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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
EXAMINATION
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BY
VOLTAI RE.
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LONDON :
GEORGE STANDRING, 7 & 9 FINSBURY STREET, E.C.
1890
��Introduction.
The ambition of domineering over the mind is one of the strong
est passions. A theologian, a missionary, or a partisan of any
description is always for conquering like a prince, and there are
many more sects than there are sovereigns in the world. To
whose guidance shall I submit my mind ? Must I be a Christian
because I happened to be born in London or in Madrid ? . Must
I be a Mussulman because I was born in Turkey ? As it is my
self alone that I ought to consult, the choice of a religion is my
greatest interest. One man adores God by Mahomet, another
by the Grand Lama, and another by the Pope. Weak and foolish
men! adore God by your own reason.
The stupid indolence which takes possession of the generality
of men, and sets aside this most important of all concerns, seems
to intimate to us that they are nothing but stupid machines,
endowed with animal functions, whose instinct never occupies
itself beyond the present moment. We make use of our under
standings in the same way as we use our bodies ; both are fre
quently abandoned to quacks, whose chief concern is to get
possession of our money.
The prodigious multitude of Christian sects already forms a
great presumption that they are all founded on erroneous systems.
The wise man says to himself : “ If God had intended us to ren
der him any particular worship, this worship would have been
necessary to our species. If this worship were necessary, he
himself would have communicated it to each of us, as invariably
as he has given us two eyes and one mouth.” This worship
would likewise have been uniform, since we have not been able
to discover anything necessary to the human race that does not
possess this uniformity. The universal principles of reason are
common to all civilised nations; all acknowledge a Deity; and
they may thence infer that this belief is founded in truth. But
each nation has a different religion ; they ought therefore to
conclude that reason tells them to adore a God, but that they
have uniformly fallen into errors by wishing to overstep the
bounds prescribed them.
The principle, then, in which the whole universe is in agree- .
ment, appears to be true ; other principles whose consequences
are diametrically opposite must appear to be false, and it is
natural for us to mistrust them. We have a still greater diffi
dence when we find that the sole aim of those at the head of each
�V.
Introduction.
sect is to domineer and enrich themselves as much as they can ;
and that from the Dairis of Japan to the Bishop of Rome they
are occupied in raising to the pontiff a throne founded on the
misery of the people and often cemented with their blood.
Let the Japanese, then, examine how long the Dairis have held
them in subjection ; let the Tartars make use of their reason in
order to judge whether the Grand Lama be immortal; give the
Turks permission to judge their Alcoran ; and let us, as Chris
tians, examine our Gospels.
I have learnt that a French vicar, of the name of John Meslier,
who died a short time since, prayed on his death-bed that God
would forgive him for having taught Christianity. I have seen
a vicar in Dorsetshire relinquish a living of £200 a year, and con
fess to his parishioners that his conscience would not permit him
to preach the shocking absurdities of the Christians. But neither
the will and testament of John Meslier nor the declaration of this
worthy vicar are what I consider decisive proofs. Uriel Acosta,
a Jew, publicly renounced the Old Testament in Amsterdam ;
however, I pay no more attention to the Jew Acosta than to
Parson Meslier. I will read the arguments on both sides of the
trial with careful attention, not suffering the lawyers to tamper
with me ; but will weigh before God the reasons of both parties,
and decide according to my conscience. I commence by being
my own instructor.
NOTE TO NEW EDITION.
This pamphlet is reprinted from an edition published over forty
years ago by James Watson. It is necessary to explain that in
reproducing it I have omitted a few passages which, in my
opinion, could be discarded without in the slightest degree
affecting the validity of .the arguments
G. S.
�CHAP. I.
Of the books of Moses.
Christianity is founded on Judaism ; let us, then, ex
amine if Judaism be the work of God. The books of
Moses are handed to me, and the first point I have to
ascertain is, whether or not these books were actually
written by Moses.
In the first place—Is it possible that Moses could have
graven the Pentateuch, or the books of the law, on
stone, and that he found gravers and stone-cutters in a
frightful wilderness, where it is said that his people had
neither tailors, shoemakers, raiment, nor bread, and
where God was compelled to work a continued miracle,
for the space of forty years, in order to clothe and feed
them ?
Secondly.—The book of Joshua tells us that Deuter
onomy was written on an altar of rough stone,1 covered
over with plaster. How could a whole book be written
on plaster? Would not the letters soon be effaced by
the blood which continually flowed on this altar ? And
how could this altar, this monument of Deuteronomy,
subsist so long in a country that had been such a length of
time reduced to a state of slavery, which their plunders
had so fully justified ?
Thirdly.—The innumerable geographical and chrono
logical errors and contradictions which we find in the
Pentateuch have compelled many, both Jews and Chris
tians, to declare that the Pentateuch could not have
been written by Moses. The learned Le Clerc, a number
1 Joshua viii., 31, 32.
�6
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
of divines, even the great Newton, have embraced this
opinion, which appears at least very probable.
I likewise ask any reasonable man if it be at all likely
that Moses, when he was in the wilderness, would have
given precepts for Jewish kings who did not exist for
several centuries after him ; and if it be possible that,
when in the same wilderness, he could have allotted
forty-eight cities and their suburbs to the tribe of the
Levites alone, independent of the tenths which the other
tribes ought to pay them ? It is, doubtless, very natural
to suppose that the priests would lay hold of everything,
but we cannot imagine that they had forty-eight cities
given them in a little canton where at that time two
villages scarcely existed: as many cities would, at least,
have been necessary for the other Jewish tribes, and the
whole would have amounted to four hundred and eighty
cities with their suburbs. The Jews have not written
their history in any other manner. Each trait is a
ridiculous hyperbole, a stupid falsehood, or an absurd
fable.
CHAP. II.
Of the person of Moses.
Was there ever such a person as Moses ? There is so
much of prodigy in him from his cradle to his death that
he appears to be an imaginary personage like the magi
cian Merlin. If he had really existed, if he had per
formed the dreadful miracles attributed to him in Egypt,
would it have been possible that no Egyptian author
should have spoken of these miracles, and that the
Greeks, the lovers of the marvellous, had not recorded a
single word respecting him ? Flavius Josephus, who, to
extol his despicable nation, seeks after the testimony of
the Egyptian authors who have spoken of the Jews, has
not the face to quote one that makes mention of the pro
digies of Moses. Is not this universal silence a proof
that Moses is only a fabulous personage ?
�The. Person of Moses.
7
Those who have paid any attention to antiquity know
that the ancient Arabs invented many fables which suc
ceeding ages made known to other nations. They had
imagined the history of ancient Bacchus, whom they
supposed to have lived long anterior to the time when
the Jews tell us their Moses made his appearance. This
Bacchus, or Back, who was born in Arabia, had written
bis laws on two tables of stone; he was called Misem, a
name which has some resemblance to that of Moses ; he
was picked up in a box on the waters, and the significa
tion of his name is “ saved from the waters ” ; he had a
rod with which he performed miracles, and he could
change his rod into a serpent at his own pleasure. This
same Misem passed the Red Sea dry-shod at the head of
his army; he divided the waters of Orontes and Hydaspus, and suspended them to the right and left, and a
fiery column lighted his army during the night. . The
ancient Orphic verses which were sung in the orgies of
Bacchus, celebrated a part of these extravagances. This
fable was so ancient that the fathers of the church be
lieved Misem or Bacchus to have been Noah.1 Is it not
highly probable that the Jews adopted this fable, and
that it was written as soon as they had obtained some
knowledge of literature under their kings ? They must
have a little of the marvellous as well as other people,
but they were not the inventors; never was there a petty
nation more stupid; all their falsehoods were plagiarisms,
and all their ceremonies were visibly performed in imita1 We must observe that Bacchus was known in Egypt, Syria,
Asia Minor, and Greece a long time before any nation had heard
the name of Moses, or even of Noah and the whole of his gene
alogy. Everything that belonged exclusively to the Jewish
writings was absolutely unknown to both Eastern and Western
nations, from the name of Adam to that of David.
The wretched Jews had their own chronology and fables apart,
which bore only a slight resemblance to those of other nations.
Their writers, who were very tardy in commencing their labors,
ransacked everything they could find among their neighbors, and
disguised their thefts very badly; witness the fable of Moses,
borrowed from that of Bacchus; their ridiculous Samson, from
that of Hercules ; Jephthah’s daughter, from Iphigenia; Lot’s
wife, imitated from Eurydice, &c.
�8
Examination of the Holy Scrintums.
tion of those of the Phoenicians, Assyrians and Egyptians.
What they themselves have added appear to be such
disgusting stupidities and absurdities that they excite
both our indignation and pity. In what ridiculous
romance could we bear to hear of a man changing all
the waters into blood by a flourish of his rod, in the
name of a God unknown, while the magicians can do the
same thing in the name of their local deities ? The only
superiority that Moses obtains over the king s magicians
is in creating lice, which they were unable to perform.
This made a great prince say that as far as lice, were
concerned, the Jews could do more than all the magicians
in the world.
How did an angel of the Lord come and kill all the
cattle in Egypt ? How did it happen that the king of
Egypt had afterwards an army of cavalry ? And how
did the cavalry proceed to cross the muddy bottom of
the Red Sea? How did the same angel of the Lord slay
all the first-born of the Egyptians in a single night ? It
was then that the pretended Moses ought to have taken
possession of this beautiful country, instead of running
away like a coward and a vagabond, with two or three
millions of men, among whom it is said that there were
six hundred and thirty thousand combatants. It was
tbis prodigious multitude that he took with him to wan
der and die in the wilderness, where they could not even
find water to drink. To facilitate this grand expedition
his God divides the waters of the sea, which he raises
like two mountains to the right and left, in order that his
favorite people may perish with hunger and thirst.
All the rest of the history of Moses is equally absurd
and barbarous. His quails; his manna ; his conversa
tions with God ; twenty-three thousand of the people
killed by order of the priest; twenty-four thousand mas
sacred at another time; and six hundred and thirty
thousand combatants in a wilderness where they could
never find two thousand men ! Assuredly the whole of
this appears to be the height of extravagance; and it has
been said that Orlando Eurioso and Don Quixote are geo
metrical books in comparison with those of the Hebrews.
If- we could find only a few rational and honest actions
in the fable of Moses, we might then in reality believe
that such a person had existed.
�The Person of Moses.
9
They have the face to tell us that the feast of the
Passover among the Jews is a proof of the passage of the
Red Sea. At this feast they thanked the Jewish God
for his goodness in killing all the first-born of Egypt; and
they tell us that nothing could be more true than this
holy and divine butchery.
“ Can we conceive,” says that declaimer and trifling
reasoner, Abbadie, “ that it was possible for Moses to
institute sensible memorials of an event recognized to be
false by more than six hundred thousand witnesses?”
