* Numbers xxv, 6-13.
Do men like Bryan and Roosevelt, who are representative men in America, know that there are scores of such stories in the Word of God? How do they excuse Jehovah for rewarding Phinehas for so shameful a crime? Why kill a man who has loved and married a Gentile? But to this day, the orthodox Jew sits on the floor and mourns for his son or daughter who has married a Gentile, as one mourns for the dead.
In what sense, then, is it true that "the Old Testament carried Israel far beyond the point any neighboring nation had then reached?"
Of course, as already explained, I do not believe the shameful things the bible relates about the Jewish people, but had Colonel Roosevelt read the bible carefully before writing about it; or had he taken the pains to acquaint himself with the results of higher criticism, as presented by Christian scholars themselves, he would never have rushed into his statement about the Old Testament carrying the Jews beyond any nation of antiquity. In his Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names, Dr. T. Inman, speaking on this same subject, says this:
Even the devil is not so black as he is painted; and however dark may be the crimes of the ancient Jews, the historian is bound to ascertain whether there are not some bright spots in the vast pall of evil deeds that spreads over their history. Yet to me the task is hopeless; I can not find one single redeeming trait in the national character of the ancient Hebrews. It is difficult to find a people in the olden times, whereof we have a history, who were not superior to the necks shall be your footstools.
The same scholar sums up the commandments, exhortations, ordinances and revelations of the authors of the Old Testament, and finds their burden to be this:
Keep yourselves to yourselves, and to the God whom we preach; shun your neighbors, hate them, and, when you can, plunder and kill them. Agree among yourselves and treat your priests well, and then you shall be great and glorious, princes, kings and potentates in every land, and your enemies' necks shall be your footstools.*
It is very much safer for a public man to denounce the trusts than to read and tell the truth about the bible. Mr. Roosevelt has only made an assertion about the value of the Old Testament to the Jews. But an assertion is not an argument. We respectfully call Mr. Roosevelt's attention to the opinion which Jehovah, himself, held of his own people, which will settle the question of whether or not the bible helped to make the Jews better than their neighbors:
And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none. ***
* Vol. II, page 334.** Inman, Vol. II, page 335.*** Ezekiel xxii, 30.
PRODUCE a book like the bible," is the oft-repeated challenge addressed to the critics of the book. It is impossible to produce a book like the bible, without copying it. Another bible, exactly like the one we now have, could only be had by making the second a duplicate of the first. There is no other way of reproducing a book. We can no more reproduce the bible than we can the "Arabian Nights," or Shakespeare. In fact, no two things in nature are exactly alike. Men differ from one another, even as do books. Another Socrates, or another Napoleon, or another Lincoln, would be an impossibility. It is equally out of the question to have another Nero, Constantine, or Pope Alexander VI.
To ask us to produce a book like the bible is as unreasonable as to ask us to produce another Koran, or another Mahomet. If the new Koran be like the old, no addition, or improvement has been made to religious literature by its production; if the new Koran be different from the old, then it is not a reproduction. "Let them produce it!" sounds pompous enough, but it is all noise and rattle.
In a private letter to an inquirer, to whom I am indebted for the quotation I am about to make, Mr. W. J. Bryan, referring to the author of this book, asks, "If Mr. Mangasarian has books better than the bible, there is nothing to prevent his presenting them to the public, and driving the bible out of use." But that is precisely what is being done. The bible has been, a step at a time, driven completely out of use in the halls of learning. It is no longer an authority, for example, on questions of science—geology, astronomy, chemistry, biology and all the other branches of one of the principal pursuits of man. Better books on these subjects have replaced the "Word of God." What is true of science is true of history, politics, government, education, commerce; in all these departments and activities of life better books have relegated the bible into the background.
