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NATIONAL
MAKERS
RUTH, SAMUEL, DAVID
SOLOMON & OTHERS
MOSES
JOSHUA AND JUDGES
Jk
BY
ARTHUR B.
MOSS.
London:
WATTS & Co., 84, FLEET STREET, E.C.
Price One Penny.
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MOSES.
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1 J
Emerson says that “the sacred books of each nation
express for each the supreme result of their experience.”
This is undoubtedly true. By reference to the sacred
writings of a people we can, to a very large extent, form
a correct estimate of their intellectual and moral ad
vancement. A Bible, in fact, should be the result of
the joint labours of the best scientist, moralist, social
reformer, historian, poet, dramatist, and novelist of the
time in which it is written. Not that these eminent
personages collaborate to produce a book, as dramatic
authors now-a-days do to produce a play, one supplying
the plot, the other the dialogue, and in some instances a
third being called in to compose some music for a song
or two, introduced for the special reason of giving the
hero or heroine a chance of displaying his or her vocal
talent, and relieving, in some degree, the heavy character
of the piece; but each writer supplying, independent of
the other, essays on those subjects with which he feels
himself most conversant, sometimes venturing an opinion
on matters upon which his knowledge is of the scantiest
kind.
Moses, or whoever the author of the Pentateuch may
have been, belonged to the class of versatile writers
sometimes to be found on the staff of our daily journals,
who feel themselves competent to write on all subjects
in heaven above and earth beneath; who can with ease
polish off an article either to refute Darwin, turn Mill’s
logic inside out, expose its many weaknesses, and, as a
light diversion, pulverise the arguments in Mr. Glad
stone’s latest speech into the most minute particles of
rubbish it is possible to conceive, and with one whiff of
journalistic wisdom scatter all that remains to the four
winds of heaven. Accordingly, we find Moses figuring
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first as a scientist, then as a historian, then as a bio
grapher ; next, after bringing the children of Israel out
of Egypt safely through the Red Sea, as a poet; and lastly
as a moral teacher. Of course, it would be unreasonable
to expect Moses to write ahead of the knowledge of the
times in which he lived, unless, like the theologian, we
credit him with being divinely inspired—a claim which,
as far as I can judge, he never put forward on his own
behalf.
jr
When Moses, on his own responsibility, made Jahveh
create the earth in six days, throw into the infinite
expanse the sun, moon, and stars, and finally make man
and woman after his own image, he merely reflected'the
current beliefs of the best informed persons of the time.
Had he done more than this, he would not have succeeded
in pleasing the people for whom he wrote ; and to be a
successful man even in one’s own day is no small task :
it is indeed to gain a position after which many strive
very arduously, but which few manage to attain. To be
successful through ages, to win the admiration, of the
fWpeople as they increase in wisdom and goodness, is given
only to a few men of rare genius, whose works shed im
perishable lustre upon the nation in which they are born,
only that it may be spread through various sources to all
the peoples of the earth.
“ Sufficient for the day is the success thereof” is the
motto of most men of the world. A popular dramatist,
upon being spoken to by a friend, a short time ago,
anent the unenduring character of his work, and asked
why he did not consider the judgment posterity would
pronounce upon it, caustically replied : “ What do I care
for posterity ? Posterity does not pay me.” And Moses
and others among the Biblical writers regarded posterity
with the same air of ’supercilious disregard, having seem
ingly much more care for the certain popularity of the
hour than the enduring regard of subsequent generations.
Not alone in his unscientific disquisitions did Moses show
that he did not possess an idea above the common pre
vailing sentiments of the Jewish people, but he told them
to act towards slaves and blasphemers in precisely the'
way we may fairly suppose they would have chosen to
act when left to be guided by tl^gir own uncultivated
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feelings and judgment. He told them to buy slaves “ of
the heathen round about them,” and to brutally ill-treat
them, if it pleased them so to do. He commanded them
not to “ suffer a witch to live,” and to barbarously stone
blasphemers to death. Mohammed, in establishing a
new religion many years later, was equally careful in the
Koran (chapter entitled “ The Cow ”) to warn his fol
lowers of the fate of unbelievers, who, he said, would
not believe, whether they were admonished or not.
Fr; In his poetical efforts Moses was singularly tame : he
sang not the song of love or labour, but of strife and
warfare; and it lacked the true poetic ring. But, if his
poetry was bad, his history was worse. When he records
the doings of the Israelites, even though he himself is
commander-in-chief, priest, and deliverer, he writes a
comedy of errors, which at last degenerates into the
broadest of farce. His tragic seriousness is drily and un-consciously humorous, so much so that I can fancy the
late Mr. Compton causing shouts of merriment over the
solemn delivery of Moses’ inimitably grotesque’ account
of the plagues. Even when he is describing such a
sad and shameful occurrence as the flood—a god-wrought
crime unparalleled in the history of the world for its
vindictiveness and cruelty—he gives Noah the stupendous
task of collecting all the animals prior to packing them
“ close as herrings ” in the ark, and the tragedy is un
necessarily delayed while this unspeakably cornig, busi
ness is enacted. As to Moses’s biographical sketches, they are sadly
wanting in many important respects. He does not give
us a particle of information concerning the earlier life of
Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, though we should be much
better able to estimate their qualities if we knew howr they
were trained, who were their instructors and companions,
and what were the social conditions by which they were
surrounded. He gives us an account of such unimportant
affairs as the quarrels of Abraham’s and Lot’s servants, of
Jacob’s dream, and of the angel’s acrobatic performances
on the ladder; but of the career of the magnanimous
Esau he supplies us only with the faintest possible out
line.