Poor man ! thou shouldst have said by more than two
millions of witnesses, for six hundred and thirty thousand
combatants, whether they were fugitives or not, assuredly
lead us to suppose that there were more than two mil
lions of inhabitants. Thou sayest, then, that Moses read
his Pentateuch to two or three millions of Jews, Thou
believest, likewise, that these two or three millions would
have written against Moses if they had discovered any
errors in his Pentateuch, and that they would have had
their remarks inserted in the journals of the country.
Thou hast forgot nothing, except telling us that these
three millions have signed as witnesses and that thou
hast seen their signatures.
Thou believest, then, that the temples and rites in
stituted in honor of Bacchus, Hercules, and Perseus,
evidently prove that Perseus, Hercules, and Bacchus
were the sons of Jupiter ; and that among the Romans,
the temple of Castor and Pollux was a demonstration
that Castor and Pollux had fought for the Romans. Thus
they always beg the question ; and in matters of the
greatest importance to the human race these controversial
traffickers make use of arguments that Lady Blackacre
durst not hazard on the stage.
We se£ that these tales have been written by fools,
commented upon by simpletons, taught' by knaves, and
given to children to be learned by heart; yet the sage
is called a blasphemer because he becomes indignant
and is irritated at the most abominable fooleries that
ever disgraced human nature.
�10
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
CHAP. III.
Of the inspiration attributed to the Jewish Books.
How can we suppose that God would choose a horde of
Arabs to be his favorite people, and that he would arm
this horde against all other nations ? And why, when
fighting at the head of them, did he so frequently suffer
his people to be vanquished and to become slaves ?
In giving them laws, why did he forget to inculcate
among this little troop of thieves the belief of the immor
tality of the soul, and the rewards and punishments after
death,1 while all the great neighboring nations, such as
the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Assyrians and Phoenicians,
had so long embraced this salutary belief ?
Herodotus tells us that the famous temple of Tyre was
built two thousand three hundred years before his time ;
and they say that Moses conducted his troop in the de
sert about sixteen hundred years before our era. Herod
otus wrote five hundred years before the vulgar era, so
that the temple of the Phoenicians subsisted twelve hun
dred years before Moses, and the Phoenician religion was
established long before that time.
1 This is the strongest argument against the Jewish law, and
one which the great Bolingbroke did not sufficiently insist upon.
What! The legislators of the Indians, Egyptians, Babylonians,
Greeks, and Romans all taught the immortality of the soul,
which we find in twenty places even in Homer, and yet the pre
tended Moses does not speak of it. Not a single word is said of
it, either in the Jewish Decalogue or in the Pentateuch. It be
came necessary for commentators, who were either very ignorant,
or more inclined to knavery than folly, to twist some passages of
Job, who was not a Jew, in order to make it believed by men
more ignorant than themselves, that Job had spoken of a future
life, because he said, “ For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and
though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh
shall 1 see God ” (Job xix. 25). What connection is there, I
pray you, between a sick man who is suffering but hopes to be
cured, and the immortality of the soul, hell, and paradise ? If
Warburton had contented himself with proving that the Jewish
law did not mention a future life, he would have rendered a very
great service. But by the most incomprehensible madness, he
wished to have it believed that the stupidity of the Pentateuch
was a proof of its divinity, and his excessive pride supported this
chimera with the most intolerant insolence.
�Who wrote the Pentateuch ?
11
This religion, as well as that of the Chaldeans and the
Egyptians, announced the immortality of the soul, which
was never a fundamental dogma with the Jews. We are
told that they were a rude people, and that God put
himself upon a level with them. With whom ? Jewish
robbers ! God more stupid than his people ! Is not this
blasphemy ?
CHAP. IV.
Who is the author of the Pentateuch ?
I am asked who is the author of the Pentateuch. I would
as soon be asked who wrote “The Four Sons of Aimon,”
“Robert the Devil,” and “ The History of Merlin the
Magician.”
Sir Isaac Newton, who so far degraded himself as to
examine this question seriously, pretends that Samuel
wrote these reveries, apparently to render the name of
king odious to the Jewish horde, whom this detestable
priest wished to govern by himself. I am of opinion,
myself, that the Jews could neither read nor write until
the time of their captivity under the Chaldeans, because
their letters were first Chaldaic and afterwards Syriac.
We have never had an alphabet purely Hebraic.
I fancy that Esdras forged all these tales of a tub after
the captivity. He wrote them in Chaldean characters in
the jargon of the country, in the same way as the peas
antry of the north of Ireland make use of the English
alphabet.
The Cuteans who inhabited Samaria wrote the same
Pentateuch in Phoenician characters, which they made
use of in that country, and this Pentateuch is still extant.
I believe Jeremiah may have contributed a good deal
to the composition of this romance. We know that he
had a strong attachment to the Babylonish kings ; it is
evident from his rhapsodies that he was paid by the
Babylonians, and that he betrayed his own country ;
he wishes everything to yield to the king of Babylon.
The Egyptians were at that time enemies of the Babylon
ians, and it was to make their court to the great king who
was master of Hershalaim Kedusha (called by us Jerusa
�12
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
lem) that Jeremiah and Esdras conspired to instil into the
Jews such a horror of the Egyptians. They took care to
say nothing about the people of the Euphrates. They are
slaves that keep upon good terms with their masters.
They confess, indeed, that the Jewish horde has almost
always been enslaved, but they respect those to whom
they were then in subjection.
Whether or not any other Jews have recorded the feats
and tricks of their kings is a matter as unimportant to me
as the “ History of the Knights of the Round Table,” or
the “ Twelve Peers of Charlemagne”; and I fancy the
most useless of all researches must be that of finding out
the name of the author of a ridiculous book.
Who first wrote the histories of Jupiter, Neptune and
Pluto ? I do not know ; nor do I care about knowing it.
CHAP.. V.
That the -Jews have borrowed from all other nations.
It has frequently been said that petty enslaved states al
ways endeavor to imitate their masters ; that a weak and
uncivilized people rudely conform to the customs of great
nations. Cornwall apes London ; London does not ape
Cornwall. Can anything be more natural than the sup
position that the Jews have borrowed what they could of
the religious worship, laws and customs of their neighbors?
It is now quite certain that their God, whom we call
Jehovah, pronounced by them Yaho, was the ineffable
name of the God of the Phoenicians and the Egyptians,
and was known to be so by the ancients.
Clemens Alexandrinus, in the first book of his Strom ates, relates that those who entered the Egyptian temples
were compelled to carry a species of talisman about them,
which was composed of this word Yaho; and when they
had acquired a certain method of pronouncing this word,
he who heard it fell down dead, or at least in a swoon.
This is what the jugglers of the temple endeavored to
persuade the superstitious.
It is well known that the form of the serpent, the
cherubim, the ceremony of the red cow, ablutions (since
�Jewish Borrowings.
13
called baptism), linen robes reserved for the priests, fast
ings, abstinence from pork and other meats, and circumsision, were all imitations of the Egyptians.
The Jews confess that they were a long time without a
temple, and that they had none for more than five hund
red years after Moses, according to their own chronology,
which is always erroneous. At length they invaded a
small city, in which they built a temple in imitation of
great nations. What had they before? A box. This
was customary among the Nomades, and the Canaanites
of the interior, who were very poor. There was an an
cient tradition among the Jews that, when they were
Nomades (that is to say, wanderers in the deserts of
Arabia Petrea), they carried a box containing a rude
image of a god named Remphan, or a species of star cut
in wood. You will find traces of this worship' in some of
the prophets, and particularly in the pretended discourse
which in the Acts of the Apostles is put into the mouth
of Stephen.1
Even according to the accounts of the Jews themselves
the Phoenicians (whom they call Philistines) had the
temple of Dagon before the Jewish troop had a house.
If this were the case, if all their worship in the wilder
ness consisted in having a box to the honor of the god
Remphan, who was nothing more than a star revered by
the Arabs, it is clear that the Jews in their origin were
only a band of wandering Arabs, whose pillaging enabled
them to establish themselves in Palestine, who afterwards
formed a religion to their own taste, and who composed
a history containing nothing but fables. They took a
part of the fable of the ancient Back or Bacchus, and
gave their hero the name of Moses ; but that we should
revere these fables, that we should have made them the
basis of our religion, and that these fables should still be
credited in a philosophical age, is what raises the indig
nation of all wise men. The Christian church sings
Jewish prayers, and burns those that adhere to the Jew
ish law ! How pitiful, how contradictory, how horrible!
1 Acts vii. 43.
�14
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
CHAP. VI.
Of Genesis.
All the nations by whom the Jews were encompassed
had a Genesis, a Theogony, a Cosmogony long before the
Jews existed. Is it not evident that the Genesis of the
Jews was taken from the ancient fables of their neighbors?
Yaho, the ancient god of the Phoenicians, unravelled the
chaos, the Khautereb ; he arranged matter, Muth; he
formed man with his breath, Calpi; he gave a garden for
his habitation, Aden or Eden; he forbade him to meddle
with the great serpent Ophioneus, as we are told in the
ancient fragment of Pherecidus. What a conformity with
the Genesis of the Jews ! Is it not natural to suppose
that a petty, ignorant people would, in the course of time,
borrow the fables of the great people who invented the
arts ?
It was likewise a received opinion in Asia that God
had formed the world in six periods of time, which the
Chaldeans, who were so long anterior to the Jews, called
six gahambars. This was also an opinion of the ancient
Indians. The Jews, then, who wrote Genesis, are merely
imitators ; they mixed their own absurdities with these
fables, and we must confess that it is difficult for us to
abstain from laughter when we hear of a serpent talking
familiarly with Eve; of God speaking to the serpent;
of God’s promenade in the garden of Eden at noonday ;
of God making small-clothes for Adam, and an apron for
his wife Eve. All the rest appears equally senseless.
Many Jews themselves are ashamed of these tales, and
they have been considered by them as allegorical fables.
How can we interpret literally what the Jews have re
garded as allegories ?
Neither the histories of Judges, Kings, nor any of the
Prophets quote a single passage of Genesis. None of
them speaks of Adam’s rib being taken from his side to
make a woman of; nor of th® tree of knowledge of good
and evil; nor of the serpent that tempted Eve ; nor, in
short, of any of these imaginations. Once more : have
we any rational motives for believing them ?
�Of Genesis.
15
Their rhapsodies demonstrate that they have pilfered
all their notions from the Phoenicians, Chaldeans, and
Egyptians, in the same way as they pilfered their goods,
when they had it in their power. Even the name of
Israel was borrowed from the Chaldeans, as Philo con
fesses in the first page of the narrative of his deputation
to Caligula. These are his words : “ The Chaldeans give
to the righteous the name of Israel, seeing God.” Yet we
are such simpletons in the West as to fancy that every
thing which these Eastern barbarians had stolen belonged
exclusively to themselves.
