope, rendered its decree that "the doctrine of the
double motion of the earth about its axis and about the sun is false, and
entirely contrary to Holy Scripture," and must not be taught or advocated.
The decree condemned all the works of Copernicus and "all writings which
affirm the motion of the earth," and placed them, and those of Kepler and
Galileo, on the "Index of Prohibited Books," from which they were
removed only in 1835!
In 1633 Galileo was again haled before the
Inquisition, by order of Pope Urban 8: threatened with torture, and subjected
to imprisonment by order of the pope. He was forced to pronounce publicly and
on his knees this monstrous recantation:
"I, Galileo Galilei, being in my
seventieth year, being a prisoner and on my knees, and before you, most Eminent
and Reverend Lord Cardinals, Inquisitors-General against heretical depravity,
having before my eyes and touching with my hands the holy gospels -- swear that
I have always believed, and do now believe, and by God's help will for the
future believe, all that is held, preached, and taught by the Holy Catholic and
Apostolic Roman Church. ... An injunction having been judiciously intimated to
me by this Holy Office, to the effect that I must abandon the false opinion
that the sun is the center of the world and immovable, and that the earth is
not the center of the world, and moves, and that I must not hold, defend, or
teach in any way whatsoever ... the said doctrine, after it had been notified
to me that the said doctrine was contrary to the Holy Scripture. ... therefore.
... with sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I abjure, curse, and detest the
aforesaid errors and heresies, and generally every other error and sect whatsoever
contrary to the said Holy Church. ... So help me God, and his holy gospels,
which I touch with my hands. ... And in witness of the truth thereof, I have
with my own hand subscribed the present document of my abjuration, and recited
it word for word at Rome, in the Convent of Minerva, this 22nd day of July,
1633." [The Library of Original Sources, Editor-in-chief, O.J. Thatcher;
(Milwaukee: University Research Extension Co.), Vol. 5: pp. 306-7.]
From this cringing attitude to which he was
forced by the inspired vicar of Yahveh, the broken old prophet of the Architect
God rose in righteous rebellion of spirit, and muttered back at his holy
inquisitors the immortal "Ma pur' si muove!" ("But it does move,
for all that!") and tottered out to his hastening death. The world knows,
too, whether Holy Ghost or Galileo was right. In 1664, Pope Alexander 7 issued
his inspired bull in which be "finally, decisively, and infallibly"
condemned "all books teaching the movement of the earth and the stability
of the sun"; all works in which the arch heresy was taught or proposed
were put upon the Index of Prohibited Books, and true faith was again
triumphant on earth.
It is a curious commentary on inspiration and
infallibility that the catalogue of the papal Index shows every single book
published during all the Dark Ages of faith in which the genius of man sought
to reveal God's true knowledge of himself through his works of nature, and to
enlighten the human mind and spirit steeped in the dark superstitions of the
Bible and the Church to have been banned and burned by the dictates of the Holy
Ghost, because, forsooth, God's facts of nature contradicted and rendered
ridiculous the ancient tales of Yahveh and "revelation!" Besides the
epoch-making works of the great physicists and philosophers, scores of others,
such as those of the great modern naturalists, of Linnaeus, of Geoffrey
Saint-Hilaire, of Cuvier, of Lyell, of Buffon, appear in that catalogue of
inspired ignorance. Buffon, just at the time of our Revolution for Independence,
was forced by the inspired Vicegerent of Yahveh to subscribe and swear to this
debasing formula of recantation: "I declare that I had no intention to
contradict the text of scripture; that I most firmly believe all therein
related about the creation, both as to order of time and the matter of facts. I
abandon everything in my book respecting the formation of the earth, and
generally all which may be contrary to the narrative of Moses." And his
monumental Histoire Naturelle of forty-four volumes was put under the anathema
of the Church in its Holy Index.
These unhappy instances of human ignorance are
of no importance as such, for every day we learn things which we were ignorant
of the day before, and thus we grow in knowledge. But the awful significance of
these instances and all their kind is that the "Word of God" is the
inspired source and fountain of all this ignorance and teaches it as
"revelation" of truth; and the "Church of God," which
claims to be daily taught and guided by the Spirit of Yahveh, perpetuated
humanity in this ignorance under the pretense that the "Holy Ghost"
advised it that all this mass of ignorance was the very truth of God, to doubt
or deny which meant the terror of ecclesiastical curses and prison and rack and
stake. That Bible and Church have in every single instance of conflict with
science been defeated and proved in error, demonstrates that the Church is
mistaken in its claims to be possessed of infallible scriptures and
inspiration.
The Bible throughout, Old and New Testaments,
and particularly the latter, teaches that sickness and disease are due directly
to devils and demoniacal possession; Christ and his disciples cast out devils,
and the sick were thereupon cured. There is never a word of medicine or surgery
in all the Bible, except the fig-poultice for Hezekiah's boil, and the
spit-salve in the blind man's eyes; and never a hint of the prevention or
rational cure of disease. The divine prescription is: "Go, cast out devils
in my name and heal the sick." According to the Bible and the Church all
plagues are specifically sent by God in punishment of sin. Yes, sanitary sin!
against which there is not a single word in all Scripture, though it abounds in
incantations and exorcisms and "purifications." The unwashed saints
of
The great Father Origen thus instructs us in
celestial science: "It is demons which produce famine, unfruitfulness,
corruptions of the air, and pestilences; they hover concealed in clouds in the
lower atmosphere, and are attracted by the blood and incense which the heathen
offer to them as gods." God save the mark! The quasi-divine Father St.
Augustine adds for our faith in celestial science: "All diseases of
Christians are to be ascribed to these demons; chiefly do they torment
fresh-baptized Christians, yea, even the guileless, new-born infants!"
Father St. Bernard warned his monks that "to seek relief from disease in
medicine was in harmony neither with religion nor with the honor and purity of
their order." The use of the crude pain-reducing anaesthetist of the times
was opposed by the inspired Church; especially their use in childbirth was
objected to as an attempt "to avoid one part of the primeval curse on
women"; and in 1591, Lady Macalyane was burned alive on Castle Hill in
Edinburgh for seeking aid for relief of pain in the birth of her two sons! The
"Apostles' Creed," regarding resurrection of the body, discouraged
anatomical study, and the Church forbade surgery to monks. All dissection was
forbidden by decretal of Pope Boniface 8, and excommunication was threatened
against all who presumed to practice it, though the Christians tore millions of
human bodies to bits on their infernal racks, and burned hundreds of thousands
to ashes, thus rendering the bodily resurrection difficult if not precarious.
An awful case of belly-ache suffered by a
pious nun is solemnly avowed by the Holy Father, Pope Gregory the Great, to
have been caused by her having swallowed a devil along with a piece of lettuce
which she was eating, she having omitted to make the sign of the cross (which
is potent magic as a scare-devil); and this devil, when commanded by a holy
monk to come out of her, derisively replied: "How am I to blame? I was
sitting on the lettuce, and this woman, not having made the sign of the cross,
ate me along with it" (Dialogi, lib. 1:c. 4 )! This Gregory the Great,
Yahveh's own anointed Vicar on earth, full of the inspiration of truth, is the
same through whom the Holy Ghost made the formal revelation of purgatory; the
same who stopped a pestilence in Rome by marching at the head of a procession
of monks and priests, and saw Michael the Archangel shooting fiery darts of
death into the Holy City.
All this is of a piece with the inspired bull
in which Pope Calixtus, moved by mortal fear and the Holy Ghost, is said to
have excommunicated Halley's comet. In 1618, "a comet caused an eruption of
Mount Vesuvius, which would have destroyed Naples had not the blood of the
Invincible St. Januarius withstood it" (see Cath. Enc., Vol. 8: p. 295 ).
Thousands of like inspired narratives of the Holy Ghost and Holy Church abound;
it would take whole volumes to contain them. Read the Catholic Encyclopedia.
WITCHCRAFT AND INSPIRATION
One of the most piteous and murderous
superstitions in all the inspired "infallible annals of the Spirit of
God," is the inspired revelation of witches. Many times it is asserted in
this "Word of God poured forth by Moses" that witches, witchcraft,
and sorcery exist and have wrought wonders on earth; and that God himself
commanded that witches and sorcerers should be put to death without mercy. All
the world but a Bible Christian knows that the persons who wrote that God told
them by inspired revelation to state such things were mistaken, and truth was
not in what they wrote. This is the alleged positive enactment of Yahveh on
Sinai: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Ex. 22: 17 ) --
"or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a
necromancer."
Wesley, the founder of Methodism was so
saturated in this "inspired Word of God" that he declared, in
substance, with all the assurance of a credulous intellect: "Unless
witchcraft is true, nothing in the Bible is true" -- and I admit he told
the truth, though in a contrary sense. Time and again in his Journals he voiced
his abiding faith in witchcraft and ghosts. I quote a few precious excerpts
with the suggestion that one so credulous of such hocus-pocus may not have been
wholly illumined as to other matters. Wesley records a case of
"possession" which he witnessed (apparently a young woman in an
epileptic fit). Note his plaintive arguments and the typical clerical sneers at
the scoffers:
"When old Dr. A--- R--- was asked what
her disorder was, he answered 'It is what formerly they would have called being
bewitched.' And why should they not call it so now? Because the infidels have
hooted witchcraft out of the world; and the complaisant Christians, in large
numbers, have joined them in the cry. I do not so much wonder at this -- that
so many of these herein talk like infidels. But I have sometimes been inclined
to wonder at the pert, saucy, indecent manner wherein some of those trample on men
far wiser than themselves; at their speaking so dogmatically against what not
only the whole world, heathen and Christian, believed in ages past, but
thousands, learned as well as unlearned, firmly believe at this day, ... whose
manner of speaking concerning witchcraft must be keenly offensive to every
sensible man, who cannot give up his Bible!" [John Wesley, Journal, June
26, 1770; Works, Ed. John Emery (New York: Carlton Lenahan), Vol. 4: p. 333.
Again the great Methodist says: "I cannot
give up to all the deists in
The testimony of all history, sacred and
profane, regarding many other superstitions of faith, has been (and in some
particulars, among some classes of intelligence, yet is) as persuasive as was
the testimony regarding witches and ghosts to Wesley; but witches have gone
glimmering despite Bible and Church; and the whole Broken-crew of devils,
ghosts (Holy and otherwise), and specters of Bible superstitions is fast
trailing after them to oblivion.
Hear Wesley's natural history, spoken as if by
full inspiration, of primitive wild animals: "Before Adam's sin none of
these attempted to devour or in any wise hurt one another; the spider was as
harmless as the fly!" He had never heard what science has of late revealed
about this little filth-laden, disease- disseminating imp of the devil. it is
so -- for Luther is positive that "Flies are the images of heretics and
devils!" But to stick to witchcraft for a moment -- not indeed that
witches fly in an age of electric light, but to illustrate the darkness of holy
inspiration.
It may be doubted whether Wesley was fully
inspired. But the Bible is admitted to be so; and Holy Church admits that
itself is. Several of its divinely inspired vicegerents of Yahveh, "by
virtue of the teaching power conferred by the Almighty, and under the divine
guidance against any possible error in the exercise of it" (such is their
holy formula), have from time to time during the ages of faith emitted God-inspired
fulminations against the unholy practices of witchcraft and sorcery so often
avowed as fact and denounced as the work of the devil, in Old and New
Testaments alike. I shall mention but a few samples of the infallible teachings
of the Holy Ghost on this subject, by which we may judge of other like inspired
teachings on other subjects; remembering "falsus in uno," etc.
Yahveh's Vicar, Pope John 22: in 1317, in his
bull (it is odd that Holy Church speaks, like the Irishman, always in bulls)
"Spondent Pariter," and others of like tenor, complains that both he
and his flock (i.e., of "sheep") are in danger of their lives by the
arts of sorcery and witchcraft; he declares that sorcerers can send devils into
mirrors and finger-rings, and kill men and women by a magic word; that they
have tried to kill him by piercing a waxen image of him with needles in the
name of the devil. He therefore calls upon all rulers, secular and
ecclesiastical, to hunt down the miscreants who thus afflict the faithful, and
he especially increased the powers of the inquisitors in various parts of
Europe for this pious purpose. Yahveh's Vicar, Pope Eugene 4: in 1437, in
another bull exhorted the holy inquisitors of heresy and witchcraft to use
greater diligence against these human agents of the Prince of darkness, and
especially against such of them as have the power to produce bad weather!
Yahveh's Vicar, Pope Innocent 8: on December 7, 1484, perpetrated the famous
bull "Summis Desiderantes," inspired by the divine command "Thou
shalt not suffer a witch to live," exhorting the clergy to leave no means
untried to detect sorcerers, and especially those who "by evil weather
destroy vineyards" (he was evidently not a prohibitionist, -- as have been
none of his inspired successors, this being the unique instance in
ecclesiastical history in which these vicars of Yahveh have ever pretended to
champion "personal liberty" of conduct or conscience). Armed with his
manual "Malleus Maleficarum" ("Witch Hammer"), his
witch-hunting inquisitors scoured Europe for victims, extorting confessions by
torture, and murdering millions of victims of their fanaticism.
Similar bulls were inspired by the Holy Ghost
and issued by Yahveh's Vicars, Pope Julius II in 1504, and Pope Adrian VI in
1523; tens of thousands of unhappy -- and innocent -- persons were thus piously
destroyed because of the inspired but ignorant belief in witchcraft and
sorcery. James I of England, "By the Grace of God, King, Defender of the
Faith" -- he who instigated the "Authorized Versiore' of this old
Jewish witch book, and to whom it is dedicated in terms of most disgusting
adulation -- wrote a famous book of demonology, and used torture to get
evidence of witchcraft with which to adorn its veracious pages. On the occasion
of his august bride's being driven back by a storm at sea, Dr. Fian, under
torture, with his legs crushed in the "boots" and with wedges driven
under his finger-nails, confessed that several hundred witches had gone to sea
in a sieve from Leith and had raised storms and tempests to drive back the
princess! Sir Matthew Hale, in burning two witches to death, judicially
declared that he based his judgment on the direct testimony of Holy Scripture!
The Church still clings to its puerile superstition: "In the face of Holy
Scripture and the teachings of the Fathers and theologians the abstract
possibility of a pact with the Devil and of a diabolical interference in human
affairs can hardly be denied." (Cath. Encyc., Vol. 15:p. 677; art.
Witchcraft.)
ANCIENT FAITH YET FULLY VALID
Yet all the foregoing outpourings of Yahveh
through Moses are of the most essential "fundamentals" of the
Christian religion. They are Catholic and Protestant "truth" alike,
and according to the creeds of them all, "necessary to salvation," to
be professed and believed; they are Christianity. The truth is admirably, if
presumptuously, expressed by the great Father St. Augustine: "Neither in
the confusion of paganism, nor in the defilement of heresy, nor in the lethargy
of schism, nor yet in the blindness of Judaism, is religion to be sought; but
among those alone who are called Catholic Christians, or the orthodox, that is,
the custodians of sound doctrine and followers of right teaching" (De Vera
Religione, Chap. v). The Athanasian Creed, reaffirmed by the papal encyclical
"Pascendi Dominici Gregis," in 1907, avers: "Whoever will be
saved, it is necessary above all else that he hold to the Catholic Faith."
Faith is the "substance of things hoped
for, the evidence of things not seen," as defined by the great dogmatist of
the faith. The preceding pages have shown much of this "substance"
very unreal, and as "evidence" of actuality to be less than nil. Some
progressive and "modernist" theologians, indeed, would wave all this
away as old stories, ignorant superstitions long since abandoned and forgotten
by Holy Church, shining but discarded vagaries of "medieval
theology." But truth is of all time; Bible and Church, in all of truth
they ever had, are -- if ever they were -- as infallible, and hence as eternal,
as truth -- the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. The same "Holy
Ghost" inspires the Bible and presides over and inspires its infallible
Church to-day as in its beginning and through all the dark ages of faith.
The Holy Ghost, unburdening itself through
Pope Leo 13:in the encyclical AEterni Patris, of August 4, 1879, the purpose of
which was "the revival of scholastic philosophy, according to the mind of
St. Thomas Aquinas," begins with the humorous assurance, that "the
Church, although officially the teacher of revealed truth only, has always been
interested in the cultivation of every branch of human knowledge"! It then
demonstrates how such "philosophy prepares the motives of credibility in
matters of faith, and explains and vindicates revealed truths. But the truths
unfolded by reason cannot contradict the truths revealed by God; hence,
although in the pursuit of natural knowledge philosophy may justly [How
condescending!] use its own methods, principles, and arguments, yet not so as
to withdraw from the authority of divine revelation!" The encyclical next
shows, by extracts from many Fathers of the Church, "what reason helped by
revelation" can do for the progress of human knowledge! (Cath. Encyc.,
Vol. 1, p. 177.)
As if fearful that these sacred truths might
be discounted, if not impiously laughed quite out of countenance in this modern
age of reason and of knowledge, the Holy Ghost has very recently and repeatedly
gone to much pains and suffered no little skeptical ridicule, to reaffirm the
eternal truth of all its dogmas, and its own and its inspired Vicars' total
infallibility in all matters of faith or belief -- or credulity.
In the year 1870, the sacred Vatican Council,
convoked by Pope Pius IX and presided over by the Holy Ghost itself, expressly
avowed the immutability -- the stagnation -- the fossilization -- of religious
truth in all its ancient and hoary dogmas and beliefs, which some threatened to
reject as discredited superstition, averring: "The doctrine of faith,
which God [i.e., Yahveh] has revealed, has not been proposed as a philosophical
discovery to be improved upon by human talent, but has been committed as a
Divine deposit to the spouse of Christ, to be faithfully guarded and infallibly
interpreted by her." It embalms its petrified "Sacred Science of
Christianity" as the eternal and unchangeable revelations of Yahveh,
asserting: "The Successors of St. Peter have been promised the Holy Ghost,
not for the promulgation of new doctrines, but only for the preservation and
interpretation of the Revelations committed by the Apostles." All this was
a sort of Socratic leading-up to the climacteric formulation in writing of the
terms of the inspired mandate granted of old orally by the Holy Ghost to its
vicar-general on earth, and reiterating the venerable dogma of its own
infallibility:
"Faithfully adhering, therefore, to the
traditions inherited from the beginning of the Christian faith, we, with the
approbation of the Sacred Council, for the Glory of God our Savior, for the
exaltation of the Catholic Religion, and the Salvation of Christian peoples,
teach and define, as a divinely-revealed dogma, that the Roman Pontiff, when he
speaks ex cathedra -- that is, when he, in the exercise of his supreme
apostolic authority, decides that a doctrine concerning faith and morals is to
be held by the entire Church -- he possesses, in consequence of the Divine Aid
promised him in St. Peter, that infallibility with which the Divine Saviour
wished to have his Church furnished for the definition of doctrine concerning
faith and morals; and that such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of
themselves, and not in consequence of the Church's consent, irreformable."
All this is as lucid of expression and
inspiration as one could reasonably expect; and it expressly and Solemnly, in
A.D. 1870, puts the Great Seal of Yahveh on all the bulls and claims of
ecclesiastical inspiration and infallibility from the New Testament and the
witch bulls, to the celebrated encyclical "Pascendi Dominici Gregis"
("Feeding the Lord's Flock") of Pope Pius X. Like Gregory 16:His
Holiness finds his text in the horrified question of Augustine: "What is
more deadly to the soul than the liberty of error?" and proceeds to place
all liberty of thought under the curse of Yahveh God.
This monumental emanation of inspiration, put
forth on September 8, 1907, reiterates the axiom of Holy Church: "Faith
has for its object the unknowable"; and at great lengths proceeds to aver
its own infallible knowledge of all these unknowable things; puts its ineffable
anathema upon all the priceless truths of human knowledge acquired through the
ages in defiance of Holy Church, and upon the precious boon of liberty of
thought and conscience attained fearfully in spite of the Churches -- all of
which the popish encyclical sneering dubs "Modernism," asserting that
this "Modernism embraces every heresy against the inspired revelations of
Bible and Church" (which, indeed, is true). It concludes with a sweeping
formula of abjuration, to which all priests and clerical persons "are
obliged to swear, reprobating the principal Modernist tenets" -- which, of
course, include the utter denial of witches and sorcery, possession by devils,
the flatness and stability of the earth, miracles, the inspiration of
revelation, the virgin birth and divinity of Jesus Christ, the validity and
justice of the plan of salvation, and a thousand like relics of ancient faith,
incompatible with modern knowledge of the truth.
Thus in the twentieth century, the Holy Ghost
itself, if Pius X -- now about to be canonized by his Church for his own
miracles -- is to be credited with authentic knowledge of its true sentiments,
harks back with conscious pride through the Dark Ages of Faith to its original
fountains of inspired verity, and puts its seal of approval on the classic
formula of faith: "Illa sola credenda est Veritas quae, in nullo ab
Ecclesiastica et Apostolica discordat Traditione" -- "That only must
be believed as truth which in nothing disaccords with the ecclesiastic and
apostolic tradition!"
O, Fratres Ignorantiae!
CHAPTER 13
THE "PROPHECIES" OF JESUS CHRIST
THROUGHOUT the four gospel biographies of
Jesus, the Christ, there are frequent references to and quotations of sundry
passages in the Old Testament, which are appealed to as "prophecies"
concerning Jesus Christ, and are asserted to foretell his birth and death, as
well as many incidents of his life, and to have been fulfilled by these several
incidents. The Jews bad for centuries, ever since their captivity, lived in the
fervent belief and expectation of a Messiah, an anointed king of the race and
lineage of David, who should at last arise, overthrow all their enemies)
restore the Kingdom of Israel, and reestablish the throne of David
forever." Gabriel assured Mary, with respect to her son: "God shall
give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house
of Jacob for ever" (Luke
How and why these false pretenders to
Messiahship could "come in my name" -- in the name of Yahveh's
genuine Messiah, who had already come and by his own "signs and
wonders" had demonstrated to the satisfaction of all who believed them
that he thus "fulfilled all the law and the prophets" and was indeed
the Messiah and thus closed the lists -- is not at this day very evident. But,
admittedly, the working of such "great signs and wonders" -- miracles
-- was no authentic badge of Messiahship, but was the common stock in trade of
any bogus pretender. Of this fact there are many scriptural assurances and
instances besides the admission just made by Jesus.
A very curious instance of pretended
Messiahship after Jesus, noted in the New Testament, was Simon Magus, the
sorcerer, who notoriously "used sorcery, and bewitched the people of
Samaria, from the least to the greatest," so that all the people said:
"This man is the great power of God," and "of a long time he had
bewitched them with sorceries" (Acts 8: 9-11 ). The case of Elymas
Bar-Jesus is somewhat in point (Acts 13: 6, 8 ); as is also that of the
"damsel possessed with a spirit of divination, which brought her masters
much gain by sooth-saying" (Acts
Yet all these miraculous powers were clearly
not of God, and prove no divine mission or authority of the wonder-workers. To
be sure, Nicodemus declares: "No man can do these miracles that thou doest
except God be with him" (John 3: 2 ). And Jesus himself appealed to this
very power of working "signs and wonders" as the culminating proof
and patent of his divine authority and Messiahship, greater and more persuasive
than the inspired assurances of his only human witnesses, the gospel-writers:
"But I receive not testimony from man. ... But I have greater witness than
John; for ... the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father
hath sent me" (John 5: 34, 36 ); and, "though ye believe me not,
believe the works" (John 10: 38 ); and again, "Believe me for the
very works' sake" (John 14: 11 ). But such "works," such
"great signs and wonders," are proved by the Bible to prove nothing
-- as Jesus himself has just admitted -- except the great credulity of the
people. And elsewhere Jesus denied positively that he ever worked any
"signs and wonders," and refused to perform any (Matt.
With the testimony of "man," John
and gospel-biographers, discounted; with his own testimony for himself declared
"not true"; with the "witness of the works" discredited as
being the common arts of charlatans and false pretenders, we must needs, in
seeking satisfying evidences of the truth of claims that Jesus Christ is the
true "promised Messiah" of the Hebrew prophets, turn to and examine
these "prophecies," and the "internal evidences" of the
gospels.
THE GOSPEL RECORDS
The Jews, the people who lived in the devout
expectation of the coming of the Messiah and who are said to have seen all the
"great signs and wonders" of Jesus, as well as of the numerous
"false Christs" whom Jesus decried, did not believe in Jesus as
Messiah and king. After the death of Jesus, when a new generation, which had
not seen these "great signs and wonders," had grown up, the gospel
biographies and epistles began to be written, to further the propaganda of the
new faith. The Jews still looked for their Messiah, promised and prophesied, it
is said, in their ancient Scriptures. Obviously there could be no Messiah who
did not fulfil these various prophecies. Hence the very first obligation for
any pretender to the Messiahship -- for the "false Christs" who, as
Jesus avers, abounded -- was that he make himself fit into the
"prophecies," or be made out by his propagandists to have done so.
Ample stores of alleged "prophecy of
Messiah" were at hand, in the Scriptures. Of these prophecies the most
curious feature, betraying a blood-relationship to Delphic oracles, is their
utter meaninglessness, or their capacity to mean anything or everything
according to the necessities of the person invoking them to serve selfish
purposes or the cause he seeks to promote. One would think, it may be remarked
in passing, that an All-wise God, intent upon revealing his awful purposes for
the future of his Chosen People and in the instance of the Christ, for the
redemption of all the human race -- would speak, not in "dark sayings,"
but in plain, intelligible Hebrew, so that everyone might understand the
prophecy and recognize clearly its wonderful fulfillment. Thus only, one would
think, could Yahveh's own test of true prophecy be intelligently and certainly
applied when a question arose: "If the thing follow not, nor come to pass,
that is the thing which Yahveh hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it
presumptuously" (Deut. 18: 22 ). Rather, as we will see, the chief
characteristic of prophecy, as of oracle, is lack of precision of meaning,
which gives it a latitude of interpretation and lends itself admirably to even
maladroit manipulation by everyone who raises the cry: "Lo, here is
Christ, or there." But the "prophecies of the Messiah." and the
gospel interpretation of them, may now be let speak for themselves.
The Jews knew their Scriptures and what sort
of "Messiah" they were promised: a lineal descendant of David King of
Israel, who should himself be King of Israel and "establish the throne of
David for ever" in the restored national land. Most special of all
qualifications of promised Messiahship was: "He shall deliver us from the
Assyrian, when he cometh into our land" (Micah 5: 5, 6 ). None of the
"false Christs" had met any of the "prophetic"
prescriptions; and Jesus was hailed by the rabble as king but for one day. In
beginning his campaign among the people, he sent forth his adjutants or
disciples, and straitly commanded them: "Go not into the way of the
Gentiles; ... But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel"
(Matt. 10: 5, 6 ) So "he came unto his own, and his own received him
not" (John 1: 11 ). But when his own received him not, and repudiated both
his claim of Messiahship and his claim to be the actual virgin-born Son of God
(which was not an attribute of the prophesied Messiah), "Lo, we turn to
the Gentiles" (Acts 13: 46 ), says Paul, who from being the chief
persecutor of those who believed had become the chief propagandist of the new
faith of dogma, formulated by himself.
The gentiles were the superstitious pagans of
Palestine, Asia Minor, and parts thereabouts; they were steeped in belief in
all the fables of all the gods of the heathen world. They knew nothing of the
Jewish Scriptures or of the promised Messiah; they had no critical sense in religion,
but, like Paul and his converts, "believed all things and hoped all
things." A new God was to them just one more god among many. The Greeks
had an altar erected even "To the Unknown God" (Acts 17: 23 ). The
Gentiles believed already in virgin-born gods and in resurrections from the
dead: the myths of Attis, Adonis, Isis, and Tammuz were accepted articles of
their pagan faiths; fertile ground for a new faith with little or nothing new
or strange about its beliefs and dogmas. So to the pagan gentiles the
propagandists turned, and fortified their propaganda with marvellous tales of
venerable "prophecies" wonderfully fulfilled: "and when the
Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of Yahveh"
(Acts 13: 48 ).
It was among these pagan gentiles that the
propaganda of the new faith was chiefly conducted and was most successful; and
for them the "Good News" and epistles were generation and more after
the death and disappearance of the Divine Subject about whom it all was. Pagans
whose articles of faith were the myths of the gods of Greece, Egypt, and Rome,
and all the pantheon of the orient had little difficulty in being
"converted" from these crude superstitions to the new God, whose
"coming" had been prophesied in the ancient books of Israel and was
wonderfully fulfilled -- they were told -- in the miraculous birth, life,
death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, Son of Yahveh, Elohe Israel.
The inspired formula of the new faith is
Paul's own confession: "Believing all things which are written in the
prophets" (Acts 24: 14 ); and "believing all things, hoping all
thing" (2 Cor. 13: 7 ), their faith was to them "the substance of
things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Heb. 11: 1 ) -- and
not knowable; "Hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why
doth he yet hope for?" (Rom. 8: 24 ).
We shall now respectfully view the Divine
Comedy -- the supreme tragedy -- of the "promised Messiah," and the
wonders of "prophecy fulfilled in Jesus Christ."
1. The Miraculous "virgin Birth" of Jesus
Matthew, whose gospel was written later, comes
first in the order of gospels in our printed collections, for the reason that
he gives a detailed "revelation" of the manner of miraculous
conception and virgin birth of the Subject of his biography. He begins his book
with the genealogy of Jesus, which we elsewhere take notice of. He then
proceeds with inspired pen to record:
"Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on
this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came
together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband,
being a just man, not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put
her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of Yahveh
appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to
take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy
Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for
he shall save his people from their sins." (Matt. 1: 18-21 )
The foregoing is pure fiction; here follows
the crowning instance wherein "the false pen of the scribes hath wrought
falsely":
"Now all this was done, that it might be
fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord [Heb., Yahveh] by the prophet, saying,
Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they
shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us."
For this "prophecy" of the virgin
birth of the Child Jesus, the marginal reference is to the Old Testament,
Isaiah 7: 14, as the inspired "source" of the assertion made by
Matthew. True, it says nothing of any miraculous pregnancy of any woman by the
Holy Ghost, who was wholly unknown in the Old Testament; but this we do find,
as rendered by the "false pen of the scribes" who translated Isaiah:
"Therefore the Lord himself shall give
you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his
name Immanuel." (Isa. 7: 14 )
The King James, or Authorized, Version, or
translation, puts into the margin opposite this verse the words "Or, thou,
O virgin, shalt call." Nothing like this is in the Hebrew text.
We turn to the Hebrew text of this most
wonderful of the "prophecies," and may well be amazed to find that it
is falsely translated. The actual Hebrew words, read from right to left, and
transliterated, so that the reader who knows no Hebrew may at least catch some
words already become familiar, are:
"laken yittan adonai hu lakem oth hinneh
ha-almah harah ve-yeldeth ben ve-karath shem-o immanuel."
Literally translated into English, in the
exact order of the Hebrew words, the "prophecy" reads:
"Therefore shall-give my-lord he
[himself] to you sign behold the-maid conceived [is pregnant] and-beareth son
and- calleth name-his immanuel."
Here the word harah (conceived) is the Hebrew
perfect tense, which, as in English, represents past and completed action;
there is not the remotest hint of future tense or time. No doctor of divinity
or scholar in Hebrew can or will deny this.
Moreover, this is confirmed by the more
honest, yet deceptive, Revised Version. In its text of Isaiah 7: 14, it copies
word for word the false translation of the King James Version; but it inserts
figures in the text after the words "a virgin" and "shall
conceive," and puts into the margin opposite, in small type, which not one
in many thousands ever reads or would understand the significance of, the true
reading: "the virgin" and "is with child." It was thus not
some indefinite "a virgin," who 750 years in the future " shall
conceive" and "Shall bear a son," and "shall call" his
name Immanuel; but it was some known and designated maiden to whom the
"prophecy" referred, who had already conceived, or was already
pregnant, and whose offspring should be the "sign" which "my
lord" would give to Ahaz. The dishonesty of Matthew and of the translators
in perverting this text of Isaiah into a "prophecy" of Jesus Christ
is apparent.
"VIRGIN" OR "YOUNG WOMAN"
Another false, or at best misleading,
translation is that of "virgin" in Isaiah. The Hebrew word used by
Isaiah and translated "virgin" is almah, which does not at all
signify "virgin" in the sense in which we understand it, of an
unmarried woman who, in the often-repeated biblical phrase, "hath not
known man by lying with him." The exegetes of the Biblical Encyclopedia
thus correctly define it: "virgin, Heb., almah; i.e., a young woman of
marriageable age" (Vol. 3: p. 117 ) -- not necessarily, or even
presumptively, of intact virginity. The Hebrew word for a woman actually a
virgin is bethulah; and throughout the Hebrew Bible the two words almah and
bethulah are used with a fair degree of discrimination of sense, as shown by
the instances which I think it pertinent to cite, for a clear understanding of
this important point.
In the Hebrew texts the word almah is used
seven times, always simply in the sense of a young female, and is rendered
"damsel" once, "maid" twice, and "virgin" four
times. The word bethulah occurs fifty times, rendered "maid" seven
times, "maiden" eight times, and "virgin" thirty-five
times. All fifty times it has the technical sense of virginity. For example,
Rebekah was a "bethulah, neither had any man known her" (Gen. 24: 16
). "He shall take a wife in her virginity [bethulah]. A widow, or a
divorced woman, or profane, or a harlot, these shall he not take: but he shall
take a virgin [bethulah]" (Lev.
THE "SIGN" OF A FALSE PROPHECY
What really was Isaiah "prophesying"
about and whereof was the "sign" which he persisted in thrusting upon
Ahaz after the king had flatly refused to listen to it and had piously
protested: "I will not ask [for a sign], neither will I tempt
Yahveh"?
No lawyer or other intelligent person would
for a moment jump at the meaning of a document from an isolated paragraph; he
would stultify himself if he should pretend to form an opinion without a
careful study of the whole document. The passage on which the opinion is sought
must be taken with all its context. As this of the "prophecy" of the
alleged "virgin birth of Jesus Christ" is the keystone of the whole
scheme of Christianity, it is of the highest importance to clearly understand,
from the context, what Isaiah is recorded as so oracularly delivering himself
about. The whole of chapter 7, or at least the verses bearing upon the
subject-matter of his "prophecy," must be presented to the reader.
In a word, Isaiah was speaking of a then
pending war waged against Ahaz, King of Judah, by the kings of Israel and
Syria, who were besieging Jerusalem; Isaiah volunteered his "sign of
virgin birth" in proof of his "prophecy," -- shown false by the
sequel -- that the siege and the war would fail by the defeat of the allied
kings. Here is the inspired text:
"1. And it came to pass in the days of
Ahaz, king of Judah, that Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah, ... king of
Israel, went up toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail
against it. ... Then said Yahveh unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz; ...
And say unto him, Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither be faint-hearted.
... Thus saith Yahveh Elohim, It shall not stand, neither shall it come to
pass. ... "Moreover Yahveh spake again unto Ahaz [here Isaiah is not the
medium], saying, Ask thee a sign of Yahveh thy God; ask it either in the depth,
or in the height above. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt
Yahveh. And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; It is a small thing for you
to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? [here apparently Isaiah or some
unknown medium is again speaking]. "Therefore my Lord [Heb., adonai, my
lord] himself shall give you a sign.; [honestly translated]: Behold, the maid
is with child, and beareth a son, and called his name Immanuel. "Butter
and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the
good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good,
[that is, soon after its birth] the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken
of both her kings." (Isa. 7: 1-16 )
This about eating butter and honey so that the
child should know good from evil is none too lucid of meaning; and the
assurance that before this should come about, "the land which thou
abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings," is hardly more
intelligible. But if meaning it has, it means -- as elucidated in chapter 8 --
that very soon after the promised "sign," Samaria, the land of Israel
and its king Pekah, under the suzerainty of Rezin King of Syria, should be
overthrown; and that the two kings should not prevail in their war against
Judah. "It will not succeed. Notice the positive tone of the
prophet," says the Biblical Encyclopedia (Vol. 3: p. 116 ), commenting on
verse 7.
Verses 17 to 25, completing chapter 7, which
give the unique information that "Yahveh shall hiss for the fly that is in
... Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria" (7: 18 ), and
that Yahveh shall "shave with a razor that is hired" (7: 20 ), are
altogether too oracular and cabalistic for modern understanding; but they are
recommended as a rare bit of inspiration.
Isaiah carries his peculiar line of
"prophecy" over into chapter 8, and after several utterly
unintelligible verses, strikes the trail of his war prophecy again, thus:
"Yahveh spake also unto me again, saying,
Forasmuch as this people ... rejoice in Rezin and Remaliah's son [Pekah]; Now
therefore, behold, Yahveh bringeth ... upon them ... the king of Assyria, and
all his glory: ... And he shall pass through
No clearer proof could be that Isaiah,
whatever he was trying to say, was not speaking of Jesus. In chapter 7, he spoke
of the war of the kings Rezin and Pekah, son of Remaliah, and offered a
"sign" that their expedition would fail, this sign being the
virgin-born child Immanuel. Immediately afterwards he predicts a further war
upon Judah by the King of Assyria, and addresses his allocation to this same
infant Immanuel, and says that Assyria will overrun "thy land, O
immanuel." Isaiah spoke simply, and falsely, of a "sign" to King
Ahaz regarding the then pending war. Yet Matthew says that this Immanuel was a
prophecy of Jesus; but how Jesus could be Immanuel and a "sign" of
the result of a war 750 years previously, or the subject of the remarks of
Isaiah about the Assyrian war of the same period, is not explained in any
revelation I have yet come across. Such a post-mortem "sign" would be
of no use to Ahaz anyhow. This pretence by Matthew is clearly unfounded and
false.
Moreover, as this "sign" of the
virgin-born child Immanuel was proclaimed by Isaiah as a proof of the truth of
his prophecy as to the outcome of the pending war, I call special attention to
the historical record of the result of this expedition of the Kings of Syria
and Israel against Jerusalem and Ahaz. This is from the Second Book of the
Chronicles of Israel and Judah:
"Ahaz ... reigned sixteen years in
Jerusalem: but he did not that which was right in the sight of Yahveh. ...
Wherefore Yahveh his God delivered him into the land of the king of Syria; and
they smote him, and carried away a great multitude of them captives, and
brought them to Damascus. And he was also delivered into the hand of the king
of Israel, who smote him with a great slaughter. For Pekah the son of Remaliah
slew in Judah an hundred and twenty thousand in one day, which were all valiant
men; because they had forsaken Yahveh Elohim of their fathers. ... And the
children of Israel carried away captive of their brethren two hundred thousand,
women, sons, and daughters, and took also away much spoil from them, and
brought the spoil to Samaria." (2 Chron. 28: 1, 5, 6, 8 )
So the "prophecy" is seen to be
false, though the history is contradictorily recorded in 2 Kings 6: 1-9.
2. Where the King was Born
The second statement in which Matthew appeals
to the prophets, is that when the "Wise Men" came from the East to
Jerusalem in search of the new-born "King of the Jews," Herod sent
for the chief priests and scribes and "demanded of them where Christ
should be born" (Matt. 2: 1-6 ). How Herod could call a baby a few days
old, of whom he knew nothing, "Christ" is beside the present issue.
"Christ" means "anointed," and Jesus was not
"anointed" in any sense until thirty-odd years later, when the woman
broke the box of ointment over him just before his death. But Matthew asserts:
"And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of
Judea: for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou Bethlehem, in the land
of Judea, art not the least among the princes of Judea; for out of thee shall
come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel." (Matt. 2: 5, 6 )
The marginal source reference of this prophecy
is to the book of Micah (5: 2 )., This, with its pertinent context, reads as
follows:
"But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though
thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come
forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from
of old, from everlasting. ... And this man shall be the peace, when the
Assyrian shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then
shall we raise against him seven shepherds and eight principal men. And they
shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the and of Nimrod in the
entrances thereof: thus shall he deliver us from the Assyrian, when he cometh
into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders." (Mic. 5: 2, 5, 6
)
Now, whatever this may have referred to, it
referred to some leader who should arise to oppose the Assyrians. Nineveh,
"that great city," the capital of Assyria, was destroyed, and
Assyrian power ceased to exist, 606 years before Christ. This makes it most
evident that Micah had no reference to Jesus; and it may seem an oddity that
the chief priests and scribes, who always opposed and denied Jesus during his
life, and sent him to his death, should have wittingly furnished Matthew with
so potent a prophecy concerning him, when Jesus was but a few days old. If the
chief priests and scribes, who earnestly looked for the prophesied Messiah,
knew that the infant Jesus was the Messiah, the fulfillment of Micah's
prophecy, it may be wondered why they did not help him to become indeed "a
ruler in Israel" and its great deliverer from the thraldom of Rome.
3.
"Out of Egypt"
Matthew's third invocation of the prophets,
although the matter referred to was a past fact and not a prophecy, is also
found in chapter 2, when the angel is said to have appeared to Joseph in a
dream and told him to take Jesus to Egypt in order to escape Herod.
"When [Joseph] arose, be took the young
child and his mother by night, and departed into
The marginal reference for the source of this
prophecy is to Hosea (11: 1 ). This chapter is entitled by the Bible editors,
"The ingratitude of
"When
Now, there is a marginal reference at this
passage to Exodus 4: 22, 23, as the source of Hosea's allusion to the people
called "Israel" as the "son" of Yahveh, and refers to the
fact of this "Son" being in Egypt, and being "called" out
of Egypt by Moses. Never once does the text say: "I will call" -- but
"called." The historical allusion, with its context, is as follows:
"And Yahveh said unto Moses, Thou shalt
say unto Pharaoh, 'thus saith Yahveh, Israel is my son, even my first born: And
I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me." (Ex. 4: 21-23 )
From this it is clear that Hosea was looking
into the far past and speaking of the exodus of the Children of Israel out of
Egypt; not peering into the dim future and speaking of the flight of the Joseph
family into Egypt. So Matthew makes another false appeal to
"prophecy."
4. "Out-Heroding" Herod
The fourth venture of Matthew in citing the
prophets is in the same chapter, after the account of the "Massacre of the
Innocents" by Herod in his effort to murder the infant Jesus.
"Then was fulfilled that which was spoken
by Jeremy the prophet, saying, In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation,
and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not
be comforted, because they are not." (Matt. 2: 17, 18 )
The marginal reference opposite this citation
is to the Book of Jeremiah (31: 15 ). The weeping prophet was speaking of the
utter desolation of the people on account of the Babylonian captivity and
threats of further destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, as any one reading the
chapter may see.
"Thus saith Yahveh; A voice was heard in
Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children refused
to be comforted for her children, because they were not. Thus saith Yahveh;
Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for ... they shall
come again from the land of the enemy." (Jer. 31: 15, 16 )
Jeremiah speaks of an event which had already
happened, and quotes Yahveh as speaking in the past tense "a voice was
heard," because of the great afflictions caused by the Babylonians, and
promises the "return from captivity," over six hundred years the
episode related of Herod. The reader may draw his own conclusions as to the
honesty of Matthew's use of this "prophecy" and its fulfilment under
Herod. Uninspired human history records not a word of such an impossible
massacre by the Roman king.
5. The "NAZARENE"
The fifth reference to the prophets occurs in
the same chapter.
"And he came and dwelt in a city called
Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall
be called a Nazarene." (Matt. 2: 23 )
This is a bit of fancy falsehood. There is not
a word in the Old Testament of this "prophecy" or anything like it,
or of such a place as
"Lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son;
and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite [Heb.,
Nazir] unto God from the womb; and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the
hand of the Philistines." (Judges 13: 5 )
The product of this angelic visitation was the
giant-killer Samson, and he was to fight the Philistines; Jesus never did.
The second reference has to do with a like
angelic aid to Hannah, who made a vow never to let a razor come upon the head
of her prospective son Samuel. Those unkempt offsprings of angelic intercourse
were called Nazarites. This is the closest that the Old Testament gets to
Nazareth, and its inhabitants, Nazarenes. Matthew's invocation of the
"Prophets" is far afield both in form and substance.
6. The Great Light
The sixth so-called "prophecy"
relating to Jesus which Matthew invokes is in chapter 4: 12-16, a paragraph
standing unrelated to anything else in the chapter.
"Now when Jesus had heard that John was
cast into prisons he departed into Galilee; And leavingng Nazareth, he came and
dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and
Nephthalim: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet,
saying, The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea,
beyond the Jordan Galilee of the Gentiles; The people which sat in darkness saw
a great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light
is sprung up." (Matt. 4:12-16 )
We are given as marginal reference of
authority for this Isaiah 9: 1, 2. As Matthew so mutilates and distorts his
quotation, I shall have to direct attention to the several marked discrepancies
and contortions which he makes of his texts, and explain, by their context,
what Isaiah was really saying:
"Nevertheless the dimness shall not be
such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of
Zebulun and the land of Naphtah, and afterward did more grievously afflict her
by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations. The people
that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of
the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined." (Isa. 9:1, 2 )
It will be noticed that Matthew entirely omits
all the words which show that Isaiah was speaking of some accomplished
historical fact, relating to the afflictions which the tribal sections
mentioned had already suffered. These explanatory and historical words, to
repeat them for the reader's better catching their significance, are:
"Nevertheless, the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when
at the first he lightly afflicted Zabulon and Naphthah, and afterward did more
grievously afflict her." After depriving the verse of all sense, Matthew
retains the simple geographical names: "the land of Zabulon, and the land
of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the
Gentiles." Both places are west of the Jordan. If "beyond" means
"west of," Isaiah must have been written in Babylonian captivity, as
no doubt it was. Matthew converts these meaningless words, taken out of their
sense in an historical past context, into a prophecy, which he says was
fulfilled because Jesus went to the town of Capernaum, in that part of the
country.
But there is more to it. The verse opens with
the words: "nevertheless the dimness." Necessarily this refers to
something which has preceded in the text. This is found in chapter 8, of which
chapter 9 is simply a continuation. But chapter 8 is so incoherent, speaking of
"seeking unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep,
and that mutter," that it is hardly possible to know what Isaiah is
"raving" about. In the last verse, however, he denounces such seekers
after wizards, and delivers himself of this: "And they shall look unto the
earth; and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall be
driven to darkness" (Isa. 8: 22 ). Then chapter 9 opens with the words
quoted: "Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her
vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the
land of Naphtah, and afterward did more grievously afflict her," etc. Isaiah
then continues: "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great
light," etc. All this, whatever unapparent sense there may be in it,
refers to past events, and the reader may judge of Matthew's accuracy in
calling it a "prophecy" fulfilled by Jesus going to Capernaum.
7. He Bore Our Infirmities
The seventh appeal of Matthew to
"Prophecy" is in chapter 8, as follows:
"When the even was come, they brought
unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with
his word, and healed all that were sick: That it might be fulfilled which was
spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare
our sicknesses." (Matt. 8: 16, 17 )
For this the marginal reference carries us to
Isaiah 53: 4:
"Surely he hath borne our griefs, and
carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and
afflicted."
All this is in the past tense, showing Isaiah
lamenting over some departed friend, who was esteemed to have been
"smitten of God," and is now dead. It can have no possible reference
to Jesus Christ, Yahveh's "beloved son in whom I am well pleased,"
engaged in the divine work of casting out devils and healing the sick and
smitten; never was Jesus at any time "smitten of God." So Matthew
again uses a few words out of their context, misquotes them at that, and calls
a lamenting statement over some past fact a "prophecy" fulfilled in
Jesus Christ.
8. The "Bruised Reed"
The eighth instance of Matthew's adapting what
he calls "prophecy" to his own uses, as proof that his account is the
truth, occurs in chapter 12. The passage is long, but as it is necessary to
compare it with the reputed "prophecy" in order to show Matthew's
singular misquotation and misuse, I copy it entire:
"Then the Pharisees went out, and held a
council against him, how they might destroy him. But when Jesus knew it, he
withdrew himself from thence: and great multitudes followed him, and he healed
them all; And charged them that they should not make him known: That it might
be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Behold my servant,
whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my
spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not
strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. A bruised
reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send
forth judgment unto victory. And in his name shall the Gentiles trust."
(Matt. 12: 14-21 )
The marginal reference for the source of this
is Isaiah, 42: 1-4:
"Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine
elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall
bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause
his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall be not break, and the
smoking flax shall he not quench; he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He
shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and
the isles shall wait for his law."
Who "my servant" upon whom "I
have" put my spirit, here spoken of is, Isaiah does not tell us; but
certainly the description does not in the least fit Jesus. Jesus was
discouraged, and he enjoined secrecy on all his followers and fled to
Gethsemane, where he collapsed in despair, as the whole unhappy scene in the
Garden shows, and he never saw "victory"! And Isaiah never at all
said what Matthew attributes to him in v. 21: "And in his name shall the
Gentiles trust"; this is entirely new, made of the whole cloth, and the
whole "prophecy" is misquoted and misapplied.
9. "The King Cometh"
The ninth resort by Matthew to this
pettifogging method of proof that things done by Jesus were fulfillment of
ancient prophecy. is as follows:
"And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem,
and were come to Bethphage, unto the mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two
disciples, Saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and
straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and
bring them unto me. And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The Lord
hath need of them; and straightway he will send them. All this was done, that
it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell ye the
daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an
ass, and a colt the foal of an ass." (Matt. 21: 1-5 )
This is a misquotation of alleged prophecy, as
is shown by turning to the marginal reference, Zechariah 9: 9:
"Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion;
shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just,
and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal
of an ass."
The book of Zechariah treats of the return of
parts of the Jewish tribes from captivity in
"Thus saith Yahveh of hosts; Behold, I
will save my people from the east country, and from the west country; And I
will bring them, and they shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem." (Zech.
8: 7, 8 )
And, in chapter 9, after the verses about the
"entry of the King," and amid other exaltations, Zechariah exclaims:
"Turn you to the strong hold, ye
prisoners of hope: ... And Yahveh their God shall save them in that day: ...
For how great is his goodness, and how great is his beauty! corn shall make the
young men cheerful, and new wine the maids." (Zech. 9: 12, 16, 17 )
Zechariah is here not very lucid, but in any
event he was exulting over the return from the captivity, and not over Jesus
entering Jerusalem, as Matthew would have us believe.
10. What is this One?
Matthew's tenth appeal to the prophets (Matt.
26: 51-56 ) is too general to permit of specific contradiction by comparing his
authority. It is in connection with the story of Peter's cutting off the ear of
the high priest's servant with a sword on the night of the arrest of Jesus.
Jesus told him to put up his sword, and said that he could call down twelve
legions of angels to his defence if he should pray for them. And be asks:
"But how then shall the scriptures be
fulfilled, that thus it must be?" (Matt. 26: 54 )
Then Matthew says:
"But all this was done, that the
scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled." (Matt. 26: 56 )
He does not say which scriptures nor which
prophets; but the Bible editors come to his aid and give a marginal reference
to the much abused Isaiah bewailing his anonymous "departed friend"
who was "smitten of God" (53: 7 ), which we have above referred to
and shown to be all in the past tense. Another editorial reference is to the
Lamentations (4: 20 ), which may be offered for what it is worth:
"The breath of our nostrils, the anointed
of Yahveh, was taken in their pits, of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall
live among the heathen."
Jeremiah is here bewailing the desolation of
Jerusalem under the captivity of the "heathen" Babylonians, as
appears from the entire book of woe, but particularly in these verses:
"Yahveh hath accomplished his fury; he
hath poured out his fierce anger, and hath kindled a fire in Zion, and it hath
devoured the foundations thereof. The kings of the earth, and all the
inhabitants of the world, would not have believed that the adversary and the
enemy should have entered into the gates of Jerusalem." (Lam. 4: 11, 12 )
It is plain that the writer was speaking of
the ruin of Jerusalem. But it further appears of whom he was speaking by the
terms "the breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Yahveh." All the
Jewish kings were the "anointed of Yahveh" -- just as modern ones
also are said to be. A marginal reference opposite these words of Lamentations
is to Jeremiah 52: 9, which I shall quote together with the preceding and
following verses, so as to get the full context:
"But the army of the Chaldeans pursued
after the king, and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho; and all his
army was scattered from him. Then they took the king, and carried him up unto
the king of Babylon to Riblah in the land of Hamath; where he gave judgment
upon him. And the king of Babylon slew the Sons of Zedekiah before his eyes:
he, slew also all the princes of Judah in Riblah."
Hinc illa, lacrimae! So Matthew is seen again
twisting historical facts into pretended prophecies fulfilled by Jesus.
