1
10
2
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/93bdf3b176ba14e1e3837773d09f7022.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=wBJ%7EgOFb-maKBtoI2Moa5yT8SgRz6rZ9%7EDW-9sHj5ly8X9MgyJ5IaBcbPjtVOPWLu01U%7ELkyXGJJ8xGU15kYrkZSIfI0%7EviajD7LzBD3g3q90oCfdktVg1nKJHr7NMcw7kMSUzGhz18-KqufFTGSOcLgu8gb9jcKKMCGfHTkhO27fkF1NBOuRPzoww9SCAeZCQOEY9Md0GRM6ig%7E2NFK1nqVGpeHlSQbmgKHCiwuuyxs3Uo12G9ElCnaB4NtC2cXCLcTluOEj6JTtriaZ3PWRSadkG8rUSmwIUOnFULWF9Knvw2xWQZE%7E59lRpyIQMVvcxlU6n4O5pbILpWCypBMuQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
efd92a91bf6a5a6976919af744325469
PDF Text
Text
MP57
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.
By W. P. BALL.
Christians of course regard the Ten Commandments as
the Moral Law drawn up for the guidance of mankind by
their God. He, though always present everywhere, came
down specially in some concentrated form on the top of
Mount Sinai, and without mouth or tongue spoke these
commands audibly through Moses to the awe-stricken
Israelites. He then added three chapters of other moral
and immoral laws, and six chapters on the elaborate uphol
stery, and fittings, and ceremonies, for a large tent, with
coloured curtains, and with candlestick, tongs, snuff-dishes,
fire-pans, shovels, &c., all fully described by divine wisdom.
Moreover, at the end of the forty days, during which Moses
remained alone with him on the mount, he gave him two
tablets of stone whereon the Ten Commandments were
“ graven with the finger of God.” But the Israelites, notwith
standing their alleged terror of Jehovah and the dreadful
thunders, lightning, smoke, devouring fire, and the exceeding
loud voice of a trumpet, all seen by them on the quaking
mount, to touch which was instant death to man or beast,
had so far ignored Moses and his Jehovah as to make and
worship a rival god, a golden calf, of which the magnanimous
Jehovah immediately became exceeding jealous, insomuch
that Moses had great difficulty in persuading him to forego
the execution of his wrathful intention of annihilating the
whole nation of the Hebrews. Moses in his own uncon
trollable anger, however, having broken the tablets of stone,
went up the mountain again alone, and remained there once
more for the favourite period of forty days, in order to re
place the broken tablets with two new ones, which God,
breaking his promise to re-write them himself, dictated to
Moses instead. It is rather creditable to Moses that,
without food or drink, and probably by the light of his own
phosphorically luminous face, he completed his task in forty
days, the precise period he had previously been kept waiting
on the mount, before he received the same piece of work as
�2
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.
executed by Jehovah, although the latter engraved with his
finger, while Moses doubtless was under the disadvantage of
having to resort to the use of some kind of graving tool.
Let us now examine these important Commandments,
supposed to have been given in so striking and miraculous a
fashion.
We notice as the most prominent feature that, in order of ar
rangement, and in the quantity of words employed, Jehovah
attends first of all and most specially to his own interests and
ceremonies. Barely more than one-fourth of his words are
spent on merely human and secular duties, of which only a
few of the most obvious are mentioned. Four words,
“ Thou shalt not kill,” or “ Thou shalt not steal,” are suf
ficient against real crimes, while about eighty words are de
voted to the prohibition against making and worshipping
images, and still more to the command concerning the
seventh day. We surely may presume that this preference
in order of arrangement and in amount of wordiness mea
sures, in some degree, the relative importance attached by
Jehovah to his various commands. Must we not then infer
that this moral governor of the universe considers working
on a Saturday far more criminal than committing murder,
and preparing an image or drawing, or taking his name in
vain more immoral than adultery, theft, or perjury ? We
see, in short, the commands concerning the worship of the
newly-invented national God, the jealous and arbitrary
Jehovah, usurping supremacy over a few elementary samples
of the only real and universal moral law, the one affecting
human beings. We see a baseless and therefore strongly
enforced superstition prudently condescending to ally itself
with a humanly indispensable following of real moral duties
or prohibitions, which are apparently either less worthy of
loquacious enforcement, or are more capable, in all their
unsupported brevity, of standing on their own merits.
The first commandment, “Thou shalt have none other
Gods before me ” (or, but me), without any honest straight
forward denial of the existence and power of the various rival
Gods then believed in, instals Jehovah as the chief national
deity according to the wording of the Bible, as sole national
deity according to the altered wording adopted in the Church
Catechism.
The Commandment second in place, and, we may suppose,
second in importance, in God’s moral code, is that .we. shall
make no image or likeness of anything. This prohibition of
statues, pictures, &c., annihilating the foremost of the fine
�THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.
3
arts, is identical with the Mohammedan command so widely
obeyed in the East. The modern Christian, however, de
mands an allowance, a consideration, a leniency towards God
Almighty’s composition which he would not grant to a school
boy’s essay or examination paper. Forgetting the stops and
the phrasing, he would have us telescope the two distinct
parts of the command into one. He would supplement
God’s faulty composition thus : “ Thou shalt not make any
image or any likeness of anything whatsoever: (so that) thou
shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them.” An ordinary
and far from all-perfect human being would have prevented
all misunderstanding by commencing, “Thou shalt not
worship images.” God’s ways, however, are not as men’s—
unfortunately—being less clear and intelligible.
