* Deuteronomy xxiii, 19, 20.** Leviticus xxv, 45, 46.*** Deuteronomy xiv, 21.
To give or to sell putrid flesh to the Gentile, or theGoim, is that the way to educate and prepare the world for brotherhood?
The defenders of the bible have often pleaded that the wars of extermination in the bible had for their object the preservation of the chosen people from idolatrous associations. To keep pure the religion revealed from above it was necessary, it is argued, to kill and destroy the surrounding races and forbid the Jews under severe penalties from entering into close relations with them. But how does selling bad meat to the Gentiles help to preserve the purity of a religion? How does enslaving the stranger contribute to the same end? If it is association with the Gentile that is feared, why were the Jews permitted to buy slaves of them and live with them in the same house or field? And how does lending money upon usury to the stranger help to protect the divine religion from contamination? Candidly speaking, it is difficult to see how anybody with a touch of the spirit of love and humanity in his breast can believe in the Old Testament. The fall of the bastile did not mark the dawn of a better day for France more than the fall of the bible will for both Jews and Gentiles.
One of the most hopeful signs of the day is that the cultivated Jew has completely broken away from the religion of his ancestors. The synagogues are even emptier than the churches. Of course, this has greatly alarmed the orthodox element. Recently the junior rabbi of the wealthiest New York synagogue, * in a sermon, on the first day of Passover, publicly attacked the Rationalists among the Jews, and held them responsible for the disrepute into which has fallen the religion of the bible:
* Temple Emanuel.
The old tree that brought forth many beauteous blossoms is almost stripped of its foliage, and one by one the golden autumn leaves are falling as the older men and women of the congregation pass to their rest. There is no springtime here. It is the winter that is before us. For we have no youth, no young Jews and Jewesses to take the place of the elders. Let each family of the congregation ask itself where the young are, and the answer will be—not within the synagogue, but outside of it, indifferent to it; and faithless and disloyal to Judaism!
Continuing his wail, the rabbi said:
Look among you! Your sons and your daughters, many of them, are marrying outside of their people. They are rearing their children with all modern accomplishments, but with no religion. Their homes are bare of piety and of the spirit of prayer. Some of them perhaps are engaged in charitable work, but the work of charity is a negative work at the best, and with our young men and women it is very seldom carried on in the spirit of Jewish brotherhood, but rather in a spirit of remote pity mingled with disdain. Are you satisfied with this result of your reform of Judaism?
Of course, when this rabbi speaks of religion he means Judaism; and when he speaks of brotherhood, he means "Jewish brotherhood." It is as impossible to make Judaism tolerant, as it is Christianity. Fortunately, many of the fellow Jews of this rabbi did not hesitate to combat a teaching which aims to hold the Jews back while the whole world is moving forward. Why should the Jew remain an Asiatic in religious thought and practice? It may be to the profit of the rabbi to keep the Jew tied to the apron strings of the past, and to prevent his exodus from the wilderness of Sinai, but what spells prosperity for the rabbi or the priest spells ruin for the people. Look at Ireland. The priests wear gold chains and live in palatial residences—they increase and multiply—while Ireland is depopulated and wasted to the bone. Not until both Catholic and Jew dare to disobey their priests, do they begin to prosper and enjoy the liberties and blessings of life. As a Jewish scholar expresses it, the question is not whether or not the Jews shall embrace Christianity or remain Jews, but whether they shall be Asiatic or American.
ANOTHER way of showing how the Old Testament has injured the thought and conduct of the Jewish race—as it has of all other races which have accepted its authority, although, not to the same extent, for the obvious reason that they have wandered from its teaching more freely and daringly than the Jews—would be by examining Jewish religious literature, especially the Talmud.
