1 Multa in Hebraicis et Græcis codicibus vitia esseostendimus. Malta mendacia in rebus minutis, eorum parsuliqua non exigua nostra editione vulgata extat.—-Marianpr. edit. vulg. cap. 21.
If the books of the Old Testament were composed at so late a period, no wonder then that we find all the mysterious part of them so much like the religion of the ancients, and particularly of the Babylonians, and the historical part made up of heterogeneous matters, which in our days, unassisted by any profane writer of that age, we can make nothing of. I shall mention a few of the most striking points of resemblance between the Jewish and other mysteries. Abraham, the most famous of their patriarchs, has ever been celebrated in India. This they seem to have brought from their native country, Arabia. We have already noticed, that their account of the creation is exactly copied from Zoroaster, who says, that the world was made in six periods of time, called by him the thousands of God and of light, meaning the six summer months; in the first, God made the heavens; in the second, the waters; in the third, the earth; in the fourth, trees; in the fifth, animals; and in the sixth, man. The Etrurians and the Hindoos have very similar traditions of the highest antiquity, which, though they were emblems at first perfectly understood, astronomers afterwards converted them into periods, comprehending as many years as was required for different revolutions of the planetary system.
Thus, while the Hindoos and Persians called the days or ages of the world, each of many thousands of years; the Jews, ignorant of astronomy, and fond of the marvellous, comprised all within six common days. Their firmament or heaven of crystal, and its windows, are absurdities not peculiar to them; the feast of the Pascha, which signifies passage, is of Egyptian origin, and was in reverence for the passage of the sun at the vernal equinox: the sacrifices of calves or oxen, the ceremony of the scape-goat, are Egyptian and Indian; the latter, in particular, have a ceremony altogether the same with that of the scapegoat. It is too long to insert here, but I refer my readers to Mr. Halhed's introduction to the code of Gentoo laws for information on this head. The distinction between pure and impure animals was first made by the Egyptians; the ladder seen in Jacob's vision, is exactly a copy of that with seven steps in the cave of Milthra, representing the seven spheres of the planets, by means of which souls ascended and descended. It is also the mythology of the Hindoos, whose antiquity no man at the present day can venture to deny. The seven candlesticks, and the twelve stones are Egyptian, and were emblems of the seven planets, and twelve signs of the Zodiac. The serpent is the most famous Egyptian hieroglyphic; it signifies eternity, or the sum of all things. The fasts before feasts are also derived from this nation. The Jewish high-priest, like the Egyptian, wore an image of sapphire, being the emblematic picture of truth, upon, his breast: in short, the Egyptians, their masters, gave them the first ideas of mysteries, which, in the course of time, they mingled with the Chaldaic; and Manetho informs us, in the extract given by Josephus in his first book against Appian, that, in authors of great authority, he found the Jews to have been distinguished in Egypt by the name of captive pastors, which Josephus artfully enough has attempted to convert into captive kings. These are the men whom sacred historians pretend to have taught the Egyptians all their arts. These wretches, despised of all nations, were themselves the emphatical admirers of the wisdom of the East. Their legislator was an Egyptian priest, and learned all that he knew from them; and you would persuade us that a set of Arabian hordes had founded the Egyptian empire, simply because they, like the Irish, are pleased to say that they were antedeluvians. I pardon the Jews for their credulity; but Europeans in the 18th century ought not to think as the inhabitants of Palestine. If we give credit to all the reports of the origin of nations, we may give up all pretensions to common sense.
The immortality of the soul is shown, by the learned but superstitious Warburton, never to have been mentioned in the Pentateuch; nor the notion of hell, or of future rewards and punishments. There is nothing more certain, however, than that the Pharisees, long before Christ, strenuously maintained the immortality of the soul, and in some measure adopted the doctrine of transmigration of souls, which they had got from the Greeks and other nations.