11. The "Potter's Field"
For the eleventh time Matthew invokes the
prophets, the passage being from the story of Judas and the thirty pieces of
silver (27: 3-10 ). Matthew says that Judas repented of his bargain of betrayal
and took the money back to the chief priests, threw it at their feet, and went
and hanged himself. The holy priests who had paid the thirty pieces for the
"betrayal of innocent blood" were punctilious about putting the price
of the blood into the treasury of Yahveh.
"And they took counsel, and bought with
them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called,
The field of blood, unto this day. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by
Jeremy the prophet, staying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the
price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value;
And gave them for the potter's field, as Yahveh appointed me."
If I were arguing this as a case in court, I
should indict this in strong terms as pure charlatanism. But as I am simply
offering appeals to "prophecy" with a little necessary comment, I
merely let the reader compare it with Jeremiah's words (Jer. 32: 6-15 ). They
have no more to do with the high priests' buying the potter's field with the
thirty pieces of silver than with my buying my house in this city. They refer
simply to Hanameel's coming to Jeremiah in prison, "according to the word
of Yahveh," and saying to him:
"Buy my field, I pray thee, that is in
Anathoth; ... And I bought the field of Hanameel my uncle's son, that was in
Anathoth, and weighed him the money, even seventeen shekels of silver."
(Jer. 32: 8, 9 )
This is all there is to "that which was
spoken by Jeremy the prophet," pretended to be fulfilled by buying the
potter's field with the blood-money of Judas Iscariot.
But the Bible editors give another marginal
reference, not to "Jeremy the prophet," but to Zechariah, for the
reason, presumably, that a "Potter" and "thirty pieces of
silver" are mentioned. So that no opportunity to let Matthew and his
editors vindicate themselves may be denied them, I quote these incoherent
verses, without comment -- except to say, what the reader can readily see, that
they have no earthly connection with Iscariot's thirty pieces, or with anything
else sanely imaginable:
"And I took my staff, even Beauty, and
cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which I had made with all the
people. And it was broken in that day: and so the poor of the flock that waited
upon me knew that it was the word of Yahveh. And I said unto them, If ye think
good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price
thirty pieces of silver. And Yahveh said unto me, Cast it unto the potter; a
goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of
silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of Yahveh. Then I cut asunder
my other stair, even Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah
and Israel." (Zech. 11: 10-14 )
JUDAS HANGED HIMSELF?
Before passing from Matthew's story of Judas,
who, he says, "departed, and went and hanged himself" (27: 5 ), I
call attention to the fact that Matthew is flatly contradicted on this point by
whoever wrote The Acts of the Apostles (supposed to be the evangelist Luke).
This authority, also indulging in some dubious references, makes Peter tell a
different story from Matthew's:
"And in those days Peter stood up in the
midst of the disciples, and said, ... Men and brethren, this scripture must
needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake
before concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus. For he was
numbered with us, and had obtained part of this ministry. Now this man
purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst
asunder in the midst and all his bowels gushed out." (Acts 1: 15-18 )
According to this delicate gloating over the
ill fate of an apostate brother apostle, it was Iscariot himself who bought a
field -- and not a "potters field," but an estate -- with the thirty
pieces which he had received as "the reward of iniquity"; be did not,
therefore, "repent" and return the money to the priests. Nor did he
go hang himself; he accidentally fell and ruptured himself fatally.
Peter's reference to David as speaking, a
thousand years before, of Judas, is of a piece with some of the false pretenses
of Peter's pretended "successors." The reference for David's reputed
remarks about Judas is to Psalm 41: 9:
"Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I
trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me."
Now, David had troubles of his own, without
bothering himself with Judas a thousand years ahead. The whole psalm shows that
Peter ignorantly or wilfully falsified. David was pleading with Yahveh for
himself alone, as appears by these verses:
"I said, Yahveh, be merciful unto me:
heal my soul; for I have sinned against thee. Mine enemies speak evil of me,
When shall he die, and his name perish? Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom
I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me. But
thou, O Yahveh, be merciful unto me, and raise me up, that I may requite
them." (Psalm 41: 4, 5, 9, 10 )
No words are needed to show that David was
speaking of his own troubles, and nothing else. He prays his Yahveh to be
merciful and raise him up, so that he can take vengeance on his enemy.
But in this harangue of Peter there are more
bungles of falsity and flat contradictions of other inspired passages. It is
odd, in the first place, that Peter should make such a speech "in the
midst of the disciples" (Acts 1: 15 ), telling them tales they must have
known as well as he; and he proceeds to tell them also about the "field of
blood," thereby contradicting Matthew. After speaking of Judas's taking
the thirty pieces of silver and buying the field, and then bursting asunder
bloodily, he conveys to them this bit of information: "And it was known
unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem; insomuch as that field is called in their
proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood" (1: 19 ).
This speech was made almost immediately after the ascension of Jesus, related
in verses 1-14. Peter then, "in those days" (1: 15 ), made this
speech in Jerusalem. As the betrayal of Judas had taken place only a few days
before, it is strange that Judas's field should already have acquired this
historic name, and be known to all the town. But it is more strange that Peter,
speaking Aramaic to peasant disciples who also spoke Aramaic, in which Aceldama
is a vernacular word, should translate it into Greek, "field of blood,"
which neither he nor his hearers understood. Somebody wrote this speech long
afterwards in Greek, for Greek-speaking converts, and translated Aceldama into
Greek for their benefit.
But Peter contradicts Matthew as to the origin
of the term. Matthew says that the priests to whom the thirty pieces were
returned by Judas "took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field,
to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto
this day" (Matt. 27: 7, 8 ); "unto this day" showing, too, that
the tale was written long after.
Peter further falsely quotes David as speaking
of Judas: "For it is written in the book of Psalms, ... and his bishoprick
let another take" (Acts 1: 20 ). For this the supporting reference is to
Psalm 109 a perfect gem of anathemas against "my adversaries" (109: 4
), who "fought against me without a cause" (109: 3 ). Among other
picturesque evils which Yahveh is invoked to bring upon the adversary,
"Let Satan stand at his right hand; ... let his prayer become sin. Let his
days be few; and let another take his office" (109: 6-8 ). So Peter joins
the chorus of "lying prophets" and Jesus-propagandists. His appeals
to "prophecy" regarding Judas are absolutely false and ridiculous.
12. Parting His Garments
The twelfth and last of Matthew's appeals to
the prophets is indulged in at the time of all others when the occasion would
seem to have led him to quote accurately and to tell the truth. Under the very
shadow of the cross, he says:
"And they crucified him, and parted his
garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the
prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast
lots." (Matt. 27: 35 )
The reference is to Psalm 22: 18 and by it
David is again made responsible for a pretended prophecy -- though David is not
usually "numbered among the prophets." Matthew misquotes the words of
David, spoken in the present tense, by putting them into the past tense and
changing the pronoun "my" to "him," to make it apply to the
acts of the Roman soldiers. The words of David are:
"They part my garments among them, and
cast lots upon my vesture." (Psalm 22: 18 )
Again David is bewailing his own troubles, in
the fanciful imagery of oriental poetry. He begins the psalm, which is a song
inscribed "to the Chief Musician Aijeleth," with the words quoted by
Jesus on the Cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" and
proceeds in what he himself calls "the words of my roaring." Among
the many "roaring" things he says about himself, I quote a very few:
"Many bulls have compassed me. ... They
gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion. ... All my
bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my
bowels. [David evidently wasn't up on anatomy, and didn't know of the
diaphragm]. For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have
enclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. [It is a wonder that Matthew
didn't use this apt phrase as a prophecy of what was done to Jesus!] I may tell
all my bones: they look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them,
and cast lots upon my vesture." (Psalm 22: 12-14, 16-18 )
How far these "words of roaring"
applied to Jesus on the cross, as Matthew avers one verse did, and how correct
Matthew is in his use of so-called prophecy, I leave now with the reader. I
pass now to Mark.
MARK'S APPEALS TO PROPHECY
Mark is quite sparing of prophecy, but no less
false and unsuccessful in its use.
His book opens with a very fanciful vision of
the Day of Judgment converted into a prophecy concerning John the Baptist as
the herald of Jesus. Mark says:
"The beginning of the gospel of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God; As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my
messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee." (Mark
1: 1, 2 )
The marginal reference here is to the book of
the last of the prophets, Malachi. The context shows what it was that Malachi
was beholding:
"Behold, I will send my messenger, and he
shall prepare the way before me; and Yahveh, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come
to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold,
he shall come, saith Yahveh of hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming?
and who shall stand when be appeareth? for, he is like a refiner's fire, and
like fullers' soap: And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and
he shall purify the sons of Levi: and purge them as gold and silver, that they
may offer unto Yahveh an offering in righteousness." (Mal. 3: 1-3 )
Malachi carried his vision over into chapter 4
which is of only six verses, and is headed by the Bible editors "Elijah's
coming and office." The pertinent verses are:
"For, behold, the day cometh, that shall
burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be
stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith Yahveh of hosts,
that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. ... Behold, I will send you
Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of
Yahveh." (Mal. 4:1, 5 )
It is thus clear that Malachi was "seeing
things" concerning the "great and dreadful day of Yahveh," and
said that Elijah would be sent ahead as sort of press-agent and committee of
preparations. This vision certainly has nothing to do with John the Baptist or
with Jesus, who each denied that he was Elijah (John 1: 20, 21; Matt. 16: 13 ),
though Matthew makes Jesus say that John is Elijah (Matt. 11: 14 ).
In this connection, to show a contradiction of
inspiration, it may be mentioned that Matthew makes a similar claim of prophecy
about John the Baptist, but cites a different source. He says:
"And in those days came John the Baptist,
preaching in the wilderness of Judea. ... For this is he that was spoken of by
the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare
ye the way of Yahveh, make his paths straight." (Matt. 3: 1, 3 )
Matthew's reference is to Isaiah, 40: 3, which
reads a little differently:
"The voice of him that crieth in the
wilderness, Prepare ye the way of Yahveh, make straight in the desert a highway
for our God."
In verse 6 he adds: "The voice said, Cry.
And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass," etc. John the Baptist
is not reported as having made any such cry in the wilderness; it is simply
poetic frenzy, the meaning of which, if it has any, being not yet revealed or
unravelled.
2. "Numbered among Transgressors"
The second and last reference by Mark to
"prophecy" is as follows:
"And with him they crucify two thieves;
... And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, And he was numbered with the
transgressors." (Mark 15: 27, 28 )
Here again we are referred to that
inexhaustible source of pseudo-prophecy, Isaiah 53, which throughout is in the
past tense, a lamentation and eulogy over some dead friend. Any righteous man
who is put to death unjustly or upon false accusations may be said to be
"numbered with the transgressors." There is no "prophecy"
in this.
The two other evangelists, Luke and John,
mention very few "prophinecies" as being fulfilled in Jesus. One or
the other mentions such instances as riding on the ass and casting lots for the
garments, which we have already introduced from Matthew, and shall not repeat.
The few remaining instances will now be considered.
LUKE CITES PROPHECY
Luke does not himself invoke the so-called
prophecies, but puts them into the mouth of Zacharias, the father of John the
Baptist. Luke says that when the child John was born "his father Zacharies
was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied, saying" (Luke 1: 67 ).
Now, what Zacharias said related exclusively to his own child John, but he
cites exactly the same "prophecies" as are always evoked as applying
to Jesus. The Bible editors recognized this, and straddled by heading the
chapter, "The prophecy of Zacharias, both of Christ, and of John."
But John was born six months before Jesus was born. It was on the eighth day
after the birth of John, at his "christening," that Zacharias, having
been stricken dumb as a "sign" of John's birth to the old and barren
Elizabeth, wrote: "His name is John," and then recovered his voice,
"was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied." Being "filled
with the Holy Ghost," he was consequently fully "inspired," and
must have spoken knowingly and truly. Being so filled, he
"prophesied" -- of his own son John -- saying:
"Blessed be Yahveh God of Israel; for he
hath visited and redeemed his people, And hath raised up an horn of salvation
for us in the house of his servant David: ... And thou, child, shalt be called
the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of Yahveh to
prepare his ways; To give knowledge of salvation unto his people, by the
remission of their sins, Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the
dayspring from on high hath visited us, To give light to them that sit in
darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the
day of his showing unto Israel." (Luke 1: 68, 69, 76-80 )
Zacharias clearly speaks all this only of his
son John. But whether of John or Jesus, or both, the result is the same: it
applies to neither, as is very plain to see. The marginal reference for Luke 1:
69 is to Psalm 132: 17: "There will I make the horn of David to bud: I
have ordained a lamp for mine anointed." This "anointed" is
pretended to be John or Jesus. A few anterior verses will show who the
"anointed" was -- King David himself. He begins the psalm:
"Yahveh, remember David, and all his
afflictions. ... For thy servant David's sake turn not away the face of thine
anointed. Yahveh hath sworn in truth unto David; he will not turn from it; Of
the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne. If thy children will keep my
covenant and my testimony that I shall teach them, their children shall also
sit upon thy throne for evermore. For Yahveh hath chosen Zion. ... This is my
rest for ever: here will I dwell. ... There will I make the horn of David to
bud: I have ordained a lamp for mine anointed." (Psalm 132: 1, 10-14, 17 )
All this is about a long line of kingly
successors of the house of King David: nothing of Zacharias's son John, or of
Jesus, neither of whom ever sat on the throne of David.
"GENEALOGIES" OF JESUS
In entire disproof of this reference to Jesus
as being a "bud of the horn of David," or a "branch of
David," I wish to offer a bit of collateral evidence proving that Jesus
was nowise "of the house of David," as is so often asserted in the
New Testament. Matthew and Luke both give detailed reputed "genealogies of
Jesus Christ, the son of David" (Matt. 1: 1-17, Luke 3: 23-38 ). Matthew
twenty-eight generations between David and Joseph; Luke records forty-three
generations, every name but three between David at one end and Joseph at the
other being totally different. Matthew derives Joseph from David through
Solomon and Bathsheba, and through Roboam, son of Solomon, down to "Joseph
the son of Jacob." Luke derives the ancestry from David through
"Nathan, the son of David," down to "Joseph, the son of
Heli." But in either event Jesus could not be the son of Joseph, and hence
of David, if the angel spoke true, whom Matthew quotes as having said to Joseph
in a dream:
"Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to
take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy
Ghost. ... And thou shalt call his name Jesus." (Matt. 1: 20, 21 )
For as "Joseph, thou son of David"
was not, according to this dream, the father of Jesus, either line of descent
from David, whether Matthew's or Luke's, was broken, and the rather attenuated
blood of David did not at all pass into Jesus. If the first husband of some
woman had been the son of George Washington, but died without child, and the
widow married a Mr. Smith, and they had a little George Washington Smith,
certainly this offspring would not be a "son" of the Father of his
Country, not even by the "bar sinister."
The first reference for Luke 1: 70 is to
Jeremiah 23: 5, 6; verses 7 and 8, which I add, might honestly have been also
referred to. The passage is as follows:
"Behold, the days come, saith Yahveh,
that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and
prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days
This refers to a righteous king of the dynasty
of David, who "shall reign and prosper." No language could be plainer
than that this "Branch of David" was to be a secular king who should,
as Zacharias himself says, save us "from our enemies, and from the hand of
all that hate us" (Luke 1: 70 ). Neither John nor Jesus was this man, or
was a king, or did any of these heroic things. And Jeremiah's "prophecy"
failed, for no such deliverance ever came.
Another marginal reference is to Daniel 9: 24;
but Infinite Wisdom alone could tell what this passage is about, so I pass it.
This disposes of and discredits Luke. We take
up John.
JOHN APPEALS TO PROPHECY
1. A Prophecy Puzzle
The first reference to "prophecy" by
John is in chapter 1, verse 45:
"Philip findeth Nathanel, and saith unto
him, We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write,
Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."
This brings on such an intricacy of marginal
reference and cross reference, that merely to try to disentangle such meaning
as they may have would certainly affect one's mind, as Don Quixote's was
affected by his books of knight-errantry. So I shall give only a few samples,
and leave any reader who has nothing better to do to unravel the rest.
The first reference is to Genesis, 3: 15, the
story of Eve and the serpent, and Yahveh's saying that there should be enmity
between her seed and the serpent's seed. As nobody rationally believes that
such a scene and colloquy ever occurred, what was not said does not signify; it
means nothing anyhow, as demonstrated elsewhere. A bona fide God could speak
more to the point than this jargon if he wanted to prophesy, especially of so
fateful an event.
The next marginal reference is to Genesis 49:
10, from the account of dying Jacob's blessing on his sons:
"The scepter shall not depart from Judah,
nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the
gathering of the people be. Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt
unto the choice vine; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the
blood of grapes: His eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with
milk." (Gen. 49: 10-12 )
Here we have, for verse 10, a false
translation, or, if not, a notoriously false prophecy, besides an obviously
post-Mosaic passage. Shiloh was the name of a town north of Bethel, where the
Ark was deposited before it was removed to Jerusalem (Josh. 18: 1; Judges 18:
31; 1 Sam. 4: 3, 4 ). Consequently Jacob could have known nothing about Shiloh,
and Moses could not have written the passage. But the Messiah-mangers have long
regarded verse 10 as an alluring explicit prophecy of Jesus Christ,
ridiculously torturing "Shiloh" into the name of a person. The
Revised Version is loath to give up this false translation; but it does put
into the margin the true rendition of the Hebrew: "Till he come to Shiloh,
having the obedience of the peoples." This "he" is Judah, son of
Jacob, to whom this "blessing" is addressed (Gen. 49: 1, 8-12 ); and
the passage means, if anything, that supremacy should not depart from the
descendants or tribe of Judah, after the tribe should possess that town in the
promised land, so long as they retained the obedience of the people (see Encyc.
Bib., Vol. 4: art. Shiloh). To change Shiloh into a person, and that person Jesus
Christ, and to say that the "scepter shall not depart from Judah"
until he came would involve poor Jacob in a false prophecy; for the scepter did
"depart from Judah" forever when Nebuchadnezzar conquered the land,
586 years before Christ. Whatever this red-eyed drunkard referred to, it can
hardly be believed to be a prophetic portrayal of Jesus, who was neither a
wine-bibber nor held a scepter as king of Judah.
The next reference is to Deuteronomy
2. "For Moses Wrote of Me" (Jesus)
The second of John's appeals to prophecy
occurs where John puts into the mouth of Jesus a false statement of pretended
prophecy concerning himself. John makes Jesus say:
"For had ye believed Moses, ye would have
believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall
ye believe my words?" (John 5: 46, 47 )
The latter verse (
"For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A
prophet shall Yahveh your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me;
him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you."
The references opposite these companion verses
take us back to the citations we last reviewed, particularly to the so-called
"Fifth Book of Moses," Deuteronomy 18: 17, 18. Jesus and the author
of Acts call this a "prophecy" concerning Jesus:
"And Yahveh said unto me, ... I will
raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put
my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command
him."
Who, then, was this prophet whom Yahveh was to
raise up out of "thy brethren" like unto Moses, and to whom they were
to hearken in all things which he commanded them? Moses, or whoever wrote the
Five Books, tells us. For, in Numbers 27: 12, Yahveh told Moses to go up into Mount
Abarim, "and see the land which I have given unto the children of
Israel":
"And when thou hast seen it, thou also
shalt be gathered unto thy people. ... And Moses spake unto Yahveh, saying, Let
Yahveh ... set a man over the congregation, Which may go out before them, and
... lead them. ... And Yahveh said unto Moses, Take thee Joshua the son of Nun,
a man in whom is the spirit, and lay thine hand upon him; And set him before
... all the congregation; and give him a charge in their sight. And thou shalt
put some of thine honor upon him, that all the congregation of the children of
Israel may be obedient. ... And Moses did as Yahveh commanded him: and he took
Joshua," etc. (Num. 27: 13-22 )
It is plain from this and the other alleged
"prophesies" referred to by Jesus and the evangelists that Moses did
not write of Jesus, nor did the prophets speak of him; but of Joshua as the
immediate successor of Moses as leader of the Chosen People.
3. Who Hath Believed? And Why Not?
The third attempt of John to fulfil
"prophecy" is a two-horned imposition on Isaiah, as usual.
"These things spake Jesus, and departed,
and did hide himself from them. But though he had done so many miracles before
them, yet they believed not on him: That the saying of Esaias the prophet might
be fulfilled, which he spake; Yahveh, who hath believed our report? and to whom
hath the arm of Yahveh been revealed? Therefore they could not believe, because
that Esaias said again, He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart;
that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and
be converted, and I should heal them." (John 12: 36-40 )
The first reference, about believing our
report, is to that mine of "near-prophecy," Isaiah 53: 1. I can see
no connection between "not believing our report," which would be of
things past and unknown to the persons to whom the report is made, and not
believing in a person and things seen with one's own eyes, some seven centuries
later, as was the case with those "before" whose eyes Jesus did
"see many miracles." Furthermore, Isaiah is speaking about the
"report" of himself and other prophets: "Who hath believed our
report?" It is idle to say more about this phase of it.
The other horn of this dilemma is utterly
false, and implies an abhorrent proposition. John says that the Jews who saw
the many signs of Jesus "believed not on him." But why not? John
tells us why, saying positively: "For this cause they could not
believe"; for as Isaiah (6: 9, 10 ) had said: "He [Yahveh] hath
blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they should turn [repent],
and I should heal them." It is discouraging to have to point out again
that Isaiah was speaking of his own times and people and troubles. A few verses
will make this evident even to a learned theologian:
"The vision of Isaiah which he saw
concerning
John craftily omits even the opening words of
Isaiah's verse 9, which of itself shows that Isaiah was told by Yahveh to
"go and tell this people" those things, which John then claims that
Isaiah gave as the reason why other Jews, 750 years later, would not believe
Jesus! And the scraps of verses which I have picked from each of the preceding
five chapters, to connect the whole, further prove what Isaiah was talking
about, and to whom he was speaking.
The "abhorrent thing" which I
mentioned is John's remarkable excuse for Jesus' not being believed by the
Jews: "For this cause they could not believe" -- because Yahveh had
"blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts," so that they could
not believe and turn and be healed; that is, repent and be saved! Yet, if this
same John and all his colleagues in inspiration are to be believed, Yahveh sent
his own "beloved Son" into the world that the world through him might
be saved; he called all to repentance, saying: Believe on me and ye shall be
saved, and if ye believe not, ye shall be damned!
4. A Cooking Lesson as "Prophecy"
We pass now to the last reference by John to
alleged "prophecy" of Jesus. This is also a double-barreled
blunderbuss, and scatters shot all through the law and the prophets.
As Jesus hung on the cross between the two
thieves, says John:
"Then came the soldiers, and brake the
legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with him. But then they
came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs: But
one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side. ... For these things were
done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be
broken. And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they
pierced." (John 19: 31-34; 36, 37 )
John appeals to these spurious
"prophecies" with great solemnity, and, as he admits, for the express
purpose of making himself believed: "And he that saw it bare record, and
his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.
For," he adds, "these things were done that the scripture should be
fulfilled" (John
1. Exodus 12 records the establishment of the
passover feast, consisting of unleavened bread and a male lamb or kid (12: 5 ).
This was to be prepared and eaten:
"And they shall eat the flesh in that
night, roast with fire, and un-leavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall
eat it. Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire;
his head with his legs, and with the purtenance thereof. ... And thus shall ye
eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your
hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is Yahveh's passover. ... In one house
shall it be eaten; thou shalt not carry forth ought of the flesh abroad out of
the house; neither shall ye break a bone thereof"! (Ex. 12: 8, 9, 11, 46 )
John misquotes this last sentence out of a
whole chapter of minute directions for cooking and eating the passover lamb or
kid; and changes the neuter "a bone thereof" -- that is, "of
it," of the lamb or kid -- so as to make it apply to a man: "a bone
of him shall not be broken." Then he calls it a "prophecy" of
Jesus Christ fulfilled!
2. The second reference is in practically
identical words; it is identical in subject; and its application to Jesus is
identical in falsity:
"Let the children of
3. The third reference in trying to make this
cookery recipe apply to Jesus on the cross is to Psalm 34. This does not even
squint at the "prophecy" -- "A bone of him shall not be
broken." David is in a good humor with himself and his Yahveh, and he
sings:
"I will bless Yahveh at all times: his
praise shall continually be in my mouth. ... Many are the afflictions of the
righteous: but Yahveh delivereth him out of them all. He keepeth all his bones:
not one of them is broken. -- (Psalm 34: 1, 19, 20 )
This clearly irrelevant last appeal to wholly
impertinent "prophecy" exhausts the series of remarkable attempts of
the four evangelists to torture Old Testament "ravings" of the
prophets into inspired fore-tellings of the Jesus Christ of the New. It is more
than evident from this review that not a single word of the scores of so-called
"prophecies" culled from the old Hebrew Scriptures in the remotest
degree hints at the humble Man of
If a lawyer, pleading his cause before any
court in any civilized country of the world, should resort to the device of
citing records, precedents, and authorities in support of his contentions, and
these should be discovered by his opponent or by the court to be of the sort
appealed to by the gospel writers, he would be disgraced, branded as charlatan
and "shyster," driven from the profession which he had thus
dishonoured, and exposed to the contempt of honest mankind. But gospel writers
are yet haloed as inspired saints, and preachers of the "Word of God"
are yet sacred "divines," who go about redolent of the odor of
sanctity, and listened to with rapt awe when they teach and preach these
"prophecies" and their "fulfilment" to those who have been
taught to believe them and have never thought for themselves or "searched
the scriptures" for the wonders of their most holy faith. Like John on
CHAPTER 14
THE INSPIRED "HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS"
OF THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST
THE life and times of Jesus of
In these biographies their subject is claimed
by the writers to be the "Son of God" -- the Hebrew Yahveh; as
"conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary," working
wonders, crucified, rising from the dead, and ascending into heaven, where he
sitteth on the right hand of his Father Yahveh, until he shall "come again
to judge the quick and the dead" -- which he asserted would be very
shortly, in the lifetime of his hearers.
In his brief career, between two or three
Jewish Passovers only, he is recorded to have wrought "great signs and
wonders" -- miracles; to have raised the dead; cured incurable diseases by
a word or a touch or the simple faith of the patient or of his friends, or by
his potent command "casting out devils" which caused the ailments; to
have been tried and condemned by a Roman magistrate, and crucified by Roman
law; on his death to have caused a great eclipse of the sun; to have rent in
twain by earthquake the veil of the holy temple, causing innumerable graves to
open, whose sheeted dead came forth and walked the streets of the Holy City, in
full view of the populace; to have risen from the dead under the eyes of an
armed Roman guard, specially stationed at his grave to prevent all tampering;
and to have -- on the same or the next day, or forty days afterwards --
ascended to heaven at four different times and places, before the eyes of four
different sets of spectators, and under four totally different sets of
circumstances.
Not a word of any of these transcendent
wonders is to be found in all the historic records or contemporary annals of
that great city and age. The Roman philosopher Pliny, some forty years after
the Crucifixion, about the time the first gospel is thought to have been
written, lost his life seeking to investigate the very minor event of an eruption
of Vesuvius which destroyed -- and preserved for future confirmation -- the
unimportant Roman town of Pompeii. Of this event ample contemporary historical
records abound. Flavius Josephus, a contemporary, the greatest historian of
Jewry, records the minutest facts and even myths of Hebrew history from the
earliest ages down to his own times. But there does not exist a word of any
record, human or divine, concerning this God made man and his wondrous works
outside of a notoriously forged and meagre reference, in a book written some
sixty years after the death of Jesus, and stuck between incongruous paragraphs
of one of the works of Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews, Bk. 18, chap. 3: 3 ),
and outside the pages of these so-called gospels and epistles, and the
Apocalypse or Revelation.
This Jesus was Incarnate God on earth, or
lived as a man and teacher (if he ever lived) in one of the most brilliant ages
and cultured societies in ancient history: in the reign of Caesar Augustus, an
epoch illustrious as the golden age of Roman imperial, legal, literary, and
cultured civilization.
Judaea was then a Roman province,
The tales of the Christ are marvellous and
incredible, impossible, according to all human standards of reason, as shown in
every circumstance of the confused and contradictory records of the four
gospels. We have seen their subject stripped of every vestige of claim to be
the fulfilment of prophecies appealed to by his four posthumous biographers in
support of their accounts of the most salient features of his life and acts. No
less unreal will be found the "harmony of the gospels" with respect
to his birth, life, trial, crucifixion, death, resurrection, and ascension.
Such events, so contradictorily chronicled and vouched for, could not be
accepted as truth if testified on oath before a court of human justice. The
rule of logic and of law: "Of two contradictories, one must be false"
makes their "harmony" and truth incredible and impossible.
We shall take up these diversely recorded
incidents one by one, and submit them to candid judgment.
THE DATELESS NAZARENE
Biographers of celebrated men are careful to
state with exactness, or to approximate, the dates of the birth and death and
of the principal events of the lives, of their subjects. The inspired
biographers of the Son of God, for Christians the most momentous figure of
history, ignore such dates or muddle them beyond even approximate probability.
Only Matthew and Luke essay to tell of the birth of the God made man; there are
at least thirteen years difference between the times of birth recorded by them.
Like conflicts persist as to the duration of his ministry, and his age at
various periods, as at the beginning of his ministry and at the time of his
death.
According to Matthew, "Jesus was born in
Bethlehem of Judaea, in the days of Herod the king" (Matt. 2: 1 ). Herod
died in the year 4 BC, but Jesus was born at least two years before the death
of Herod, for Herod is recorded by Matthew as long waiting for the return of
the "wise men" to report on the new-born King of the Jews, and as
massacring all the children "from two years old and under, according to
the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men" (Matt. 2: 16 ).
Jesus was thus born at least six years BC, if Herod died immediately after the
massacre of the Innocents, which is not likely. Matthew thus lays the birth of
Jesus in 6 BC at the earliest.
Luke makes out the birth to have been at
earliest in the year 7 AD or thirteen years later. Luke tells of Joseph and
Mary's going from
A word may be added about Luke's "decree
from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed" (Luke 2: 1 ),
and about the journey of Joseph and Mary from their home in Galilee to
Bethlehem of Judea "to be taxed" (Luke 2: 4, 5 ). No such decree of
Augustus is known to secular history; the provinces were taxed locally and at
such different times as the local authorities decreed. If Jesus was born, as
Matthew says, "in the days of Herod," Joseph, whether a resident of
Galilee or of Judea, could not have been subject to such a Roman tax, for
neither of these Jewish districts, belonging to Herod's kingdom was then a part
of the Roman empire or of its province of Syria, being added thereto only in 7
AD Nor would residents of Galilee have gone to Judea to be taxed, either when
both districts were separate governments, or after both were parts of Syria;
citizens are taxed in the places of their actual residence, not in the town, in
a different government, where they chanced to have been born. In all respects,
"the account of Luke rests, therefore, on a series of mistakes"
(Encyc. Bib., Vol. 1: col. 808 ).
The age of Jesus at the beginning of his
ministry is left in like uncertainty. Luke says: "In the fifteenth year of
the reign of Tiberius Caesar. ... Jesus himself began to be about thirty years
of age" (Luke 3: 1, 23 ). The reign of Tiberius began in 14 AD; the
fifteenth year of his reign would be 29 AD If Jesus was born, as Matthew says,
"in the days of Herod the king" (Matt. 2: 1 ), and was thus born in
or before 6 BC, as Matthew's account works out, Jesus would be thirty-five
years of age in AD 29 and not "about thirty." But if Jesus was born,
as Luke says, "when Cyrenius was governor of Syria" (Luke 2: 2 ),
which was in AD 7, Jesus would be but twenty-one or twenty-two years of age in
the fifteenth year of Tiberius, 29 AD, when his ministry began. The Jews took
exceptions to the remark of Jesus: "Before Abraham was, I am."
"Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast
thou seen Abraham?" (John 7: 56-58 ). Thus Jesus, at least by appearance,
must have been nearly fifty years of age during his ministry.
Jesus, according to Luke, began his ministry
very shortly after John began his, which was in the time of Tiberius, as above
shown, "Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests" (Luke 3: 1, 2, 23;
4: 1, 14, 15 ). This is another inspired impossibility: two high priests never
held the office jointly. It is as if a history of the United States should
read: "Washington and Monroe being Presidents," there being about the
same space of time between the two presidents and the two high priests.
Caiaphas was the high priest at the time indicated, and three others had held
the office between Annas and Caiaphas (Josephus, Bk. 18: chap. 2, sec. 2 ). At
the time when Caiaphas was high priest, John the Baptist, cousin of Jesus,
began his tour of preaching, just when "Jesus himself began to be about
thirty years of age" (Luke 3: 1-3, 23 ), and immediately afterwards Jesus
was baptized (Luke 3: 21 ), and began his own ministry (Luke 4: 1, 14, 15 ).
But according to Matthew, Jesus was but about two years old at the death of
Herod and his return from Egypt, when "in those days came John the
Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea" (Matt. 2: 19-23; 3: 1 ).
The ministry of Jesus lasted, according to
Matthew, Mark, and Luke, for only one year; according to John it covered at
least three years. The former writers record but one visit of Jesus to
Jerusalem; John brings him there at least four times (John 2: 13; 5: 1; 10: 22,
23; 12: 12 ). In this brief space of one or three years, so great was his activity,
says John, that besides all the things which he relates in his gospel,
"there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they
should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not
contain the books that should be written" (John 21: 25 ) ! But in the very
next book of the Bible, it is avowed by Luke that in his "former
treatise" -- that is, the Gospel of Luke -- he had recorded "all that
Jesus began both to do and to teach, Until the day in which he was taken
up" (Acts 1: 1, 2 ). These things which Jesus both did and taught will now
be examined as they are recorded by inspired pens.
THE "BLESSED NAME" OF JESUS
It may be noted first, in passing, that the
name of the "Christ," whether God or man, was not, to himself and his
own family and people, Jesus at all. His given name in Hebrew, or Aramaic, the
language in which be spoke, is Yehoshua (plain Joshua)-- exactly the same as
that of the old heathen worthy for whom the sun and moon stood still upon
Gibeon. The meaning of the name is "Yahveh is salvation"; Jesus is
the later Greek form of the name Joshua.
The added title "Christ" is another
Greek translation or substitute for the Hebrew Scripture word
"Messiah," which means "anointed." John, if he wrote the
gospel attributed to him, himself a Hebrew but writing in current Greek,
correctly explains this when he tells of Andrew's coming to his brother Simon
Peter and announcing: "We have found the Messiah, which is, being
interpreted, the Christ" (John 1: 41 ). Both words, the Hebrew Mashiach
and its Greek equivalent Christos, mean simply "the anointed."
The Galilean bearer of this name (Hebrew,
Joshua; Greek, Jesus), by this token cannot be the virgin-born subject of the
"prophecy" of Isaiah, as claimed by Matthew; for Isaiah declares that
his virgin, bearing a son, "shall call his name Immanuel" (Isa. 7:
14; quoted in Matt. 1: 23 ). This name, as Matthew explains in the same verse,
"being interpreted is, God [El] with us" (Matt.
It has already been fully proved that Isaiah's
unfulfilled "prophecy" regarding his "sign" of the outcome
of the war of the two kings against Jerusalem does not at all refer to the
child of Mary, 750 years later. We need not dwell again here on this prophecy
of miraculous birth, but proceed to other as compelling proofs of the persistent
errancy and inconsistency of Matthew and his fellow propagandists of this Jesus
as the Christ.
The great national hero who should come to
avenge the Chosen People of Yahveh against the Assyrians and other oppressors
is not once intimated in the Hebrew Scriptures to be any other than a human
being, "of the seed of David," who, as a king, should re- establish
the throne of David on earth, as so often promised and proclaimed by Yahveh
(e.g., Isa. 11: 1; Luke 1: 32; Acts 2: 30 ). Never once is it hinted that
Yahveh himself, "Man of war" though he was, would come in person to
accomplish the liberation and restoration of his
GENEALOGIES OF JESUS
The pedigree of Jesus causes the next notable
conflict, between Matthew and one of his colleagues, Luke, who contradicts him,
and between both of them and the Old Testament records. The chief of the
essential qualifications of the expected Jewish Messiah was that he should be
of the house and lineage of David the King, and should as king
"re-establish the throne of David forever." This descent in unbroken
line must be proved of Jesus the Son of Joseph or of Yahveh, or of any other
who would successfully claim to fulfil the promise of the Messiah as an earthly
king. Matthew therefore begins his biography with "The book of the
generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham" (Matt.
1: 1 ). Beginning with Abraham, he comes in a direct line of
"begettings" to David, and from David, through Solomon and Roboam, to
one Jacob: "And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born
Jesus, who is called Christ" (Matt. 1: 16 ); and he declares specifically,
after naming all by name, that from David to Christ there are twenty-eight
generations (1: 17 ). Matthew says that from Abraham, with whom his genealogy
begins, to Jesus there were forty-two generations; but his own list (1: 2-16 )
shows only forty-one. He seems to have counted someone twice.
Matthew divides his genealogy into three
periods, from Abraham to David, from David to the carrying away into captivity,
from the captivity to Jesus; and he declares that in each of these periods
"are fourteen generations" (Matt.
Luke, in chapter 3 of his equally inspired and
credible biography, produces the genealogy of his subject, but in inverse order,
from Jesus to David, instead of, as in Matthew, from David to Jesus. Luke
carries the line of begettings directly back to David via one Mattatha,
"which was the son of Nathan, which was the son of David" (
|
MATTHEW 1:6-17 |
LUKE 3:23-38 |
|
*1. David 2. Solomon 3. Roboam 4. Abia 5. Asa 6. Josaphat
7. Joram 8. Ozias 9. Joatham 10. Achaz 11. Ezekias 12.
Manasses 13. Amon 14. Josias 15.
Jechonias *16.
Salathiel *17.
Zorobabel 18. Abiud *19.
Eliakim 20. Azor 21. Sadoc 22. Achim 23. Eliud 24. Eleazar 25. Matthan 26. Jacob *27. Joseph *28. Jesus
|
*1. David 2. Nathan 3. Mattatha 4. Menan 5. Melea *6. Eliakim 7. Jonan 8. Joseph 9. Juda 10. Simeon 11. Levi 12. Matthat 13. Jorim 14. Eliezer 15.
Jose 16. Er 17. Elmodam 18. Cosam 19. Addi 20. Melchi 21. Neri *22.
Salathiel *23.
Zorobabel 24. Rhesa 25. Joanna 26. Juda 27. Joseph 28. Semei 29.
Mattathias 30. Maath 31. Nagge 32. Esli 33. Naum 34. Amos 35.
Mattathias 36. Joseph 37. Janna 38. Melchi 39. Levi 40. Matthat 41. Heli *42. Joseph *43. Jesus |
*Indicates names which occur in both lists.
This proves entire want of truth in one or the
other of these fictitious and contradictory genealogies; and, curiously, both
at the most critical point break the circuit of the direct descent of Jesus
from David. For if Jesus was not the carnal son of Joseph, but was the
incarnate Son of Yahveh by his Holy Ghost and the yet virgin Mary, he could
not, by any possibility of human descent, be a blood descendant of David, whose
line of generation ended with Joseph -- if Joseph was not the carnal father of
Jesus. So in no sense could Jesus be a "Son of David," and so fill
the first and essential requirement of the promised Messiah.
The "genealogies of Jesus,"
fictitious compilations of a century more or less after Jesus, ipso facto prove
that at the time they were composed Jesus was regarded simply as a man
"born of the seed of David after the flesh"; else why human
genealogies? A God could have no ancestors. The truth is thus declared:
"The genealogy could never have been drawn up after Joseph ceased to be
regarded as the real father of Jesus" (Encyc. Biblica, Vol. 3: col. 2960
).
Jesus himself denies positively that he is a
"son of David"; for, "while the Pharisees were gathered
together, Jesus asked them, Saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he?
They say unto him, The son of David. He saith unto them, How then doth David in
spirit call him Lord? ... If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?"
(Matt. 22: 41-43, 45; Mark 12: 35-37; Luke 20: 41-44 ). This was a good deal of
a conundrum, "for no man was able to answer him a word" (Matt. 22: 46
). Nor can I. But John the Divine, about one hundred years later, quotes Jesus
as saying in heaven: "I am the root and the offspring of David" (Rev.
22: 16 ); but this was in a dream.
Luke says that this controversy as to whether
Jesus was a "son of David" was, not with Matthew's Pharisees, but
between Jesus and "certain of the scribes" (Luke 20: 39-44 ); though
Mark records no controversy at all, but says that Jesus, "while be taught
in the temple," talking to "the common people," himself proposed
the conundrum ("How say the scribes that Christ is the son of David?"
Mark 12: 35-37 ) and answered it himself, and no one else said a word. Mark
quotes Jesus as saying that David said all this about the Lord "by the
Holy Ghost" (Mark 12: 36 ); but Matthew says Jesus said: "How then
doth David in spirit call him Lord" (Matt. 22:, 43 ); Luke says simply
that Jesus said that "David saith in the book of Psalms" (Luke 20: 42
).
Matthew adds to his account that after the
dispute about the "son of David" matter with the Pharisees,
"neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more
questions" (Matt. 22: 46 ); but Mark records that it was "one of the
scribes" who argued with Jesus about the commandments, and "no man
after that durst ask him any question" (Mark 12: 28-34 ); Luke declares
that it was after a controversy with the Sadducees regarding the resurrection,
and "after that they durst not ask him any question at all" (Luke 20:
27-40 ).
VIRGIN BIRTH OF JESUS
The reputed virgin birth of Jesus we have
already fully disproved as having been prophesied by Isaiah, Matthew to the
contrary notwithstanding. We shall briefly consider the miraculous pregnancy of
the Ever-Virgin Mother (who had more than half a dozen children), and the
circumstances of the birth of her first-born, Joshua or Jesus.
Matthew again is our inspired historian. He
relates that, "When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they
came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost" (Matt. 1: 18 );
that Joseph felt quite naturally disposed to "put her away privily";
but that he dreamed that an angel of Yahveh told him to fear not to accept his
wife Mary, "for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost"
(1: 20 ). This dream seems to have quite satisfied Joseph, though he had never
heard of a Holy Ghost, and no such person of the Christian Trinity is recorded
in the Hebrew Scriptures. A curious grammatical consideration tends to disprove
that Gabriel told Joseph (Matt. 1: 20 ), or Mary (Luke 1: 35 ), that the Holy
Ghost would be the father of her child. In the Hebrew, or, Aramaic, spoken by
these peasants, the word "spirit" or "ghost" (ruach) is of
the feminine gender, and would never be thought of as indicating a potential
father. But in Greek the word (pneuma) is masculine, so that the Church Father
who forged the tale might with grammatical propriety, however fictitiously, say
that the hagion pneuma (Holy Ghost) begot Jesus. So Joseph, "being raised
from sleep, did as [he dreamed that] the angel of Yahveh had bidden him, and
took unto him his wife: And knew her not till she had brought forth her
firstborn son" (1: 24, 25; cf. Luke 2: 7 ).
Thus we learn, from Matthew, that the news of
this pregnancy of his wife by the Holy Ghost was first broken to Joseph in a
dream. When he dreamed this Inspiration does not directly tell; but it is
readily deduced that it was not till at least three months after the secret
visitation by the Holy Ghost took place, as will appear below. That it was
several months after is also indicated by the fact that Joseph then took her
unto himself, "and knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn
son" -- evidently a considerable space of time, as the fact of Joseph's
marital self- restraint is specially noted.
This (parenthetically) disproves too the dogma
that Mary remained immaculate and ever-virgin: for, that Joseph knew her not
"till" she had given birth to her first-born son, argues that he did
"know her" carnally thereafter; and her "first-born" son
argues others born thereafter. So a favorite fallacy of the celibate Fathers is
exploded; to say nothing of the virginity-destroying effects of the births of
half a dozen brothers and sisters of Jesus: "his brethren, James, and
Joses, and Simon, and Judas, and his sisters," (Matt. 13: 55, 56; Mark 6:
2, 3 ); and Paul speaks of seeing his friend the apostle "James the Lord's
brother" (Gal. 1: 19 ).
Luke as usual contradicts Matthew's story of
Joseph's dream of the origin of his wife's pregnancy. Luke goes into much
detail, relating that the angel Gabriel, in the sixth month after his like
mission to Mary's cousin Elizabeth, was sent from Yahveh to Nazareth, "to
a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, ... and the virgin's name was
Mary" (Luke 1: 26, 27 ). Gabriel announced to Mary that "the Holy
Ghost shall come upon thee," and that she should "bring forth a son,
and shalt call his name Jesus." And Gabriel told her that the same kind of
thing had already happened to her cousin Elizabeth six months before; and he
departed. Mary, with true womanly instinct, arose and went with haste into the
hill country, to the town of Elizabeth, to congratulate her and to break the
news of her own like expectation; they both celebrated exultantly "with a
loud voice" (1: 42 ).
Mary's hymn of praise at the
"annunciation" is not a spontaneous and original jubilation; it is
almost word for word copied from the song of Hannah over the similar
annunciation of the birth of Samuel (cf. 1 Sam. 2: 1-5; Luke 1: 47-55 ).
Whether the annunciation was made by an angel
to Mary or in a dream to Joseph, there is little difference; Luke's angels are
of the same sort of stuff as Matthew's dreams, and everyone is coming now to
know that angels's tales and Bible visions are but as "the baseless fabric
of a dream."
That Mary had not told Joseph of the
"visitation" of the Holy Ghost to her, and that he was ignorant of it
for at least three months, is very evident from Matthew's inspired record. The
promise was no doubt performed to Mary at the time of the
"visitation" of the angel, related by Luke. It was three months
later, when Mary returned to Joseph, or later still, that Joseph, by some means
not revealed, "found" that Mary was "with child of the Holy
Ghost." Really what Joseph found was simply that his wife "was with
child," without his knowing by whom or what. For Joseph was thereupon, and
naturally, "minded to put her away privily," so as not to "make
her a public example" and create a scandal, as Matthew says. So Joseph
could not have known, at the time of his discovery of the pregnancy, who was
its author. It was only later, when he was sleeping on the matter, that he
dreamed that he was told: "That which is conceived in her is of the Holy
Ghost" (Matt.
We may here note for what it is worth in
support of the orthodox faith that there was no novelty at all in virgin births
from gods in the ancient religions. They were commonplace happenings which any
superstitiously inclined pagan or Hebrew would readily accept in fullness of
faith. Even the Hebrew Yahveh, who is not revealed to have had any heavenly
spouse, is credited with numerous offspring -- the "beni ha-Elohim, sons
of the-Gods," of Genesis and Job, who sported with the daughters of men,
producing the demigod giants. To Yahveh also is credited the miraculous
conceptions of Isaac (Gen. 18: 10, 11; 21: 1-3 ); of Samson (Judges 13: 2, 3,
24 ); of Samuel (1 Sam. 1: 9-11, 20 ); and of John the Baptist (Luke 1: 7-13 ).
A similar miracle does not therefore prove Jesus divine; and Jesus evidently
was not the "only begotten Son" of Yahveh God.
The great god of the Greeks, Zeus, was also
prolific author of virgin births, of which we cite only the well-known and
highly accredited instances of his copulation in the form of a swan with Leda,
the miraculous product of which was the twins Castor and Pollux, and his
intrigue with Io, which resulted in a son Epaphus.
The Roman war-god Mars likewise kept amorous
tryst with the vestal virgin Rhea Silvia, from which the twins Romulus and
Remus resulted. The great hero Achilles was also the product of the amours of,
this time, a human father and the immortal sea-goddess Thetis. Divine hybrids
in human form resulted. Alexander the Great was reputed son of his mother
Olympias and Jupiter Ammon, as that god himself declared. The Egyptian Pharaohs
and the Roman emperors were gods, the former by birth, the latter by
apotheosis, just as are saints by canonization. The Son of Yahveh and Mary could
not have been altogether "Very God," but was half human, and so only
a demigod. Either virgin births by gods were very frequent actualities in the
good old Hebrew-pagan times, or priestly assurance and popular credulity passed
them as miraculous events worthy of faith. It is all the same, so far as they
may serve as precedents for faith in the virgin birth of the reputed Son of
Yahveh.
The only authentication which we have of this
much controverted event is sundry "proofs of Holy Writ," consisting
of very contradictory scraps of inspiration in the New Testament.
Peter, at Pentecost, when all were filled with
the Holy Ghost, preached his first sermon, in which by plenary inspiration he
declared: "Ye men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man
approved of God among you," etc. "The patriarch David. ... Therefore
being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him [Psalm 132:
11, 12], that of the fruit of his loins according to the flesh, he would raise
up Christ to sit on his throne" (Acts 2: 22, 29, 30 ). What could be more
positive proof of humanity and disproof of divine paternity than this first
avowal of Peter, perverted by his successors? And Paul, if he wrote the Second
Epistle to Timothy, says: "Jesus Christ of the seed of David" (2 Tim.
2: 8 ). And John of Patmos: "I Jesus ... am the root and the offspring of
David" (Rev. 22: 16 ). A god cannot be crazy; but Mark records (Mark 3:
21; cf. John 10: 20 ) that the family and friends of Jesus thought him so and
went to arrest him as a madman: "And when his friends [margin: relatives]
heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside
himself" (Greek: existemi, to be out of one's wits, distracted, beside
oneself). Thus his own family knew him for human and knew nothing of the fabled
paternity of the Holy Ghost.
Paul, the most dogmatic theologian of them
all, admits that Jesus Christ was altogether human in origin, for he "was
made of the seed of David according to the flesh" (Rom. 1: 3 ), and was
simply "declared to be the Son of God [Yahveh] with power, according to
the spirit of holiness" (1: 4 ). Paul admits the manhood of the Christ:
"There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ
Jesus" (1 Tim. 2: 5 ). The Christ of Peter and Paul was not a god, but a
mere man, "approved of God," and endowed with divine gifts, but yet a
mere human being. Mark, the earliest of the gospel biographers, mentions no
miraculous or virgin birth at all, either of Jesus or of John; Mark is
therefore a potent witness 'ab silentio' against the controverted fact. Luke,
after quoting Gabriel in chapter 1(28-36 ), seems to forget all about him in
chapter 2: where he simply relates that Joseph went from
John says not a word of miraculous or virgin
birth; he says: "I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God
[Yahveh]" (John 1: 34 ). But what John meant by "Son of God" he
has previously defined, and the expression is clearly shown by his own words to
be used in a metaphorical, or Pickwickian, sense -- for all believers are sons
of God: "But as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become
the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name [even the devils believe
and tremble]: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor
of the will of man, but of God" (1: 12, 13 ).
Thus two of the four gospel biographers wholly
ignore -- and so tacitly deny -- any pretence of miraculous or virgin birth --
the most transcendent dogma of later Christian faith; and Paul and Peter, the
greatest authors of dogma, expressly declare Jesus to have been of purely human
procreation and birth -- "made of the seed of David according to the
flesh" -- as he could not have been if of Yahvistic paternity. And if he
was not, through Joseph, "of the seed of David," every inspired
"prophecy of the Messiah" fails utterly.
THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM
The signs and portents attendant upon the
miraculous birth of Joshua-Jesus give occasion for another clash between the
inspirations of Matthew and of Luke, and lead into several tangles. Matthew alone
of the four gospel historians relates that mysterious phenomenon of the
heavens, the "star of Bethlehem"; and so relates it that we know it
never was seen by eye of "wise men" or foolish, but was only a vision
of inspired imagination. The East was celebrated for its zeal in the science of
astronomy; but never an astronomer of Eastern antiquity saw or recorded that
extraordinary star. Nor did anyone else ever see it, outside the mind's eye, as
is evident enough from the inspired account of it.
In his second chapter Matthew essays to tell
how certain "wise men from the east" (but from where in the East he
does not say) came to Jerusalem "when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of
Judaea," and went about asking: "Where is he that is born King of the
Jews? "for," they explained, "we have seen his star in the east,
and are come to worship him" (2: 1, 2 ).
It is clear therefore, that this
"star" was no bright and flaming sidereal luminary; it was not
visible on the meridian of Jerusalem; no one but the "wise men" is recorded
to have seen it at all; and they saw it only "in the east." Proof of
this is that Herod "was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him" (2: 3 )
when they heard about the strange star. Herod "gathered all the chief
priests and scribes," and inquired about the alleged new King of the Jews
(2: 4 ); then he "privily called the wise men," and "enquired of
them diligently what time the star appeared" (2: 7 ). Neither Herod nor
any of "all Jerusalem" had seen this marvel or there would have been
no need to "diligently enquire" as to the when and where of the
phenomenon, which had now entirely disappeared from human view, else Herod
could have seen it for himself.