The rank and file of the orthodox Jews regard the Talmud with almost as great a reverence as the Old Testament. Even by advanced rabbis it is regarded as the best commentary on Mosaic morals and ritual. The Talmud is to the Jews what the decisions and interpretations of church councils are to the Catholics. The Talmud has been called the "Revelation on the Lip," that is to say, the unwritten word of God. For an intelligent understanding of Judaism, a knowledge of the Talmud is as indispensable as that of the Old Testament. We will make a few quotations here to show that the Talmud goes even beyond the Old Testament, if that were possible, in regarding the Gentile as an enemy, instead of as a brother. Many among the Jews are as ignorant of the contents of the Talmud, as many among the Christians are of the contents of the bible. Let me reproduce a few of the Talmudic texts:
If the ox of an Israelite bruise the ox of a Gentile, the Israelite is exempt from paying damages; but should the ox of a Gentile bruise the ox of an Israelite, the Gentile is bound to recompense him in full.*
If one finds lost property in a locality where the majority are Israelites, he is bound to proclaim it, but he is not bound to do so if the majority be Gentiles. **
If one who intends to kill a Gentile, he slay an Israelite... he shall be free. ***
An alien forfeits the right to his own property in favor of the Jews. ****
Rabbi Shemuel says advantage may be taken of the mistakes of a Gentile. He once bought a gold plate as a copper of a Gentile for four zouzim, and then cheated him out of one zouz in the bargain. Rabbi Cahana says that he swindled a Gentile, while the Gentile assured him that he confidently trusted to his honesty. (v)
It is also expressly urged (Bava Kama, fol. 113, col. 1 ), to resort to false and adroit pretexts to secure the acquittal of a guilty Jew. Compare this from the "people of God" with the following from a Pagan Poet:
If ever called
To give thy witness in a dubious case,
Though Phalaris himself should bid thee lie
On pain of torture in his flaming bull,
Disdain to barter innocence for life,
To which life owes its luster and its worth.(vi)
* Talmud, Bava Kame, fol. 38, col. 1.** Bava Metzia, fol. 24, col. 1.*** Sanhédrin, fol. 78, col. 2.**** Bava Kama, fol. 38, col. 1.v Bava Kama, fol. 118, col. 2.vi Juvenal, Sat. 8,1,80.
Doctor Edersheim quotes the following from the Talmud:
The best of the Gentiles kill; the best among serpents, crush its head.
Now this is the book which is to the orthodox Jew in Poland and Russia what the Pope is to the Italian and Spanish peasantry. That it is binding upon the conscience of every believing Jew may be inferred from the following:
Whosoever transgresses any of the sayings of the scribes is guilty of death.*
The Talmud with its twelve large folio volumes, represents the national literature of the Jews for a long period of time. What its worth is, aside from the few scattered passages quoted above, may be seen from the following estimate:
But yet I venture to say that it would be impossible to find less wisdom, less eloquence and less high morality, imbedded in a vaster bulk of what is utterly valueless to mankind—to say nothing of those parts of it which are indelicate and even obscene—than in any other national literature of the same extent.**
* Eiruvin, fol. 21, col. 2.** Dean Farrar, in A Talmudic Miscellany.
But what Canon Farrar says of the Talmud could with equal truth be said of the bulk of the bible. The Jews could ask for no better illustration of the baneful influence of the bible upon their national literature for long centuries than the worthless character of the Talmudic writings.
It would have been a real miracle for the Jews to have developed a great literature, or to have created a great civilization like that of the Hellens or the Latins, with an infallible bible, and its offspring, the Talmud, blocking their progress on every side. It is interesting to note that the only races of antiquity which blossomed morally, as well as intellectually, are those which had norevelationto hamper their free movements or to stunt their growth. The unfortunate Jews went through life carrying the burden of Jehovah. The Greeks made sport of their gods; Jehovah made sport of the Jews.
If in modern times the Jews have produced first-class scholars in nearly every branch of the activities of the mind, it is because, like the glorious Spinoza, the heretic Jew who was cursed and expelled from the synagogue, they have divorced barren Judaism and "taken for spouse" science—the only redeemer that redeems. I sincerely hope—and there are many signs that this hope will be realized in the not distant future—that even as the French after centuries of submission to Rome threw off its yoke and came out of Catholicism into modern thought—not a few individuals only, but the best part of the nation—government and all; and as Spain, the most Catholic country in the world, is preparing to follow the example of France; and as noble little Portugal has just reasoned and voted itself out of the papacy into freedom of thought and action, I earnestly hope that the Jews, too, after untold centuries of intellectual bondage to an Asiatic religion, which is inimical to culture and humanity, will come out of the synagogueen masse, thereby registering their protest against both bible and Talmud, and proving, as the French have done, for instance, that they are great enough to change their religion.