In the light of modern knowledge the omniscient
Jehovah’s expressions “ the heavens above,” and 11 the earth
beneath,” and “ the waters under the earth,” are clearly seen
to betray a ludicrous ignorance of great physical facts, a
childish misconception of the wondrous universe made by
his own hands, and planned and sustained by him in every
particular.
But here and everywhere Jehovah always
adopts the popular fallacies concerning such matters, and
ignorantly, carelessly, or wilfully repeats current falsehoods
as facts. How shall he teach man to be strictly truthful
who is not so himself? But we can scarcely expect high
moral qualities in a God who proceeds without shame to
declare that he is a jealous God, inhumanly visiting the sins
of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth
generation of those who, however good and honest
they may be, yet hate him, as millions of human beings in
all ages have had just and ample reason for doing. In Exodus
xxxiv. 7, where the vindictive statement is repeated, the
words “ of those who hate me ” are omitted, evidently not
being regarded by Jehovah as in the least essential.
The Commandment placed third on the list—against
taking God’s name in vain—seems trivial and pointless after
the two preceding ones.
The fourth Commandment, to keep holy the seventh day, is
founded by Jehovah on his own ridiculously erroneous esti
mate of the chronology of his own universe—an estimate in
consistent in its details, and as childishly ungeological as
Jehovah’s expressions in the second commandment are unastronomical. But if facts will not accommodate them
selves to what J ehovah says of them, so much the worse for
the facts; at least, we may fairly assume this to be the view
�4
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.
taken by the strictly orthodox, seeing the extreme disfavour
with which they look upon geology and modern science, and
criticism generally. The Commandment says : “ In six days
the Lord made heaven and earth,” &c., “and rested on the
seventh day” (“and was refreshed,” adds Ex. xxxi. 17);
“ wherefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and hallowed
it.” Now, in Deut. v., in recapitulating the Ten Command
ments, Moses, although merely once more repeating God’s
identical words, omits this reason entirely, and gives a totally
different one, namely, that God had delivered the Israelites
from their bondage in Egypt with a mighty hand, “ therefore
the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath
day.” All things being possible with God, he may of
course be able to reconcile these two versions, each pro
fessing to be the exact words proceeding from his own
mouth on a special occasion. Human reason, however,
declines the task.
The importance attached by a just and merciful God to
this comparatively insignificant command (for mankind will
have rest-days and holidays, and rigid piety can but steal
these from them) is shown by the stringent command
issued by himself in continuation of his Decalogue, that
“ whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day he shall
surely be put to death” (Ex. xxxi. 15). Imagine this com
mand of an infinitely benevolent God carried out in
England at the present time. Imagine thousands of
railway officials, poor shop-keepers, cab-drivers, milk-maids,
and thousands of others being led off handcuffed, to be
stoned to death by a brutal, bigoted populace. Yet this
would merely be pious obedience to a wise and gracious
God’s deliberate command. Pious Jews, it is well known,
consider that the expression “no manner of work” forbids
even poking a fire or snuffing a candle on the sabbath, and
they are therefore compelled, in a cold country like
England, to call in the occasional assistance of a Gentile,
in order that they may pass their sabbath in something like
comfort. Accidentally, and in a crude form, a true moral com
mand has crept into the wording of this Commandment—the
apparent command to work. But this age will not obey it
as it stands, “ Six days shalt thou work.” On the contrary,
having lost the old superstitious reverence for the number
seven, it begins to insist on more frequent opportunities for
rest, recreation, and instruction. Hence the success of the
Saturday half-holiday movement, and of the new Bank
holidays.
�THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.
5
The fifth Commandment bids us honour our parents in
order that we may prolong our lives. This “ first Commandmentwith promise,” as theinspired apostle styles it, thus sullies
natural filial piety and reverence by apparently enjoining
them only as a means of attaining an altogether irrelevant
reward—length of days. This motive, too, though the only
reason adduced for honouring one’s parents, rests upon a
baseless and fallacious promise, the connection between
filial piety and length of life being of the slightest possible
description. Were it otherwise, we presume that lifeinsurance companies would make strict inquiries as to the
filial dispositions and character of would-be insurers, and
unfilial conduct would be made to entail a forfeiture of
one’s life policy. Obedient and reverential sons, on the other
hand, would be accepted at half the usual rates. Never,
however, having heard of any such forfeiture clause or re
duced terms, we conclude that the first divine “ promise ”
contained in God’s wonderful moral message to man is a
dead letter, as fallacious and inoperative as the New Testa
ment promise of Jehovah’s son “that the meek shall inherit
the earth.” Yet Jehovah both here and elsewhere adopts
this deceitful and immoral method of bringing about
obedience to moral obligations. We take great pains to
prevent such methods being applied to our children by
ignorant and indolent nurse-girls and others, and finally
dismiss the culprits, if incorrigible. A divine being, however,
whether he be a Grecian Jupiter or a Hebrew Jehovah,
appears to have some special licence throughout his entire
career, by virtue of which he makes his own morality for
each occasion, and so does as he pleases without incurring
any moral guilt or responsibility. And we—dazzled and
utterly blinded as we are to be before the divinity that doth
hedge a King of Kings—are to imitate such beings in our
daily lives, but must not criticize them ; better the blackest
of merely human crimes than that unforgivable sin. It
is strange that when God appeared on earth as Jesus,
and as an example in human shape to all men, he paid so
little attention to his own fifth Commandment as to treat
his mother on several occasions with marked disdain. Hence,
perhaps, his early death.
