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CHRISTIANITY COMPLETELY UNDERMINED.
SYMES.
By JOSEPH
WITH
1
FAC-SIMILES
MSS.
SECOND EDITION.
Price THREE
%
OF
PENCE.
London:
THE PIONEER PRESS, 2 NEWCASTLE STREET, E.C.
�EXPLANATION
OF THE
FAC-SIMILES.
The first is a specimen of the running hand, written on Egyptian papyrus
some time between b.c. too and too a.d. It is a fragment of Hyperides,
an orator of the time of Demosthenes, 4th century b.c.
The second is an extract from Philodemos, a philosopher and poet of
Cicero s day.
t^irdspecimen is from a manuscript of the Greek Old Testament
(Co«x Fredenco-Augustanus). It contains 2 Sam. vii. 10-11
fourth is a specimen of Codex Sinaiticus, the famous manuscript
which Tischendorf brought (the monks say, stole) from the convent of St.
Catherine, Mount Sinai, 1859. The part quoted is Luke xxiv. 33-34
The two lines on the right-hand side below, written up and down
deserve a moment’s notice. They also are from Codex Sinaiticus, and
are a portion of 1 Timothy 111. 16, a passage which has given the Christians
endless trouble and led to disputes which reason can never settle. The
text reads to tes eusebeias mysterion ; but whether the next word is hos or
theos is the point in dispute. It appears that most of the manuscripts
read theos, though several important ones have hos or ho. The difficulty
arises from the fact that the manuscript writers and copiers frequently
contracted or abbreviated words, as we do still. We write Mr. for mister
or master; Mrs. for mistress; Dr. for doctor, etc. And in the ancient
manuscripts OC stand for hos (who); and the same letters, with horizontal
lines across the O stand for theos (God). The puzzle then is to decide
whether 1 Tim. ni. 16 should be read who (or which) or God!—a very
serious puzzle indeed, and one it is now too late to clear up, without a
new revelation—which even the most pious do not expect.
As Dr. Scrivener says, “ This text has proved the crux 'criticorum,” the
despair of the critics, we may say. And it is plain the text in Codex
Sinaiticus has been tampered with or else corrected by the author. Let
the reader look at it—the second perpendicular line, right-hand side below.
Reading up the line, the last letters are OCE. (The C is pronounced S
by the way.) Partly over the O and partly over the preceding letter n’
you see a peculiar compound mark, which Tischendorf says was made by
some corrector in the 12th century. The mark is evidently
which
together with OC below, make theos or God.
The text commonly reads, great is the mystery of godliness; God was
manifested in the flesh. But this celebrated manuscript of Tischendorf’s
reads in the first hand, Graf is the mystery of godliness who was manifested
m the flesh.
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There are hundreds of similar doubtful readings in the manuscripts •
and I have given this as a specimen that all can understand.
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The printed Greek
(in English letters)
runs thus :—min ton
lithon ek tes thuras
tou mnemeiou kai
anablepsasai theorousin hoti anakekulistai ho lithos en
gar megas sphodra
kai elthousai eis to
mnemeion eidon neaniskon kathemenon
en tois dexiois peribeblemenon stolen
leuken kai exethambethesan ho de legei
autais me ekthambeisthe iesoun zeteite ton nazarenon
ton estauromenon
ergerthe ouk estin
hode ide ho topos
hopou ethekan auton alia hupagete
eipate tois mathetais autou kai to
petro hoti proagei
humas eis ten galilaian ekei auton
opsesthe kathos eipen humin kai exelthousai ephugon
apo tou mnemeiou
eichen gar autas
tromos kai ekstasis
kai
oudeni ouden
eipon ephobounto
gar.
Kata Markon.
FAC-SIMILE OF CODEX VATICANUS, MARK Xvi. 3-8.
�PREFACE.
I must ask the reader to observe that the following notes upon the
New Testament Manuscripts are not intended to be a treatise or at
all exhaustive. The pamphlet is a reprint from several consecutive
numbers of the Liberator; and the notes were written as the printers
required copy. Hence there will be seen a want of consecutiveness
in them, which I hope may be forgiven.
I have written for the multitude, not for scholars ; although, I
respectfully submit, the best of Christian scholars would do well to
consider the points and issues I raise. Let them remember that
every item in the liberal thought of to-day was first supplied by
Freethinkers, and long afterwards adopted by the Christians when
they found their old notions, no longer tenable. So must it be in the
future. The views I here advance will be generally adopted in the
next generation.
I may here note a common argument of the Christians, though
not so confidently urged now as in former days :—
It is often said that we have better evidence for the Christian
scriptures than for the Classical works of Greece and Rome—that
is, that it is easier to prove, for example, that Matthew wrote the
gospel which goes in his name than to prove that any given Greek
or Roman author wrote a work circulating in his name. If that be
so, we are quite in the dark as to the origin of the Classical books,
for the most eager defender of the faith has never yet been able to
show when, or where, or by whom, any of the New Testament books
were written.
Further, I submit that, had there been various sects of Classicists,
all trying to exterminate the rest; and had one powerful sect gained
the upper-hand and destroyed its rivals and their books as well, and
libelled them into the bargain; and further, that if most of what we
hold to be Classical literature emerged from the care and keeping of
that conquering sect, we could have no confidence whatsoever in the
teachings of that sect as regards the authors, etc., of the books they
handed over to us. Add to this the supposition that the books
actually preserved, on the whole, strongly favored the pretensions of
the sect which preserved them, and you see how suspicious would
be their testimony.
Well, it is not the poor people, nor the masses of the people, to
whom we owe the preservation of the New Testament, but to
the most villainous set of men ever known, and men whose prime
tenets are supported by these very books.
When we further reflect upon the forgeries and lies the dominant
sects have always resorted to on occasion, we shall see that anything
�ii.
PREFACE.
coming from them must be regarded with the strongest suspicion?
until independent evidence can be obtained.
All things considered, the case of the Classical books, though by
no means satisfactory, is not a tenth as bad as the case of theNew Testament, which is vouched for mainly by those who
benefit by it.
Since I began my notes on the manuscripts, quite unexpectedly,
a friend has offered to produce a facsimile or two expressly for me
and through that gentleman’s kindness I am now able to publish, in
addition to the previous fragments, a facsimile, slightly reduced, of
a small portion of the Vatican manuscript or Codex Vaticanus, as
scholars are pleased to call it.
In the column beside it I have given the same words in the
ordinary New Testament Greek, but in English letters. It is not
necessary to insert the translation, as any one with an English New
Testament may read it for himself in Mark xvi. 3-8.
Please look over this facsimile and note a fact or two. 1. It is all.
in capital letters, or uncials, as scholars call them. 2. There are no
divisions between the words, and therefore the manuscript is difficult
to read, and in many cases quite uncertain. 3. In the 14th line
from the top there is a contraction, in, which is read “ iesoun ” or
Jesus (acc. case). But the word must be doubtful, in the nature of
the case. 4. There are little marks over many of the letters which
scholars say were inserted by some one long after the manuscript
was first written. That may be, but who can be sure ? 5. Below
are two words, “ Kata Markon,” said to be by a later scribe. Who'
knows ?
Note.—It is by such trifles scholars undertake to decide the dates
of manuscripts. The whole thing is doubtful in the extreme.
It may not be out of place to rehearse a few facts relating to the
Greek Testament, facts that should be persistently put before our
Christian neighbors and opponents. The clergy should be challenged
to say whether these statements are facts or fictions. And if I am
wrong in my statements, they should be urged to refute them.
It is no advantage to me to deny the truth or to preach and teach
error. If the New Testament is really an authentic history, it will
pay me well to say so. There are many thousands of people ardently
anxious that I should cease my opposition to their beliefs and begin,
again to preach the Gospel I have labored so long to discredit.
Therefore, it will be an immense advantage to me to be shown and
convinced that the New Testament is true history ; for, once satis
fied of that, I shall preach it most earnestly. And to do so would
bring me ^20, where I now get one. Therefore, if I oppose and
expose the New Testament and Christianity, it must be conceded
that some moral and legitimate motive impels me to do so.
On the other hand, if the clergy are not able to refute me, they
have no right to continue to preach and to live upon what they are
not able to prove to be true. If they can confute me, and will not,
they must be extremely immoral to permit me to propagate serious,
error and misrepresentations of the truth, which they can so easilyput a stop to.
�PREFAC®,
♦
iii.
To bring matters to an issue, I assert without fear of contradiction,
that the whole round of the gospel is an unfounded superstition ;
that the Gospels are frauds and forgeries; the New Testament a
‘book of most uncertain date ; and that, instead of having been
written by eye-witnesses of the things it relates, no proof exists that
the book is yet so much as 1,000 years old—-Though I do not deny
that it may be older.
I assert that the New Testament manuscripts now existing cannot
be traced back to any known author or writer or copier ; and that
•it is impossible to discover in what country any one of them was
produced. Nor is it possible to fix, within hundreds of years, the
date when any one of them was written.
Such is my challenge. And there is more to follow. Our common
New Testaments assert, on their title-page, that the English version
has been “ translated out of the original Greek.”
Now this was a known falsehood when first circulated. The
bishops and others of the English Church, in the reign of James I.,
were fully aware that the Greek they used did not pretend to be the
original; they were well aware that no one had ever pretended to
have seen the original—unless they meant to say that the printed
v text they had was the original, as they certainly did not. Those
Scholars knew that Erasmus, the Catholic critics, Stephens, and the
rest, who had for many years been examining manuscripts, had none
of them ever hinted or whispered that they had found the original.
Therefore, when those bishops authorised the printer to print
translated out of the original Greek,” they perpetrated a most
deliberate fib, and a fib that has imposed upon countless millions of
confiding people.
There was no excuse for this falsehood of theirs, except such an
excuse as vanity, ambition, or deliberate imposture could supply.
And whatever excuse might be urged for bishops and others of
nearly 300 years ago, there can be no shadow of excuse for those
who continue to reprint and circulate this fib. Since those ancient
bishops died, and most especially during the last sixty years, every
known corner has been ransacked for New Testament manuscripts ;
the most strenuous efforts have been made by Christian critics,
armed with all the weapons learning could give, to connect the New
Testament with the alleged apostles, and with Jesus. All such
efforts have hopelessly failed. No record, no scrap, of the originals
can be found ; no materials can be discovered out of which to con
struct a historical bridge to connect the oldest known manuscript
with the apostles or with Jesus.
Even if I admitted that Jesus and his apostles may have been
real persons and not fictions, still from the time of their death down
to the oldest fragment of real Church history, and down to the oldest
New Testament manuscript yet found, there must be reckoned
hundreds of years. Although the popular defender of the faith tries
to brazen it out and talks confidently, scholars know, and some of
them admit all that I contend for—in effect, if not in the language
I employ. I must quote a few passages from well known Christian
•works.
�iv.
PREFACE.
Smith's Bible Dictionary, 1863, article “New Testament” (by
Westcott the late Bishop of Durham), says, “ It does not appear
that any special care was taken in the first age to preserve the books
of the New Testament from the various injuries of time, or to insure
perfect accuracy of transcription. They were given as a heritage
to man, and it was some time before men felt the full value of the
gift. The original copies seem to have soon perished; and we may
perhaps see in this a providential provision against the spirit of
superstition which in earlier times converted the symbols of God’s
redemption into objects of idolatory (2 Kings xviii. 4). It is certainly
remarkable that in the controversies at the close of the second
century, which often turned upon disputed readings of scripture, no
appeal was made to the apostolic originals. The few passages in
which it has been supposed that they are referred to will not bear
examination.”