The fear that the decline of Judaism will bring about national disintegration is without foundation. If the Jew is an American in America, an Englishman in England, a German in Germany—how can his withdrawal from Judaism affect his nationality? Is Judaism the name of a nation or of a religion? It is argued that the Jews are compelled to cling to one another, and to keep together in a body, because of the general prejudice against them. Will I be forgiven if I were to say that Judaism is largely responsible for this fearful prejudice. Is there a text in bible or Talmud, which any rabbi could quote, to prove that Jew and Gentile should love and respect one another and dwell together in fraternal relations, taking and giving in marriage, as though they were one people? Produce such a text! And if there be not, is it any wonder that the Gentile, the world over, and in all the ages, has looked upon the Jew as an alien? It is not true that the cause of the prejudice against the Jew is the charge that his ancestors crucified Christ. That is a foolish argument. It is invented by the rabbis to throw dust into the eyes of inquirers. Then why did the ancient Romans, long before Christ, entertain a prejudice against the Jews? The Latin authors explained the reason for the prejudice: It was the religious scruple of the Jew against mingling cordially and honestly with people other than his own. Judaism shut up the Jew in his shell. To come in contact with a non-Jew, to treat him, in every respect, as a brother, was blasphemy. Is it any wonder that Cicero, writing about the Jews, said that the Romans were better acquainted with the Hindus who lived thousands of miles away, than with the Jews who lived next door to them? It was the exclusiveness of the Jew which created and which, alas, prevents from dying, the prejudice against them. It is far from my purpose to contend that this is the only source of the ill-feeling between Jew and Christian, but I am confident that were the Jews to abandon Judaism, an Asiatic religion which will not assimilate modern thought, and abandon also such rites and ceremonies which are unbecoming to a civilized people, and enter into the most intimate domestic relations with their neighbors, in a few generations the ugly sectarian and racial prejudices, lacking their daily nourishment, will waste away and die. "Ah, but if we do that, we will lose our Judaism," says the rabbi. Keep your Judaism, if you prefer it to humanity. Of course, the Christians, too, must outgrow their exclusive religion. But my point is that the Christians, as in France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and America are coming out of the old faithsen masse, while there is as yet no such definite movement among the Jews. True enough, here and there one meets a Jew who has all but repudiated Judaism. As a representative of this class is the writer of the article on Judaism inChambers' Encyclopedia—Doctor Krauskopf, of Philadelphia. This gentleman almost completely strips Judaism of all its biblical and Talmudic features. The program put forth by him is of so very radical a character as hardly to deserve the title of Judaism. It comes near leaving out supernaturalism altogether.
"We discard," says Doctor Krauskopf, "the belief in a God who is a man magnified, who has his abode somewhere in the interstellar spaces. We discard the belief that the bible was written by God, or by man under the immediate dictation of God, and that its teachings are therefore infallible.... We discard the belief in the coming of a human Messiah who will lead us back to Palestine, establish us as the rulers of the world, and make all nations tributaries to us. We discard the belief in bodily resurrection, hell-torments, Paradisian rewards, prophecy, superstitions, all biblical and rabbinical beliefs, rites and ceremonies and institutions, which neither elevate nor sanctify our lives." * Another step, and Judaism will be swallowed up in Rationalism.
Will Judaism take that other step? The Jew will; but I fear that Judaism will not. Like Christianity and every other form of organized religion, Judaism is too aged to put forth new shoots. Abandon it, is my earnest suggestion. It has hurt the Jew. Judaism has made the Jew narrow and anti-social. At a Jewish Congress held at Basle in 1898, Doctor Mandelstam, Professor in the University of Kiev, said: "The Jews energetically reject the idea of fusion with other nationalities, and cling firmly to their historical hope—that is, of a world empire." Again, Dr. Leopold Kahn, the Vienna rabbi, in 1901 declared that "the Jew will never be able to assimilate himself; he will never adopt the customs and ways of other peoples. The Jew remains Jew under all circumstances. Every assimilation is purely exterior." **
* On the Progress of Liberty of Thought, C. E. Plumpter,page 71.* Ethical World, August, 1911.