CHAP. VII.
Of the manners of the Jews.
If we pass from Jewish fables to Jewish manners, do we
not find them as abominable as their tales are absurd ?
According to their own confession, they are a troop of
brigands, who carry into the wilderness all that they stole
from the Egyptians. Joshua, their chief, passes the Jor
dan by a miracle similar to that of the Red Sea ; and for
what purpose ? To put to fire and the sword a city to
which he was an entire stranger, and the walls of which
God caused to fall by the sound of trumpets.
The fables of the Greeks had more of humanity in them.
Amphion built cities by the sound of his flute ; Joshua
destroys them, and gives up to fire and sword old men,
women, children, and cattle. Was there ever a more
senseless brutality ? He pardons only a prostitute who
had betrayed her country. What occasion had he for the
perfidy of this miserable woman, since the walls fell at
the sound of his trumpet, which may be compared to the
trumpet of Astolphus, that made everybody run away from
him. We may remark, by the bye, that this woman
called Rahab, the prostitute, was an ancestor of the Jew
whom we have since transformed into a God, who like
wise reckons himself a descendant of the incestuousTamar, the impudent Ruth, and the adulterous Bath
sheba.
�16
Examination of the Holy Scriptures,
We are then told that this same Joshua smote thirty one kings of the country, that is to say, thirty-one village
chiefs, who had defended their firesides against this troop
of assassins. If the author of this history had formed a
design of rendering the Jews execrable among other
nations, could he have adopted a surer method? To add
blasphemy to robbery and barbarity, the author dares to
say that all these abominations were committed in the
name and by the express command of God, to whom they
were offered up as so many human sacrifices.
These are God’s people! Certainly the Hurons, Cana
dians, and Iroquois were philosophers of humanity com
pared to the children of Israel; and yet it was to favor
these monsters that the sun and moon stood still at noon
day !
And why ? To give them time to pursue
and slay the miserable Ammorites, who were already
crushed to death by a shower of great stones, covering a
space of five leagues, which God had thrown upon them
from the sky. Is this the history of Gargantua ? Is
this the history of God’s people ? And which do we find
the more insupportable, the excess of horror or the ex
cess of foolery contained therein ? Is it not increasing
this stupidity, to amuse ourselves by combatting this
detestable collection of fables, which are equally disgrace
ful to common sense, to virtue, to nature, and to the
Deity ? If a single adventure related of this people had
unfortunately been true, all nations would have united
to exterminate them; and if they be false it is not pos
sible to tell lies in a more stupid manner.
What shall we say of Jephthah, who immolates his own
daughter to his imaginary God; of the left-handed Ehud,
who assassinates Eglon his king in the name of the Lord;
of the divine Jael, who assassinates General Sisera by
driving a nail into his head; and of the drunken Samson
whom God favors with so many miracles ?
This last is a gross imitation of the fable of Hercules.
The eleven tribes arm four hundred thousand soldiers,
against the tribe of Benjamin. Four hundred thousand
soldiers, good God! in a territory which did not measure
fifteen leagues in length by five or six in breadth! The
Grand Seignior never had half such an army. These
Israelites exterminate the tribe of Benjamin, both old
�The. Manners of the Jezvs.
17
and young, women and girls, according to their laudable
custom. Six hundred boys escape. It would not be
proper to let one tribe perish, therefore six hundred girls
at least must be given to these six hundred boys.
What do the Israelites do ? There was in the neigh
borhood a small city named J abez ; they take it by sur
prise, kill all, massacre every thing, even the cattle,
reserving only four hundred girls for four hundred Benjamites !
Two hundred boys remain to be provided for, and it is
agreed that they shall ravish two hundred of the daugh
ters of Shiloh, when they go to dance at the gates of the
city J1
Come on, Tillotson, Sherlock, Clarke, and the rest of
your tribe; say something to justify these cannibal fables;
prove to us that these a^e all types and figures announc
ing Jesus Christ!
CHAP. VIII.
Of the Jewish manners under their Kings and Pontiffs, to
the destruction of Jerusalem by the Bomans.
The Jews obtain a king in spite of the priest Samuel,
who does all he can to preserve his usurped authority,
and he has the hardihood to say that “ to choose a king
is to reject God.”2
At length a herdsman, who sought his father’s asses,
is elected king by lot. The Jews were then under the
yoke of the Canaanites ; they had never had a temple ;
their sanctuary was an ark that could be put into a cart.3
The Canaanites had taken their ark from them, at
which God was much displeased; yet he, nevertheless,
suffered them to take it, but to be revenged he gave the
piles to the conquerors and sent mice into their fields.
The victors appeased God by returning him his ark,
accompanied with five golden mice.4
1 Judges xxi., 21.
S1 Sam. vi. 11.
2 1 Sam. viii. 7.
41 Sami vi. 4.
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Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
No vengeance or sacrifice could be more worthy of
the Jewish God. He pardons the Canaanites, but kills
fifty thousand and seventy of his own people for having
looked into the ark.1
It is under these propitious circumstances that Saul is
elected king of the Jews. In their miserable country
there was neither sword nor spear ; the Canaanites or
Philistines did not permit their Jewish slaves even to
sharpen their plough-shares and axes; they were forced
to apply to the Philistine laborers for this assistance ;2
and yet we are told that king Saul had, at first, an army
of three hundred thousand men with whom he won a
great battle.8 Gulliver has similar fables, but not such
contradictions.
In another battle Saul comes to terms with the pre
tended king Agag. The prophet Samuel arrives, and
asks, in the name of the Lord, “ Wherefore didst thou
not obey the voice of the Lord, to slay both man and
infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass?”* and
4
he takes a hatchet and hews king Agag in pieces.5 If
such an action were true, what kind of people and priests
were the Jews?
Saul, who was reproved by the Lord because he had
not himself slain king Agag his prisoner, goes at length
to fight against the Philistines, after the death of the
meek prophet Samuel. He consults a witch respecting
the success of the battle. It is known that witches can
raise ghosts. This witch brings out of the ground the
ghost of Samuel; but this merely regards the fine philo
sophy of the Jews. Now for their morality.
A player of the harp, for whom the Deity had caught
a tender affection, causes himself to be anointed king
during Samuel’s life-time : he revolts against his sove
reign, and, as the Scripture tells us, collects four hundred
wretches. “ Every one that was in distress, and every
one that was in debt, and every one that was discon
tented, gathered themselves unto him.”G
This was a man after God’s own heart; so the first
thing he does is to assassinate a farmer, named Nabal,
1 1 Sam. vi. 19.
4 1 Sam. xv. 8.
21 Sam. xiii. 19, 20.
5 1 Sam. xv. 33.
3 1 Sam. xi. 8.
6 1 Sam. xxii. 2.
�The Manners of the Jews.
19
because he refused to pay contributions. He marries
Nabal’s widow, and eighteen other women, without
reckoning concubines. He goes to an enemy of his own
country, king Achish, who receives him well; and as a
recompense for this kind reception, he sacks the villages
of the allies of Achish, whom he persuades that he has
not meddled with any towns except such as belonged to
the Hebrews. We must confess, that highwaymen are
less culpable in the eyes of men; but the ways of the
Jewish God are not as our ways.
The good king David robs Saul’s son, Ishbosheth, of
his crown. He causes Mephibosheth, son of his protec
tor, Jonathan, to be assassinated. He delivers up to the
Gibeonites two sons of Saul, and five of his grandsons to
be put to death. He assassinates Uriah, to screen his
adultery with Bathsheba; and yet this abominable Bath
sheba was the mother of Solomon, who was an ancestor
of Jesus Christ.
The remainder of the Jewish history is nothing but a
tissue of consecrated crimes. Solomon begins by killing
his brother Adonijah.
If God granted to this Solomon the gift of wisdom, he
appears to have refused him the gifts of humanity, justice;
continence, and honor. He has seven hundred wives
and three hundred concubines. The song imputed to
him is written in the style of those indecent books which
are calculated to put modesty to the blush.
Such were the manners of the wisest man among the
Jews, or, at least, the manners imputed to him out of
respect by miserable rabbins and Christian divines, whose
notions are still more absurd.
At length, to unite an excess of ridicule with this ex
cess of immodesty, the priests have decided that the
rhapsodies of Solomon’s Song are an emblem and a type
of the marriage of Jesus Christ with his church.
Of all the kings of Judah and of Samaria, there were
very few of them who were not either assassins or assas
sinated, until this den of robbers, who massacred one
another in the public places and the temple during the
time that Titus besieged them, fell under the iron chains
of the Romans with the fest of this miserable people of
G®d, of whom five-sixths had long been dispersed' over
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Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
Asia, and sold in the markets of the Roman cities, each
Jew being valued at the price of a pig, an animal which
was certainly less impure than this nation, if it weresuch as its historians and prophets represent it.
No one can deny that the Jews have written these
abominations ; and when we thus assemble them before
our eyes, our hearts revolt at them. These, then, are
the heralds of Providence, the forerunners of the reign of
Jesus. Sayest thou, 0 Abbadie, that all the Jewish
history is a prediction of the Church ; that all the pro
phets have foretold Jesus? Let us, then, examine theprophets.
CHAP. IX.
Of the Prophets.
Prophet, Nabim, Roheim—speaking, seeing, guessing, isall the same thing. All ancient authors agree that the
Egyptians, the Chaldeans, and all the Asiatic nations had
their prophets and conjurers. These nations were longanterior to the little people called the Jews, which, when
it formed a horde in a corner of land, had no languagebut that of its neighbors, and which, as we have before
shown, borrowed from the Phoenicians even the namesof its God, Eloha, Jehovah, Adonai, Sadai; which, in
short, took all its rites and ceremonies from its surround
ing neighbors, though it continually declaimed against,
them.
It was said by some writer, that the first seer, or pro
phet, was the first knave who met with a simpleton;
thus is prophecy established from the most remote anti
quity. But to fraud, let us add fanaticism; these twomonsters dwell together very peaceably in human skulls.
We have witnessed the arrival in London of hordes from,
the heart of Languedoc and Vivarais, who were as much
prophets as those of the Jews, and joined the most hor
rible enthusiasm to the most disgusting falsehoods. We.
have witnessed Jurieu prophesying in Holland. There
were always such impostors, and not only wretches who
predicted/but other wretches who imagined prophecies
spoken by ancient personages.
�The, Prophets.