The writer then proceeds to dispose of certain imaginary references
to the originals in Ignatius and Tertullian.
He proceeds, “No Manuscript of the New Testament of the first
three centuries remains.” He drops the innocent remark that,
“ As soon as definite controversies arose among Christians, the text
of the New Testament assumed its true importance.” Westcott
notes the fact that the early Christians mutually accused each other
of corrupting their sacred books. The last note I need quote -from
him just at present is this, “ History affords no trace of the pure apostolic
originals."
Here, then, I have quoted from this Christian divine all that is
needed to justify the strong language I have used above. Of
course, the reader will perceive that Westcott, having, a
shockingly bad case, makes the best he is able of it. He raises
a pious dust, talks of providence, idolatry, etc. Still the truth
appears quite plainly through the mist; and the truth may thus
be summed up :—
1. Had the New Testament been an inspired book or a correct
record of the life of Christ and his apostles, there never could have
been a time when Christians could have valued them at less than
their real worth. Those who wrote the books would surely not be
blind to their value 1 They could not have been careless as to whom
they confided the books.
2. Those who received them from the authors must have valued
them as the most precious heritage of the Church, as Westcott fully
admits in hinting that people might have worshipped the originals
if God had not providentially destroyed what he had taken such pains
to inspire !—a wonderfully comical way of accounting for the loss
or early destruction of the originals, surely !
3. But Westcott was too wide awake not to understand why no
books have descended to us from the apostles, etc.—they never wrote
any, that is the truth. If they had done so, there would have been
no lack of evidence for it. It is not in the power of the .most cun
ning defender of the faith to assign or to.suggest a plausible reason
why the apostolic originals are not now in existence, supposing the
apostles really wrote and published anything.
�PREFACE.
V.
4. The fact that controversies arose so early and that they were
neither prevented nor settled by appeals to the apostolic originals is
clear proof that such originals never existed. How could controversies
arise amongst people who had the New Testament, as they supposed,
as an infallible guide ? And, granting the controversies, it is incon
ceivable that the disputants should have failed to appeal to an
apostolic standard, if such had really existed.
All these admissions of Westcott are plain proof that the New
Testament did not exist at the close of the 2nd century, when
those controversies raged. That being so, the New Testament must
be set down as a forgery of later times; but how much later cannot
as yet be ascertained. As Westcott says, the text assumed its true
importance in times of controversy ! Just so. All the round of
•dogmatic theology arose and was produced in times of controversy.
And it is plain that the New Testament was forged by the squabbling
Christians for the purpose of defending themselves and demolishing
their opponents. Yes, and the book itself is plentifully sprinkled
Over with the evidences of that.
�THE NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS.
It seems to me that Christian writers upon this subject make,
admissions or statements, which, properly considered, are quite fatah
to all historical claims of or for the New Testament. I have quoted
a specimen or two from Bishop Westcott, and here are others.
Dr. Newth, one of the authors af the Revised Version, says, in
Lectures on Revision, 1881, “ It is scarcely needed to state that we do
not now possess the original copies of any of the books of the Old
or the New Testament. Even while these (that is, the originals)
were still in existence it was necessary to transcribe them in order
that many persons in many places might possess and read them.”
I note here, ist.—That the statement that we do not possess the
originals of any portions of the Bible is strictly and absolutely true.
But, 2nd.—The assumption that the originals were copied and copied
in order to give many person^ the opportunity to read them is a
mere assumption with not one known fact to support it. If Dr..
Newth could prove the originals to have been copied, as he says they
were, he would more than half prove the New Testament historical
but the originals, as I shall show later, are nowhere mentioned by
any ancient writer. If many persons wanted copies to read, popular
education must have been early prevalent; but by common consent,,
the early Christians were not only of the poorer classes, for the
greater part, but also quite illiterate.
The doctor proceeds to show how almost impossible it was to
produce correct copies of the Bible. “ In the work of transcription,
however careful the transcriber might have been, errors of various kinds
necessarily arose ; some from mistaking one letter for another ; some
from failure of memory, if the scribe were writing from dictation ;
and some from occasional oversight, if he were writing from a copy
before him ; some from momentary lapses of attention, when his
hand wrote on without his guidance ; and some from an attempt tocorrect a real or fancied error of his predecessor ” (p. 3).
I ask, What could the Holy Ghost be thinking about to give man
kind a revelation in so uncertain and unreliable a manner ! This
point must be pushed. Nothing could be more blundersome or
more provocative of blunders than the course taken ; and the Holy
Ghost, if he inspired the Bible, must be held responsible for all the
errors of all its copies. He committed the first and fatal blunder of
trying to do what was impossible to be done by the means he
employed.
Dr. Newth says (p. 4) that the more recent the manuscripts are,
the greater is the agreement amongst them! That is as good as to
say, The more ancient your manuscripts are, the more do they
s
�NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS.
II
disagree amongst themselves! Well, critics tell you their oldest
existing New Testament manuscripts date from the 4th century.
If, then, the oldest disagree more and more in proportion to their
age, if we had the 3rd century manuscripts, we should find they
'differed Still more than the oldest we have ; if the 2nd century ones
could be recovered, we should find them worse still! and the 1st
-century ones, the worst of all! !
In other words, the nearer you approach the fountain head of
•Christianity, the more impure do you find the waters ! That being
so, of what conceivable value are the most ancient manuscripts ?
Nay, of what value are any of them ? These are questions no
scholar can answer in any satisfactory manner. Confusion of con
fusion, all is confusion and vexation of spirit; and the more the
subject is stirred, the more bewildered does the honest investigator
become. If it were the Koran that was concerned, instead of the
New Testament, how sarcastically and scornfully the Christian
Scholars would wax over such admissions and statements as I have
quoted above. How readily, in that case, would they perceive that
the evidences were totally unreliable and hardly worth refuting!
But reverence for their own fetish book has completely blinded
most of the Christian doctors, on the one hand, of the Mohammedan
doctors, on the other ; and none but Freethinkers can ever settle
the difficulties of either party.
Even the printing press, as Dr. Newth says, has by no means
abolished errors from the Bible. He supplies the following examples
of even printed errors in God’s most holy word, which the Holy
Ghost never took the trouble to correct, although the bishops and
clergy were as full of that ghost when those errors were committed
as at any time in the history of the Church.
In a Bible, called the “wicked Bible,” printed in 1631, Exodus
Xx. 14 reads, “ Thou shalt commit adultery.” In another, printed
1682, Deut. xxiv. 3 reads, “If the latter husband ate her,” instead
of “ hate her.” “ He slew two lions like men,” was printed for
“ two lion-like men ” (2 Sam. xxiii. 20), in a Bible dated 1638.
“ Deliver up their children to the swine ” (Jer. xviii. 21) for “ to the
famine,” appears in a Bible of 1682.
There are several others not worth quoting here. If such blunders
may occur in a printed book, what blunders may not have been
•committed in the ancient manuscripts ! Look at the facsimiles we
give, and note how easy it must have been, in copying hundreds of
pages of such manuscript, to fall into errors.
Dr. Newth says again, “ The exact words used by the inspired
writers are not now to be found in any one book or manuscript.
They have to be gathered from various sources, by long and careful
labor, demanding much skill and learning. These sources, more
over, are so numerous that the investigation of them can be
accomplished only by a large division of labor, no one life being
long enough for the task, and no one scholar having knowledge
-enough to complete it alone ” (p. 79).
There is a confession of the utter hopelessness of the task. Let
us note a point or two. 1. The common Bible will tell you, on its
�12
NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS.
title-page, that it was “translated out of the original ” (Hebrew for
the Old Testament, Greek for the New). But, as New th and other
writers openly acknowledge, this is most untrue, for the manuscripts
used by the authors of our common Bible were recent ones and of
no authority whatsoever. The statement, then, that the books were
translated out of the original is as deliberate a lie as could be told.
2. Still, if no older or better manuscripts had been found, a few
days would have sufficed to compare the printed copies with the
manuscripts. Yes, and Christians would have gone on repeating
the lie about the translation from the original, and would, have
declared that the exact and identical word of God was found in our
common Bible.
3. But the whole question has been so closely studied since 1611,
when our common Bible was first published, that some of the fore
most scholars have set aside the text used then as of no value or
authority whatsoever ; and have tried to reconstruct the original
New Testament out of older and, as they say, more reliable
manuscripts.
4. But now another difficulty stares us in the face. Admitting
that the manuscripts used by the authors of the Revised Version of
1881 to be better than those used in 1611, other manuscripts may
soon be found better than any now known ; and then the work of
reconstructing God’s holy but most delapidated word must all be
done over again.
5. If no one manuscript contains the exact words of the original,
as Newth declares, do any twenty manuscripts ? or any hundred ?
or one thousand ? Do all the known manuscripts contain “ the
exact words,” etc. ? How do you know ? Who does know ? Who.
pretends to know ? If a thousand more manuscripts should be
discovered, or forged and palmed off upon scholars, must the exact
words be picked from them also ?
6. If one life is too short for such a work, then no man can ever
HAVE
SUFFICIENT
KNOWLEDGE
TO
ENTITLE
HIM
TO
PASS . AN
therefore no man can ever have a just
right to decide such a question or to help to decide it; and therefore,,
no man being capable of forming an independent opinion upon it,,
no two men can ever rationally agree upon the subject; and there
fore, lastly, no number of men can ever have the just right to palm
off their version upon the world, or the nation, or to express any
opinion whatsoever upon the subject, except to say, “ The task, is
too great for the human intellect, and can never be satisfactorily
performed.”
Such is the corner into which Dr. Newth unconsciously drives
the Christian critics, himself with them; and. by so doing, he un
wittingly condemns the course taken by himself and his fellow
workers who produced the Revised Version; for they undertook a
work no number of men could possibly perform, and they settled all
disputes and doubts by a majority vote !—voted what was, what was
not God’s word ! Had the Revisers been only half as many, or
double the number, how different the result of their voting must
have been !
opinion upon the subject;
�h
• NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS.
13
And it must not be forgotten that no other company can ever
succeed any better, for the work is such that it never can be final.
In 1611 it was possible for the King and Parliament to produce a
Bible pretending to be the right one ; and most English speaking
people accepted and used it as a genuine work. Scholars for ages
have known better, and many would like to supersede it. But they
cannot. An Act of Parliament now would never bind the people on
such a subject; and no one church could issue a Bible that all
would accept. No one man can do it. All the churches could
never be brought to agreement on it. And there it rests—nay, not
rests. There is no more rest for the churches, none for God’s most
holy word. Scepticism has won ! The Bible is logically as dead
as Psalmanazer’s History of Formosa; and during the next genera
tion or two the masses will be as well satisfied of that as scholars
are at the present day.
The whole question of the value of the Bible has been unwittingly
raised, in the last few years, by the English and American clergy ;
and this has been done by projecting and executing the Revision of
the common English Bible. The first definite step was taken in
this work, February io, 1870, when the upper house of Convocation
or “ gathering ” of the English Church parsons passed a resolution
appointing a committee to perform the work of revising, amending
and repairing the word of God.