'.uo.'
..i ;•
■
As a writer of unconsciously grotesque and amusing
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narrative, Moses was, perhaps, the equal of any of the
Biblical writers. Nothing can surpass in this respect the
story of Balaam’s visit to Balak on his talkative donkey,
except it be the candid account of his own death and
burial. But, taken altogether, spite of its many imper
fections of style and its ludicrous stories, its tales of vice
and crime and bloodshed, the Pentateuch is exceedingly
interesting reading, especially to the Freethinker, who,
discarding the silly notion of Divine inspiration, is better
able to estimate its true value as indicating the moral
and intellectual advancement of a people who, though
they plume themselves on being the “chosenchildren of
God,” have been one of the most unfortunate among
the races of men.
JOSHUA AND JUDGES.
Many things, it will be admitted, are extremely doubtful
in reference to the authorship of the books of the Bible;
but no manner of doubt can, I imagine, exist in any
thoughtMamind that Joshua was no more the writer of
the book that bears his name than Moses was the
author of the Pentateuch. For the purpose of having
names to refer to as the accredited authors of the various
books of the Bible, it will be convenient to assume that
these persons were in reality responsible for the books of
which they are the alleged authors. And it may at once
be said that the contents of the Book of Joshua show
that that personage entertained not only a very good
opinion of himself, but a very poor one of everybody
else.
When an author is writing reminiscences of his career
as a general, and describing, in vivid language, the rapine
and murder of which the soldiers under his command
were guilty, it is positively in bad taste to say a word on
his own behalf, as though pleading for promotion or a pen
sion, and to declare that “ his [Joshua’s] fame was noised
throughout all the country.” Joshua seemed to think
that fame and notoriety were much the same.. In this,
however, as in most other things, he greatly erred. Any
murderer may get notoriety if he only display enough
brutality or callousness in the execution of the deed ; but
fame can be achieved only by meritorious conduct, and
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we have no evidence that Joshua understood even what
that meant. Being the successor of Moses, he thought
it incumbent upon him to imitate, as far as possible, the
deeds of wanton cruelty, deceit, and villainy which cha
racterised his predecessor. Or, supposing that Joshua did
not do these things, but merely recorded them as having
happened for the edification of future generations,
then he must have imagined that the people would be
satisfied with stories of bloodshed, or of wonders wrought
by the Lord for the special behoof of his chosen people.
He must have thought, too, that the credulity of his
readers was practically unlimited, and that it did not
matter much how stupid the event was that he recorded,
so long as something similar was said to have occurred
before, or that nobody could doubt that such and such
a miracle had been performed, if only the Lord could be
placed in the background—behind the curtain, as it were
—to act as the performer.
As a historian Joshua was a dead failure. He was
too ignorant to understand even ordinary events, and
extraordinary occurrences simply bemuddled what
little reason he may have possessed. Like all careless
students of nature, he was prone to grossly exaggerate
the things he saw, and to exaggerate still more mon
strously the things that he did not see, but only heard
spoken of by his friends and co-workers. He would
have done very well for the war correspondent of the
Daily Telephone ; for his special telegrams of one day
could have been very easily contradicted on the day
following by some other correspondent who was an “eye
witness ” to the event recorded, but did not see it “ in
the same light ” of the gentleman who did the special.
In point of truth, Joshua was one of that class of writers
—always assuming that he wrote anything at all—who
could have done his correspondence, and appeared to
have been on the field, just as well in the back parlour
of a Fleet Street restaurant as in a rude tent near the seat
of war.
When Joshua wrote the account of the sun standing
still upon Gideon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon,
he forgot for the nonce in which department of the literary
staff of the said journal he was engaged, and thought
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that his views on astronomical phenomena would be
quite as acceptable to the Jewish public as his opinion
on the best method of decapitating the Midianites. It
was as though the sporting correspondent of a paper had
ventured to send in, unsolicited, a descriptive account of
an archbishop’s last sermon, or the musical critic had
supplied an article on the “ germ theory of disease.” If
Joshua meant that the sun stood still in order to allow
him to win a battle, he must have been joking; for, as
every little boy now knows, the sun, so far as this earth
is concerned, never moves. But what about the moon ?
Was not the light of the sun enough? Did Joshua
imagine that a night-light would be of assistance in the
daylight—a rushlight an important auxiliary to the sun ?
If we suppose that Joshua tried to be poetic in referring
to the sun and moon, his figurative language must have
got slightly mixed-—he made too much of the moon. As
Thomas Paine pointed out, as a figurative declaration
Joshua’s is inferior to one by Mohammed, who, when
a person came to expostulate with him upon his
doings, retorted : “ Wert thou to come to me with the
sun in thy right hand and the moon in thy left, it should
not alter my career.” For Joshua to have eclipsed
Mohammed he should have put the sun in one pocket of
his waistcoat and the moon in the other, and used them
as watches—one to time his doings by day, the other to
regulate his conduct by night; or, as Paine remarks,
“ carried them as Guy Fawkes carried his dark lanterns,
and taken them out to shine as he might happen to want
them.”