Did the framers of the American Constitution, for instance, which Gladstone calls "the proudest product of the pen and brain" of man, consult the bible for their work? Did they borrow the doctrine of the separation of Church and State from the bible? The Church in the bible dominates the State; but the Americans compelled the Church to take its hands off the State. Did they learn that lesson from the bible? The Constitution, again, declares that all power is derived from the consent of the governed. Is that biblical? Does not the "Word of God" plainly teach that "the powers that be are appointed of God," and that not to obey the powers thus appointed, whether they be good or evil, is to receive "damnation to their souls"? Evidently, then, the makers of America had better books than the bible to be guided by.
Where again, is it permitted in the bible to tolerate all religions and to favor none? If there is any one idea more prominent than any other in the bible, it is that the religion which it announces is alone true, and that all the others are pernicious, and to be suppressed by fire and the sword. And religious tolerance is one of the glories of the American Constitution.
It is its tyranny that is attacked, it is the forbidding and misleading labels which the priesthood has placed upon it, which we wish to remove. It is the bible as a fetish, or as the best book, or as a weapon of persecution, that we wish to overthrow.
But if the bible is not divine, we are asked again, how explain the fact that despite all the attacks of all the ages, it is still loved and cherished by so many? We might as well ask, "If the bible is divine, how is it that in spite of all the things done to bolster it up, there are still so many who do not believe in it?" If long life and popularity prove the bible true, they ought to prove the Chinese and the Hindu bibles true, too. Is a man right because he is old, or is he wrong because he is young? Is truth to be decided by counting beans, as Socrates would ask? If it is majorities or age that counts, then Christianity must have been false when it was new, and counted only a handful of followers.
And then, there is the question, "What will you give us in place of the bible?" We can not take anything away from you which you can keep. And if you can not keep the bible, you have to let it go, whether or not you can find another to take its place. But are there not better stories in the world than those of the serpent in Eden; the fall of man; the deluge and the drowning of the human race; the ten plagues of Egypt; the talking ass; the whale that swallowed a man, and of the innumerable wars and massacres? Is it true that the foolish rites and ceremonies, and the unintelligible trinities, incarnations and resurrections in the bible can not be matched? Are we really worrying that, if we give up these tales and mysteries, we will not be able to find anything to replace them?
If we desire fairy stories, there is the mythology of the Greeks; if we want miracles, there is science with its real wonders; if we want tales of human adventure and heroism, there is history, ancient and modern; if we want biography, better than the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is the story of the glorious discoverers and inventors whose genius transmuted human ignorance into knowledge and barbarism into civilization. And for the sufferings of the gods, read the story of the martyrdom of man!
LET us put in the mouth of the defenders of the bible the strongest, the most convincing and the most plausible arguments imaginable. Nothing is gained by denying to our adversary a fair chance. Who cares to measure swords with a shadow?
I. "The bible ought to be judged by its fruits," is one of the most commended arguments in its favor. It is claimed that civilization, with all its blessings, is the gift of the bible. If this were true, it could not prove the bible inspired. The inventors of steam, the mariner's compass, and the printing-press have contributed much to human progress, but would that prove that they were inspired? The writings of Socrates and Aristotle greatly aided the development of Europe, as the wars of Alexander the Great helped to educate all Asia. But does that make Greek literature, or Alexander's wars, inspired?
But it is not true that civilization is the exclusive gift of the bible. There was a civilization, in many respects fairer than ours, in Rome and in Greece, without the bible; while in Christian Abyssinia there is no civilization to-day to speak of. If the bible is the only civilizer, the Jews should have been in advance of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans. If the bible is the sole civilizing force, how explain the Dark Ages, when there was no other book that was even allowed to be named which did not agree with the bible?
II. The next "best" argument in favor of the bible is that it gives the world the only information on God, the soul, the origin of man, his destiny, life beyond death, and the mysteries of Revelation. But what is the information worth? Is its account of the creation of man and of the universe out of nothing, and the creation of woman out of a rib, believable? Is the portrait of God, as given in the bible, acceptable? And as to the beyond, does the bible throw any more light on the question than the older or newer theo-sophic books?