There cannot be the least doubt that those men who then assem
bled expected to do a good stroke of business for their party and
more or less embarrass, and perhaps defeat, the enemies of the faith.
Whether they have succeeded in their object will be seen as we
proceed. In fact, I may say just here that, in my esteem, no step
was ever taken by a large section of the Church more fatal in its
effects upon the popular superstition than this revision business.
Had the common English Bible, which was launched upon the
world in 1611, been merely a faulty book more or less misrepresent
ing the written or manuscript Bible that preceded it, the revision
and correction would have been easily accomplished, and no harm
could have resulted.
Let the reader try to grip the situation. If I wrote a lengthy
article for the Freethinker, and the printers made serious blunders in
the printed copy, it would be very easy to correct them by means of
my manuscript. Yes, but suppose that, instead of one manuscript,
there were from one to two thousand manuscripts of the same article,
all written in different hands, with different spelling ; many of the
manuscripts being unreadable in hundreds of places. And suppose
most of those manuscripts were mere fragments, and only one or
two (or not one) contained the entire article I wrote. And suppose
one or two contained the article and much more besides that I never
wrote.
Suppose, further, that the original manuscript which I wrote
could nowhere be found ; and that all the thousand or two thousand
manuscripts of the article now known were copies of copies of copies
and so on to an utterly unknown extent; and that all those copies
were by unknown persons, in places and times unknown. Add to
�i4
NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS.
this confusion the additional fact that the manuscripts contradicted
or varied from each other in about 150,000 places, and that no man
or number of men could tell which of them was nearest to or most
remote from the original.
In addition to all this, suppose that no one knew what copy or
copies the printers printed my article from, that they never told any
one, or refused to tell, or were out of the way and could not be
questioned.
Once more, suppose there were a dozen first-rate scholars engaged
in sifting the copies, and that no two of them agreed as to which
was best to follow or the nearest to the original.
And then suppose that no one had ever seen the original, but
merely those copies of copies, etc., and that I would not or could
not speak a word or take a step to clear up the mystery which no
other person knew. And, lastly, suppose it doubtful if I ever did
write the article, or that I, its reputed author, could not be proved
ever to have lived.
With all these difficulties before you, how could you, or any other
person, ever tell how the original article read and how it should be
reproduced ?
The case supposed is almost exactly parallel to the case of the
Bible, or to keep to our present subject, the New Testament. And
the attempt to Revise the book has had the effect of calling public
attention to these fatal facts as it never before was called ; and
further, it has demonstrated to scholars themselves the utter hope
lessness of all attempts to recover the original New Testament, or
of deciding what it was like, whence it came, or what was its value.
Note once more the leading facts. The common English Bible
was revised, patched, or repaired in 1611, the cobblers never having
made it known what materials (manuscripts) they used in the
patching, vamping, caulking, puttying, painting, gilding, or whatever
name you may please to give to their work. This was very dishonest;
but they did worse, they declared on the title-page that they translated
from the original and compared with former translations. The first
statement is a deliberate falsehood, for they knew the manuscripts
they had were not the original—unless, by the way, the Bible,
instead of being an ancient book, turns out to have been first
written a few centuries ago. If that is so, the translators of the
common Bible may have used the originals. But no Christian will
adopt that view.
During 250 years many scholars worked with a will to improve
the common Bible, and in the course of time materials were gathered
up from many quarters; and for generations there was a growing
conviction amongst the learned that something required to be done
to bring the Bible into closer agreement with the “ original,” as they
are pleased to call the manuscripts.
But just here the difficulties begin in earnest, and every step
lands the workers deeper into the bog of uncertainty.
The Greek text of the New Testament first published by Erasmus
and patched and mended by the Stephens of Paris, and called
generally the Textus Receptus, Received Text, etc., was quietly set aside
�NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS.
15
as of no authority at all by the men who made the Revised Version
of 1881. Theyssay, in the preface to the New Testament, that all
the Greek Testaments used by the translators of 1611 “were
founded for the most part on manuscripts of late date, few in number,
and used with little critical skill,” This text of the old translators,
they say, “ needed thorough revision.” They add, “A revision of
the Greek text was the necessary foundation of our work ; but it
did not fall within our province to construct a continuous and
Complete Greek text.”
Why not ? They imply that that was really necessary; and
therefore it ought to have been done, and done before going any
further ; for what was wanted was not a translation of some imperfect
and uncertain text, but of the undoubted word of God.
“ Textual Criticism,” say they in their preface, “ as applied to the
Greek New Testament, forms a special study of much intricacy and
difficulty, and EVEN NOW LEAVES ROOM FOR CON
SIDERABLE VARIETY OF OPINION AMONG COM
PETENT CRITICS. Different schools of criticism have been
represented among us, and have together contributed to the final
result.”
Just so. They mean to say, but don’t like to speak plainly, that
the Revisers were often at sixes and sevens, and found it impossible
to settle their disputes but by a majority vote ! Fancy settling
what Homer wrote in the same way ! Fancy settling history by a
vote ! Fancy deciding points in Mathematics in that way ! And
then fancy voting upon the question, Which manuscripts shall we
follow in this or that verse or chapter ?
Yes, the Revisers voted, for that was the only way of settling
their difficulties—the only way. And their vote tells us how God
wrote and what he wrote. This is a clever dodge, mind. And it
is precisely the same dodge resorted to at Rome to find out who it
is the Holy Ghost has decided to make the next Pope. It seems a
bit astonishing that men of any reflection at all should make such a
confession ; but, then, what can they or could they do ? There is
no method of settling the points in dispute ; they cannot possibly be
settled ; and, I suppose voting is as good a way as any of performing
the farce which pretends to solve questions which are in their
nature insoluble. But the Revisers should have been candid enough
to tell the world plainly that their work was nothing but a farce,
a farce of the solemn kind, no doubt, and one mixed up with prayer
and other magic ceremonies; but really a farce of the worst
description.
Let us see where we now are. The Revisers of 1881 had set
aside the Old Greek Text as of no authority; but they put
no authoritative one in its room. So we are now without any
Greek text that has authority. True, Drs. Hort and Westcott
tried to palm off a Greek Testament of their own manufacture
upon their fellow Revisers; and they seem to have succeeded
admirably.
I have said that the Revisers of 1881 set aside the Old Greek
Testament, which the translators of the common Bible called the
�i6
NEW TESTAMENT
MANUSCRIPTS.
“original Greek” in 1611, and substituted for it a Greek text
manufactured by Drs. Westcott and Hort, two of the Revisers.
This conduct would have been quite honest and proper, if the
Revisers had only been so happy as to have discovered a better and
more reliable text; but had they ? It appears that some scholars
as pious as themselves and not less learned, are of opinion that the
Revisers really set aside a good text for a much worse one, as a few
notes and quotations will make clear to the reader.
The Rev. Canon Cook, in The Revised Version Considered, London,
1882, earnestly defends the old Greek against the new. I think he
makes out a good case against the new text, but he leaves us com
pletely in the dark as to the value of the old. He demonstrates
that the new idol of the Revisers is not the right and proper object
of worship; but he fails to establish any claims for the old one.
He prefers the old Greek used by the translators of 1611, but his
preference seems to be more a matter of taste than argument.
Mr. Cook admits that the manuscripts relied upon by the Revisers
are very ancient; but he contends that, “ in the earliest ages the
stupidity and licence of copyists was far greater than at any later
period, the result being that the most ancient manuscripts are
tainted with the most numerous and most serious errors ” (p. 7).
This is extremely encouraging ! If the oldest scribes were such
clumsy copyists or such wilful corrupters, and from them has
descended to us “ the divine word,” as we have it, of what use or
authority can it be ? Manifestly none.
The modern critics cannot be relied on either. Tischendorf, the
greatest of them all, it is said, produced several editions of his
Greek New Testament. After he found the Sinaitic Manuscript,
in 1859, he was so full of its importance that he set to work and
produced a new edition of his Greek Testament, differing in more
than 3,000 places from his previous edition. But, as Mr. Cook says,
the larger portion of these changes have been given up as untenable
by editors who have followed Tischendorf (p. 8).
And so the solemn farce of supplying us with “ God’s word ”
proceeds from folly to folly, each successive editor overturning the
work of his predecessors. What Mr. Cook says of two contending
critics who came to ink and paper blows over the question, is
instructive. He says, “ I cannot but regard Dean Burgon’s argu
ment on one side, and Dr. Hort’s on the other, as remarkable
instances of the use and the misuse of vast learning and of equally
remarkable subtlety” (p. 147).
I think the same remark will apply to all the ablest works on
theology. No learning, no subtlety can settle a single point in it.
And, in truth—I speak from experience and long study—the more
learning is brought to bear upon any theological dogma, the more
hopeless does it become. The modern critics have fallen into the
terrible mistake of trying to prove their doctrines by reason or
rational processes. They forget that, not reason, but the blindest
of blind faith is the only saving virtue, the only way by which a
man can receive the Gospel. Wordly wisdom, that is, enlightened
reason, has nothing to do with it. You must, as when taking a
�NEW .TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS.
17
header into the sea, shut your eyes and plunge ! To wait for reason
to lead faith or to confirm faith is to be a Sceptic and to reject the
whole of Christianity as an unreasonable superstition.
I quote next a few important passages from The Revision Revised,
by John William Burgon, B.D., Dean of Chichester. London,
1883.
'
Let the reader remember that our Revisers of 1881 discarded the
old Greek Testament as of no authority. This fact must be
remembered all through. And so must the other, namely, that
Drs. Hort and Westcott manufactured a new Greek Testament and
induced the Revisers to accept that as God’s most holy word. The
Bishop of Gloucester accepts the new text and defends it. Dr.
Scrivener, says Burgon, held that this new text was based on “ the
sandy ground of ingenious conjecture”....... that the work of the
new editors must be received by a sort of intuition or “ dismissed
....... as precarious or even visionary”....... “Dr. Hort’s system
is entirely destitute of historical foundation”....... and of “all
probability.”
So the reader sees where we are—The Revisers repudiate the old
text and cannot induce the best scholars to accept their new one !
The Revisers say, in effect, “ Ladies and Gentlemen, you have
innocently believed that the Bible you are so familiar with is God’s
most holy word, translated from the original. We are sorry to tell
you it is nothing of the kind. The book from which this translation
was made is of no authority whatsoever, we assure you, Ladies and
Gentlemen ! But do not be alarmed. We have found two manu
scripts, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus, both
preserved by the mysterious providence of God, which also raised
us up to study and to set them before the world. And by patching
together these two famous manuscripts, with quite a multitude of
others, we have, by divine assistance, produced, or rather, repro
duced, the word of God in as correct and elegant a style as the
resources of scholarship and piety combined can ever hope to produce
it, and as near to the original as the most fastidious piety can
■demand.”
Such, in plain language, is the position taken up by the Revisers.
But, unfortunately, just as they reject the old text, so do other
scholars reject their new one; and the unhappy Christians are left
without any word of God at all; and the wisest of the godly
.scholars can merely grip this or that text in sheer desperation ; for
reason and science declare that not one of them is of any authority
whatsoever.
Burgon says, the Greek text on which the Revisionists spent ten
years “ was a wholly untrustworthy performance ; was full of the
gravest errors from begining to end.” It is “ the most vicious
(text) in existence.” It was also smuggled into the Revisionists’
camp and palmed off upon the members.