In addition to being special reporter, historian, poet,
and commander for the Israelites, Joshua varied these
occupations by occasionally acting as executioner.
Among his many achievements I find that he burned the
city of Ai and hanged the king, and performed the office
of executioner (without a special request) to five other
crownedheads. I must not, however, dwell atgreaterlength
upon the writings or doings of Joshua, but come at once
to the gentlemen who describe themselves as “Judges.”
What these persons were judges of we have no means
of knowing. It is pretty clear, however, that they could
not very well have been judges of a man’s capability,
A
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single-handed, of destroying brute beasts or his fellow
creatures, else they would not have favoured us with the
silly account of Samson’s encounter with a lion, or his
great feat with a jawbone. As a profane wag once re
marked, if Samson could have slain a thousand people
with another ass’s jawbone, it is extremSy difficult to
understand why he could not have done it with his
own.
On the subject of dreams the Judges were authorities.
If any wandering lunatic dreamed a dream, these writers
were sure to allow it to come true. Indeed, a very large
portion of the Bible is made up of accounts of religious
dreams, and the “ Bible makers,” being themselves mostly
dreamers, attached great importance to the interpretation
of visions which the dreamers themselves had half for
gotten. And so, in the seventh chapter, we are told that
when Gideon had come into the city of the Midianites
“ there was a man that told a dream unto his fellow, and
said, Behold, I dreamed a dream, and, lo, a cake of
barley bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came
unto a tent, and smote it that it fell, and overturned it
that the tent lay along. And his fellow answered and
said, This is nothing else save the sword of Gideon, the
son of Joash, a man of Israel; for into his hand hath
God delivered Midian and all the host.” The writers
of the book of Judges then proceed to show that the
barley loaf in the dream did really mean the sword of
Gideon; and though no tent was overturned by either
the loaf or the sword, nor even the walls of the city, the
Midianites were put to flight, pursued, and those of
them that were unfortunately overtaken were mercilessly
slain, even to the princes who were taken prisoners.
Judges, with its stories of dreams, battles, and the man
whose strength lay in his hair, may be considered very
good pabulum upon which to feed religious babes and
sucklings ; but it is decidedly poor stuff upon which to
rear children of a large and more vigorous growth ; and
of such are the children of earth.
RUTH, SAMUEL, AND DAVID.
Sandwiched between Judges and Samuel is the book
of Ruth. How it came to be incorporated in the Bible
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it would be difficult to tell, without great faith and a
prayerful spirit; and, unless we suppose that some lewd
fellow, thinking that a little more pruriency would be an
improvement, by some dexterous and surreptitious means
slipped the book in, there is no accounting for its appear
ance among the sacred writings at all. It is, however
a pretty love-story. It tells of a poor simple girl from
the country, who came up to town to see her cousin,
Boaz, and, having successfully repelled the advance
ments of numerous young men who were infatuated
with her charms, steals slily to bed with her cousin, who
blesses her for her unselfish kindness, and ultimately
rewards her by making her his wife. As no more
mention is made of them, we will be generous enough to
suppose that they lived happily ever after. If Miss Ruth,
however, wrote this brief autobiographical sketch, it must
be ^confessed that she was as candid in revealing her
failings as Jean Jacques Rousseau was in revealing his,
if, indeed, she meant this little business with her cousin
to be considered as an iniquity at all.
We come now to Samuel. He was the son of Elkanah.
He wrote a book, or a number of books, and followed
his predecessor, Moses’s, example in being careful to give
a full account of his own death and burial. His father
he described as “ a certain man of Ramathaim Zophim
and Mount Ephraim.” Most fathers are “ certain men.”
He gives an account of a man named Saul, who was
seeking his father’s asses, which had gone astray. The
children of Israel at the same time were in search of a
king. The asses were found; so was Saul, who was at
once anointed king by Samuel, who, from an early age,
was a prophet of the Lord. His early appointment to
this profession took place in this wise: he received a
“ call ” from the Lord, who, hiding himself in an obscure
corner of the sky, had an inoffensive game at bo-peep
with the child Samuel, and, after allowing the lad to
make a couple of wrong guesses as to who it was that
had called him, permitted him to guess correctly the
third time, and thus save his bacon, and become a per
petual prophet of the Lord of Hosts ever after.
Samuel faithfully recorded the lives of such illustrious
kings as Saul and David ; gave a graphic description of
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the unequal encounter between David and Goliath, in
which he showed how easy it was for a little boy with a
sling and a stone to kill a giant; and, further, how diffi
cult it is for a harpist—a Jew-harpist—by dulcet strains
of music to soothe the savage breast of a king, after
having taken from him the favour of the people. Samuel
also demonstrates that a high degree of mental culture
was not an indispensable accomplishment of a prophet.
David prophesied upon a harp ; many of the people
prophesied with cymbals and with song; and some, no
doubt, produced the same result upon the bango, or with
the bones ; but King Saul put them all to the blush.
Finding that everybody was going in for prophesying,
he divested himself of all his raiment, and lay on his back
and prophesied as hard as any of them. This, as an
honest historian, the prophet Samuel has faithfully set
down, not in a spirit of malice or uncharitableness,Jbutj
in that of candour and truth, that ordinary folk might
understand the strange doings of the godly.