III. A third "best" argument is that the bible presents the highest morality and the noblest ideals ever known by man. What are they? Did the bible discover morality? Was selfishness, or theft, or murder, or meanness, a virtue before the bible forbade them? Was there no love of one's neighbor, love of one's country, or nobody to practice charity, or justice, in the world before Moses or Jesus? But it is not true that the bible teaches the highest morality; on the contrary, as this book undertakes to show, morality is the least of all the anxieties of the bible. According to its teaching,beliefcomes first; and all the morality in the world, we are told, can not save the man who will notbelieve.
IV. Another plea made in behalf of the bible is that it has comforted thousands and reformed some of the worst characters. "I have the witness of the spirit in me," argues the convert, "that the bible is the 'Word of God.'" And he proceeds to relate how he was downcast, or fallen in sin, and the bible made a new man of him. We rejoice whenever the disconsolate find cheer or the fallen arise. Nor is our happiness diminished in the least when we are told that it was the bible which worked the change. Whoever dries a tear upon the eyelid of sorrow, and whatever the force which lifts the fallen to their feet, deserves the gratitude of man. But if that proves the bible divine, why are there so many who are not comforted, or so many of the fallen who do not rise at all? An infallible book should save more people than the bible is claimed to do. The greater part of Christendom, not to speak of the rest of the world, is still to be saved. If the bible only saves some, so does education and other purely human agencies; and if education does not save everybody, neither does the bible. Wherein, then, is the superiority of the "divine" to the human?
Moreover, if a man is comforted by reading Shakespeare, or Goethe, or Emerson, or George Eliot, would that prove these authors inspired? Or, if a sick man is made better by exercise, or medical attention, and a bad man becomes good by a change of environment, would it follow that these agencies were divine? If the bible is not the only power that can help, then it is but one of many agencies, and why should one of the many agencies which make for improvement be labeled "divine"?
Nor does the plea that, because "I feel it in my heart that the bible is divine," make it so. If "I feel it in my heart" were enough to prove anything true, other bibles would be as true as ours. The Turk and the Chinaman "feel it" in their hearts about their gods as we do about ours. The argument fromfeelingpractically dispenses with knowledge, and leads to intellectual nihilism.
V. In defense of the bible it is further urged that, it being "a heavenly treasure in an earthen vessel," allowance should be made for the unavoidable imperfections which have crept into its pages. God was the author, man was the amanuensis, they say, and, therefore, the defects of the bible should be charged to the account of man. But why should a heavenly treasure be enclosed in an earthen vessel? Are there no heavenly vessels? Was not Jesus as divine as his father? Why could not he have committed the revelation to writing? Why leave it to unknown and unreliable reporters to transcribe a divine message? If the reporters were not unreliable, then what is the complaint? But if reliable reporters could not be found, the deity could just as easily, and very much more safely, have written the whole of his message with his own hand. Besides, a heavenly treasure which an earthen vessel can spoil is not very heavenly. If the incorruptible can be corrupted, then it is not any different from any other corruptible thing. Alas! for the infallible book which has to be protected against printers' or revisers' mistakes. Let us have a better bible—one that no earthen vessel can contaminate.
VI. Finally, "Why not dwell upon the truths in the bible and let alone the errors?" is another of the "strong arguments" of the bible defenders. "There are truths enough in the bible, and to spare," say they. "Why, then, waste time on its imperfections?" But it all depends upon how serious the imperfections are. It is not the number of errors, but their importance that counts. One serious blemish in a book would be enough to condemn the whole book. The strength of a chain is in its weakest link. It is no comfort to think that there are many more sound links in the chain than weak ones. When the defects in the bible are pointed out, it is no answer to say that many, or even most, of its parts are all right. But this leads us to the next important question.