The sixth Commandment is, “ Thou shalt not kill.” A
strikingly horrible commentary on this maybe selected from
the Old Testament records in Jehovah’s urgent, oft-repeated,
and most atrocious commands to slaughter whole nations,
sparing neither age nor sex. The penalty enacted by
�6
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.
Jehovah for murder and for sabbath-breaking was the same,
namely death, with important alleviations in the case of one
of these great crimes. The murderer, with whom Jehovah
apparently has more sympathy than with the Sunday excur
sionist, might, in one shameful case at least, go scot free
(Ex. xxi. 21).
The eighth Commandment prohibits stealing. A short
time before giving this command against stealing, Jehovah
had specially ordered the Israelites to borrow “jewels
of gold and jewels of silver, and raiment,” of their
Egyptian neighbours, in order to carry them away with
them in their contemplated flight from Egypt. And so
they “ spoiled the Egyptians,” and were exceedingly proud
of the feat. But notwithstanding his having specially
planned and assisted this pious theft, Jehovah now alters
his mind. He does not indeed return the jewels as a really
penitent thief would do, but he does the next best thing
—he prohibits future stealing. But for all that, his favoured
Israelites are to plunder whole nations of all their possessions,
land and houses, cattle and goods. They are not indeed to
steal the people themselves as slaves. This too lenient
course bitterly enrages the gracious and long-suffering
Jehovah, whenever it is attempted by his less inhuman
followers. Fiercely he insists that they shall murder whole
sale man, woman, and child. Frenzied Bulgarian atrocities
are hellish. Deliberate Holy-Land atrocities are divine.
The ninth Commandment is, “ Thou shalt not bear false
witness against thy neighbour.” Why does it say “ against
thy neighbour ” ? Is it permissible to bear false witness
against a stranger and an enemy ? Of course the learned
and able Christian will inform us that when God said
“neighbour,” he merely adopted a striking and pictorial
way of indicating everybody, enemies included. Pity he did
not speak plainly, then, so that the masses might fully under
stand him without the scholar’s aid. Jehovah’s own
breaches of the spirit of this law and of his other moral
laws, the lying, deceit, treachery, theft, and murder com
manded and assisted or connived at by him, and committed
by his faithful friends and servants, are they not recorded
ad nauseam in his own vaunted bible ?
The tenth Commandment is hardly of sufficient import
ance to justify its insertion in the Decalogue even in Jesus’s
opinion (Matt. xix. 18, Mark x. 19). It says we are not to
covet our neighbour’s houses, nor his wife, nor his slaves
(euphemistically spoken of as servants, see Ex. xxi. 21, &c.),
�THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.
7
nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything which is his. The ox and
the ass are surely not such common objects of covetousness
as to need special mention in a code intended for all times
and nations. The tenth Commandment, like most of the
others, is negative. Instead of giving an object or ideal to
engage the attention and to shape the ideas, it only tells us
what we are not to do, thereby directing the otherwise un
employed thoughts to the very objects forbidden. It is of
course well known to all who understand the moral
management of human beings, whether of children or of
men, that this evil should be avoided as far as possible.
Throughout the whole of the Decalogue we find no men
tion whatever of justice or right, no idea whatever of the
modern sentiment of duty, no information concerning a
man’s duty to himself.
Finally we must say that this Moral Code, specially drawn
up by an all-perfect God for the guidance of mankind, is a
shamefully misleading and imperfect one, loquacious and
bigoted where it might well be silent, silent where it should
speak with solemn emphasis.
As a relic of incipient
sociology, of barbarism a-stir, one might perhaps respect it,
or at least pardon it. But when we see it still written in gold
in the place of honour in almost every church and chapel in
the land; when purblind bigotry and massive ignorance force
its antiquated observances upon us, and fine and imprison
us for doing certain acts on the first day of the week,
because one of the hideous gods of antiquity has prohibited
them on the seventh; when this Decalogue and its associated
Levitical law and Hebraic ideas concerning women and
marriage, and the whole religious scheme connected with
it, are made one gigantic stumbling-block in the path of
social progress, of fundamental justice and truth, of liberty
of speech and conscience—'then it is time for every thought
ful, earnest, conscientious man to denounce the monstrous
imposition, to smite the pious fraud again and again with
his utmost strength and with all the weapons in his power
never ceasing his protest and his conflict till he or the
fraud shall have passed away.