Samuel’s account of the life of David is filled with
interest. Thackeray’s “ Four Georges ” or Carlyle’s
“ Cromwell ” are not more graphic. If only the letters
of David to his various mistresses had been preserved,
what a splendid addition they would have made to this
fascinating biographical sketch ! Great affection, unselfish
devotion, David unquestionably displayed towards Jona
than ; but how infinitely small it was compared with the
unbounded love he showed towards the wives of Nabal
and Uriah. David robbed, outraged, and murdered
wherever he went; and, in true prophetic strain, Samuel
describes him as a “ man after God’s own heart,” clearly
showing that he knew the character of God very well;
he, therefore, represented David as much “ after the
image of his maker ” as possible. It is said that David,
at the end, repented ; so, too, did Charles Peace—at the
rope’s-end. Worthy couple!
The books of Kings and Chronicles, which are merely
a combination or repetition of the stories of Samuel, I
pass over, as also the book of Job, a Gentile production
which deserves to be considered on its merits, apart
altogether from the place it occupies in men’s minds on
account of being one of the books of the Bible.
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We come now to the Psalms of David, which throw a
flood of light upon the inner life of the king and
prophet. They are a collection of songs—not comic;
mostly expressive of praise to Deity. What many-sided
ness of nature ffihese poetic expressions disclose ! What
infinite piety,jjhombined with consummate rascality—
what unctuousness, covering the imperious dogmatism of
a king and a priest! How anxious David is that the
religious shall have no “ fellowship with the ungodly
that the Lord shall rebuke the unbeliever, and afflict
him with great suffering !
David’s God was essentially a butcher and a king.
Give heed to this poetic strain :—
O clap your hands, all ye people ; shout unto God with the voice
of triumph.
For the Lord Most High is terrible ; he is a great king over all the
earth.
He shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under our
feet.
He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob
whom he loved. Selah. (Psalm xlvii.)
As for the Atheist, David loathed him with every drop
of his blood. He regarded him as a fool, and said as
much. Most people call those persons names whom
they cannot answer :—
The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. Corrupt are
they, and have done abominable iniquity : there is none that doeth
good. (Psalm liii.)
In a more humble mood was the Psalmist when he
penned the following :—
Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty ; neither do I
exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me.
Surely I have behaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned
of his mother : my soul is even as a weaned child.
Let Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth and for ever.
(Psalm cxxxi.)
But in his true colours David is seen when, from the
lowest depths of his fiendish heart, he gives vent to his
views as to how God should treat those who had been
his (David’s) and God’s enemies :—
Set thou a wicked man over him, and let Satan stand at his right
hand.
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When he shall be judged let him be condemned, and let his
prayer become sin.
Let his days be few, and let another take his office ; let his chil
dren be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
Let his children be continually vagabonds and beg; let them
seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
Let the extortioner catch all that he hath, andi^et the strangersspoil his labour.
Let there be none to extend mercy unto him ;* reither let there
be any to favour his fatherless children.
Let his posterity be cut off, and in the generation following let
his name be blotted out.
Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the Lord, and.
let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
' u
Oh, what a difference between the sentiments of the
Atheist poet, Shelley, and the Theist poet, David ! The
one wrote for the ignorant and cruel and despotic people
of ages that have gone ; the other, in incomparably grand
verse, breathed the pure and lofty sentiments of the
humanity of the future.
SOLOMON AND OTHERS.
Interspersed among much that was unwittingly funny,
and more that was deliberately barbarous, it was only
natural that the Bible-makers should supply a few
chapters of gloomy sermonising, to lend a kind of moral
respectability to the whole work. King Solomon wa|f ♦
therefore, specially retained to supply the article. Credited
with almost unlimited knowledge and wisdom, but pos
sessing, if we may judge from his writings and conduct,
a very infinitesimal quantity of either; a notorious man
of the world; devoid altogether of principles or sincerity
—a more appropriate person could scarcely have been
chosen for the task. No men are more prone to preach
—and sometimes very good sermons too—than those
whose practice is in flagrant and diametrical opposition
to their teachings. From the judge upon the bench
to the unpaid magistrate in an obscure country town, or
from the opulent bishop to the poor underpaid curate,
we have hundreds of examples of men who, in their
official position, give admirable lessons to the public as
to how they should conduct themselves morally—lessons
which they themselves not only never attempt to put into
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practice, but which they persistently and deliberately
disregard. The Spartans, it is said, used to make a
slave drunk, and set him before their sons, so that the
exhibition might disgust them, and thus influence them
against the excessive use of intoxicating drinks. Solomon
seems to have '^een chosen as a contributor to the pages
of the Bibl,|j^n the same principle. Having divided
his attention?, mainly between wine and woman, espe
cially the latter; monopolising several hundred wives
and three hundred concubines, he was considered to
be a high authority upon the things of life in general,
and upon women and wine in particular. And a very
gloomy opinion it was—pessimistic to the last degree.
The reclaimed drunkard is often considered the best
advocate of temperance; the converted burglar the
most admirable teacher of morality; the reformed prize
fighter the best example of the influence of the meek
and lowly Jesus. In Solomon the qualities of all these
persons were combined. He had had experience of life
in all its varied aspects ; he had prostituted his physical
and mental faculties for the sake of transitory pleasures;
and at last, when he had become a decrepit, used-up
debauchee, he yelled out, in the agony of his despair:
“ Vanity—all is vanity !” To Solomon childish laughter
seemed fiendish, innocent playfulness agonising folly,
honest toil madness; and he summed up life as com
prising nothing but “ vanity and vexation of spirit.”