THE character of a book is determined not by its best, but by its worst parts. This sounds paradoxical, but let us see if it is not true. The bulk of a book may be composed of harmless and even of wholesome matter, but if there is in it even half a page of questionable teaching, the book becomes unsafe. One may write magnificently of liberty and the rights of man, for instance, but if anywhere in the book, even though only for once, assassination be recommended as a political weapon, that one idea would give to the whole work a dangerous tendency. Indeed, the good parts of such a book, if anything, add to the mischief it might do, because they help to give it an air of respectability. In the same way, a comedy, or a drama, may be perfectly proper in nearly all its parts, but if it offends good taste, or attacks morality in a single line, the play is bad. One indelicate scene in a production will bring upon its author the just condemnation of the public. Likewise, a novel may be crowded with helpful philosophical reflections, but the least vulgarity in it would make the book a menace.
We are not taking the position that such books or plays should never be read or acted, but that they should never be given anunqualifiedendorsement. The bible is given an unqualified endorsement. To deserve it, it ought not only to be good in the main, but good altogether. We shall see if the bible is good even in the main; but before we take up that phase of the subject let me give you a few more illustrations to show that it is not true of the bible only that its worst parts determine its character, but also of the men in it who are held up for our emulation. If any one of our physical organs is in an unhealthy or perilous condition, the health of the whole body is in question. The soundness of all our other parts can not excuse the alarming symptoms of the affected organ. The insurance companies will reject our application if, though perfectly well in all our other organs, we are seriously affected in any one of them.
By the same rule is measured a man's intellectual parts. It is not the thousand sensible things a man says, but the one absurd or impossible statement he advances which gives us the gauge of his intellect. To the objection that the rule which we have been applying would do a great injustice if applied to such a man as Alfred Russel Wallace, for instance, who though an eminent scientist, and the rival of Charles Darwin, was also a firm believer in spiritualism, the answer is that the example cited proves the inadvisability of endorsing any book or man, unqualifiedly. Only an infallible book, or an infallible man, could command such endorsement. The bible, therefore, must be perfect in everything, else its unqualified endorsement by the clergy is a real danger.
But not only the physical and the intellectual, but also the moral character of a man is ascertained by this rule. One act of treachery or murder is enough to put a man behind the bars. Before such a man may be restored to society he must reform, and, likewise, before a book may be given full endorsement, the objectionable and the absurd must be eliminated therefrom. In the same way, before any man could be held up as a perfect example, he must be above the charge of even a single serious defect. If you would have your play staged, cut out the offending lines; if you would have your bible read in the home and the school, and the characters therein depicted, admired and followed, cut out the scandalous stories and the immoral teachings it contains. You will not do this? Then both science and morality have the right to condemn your book, and forbid its use in the public schools, by the help of the courts. We hope that in the near future the civilized world will avail itself of this right, by taking steps to render the bible as harmless in church and Sunday-school as it now is in the public schools. This can be done by breaking down theunqualified endorsementwhich the sectarian interests of the country have given the book. Unveil the bible! and its glamour will vanish.
The most telling proofs in favor of the Rationalist position on the bible are the admissions which, from time to time, the defenders of the bible themselves make. The editors of theOberlin College Magazine, which is a religious publication, in an article on "Bible Hero Classics," suggest that parts of the bible should be excluded from the mails:
Modern scholarship has so changed the point of view with which the bible is regarded, that one no longer has the confidence, in sending the "seeker after God" to the bible to believe that he will certainly find Him there. The Old Testament is a complete literature with units of varying value. Much of it is incomprehensible to the ordinary reader. Parts of it should be excluded from the mails.
Prof. Dr. Charles Henderson, the chaplain of the University of Chicago, expresses his utter contempt for certain parts of the bible: "John the Baptist's God was no better than our devil. The things which made Solomon and David saints in their own day would land them in the penitentiary in ours." *
* Reported in the Tribune, Chicago.
The bible quotes God as saying that David was a man after His own heart, but this divine tells us David was a criminal. Could a more damaging admission be made by a clergyman? And yet the book that can mistake a scoundrel for a saint is to be placed in the hands of our children at a very tender age, and foisted upon the whole nation as "the sublimest of books," to quote the words of another divine. * A book concerning which its own friends can hold such diametrically opposite opinions can not be, at least, a very honest book. Honest people speak or write to be understood. If what one reader of the bible calls God, another calls the devil; or if to one reader David is a great saint, while to another he is only a scamp, deserving a long term in jail, then, surely, either we can not understand the bible, in which case the book is worthless; or the bible was not meant to be understood, which leads to the same conclusion.