The two chief manuscripts used by the fabricators of the new
text differ immensely from the old text. In the Gospels alone, the
Vatican manuscript differs in 7,578 places ; and the Sinaitic in
•8,972 places. This manuscript has been tampered with no less
�NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS.
than ten different times between the 6th and 12th centuries(p. 12).
Burgon grows jocular, and declares that if Shakespeare were to
be revised as the Bible has been, Hamlet’s Soliloquy, “ To be, or
not to be,” etc., would read thus >—The Alexandrine Manuscript:—
Toby, or not Toby ; that is the question. The Vatican Manuscript:—
Tob or not, is the question. The Sinaitic Manuscript:—To be a
Tub, or not to be a Tub ; the question is that. Ephrem’s Manu
script :—The question is, to beat, or not to beat Toby ? Beza’s
Manuscript:—The only question is this : to beat that Toby, or to.
be a Tub ” (p. 15).
No doubt exists in the mind of anyone acquainted with Hebrew
or Greek that, if the authors of the Bible could be resurrected, they
would find hundreds of texts quite as ridiculously represented and
as fully muddled as the Shakespeare text just given. Could the'
ancient authors of these holy books be found and consulted, how
astonished would they feel at the marvellous changes made in their
works, and most especially at the meanings now attached to their'
words.
Let the reader reflect, that no two men, born in the same
place, speaking the same language and educated in the same
school, can ever fully understand each other. Two men, all
their lives in diverse conditions, are still less able to comprehendeach other. But let thousands of years intervene between the
writer of a book and his reader, not to mention the fact that
their languages are so different, how can the latter comprehend
the former ? most especially so if it is extremely doubtful what
the author wrote ?
Even if the so-called God’s book had been preserved just
as it was first written, with a full vocabulary of all the words,
and a perfect grammar, even then a perfect understandingwould have been impossible in our day ; and the farther
removed we were from the times and conditions of the authors,
the greater and greater would become the impossibility of
understanding the work—of putting ourselves en rapport with
those who wrote it.
The case of the Bible is immeasurably'worse than that; for we
know not who wrote a line of it; nor what was his motive; nor his
circumstances ; nor his opinions ; nor his moral and social character ;
nor his knowledge of things ; and, worse still, so imperfectly have,
his words descended to us, that the best scholarship can never decide
what he did or did not write.
Burgon proceeds to say that the Sinaitic, the Vatican, and the
Beza manuscripts—those mostly relied upon by the Revisers—arethe “ most scandalously corrupt copies extant :—exhibit the most shamefrilly
mutilated texts which are anywhere to be met with....... the depositories,
of the largest amount of fabricated readings, ancient blunders, and,
intentional perversions of truth,” etc. (p. 6).
He proceeds to criticise the leading editors or manufacturers of
Greek Testaments. Lachmann, who put out a Greek Testament
about 90 years ago, which was based on three or four manuscripts,
�NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS.
J.g
only ; Tregelles, who spent his life upon this kind of work, rejected
*
8g out of every go manuscripts, and manufactured his edition of the
“ Word of God ” out of the remainder. Upon Tischendorf, Burgon
is especially severe ; though one can scarcely see why. The fact is,
New Testament Textual Criticism is a game rather than a Science
—an art, certainly it is—the art of thimblerigging, of finding
solutions for insoluble puzzles, of making out a case where there is
none. Taste, prejudice, envy of other critics, love of fame, dogmatism,
narrow-mindedness, perversity, monomania, pet ideas, religious
fervor, callousness, and many other petty principles, prompt and
guide the critic in his work. Never was there a field of inquiry so
well adapted to develop all the crooked elements of one’s nature—
•except the field occupied by the popish priests and especially the
Jesuits. Indeed, all the leading elements of Jesuitry find ample
employment in this department of manufacture—the manufacture
■of different versions and editions of that unspeakable sham, “ God’s
Holy Word.” Common sense, if that were allowed to influence them,
would demonstrate to them the impossibility of a man, who is
dominated by a creed and by pious prejudices, ever coming to
rational and candid conclusions in such an inquiry. Such people
can never deal honestly with the Bible, for blind, stubborn prejudice,
sways them at every step. Their eternal salvation, so they solemnly
believe, depends upon their arriving at certain foregone conclusions.
Those pious “ critics ” deserve no more respect than performing
.animals in a circus. They may be clever and amusing, but their
whole performance is automatic and preordained by their antecedents
and environment.
Here before me lies The History of the Sacred Scriptures of the New
Testament by Eduard (Wilhelm Eugen) Reuss; Edinburgh, 1884;
and what says it respecting the manuscripts ? The following
•quotations will show.
“The original copies of the New Testament books....... do not
appear to have remained in existence long. On account of the poor
quality of the paper, they must soon have become unfit for, use and
finally have been lost, even if they were not destroyed sooner by
violence and neglect. IT IS CERTAIN THAT NO ANCIENT
WRITER MAKES MENTION OF THEM ” (p. 367).
This quotation gives us the whole case. 1. The books were
written on poor paper! Well, then, probably they were to a great
■extent illegible from the beginning ; and hence would arise the con
fusion we find in the Gospels, etc., that have descended to us.
2. But would the Holy Ghost have been such an absolute fool as to
permit his writings or inspirations, intended to remain as a permanent
guide to man, to be written on such flimsy stuff! To suppose so, is
to fling contempt upon the Holy Ghost. 3. Would inspired men
act so idiotically ? Would men who supposed they were writing
divine revelation be likely to put it upon such fragile stuff ?
* It is boasted of Tregelles that he devoted 30 years to examining manuscripts,
•etc., worked himself blind at it. Well, Du Chat spent 40 years on the works of
Rabelais! Tastes differ. Rabelais is less evil, a million-fold, than the Bible.
�20
NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS.
5. Would those who first received this divine truth be likely to
permit accident or time to destroy its vehicle, not to mention
destruction by violence ?
The books of the Sibyl, kept so long in ancient Rome, were not
written upon such perishable material. The revelations of Egypt
and Chaldaea were recorded on clay tablets (say, pottery), and on
stone; and are as sound and strong to-day as they were several
thousand years ago. How was it the Holy Ghost or his agents
were so much more careless or foolish than the Pagan writers ?
Uninspired men have always been wiser, if not so cunning as the
fellows inspired by God.
If no ancient writer mentions the original copies of the New
Testament, of what value can it be ? Absolutely none. This state
ment of Reuss (and other Christian critics) is an admission that
Christianity is not historical, that the New Testament is a forgery;
for had the writers been known, those who received the books from
their authors must have named or recorded so interesting and
important a fact. Reflect upon the case. Some eight or nine
authors are alleged to have contributed their quota to the New
Testament, namely, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James,
Jude. Is it not a most singular thing that no one of their contem
poraries should have mentioned the interesting fact that they were
inspired, or authorised to write this or that portion of the New
Testament ? Is it not astounding that no one should mention the
fact that he received a given portion of the New Testament from
the author’s own hand ?
I feel sure that this negative evidence, when carefully weighed
by thoughtful people, must prove absolutely fatal to the claims of
the New Testament.
Reuss refers to the well-known tales of finding the autographs of
John at Ephesus in the fourth century ; and in the foundations of
the Temple of Jerusalem, in Julian’s day; of Matthew in the grave of
Barnabas in Cyprus, etc., and stigmatises them as fables. Still,
fables though the tales certainly are, they are instructive,' although
Reuss fails to note that. Those fables show that ancient Christian
authors were puzzled and troubled about the originals and could not
imagine how it was that their predecessors had not mentioned them.
And the fables were invented to fill the painful gap and satisfy the
anxious inquiries of the faithful.
Reuss goes on to discuss the variations in existing manuscripts,
and says, the farther we go back in the history of the text the more
arbitrary do we find the treatment of it by transcribers—that is, in
plain English, the early copiers took great liberties with what they
copied, and the farther we go back the more of such liberties do we
find. Nay, the Apostles themselves, or their amanuenses “ may
have made mistakes” ; and “ the question comes whether the text,
ever existed in complete purity at all, and in what sense” (p. 370).
If one had lighted upon this in very early life, it must have taken
his breath away, considering how confidently his teachers had
assured him that the Word of God was perfect, and that the writerswrote with an unerring hand.
�NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS.
21
Reuss says the changes so very early introduced into the text of
the New Testament “were doubtless, for the most part, such aswere designed for its improvement” (p. 371).
Of one thing I am certain, no man who really supposed and
devoutly believed he was reading God’s inspired word could havetried to improve it. Only a doubter or confirmed disbeliever in itsdivine authority could have done that.
If the changes were introduced purposely to improve the booksz
then so long as this continued to be done, the books could not havebeen considered binding, infallible, etc.
If the copyists improved, we ask, To what extent did they do so ?
Did they leave out whole sentences, sections, books ? Did they
invent, borrow, and insert to equal extent ? And how do you know
to what degree the “original” New Testament differed from the
present? Alas for orthodoxy! No means exist for settling that
most essential matter.
Reuss even suggests that some of the readings in the New Testa
ment are due to “freaks of fancy,” although they may be “only
blunders ” (p. 372). Well, when the Holy Ghost is inspiring a
man to write and blunders occur, or “ freaks of fancy ” display
themselves in the writing, whose blunders, etc. are they ? The
Ghost’s or his Clerk’s ? I wish the critics would settle that.
My Christian author proceeds. Alterations, he says, were made
for enrichment; the Gospels were enriched by traditional matter ;
they were also purposely made more like each other, and quotations
from the Old Testament, which had been wrongly quoted, were cor
rected ! Other writers wrote their thoughts or comments in the
margin of their manuscripts, and these were, by-and-bye, copied into
the text. Look at our facsimile on a former page, where kata
markon is seen in the lower margin. That might have been copied
into the text by the next scribe, as many words have been in the
New Testament manuscripts now in existence.
This writer admits that, not the New Testament, but tradition,
decided matters of faith in the early Church ; and therefore the book
was in danger of being altered to suit the tradition. Then he refers
to the frequent mention in early writers of wilful corruptions of the
text for controversial purposes. In this connection he shows up the
unscrupulous characters of the orthodox church fathers, apparently
forgetting that in so doing he damns most effectually the only
witnesses for Christianity. In fact, no Christian critic can traverse
the ground of New Testament history without making statements
altogether fatal to the claims of his superstition. (See pp. 375-6).
I must call attention to the several facsimiles. The manuscripts
are. all written without breaks or points. Reuss says, “ Aside from
the general scarcity of books, reading was rendered difficult for the
unpractised by the total lack of all explanatory pointing. It was
not until the close of the ninth century, after isolated attempts in
earlier times, that copyists generally introduced the breathings and
accents into the copies of the New Testament. A still greater
hindrance to the easy reading of the text was the custom of writing
without breaks between the words. “ This gave occasion foh
�22
NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS.
MANY MISUNDERSTANDINGS AND MUCH THEOLOGICAL WRANGLING ”
(P- 386).
It is not every Christian critic who will speak so plainly as Reuss.
To see how awkward it is to read without spaces and stops, take the
same passage which appears in the facsimile 1, this time in English
capitals and without any stops or spaces.