He had wasted his life, and he longed for death to
escape from wThat, to him, was a dreary and miserable
existence. And while he was in this unpleasant mood
he contributed twelve chapters to the Holy Bible, for
which the long-faced, lugubrious gentlemen of orthodoxy
will ever thank and praise him.
Having finished Ecclesiastes, Solomon apparently
rested for a time, and then rushed into song, which,
being written when the author was in a better state of
mind—in fact, in quite an affectionate mood—with,
doubtless, one of his many wivd^gitting upon his knee
caressing him, are, therefore, much more pleasant,
though not altogether decent, compositions. The meta
phor, at times, is very coarse, as the reader will see, if he
glance cursorily over chapter seven and the first few
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verses; and one cannot avoid the conclusion that the
writer was inebriated at the time with something of a
stronger nature than exuberant verbosity.
The book of the prophet Isaiah follows. Isaiah was
a dreamer, and all the terrible events which ^e foresaw
as certain to happen he had had revealed to him in a
vision. Many of these predictions were perfectly safe.
They were not to take place till the “ last day,” and, as
that interesting period is unlikely to come very soon in a
world that is, as the Prayer Book properly says, “ without
* end,” the events are not likely to be carefully verified.
When we are assured that “ it shall come to pass in the
last days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be
established in the top of the mountains, and shall be
exalted above the hills; and all the nations shall flow
into it,” we can only remark that, if ever the mountain
of the House of Lords—or Lord’s House, which is the
same thing—should get elevated at all, it is not unlikely
that it will be exalted much higher than the hills—
probably elevated off the face of the earth • and so that
prophecy will be fulfilled. As to the composition itself,
I think it may not unfairly be said that it is the most in
coherent and meaningless jargon to be found in the
Bible, save and except, perhaps, the ravings of St. John,
the divine maniac, in the book called Revelation, which
reveals nothing but the hopeless imbecility of the
writer.
.
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>
Prophesying was once a good businessW^Every priest
practised it, and every ignoramus believed in it. Old
women of both sexes gave it their countenance and
support. The Bible-makers knew the importance of it,
and so, to every single historian or poet on the staff, they
kept four prophets.
After Isaiah come Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the former
of which contains nothing of importance, and the latter
only a parable concerning a boiling pot and a faithful
narrative of the disgusting practices of Aholah and
Aholibah, two painted harlots of Babylon. These, with
Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Zechariah, and Malachi, and
one or two others that are never read, complete the first
part of the Bible. Most of these last-named writers
were in the prophetic line, and their prophecies need a
�16
BIBLE-MAKERS.
revelation before they can be understood. I don’t
profess to understand them, and I do not know any
sensible person who does; but, if there are any who
understand them, or think they do, they are sure to be
numbered among the Bible-makers of the future.
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ALSO BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
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SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND JESUS
............................
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THE MIRROR OF FREETHOUGHT
............................
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THE BIBLE GOD AND HIS FAVOURITES
..
..
ox
FICTITIOUS GODS...................................................................
ox
CHRISTIANITY UNWORTHY OFGOD..............................
ox
THE SECULAR FAITH
......................................................
ox
IS RELIGION NECESSARY OR USEFUL?
..
ox
HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS...........................
ox
THE OLD FAITH AND THE NEW
..
..
..
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BRAIN AND SOUL ..
..
..
................
...
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BIBLE SAINTS AND SINNERS....................................................ox
AND
'
WAS JESUS AN IMPOSTOR?
(One Hundred Pages.
In Boards.
Price One Shilling.)
A Discussion between two Freethinkers—-Agnes Rollo Wilkie
and Arthur B. Moss. The most blasphemous book of the age.
Freethinkers enjoy it ; Jews like it amazingly ; Christians detest it.
It strikes at Jesus the God, demonstrates the hollowness of his pre
tensions, shows that he deceived himself and his followers, and that
through them the world has been deceived ever since.
Jjrm
.It
GUO
Pt inted arid Published by Watts R Co., 84, Fleet Street,. EXS i
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Bible-Makers: Moses, Joshua and Judges, Ruth, Samuel, David, Solomon & others.
Creator
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Moss, Arthur B.
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: List of works by the same author available from Watts & Co. on back page. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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Watts & Co.
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[1885]
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N498
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Bible
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Bible-Makers: Moses, Joshua and Judges, Ruth, Samuel, David, Solomon & others.), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Bible-O.T.-Criticism
NSS
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https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/930287db88e8ca77edbb60dcda3f6fe6.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=lgkdvmx2EpKx%7EvJCwZknueQ6QigUlRV7HNE3nd6cGLL3RzhUkUML5ktnBI%7ECYxgfBTw9pIfWxYqoP8xID4beeaGvf3qfzDTJGAbW-L8Z%7EgVl-h0sQGOGub6DoQ7anRsv8lIT83vrMY3mwJjhfdf63sSPLAb14t-vgi2fabb6OyB0KXN1bECMH3o5fmnzC-MSk0IGbtjpjgxl1IwjFxlcqdoOQ%7EAaAKCTkD0LUenMWMScbl9-G2e6RkKdjlgPsJyZGzc8LjSRvynAlYg0vvc1IoBK%7Ew5ARkF%7E-EDw8AzO40vnuyEayFAsrUVIWjfnSf2J52ZOaZwNrX2T8BaykK1Kyg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
c92da0312d9e19449d22e0e3dcd68c3d
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Text
BIBLE HORRORS;
OR, TRUE BLASPHEMY.