It is clear too that this "star" was
not the guiding pilot that it is popularly supposed to have been, leading the
"Wise men" from the East to Jerusalem, or to the new-born King. It is
not visible in Jerusalem; the "wise men" claimed only to "have
seen his star in the east," somewhere far away. And they came to Jerusalem
(not "to Bethlehem where the child was"), wholly ignorant of his
whereabouts; so that they had to go about asking anybody they met on the
streets, just as a stranger in town asks the corner policeman: "Where is
he that is born King of the Jews?" (2: 2 ). How these pagan down-easters
were inspired to know or care anything about an unheard-of baby King of the
Jews, or to know what the alleged "star in the east" signified with
respect to him, and to journey across the burning deserts to
"worship" him is curious to inquire, but is not revealed. Nor was the
miraculous "star" itself very revealing. Though hung up in the
Eastern skies for their own special benefit and guidance, it led them not to
the Babe King in Bethlehem, nor even to Jerusalem; they had to go about and
ask: "Where is he that is born King of the Jews?" But no one in all
Jerusalem had seen the star or knew of the new-born King.
The sequel proves that wicked Herod was now
himself to be "numbered among the prophets"; for he "gathered
all the chief priests and scribes of the people together," and
"demanded of them [a very curious and 'inspired' sort of question] where
Christ should be born?" (2: 4 ). Surely Herod never asked such a question.
It was thirty-odd years afterwards that (to believe the story at all) Jesus was
first "Christ"-ened, or "anointed," and thus first became
"Christ," or "the Anointed." Unless Herod was inspired by
prophetic vision, and could foresee thirty-odd years into the future, and
behold in his mind's eye the very variously related incident of the woman
breaking the alabaster box of ointment over the head -- or the feet -- of the
Babe of Bethlehem, he could not ask such a question; and we may be sure that he
did not. It is Luke who says that the Babe was born in a manger; Matthew
declares that the "wise men" came "into the house" where
the Child and mother were (Matt. 2: 11 ) and gave their presents. Luke says the
Child was "laid ... in a manger; because there was no room for them in the
inn" (Luke 2: 7 ). But there were no inns in Jewry at that time; the story
betrays its fabrication by some Greek Father in a foreign country, who knew
nothing of such details.
As the star had not led them right, the
"wise men" had to pursue their quest for the object of their search.
It required the whole assemblage of priestly wiseacres of
Then, "when they had heard the king, they
departed" (2: 9 ) on their now well-directed way; and 'mirabile dictu,'
"lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came
and stood over where the young child was" (2: 9 ). Thus the wonderful
star, till now wonderfully inefficient as a guide when the Wise Men needed
guidance across the deserts, now when it was no longer needed as a guide, Herod
himself having located the place, flared up before their eyes and flitted along
before them on their journey to Bethlehem, a little suburban town just across
the creek from Jerusalem.
This fabled "star of Bethlehem" was
evidently merely a sort of flighty will-o'-the-wisp, not a regular star; for
the nearest star in the heavens is some twenty trillions of miles away from
earth, where it can be seen of all men, wise or otherwise, and neither goes
before people, to guide them where they do not need a guide, nor comes and
stands for their accommodation when they get there. However, it is curious to
note that the "wise men," who are said to have seen the star "in
the east" before coming to Jerusalem, now seem to have seen it for the
first time as they left Jerusalem and as it "went before them"'
Bethlehem-ward; for, "when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding
great joy" (2: 10 ).
When the "wise men" had at last
found the young Child, they duly worshipped it, and delivered their gifts;
then, dreaming of some heavenly warning not to return to Herod, they
"departed into their own country another way" (2: 12 ) -- so as to
fool Herod, who was said to be awaiting their return to go himself and worship
the baby King to be (2: 8 ). This is the faithful record of Matthew.
THE SHEPHERD CHOIR
But, according to the record of Luke, it did
not happen this way at all. There was no star of Bethlehem; there were no
"wise men" from the East; simply a group of lowly "shepherds
abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night" (Luke 2: 8
). To them an anonymous angel came, scaring them very badly, and told them that
"a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord" (thus again anticipating the
anointing), was born unto them that day. And of a sudden a whole angel choir, a
"multitude of the heavenly host," winged down to earth from the
heavens, over 1,000,000 light years away, and sang wondrously in the cold night
air: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward
men" (2: 13, 14 ) -- an angelic prophecy never yet realized on this
war-racked, hate- filled earth. It was the shepherds, according to Luke, who
came with haste to Bethlehem to investigate the angelic report; and when they
had found "the babe lying in a manger," they straightway broadcast
the news throughout all those parts (2: 16, 17 ). The reader may choose whether
to accept Matthew's star or Luke's angel choir. It is curious to note that in
Matthew every communication regarding the Child Jesus is through dreams; in
Luke through the agency of angels -- but both alike unreal.
THE NOCTURNAL FLIGHT TO EGYPT
Another highly important conflict of
inspiration occurs here, in connection with the early life of the Child Jesus.
Mark, who wrote first, omits all the childhood of his subject, beginning his
biography with "the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of
God" (Mark 1: 1 ). But Matthew seeks to supply many items -- as is not
infrequent with biographers. The cherry-tree episode of the youthful Father of
his Country is an instance. But Matthew's "sources" were not ample,
or his imagination lagged; so he sends the Holy Family and the Child to Egypt
for some years, in fulfilment, he says, of another "prophecy," which
we have elsewhere seen was not one at all. In any event, Luke says it was not
true, as we shall presently see.
According to Matthew, immediately after the
'(wise men" had departed for their own country, as a result of their dream
of warning (Matt. 2: 12 ), another dream caused another hegira, thus related:
"When they were departed, behold,
the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take
the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I
bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. When he arose,
he took the young child and his mother by night [that same night], and departed
into Egypt: And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled
which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called
my son." (Matt. 2: 13-15 )
They stayed in Egypt until after the death of
Herod, some unknown time later. Then they were told to return (Matt. 2: 20 ) in
the same words in which Yahveh had commanded Moses to return to Egypt (Ex. 4:
19 ).
We have already examined the so-called
"Out of
So they did not flee into
"Now his parents went to
And they took the young Jesus along with them,
at least on this occasion, for "when they had fulfilled the days, as they
returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his
mother knew not of it" (2: 43 ), and did not discover that the child was
missing until the next day: "But they, supposing him to have been in the
company, went a day's journey" (2: 44 ). Not finding him, "they
turned back again to Jerusalem," and "after three days" of
search, "they found him in the temple" arguing with the doctors (2:
45, 46 ). So for at least twelve years there was no midnight flight to Egypt to
escape Herod; and they could not have remained there "until the death of
Herod" (Matt. 2: 15 ), for Herod died in the year 4 AD, during the twelve
years that the Holy Family remained at home in Nazareth, as Luke testifies.
That Jesus was not born in the year 1 of his era, but some 6 to 10 years BC, is
now generally known.
There in the temple, when the Child was found,
Mary herself positively denies the divine paternity of her Child, and rightly
calls Joseph its father; for when she found the Child, she said: "Son, why
hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father [Joseph] and I have sought
thee sorrowing" (2: 48 ). Jesus here seems to deny the paternity of
Joseph, saying: "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's
business?" (2: 49 ) or, as the Revised Version honestly translates:
"I must be in my Father's house." But both Joseph and Mary
"understood not the saying which he spake unto them" (2: 50 ) -- thus
proving that they knew him for their own flesh-and-blood Child, and had no
thought or knowledge of the dogma of divine paternity.
Even now they did not go to Egypt, for
"he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto
them" (2: 51 ). And there he remained until he began to teach and preach
when he "began to be about thirty years old," after his baptism by
John. So the prophecy "Out of Egypt have I called my Son" is shown to
be another instance of errant inspiration.
Here we may notice another radical
contradiction. Luke makes Joseph and his family residents of Nazareth, and says
they went from there to Bethlehem to be taxed, and then "they returned
into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth" (Luke 2: 4, 5, 39 ). But Matthew
makes Joseph and his family resident in Bethlehem, whence they fled into Egypt.
When Herod was dead, they returned and "came into the land of Israel"
(Matt. 2: 21 ), but hearing that Archelaus was king in Judea, in which Bethlehem
is situated, "he was afraid to go thither." After another
dream-warning "he turned aside into the parts of Galilee: And he came and
dwelt in a city called Nazareth" (Matt. 2: 22, 23 ), that another specious
prophecy might be fulfilled. This indicates that Galilee was outside of Herod's
kingdom, and discredits the story of the family's going to Bethlehem "to
be taxed," because Judea and Galilee were separate governments, and people
are always taxed in their own country, not in a foreign land.
THE "MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS"
The amazing statement of Matthew that when
Herod "saw that he was mocked of the wise men, [he] was exceeding wroth,
and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all
the coasts thereof, from two years old and under" (Matt. 2: 16; may be
dismissed with bare mention. That a Roman king, under the great Roman peace of
the golden age of Augustus, could execute such a wholesale massacre of the
subjects of the empire proves itself impossible. No human history records such
a massacre in Judea; not even Josephus, who relates in forty chapters of his
Antiquities of the Jews the most trifling details of the life and reign of
Herod and dilates upon his many crimes, has a word of this tremendous murderous
event. But why argue such a statement of even an inspired author? The story,
moreover, involves other serious contradictions. Matthew says that Herod
commanded the massacre of all the children of the district "from two years
old and under"; consequently Jesus was at least two years old at the time,
and, curiously enough, Herod must have patiently waited quite two years after
being "mocked of the wise men," before he got so "exceeding
wroth" as to commit this amazing, and unrecorded, crime. Nor was there any
need for this long wait and general massacre: Herod could easily have caught
the child in Jerusalem, for just after the "purification" "they
brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to Yahveh" in the temple (Luke 2:
22, 27 ). But, what is more serious, the massacre never occurred at all; for Luke
expressly asserts that immediately after the forty days
"purification" of the Immaculate Virgin, and after the visits of
Simeon and Anna, Joseph and Mary "returned into Galilee, to their own city
Nazareth," and remained there continuously. This wholly discounts
Matthew's visit of the Magi, the flight to Egypt, the "mocking" of
Herod, and Herod's massacre of the Innocents. So this bloody blot is removed
from wicked Herod's escutcheon.
JOHN AND THE BAPTISM OF JESUS
The first thing recorded by inspiration in
regard to Jesus -- after his return from Egypt, or after be did not go to Egypt
but "began to be about thirty years old" at home in the carpenter's
shop of Nazareth is his reputed baptism by his cousin John the Baptist, in the
Jordan. John himself is the subject of much uncertainty, into which we may for
a moment inquire. His paternity is involved in curious obscurity, very like
that of ancient Isaac. His parents were "both now well stricken in
years," and his mother was "barren," like old Sarah. Angels,
too, had to come and prophesy a child to them and some sort of divine agency is
apparent in the fulfillment of the prophecy, for the child was "filled
with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb" (Luke 1: 5-15 ). By
special orders of Gabriel the child was named John; he wasn't really John,
however, but, miraculously, the ancient prophet Elijah, alias Elias -- if his
cousin Jesus is to be believed against the positive denial of the Baptist. For
Jesus, inspired with all truth, says and repeats explicitly of John: "This
is Elias, which was for to come" (Matt. 11: 14; 17: 11-13 ); and Matthew
to prove it -- as if the word of Jesus needed proof -- invokes a prophecy of
Malachi: "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of
the great and dreadful day of Yahveh" (Mal. 4: 5 ). But John as
categorically twice denies the imputation:
"And he confessed, and denied not; but
confessed, I am not the Christ. And they asked him, What then? Art thou Elias?
And he saith, I am not. Art thou that prophet? And he answered, No." (John
1: 20, 21 )
So with this positive "He is" of
Jesus and the equally positive "I am not" of John, who ought to know,
we must leave the identity of the Baptist in doubt, but the "great and
dreadful day of Yahveh" did not come in John's time, nor did Jesus fulfil
the role of him of whom Elijah was to be the precursor. We pass to the proofs
of the baptism and some of its contrary incidents. Matthew tells us:
"In those days came John the Baptist,
preaching in the wilderness of Judaea [and many came], And were baptized of him
in Jordan. ... Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be
baptized of him. But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized of
thee, and comest thou to me? And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be
so now. ... Then he suffered him. And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up
straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he
saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: And lo a
voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased." (Matt. 3: 1, 6, 13-17 )
So John the Baptist knew and recognized Jesus,
talked with him, and modestly protested against baptizing the Son of Yahveh,
"whose shoes I am not worthy to bear" (3: 11 ); and John saw the dove
from heaven, and heard the voice from heaven proclaiming the God-Man. Mark (1:
9-11 ), Luke (3: 21, 22 ), and John (1: 25-32 ), all relate the same inspired
incident, and John the Evangelist, whose "record is true," as he himself
admits, emphasizes the Baptist's knowledge of the divine identity of Jesus, and
quotes the Baptist as proclaiming his knowledge that it was the Christ who came
to him to be baptized -- but whom he evidently did not baptize, for he does not
mention this, which would have been the most signal event of his life. Let us
try to get this straight; the story is very tangled. The Evangelist John, first
speaking of, then quoting John the Baptist, says: "John bare witness of
him, and cried, saying, This is he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is
preferred before me ... And of his fullness have we received, and grace for
grace" (John 1: 15, 16 ). John could not have said this; it was before the
alleged baptism of Jesus, and before Jesus began his "ministry of
grace," and hence could not have been said at that time. The Baptist is
further quoted by the Evangelist as declaring to sundry Pharisees who came to
ask who he was and why he baptized: "John answered them, saying, ... There
standeth one among you, whom ye know not; He it is, who coming after me is
preferred before me" (John 1: 24-27 ). This a clear and unequivocal
recognition by the Baptist of the Christ.
The Evangelist then says: "These things
were done in Beth- abara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing" (John 1:
28 ). The Greek Father who wrote this tale did not know Jewish geography; there
is no such place in Jewry as Beth-abara; it was in Perea, far from the Jordan.
So the Revised Version changes the name to Bethany; but this does not help, as Bethany
is a suburb of Jerusalem and not "beyond Jordan," nor near the
Jordan. The Evangelist proceeds: "The next day John seeth Jesus coming
unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the
world. This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred
before me" (John 1: 29, 30 ) -- another explicit recognition. Then the
Baptist twice says: "And I knew him not" (John 1: 31, 33 ), until he
saw the promised "sign" of the dove descending from heaven upon Jesus
(John 1: 32, 33 ). Upon seeing the sign, John says: "I saw, and bare
record that this is the Son of God" (John 1: 34 ). But he says not a word
of a miraculous voice from heaven proclaiming: "This is my beloved
Son," nor records that he baptized Jesus; a rare omission on both points,
for John is the only one of the disciples who was present at the scene. If John
heard the voice from heaven, he evidently did not believe it, as his next
recorded action proves.
Notwithstanding all the foregoing explicit
testimonials, inspiration contradicts them all, makes it clear that John did
not baptize or even know Jesus, and makes John have to send a special embassy
from prison to Jesus to inquire about his identity:
"Now when John had heard in the prison
the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples, And said unto him, Art thou
he that should come, or do we look for another?" (Matt. 11: 2, 3; Luke 7:
18-20 )
The clearest inference from this passage is
that the Baptist did not baptize or even know Jesus, his own cousin, and did
not "bear record" that "this is he who cometh after me" --
"this is the Son of God." So whether Jesus was ever really baptized
at all is very doubtful. John the Baptist certainly, on the gospel word of two
of the four gospel biographers, did not baptize him; for he could not have done
so and borne such witness, and then forget all about it, and send to inquire as
about a total stranger.
Naturally the Baptist could not have
"heard in the prison the works of Christ" (Matt. 11: 2 ) until the
Christ had begun his ministry and had performed "works" or miracles
-- so that, says Luke, "this rumor of him went forth throughout all
THE TEMPTATION IN THE WILDERNESS
Most bizarre of the recorded events of the
life of the Christ, the "mighty One of Jacob," the "Prince of
Peace," the "Son of God," are his unique adventures with the
Devil in the wilderness of Judea and other places. Immediately after the
dubious baptism above noticed, the three synoptists say that Jesus was either
"led" (Matt. 4: 1; Luke 4: 1 ) or "driven" (Mark 1: 12 ) by
the spirit of God into the wilderness "to be tempted of the Devil";
but they no sooner get him there than all sense of "harmony" is lost,
and with vivid picturesqueness of inspiration and quaint and varied
embellishment of detail they diversely draw the picture of the "strong Son
of God" in the toils of the Evil One.
Mark wrote the story first; he relates the
baptism of Jesus, and says "immediately the spirit driveth him into the
wilderness. And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan;
... and the angels ministered unto him" (Mark 1: 12, 13 ). Thus the
temptings were during the forty days; the "angels ministered unto
him" food and drink, but not a word of the manner or eerie form of the
temptations is hinted. But such a prosaic account does not suit the vivid
inspiration of Matthew: "And when he had fasted forty days and forty
nights, he was afterward an hungered. And when the tempter came to him"
(Matt. 4: 2, 3 ) -- thus Jesus wasn't ministered to by the angels; and the
temptations were not during forty well-fed days, but after forty days and
nights of fasting and hunger. Luke mixes both temptations and fasting; he says
that Jesus was "forty days tempted of the devil" (Luke 4: 2 ); that
is, he was being tempted daily during the forty days. "And in those days
he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered. And the
devil said to him" (Luke 4: 2, 3 ) -- thus the first temptation, after
forty days of temptations.
Mark gives no details of the temptations, but
Matthew revels in them, as is his wont, as also does Luke, differently. Both
make the first temptation after the forty-day fast, and appropriately, being
hungry and in the desert, it was: "Command that these stones be made
bread" (Matt. 4: 3 ); but Luke says the Devil said: "If thou be the
Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread" (Luke 4: 3 ).
But now we have the most amazing spectacle on
record: the great fiend of hell, like a monster sinister pterodactyl, seizes
the poor bleating "Lamb of God," the mighty "Lion of Judah"
-- pardon the inspired mixed metaphors -- tucks him under his vast wing or
dangles him from a mighty claw, springs from earth into the air, and with
soaring, flight heads for the Holy City, circles with diabolic sweep of wing
over the heads of the gaping populace, swoops down upon the holy temple, and
perches the captive Son of God "on a pinnacle of the temple" (Matt.
4: 5; Luke 4: 9 ). This is Matthew's second, Luke's third temptation; the
Devil, according to both, tempting his victim to cast himself down to the
street below, so that the angels might break his fall. Then, says Luke, the
temptations ended, and the Devil departed for a season (4: 13 ). Both Matthew
and Luke say "upon a pinnacle of the temple"; but no Jew could have
written that, even without inspiration, for the sacred pile had but one
pinnacle. After 1800 years the Holy Ghost discovered its architectural mistake,
and in the Revised Version substituted "the" for "a." The
Catholic Version hasn't yet done so.
The temptations must have happened in a
certain order, which even inspiration couldn't alter -- but Matthew's third is
Luke's second. The Satanic cicerone with his divine burden wings his cloud-like
flight to the top of an "exceeding high mountain"' whence in vast
panorama -- Luke says: "in a moment of time" (4: 5 ) -- could be seen
"all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them" (Matt. 4: 8 );
and all these kingdoms, some of them in the America of the Incas and
Montezumas, the Devil showed the God, and offered to him, for, he said, "that
is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will, I give it." Comment on
this bit of inspiration is supererogatory.
But this amazing spectacle was never presented
to eye of Christ or man, if we believe the inspired author of the Gospel of
John, and Jesus was never in the wilderness with the Devil at all. After
recording the descending of the dove upon Jesus (without the voice from heaven
or the baptism), it is declared that "the next day after" occurred
the episode of Andrew and Simon Peter (John
THE APOSTLES CHOSEN
The "calling of the Apostles"
should, it would seem, be one of the simplest narratives that truth-inspired
gospel historians could relate if they knew what they were talking about, or
were inspired. But it is as sadly mixed and muddled as any narrative in the
books, when there is more than one inspired recorder of the same alleged fact
-- for no two ever tell the same thing the same way.
Matthew is inspired to relate that immediately
after the baptism by John, and the fantastic "temptation in the
wilderness" by the Devil, Jesus, "leaving
Thus we have two separate and distinct pairs
of fishermen, found successively some distance apart, both pairs expressly
"called" by Jesus, and straightway leaving their jobs and following a
total stranger on a novel kind of man-fishing expedition.
But Matthew's persistent contradiction of Luke
relates the incident quite differently, but by the same inspiration. In his
chapter 5, Jesus, now evidently in a big crowd, "as the people pressed
upon him to hear the word of God," "stood by the lake of Gennesaret,
and saw two ships standing by the lake: but the fishermen were gone out of
them, and were washing their nets" (5: 1, 2 ) -- not here "casting
their nets into the sea," as Matthew says. And Luke says that at the
bidding of the stranger, Jesus, Simon the fisher let down his net, and
"inclosed a great multitude of fishes: and their net brake" (5: 6 );
and the fish "filled both ships, so that they began to sink" (5: 7 ).
But John says there were only 153 fishes, but big ones, "and for all there
were so many, yet was not the net broken" (John 21: 11 ). Aren't fishermen
the liars! This happened at the very beginning of Jesus' ministry -- just after
he had gone to Simon's house and healed Simon's mother-in-law (Luke 4: 38, 39
), but before Jesus met and "called" Simon (Luke 5: 1-10 ). John,
however, says that it was after the resurrection, on the occasion of his
"third appearance" (John 21: 14 ). Aren't evangelists inspired!
But to return to the contradictory accounts of
the "calling." Jesus "entered into one of the ships, which was
Simon's, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. And he
sat down, and taught the people out of the ship" (5: 3 ). And James and
John, the Zebedees, were there with Peter and Andrew -- "their partners,
which were in the other ship" (5: 7 ); and it is repeated, for our greater
credence: "James, and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were partners with
Simon" (5: 10 ). And here it was that "Jesus said unto Simon, Fear
not; from hence forth thou shalt catch men" (5: 10 ). Then (after a fish
story extraordinary, which we shall soon tell), "when they had brought
their ships to land, they [all four together] forsook all, and followed
him" (5: 2 ) -- this time without being "called" or asked at
all. So Matthew and Luke here again inspiredly contradict each other; but again
John breaks into the narrative and flatly contradicts them both.
And this is the "true record" of the
"calling" -- which was not a calling at all. John the Baptist was
beside the Jordan, baptizing all comers; and as "John stood, and two of
his disciples" (John 1: 35 ) -- there by Jordan, and not on the Sea of
Galilee or Lake Gennesaret -- Jesus walked by, evidently all alone; and [John]
"looking upon Jesus as he walked, [John] saith, Behold the Lamb of
God!" (1: 36 ). And John's "two disciples heard him [John] speak, and
they followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto
them, What seek ye? They said unto him, Rabb1: ... where dwellest thou? He
saith unto them, Come and see" (1: 37-39 ). And the two went home with
Jesus "and abode with him that day."
Here comes the most surprising feature of this
inspired record: "One of the two which heard John speak, and followed him
[Jesus], was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother!" (
"THE TWELVE"
Before leaving the apostles to shift for
themselves, we may briefly notice several other flaws of inspiration relating
to them. Matthew, who was one of them, surely ought to know his own name, and
how he came to be numbered among the chosen Twelve. We have seen already the
conflicting accounts given by him and by Luke and John as to the
"calling" -- or volunteering -- of Andrew, Peter, James and John. As
for himself, Matthew says modestly: "And as Jesus passed forth from thence
[where be had healed the man with the palsy], he saw a man, named Matthew,
sitting at the receipt of custom; and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he
arose, and followed him" (Matt. 9: 9 ), But Mark tells us that "as
[Jesus] passed by [after the healing], he saw Le6: the son of Alphaeus sitting
at the receipt of custom," and called him (2: 14 ). And Luke (5: 27 )
corroborates Mark, as usual contradicting Matthew, even as to his own name.
This little tangle does not end here: Matthew
gives a list of the twelve apostles; among the others he lists "Matthew
the publican"; two Simons, one surnamed Peter, the other the Canaanite
(the whole race of Canaanites having been exterminated by Joshua); two Jameses,
the son of Alphieus, and the son of Zebedee; and one "Lebbaeus, whose
surname was Thaddaeus" (10: 2-4 ). Luke omits Lebbaeus, and substitutes a
second "Judas, the brother of James," besides Judas Iscariot (6: 16
). So we do not really know who composed the Twelve.
As for James, his identity is very confused,
as is also that of the second Judas. Matthew (13: 55 ) and Mark (6: 3 ) say
that both James and Judas were sons of the Virgin Mary and brothers of Jesus;
and Paul affirms that James was "the Lord's brother" (Gal. 1: 19 ).
But later both Matthew (27: 56 ) and Mark (15: 40 ) contradict themselves and
say that this James was the son of some other Mary. If James and Jesus were
sons of the Virgin Mary, their father was of course Joseph the carpenter; but
Matthew (10: 3 ) and Mark (3: 18 ) say that James and Judas were the sons of
Alphaeus. If they were the sons of Alphaeus, they were brothers of Matthew,
alias Le6: the publican; for Mark declares (2: 14 ) that Levi was the son of
Alphaeus. Judas, according to Luke (6: 16 ), was "the brother of
James"; the Revised Version says: "Judas, the son of James."
James is not once mentioned in the gospel of his brother John.
Again, Matthew and John, as we have seen,
represent the Twelve picked up, one, two, or four at a time, at various times
and places; but Mark and Luke say that they were all chosen together at one and
the same time, from a large number of disciples: Jesus "went out into a
mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer. And when it was day, he
called unto him his disciples: and of them he chose twelve, whom also he named
apostles" (Luke 6: 12, 13; Mark 3: 13, 14 ); and then follows the list of
names we have just seen to differ from the other two lists. So the whole matter
of the apostles is left a puzzle, except in one point, the personal character
of these sainted gospel propagandists.
APOSTOLIC GREED AND STRIFE
Two of them, Peter and John, are expressly
declared to be "unlearned and ignorant men" (Acts 4: 13 ); all twelve
were of the same type and well matched. They were variously picked up from
among the humblest and most superstitious of the Jews of the time, naked
fishermen and peasants, "called" personally, we are told, by the Son
of Yahveh, the King of the Jews, to be his counsellors and friends in the
establishment of his earthly and heavenly kingdoms. They saw this carpenter's
Son of Nazareth acclaimed by the desert dervish John as the Son of Yahveh, the
long-promised and never- realized Messiah, the King of the Jews. This John was
the own cousin of Jesus, born within six months of Jesus' birth, and brought up
in intimate association; yet John avers and repeats: "I knew him
not," until the dove flew down and lighted on him (John 1: 29-34 ), and
thus gave divine "sign" of the truth of his claim. But any signs are
good to the ignorant and superstitious; and none at all are needed to gather
followers for curiosity or hope of reward.
The hope of reward was the inspiredly recorded
motive of these peasants who left their petty crafts for greater profit by
following the lowly king-to-be. The greed and zeal for personal aggrandizement
of the chosen Twelve is constantly revealed throughout. Hardly had the Twelve
got organized and into action before the cunning and crafty Peter, acting as
spokesman, boldly advanced the itching palm: "Then answered Peter and said
unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have
therefore?" (Matt. 19: 27 ). Here for once is complete "harmony of
the gospels"; all three record the demand and the promise of reward,
though still variantly (Mark 10: 28; Luke 18: 28 ). The Master responded
splendidly with the promise: "Verily I say unto you, That ye which have
followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of
his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of
Israel" (Matt. 19: 28 ) -- which seems to indicate that the ten tribes
were not so lost as has been generally supposed. Still, this reward of reigning
in future glory was naturally dampening to the spirits of those who had
abandoned fishnets and the like to follow one proclaimed King of the Jews,
whose earthly throne was to be established forever, there on earth. The other
two inspired recorders assert that the promise was for reward both on earth and
in the hereafter: that they should "receive an hundredfold now in this time;
... and in the world to come eternal life" (Mark 10: 30; Luke 18: 30 ).
But even these brilliant rewards could not satisfy the greed of the holy ones,
and led, not to gratitude, but to greater greed and strife.
The mother of James and John, probably inspired
by them, and zealous for their greater glory, came secretly, with her two sons,
to Jesus, "worshipping him, and desiring a certain thing of him"; and
when Jesus asked her what it was, "She saith unto him, Grant that these my
two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy
kingdom" (Matt. 20: 20, 21 ). But Mark contradicts the assurance of
Matthew that it was Mrs. Zebedee who made the request; and says that
"James and John, the sons of Zebedee, come unto him, saying, Master, we
would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire," and
themselves stated their modest demand for preferment (Mark 10: 35-37 ) --
which, if granted, would have ousted Yahveh God from his proper seat (Mark 16::
19 ). But both agree that "when the ten heard it, they were moved with
indignation against the two brethren" (Matt.
Nor during the whole year or two of
association with their Master did these holy apostles abate their greed and
strife. Several disputes are recorded among them as to "who should be
greatest" among them (Matt. 18: 1; Mark
But we shall now point out some other of the
more glaring contradictions and obviously impossible truths of the inspired
gospels. All their fables and superstitions it is impossible on account of
their number even to mention. We limit instances to reputed incidents of the
life of Christ.
OTHER APOSTOLIC TANGLES
Immediately after the calling of Peter,
Andrew, James, and John, according to Mark (1: 16-20 ), "they went into
Capernaum ... and entered the synagogue, and taught" (1: 21 ); but Luke
says that Jesus went to Capernaum and taught in the synagogue alone (4: 31 )
and before "calling" these four fishermen (5: 1-11 ). Jesus
plaintively said that the foxes have holes and the birds have nests, but
"the son of man hath not where to lay his head" (Luke 9: 58 ), as if
he were a homeless wanderer and outcast. Mark, however, tells us that "as
Jesus sat at meat in his own house, many publicans and sinners sat also together
with Jesus and his disciples" (2: 15 ). This was his permanent dwelling
house; for "leaving Nazareth he came and dwelt in Capernaum" (Matt.
4: 13 ). According to this, Jesus had a spacious home, and could entertain
large companies, though Luke says the dinner was given by Levi in his own house
(Luke 5: 29 ).
Before the "calling" of the Twelve
Jesus performed no miracles, according to John, for "the third day"
after his baptism Jesus and his disciples were invited to the wedding in Cana,
and there Jesus turned the water into wine. "This beginning of miracles
did Jesus in Cana" (John 2: 1-11 ). But according to all the others, as we
have seen, Jesus did not go to Cana and perform there his first miracle, but
into the wilderness for forty days; and according to Matthew (4: 18-23 ) and
Mark (14: 12-20, et seq.), immediately after the temptation Jesus
"called" the first four disciples and then began his miracles in
Capernaum. But Luke brings him to Capernaum, gives him a long list of miracles,
and reports his casting out devils and healing Peter's mother-in-law and his
preaching throughout Galilee (Luke 4: 31-44 ) before he "called" the
big four (5: 1-11 ).
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT -- OR THE PLAN
The Sermon on the Mount is the most beautiful
and lofty discourse in Christian history. Very little of it is original; as the
marginal references show, a great part of it is the stringing together of odd
scraps of moralizing taken bodily from the Old Testament. Matthew sets it out
in extenso, and lays the scene just after the temptation in the wilderness, and
the "calling" of Peter, Andrew, James, and John, but before the
"calling" of Levi (Matt. 5-7; 9: 9 ). According to Luke (5: 27; 6:
17-20 ) it was after Levi was "called." He declares that "seeing
the multitudes, [Jesus] went up into a mountain: and, when be was set, his
disciples came unto him: And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying"
(Matt. 5: 1, 2 ) -- here following in three chapters the justly celebrated
sermon.
But Luke tells the whole affair quite differently.
It was not on the mountain, where Jesus spoke seated; it was down in the plain,
where Jesus stood and spoke. It was after all the Twelve had been chosen and
commissioned, which, according to Luke, as we have seen, took place while Jesus
was up on the mount in prayer all night (Luke 6: 12-16 ). Then, "He came
down with [the Twelve], and stood in the plain, and the company of his
disciples, and a great multitude of people" (6: 17 ). There, standing,
"he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said" (6: 20 ) -- and
here follows the selfsame sermon but abbreviated. Again inspiration clashes
with inspiration, and we are left in doubt of truth.
THIS LORD'S PRAYER
A beautiful part of Matthew's Sermon on the
Mount is the Lord's prayer. Jesus told the multitude of the vain public prayers
of the heathen and of the hypocrites, and said: "Be not ye therefore like
unto them. ... After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in
heaven," etc. (Matt. 6: 8, 9 ) Luke again gives a different origin for
this cherished story; laying the scene long after the Sermon on the Mount or
the Plain, under totally different circumstances, and making it a prayer
delivered as a model, on request, to only a few disciples. As if by plenary
inspiration Luke says: "And it came to pass, that, as [Jesus] was praying
in a certain place, when he ceased one of his disciples said to him, Lord,
teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. And he said unto them.
When ye pray, say, Our Father," etc. (Luke 11: 1-2 ).
Every circumstance of the two origins is in
conflict. Even this masterpiece of devotion is in two totally different
settings, and in two different versions -- and like the whole sennon, is a
composite of ancient sayings of the Scriptures. It is said to be practically
identical with the Kaddish of the Talmud.
CHRIST ANOINTED
Let us witness the much celebrated
"Christening" or anointing of the Messiah-King of the Jews.
Inspiration is strangely at variance as to when and where it happened, and how.
If the great Yahveh of heaven had sent his only begotten Son on special mission
to earth as the long-prophesied Messiah, to re-establish the throne of David
forever and sit upon it as king, it was a very sorry ceremonial, at best, for
the anointing of a king, earthly or heavenly.
Matthew states that two days before the
Passover (at which he was to be betrayed) "Jesus was in Bethany, in the
house of Simon the leper"; and "there came unto him a woman having an
alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat
at meat"; whereat "his disciples ... had indignation" for the
waste (Matt. 26: 6-8 ). Mark's account is the same, in substance (Mark 14: 1-4
), but he specifies that the box of ointment was "of spikenard, very
precious" (14: 3 ), and that only "some" of the disciples were
annoyed at the waste. Both lay the scene, as we have seen, two day's before the
last Passover at which Jesus was ever present, just before his betrayal and
death and after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and in the house of Simon
the leper.
But Luke (chapter 7 ) makes a very different
story of it: the time was early in Jesus' ministry, just after John the Baptist
had sent two of his disciples to Jesus, in the earliest days, to inquire:
"Art thou he that should come? or look we for another?" (7: 19, 20 ).
Then "one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he
went into the Pharisee's house [in "a city called Nain" (7: 11 )],
and sat down to meat" (7: 36 ). Now and here it was that "behold, a
woman in the city, which was a sinner" came in with the alabaster box of
ointment; and she washed "his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the
hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them [his feet] with the
ointment" (7: 37, 38 ). Nobody said anything about the waste -- the
disciples were not even invited to the dinner. The Pharisee is here called
Simon, but could not have been the leper, for lepers were "unclean,"
and no one would have eaten with them. Moreover this dinner was two years
before the last Passover; and the feet, not the head, were anointed.
But the greatest surprise comes from the
inspired record of John (chapter 12 ). The event takes place "six days
before the Passover," and before the entry into Jerusalem and in the house
of Lazarus "which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. There they
made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at
the table with him. Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very
costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair"
(12: 8 ). It was "one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot" (12: 4 ), who
alone complained about the waste, and said that the ointment should have been
sold and the proceeds given to the poor (12: 5 ). In chapter 11: John tells of
a sick man named Lazarus and of "Mary and her sister Martha" (11: 1
); and makes the positive identification: "It was that Mary which anointed
the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair" (11: 2 ) --
though the story of her doing it is deferred until the next chapter. We are
pardonably surprised to learn that it was this friend of Jesus who was the
"woman of the city, which was a sinner" (Luke 7: 37 ), for we had not
previously suspected her virtue, and had thought it was Mary Magdalene, the
"soiled dove" out of whom he had "cast seven devils" (Mark
16: 9; Luke 8: 2 ). Inspiration is here again seriously at odds.
JESUS -- KING OF THE JEWS
The saddest, sorriest mockery in the reputed
life of the humble Nazarene was his tawdry entry into Jerusalem as the arrived
Messiah -- the King of the Jews. Great must have been the obsession, the
delusion, of the poor Wayfarer, who had no place even to lay his head, and had
to catch a fish to find a penny to pay his pittance of a poll-tax -- and must
needs borrow an ass's colt to make his mock-triumphal entry into his kingdom --
for one day. The discrepancies of the four inspired accounts of it are rather
trifling, but they exist, and may be noted in passing the pitiful scene.
In Matthew 21: Jesus having arrived, with disciples
and a rabble, at Bethphage, by the Mount of Olives, sent "two disciples,
Saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye
shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto
me" (21: 1, 2 ). The two disciples went and "brought the ass, and the
colt [two animals], and put on them [both animals] their clothes, and they set
him thereon" (21: 7 ) -- thus riding both ass and colt. The rabble
followed behind, shouting Hosannas to their King (Mark
The God-sent King who was to establish his
kingdom and reign forever over Israel did not fulfill the principal part of the
prophecy.
Mark, who wrote the story first, says that
Jesus said: "Go your way into the village over against you and ... ye
shall find a colt tied; ... bring him. ... And they brought the colt to
Jesus" (Mark 21: 2, 7 ); but as this would not fulfill the prophecy of "an
ass and a colt," Matthew, in copying Mark, added the ass and the prophecy.
Luke tells only of the colt (Luke 19: 29-40 ). John, who tells us that he
always tells the truth, says that it was "on the next day" (John 21:
12 ) after the "six days before the Passover" (12: 1 ) when Mary
anointed the feet of Jesus; "much people that were come to the feast, when
they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, Took branches of palm trees, and
went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel."
Thus the city rabble took the initiative in the farce-comedy. John assures us:
"These things understood not his disciples at the first" (12: 16 ),
whereas the other three make it the disciples who brought the ass, or ass and
colt, or colt, and put their own clothes thereon, and themselves began the
whole scene. Until another revelation, we shall never know the details exactly.
The "purging of the temple," says
John, occurred only a few days after the wedding at Cana, and therefore at the
beginning of Jesus, ministry (John 2: 1-22 ); but the other three (Matt, 21:
12-16; Mark 11: 15-18; Luke 19: 45-48 ) all place it at the close of his
career, just before his last Passover. The next day after the purging, Jesus is
recorded as cursing the fig tree (Matt. 21: 18, 19 ); but Mark says the cursing
came first; then Jesus went into Jerusalem (but not on his triumphal entry,
which had taken place the day before; Mark 11: 1-11 ) and cleaned out the
money-changers (11: 12-19 ). According to Matthew, the fig tree was blasted by
the curse immediately, before the eyes of the disciples (21: 19, 20 ); but Mark
says that it was not till the next day after the cursing
that the disciples, as they passed by, saw the
fig tree dried up (11: 19, 20 ). Mark says that Jesus and his company, being
hungry "and seeing a fig tree afar off," went to it to find figs, but
found none, "for the time of figs was not yet" (11: 12, 13 ). Then
Jesus cursed it (11: 14 ). As this happened at the time of Passover, in March
or April, naturally there would be no figs, which are summer fruit; and one
would think that the all-wise Son of Yahveh, who could read the innermost
thoughts of man, would know this simple fact of nature, as well as whether
there were figs on the tree without going to find out by inspection. The
omniscient God searching for figs in March, and disappointed at not finding
them -- creating a tree to bear fruit in the summer and cursing it for not
bearing in the spring! Jesus cursed a living tree and it died; Mohammed blessed
a dead tree and it lived.
POT-POURRI OF INSPIRED INHARMONIES
The Gospels simply cannot tell the truth.
Scarcely a thing is stated by one inspired writer which is not denied or
contradicted by one or more of the others. To cite them all would lead beyond
reasonable limits of space; but to show further the incessant inharmony of
inspired truths even in minor details, I shall pick at random a number of
instances, with bare citation of subject, chapter, and verse.
Jesus cured Peter's mother-in-law after he
cleansed the leper (Matt. 8: 2, 3, 14, 15 ); or before (Mark
At Nain Jesus raised a dead man to life (Luke
7: 12-15 ), but this great miracle is mentioned only by Luke; all the others
ignore the stupendous feat. The disciples of John asked Jesus about fasting
(Matt. 9: 14 ); but it was the scribes and Pharisees who made the inquiry (Luke
5: 33 ). Jesus is credited with raising the daughter of Jairus from the dead.
Matthew quotes Jairus as saying: "My daughter is even now dead"
(Matt. 9: 18 ); but he said: "lieth at the point of death" (Mark 5:
23 ); or "lay a dying" (Luke 8: 42 ). Whether Jesus raised a dead
girl to life or simply healed a sick one is uncertain. Peter, James, and John
witnessed this miracle (Mark 5: 37-40; Luke 8: 51 ); John, who was the only
gospel writer present, does not mention it at all. When Jesus first sent out
the Twelve, he said: "He that receiveth you receiveth me," etc.
(Matt. 10: 40; Luke 10: 16 ); but Jesus used these words at the Last Supper
(John 13: 20 ). When sending the Twelve on their first crusade, Jesus told them
to take "neither shoes, nor yet staves" (Matt. 10: 9, 10; Luke 9: 3
); but he commanded them to take shoes and staves and nothing else (Mark 6: 8,
9 ). He also commanded them not to go among the Gentiles, "and into any
city of the Samaritans, enter ye not" ( Matt 10: 5 ); but straightway both
Jesus and the disciples went to Samaria to Sychar, and they "abode there
two days" (John 4: 3-5, 8, 40 ). Jesus told the multitude: "From the
days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence"
(Matt. 11: 12 ). The words "from the days of John the Baptist until
now" would indicate that a long period of time had elapsed since the days
of John; yet on the very day on which Jesus uttered these words, Matthew
himself records a visit to Jesus of the disciples of John, who was yet living
(Matt. 11: 2, 3 ). The disciples said to Jesus: "Master, the Jews of late
sought to stone thee" (John 11: 8 ); the disciples were themselves Jews;
such language would never be used by Jews, but rather by the Greek Father who wrote
the "Gospel according to John." When Herod heard of the wonderful
works of Jesus, he said: "This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the
dead" (Matt. 14: 2 ); here we have the Christian doctrine of bodily
resurrection avowed by the pagan tetrarch. The account given by Matt. (14: 6-11
) and Mark (6: 21-28 ) of the time and the reason for Herod's beheading of John
is entirely at variance with that of the greatest Jewish historian, Josephus
(Antiq., Bk. 18: chap. 5: sec. 2 ). John is said to have baptized "Jerusalem
and all Judea" (Matt. 3: 5; Mark 1: 5 ); this is of course at least mildly
exaggerated; if Jesus and his disciples "made and baptized more disciples
than John" (John 4: 1, 2 ), where did these latter come from? Of his
mightier successor, John said: "Whose shoes I am not worthy to bear"
(Matt. 3: 11 ); what John said was: "The latchet of whose shoes I am not
worthy to stoop down and unloose" (Mark 1: 7 ), which is John's own report
(John 1: 27 ). John also said of Jesus: "He shall baptize you with the
Holy Ghost" (Mark 1: 8; John 1: 33 ); but he said that the baptism should
be "with the Holy Ghost and with fire" (Matt. 3: 11; Luke 3: 16 ) --
the latter an element not recorded as having been used, unless the reference is
to hell fire, which Jesus invented.
The loaves and fishes to feed the multitude
were provided by the disciples (Matt. 14: 15-17; Mark 6: 35-38; Luke 9: 12, 13
); but they were furnished by "a lad" (John 6: 9 ). The miraculous
feast was enjoyed by "about five thousand men" (Mark 6: 44 ); but this
was "beside women and children" (Matt. 14: 21 ). This miracle
occurred in "a desert place belonging to the city called Bethsaida"
(Luke 9: 10 ); but when the repast was furnished, Jesus "constrained his
disciples to get into the ship, and go to the other side before unto
Bethsaida" (Mark 6: 45 ); if the miracle was performed in a desert of
Bethsaida, the disciples were already there and did not cross the sea to reach
the place. Then, after the feeding, Jesus "sent the multitudes away" (Matt.
14: 22; Mark 6: 45 ); he did not, but withdrew himself into a mountain (John 6:
15 ). Jesus went into this mountain to pray (Matt. 14: 23; Mark 6: 46 ); he
went to the mountain to escape the multitude who wished to "take him by
force, to make him a king" (John 6: 15 ). Jesus had sent his disciples by
ship across the sea; he went into the mountain to pray; "and when the
evening was come, he was there alone. But the ship was now in the midst of the
sea" (Matt. 14: 22-24; Mark 6: 46, 47 ); on the other hand, "as he
was alone praying, his disciples were with him" (Luke 9: 18 ). Jesus
commanded his disciples, after the feeding, to sail "unto Bethsaida"
(Mark 6: 45 ); they steered their course "toward Capernaum" (John 6:
17 ); and this erratic course brought them "into the land of
Gennesaret" (Matt. 14: 34 ). Walking on the water, Jesus overtook the
shipload of disciples "in the midst of the sea" (Matt. 14: 24-26;
Mark 6: 47, 48 ); but it was as they were nearing the land (John 6: 19-21 );
thus, according to John, Jesus walked entirely across the sea, not merely half
way, as in the other record. Peter tried to imitate his Master and walk on the
stormy waters, according to Matthew (14: 29-31 ); none of the others report
this interesting adventure.
After feeding five thousand with five loaves
in the wilderness of Bethsaida, Jesus proposed to feed four thousand with seven
loaves; at this the disciples expressed their surprise, and asked: "From
whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness?" (Mark
8: 4, 5 ) After this second miraculous feeding, Jesus "came into the
coasts of Magdala" (Matt. 15: 39 ); the Revised Version reads
"borders of Magadan"; but he really came "into the parts of
Dalmanutha" (Mark 8: 10 ).
The scribes and Pharisees complained to Jesus
that his disciples violated the traditions by eating with unwashed hands (Matt.
15: 1, 2; Mark 7: 1, 2 ); but it was a certain Pharisee who made this complaint
to Jesus because he himself ate without washing (Luke 11: 37, 38 ). A
"woman of Canaan" besought Jesus to cast the devil out of her
daughter (Matt. 15: 22 ); "the woman was a Greek" (Mark 7: 26 ).
On the way to Caesarea Philippi, Peter makes a
great discovery. Asked by Jesus, "But whom say ye that I am?" Peter
replied: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus
answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona; for flesh and
blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven"
(Matt. 16: 16, 17 ). And as a reward for his supernatural perception, Jesus
conferred on him the keys of heaven and hell. Both Jesus and Matthew must have
forgotten that just before, when Peter was about to sink as he tried to walk to
Jesus on the water, and Jesus rescued him and brought him aboard the ship,
"they that were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth
thou art the Son of God" (Matt. 14: 29-33 ). So that Peter's information
was not a divine revelation but the common gossip of the whole crew of
fishermen. And at the very beginning of the ministry of Jesus, before Peter was
"called," and when his brother Andrew went and found him to bring him
to Jesus, Andrew said to Peter: "We have found the Messias, which is,
being interpreted, the Christ" (John 1: 41 ). On the next day Nathaniel
said to Jesus; "Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of
The Transfiguration occurred "after six
days" from the announcement by Jesus of his immediate "second
coming" (Matt. 16: 28; 17: 1; Mark 9: 1, 2 ); but "it came to pass
about an eight days after" (Luke 9: 27, 28 ). Peter, James, and John were
with Jesus there; "And his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was
white as the light" (Matt. 17: 2 ); "The fashion of his countenance
was altered, and his raiment was white and glistening" (Luke 9: 29 ). But
it was only the clothing of Jesus which was affected: "And his raiment
became shining, exceeding white as snow" (Mark 9: 3 ). A voice from the
clouds declared: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear
ye him" (Matt. 17: 5 ); but the voice only said: "This is my beloved
Son; hear ye him" (Mark 9: 7; Luke 9: 35 ). As at the baptism, when the
same voice was heard to say the same thing, it probably only thundered, and any
interpretation could be given to the noise by superstitious peasants. Moses and
Elijah joined the transfiguration group, and Peter, ambitious always for a
speaking part, proposed to build three tabernacles for the heavenly visitors;
this proposal was made in the awful presence and hearing of Moses and Elijah
(Matt. 17: 3, 4; Mark 9: 4-8 ); but Peter did not say this until "as they
departed from him" (Luke 9: 33 ). Moses and Elijah talked with Jesus
"and spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem" (Luke
9: 31 ); but I cannot understand how Luke knew what the conversation was about,
as he was not present. Peter, James, and John "were heavy with sleep"
(Luke 9: 32 ), and so could not have heard the conversation; and the proposal
for the tabernacles came only afterwards "when they were awake" (Luke
9: 32 ). But the three disciples were not asleep at all; they were quite awake
and saw and heard all that passed (Matt. 17: 2-7; Mark 9: 2-8 ). John was the
only Gospel historian who was present at this tremendous scene; he mentions not
a word of it. Of this and of all similar situations said to have been witnessed
by John, an authority has said: "All the events said to have been
witnessed by John alone are omitted by John alone. This fact seems fatal either
to the reality of the events in question or to the genuineness of the fourth
gospel." [W.R. Greg, Creed of Christendom.] Immediately after the
disappearance of Moses and Elijah the conversation turned upon the tradition
that "Elias must first come"; and Jesus replied that "Elias is
come already and they knew him not. ... Then the disciples understood that he
spake unto them of John the Baptist" (Matt. 17: 10-13 ). Jesus would seem
to recognize thus the doctrine of transmigration of souls; but if Elijah had been
before their eyes at the transfiguration, this conversation could not well have
followed.
After the transfiguration Jesus cured a
lunatic (Matt. 17: 15 ); he was an epileptic (Revised Version); but he had
"a dumb spirit" (Mark 9: 17 ). The tax collector of Capernaum
demanded a poll-tax of Jesus; he told Peter to go fishing "and take up the
fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find
a piece of money; that take, and give unto them for me and thee" (Matt. 17:
27 ). But Matthew leaves us genuinely curious as to what kind of
"fisherman's luck" Peter had this time, whether he caught the fish
and got the money or not: there are limits even to fishermen's tales. After
leaving Galilee Jesus went "into the coasts of Judaea beyond Jordan"
(Matt. 19: 1 ). The inspired writer again did not know geography; there were no
"coasts of Judaea beyond Jordan"; Jordan was the eastern boundary of
Judaea; the coasts were some fifty miles to the west. On his way to Jerusalem to
attend his last Passover, Jesus "passed through the midst of Samaria"
(Luke 17: 11 ); but he "cometh into the coasts of Judaea by the farther
side of Jordan" (Mark 10: 1 ); these are two totally different routes.
"And Jesus entered and passed through Jericho" (Luke 19: 1 ). This
contradicts Luke's statement that Jesus "passed through the midst of
Samaria" (Luke 17: 11 ), as Jericho was not on the route from Samaria, but
was on the route described by Mark (Mark 10: 1 ). On whichever of these routes
he was, Jesus in the way healed ten lepers (Luke 17: 12-14 ); this wholesale
miracle is recorded by no other gospel; it is declared to be "absolutely
unhistorical" (Bible for Learners, Vol. 3: p. 310 ). I see no reason why
the learned divines who edited the Bible for Learners should have singled out
this one miracle to criticize as "unhistorical"; they were all so. On
the way also "blind Bartimaeus" sat begging, and he cried out:
"Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me" (Mark 10: 46, 47; Luke 18:
35-38 ); but it was not one but two blind men who cried: "Have mercy on
us, O Lord, thou son of David" (Matt. 20: 30 ). This dubious episode
occurred "as he was come nigh unto Jericho" (Luke 18: 35 ); it
occurred "as they departed from Jericho" (Matt. 20: 29; Mark 10: 4?6
). Mark agrees with Luke and disagrees with Matthew as to the number of men,
and agrees with Matthew and disagrees with Luke as to the time of the
occurrence.