The educated Jews everywhere should combat such bigotry. If the Jewish people desire universal respect and equality, they must fuse with other people, which they can only do by coming out of the ancient oriental wilderness. To say that the jews energetically reject the idea of "fusion with other nationalities," is to expose them to the charge that they are the sworn enemies of the human race. Rabbis, beware!
During the recent Race Congress in London, Mr. H. Snell spoke as follows on this important question:
Regarding the question from the standpoint of ethical internationalism, it is not the Jew, but Judaism, that is at fault. As a citizen pursuing his daily avocation, sharing in the duties and responsibilities of the common life, the Jew is the equal of his English neighbor, and should be so regarded. He is a reliable business man, a loyal comrade and a good friend. The Jew in the synagogue is a totally different matter. It is the curse of organized religion that it divides men from their fellows, and engenders strife rather than harmony. The moment the orthodox Jew remembers his Judaism, he ceases to be one with the nation in which he lives, and he falls back upon those racial prejudices which certainly perpetuate, even if they did not actually create, the aversion with which he is regarded. It is, I repeat, not the citizen Jew, but the theocratic Jew and the financial Jew, that constitutes the problem. No people can expect to be loved when they, through their habits and institutions, openly deride the institutions and customs of the nations under whose laws they live. The orthodox Jew is not an Englishman or a German, even though he may happen to have been born in the countries named. In so far as he obeys the Jewish law he represents a firm, isolated, yet international political unity, having as its goal the dominancy of the Jewish people. The land in which he lives does not appear to count. The Jewish people become a State within a State, living their own life, and cutting themselves off from the customs and ideals of the populations among whom they exist, and through whom they attain to material comfort. The Jew will not eat or drink with his Gentile neighbors; their marriage laws are not good enough for him; he regards marriage with any one outside his race with horror; he will not accept the day of rest enjoined by the peoples among whom he dwells for his own Sabbath, but makes one day's rest in seven practically impossible for large sections of the people by insisting upon a special day of his own. It is this senseless isolation of Judaism, and its badly concealed contempt for the Gentile, that make the change of attitude toward the Jew so difficult.
The prejudice against the Jew is one of the most degrading things in modern life. Such is the solidarity of humanity that what hurts one is bound to hurt also the other. But we see no solution of the Jewish problem except in the complete emancipation of the Jew from Judaism, and of the Christian from Christianity. Reason will unite what religion has put asunder.
THE masterpiece of the bible was Jerusalem. The proudest building in the "holy city" was Solomon's temple. Both Jehovah and his people exerted themselves to do their utmost to build a temple that was to be the envy of all ages and peoples. Preparations for its erection were begun in the reign of David, to whom God gave untold wealth. It is related in the bible that—
David the king... prepared for the holy house, even three thousand talents * of gold, of the gold of Ophir, and seven thousand talents of refined silver, to overlay the walls of the houses withal... Then the chief of the fathers and princes of the tribe of Israel... offered willingly, and gave for the service of the house of God of gold five thousand talents and ten thousand drams, and of silver ten thousand talents, and of brass eighteen thousand talents, and one hundred thousand talents of iron.**
* Cruden makes a talent of gold about35,000, and a talent of silver about2,000.** Chronicles xxix, 1-7.
Here then was a sum which in our money would run up to about three hundred millions of dollars. We are not going to ask how the chief of a petty tribe, in one of the poorest and most barren parts of Asia, could, at so remote a time, raise so enormous a fund; our desire is only to show the elaborate preparations undertaken for the erection of Solomon's temple. But this is not the only reference to the big sums of money and other precious things which David collected for the temple, which was to be the glory of Jerusalem. Elsewhere in the bible we read:
Now, behold, in my trouble I have prepared for the house of the Lord an hundred thousand talents of gold, and a thousand thousand talents of silver; and of brass and iron without weight.*
This was fabulous wealth. David must have had a gold mine of miraculous proportions. Mongredien, as quoted by G. W. Foote, of England, estimates that the total value of all the gold and silver of every sort in the British Isles barely amounts to seven hundred millions of dollars, and David, the bible says, raised, "in my trouble," when times were not very prosperous, three thousand and six hundred millions in gold, and nearly two thousand and two hundred millions in silver. For no other building were such preparations ever made.