That the Church herself has felt the grievous imperfections
in God’s attempted compilation of a Moral Code, can easily
be seen in her catechism, which in its modernized or explan
atory form of the Ten Commandments omits all reference
to the second and fourth, although in God’s original they
outweigh in mass of verbiage all the rest put together. The
Church, too, partially remedies several other defects. It says
�8
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.
more about our neighbour than about God. It adds, as
duties inculcated by the Decalogue, such much-needed
injunctions as “ to be true and just in all my dealings,” “ to
bear no malice nor hatred in my heart,” “ to hurt nobody by
word or deed,” &c.,and others not so much needed, as, “to
order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters” “ to
submit myself to all my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors
and masters,” &c. In the same “ duty to my neighbour,”
learnt from the Decalogue, the Church also gives two
instances of man’s duty to himself, namely, “ to keep my
body in temperance, soberness, and chastity,” and “ to learn
and labour truly to get mine own living, and to do my
duty.” Both Church and God carefully avoid saying anything
which might render men less submissive, or more thought
ful, or more attentive to personal rights and public duties
and reforms. They both speak to men as to slaves, whose
chief duties are submissiveness and harmlessness according
to the Church, bigoted and terrified obedience according
to Jehovah. Neither of them teach the highest and greatest
command of all.—the endeavour to obtain justice and right
for all—which will mean happiness for all, or such at least as
each deserves and is capable of. This endeavour—this obtain
ing of justice and right for all—the standard of whose world
wide and resistless progress will ultimately be the utilitarian
one alone—not as caricatured by mockers of imagined pigs,
but as continuously improved, verified, altered and elevated’■
by rational, really benevolent, far-seeing minds—this aim,
this tendency, this hoped-for approximate result, it is that
renders worthy of highest honour the patient search for
knowledge, truth, and insight, the quenchless conflict on
behalf of that truth where found, the determined struggle
against all tyrannies and lies, whether grossly obvious in fire
and chains and murder, or more dangerously concealed in
bad social usages and beliefs.
THE FREETHOUGHT"
'
Y
AAA A
H n THp
ONE PENNY.
,v
> A 'r C- Td\ JJICAMA‘
T_>
-
11V T? H 7* Tm?
Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, 28, Stone
cutter Street, London, E.C.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The ten commandments
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ball, William Platt [1844-1917]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Stamp at end (p.8): The Freethought Radical, Literature Depot, 80 Piccadilly, Hanley. Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[n.d.]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N057
Subject
The topic of the resource
Christianity
Bible
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The ten commandments), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
NSS
Ten Commandments
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/a816712cd125498501d5a585d1b5d5a0.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=p8K6EJjgu2eUzxK1ahkmlqoBij2TXfC01rRaqxvm9us5MkqzekUsvY-j6bwfhOiDeYmp8jCp6yfIaSOL8im-mS%7EJOyielEvZmvjylbpCmwn201CIWvuLxF2TcwTbr6SkBwb%7EGwlSnZBXtrz1cnUbsOMYcBQhUJR2cG1lVh2DlK-VfSLcjmHtgKwjLH7cEEqLnGB65JaccGDcBuYqJxNW-koelFY8VY488Jy7DiA5hRa%7ElkpDtfmidM8aeEyGePBJhF4SDte-6WEIt7p3OnhPAhHKUf02yo5JdBeyTN%7ELSxMsFbCzZcIExBL9SozG9AYHhySe5K6W83l4ZQ8YHlQSRA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
8afd4fe8374eb0cbc7a69ae429b52bbd
PDF Text
Text
THE
NEW BIBLE COMMENTARY
'
-
z
•
AND THE
TEN COMMANDMENTS.
BY
EDWARD VANSITTART
NEALE.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SGOTT,
No. 11 The Terrace, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood,
,
London, S.E.
Price. Threepence.
��THE NEW BIBLE COMMENTARY.
My Dear Mr Scott,
In compliance with your request, I state the
impression produced on me by an examination of
the ‘ New Bible Commentary,’ so far as it has at
present proceeded. I regret to say that it is by
tio means a favourable one. If the work is to be
continued in the spirit indicated by this beginning,
assuredly it will completely fail in its primary
object, of “ giving to every educated man an expla
nation of any difficulties which his own mind may
suggest, as well as of any new objections urged
against any particular book or passage of the Bible
whether or not it may fulfil its second object, of
“supplying satisfactory answers to objections rest
ing upon misrepresentations of the sacred text
(Advertisement, page 1).” For, as you are well
aware, it is not upon misrepresentations of the text,
but upon the faithful presentation of its simple,
natural sense, that the force of the objections
adduced to its statements depends. The misrepre
sentations are to be found in the rationalising exposi
tions of its,so-called,orthodox defenders; who twist
the natural meaning of its words—for instance, the
six days of Genesis with their “ evenings and
A
�4
The New Bible Commentary.
mornings ”—into non-natural significations, sug
gested, not by a careful study of the sacred text,
but by the desire to bring the statements which
they profess to regard as divine into accordance
with the knowledge which they know to be purely
human.
If any one, at the present day, wishes to learn
the simple, natural sense of the words of the Bible,
undisturbed by-any theory, but ascertained by
careful inquiry, by the patient application of all
the resources at the command of the modern science
of language, much more if he would learn all that
can be known with reasonable probability about
the dates, authors, and general character of the
books comprised in it, it is to the critical, not to
the so-called orthodox, schools of commentators
that he must address himself. For these orthodox
commentators, so far as I know their works, are one
and all tainted with the “ original sin ” of Apology.