Speaking of divorce, Jesus said:
"Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery
against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to
another, she committeth adultery" (Mark 10: 11, 12 ). A Jew could not have
said or written this, for by the Jewish law a woman could not put away her
husband at all. Matthew puts in a proviso which is a notable contradiction of
Mark; he quotes Jesus as saying: "Whosoever shall put away his wife,
except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth
adultery" (Matt. 19: 9 ). According to Mark a man who divorces his wife
for any cause whatever cannot lawfully marry another; according to Matthew if
the divorce is for cause of the wife's fornication the man may lawfully marry
again. In his conversation with the rich man, answering his question as to what
he should do to inherit eternal life, Jesus told him that be must keep the
commandments; the rich man asked which. In reply Jesus named five as essential
and sufficient for the inheritance of heaven. What these commandments are no
two of the synoptists agree; Matthew and Mark each give a commandment not given
by either of the others (Matt. 19: 18, 19; Mark 10: 19; Luke 18: 20 ). The
special significance of the reply of Jesus is that it asserts that keeping a
few commandments is all that is required to go to heaven: thus repudiating the
necessity of "articles of faith necessary to salvation"; and it
invalidates his own repeated assertion, "He that believeth not is
damned."
Jesus affirmed of the mustard seed that it
"indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest
among herbs" (Matt. 13: 32 ). Everyone knows that the mustard seed is not
the "least of all seeds"; neither is the plant "the greatest
among herbs." A celebrated saying of Jesus is "If ye have faith as a
grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to wonder
place; and it shall remove" (Matt. 17: 20; Mark 11: 23 ), but Matthew
makes a mountain out of a much less thing; for what Jesus said was: "Ye
might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted
in the sea; and it should obey you" (Luke 17: 6 ). The time and
circumstances of the incident are also entirely different in each report.
In the parable of the great feast, the
function was a wedding dinner given by a king for the marriage of his son
(Matt. 22: 2-4 ); it was simply a "great supper" given by "a
certain man" (Luke 14: 16 ). The king sent "his servants" and
then "other servants" to invite the guests (Matt. 22: 3, 4 ); but the
"certain man" only "sent his servant" (Luke
In the parable of the wicked husbandmen, the
owner of the vineyard sent "his servants" to collect the rent, and
the evil farmers "took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and
stoned another" (Matt. 21: 33-35 ); however, only one servant was sent and
they only "beat him, and sent him away empty" (Mark 12: 3 ). In the
parable of the talents, a man who was going on a journey had three servants;
"And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another
one" (Matt. 25: 15 ); but the master, who was a nobleman, going off to
take over a kingdom, really had ten servants, and to each of them he delivered
one pound (Luke 19: 12, 13, 16 ). Two of the three servants each doubled his
money (Matt. 25: 16, 17 ), thus returning ten and four talents respectively; of
the ten servants one reported a gain of tenfold, the second of fivefold (Luke 19:
16, 18 ). The "unprofitable servant" of Matthew "digged in the
earth, and bid his lord's money" (Matt. 25: 18 ); the same servant in Luke
returned his pound "which I have kept laid up in a napkin" (Luke 19:
20 ).
A lawyer had an interview with Jesus in regard
to the two great commandments; the lawyer "asked him a question, tempting
him, saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law?" and Jesus
stated the two great commandments (Matt. 22: 35-40; Mark 12: 28-31 ); but when
the lawyer asked the question, Jesus in turn asked: "What is written in
the law? how readest thou?" and the lawyer himself in reply stated the two
great commandments (Luke 10: 25-27 ). The lamentation of Jesus over Jerusalem
(Matt. 23: 37 ) was delivered in the temple at Jerusalem" (Matt. 21: 10,
et seq; 24: 1 ); it was delivered in a synagogue in Galilee before he went to
Jerusalem (Luke 13: 34; 17: 11 ). While Jesus was at Jerusalem there came
"a voice from heaven"; "the people therefore, that stood by, and
heard it, said that it thundered: others said, An angel spake to him. Jesus
answered and said, This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes"
(John 12: 28-30 ); if the people who heard the "voice" could not
distinguish it from thunder, of what benefit was it to them -- "for your
sakes?"
The last prayer of Jesus was uttered in the
Garden of Gethsemane (Matt. 26: 36, 39; Mark 14: 32, 35; Luke 22: 39, 41 ); but
the last prayer is reported as made in Jerusalem before going to Gethsemane
(John 17; 18: 1 ). During the last prayer in the garden Jesus was in agony,
"and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the
ground" (Luke 22: 44 ). Luke was not one of the Twelve and was not
present; Jesus was "withdrawn from them," praying alone. And when he
rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them
sleeping" (Luke 22: 41, 4: 5 ). How Luke knew of this unusual form of
perspiration is not revealed.
Baptism being declared by Jesus to be an
essential to salvation (Mark 16: 16 ), naturally he and his disciples must have
performed this ceremony from the beginning of the ministry, every time the
"fishers of men" caught a peasant; and John says so. Just after the
wedding at Cana and the meeting with Nicodemus, "came Jesus and his disciples
into the land of Judaea; and there he tarried with them, and baptized"
(John 3: 22 ); though John later tells us, in parentheses, "Though Jesus
himself baptized not, but his disciples" (John 4: 2 ). At least, then, the
disciples baptized from the start. But it was not until after the resurrection
of Jesus that he first commissioned them to baptize (Matt. 118: 18; 19; Mark
16: 15, 16 ). The formula of baptism is expressed, outside of one reference in
the gospels, by Peter only; all were to be "baptized in the name of Jesus
Christ," or "of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 2: 38; 8: 16; 10: 48; 19:
5 ). The formula "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost" (Matt. 28: 19 ), put by Matthew into the mouth of Jesus, is
self-evidently a much later forgery, made after the Trinity had been invented.
In the beginning of his ministry and
immediately after the wedding at Cana, Jesus foretold his death and
resurrection (John 2: 18-22 ); but it was late in his ministry, just before the
transfiguration, that "From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his
disciples, how that he must ... be killed, and be raised again the third
day" (Matt. 16: 21; Mark 8: 31; Luke 9: 22 ). The parting command of Jesus
to his disciples was: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to
every creature. ... And they went forth, and preached everywhere" (Mark
16: 15, 20 ). This is totally irreconcilable with early church history; for,
some ten years after the death of Jesus Christ, Peter is accused and condemned
by the "apostles and brethren" because they had "heard that the
Gentiles had also received the word of God" (Acts 11: 1-19 ). And the
"second coming" had not yet arrived, though Jesus -- limiting their
mission to the "lost sheep of Israel" -- had told Peter and his
confreres: "Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son
of man be come" (Matt. 10: 23 ). In contradiction of this positive
assurance he had declared: "The gospel must first be published among all
nations" (Mark 13: 10 ).
The prime endowment to the disciples was, or
was to be, the gift of the Holy Ghost, which was conferred in a manner
strangely reminiscent of the breathing of life into Adam; and this supreme gift
was bestowed upon ten of the Twelve by Jesus himself at the time of his second
appearance after the resurrection: "He breathed on them, and saith unto
them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost" (John 20: 22 ). Thomas Didymus (the Twin)
never received any Holy Ghost, as he was not present (John
This must end, for "There are also [so]
many other things which Jesus did" and said -- which are so
contradictorily related by inspiration -- that while it cannot without some
exaggeration be said that "the world itself could not contain the books
that should be written" -- at least one ample volume such as this would
not contain them.
ECCE HOMO!
Many superlatives of laudation and
magnification are applied to Jesus the Christ: the mighty God, eternal,
self-existent, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, infinite in wisdom,
infinite in goodness, infinite in mercy, gentle and loving. His own words and
deeds contradict each of these fanciful attributes.
Was Jesus self-existent? "The living
Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father" (John 6: 57 ); and of him
Paul said: "He liveth by the power of God" (2 Cor. 13: 4 ). Was he
omnipotent? "The Son can do nothing of himself ... I can of mine own self
do nothing" (John 5: 19, 30 ). Was Jesus omniscient? Speaking of his own
second coming, notwithstanding his many assertions that it should be very soon,
he said: "But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels
which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father" (Mark 13: 32 ). This
seems to indicate that Father and Son are two quite distinct persons. Also he
did not know that there were no figs on the tree which he cursed, for "he
came, if haply he might find anything thereon" Mark 11: 13 ), and was
disappointed when he found none. Also, if Jesus was omniscient, it is odd that
he should have chosen Judas for the first church treasurer, who "was a
thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein" (John 12: 6 ). Was
Jesus omnipresent He travelled about the country like any other man; he said:
"I am glad for your sakes that I was not there" (John 11: 15 ).
"Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me: and where I am, thither ye
cannot come" (John 7: 36 ). "And now I am no more in the world"
(John 17: 11 ).
Infinite wisdom is absolute; but Jesus
"increased in wisdom" (Luke 2: 52 ); therefore he had less wisdom at
one time than at another, and his knowledge was limited, not infinite. Was
Jesus infinite in goodness? He denies this. "Why callest thou me good?
there is none good but one, that is, God" (Mark 10: 18 ) -- which again
admits that Father and Son are separate and distinct. Far from infinity of
mercy, he reiterates his mercilessness: "He that believeth not shall be
damned" (Mark 16: 16 ); Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire,
prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matt. 25: 41 ); "and these
shall go away into everlasting punishment" (Matt. 25: 46 ). These words
are those of the fiercest fanaticism, fearfully false and merciless; they are the
words either of a deluded madman or of lying priests, used to frighten
superstitious dupes into subjection of mind and soul; they are not of incarnate
God, but of incarnadine Devil.
The family or "kinsmen" of Jesus
thought him insane and "went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is
beside himself" (Mark 3: 21 ); and "many of [the people] said, He
hath a devil, and is mad" (John 10: 20 ). Peculiarities of conduct began
to show themselves early in his life, and were persistent. At the age of twelve
he eluded his parents and stayed behind in Jerusalem, and had them frantically
seeking him for three days. When he was found, in the temple, his mother gently
chided him: "Thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing"; he replied
only: "How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my
Father's business?" (Luke 2: 42-49 ). The next thing we hear of him, at
the beginning of his ministry, he is a guest at the wedding at Cana. His mother
came and said to him: "They have no wine"; Jesus answered: "Woman,
what have I to do with thee?" (John 2: 4 ). Never again is he recorded as
seeing or mentioning his mother, until one of his biographers records the curt
remark from the cross, "Woman, behold thy son" (John 19: 26 ); the
other three do not say that she was even present.
Apparently forsaking home and parents and
family, Jesus spent his entire period of ministry travelling barefoot (Matt.
The repute publicly won by Jesus was that of
being "a man gluttonous, and, a winebibber, a friend of publicans and
sinners" (Matt. 11: 19; Luke 7: 34 ). By ancient and laudable social
custom "the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft,
eat not, holding the tradition of the elders"' (Mark 7: 3 ). Great was the
offence which Jesus and his peasant disciples gave to the well-mannered gentry
by their constant violation of this first precept of cleanliness and decency,
because they "eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with unwashen,
hands" (Mark 7: 2; Matt. 15: 2 ). Invited by a courteous Pharisee to dine
at his home with a polite company including lawyers, Jesus "went in, and
sat down to meat. And when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not
first washed before dinner. And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees
make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full
of ravening and wickedness. Ye fools ... Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! ... Woe unto you also, ye lawyers!" (Luke 11: 37-40, 44, 46 ).
Pious people smirk and applaud as if this were a genteel act and speech; if any
other guest at the table of a gentleman and in polite company should sit down
unwashed and use like language to his host and guests, some plain but cultured
people might think it the most uncouth insolence and unpardonable coarseness.
The meek and gentle Jesus made fluent use of a
vocabulary which, if it were used by a Billingsgate fishwife, would be deemed
vituperative abuse of a shocking kind. Here are some choice bits which he dealt
out to people who did not entirely appreciate and agree with him: "Ye
fools and blind" (Matt. 23: 17, 19 ); "Ye serpents, ye generation of
wipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" (Matt. 23: 33 ) this
chapter 23 is a rare study in fervid philippic); "All that ever came
before me are thieves and robbers" (John 10: 8 ).
How sweet the oft-quoted unctuous words of the
Master: "Suffer little children to come unto me." If he said it he
meant little Jewish children only; others he spurned with disdain. When the
woman of Canaan came and worshipped him, begging that he would heal her
daughter, "grievously vexed with a devil," the great Specialist in
devil-exorcism retorted to the stricken mother: "It is not meet to take
the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs" (Matt. 15: 26 )! a truly
Christlike rebuff. And that those deemed unworthy should receive no charity, he
prescribes the general principle: "Neither cast ye your pearls before
swine" (Matt. 7: 6 ).
Shiftlessness and poverty are inculcated as
moral virtues for his indigent followers: "Lay not up for yourselves
treasures upon earth. ... Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or
what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. ... Take
therefor no thought for the morrow" (Matt. 6: 19, 25, 34 ); and this never
yet realized promise is added for better persuasion: "But seek ye first
the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matt.
6: 33 ). One instance, related by himself, belies his own assurance. Lazarus
died a beggar, and, besides the crumbs from the rich man's table, inherited
only the kingdom; he "was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the
rich man also died; ... And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in
torments" (Luke 16: 22, 23 ). Thus is vagrancy exalted and thrifty
respectability decried. Poverty is further encouraged as an essential to
salvation, though the Christ falls into a contradiction. The rich ruler asked:
"Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto
him ... Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor" (Luke 18:
18, 22 ). But another rich man volunteered: "Behold, Lord, the half of my
goods I give to the poor. ... And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation
come to this house" (Luke 19: 2, 8, 9 ). 'Such good works should be
publicly displayed before men, that they may see your good works (Matt. 5: 16
); though to do so is forbidden under penalty of God's reprobation: "Take
heed that ye do not your alms [Revised Version, righteousness"] before
men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in
heaven" (Matt. 6: 1 ).
Jesus spread abroad the doctrines of class
hatred and set the poor against the rich, the shiftless vagabond against the
prudent provider for his family. In the second version of his Sermon on the
Mount (this time on the plain) he preached: "Blessed be ye poor: for
your's is the kingdom of God. ... But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have
received your consolation" (Luke 6: 20, 24 ); though the Wise Man
declared: "The rich man's wealth is his strong city: the destruction of
the poor is their poverty" (Prov. 10: 15 ). Thus the Christ contrasts the
present earthly condition of his paupers and of the evil well-to-do with their
respective lots in the hereafter, and to the unlucky former class holds out the
lure of future "consolation," while here they may find solace in
pious gloating over the woeful prospects of the latter: "Blessed are ye
that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye
shall laugh" -- in another and better world after the poor victims with
their broken hearts have starved to death. It may be preferable, with Omar the
Seer, to "take the cash, and let the credit go."
The
Domestic strife and family division and
hatreds are time and again inculcated by the Master in furtherance of the
propaganda of his cult: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father,
and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and
his own life also, he cannot be my
disciple" (Luke 14: 26; Matt. 10: 37 ). Again: "I am come to send
fire on the earth; and what will 1:if it be already kindled? ... Suppose ye
that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division:
For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against
two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and
the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter
against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the
daughter in law against her mother in law" (Luke 12: 49, 51-53; cf. Matt.
10: 34, 35 )! For once the Christ and his gospels spoke true: these accursed
teachings of the Christ have borne the bitterest fruits of human woe, misery,
and destruction throughout the ages wherever his falsified gospels have been
preached and heeded. Read Lecky's History of European Morals for fearful
instances -- or recall your own observations or experiences. The rules of
proselytism, as laid down by the Christ, are all-embracing and sophistically
contradictory, as usual: "He that is not with me is against me" (Luke
11: 23 ); "He that is not against us is for us" (Luke 9: 50 ); it's
"catch as catch can."
In the exalted zealotry of propaganda the
Christ did not hesitate to enjoin the most frightful and fatal deeds of abject
submission to his superstition; be taught that, marriage was evil, celibacy a
sacred piety, and horrid self-mutilation a pious, acceptable sacrifice
"for the kingdom of heaven's sake." For those "to whom it is
given" to "receive this saying," the Christ agrees "it is
not good to marry"; and he says: "There be eunuchs, which have made
themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive
it, let him receive it" (Matt. 19: 10-12 ). Paul is credited with having
followed this infamous precept and himself put this "thorn in the
flesh," as also the childless Father Origen, and hosts of other church
fanatics. The great Pascal said: "Marriage is the lowest and most
dangerous condition of Christians." Fanaticism in the name of Jesus, for the
principles taught by Jesus, can go no further than these desperate and suicidal
precepts: "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you ...
for my sake" (Matt. 5: 11 ); "He that loseth his life for my sake
shall find it" (Matt. 10: 39 ); a fearful bid for self-destruction which
has its climax in Paul's frantic Christ- incited exhortation: "I beseech
you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service"
(Rom. 12: 1 ). Countless thousands of fanatic morons have gone to torture and
to death, their bodies living sacrifices, acceptable to the Juggernaut fetish
of Jesus the Christ.
"My friends, Be not afraid of them that
kill the body" (Luke 12: 4 ), with mock heroism the Christ cajoles others;
but as for himself, "After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he
would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him" (John 7: 1
). When the scribes and Pharisees "took up stones to cast at him. ...
Jesus hid himself" (John 8: 59 ); again, after an argument with the
people, "Jesus ... departed, and did hide himself from them" (John
12: 36 ). When Jesus heard that John had been imprisoned, "he departed
into Galilee" (Matt. 4: 12 ); when John was beheaded, he "departed
thence by ship into a desert place apart" (Matt. 14: 13 ). When the
Pharisees held a council how they might destroy him, "when Jesus knew it,
he withdrew himself from thence"; and when people followed him, he
"charged them that they should not make him known" (Matt. 12: 14-16
). At Gethsemane, in an agony of fear at his coming betrayal and death, Jesus
"fell on his face" and prayed that the cup might pass from him (Matt.
26: 39 ). After his crucifixion, his cowardly disciples who had fled and
deserted him in his dire need, were found by him huddled in a room of which
"the doors were shut ... for fear of the Jews" (John 2: 19 ). On
Calvary the dying God frantically cried: "My God, My God, why hast thou
sacrificed me?" -- a cry which "could never be wrung from the lips of
a man who saw in his own death a prearranged plan for the world's salvation,
and his own return to divine glory temporarily renounced for transient misery
on earth. The fictitious theology of a thousand years shrivels beneath the awful
anguish of that cry." [W.R. Greg, Creed of Christendom.] "Even in
those days there were those who could "point to others the steep and
thorny path to heaven, but reck not their own rede."
In his divine egoism the Christ proclaimed:
"I and my Father are one" (John 10: 20 ) here announcing at least the
partial unity of the Godhead; though this he later repudiates, and admits
"My Father is greater than I" (John 14: 28 ), thus confessing again
two distinct persons and again putting his identity with God in doubt. But
without hesitation he avows of himself: "Behold, a greater than Solomon is
here" (Matt. 12: 42 ), as he admits that he is also greater than Jonah
(Matt. 12: 41 ).
Some of the precepts of Jesus might be
regarded as very peculiar if they were emanations of the mind of an ordinary
teacher. Is poverty of spirit a blessing? Then, "Blessed are the poor in
spirit" (Matt. 5: 3 ). Resistance to wrong he taught was wrong: "Unto
him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other" (Luke
The principle is inculcated, that because the
judge may not be free from some sin or error the accused must go free; the
concrete case is the woman taken in adultery (John 8: 3-11 ). The general
adoption of this principle would free every criminal and close the courts and
jails, for judges are human and fallible. Though man cannot punish sin because
not free from sin himself, yet God, the author of all sin, is regarded as quite
just in punishing man eternally for his sins, even for the sin of doubt.
Jesus declared: "They that take the sword
shall perish with the sword" (Matt. 26: 52 ); and as if presaging the
general havoc which he had declared he had come to bring about, he straightway
commanded his disciples. "He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment,
and buy one" (Luke 22: 36 ). The sword was never out of the hand of his
apostolic church till stricken from it by force. To those who would violate
every sacred tie of life and bond of humanity the Christ speciously promised
great earthly reward: "There is no man that hath left house, or brethren,
or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake,
and the gospel's, But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses,
and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children [but not wives], and
lands" (Mark 10: 29, 30 ). This has never been known to have been made
good. To Paul, at least, the Christ made this promise in a dream: "I am
with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee", (Acts 18: 10 ); but
this is Paul's own report: "I am ... in stripes above measure, in prisons more
frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save
one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned" (2 Cor. 11: 23-25
). This shows how foolish it is to believe in dreams -- or in the promises of
Jesus the Christ!
Christ Jesus was not always as free from what
may be called dissimulation or deception as a Son of God should be -- but think
what his Father Yahveh was! At the grave of Lazarus, "Jesus lifted up his
eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that
thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said
it" (John 11: 41, 42 ). Jesus told his brethren: "Go ye up unto this
feast [of Tabernacles]: I go not up (yet) unto this feast. ... But when his
brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast" (John 7: 8, 10
). The word "yet" is not in the text, as the American revisers
pointed out; but while retaining it, the Revised Version puts into the margin:
"Many ancient authorities omit yet." After his resurrection, when he
intended to stop at Emmaus with Cleophas and his companion, "He made as
though [i.e., pretended] he would have gone further," but his companions
begged him, "and he went in to tarry with them" (Luke 24: 28, 29 ).
These are isolated instances of what Jesus
himself avows was his constant and purposeful practice -- to mislead or deceive
his hearers. Jesus spoke "unto the multitude in parables; and without a
parable spake he not unto them" (Matt. 13: 34 ); and when his disciples
asked him: "Why speakest thou unto them in parables?" (Matt. 13: 10 )
Jesus said unto them: "All these things are done in parables: That seeing
they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand;
lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven
them" (Mark 4: 11, 12 )! Can a more monstrous thing be imagined? The Son
of God who pretended to have come "to take away the sins of the
world" purposely deceiving the poor morons that he might have the pleasure
of seeing them damned!
"This is Jesus the King of the
Jews."
SECRECY ENJOINED
It is singular that the Messiah, so long
prophesied and awaited, so often proclaimed by long-distance voices from his
Father Yahveh in heaven: "This is my beloved Son ... hear ye him,"
and now making his triumphal entry into Jerusalem as the arrived Messiah and
king, should so often have denied his divine identity and enjoined silence and
secrecy about it. Time and again, as in the anguish of mortal fear, he charged
his disciples "that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the
Christ" (Matt. 16: 20; 17: 9; Mark 8: 30; et passim); and he suffered not
even his very active and efficient witnesses the devils to testify for him,
"for they knew that he was Christ" (Luke 4: 41; Mark 1: 25, 34, et
passim). Before Caiaphas and Pilate, who asked him "whether thou be the
Christ" (Matt. 26: 63 ), and "Art thou the King of the Jews?"
(Matt. 27: 11 ), he hesitated, and equivocated, and answered only: "Thou
sayest" (Matt. 27: 11 ) or "If I tell you, ye will not believe"
(Luke 22: 67 ). He allowed no one to witness his resurrection, in the dead of
the night; and when he was risen from the dead, be showed himself, equivocally,
but to one or a variously related number of private persons, never in public,
as the Son of God triumphant over death.
SUPERSTITIONS OF JESUS CHRIST
A discrediting aspect of the personality of
the proclaimed Son of Yahveh, who knew all things, even the hidden thoughts of
men, is that he believed and declared so many things, which were current
beliefs among the ignorant of his times, but are known by all school-children
to-day to be fables and superstitions, and which the all-knowing mind of a God
would always, even then, know to be impossible and untrue. Multiplied instances
abound in the four inspired biographies.
The Christ warns against all others who should
claim to be Christs, offering his own credentials: "If any man shall say
unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there, believe it not. For there shall arise
false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders;
insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect"
(Matt. 24: 23, 24 ). We all know that miracles do not happen; that, as Hume
justly said: "No testimony can prove miracles, for it is more probable
that the testimony is false than that the miracles are true." But, even
otherwise, how could "great signs and wonders" be worked, great and
deceptive miracles be wrought, by impostors in whom the power of God is not?
Signs and wonders, miracles, were the very sign-manual of the identity of Jesus
with the Christ: "for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except
God be with him" (John 3: 2 ). "Believe me for the very works'
sake" (John 14: 11 ), is the Christ's special challenge for faith to the
doubting. Yet he concedes to impostors and to devils the very same power to
work miracles which is his own special patent of divinity.
It is this same token of the authenticity of
his divinity that he sends to the doubting Baptist, who sent to inquire:
"Are thou he that should come? or look we for another?" The only answer
which Jesus returned, the only proof he deemed necessary, was a report of his
miracles: "Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and
see" -- reciting a list of the miracles he had done (Matt. 11: 4, 5 ). And
it is the same all-sufficient answer which be flung back at Herod: "Go ye,
and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils," etc. (Luke 13: 32 ); and
throughout, the signs and wonders" which he worked are the test and
authentication of the divinity of the Christ. "Except ye see signs and
wonders, ye will not believe" (John 4: 48 ), Jesus himself declared.
Yet, a thousand times, the "false
Christs" and the devils do the miracles of Yahveh, and are in this respect
his successful rivals. The Devil leads the Christ into the wilderness, and up
on a high mountain, and sets him on the pinnacle of the temple, and
"tempts" him, claiming undisputed dominion over the kingdoms of the
world (Matt. 4: 1-11 ). Jesus "cast out devils" by the legion from
disordered persons, and held argument with the devils, recognizing their
existence, intelligence, and power (Matt. 8: 28-32, passim); he enjoins his
followers to "fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in
hell" (Matt. 10: 28 ); he proclaimed that there is "everlasting fire,
prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matt. 25: 41 ); and as the badge
of their divine mission and authority, he gave to his disciples "power and
authority over all devils" (Luke 9: 1) -- and so on ad infinitum; though
God and intelligent persons know there are no devils and no hell of fire -- and
that devils and false Christs cannot work miracles.
With all the assurances of Jesus himself as to
his manifold "Signs and wonders" and with the four gospels replete
with records of his miracles, we are amazed to hear the positive words of the
Master denying that he performed or would perform any miracles at all:
"They said therefore unto him, What sign shawest thou then, that we may
see, and believe thee? what dost thou work?" (John 6: 30 ). The answer is
not here explicit, but is reported by the other biographers: "And he
sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith, Why doth this generation seek after a
sign? verily I say unto you, There shall no sign be given unto this
generation" (Mark
Scores of other superstitious legends and
fables, Jesus also constantly appeals to as living truths: Abel, Noah and the
Flood, Lot, and his wife turned to a pillar of salt, Moses and the burning
bush, Jonah swallowed by the fish -- a whole congeries of ancient fables the
Son of Yahveh takes as gospel truth which God knows never were true. Even the
Christ was infected with that "strong delusion to believe lies" sent
by his Father upon men, "that they may all be damned."
THE "SECOND COMING" OF CHRIST
The crowning disproof of the divinity, even of
the common sense, of the Christ, and a sad proof of the serious delusion which
he suffered, is the stupendous assertion which he made of his immediate Second
coming to earth in all the glory of his triumphant kingdom. He never said a
more positive and explicit thing -- incapable of being misunderstood or of
double meaning -- than this:
"Verily I say unto you, There be
some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of
man coming in his kingdom." (Matt. 16: 28; Mark 9: 1 )
"Verily I say unto you, that this
generation shall not pass, till all these things be done." (Mark
"But I tell you of a truth, there be some
standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the
So soon should the "second coming"
be that when the Twelve were sent out on their first preaching tour in little
Caiaphas, the high priest before whom Jesus
was led after his capture in the garden, solemnly appealed to him for truth:
"I adjure thee by the living God,
that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God.
"Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast
said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting
on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." (Matt.
26: 63, 64, Mark 14: 61, 62 )
And in these nineteen hundred years this
supreme prophecy of the Son of Yahveh has gone unaccomplished. No more is
needed to convict the inspired records of utter falsity and discredit, to prove
that the lowly Nazarene was no God, was no promised Messiah -- was himself a
"false Christ," who has deceived the very elect who have misplaced
faith in his Holy Word.
CHAPTER 15
MORE "HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS"
THE CLOSING SCENES OF THE DRAMA
WE have thus reviewed the salient features of
the recorded events of the birth and career of the Man of
THE LAST SUPPER
The holding and eating of a Jewish Passover
supper by thirteen poor wandering Jews, in a borrowed dining room (Matt. 26:
18, 19; Mark 14: 14, 15; Luke 22: 9-13 ), would seem to be a simple affair, to
be narrated by divinely inspired chroniclers with little effort and with fair
chances for truth. But already one inspired contradiction stares us in the
face. Was it the Passover supper or just an ordinary meal? Three of the gospel
recorders declare expressly that the Last Supper was the Passover meal; John says
that it was a supper eaten before the Passover.
According to the synoptists: "The
disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for
thee to eat the Passover? ... And the disciples did as Jesus had appointed
them; and they made ready the Passover. Now when the even was come, he sat down
with the twelve" (Matt. 26: 17, 19, 20; Mark
That one of the Twelve should betray him Jesus
announced during the Last Supper: "And as they did eat, he said, Verily I
say unto You, that one of you shall betray me" (Matt. 26: 21; Mark
THE "LORD'S SUPPER" OR EUCHARIST
Immediately after the Last Supper a ceremony
was performed by Jesus, which the synoptists declare to have been the Lord's
Supper or Eucharist, but which John asserts was the simple act of washing the
feet of the disciples. (John was the only gospel writer present.) John does not
mention the former institution, and the others do not mention the foot washing;
but both are said to have been the final act of Jesus before going out to
Gethsemane and betrayal.
During the supper and before the ceremony of
the Eucharist, Jesus passed a cup of wine to the disciples, and said: "I
will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come
(Luke 22: 18 ). But the remark, according to Matthew, was not made until after
the ceremonial of the Lord's Supper, and in connection with it, and Jesus said
that he would no more drink of the fruit of the vine "until that day when
I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom" (Matt. 26: 26-29 ). The
difference here is great: one statement is that he would drink again on earth
when the kingdom of God was come, as it was scheduled to do immediately; the
other is that he would drink it with the disciples some time in heaven. Mark
also makes the statement come after the ceremony, and Jesus was to drink either
on earth or in heaven, but quite alone; the disciples were not included in the
invitation: "until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of
God" (Mark 14: 25 ). According to two reports the cup was passed but once,
and the remark of Jesus was made at that time (Matt. 26: 26-30; Mark 14: 22-26
); the other says the cup was passed twice, first during supper, when the
remark was made, and "likewise after supper," when the Eucharist was
instituted (Luke 22: 17, 18, 20 ).
Just what this eucharistic ceremonial was and
whether it was intended as a perpetual memorial or was for that occasion only
is a question of first concern, and like all other gospel truth is sadly
confused and contradictory. If John, who was the only evangelist who attended
the Last Supper, is believed, there was no eucharistic ceremony at all; only
foot washing (John 13: 4-12 ). But according to the synoptists, Jesus took
bread and wine, blessed them, and passed them to the disciples, saying, as to
the bread: "Take, eat; this is my body" (Matt. 26: 26; Mark 14: 22 );
or, "this is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of
me" (Luke 22: 19 ). Luke's report cannot be authentic if the other two are
true. The chief tangle of inspiration is with respect to the wine. What was the
mystic purpose for which the Christ's blood was to be shed?
Jesus said, according to Matthew:
"Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood
of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins."
(Matt. 26: 27, 28 )
Jesus said, according to Mark:
"This is my blood of the new testament,
which is shed for many." (Mark 14: 24 )
Jesus said, according to Luke:
"This cup is the new testament in my
blood, which is shed for you." (Luke 22: 20 )
More notable discrepancies on a more important
tenet of Christianity there could hardly be. The blood of Jesus, symbolized by
the wine, was shed for the disciples only, "shed for you" alone, says
Luke; it was "shed for many," but for whom is not specified,
according to Mark; it was "shed for many for the remission of sins,"
according to Matthew, who is notoriously the purveyor of the amplest
inspiration, and always embellishes the reports of the others. This revelation
of the greatest of Christian doctrines, the atonement, is either falsely
ascribed by Matthew to Jesus; or Mark and Luke have ignorantly or intentionally
omitted it. The words attributed to Jesus by Luke are entirely different from
those quoted by the others, even in the first part of the sentence. Not more
than one of the three can possibly be accurate; the other two are necessarily
false.
With respect to the bread only one of the
three quotes words which are construed as establishing a permanent institution:
"Do this in remembrance of me" (Luke
John only of the Gospel recorders was an eye
and ear witness to the proceedings of the -- not Passover, but simply last meal
together. The "supper being ended" Jesus "riseth from supper,
and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself. After that
he poureth water in a bason, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe
them with the towel wherewith he was girded. ... So after he had washed their
feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down again, be said unto
them" etc. (John 13: 2, 4, 5, 12 ).
John then, without a word of the Lord's
Supper, records verbatim a long speech by Jesus (covering the remainder of
chapter 13 and all of chapters 14-17 ). Then, "when Jesus had spoken these
words, he went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a
garden, into the which he entered, and his disciples" (John 18: 1 ).
Whether, then, the "mystery of the blessed Eucharist" or simple foot
washing was there ordained is not yet unriddled.
THE BETRAYAL AND ARREST
Next comes the affecting incident of the
betrayal and capture of Jesus, by night, in the Garden of Gethsemane. Of the
posse comitatus which effected the capture, its source, its personnel, its
material. Matthew thus writes:
"And while he [Jesus] yet spake, lo,
Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and
staves, from the chief priests and elders of the people." (Matt. 26: 47 )
Mark records it thus:
"And immediately, while he yet spake,
cometh Judas, one of the twelve, and with him a great multitude with swords and
staves, from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders." (Mark 14:
43 )
Luke thus:
"And while he yet spake, behold a
multitude and he that was called Judas, one of the twelve, went before them.
... Then Jesus said unto the chief priests, and captains of the temple, and the
elders, which were come to him," etc. (Luke 22: 47, 52 )
John says:
"Judas then, having received a band of
men [Revised Version, "soldiers"] and officers from the chief priests
and Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons."
(John 18: 3 )
The discrepancies in the foregoing four
accounts of the posse are, in a narration of inspired truth, significant.
Matthew says the posse was sent by "the chief priests and elders";
Mark, by the "chief priests, and the scribes and the elders"; Luke,
that the chief priests, and captains of the temple, and the elders" went
in person with the posse; John says that it was sent by the "chief priests
and Pharisees." Matthew and Mark say that Judas took along "a great
multitude," Luke, simply "a multitude," all civilians.
John, much more precisely, says "a band
of men and officers," all soldiers (R.V.). Since this whole proceeding was
by night, it may naturally be somewhat in the dark, notwithstanding the
"lanterns and torches" of John's soldiers.
Secondly, as to what happened when Judas and
his posse arrived at the garden. Matthew says:
"Now he that betrayed him gave them a
sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast. And
forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, Hail, master; and kissed him. And Jesus
said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Then came they, and laid hands
on Jesus, and took him." (Matt. 26: 48-50 )
Mark says:
"And he that had betrayed him had given
them a token, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he; take him, and
lead him away safely. And as soon as he was come, be goeth straightway to him,
and saith, Master, master; and kissed him. And they laid their hands on him,
and took him." (Mark 14: 44-4-6 )
Luke says:
"Judas ... went before them, and drew
near unto Jesus to kiss him. But Jesus said unto him, Judas, betrayest thou the
Son of man with a kiss?" (Luke 22: 47,48 )
John relates that as the hand of soldiers
approached at some distance,
"Jesus therefore, knowing all things that
should come upon him, went forth, and said unto them, Whom seek ye? They
answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am he. And Judas
also, which betrayed him, stood with them. As soon then as he had said unto
them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to the ground. Then asked he them
again, Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I have
told you that I am he: if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way. ...
Then the band and the captain and officers of the Jews took Jesus, and bound
him." (John 18: 4-8, 12 )
The conflicts of testimony are glaring here.
Matthew and Mark are substantially agreed, declaring that Judas had prearranged
to point out Jesus to his civilian posse by kissing him; and they both say that
Judas went straightway to Jesus, hailed him "Master," and kissed him.
But Luke does not testify that Judas kissed Jesus; he says only that he
"drew near unto Jesus to kiss him"; and that Jesus, telepathically
knowing his purpose, checked him, saying: "Judas, betrayest thou me with a
kiss?" John contradicts the contradictory reports of all three of the
others in his version. Judas, instead of going "before them," as Luke
says, simply "stood with them"; and as soon as Jesus had said "I
am he," the whole company of soldiers, with Judas, terrified, "went
backward, and fell to the ground." John says the soldiers then "took
Jesus and bound him" (18: 12 ); according to Matthew (27: 2 ) and Mark
(15: 1 ) Jesus was not bound until he was sent to Pilate. No contradictions in
human language could be plainer than these.
The little incident of Peter's cutting off the
ear of one of the posse is related by Matthew thus:
"And, behold, one of them which were with
Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the
high priest's, and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again
thy sword." (Matt. 26: 51, 52 )
Mark tells it thus:
"And one of them that stood by drew a
sword, and smote a servant of the high priest, and cut off his ear. And Jesus
answered and said unto them, Are ye come out, as against a thief, with swords
and with staves to take me?" (Mark 14: 47, 48 )
Luke tells it thus:
"When they which were about him saw what
would follow [the kissing], they said unto him, Lord, shall we smite with the
sword? And one of them smote the servant of the high priest, and cut off his
right ear, And Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye thus far. And he touched his
ear, and healed him." (Luke 22: 49-51 )
John relates it thus:
"Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it,
and smote the high priest's servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant's
name was Malchus. Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath:
the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" (John 18:
10, 11 )
Little as this incident is, these four
inspired historians cannot tell just how it happened. Matthew relates that
"one of them which were with Jesus" struck, and Jesus simply said:
"Put up again thy sword." Mark speaks of the sword-play as by "a
certain one of them that stood by"; and Jesus said nothing about putting
up the sword, but said to the posse: "Are ye come out as against a
thief?" Luke tells us that "they which were about" Jesus, seeing
what was going to follow the undelivered kiss, asked permission as for a
general affray, saying: "Lord, may we smite with the sword?" and one
of them without waiting for a reply, cut off the servant's ear. Jesus, when it
was too late, answered in the negative; then Luke, the physician, puts in a
word for his profession, and tells us that Jesus performed a miracle by healing
the ear. No one else relates this, the most remarkable incident of the whole
evening. John goes into his usual detail and gives us the name of Peter as the
aggressor, says nothing about the asking permission for a general assault, and
gives the name of the wounded servant. And he reports that Jesus told Peter to
put up his sword, for he himself must take his medicine out of the cup prepared
for him. Each reader may take his choice as to how it happened or did not
happen. It is related that "then all the disciples forsook him, and
fled" (Matt. 26: 56 ).
PETER'S DENIAL OF JESUS
We shall now take up the trial of Jesus as
recorded by his four inspired reporters. I omit, of course, all reference to
Jewish or Roman law and legal practice, as the Bible account must stand or fall
on its own internal consistency. The italics, used to call attention to the
contradictions, are mine.
First, we shall consider the incident of
Peter's denial, the beginning of which precedes the trial. This takes us back a
moment for our authority. Jesus is reported to have predicted this denial of
Peter, in rebuking his vain boast of unfailing fidelity.
Matthew states the events thus:
"And when they had sung an hymn, they
went out [from the Last Supper] into the mount of Olives. ... Jesus said unto
him [Peter], Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the
cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice."
(Matt. 26: 30, 34 )
Mark relates the events thus:
"And in the evening he [Jesus] cometh
with the twelve. ... And Jesus saith unto him [Peter], Verily I say unto thee,
That this day, even in this night, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny
me thrice. ... And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane." (Mark
14: 17, 30, 32 )
Luke writes thus:
"And when the hour was come, he sat down,
and the twelve apostles with him. And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock
shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest
me. ... And he came out, and went, as he was wont, to the mount of
Olives." (Luke 22: 14, 34,, 39 )
John relates the events thus:
"And supper being ended, ... Jesus
answered him [Peter). ... Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not
crow, till thou hast denied me thrice." (John 13: 2, 38 )
Here we have more conflicting truths. Matthew
says that the accusation of Peter was made by Jesus after the Last Supper, in
the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives. Mark, Luke, and John deny
this, and assert that it occurred during the Last Supper, and that they then,
afterwards, went to the mount. Matthew, Luke, and John report Jesus as saying
that "before the cock crows" once, Peter would deny him thrice; Mark
makes him say "before the cock crows twice," Peter would make the
three denials. The reader may accept either of these cock-tales which he most
relishes.
Now, how did these prophesied denials of
Peter's come about, and what were their attendant circumstances?
Matthew relates the story thus:
"And they that had laid hold on Jesus led
him away to Caiaphas the high priest, where the scribes and the elders were
assembled. But Peter followed him afar off unto the high priest's palace, and
went in, and sat with the servants, to see the end. [The trial was proceeding
-- verses 59-68.] Now Peter sat without in the palace, [i.e., in the
courtyard]: and a damsel came unto him, saying," etc. "But he denied
before them all, saying," etc. "And when he was gone out into the
porch, another maid saw him, and said," etc. "And again he denied
with an oath. ... And after a while came unto him they that stood by, and said
to Peter." etc. "Then began he to curse and to swear, saying I know
not the man. And immediately the cock crew. And Peter remembered the word of
Jesus, which had said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me
thrice." (Matt. 26: 57, 58, 69-75 )
Mark reports the matter with important
variations:
"And they led Jesus away to the high
priest: and with him were assembled all the chief priests and the elders and
the scribes. And Peter followed him afar off, even into the palace of the high
priest: and he sat with the servants and warmed himself at the fire. [The trial
then progressed -- verses 55- 65.] And as Peter was beneath in the palace
[i.e., in the courtyard], there cometh one of the maids of the high priest, and
said," etc. "But he denied. ... And he went out into the porch; and
the cock crew. And a maid saw him again, and began to say," etc. And he
denied it again. And a little while after they that stood by said again to
Peter," etc. But he began to curse and to swear. ... And the second time
the cock crew. And Peter called to mind the word that Jesus said unto him,
Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice." (Mark 14: 53, 54,
66-72 )
Luke relates the incident, with marked
differences, as occurring on the next day before the trial:
"Then took they him [Jesus], and led him,
and brought him into the high priest's house. And Peter followed afar off. And
when they had kindled a fire in the midst of the hall, and were set down
together, Peter sat down among them. But a certain maid beheld him as he sat by
the fire, ... and said," etc. "And he denied him, saying," etc.
"And after a little while another saw him, and said, Thou art also of
them. And Peter said, Man, I am not. And about the space of one hour after
another confidently affirmed," etc. "And Peter said, Man, I know not
what thou sayest. And immediately, while he yet spake, the cock crew. And the
Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord,
how he had said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me
thrice." (Luke 22: 54-61 )
John gives a totally different report:
The soldiers "led him away to Annas
first. ... And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple: that
disciple ... went in with Jesus into the palace of the high priest. But Peter
stood at the door without. [Later the maid that kept the door let Peter in.]
Then saith the damsel that kept the door unto Peter," etc., and he denied.
The servants and officers and Peter were standing there warming themselves. The
trial, apparently before Annas, was proceeding, (18: 19-24 ). "And Simon
Peter stood and warmed himself. They said therefore unto him," etc.
"He denied it. ... One of the servants ... saith," etc. Peter then
denied again: and immediately the cock crew." (John 18: 13, 15-18, 25-27 )
The conflicts and contradictions in the
relation of this trifling incident are astonishing. It is difficult to untangle
the twisted narrative into its several warped strands. Matthew, Mark, and Luke
lay this incident of denials and cock-crowing at the house of the high priest,
Caiaphas; John lays it partly at the house of Caiaphas and partly at the house
of Annas. Matthew and Mark say that it took place during the night trial of
Jesus at the house of Caiaphas; Luke says that it occurred during the night,
but during no trial, as Jesus was simply held a prisoner in the courtyard
overnight, and his trial took place next day; John says -- well, Aristotle
himself could hardly tell what John says; it is so mixed. I pass this puzzle
till we come to the account of the trial.
To whom the denials were made, and where, is a
matter of much conflict. As to the first denial, Matthew says that Peter was
sitting without in the court, and a maid came unto him. Mark says that as Peter
was "beneath in" the court, "one of the maids" came to him.
Luke, says a certain maid saw him as he sat by the fire. John says it was the
maid who kept the door of the court and who let Peter in.
As to the second denial, Matthew says that
when Peter was gone out into the porch, another maid saw him. Mark says, when
Peter was out in the porch, the same maid as at first saw him. Luke says Peter
was still by the fire and that it was a man, Peter replying: "Man, I am
not." John says it was "they" (officers and servants).
Of the third denial, Matthew says that after a
little while "they that stood by" came. Mark says the same. Luke says
that after the space of about one hour, "another man." John says
"one of the servants."
Matthew, Luke, and John report the cock as
crawing only once, and after the third denial; Mark says that the cock crowed
twice, after the second and after the third denials. Matthew, Luke, and John
record Peter as thereupon remembering that Jesus had said to him: "Before
the cock crows [once], thou shalt deny me thrice"; Mark makes Peter remember
that Jesus had said: "Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me
thrice." Luke says that Jesus was present at the denial, and "turned,
and looked upon Peter"; the others all represent Jesus as not present.
THE TRIAL OF JESUS
This brings us to the trial of Jesus Christ.
Matthew thus relates the trial scene:
"And they that had laid hold on Jesus led
him away to Caiaphas the high priest, where the scribes and the elders were
assembled. ... Now the chief priests, and elders, and all the council, sought
false witness against Jesus, to put him to death; But found none: yea, though
many false witnesses came, yet found they none. At the last came two false
witnesses, And said, This fellow said, I am able to destroy the
Mark's account of the trial scene (Mark 14:
15: 1 ) is substantially identical with Matthew's; therefore I do not repeat
it.
Luke records the scene entirely differently.
To get the connection I shall have to repeat a few verses offered in connection
with the story of the "denial."
"But a certain maid beheld him [Peter] as
he sat by the fire, and said," etc. "And he denied," etc.
"And ... the cock crew. And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. ...
And the men that held Jesus mocked him, and smote him. And when they had
blindfolded him, they struck him on the face, and asked him, saying, Prophesy,
who is it that smote thee? And many other things blasphemously spake they
against him. And as soon as it was day the elders of the people and the chief
priests and the scribes came together, and led him into their council, saying,
Art thou the Christ? tell us. And he said unto them, If I tell you ye will not
believe. And if I also ask you, ye will not answer me, nor let me go. Hereafter
shall the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power of God. Then said they
all, Art thou then the Son of God? And he said unto them, Ye say that I am. And
they said, What need we any further witness? for we ourselves have heard of his
own mouth. And the whole multitude of them arose, and led him unto
Pilate." (Luke 22: 56-71; 23: 1 )
John gives a still different account of the
scene:
"Then the band and the captain and
officers of the Jews took Jesus, and bound him, And led him away to Annas
first; for he was father in law to Caiaphas, which was the high priest that
same year. The high priest then asked Jesus of his disciples, and of his
doctrine. Jesus answered him, I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in the
synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret
have I said nothing. Why askest thou me? ask them which heard me, what I said
unto them: behold, they know what I said. And when he had thus spoken, one of
the officers which stood by struck Jesus with the palm of his hand, saying,
Answerest thou the high priest so? Jesus answered him, If I have spoken evil,
bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me? Now Annas had sent
him bound unto Caiaphas the high priest." (John 18: 12, 13, 19-24 )
The first two evangelists, Matthew and Mark,
practically agree in their accounts of the trial: it was before Caiaphas; it
was during the night when Jesus was captured; false witnesses testified; Jesus
made statements which were considered blasphemous, and was judged worthy of
death; and on the next morning he was carried before the Roman governor,
Pilate. But Luke completely discredits the reports of Matthew and Mark. For
Luke makes it plain that there was no trial during the night; Jesus passed the
night in the courtyard with his guard and Peter; and the next morning, "as
soon as it was day," the council assembled, "and they led him into
their council." The proceedings are related with some minor differences,
of which only one need be noticed. The high priest asked Jesus: "Art thou
the Christ? ... And Jesus said, "I am" (Mark 14: 61, 62 ); but Luke
says that Jesus replied: "If I tell you, ye will not believe" (Luke
22: 67 ). John says that Jesus was first taken to Annas, at whose house some
proceedings and one of Peter's denials seem to have taken place; then
"Annas sent [Jesus] bound unto Caiaphas the high priest." Whether by
night or day does not appear.
After the proceedings before Caiaphas, Jesus
was taken to Pilate for final sentence. There are many variants in the four records
of the proceedings before Pilate, but I shall pass all except the most glaring.
Luke represents the proceedings before Pilate as held in the presence of the
accusers of Jesus: "And led him unto Pilate. And they began to accuse him.
... And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused him. ... And
Pilate ... said unto them ... behold, 1:having examined him before you, have
found no fault in this man touching those things whereof you accuse him"
(Luke 23: 1, 2, 10, 13, 14; cf. Matt. 27: 12-14; Mark 15: 1-4 ). But John
declares that the hearing before Pilate was ex parte, without witnesses or
accusers present: "Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of
judgment: and it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall,
lest they should be defiled. ... Pilate then went out unto them, and said, What
accusation bring ye against this man? ... Then Pilate entered into the judgment
hall again, and called Jesus" (John
The result of the so-called trial was, by
complete harmony of the gospels, that Pilate declared Jesus innocent -- and
sentenced him to death! "Pilate saith unto them, Take ye him, and crucify
him: for I find no fault in him" (John 19: 6 )! Somewhat odd, this, for
the highest court of the land to adjudge a man not guilty and then pronounce
the sentence of death! Such is inspired truth. Then the soldiers "stripped
[Jesus], and put on him a scarlet robe" (Matt. 27: 28 ); but John calls it
"a purple robe" (John 19: 2 ).
If this action of Pilate is denounced as
infamous, Jesus says that his Father Yahveh was the greater criminal. He said
to Pilate: "Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were
given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee [Yahveh] hath
the greater sin" (John 19: 11 )! Good for Jesus!
THE CRUCIFIXION
The immediate scene of the Crucifixion offers
several points of conflict. Let it be remembered that we now have to do with
the most stupendous series of events in all time -- if any of them ever
happened at all. The jewel of consistency should crown the inspired record of
these wonders. Amid all the miracles appealed to, to accredit the story of the
death and resurrection of a God, the seal of God's truth should blaze upon this
supreme miracle for the faith of mankind. Let us look for the miracle of truth
in these four records.
BEARING THE CROSS
Matthew (27: 32 ), Mark (15: 21 ), and Luke
(23: 26 ) say that on the way to Golgotha with Jesus, one Simon a Cyrenian was
"compelled to go with them, that he might bear his cross"; John, who
says he was there, declares (19: 17 ) that Jesus himself, bearing the cross for
himself, went forth to Golgotha.
WHEN WAS IT?
The time of the Crucifixion is much confused,
both as to the day and the hour of the day. We have seen three of the gospel
historians declare that the Last Supper was itself the Passover meal; John says
it was before the Passover; and John, the most intimate friend of Jesus, who
was with him at the foot of the cross, says that he was crucified before the
Passover, and after noon: "And it was the preparation of the Passover, and
about the sixth hour" (19: 14 ) when Jesus was delivered up to be
crucified (19: 16 ); he was taken to Golgotha (19: 17 ); and Pilate came and
wrote the inscription (19: 19 ); so that the Crucifixion took place some time
after noon, and before the Passover, "because it was the preparation"
(19: 31 ). Thus Jesus did not eat the Passover. According to the other three
accounts, the Crucifixion took place the day after the Passover; a difference
of two days.
Matthew says that the Crucifixion lasted from
noon to three o'clock: "Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over
all the land unto the ninth hour" (Matt. 27: 45 ). But Mark says: "It
was the third hour [9 a.m.], and they crucified him" (Mark 15: 25 );
though he joins Matthew in making the dying cry come at the ninth hour, or 3
p.m. (15: 34 ), as does Luke (23: 44 ); so that Jesus, according to two
recorders, hung for three hours on the cross; for six hours, according to Mark.
THE INSCRIPTION
Jesus was crucified with an inscription above
his head. With respect to this Matthew says:
"And [the soldiers who crucified Jesus)
set up over his head his accusation written, This is Jesus the King of the
Jews." (Matt. 27: 37 )
Mark records:
"And the superscription of his accusation
was written over, The King of the Jews." (Mark
Luke says:
"And a superscription also was written
over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, This is the King of the
Jews." (Luke 23: 38 )
John says:
"And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on
the cross. And the writing was, Jesus of
And John, who says he was there throughout,
adds a totally new incident:
"Then said the chief priests of the Jews
to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the
Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written I have written." (John 19: 21 )
The inscription reads four different ways,
with really vital differences of text. Luke, who did not see it, and John (19:
20 ) say that it was written in three languages, on the order of the Rosetta
Stone. Mark and Luke say that the name of Jesus was not in the inscription,
which simply read: "This is the King of the Jews"; Mark makes it even
more laconic by omitting the first two words. Matthew declares that it named
Jesus; John asserts that it gave him both name and title, "Jesus of
Nazareth, the King of the Jews." Matthew says that the soldiers who
crucified Jesus set up the inscription; Mark and Luke say simply that it
"was written," without indicating its writer; John flatly contradicts
Matthew's statement that the soldiers did it, declaring that Pilate wrote it
and put it on the cross. The colloquy about
the text between Pilate and the chief priests, recorded by John (19: 21 ), is
evidently apocryphal, as Pilate certainly was not present, and it may be
doubted that the chief priests were there either.