ANDTH EYSAIDAMONGTH EMSELVESWHOSHALL
ROLLUSAWAYTH ESTONEFROMTHEDOOROFTH E
SEPULCHREAN DWH ENTH EYLOOKEDTH EYSAW
THATTH ESTON EWASRO LLEDAWAYFO RITWASV
ERYGREATANDENTERINGINTOTHESEPU LCH RE
TH EYSAWAYOU NGMANSITTINGONTH ERIGHTSI
DECLOTH EDINALONGWHITEGARMENTAN DTHE
YWEREAFFRIGHTE DAN DH ESAITHUNTOTH EMB
ENOTAFFRIGHTEDYES E EK J ESUSOFN AZARETH
WHICHWASCRUCI FI EDH EISRISEN H EISNOTH E
REBEHOLDTHEPLACEWHERETHEYLAIDHIMBU
TGOYOU RWAYTE LLHISDI SCI PLESAN D PETE RT
HATH EGOETH B EFOREYOUINTOGALILEETH ER
ESHALLYESEEHIMASHESAI DU NTOYOUAN DTHE
YWENTOUTQUICKLYAN DFLEDFROMTH ESEPUL
CH REFORTH EYTREM B LEDANDWEREAMAZEDN
EITHERSAIDTHEYANYTHINGTOANYMAN FORTH
EYWEREAFRAID
As the old written letters are not half so well formed as our printed
•ones, it must have been all the harder to read them correctly.
Though the manuscripts, says Reuss, are our best sources of
knowledge of the original New Testament, yet they can never vouch
for the correctness of any reading, because they were all written
after the text was corrupted.
Hear again : “the age of a text is only determined with great
difficulty and little certainty, from a comparison of many manu
scripts,” etc. (p. 387).
In all this Reuss confirms what I have so often said. He also
confirms me in reference to the versions of the Bible, by pointing
out that an ancient version needs to be proved itself before it can
be used as a witness for the text (p. 404).
Reuss openly admits that all attempts to restore the New
Testament text to its original purity have failed, and must ever
fail (p. 445).
That is the plain truth about the matter ; and when the clergy
are honest enough to prefer truth to place and pay they will say
the same.
No doubt the reader is about tired of this subject; but I must say
a little more.
The New Testament is of unknown origin, unknown date,
unknown birthplace, unknown authorship. There is not a single
question about its history, for the alleged first two or three centuries
of its existence, which can be answered. Let us ask a few. Who
wrote the Four Gospels ? History does not say. What authority
�NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS.
25
had they ? The writers do not tell us. Were they eye-witnesses ?
Manifestly not, for they never profess to be. Are they known ?
Not at all; only one of the Gospels pretends to be written by any
particular person. When was any one of them written ? No one
knows. In what language ? No one knows. On what material ?
No one can tell.
What Church first possessed a Gospel ? History gives no reply.
When and where did the Gospels first circulate ? We cannot tell..
What language were they (or any one of them) first written m ?
No scholar can answer that question. What became of the original
manuscripts ? No one reports ever seeing one of them.
The probability is that the New Testament is a set of monkish
books or pamphlets, written for edification—that is, to rouse religious
or devotional feelings, not to instruct. The stories in the . New
Testament were probably never regarded as true when first written
they were a sort of parables, allegories, tales, intended to convey
some lesson or to stir devotion. Those who first told or wrote the
tales could never have supposed they were relating sober facts, and
would doubtless be abundantly astonished if they could know how
solemnly scholars brood over their ridiculous tales, and try to make:
biography and history out of them.
The New Testament is no more true than the Mythologicalstories of Greece and Rome ; than the Gesta Romanovum ; than the
lives of the popish saints and martyrs; than the multitudinous
stories of saints and miracles found so plentifully in the Bible itself
and in so-called Church history. When Gulliver's Travels and the.
Arabian Nights have been proved to be history, I, for one, shall be
prepared to accept the New Testament also.
So long as it is a merit to believe the impossible, I suppose the
impossible stories of the New Testament will continue to be
swallowed by people of a gulping disposition. But of one thing we.
may be certain, and that is, reason never swallowed the Arabian.
Nights or the New Testament; and never can.
I will quote a few brief passages from Hug's Introduction to the
New Testament; Andover (U.S.), 1836. This is Professor Moses
Stuart’s edition. The work is a learned one, and rather advanced,
for its date.
Hug says (pp. 68-9), “ These books (New Testament ones), whenonce circulated among the multitude, encountered all the fortunes,
which have befallen other works of antiquity....... Only the original,
writings possessed an authority beyond objection, and we might
hence expect that peculiar care would have been taken to preserve
them to posterity. Yet we have no CERTAIN INFORMA
TION WHERE THEY WERE KEPT, how long they were to
be seen, or by what accident they were lost to the world. For those
passages of the ancients which have been supposed to communicate
information respecting the autographs have in fact a totally different
purport.”....... “We have the most irrefutable proof....... that Tertullian, and not only he, but Clement, Origen, and the fathers of the
Church generally, knew nothing of the existence of the autographs,
in all those works in which they combat the heretics.”
�24
NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS.
He goes on to show that the “Fathers” disputed with the heretics
as to how certain texts of the New Testament ought to read. If
they had known where to find the originals, those disputes could
have been settled at once. But they never appealed to the originals ;
and the only inference possible is that the “ Fathers ” never knew
those originals.
In truth, this confession is equal to giving up the whole case for
Christianity. If none of the early writers saw the originals of the
New Testament, or ever referred to them, it is idle to dispute further;
perfectly idle. The book is out of court as a nameless, fatherless
waif, a vagabond who can give no account of himself, except to say,
“ Here I am ; I don’t know what I am ; I don’t know where I came
from ; don’t know any of my family relations ; can’t tell what
country I belong to; and I don’t know anything about my age.”
“ Thus we seek in vain for the original manuscripts at a time
when nothing was known of them. They were lost, without so
much as a hint to us by what means a possession so important to
the Church perished. How shall we explain this singular fact ? ”
(Hug, pp. 67-70).
Hug does not explain it, nor can it be explained, except to the
damage^of Christianity. People do not carelessly lose or destroy
Wills, bcrip, Bills of Sale, Debentures, and other valuable docu
ments. And the original Gospels, etc., according to Church
sentiment, were worth infinitely more than all other documents
whatsoever. Yet they are never mentioned by any Church
writer!
Here is a thought that just this moment strikes me. Relics
were venerated or worshipped very early in the Church. In fact,
we cannot suppose there ever was a time when they were not.
Well, the Church has preserved—so silly fables and impudent lies
assure us—the “holy coat” that Jesus wore; the cross and its
nails; the Veronica napkin, and a crowd of other early relics.
How shall we explain the strange fact that the Church preserved
neither the original books of the New Testament, nor ever pretended
to have them ? How is it that such precious relics were never
counterfeited as most others were ?
There is but one reply, and that is, the New Testament never
became a precious book until the age of counterfeiting or manu
facturing relics had passed its prime, and it was too late to set up
the original manuscripts for worship, too late to manufacture them.
Indeed, until the Reformation the Bible held but a very subordinate
position ; and its monstrous claims since that date were invented
and pushed merely to checkmate Popery. Popery had the Infalli
bility of the Pope, or of the Church, or something, and the Reformers
set up a counter Infallibility in the Bible. Up to that date the
Bible had been little, or no better, or more authoritative, than other
holy fable books, and certainly had never reached the value or
importance of a chip of the cross, or other relics that might be
named.
This reflection, properly worked out, is quite sufficient in itself to
destroy the whole value of the Bible—except as a mere antiquity.
�NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS.
25
As an antiquity, its value is assured. As a divine book, it is utterly
beneath contempt.
Here is another instructive selection from Hug’s work :—“ The
fate which has befallen other works of antiquity, befel the New
Testament likewise” (p. 85). The carelessness of copyists pro
duced errors. “ But this is not all; the New Testament has had
the peculiar fate of suffering more by intentional alterations than the
works of profane literature.”
Yet Christians will often proclaim the empty and impudent boast
that the New Testament has far better evidence to connect it with
the Apostles, etc., than any ancient profane book has to show that
it was written by its reputed author. Read again the last quotation
from Hug, who proceeds to say the heretics had no hand in the
wilful alterations. In fact, he shows that the orthodox slandered
Marcion and other heretics by charging upon them corruptions of
the New Testament, which were perpetrated in the orthodox camp
itself! That will not surprise any who understand what modern
Christian malice and lying are constantly doing.
In the first four centuries, says Hug, “ Strange things had
happened in individual manuscripts ” (p. 86). He says Origen
complained much of the wilful corruptions before his day.
I think I need not continue this subject; for I have said enough
in these quotations and notes to destroy all faith in the New
Testament. And when we add the fact that the New Testament
carries its own damnation upon almost every page, the reader will
understand how baseless is the Christian superstition. The New
Testament bristles with fables, superstitions, and impossibilities.
No amount of evidence could ever prove it historical or help towards
that end. The Christians themselves would scout all the fables of
the New Testament as I do, if they found them related in connection
with any other religion than their own.
In conclusion, I may say that never was a greater failure than is
shown in the long-continued attempts to decide what is, what is not,
divine revelation. All such attempts have but demonstrated:
1. that the New Testament (I am dealing only with that just now)
is of unknown origin and date. 2. That it has no authority at all
beyond what blind custom, blind prejudice, tyranny, or a majority
vote imparts to it. .3. That all the scholars in the world are not
able to decide how any text of the New Testament originally ran.
This is literally true. 4. The result of the 300 years’ labor and
expense bestowed by Christians upon this book is to dissipate for
ever all rational claims on its behalf and to explode the entire
authority of the Churches. In one word, it has left us destitute of
all Christian revelation and of all rational grounds for belief in such
a thing.
To the Freethinker this is satisfactory. It blows away a world
of cant, hypocrisy, and clerical impudence and tyranny.
For ages, from Bentley onward, the Christians boasted that,
though the New Testament manuscripts differed from each other in
30,000 (Bentley’s admission) places, or 150,000 (as latertim.es show)
not one doctrine of Christianity was affected by them ! That boast
�‘26
NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS.
is the condensed essence of impudence or of ignorance. For the
variations and other facts combined, strip the Churches of the book
'itself upon which they founded all their pretence and all their
doctrine. Textual Criticism has undermined and blown up the
entire fabric of Christianity and left it destitute of any plausible
excuse for continuing to exist, except blind custom and—cash.
If they deny what I say, let them at once inform us on what
authority they receive the life of Jesus and the rest of the incidents
and doctrines of the New Testament. Let them say on what and
whose authority they receive the New Testament itself. And, lastly,
let them tell us what the New Testament is—I mean, whether all
the books now in it ought to be there, whether none other should
be inserted ; and on what manuscripts or other evidence they rely.
Most confidently I deny their ability to meet these demands.
And therefore I assert that Christianity, in itself, is a gross and
irrational superstition. As it is put before the world, it is the worst
imposture that could be conceived.
�APPENDIX.
Finally, in the Athenaum, June 16, I am gratified to find thefullest confirmation of my views, the most complete justification of
the strongest opinions I have expressed above. The reader may
remember that I quoted the work of Rev. H. A. Scrivener, M.A.,„
D.D., etc. That gentleman was confessedly and by common
consent one of the most sober and reliable critics in this department
of learning, not brilliant, but solid and thoughtful. Since his death
(just recently, in fact), there is issued a work of his entitled
Adversaria Critica Sacra, which the Athenceum reviews. In fairnessto all parties I quote all the critic says upon the subject:—
“ These Adversaria Critica Sacra consist of collations of forty-nine
*
MSS. of portions of the New Testament, Six MSS. containing frag
ments of the Septuagint and a record of the variations from the
Textus Receptus of the principal early editions of the New Testament.