They are, I say it with regret, essentially untruthful.
Not that I mean to charge them with consciously
asserting what they believe not to be true. What
I complain of is, that they put themselves into a
mental attitude in which the light of truth is shut
out, as effectually as the natural light is by shutting
our eyes. They apply to the Bible a principle
which, if it is applied by the Mahometan to his
Koran, or the Brahmin to his Vedas, they would be
foremost in denouncing as a false principle-^—namely,
the assumption that its statements must be taken
to be absolutely correct wherever they cannot be
demonstrated to be false, by evidence admitting of
no doubt; and that the duty of its expositors is to
rack their ingenuity to discover hypotheses in
justification of these statements, without troubling
�The New Bible Commentary.
$
themselves to inquire whether there is a particle of
evidence adducible in support of them beyond the
fact that they are “ wanted ” to meet objections to
the statements to be defended.
That the New Commentary, from which so much
might reasonably have been expected, considering
the flourish of trumpets by which it was ushered
into the world, should be deeply infected with this
grievous taint, is to me a subject ©f sincere regret.
It is so, because this leprosy of pious falsehood
is, in my judgment, the fatal disease by whose
ravages the great ideas of the Catholic Faith,
which, as you know, I differ from you in holding
I to be essentially true, while you regard them as
delusions, are deprived of their inherent power
over men’s minds. For, that these ideas are
intimately connected with the history of the
Jewish nation preserved to us in the Bible is
unquestionable. Obviously, therefore, it must be
of the first importance to the spread of the
ideas, that their effects should not be impaired by
their association with any matters of a doubtful
nature associated with that history. The spiritual
element must be presented, unmixed with the
slightest particle of detectable falsehood, or un
doubtedly it will be rejected, and rejected, I think,
with entire justice, by the earnest, laborious, truth
seeking generation of thinkers nurtured, at the
present day, in the schools of natural and historical
science.
But is the New Commentary really open to such
an accusation as I make against it ? I am afraid
the answer admits of no doubt. I could easily fill
a volume, were I to attempt to point out in detail
the many sins of omission and commission by which
A 2
’
�6
The New Bible Commentary,
it is already marked. I can only refer those, and
I hope they may form a large body, who desire to
satisfy themselves upon this matter, to the searching
examination into its statements by the Bishop of
Natal, of which the two first parts are already
published. But, ex pede Herculem: I will take one
instance only, a very important one, both from the
matters treated of and the mode of treatment, the
story of the “ Ten Commandments and the Book of
the Covenant.” I will show the difficulties with
which the account is encumbered, and how they
are met, first by the Bishop of Natal, and then
by the Rev. Canon Cook and Mr S. Clark who have
divided this subject between them, as the representa
tives of the critical and the apologetic schools. A
comparison of the two methods by their results
will, I think, show clearly and conclusively which
method best serves the interests of Truth and
Religion.
If we read carefully the nineteenth chapter of
the Book of Exodus, we shall find a succession of
“ goings up ” and “ comings down ” of Moses,
between “ the people ” and “ Jehovah,” which are
so unintelligible, that, divested of the imposing
accompaniment of lightnings and thunders, and
thick darkness, and terrible voices, they become
absurd. 1st. In ver. 3 Jehovah callsup Moses into
the Mount, and gives him a message relating to the
blessings to be obtained by the Israelites through
the observance of a covenant, of which no mention
has previously been made. 2nd. Moses brings this
message to the people, who reply (v. 7) that they
will do all that Jehovah had spoken, though there
is no record of his having ordered them to do any
thing. 3rd. Moses returns with this answer of
�The New Bible Commentary.
y
the people to Jehovah (y. 8), and receives the reply
that He will come to speak with him in a dark
cloud, so that all the people might hear, and believe
in him for ever; and the command to return to the
people and prepare them for this appearance on the
third day.* 4th. This order Moses fulfils, and
brings out the people on the third day to meet
Jehovah (y. 17), to whom Moses speaks, and God
answers by a voice. 5th. But all that He says is
to call Moses up a third time into the Mount; and
as soon as he gets there, to command him to go
down again, to warn the people against doing
’what the execution of the orders previously given
had made it impossible for them to do, as Moses
takes the liberty of reminding Jehovah (y. 21-23);
and to direct the“ priests,” of whose appointment
not a word has been said, to sanctify themselves,
“ lest Jehovah break forth upon them and after
wards to come up into the Mount with Aaron.
No compliance with this last command is recorded;
but, without waiting for the return of Moses,
Jehovah, as soon as Moses has spoken to the
people, utters the Ten Commandments (Ex. xx.
1-17.)
8th. Then the account mysteriously carries us
back to the descent of Jehovah in chapter xix.
The people, who were so little impressed by the
“ smoke which went up as the smoke of a furnace,
and the trembling of the whole Mount, and the
sound of the trumpet louder and louder,” and the
voice of Elohim (xix. 19), that it needed a summons
* I omit, as apparently an accidental mistake, the statement
(y. 9) that Moses reported the words of the people to Jehovah,
which would imply another going down and coming up on his
part not detailed.