THE WITNESSES
It would seem to be of great importance to
know who were witnesses to that awful scene of a dying God; but the accounts
are too variant and contradictory to satisfy a just interest. All the recorders
speak of passers-by, soldiers, chief priests, scribes and elders of the Jews,
and John makes Pilate present. That no Jews were or could be present is
asserted by scholars versed in Jewish customs and tradition. This holy gentry
would not so much as enter into the judgment hall of Pilate to press their
accusations against Jesus "lest they should be defiled" (John 17: 28 );
much less would they defile their pure selves by witnessing the murder they had
procured, even if permitted to do So.
Probably only the Roman soldiery was present,
with chance passers-by and some of the pagan populace. The three synoptists
speak of "the centurion" and his remarkable testimony. A centurion
was an important officer, commander of one hundred men, a captain of a company
of soldiers. There were but four soldiers (John 19: 23 ) present, and it is
hardly likely that a company commander was sent in charge of a corporal's squad
of four men to execute two thieves and one Christ.
The friends and followers of Jesus who
witnessed the fatal scene deserve our attention more; but we can never know who
they were. John, who claims to have been on the spot, says that only
"there stood by the cross of Jesus" three Marys, "his mother,
and his mother's sister [both oddly named Mary], and Mary Magdalene" (John
19: 25 ); and that Jesus, pointing to John, said: "Woman, behold thy
son" (19: 26, 27 ). But John was not present, according to the silence of
all the other gospel truth-bearers. Matthew, who was not there, bears record of
"many women ... which followed Jesus from Galilee: ... Among which was
Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses [he does not call her the
mother, too, of Jesus] -- and the mother of Zebedee's children" (Matt. 27:
55, 56 ). Mark gives the list differently: "Among whom was Mary Magdalene,
and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome, and many other
women" (Mark 15: 40, 41 ). Both Matthew and Mark declare that this whole
troupe of women "were there beholding afar off," "looking on
from afar" -- therefore not "standing by the cross" at all, as
John says they were. And Luke too testifies that not only "the women that
followed him from Galilee" but also "all his acquaintance" with
them "stood afar off, beholding these things" (Luke 23: 49 ). How the
ladies could have seen these things from afar is not clear, for we are assured
by the Holy Ghost, through three historians of the scene, that during the whole
time that Jesus hung on the cross "from the sixth hour there was darkness
over all the land unto the ninth hour" (Matt. 27: 45; Mark 15: 33; Luke
23: 44 ); though John, who was present throughout, didn't see the darkness and
eclipse, nor any of the other wonders to be noted.
John alone of the delectable Twelve was
present at the final tragedy, according to him; all the disciples (himself
included) at
THE INCIDENTS AT THE CRUCIFIXION
What occurred at and during this transcendent
scene of the Passion of a dying God, which should be recorded by inerrant
inspiration, is peddled with the same sort of pettifogging tell- tale which
characterizes all inspired narrative.
After arriving at the place of crucifixion,
say Matthew and Mark, and before Jesus was put upon the cross, he was offered
something to drink, but what is not certain. Matthew says: "They gave him
vinegar to drink mingled with gall" (27: 34 ); Mark says: "They gave
him to drink wine mingled with myrrh" (
Two "thieves," say Matthew (27: 38 )
and Mark (15: 27 ), were crucified with Jesus; Luke says they were simply
"malefactors" (23: 32 ); John does not know what their offence was,
and to him they were merely "two other" (19: 18 ). Both of Matthew's
"thieves" joined with the chief priests, scribes, and elders in
"mocking" Jesus, and "cast the same in his teeth" (27: 44
), and neither of them repented, or was invited to paradise; and Mark agrees
that both "they that were crucified with him reviled him" (15: 32 ),
however unseemly it may be for those in the agony of death to engage in
reproaching a fellow sufferer. But that there is honor even among dying thieves
is admitted by Luke, who records that but "one of the malefactors ...
railed on him," while "the other answering rebuked" the railer
(23: 39, 40 ), and "this other" did not repent of "reviling
Jesus," for he had not reviled him; but he did say: "Lord, remember
me when thou comest into thy kingdom" (23: 42 ) -- this dying thief being
thus made to show a familiarity with the esoteric teachings of Jesus which even
his own disciples did not at the time comprehend. But John, who was at the very
foot of the cross, recorded no reviling or mocking, and the thieves, according
to him, died like gentlemen, without a word.
As tangled a bit is next related regarding the
casting of lots over the garments of the Crucified. The synoptists relate that
all the clothing was raffled: "They parted his garments, casting lots"
(Matt. 27: 35; Mark 15: 24; Luke 23: 34 ). But John, who was present, says that
the lots were cast only for the seamless coat, the other things being divided
by choice: "Then the soldiers ... took his garments, and made four parts,
to every soldier a part; and also his coat: now the coat was without seam. ...
They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lot's for
it, whose it shall be" (19: 23, 24 ); and John puts into the mouth of the
Roman soldiers ancient Davidic complaints as pretended Hebrew prophecy being
fulfilled by themselves -- "... whose it shall be: that the scripture
might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my
vesture did they cast lots. These things therefore the soldiers did" (19:
24 ).
Matthew records that "about the ninth
hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?"
(27: 46 ), these Hebrew words being rendered as meaning: "My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me?" Mark quotes the same expiring cry, but makes
the first two words the Aramaic "Eloi, eloi" (15: 34 ); though
neither Luke nor John records them in either form. But sabachthani means, not
"forsaken me," but sacrificed me. The words are quoted from one of
the Psalms (22: 1 ), and it seems strange that one dying in the agony of the
cross should for his dying words quote ancient poetry. However, the quotation
leads into other oddities of inspiration. Matthew says that "some of them
that stood there," hearing the words, said, "This man calleth for
Elias" (27: 47 ); one of them ran and got a vinegar-soaked sponge
"and gave him to drink. The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias
will come to save him" (27: 48, 49 ). But, according to Mark; it was the
same man who gave the vinegar who made the remark: "And one ran and filled
a sponge ... and gave him to drink, saying, Let alone; let us see whether Elias
will come to take him down" (15: 36 ). This despairing cry, "My God,
why hast thou forsaken [sacrificed] me?" at the hour of death, when the
oft-proclaimed Kingdom of David, or the Messianic program for the Kingdom of
God, seemed utterly collapsed, proves of itself that the dying Christ was
conscious that he was not God, but a poor, disillusioned dying man, forsaken,
sacrificed, by Yahveh, God of Israel.
It is odd that anyone, Jew or gentile, should
have mistaken the Hebrew word eli ("my God") for a call for Elijah,
of which Elias is the Greek form. As pronounced by Jesus, the word sounded
'lay-lee"; the name of Elijah in Hebrew is pronounced "eh-lee-yah-
hoo" (meaning "Yahveh is God"). The two words could not have
been mistaken by the Jews, and to the pagan gentiles they would have been
meaningless; they knew nothing about Elijah. Jews hearing it would hardly have
mistaken the words of the Psalm 22 for a cry to the precursor of the Messianic
kingdom -- a mistake upon which their raillery is made to depend.
One of the extraordinary episodes, related by
John only, is that after Jesus "was dead already" (
THE LAST WORDS
Matthew and Mark relate not a word said by
Jesus on the cross except the expiring cry at the ninth hour, "Eli, Eli,
lama sabachthani" (a quotation from David; Ps. 22: 1 ), meaning "My
God, my God, why hast thou sacrificed me?" Luke (23: 43 ) tells of a
single remark to one of the thieves, "To-day shalt thou be with me in
paradise" (but Jesus, after his death, went, not to paradise, but to hell;
Acts 2: 31; 1 Pet. 3: 19; cf. the Apostles' Creed); and then, at the ninth
hour, the expiring cry, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit"
(23: 46 ). John relates only one remark by Jesus to his mother, concerning
John, "Woman, behold thy son!" and one to the disciple, "Behold
thy mother!" and "I thirst" (19: 26-28 ). At the end Jesus
merely said: "It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the
ghost" (19: 30 ), without either of the expiring cries. Surely this is
unsatisfactory for such a scene.
THE WONDERS AT DEATH
Wonderful miracles attended the death of a God
on a cross, as related by one or another of the reporters.
Matthew (27: 45 ), Mark (15: 33 ), and Luke
(23: 44 ) say that "from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the
land unto the ninth hour," when, with or without the expiring cry, Jesus,
"gave up the ghost." But John, who was there, and saw, and
"saith true, that ye might believe," did not see the darkness, nor
other wonderful phenomena. Matthew gives a whole catalogue of wonders, which is
found in no other history of that period:
"And, behold, the veil of the temple was
rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the
rocks rent; And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which
slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into
the holy city, and appeared unto many." (Matt. 27: 51-53 )
How there could have been "saints"
already dead and buried ages before the Holy Church set up its saint-mill is
not clear; and what they did between the "ninth hour," when they
"arose," and three (or one and a half) days later, when they
"came out of their graves after his resurrection," is not revealed.
Maybe, as Ingersoll suggests, "they were polite enough to sit in their
open graves and wait for Christ to rise first." But Mark does not credit
these ghosts, nor the earthquake, any more than I do, for he simply says (15:
38 ) the "veil of the temple was rent in twain," which is also all
that Luke says (23: 45 ); and John, who alone was there to see, discredits
every word of the three others, for he says nothing of all these wonders.
These inspired writers are also in hopeless
conflict as to what the Roman centurion said when Jesus "gave up the
ghost." Matthew and Mark say that, when those present "saw the
earthquake," the centurion said: "Truly this was the Son of God"
-- thus familiar with the Jewish Messianic doctrine and confessing the
Christian claim that Jesus was the Messiah! But Luke is not so ambitious for a
confession of Christian faith from the pagan Roman, and declares that he simply
said: "Certainly this was a righteous man." John, at the foot of the
cross, did not hear any remark from the centurion, or did not record it.
THE BURIAL SCENE
We may bow with such reverence as the palpable
sham of the whole affair permits while we look for a moment upon the burial of
a crucified and dead God.
Matthew records that when even was come, a
rich disciple of Jesus, one Joseph of Arimathea, "went to Pilate, and
begged the body of Jesus" (27: 58 ). Mark tells how Joseph went about the
request; he "went in boldly unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus (
Joseph then, all alone, says Matthew,
"rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed"
(27: 60 ), leaving two Marys "sitting over against the sepulchre"
(27: 61; Mark 15: 46, 47 ). But according to Luke, Joseph, though alone, rolled
no stone against the door, but simply laid the body in (23: 53 ) and went away,
and he left no women there watching. For, after Joseph was gone away, "the
women ... followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was
laid" (23: 55 ), showing there was no stone closing the sepulchre, which
is further proved by the statement that the women "returned and prepared
spices and ointments" (23: 56 ) to anoint or embalm the body. There was no
embalmment, according to Matthew and Mark, as we have seen; and Luke's women
saw none, for they viewed the body and went away to prepare to embalm it. But
John avers that the body of Jesus was embalmed before burial, by Joseph and
Nicodemus, and in very exuberant superfluity. For Nicodemus brought along
"a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight" (19: 39
) -- enough to embalm an elephant. "Then took they the body of Jesus, and
wound it in linen clothes with the spices as the manner of the Jews is to
bury" (19: 40 ). Then they buried it, but are not recorded to have rolled
any stone before the sepulchre, though all four evangelists speak of the
stone's being rolled away on the morning of the resurrection.
The women who, Luke says, came up after Joseph
had left, "saw how his body was laid" in the open sepulchre; they
then returned home "and prepared spices and ointments" to embalm the
body, and then they "rested the sabbath day" (Luke 23: 56 ); thus
they had obtained and prepared the materials before the sabbath. But Mark has
it otherwise, that "when the sabbath was past," the women "had
bought" (the Revised Version honestly reads "bought") the
materials "that they might come and anoint him" (Mark 16: 1 ); thus
not buying the materials until after the sabbath.
Matthew, the most incorrigible wonder-monger
of them all, is the only one to record an episode which must be noticed, as it
is one of his most palpable fabrications. According to Matthew, Jesus was
crucified and buried on the "day of preparation" for the sabbath,
that is, on Friday afternoon. Then he begins to entangle himself:
"Now the next day, that followed the day
of the preparation [that is, on the sabbath day], the chief priests and
Pharisees came together unto Pilate [the most punctilious of the Jews going on
their holy day to their pagan enemy, Pilate, to attend to business in utter
defiance of their holy law], Saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said,
while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again" (Matt. 27: 62,
63 ) -- showing the priests to be more familiar with the resurrection doctrine
of Jesus than his own disciples, "For as yet they knew not the scripture,
that he must rise again from the dead" (John, 2, 9 ). And the sanhedrim
visitors proceeded: "Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure
until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and
say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be
worse than the first" (Matt. 27: 64 ) -- an admission that they had erred
in their accusations and in procuring the death of "this deceiver."
In reply, "Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as
sure as ye can. So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone,
and setting a watch" (27: 65, 66 ); these rigorous sticklers for the law
forbidding work on the sabbath here violating it by undertaking a big job of
masonry.
This story is evidently written in with a
purpose, that expressed by the Jews, of anticipating the claim of false
resurrection, and for the further purpose of lending greater credibility to the
ensuing story of the resurrection.
Immediately following, Matthew begins the
scene for which he has thus set the stage. "In the end of the sabbath
[that is, Saturday at sundown, or as the verse erroneously continues] as it
began to dawn toward the first day of the week [therefore Sunday morning], came
[the two Marys] to see the sepulchre. And, behold, there was a great
earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and
rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. ... And the angel
answered and said unto the women ... He is not here: for he has risen, as he
said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay" (28: 1, 2, 5, 6 ).
Here was the grave sealed, and an armed Roman
guard standing sentinel before it; the angel descended from heaven before the
eyes of soldiers and women, and in their presence, breaking the seal, rolled
away the stone; and, lo! "He is not here: for he has risen."
When and how did the risen Lord rise and with
his physical body get out of the grave? It was sealed and guarded by Roman
soldiers, and when opened before witnesses, it was empty. Matthew is caught in
his own trap; his attempt to create the air of credibility results in a dilemma
of total incredibility. Either the body of Jesus Christ was never put into that
grave -- or it was "stolen away" before the grave was sealed and the
sentinels posted. Which? Jesus was put into the grave Friday about sunset; the
sepulchre was not sealed and the armed watch set until some time "the next
day that followed" (Matt. 27: 62, 66 ). Was Jesus simply in a swoon from
those three hours on the cross? Or was he really dead, and put into the tomb by
his friend and disciple Joseph, Friday evening? and did "his disciples
come by night [that Friday night] and steal him away" before the watch was
set on the sabbath, and then "say unto the people, He is risen from the
dead," just as the chief priests and Pharisees suspected?
Matthew pursues his phantom. He relates that
when the women and angel left the sepulchre, "Some of the watch came into
the city" and related the affair to the chief priests; the latter summoned
the council (sanhedrim) and talked the problem over; then "they gave large
money unto the soldiers, Saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole
him away while we slept. And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will
persuade him, and secure you. So they took the money, and did as they were
taught" (Matt. 28: 11-15 ). What could be more preposterous? Soldiers
posted for three days leaving their posts before their time was up -- a capital
offence; then taking a bribe to admit that they slept on post -- for which
summary death was the unescapable penalty; then learning that the seal was
broken and the great stone rolled away right under their noses (whether asleep
or not, the commotion would have waked them); then, most improbable of all,
lyingly confessing and trusting to these Jewish murderers of the Christ to
"persuade" Pilate, who hated them, to "be easy" on the
recreant soldiers of the guard who failed in the single purpose of their
posting. Inspiration surely is childish at times.
THE RESURRECTION
Jesus was buried Friday evening; the Jewish
sabbath, our Saturday, passed, and the next morning, lo, "He is risen from
the dead"! Jesus was thus in the grave, if at all, two nights and one day
at most, discrediting his own prophecy in which he appealed to the similitude
of poor old Jonah: "For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the
whale's belly [so it was a whale after all, not simply a "great
fish"]; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the
heart of the earth" (Matt. 12: 40 ). Jonah was a poor prototype for a God,
and the prophecy of three days and three nights was not fulfilled.
The resurrection of Jesus took place in the
dead of night; no human being was eyewitness to it. Only an empty borrowed
grave -- and some immense contradictions -- vouch for it. Matthew records the
time and persons thus:
"In the end of the sabbath, as it began
to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other
Mary to see the sepulchre." (Matt. 28: 1 )
Mark states thus:
"And when the sabbath was past, Mary
Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that
they might come and anoint him. And very early in the morning the first day of
the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun." (Mark
16: 1, 2 )
Luke thus:
"Now upon the first day of the week, very
early in the morning, they [i.e., the women which came with him from Galilee;
23: 55] came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared,
and certain others with them." (Luke 24: 1 )
John's record is this:
"The first day of the week cometh Mary
Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre." (John 2: 1 )
The conflicts here are very apparent, upon
seemingly trifling points; but nothing is trifling concerning inspired truths
of the event surpassing everything else in history, human or divine. The time
varies: Matthew, "as it began to dawn toward the day"; Mark,
"very early in the morning at the rising of the sun"; Luke,
"very early in the morning"; John, "when it was yet dark."
Now, it could not be sunrise and dark at the same time.
The writer of the Gospel According to Matthew
was evidently not a Jew. He says that the women went to the sepulchre "in
the end of the sabbath" and "as it began to dawn toward the first day
of the week" (28: 1 ), and they found that Jesus had already risen. If
this be true, then the resurrection took place, not on "the first day of
the week," as Mark asserts (16: 9 ), but on the last day of the week, the
sabbath. The Jewish day ended, and another began, at sunset, a method of
computation of which no Jew has ever been ignorant "even unto this
day." No sabbath with the Jews ever ended "as it began to dawn
toward" the first day of the week; the sabbath ended at the previous
sunset. The writers both of Matthew and of Mark evidently supposed that the
Jewish day began at dawn or sunrise; but the "first day of the week"
and every other began in the evening, at sunset of the preceding day. The night
preceding the morning visit to the tomb belonged, not to the seventh day, but
to the first.
The conflict continues as to the persons who
came, at sunrise or by dark: Matthew, two persons, "Mary Magdalene and the
other Mary"; Mark, three persons, "Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother
of James, and Salome"; Luke, a number of persons, "the women ...
which came with him from Galilee, ... and certain others with them"; John,
one person, "Mary Magdalene," alone; John says nothing about spices
and anointing; and it may be wondered how they could expect to anoint a body
already buried three days, sealed in a grave with a great stone before the
door, and with an armed Roman guard specially posted to prevent tampering.
Now we shall see if we can disentangle what
happened when one, two, three, or a number of persons came to the sepulchre at
sunrise, or by dark:
Matthew asserts that this is what happened:
"And, behold, there was a great
earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and
rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like
lightning, and his raiment white as snow: And for fear of him the keepers did
shake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women,
... go quickly, and tell his disciples." (Matt. 28: 2-7 )
Mark asserts that this happened:
"And when they looked, they saw that the
stone was rolled away: for it was very great. And entering into the sepulchre,
they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white
garment; and they were affrighted." (Mark 16: 4, 5 )
Luke asserts that this happened:
"And they found the stone rolled away
from the sepulchre. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord
Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two
men stood by them in shining garments." (Luke 24: 2-4 )
John bears true record that these totally
different and quite impossible things happened:
"The first day of the week cometh Mary
Magdalene ... unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the
sepulchre. Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other
disciple [John], whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away
the Lord out of the sepulchre. ... Peter therefore went forth, and that other
disciple, and came to the sepulchre [John arriving first]. And he stooping
down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in. Then
cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the
linen clothes lie. ... Then went in also that other disciple, and he saw, and
believed. For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from
the dead. Then the disciples went away again unto their own home. But Mary
[Magdalene] stood without ... weeping: and ... stooped down, and looked into
the sepulchre, And seeth two angels in white, sitting, the one at the head, and
the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain." (John 2: 1-12 )
The contradictions here are very glaring, and
are of the highest importance. Matthew avers that, after the two Marys arrived
at the sepulchre, a lightning-faced angel descended before their eyes,
accompanied by an earthquake, and rolled away the stone and sat on it outside
the sepulchre. This second "great earthquake," which none of the
others saw or felt or mention, leaves the armed Roman guard stretched out like
dead men; the angel speaks to the scared women; neither of Matthew's two women
enters the sepulchre; but the angel announces the resurrection and sends them
away to tell the news. Mark's three women see that the stone is already rolled
away, and they enter into the sepulchre and find one young man sitting on the
right side. Luke's whole trompe of women find the stone removed, and they all
enter into the sepulchre, and find two men standing by. John, who was there
himself after Mary Magdalene called him, states that Mary Magdalene went alone
to the sepulchre, and found the stone taken away; but no angel of Yahveh, nor
one young man sitting, nor two men standing by are mentioned. Mary Magdalene
calls Peter and John, and they find the sepulchre empty except for the
grave-clothes. When Peter and John had found nothing and gone home, then the
Magdalene looked in and saw two angels, one at each end of the place where the
body had been. But none of these saw a guard of keepers scared by a great
earthquake. Mark (16: 5 ) and Luke (24: 5 ) say that it was the women who were
affrighted; Mark says that "they went out quickly, and fled" (16: 8
); according to Luke, they "bowed down their faces to the earth" (24:
5 ).
One of the most remarkable misstatements is
that of John (2: 9 ): "For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he
must rise again from the dead." This denies the most insistent teaching of
Jesus throughout his career of preaching, and contradicts numerous explicit
declarations of his coming resurrection made to these same disciples. "And
Jesus going up to Jerusalem took the twelve disciples apart in the way, and
said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be
betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn
him to death, And shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge,
and to crucify him: and the third day he shall rise again" (Matt. 2:
17-19; cf. Mark 8: 31; 9: 31; 10: 34; Luke 18: 31-33; 24: 46 ). Moreover,
John's statement is a gross anachronism; there could not have been any
scripture about the resurrection; there was only the oral teaching of Jesus
within the few months of his nomadic association with his disciples. The
reference to "scripture" betrays the fact that the Gospel According
to John was written many years later by some forger who probably had Mark's book
of Christ- tales before him.
BREAKING THE RESURRECTION NEWS
The happenings immediately after the arrival
at the sepulchre of the one, two, or three women, or the troupe of women, and
their finding an angel sitting outside on the stone, or one young man sittings
or two men standing by, or none of these at all, are thus related by the four
inspired recorders:
Matthew tells this story, abbreviated but
exact:
"The angel ... said unto the women, Fear
not ye: ... for he is risen, as he said. ... Go quickly, and tell his disciples
that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee;
there shall ye see him. ... And they departed quickly, and did run to bring his
disciples word." (Matt. 28: 5-8 )
Mark abbreviated but exact, tells this story:
the young men sitting on the right side said:
"Be not affrighted. ... He is risen. ...
But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into
Galilee: there shall ye see him. ... And they went out quickly, and fled; ...
neither said any thing to any man; for they were afraid." (Mark 16: 6-8 )
Luke abbreviated but exact, tells a different
story thus: the two men standing by said to the several women, who were
"Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women
that were with them" (24: 10 ):
"Why seek ye the living among the dead?
He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you. ... And they
remembered, ... And returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things unto
the eleven, and to all the rest. ... Then arose Peter, and ran unto the
sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves,
and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass." (Luke
24: 5-12 )
John, abbreviated but exact, tells a very
different story: Peter and John, as above related, ran together to the sepulchre
after Mary Magdalene had told them, and found the linen clothes, and both went
home. Then Mary went into the sepulchre, and the two angels asked her:
"Woman, why weepest thou?" (John 2: 13 ) The first words of greeting
are differently recorded. Matthew's angel announces the resurrection as he sits
outside on the stone, and sends the two women to tell the disciples, adding
that Jesus had gone ahead into Galilee, where he would see them; and the women
ran to bring the disciples word. Mark has his young man, sitting inside, make
the announcement, and direct the three women to go tell the disciples; but
being afraid they told no man. Luke says his two men, standing by, told the
troupe of women that Jesus was risen, and they went, without being instructed
and told all the disciples; and Peter alone went and looked in, did not enter
the sepulchre, and went away wondering. John says that Mary Magdalene alone
went to the sepulchre, found it empty and saw no one, and then went and told
him and Peter, and both went running, looked in, entered, and found only the
linen clothes and saw no one, and went home. Then it was that Mary Magdalene a
second time looked in, and saw two angels, who spoke to her, asking what she
sought. But they did not announce the resurrection, for the reason which will
next appear.
POST-RESURRECTION APPEARANCES OF JESUS
This brings us to the appearances of the Lord
after his resurrection to his disciples and other acquaintances.
THE FIRST APPEARANCE
Matthew, after stating that "Mary Magdalene
and the other Mary" left the sepulchre at the behest of the angel to go to
tell the disciples that Jesus had gone to
"And as they went to tell his disciples,
behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the
feet, and worshipped him. Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my
brethren that they go into
Mark, after telling how "Mary Magdalene,
and Mary the mother of James, and Salome" had "fled from the
sepulchre," and told no one, "for they were afraid," gives this
account:
"Now when Jesus was risen early the first
day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene. ... And she went and told
them that had been with him, as they mourned and wept. And they ... believed
not." (Mark 16: 9-11 )
Luke, after relating how "Mary Magdalene,
and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with
them" had returned from the sepulchre and told all these things to the
eleven and to all the rest, and how Peter had then run to the sepulchre alone
and seen only the grave-clothes laid by, relates the first appearance very
differently, thus:
"And, behold, two of them [disciples]
went that same day to a village called Emmaus. ... And they talked together of
all these things which had happened. And it came to pass, that, while they
communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. ...
Then he said unto them, O fools," etc. "And he went in to tarry with
them. ... And he hid from their sight." (Luke 24: 13-15, 25, 29, 31 )
John, after telling of Mary Magdalene's going
alone to the sepulchre, and finding the body gone but seeing no one, and of her
telling Peter and John, who went and found nothing but the grave- clothes, and
saw no one and returned home, and of Mary's seeing two angels sitting where the
body had lain, and their asking her, "Woman, why weepest thou?" then
declares:
"And when she had thus said, she turned
herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. ... Jesus
saith unto her, Touch me not. ... Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples
that she had seen the Lord." (John 2: 14, 17, 18 )
Thus we have the four conflicting accounts.
Matthew says that Jesus first appeared to the two women as they went to tell
the disciples, and they at once recognized him; Mark says that he first
appeared to one woman, Mary Magdalene, early the first day; Luke says that
Jesus first appeared to the two disciples as they went to Emmaus; John says
that Jesus first appeared to Mary Magdalene by the sepulchre, as she turned
from speaking with the two angels, and that she did not recognize him. And she
said that Jesus forbade her to touch him, "for I am not yet
ascended"; Matthew says that his two Marys "came and held him by the
feet."
THE SECOND APPEARANCE
The second appearance is as diversely
narrated. Matthew, after saying that Jesus had told the two Marys to tell his
disciples to meet him in Galilee, relates the second appearance was thus:
"Then the eleven disciples went away into
Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. ... And Jesus came and
spake unto them, saying, ... And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end
of the world. Amen." (Matt. 28: 16, 18, 20 )
Mark, after telling how Jesus "appeared
first to Mary Magdalene," on the first day, tells of the second appearance
thus:
"After that he appeared in another form
unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country." (Mark 16: 12
)
Luke, after relating how Jesus first appeared
to the two on their way to Emmaus, and how he went with them, and took supper
with them, says:
"And they rose up the same hour, and
returned to
John, after relating how Jesus had first
appeared early on the resurrection day to Mary Magdalene alone at the
sepulchre, says of the second appearance:
"Then the same day at evening, being the
first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were
assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in their midst, and saith
unto them, Peace be unto you. ... Then were the disciples glad when they saw
the Lord." (John 2: 19, 20 )
The contradictions as to the second appearance
are obvious. Matthew says that it was to the Eleven on a mountain in Galilee,
"where Jesus had appointed them." But neither Jesus nor the Eleven
went into
THIRD APPEARANCE
There were other appearances, not recorded by
all the gospel historians, the accounts of which are equally conflicting.
Matthew relates only the two appearances already credited to him. Mark, after
telling of the second appearance, to the two walking in the country, tells of a
third:
"Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as
they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief." (Mark 16: 14 )
Luke is satisfied with his two, which differ
entirely from Matthew's two, as we have seen. John, after his account of the
second appearance, to the disciples in the closed room, on which occasion he
says that Thomas Didymus was not present, and after stating that Thomas, when
he heard about it, would not believe, then tells of a third appearance, at
which Thomas was convinced:
"And after eight days again his disciples
were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and
stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you." (John 2: 26 )
Thus we see that Matthew and Luke relate only
two appearances, and, if we believe Luke, there were no more; Mark and John
relate three. All the accounts differ about time, place, persons, and other
circumstances; each account renders impossible the others.
FOURTH APPEARANCE
John relates a fourth appearance, which he
calls the third, to the disciples:
"After these things Jesus shewed himself
again to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias; and on this wise shewed he
himself. ... This is now the third time that Jesus shewed himself to his
disciples, after that he was risen from the dead." (John 21: 1, 14 )
On this occasion the disciples were fishing,
and had caught nothing. Jesus told them to throw their net on the other side of
the boat, and they landed 153 "great fishes"; "and for all there
were so many, yet was not the net broken" (21: 11 ). When they landed,
they saw a fire of coals, with fish already broiling thereon, with bread, and they
all had breakfast alfresco.
SUNDAY OTHER APPEARANCES
This would seem to complete the very
contradictory relations of the appearances of the Crucified after the
resurrection. But the end is not yet; other witnesses say there were at least
forty, and perhaps more, appearances. We call the anonymous author of the Acts
of the Apostles, reputed to be Luke, who has already, and quite differently,
testified in his gospel. In Acts 1: 1, 2, this witness now testifies that
Jesus, before "the day in which he was taken up," gave commandments
to the apostles,
"To whom also he shewed himself alive,
being seen of them forty days." (Acts 1: 3 )
There would be, then, at least forty several
appearances to the apostles, on forty several days after the resurrection.
But the chronicler of the Acts quotes Peter
'not only as throwing doubt on the means of Jesus' death, asserting that he was
"hanged on a tree" (Acts 10: 39 ), but further saying:
"Him God raised up the third day, and
shewed him openly; Not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of
God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the
dead." (Acts 10: 40, 41 )
This would seem to indicate only one
appearance, to the Eleven only; and it discounts the repeated appearances to
the one, two, or many women. It limits the appearance to the little apostolic
band, by declaring that Jesus showed himself "not to all the people."
One would think that the sole proof of so tremendous an issue as the
resurrection of a God from the death of a man would not be left to a crew of
deserting cowards and proved liars, but that the risen God would at once have
shown himself to Pilate, to the sanhedrim, "to all the people," as
openly at least as the dead saints who "came out of their graves after his
resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many" (Matt.
27: 53 ); though, it is true, we have only Matthew's word for this.
The inspired historian of Acts a little later
quotes Paul on the subject, and in quite different tenor:
"But God raised him up from the dead: And
he was seen many days of them which came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem,
who are his witnesses unto the people." (Acts 13: 30, 31 )
Thus for many days, and to a whole rabble of
Galilean peasants the Conqueror of Death paraded himself in private; but no
single intelligent person, chief priest of the Jews, Roman ruler of Jerusalem,
or official historian of the province, was advised of it, or given an
opportunity to make a credible record of the greatest wonder of the world. What
negligence! Instead of fishermen's tales of this transcendent event we should
have accredited official history.
But with the lapse of time wonders grow, and
Paul writing to the Corinthians, lately pagans, adds prodigiously to the throng
of witnesses for the verity of his risen Lord. After telling of the death and
burial of the Christ, he adds:
"He rose again the third day according to
the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that,
he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once. ... After that he was seen
of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, as
of one born out of due time." (1 Cor. 15: 4-8 )
This is a most extraordinary rigmarole of
falsities and impossibilities -- if there is a word of truth in the four gospels;
for it contradicts even all the gospel contradictions on the subject. Paul
begins with a blunder: Jesus rose on the third day "according to the
scriptures." There were no scriptures of the New Testament at that time;
the gospels were not written until some fifty or one hundred and fifty years
later, and were not in existence when the Epistles of Paul and the others were
written. The Old Testament never once predicts or mentions the resurrection.
Paul next says that the first appearance of
Jesus after his resurrection was to Peter (Cephas). This contradicts flatly
every gospel recorder, every one of whom declares, though diversely, that the
first appearance was to Mary Magdalene, alone or with other women. Next Paul
says that Jesus was "seen ... of the Twelve." But there were no
Twelve at the time; Judas had deserted and was dead, and his successor was not
chosen until some time after the "ascension," when one Matthias was
elected (Acts 1: 23-26 ). Paul evidently knew nothing about Judas and his
betrayal of the Christ. After that, declares Paul, Jesus was seen by over five
hundred witnesses at once. This general appearance is not only entirely unknown
to the evangelists, but contradicts them all, particularly Peter's declaration
that Jesus appeared only "unto us who did eat and drink with him after he
rose from the dead" (Acts 10: 41 ); therefore to the Eleven only. In the
days of Jesus there could have been no "five hundred brethren";
shortly after the ascension, when all the "brethren" were gathered to
hear Peter, it is recorded that "the number of the names together were
about one hundred and twenty" (Acts 1: 15 ); and this number is considered
exaggerated.
James, own brother of Jesus, nowhere makes
claim to have seen him after the resurrection; and only Paul vouches for his
own peculiar vision, "as of one born out of due time." Both the last-
cited witnesses contradict the contradictory histories of the four gospel
writers, quoted above, and leave the whole matter of post- mortem and pre-ascension
appearances much more confused and doubtful than even the gospels leave it. Not
only are all these alleged appearances contradictory and mutually destructive,
and thus evident fabricated; they also destroy the possibility of the truth of
the contradictorily related, fabled ascension.
THE ASCENSION
Matthew, the most prolific wonder-teller, knew
nothing of an "ascension", and there was none if we stop with him,
for he does not mention it. On the contrary, in the last verse of his gospel
Jesus assures his hearers that he was going to stay with them -- "I am
with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen" (Matt. 28: 20 ).
Mark, after relating the third appearance, to
the Eleven as they sat at meat, evidently in a room in a house, declares:
"So then after the Lord had spoken unto
them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. And
they went forth, and preached." (Mark
Luke, after relating the second and last
appearance, to the Eleven in Jerusalem, when Jesus ate the broiled fish and
honey- comb, says:
"And he led them out as far as to
Bethany, and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass,
while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into
heaven." (Luke 24: 50, 51 )
John, like Matthew, knows nothing, or says
nothing, of an ascension.
We have recourse now to our new and fifth
witness, the author of the Acts of the Apostles. After asserting that Jesus
remained on earth with the apostles and was "seen of them forty days,"
"being assembled together with them" on the Mount of Olives, speaking
with them, the writer says:
"And when he had spoken these things,
while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their
sight. ... Then returned they unto Jerusalem from the mount called
Olivet." (Acts 1: 9, 12 )
The evidence for the ascension is quite as
conflicting, both as to time and place, as all the rest which we have examined.
Matthew and John record no ascension at all. The resurrection is laid by all on
the first day of the week. As to the time of the ascension, Mark is indefinite;
he makes the first appearance of Jesus on the same first day; and says and
"after that" he made the second appearance, and "afterward"
the third. This third appearance was indoors, at a meal-time, with the Eleven,
and probably in Jerusalem, their headquarters; and then and there "the
Lord was received up," right through the roof of the house.
Luke, in his gospel, lays the time of the
resurrection day, immediately after the second and last appearance, at a meal
with the eleven in Jerusalem, and asserts that, when the meal was ended, Jesus
led them out as far as Bethany, and there "was separated from them and
carried up into heaven," from the open country side. But in the Acts Luke
tells a different story: he explicitly says that the time was after forty days
and at least forty appearances, and that the place was "the mount called
Olivet." As stated, John does not record any ascension; but he relates the
second appearance of Jesus, to the eleven on the evening of the resurrection
day, and says that "after eight days" Jesus again appeared to them
when Thomas Didymus was also present; so that, according to John, the
ascension, if there was one, must have been at least eight days after the resurrection;
and longer, for John records that "after these things Jesus shewed himself
again to his disciples at the sea of Tiberias," on the occasion of the
miraculous fishing. And the ascension could not have occurred far forty days
after the resurrection, if Peter is believed; for he says that Jesus was
"seen of them forty days" (Acts 1: 3 ). This destroys every gospel
tale of the ascension.
NOBODY BELIEVED THE "IDLE TALES"
In concluding our review, we may pause for a
moment and satisfy a natural curiosity, as well as adduce important evidence,
by inquiring what effect all these "miracles and wonders and signs"
had upon the loyal disciples and close associates of Jesus. They were with him
throughout his career, and Jesus said to them: "Ye are witnesses of these
things." Jesus also gave them the fair and gentle admonition, "He
that believeth not shall be damned" (Mark 16: 16 ). This inquiry affords
pertinent evidence for one who, twenty centuries after -- when "seeing is
believing" -- not having seen these things himself, and having them only
on the credit of the four inspired biographies and the Acts, may be so bold as
not to believe them.
Matthew guards a discreet silence, although be
says (28: 17 ) that when Jesus met his disciples in
Mark, after saying that Jesus first appeared
to Mary Magdalene, who told the others, says:
"And they, when they had heard that he
was alive, and had been seen of her, believed not. After that he appeared in
another form unto two of them, And they went and told it unto the residue;
neither believed they them." (Mark 16: 11-13 )
Luke, after relating that his group of women
returned from the sepulchre and told the apostles of the resurrection, says:
"And their words seemed to them as idle
tales, and they believed them not." (Luke, 24: 11 )
John quotes Jesus as saying: "Ye also
have seen me, and believe not"; and John tells the story of "doubting
Thomas," who said: "Show me, or I will not believe."
A PROPHET WITHOUT HONOR
A halo of pathos surrounds, for credulous
devotees of the Christ, his plaintive words, which have become proverbial:
"A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own
house" (Matt. 13: 57; Mark 6: 4; Luke 4: 24; John 4: 44 ).
Even the little episode of the utterance of
this just reproach cannot be related by the truth-inspired gospel biographers
without contradictions which entirely destroy its force and discredit its
authenticity. The three synoptists say that Jesus uttered the rebuke to the
Galileans because of their rejection of him in his home country; John says that
it was directed at the Judeans because they rejected him, and that the
Galileans accepted him. Jesus and the Twelve began the first preaching tour in
John reverses the situation. According to him,
Jesus "left
The synoptists thus say that Jesus was without
honor in
Thus Christendom's Jewish prophet is stripped
of honor, not only in "his own country," which honored him not, but
in the credulous Christian world, which has dishonored itself by believing --
and by murdering and martyring millions who would not believe -- these
childish, contradictory tales of the Christ.
This summary review of the reputed life and
acts of Jesus of Nazareth, as set forth in the only human documents in which
they are with any pretense of inspiration recorded, has more than abundantly
shown, to even the most reverently credulous, the degree of inspired truth in
the gospel stories. The common asseveration of veracity, "true as the
gospel," has lost force as a convincing assurance. "On my word of
honor" is to be recommended as a more persuasive formula for men of truth
and honor.
It is sad perhaps to discover that the
long-cherished gospels are totally wanting in that "harmony" which
has long been regarded as their most potent assurance of truth. But the simple
process of attentively comparing their records and pointing out their
contradictions has stripped them of all pretense of being inspired truth. These
gospels prove themselves -- as historical records -- to be clumsy fabrications
of impossibilities, palmed off upon an ignorant and credulous populace -- a
whole generation and more after the pretended events, by perhaps well-meaning
persons, pretending, as Paul admits of himself, by their lies to make the glory
of God the more to abound (Rom. 3: 7 ).
CHAPTER 16
THE SACRED DOCTRINES OF CHRISTIANITY
THE creeds, says a poet, are in number some
seventy-three. Of Christian sects or denominations, each founded upon chosen
texts, there are in fact a much greater number, some hundreds, each quite out
of harmony with all the others. Each by its sectarian votaries is fondly held
to be the sole inheritor of saving truth, and can point with pride to the
inerrant texts where the legacy of truth is made to it alone. But every other
sect disputes this reading, and with equal assurance and no less pride can
point to yet other texts of the true Testament which nullify the pretensions of
all the others and leave itself the sole and universal heir to saving truth.
For are not the Christian sects, seventy-three
though be their conflicting creeds, one and all of them founded upon the
"impregnable rock of the Holy Scripture," as Mr. Gladstone termed it,
and the belief that this book is divinely inspired in its every word; that it
is the "living Word of God," the faithful revelation of his divine
will to man? Outside the sacred tome itself, no higher authority can be invoked
for the inerrant truth of Holy Writ and the utter unity of that truth than the
recent (AD 1870 ) spirit-illumined declaration of the sacred
"These books are sacred and canonical
because they contain revelation without error, and because, written by the
inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author."
Yet we have in the foregoing pages seen great
parts of this God-written book sadly lacking in inspiration and truth; and to
explain or attenuate this, one might suspect that such parts of it may be
excepted from the general rule of inspiration and inerrancy. But in this they
err, to believe the Holy Ghost speaking lately through Pope Leo 13: in his
encyclical Provid. Deus, where this error is roundly refuted:
"It will never be lawful to restrict
inspiration merely to certain parts of the Holy Scripture, or to grant that the
sacred writers could have made a mistake. ... They render in exact language,
with infallible truth, all that God commanded and nothing else; without that,
God would not be the Author of the Scripture in its entirety."
This settles it; "Roma locuta est, causa
finita est." And to this dogma of infallibly inspired truth in toto, all
the otherwise dissentient members of the Body of Christ chorus unanimously
amen.
The trouble with the dogma of inspired
infallible truth is in the utter riot of diversity of truth in the sacred book,
each truth inferentially and necessarily discounting or discrediting all the
others. For is it not true that of two or more contradictory dogmas or
doctrines, while none may be true, not more than one can possibly be? "All
scripture is given by inspiration of God" (2 Tim.
The fault lies not in the reader and searcher,
but in the book. We shall simply turn the pages of the inspired and inerrant
Word and note the principal dogmas and doctrines of the Christian creeds -- and
leave the result to speak for itself.
THE FORMULA OF FAITH
The inspired formula of the faith is Paul's
own confession of faith: "This 1confess unto thee, that after the way
which they call heresy, so worship 1the God of my fathers, believing all things
which are written in the law and in the prophets" (Acts 24: 14 ). Faith
cares not for facts or proofs, but boasts that it "believeth all things,
hopeth all things" (1 Cor. 13: 7 ). Faith is all-sufficient, in lieu of
fact -- "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen" (Heb. 11: 1 ), not known, and altogether unknowable.
In this confessed absence of certain
knowledge, we shall see what the inspired dogmatists and doctrinaires solemnly
posit for our belief. First let us have well in mind the confessed mendacities
and frauds which were so potent a factor in carrying on the good work of
Salvation from mythical perdition.
LYING AND FRAUD ADMITTED
Paul, in his zealot exaltation, admits and
justifies, on Jesuitical principles, the preaching of falsehood, and feels
really aggrieved that honest men should take exceptions to such mendacious
propaganda:
"For if the truth of God hath more
abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am 1also judged as a
sinner?" (Rom. 3: 7 )
In a spirit of good-humored naivete he winks
at the flock of Corinthians whom he has hooked into the fold, and admits that
he had tricked them:
"Though the more abundantly 1love you,
the less 1be loved. But be it so: ... nevertheless, being crafty, I caught you
with guile." (2 Cor. 12: 15, 16 )
As a "man that striveth for the
mastery" (1 Cor. 9: 25 ), he expounds to the church leaders the modus operand1of
the successful propagandist:
"I made myself servant unto all, that 1
might gain the more. And unto the Jews 1became as a Jew, that 1might gain the
Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that 1might gain them
that are under the law; To them that are without law, as without law, that
1might gain them that are without law. ... 1am made all things to all men, that
I might by all means save some. And this 1do for the gospel's sake" (1
Cor. 9: 19-23 ). And he admits to the church of Corinth: "1robbed other
churches ... to do you service" (2 Cor. 11: 8 ).
REDEMPTION FROM THE CURSE
The dogma of death and damnation through the
"sin of Adam" is variously stated and elaborated by its protagonist
Paul; first as follows:
"Wherefore, as by one man sin entered
into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men; ...
therefore, as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation;
even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto
justification of life." (Rom. 5: 12, 18 )
Thus Paul propounds the doctrine of death and
damnation to all by the sin of one, Adam, and of salvation by the "free
gift unto all men" by the atonement of another One. More simply and
positively he repeats this:
"For as in Adam all die, even so in
Christ shall all be made alive." (1 Cor. 15, 22 )
And with the utmost assurance he avers:
"Christ hath redeemed us from the
curse." (Gal. 3: 13 )
These texts carry the positive assurance,
perfectly logical and just if true, that as the fearful "original
sin" of Adam entailed the "curse" of inevitable involuntary sin
and damnation upon all mankind ever since, the great sacrifice and propitiation
of Jesus Christ has the effect of wiping out that old score utterly, and redeeming
all mankind without more ado. Indeed, the nearest and dearest to Jesus of his
four biographers several times in his first epistle justifies this
interpretation and confirms this reasonable expectation:
"God ... sent his Son to be the
propitiation for our sins." (1John 4: 10; 3: 5 )
He repeats and amplifies this assurance of
free redemption:
"And he is the propitiation for our sins:
and not for our's only, but also for the sins of the whole world." (1 John
2: 2 )
The same is likewise asserted by Peter:
"For Christ also hath once suffered for
sins, the just for the unjust, that be might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:
18 )
And he asserts the complete efficacy of the
vicarious atonement once and for all:
"Who his own self bare our sins in his
own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto
righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed." (1 Peter 2: 24 )
These plain texts surely seem to mean what
they with such reiteration say -- that, as all were damned nolens volens
through the Old Adam, willy-nilly all should have free and unconditional
redemption through the expiation of the New Adam "for the sins of the
whole world." But our well justified confidence is by a variety of
limitations disappointed: redemption and salvation are found to be quite partial,
precarious, and then impossible.
FREE FOR ALL OR LIMITED
The universality of free redemption is assured
in gracious terms by the Master's own words:
"For the Son of man is come to save that
which was lost." (Matt. 18: 11 )
And again, in appealing, soothing words
assuring free grace and salvation to all, believer or not:
"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matt. 11: 28 )
Even broader and freer is the offer of the
Apocalypse:
"And whosoever will, let him take the water
of life freely." (Rev. 22: 17 )
Surely these repeated passages prove free
"redemption from the curse" and salvation from sin for all mankind,
without condition and without price the "free gift of grace." All
were cursed and damned; all are redeemed and saved.
But the Beloved Disciple strikes a chord whose
fatal dissonance alarms the hopeful soul even under the beautiful words in
which it is clothed -- it is the Believer only for whom the supreme
propitiation is made, who only is thus "redeemed from the curse":
"For God [i.e., Yahveh] so loved the
world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3: 16 )
The Christ himself proclaimed the universal
efficacy of his sacrifice:
"And 1:if I be lifted up from the earth, will
draw all men unto me." (John 12: 32 )
though this he denies in his cryptic
assertion:
"For many be called, but few
chosen." (Matt. 20: 16 )
"SALVATION IS OF THE JEWS"
Even this limitation of salvation to
"whosoever believeth" has yet another limitation: Christ did not come
to redeem all mankind damned in the curse that is to be redeemed, but the Jew
only -- if the Jew believed. The Christ himself positively asserts so:
"But he answered and said, I am not sent
but unto the lost sheep of the house of
This was the divine commission given by the
Master to the Twelve upon their very first mission.
"These twelve Jesus sent forth, and
commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city
of the Samaritans enter ye not; But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of
The Christ told the woman of
Thus, by his own iterated assertion, the
Christ gainsays all the assurances of free and universal redemption "for
the sins of the whole world" and the assurance that God sent his Son that
"whosoever believeth" should be saved. The believer must be a
"lost sheep" of Israel; all others still remained under the universal
curse. But Jewry was safe and that too without condition of belief:
"And so all Israel shall be saved: as it
is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away
ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take
away their sins." (Rom. 11: 26, 27 )
This prophecy, however, is known to have not
yet been wholly verified, and besides is expressly repudiated by the chief
apostle after the total failure of the Christ to realize his special mission to
the "lost sheep" of Israel. The Jews had been so often deceived by
"false Christs," self-proclaimed Messiahs -- by the fatuous cry,
"Lo, here is Christ, or there" (Matt. 24: 23 ) -- that they were not
in a receptive mood towards this One. So Paul, who had taken up the propaganda
of the faith that failed at the cross, hopeless of the sophisticated "lost
sheep of Israel," denounced them as "unworthy of everlasting
life" (Acts 13: 46 ); and he proclaimed: "Lo, we turn to the
Gentiles" (13: 46 ) -- who were not so schooled in Hebrew traditions, and
might thus more readily be taken into the fold. Paul thus assures them:
"For so hath the Lord [Yahveh] commanded
us, saying, I have set thee, to be a light of the Gentiles. ... And when the
Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of Yahveh."
(Acts 13: 47, 48 )
But it is the Hebrew God Yahveh who is quoted
(Isa. 49: 6 ) as saying this: it was no part of the mission or purpose of the
Christ to redeem or save any but the Jews -- "I am not sent but to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel." Consequently the mission of the Christ
had been a confessed failure; and the gentiles, to whom the "free
gift" was now promised, and who were glad, were yet to learn the
conditions and limitations of the gift.
BELIEVE AND BE SAVED -- OR STAY DAMNED
God so loved the world that he sent his only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but should be
redeemed from the curse, and have everlasting life; but "He that believeth
not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him."
(John 3: 36 )
The sine qua non of belief as the alternative
to continued eternal damnation is reiterated throughout the gospels and the
epistles of the God of Love, who came "that the world through him might be
saved." In his last recorded words after the resurrection, the crucified
Christ thus challenges the unredeemed:
"He that believeth and is baptized shall
be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." (Mark
All repudiations of the doctrine of
unconditioned free grace and salvation culminate, however, in this statement of
Paul:
"He that doubteth is damned." (Rom.
REPENTANCE AS A CONDITION
To the requirement of belief the Master has
just added that of "and is baptized"; otherwise the soul is damned
and the wrath of Yahveh God abideth on him as since Adam's time. Following this
fearful intimation come Peter's words of exhortation, adding yet another
condition to the "free" gift:
"Repent ye therefore, and be converted,
that your sins may be blotted out." (Acts
Paul, however, flatly denies the need for
repentance:
"For the gifts and calling of God are
without repentance." (Rom.
Paul's statement is also a flat contradiction
of the explicit words of his Master:
"Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise
perish." (Luke 13: 3 )
The need of repentance, or of any other act on
the part of the individual damned through Adam seems to be entirely obviated by
the explicit avowal of divine responsibility for unbelief -- which seems hard
to believe of a good God:
"For God hath concluded them all in
unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all." (Rom. 11: 32 )
But the assurance of gratuitous mercy to all,
even unbelievers, is contradicted by the same inspired dogmatist in the selfsame
epistle; he imputes to God the wilful turning of human souls to damnation,
destroying their power of escape:
"Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will
have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth." (ROM. 9: 18 )
ELECTED OR ECLECTIC?