A minute and accurate account is given of each MS. It is needless
to say that Dr. Scrivener did his work with the utmost conscientious
ness, and that his labors are of great value, and deserve the heartiest
recognition from all Biblical scholars.
He made no effort to
determine how far his new collations will modify the text of the N ew
Testament, but throughout the book there runs a current of
opposition to the principles laid down by Hort in his Introduction to
the New Testament in the original Greek, edited by him and Bishop ■
Westcott. It begins in a note on p. vi. of the Introduction, in which
Dr. Scrivener states that Dean Burgon
‘ Had been engaged day and night for years in making a complete
index or view of the manuscripts used by the Nicene (and ante-Nicene)
Fathers, by way of showing that they were not identical with those
copied in the Sinaitic and Vatican codices, and inasmuch as they
were older, they must needs be purer and more authentic than these
overvalued uncials.’ ”
In a postscript to the Introduction, Dr. Scrivener says that Dean
Burgon
“ Very earnestly requested me that if I lived to complete the
present work, I would publicly testify that my latest labors had in no
wise modified my previous critical convictions, namely, that the true
text of the New Testament can best and most safely be gathered
from a comprehensive acquaintance with every source of information
yet open to us, whether they be manuscripts of the original text,
Versions, or Fathers, rather than from a partial representation of
three or four authorities, which, though in date the more ancient and
akin in character, cannot be made even tolerably to agree together.”
Dr. Scrivener renews his avowal, and illustrates it by an instance.
The opinion comes out most strongly in the words of Mr. Hoskier,
who collated Evan. 604 for Dr. Scrivener. Dr. Scrivener says:—
“ Mr. Hoskier’s conclusion shall be given in his own words : ‘ I
defy any one after having carefully perused the foregoing lists, and.
�ii.
APPENDIX.
after having noted the almost incomprehensible combinations and
permutation of both the uncial and cursive Manuscripts, to go back
again to the teaching of Dr. Hort with any degree of confidence.
How useless and superfluous to talk of Evan. 604 having a large
western element or of it Siding in many places with the neutral text. The
whole question of families and recensions is thus brought prominently
before the eye, and with space we could largely comment upon the
deeply interesting combinations which thus present themselves to the
critic. But do let us realise that we are in the infancy of this part
of the Science....... and not imagine that we have successfully laid
certain immutable foundation stones, and can safely continue to
build thereon. It is not so; much, if not all, of these foundations
must be demolished....... It has cost me a vast amount of labor and
trouble to prepare this statement of evidence with any degree of
accuracy; but I am sure it is worth while, and I trust that it may
stimulate others to come to our aid, and also help to annul much of
Dr. Hort’s erroneous theories.’ ”
Such is the quotation from the Athenaum. I have stated in the
pamphlet that the translators of the Authorised Version declared
they translated from the “ original ’’—which was a lie. For two
centuries and a half this falsehood has been imposed upon most
English speaking Bible readers. When the Revised Version was
made, the so-called “ original ” of the old translators was set aside
in favor of a Greek text manufactured by Dr. Hort and the present
Bishop of Durham. In the above quotation, the reader will see how
thoroughly Dr. Scrivener, as well as Dr. Burgon, repudiates the
Hort-Westcott Greek text.
But reflect. One set of critics flings up one Greek text another
flings up another !
I must once more solemnly affirm that anything like certainty in
Greek Testament criticism is impossible—except the damning
certainty that it is impossible to discover whence the New Testament
came, or to find the history of any of the manuscripts.
Criticism, even as conducted by Christian critics, has proved
Christianity to be unhistorical and the New Testament of unknown
authorship and date.—Liberator, Melbourne, August 11, 1894.
�SOME WORKS BY G. W. FOOTE
Price. Post.
Atheism and Morality
Bible and Beer
Bible God, The
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Book of God, The, in the Light of the Higher
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Is the Bible Inspired ?
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A Criticism of Lux s. d.
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Rome or Atheism? The Great Alternative ... 0 3 1
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A Reply to General Booth ...
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Secularism and Theosophy. A Rejoinder to
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Victorian Blogging
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The New Testament manuscripts, or, Christianity completely undermined
Description
An account of the resource
Edition: 2nd ed.
Place of publication: London
Collation: [3], [i]-v, [10]-26, ii p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: "With fac-similes of MSS."--Front cover. Appendix dated "Liberator", Melbourne, August 11, 1894. "Some works by G.W. Foote" listed on unnumbered pages at the end. Includes extracts in Ancient Greek. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Symes, Joseph [1841-1906]
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1906
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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 (The New Testament manuscripts, or, Christianity completely undermined), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Bible-Evidences
Bible. N.T.-Criticism
NSS
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PDF Text
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��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.
�18
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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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
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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
�34
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.
�40
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.
�42
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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Examination of the holy scriptures : a critical inquiry into the Old and New Testaments
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Voltaire [1694-1778]
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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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Bible-Criticism
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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT EXAMINED.
WHAT THE OLD TESTAMENT SAYS
ABOUT ITSELF.
BY
JULIAN,
Author of “The Popular Faith Exposed,” “Bible Words: Human,
not Divine,” “The Pillars of the Church,” Etc.
ISSUED FOR THE
London :
WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET St.
Price One Penny.
* ,
�OUR PROPAGANDIST PRESS COMMITTEE.
This Committee has been formed for the purpose of assisting in
the production and circulation of liberal publications.
The members of the Committee are Mr. G. J. Holyoake, Dr.
Bithell, Mr. F. J. Gould, Mr. Frederick Millar, and Mr. Charles
A. Watts.
It is thought that the most efficient means of spreading the
principles of Rationalism is that of books and pamphlets. Many
will read a pamphlet who would never dream of visiting a lecture
hall. At the quiet fireside arguments strike home which might
be dissipated by the excitement of a public debate. The lecturer
wins his thousands, the penman his tens of thousands.
The aim of the various writers will be to obtain converts by
persuasiveness rather than undue hostility towards the popular
creeds.
All who are in sympathy with the movement are earnestly re
quested to contribute towards the expenses as liberally as their
means will allow. The names of donors will not be published
without their consent.
On the 31st of January of each year a report and balance-sheet
will be forwarded to subscribers. The books of the Committee are
always accessible to donors.
Contributions should be forwarded to Mr. Charles A. Watts,
17, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C. Cheques should
be crossed “ Central Bank of London, Blackfriars Branch.”
PUBLICATIONS ISSUED FOR THE COMMITTEE BY
MESSRS. WATTS & CO.
Agnostic Problems. Being an Examination of Some Questions
of the Deepest Interest, as Viewed from the Agnostic Standpoint.
By R. Bithell, B.Sc., Ph.D. Cheap Popular Edition, cloth, 2s. 6d.
post free.
_____
id. each, by post 1Xd->
Agnosticism and Immortality. By S. Laing, author of “ Modern
Science and Modern Thought,” etc.
Humanity and Dogma. By Amos Waters.
What the Old Testament Says About Itself. By Julian.
The Old Testament Unhistoric and Unscientific. By Julian.
LIBERTY OF BEQUESTS COMMITTEE.
This Committee has been formed for procuring the passing of a
law legalising bequests for Secular and Free Thought purposes.
As the law now stands, all legacies left for the diffusion and main
tenance of Secular or Free Thought principles can be confiscated.
Subscriptions in furtherance of the object of this Committee may
be sent to Mr. George Anderson, Hon. Treasurer, 35a, Great
George Street, London, S.W.
�KH'AZ.
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT
EXAMINED.
Part I.
WHAT THE OLD TESTAMENT SAYS ABOUT ITSELF.
Probably every person who reads this little work knows
that a part of the Bible is called the “ Apcfcrypha,” a
word which means “ reserved for the initiated,” or “ kept
back from the general public.”
Exoteric and Esoteric Disciples.—In all the ancient
religions there were two classes of disciples—-the exoteric
and the esoteric. The exoteric were the general auditors,
the esoteric the real disciples, initiated into the secret and
hidden meaning of the words employed by the master.
Thus, when Pythagoras taught in his schools that wise
men should “ beware of beans,” the general public
supposed he meant that beans were to be avoided as a
food; but he privately told his true disciples that he
meant: Do not interfere with politics, lotteries, or ballotboxes, in which votes were taken by beans, as we now
take them by slips of paper or small ivory balls.
You will remember that, when Jesus had spoken a
parable to the Jewish mob, his disciples frequently came
to him in private, and asked him to explain to them the
esoteric or secret meaning of his words. The initial
verses of the Fourth Gospel afford a good example, where
the words “ Logos,” “ darkness,” “ light,” and so on, have
a. double meaning—one open, and one remote or con
cealed. Now, the latter may be called the Apocrypha,
and we are told by Ezra or Esdras that Moses gave one
Pentateuch to the general public, but another to the
initiated. The exact words are : “ In the bush I
�2
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT EXAMINED.
[Jehovah] did manifestly reveal myself unto Moses, and
talked with him when my people served in Egypt. And
I sent him to lead my people out of Egypt, and I
brought him up to the Mount of Sinai, where I held
him by me a long season. And I told him many
wondrous things, and showed him the secret of the times
and of the end ; and I commanded him, saying : These
words shalt thou declare [openly to the people] ; but
these thou shalt hide [from the general, and declare only
to the initiated].”* Similarly, as we shall see by-andby, Jehovah commanded Ezra to write certain books,
one of which was to be published abroad, and seventy
others were to be reserved for the priesthood. The
Apocryphal books were the foundation of what is called
tradition.
The Apocrypha.—In the Old Testament, till quite
modern times, there were thirty-eight books, fourteen of
which are omitted in all Bibles now published by the
Bible Society. These fourteen books were first called
“The Apocrypha,” in 1380, by John Wyclif the Re
former ; but they still continue parts of the canonical
Scriptures in all Catholic Bibles.
Why Ignored by Protestants.—Protestants ignore
these fourteen books entirely. But the Church of
England, trimming between Catholics and Puritans,
teaches that the Apocrypha is excellent for Christian
instruction and example, but is not to be used for doc
trine and dogma. The words of the article are as
follows: “Whatsoever Book is in the Old Testament
besides the twenty-four [mentioned] shall be set among
the Apocrypha—that is [books] without authority of
belief. The Church doth read them for example of
life and instruction of manners, but doth not apply them
to establish any doctrine.”
I am quite prepared to allow that much of the Apoc
rypha is extremely foolish, and undoubtedly mere fable;
but what else can be said of the talking serpent and the
talking ass ? and on the former of these stories is founded
the great Church doctrines of original sin, the fall of
man, and redemption or paradise regained. The tale is
* 2 Esdras xiv. 3-6.
�THE OLD TESTAMENT.
3
that the Devil metamorphosed himself into a snake, and
chatted with Eve in familiar converse, just like a neigh
bour-gossip. Having persuaded the silly, vain woman
to taste a certain fruit, because it would make her clever,
sin entered the world with all its evils, including death
and Hell.
The Strange Part of the Story.—Now, what is very
strange in this marvellous story is this : The prating
snake was no snake at all, but the Devil; and the whole
serpent tribe was cursed because the Devil acted a lie.