But money alone was not all that was needed. A wise king, indeed the wisest that ever sat on a throne, if the bible is to be believed, appeared just at this time to take charge of the building of the temple. The Lord asked Solomon to draw upon him for whatever he wanted. "Ask what I shall give thee," ** he said. Solomon asked for wisdom, and got very much more.
And God said to him... I have done according to thy words: lo, I have given thee a wise and an understanding heart; so that there was none like thee before thee, neither after thee shall any rise like unto thee. And I have also given thee... both riches and honour. ***
* I Chronicles xxii, 14.** I Kings iii, 5.*** I Kings iii, 11-14.
Thus equipped Solomon took up the work of preparation for the building of a suitable monument to Jehovah, which his father, David, had begun. One of the first things Solomon did was to put thirty thousand men to the task of gathering material for the construction of the temple. For the space of four years this crowd of men traveled into foreign countries in search of timber, as well as of skilled men for the temple:
So Hiram gave Solomon cedar trees and fir trees according to all his desire. And Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat for food to his household, and twenty measures of pure oil: thus gave Solomon to Hiram year by year.... And King Solomon raised a levy out of all Israel; and the levy was thirty thousand men. And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month by courses. *
And Solomon told out threescore and ten thousand men to bear burdens, and fourscore thousand to hew in the mountain, and three thousand and six hundred to oversee them. **
So was he seven years in building it. ***
Four years collecting materials, and seven years building the temple—eleven years altogether. And "threescore and ten thousand men," added to "fourscore thousand to hew in the mountain," plus "three thousand and six hundred" overseers, make a hundred and fifty-three thousand men in the service of the temple. By adding to this number the thirty thousand traveling abroad for the same object, we get the grand total of one hundred and eighty-three thousand and six hundred laborers devoting eleven years to the erection of the temple.
When at last the monument which had taxed the whole nation and its God to the utmost was completed, people came from far and near to behold it and its royal architect:
And when the Queen of Sheba **** heard of the fame of Solomon, she came to prove Solomon with hard questions.
* I Kings v, 10-14.** 1 Kings vi, 38.*** II Chronicles ii, 2.**** Country unknown.
... and Solomon told her all her questions: and there was nothing hid from Solomon which he told her not.
And when the Queen of Sheba had seen the wisdom of Solomon, and the house that he had built.
And the meat of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel; his cupbearers also, and their apparel; and his ascent by which he went up into the house of the Lord; there was no more spirit in her.... And she gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices great abundance, and precious stones. *
There was no more spirit in her, I suppose, means she was dumb with astonishment. Indeed, the fame of the temple of Solomon threw a sort of magic spell upon all the rival nations of the world, hypnotizing them into submission to Israel:
And all the kings of the earth sought the presence of Solomon, to hear his wisdom, that God had put in his heart And they brought every man his present, vessels of silver, and vessels of gold, and raiment, harness, and spices, horses, and mules, a rate year by year.**
* II Chronicles ix, 1-9.** II Chronicles ix, 23,24.
Everything turns into silver and gold. Every one of Jehovah's favorites, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon, became exceeding rich. In the present instance, not only are "all the kings of the earth" on their knees before the man who conceived and carried into completion so stupendous a monument—one of the seven or eight wonders of the world—but they also empty their purses in his lap. The temple is already earning a dividend.
But when we draw nigh unto this bible masterpiece to take its measurements, we find that the one hundred and eighty-three thousand and six hundred men, working for eleven years, and spending the wealth of many modern countries put together, produced only what we would call to-day an unusually small meeting-house.
And the house which King Solomon built for the Lord, the length thereof was three-score cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits.