* Editor Sunday School Times.
The Rev. J. Biresley, writing in theChristian World, pays, unconsciously, a great tribute to the Rationalist: "More than thirty years ago I listened to a lecture by Charles Bradlaugh on 'Is the Bible True'? His assertions shocked the orthodox among his hearers, and yet there was scarcely one of them which the biblical students of to-day would not accept." What a compliment this is to the courage of the Rationalist. He dared to shock the orthodox at a time when they had the power to persecute him unto death. And what an admission this is, of the intellectual and moral superiority of the heretic to the believer! It takes "thirty years" of dilly-dallying before Christian scholars will admit that the persecuted heretic was in the right. Is it any wonder that the world is losing respect for priest and preacher and honoring the heretics as the pioneers of the golden day of truth?
To the churches we say: "If you would save the bible, separate the good from the bad, and the false from the true. Do not print them all in one volume as the 'Holy Bible.' If you have not the courage to call any part of the bible bad, or any of its statements false—we shall do it for you."
THERE are also good things in the bible. It would be regrettable, indeed, to believe it possible for a book of the size of the bible to be wholly bad. Literature is life; and it would be as impossible to find a people with a literature wholly bad, as it would be to find a people with an infallible literature. Together with theVedasof India, theAvestaof the Pharisees, theFive Kingsof the Chinese, the BuddhistTri Pitikes, and the MoslemKoran, the Jewish-Christian scriptures contain many splendid passages.
In all ancient literature we run across bits of fine poetry and eloquence. It would really be impossible to collect all the literature of a people, of whatever race or period in history, into one volume, without finding in the collection many a precious gem. The cry of a man in distress is always touching, be he Jew or Hindu. The love of man for home and fatherland, for wife and child, for truth and freedom, in any book, is sublime. Friendship is the one rose without a thorn, wherever it blooms. A melody does not have to be inspired, to be sung in all lands. We weep for the sufferings of a savage of ten thousand years ago, and we laugh with the men of wit and humor of every race and clime. We have no prejudice against the bible. All we demand is the liberty to read it as we do any other literature: To enjoy what is noble and inspiring in it, and to reject what is false and degrading. It is the object of our efforts to make it perfectly proper, as well as safe, for any one to read and tell the truth about the bible. No man shall be compelled to agree with it upon penalty of losing his standing in the community now, or his "soul" in the hereafter.
In comparing one book with another, we must bear in mind that it is not the ideas in which they agree, but those in which they disagree, that justifies their existence. All the seven bibles of the world * forbid crime and recommend the virtues. Are they, then, all equally worthy? If the important thing is sameness of teaching, why is not one bible enough? But there are many bibles, because it is the differences that preserve, as well as distinguish, one book from another. We would never be able to tell wherein the bible of Confucius was superior to the Moslem Koran, or the Koran to the Avesta of Zoroaster, or again, the book of science to the creeds, if we confined our investigations to the things held in common by them all. It is by the things in which theydisagreethat their real character is revealed.
* The seven bibles of the world are the Koran of theMohammedans, the Tri Pitikes of Buddhists, the Five Kings ofthe Chinese, the three Vedas of the Hindus, the Zend Avestaof the Persians, the Eddas of Scandinavia, and Old and NewTestaments of the Christians.
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor" is in all the bibles, but "Speak according to knowledge" is not in any of the bibles—it is found only in the bible of science, and that is the difference between religion, which builds onfaith, and science, which builds onknowledge.
In this one difference is the glory of science, a glory which is not shared by any of the sectarian bibles of the world.