21
The world has been filled with Sybils and Nostra•damuses. The Alcoran reckons two hundred and twentyfour thousand prophets. Bishop Epiphanius, in his notes
■on the pretended Canon of the Apostles, reckons seventythree Jewish prophets and ten prophetesses. The trade
•of prophet among the Jews was neither a dignity nor a
degree, nor a profession in the state; they were not ad
mitted prophets as doctors are admitted at Oxford and
■Cambridge. Let those prophesy that would; it was
■sufficient to have, or to believe they had, or to feign they
had, the calling of the spirit of God. Futurity was an
nounced by dancing and playing on the psaltery. Saul,
¿although he was rebuked, took it into his head to be a pro
phet. During civil wars each party had its prophet, as we
have our Grub Street writers. The parties treated each
■other reciprocally as fools, visionaries, liars and knaves,
and in this alone they spoke truth. “ The prophet is a
fool, the spiritual man is mad,” says Hosea, chap. ix. ver. 7.
The prophets of Jerusalem are fanciful and deceitful
men, said Saphoniah, a Jerusalem prophet. They are all
¿something like our apothecary, Moore, who inserts in the
newspapers, “ Take my pills and beware of counterfeits.”
When the prophet Micaiah is predicting misfortunes
to the kings of Samaria and Judah, the prophet Zedekiah
.gives him a box on the cheek, saying, “ Which way went
the spirit of the Lord from me to speak unto thee?”]
Jeremiah, who prophesied in favor of Nebuchad
nezzar, a Jewish tyrant, put cords round his neck, and a
yoke on his back, which was a type, and he was to send
this type to the neighboring petty kings, to invite them
to submission to Nebuchadnezzar. The prophet Ananias,
who looked upon Jeremiah as a traitor, took his cords
from him, and threw his yoke on the ground.
Prophecies are seldom read; it is difficult to go through
these lengthy and enormous rhapsodies. Fashionable
men who have read Gulliver and Atlantis, know neither
Hosea nor Ezekiel.
When we point out to sensible people, these execrable
passages, buried in the rubbish of prophecy, they cannot
recover from their astonishment.
1 2 Chron. xviii. 23.
�22
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
They cannot conceive, that an Isaiah1 should walk
stark naked in the middle of Jerusalem ; that an Ezekiel
should cut his beard into three portions; that a Jonah
should be three days in a whale’s belly, &c. Were they
to read these shameless indecencies in a profane book,,
they would throw it away in disgust. It is the Bible ;
they remain confounded ; they hesitate ; they condemn
the abominations, and dare not condemn the book that
contains them. It requires time, before they dare to
make use of common sense, but, in the end, they detest
what knaves and simpletons have taught them to adore.
When were these irrational and immodest books writ
ten? Nobody knows. The most probable opinion is
that the greater part of the books attributed to Solomon,
Daniel, and others, were written in Alexandria ; but
what matters it as to time and place ? Is it not sufficient
to witness in them the most outrageous folly, and the.
most infamous debauchery ?
How is it, then, that the Jews have held them in
veneration ? Because they were Jews. We must like
wise consider, that all these extravagant monuments
were preserved only by priests and scribes. We know
how scarce books were in all countries, where the art of
printing (which the Chinese invented) reached us so late.
We shall be still more astonished when we see fathers of
the Church adopt these disgusting reveries, or allege
them in support of their sins.
We come, at length, from the old covenant to the new
one. Let us proceed to Jesus, and to the establishment
of Christianity.
CHAP. X.
Of the person of Jesus.
Jesus was born at a time when fanaticism was still
dominant, but when decency began to show itself a little.
The long commerce of the Jews with the Greeks and
Romans had given to the respectable part of the nation
manners less vulgar and irrational; but the populace, who.
are always incorrigible, preserved the same spirit of folly.
1 Isaiah, xx. 8.
�The Person of Jesus.
23
Some Jews, who were oppressed under the kings of
Syria, and under the Romans, had then imagined that
God would at some time send them a liberator, a Messiah.
This expectation ought naturally to be fulfilled in the
person of Herod. He was their king, and an ally of the
Bomans; he had rebuilt their temple, the architecture
of which greatly surpassed that of Solomon, since he had
filled up a precipice on which that edifice was erected. The
people no longer groaned under a foreign yoke; they paid
no imposts but to their own monarch; the Jewish worship
flourished, and the ancient laws were respected; Jerusa
lem, we must confess, was then in its greatest splendor.
Idleness and superstition brought forth many factions
or religious societies : Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenians,
Judaites, Therapeutaa, and Johnists, or disciples of John,
in the same way as the Papists have their Molinists,
Jansenists, Jacobins, and Cordeliers. However, at that
time no one spoke of the expectation of a Messiah.
Neither Josephus nor Philo, who have entered into such
minute details of the Jewish history, say that there was
any expectation of the coming of a Christ, an Anointed,
a Liberator, a Redeemer, of whom they had then less
need than ever. And if there had been one, it must have
been Herod. There was, in reality, a party or sect
called Herodians, who acknowledged Herod to be the
messenger of God.
At all times this people had given the names of An
ointed, of Messiah, of Christ, to any one that had been
serviceable to them ; sometimes it was given to their
own pontiffs, and sometimes to foreign princes. The Jew
who compiled the reveries of Isaiah, makes him employ
a vile flattery, very worthy of a Jewish slave: “Thus
saith the Lord to his Anointed, to Cyrus, whose right
hand I have holden to subdue nations before him,”1 &c.
The first book of Kings2 call the wicked Jehu, Anointed.
A prophet announces to Hazael, king of Damascus, that
he is the Messiah and the Anointed of the Most High.
Ezekiel says to the king of Tyrus, “ Thou sealeth up
the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty—thou art
the Anointed Cherub.”3 If this prince of Tyrus had
1 Isaiah xlv. 1.
2 2 Kings ix. 6.
3 Ezek. xxviii. 12, 14.
�24
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
known that these titles were given to him in Judea, it
rested only with himself to have been a kind of demi-god.
He had an apparent right to such a title, supposing
Ezekiel to have been inspired. The Evangelists have
not said so much for Jesus.
However, it is quite certain that no Jew either hoped,
desired, or announced an Anointed, a Messiah, in the
time of Herod the Great, under whom, it is said, Jesus
was born. After the death of Herod, when Judea was
governed as a Roman province, and another Herod was
established, by the Romans, tetrarch of the little bar
barous district of Galilee, many fanatics took upon them
selves to preach among the ignorant people, particularly
in this Galilee, where the Jews were more ignorant than
elsewhere. It is thus, that Fox, a poor cobbler, estab
lished in our own times the sect of the Quakers, among
the peasantry in one of our counties. The first that
founded a Calvinist church in France, was a woollen
carder, named John Le Clerc. It is thus, that Muncer,
John of Leyden, and others, founded Anabaptism among
the poor people in some of the canons of Germany.
I have seen the Convulsionists, in France, institute a
small sect among the mob in one of the Fauxbourgs of
Paris. Sectarians began in this way all the world over.
They are generally beggars who rail against the govern
ment, and finish either by becoming chiefs of a party, or
by being hanged. Jesus was put to death at Jerusalem,
without having been anointed; John the Baptist had
already been put to death. Each of them left some
followers among the dregs of the people. Those of John
established themselves towards Arabia, where they still
exist. Those of Jesus were at first very obscure, but as
soon as they became associated with some of the Greeks,
they began to be known.
The Jews, under Tiberius, having carried their accus
tomed knaveries to a higher pitch than ever, and having
likewise seduced and robbed Fulvia, wife of Saturnius,
were driven from Rome, and could not be re-established
there, except by giving much money. They were like
wise severely punished under Caligula and Claudius.
Their disasters served in some measure to embolden
the Galileans, who comprised the new sect, to separate
�The Person of Jesus.
25
themselves from the Jewish communion. At length, they
found some who were a little acquainted with letters,
who put themselves at their head, and who wrote in their
favor against the Jews. This was what produced such
an immense number of Gospels, a Greek word, signifying
“ Good-news.” Each gave a life of Jesus ; none of them
agreed with the rest, but all of them had resemblance by
the number of incredible prodigies which, to vie with
each other, they attributed to their founder.
The Synagogue, on its part, seeing that a new sect had
sprung up in its bosom, and that it was vending a life of
Jesus, very injurious to the Sanhedrim, began to make
enquiries respecting this man, to whom it had not hitherto
paid any attention.
We have still a stupid work of that time, entitled
■“ Sepher Toldos Jeschut.” It appears to have been
written many years after the death of Jesus, during the
time when the Gospels were compiled. This book, like
all others of the Jews and Christians, is full of prodigies,
but, extravagant as it is, we must confess that many
■statements contained in it are much more probable than
those related in our Gospels.
It is said in the “ Toldos Jeschut ” that Jesus was the
son of a woman named Mirja, who was married in
Bethlehem to a poor man of the name of Jocanam. There
was in the neighborhood a soldier of the name of Joseph
Pander, a well-shaped, good-looking young man, who fell
in love with Mirja or Maria. As the Hebrews do not
■express their vowels, they frequently take a for j.
Mirja became with child by Pander. Jocanam, who
was seized with confusion and despondency, quitted
Bethlehem, and went to secrete himself in Babylon,
where there were still many Jews. The conduct of Mirja
disgraced her, and her son Jesus or Jeschut, was declared
a bastard by the judges of the city. When he became
old enough to be admitted into the public school, he
placed himself among the legitimate children ; however,
he was compelled to leave this class.
Hence arose the animosity against priests, which he
manifested when he had attained manhood ; he lavished
on them the most opprobrious epithets, calling them “ a
race of vipers and whitened sepulchres.”
�26
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
Having, at length, quarrelled with Judas, a Jew, re
garding a question of interest, as well as concerning some
religious points, Judas denounced him to the Sanhedrim.
He was arrested, began to cry, and begged pardon, but
in vain; he was flogged, stoned, and afterwards put to
death.
Such is the substance of this history. Insipid fables
and impertinent miracles have since been added, which
injured it much, but the book was known in the second
century. Celsus quotes it; Origen refutes it, and it has
reached us quite disfigured.
The chief part of what I have just stated is certainly
more probable, more natural, and more comfortable, to
what passes in the world in our own days, than any of
the fifty gospels of the Christians. It was much more
likely that Joseph Pander was the father of Mirja’s child,
than that an angel came from heaven, with God’s com
pliments to a carpenter’s wife, in the same way as Jupiter
sent Mercury to visit Alcmena.
Every thing that they tell us about Jesus is worthy of
the Old Testament, and of Bedlam. They bring I know
not what kind of Agion pneumo,, a Holy Ghost, that had
hitherto never been spoken of, and which they have since
told us is the third part of God.
Jesus then becomes the Son of God, and of a Jewess ;
he is not yet God himself, but he is a superior Being.