�8
The New Bible Commentary.
from Jehovah to Moses, in order specially to charge
them “ not to break through to Jehovah to gaze,” and
who had then heard the awful sounds change to the
distinct voice in which the Ten Commandments
must be supposed to have been spoken, now, all at
once, are so frightened by the thunderings and the
flames, and the sound of the trumpet, and the
mountain smoking, that they shrink back, and stand
afar off, and say to Moses, “ Speak thou with us and
we will hear, but let not Elohim speak with us
lest we die ” (xx. 18,19).
9th. Moses, accordingly, after saying a few
words to quiet their apprehensions, but without the
slightest reference to what they had just heard,
“ draws near to the thick darkness where Jehovah
was ” (y. 20); when he receives, 1st, a mass of laws,
treating of nearly all the subjects comprised in the
Ten Commandments, but in a totally different order,
and mixed up with various regulations concerning
different social or religious matters, which extend
from chapters xx. 22 to xxiii. 18, and are terminated
by promises and threats relating to the future resi
dence of the people in Canaan; 2nd, a command to
bring up Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy
elders of Israel to Jehovah (xxiv. 1).
10th. This command Moses fulfils (xxiv. 9-11) ;
when the elders are said to have seen Elohim, and
eaten and drank in his presence (xxiv. 11), though
not till after Moses had “ written down all the words
of Jehovah in a Book,” and made a solemn covenant
between the people and Jehovah in its words (xxiv.
3-8).
If we now turn to the account of the giving of
the law in the Book of Deuteronomy, this Book of
the Covenant, which plays so important a part in
�The New Bible Commentary.
9
Exodus, disappears. In its place we have, as the
terms of the "covenant made by Jehovah with
Israel,” another version of the Ten Commandments,
differing in several important particulars, especially
the reason given for observing the sabbath, from
that contained in Exodus, but which, nevertheless,
is declared to have been the very words uttered
by Jehovah, neither more nor less, and to have been
written by him on two tables of stone, and given to
Moses (Deut. v. 1-23, ix. 10). Many interesting
observations are made by the Bishop of Natal on
these tables, and those mentioned in the Book of
Exodus, which I have not space to discuss here. I
apply myself to the questions, can any reasonable
explanation be given of the incongruities in the
story in Exodus taken by itself, and of the remark
able differences between it and the story in
Deuteronomy ? The answer given by the Bishop
of Natal to both questions is complete. By an
exhaustive examination of the verbal and gram
matical peculiarities distinguishing different parts
of the Pentateuch, he has shown that the narrative
in Exodus consists of an original story, to which
additions have been made, first by the author of
Deuteronomy, and afterwards by the authors of the
laws which form the Levitical legislation.
The original story narrates one ascent of Moses
only on his arrival at Mount Sinai, when he
receives from Jehovah instructions as to what he
is to do (xix. 3a, 9-13) ; followed by the descent
of Jehovah on the third day (xix. 16-19), the terror
of the people (xx. 18), the approach of Moses to
the “thick darkness where Elohim is” (xx. 21),
the laws contained in the Book of the Covenant,
and the acts by which the covenant is made, on
�io
’The New Bible Commentary.
the basis of these laws. Into this story the
Deuteronomist introduced : 1st. The account of
what now appears as the first going up of Moses
(xix. 8-9) with the answer of the people (v. 8),
very inappropriate where it stands, but quite
intelligible from the pen of one who had lying
before him the laws supposed to be spoken by
Jehovah; “all that Jehovah has spoken we will
do ; ” 2nd. The Ten Commandments, on which alone
he dwells in his own fuller and later composition,
the Book of Deuteronomy ; and 3rd. The warnings
and promises which close chapter xxiii. 24-83, with
matter unfit to be introduced into a covenant as
part of its terms, though very suitable in the mouth
of a prophet, as a statement of its consequences.
Into it also thé later Levitical legislator, in his
desire to magnify Aaron and the priestly order,
introduced the strange passage which now closes
chapter xix., and inadvertently brings the priests
on the scene before any were in existence.
The disjointed, self-conflicting character of the
present narrative is thus fully accounted for, in a
manner which accounts also for the omission of any
notice of the Book of the Covenant in the story of
the Deuteronomist, with whose ideas of Divine
Order, as set forth in Deuteronomy, the laws con
tained in it jarred in many particulars. And the
explanation removes at the same time all conflict
between this story and our present conceptions of
the action of Godin the world. For the reasoning
by which the different parts of the Pentateuch are
distinguished, leads also to the conclusion that this
story was written long after the death of Moses,
probably not before the days of David. Thus the
manifestation of the Divine Being recorded in the
�¥he New Bible Commentary.