"Speak according to knowledge" and "Speak according to knowledge." That is to say, "Let your tongue keep pace with your mind," are the two commandments for which one looks in vain in the Jewish-Christian bible. Neither Moses nor Jesus ever thought of commanding, or at least of permitting, people to confine their statements and beliefs to the facts—of never dogmatizing about the unknown, which vice has converted the world into a babel of discord, hatred and persecution. Never did either of these teachers think of inculcating so sweet, so sane, so wholesome, so modest, so reverent, so peaceful, a command as is expressed in the caution which science has posted up at every turn of the road: Speak according to knowledge.
Nor does the bible allow people to speak their true thoughts. Could any book be guilty of a greater offense against the highest ethics? All the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount can not make up for this failure of the bible to encourage, yea; and to command, in unmistakably plain and persuasive language, liberty of thought and speech as the only guarantee of honesty in religion, and as the only enemy which falsehood fears. On the other hand, how can any book be called good, much less the best, in all the world, which contains such a passage as the following:
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.*
* Mark xvi, 16.
Can freedom and the bible live under the same roof? Would it be safe to speak according to knowledge, when "damnation" is the penalty for so doing? Was it to encourage honesty, liberty of conscience and tolerance that so Asiatic and despotic a command as the above has been translated into all the languages of the earth? Would not the bible have been a more helpful book if it had said: "Do not believe upon insufficient evidence, for to do so is to prefer error to truth"? But there is not a single bible that contains so daring a commandment. If a man may not "Speak according to knowledge," he can not act according to conscience, and a religion which denies to us these two rights instead of saving us, destroys us body and soul.
The only difference, in respect to freedom of worship, between the New Testament and the Old is that, while the New Testament postpones the punishment of the free thinker until the day of judgment, the Old Testament proceeds to "damn" him here and now:
If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods... Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: but thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones that he die. *
* Deuteronomy xiii, 6-10.
It brings tears into my eyes to think of Europe and America upon their knees, with blanched cheeks and trembling lips, before such a text. Why retain so unjust and tyrannical a commandment in a book which the people are asked to love and obey? And why translate such evil words into all the tongues of man? What has happened to the European races—to the descendants of the glorious Greeks and the proud Romans—that they can fawn over a book that commands a mother to kill her child for not believing as she does? Surely a blight of some kind must have fallen upon both the heart and intellect of the Western world—else how explain the gilt-edged bibles, containing these inhuman texts by the score, which young and old carry in their pockets, and almost worship?
But the full import of this text is in the words we have printed in italics: "Neither shall thine eye pity him." It seems as though the being who gave the commandment feared that the natural affections might lead fathers or mothers to hesitate dipping their hands in the blood of their own sons and daughters; hence, the imperative, "Neither shall thine eye pity him." Yes, the heart must turn into a stone, even as the head must be stunned, before anyone can be a good Jew or a good Christian.
MUCH depends upon what impression the first chapter produces upon our minds. If we find the statements therein contained accurate, precise, reasonable, original, of course, that fact will dispose us very favorably toward the remainder of the book; but if, on the other hand, the first chapter should appear to us as fantastical, fictitious, legendary, contradictory, grotesque—made up of gossip borrowed from here and there—naturally, we will be prejudiced against the chapters which follow. If the first chapter is not true, the credit of the book will certainly suffer. We may read the rest of the book as literature, or from curiosity, but as the word of God—no!
Curious, is it not, that there is not a Christian scholar, or a university man, who does not admit that the opening chapter of the bible is legendary, that is to say, not true. Sir Oliver Lodge, who is one of the champions of the church, in his reply to Professor Haeckel, refers to the first chapter as "the old Genesis legend." Canon Farrar, who was a shining light in the Anglican church, calls this same chapter an allegory, that is to say, a fable. And the scholarly authors of the Encyclopedia Biblica do not hesitate to deal with the story of the creation in Genesis as mere gossip, borrowed from Assyrian and Babylonian sources.
There is hardly a single educated Christian who accepts the first chapter of the bible as anything more than tradition or fiction.