The text last quoted contains the hint of what
may be termed election to involuntary damnation, which is the effect of God's
"hardening" of a predamned soul which may desire to believe and be
saved. But the fatal doctrine, which is the total repudiation of "propitiation
for the sins of the whole world," finds many more explicit assertions --
as well as bald denials -- in the inspired texts. When Paul "turned to the
Gentiles," and the Gentiles were glad, and glorified, and apparently were
all zealous to accept the new faith, it is recorded:
"And as many as were ordained to eternal
life believed." (Acts 13: 48 )
This fatal phrase "ordained to eternal
life," limiting the possibility of belief, and hence of salvation, to an
unknowable select number of the gentiles, seems like the explosion of a
sapper's mine under hope in the promise of "whosoever will." But hope
is raised by the apostolic assurance:
"For whosoever shall call upon the name
of the Lord [Yahveh] shall be saved." (Rom. 10: 13 )
This hope, however, is dashed by the counter-assurance
of the same inspired author:
"According as he hath chosen us in
him before the foundation of the world, ... having predestinated us unto the
adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure
of his will." (Eph. 1: 4, 5 )
And the doctrine of free-will to choose to be
saved -- if not saved without choice, as damned without choice -- is denied by
the stone on which the Church is founded:
"Elect according to the foreknowledge of
God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit." (1 Peter 1: 2 )
These words of renewed hope greet us:
"For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the
ungodly." (Rom. 5: 6 )
But the hope is sadly jarred by these others
of the same dogmatist:
"Because God hath from the beginning
chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the
truth." (2 Thess. 2: 13 )
The colloquy between the jailer of
"Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And
they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy
house." (Acts 16: 30, 31 )
The jailer, however, would seem to have been
"elect" and the reasonable hopes of other willing believers seem rudely
curtailed by the discouraging ipse dixit of the Master:
"Then said one unto him, Lord, are there
few that be saved? And he said unto them, Strive to enter in at the strait
gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be
able." (Luke 13: 23, 24 )
This seems strangely at variance with the
inspired assurance, often repeated:
"Whosoever shall call upon the name of
the Lord [Yahveh] shall be saved." (Romans 10: 13; Acts 2: 21 )
All hope of free choice of salvation is quite
upset, and only those foreordained by Divine Providence are given any chance to
escape the wrath of God, by these other words of his Son:
"All that the Father [Yahveh] giveth me
shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out."
(John 6: 37 )
The dismal doctrine of "election" to
redemption from the curse and of salvation for those only whom the Father
Yahveh giveth to be saved (of the lost sheep of Israel only) is reaffirmed in
the very words of the Father of Life, as quoted by Paul:
"For the children being not yet born,
neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to
election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth. ... For he saith
to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have
compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that
willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. ... Therefore
hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth."
(Rom. 9: 11, 15, 16, 18 )
The doom of election to salvation and
damnation by Yahveh himself, regardless of human striving, receives solemn
confirmation in the record of the early operations of the plan:
"And the Lord added to the church daily
such as should be saved." (Acts 2: 47 )
Those who have never taken the pains to
compare doctrinal texts must naturally prick up their ears in curiosity at the
discordant notes of the sacred texts of salvation. One doctrine is flatly
denied by the other; therefore, both alike are discredited, or at least
inextricably confused. So that no man can guess whether "salvation"
was for the Jew Only; or to the Jew first and then, upon his rejection of it,
to the gentile, to keep the legacy of the "free gift" from failing
entirely; or whether Jew or gentile might be saved by believing and willingly
seeking salvation; or whether only those "elected" by Yahveh in
heaven before the foundation of the world might ever attain to heaven. And if
only the "elect" are to be saved, and these willy-nilly, what is the
use for anyone, who cannot possibly know whether he is of the "elect"
or not, to make any effort or worry at all about salvation? His efforts are
either quite unnecessary or wholly unavailing.
FAITH OR WORKS?
However we may solve or leave the foregoing problem,
we are at once met with another series of conflicting passages on the
interesting subject of salvation by grace through faith or by works -- both
doctrines contrary to the theory of salvation through election. Paul asserts:
"For by grace are ye saved through faith;
... not of works." (Eph. 2: 8, 9 )
And again;
"As it is written; The just shall live by
faith." (
But James, the brother of Jesus, flatly
contradicts Paul:
"What doth it profit, my brethren, though
a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? ... Even so
faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone." (James 2: 14, 17 )
And he offers an array of ancient instances --
with a contemptuous slur at his antagonist Paul:
"But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith
without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he
had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?" (James 2: 20, 21 )
The status of Father Abraham himself, however,
is not quite so free from uncertainty in view of the laboured retort of Paul:
"What shall we say then that Abraham our
father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? For if Abraham were justified
by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. For what saith the
Scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for
righteousness." (Rom. 4: 1-3 )
The bone of apostolic contention over the good
old patriarch is not yet gnawed bare, as appears by the next bit of
inspiration:
"Even as Abraham believed God, and it was
accounted to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of
faith, the same are the children of Abraham." (Gal. 3: 6, 7 )
James plays off faith against works and makes
a combination of both essential to the free grace of salvation, or a
prerequisite to election, as the case may be:
"Seest thou how faith wrought with his
works, and by works was faith made perfect? And the Scripture was fulfilled
which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for
righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God. Ye see then how that by
works a man is justified, and not by faith only. ... For as the body without
the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." (James 2: 22-24,
26 )
The contradictory doctrine of justification by
faith alone is argued laboriously by Paul:
"Knowing that a man is not justified by
the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed
in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by
the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be
justified." (Gal. 2: 16 ) "Therefore we conclude that a man is
justified by faith without the deeds of the law. ... Do we then make void the
law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law." (Rom.
The whole muddled disputation seems left in a
bewilderment of nonsensical puzzle, both for the inspired dogmatist and for the
perplexed seeker after truth, by the confused ratiocinations of Paul:
"And if by grace, then is it no more of
works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no
more grace: otherwise work is no more work." (Rom. 11: 6 )
All this produces in the mind a certain
querulous state which finds apt expression in the query of the chief apostle:
"And if the righteous scarcely be saved,
where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?" (1 Peter 4: 18 )
LAW OR NOT LAW?
The effect of this jumble of ideas may be
heightened by considering this:
"And by him all that believe are
justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of
Moses." (Acts 13: 39 )
The unequivocal words of the Master would seem
to be in express denial of the text last quoted, as well as of several of those
cited just previously, for he said:
"Think not that I am come to destroy the
law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say
unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise
pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." (Matt. 5: 17, 18 )
This positive assurance the Master, however,
repudiates by his assertion that the law has been fulfilled:
"The law and the prophets were until
John; since that time the kingdom of God is preached." (Luke 16: 16 )
One of these divine utterances of policy and
purpose is quite negatived, the other confirmed, by the assertion of the
apostle of grace:
"For sin shall not have dominion over
you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace." (Rom. 6: 14; cf. Gal.
3: 24, 25 )
Paul, however, in one of his next breaths
contradicts himself most egregiously:
"The law hath dominion over a man as long
as he liveth." (Rom. 7: 1 ) though almost immediately be asserts the
contrary: "But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein
we were held."(Rom. 7: 6 )
He reaffirms the permanency of the law and the
obligation to do its full works:
"For as many as are of the works of the
law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth
not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them."
(Gal. 3: 10 ) and again contradicts his own words:
"For if they which are of the law be
heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect: Because the law
worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression." (Rom. 4:
14, 15 )
But Paul seems to make a curious refutation of
the declaration that in the absence of law there can be no violation or
transgression of law, by making out the law to be dependent upon and a
consequence of previous transgression:
"Wherefore then serveth the law? It was
added because of transgressions." (Gal. 3: 19 )
John takes issue with Paul, and states the
rule more reasonably:
"Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth
also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law." (1 John 3: 4 )
Paul lauds the law in his Epistle to the
Romans:
"Wherefore the law is holy, and the
commandment holy, and just, and good. ... For we know that the law is
spiritual." (Rom. 7: 12, 14 ) and asserts that Yahveh God of
"Now we know that what things soever the
law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be
stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God." (Rom. 3: 19 )
And yet he assures the Galatians that the law
has them all bound in sin, from which they may be relieved by faith, which has
done away with the law, heedless that this is a flagrant denial of the words of
the Master, previously quoted, as well as of his own to the Romans:
"But the scripture hath concluded all
under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them
that believe. But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto
the faith which should afterwards be revealed." (Gal. 3: 22, 23 )
The effect of these bits of inspired text can
be but to increase the wonder of the "hearers of the Word," a feeling
much akin to that produced by the snake in Hudibras, which "Wriggled in
and wriggled out, Leaving the people much in doubt, Wether the snake that made
the track Was going east or coming back."
CIRCUMCISION OR UNCIRCUMCISION?
The confusion is heightened by the hotly
debated question raised, but adroitly dodged, in Acts 15:
"Is any man called being circumcised? let
him not become uncircumcised. Is any called in uncircumcision? let him not be
circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the
keeping of the commandments of God." (1 Cor. 7: 18, 19 )
Paul himself denied this assertion:
"For circumcision verily profiteth, if
thou keep the law." (Rom. 2: 25 ) and also flatly contradicted both the
preceding statements: "Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be
circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing." (Gal. 5: 2 )
And the selfsame Paul flings a denial into the
very teeth of his immediately preceding inspired assertion:
"What profit is there of circumcision? Much
every way." (Rom. 3: 1, 2 ) though this too he gainsays: "For in
Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision."
(Gal. 5: 6 )
And in spite of Paul's assuming to preach on
every side of the question, which did or did not matter, according to whom he
was addressing, whether Jew or Gentile, he claims a special revelation of
Yahveh to himself and to his partner Peter to split the question and take
opposite sides of it:
"The gospel of the uncircumcision was
committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter."
(Gal. 2: 7 )
BAPTISM AND BACKSLIDING
That baptism is essential to salvation is a
positive assertion of the Christ, who enjoined the ceremonial on his disciples,
to be imposed on all their converts:
"He that believeth and is baptized shall
be saved." (Mark
Unless the ceremony was submitted to, it was
declared impossible to go to heaven:
"Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except
a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the
The parting command given by the risen Lord to
his disciples -- but which we have seen he never gave -- was this:
"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations,
baptizing them." (Matt. 28: 19 )
The repentant thief on the cross was not
baptized, and his belief must have been very embryonic, yet he entered
forthright into the kingdom. Baptism then would seem not to be so essential to
salvation as is sometimes thought; and Paul takes credit to himself for
omitting the watery initiation, and asserts that Christ did not enjoin the
performance of the rite on him:
"I thank God that I baptized none of you,
but Crispus and Gaius. ... For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the
gospel." (1 Cor. 1: 14, 17 )
The ceremonial once performed, is its efficacy
permanent? The act of faith is of lasting effect unto eternal life, says the
Christ:
"My sheep hear my voice, ... and they
follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish,
neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." (John 10: 27, 28 )
Here the genial doctrine of
"backsliding" is confirmed; the backslider may enjoy the earthy
fruits of his lapse and yet enter into the joys of his Lord. But in this he
will find himself greatly mistaken, notwithstanding the assurance of the
Comforter; his latter end will be worse than the first, asserts the keeper of
the keys:
"If after they have escaped the
pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse
with them than the beginning." (2 Peter 2: 20 )
The creed, however, harks back to the Christ
and affirms the right of backsliding ad libitum:
"There is no condemnation for them that
believe and are baptized" (Confession of Faith, Art. 9 ).
FORGIVENESS OF SIN
The Master said:
"If thy brother trespass against thee,
rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven
times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent;
thou shalt forgive him." (Luke 17: 3, 4 )
This is supplemented by a n even more liberal
version of the same divine injunction, never known to have been acted upon
since:
"Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto
thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven." (Matt. 18: 22 )
But this beautiful precept of conduct between
man and man finds no place in the stricter dealings of Yahveh with man, if we
are to believe Paul:
"For if we sin wilfully after that we
have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for
sins." (Heb. 10: 26 )
This harsh denial of the comfortable principle
of backsliding is reaffirmed by the same dogmatist:
"For it is impossible for those who were
once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, ... If they shall fall
away, to renew them again unto repentance." (Heb. 6: 4, 6 )
The proper depository of the divine power of
forgiveness of sin is left in serious doubt. First Christ claimed the power in
himself:
"The Son of man hath power on earth to
forgive sins." (Mark
Then he is said to have delegated plenary
power to Peter:
Thou art Peter. ... And I will give unto thee
the keys of the kingdom of heaven: ... and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth
shall be loosed in heaven." (Matt. 16: 18, 19; 18: 18 )
Though the Christ thus promised "I will
give the keys," the record of the actual investiture is missing; this has
not hindered the successors of the fisherman, however, from displaying models
of the celestial keys and claiming constant use of them.
But later it is asserted that the power is the
prerogative of the heavenly King:
"He [Yahveh] is faithful and just to
forgive sins" (1 John 1: 9 ).
RESURRECTION
We now cite a series of conflicting texts
touching upon the subject of the resurrection of the body, a doctrine much in
dispute in the early days, which appears to be stated by Paul rather as a pious
hope than as a dogma:
"And [I] have hope toward God, which they
themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of
the just and unjust." (Acts 24: 15 )
But at another place the apostle seems to put
the matter even more in doubt, as possibly an unattainable aspiration:
"If by any means I might attain unto the
resurrection from the dead." (Phil. 3: 11 )
Jesus told the Sadducees:
"For in the resurrection they neither
marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven."
(Matt. 22: 30 )
A sentiment worthy of the woman-hating Paul,
who says in a typical vein:
"But some man will say, How are the dead
raised up? And with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest
is not quickened, except it die." (1 Cor. 15: 35, 36 )
Besides exposing himself to the "danger
of hell fire," with which the Master himself threatened whoever calls his
brother a fool (Matt. 5: 22 ), and making a rather unbecoming exhibition of
apostolic spleen, the apostle seems, to any one who has done gardening or
otherwise acquired the rudiments of agricultural biology, to show himself
entitled to the appellation, for a tyro in farming knows that the inspired
argument is fallacious: the seed which dies is not "quickened," but
rots and is lost; only the seeds which live in the ground and germinate are
"quickened" and grow up to reproduce their kind. If the inspired
author was so ignorant of natural things, he might be in error with respect to
things supernatural. The next verse is from the same ill-inspired source:
"It is sown by a natural body; it is
raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual
body." (1 Cor. 15: 44 )
The argument is labouriously resumed:
"Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and
blood cannot inherit the
These last verses seem to assert that the
resurrection is not of the body as it is laid in the grave, but of something
quite different which is manufactured "in the twinkling of an eye at the
last trump," out of nothing, for in many instances the material body would
be quite destroyed. And certainly, as would occur to any one versed in
theological lore, this theory is wholly opposed to the proposition of the
"Apostles' Creed" (of origin several centuries after the apostles)
concerning the material "resurrection of the body." This creed,
however, finds some support in the gospel of the Beloved Disciple:
"Marvel not at this: for the hour is
coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall
come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they
that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation." (John 5: 28, 29
)
THE FINAL JUDGMENT
These texts may appear to any thoughtful
person to raise the curious question of what becomes of the human soul between
the time of death the body and the magical blasts of the resurrection trumpet,
countless ages in the future, at the Day of Judgment. In popular concept, as in
scriptural representation, the soul goes to its final reward or punishment
immediately after it leaves the body at death. Lazarus died, and quite shortly
Dies, and both souls sped at once to their respective eternal billets; for we
are told that upon the death of Lazarus, he "was carried by the angels
into Abraham's bosom"; and "in hell [Dies], lift up his eyes, being
in torment," and engaged in an instructive dialogue with Lazarus across
the immeasurably great gulf fixed between their habitats. The repentant thief
on the cross was on the same day transported to paradise, and there are other
instances of the same sort.
If this be true, what then, one may curiously
ask, is the use or need of a general final judgment, which could not alter the
status of the souls already for unnumbered ages basking in heaven or broiling
in hell? On the other hand, if this be not true, it appears very incongruous
that souls, after leaving the body, should flit around in a sort of limbo of
empty space for untold time awaiting the playing of the last trump. Yet this is
the situation described by one who was snatched up into the third heaven, and
verily "saw the vision of the future and the wonders that would be";
for he says, in rapt clairvoyance:
"And the sea gave up the dead which were
in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they
were judged every man according to their works." (Rev. 2: 13 )
But why -- in hell -- judge one who already
has been for ages in hell? A reversal of his sentence would be like reversing
that of a man already hanged.
Another gospel text seems to represent both
soul and body as lying moldering in the grave, not until a trumpet-call, but
the voice of the Master, should awaken such only as were "elected" to
awake to a new life:
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour
is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God:
and they that hear shall live." (John 5: 25 )
But what seems a plain contradiction of this
theory and an assertion that the dead are raised to life at once without
waiting for any general resurrection day comes in the Master's own words
(misquoting his source):
"Now that the dead are raised, even Moses
showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord [Yahveh] the God of Abraham, and
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of
the living; for all live unto him." (Luke 20: 37, 38 )
As this argument is, however, based on the
"burning bush" incident, which no one believes ever happened, and is
also a mis- statement of the alleged fact, since it was Yahveh himself, not
Moses, who made use of the words quoted (Ex. 3: 6 ), it may not be very
persuasive. But the Master himself contradicts this theory and postpones to his
"second coming" the adjudication of rewards and punishment, during
the interval preceding which both body and soul are apparently quiescent in the
common grave:
"For the Son of man shall come in the
glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man
according to his works." (Matt. 16: 27 )
The next verse is in a tone of dubious
argumentation, suggesting a possible negation of the major premises of its final
sentence, as well as begging the whole resurrection question:
"Now if Christ be preached that he rose
from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the
dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen."
(1 Cor. 15: 12, 13 )
Yet a deeper note of potential despair echoes
in another text of the great dogmatist:
"And if Christ be not raised, your faith
is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in
Christ are perished." (1 Cor. 15: 17, 18 )
So the questions of the resurrection of the
body and the final judgment of the soul, and the why and wherefore of both, are
left in a nebulous state. The Lord only knows just exactly how it will all
happen, as it has not been very clearly revealed yet.
THE "SECOND COMING"
The most unequivocal and positive of the
teachings of Jesus and of his several apostles alike is the immediate visible
"second coming" of Christ, the end of the world, the final judgement,
and the prompt establishment of the Messianic Kingdom of Yahveh and David on
the new earth -- all this being the most potent propaganda of the new religion.
The Master commanded:
"And as ye go, preach, saying, The
kingdom of heaven is at hand." (Matt. 10: 7 )
The immediacy of the coming is proclaimed by
him in the most positive and unmistakable terms repeatedly:
"Verily, I say unto you, There be some
standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man
coming in his kingdom." (Matt. 26: 28 )
He adds reassurance to make assurance of the
coming and the kingdom doubly sure:
"Verily I say unto you, This generation
shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." (Matt. 24: 34; Mark
13: 80 )
The same doctrine, in almost identical words,
is repeated in Mark 9: 1 and Luke 9: 27, and is implied in the remark of Jesus
after the jealous altercation between Peter and John:
"Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he
tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me." (John 21: 22 )
The end should come so quickly that the disciples
should not have covered even the little territory of Palestine:
"Ye shall not have gone over the cities
of Israel, till the Son of man be come." (Matt. 10: 23 )
But why, then, one wonders, should they be
again commanded:
"Go ye into all the world, and preach the
gospel to every creature." (Mark 16: 15 )
The assurance of the speedy fulfilment of the
prophesied end of all things is reaffirmed, somewhat tardily, in the Revelation
-- written some 100 years after Christ:
"The revelation of Jesus Christ, which
God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to
pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John: ... for
the time is at hand." (Rev. 1: 1, 3 )
And again:
"Behold, I come quickly." (Rev. 3:
11 )
The notion is repeated by Paul:
"For yet a little while, and he that
shall come will come, and will not tarry." (Heb. 10: 37 )
And reiterated by John:
"Little children, it is the last time:
and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many
antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time." (1 John 2: 18 )
Paul declares that the great day is so close
at hand that he enjoins total carnal abstinence as a sort of preparatory
purification:
"But this I say, brethren, the time is
short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had
none," etc. (1 Cor. 7: 29 )
And he tells the same Corinthians, who were
evidently getting impatient, that the coming was to be during the very lives of
themselves; that they would not die, but should hear the fateful trump sound in
their living ears; that those already dead should be promptly resurrected, and
the yet living would be "changed":
"Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall
not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an
eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be
raised incorruptible, and we [the yet living] shall be changed." (1 Cor.
15, 51, 52 )
The Master again preaches preparedness for his
early advent:
"Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son
of man cometh at an hour when ye think not." (Luke 12: 40 )
Peter joins in the refrain of watchful
waiting:
"But the end of all things is at hand: be
ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer." (1 Peter 4: 7 )
He paints a lurid picture of how it is to
happen:
"But the day of Yahveh will come as a
thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great
noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the
works that are therein shall be burned up." (2 Peter 3: 10 )
Paul, with his chronic cocksureness about
everything which he is totally ignorant of, also tells us explicitly and fully
just how it is going to happen:
"For the Lord [Yahveh] shall descend from
heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of
God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and
remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in
the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another
with these words." (1 Thess. 4: 16-18 )
But as the brethren, despite all these
assurances of quick dividends of glory, were apparently getting restless for
the grand catastrophe and spectacle which was so tardy, James, own brother of
Jesus, cajoles them:
"Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the
coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of
the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter
rain. Be ye also patient, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh." (James
5: 7, 8 )
Paul also finds himself under the necessity of
preaching patience in order to save his own reputation as an inspired prophet:
"And the Lord direct your hearts ... into
the patient waiting for Christ." (2 Thess. 3: 5 )
And yet again, he coaxes those of the Hebrews
who had fallen into the faith and were chafing at its unfulfilled promises:
"For ye have need of patience, that,
after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet a
little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry." (Heb.
10: 36, 37 )
But the clamour for fulfilment of these
promises of the "second coming" became louder and more insistent,
threatening the total discredit of the inspired promisers; the disappointment
of the saints over the non-fulfilment of the reiterated assurances, promises,
and prophecies, and the nature of their taunts, being voiced with very pertinent
directness by those whom the crafty Peter dubs "scoffers":
"And saying, Where is the promise of his
coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were
from the beginning of the creation." (2 Peter 3: 4 )
This same crafty Peter, first pope of the new
faith, himself makes a shifty pretended answer to these "scoffers,"
whereby he tries to squirm out of the situation created by the palpable failure
of all the inspired predictions by himself and his confreres of the immediate end
of all things:
"But, beloved, be not ignorant of this
one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand
years as one day." (2 Peter 3: 8 )
This, however, does not seem at all
disingenuous and honest, and hardly meets the positive repeated assurances that
"some standing here shall not taste of death" before the "second
coming" -- that "this generation shall not pass away till all these
things be accomplished," when "we that are alive" shall be
"caught up" into glory. There seems to be a sad want of inspired
truth, and even of common honesty, in solemnly declaring such awful events,
which scared thousands into belief, and then deceived their terrified
expectation. And it may be wondered how any of them ever persisted in their new
faith after such patent deception. If inspiration is so out of joint with truth
in this most positive of the declarations of Christ and his propagandists, the
whole of their preachings and predictions may well be subject to some discount,
if not entire discredit.
DEVILOLOGY
A flood of inspired texts illustrates one of
the most persistent superstitions of the whole Scriptures: the belief in devils
and demoniac possession, in hell and its malign ruler Satan, almost if not
quite equal in power, and in some respects even superior, to Yahveh Almighty,
(the English rendering of the Hebrew El Shaddai, "God of Demons.")
The Devil appears early and holds fast:
"And Jesus ... was led by the Spirit into
the wilderness, Being forty days tempted of the devil. ... And the devil,
taking him up into an high mountain, shewed
unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said
unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is
delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt
worship me, all shall be thine." (Luke 4: 1-7 )
These verses clearly recognize the Devil as a
divine being, with full power of possession and dominion over this world,
having miraculous powers quite equal to those of Yahveh's. Indeed, Paul gives
him this exalted title:
"The god of this world hath blinded the
minds of them which believed not." (2 Cor. 4: 4 ) a designation of rank
and power confirmed by the Master himself:
"For the prince of this world cometh, and
hath nothing in me." (John 14: 30 )
And repeated, among many others, by Paul:
"According to the prince of the power of
the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience."
(Eph. 2: 2 )
The Master himself admits the divine origin of
the princely Devil:
"And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as
lightning fall from heaven." (Luke 10: 18 )
In the nightmare visions of the Apocalypse a
fearful and wonderful pen picture is drawn of this great potentate of heaven,
rebel against Yahveh his King, conquered by the great Michael Archangel, and
ousted from the realms of light:
"And the great dragon was cast down, the
old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he
was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him." (Rev.
12: 9 )
So great was the awe in which the Satanic
power was held by even the highest in the hierarchy of heaven that it is
declared:
"Yet Michael the archangel, when
contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring
against him a railing accusation, but said, Yahveh rebuke thee." (Jude 9 )
The miraculous power of Satan and his minor
devils is attested by the apostle in chief:
"The working of Satan with all power and
signs and lying wonders." (2 Thes. 2: 9 ) and also in the Apocalypse:
"For they are the spirits of devils,
working miracles." (Rev. 16: 14 )
And their powers are quite equal to Yahveh's
and defiant of his Almightiness:
"And no marvel; for Satan himself is
transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his
ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness." (2 Cor.
11: 14, 15 )
The Master himself accredits the doctrines of
Zoroaster touching the two great powers who disputed the government of the
universe, one the creator and purveyor of good, the other of evil:
"Ye are of your father the devil. ... He
was a murderer from the beginning. ... He is a liar, and the father of
it." (John 8: 44 )
The following verse recognizes the same
principle, but impresses one with a feeling of disappointment that the purpose
expressed in its second sentence has seemingly as yet failed of complete
success:
"He that committeth sin is of the devil;
for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was
manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil." (1 John 3: 8 )
Again this divinely purposed triumph over the
evil one is expressly declared, with an admission at the same time of the
extraordinary powers possessed by His Satanic Majesty:
"That through death he might destroy him
that had the power of death, that is, the devil." (Heb. 2: 14 )
And the success of the project is assured by
the Christ in person:
"Now is the judgment of this world: now
shall the prince of this world be cast out." (John 12: 31 )
But Paul trims down the promise of destruction
of the Devil and his works, substituting a milder form of discipline, which,
though its prompt accomplishment is promised, does not appear to have been yet
brought about:
"And the God of peace shall bruise Satan
under your feet shortly." (Rom.
Considerable puzzlement is caused after all
the foregoing texts descriptive of the activities of the prince of devils and
his legions, and the divine assurances of his early capture and destruction, or
at least bruising, by the official keeper of the keys of hell, by the
surprising revealed assurance that His Satanic Majesty and his devil hosts were
already in chains in hell, and had indeed always been so since they were first
cast out of Heaven:
"God spared not the angels that sinned,
but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be
reserved unto judgment." (2 Peter 2: 4 )
though such captivity is again revealed as
being simply an apocalyptic vision, and for a term which with Yahveh is, as we
are elsewhere told, but as one day:
"And he laid hold on the dragon, that old
serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years."
(Rev. 20: 2 )
And even this millennial period, so
confidently assured, not only has not come about in these two thousand years,
but is expressly admitted to be but a temporary makeshift of restraint, after
which the Devil was to be freed to resume his operations:
"And cast him into the bottomless pit,
and shut him up and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no
more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be
loosed a little season." (Rev. 20: 3 )
This causes the thought that it was odd for
the almighty Yahveh of heaven to permit the release of the arch-fiend to prey
upon his creatures, after once he had him safely chained down and sealed up in
the bottomless pit; Yahveh even seems by this act to make himself accomplice in
the malignant works of the Devil. And one wonders upon what compulsion "he
must be loosed" from hell, which seems to imply a serious limitation upon
the almightiness of Yahveh. In any event, the confused and conflicting texts
about the Devil and his status, past, present, and prospective, leads to the
thought that the inspired writers did not really know what they were talking
about; that the Devil was a myth, or at least that the revelations made
concerning him were altogether mythical.
Paul himself admits the besetting activities
of the Devil, and acknowledges himself, despite all his boasted power over
devils, to be a victim of the powers of their chief:
"We would have come unto you; but Satan
hindered us." (1 Thess. 2: 18 )
Peter, evidently despairing of the promised
victory over the Devil and of effective restraint of him, from which he was
broken loose, issues a warning to the faithful against his continued
activities:
"Be sober, be vigilant; because your
adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may
devour." (1 Peter 5: 8 )
FIGHTING THE DEVILS
That a very active campaign was, however,
waged against the hosts of devils, who were evidently as plentiful as
blackberries in those days, and very mischievous, is made apparent by scores of
texts of devilology, which make up so large a part of gospel truth that only a
few can be here presented. The fight against devils was apparently the
principal occupation of the Master, and the highest patent of his divine
personality and mission:
"And he preached ... throughout all
He cites this gift as the first and most
potent proof of his divine mission:
"And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell
that fox, Behold, I cast out devils." (Luke 13: 32 )
Likewise it was the badge of commission of the
Twelve:
"Then he called his twelve disciples
together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure
diseases." (Luke 9: 1 )
as also of the Seventy:
"And the seventy returned again with joy,
saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name." (Luke
10: 17 )
This devil-exorcism was also the badge and
working tool of all true believer:
"And these signs shall follow them that
believe; In my name shall they cast out devils." (Mark 16: 17 )
Paul reaches the apex of the superstition in
the startling assertion not only that devils galore exist, but (in accordance
with the Vulgate Version of Psalm 96: 5, that "all the gods of the heathen
are devils") asserts their divinity with his usual omniscient assurance:
"But I say, that the things which the
Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God [Yahveh]: and I
would not that ye should have fellowship with devils." (1 Cor. 10: 20 )
The inspired historian of the Acts makes Paul
the hero of an episode which attributes to these devils the divine faculties of
foreknowledge and prediction, the same as to the acknowledged prophets of
Yahveh:
"And it came to pass, as we went to
prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which
brought her masters much gain by soothsaying: ... and this did she many days.
But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the
name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out in the same
hour." (Acts 16: 16, 18 )
The Great Physician graciously busied himself
in healing all kinds of diseases, but made a specialty of casting out devils,
which in those days, before medicine was well developed, were regarded, even by
the Son of Yahveh, as being the active agents of all the ills to which human
flesh was heir:
"Jesus of Nazareth ... went about doing
good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil." (Acts 10: 38 )
Some texts seem to distinguish between
ordinary diseases, and those caused by the possession of devils, and lunacy:
"And they brought unto him all sick
people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were
possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the
palsy; and he healed them." (Matt. 4: 24 )
But the devils were evidently the efficient
cause of even sore cases of mental alienation, according to the Master
Physician's own diagnosis:
"Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is a
lunatic, and sore vexed. ... And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out
of him." (Matt 17: 15, 18 )
As likewise of sundry female troubles:
"And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out
of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou
son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil." (Matt. 15: 22
)
And again:
"And ought not this woman, whom Satan
hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath
day?" (Luke 13: 16 )
And especially in the celebrated case of Mary
Magdalene:
"Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went
seven devils" (Luke 8: 2 ).
Also of dumbness:
"As they went out, behold, they brought
to him a dumb man possessed with a devil, and when the devil was cast out, the
dumb spake." (Matt. 9: 32 )
These devils had a way, in Bible days, of
entering into people and causing them a devil of a time, to their great
suffering and distress; and the devils were intelligent in their way:
"And he healed many that were sick of
divers diseases, and cast out many devils; and suffered not the devils to
speak, because they knew him." (Mark 1: 34 )
The perversity of the devils is indicated by
the fact that they did not at all heed the command of the Master not to speak:
"And devils also came out of many, crying
out, and saying, Thou art Christ the Son of God. And he rebuking them suffered
them not to speak: for they knew that he was Christ." (Luke, 4: 41 )
The devils were even saucy and talked back:
"Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do
with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who
thou art; the Holy One of God." (Luke 4: 34 )
This, if the devils ever really said it,
proves that they themselves are children of Yahveh and joint heirs of salvation
with the best of believers -- for:
"Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus
Christ is come in the flesh is of God." (John 4: 2 )
and by every principle of the gospel promises,
are entitled to share in the joys of the Lord Yahveh:
"That through his name whosoever
believeth in him shall receive remission of sins." (Acts 10: 43 )
That the devils had a firm Christian faith,
evidenced by their unanimous confessions, is avowed in express terms:
"Thou believest that there is one God;
thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble." (James 2: 19 )
But they are seemingly doomed to a
disappointment of their just hopes as true believers:
"Then shall he say also unto them on the
left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the
devil and his angels." (Matt. 25: 41 )
All the devils were apparently not of Satan;
some seem to have been celestial, a point to be tested by some means not
explained:
"Beloved, believe not every spirit, but
try the spirits whether they are of God." (1 John 4: 1 )
These and a hundred or more other verses
dealing with various phases of devilology establish the high record for
inspired Bible texts on a single subject, it being apparent that no other name
or subject in all the Bible, hardly excepting the Divine Father Yahveh and his
Son, is more often mentioned, or held in higher faith or fear than that of the
Devil and the teeming hosts of devils. Belief in devils and in demoniac possession
was an article of the profoundest credulity of all the inspired writers as of
the uninspired ignorant masses, and in none stronger than in the Son of Yahveh.
We can but wonder how belief in such an ignorant myth and superstition was
possible to one who claimed to be the very Son of Yahveh, God of truth, and to
those claiming to be divinely inspired by Yahveh to be the apostles of truth on
earth.
THE PENALTIES OF UNBELIEF
Let those who may be tempted to question the
eternal verity of it all take warning from the fearful threat against unbelief
which the chief apostle hurls at the incredulous:
"That they all might be damned who
believed not the truth." (2 Thess. 2: 12 )
The same dire fate is pronounced against him
who even hesitates in his faith:
"And he that doubteth is damned"'
(Rom.
This is that to which they are damned:
"Are set forth for an example, suffering
the vengeance of eternal fire." (Jude 7 ) to which is added the Master's
fearful admonition:
"Fear him which is able to destroy both
soul and body in hell." (Matt. 10: 28 ) and the fulmination of the
ex-persecutor of the faithful, persecutor now of the faithless:
"He that despised Moses' law died without
mercy: ... Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy,
who hath trodden under foot the Son of God?" (Heb. 10: 28, 29 ) followed
by the warning of the horrible example of the past:
"The Lord, having saved the people out of
the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not." (Jude 6 )
and the very pertinent warning for the future:
"For which things' sake the wrath of God
cometh on the children of disobedience." (Col. 3: 6 ) and the yet more
terrifying threat in the gentle Jesus' own words:
"Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers,
how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" (Matt. 23: 33 )
Paul again says:
"For the wrath is come upon them to the
uttermost." (1 Thess. 2: 16 ) and John: "For the great day of his
wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand? (Rev. 6: 17 )
This is augmented by the apostolic prophesy of
yet more wrath to come:
"But a certain fearful looking for of
judgment ana fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries." (Heb.
10: 27 )
The argument of terror and its efficiency is
again urged by Paul, who admits he uses it for the moral suasion of converts:
"For we must all appear before the
judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his
body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. Knowing
therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." (2 Cor.
"Seeing it is a righteous thing with God
to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; And to you who are troubled
rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty
angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that
obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with
everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of
his power; When he shall come to be glorified in his saints." (2 Thess. 1:
6-10)
All this tends to induce the mind to yield a
very ready assent to the total truth of the same apostle's warning:
"It is a fearful thing to fall into the
hands of the living God." (Heb. 10: 31 )
Many may well wonder how a kind and loving
heavenly Father of us all should make such terrible threats or inflict such
fearful penalties upon his human children for simply not believing things so
contrary to the most godlike faculty he had endowed them with, divine reason --
threats and penalties more consonant with the practices of Apache Indians than
with the principles of a just and merciful God.
INTOLERANCE AND DESTRUCTION
Evidently, from what follows, there was not
sufficient sanction for the new religion in the awful things that the wrathful
Yahveh was said to have in store for the hapless unbeliever after death. His
apostolic vicars and vicegerents here on earth hold divine commission to
anticipate upon the body here and now the fearful tortures which their Yahveh
should inflict upon the soul hereafter and eternally. The principle of priestly
intolerance and the torch which lit the hellish fires of the Holy Inquisition
have both their certain warrant and divine command in inspired texts.
Everyone who did not accept the Nazarene as
the Christ he declared to be his enemy: "He that is not with me is against
me" (Matt. 12: 80 ); and upon all such he calls down destruction and
death:
"Those mine enemies, which would not that
I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me." (Luke
19: 27 )
The Christ himself, to say nothing of numerous
impostors who had preceded him, declared that others after him should claim to
be Messiah, and should have miraculous powers like himself, so that even the
chosen could hardly tell the difference between the genuine and the spurious
Christs:
"For there shall arise false
Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch
that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect." (Matt. 24:
24 )
Paul pictures "Satan with all power and
signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness" enticing those who
"received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved";
though it was impossible that they should believe the truth:
"For this cause God shall send them
strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned
who believed not the truth." (2 Thess. 2: 9-12 )
Peter, the rock upon which the Church
persecutrix was founded, true to his traditions of violence, breathed deadly
vengeances against all who presumed to differ from his dogmas. Peter cites
Moses as predicting Jesus Christ as the prophet to be raised up "like unto
me," and quotes Yahveh as threatening with death all who would not heed
his word:
"Every soul which will not hear that
prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people." (Acts 3: 23 )
And he devotes to swift destruction all who do
not think as he thinks -- a murderous program followed by his apostolic
successors for as long as they dared and could:
"There shall be false teachers among you,
who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, and bring upon themselves swift
destruction." (2 Peter 2: 1 )
Even the Beloved Disciple preaches
denunciation and intolerance:
"Who is the liar but he that denieth that
Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist." (1John
But then we recall the admission that this is
the bluster of ignoramuses:
"Now when they saw the boldness of Peter
and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they
marveled." (Acts
On those who were indisposed to receive the
ministrations of the zealous crusaders of the new religion, summary destruction
is invoked of Heaven:
"And when his disciples James and John
saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we commend fire to come down from
heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?" (Luke 9: 54 )
The earliest and a very characteristic glimpse
of him who became the chief of the apostles is this:
"And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings
and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high
priest." (Acts 9: 1 )
Paul thus vents his apostolic intolerance of
free speech and liberty of discussion -- the cardinal polity ever since
followed by the Holy Church which he founded:
"For there are many unruly and vain
talkers and deceivers, whose mouths must be stopped." (Titus 1: 10, 11 )
Ostracism and the boycott are proclaimed as
the first steps in the ascending scale of suppression of those who disagree
with the new doctrines:
"Now, I beseech you, brethren, mark them
which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have
learned; and avoid them." (Rom. 16: 17 )
He then boldly preaches the gospel of priestly
anathema against man or angel who should presume to contradict the apostolic
dogmas:
"But though we, or an angel from heaven,
preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let
him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any
other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed."
(Gal. 1: 8, 9 ) and caps the climax of consecrated bigotry with a pious
exhortation to the annihilation of all who dare disbelieve his inspired pretensions
of truth:
"He that troubleth you shall hear his
judgment, whosoever he be. ... I would they were even cut off which trouble
you." (Gal. 5: 10, 12 )
To the credulous he even adopts a tone of
terroristic authority to hold them in their credulity: For though I should
boast somewhat more of our authority, which the Lord hath given us, ... I
should not be ashamed: That I may not seem as if I would terrify you by
letters." (2 Cor. 10: 83 9 ) and modestly claims for his self-assumed
authority no limitations of law, human or divine, except sacerdotal notions of
expediency: "All things are lawful for me, but all things are not
expedient." (1 Cor. 10: 23 )
INSPIRED PRIESTLY PRESUMPTION
The bigot Paul hedges himself about with
autocratic near- divinity and warns away presumptuous mortals from all profane
contact or interference with his awful personality, while he vain- glories in
the mutilation of person which changes him into a celibate zealot:
"From henceforth let no man trouble me:
for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." (Gal. 6: 17 )
Heedless of the infinite contradictions of his
dogmas, he asserts in their behalf and for himself the infallible verity of
direct inspiration, not, however, from Father Yahveh, but from his Son Jesus:
"I certify you, brethren, that the gospel
which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man,
neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ." (Gal. 1:
11, 12 )
This inspired veracity he lays claim to in the
fullest measure:
"As the truth of Christ is in me."
(2 Cor. 11: 10 )
He vaunts his self-assumed title and claims
all the credit for the results of his pious propaganda:
"Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have
I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord? (1 Cor. 9: 1
) though he admits that he is not a free agent in this propaganda, but claims
to be under some sort of mysterious "control," or maybe under the
spell of his own terroristic doctrines:
"For though I preach the gospel, I have
nothing to glory of: for necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if I
preach not the gospel!" (1 Cor. 16 )
He claims precedence over all other
propagandists of the new faith, making (parenthetically) an interesting
personal though braggart admission:
"Are they, ministers of Christ? (I speak
as a Fool) I am more." (2 Cor. 11: 28 )
This gospel truth he reaffirms, claiming to be
proud of the fact:
"I am become a fool in glorying; ye have
compelled me." (2 Cor. 12: 11 )
He displays it so patently and publicly that
Festus declares:
"Paul, thou are beside thyself; much
learning doth make thee mad." (Acts 26: 24 )
But Paul justifies himself by the special plea
that it is for the good of the cause:
"For whether we be beside ourselves, it
is to God: or whether we be sober, it in for your cause." (2 Cor. 5: 13 )
With pretended plenary inspiration he assures
us of his perfect knowledge of all the divine mysteries, which, however, he
does not very plenarily reveal to the rest of us:
"Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand
my knowledge in the mystery of Christ." (Eph. 3: 4 )
He reaches the superlative of obsessed egoism
by boldly claiming Jesus Christ's gospel as his own:
"Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed
of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel." (2 Tim. 2: 8 )
even setting up his own notions as the ratio decided in the end of the Last
Judgment:
"In the day when God shall judge the
secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel." (Rom. 2: 16 )
He would even supplant his old friend and
partner Peter as the purveyor general of pardons, in a childish tangle of
tautology:
"To whom ye forgive anything, I forgive
also: for if I forgave any thing, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave
I it in the person of Christ." (2 Cor. 2: 10 ) and boastingly claims
commission as the true adjutant of the Almighty Yahveh to give human utterance
to his holy will, and makes acceptance of this pretence the one test of the
true prophet and of the genuine gift of spirit -- whatever that is:
"If any man think himself to be a
prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto
you are the commandments of the Lord." (1 Cor.
He pretends to rely upon moral suasion rather
than to impose belief by Yahveh's divine authority:
"Not for that we have dominion over your
faith, but are helpers of your joy: for by faith ye stand." (2 Cor. 1: 24
) although he certainly had the divine right and authority to command boldly
and to impose his own will as that of the Lord Yahveh: "Wherefore, though
I might be much bold in Christ to enjoin thee that which is convenient."
(Philem. 8 )
And again he returns to a warning against any
who may not even yet be quite persuaded by all his strained arguments and
terrifying threats:
"Take heed, brethren, lest there be in
any of you an evil heart of unbelief." (Heb. 3: 12 )
AN INFAMOUS ACCUSATION
But aside from the difficulty, or stark
impossibility, of knowing what to believe of all the contradictions and
conflicts of dogma, or of believing any of it under such conditions, our
inspired dogmatist, with very odd logic, tells us that it is impossible to
believe at all, as his God Yahveh has himself closed the human heart to belief,
so that he could save men whether they believed or not:
"For God hath concluded them all in
unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all." (Rom. 11: 32 )
Yet he contradicts himself in this by his
dogmatic assertion that the promise of salvation is only to those who do
believe:
"But the scripture hath concluded all
under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that
believe." (Gal. 3: 22 )
Again the same apostle denies both of his
former bald assertions, and asserts that we are to be saved actually through
others not believing at all:
"For as ye in times past have not
believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief." (Rom.
11: 30 )
Straightway he contradicts this medley of
contradictions, and with amazing assurance imputes to the God of truth and
mercy the total depravity of making men believe lies in order that they might
be damned for their God-imposed unbelief:
"And for this cause God shall send them a
strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might
be damned who believed not the truth, but had
pleasure in unrighteousness.(2 Thess. 2: 11, 12 )
And then, as if conscious of being adjudged
into this class himself, before any one has time to accuse him of it, he
hastens to deny it and to proclaim his own inspired veracity -- though with
respect to which of his manifold contradictions he does not explain, leaving us
in the darkness of doubt as to them all:
"I say the truth in Christ, I lie
not." (Rom. 9: 1; Gal. 1: 20; 2 Cor. 11: 31.) though he has just a little
before confessed to the Romans, with a show of pious pride in his adroitness of
mendacity, that he was accused and "judged as a sinner" because of
his abounding lies "to the glory of God" (Rom. 3: 7 ).
THE APOSTLES' VIEWS OF EACH OTHER
A new and final commandment the Christ gave to
his holy apostles: "That ye love one another" (John
Paul denied the teachings of James as to faith
(Gal.
"The gospel of the uncircumcision was
committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter."
(Gal. 2: 7 )
Peter flatly denied this and claimed that the
commission was assigned to him:
"And when there had been much disputing,
Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good
while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear
the word of the gospel." (Acts 15: 7 )
A quarrel had prevailed among the holy ones of
Christ, Paul and Barnabas on the one side; and Peter, James, and John, who,
says Paul, only "seemed to be pillars," on the other; but they
patched it up apparently and gave each other in token "the right hands of
fellowship."
"But when Peter was come to Antioch, I
withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. ... And the other Jews
dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with
their dissimulation. (Gal. 2: 9, 11, 18 )
John of Patmos, from the third heaven,
illumined by the great white light of Yahveh's throne, caught a good bird's-eye
view of the whole apostolic crew, and at the command of the enthroned Christ
declared:
"Thou hast tried them which say they are
apostles, and hast found them liars." (Rev. 2: 2 )
KNOWLEDGE SCORNED -- IGNORANCE EXALTED
The first "thou shalt not," the
first ban imposed on humanity, was the edict of Yahveh God in Eden decreeing
perpetual ignorance for his creature man. In the midst of the garden Yahveh
Elohim planted the tree of knowledge, and thus he decreed:
"Thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day
that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." (Gen. 2: 17 )
Thus the priests banned human knowledge under
penalty of death, a penalty often enforced by them; and the ignorance thus
decreed they have perpetuated; they have forbidden and derided knowledge,
boasted of their own ignorance, and imposed it on mankind ever since. Even the
Master exulted that his preachments were not for intelligent persons but were
kept for the childish- minded only. Looking up to his Father Yahveh, he fervently
exclaimed:
"I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven
and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and
hast revealed them unto babes." (Matt. 11: 26; Luke 10: 21 )
The propagandist-in-chief of these beliefs of
babes reiterates his enthusiasm for ignorance and his scorn and fear of
knowledge:
"Knowledge puffeth up." (1Cor..8: 1
)
"The wisdom of this world is foolishness
with God." (1 Cor.3: 19 )
"Beware lest any man spoil you through
philosophy." (Col. 2: 8 )
And he expressly enjoins the perpetuation of
ignorance and forbids all effort for enlightenment:
"If any man be ignorant, let him be
ignorant" (1 Cor.14: 88 ).
The fruits of the Christian ban on learning
and of its exaltation of unthinking ignorance are seen in the quality of the
flock fed on such refuse:
"Not many wise men after the flesh, not
many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things
of the world to confound the wise. ... Base things of the world, and things
which are despised, hath God chosen yea, and the things which are not."
(1Cor.
Hear his own description of his converts and
of the membership of his churches:
"We are made as the filth of the world,
and are the offscouring of all things unto this day." (1 Cor. 4: 13 ).
And the apostolic feeders of the flock are
admitted to be no better:
"We are made a spectacle unto the world,
and to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake." (1 Cor. 4: 9,
10 )
One has only to contemplate the vast hordes of
"true believers" throughout Christendom, and to look upon the faces
of thousands of little padres and preachers of the word, to visualize the
ancient apostles and their followers. Those countries of Christendom to-day
where the faith most flourishes are shown by readily available statistics to
have the greatest percentages of illiteracy among the credulous population, and
there ignorance and superstition most abound.
Victor Hugo knew the class whom he describes
as "neither men nor women -- priests"; and he says: "There is in
every village a lighted torch, the schoolmaster; and a mouth to blow it out,
the parson."
CHILDISH FAITH FOR SALVATION
When a person of any God-given intelligence
has read and pondered these correlated contradictions, so solemnly uttered for
our faith, he can better appreciate the subtle significance of the oft-repeated
prime qualification for Christian faith and salvation. The Master himself
declares:
"Except ye ... become as little children,
ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. 18: 3 ) "For of
such is the kingdom of heaven"! (Matt. 11: 14 )
Little children have such childish simplicity
and credulity, -- believing in Santa Claus, fairies, elves, and ghosts in full
faith. When they have grown into adult child-mindedness, the Holy Ghost,
Yahveh, and Jesus Christ are added to their holy faith.
DAMNATION FOR UNBELIEF
Along with such childlike belief go the most
fearful threats of eternal death and damnation if one is not so childish as to
believe it all:
"He that believeth not is condemned
already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of
God; ... but the wrath of God abideth on him." (John 3: 18, 36 ) And after
reading all the divine assurances, even "He that doubteth is damned"!
(Romans 14: 23 )
FATUOUS FANATICISM
When, under the influence of the inspired and
contrary preachments above dinned, coaxed, and threatened into one, one
forswears his reason and becomes so like a little child as to believe, these
are among the pious duties and obligations to which he is devoted, by the
Master's own avowal, and for his own sweet sake and that of the holy Christian
religion:
"The brother shall deliver up the brother
to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against
their parents, and cause them to be put to death." (Matt. 10: 21 )
A Christian ideal realized untold times during
the long dark ages of faith, which to-day still flourishes, dividing the
Christian world into hostile camps of bigoted and intolerant factions. And the
promise of reward for so great inhumanity is very incentive to those who
believe it:
"Every one that hath forsaken houses, or
brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for
my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life."
(Matt. 19: 29 )
In countless homes and hearts, blighting the
tenderest love, the curse of the inspired ban has been felt:
"Be ye not unequally yoked together with
unbelievers: for ... what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?" (2
Cor. 6: 14, 15 )
THE "PRINCE OF PEACE"
Of all the inspired words which we have quoted
and commented on, the only provable ones which have proved true are those of
the last few paragraphs, and the sinister, cruel, and fearful sentences of the
Man of Nazareth, fondly called the "Prince of Peace" -- words which
have borne the bitterest harvest of blood, and blight, and hell-on-earth
through all the ages since they were uttered:
"Think not that I am come to send peace
on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at
variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the
daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of
his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of
me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."
(Matt. 10: 34-37; Luke 12: 51-53 )
The Christian creeds and dogmas, laid down
with such inspired assurance and so self-contradictorily -- in the Holy Bible,
may here be left, conveniently assembled and matched for the easier radical
revision of opinion regarding them.
CHAPTER 17
THE CHRISTIAN "PLAN OF SALVATION"
ORIGINAL SIN AND ETERNAL DAMNATION
"Redemption
from the Curse"
THE whole philosophy of what is fondly known
as the "Sacred science of Christianity" revolves around two extremes
of inspired Bible history: the "curse on man" through Adam, and the
"redemption from the curse" through Jesus Christ. The second Council
of Orange (A.D. 529 ) thus declares and defines the deadly dogma: "One man
[Adam] has transmitted to the whole human race not only the death of the body,
which is the punishment of sin, but even sin itself, which is the death of the
soul" (Cath. Encyc., Vol.11:p. 314.) St. Augustine, profoundest apologist
of the Church and its dogmas, states the Christian scheme thus: "The whole
Christian religion may be summed up in the intervention of two men, the one to
ruin us, the other to save us" (De Pecc. Orig., 24; Cath. Encyc., Vol 11:
p. 314 ). This is but a paraphrase of the proposition as formulated by the
directly inspired originator of the dogma,
"For as in Adam all die, even so in
Christ shall all be made alive." (1 Cor.15: 22 )
Thus, by the express utterance of inspiration,
the Christian religion rests totally upon, is inextricably and fatally involved
with, the historicity of the Garden of Eden, of Adam and Eve, of the talking
snake, and of the "curse" and the "Fall" -- for upon the
verity of these events depends utterly the validity of the divine mission of
Jesus Christ, Son of Yahveh God, sent by Yahveh to "redeem the world from
the sin of Adam." It was the "original sin" of Adam which
brought on the fearful curse of Yahveh which clings to every since-born human
soul, until and unless "redeemed" by Jesus the Christ.
This frightful sin was thus defined by
inspiration of the Holy Ghost in the sacred council of Trent (the italics are
mine): "Original sin is described not only as the death of the soul, but
as the privation of justice that each child contracts at its conception"
(Coun. Trent, Sess. 6:chap. 3; Cath. Encyc., Vol. 11:p. 314 ). If this, in the
mercies of a just God, is not true, it is the most fearful and blasting untruth
which priest has ever inflicted on mankind. Let us examine the dogma with the
fearful attention which it challenges.