“ On thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all
the days of thy life ” was, in reality, said to the Devil;
but somehow it got transferred to the race of serpents,
who were as innocent as young lambs. The serpent did
not assume the form of the Devil; but the Devil
assumed the form of a serpent. Suppose his Satanic
Majesty had assumed the form of an archangel, as he
sometimes did, would the curse have fallen on all the
hierarchy of Heaven ?—“ on your bellies shall ye crawl,
and dust shall ye eat” henceforth, instead of the fruits of
Paradise ; yet one would have been just as wise, just as
fair, as the other. However, we meet a parallel case in
the New Testament, when a legion of foul fiends took
up their abode in a herd of swine; the swine were killed
for the demoniacal trick. This is just as if a burglar
broke into the mansion at Sandringham, and the Prince
of Wales, his wife, children, and domestics were all
hanged instead of the burglar. If I choose to dress up
like an African and steal the Crown jewels, surely the
Queen would not send her armies into Africa, and reduce
all the inhabitants to slavery. Then why should snakes
and serpents be punished because, without their know
ledge and consent, Satan masqueraded as a snake in
order to tempt Eve to disobedience ? But the mystery
does not end here. Evidently the serpent tribe before
then were not creeping things ; for a part of the curse
was “ on thy belly shalt thou go ” henceforth. Now,
Satan does not go on his belly, and does not eat dust all
the days of his life. At least, I suppose so. Certainly
he did not crawl on his belly like a snake when he
tempted the Nazarene in the wilderness, and carried him
to the pinnacle of the temple, and to a mountain so
�4
the old and new testament examined.
exceedingly high that Jesus could see thence even the
Antipodes, as well as the kingdoms of the northern half
of the globe. Telescopes have done something for ns;
but we have not yet invented an instrument which can
show us our Antipodes. As Satan, the aggressor, escaped
this curse, it fell wholly on the innocent party, who were
as guiltless as you or I.
These manifest fables, these illogical stories, these
palpable contradictions, make us pause to believe that
they can be the words of truth and soberness. I cannot
bring my mind to believe that a God of Justice and
Wisdom would punish innocent serpents because the
Devil chose to assume their form ; nor can 1 believe that
he killed a whole herd of swine because a legion of
devils were supposed to have taken up their abode in
the pigs. I cannot believe that snakes and serpents
are now creeping things, because Satan played them
this trick. But, if the tale of the serpent is not true,
then the tale of the “ fall,” the dogmas of “ original
sin ” and of “ redemption,” are false also, and the whole
Bible scheme falls to ruin like a child’s card-house.
There is nothing in the Apocrypha more illogical and
foolish than these two tales of the canonical Scriptures,
and not all the concensus of all the fathers, Hebrew or
Christian, can render the story of the Serpent and Eve
credible.
I really must press upon my readers the supreme
importance of this remark. We are too apt to dwell
exclusively upon the amiable character of Jesus, his
going about daily doing good, his suffering, his resurrec
tion, and ascension into Heaven. We feel that the
wonderful miracles ascribed to him were wholly beyond
the power of man. We feel that his conception by the
Holy Ghost accounts in some measure for his claim of
being god as well as man. We feel that his resurrection
by his own innate will makes him the potentate of life
and death, and that his ascension into Heaven has
restored him to the throne which, we are told, he aban
doned in order to become man. Looking at these
things alone, we see no great difficulty in believing that
this extraordinary person might be divine. If divine, he
was God incarnate, or God in the fashion of a man. If
�THE OLD TESTAMENT.
5
he was God, who had merely assumed for the nonce the
likeness of man, he did it that he might die. If he did
not die on the cross for his own misdeeds, he died for our
redemption. If he died for our redemption, he was our
federal head in the New Dispensation. Before this,
man was in the Old Dispensation, that of Adam; but
after the death on the cross he was transported from the
dispensation of the first Adam into that of the second
Adam, Jesus Christ.
Now mark how all this hangs together. We all know
that the strength of a chain cable is only that of its
weakest link, and so the truth of this long story is wholly
dependent on the weakest portion of the story.
If man was never under the dispensation of Adam, he
could never be removed therefrom into the dispensation
of the new Adam. If there is no transmitted sin, there
was no original sin to be nailed to the cross. If Adam
never bit the forbidden fruit, he never committed that
sin of disobedience, and could not have transmitted the
transgression to his posterity. He was a clean fountain,
and sent forth clean water—not a polluted spring from
which issued a polluted stream. There was nothing to
redeem, no muddy water to purify, no birth sin to wash
away. If, therefore, the tale of the prating serpent is
rejected, the death of Christ to abolish the evil conse
quences of the “ fall ” must be rejected also. If the
Devil, in the guise of a snake, did not talk to Eve,
impose upon her vanity (and remember she had no
vanity, for she was not yet in sin), and induce her to eat
the fruit of the “Wisdom Tree,” then the death of Jesus
to abrogate these consequences is wholly a misconcep
tion. He may have died, but he did not die to abolish
the fatal consequences of Eve’s listening to the words of
a serpent, inasmuch as there was no such serpent.
Just as far as this tale of the Devil is true, the hypo
thesis of redemption is true. Just as far as the iniqui
tous judgment passed on the reptile race, because the
Devil played them a most scurvy trick, is true, so far
and no further the atonement of Christ is true. If the
Almighty did not punish snakes because Satan on one
occasion pretended to be a snake, then Christ did not
die upon the cross because God did do so. If, in fact,
�6
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT EXAMINED.
Paradise was never lost as related in the foolish and
most illogical tale told us in Genesis, it could never be
regained as we are told it was in the Gospels.
Do look for a moment at the tissue of nonsense and
contradiction in this Jewish myth. Surely never HLsop
could have strung together anything more utterly im
probable :—
We have man made in the image of God, who has
no image at all; no likeness of anything in heaven or
earth ; no form ; no parts.
We have Adam, though perfect in holiness and inno
cence—perfect as God could make him, perfect as God
himself—guilty of disobedience ; and by this one act of
disobedience “ guilty of the whole law ”—by this one
act of disobedience made to rank with liars, adulterers,
thieves, and murderers, the children of the Devil and
the heirs of Hell.
We have a serpent, which was no serpent at all, but
the Devil in masquerade.
We have reptiles before they were reptiles ; because
the condition of “creeping” was not yet imposed upon
them.
We have a godly, immaculate woman, fresh from the
hands of the Almighty, described as vain, conceited,
credulous, wilful, and hungering to know the difference
between good and evil.
We have innocent beasts (serpents) punished eternally
for doing something which they did not do.
We have the guilty Devil let off scot-free, and per
mitted to roam the earth, through all time, to plan more
mischief and ruin millions of souls yet unborn.
And we have, in addition to all this, the sin of all
sins—the teeth of all mankind set on edge, because
thousands of years ago a silly woman chose to eat sour
grapes.
And, mark ye, if every word of this tissue of nonsense
is not precisely true, the whole story of redemption falls
to the ground, for one hangs on the other as cause and
effect.
Religion the Invention of Priests.—Every religious
mystery has had, and still has, its hierarchy, whose
ergon it is to uphold its mythology. The rabbis and
�THE OLD TESTAMENT.
7
Christian fathers did the same; but their concensus
is not of the slightest value and authority beyond that
of the priests of Egypt, China, Hindustan, old Greece
and Rome, Etruria, Persia, or any other priesthood.
All they can do is to say : “ Such is our mythology, and
these are our books.”
The Apocrypha Worthy of Credit as Other Scrip
tures.—We have somewhat run away from our imme
diate subject, the Apocrypha, but have shown there is
no earthly reason why the fourteen half-and-half books
are not just as worthy of credit as the twenty-four selected
by the compilers of our articles in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth.
We said above that these fourteen books were first
called “The Apocrypha” in 1380, by John Wyclif, the
Yorkshire Reformer. Before that time they were called
“ Hagiographa.” And it must be distinctly borne in
mind that all copies of the Old Testament in the first
three centuries of the Christian era contained the Apoc
rypha without the slightest intimation that it differed
in authority and character from the twenty-four books
stamped with the authority of our Protestant reformers.
The Council of Trent in 1546 distinctly recognised its
equal authority and “ inspiration ” with any other parts
of Scripture. It forms part of the Septuagint always used
by Jesus called the Christ; it is universally attached to the
version published in 1609 by the English colony of Douay;
and the Catholic Church to the present hour considers it
an integral part of the Old Testament. The main reason
why the reformers disliked it is because certain doc
trines, such as purgatory and prayers for the dead, which
they objected to, are supported on the authority of these
books; but this looks very like selecting Scripture
because it squares with preconceived opinions, and not
forming religious doctrines on the authority of Scripture.
The Church first draws out its own platform, and then
selects such books as correspond therewith, and rejects
whatsoever makes against them. That is, the Church
makes the Bible, and not the Bible the Church. I grant
that the nation makes its laws, not the laws the nation;
and a master makes the rules to be observed in his house,
not the rules the master; but the things are not parallel.
�8
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT EXAMINED.
In the latter cases the nation and the master are free to
do as they like; but the Church pretends to be the mere
exponent of Jehovah, the interpreter of his laws, the
executive of his government, and every iota of their own
introduction is imposition and forgery. It is living and
acting a lie; palming off their own counters as the
current coin of the kingdom of God. If the Bible is
God’s digest, no human council can possibly introduce
a single dogma or doctrine. The law and the testimony
is the one and only authority, and everything besides is
false coin and religious treason. Take the dogma of
the Vatican Synod in 1870—the Immaculate Concep
tion. Where is that found in the Bible ? Nowhere.
But, if synods are the Church legislators, then plainly the
Church is only a human institution. It is not God’s
Church, but merely a synodical Church. It is not under
the hand and teaching of God, but under the hand and
teaching of human boards, which may vote one thing
to-day and something else to-morrow ; one thing in the
east and another in the west; one thing with the domi
nant party of sect A, and another thing with the domi
nant party of sect B. Practically, this is done all the
world over. A set of men make a platform : those who
like its planks join the set; those who do not, look out
for another sect which they like better ; but, as for God’s
word, it is made by the Church the mere testimonial to
a quack medicine—all very well so long as it fadges with
their own platform; but the moment it runs counter
thereto it is wrong, it must be whittled down, it speaks
in metaphor, the letter killeth, it is man’s interpretation
which giveth life. If science, history, or synods run
counter to the Bible, the Bible, as the weaker vessel,
must go to the wall.
The Two Books of Esdras.—Returning to the Apoc
rypha, you know that two of the books are entitled
“ Esdras,” another form of Ezra. This Ezra or Esdras
was a Jewish priest, born probably during the captivity
of the Jews in Babylon. Artaxerxes, the Long-handed,
King of Persia, gave him a commission to return to
Jerusalem and take with him as many exiles as wished
to return. We are told that only 1,754 persons availed
themselves of this permission, thirty-eight of whom were
�THE OLD TESTAMENT.
9
Levites; all the rest of the captives preferred to remain
in the rich cities and fertile lands of the Persian king.
This speaks highly for the prosperity of the people and
the mild rule they were under. Probably the Mosaic
religion was unknown among them, except perhaps by
a few antiquaries, and certainly it was a matter of in
difference to them. Sixty years before, the King of
Babylon had carried away captive 10,000 princes and
mighty men of valour, besides craftsmen and smiths.
This would amount to something like 300,000 in all.