The dean of the University of Chicago, who is a Baptist clergyman, recently said this in public print: "It is irreligious to teach that the world was made in six days, when we know that it was not." But the first chapter of the bible teaches that untruth, and for two thousand years the churches, according to this Christian professor, have taught what is not true. In the Ten Commandments, supposed to have been given by God himself, and which are still read in all the churches, we are ordered to keep the seventh day holy, "for in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth, etc." Yet, this Christian professor says this is not true. What is still more puzzling is that this same professor who condemns the first chapter as erroneous, accepts the second, or the third, or the tenth, as the word of God! Even more astonishing than this is the conduct of the religious teachers who from Monday to Saturday believe in the scientific doctrine of evolution, but on Sunday repeat with theWestminster Catechismthat "In six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth." What shall we think of a religion that can make people so callous as that?
Of course, a book or a man may make a number of statements of which some are true and some are not, but the man or the book that makes statements of which some are true and some false ceases to be different from any other book or man. The position of the orthodox preachers, that the bible is infallible from cover to cover, is very much more consistent than the position of the Christian professor we have quoted, who says that the first chapter of the bible is not the word of God, but the second or the fifth is. No. If the first chapter of your "holy" book is not divine, the whole book is human.
But to state, as these Christian scholars do, that what the bible says in its first chapter is not true, is to make a very serious admission. If Genesis is a legend, Jesus might be a legend, too, for both Genesis and Jesus are in the same "holy" book. If the bible is unreliable when it says the world was created, it may be equally unreliable when it says Christ was incarnated. If it is not true that the universe was made in six days, it may not be true either that Christ rose from the grave. Our evidence for either statement is the bible. If the story of the fall of man is a myth, the story of the "Lamb of God taking away the sins of the world," may also be a myth. You can not part with Genesis and keep Jesus. The moment a single stone is removed from the structure of super-naturalism, the safety of the whole building is threatened. The tragedy of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is inseparably related to the tragedy of a dying god on Calvary. Christ is supposed to have shed his blood because Adam's sin had brought a curse upon the whole human race; and if Adam is a myth, what becomes of Christ?
BUT let us read the first verse of the first chapter:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Indeed! The text could not be more childish if it read: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the moon." Is not the moon, or the earth, a very small part of "the heaven" and included therein? Why separate the earth, or the moon, from the rest of the universe? How would it sound to say: "In the beginning God created the earth and the Sandwich Islands?" or "the earth and a grain of sand"? But our next comment will show that if the writer of this first verse of the first chapter of the bible was pitiably ignorant of his subject, the translator of it was even worse than ignorant—he was, I am sorry to say, also a falsifier.
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
I hold my breath! The very first verse shows deliberate manipulation and tampering with the text. The Hebrew word which has been rendered into English as "God," is "Elohim," which means gods, not God. The singular of Elohim is Eloah—the dreaded one. But the Hebrew text reads Elohim, not Eloah, that is to say, the plural and not the singular form is used. Had the translators of the bible been free from sectarian prejudices, the first verse in the bible would have read: "In beginning (not in the beginning) the gods created the heaven and the earth." But the priesthood, which had the bible in its custody, desired to prove by it the dogma of monotheism. Yet, the first verse of the first chapter of the bible proved polytheism—more than one god. Whereupon, the translators quietly dropped the letter "s" from the word gods, and made it to read God, thereby suppressing the fact that the supposed inspired writer of the opening chapter of the book was a Pagan, with more gods than the translators themselves believed in. It does not require much effort to see what the consequences would have been had the first verse of the bible been truthfully rendered into the modern tongues. "In beginning the gods created the heaven and the earth" might have relegated the bible to the limbo of other mythological compositions. "The gods" would have made the exclusiveness of Christianity or Judaism impossible. The history of European religions would have been different had not that one letter "s" in the first verse of the first chapter of the bible, and the very first time the deity is mentioned, been killed by the translators. Of course, finding manipulation in the very first verse, we will begin to suspect that other texts, too, have been "doctored."
The very name of the book—Holy Bible—shows manipulation. By what, or by whose authority is the book called "holy"? It is nowhere stated in any of the manuscripts translated that the writings are "holy." The words Holy Bible, then, represent nothing more than the opinion or guess, or, at best, the judgment, of the English translators of the book.