He works miracles. The first he performs is, to have
himself conveyed by the devil to the top of one of the
mountains of Judea, where he could discover all the
kingdoms of the earth. His raiment appeared white ;
what a miracle ! He changes water into wine at a repast,
where the guests were already drunk.1 He dries a fig
tree, because it does not furnish him with figs to his
1 It is difficult to say which of those pretended prodigies is the
more ridiculous. Many people give a preference to that of the
wine at the marriage of Cana. That God should say to his
mother, the Jewess, “ Woman, what have I to do with thee ? ” is
a strange thing; but that he should feast with drunkards, and
should change six pitchers of water into wine for men that had
already drunk too much, is a blasphemy as execrable as it is im
pertinent. The Hebrew text uses a word which answers to>
“tipsy ” or half drunk; the Vulgate says “inebriate.”
�The Person of Jesus.
27
breakfast in the month of February. Yet the author of
this tale has at least the honesty to tell us that it was
not the season for figs. He goes to sup with women,,
and then with publicans, and yet it is pretended, in his
history, that he looked upon these publicans as bad
characters. He goes into the temple, that is to say, into
the large inclosure where the priests resided, in the court
where retail dealers were authorised by law to sell fowls,
pigeons, sheep, and oxen, and strews their money on theground. Yet he is suffered to proceed without interrup
tion ! And if we believe the book attributed to John,
they content themselves with asking him to work a
miracle, in order to show his authority, to play pranks
like these in a place so respected.
It was a very great miracle, for thirty or forty trades
men to suffer themselves to be kicked, and to lose their
money, by one man, without saying anything to him.
There is nothing in Don Quixote which approaches such
extravagances as this. But instead of performing the
miracle they demand of him, he contents himself with
saying, “ Destroy this temple, and in three days I will
raise it up.”1 The Jews reply, according to John, “ Forty
and six years was this temple building, and wilt thou
rear it up in three days ? ”
It was asserting a great falsehood to say that Herod
had been employed forty-six years in building the temple
of Jerusalem. The Jews in their reply, could not make
use of such a falsehood. By the bye, this alone shows
us that the Gospels have been written by men who were
scarcely acquainted with anything.
After this foolish enterprise, Jesus is said to have
preached in the villages. What kind of discourses do
they make him hold forth ? He compares the kingdom
of heaven to a grain of mustard seed; to a morsel of
leaven, mixed in three measures of meal; to a net, that
catches both good and bad fish ; to a king, who kills his
chickens to make a feast at his son’s wedding, and sends
his servants to invite the neighbors to it. The neighbors
kill the servants that request them to dine, and the king
kills the people who killed his servants, and bums their
1 John ii. 19.
�28
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
■city. He then sends to compel the beggars on the high
way to come and dine with him, and seeing a poor guest
who had no garment, instead of giving him one, he causes
him to be thrown into a dungeon. This is the kingdom
■of heaven according to Matthew.
In the other discourses, the kingdom of heaven is
■always compared to a usurer, who will absolutely have
cent, per cent, profit. They confess that our Archbishop
'Tillotson preaches in a different style.
How did the history of Jesus finish ? By events which
have happened both in. our own country and in the rest
■of the world, to many people who wished to stir up the
populace, without being sufficiently capable either of
arming that population, or of gaining to themselves
powerful protectors. They most commonly finish by
being hanged. Jesus was put to death, for having
■called his superiors, “a race of vipers, and whited
sepulchres.”1 He was executed publicly, but he rose
from the grave privately. At length he ascended into
heaven, in the presence of eighty of his disciples, without
any other person in Judea seeing his ascension in the
clouds, which was, however, easy to be seen, and ought
to have made a great noise in the world.
Our Creed, called by the Papists Credo, which was
attributed to the apostles, though evidently fabricated
more than four hundred years after these apostles,
acquaints us, that before Jesus ascended into heaven, he
went on a tour into hell. You will remark, that not a
single word is said about this journey in the Gospels, and
yet it is one of the principal articles of the Christian
faith. We cannot be Christians, if we do not believe that
Jesus descended into hell.
Who was, then, the first that imagined this journey ?
It was Athanasius, about three hundred and fifty years
after the event. It is in his treatise against Apollinarus,
on the incarnation of the Lord, where he mentions that
the soul of Jesus descended into hell, while his body
remained in the sepulchre.
His words are worthy of attention, and show us with
what sagacity and wisdom Athanasius reasoned.
xMatt. xxiii. 27.
�The Establishment of Christianity.
29
Here follow his own words : “ It was necessary after
his death, that his divers essential parts should perform
divers functions ; that his body should remain in the
sepulchre to destroy corruption, and that his soul should
go into hell to vanquish death.”
The African St. Augustin, in a letter that he wrote to
Evodus, seems to agree with him, Qicis ergo nisi infidelis
negaverit fuisse apud inferos Christum ?
Jerome, his contemporary, was nearly of the same
opinion; and it was during the time of Augustine and
Jerome that this Credo was composed, which, among
ignorant people, passed for the Apostles’ Creed.
Thus were opinions, creeds, and sects established.
But how could these detestable fooleries be credited ?’
How did they overturn the other absurdities of theGreeks and Romans, and, at last, the empire itself ? How
have they caused so many evils, so many civil wars,
lighted so many faggots, and spilled so much blood? We.
are going to account for it.
CHAP. XI.
Of the establishment of Christianity, and particularly
of Paul.
When the first Galileans spread themselves among the
populace of the Greeks and Romans, they found this
populace infected with all the absurd traditions that can
take possession of ignorant minds enamored with fables.
They had gods disguised in the shape of bulls, horses,
swans, and serpents, to seduce women and girls. Magis
trates, and respectable citizens, did not admit of these
extravagances, but the populace fed on them, and these
constituted the pagan mob. I fancy I see the followers
of Fox dispute with those of Brown. It was not difficult
for Jews, possessed with devils, to make their reveries
believed by the ignorant, who believed other reveries
equally impertinent.
Novelty attracted weak minds, who grew tired of their
old follies, and ran to hear new tales, just like the mob
at Bartholomew fair, demanding a new farce, and be
�30
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
coming disgusted with the old one, which they have so
often seen repeated.
If we believe the books of the Christians, we are told
that Peter, son of Jonas,1 dwelt with Simon the tanner,
in a garret at Joppa, where he brought to life again the
mantua-maker, Dorcas.
In the chapter of Lucian, entitled Philcpatris, he
speaks of a Galilean “ with a bald forehead, and large
nose, who was carried to the third heaven.”
See how he speaks of an assembly of Christians, whom
he fell in with: “Tatterdemalions almost naked, with
fierce looks and the walk of madmen, who moan and
make contortions; swearing by the Son who was be
gotten by the Father, predicting a thousand misfortunes
to the empire, and cursing the emperor.” Such were the
first Christians.
He who had given the greatest notoriety to this sect
was this Paul with the large nose and bald forehead,
whom Lucian ridicules. The writings of Paul, it appears,
are sufficient to show how far Lucian was right. What
nonsense he writes to the society of Christians, forming
at Rome the Jewish rabble ! “ Circumcision verily profiteth if thou keep the law, but if thou be a breaker of
the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision.”2—
“ Do we then make void the law through faith ? God for
bid; yea, we establish the law.”3 “If Abraham were justified
by works, he hath whereof to glory, but not before God.”4
In thus expressing himself, Paul spoke evidently as a
Jew, and not as a Christian.
What a discourse to the Corinthians, “ Our fathers
were all baptised unto Moses, in the cloud and in the
sea.”5 Was not Cardinal Bembo right in calling these
epistles Epistolacia, and advising people not to read them?
What shall we think of a man who says to the Thessa
lonians, “Let your women keep silence in the churches,
for it is not permitted unto them to speak,”0 and who in
the same epistle announces that they ought to pray and
prophesy with their heads covered ?7
1 Acts ix. 39.
4 Rom. iv. 2.
2 Rom. ii. 25.
s 1 Cor. x. 1,2.
7 1 Cor. xi. 5
3 Rom. iii. 31.
6 1 Cor. xiv. 34.
�The Establishment of Christianity.
31
Is his quarrel with the other apostles that of a wise
and moderate man ? Does not every thing show him
to be a party man ? He is a Christian; he teaches
Christianity, and goes seven days to sacrifice in the
temple of Jerusalem, by the advice of James. He writes
to the Galatians, “Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if
ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.”1
And he afterwards circumcises his disciple Timothy, who,
as the Jews pretend, was the son of a Greek and a
prostitute. He obtrudes himself among the apostles, and
boasts of being as much an apostle as the rest of them :
“ Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus Christ,
our Lord ? Are not ye my work in the Lord ? If I be
not an apostle to others, yet doubtless I am to you.
Have we not a power to eat and to drink ? Have we not
a power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other
apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord ? Who goeth
a warfare any time at his own charges ?” What frightful
things in this passage ! The right of living at the expense
of those he has subjugated ; the right of making them
pay the expenses of his wife or his sister ; and, at last,
the proof that Jesus had brethren, and the presumption
that Mary, or Mirja, was brought to bed more than
once.
I should be glad to know of whom he is speaking again
in his 2nd Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. xi.: “ For
such are false apostles. Howbeit, wherein soever any is
bold, I am bold also. Are they Hebrews ? So am I. Are
they the seed of Abraham ? So am I. Are they the
ministers of Christ ? I am more; in labors more abun
dant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent,
in deaths oft. Five times received I forty stripes, save
one ; thrice was I beaten with rods ; once was I stoned ;
a night and a day I have been in the deep.”
Behold this Paul, who was twenty-four hours in the
deep without being drowned ! It is a third of the adven
ture of Jonah. But does he not here clearly manifest
his base jealousy of Peter and the other apostles, by
thinking to carry the palm from them, because he has
received more stripes and floggings than they have done ?
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Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
Does not his fury for domineering appear in all its in
solence, when he says to the same Corinthians, “ This is.
the third time I am coming to you. In the mouth of two
or three witnesses shall every word be established. Being
now absent, I write to them which heretofore have sinned,
and to all other, that, if I come again, I will not spare.”1
To what simple fools, to what kind of besotted creatures,
did he thus address himself like a tyrannical master ?
Those to whom he had the hardihood to assert that he
was carried to the third heaven. Impudent and dastardly
impostor ! Where is this third heaven in which thou
hast travelled? Is it in Venus or in Mars ?
We laugh at Mahomet, when his commentators pretend
that he visited seven heavens in succession, in a singlenight; but Mahomet, in the Alcoran at least, does not
speak of such an extravagance as that which is-imputed
to him; yet Paul dares to assert that he has performed
half of this journey.