So that less than one man out of 150 was willing to
return. This does not say much for the Jewish theo
cracy. Above 149 out of every 150 preferred the
government, laws, religion, and customs of the Persians
and Babylonians to the vaunted government and religion
of Jehovah.
The Old Testament Unknown and not Cared for.—
You must not suppose that the Jews had Bibles as we
now have. Apparently, in the reign of Josiah, there was
one, and only one, in the whole kingdom of Judea ; but
not a single copy among all the ten tribes of Israel.
Josiah reigned about 100 years before the Captivity.
Apparently “ the Law of Moses”—-that is, the Pentateuch
—was neither read nor even consulted by the Jews, for,
when Hilkiah the priest accidentally stumbled on a
copy in some rubbish-heap of the Temple, it was
announced to the king as a wonderful discovery, and as
much fuss was made about it as if we were now to light
upon, in some out-of-the-way store, a MS. copy of old
Homer.
There is not the least likelihood that a copy was taken
by the captives to Babylon. All that the Jews knew
about Moses and his religion they learnt by hearsay,
just as the Greeks and Romans knew about their my
thology. It was a system taught by their priests, and
we know from our own history of the mediseval ages
how utterly worthless and untruthful such hearsay reli
gion always is. Read our old English Chronicles, such
as Geoffrey of Monmouth, and see what reliance can be
placed on hearsay history; and there is no reason to
suppose that the Jews differed in this respect from the
ancient Britons. History, as a matter of fact, is quite a
�IO
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT EXAMINED.
modern science, a thing born in the last half of the nine
teenth century; before then it was the record of floating
tradition, cooked, dressed, and salted by romancers, as
historical novels were in the Walter Scott period.
There is a sort of truth in “ Ivanhoe ” and the “ Talis
man;” but it is the traditional grain of wheat in a bushel
of chaff, or needle in a bottle of hay. We know what
such religion must always be—a series of marvels and
superstitions, trifling incidents magnified and grossly
exaggerated, a row in the streets transformed into a great
battle, a rioter knocked down by a policeman exalted
into a martyr, and some ringleader of the mob immortal
ised as a Caius or Tiberius Gracchus. Who now believes
the battle of Lake Regillus, so graphically sung by
Macaulay, to be an historic fact ? or that Castor and
Pollux, on their heavenly steeds, led the Romans to
victory ? Yet such romance was Roman history. Who
now believes in the marvellous feats of Horatius and his
two comrades at the Bridge?—a tale of blood-stirring
interest, and at one time as firmly believed as text of
Holy Writ. There is no tale in the Old Testament so
well attested as these Roman tales. There were feast
days kept in their honour with as much gravity as we
keep Christmas Day or Good Friday. Historians and
poets referred to them, and biographers delighted to
trace up pedigrees to some hero who fought and died
at these mythical engagements. I maintain that Aulus
the Dictator, who led the Romans in the Battle of Lake
Regillus, is as worthy of credit as Joshua, who over
turned the walls of Jericho by too-tooing on seven silver
trumpets. I maintain that the tale of Castor and Pollux
fighting for the Romans is every bit as likely as the
angel which led the host of the son of Nun to victory
after the passage of the Jordan.
“ So Aulus spake, while buckling
Tighter black Auster’s band,
When he was aware of a princely pair
That rode at his right hand.
So like they were, no mortal
Might one from other know ;
White as snow their armour was,
Their steeds were white as snow.......
And Aulus, the Dictator,
�THE OLD TESTAMENT.
Il
Scarce gathered voice to speak—
1 Say by what name men call you ?
What city is your home ?
And wherefore ride ye in such guise
Befoie the ranks of Rome ?’ ” '
And the two celestial horsemen told Aulus they were
Castor and Pollux, and concluded with these words
’Tis for the right we come to fight
Before the ranks of Rome.’ ”
Turn now to the Book of Joshua, ch. v., the last three
verses: “And it came to pass when Joshua was by
Jericho that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold
there stood a man over against him with a sword drawn
in his hand. And Joshua said to him, ‘ Art thou for us,
Or for our adversaries ?’
And the man said: As
captain of the Lord’s host am I come.’ And Joshua
fell on his face to the earth, and did worship the
heavenly visitant. It was Castor and Pollux come, to
help Joshua, as they helped Aulus ; and one tale is just
as likely as the other.
.
Ezra Read to the People his own Version op the
Books of Moses.—Well, Ezra, at the kings bidding,
went to Judea, and thirty-eight men of the priestly tribe
were willing to cast in their lot with him. What he did
in Judea we are not told ; but probably he left his little
colony there and returned to Babylon. Thirteen years
later we find him again in Jerusalem with Nehemiah,
reading to the people “ the Book of the Law.
The
exact words are (Nehemiah viii.):
Ezra the priest
brought the Law before the congregation, and read
therein before the street that was before the Water-gate ,
[he read] from morning until mid-day........... and all
the people wept when they heard the words of the Law.
And on the second day he read to the people about the
Feast of Tabernacles, and all the people went forth and
brought boughs to the roofs of their houses............and
sat under the boughs.”
Inferences.—Before we proceed any further it will be
well to make one or two passing observations.
Manifestly, the Book of the Law was a new thing to
these Jews, for when Ezra read it the words came to
them as a surprise. Apparently they never before heard
�12
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT EXAMINED.
ab°ut ?e Fe?St
tabernacles, and, like children thev
made themselves bowers on their house-tops and played
no
Pal ^rnaC CS; T^y had been born and brought
up in Babylonia, and evidently knew nothing of the Five
Books of Moses. Probably they scarcely knew the name
S Kng Arthaur.°Ur m'ettered hindS
have
I he question hence arises, Where did Ezra get his
oook from ? Happily we are not left in doubt upon the
subject, for he himself tells us all about it in 2 Esdras xiv.
ow Ezra Got his Bible.—Ezra says, as he sat under
an oak tree, there came a voice to him out of a bush
hard by and said: “ Esdras, Esdras !” Whereupon I
feetWe And I?'!6 /AL°rd’” and 1 St00d UP™
feet And the Lord bade me go and reprove the people
for their sms. So I answered and said, “I will go and
do as thou commandest: but when I am dead, who will
then be able to teach the people the way of life ? for the
Book of the Law [that is, the Jewish Bible] has been
burnt, and no man knoweth the things that have been
rtr- m thee]r°k
If’ now’ 1 have found favour in
thy sight, send the Holy Ghost into me, and I will write
out all that hath been done from the beginning of the
world, even all that was written in the Book of the Law
Jat men may find thy path, and that those who live in
the latter days may live.”
And the Lord said to me : “ Go thy way Esdras and
prepare thee a goodly number of boxwood’tablets \ and
with thee five men [names given] skilled in writing
quickly. And when thou hast written what is in thy
heart, some of the things thou shalt publish abroad, and
some thou shalt show only to the wise. To-morrow, at
this hour, shalt thou begin to write.n
So I retired from the sight of man with the five scribes
for forty days into a field, and remained there. But no
sooner had I retired from the sight of man than the
IZX Cai3e,it0 !meuagT’ Sayin£: “Esdras, open thy
mouth and drink what I give thee.” So I opened my
mouth and he reached me a cup full of something like
wMer but the colour of it was like fire. And I took
and drank it, and when I had so done my heart uttered
understanding, and wisdom grew in my breast, for my
�THE OLD TESTAMENT.
13
spirit strengthened my memory. And the five men
wrote the wonderful visions. For forty days they wrote
all day long, and at night they ate bread. As for me, 1
spake in the day, and held not my tongue by night.
And in the forty days the men had written 204 [the
margin says 904J books.
\nd the Highest said to me: “ The first that them
hast written publish openly, that the worthy and the
unworthy may read it; but the seventy last keep back,zx\a.
show only to the wise among the people, for in them
is the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom,
and the stream of knowledge.” And I did so.
Such is the account given by Ezra himself; but there
are one or two things extremely puzzling. The scribes,
we are told, wrote out 204 or 904 books. What, then,
is meant by the first and the seventy last of these, books .
Seventy and one neither make 204 nor 904. It is pretty
plain, however, that the first was the common Bible, or
Old Testament, to be read by and to the people ; but
that there were seventy other esoteric books, to be shown
only to the learned priests. These Apocryphal Scriptures,
like the Sibylline books, furnished traditions whenever
the priests required support.
Another difficulty is this: What is meant by in them
is the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom,
and the stream of knowledge ” ? Does it mean in the
seventy Apocryphal books is wisdom, understanding, and
knowledge, or in the “ wise ” to whom these books were
to be shown ? Either way, it is quite certain only a
very small portion of the Bible was given to the general
public; the main part was kept back, as strong meat
unfit for babes.
The most important lesson, however, taught by this
extract is, first, there was but one Book of the Law in
all Judea, and that was burnt or destroyed by fire. Ezra
says he was the only man who knew it more or less
perfectly by heart, and he retired to a field for forty days,
and wrote out from memory what we now call the Five
Books of Moses, probably including Joshua, and other
“Historical Books” of the Old Testament. For this
task he was qualified by drinking a cup-full of some strong
liquor, of the substance of water and the colour of fire.
�14
THE old and new testament examined.
Internal evidence corroborates this tale, for it is quite
certain that many things could not possibly have been
written till long after the death of Moses; and all such
remarks as “which remain unto this day” show to
demonstration that the writer lived long, long after the
event recorded. Of course, Moses and Joshua could
not have written the records of their own deaths. And
such a remark as “ There has not arisen a prophet since
like unto Moses ” must have been written after the days
of the prophets, which would bring us to the time of
Ezra. Similarly, when it is said at the close of Joshua
that “Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and
all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua,” it is
■‘ '^ manifest that these words must have been written after
the “days of the elders,” and probably a considerable
time after.
If the Old Testament is merely the reproduction of
Ezra, written in forty days from memory, and obviously
interpolated, it is not much to be depended on. Six
weeks is but a short time for such a task, and a slippery
memory may account for many palpable errors. But,
what is worse than all this, Ezra had an object, was very
strongly biassed, was brought up in Babylon in the very
darkest period of Jewish history; and, as “no man
living ” knew the Bible except Ezra, there was no one
to check him or correct his box-wood tablets. No doubt
Ezra was a learned man, as learning then went with the
captive Jews; but it is wholly impossible now to tell
where his memory halted, where he touched up his
narrative, as the Catholics touched up the New Testa
ment, and to discriminate between the original text and
the interpolations introduced. Such a book can, in no
sense, be called the Word of God; and it is a gross
falsehood to affirm that not a word, not a letter, not even
a point, has been added thereto or taken therefrom.
This is palpably incorrect, and, being so, if any part
belongs to the original tqxt, the version we possess is a
comparatively modern recension by Ezra after the
Captivity. He tells us so himself; internal evidence
corroborates his statement; and, if this is denied, the
gainsayer is bound to produce a more plausible theory.
�
Dublin Core
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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What the Old Testament says about itself
Creator
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Julian
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 14 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Date of publication from Cooke, Bill. The blasphemy depot (RPA 2003), Appx. 1. 'Julian' is the pseudonym of Ebenezer Cobham Brewer (1810-1897). At head of title: The Old and New Testament examined. Issued for the Propagandist Press Committee. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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Watts & Co.
Date
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[1891]
Identifier
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N422
Subject
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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 (What the Old Testament says about itself), 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
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Bible. N.T.-Criticism
Bible. O.T.-Criticism
NSS