And the porch before the temple of the house, twenty cubits was the length thereof, according to the breadth of the house; and ten cubits was the breadth thereof before the house. *
* I Kings vi, 2.
Now a cubit is the length of the forearm from the elbow to the end of the middle finger, or about eighteen inches. The Egyptian cubit was about twenty inches. It is not quite certain whether the Hebrew cubit was as long. Some commentators, wishing to help Solomon's temple, stretch the cubit to nearly twenty-six inches. Figuring, however, on the basis of the cubit of bible times, the Egyptian cubit, to ascertain the size of Solomon's temple, we find that this national monument of Israel, the pride of the desert, was about ninety feet long, thirty feet wide, and forty-five feet high; which would have cost to-day, when labor and material are very much higher, but a few thousand dollars, and a short time to build it in. Surely not all the gold and silver which David and his son Solomon raised by taxing the people, and by collecting tribute from foreign powers were spent in the erection of this modest little chapel! Into what other channels could the money have been diverted? Who did the stealing? Nobody, really. It was only mythical wealth, and a mythical army of workmen, building a mythical temple. The real temple which was destroyed when Jerusalem was sacked must have been a very inexpensive affair.
The only striking feature of the vaunted Solomonic edifice was its porch, which was altogether out of proportion to the rest of the building, being one hundred and forty feet higher than the temple itself. But the eccentric porch, climbing up a hundred and forty feet higher than the building it was designed to serve, as well as the building itself, and the untold moneys it cost, together with the huge army of toilers, existed only in the imagination of the Jewish scribe. We have only to think of the pyramids of Egypt, the cities and temples of Babylonia, the still-abiding wonder of Baal-bec—the temple of the sun, to realize that even when they vaunt their gifts and possessions, even with their passion for inflation and swagger, the bible writers do not rise to the level of the achievements of their heathen neighbors.
But it is only by comparing Athens with Jerusalem that we realize how very much more wonderful is the truth of paganism than Jewish fiction. It is not our intention to enumerate the masterpieces of Athens. To preserve even its dust and broken fragments, museums far more stupendous than Solomon's temple have been reared all over the world. Was not Athens—as a city, as a place of habitation, as a school for the mind, as a spectacle for the eye, as the home of liberty—better than Jerusalem? And is not the book or books which tell the story of the wonderful Greeks—how they lived, and thought, and sang, and wrought their masterpieces—better than the book which tells the story of the desert? Both Judaism and Christianity will disappear, but Greece, that is to say, science, that is to say, art, that is to say, civilization, will continue to produce masterpieces, and yet remain as prolific as time.
CONSISTENCY is as admirable in a book as it is in a man. Inconsistency is born either of ignorance or insincerity. In either case, it is a serious blemish in both man and book. There is, of course, a sense in which all growing minds are inconsistent, and proudly so. Manhood is inconsistent with childhood, experience contradicts want of knowledge, and progress is the very antithesis of custom and tradition. But there is no contradiction in dropping an idea which we find to be outworn and untenable, to espouse its very opposite. On the other hand, it would be the most unpardonable inconsistency to try to hold on to an opinion in the face of all the evidence against it. Equally insincere and contradictory would be our conduct if we advocated the new idea without giving up the old.
The Protestants, for instance, profess to believe in private judgment; but they also believe in an infallible revelation. How can an honest mind hold on to both these ideas? What is private judgment good for where there is an infallible guide? But, if private judgment is meant to help us test or interpret infallibility, then private judgment is the judge of infallibility, which is absurd. And when a man uses his private judgment and disagrees with any part of the bible, is he not summarily dropped from the list, and "delivered up to Satan," as the apostle commands? Is that the way to respect the right of private judgment?