BY
ARTHUR
B.
MOSS.
LASPHEMY is a peculiar offence : only a believer in
the being whose reputation is attacked can commit it,
even then time and circumstance have to be taken into
account. The Jew cannot blaspheme the Christian God,
because he does not believe in him ; the Christian may say
what he likes against the gods of the Brahmin and Buddhist;
and the Mohammedan may speak disrespectfully of all the
gods of the nations of the earth save his own. All, how
ever, must be careful that they give utterance to their blas
phemous expressions at the proper time and place. The
Jew must not attack the Christian Deity in an English
church, nor the Christian sneer at Jehovah in a Jewish
synagogue, nor either of them ridicule the Mohammedan
Deity in a moslern in Turkey ; but in their own city, and
at the proper season, each may blacken the deity of the
other.
Ridicule has always been considered a powerful weapon
in eradicating false impressions from the human mind,
though some pious persons now declare it to be a crime
when it is used to show the fallacy of their own belief.
Do not the religious ridicule the opinions and cherished
beliefs of Freethinkers ? Did they not laugh immoderately
at what seemed to them the monstrously absurd notion of
the late Charles Darwin, that man had evolved from a
lower for-m of being? Did they not ridicule the Materialist
when he declared that he believed that the laws of nature
were sufficient to account for “all phenomena without the
meddling of the gods”? Then why should Freethinkers
abstain from using a weapon which has proved effectual in
many a controversial encounter ? The statesman uses it,
Band
�2
BIBLE HORRORS;
the historian wields it, the social reformer does not disdain
to employ it, and the popular orator knows its wonderful
power in exploding false notions.
But real blasphemy is an attack by a believer upon the
reputation of his deity. It matters not that he does it to
flatter the power or vanity or the capriciousness of his god :
the blasphemy is none the less real. Did it never occur to
the Christian that his Bible teems with such blasphemy—
indeed, is as filled with it as some of the numbers of a
blasphemous publication (in the eyes of Freethinkers) called
the War Cry. The cry of the Christians was always a cry
for blood : their appetite for it is much stronger than that
of the general occupants of the gallery at third-rate theatres
during the representation of a drama in which several
murders occur in each act and a frightful slaughter at the
end of the play. Look into the Bible, my readers, for the
record of human bloodshed. In early times the earth was
a slaughter-house and Jehovah a mighty butcher. Take
the merciless slaughter of the Egyptians, and see if it finds
its parallel in profane history. Not content with depriving
the Egyptians of water by causing Moses to turn it into
blood ; not satisfied with afflicting an unoffending people
with plagues of frogs, lice, and flies ; not satisfied with
destroying harmless cattle with a grievous murrain ; not
content with supplementing these with frightful plagues of
hail, locusts, darkness, and the slaughter of the first-born,
this Bible God allowed the Israelites to utterly “ spoil the
Egyptians,” robbing them of jewels and other valuable pro
perty, and ultimately bringing them to the Red Sea to perish
in the waves, that the Israelites might exult over their death.
And what was the cause of all this ? What had the
Egyptians done ? That God had hardened “ Pharoah’s
heart ” is the only explanation vouchsafed to us respecting
this Bible horror. And so the poor Egyptians had to suffer,
not through any fault of theirs or of Pharoah’s, but through
a fault attributable to God alone.
Barbarous deeds recorded in the Bible are of two kinds
—those perpetrated by the bloody hand of Deity himself
and those to which he gave explicit sanction. The slaughter
of the Amalekites by Joshua had the approval of the Deity;
the uplifted hands of Moses, tightly clutching the “ rod of
the Lord,” was enough to win the support of Jehovah, who
was always on the side of injustice and tyranny. This, in
�OR, TRUE BLASPHEMY.
3
all conscience, was frightful enough. But mark what soon
follows. Moses, Aaron, and seventy elders have had an
interview with the Lord. From the summit of an exceed
ingly high mountain they are witnesses of his great glory.
They behold the feet of the Infinite God ! Moses even
receives the Commandments, written by the finger of God
upon great tablets of stone. While Moses is thus “ inter
viewing ” the great God of the Jews, Aaron is among the
people seeking to satisfy their craving for a real god—one
they could see and handle, and who could assist them in
time of trouble; for their minds were sorely disturbed by
great doubts and misgivings concerning the God whom
Moses had spoken of so often, but who appeared to be so
far above the clouds that nobody could get at him. Aaron,
with Jewish simplicity, thought that a golden god was the
most appropriate for the children of Israel; he, therefore,
beset himself the task of making a Golden Calf. Retribu
tion came quickly ; but, as is usual in Biblical matters, it
fell on the wrong shoulders. No sooner did Moses discover
that the “ God in the skies ” was doubted than he took a
most effective way of removing all scepticism—a method
which has often been imitated since his day. “ Then Moses
stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the Lord’s
side ? Let him come unto me. And he said unto them,
Thus saith the Lord God of Israel : ‘ Put every man his
sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate
throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and
every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.