Inevitably, if Genesis is not true, Jesus
Christ, as God and "Savior," is not, cannot be, true; both stand or
fall together; if one, then the other must be relegated to the same limbo of
exploded myth. Adam, says Paul, "is the figure of him that was to
come" (Rom. 5: 15 ); Jesus Christ, again he says, is the "last
Adam" (I Cor.15: 45 ). If the "first Adam" goes into the
discard, the "last Adam" must needs follow.
In a previous chapter we have examined a score
or more of pretended "prophecies" of the Hebrew Scriptures, alleged
to have been "fulfilled" in Jesus Christ and sundry of the events of
his life and death. Every one of these we have found to be apocryphal. In
addition to these ineptly invoked "prophecies" there are many other
-- some one hundred and forty-nine -- jumbles of words scattered through the
Hebrew Scriptures which the pious Bible editors, or the inspired Church, proclaim
to be other "prophecies of Jesus Christ" -- of like quality with the
former.
The very first of these is that of the
"curse" and the "Fall," with its pretended "promise of
the Redeemer." How priest ever proclaimed, and human intelligence ever
believed, that a good and loving Father God (as Yahveh is naively described),
who said that not a sparrow could fall without his anxious concern, would damn
throughout eternity the errant masterpieces of his creation, on the very first
day of their existence, for a simple disobedience, and involve all creation and
all future humanity in a deadly curse on the soul of man until his Son should
come, perhaps, four thousand years later, to "redeem" this humanity
from the damnation of "original sin," and then leave damned or redamn
all those who would not believe the "Word of God" about it, or who
never heard of it and so never had a chance to disbelieve it -- this I leave to
more knowing or more credulous minds to try to explain. I simply read the texts
of the "Word of God" where this is all said by the priests to be
revealed, to discover whether an unprejudiced lay mind can see it as they do.
THE REVELATION OF THE FALL
Chapter 3 of Genesis begins with the talking
snake, who is praised as being more subtle than any beast of the field which
Yahveh had made. The serpent meets, for the first time, Mother Eve under the
shade of the wondrous tree of knowledge which flourished in the midst of the
Garden of Eden, with respect to which Yahveh, in the first lie on record, had benignly
threatened: "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely
die." The serpent tells Eve that this is really not a true statement, for
the fruit of the tree was good to eat, and if eaten, "your eyes shall be
opened, and ye shall be as the gods, knowing good from evil." Here again
the verity of a plurality of gods is asserted.
This was Eve's first day on earth; she was
totally inexperienced with the ways of the world or of serpents; so she was
"beguiled" by the serpent and did eat of the fruit, and gave some to
Adam. While the trio were yet together, but too late to do any good by
prevention, Yahveh appears upon the scene, learns of the incident, flies into
the most damning of all the rages recorded of him in all his Book of Curses,
and immediately damns every person and thing in being and yet to come.
THE "CURSE" IN EDEN
This "curse" is a triple-plated
damnation -- against the serpent, against the woman, and against the man. It is
well worth the while to pause a moment to dissect it, curse by curse, as set
out in Genesis 3:
THE SNAKE CURSE
"Yahveh Elohim said unto the serpent;
Because thou hast done this,
"[1] thou art cursed above all cattle,
and above every beast of the field;
"[2] upon thy belly shalt thou go, and
dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
"[3] And I will put enmity between thee
and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed;
"[4] it shall bruise thy head, and thou
shalt bruise his heel." (Gen. 3: 14, 15 )
While this is quite a blustering curse, it
seems of slight practical consequence -- though the Bible editors and the
inspired Church assure us that this really and truly is a pellucid and positive
divine promise of Jesus Christ. As the serpent naturally went on his belly
anyhow, one may wonder where is the point in cursing him to continue to
"wriggle in and wriggle out" as usual; and as to eating dust for a
steady diet, this must be a mistake, if the "curse" applied to snakes
generally, as the "Funny-mentalists" insist, for snakes are not known
to eat dirt, but they suck eggs, and eat birds and rabbits and rats and other
snakes; not even Barnum's circus at its heyday ever had a snake addicted to
such unusual and economical diet as dirt.
This dust diet is really prescribed only to
this particular serpent; and there seems no just reason to read into the plain
language of Yahveh the curse of a perpetual dirt diet for all snakes for all
time, which is not in effect anyhow; and it would hardly be just in Yahveh to
condemn all snakes in the world for the wrong of one snake. "Shall not the
judge of all the earth be just?" And should the "just suffer for the
unjust?" We shall consider the words "enmity between thee and the
woman" and "thy seed" when we have noticed the other curses in
their order.
THE CURSE ON WOMAN
"Unto the woman be said,
"[1] I will greatly multiply thy sorrow
and thy conception;
"[2] in sorrow thou shalt bring forth
children;
"[3] and thy desire shall be to thy
husband, and he shall rule over thee." (Gen. 3: 16 )
Here the choleric Yahveh simply inflicts poor
Eve in her own single person with increased pangs in child-birth and a
multiplication of sorrows, which would do no credit to any kind and loving God.
As for the rest, a desire or love only to her own husband, instead of her
running off after affinities and soul- mates, would seem to be a blessing
rather than a curse; and the subjection to her husband as the head of the
household, is no accursed thing within reasonable limits of equality of personal
privilege.
This curse on woman was also evidently limited
to Eve alone; and there is no justice or reason in claiming, as some expositors
insist, that Yahveh cursed all women for the simple act of one woman, any more
than he did all serpents. The whole curse against Eve was really pain and
sorrow in giving life, not eternal damnation after death.
THE CURSE ON MAN
"'Unto Adam he said, Because thou hast
hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I
commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it:
"[1] cursed is the ground for thy sake;
"[2] in sorrow shalt thou eat (of) it all
the days of thy life;
"[3] Thorns also and thistles shall it
bring forth to thee;
"[4 ) and thou shalt eat the herb of the
field;
"[5 ) In the sweat of thy face shalt thou
eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; "for out of it wast thou
taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." (Gen. 3: 17-19
).
This was Adam's share in the tremendous curse;
and just what was it? Let me state its terms again:
1. The ground is accursed;
2. in sorrow shalt thou (Adam) eat it all the
days of thy life (though he was to die on the very day he ate it);
3. thorns and thistles shall grow from the
ground;
4. thou shalt eat the herbs of the field;
5. thou shalt eat bread in the sweat of thy
face until thou return unto the ground; that is, until thy death.
This is every single solitary item of the
fearful "curse on man." it is no curse upon adam (man) at all, except
the one item of having to work for an honest living; all the rest of the
"curse" is upon the harmless and helpless earth, which Yahveh had
just created with such a deal of pains that he had to rest a whole day -- which
with him is as a thousand years (2 Peter 3: 8 ). But there is not a single word
or remotest hint of sin, or death of soul, or eternal damnation. If Yahveh ever
said: "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (
2: 17 ) he either "repented" as usual, or it was all a brutal Jahvic
bluff; for Adam continued to live, after that fatal day, for just nine hundred
and thirty years, if the vital statistics of Genesis are to be credited. But I
repeat that there is not one word in the whole record of sin or death or
damnation as a penalty against Adam himself, much less against his posterity
and all humanity.
THE "CURSE" INNOCUOUS
The "curse," as we have seen, is
principally against the ground itself, not upon the man: "accursed is the
ground for thy sake." The man is humorously condemned to eat ground, as
was the snake; there is no "of" in the original Hebrew. The ground
also should grow thorns and thistles; yet, according to Genesis 1:every kind of
herb and plant and tree, including, of course, thorns and thistles, had already
been created and "the earth brought forth" the same, on the third day
( 1: 12 ). The man was further condemned, as part of the "curse," to
eat "the herb of the field"; but already, and as a divine providence
for man, these same herbs of the field had been graciously bestowed upon him
for food; for it is recorded: "And Elohim said, Behold, I have given you
every herb, and every tree, in the which is the fruit; ... to you it shall be
for meat" ( 1: 29 ). As for eating bread in the sweat of his face, or
working to make the ground bring forth its produce of food, why, that was the
express purpose for which man was created in the first place (in the second
version of his creation) and put into the Garden of Eden -- a blessing of
healthful work instead of idle existence. For, after the earth was created, and
before man was put upon it, it is recorded: "And there was not a man to
till the ground" ( 2: 5 ). So Yahveh proceeded to form man out of the dust
of the ground, and then laid out and planted the Garden of Eden. Then Yahveh
Elohim took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden "to dress it and
to keep it" ( 2: 15 ) -- thus providing for him useful and healthful work,
so that "by the sweat of his face" he should eat of all the varied
products of nature which Yahveh had given the man for food, until his return to
the dust from which he was taken.
So we see that every single clause of the
"curse" on man, was no "curse"(?) at all; every item of it,
except that of "eating dirt" all his life like the snake, and which
he never acquired the habit of doing, was already provided by the bounteous
Creator Yahveh as particular blessings for his masterpiece of creation. The statement
about his death and return to dust was no part of the "curse" at all,
for man was never designed to live on earth forever, but was mercifully to be
released, in due time, from that intolerable fate. The pretence of some pious
persons and of the Council of Orange that gut for this awful "original
sin," man would have lived always without tasting death, besides being
utterly absurd, is distinctly denied by the inspired record; for, in a very
curious passage, Yahveh Elohim is represented in a colloquy with some of the
other gods, anonymous in the record, and, says Yahveh: "Behold, the man is
become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his
hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore
Yahveh Elohim sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from
whence he was taken" (3: 22, 23 ). Thus the man was driven away from the
tree of life, which had the magic property of making earthly life everlasting,
expressly to prevent him from acquiring immunity from death.
And he was driven forth from the garden
expressly "to till the ground from whence he was taken" (
THE "CURSE" LIFTED
And just here one very singular circumstance
may be mentioned, which is another falsehood imputable to Yahveh. Just after
the Flood, when pious reckless old Noah destroyed one-half of all his breeding
stock for a burnt sacrifice to Yahveh, we are told that "Yahveh smelled a
sweet savor; and Yahveh said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground
any more for man's sake" (Gen. 8: 21 ). This would certainly seem to
indicate that Yahveh was appeased and the "curse" lifted, and that
the new race of mankind would now have a fair new start in life. But this is
evidently a mistake; for the "curse" of Eden yet rests upon the
ground. Indeed, "all things continue as from the beginning of the
world"; the ground still brings forth thorns and thistles, and in toil man
still eats of it in the sweat of his face (for, as the poet sings: "How
salt with sweat is the laborer's bread!"); snakes still wriggle through
life on their belly; and in pain do women yet bring forth children. So
Jahvistic injustice is still universal and his Holy Word is broken, believe
either phase of it one may prefer.
This is the whole of the fearful "curse"
and "fall of man," whereby, we are told, all humanity was placed
under the "curse of God," and Jesus Christ had to be sent into the
world by his Father Yahveh, after four thousand years of weary "watchful
waiting," to suffer and die ignominiously in order "to redeem mankind
from the sin and curse of Adam." But one may wonder where is any eternal
death and damnation in all this, or any scheme of redemption -- where is the
joke. I shall reveal it.
THE RIDDLE OF THE SERPENT SEED
Utterly all of the "plan of salvation"
is revealed, or concealed, in one fatal verse of Genesis 3. The whole trick is
in the riddle of Yahveh and his talking snake: "I will put enmity between
thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy
head, and thou shalt bruise his heel" ( 3: 15 ). Yahveh Almighty, Maker of
heaven and earth, in his infinite wisdom, said those few cabalistic words about
snake- and woman-seed, and about bruising heads and heels, to his talking
snake; and out of this inspired sentence the inspired oracles of the new
dispensation, over four thousand years afterwards, conjured this fearful and
wonderful combination of curse and prophecy, clear as mud: Mankind is damned
through the sin of Adam to the last generation; but the merciful and loving
Yahveh will send his son Jesus Christ, the Lord knows when, to "redeem and
save" all those who believe this childish Jewish fable, and to re-damn in
hell fire, not then invented, all those who do not and will not believe a word
of it.
Of course, Yahveh did not say this in words
that anybody but a talking snake or a priest could understand. The mystic
remark was made to the serpent; it does not appear that Adam and Eve heard it
or understood it to mean anything, and certainly not the tremendous curse of death,
damnation, and salvation, four thousand years afterwards evolved out of it.
Nor did a single patriarch, priest, prophet,
or seer of Israel, with all their frenzied visions and fiery cursings, ever
imagine or mention anything of the sort. Of all persons on earth, these Old
Testament worthies surely would not have overlooked so momentous and terrific a
curse, in the very beginning of their own Book of Curses, if either by
inspiration or ingenuity they could have unriddled such a sense out of these
seemingly senseless words. Those holy ones of Israel surpassed all human skill
of those ages in devising curses to terrify the Chosen People into abject
submission to the priests and to Yahveh; but, fearfully effective as it was
afterwards made, not a word of the awful "curse of Adam," with
eternal hell fire and damnation, do they utter, or even hint, or suspect.
A BIG CHANCE MISSED
Moses is Yahveh's arch-terrorist; he piles
Pelion on Ossa of threats and curses throughout all of his reputed Five Books,
and sums them all up in his schedule of curses in the closing chapters of
Deuteronomy. He elaborates the most frightful and blood-curdling catalogue of
curses ever framed or imagined prior to the gentle and loving Jesus and his
apostles and to medieval churchly anathemas. All which he threatens "shall
come to pass if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of Yahveh thy God, to
observe to do all his commandments; ... all these curses shall come upon thee,
and overtake thee." Cursed shalt thou be in this and cursed shalt thou be
in that:
"Yahveh shall send upon thee cursing,
vexation, and rebuke, ... until thou be destroyed. ... Yahveh shall make the
pestilence cleave unto thee, until he have consumed thee from off the land. ...
Yahveh shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an
inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with
blasting, and with mildew. ... And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body,
the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters" -- and countless other blood-curdling
and diabolic horrors. And when old Moses has exhausted his powers of invention
of terrors and his vocabulary of horrors, and is choked off by an apoplectic
fit of rage, he sputters and spits forth a residuary clause of curses:
"Also every sickness, and every plague, which is not written in the book
of this law, them will Yahveh bring upon thee, until thou be destroyed"
(Deut. 28: 15-61 ).
These gentle admonitions to belief and
obedience, be it remembered, are by Moses himself -- the same inspired author
of the riddle of the serpent seed, supposed by Christian propagandists to
signify eternal damnation in hell fire. Read in the light of hell fire, this
"curse of Adam" would have been the most potent of all the terrors of
the priests of Yahveh, just as it always has been, until lately, of those of
the later triplex Deity. Moses imposed the yoke of the priest upon the people
by the threat of death: "The man that will do presumptuously, and will not
hearken unto [obey] the priest. ... even that man shall die" (Deut. 17: 12
); and he exhausts the vocabulary of terrorism to instill the abject fear of
the hierarchy into the minds and souls of the deluded Chosen: but never once
does he hurl at them: "Doubt and be damned" -- "Fear him who hath
power to destroy both soul and body in hell!" What a chance be missed!
But Moses, in all his fluency of frightfulness
and fury of invention of terror, never once includes the "curse of
Adam" in the catalogue of "all the curses that are written in this
book"; he evidently did not read his own riddle that way; and no other
priest or prophet from Moses to Malachi even hints at Adam's curse, or Fall, or
eternal damnation in hell fire. Hell and its fire are totally non-existent in
the entire Hebrew scheme of penalties and punishments.
Again, let it be noted in the reader's mind,
and written indelibly upon his memory, that from the first "curse" in
Genesis 3 until the final "Lest he come and smite the earth with a
curse" in the last verse of Malachi" amid all the fearful cursings and
ravings of the prophets of Yahveh calling down death and destruction upon his
Chosen People, there is not one single mention or remotest reference again in
all the Hebrew Bible to the snake story, or to the curse of Adam, or to the
"fall of man," or to the necessity or propriety of redemption from
"original sin" and from the fires of hell. All the furies of the
dread Yahveh, invoked by all his holy prophets, are temporal terrors; all his
pains and penalties are ended with the death of his miserable victims. In the
grave (sheol) they are at rest; they are never pursued into any hell fire on
account of Adam's sin or of their own. We must give even their Yahveh his due.
DAMNATION A CHRISTIAN DOGMA
Whence then, comes this fearful doctrine of
"original sin," of the "fall of man," of eternal death and
damnation -- of this curious and accursed "plan of salvation?" It is
all a fiendish invention of the apostles and priests of the new dispensation,
as will now be very easily seen. Hell fire and damnation are simply the genial
sanction of the religion of the gentle and loving Jesus. But Jesus Christ never
once even mentioned Adam or the pretended curse and the Fall; he never once
intimated that his mission was due to the pretended talking snake scene in the
Garden of Eden. More than that, not one of the four writers of the so-called
gospels utters a word about Adam, or the curse, or the Fall, or of
"redemption" by Jesus Christ for any sin of Adam, which is never even
remotely referred to throughout their gospels. The single reference by the
gospel writers to any Mosaic antecedent for any of the events of the life of
Jesus Christ (except some pretended "prophecies" elsewhere examined )
is by John, "the disciple whom Jesus loved," his dearest and closest
friend; and he only says: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up" (John 3: 14 ). But
this is not because of the serpent in Eden, or of the "curse" on Adam
and mankind, but simply, as John says, "that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish, but have eternal life." Thus neither Jesus nor any of
his inspired biographers makes the remotest allusion to the very cornerstone of
the "plan of salvation."
PAUL THE APOSTLE
The awful dogma was inflicted upon suffering
superstitious humanity by one who never knew Jesus; who was the most malignant
of the early persecutors of the believers in Jesus; one Saul of Tarsus, a Jew,
a Pharisee, a doctrinaire, a garrulous, tergiversating zealot, who admits that
he "profited in the Jews' religion above many" (Gal. 1: 14 ); then
changed his name to Paul, and with the zeal of a new convert became perfectly
frenzied as a propagandist of the new religion -- admittedly "lying to the
glory of God" -- to such an extent that he came to be called "the
second founder of Christianity," the creator of its dogma, and deviser of
its dogmatic system, self-contradictory in most or all of its muddled
propositions.
This Paul in a fit of frenzy gives vent to
this: "I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago (whether in the
body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth
[but certainly out of the mind]; such an one caught up to the third heaven; ...
and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter" (2
Cor.12: 2 ). Notwithstanding this pretended trip to the very fount of
inspiration, Paul is so uninspired by truth that he takes the prophets of old
seriously, and assures us that "God ... at sundry times and in divers
manners [i.e., by dreams, dice, and phallic ephods] spake in time past unto the
fathers by the prophets" (Heb. 1: 1 ) -- heedless that this same God
himself had said: "The prophets prophesy lies in my name: I sent them
not" (Jer.14: 14 ).
The grossness of his superstition and the
proof that nothing he utters is to be believed as very "oracles of
God" lie not only in his incessant contradictions of himself, but also in
his own boasting confession before Felix: "But this I confess unto thee,
that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers
[Yahveh], believing all things which are written in the law and in the
prophets" (Acts 24: 14 ). We have just seen the portraiture of this
Yahveh, "God of my fathers," and heard the maudlin
"ravings" and monstrous lies of the meshuggah prophets, of whom
Paul's old side-partner and rival Peter fatuously says: "Prophecy came not
in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by
the Holy Ghost" (2 Pet. 1: 21 ). But these "holy men of Yahveh"
have abundantly admitted the sources of their "inspiration," and are
totally discredited.
Now it is that this Paul inflicts his cruel
and accursed "original sin" on humanity. If he had been inspired of
truth by God, be would have known that Adam, Eve, the Garden of Eden, the talking
snake, the "curse," Moses, and his Genesis, all were myths and
fables. But he had been whisked into the third heaven, wherever that is, and
this may have been one of the things he heard "which it is not lawful for
a man to utter" -- at least, for an honest and truthful man; the chief
advance agent of "revelation" deemed it unlawful to reveal things
which he saw in heaven with his own eyes, and instead peddled ancient and false
"prophecies" of the old meshuggahs of Israel. When he comes back to
earth (but not to his senses), he maunders through some pages of myth and wrath
of God and blood, and delivers himself of the solemn, oracular, and gratuitous
utterances on his novel propositions of "original sin" and the
"plan of salvation."
THE "PLAN OF SALVATION"
The whole of theology, founded on these fables
of dogma, is aptly summed up in those memorable opening words of
"Of
man's first disobedience and the fruit
Of that
forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought
death into the world and all our woe,
With
loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore
us and regain that blissful seat,
Sing,
heav'nly Muse."
But truly inspired of poesy as was Milton, let
us turn to yet higher inspiration for the more authoritative theory of original
sin and for the inspired originals of the plan of salvation. The great
dogmatist of the faith, Paul, thus states and restates his doctrine, of which
he is the originator:
"For as in Adam all die, even so in
Christ shall all be made alive." (1 Cor.15: 22 )
This theorem he elaborates at great length and
with much iteration in others of his letters, of which this is a fair example:
"Wherefore, as by one man sin entered
into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, ... even
over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression. ...
Through the offence of one many be dead. For as by one man's disobedience many
were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made
righteous." (Romans 5: 12-15, 19 )
And to cap his direful dogma, he emits this
positive assurance:
"Christ hath redeemed us from the curse
of the law." (Gal. 3: 13 )
Human language is inadequate for comment on
the fearful fatality of these fatuous sentences. The fairest part of the earth
has been under their blight for nearly twenty centuries; at this time and place
it suffices to demonstrate their awful enormity of falsehood.
A childish fable of a talking snake and a
muddled "curse," about as pregnant of the sense of "original
sin" and eternal damnation as "chops and tomato sauce" are of
breach of promise of marriage, are warped and twisted and tortured by the
adroit Sergeant Buzfuz of Christianity into the priestly doctrine of eternal
damnation in hell fire for all humanity! As there never was any Adam, it cannot
be true that "in Adam all die"; therefore its corollary that
"even so in Christ shall all be made alive" cannot follow. As it
consequently is not true that "by one man sin entered into the world, and
death by sin," the superstition of "original sin" is false, as
it is likewise false that "so death passed upon all men," in the
sense of the soul's "death by sin" of Adam inflicted upon all
succeeding generations by a "curse."
From this fatuous torturing of an idle fable,
purely personal and temporal in its every fanciful term, comes the monstrous
cardinal tenet of the Christian Church, that a great and glorious God damned
all the countless millions of yet unborn humanity to eternal hell fire because
one man in a fable ate a fabled apple at the instigation of a fabled talking
snake, and for punishment was told that he must work for his living thereafter,
and that "in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shall surely die"
-- which he leisurely enough is said to have done just 930 years after the
fatal incident.
Based on this inspired story and on the
amazing deductions from it by the inspired Doctor of Dogma, Paul, is the
inspired doctrine thus formulated by the original one true Church of Yahveh,
and fondly adopted by every sect in Christendom, however otherwise dissentient,
as the very cornerstone of the ecclesiastical plan of salvation:
"The souls of those who depart in mortal
sin, or only in original sin, go down immediately to hell" (Second Council
of Lyons; and Decree Unionis, Council of Florence; Cath. Encyc., Vol. 7:p. 208
).
The climax of this deadly doctrine is found in
the awesome aphorism of sundry of the Christian creeds that "Hell is full
of infants a span long," roasting in the torments of everlasting hell fire
because of the "original sin" of Father Adam, who never lived, in a
Garden of Eden that never was.
"REDEMPTION FROM THE CURSE"
The culminating doctrine of the whole series,
perfectly typical of untruth of it all, is Paul's astonishing assertion:
"Christ hath redeemed us from the curse" (Gal. 3: 13 ). Let us apply
a moment's thought to this dogma of Paul and the priests.
According to the infamy imputed to Yahveh, he
damned all future humanity into hell for the sin of the fabled first man.
Awful, if true; all babes, however innocent; all men and women, however nobly
good and virtuous in life -- all damned in hell irretrievably because of One;
for "in Adam all men die" (1 Cor. 15: 22 ), "and so death passed
upon all men" (Rom. 5: 12 ).
But after four thousand years Yahveh, who had
done this, relenting, sent his "only begotten Son" to die and so save
the world from this curse. Christ died that all might live; he redeemed us from
the curse. This is just and righteous, however tardy, if true. As all were
damned, whether they knew it or not, whether they believed it or not, whether
they had sinned or not, surely, in righting the wrong, all should be saved
quite as universally and effectively.
But no; the Christian plan of salvation does
not work that way. Its terms and conditions are: "Believe, and ye shall be
saved; believe not, and ye are damned already" (Mark16: 16; John 3: 18 ).
Damned nolens volens: undamned only volens and credulous. Be born and be
damned; believe unbelievable things and be saved, or remain damned: such is the
"sacred science of Christianity."
Of course, if the sacrificial death of Jesus
Christ is given full credit, its efficacy is, must be, universal. He was
proclaimed from heaven: "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin
of the world" (John
THE CURSE NOT 100% REDEEMED
There are yet other curiosities of the plan of
salvation -- of this "redemption" from the "curse" -- even
for the true believers. If by the sacrifice of the cross the "curse"
is taken away, even if only for those who believe, then why not all the curse?
Why is the wondrous work of redemption so incomplete? The snake still goes
pronely upon his belly, under the curse; the believing woman still brings forth
her still damned child in birth pains, under the curse; the yet accursed ground
yet brings forth thorns and thistles, under the curse, and yields its fruits,
even to the true believer, only by dint of "the sweat of his face,"
under the curse; even the true believer yet eats his bread in the sweat of his
face -- all exactly as pronounced in the "curse" from which his
Christ "redeemed" him two thousand years ago. Surely "the wisdom
of Yahveh is foolishness to men." And all this wisdom is the legitimate
fruit of the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Such is the Sacred
Science of Christianity.
The whole fabric of the Christian
"faith" -- and not its admirable moral precepts, which are not new or
peculiar to it at all, but its laboriously built up dogmatic theology, forged
by Paul and his associate propagandists into a priestly system of beliefs and
practices enforced by terrific threats of eternal damnation hereafter through
eternity -- and so long as was possible by torture and death here on earth --
is seen to be totally dependent, as it was falsely founded, upon the idle
fables of Yahveh of the primitive, superstitious, heathen Hebrews, and falls
into vacuous nothingness with the disproof of the fabled Eden and the Fall.
Thus we see that the whole of the Christian
faith, the entire Christian plan of salvation, -- the sole and only apology for
Christian theology -- hangs like a
Paul admits: "Beyond measure I persecuted
the
Jesus Christ founded the Church with a play on
words, a pun: "Thou art Peter [Greek, Petros, a stone], and upon this rock
I will build my church" -- and the assurance is fondly added: "and
the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matt.16: 18 ). Hell and
the church are thus cut from the same piece by the Grand Master of both
superstitions. The hell myth has long since been exploded, and the church was
badly shaken by the explosion. When the keystone of the arch, ecclesiastic
theology, is knocked out, the whole structure of superstition will crash down
to ruin, "and great will be the fall thereof", to the universal
advantage of true spiritual uplook and the brotherhood of man on earth.
CHAPTER 18
REVELATIONS OF THE HEREAFTER
HEAVEN, HELL, AND PURGATORY
IN the twentieth century after the traditional
advent of the Son of Yahveh on earth, the religion which is built around that
event persists in a congeries of primitive cosmological notions, which modern
knowledge has made totally obsolete. The Hebrew, and ancient primitive, notions
of the architectural scheme of their very limited universe were intimately
related to, and an integral part of, their scheme of theology and of
eschatology, or after-life affairs as they conceived them. Their notions of
God, of heaven, of hell, and of after-life, were adapted, and were adaptable
only, to the narrow limits of the universe as imagined by the ancient
theologians. And present-day Christian theology adopts wholly and wholly rests
upon the ancient Hebrew revelation of earth and heaven and hell -- with fire
later kindled in the last.
According to this ancient Hebrew revelation,
the earth is flat and four-cornered; the sun moves around it as a center, and
on occasion can be made to stand still in its course. No great distance above
the flat surface of the earth is a solid arched "firmament," in which
the sun, moon, and stars are somehow set and on which they move. Just within
this firmament, which is a solid something which "divides the waters which
were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament"
(Gen. 1: 7 ), is heaven, where Yahveh and angels, seraphim, the "sons of
the gods," and others of the "heavenly hosts" have their abode.
This heaven is so close to the earth that men
could propose and attempt to build a tower which should reach into it and
enable them to scale up to the gods; so close that a ladder resting on the
earth actually reached into the heaven, and angels passed to and fro on it.
Yahveh and his messengers can easily and quickly pass back and forth between
earth and heaven; the "sons of the gods" can come to earth among the
daughters of men. The voice of Yahveh can easily be heard when he cries from
heaven, and from heaven he can hurl stones and thunder-bolts when he fights,
like Jove, in the battles of his chosen warriors. The Spirit of Yahveh can flit
dove- like from heaven to earth to accredit the Son of Yahveh to men. The
living bodies of Enoch and Elijah can be "translated" into heaven,
the latter in a chariot and horses of fire, before human eyes; the flesh-clothed
shades of Elijah and Moses can swoop down upon the Mount of Transfiguration and
back again like flashes of lightning, The human eye in ecstasy can see into
heaven and behold Yahveh seated on his throne. Dives in hell can look up into
heaven and see Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham and hold converse with him.
Satan, King of Hell, was wont to pass readily to heaven to hold Yahveh in
challenging argument and defiance and to plot evil to Job. Under the "new
dispensation," the souls of the newly dead found instant lodgment in
heaven or hell, according to the deeds done in the flesh.
WHAT HEAVEN IS AND WHERE
"In the beginning Elohim [gods] created
the heaven and the earth," reads the ancient Hebrew revelation, and
"made the firmament, and called the firmament Heaven" (Gen. 1: 7, 8
).
About the same time, perhaps, Marduk,
Babylonian sky-god and creator of heaven and earth, forged the immense dome of
heaven out of the hardest metal, resting it upon a wall surrounding the earth.
For the Egyptians, the heavens were an arched iron ceiling from which the stars
were suspended by cables. To the ancient Greeks and Romans, the sky-father
(Zeus-pater, Jupiter) had set up a great vault of crystal, to which the fixed
stars were attached, the sun and planets being suspended movably by brazen
chains. Olympus's high head pierced the visible sky, and on its lofty summit
awful Zeus held his court. The Romans called the vaulted ceiling or covering of
the earth coelum.
How do the heathen rage and the peoples
imagine vain things! Fatuous notions these, of childish heathen cosmogony, of
pagan superstition. Only the Hebrews in their hoary Holy Writ had the true
revelation of creation by their true God (s); they only, inspired by their
Yahveh, truly knew what or where heaven is, for their Yahveh himself wrought
it, as is revealed: "I am Yahveh that maketh all things; that stretcheth
forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself" (Isa.
44: 24 ). Heaven, Job says, "is strong, and as of molten brass" (Job
37: 18 ).
This was the heaven of the Hebrew: in his
consonantal language SHM, "to be high"; in Anglo-Saxon heofon,
"heaved, lifted up." "And Elohim called the firmament
Heaven"; a solid something which was fixed "in the midst of the
waters, to divide the waters from the waters" (Gen. 1: 6 ) -- thus a sort
of great vaulted bulkhead or retaining-wall for the vast celestial reservoir
above, through which the upper waters poured in Noah's deluge when "the
windows of heaven were opened" (Gen. 7: 11 ). The firmament (RQY) of
Hebrew revelation is something" beaten or hammered out," something
"made firm or solid -- hence firmamentum" in the Vulgate. How
strangely alike the pagan fables and inspired revelation! The revealed
Hebrew-Christian heaven so closely girded the four-cornered flat Bible earth
that, as Amos says, living people might "climb up to heaven" (Amos 9:
2 ). And it is common knowledge that the departed soul "in the twinkling
of an eye" flashes from earth to its home in heaven, so near is heaven to
us, according to Paul.
But profane human knowledge points otherwise.
By processes wonderful as they are precise, the primitive heaven of Hebrew
revelation has been pushed back beyond the tiptop of Jacob's dreamed ladder and
the storied snow-capped peaks of Olympus, and has been translated so far into
fathomless sidereal space that the journeyman departed soul needs much more time
to reach it.
Delicate instruments devised by the genius of
man, and the divine powers of trigonometry, while not yet attaining the exact
triangulation of heaven, have amazingly shown where heaven is not. The
unwritten revelations of the real Creator God through astronomy have made
manifest for our wonder and reverence the far-flung extent of his universe; the
Sun at 93,000,000 miles from its tiny planet earth; Neptune, most distant of
his planets, 2,793,000,000 miles farther into space; the nearest of the fixed
stars, which "God set in the firmament," 20,000,000,000,000 miles
from the base of Jacob's ladder on earth.
Not to pause at other stars which have yielded
the secret of their distance to the eye of science, we plunge in thought upward
and onward to "star clusters," so thick-studded and so far away that
their separate bodies are mingled to the sight of the most powerful sidereal
telescope so as to be in appearance almost as identical and inseparable as are
in dogma the ineffable Persons in the mystery of the Three-in-One Godhead,
Yahveh, Logos, and Paraclete Bel, On, and Hea; Osiris, Isis, and Horus; or
Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu -- one has a liberal choice of trinities. And there is
revealed, on the very frontiers of the fathomed universe a truly divine
revelation -- the star cluster, known only by its number, N.G.C. 6822, which
lies in profound depths of space so far distant that the blaze of light from it
reaches this mundane sphere only after a flight through space of 1,000,000
years! (Int. Encyc. Year Book, 1924, p. 66 ). Those true prophets of the God
Creator, astronomers, measure sidereal distances not by miles or leagues but by
"light years," or units of the distance in miles that light travels
through space in a year of time; and 1,000,000 such light years measure the
stupendous distance from earth to somewhere this side of heaven where star
group N.G.C. 6822 answered the divine flat: "Let there be light," and
burst into glorious being.
But we have not yet defined this stretch of
space heavenward; we will at least resolve it into its arithmetical elements.
Light flashes through space at the dizzy speed of about 186,280 miles in one
second of time. In one year there are 31,557,600 seconds. Thus one light year
is equal to 5,879,180,880,000, or approximately six trillions, of miles of
travel per year. This number of miles multiplied by the 1,000,000 years the
light of this star group requires to reach our eyes gives us a number that no
man can apprehend and only the mind of God can comprehend -- 5,879,180,880,000,000,000
miles! And heaven -- since we can see with uninterrupted, though telescopic,
sight up to that star cluster -- is somewhere beyond, with its myriads of
mansions, its jasper walls, its golden streets and pearly gates, its wondrous
River of Life which flows by the throne of Yahveh; otherwise it would intercept
and shut off the blaze of light from the star group N.G.C. 6822.
Nowhere by inspiration is the speed of a soul
in flight revealed to man, or the time it takes to flit "from earth to
heaven's immortal day." A near-revelation is near-made in one well- known
scripture passage, when about the sixth hour of a memorable day One Crucified
is reported as saying to one of his companions in passion: "Verily, this
day shalt thou be with me in paradise." It was not until the ninth hour
that that immortal Spirit gave up the ghost, leaving only three hours of the
day remaining for the journey to paradise; so that this remark may be
interpreted as a suggestion of very rapid ascent to the kingdom of heaven. But
the data are too meagre to allow of exact computations, such as we are able to
make in the calculations just submitted.
Inspiration and science have here yet another
point of friendly contact, in their processes. "Believe not every spirit,
but try the spirits whether they are of God" (John 4: 1 ) is the
thumb-rule of revelation. Science, applying this same principle to test its own
revelations, tries out every possible hypothesis before it puts the seal of
infallibility upon its really heavenly dogmas. So until it is revealed or
otherwise satisfactorily shown that a departed soul has, as it were, a muzzle
velocity on leaving the body and a constantly maintained flight through space
far excelling the speed of light and quite equal to that of thought, our
conclusions from irrefragable figures that three hours are too narrow a margin
of time for a soul to span the gap from earth to heaven stand on at least as
firm a foundation of truth as that of the revelation of the efficacy of
priestly prayers -- at so much per -- for the relief and ultimate release of
the souls in purgatory.
Scientific methods of research for truth, as
well as certain precepts of inspired dogma, compel us to examine the hypotheses
of purgatory and hell, against the possibility that perchance, after all, the
soul of the repentant thief did not, in sad reality, bend its flight
heavenward, but, in virtue of sin, original or acquired or both, was barred
from that kingdom of glory, and must seek its temporary or eternal habitat in
one or another of the spirit realms conveniently provided for unshriven souls
by inspired revelation or equally inspired tradition. Such an inquiry is
demanded by scientific candor; as the problem of the destiny of the soul, when
disembodied, is both quite germane to our theme and not without a curious
interest of its own, the subject justifies a brief excursus on the hypotheses
of these two other Christian provinces, or providence, or properties.
SO THIS IS HELL
Hell, as it comes first in time of discovery,
or revelation, or invention, claims first our fearful attention. In the genial
doctrine of the gospel of love, hell is the goal of the soul which dares even
to doubt, which is the unpardonable sin. Here we are not vexed with scientific
or mathematical speculations of time of transit. Dogma, which so admirably
complements the shortcomings of revelation, has set its fatal sanction on the assured
fact of instantaneous translation, and sundry other congenial incidents.
Thanks to the inspired infallible decree
"Unionis" (Council of Florence; Cath. Encyc., Vol. 7: p. 208 ), we
now know just when and where we arrive and what to expect upon arrival:
"The souls of those who depart in mortal sin, or only in original sin, go
down immediately into hell." And patching out this precious piece of the
sacred deposit with a scrap from the creed, we learn that it is "into
everlasting fire" that we go; and once landed safely in it, "the
torments of the damned shall last forever and ever," as Holy Writ of the
dispensation of God's love and mercy so often reassures us for our warning.
The "sacred science of
Christianity," like profane knowledge, is a progressive science, and hell
has evolved with the process of the suns and of revelations. In the Babylonian
"Lay of Ishtah" -- from which Hebrew revelation would seem to have
cribbed this and other matters of revelation -- the underworld to which the shade
of the departed, sinner and saint alike, sank after death, is described in
appropriately gloomy colors. It is variously and poetically called "the
pit," the "house of darkness," the "land of no return"
-- metaphors strangely reminiscent of "Pluto's gloomy realm" of
Homer, of the "go down to the pit," of the Psalmist, of Isaiah, and
of Job; of the "bottomless pit" of the Apocalypse; of the "outer
darkness" and "pits of darkness" of the evangelists; of the
"land of forgetfulness" of the sweet singer of Israel (Psalm 88: 12
); of "death, and the house appointed for all living" of the man of
boils and patience (Job 30: 23 ) -- of the "borne from whence no traveller
returns" of another of high inspiration.
Wherever in the old Hebrew revelation the
place of dim life after death is named, its name is Sheol (the cave, dug-out);
it is equivalent to and often rendered as "the grave" in English
versions: "O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave [Sheol]," cries
Job (14: 13 ), "until thy wrath be past"; Korah and his band
"went down alive into the pit [Sheol], and the earth closed upon
them" (Num. 16: 33 ); "Thou hast brought up my soul from Sheol,"
sings the Psalmist (Psalm 30: 3 ). It is identical in every sense with the
"Hades" of pagan and Christian Greek: "Thou wilt not leave my
soul in Sheol," sings again in Hebrew the Psalmist (Psalm 16: 10 ) --
quoted: "Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades" (Acts 2: 27 ). Good
and bad alike found there their rest after life's fitful fever; it was truly
"the house appointed for all living" (Job 30: 23 ). The soul of the
Psalmist we have just seen there, though his hope is that it will not remain
always. "Out of the belly of Sheol cried I," wails the godly Jonah
(2: 2 ). In grief for Joseph reported dead, the patriarch Jacob rent his
garments and cried: "I will go down into Sheol unto my son mourning"
(Gen. 37: 35 ). There in the same Sheol was the shade of the holy Samuel,
conjured up to earth at King Saul's behest by the uncanny witch of En-dor (1
Sam. 28 ).
Moreover, the place and locality of the Hebrew
Sheol is fixed with a precision unusual to revelation: "I shall ... set
thee in the low parts of the earth, in places desolate of old, with them that
go down to the pit [Sheol] (Ezek. 26: 20 ). Nor is it so far down that
reasonable efforts of excavation may not lay it bare: "Though they dig
into Sheol" (Amos 9: 2 ); indeed there are things and places which are
"deeper than Sheol" (Job 11: 8 ). And in all this not one fleck of
hell fire; not one whiff of brimstone; not even the sound of "weeping and
gnashing of teeth" (Luke 13: 28 )! In the Old Testament, therefore, Sheol
is simply "the place desolate of old," bereft morely of the
"glory set in the land of the living" (Ezek. 26: 20 ). The books of
the law and the prophets, major and minor, are silent as the grave on the whole
Christly-apostolic-churchly doctrine of the future reward of good and
punishment of evil. Their hell is on earth, in life; the nearest approximation
in Hebrew revelation to the notion of heavenly reward is death and the ensuing
"sinking down into Sheol," away from the awful wrath of their jealous
Yahveh.
Had the repentant thief then, by luck or in
providence, lived and passed from life under the post-mortem regime of the old
dispensation, his spirit would have found its lasting abode in a cheerless,
maybe, but not fiery habitat, where it would have enjoyed the companionship of
the shades of Adam and Eve and Noah, of the patriarchs (but not of the
prophets, as we shall see, except Samuel), of Kings David and Solomon, of the Queen
of Sheba, and Jezebel, and the harlot of Jericho, and other worthies, good,
bad, and indifferent, of Israel; of Homer, Ulysses, Socrates, Xantippe, Sappho,
of unnumbered other great and good spirits of olden times. That the worthies of
Israel were there their own inspired revelation indicates; a newer revelation,
not indeed of the Scriptures but of equal inspiration, vouchsafes to us the
real reason for their seclusion in that house of darkness, or limbo; "in
which the souls of the just who died before Christ awaited their admission to
heaven; for in the meantime heaven was closed against them in punishment for
the sin of Adam" (Cath. Encyc., Vol. 7: p. 207 ). This proves that there
was no fire in hell prior to the new dispensation, and that purgatory was not
yet discovered; for it would not have been fair to broil the just along with
the unjust for four thousand years, while they waited for transfer to heaven.
It also proves that Mohammed spoke the truth when he said: "God is
just," as the event also proves.
If the ghost of our repentant thief had been
immured in Sheol- Hades, it would undoubtedly have been an interested
spectator, if not a beneficiary, of the remarkable act of justice, however
tardy, rendered to these poor imprisoned spirits by the unparalleled
deliverance from hell which inspiration, at first rather hazily, afterwards
with the most soul-satisfying assurance, relates. To St. Paul we are indebted
for the first glimmer of inspired light on this affair, in the lucid passage
where he is said to say, in substance and effect, that in the three days -- or
one and a half -- between the Crucifixion and the resurrection, the redeemer of
mankind occupied his time in a trip to hell (Eph. 4: 10 ). This valuable
information is illumined further by St. Peter, who relates that while there,
the Master "preached unto the spirits in prison" (I Peter 3: 19 ).
Between the two, supplemented and made intelligible by more positive revelation
out of the inexhaustible sacred deposit, we have the assurance that as the
result of this infernal excursion "Christ conducted to heaven the
patriarchs who had been in limbo."
CAPTIVITY CAPTIVE
The inspired history of all this is deserving
our profound ponderation; the logic which demonstrates it is as unique as it is
faith-compelling. The great logician of the faith,
"But unto every one of us is given grace
according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, When he ascended
up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. (Now that he
ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of
the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended.)" (Eph. 4:
7-10 )
This is almost as convincing of his conclusion
as the ditty-axiom:
"Whatever goes up is bound to come down,
On somebody's head or on the ground."
And this sententious surplusage mixed in with
the statement about "leading captivity captive," by every postulate
of reason, as of faith, means that the spirits of the patriarchs and worthies
which were in the captivity" of Sheol four thousand years were now led
"Captive" into heaven! The wonders of inspired logic, as of grace,
are beyond comprehension.
To the Ephesians, who were only new-hatched
pagan-Christians, unread in the Hebrew Scriptures, the foregoing probably
sounded familiarly like an Orphic oracle, and therefore worthy of all
acceptation. But in the memory of one better read in the Hebrew Scriptures
"captivity captive" jingles like a half-forgotten quotation, like an
ill-remembered "old odd end stolen out of Holy Writ." Pricked by
curiosity, let us then "search the Scriptures" for this alluring
alliteration. Our reward is as great as our surprise; there is naught of
"ascending on high" nor of saying anything on the ascent; but we
capture the captivity, in the jubilation song of Deborah and Barak over Sisera,
him against whom the "stars fought in their courses":
"Awake, awake, Deborah: Awake, awake,
utter a song: Arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive!" (Judges 5: 12
)
The incident of the sermon to the spirits is
revealed by equally cogent and inspired St. Peter (1 Peter 3: 17-20 ): "It
is better ... that ye suffer for well doing, than for evil doing. For Christ
also hath once suffered. ... being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by
the spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;
Which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in
the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight
souls were saved by water."
After this preachment, addressed clearly only
to the disobedient pre-Noachians, the whole of "captivity captive"
was led, like the rats by the Pied Piper, out of hell into heaven; for this
truth, if not entirely deducible from the two inspired passages quoted, is
vouched for by the inspired source above cited: "Christ conducted to
heaven the patriarchs who had been in limbo." But how this trip to Hades
during the day and a half between crucifixion and resurrection was possible
does not appear, in view of the assurance of the Crucified One to the repentant
thief: "This day shalt thou be with me in paradise," which shows that
they "ascended" together, and did not "descend" into hell at
all.
Just here we seem to strike a snag in
inspiration. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob certainly were patriarchs of the
patriarchs; but unfortunately they were not in Sheol to share in this
patriarchal deliverance, which happened just after the Crucifixion. For some
time before this event Christ himself speaks positively of "Abraham, and
Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 8: 11 ). Beggar Lazarus
"died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom" (Luke 16:
23 ). Dives in hell, "lift up his eyes, ... and seeth Abraham afar off,
and Lazarus in his bosom"; and Dives cried to Father Abraham to please
send Lazarus with a drop of water, "for I am tormented in this flame"
(Luke 16: 24 ) -- which proves that the fire had been kindled in Hades, which
was now the Christian hell. Abraham called back that there was a great gulf
fixed between heaven and hell, "so that they which would pass from hence
to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence"
(16: 26 ); though evidently it was no trick for people in either place to see
well into the other and talk, as if by wireless telephony, across the gulf of
space. There was no thoroughfare however nor corporeal passing back and forth;
which causes wonder how Christ managed to "conduct to heaven the
patriarchs [except Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob] who were in limbo" -- though
Satan fell from heaven into hell, and often used to go back to heaven to talk
with Yahveh regarding Job.
Nor were these the only absentees from the
roster of patriarchs in limbo. The godly Enoch was not there, for he had been
"translated" from the original Hebrew into heaven alive; nor was
Elijah in hell, for he had been whirled alive in the fiery chariot right into
heaven; nor was Moses, for he and Elijah appeared there to Peter and his
companions on the Mount of Transfiguration. They must have come down from
heaven together, not one down from heaven and the other up from hell. Moreover,
"all the prophets" were on the absence-list of hell, for they were "with
Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob. ... in the kingdom of god" (Luke 13: 28 ).
A DAMNED PLACE IS HELL
All these wonders and this good and godly
company our repentant thief must have missed. His departure from life was under
the new dispensation of love and mercy, after the fires of brimstone had been
kindled by Christ himself in Sheol, and, in providence, it had become the
Christian hell. If, according to the hypothesis which we are examining, having
missed heaven, the repentant thief's soul was doomed to the Christian hell,
what a hell of a doom awaited it! We know so much about it already from the
hell-reeking pages of the gospels of love, and from the blood- curdling Inferno
of the "man who has been in hell" on a personally conducted tour with
a good old pagan guide, there resident, and also by the glimpse of Dives
"in anguish in this flame" -- that we turn away with a shudder of
soul from the spectacle, and will not look for even a thief in such a damned
place or "place of the damned," if that sounds less profane, as it is
more scriptural and theological. And surely the gentle reader would not endure
the apocalyptic vision revealing the genial repentant soul among poor sinners
(either of original or of mortal sin), who are there "tormented with fire
and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the
Lamb," who all look on complacent while "the smoke of their torment
ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night" from
the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God (Rev. 14: 10, 11 ). This is the
inspired revelation of the God of all love.
What a horrid caricature of the Christian
Yahveh's mercy is that of the abominable Koran of the infidel, with its crude
brutal bullying fate of the unbeliever: "Verily, those who disbelieve our signs,
we will surely cast to be broiled in hell fire; so often as their skins shall
be well burned, we will give them other skins in exchange, that they may taste
the sharper torment; for Allah is mighty and wise" (Sutra iv)! Oh, the
holy mercies of the Christian faith, wherein no such fiendish skin-grafting is
practiced for our greater torment! Turning away in holy horror and godly fear
from such a hell, we would fervently utter in spirit the prayer: "God have
mercy on the souls in hell"; but are checked by the remembrance that this
our prayer would not do them any good, for it is revealed that "the wrath
of God abideth on the damned" -- and "the torments of the damned
shall last for ever and ever." without even any such graft of new skin as
the brutish Mohammedan god provides. Besides, equally inspired revelation warns
us that the souls of the Christian damned in the Christian hell, "are
never released, notwithstanding the mass for dead souls" (probably meaning
souls of the dead) -- no, "the soul that sinneth it shall surely
die." Why then torment dead souls? This brings us up with a sudden jerk in
purgatory, whither we have been steering our course for some pages back. Let us
look around for our crucified thief here.
PURGATORY -- AND PAY
Purgatory is surely the strangest Place this
side of hell. Curiously in the Bible there is no jot nor tittle of remotest
hint of it from "In the beginning" of Genesis to the final
"Amen" of the Apocalypse, search for it who will; and positive proof
of its non- existence is in the two passages from Peter and Paul that we have
just reviewed and in the revelation quoted, that "the souls of the just
who died before Christ awaited in hell their admission to heaven," there
being evidently no purgatory open for occupation at that time. This omission of
purgatory from the earlier Christian "properties" is the more curious
because we have admirable and elaborately defined purgatories in a number of
contemporary heathen systems of the hereafter; as, for example, in the twelve
cycles of purgation of Zoroaster, the seven of the very near-Christian
Mithraism, and the refined "empyrosis" of the Stoics; from which
ancient but diabolic religions, and from several others, the Hebrew-Christian
sacred science had apparently borrowed so many revelations that the holy
Fathers, to explain away the identities of the pagan and Christian rituals,
said that "the Devil had blasphemously imitated the Christian rites and
doctrines." This would be very persuasive, if not conclusive, but for the fact
that all of these plagiarized pagan systems antedated Christianity by many
centuries.
It is curious, too, that not for several
centuries after the close of the canon was this serious omission ever
officially noticed by the inspired guardians of the sacred deposit. When it
was, they held a hasty council session at
"Whereas the Catholic Church, instructed
by the Holy Ghost, has from the Sacred Scriptures [chapter and verse not cited]
and the ancient tradition of the Fathers taught in councils [unspecified] and
very recently in this ecumenical synod, that there is a purgatory, and that the
souls therein detained are helped by the suffrages [i.e., paid prayers] of the
faithful, but principally by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar; the holy
synod enjoins on the bishops that they diligently endeavor to have the sound doctrine
of the Fathers in councils regarding purgatory everywhere taught and preached,
held and believed by the faithful" -- (Cath Encyc., Vol. 12:p. 575 ). This
proves that the faithful did not very much believe it, so that Tetzel &
Co.'s famous bargain sales of indulgences from purgatorial pains were not so
remunerative as in greater faith they really should have been.
In honor of truth, however, it must be
admitted that much earlier efforts to "graft" purgatory on the true
faith had often been made, though not with such plenary instruction of the Holy
Ghost as could be invoked by the holy councils referred to. For instance, the
Holy Father Pope Gregory the Great, about A.D. 604, was the first to formulate
the hitherto vacuous doctrine into good Latin and to "call a spade a
spade," as it were, by naming the place purgatory, though its latitude and
longitude in ecclesiastical cosmogony have never been satisfactorily defined.