But there is a more serious example of manipulation on the title-page of the Bible. Instead of admitting that the translation has been made from Hebrew and Greek copies, not originals, for there are no originals (and, therefore, there is no way of telling how true the copies are, since they can not be compared with the originals), the wordsTranslated out of the original Greekis inserted on the title-page of the New Testament. This, I am compelled to say, is an indefensible misstatement. The truth is that the originals, if they ever existed, are lost. The bible as we have it is not quite two hundred and fifty years old, and the most ancient manuscript in existence of the Old Testament is not a thousand years old. This is theCodex Petropolitanus, which is in the library of St. Petersburg. But where are the originals? Why were they lost? Why were they "inspired" if they were not to be preserved? But how can men who do not hesitate to state in print that they possess the "original Greek" of the New Testament when they do not and never have possessed it, pose as the moral teachers of the world? If the translators of the bible wished to confine themselves to the truth, instead of saying "Translated out of the original Greek, which is not so, they would have said this on the title-page of their work:
A Collection of Writings
Of Unknown Date and Authorship,
Rendered Into English
From Supposed Copies of Supposed Originals
Unfortunately Lost.
Rev. T. K. Cheyne, who is one of the contributors to the most scholarly work recently produced by churchmen, * gives a number of instances of deliberate manipulation of bible texts by the translators. "The Old Testament," he writes, "is not altogether in its original form; it has undergone not merely corruption, but editorial manipulation. This is plainer in some books than in others; but nowhere, perhaps, is it more manifest than in the Psalter." Two of his examples of mistranslation are from the twenty-ninth psalm:
* The Encyclopedia Biblica.
Authorized Version. Literal Translation.1. Give thanks unto the Ascribe unto Yahwe, O yeLord, O ye mighty, give unto sons of Jerahmeel,the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe unto Yahwe glory
2. Give unto the Lord the and strength.glory due unto his name; Ascribe glory, O ye Ish-worship the Lord in the maelites, unto Yahwe,beauty of holiness. Worship Yahwe, Rehobothand Cush.
Compare also the first verse of the one hundred and thirty-ninth psalm with its literal translation as given by Doctor Cheyne :
Authorized Version. Literal Translation.1. O Lord thou hast O Yahwe ! thou hast rootedsearched me, and known me. up Zarephath,2. Thou knowest my It is thou that hast cutdown-sitting and mine upris- down Maacath;ing, thou understandest my Ashhur and Arabia thouthoughts afar off. hast scattered.All Jerahmeel thou hastsubdued.
But one of the worst cases of tampering with "inspired" texts is to be found in the New Testament. For nearly two thousand years the seventh verse of the fifth chapter of the first epistle of St. John has been saying this: "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one."
You may look high and low for that text in the Revised Version, but you will not be able to find it there. That text has slipped out of, or has been spirited away from, the bible,revised. After twenty centuries of time, the forgery blushes to look criticism in the face. The smuggled text for the trinity is still in the King James' bible, but the best scholarship of the church, at least, is ashamed of it, and has dropped it. What confidence can be placed upon men who wait for twenty hundred years before they will admit that what the Rationalist has been saying right along about the bible being a medley (to which from time to time the sects made such additions as suited their interests or from which they dropped whatever was prejudicial to their claims) is really true.
But let us return to the first verse of the bible: It is evident that the writer of that verse believed in more than one god. This is shown by other references to the subject in the same chapter. He makes Elohim, or the gods, say, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." Still another text reads: "Behold the man has become as one of us," which is also in keeping with the "gods" who created the heaven and the earth.
In reply to this criticism, it has been argued that the "we" or the "us" and the "our" in this part of the bible prove the doctrine of the trinity. The Catholic bible, in a footnote, plainly says so. Evidently, John Milton was of the same opinion, for in Paradise Lost he says:
... Therefore the omnipotent
Eternal father—thus to his Son audibly spake:
Let us make now man in our image... *