Who was this Paul, then, who still makes so much
noise, and who is every day quoted at random ? He says
he was a Boman citizen, which I dare affirm to be an
impudent falsehood. No Jew was a Boman citizen, ex
cept under the Decii and Philips. If he were of Tarsus,
it was neither a Boman city nor a Boman colony for more
than a hundred years after Paul. If he were a native of
Giscalus, as St. Jerome states, this village was in Galilee,
and, assuredly, the Galileans had never the honor of'
being Boman citizens.
He was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel; that is to
say, he was one of Gamaliel’s domestics. Indeed, it is
remarked that he took care of the clothes of those whostoned Stephen, which is the work of a valet. The Jews
pretend that he wished to marry Gamaliel’s daughter.
We see some traces of this adventure in the ancient book
which contains the history of Thecla.
It is not astonishing that the daughter of Gamaliel
should reject a little bald-headed valet, whose eyebrows
hung over a deformed nose, and who was bandy-legged.
It is thus that the “Acts of Thecla” describe him.
Disdained, as he deserved to be, by Gamaliel and his
T2 Cor. xiii. 1, 2.
�The Gospels.
33
daughter, he joined himself with the infant sect of
Cephas, James, Matthew, and Barnabas, in order to
annoy the Jews.
Any one, who has the least spark of reason, would
judge that this cause which has been assigned for the
apostacy of this miserable Jew, is more natural than that
attributed to him. How can we persuade ourselves that
a celestial light knocked him off horseback at noon-day;
that a heavenly voice addressed him ; that God said to
him, “ Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” Ought
we not to blush at such stupidity ?
If God had wished to prevent the disciples of Jesus
from being persecuted, would he not have addressed him
self to the princes of the nation, rather than to Gamaliel’s
valet? Have they met with less chastisement since Saul
fell from his horse? Was not Saul (or Paul) himself chas
tised ? What was the utility of this ridiculous miracle ?
I call heaven and. earth to witness (if I may be permitted
to make use of these improper words, heaven and earth),
that there never was a legend more stupid, more fanatical,
more disgusting, nor more deserving of our horror and
contempt.
CHAP. XII.
Of the Gospels.
As soon as the societies of half Jews, half Christians,
had by degrees established themselves among the ignorant
people at Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, and
Alexandria, some time after Vespasian, each of these
little societies wished to make its own gospel. Fifty of
them had been reckoned, and there were many more. It
is known that they all contradict one another; this could
not be otherwise, since they were all composed in different
places. All of them agree only that their Jesus was the
son of Mary, or Mirja, and that he was put to death; all
of them likewise ascribe to him as many prodigies as are
to be found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Luke dresses up a genealogy for him quite different to
that planned by Matthew; and neither of them dreams
about giving us the genealogy of Mary, who was his only
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Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
parent. The enthusiastic Pascal cries out, “ This is not
acting in concert.” Undoubtedly not. Each has written
extravagances for his little society, according to his own
fancy. This accounts for one Evangelist pretending that
the little Jesus was brought up in Egypt, and another
saying that he was brought up at Bethlehem. One of
them makes him go only once to Jerusalem, while the
others say that he went three times. One of them causes
three wise men, whom we call three kings, to be conducted
by a new star, and causes all the little children of the
country to be put to death by the first Herod, who was
then near the end of his days. The others are silent
about the star, and the wise men, and the massacre.1
At length, to explain these contradictions, we have been
compelled to make a concordance, and this concordance
is less concordant than the matters they wished to re
concile.
Almost all the Gospels, which the Christians never
made known but to their own little flocks, were visibly
forged after the taking of Jerusalem. We have a very
evident proof of it in that attributed to Matthew. This
book puts into the mouth of Jesus these words to the
Jews: "That upon you may come all the righteous
blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous
Abel, unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias,
killed between the temple and the altar.” A forger is
always discovered in some part of his work. During the
siege of Jerusalem, there was a Zacharias, son of Bara
chias, killed between the temple and the altar, by the
faction of the zealots. This enables us easily to detect
the imposition, otherwise we might have read over the
1 The massacre of the innocents is certainly the height of folly,
as well as the tale of the three wise men conducted by a star.
How could Herod, who was then almost on his death-bed, fear
being dethroned by the son of a village carpenter, who was just
born? Herod died only two or three years after, at the age of
seventy. It would have been necessary for this child to make
war against the empire. Could such a fear take possession of any
man who was not an absolute fool ? Is it possible that they have
proposed to human credulity such stupid fooleries, which outdo
Robert the Devil and John of Paris ? Man is a very contemptible
being when he suffers himself to be governed in such a way !
�k
The, Gospels.
35
whole Bible to enable us to clo so. The Greeks and
Romans read but little, and the Gospels were entirely
unknown to them. Lies were told with impunity.
An evident proof that the Gospel attributed to Matthew
was not written till long after him by some miserable
half Jew, half Christian Hellenist, is the famous passage :
■“ If he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee
as an heathen man and a publican.”1
There was no church in the time of Jesus and of
Alatthew. Church is a Greek word. The assembly of
the people of Athens styled itself Ecclesia. This ex
pression was only adopted by the Christians in process
of time, when they had obtained a kind of government.
It is clear, then, that an impostor took the name of
Matthew, and wrote his Gospel in very bad Greek. I
confess it would be comical enough for Matthew, who
had himself been a publican, to compare the heathens
with publicans. But whoever might have been the author
of this ridiculous comparison, none but a mad-cap among
the most illiterate of the people would have looked upon
a Roman knight, who was authorised to receive the im
posts established by government, as a man that ought to
be despised. The idea alone is destructive of all adminis
tration, and not only unworthy of a man whom God had
inspired, but unworthy the lackey of an honest citizen.
There are two Gospels of the infancy. The first relates
that a young beggar patted the little Jesus, his comrade,
behind, and that the little Jesus immediately killed him.
Kai para kremei peson apeidonen. At another time he
made birds of clay, which flew away. His method of
learning the alphabet was quite divine. Those tales are
not more ridiculous than that of his being carried off by
the devil, that of his transfiguration on Mount Tabor,
that of the water changed into wine, and that of the
devil’s being sent into a herd of swine. Thus this Gospel
of this infancy was long held in veneration.
The second Gospel of the infancy is not less curious.
Mary, who was conducting her son into Egypt, met with
some girls that were deploring the loss of their brother,
who had been transformed into a mule. Mary and her
1 Matt, xviii. 17.
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Examination of the, Holy Scriptures.
little one did not fail to change the mule into its former
shape of a man, but we do not know whether or not the
miserable animal was any better for the change. As they
proceeded on the road, the wandering family met with
two robbers, one named Dumachus, the other Titus.
Dumachus was for robbing the Virgin, and doing some
thing still more scandalous, but Titus took Mary’s part,
and gave forty drachmas to persuade him to let the family
go by, without doing them any injury. Jesus declared tothe Holy Virgin, that Dumachus should be the wicked
thief, and Titus the good thief; that they would one day
be executed with him ; that Titus should go into paradise,
and Dumachus to the devil.
The Gospel according to St. James, elder brother of
Jesus, or that of Peter Barjonas, a Gospel known and
boasted of by Tertullian, and by Origen, was in still
greater repute. It was called Proto-Evangelion, or First
Gospel. It was perhaps the first which spoke of the.
new star, of the arrival of the wise men, and of the
little children whom the first Herod ordered to be
massacred.
There is still a kind of Gospel or Acts of John in which
Jesus is said to have danced with his apostles the evening
before he died; and the circumstance is rendered
probable, as the Therapeutae were really accustomed to
dance in a ring, a ceremony that must be very pleasing
to our heavenly Father.
Why does the most scrupulous Christian now laugh
without remorse at all these gospels and acts which are
no longer in the canon; and why does he not dare to
laugh at those adopted by the church ? They are nearly
the same tales; but fanaticism adores in one name what
appears the height of ridicule in another.
At length, four Gospels are chosen; and the great
reason for having that number, as stated by St. Irenaeus,
is, that there are only four cardinal points ; that God is
seated on cherubim, and that cherubim have four
different shapes. St. Jerome, in his preface to Mark’s
Gospel, adds to the four winds and four-shaped animals,
the four rings of the poles, on which the box called the:
ark was carried.
�The Gospels.
37
Theophilus, of Antioch, proves that as Lazarus was
dead only four days, we can consequently admit only
four Gospels ; St. Cyprian proves the same thing by the
four rivers that watered Paradise. We must be very
impious not to yield to such reasons as these.
However, previous to any preference being given to
these four Gospels, the fathers of the two first centuries
scarcely ever quoted any except the gospels which are
mow styled apocryphal. This is an incontestible proof
that our four Gospels were not written by those to whom
they are attributed. I wish they were so. I wish, for
•example, Luke had written that which goes under his
name. I would say to Luke, “ How darest thou main
tain that Jesus was born under the governorship of
Cyreneus, or Quirinus, when it is attested that Quirinus
was not governor of Syria till more than ten years after
wards ? How hast thou the face to say, that Augustus
•ordered all the world to be taxed, and that Mary went to
Bethlehem for that purpose ? A tax on all the world !
What an expression ! Thou hast heard that Augustus
had a book which contained a detail of the forces of the
empire, and its finances; but a tax on all the subjects of
the empire is what he never could have thought of, still
less could he think of a tax all over the world. No
writer, either Greek, Roman, or barbarian, has mentioned
such an extravagance. Behold thee, then, convicted of
a most enormous falsehood, and yet thy book must be
respected! ”
But who fabricated these four Gospels ? Is it not
probable that they were written by Christian Hellenists,
■since the Old Testament is scarcely ever quoted, except
from the Septant version, which was unknown in Judea?
The apostles knew no more about the Greek language
than Jesus did. How could they have quoted the Septant ?
Nothing but the miracle of Pentecost could teach Greek
to ignorant Jews.
What a collection of contrarieties and falsehoods re
main in these four Gospels ! Were there only one, it
would suffice to shew them to be works of ignorance.
Did we find only the single tale given by Luke, that
Jesus was born under the governorship of Cyreneus, when
Augustus ordered all the world to be taxed ; would not
�38
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
this falsehood alone cause us to throw away the book
with contempt ? In the first place, there never was such
a taxation, and no author speaks of it. , Secondly,
Cyreneus was not governor of Syria till ten years after
the epoch a of the birth of Jesus. In the Gospels there
are almost as many errors as words, and thus it is they
succeed with the people.
CHAP. XIII.
How the first Christians conducted themselves among the
Romans, and how tile'll forged verses attributed to the
Sibyls, de.