Here we may pause in honor of the memory and
spiritual illumination of this great man, Pope Gregory, to note an amusing
incident for which he vouches with the same infallible inspiration as that
which attests his discovery and definition of purgatory. When elected pope in
A.D. 590,
The holy Council of Trent, for the better
ensuring that its doctrine of purgatory, and the superior efficacy of paid
prayers, should be believed by the faithful, who might be curious to know just
where their money went in this direction, and what good it did, solemnly warned
and commanded the bishops "to exclude from their preaching difficult and
subtle questions which tend not to edification, and from the discussion of
which there is no increase either of piety or devotion" -- though there
might thereby be a decrease of churchly revenues. Some of these unedifying
questions might, to some of the inquisitive faithful, be, for instance -- but
why should there be any "difficult and subtle questions" about so interesting
and important a revelation of faith, especially when the Holy Ghost was present
in person in at least three councils, and could be called into any other at a
moment's notice, to "instruct" them on these very points? Besides, it
is idle to ask questions as to what good paid prayers do for the souls of the
dead when the answer to such questions is always the silencing retort of
"the angelic doctor" St. Thomas: "Unless they [i.e., the souls
of the dead] know that they are to be delivered, they would not ask for the
prayers" (Cath. Encyc., Vol. 12:p. 578 ) -- which clinches it; though the
source or means of the dead souls' knowledge is not revealed, nor are their
messages of request, in spirit handwriting, ever exhibited for confirmation of
faith in them, to the interested or curious public, in proof of their pious
petitions.
But the real question for a faith up a tree,
as it were, is how there can be any purgatory, in which slightly soiled and
faded souls may be burnt free from earthly dross and renovated for heaven --
even if the Holy Ghost did very tardily instruct the holy councils that there
is such a place -- when the same Holy Ghost had in effect assured councils,
including these same councils of Lyons and Florence, that there was no such
place, for "the souls of those who depart in mortal sin, or only in
original sin [which defiles even the souls of just-born babes and of
ecclesiastical persons], go down immediately into hell, to be visited, however,
with unequal punishments" (Cath. Encyc., Vol. 7: p. 207 )? From the latter
place, as Abraham told Dives, there was no return. Such a clash of inspirations
-- or rather slip in promulgating the last before repealing, or concealing, the
former -- illustrates the convenience of keeping a well regulated card-index
system as an adjunct to the depository of faith, to assist in keeping a ready
check on revelations, and thus avoiding possible future embarrassments of
faith, due to their conflicts.
Here we must confess an error in our quest,
induced by friendly zeal for the comfort of our ex-thief's soul, in suggesting
the possibility of finding it in this purgatory of the orthodox (i.e.,
"right-believing") faith. For in life he was either a Jew or a pagan,
bence a heretic, who could have no part in the orthodox Christian pangs of
purgatory; and he would no doubt have added to his heresy by sharing with
Luther, the great faith-splitter, the doctrine of the twenty-seventh of his
ninety-five theses nailed up on the Wittenberg church door: "They preach
man who say that the soul flies out of purgatory as soon as the money thrown
into the chest rattles"; or, in poetic version:
"As soon as the gold in the casket rings,
the rescued soul to heaven springs"!
The phrase "as soon as" is
unorthodox; for the orthodox rule of payment is that the suffering soul
"is not released until the last farthing be paid" -- which suggests
an instalment plan of payments. This is just and as it should be. For if the
well-to-do heirs of a just-dead Christian sinner were to make an immediate lump-sum
payment for prompt prayers, the soul might escape from purgatory into heaven
before the penitential flames had done their work of preparatory purification,
the great idea being, according to Father Origen, that "the purgatorial
fire burns away the lighter materials of faults, and prepares the soul for the
kingdom of God, where nothing defiled may enter"; and all the celibate
Fathers agree.
The instalment plan of payments is distinctly
recognized and enjoined by the Father Tertullian, who advises a widow "to
pray for the soul of her husband, begging repose for him, and participation in
the first resurrection"; he commands her also to make oblations (a
euphemism for priestly "tips") for him on the anniversary of his
demise, and charges her with infidelity (whether spiritual or corporal is not
explicit) if she neglect to succor his soul (Cath. Encyc., Vol. 12:p. 577 ).
Evidently this good Father, and the great Father St. Augustine, pinned no faith
on the efficacy of such paid prayers to hurry the escape of the soul from the
fires of purgatory; for the former suggests such escape only at the "first
resurrection," and the latter postpones it till the last (whenever either
of these should be) -- declaring that "the punishment of purgatory is
temporary and will cease at least at the last judgment" (De Cir.. Dei,
lib. 21: cap. 13: 16 ). That is a long time to wait, writhing in terrible
torment; for we are assured by the holy Pope Gregory the Great, taking the cue
from St. Augustine if not from the Holy Ghost, that "the pain of those who
after this life expiate their faults by purgatorial flames will be more
intolerable than any one can suffer in this life." It must certainly be
considerable, judging by the excruciating tortures which Holy Church, by rack
and wheel, by flaying alive, by slow burning at the stake, and other like pious
practices, inflicted upon the sensitive bodies of thousands who dared to
disbelieve her inspired dogmas, and despise the source, and defy her
prostituted powers.
Here we may digress a moment to do tribute to
that ancient and cherished precept of Mosaic law, generously observed through
the ages, and become the chief stone of the corner of the Church universal:
"They shall not appear before Yahveh empty" (Deut. 16: 16 ) -- "when
they give an offering unto Yahveh, to make an atonement for your souls"
(Ex. 30: 15 ) -- but shall pay, rich and poor alike, to "buy
atonement"; and this pious work is to the churchman, like faith to Father
Abraham, accounted for righteousness. Curiously, while the new dispensation
quite overthrew and repealed the whole code of laws and ceremonies of the old,
this one thrifty exception escaped, and the Holy Church of the dispensation of
free grace, with a wisdom of this world worldly, preserved it and diligently taught
that in the article of tithes the Mosaic law is still "of divine
obligation and cannot be abrogated" (Cath. Encyc., Vol. 16:pp. 741, 742 ).
Further yet it went, inciting the faithful to outdo even the quota of the tenth
commandeered by the ancient law, by yet more liberal donatives exhorted by the
Master, who commanded to "give all that ye have" (Mark 10: 21 ) in
order to be his true disciples.
This inspired retention by divine command of
the "pay" precept of the law is expounded with his usual naive and
cogent logic by the dogmatic second founder of the faith:
"Do ye not know that they which minister
about holy things live of the things of the temple? and they which wait at the
altar are partakers with the altar? Even so hath the Lord ordained that they
which preach the gospel should live of the gospel." (i Cor. 9: 13, 14 )
Among the devotional gems of the sacred litany
of
"Cum summa cura est fratribus,
(Ut sermo testatur loquax)
Offere, fundis venditis
Sestertiorum millia.
Addicta avorum praedia
Foedis sub auctionibus,
Successor exheres gemit,
Sanctis egens parentibus.
Haec occulantur abditis
Ecelesiarum in angulis,
Et summa pietas creditur
Nudare dulces liberos!"
(Prudentius, Hymn II)
This is the poetry of the scriptural
injunction to "sell and give all," with the added prosaic truth that
the denuded children and disinherited heirs of the giver groan as naked beggars
so that their prodigal parents may have the odor of pious saints. O temporal O
mores! Thus a goodly portion of their heirs' expectations our churchmen often
obediently spend in this pious form of mundane vanity, leaving their families
fewer worldly goods, but buying their soul's atonement in truly churchly
fashion, and earning incidentally the plaudits of the clergy, who hold up
before their flocks for emulation this godly example -- of giving.
How striking and faith-compelling is the
system of types and symbols of the oriental scriptures, wherein everything
typifies or symbolizes something else -- which the inspired scrivener nine
times in ten never really thought or heard of in his life, but which all
perplexed delvers into the "hidden things of scripture" assure us is
implied in the plain and ordinary Hebrew or Greek words. But for once in
scripture, type and typified are here readily identified, even to unimaginative
occidental minds. In the new dispensation the groups of true believers are
figured forth as "flocks"; the older, dyed-in-the-wool bell-wethers
of the flocks are dubbed "sheep"; the tender ones wholly innocent of
sense are affectionately termed "lambs"; and all are herded and
driven by venerable "pastors" (postors, or in some later readings
im-postors) called "shepherds," always allegorically pictured as
going about armed with "crooks," to hook the stragglers into the
"fold," and to keep them there when once hooked in. The imagery of
the oriental mind is singularly appealing at times and persuasive of a sure- enough
inspiration of ironic truth under its symbols!
Even in a prosaic standard lexicon of the
twentieth century we may discover the persistence of this bit of oriental
imagery in the accepted definition of "sheep," in the figurative
sense: "The flock of the Good Shepherd; simple-minded and silly
persons"; while to be "sheepish" is to "resemble a sheep in
silliness or dullness!" The sheep is to this day the symbol of the vacuous
herd, all blindly following some equally stupid old bellwether which heads the flock
this way or that as his inner lights lead, or the crook of the shepherd pulls.
The diminution of patrimonial expectations
occasioned by such contributions to the "Lord's treasury was once, we
blush to say, measurably retrieved by the excellent income which the good and
generous givers derived from the rental of some of their best corner buildings
down town for saloons, and in some exceptional instances of houses owned by
them in the "restricted districts" for uses which are as well
understood as need be without being specified. True, the fine sense of
churchmanly propriety and of Christian riglitmindedness often does not allow
our good churchmen to make these leases directly to the degraded occupants.
They piously salve their consciences by giving their agents carte blanche and
asking them no inconvenient questions. We all know that "Yahveh loveth a
cheerful giver"; and Yahveh commands his people: "Thou shalt remember
Yahveh thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth" (Deut.
8: 18 ), which we must acknowledge is a potent appeal.
This scrupulous delicacy on the part of some
good churchmen, which does them honor, and which is a refinement upon the
scriptural injunction not to let the right hand know what is left- handedly
done (a sanctimonious injunction much invoked by the godly of these cultured
times), is one of the most eloquent testimonies to the cultural influence of
our professed religion in refining the grosser practices of earlier forms of
worship. Everyone who is not blinded by prejudice against the Christian faith
and is not a chronic scoffer at its cherished practices must recognize the
(relative) purity of thus replenishing by discreet indirectness the Lord's
treasury from the toll of sin, as compared with the unblushing system of temple
harlotry of ancient pagan-Hebrew worship, and with the quasi-gross but lucrative
scheme of relatively recent times when brothels of pious prostitution were
recognized adjuncts of holy nunneries, and the virgins of Christ hallowed as
pious alms the wages of sin earned for them by their sisters, whose virginity
was a welcome sacrifice on the altar, not of Cupid, but of churchly cupidity.
So all praise to those worthy churchmen who, in returning a pittance of their
gifts from Yahveh, reject such unrefined practices, and find ready means to
obey the divine command to "Give to the Lord," without openly
offending the more refined feelings of modern churchianity, though the
productive source is the same.
To return from this sympathetic digression on
the theme of pious paying enjoined by Holy Writ to the post-mortem purgatorial
payment plan of
would be regarded as a good thing for the
tormented soul, its family, and friends, and incidentally net a handsome
revenue. However it may have been, the Holy Ghost is said to have instructed
the holy Council of
It betrays a darkened understanding, or a
malevolent wit, of course, to imagine that this pay-as-you-enter plan of
priestly prayers for the souls in purgatory smacks even remotely of buying
Yahveh's grace or of bribing
This near-hell-fiery habitat of the
near-blessed being exclusively a resort of the orthodox Christian, we are
precluded -- not by doubt (which is damnable), but by dogma (which is
infallible) -- from the possibility of encountering our repentant thief's soul
there. And our compassion is already seen in revolt against the doctrine of
hell fire, common alike to orthodoxy and to heterodoxy (signifying my
"doxy," or "right-think," and your "doxy," or
"wrong-think," according as one is the speaker or the spoken to or
of). Being evidently in neither of these places, and not yet arrived at heaven,
the soul of our crucified thief, we have thus an added reason in concluding, is
still wending its way heavenward through the fathomless reaches of sidereal
space, and may yet confidently be expected to present itself and its
credentials to the celestial concierge, St. Peter.
If someone should be disposed to question
this, on the faith- founded theory above indicated that no soul clogged with
the material dross of earthy fault may be suffered to enter in at the golden
gates, but that the fault must first be purged away by the purgatorial fires,
we oppose a very reasonable, and equally effective, counter-theory, suggested
by more modern science: that the upper interstellar regions are infested with
inconceivably intense cold, a degree of cold even greater maybe than the fires
of purgatory are hot; that heat and cold, in intense degree, have often a
similar effect, particularly in point of drying up substances, rendering them
brittle; therefore, that the earthly dross of venial faults yet clinging to the
departed soul, being subjected for the 1,000,000 light years of its trajectory
heavenward to such extreme cold, may thus be either frozen quite off, or at least
rendered so crumbly that the simple violent swish of the air caused by the
rapidity of flight would flip it off en route, or at any rate enable it to be
very easily scraped off just outside the pearly gates of heaven upon arrival,
and the soul thus present itself as freed from such dross as if it had done its
penance amid the flames of purgatory.
Thus the same result is attained, and by a
process quite as uncomfortable -- which is a very great desideratum in
theology; and an enormous amount of time would be saved, as the soul could
begin its purging flight heavenward immediately on its corporeal release,
instead of first doing infinite time until the "first resurrection"
or the "last judgment" in purgatory before beginning its million-
light-year flight heavenward. Moreover, sidereal spatial cold is a scientific
fact, while purgatorial fire is only a theological "speculation,"
though a highly successful one as the source of a fine church revenue. As it
doesn't cost anybody anything to accept our new "cold storage"
revelation, and as we vouch for its being as good as any on the market, we
trust that it may have ready credence, and in time even supplant some of the
ancient and more costly nostrums of credulity.
In the long meanwhile, let us bid good-speed
to the fleeting soul on its heavenward flight, with the classic ex voto:
"Let it R.I.P."!
CHAPTER 19
CESSET SUPERSTITION! AND THEN?
"But if the salt have lost his savor,
wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be
cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men" (Matt.
PAUL'S naive confession that he told lies that
the truth of God might the more abound (Rom. 3: 7 ) we have found to be about
the only true thing he is recorded as saying. A like paucity of truth is found
in all his confreres, as our examination has shown. We have found, no doubt
with amazement, that lies are "the mostest things there isn't nothing else
but" in all Bible and Theology, to the pretended glory of God -- and to
the great profit of priestcraft. Paul also spoke true when he admitted that he
"profited in the Jew's religion above many" (Gal.
That otherwise intelligent thinking people
should be yet under this strong delusion to believe priestly lies is because
they do not know their Bible and derived theology; they take their fore-
shortened beliefs about it "on faith" from the parsons and from such
choice fervent texts as they hear expounded or casually read. That the vast
majority of Christians are rank know-nothings of Bible and theology is
evidenced by the gasps of surprise and shock which no doubt many readers of
this book have made at the disclosures of what really "God's Word"
is. Brought up from youth on the "strong delusion" that it is all
verily "God's Word," and that "he that doubteth is damned --
suffering the vengeance of eternal fire," they do not reason or dare to
doubt; they hear believingly, if they do not heed, the preached word.
Some good and scholarly "divines"
too, educated to theology and its sophistries, no doubt believe even yet, in
simplicity of faith, quite innocently. The distinguished Bishop Colenso, Church
of England "divine," may be instanced. Being appointed, in the good
mid-Victorian era, bishop of Natal, so great was his zeal to spread the saving
truth in "Darkest Africa" that be learned the Zulu language, wrote a
grammar and dictionary of the idiom, and then taught English to a number of
bright native converts to the Christian faith. With their aid he then began the
work of translating the Bible into Zulu, for the conversion of the heathen
natives. Before long the good bishop's troubles began, and he began to
"see a great light." His intelligent Zulu collaborators, who had been
converted to Christianity by hearsay and not upon knowledge, would come to him
in great amazement and point out to him things encountered in the Bible, as
they worked in translating, which to their untutored minds seemed shocking
contradictions of text;
absurdities and untruths in what they had been
taught was the inerrant inspired Word of God. The Bishop's attention being thus
for the first time challenged, he thoroughly studied the whole matter of
inspiration and revelation in this new light. The result was his monumental
seven-volume work The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua Critically Examined
(1862-1879 ), in which the inspiration and truth of the Old Testament were
denied and disproved. The bishop's "conversion" caused great sensation
and scandal in England; he was excommunicated and deposed by his indignant
church, and his salary stopped; but the courts held this action invalid and
decreed full payment of salary with all arrears. Similar cases of conversion to
reason have been known.
But many instances no doubt abound, in these
more recent times, like that of the good parson in St. Louis who urged the
writer to become a member of his church and congregation. In answer to the
frank objection that, for the reasons now exposed in this book, be could not
without hypocrisy go back into the church which he had abandoned, the good
pastor as frankly replied that all that was no sound objection; "If your
ideas about the Bible and mine were put into a bag and shaken up and poured
out, you could not tell which were yours and which mine"! How many good
parsons reading this book would not -- at least to their own inner selves --
make a like "confession of faith"!
The Christ, in the text on salt of lost savor,
quoted above, was inveighing against the superstitious old Hebrew law, in
himself now fulfilled, said to have been handed down by word of mouth from his
own putative Father, Yahveh God of Israel. In all the Bible there is no
Christian God but Yahveh, and the Christ is his Son. The description and condemnation
thus voiced by the Christ are found to fit perfectly the ancient fables and
superstitions both of the old and the new "revelations." The
theories, long and fondly held, of the divine revelation, inspiration, and
inerrant truth of these old Jewish books as the unimpeachable "Word of
God" have lost their savor, and must be cast out.
The most and worst that follows from the
discovery that the Bible is not the "Word of God" -- merely Jewish
fables of Yahveh and his Son -- is that God has not seen fit to deliver any
written "word" or "law," either to the ancient Hebrews. or
to the Christians, or to anybody else. Possibly the Supreme Architect of the
universe, who framed all this wonder of the world and established its immutable
laws, could, and would if he so pleased and saw fit, find some way and means to
make written revelation of himself and of his will for the behoof of the human
race. But he who ordered the harmony of the worlds and ordained their divine
laws, would in such event, we may do him credit to believe, so reveal and state
his will and laws to man that man would know veritably two things: that the God
made the revelation, and what be said and meant. It would be certain and
unmistakable, so that it could be known for sure to all men. It would be as
simple, too, as two and two are four; so simple and sure that the wayfaring
man, though a fool, could not err therein. There would be no danger of losing
one's soul through the impossibility of understanding the revelation; no
occasion for "heresies," and schisms, and sects, with different and
discordant interpretations of it, as with the present revelations of Yahveh and
Son by the mouth of priests and clergy. In such a true God-given revelation
there would be no occasion for the apologetic casuistry of Peter -- himself an
"ignorant and unlearned" person -- for the Jewish revelation,
"in which are some things hard to understand, which they that are
unlearned and unstable wrest unto their own destruction" (2 Pet. 3: 16 );
and Paul would not be so put to it to make believe that "the foolishness
of God [Yahveh] is wiser than men" (i Cor. 1: 25 ).
The supreme destiny of the human soul would
not be left, by a true and intelligent God, to such clouded, mystic, mythic,
jangling jargon of professional priests and prophets and apostles and
theologians as we have found their "revelation" and theology to be. A
God who could not or would not reveal his awful will for the eternal destiny of
man better and more truly than in these "inspired revelations" of
Bible and theology is not fit to be a God or to be entrusted with the fate of a
human soul. A man's last will and testament, so dubiously authenticated, would
never be admitted to probate; and with such darkened and contradictory
dispositions, would by any competent court be held "void for
uncertainty," and the testator declared intestate, if not insane. Since,
evidently, the true, all-wise Creator God has not revealed thus
autobiographically his Word, his creature man is evidently in need of no such
revelation and is none the worse off without it.
The mythic Yahveh of Israel, exactly like all
ancient and some more modern mythic deities, was by his professional prophets
and priests pretended to have spoken and commanded through them. But in truth,
as admitted, "the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by
their means, and the people love to have it so" -- then, and all through
human history. Professional priests undeniably devised all "revealed"
gods and religions; professional clergy are yet the propagandists of these
ancient myths as "religion" of God, as "articles of faith
necessary to salvation" -- with damnation as the alternative.
Priests ruled the ancient world and kings
superstitiously did their crafty bidding. For centuries priests dominated the
modern world and made kings superstitiously grovel before them and don and doff
their crowns at their command. Priestcraft to-day proclaims itself vicar of
Yahveh God on earth, and strives yet mightily to impose itself on the minds and
consciences of men, through their superstitious fears, invented and imposed by
priest and clergy, and through the awful but anachronistic authority of the
"keys of heaven and hell." It is all the same old priestly game, very
little modernized.
The Hebrew Scriptures are seen to be an
inextricable complex of ancient cosmological legends, of primitive folklore, of
rude tribal chronicles, of some actual historical events, of superstitious
religious fables, of pagan Hebrew concepts of their mythological tribal Yahveh,
God of Israel. Later the fabled Yahveh of Israel was slowly and dubiously
evolved into a -- no less mythological -- One God Yahveh of all the earth. A
mythological god cannot evolve into a real living true God -- ex nihil nihil
fit. A myth cannot be imagined into a reality. The "revelation" is
all one, from Moses to Ezra and his priests -- they hang and fall together.
False premisses cannot produce true conclusions.
Seizing upon the patent myth of Yahveh as God
of all the earth for its basic point of departure, and retaining fully and
without reserve all the primitive fables and mythology of ancient Jewry, the
Christian "revelation" builds up a fabulous fatuous scheme of
theological mystery and casuistry fondly called the sacred science of
Christianity -- founded upon the Yahveh myth, Yahveh's curse on mankind for the
"original sin" of the fabled "first Adam," atoned for by
the sacrifice of the "last Adam," virgin-born Son of the mythic
Yahveh, sent to redeem the world from Adamic sin, and culminating in the dogma
of three gods in One. Such is the holy Christian faith -- "which except a
man believe faithfully and firmly, he can not be saved" (Athanasian Creed,
Cath. Encyc., Vol. 2: p. 34 ).
The theology of this is rather mystifying.
Each of these triune persons is all Yahveh but only a part of Yahveh. According
to the creed above cited, "The Father [Yahveh] is God, the Son is God, and
the Holy Spirit is God," "these Three Persons being truly distinct
one from another"; and yet there are not three Gods but one God"
(Yahveh). And the sacred deposit lays it down: "In this Trinity of Persons
the Son is begotten of the Father by an eternal generation, and the Holy Spirit
proceeds by an eternal procession from the Father and the Son. Yet
notwithstanding this difference as to origin [Gods are supposed to be without
origin, "from eternity"], the Persons are co-eternal and coequal: all
alike are uncreated and omnipotent" (Cath. Encyc., Vol 15:p. 47 ). If
three persons are co-eternal, all existing from eternity, it is difficult to
perceive how one should be begotten by another, which implies the previous
existence of the begetter, or how another could "proceed" from the
other two, which implies the previous coexistence of the other two. This is too
subtle for any but professional theologians. But they seem to be contradicted
by the positive Yahvistic declaration of the relatively modern begetting of the
Son, only about 1000 B.C.; for David quotes some one, apparently (but quite
impossibly) the Son himself, on his supposed first day of existence:
"Yahveh hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten
thee" (Ps. 2: 7 ). For positive assurance of identity it is thrice
asserted by Paul: "God [Yahveh] ... hath raised up Jesus again; as it is
also written in the second Psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten
thee" (Acts 13: 33; Heb. 1: 5; 5: 5 ). So Yahveh the Father and his Son
can hardly, on this revealed record, or naturally, be "co-eternal";
and if the Holy Ghost "proceeds" from Yahveh and Son, the
"procession" must have begun since the date the Son was begotten by
Yahveh.
Yahveh was wholly a mythological deity,
existent only in a very primitive pagan imagination; a mythological deity could
by no possibility, except imaginative, have had an actual begotten and
incarnate son, and it is a very attenuated Ghost that could "proceed"
from such mythic sources. This simple consideration, with its unescapable
logic, leaves nothing of the Triune-Yahveh but myth and a pious perplexity at
the dogma of the theologians, once accepted by faith.
It may be mentioned, in passing, that the
"Three Persons" of the Yahvistic godhead -- or at least two of them,
these being the only ones recorded as ever saying anything -- are, on all Bible
authority, to be taken as "being truly distinct one from another,"
and therefore difficult to regard as "not three Gods but one God."
Yahveh assured his Son: "This day have I begotten thee"; a thousand
years later the Son comes to earth while the Father Yahveh remains in heaven;
the Father Yahveh calls from heaven: "This is my beloved Son," and
the Son prays to the Father -- all which is odd if both are the same Person.
The Son is specially said to be "an advocate with the Father" (1 John
2: 1 ), who "is even at the right hand of God [Yahveh], who also maketh
intercession for us" (Rom. 8: 34 ), as also "the Spirit itself maketh
intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered" (Rom. 8: 26 ).
We are often told that the Son sitteth or standeth "on the right hand of
the Father" (Yahveh). The Bible speaks of "God the Father, God the
Son, and God the Holy Ghost," but never once does it say that these three
distinctly named and designated Gods are all One God or a Triune God. The word
"Trinity" is totally unknown in Holy Writ. All this clearly
corroborates the fact of three Gods "truly distinct one from
another"; but their distinctive functions and activities leave more
questionable the theory of "not three Gods but One God" (Yahveh
alone). As fact this seems inexplicable; as fable it needs no explanation: it
is theology.
As the Bible is altogether superstitious
falsities and its Yahveh-God wholly mythological, no less so must be the
elaborate and intricate theology founded on them; the stream can rise no higher
than its source. This simple truth quite destroys the whole congeries of
conflicting creeds and wrecks their exhaustless fount, the "sacred deposit
of faith." The disclosed undeniable want of inspiration and truth in the
Bible makes grimly humorous the dogmatic assurances of the inspired truth of
the deposit, for which it is claimed: "All revealed truth is not consigned
to Holy Scripture, but Christ gave to his apostles to be transmitted to his
Church -- or they received from inspiration or revelation -- divine
instructions which they transmitted to the Church and which were not committed
to the inspired writings. Thus Christ instituted his Church as the official and
authentic organ to transmit and explain in virtue of divine authority the
revelation made to men. Holy Scripture is therefore not the only theological
source of the revelation made by God [i.e., Yahveh] to his Church. Side by side
with scripture there is tradition, side by side with the written revelation is
the oral revelation. This granted, it is impossible to be satisfied with the
Bible alone for the solution of all dogmatic questions" (Cath. Encyc.,
Vol. 15:pp. 6, 7, art. Tradition). The premisses of the above ratiocination not
being now so readily granted, there may be appreciably less satisfaction with
either Bible or tradition in respect to the verity of theological dogmas.
The Bible, though thus all true, is not all
the truth -- so says the sacred deposit. Let us now again -- in the light of
our study of Bible and deposit -- read a couple of precious excerpts from the
deposit vouching for the Bible, both put forth as ex cathedra utterances of the
Holy Ghost of Yahveh God (the italics being mine): "These books are sacred
and canonical because they contain revelation without error, and because
written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God [Yahveh] for their
Author" (Vatican Council, Sess. 3: ch. 2: 1870; Cath. Encyc., Vol. 2: p.
543 ). And: "It will never be lawful to restrict inspiration merely to
certain portions of the Holy Scriptures, or to grant that the sacred writers
could have made a mistake ... They render in exact language, with infallible
truth, all that God [Yahveh] commanded, and nothing else"! "Wherever
the sacred writer makes a statement as his own, that statement is the word of
God and infallibly true, whatever be the subject-matter of the statement"!
(Pope Leo 13:Encyclical Prov. Deus, 1893; Cath. Encyc., Vol. 2: p. 543 ). To be
impartial, take this example of the stark presumption of uninspired bunkum from
the thirteenth of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion: "Good works done
before the grace of Christ are not pleasant to God; but they have the nature of
sin"! Sancta simplicitas!
The old Roman augurs, when they performed the
sacred mysteries of the auspices upon the livers and entrails of the sacrifices
and delivered to the superstitious their solemn oracular mummeries of the awful
will of the god so revealed, were wont to stick their tongues in their cheeks
and wink at one another, in mirthful appreciation of their own ingenuity in
"getting away with it," thanks to the crass ignorance of their pious
dupes. The pagan augurs must have felt as self-conscious of base imposture as
are, of Yahveh's own power of miracle, the Christian priests who with mystic
signs and mutterings "make God with four Latin words," and metamorphose
ordinary bread and wine into the veritable bod and blood of a God who never was
-- and who, being a "spirit" (John 4: 24 ), could not have body and
blood or other "corporeal elements" to be thus anthropophagously
consumed, thousands of millions of times a year through twenty centuries. When
the theologians and "divines," in full twentieth century, read in
their Bibles the self-same things we have just wonderingly reviewed, and then
give utterance to the above quoted and other like outpourings of the Holy
Ghost, and stand forth to proclaim all this to intelligent modern men as God's
own truth -- to disbelieve which is eternal death and damnation -- probably
they restrain themselves from outward visible indications of their inner
reactions; or maybe, knowing no better, they have none. The charitable
imputation of ignorance is all that saves them from the guilt of conscious
imposition, though ethically it is all one to assert as true what one does not
know to be true and to assert as true what one knows to be untrue. Whether
ignorant or conscious, theology and dogma savor none the less inevitably of
imposture and superstition.
Superstition is thus defined by a high
lexicographic authority:
"A belief founded in irrational feelings,
especially of fear, and characterized by credulity; also any practice
originating in such belief; excessive and unreasonable scruples due to ignorant
dread of the supernatural. Specifically, a belief in a religious system
regarded by others than the believer as unreasonable and without support; a
false religion, or any of its rites" (New Standard Dictionary of the
English Language).
With this accurate definition of superstition,
and with the preceding revelations of Holy Writ fresh in mind, are not the
Hebrao-Christian creeds, dogmas, and theologies, of Bible as of
"deposit," superstitions all? The question is submitted in all candor
to every candid mind.
The supernatural myths and superstitions of
Bible and theology are no part of real religion; they have no portion in the
inheritance of righteousness which exalts a man and a nation. Rather are they a
degrading concept of God and his intelligence, and betray a strange contempt
for the dignity of mind and common sense of men in imposing such nonsense for
their belief.
Full faith in Adam, the talking snake, and
Yahveh's curse is not in these modern days necessary to an abiding faith in the
Creator God and in the creature man, though the Catholic Encyclopedia says that
"the first three chapters of Genesis contain facts touching the foundations
of the Christian religion" (Vol. 7: p. 313 ). That the "law" was
not given by word of mouth of Yahveh, tribal God of Israel, to Moses on Sinai,
does not hinder one from heeding the better principles of the ten commandments,
valid in every moral code. To discredit the virgin-birth by mortal woman of a
Son of Yahveh does not nullify the good in anything the reputed Son may have
said of truth and righteousness, nor destroy a manly reverence for woman and
motherhood. To throw hell into the discard does not impair man's ability or
will to "do good, for good is good to do," spurning "bribe of
heaven and threat of hell." To relegate angels, devils, witches, and
miracles to the limbo of childish fancy along with Santa Claus yet leaves place
-- freer, better place -- in the hearts and lives of men for truth, honor, and
justice, by freeing their minds from "complete paralysis of the
intelligence, resulting from irrational surrender to the blight of theological
dogma."
As the distinguished doctor of divinity quoted
in the last line earnestly says (the italics are mine)
"The work of the Church in bringing
Christ to men [notable -- not men to Christ, in the old pulpit cant] is
enormously handicapped by associating it with the imposed belief in the
veracity and historicity of what are patently early myths and naive, childish,
primitive folklore. "It is of supreme importance to remember that a proper
understanding of these Jewish stories, while necessarily working havoc with the
ideas of Paul and the elaborate theology that is based on them, in no wise
affects in the slightest manner the Christianity of Christ, the religion of
Jesus, the eternal principles by which he lived and for which he died"
(Fagnani, The Beginnings of History According to the Jews, pp. 23-24 ).
Again this erudite doctor of divinity and
professor of Hebrew Scripture asserts Yahveh, God of Israel, to have been
"an imagined, aboriginal, primitive deity, ... not the God of the New
Testament" (Ibid., p. 18 ). But the God is Yahveh in Old and New Testaments
alike.
While this saving clause yet savors a bit of
the original sin of theological dogma, however well diluted, these two frank,
pregnant utterances destroy alike in toto the Bible fables of Yahveh as true
God and the false theology of Paul and the Church regarding everything based on
these Bible fables. They leave untouched, except to mention and to magnify
them, and instinct with all then pristine worth, the "eternal
principles," all that is good and true and pure and worthy of all acceptation
in the recorded words and life of him who is called the Christ, and who gave to
all "power to become the sons of God" (John 1: 12 ) -- in the same
sense as was the Christ himself.
In 1797-8, a score of years after the American
Revolution for political and religious liberty, a celebrated state trial was
held in England against a bookseller for the crime of blasphemy -- for selling
a copy of the Age of Reason, by the immortal American patriot, Thomas Paine.
The distinguished attorney general of the kingdom conducted the prosecution and
made a very remarkable argument to the trial jury. He expressed in fervent
words "the regret and indignation I feel, that any man in this country
should dare to disseminate such pernicious doctrines"; and he declaimed:
"What have we to expect if those
long-established feelings and principles be expelled from the minds and hearts
of men? What reliance have I to receive from you, gentlemen of the jury, an
honest verdict on the evidence which has been laid before you? On what were you
sworn that you would act conscientiously? To what were you referred when you
swore that you would return a true verdict, 'so help me God'? You swore
on that Holy Book. ... "What reason have
you to believe that the witnesses will speak the truth, except from the
operation of those religious principles which I have described to you? Are they
not sworn on that sacred volume? ... "What hold have we on the mind of His
Honor that he will administer the law with strict justice, uprightness, and
impartiality? What security has the defendant himself that pure justice will be
rendered to him on his trial, except the oath of His Honor? ... "When any
individual assumes a station of trust or power in the government, the
constitution prescribes an oath; ... that oath is on the holy gospels of God.
... "I have only, therefore, to remind you, gentlemen, that this
information was not preferred from any idea that the Christian religion could
be affected in its character or irresistible progress by this disgusting and
contemptible book; but to prevent its circulation amongst the industrious poor,
too much engaged in the support of their families by their labor, and too
uninformed to be secure against artful wickedness. Of all human beings they
stand most in need of the consolations of religion, and the country has the
deepest stake in their enjoying it, not only from the protection which it owes
them, but because no man can be expected to be against the government of God!
Gentlemen, I leave it to you as twelve Christian men to decide whether this is
not a most blasphemous and impious libel." (William's Case, 26 Howard's
State Trials, 1798-9; pp. 654-719 )
On this specious, fantastic plea of His
Majesty's attorney general that justice could not be administered nor
government maintained among men but for the sanction of a superstitious oath on
a book of fables, the "pure justice" of a verdict of
"guilty" of blasphemy -- against the mythologic Yahveh -- was
returned in a "Christian court of justice" against the disseminator
of the truth. Let our English friends remember this eminent English precedent
when disposed to sneer too critically at the "monkey case" in the
hill-country of Tennessee!
That sixty per cent or more of the people of
these United States are not galled by the yoke of dogmatic theological religion
of any brand of itself belies the pretentious casuistry that justice cannot or
would not be done between state and citizen, between man and man, but for the
sanction of a religious oath with the fear of hell fire behind it -- as often
violated by perjury as observed from an honest regard for truth; and belies
especially, the unveiled assertion that it is the poor particularly who stand
in need of the restraints, and assumed consolations, of this priest-forged rod
of authority, without which they would be quite ungovernable. Every intelligent
person versed in history knows that it is not true that justice cannot be done,
or order in government be maintained, without the Christian threat of hell and
damnation to restrain the false witness or the insubordinate subject or to
constrain the righteous judgment of the judge.
Times have changed. Not a state of this Union
but still retains the oath "So help me God"; and in New York the
greasy old tome of Holy Writ must usually be dragged out and tagged by the
witness as he swears upon it. But such oath is not always required; the witness
may simply "affirm" that he or she will speak the truth; or may break
a saucer, or jump over a broomstick, or swear by "the beard of the
prophet" or whatever other freak he may regard as of most sacred
compulsion for him to tell the truth. It's a piddling performance at best; no
oath prevents perjury. A thousand hands are held to heaven or laid on the musty
book each day, to speak the truth, "So help me God"; and a large part
of all the solemnly vouched testimony given is lies. it would be better to
abolish the whole superstitious farce; let a man affirm that be speaks the
truth, and if he lies, jail him for perjury, and perjury will cease to be so
much in vogue as a means to "justice."
Justice can be done without swearing by
fables. The noblest, most admirable system of law, the sternest, fairest scheme
of human justice, which the world has ever known -- under which the whole
civilized world lives to-day -- is pagan Roman law. It is to-day the basis of
every legal system of Europe, as of Japan's; it largely supplements the
crudities of the common law of England; the whole system of English and
American equity is derived from and instinct with the spirit of the stern,
impartial justice of pagan Rome. Many American judges are Jews; many others no
doubt quite disbelieve the Christian faith; American juries are composed in
large part of Jews and disbelievers; still justice is rendered between men;
still government, the best on earth, is maintained, protecting men in life,
liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. It will yet persist, and human
happiness be no doubt more nearly perfect when strife and dissentions
engendered by religious differences have been relegated to oblivion.
The glory that was Greece, the grandeur that
was Rome, they know, have filled the world with beauty and with law, ages
before the Christian superstition existed or the torch of its crude theology
had been applied to the brimstone of hell and its holy fires kindled for the
unbelieving soul. Those learned in the law will recall the maxims of the
jurisprudence of ancient Rome, mistress and lawgiver of the world; maxims
gathered by Justinian into the Digest, culled from the olden precepts of the
noblest of the old Roman jurisconsults and legal philosophers, which still rule
the civilized world to-day. It was Ulpian, pagan that be was, who described the
Roman lawyers as "priests of justice, engaged in the pursuit of a
philosophy that is truly such and no counterfeit"; and pagan Ulpian it was
who gave the living definition: "Jurisprudence is the knowledge of things
human and divine, the science of the just and unjust" -- almost a
translation of the much more ancient pagan Greek Stoic concept of
"sophia." The very first sentence of the Digest is this: "The
precepts of the law are these: to live honorably, to injure no one, to render
to every one his due." The pagan Cicero declared: "Law is nothing
else than right reason, enlightened by the gods, commanding what is honest and
forbidding what is dishonest."
There are to-day some 243,000 churches,
temples, synagogues, and whatever they may be called scattered throughout these
United States, to minister to some 47,000,000 members of them all. No doubt
they are a force for good in the land. A far greater force they will be for far
greater good when once they turn from propagating worn-out superstitions and strive
to further personal and civic righteousness for its own high sake. Recently a
very well-known "liberal" minister in the metropolis declared through
the public press that his own sons refused to attend church because, they said,
they "did not want to have to listen to a lot of bunk." Nor do
hundreds of thousands of other men gifted with fair, reasonable minds. I find
the question, so often heard, again seriously put "whether the pulpit is
any longer useful in modern life"; and on this the Dean of St. Paul's,
London, thus comments:
"The crumbling of certain parts of the
dogmatic structure has undoubtedly increased the difficulty of preaching. There
is much uncertainty as to what may be, and should be, said from the pulpit. The
people themselves are impatient with dogma. Accordingly, many preachers try to
interest their congregations by topical discussions of newspaper controversies,
new books, or, worst of all, burning economic problems, in which their
ill-informed tirades generate much more heat than light. There seems to be a
kind of fatality that the Church always begins to champion a political party at
the moment when it is preparing to abuse its power. The Church never goes into
polities without coming out badly smirched, and few sermons are more unprofitable
than rambling comments or declamations on secular affairs" (Literary
Digest, November 21, 1925, pp. 31-32 ).
Churches are to-day largely social gathering
places, where the social gradations are as marked and as rigidly observed as at
the king's court, the rich in the best pews, the poor in the rear and side
ones, and little recognition or fraternity between them. On Sundays the sacred
edifices are solemnly open, and maybe on an evening during the week; the rest
of the time they are mostly closed and dark, and as cold as is their spirit
when open.
Every "house of God," of whatever
god (and there are many), throughout the land should be kept open and habitable
and every day and evening, and should be active centers of spiritual and social
and civic interests, where, most of all, the homeless should find a shelter if
not a home. Churches are in a large and important sense supported by the State,
by the public, being free from all taxation, to the extent all told of
thousands of millions of dollars yearly; they should be brought to some real
return of service to the public, beyond preaching fables and singing psalms a
couple of times a week. Church houses should be community centers, open to
every responsible and respectable society and organization, religious, social,
civic, political, freely or at only the actual expense of service for the
occasion.
Make the churches public forums, where the
public may forgather for every kind of social and civic occasion and innocent
diversion, from the instructive scenes on the "silver screen" to the
healthful, joyful dance; public lectures, political gatherings, social and
literary societies -- all are quite as socially and spiritually useful and
uplifting, and as innocuous and little "desecrating" to the sacred
edifices as church "rummage sales" and parish "grab-bag"
parties and "rates." The talk about "sacredness" and
"consecration" of churches, which must not be "desecrated"
or "profaned" by honest uses for worthy purposes, is sanctimonious
silliness. All human service is sacred, all human effort that makes for right
and for righteousness is holy, consecrated.
Let the churches then, if they would attract
and hold intelligent modern men and women, leave off preaching and teaching the
fables of the Bible as the truthful Word of God, about Adam's talking snake,
and Balaam's talking ass, and Jonah's marvelous whale, and men raised from the
dead, and men living in heaven or hell after they are dead -- of devils, and
angels. Let the ministers quit "sky-piloting" for the very dubious
hereafter and devote themselves to spreading the knowledge of God's real truths
of life and nature here on earth; ethical and educational truths, God in his
wonders of nature, the bands of Orion, or the bandaging of wounds in first aid
to the injured; the cruel hatefulness of war and its ostracism from earth; the
beauty and duty of charity to all men, of whatever race or tongue or creed, and
the loathsomeness of prejudices of race or color or creed -- and speed the
abolition of creed. Thousands of truths of knowledge and use and beauty, to the
true glory of God and benefit of man, may be taught and spread abroad from the
pulpit with never a hint of superstition or a whiff of fire and brimstone.
Then may people, in growing numbers, come to
hear and remain to be instructed in things worth while; the vast numbers driven
from the Church to-day by the vacuous myth-mongering of its preachings may
return with joy to its teaching of wholesome truths, of knowledge in all its
scope, of science in popular form. Then will the influence of the churches be
real and potent for good to all the people; not restricted as now to
miracle-mongering for a credulous few, and to social display for worldly wise
but very indifferently believing and behaving Christians.
If the churches will not with good grace make
this return of public utility and service for valuable public support by tax
exemption on their billions of dollars' worth of deadhead property, then tax
them like rich men's clubs or poor men's cottages, and let them share the
common burden of support of the government which protects all alike under the
law, and Christians from each other.
Broaden and enforce the laws against
"superstitious uses," and make illegal and void the rich legacies,
and the painfully earned pittances of the poor, for the already over-swollen
"treasury of the Lord," obtained by the false pretence of
"lending to the Lord," or for praying the souls of the superstitious
out of non-existent purgatory -- than both which there is no nearer grand larceny
in the annals of priestly avarice. Make it by the penal code grand larceny de
jure as grand larceny it surely is de facto. Consider for a moment the
countless millions filched through the centuries from the credulous through
this pious confidence game! Justice to a man and to his surviving family comes
before superstitious generosity to the Devil to buy surcease of pains for a
dead man's soul gone wrong, or tainted only with Adam's original sin. Purgatory
not only does not exist, for the souls "go down immediately into
hell" (Decree Unionis) -- but if it did exist, paid prayers are utterly
worthless to get the souls out, for it is "revealed" that they writhe
there until "the first resurrection" or until "the last
judgment," which is exactly when they would get out anyhow, to pass to
heaven or hell -- if such places existed.
For two thousand years mankind in Christendom
has been the victim of these priest-invented superstitions imposed on it as the
holy will of Almighty God; has from infancy been priest-taught to believe
fishermen's tales as inspired truth; has been duped into reverencing, obeying,
and supporting for life a horde of parasitic, hypocritic, indolent, insolent
soul-savers who have dealt damnation to all who eluded their thraldom.
Numberless millions of the most intelligent and independent human beings have
been tortured by fiendish devices, murdered, and sent to everlasting torment in
the fires of hell for daring to doubt, to question, to deride, and to despise
the priests and their deadly superstitions. The human intellect has been
atrophied and debauched, the mind paralyzed and debased, God-given reason
crumbed or confined into puerile and worthless channels, by enforced bondage to
priestcraft. Freedom of thought had been martyred; learning, discovery, science
have been cramped and thwarted; the progress of civilization itself has been
hindered and delayed by priestly oppression.
Gulliver is beginning to break the multiplied
threads which so long have bound him prostrate before padre and parson; let the
Lilliputians beware. Divinely endowed men, turned swine-minded by the hateful
enchantments of the scarlet Circle could, when freed, trample their seducers
under foot, and turn again and rend them. A better and holier than they heard
the fearful cry "Crucify him! crucify him!" Like Samson rendered
impotent by the shearing, they may be caught and crushed in the crash of the
temple when its tottering supports are knocked from under. Verbum sat sapienti.
Once free the mind and soul from the debasing
thrall of "imposed belief in the veracity and historicity" of these
Bible fables, and from the "blight of theological dogma," as God's
Word necessary to salvation, and what a flood of spiritual light and truth may
illumine man's mind and conscience from the book of God's work in nature! True,
an unknown God not revealed in writing, but still the true Creator God,
revealed through his wondrous works. Nor need the Bible be altogether
disregarded as ennobling truth. Full as is the Bible, Old and New Testaments,
of crude, cruel, immoral, revolting fables and concepts of the mythic Yahveh as
God, it abounds, too, in truly inspired outbursts of the highest fervor of
spirit, of the purest morality, of eternal principles of right and wrong, of
that righteousness that exalts men and nations, and of denunciations of those
sins which are a reproach to any people. Amid the chaff and trash and filth in
Holy Writ there are infinite gems of purest ray serene to illumine mind and
soul with true godliness whereby to light the way to death. All such gems of
ancient devotion are to be cherished as part of the great spiritual treasures
of life, to be found in the Bible as in many another work of highest worth in
many literatures and religions, valid and true wholly apart from the fables and
myths. With all the crude, gross Bible fables eliminated, there yet remains
much of truth and beauty; verses which are the gems, and contain the germs, of
true religion of the human spirit. This is the religion of clean hands and pure
hearts; of fact, not of faith; of good deeds, not of credulity. Revolting is
the doctrine of theology that not by the doing of good and by right living, but
only by credulous faith, is there profit to man or God. As we have read:
"Except which a man believe faithfully and firmly he cannot be
saved"! "Good works done before the grace of Christ are not pleasant
to God; but they have the nature of sin"! Better far to so sin and die in
such sin than live in debasing belief in such theological "confidence"
stuff!
Micah, prophet of old Israel, denouncing the
credulous beliefs and superstitious practices of his people, struck for once in
the Hebrew Scriptures the high key-note of true religion:
"He hath shewed thee, O man, what is
good; and what doth the Lord [Yahveh] require of thee, but to do justly, and to
mlove mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" (Micah 6: 8 )
This is not Christian; it was written ages
before Christ. It is not sectarian; it is catholic, universal. It is not
superstitious, but sensible. It is the key-note of the universal religion of
the sincere mind and heart, striving after spiritual godlikeness. It is
identical with the universal, highly religious concept of the very first of the
Praecepta of the pagan Institutes of the law of nature and of world law of
Rome:
Juris praecepta sunt haec: Honeste vivere,
alterum non laedere, suum cuique tribuere. The precepts of the law are these:
To live honorably, to injure no man, to render to everyone his due."
(Institutes, 1: 1, 3 )
Under the new dispensation of superstition,
there sounds out, too, one pure note in harmonious unison with the same true
religion; uttered by the own brother after the flesh of the Master of the new
faith of miracles and credulity:
"Pure religion and undefiled before God
and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction,
and to keep himself unspotted from the world." (James 1: 27 )
These three golden precepts of religion pure
and undefiled by crass superstitions are the utterances of three lofty-minded,
high- visioned men: an Old Hebrew prophet crying against the grossly
superstitious creeds and practices of the Chosen People of Yahveh; a noble
pagan prophet and priest of justice and law, human and divine; a Hebrew of the
new dispensation, brother of its Founder, who believed but a modicum of its
superstitions, but stressed to its utmost its substance of love and charity and
truth, as his beautiful Epistle shows. To these may be added the noble
exhortation of fiery Paul:
"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are
true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever
things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good
report; think on these things." (Phil. 4: 8 )
The sum total and golden substance of truth of
them all is synthesized by a creedless modern seer in the tocsin couplet of the
Kasidah:
"Do good, for good is good to do: Spurn
bribe of heaven and threat of hell."
These all are words which utter the doom of
superstition, the apotheosis of godly reason. They are the golden rule of
highest human righteousness. They spell the noblest terms of religion, of true
pure spirituality. They exclude not God; they embrace the innate sense of God,
of walking humbly with thy God, in Micah's golden phrase. God we know not except
through his wondrous works of universal creation, save in the unstillable
strivings of the human soul for righteousness, for godlikeness. Whoever,
whatever God be, we feel him instinct within us; with the pagan poet quoted by
Paul on Mars' Hill, we feel that "in him we live, and move, and have our
being"; in a very high, real sense "we are also his offspring"
(Acts 17: 28 ). In our souls we feel the impelling stirring of the truth of
Festus: "Nothing but God can satisfy the soul that he made great" --
the greatest gift of God to his masterpiece man.
But this God is not the crude tribal Yahveh,
the superstitious, psychopathic Jesus, and the inane Holy Ghost -- the cerberus
Trinity -- "revealed" in the oriental fancy of the Hebrao- Christian
Bible. God is not to be worshipped, as I conceive it, by superstitious creeds,
but in golden deeds wrought in the heart for the good of the soul and of man.
The Bible is not the inspired infallible
"Word of God"; it is the very human record of the human fallible
striving of man's soul after an Unknown but very conscious God-in-man, urging
its realization in men's lives, unconcerned with the unknowable hereafter.
That the Bible has been shown to be, IS,
wholly human, fearfully immoral, false, and cruel for the most part, detracts
naught from its immense value to mankind as a veritable treasury, not of
"God's outpourings through Moses," but of man's outpourings, of man's
upliftings of spirit towards righteousness, towards godliness. That it is
over-full of primitive, puerile superstitions; that priests and hierarchies of
priests have forged out of its crude myths a cruel, blighting system of
"theology" for dominating men's minds and souls by priestly schemes
of graft and aggrandizeinent, of rule and ruin, is, unhappily for mankind, all
too true, as several thousand years of history and the imperfect, inadequate
sketches of this book prove. But when this demonstration is brought home to the
minds and realization of men, the damage is ended forever. Knowing the truth,
men will be free from the dominion of error; the priestly era and occupation
will be gone -- gone as the ghosts of yesteryear.
But the Bible, in its better parts will
endure, to the real benefit of humanity, once it is rated at its true worth.
Inestimable evils, far more than from Pandora's box, have come from this Bible:
because misguided, mistaught, priest-taught men have mistaken it for an
inerrant book of facts of God, instead of, as it is, a book of wondrous,
fallible fables of man, carrying tremendous morals of mighty spiritual truth.
Once realize its fables as fables frankly, its inspiration as the genius of
man's fervent spirit groping up towards the truths of spiritual life, with its
gross chaff winnowed away by the discernment of the spirit, then its
"apples of gold in pictures of silver" will become more beautiful to
the mind's eye, more palatable to the spirit's taste, more vitally nourishing
to the soul's salvation from error and superstition.
The Bible has always been a wonderful work of
literature. Held as a purely human, spiritual literary work; as such cherished,
reverently regarded, spiritually and reasonably lived; with its superstitions,
prolific cause of religious hatreds and intolerance, of wars and woes
unnumbered, banished from men's minds and souls; with its lofty ideal truths of
spirit impressed on men's hearts, not its fatal mystic texts "engraven on
their reeking swords" for murderous strifes over its vain fables; and with
its fine assurance that "of one flesh hath God made all men under the
sun" and that all men are brothers under the universal fatherhood of God
-- then, then only, then indeed, will the humanized, revitalized Bible be
potent, omnipotent perhaps, to perfect the true civilization of mankind; then
triumphantly may be realized the burden of the angels' storied song over the
birth of the new era of the storied Christ:
"On earth peace to men of good
will." Or better yet: "Peace to all mankind."
END