The bible is replete with contradictions of this description. A thing is often said and unsaid in the same sentence. An idea is affirmed and denied; a promise made and broken; a doctrine given and withdrawn, in about every chapter of the bible. The most contrary propositions may be proved by texts equally "inspired." Not only does one writer pull down what the other builds up, but the same writer repeatedly demolishes his own work. The author of Exodus, for instance, states as plainly as language will allow that God is invisible; but the same writer assures us that God has been seen by man, and his form and shape discerned. Moses reports the Lord as saying to him, "Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me, and live." * But the same Moses testifies that "the Lord spake unto Moses, face to face, as a man speaketh unto a friend." ** The Apostle John bluntly contradicts this "divine" statement, by another equally "divine," that "No man hath seen God at any time." *** And whereas Jacob swears that he not only saw God but had also a wrestling match with him, which lasted for many hours,**** the Apostle Paul testifies that, not only has no man ever seen God, but no man can ever see him. (v)
It is also stated that Abraham dined with the Lord, and that about seventy of the elders went up the mount and saw the God of Israel. (vi) But more serious than the textual discrepancies, which are numerous, are the moral contradictions, of which the following is but one out of many.
* Exodus xxxiii, 20.** Exodus xxxiii, 11.*** John i, 18.**** Genesis xxxii, 24-31.v. Timothy vi, 16.vi. Exodus xxiv, 9-11.
In telling the story of the Tower of Babel, and, describing the state of society immediately after the deluge, the bible paints a pleasing picture of the world after all the bad people in it had been drowned:
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.*
An ideal state! To educate the races of the world to dwell together as one great family, speaking the same language and cherishing the same hopes—is not that the object of all our efforts? But this was precisely what the God of the bible is represented as not desiring. When Jehovah looked down from heaven and saw the state of harmony in which these people dwelt, and the energy and unanimity with which they labored to erect a tower which in their simplicity they thought would protect future generations from such a deluge as had destroyed their fathers and mothers, he was very much alarmed, and, as the text says, he decided to break up this happy family, and to make strangers and wanderers of its members over the whole earth. Could anything be more inconsistent!
And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one (that, he did not like), and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. **
* Genesis xi, i.** Genesis xi, 5,6.
This picture of human concord and purpose displeased the being, one of whose supposed titles is "Our Father in Heaven." Nor did he enjoy the sight of a united people, building a city, and a tower to defend themselves against the fury of nature; in other words, progress and science provoked the anger of Jehovah. And so the Lord said:
Let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. *
What an occupation for a "good" God! Instead of blessing their union and brotherhood, he destroys them. And this is the being whose fatherhood is to be the basis of human brotherhood! Even as Adam was expelled from the garden, "lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for-ever," ** the people dwelling in peace and laboring in unison must be scattered lest they become great and happy. And is this the book which is to teach us human brotherhood?
* Genesis xi, 7, 8.** Genesis iii, 22.
The brotherhood of man existed; but the bible-God destroyed it. "And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one." Is not that brotherhood? They were not fighting one another; they were not persecuting one another; they were not idle; they were not working at cross-purposes. But after the Lord had sown the seeds of discord, this unity was no more. How different is the bible from what people think it is!
But it would be easier to make a list of the consistencies to be found in the Old Testament than to undertake to call attention even to a limited number of its most glaring inconsistencies. The Old Testament, being miraculous from beginning to end, is but a mass of mutually destructive statements, from the Mosaic commandment, which forbids a man "to trim the corners of his beard," to the saying of the Lord that he himself will turn barber and shave the people:
In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired... the head, and the hair of the feet; and it shall also consume the beard.*
A sane word in the bible is as rare as an oasis in a desert. The Old Testament is mostly paradox and platitude.
BUT what about the New Testament? The Jesus story is as miraculous as the Mosaic, and, therefore, equally well stocked with contradictions. In presenting to us the narrative of the birth of Jesus, the first evangelist, Saint Matthew, states that Joseph "took the young child (Jesus) and his mother by night and departed into Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod.... But when Herod was dead... he (Joseph) arose and took the young child and his mother and came.. and dwelt in a city called Nazareth." ** The Evangelist Luke, on the other hand, not only ignores the flight to Egypt, but leaves absolutely not a shadow of a foundation for the story as told in Matthew, which is, that as soon as the wise men from the East had departed, an angel of the Lord ordered the "Holy Family" to Egypt. This was to protect the infant Jesus from the machinations of King Herod. It is also clearly stated that they remained in Egypt until "the death of Herod." But according to Luke, Jesus did not leave the country at all, nor did he avoid Jerusalem, where Herod reigned:
* Isaiah vii, 20. The hair of the feet. The translators weretoo civilized to render this sentence into plain English, sothey substituted the word "feet" in place of theobjectionable word in the Hebrew.** Matthew ii, 14-23.