And the children of Levi did according to the word of
Moses, and there fell of the people that day about three
thousand men” (Exodus xxxii. 26 — 28). Well might
Jehovah, in his Commandments, say: “I am a jealous God,
who visits the sins of the fathers upon the children.” And
might he not have added, “ The sins of the priests upon the
people ” ?
But this is not all—
“ On horror’s head horrors accumulate.”
Turn over the leaves of your Bible, and read how God com
manded Moses to war against the Midianites, slaying them
without mercy, and preserving only the maidens, that they
might satisfy the lustful craving of a brutal horde of soldiers
Numbers xxxi. 7—18). Read this for yourselves ; con
�4
BIBLE HORRORS ;
template these wicked horrors, and say if it is not a libel
upon a wise and good God to allege that he ever com
manded such wanton barbarity ! And let me abjure you
not to pollute your lips with Bible obscenities; do not
allow your children to read them either at home or at school.
They were written in a barbarous age by an ignorant people,
and they are fit only for brutal barbarians grovelling in a
very atmosphere of licentiousness.
lhe books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings are
filled with stories of murders and aggressive wars, to which
Jehovah always gave his approving smile. Percy Bysshe
Shelley was an Atheist: Atheists are all supposed to be
wicked, heartless men ; yet Shelley, in his “ Declaration of
Rights,” says : “ Man has no right to kill his brother. It is
no excuse that he does so in uniform—he only adds the
infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.” Was Shelley
a greater lover of humanity than the God who is alleged to
have made us all? Is the Atheist more deeply touched by
human sorrow and pain than the Christian God ? Or are
these records of bloodshed and crime, said to have been
committed at the express will of the “ Heavenly Father,”
but a long tissue of falsehoods, written in the dark nights of
ignorance and superstition ?
Among Bible horrors the second class of crime is to give
sanction to the perpetration of barbarous deeds. This the
Christian God has frequently done, so that in all ages the
Bible has served as a text-book to which the believer could
refer to find justification for the committal of all sorts of
horrible crimes. In Leviticus xxiv. 16 we find these words:
“And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord he shall
surely be put to death ; and all the congregation shall cer
tainly stone him, as well the stranger as he that is born in
the land, when he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord
shall be put to death.” This passage has incited fathers to
destroy their own children ; it has induced men to break
their fellow creatures upon the rack ; to stone, to imprison,
to crucify, or consume them at the stake. No suffering has
been too intense for the blasphemer. And yet blasphemy
is a priest-invented crime, which no unbeliever ever has,
or ever can, commit.
Again, in Deuteronomy xiii. 6—io we read: “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
�OR, TRUE BLASPHEMY.
5
own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve
other gods, which thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers
—namely, of the gods of the people which are round about
you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from one end of
the earth even unto the other end of the earth—thou shalt
not consent unto him nor hearken unto him ; neither shalt
thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt
thou conceal him. But thou shalt surely kill him. Thine
hand shalt be first upon him to put him to death, and after
wards the hands of all the people. And thou shalt stone
him with stones, that he die.” Could wickedness go farther?
Under this injunction the bravest thinkers, the most heroic
men that have adorned the world, have suffered inexpressible
torture. Socrates despised the gods of his time. That noble
philosopher suffered death like a hero and martyr rather
than be false to conviction. Even though he was broken
with age, he had courage enough to bear without a murmur
all the tortures to which his enemies subjected him. Bruno,
Vanini, and a multitude of men and women less known to
fame, have perished under this wicked command. No
wonder that human progress was slow while a passage like
this could be effectively appealed to ; no wonder that while
religion was strong science was weak.
As long as the
Church had power the people were steeped in ignorance.
Every martyr and every hero have made the path smoother
for subsequent pioneers of progress. Let us remember this,
and let the heroism of our tortured and persecuted ancestors
give inspiration to our every thought and deed to-day.
Probably the two passages which have wrought the most
evil in the world are these : “ Thou shalt not suffer a witch
to live ” (Exodus xxi. 18); “ Both thy bondmen and bond
women which thou hast with thee shalt be of the heathen
round about you, and they shalt serve thee for ever ” (Levi
ticus xxv. 44, 45, 46). The first passage was the court of
appeal in all cases of alleged witchcraft. Learned judges,
whose common sense in most matters was keen enough,
were, nevertheless, led to believe—upon no other authority
than this infamous passage from the alleged inspired word
of God—that witches had a real existence, and entered into
the bodies of men for evil purposes. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries more than a hundred thousand persons
were put to death in Germany alone as witches. In the
first year of the reign of James I. in England an Act was
�6
BIBLE HORRORS;
passed defining the crime of witchcraft with wonderful
minuteness. It says : “ Any one that shall use, practise, or
exercise any invocation of any evil or wicked spirit, or con
sult or covenant with, entertain or employ, feed or reward,
any evil or wicked spirit to or for any purpose, or take up
any dead man, etc., etc., such offenders, duly and lawfully
convicted and attainted, shall suffer death.” Soon after the
passing of this Act the popular delusion spread like an
epidemic, devastating many parts of England ; and under
this statute hundreds of men, women, and children were
mercilessly murdered with the full sanction of the people,
who were completely saturated with superstition. But if
the people were ignorant, if the judges’ minds were warped
by theological prejudice, can it be said that the Infinite
Ruler of the Universe was no better able to discriminate
between prevailing delusions and eternal truth? Is the
wisdom of God the same as the ignorance of man ? Did
a “ God of love ” look down upon this earth, and compla
cently watch the transactions of Matthew Hopkins, the
“ witch finder,” and his cowardly set of colleagues? Did
“ our Father who art in heaven ” give these deeds of blood
his warm approval, as though he had heartily declared “my
expressed will is being done”? If he did not sanction these
atrocious crimes, done in his name for his glorification, why
did he not stretch forth his almighty arm, and thwart the
wickedness of his followers ?