11
Book of Exodus, is transferred from that outer world
of natural forces, with which, according to the know
ledge now attained by us, it fits so badly, to that
inner world of imaginative power, where the sort
of action described is quite in place. From an in
coherent account of a series of partial Divine acts,
the story changes into an important link in a
universal process ; it takes a high place among the
efforts of the Divine in man, to present to itself an
adequate picture of that all-upholding Deity whose
presence we dimly feel. When restored to its original
form, the poem of The giving of the Law is not only
freed from the liability to call forth unseemly scoffs,
but becomes for us a magnificent outburst of religious
genius; a vestibule worthy of that Temple of which
the semi-dramatic utterances of the Prophets, and
the logical effusions of the Psalmists form the
abiding materials. The ill-arranged collection of
half-barbarous laws, to ’which it is an introduction,
casts an instructive light upon the state of the
Jewish tribes at the time when they were consoli
dated into a nation under their first kings. While
the interpolations, now marring its original unity,
acquire an interest distinct from their intrinsic
merits, by the insight afforded through them into
the progress of religious thought, between the age
of David and that of Josiah, and the light cast by
them, both upon the action of that great, prophet
to whom we owe the grand Book of Deuter
onomy, and on that later Legislation, which trans
formed the Prophet into the Rabbi.
But what becomes of all this food for intellect and
emotion, .when dished up by our orthodox com
mentators ? Of reasonable explanations, of course
there is not a ¿race. On the strange “goings up ” and
�12
The New Bible Commentary.
“ comings down ” of Moses in chap, xix., Canon Cook
has nothing to say ; he simply ignores the perplexity
attending them. On the equally startling conversa
tion between Moses and Jehovah at the close of that
chapter he has nothing better to suggest than “ the
very probable account of the Rabbinical writers,”
that Jehovah committed a slight blunder, in saying
“ priests who draw near to Jehovah,” when he meant
“the firstborn or heads” of families, whom the
Aaronic priesthood afterwards superseded. Of the
laws forming ‘ The Book of the Covenant,’ which,
according to the tale accepted by Mr Clark as his
torical, were spoken by Jehovah to Moses, as part of a
Divine Legislation, and if so, surely, as the Bishop
of Natal observes, “ might be expected to be divinely
perfect, infallibly just and right,”* Mr Clark says,
“that they cannot be regarded as a strictly sys
tematic whole,” that “ some are probably traditional
rules, handed down from the Patriarchs ; and others,
especially those relating to slavery, seem to have
been modifications of ancient maxims, usages which
may have been associated with notes of such decisions
in cases of difference, as had been up to that time
pronounced by Moses, and the judges whom he had
appointed by the advice of Jethro.” Truly a most
condescending Deity is the Jehovah of Mr Clark,
though a little too much given to theatrical effects ;
who descends in the awful dignity of thunderings
and lightnings, and trumpet-voices on trembling
Sinai, nearly frightening the Israelites into fits,
that he might pour into the ear of Moses a body
of traditional rules and ancient maxims, with
a réchauffée of decisions by Moses himself ; laws,
* ‘New Bible Commentary Critically Examined.’
Page 72.
Part II.
�The New Bible Commentary,
13
too “ in more than one instance,” as the Bishop of
Natal observes, “ iniquitous and inhuman” (Ex. xxi.
4, 7,21); and forming a confused jumble, the more
strange because it follows the orderly classification
of the Ten Commandments into the duty of man to
God, and his duty to other men.
But there is stranger matter behind. “What,”
says Mr Clark, “ were the words of Jehovah that
were engraven on the tables of stone ? We have
two distinct statements of them—one in Ex. xx.
1-17, and one in Deut. v. 1-21, apparently of equal
authority, but differing from each other in several
weighty particulars, each said, with reiterated em
phasis, [and that, according to Mr Clark, by Moses
himself], to contain the words that were actually
spoken by the Lord.” Mr Clark justly rejects, “ as not
fairly reconcilable with the statements in Exodus
and Deuteronomy,” both the supposition “ that the
original document is in Exodus, and that the author
of Deuteronomy wrote from memory / with varia
tions suggested at the time,” and “ that Deuteronomy
must furnish the most correct form, since the tables
must have been in existence when the book was
written.” In their place he adopts a suggestion,
made by Ewald, and, from the point of.view taken
by him, quite appropriate, “ that the original com
mandments were all in the same terse and simple
form of expression as appears (both in Exodus and
Deuteronomy) in the 1st, 6 th, 7th, 8th, and 9 th,
such as would be most suitable for recollection;
and that the passages in each copy in which the
important variations are found were comments added
when the books were written; ” “ slighter variations,
such as keep (or remember) may perhaps be ascribed
to copyists.” That is to say, in the Bishop of Natal s
�14
The New Bible Commentary.
words—“ The New Bible Commentary deliberately
admits that neither version of the commandments,
as they appear in the Bible, gives the genuine Ten
Words uttered by the Almighty on Sinai. Although
in Ex. xx. 1, we read, “ God spake all these words,”
and in Deut. v. 22, These words Jehovah spake. . .
and He added no more ; and He wrote them on two
> tables of stone, and delivered them unto me.” And
it further supposes that, in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th,
and 10th commandments, large interpolations must
subsequently have been made, apparently by Moses
when the books were written, which were thus
added to the words really spoken by Jehovah,
“ unto all the assembly, in the Mount, out of the
midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the darkness,
with a great voice.”* Well may he add, “ This
recognition of the indisputable result of the critical
examination of the Pentateuch strikes at the root
of the whole Pentateuchal story as an historical
narrative. If the Ten Commandments in the Pen
tateuch are not genuine and historical, what is ? ”
Mr Clark, indeed, observes, with touching náiveté,
“ that it is not necessary to unite this theory with
any question as to the authorship, or with any
doubt as to the Commandments being the words of
God given by Moses, as much as the Command
ments, strictly so-called, that were written on the
tables.” He should have said, not expedient: for, if
the facts are as Mr Clark supposes, and Moses
wrote the statements which we find in Exodus and
Deuteronomy, as we read them, there can be no
question at all but that he wrote, in the name of
Jehovah, deliberate lies.