And when the days of her purification, according to the laws of Moses, were accomplished (eight days after birth of the child) they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord.... And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth.*
When, then, did they visit Egypt?
According to the law of Moses, Mary, the mother of Jesus, having given birth to a child, could not appear in public until the days of her purification were over, and Jesus, the child, was required by another law, equally binding, to be circumcised on the eighth day, which he was, according to Luke's Gospel:
And when the eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called Jesus.**
* Luke ii, 22-39.** Luke ii, 21.
But if Mary and her son remained in the land to perform these ceremonies, and if they appeared in the temple at Jerusalem, where Herod could have easily seized him, if he was really looking for him, what becomes of the story in Saint Matthew, that Jesus fled by night from Bethlehem to a foreign country, where he remained in hiding until Herod died? Matthew says, Jesus fled to Egypt; Luke says, he did not go to Egypt at all, but was taken to Jerusalem, and publicly circumcised in the temple, after which he and his parents went to live in Nazareth.
If Jesus followed the course laid down by Matthew, he could not possibly have gone to Jerusalem, eight days after his birth, and thence to Nazareth; if, on the other hand, he did as Luke reports, then it was a physical impossibility for him to have fled to Egypt. Is it not evident from these random and careless statements that the writers are not reporting actual events, but merely reproducing floating gossip?
Let us quote another instance: Mark says that "immediately" after his baptism, Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, and that he remained there for forty days. Note the words "immediately" and "for forty days," and then read what John says about what Jesus did after he was baptized. According to this evangelist, Jesus, three days after he was baptized, went to a wedding in Cana of Galilee, where he turned water into wine. Will the interpreters of the Scriptures please tell us how Jesus could have gone to the wildernessimmediatelyafter his baptism and remained there forfortydays, if, according to another report, he went to a marriage feast three days after his baptism? A historical account in which such contradictions occur would lose, and deserves to lose, the confidence of the reader.
Perhaps few events are so essential to the Christian plan of salvation as the alleged crucifixion of Jesus. But there is not a consistent report of even this all-important occurrence in the Gospels. Mark has it that Jesus was crucified at the third hour; John thinks that Jesus was not crucified until some time after the sixth hour. Now, if Jesus were really crucified, and these reporters were in Jerusalem at the time, and were also present at the crucifixion, they would have known, even without inspiration, at what hour the awful tragedy took place. The very fact that they report the time of the day shows that they are anxious to give to their report all the earmarks of a historical document. If, therefore, the event had really transpired, and if the apostles had been eye-witnesses of it, there would have been unanimity as to the hour in which Jesus was crucified. The lack of such unanimity shows, we believe, that the reporters were far removed from the supposed events they are describing, and that they had nothing more than rumors to guide them.
In the description of the scene on Calvary, there are nearly as many inaccuracies as there are sentences.
Matthew and Mark say: "The thieves, also, which were crucified with him... reviled him."
John says: "And one of the malefactors... railed on him.... But the other rebuked him (his companion) saying, Dost thou not fear God?" etc.
Matthew says: "They gave him (Jesus) vinegar to drink, mingled with gall."
Mark says: "And they gave him to drink, wine mingled with myrrh."
Nor do the biographers of Jesus agree as to whether Jesus drank the vinegar-wine, or not. Matthew says, he "tasted thereof, but would not drink." Mark says: "And they gave him to drink... but he received it not." John is sure this is a mistake, for he says: "He received the vinegar." Luke does not mention the wine-vinegar drink at all. We wonder what he would have said had he also referred to the matter.
But a better idea of the character of these documents will be had by comparing the different accounts of the last hours, and the last words of Jesus. If Luke may be credited, Jesus delivered quite a little speech on his way to Calvary. Seeing the "great company of people, and of women" which followed him, he said, addressing the women alone:
Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?*