What shall we say of slavery ? What of a God who
describes one class of men as the “ money ” of another
(Exodus 20, 21)? There are no words in the English lan
guage strong enough with which to characterise him if it
were true ; but it is not true—it is all a libel : it is the
believer’s blasphemy of a God he pretends to worship.
The Christian has yet to learn that his highest conception
of Deity is but a reflection of himself; that no God has
ever possessed loftier sentiments or grander characteristics
than the people out of whose fertile imagination he grew.
Indeed, men have in all ages been god-makers, giving to
“airy nothing a local habitation and a name.”
rl he New Testament is not exempt from the charge that
is here made against the other fragmentary essays which go
to make up what in this country is called the “Holy Bible.”
Jesus, who is elevated by the priests to the position of an
Infinite Deity, is recorded to have said: “ If any man come
�OR, TRUE BLASPHEMY.
7
unto 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 xiv. 26). Can it be
true that a God of wisdom and goodness would have us hate
those who are near and dear to us, and sever ourselves for
ever from them, in order that we might render service or
pay homage to one of whom no man has the smallest know
ledge ? Is it not blasphemy to suppose that a loving God
would say to his children : “ Think not that I am come to
send peace on earth ; I came not to send peace, but a
sword ” (Matt. x. 24) ? The mission of a Devil could not
be more evil in intention. It must never be forgotten that
it is in the New Testament where the appalling doctrine of
everlasting burning in hell for unbelievers is first announced
as the distinct teaching of Jesus. Vindictive women, stirred
by the irresistible passion of jealousy, have conceived the
wicked idea of torturing and disfiguring their enemies or
rivals by throwing over them a quantity of sulphuric acid ;
fiendish men have, in a moment of madness, pushed a
fellow-creature into a vat of boiling oil; and a drunken
parent has been known to hold his child’s hand in a fire for
some moments. These fearful agonies have been endured
long enough in all conscience, though only for a few brief
hours; yet the New Testament tells us that there is a loving
father in heaven who will suffer some of his children to
pass an eternity in hell, ceaselessly tormented by the flames,
but never consumed. I will not, I cannot, believe it; and,
though my countrymen may punish me for my unbelief,
though they may fine and imprison me, I shall still main
tain that a God of goodness could never be guilty of such
infinite wickedness. To say that God will punish men
endlessly in hell has always been considered man’s feeble
way of expressing his admiration of God’s justice; to deny
that he would perpetrate such a gigantic and unpardonable
crime has ever been considered the greatest blasphemy.
Number me with blasphemers, from Socrates downwards :
it is an honour to be in such company ; and with them I
am prepared to stand or fall.
That the Bible teems with records of immorality and
obscenity, which it is a criminal offence to print in all
their naked ugliness, everybody knows full well: and yet
this book is read in our national schools, and there are
good men and women who declare that they would sooner
�;\z
BIBLE HORRORS;
8
OR, TRUE BLASPHEMY.
have their children remain in the direst ignorance than have
them brought up without a full knowledge of the contents
of the Bible. Let us charitably suppose that they speak in
ignorance—that they really have not diligently perused the
Bible themselves. It is readily acknowledged that the
Bible is not an altogether bad book, that it contains passages
of rare beauty, of lofty sentiment, and profound wisdom ;
but it can never be taken as a text-book, because it abounds
in contradictions and absurdities ; and it were far better
that man should thrust it aside for ever than that he should
accept it as containing “the beginning and end of all
wisdom ”—as a book written at the special command of a
wise and good God. Let the Christians improve their
Bible ; let them eliminate these barbarous things from its
pages ; let them proclaim their belief in a nobler God and
a loftier creed. The pure, the good, the just, and the
beautiful the Freethinker will never attack ; but all that is
cruel, wicked, impure, and unjust he will always condemn,
whether it be said to come from God or from man.
' 1
-
THE
SECULAR
REVIEW.
A JOURNAL OF DAILY LIFE.
Edited by
...
Charles Watts & Saladin.
The Secular Review is strictly a Freethought Journal,
representing all phases of Advanced Thought. It also con
tains authentic information as to the progress of liberal views
in America and oil the Continent.
To order, of Newsagents, or direct from 84, Fleet Street, London.
Published every Thursday, price Twopence.
WATTS & CO., 84, FLEET STREET, LONDON. —PRICE ONE PENNY.
mJ-
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Bible horrors; or, true blasphemy
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Moss, Arthur B.
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Two marginal marks in pencil. Date of publication from KVK (OCLC WorldCat).
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[Watts & Co.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1885]
Identifier
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G5780
Subject
The topic of the resource
Blasphemy
Bible
Rights
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Bible horrors; or, true blasphemy), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Bible
Blasphemy