* ‘New Bible Commentary Critically Examined.’
Page 68.
Part. II.
�The New Bible Commentary.
15
Miserable result! and yet just punishment of the
untruthful spirit of apologetic comment, to end by
making that contemptible which it begins by
worshipping. Contrast this issue with the view
sketched above of the place in the history of reli
gion belonging to the Pentateuch, if regarded simply
as the expression of the growth of religious feeling
and thought in the J ewish mind.
Look here upon this picture and on this :
Have you eyes ?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
And batten on this moor ?
Surely we may legitimately conclude, with the
Bishop of Natal, “ that it is far more dangerous, far
more fatal to the cultivation of an intelligent and
reverent faith in the Bible, to assert that Moses
wrote the Decalogue, but wrote twice over, each
time in different words, what he knew to be untrue,
than to say that the Decalogue, as critical examina
tion plainly shows, is, in each of its forms, the work
of the Deuteronomist in a far later age.”
Believe me,
Yours very truly,
EDW. VANSITTART NEALE.
Hampstead, October, 1872.
�The following Pamphlets and Papers may be had on addressing
a letter enclosing the price in postage sta/mps to Mr Thomas
Scott, 11 The Terrace, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood,
London, S.N.
Eternal Punishment. An Examination of the Doctrines held by the Clergy of the
Church of England. By “Presbyter Anglicanus.” Price 6d.
Letter and Spirit. By a Clergyman of the Church of England. Price 6d.
Science and Theology. By Richard Davies Hanson, Esq., Chief Justice of South
Australia. Price 4d.
Questions to which the Orthodox are Earnestly Requested to Give Answers.
Thoughts on Religion and the Bible. By a Layman and M. A. of Trin. Coll., Dublin 6d.
The Opinions of Professor David F. Strauss. Price'6d.
A Few Self-Contradictions of the Bible. Price Is., free by post.
Against Hero-Making in Religion. By Prof. F. W. Newman. Price 6d.
Ritualism in the Church of England. By “Presbyter Anglicanus.” Price 6d.
The Religious Weakness of Protestantism. By Prof. F. W. Newman. 7d., post free.
The Difficulties and Discouragements which Attend the Study of the Scriptures.
By the Right Rev. Francis Hare, D.D., formerly Lord Bishop of Chichester. 6d.
The Chronological Weakness of Prophetic Interpretation. By a Beneficed
Clergyman of the Church of England. Price Is. Id., post free.
The “ Church and its Reform.” A Reprint. Price Is.
The “ Church of England Catechism Examined.” By Jeremy Bentham, Esq. A Reprint.
Price is.
Original Sin. By Thomas Scott. Price 6d.
Redemption, Imputation, Substitution, Forgiveness of Sins, and Grace. By Thomas
Scott. Price 6d.
Basis of a New Reformation. By Thomas Scott. Price 9d.
Miracles and Prophecies. Price 6d.
The Church : the Pillar and Ground of the Truth. Price 6d.
Modern Orthodoxy and Modern Liberalism. Price 6d.
The Gospel of the Kingdom. By a Bbneficbd Clergyman of the Church of England. 6d.
“ James and Paul.” A Tract by Emer. Prof. F. W. Newman. Price 6d.
Law and the Creeds. Price 6d.
Genesis Critically Analysed, and continuously arranged; with Introductory Remarks.
By Ed. Vansittart Neale, M.A. and M.R.I. Price Is.
A Confutation of the Diabolarchy. By Rev. John Oxlee. Price 6d.
The Bigot and the Sceptic. By Emer. Professor F. W. Newman. Price 6d.
Church Cursing and Atheism. By the Rev. Thomas P. Kirkman, M.A., F.R.S., &c.,
Rector of Croft, Warrington. Price Is.
Practical Remarks on “The Lord’s Prayer.” By Thomas Scott. With
Annotations by the late Bishop Hinds. Price 6d.
The Analogy of Nature and Religion—Good and Evil. By a Clergyman
of the Church of England. Price 6d.
Commentators and Hierophants ; or, The Honesty of Christian Commentators.
In Two Parts. Price 6d. each Part.
Free Discussion of Religious Topics. By Samuel Hinds, D.D., late Lord
Bishop of Norwich. Part I., price Is. Part II., price Is. 6d.
The Evangelist and the Divine. By a Beneficed Clergyman of the Church
of England. Price Is.
The Thirty-Nine Articles and the Creeds,—Their Sense and their Non-Sense.
By a Country Parson. Parts I., II., III. Price 6d. each Part.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The new Bible commentary and the ten commandments
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Neale, Edward Vansittart [Neale]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 15, [1] p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Publisher's list on unnumbered page at the end. A review of Colenso, The New Bible Commentary Critically Examined. Part II.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1872]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5469
Subject
The topic of the resource
Bible
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The new Bible commentary and the ten commandments), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Bible-Commentaries
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Ten Commandments