People of common sense ask how this tissue of fables so«
stupidly offensive to reason, these blasphemies, which
impute so many horrid crimes to the Deity, could obtain
any credit. They might, indeed, have been astonished
if the first Christians had converted the emperor’s court,
or the Eoman senate ; but an abject mob addressed itself
to a populace not less despicable. This is so true, that
the Emperor Julian said in a Discourse to the Christians,
“ It was enough for you at first to seduce a few servants,
a few beggars, such as Cornelius and Sergius. But let
me be regarded as the most impudent of impostors, if
among those who embraced your sect under Tiberius and
Claudius there was a single man of birth or merit.”
The first reasoning Christians, then, exclaimed in the
public places and victualling-houses, to the Pagans who
attempted to reason with them : “ Be not startled with
our mysteries ; you have recourse to expiations to purge
yourselves of your crimes, but we have an expiation far
more salutary. Youi- oracles are inferior to ours; and
what we offer as a proof to convince you that our sect is
the only true one is, that your own oracles have predicted
all that we teach, and all that was done by our Lord
Jesus Christ. Have you not heard of the Sibyls?”—
“ Yes,” replied the Pagan disputants to those of Galilee,
“ all the Sibyls were inspired by Jupiter himself; their
predictions are all true.” “Very well,” replied the
Galileans, “ we will shew you Sibyline verses which
clearly announce Jesus Christ, and then you must ac
knowledge we are right.”
�Christians and Romans.
39
Behold them immediately forging the most stupid
Greek verses that were ever composed : verses similar to
those of Blackmore and Gibson, of Grub Street. They
ascribe them to the Sibyls, and for the space of more
than four hundred years they did not cease to establish
Christianity on this proof, which was on a levSl with the
understandings of both the deceivers and the deceived.
This first attempt having succeeded, we find these
puerile impostors attributing to the Sibyls acrostic verses,
all of which commenced by the letters composing the
name of Jesus Christ.
Lactantius has preserved, as authentic pieces, a great
portion of these rhapsodies. To these fables they added
miracles, which they sometimes performed in public. It
is true, that they did not raise the dead like Elisha
they did not arrest the sun on its course like Joshua;
they did not cross the sea dry-shod, like Moses; they did
not, like Jesus, cause themselves to be transported to the
top of a little mountain in Galilee, where they could
discover all the kingdoms of earth : but they cured the
fever when on its decline, and even the itch as soon as the
patient had been bathed, blooded, purged, and rubbed.
They likewise cast out devils, which was the principal
object of the apostles’ mission. It is said, in more than
one Gospel, that Jesus sent them purposely to cast out
devils. This was an ancient prerogative of God’s people.
We know that there were exorcists at Jerusalem, who
cured the possessed by putting into their noses a little of
the root called Baruth, and by muttering a few words taken
from Solomon’s Song. Jesus himself confesses that the
Jews had this power ;1 yet no devils durst take possession
2
of the governor of a province, of a senator, nor even a cen
turion. None but the poor were ever possessed by them.
If the devil ought to have seized hold of any particular
individual, it should have been Pilate, yet he never
durst approach him. Although the Christian sect was in
reality established by this custom, yet it is almost every
where abolished, except in States obedient to the Pope,
and in some of the German cantons, where the ignorant
people are unfortunately in subjection to bishops and monks.
1 2 Kings iv. 32.
2 Matt. xii. 27.
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Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
Thus the Christians gained credit among the ignorant
people during a whole century. The government let them
alone, regarding them as a Jewish sect, and the Jews
were tolerated. They persecuted neither Pharisees, nor
Sadducees», nor the Therapeutae, nor Essenians, nor
Judaites; and they had a still greater reason to permit
the Christians to creep in on their ignorance, that of
their being unknown. They were so little thought of,
that neither Josephus, nor Philo, nor Plutarch deigns to
speak of them ; and if Tacitus says a few words respect
ing them, it is by confounding them with the Jews, and
stigmatizing them in the most contemptible manner.
They possessed, therefore, the greatest facility for extend
ing their sect.
They were a little enquired after under Domitian;
some of them were punished under Trajan, and it was
then that they began to unite a thousand false accounts
of martyrs, to some others that were but too true.
CHAP. XIV.
How the Christians conducted themselves toivards the Jews.
Their ridiculous explanation of the prophecies.
The Christians could never succeed so well among the
Jews as they did among the populace of the Gentiles.
So long as they continued to live according to the
Mosaic law, which Jesus had observed all his lifetime;
so long as they abstained from meats pretended to be
impure, and did not proscribe circumcision, they were
regarded as only a particular society of the Jews, such as
the Sadducees, Essenians, and Therapeutaa. They said
that it was wrong to put Jesus to death, that he was a
holy man sent by God, and that he had risen again from
the dead.
These discoveries, it is true, were punished at Jerusa
lem ; it is said they cost Stephen his life, but otherwise
this division produced only altercations between the
rigid Jews and half Christians. They disputed ; and the
Christians fancied that they had found in the Scriptures
some passages that might be twisted in favor of their
cause.
�Christians and Jews.
41
They pretended that the Jewish prophets had predicted
Jesus Christ, and quoted Isaiah, who said to to king
Ahaz,1 “ Behold, a virgin (or a young woman, alma)2
shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call 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, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of
both her kings. And it shall come to pass in that day,
that the Lord shall hiss for the fly that is in the utter
most part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is
in the land of Assyria. In the same day shall the Lord
shave with a razor that is hired, namely, by them beyond
the river, by the king of Assyria, the head and the hair
of the feet; and it shall also consume the beard.”
Chap. viii. “ Moreover, the Lord said unto me, Take
thee a great roll, and write in it with a man’s pen, con
cerning Maher-shalal-hash-baz. And I went unto the
prophetess, and she conceived, and bare a son. Then
said the Lord to me, Call his name Maher-shalal-hashbaz,” which signifies, “Divide quickly the spoils.”
“You see clearly,” said the Christians, “that the
whole of this evidently signifies the coming of Jesus
Christ. The young woman who has a child is the Virgin
Mary. ‘ Immanuel ’ and ‘ divide quickly the spoils,’
signify our Lord Jesus Christ. As for the razor, ‘that is
hired to shave the hair of the king of Assyria,’ that is
another matter.” All these explanations perfectly re
semble those of Lord Peter, in Swift’s Tale of a Tub.
The Jews answered, “ We do not see so clearly as you
do, that ‘Divide quickly the spoils,’ and ‘Immanuel’
signify Jesus ; that Isaiah’s young woman is a virgin;
nor that alma, which is equally expressive both of girl
and young woman, signifies Mary.” And they laughed
in the faces of the Christians.
1 Isaiah vii.
2 By what fraudulent impudence have the Christians maintained
that alma always signifies a virgin ? There are in the Old Testa
ment twenty passages where alma is taken for a woman, and even
fora concubine, as in Solomon's Song vi. and Joel i. Till the time
of Abbé Tutheme none of the doctors knew Hebrew, except Ori
gen, Jerome and Ephraim, who were brought up in the country.
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Examination of the Holy Scriptures,
When the Christians said that Jesus is predicted by
the patriarch Judah, who was to “ bind his foal unto the
vine, and wash his garments in wine,”1 and Jesus having
entered Jerusalem on an ass, then Judah is a type of
Jesus. This made the Jews to laugh still more.
If they pretended that Jesus was the Shiloh who was
to come before the sceptre had departed from Judah,2
the Jews confounded them by saying, that, since the
Babylonish captivity, the sceptre had never been in
Judah, and that even during the time of Saul, the rod
was not in Judah. Thus the Christians, far from being
able to convert the Jews, were despised and detested by
them, and are so still. They were looked upon as bas
tards, who, under false titles, wished to strip the heir of
his possession. They then renounced the hope of con
verting the Jews to their cause, and addressed themselves
wholly to the Gentiles.
CHAP. XV.
Of false quotations and predictions in the Gospels.
To encourage the first they had to instruct previous to
baptism, it was thought good to quote old prophecies,
and to make new ones. In the Gospels they quoted old
prophecies at random. Matthew, or he who took the
name, says that Joseph “ dwelt in a city called Nazareth;
that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the
prophet: He shall be called a Nazarene.” No prophet
had made use of these words; Matthew wrote therefore
at random.
Luke dares to say, chap, xxi., “And there shall be
signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; the
sea and the waves roaring. Men’s hearts failing them
for fear, and for looking after those things which are
coming on the earth. For the powers of heaven shall be
shaken. And then shall they see the Son of Man coming
in a cloud with power and great glory. Verily, I say
unto you, this generation shall not pass away till all be
fulfilled.” The generation passed away, and if nothing of
1 Gen. xlix. 11.
2 Gen. xlix. 10.
�The End of the World.
43
this kind happened, it is not my fault. Paul says nearly
as much about it, in his Epistle to the Thessalonians :
“ Then we, which are alive and remain, shall be caught
up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”1
Let any one here interrogate himself, whether or not
he considers it possible to carry imposture and the
stupidity of fanaticism to a higher pitch ? When it was
seen that such gross falsehoods had been asserted, the
fathers of the church did not fail to say that Luke and
Paul had understood by these predictions the destruction
of Jerusalem. But, I pray you, what has the destruction
of Jerusalem to do with Jesus coming in the clouds, in
great power and majesty?
There is, in the Gospel attributed to John, a passage
which shews clearly that this book was not composed by
a Jew. Jesus said, “ A new commandment I give unto
you, that ye love one another.” This commandment, so
far from being a new one, is enjoined in a much more
forcible manner in Leviticus, “ Thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself.”2
In short, whoever will give himself the trouble of read
ing, with attention, the passages where the Old Testa
ment is quoted, will find only a manifest abuse of words,
and the seal of falsehood almost in every page.
CHAP. XVI.
Of the end of the world, and the new Jerusalem.
Not only have they introduced Jesus on the scene pre
dicting the end of the world, even during his own life
time, but this was also the fanaticism of all those called
apostles and disciples.
Peter Barjonas says, in the first epistle attributed to
him, “ For this cause was the Gospel preached also to
them that are dead; but the end of all things is at
hand.”8 In his second Epistle, “ We look for new
heavens and a new earth.”4
1 Levit. xix. 18.
3 1 Peter iv. 6, 7.
2 1 Thess. iv. 17.
4 Peter iii. 18.
�44
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
The first Epistle attributed to John says, formally,
“Even now there are many anti-christs, whereby we
know that it is the last time.”1
The Epistle put to the account of this Thaddeus, surnamed Jude, announces the same folly : “ Behold, the
Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute
judgment upon all.”2
In short, it was this kind of madness which served as
a foundation for the other respecting the new Jerusalem
which was to descend from heaven. The Apocalypse
announced this approaching adventure ; all the Christians
believed it. New Sibyline verses were written, in which
this Jerusalem was predicted; this new city even made
its appearance, and the Christians were to dwell in it
for a thousand years after the conflagration of the world.
It descended from heaven forty nights successively.
Tertullian saw it himself.
The day will come when every honest man will say,
Is it possible that men have spent their time in refuting
this tale of a tub?
Behold the opinions that caused half the earth to be rav
aged ! Behold what has given principalities and kingdoms
to hypocritical priests, and which, in all Catholic countries,
still precipitates simpletons into the dungeons of a cloister !
It is by means of these spider-webs that they have
twisted the cords that bind us, and they have found out
the secret of transforming them into chains of iron !
Great God ! Is it for such fooleries that Europe has
weltered in blood, and that Charles I. died on the scaffold !
O destiny ! When a parcel of half Jews wrote their dull
impertinences in barns, did they perceive that they were
preparing thrones for the abominable Pope Alexander VI.
and for this brave villain of a Cromwell?
CHAP. XVII.
Of Allegories.
Those whom we call Fathers of the Church adopted a
trick singular enough, to those who were preparing to
to be baptised in their new belief. In the course of
11 John ii. 18.
2 Jude 14.
�Falsifications and Supposititious Books.
45
time they found disciples who reasoned a little, and
adopted the plan of teaching them that all the Old
Testament is only a type of the New. The piece of
scarlet cloth which the prostitute Rahab hung out at her
window to avert the spies of Joshua, signifies the blood
of Jesus Christ shed for our sins.
Sarah, and her servant Hagar, blear-eyed Leah and
beautiful Rachel, are the synagogue and the church.
Moses lifting up his hands when he gave battle to the
Amalekites, is evidently the sign of the cross, for we are
exactly in the shape of a cross when we stretch out our*
arms to the right and to the left. Joseph sold by his
brethren is Jesus Christ. The kisses given on the mouth
of the Shulamite, &c., in Solomon’s Song, are visibly the
marriage of Jesus Christ with his church. The bride had
then no dowry, at that time she was not well established.
The people did not know what to believe; no dogma
was yet precisely agreed upon. Jesus had written
nothing. What a strange legislator must that man have
been whose hand did not trace a single line ! This made
it necessary to write; they then abandon themselves to
this good news : to these gospels, to these acts of which
we have already spoken, and all the Old Testament is
turned into allegories of the New. It is not surprising
that catechumens, fascinated by those who wished to
form a party, suffered themselves to be seduced by those
fancies that are always pleasing to the people.
This plan contributed more than anything else to the
propagation of Christianity, which spread itself secretly
from one end of the empire to the other, without the
magistrates at that time deigning to take any notice of it.
What a ridiculous and foolish notion to make the his
tory of a horde of beggars, a type and a prophecy of
everything that should happen in the world in all suc
ceeding ages !
CHAP. XVIII.
Of falsifications and supposititious books.
The better to enable them to seduce the uninitiated
during the first centuries, they did not fail to state that
the sect had been respected by the Romans, and even by
�46
Examination of ths Holy Scriptures.
the emperors themselves. It was not enough to forge
af number of writings which they attributed to Jesus ;
they also made Pilate write. Justin and Tertullian
quote the “ Acts of Pilate,” and they are inserted in the
Gospel of Nicodemus.
Here follow some passages of the first letter of Pilate
to Tiberius, which are curious :
“ It has lately happened, and I have witnessed it, that
the envy of the Jews has drawn upon them a cruel
judgment. Their God having promised to send them his
saint from heaven, to be their true king, and having
promised that he should be the son of a virgin, the God
of the Hebrews did really send him while I presided in
Judea. The principal Jews denounced him to be a
magician; I believed it, ordered him to be flogged, and
then abandoned him to them. They crucified him, put
guards round his sepulchre ; and he rose again the third
day.” This ancient letter is very important, as it shews
us that, at that time, the Christians had not yet dared to
suppose that Jesus was God. They merely say he was
sent from God. If he had then been a God, Pilate, whom
they cause to speak, would not have failed to say so.
In the second letter he says that if he had not feared
a sedition, perhaps this noble Jew would still have lived.
Fortasse vir ills nobilis viceret. They likewise forged a
more detailed account which was attributed to Pilate.
Eusebius of Caesarea, book vii. of his Ecclesiastical
History, assures us that the woman troubled with the
flux, who was cured by Jesus Christ, was a citizeness of
Caesarea; he has seen her statue at the foot of that of
Jesus. Round the base there are herbs which cure all
kinds of diseases.
They likewise gave out a pretended edict of Tiberius
to rank Jesus among the gods. They invented letters
from Paul to Seneca and from Seneca to Paul. Emperors,
philosophers and apostles were all put to contrU>ution; it
was an uninterrupted course of frauds ; somO of them
merely fanatical, the others political.
A fanatical lie, for example, is that of writing the
Revelation and attributing it to John, which is only an
absurdity; a political lie is that of writing the book of
Constitutions and attributing it to the apostles.
�Impositions of the First Christians.
F!
All these supposititious books, all these falsehoods,
which have been denominated pious, were put only into
the hands of the faithful. It was an enormous offence to
communicate them to the Romans, who had scarcely any
knowledge of them during the space of two hundred
years. Thus the flock increased daily.
CHAP. XIX.
Of the principal impositions of the first Christians.
IV
One of the oldest impositions of these new demoniacs
was the “ Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs,” and we
still have entire the Greek translation of it by John,
surnamed St. Chrysostom.
This ancient book, which was written in the first
century of our era, is visibly the production of a Christian
because it makes Levi say, in the eighth article of his
Testament, “ The third shall have a new name, because
he shall be a king of Judah.” This signifies Jesus Christ,
who has never been designated but by such like impostures.
They invented the Testaments of Moses, Enoch, and
Joseph; their ascension or assumption into heaven; that
of Moses, Abraham, Elda, Moda, Elias, Sophonia, Zachariah, and Habakkuk. At the same time they forged
the famous book of Enoch, which is the only foundation
for all the mystery of Christianity, since it is in this book
alone that we find the history of the rebellious angels
who had sinned. It is certain that the writings attributed to the apostles were not composed till after the
fable of Enoch, which was written in Greek by some
Christian of Alexandria. Jude, in his Epistle, quotes
this Enoch more than once ;' he reports his own words,
and is so destitute of common sense as to assert that
Enoch, who was the seventh man after Adam, had written
prophecies.
Here, then, we have two vile impositions well attested:
that of thl Christian who invented the book of Enoch,
and that of the Christian who invented the Epistle of
Jude, in which the words of Enoch are related. There
was never a more stupid falsehood.
1 Jude 14.
�48
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
It is useless to enquire who was the principal author
of these frauds, which insensibly gained credit, but there
is some probability that it was Hegessipus, whose fables
had a great run, and who was quoted by Tertullian and
afterwards copied by Eusebius.
The supposititious letter of Jesus Christ to a pretended
king of the city of Edessa, which had not then a king,
and the journey of Thaddeus (or Jude) to this king, were
four hundred years in vogue among the first Christians.
Whoever wrote a gospel, or undertook to teach his
little rising flock, imputed to Jesus discourses and actions
which are not mentioned in our four gospels. It is thus
that in the twentieth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles,
Paul quotes these words of Jesus: “It is more blessed
to give than to receive.”1 These words are not to be
found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. The travels of
Peter, the revelation of Peter, the acts of Paul and of
Thecle, the letters from Paul to Seneca, and from Seneca
to Paul, the acts of Pilate and the letters of Pilate, are
sufficiently known among the learned, and it is useless to
rummage among these archives of falsehood and absurdity.
They carried their nonsense to such a pitch as to write
the history of Claudia Procula, who was Pilate’s wife.
CONCLUSION.
I conclude that every sensible man, every honest man,
ought to hold Christianity in abhorrence. “ The great
name of Theist, which we can never sufficiently revere,”2
is the only name we ought to adopt.
The only gospel we should read is the grand book of
nature, written with God’s own hand, and stamped with
his own seal. The only religion we ought to profess is,
“to adore God and act like honest men.” It would be
as impossible for this simple and eternal religion to pro
duce evil as it would be impossible for Christian fanatic
ism not to produce it.
Natural religion can never be made to say, “Think not
that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to
send peace but a sword.”3 Yet this is the first confession
they put into the mouth of a Jew whom they call Christ.
1 Acts xx. 35.
2 Shaftesbury.
3 Matt. x. 34.
�Conclusion.
49
Men are very blind and wretched to prefer an absurd
and sanginary sect maintained by hangmen and sur
rounded by funeral piles ; a sect which could find no
admirers but among those to whom it communicated
wealth and power; a particular sect received only in a
small portion of the globe, in preference to a simple and
universal religion which, even by the confession of Chris
tians, was the religion of the human race during the ages
of Seth, Enoch, and Noah. If the religion of the first
patriarchs were true, certainly the religion of Jesus must
be false.
Sovereigns have submitted themselves to this sect,
thinking they would be more respected by their own sub
jects by loading themselves with the yoke which was
imposed upon the people. They did not perceive that
they made themselves the first slaves of the priests, and
in one half of Europe they have not yet been enabled to
render themselves independent. And pray what king,
what magistrate, what father of a family would not rather
be the master of his own house than be the slave of a
priest ?
What! the innumerable number of citizens that have
been injured, excommunicated, reduced to beggary, killed
and their bodies cast on the highway; the number of
princes dethroned and assassinated, has not yet opened
men’s eyes ! And when we do open them, we perceive
that this fatal idol is not yet demolished !
But what shall we substitute in its place, say you ?
What ? A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my
relatives. I tell you to rid yourselves of this beast, and
you ask me what you shall put in its place ! Is it you
that put this question to me? Then you are a hundred
times more odious than the pagan pontiffs, who permit
ted themselves to enjoy tranquility among their cere
monies and sacrifices, who did not attempt to enslave
the mind by dogmas, who never disputed the powers of
the magistrates, and who introduced no discord among
mankind. You have the face to ask what you must sub
stitute in the place of your fables? I answer you, “God,
truth, virtue, laws, rewards and punishments.” Preach
probity, and do not preach dogmas ; be the priests of
God, and not the priests of a man.
�J
���
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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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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Examination of the holy scriptures : a critical inquiry into the Old and New Testaments
Creator
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Voltaire [1694-1778]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: v. [i.e. iv.], [5]-49 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Translation of Examen important de Milord Bolingbroke. First published in French 1736. Reprint of 1841 edition (London: James Watson) with a few passages omitted (see note at end of Introduction). Imprint taken from t.p.: front cover has additional imprint: London: R. Forder, 1891. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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George Standring
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1890
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N652
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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 (Examination of the holy scriptures : a critical inquiry into the Old and New Testaments), 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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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Bible-Criticism
Bible-O.T.-Criticism
Bible. N.T.-Criticism
NSS