The Sadducees, founding themselves upon the Bible, fervently denied a future life. The Essenians, according to Philostratus, were Pythagoreans, both in their morals, belief, and mode of life, except that a few of the Jewish articles of faith, such as the necessity of circumcision, were mingled with their creed. Josephus himself acknowledges the similarity between the Essenians and the Plisti among the Thracians, to whom Zamolxis, the disciple of Pythagoras, taught his doctrines: The Therapeutes, the pattern and ori—gin of Christian morals, were reckoned amongst the Jews to be the most holy among the Essenians. They sacrificed their passions to God; they never swore, but made simple affirmations; they lived, as it were, in convents; they despised bodily pain: when they entered their state of perfection, they abandoned their property, wives, children, and all earthly concerns; they lived upon bread and water and salt; and spent the six days of the week in interpreting the allegorical sense of the Bible. They revered the Sabbath with a most scrupulous exactness; then they assembled in places set apart for religion, the men ranged on one side, and the women on the other, separated by a division four feet high, to prevent temptation. Then they sung praises to God, and preached; they obeyed all the laws of their country, but never would execute any order to hurt another person. They, like the Pythagoreans, thought themselves possessed of the gift of prophecy; they, like the Pythagoreans, believed in the great year, whence arose the famous millennium of the Christians. The three sects of Jews—Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenians, lived all in perfect harmony; the incredulous Sadducees not being considered as heretics, but often attaining the dignity of high-priests. This suffices to show, that the Jews borrowed from other nations those very mysteries which the ignorance of writers has misled mankind to consider as the special revelations of Jesus Christ.
I have insisted so much upon this circumstance, because there is not a single article of Christian morals, nor one religious tenet, contained in the New Testament, that was not known before Jesus Christ was born. And the Christian religion, like that of the Jews, is a corruption of the mythologies of the nations they brand with the name of infidels.
I return to your book. It is now needless to answer your logical inference, that if Esdras is the compiler of the books of the Pentateuch, they may still be true. I have already said, that we are not to sacrifice our reason to the compilations or works of a Jewish scribe, who borrowed evidently so much, and who pretended to divine inspiration and conversations with the angels. When I began to read your book, I was impressed with the idea of your candour; sorry am I to see the malevolence with which you treat Mr. Paine, and how much you misrepresent his just aspersions on the conduct of Moses. Your language almost persuades me that you do not differ from the gentlemen of your profession. Could Moses affirm, as you pretend he might, that he never persecuted any man? What! that monster, who, although married with a Midianite, ordered thousands of his credulous followers to be murdered, because one of them had slept with a Midianite, whom Josephus states was his wife! What! when his brother and coadjutor makes a golden calf to the people, this impostor, instead of punishing him, orders 3,000 men to be murdered, and appoints Aaron his successor! Because Korah, Da-than, and Abiram, could not suffer to see him usurping all the power, he murders them, although Korab was the descendant of Levi. This is Moses, who says, like Bishop Watson, that he "was a very meek man!" Were these continual murders necessary to instruct ignorant idolaters who followed the example of their priests? Have not the founders of our faith been the most cruel murderers? But all this we are told was the immediate orders of the Lord Jehovah, a merciful God. How feeble appears the power of this great God! He is continually repenting, and always obliged to renew his covenants with a set of wretches, who, although they enjoyed his special protection, always forsook him, and only fulfilled his commands strictly when they were ordered to massacre. They might have been the favourite people of God, but I am sure they were the disgrace of men. You talk of idolatrous nations sunk in vice. I know of none so barbarous as the Jews, whose legislator was obliged to fly from Egypt for murder, a perfect assassin. The laws concerning paternal power, which you support, are horrid. Their having been adopted by many nations, is a proof of the general prevalence of superstition, ignorance, and despotism. I have nothing to answer to your discourses on tythes. The Bible is preached up, because it teaches passive obedience, donations to the church, and such other acts ofpublic utility.
After what I have observed above, it will be useless to say much as to your third letter, in which you examine minutely the passages Thomas Paine has pointed out to prove the Pentateuch not genuine. First, As to the objection taken from the name of Dan, I never thought it specious. This is not the case with the very next one, which is of very great weight. The writer, after enumerating a number of Arabian names, concludes in these words, "These are the kings that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel." Contrary to my expectations, you acknowledge this to have been written after the Jews had kings. Many of your brethren have attempted to deny it by quibbles! but you say that this does not invalidate the authority of the book: wonderful! if youralma-matertaught you, that an evident lie or contradiction in any book, particularly of remote antiquity, and relating histories unsupported by impartial authors, does not create a suspicion, which approaches to certainty, that the book is not authentic; if you think so, I must give up arguing with you. It may be an interpolation, you observe. How did you learn this? You will at least leave, me the right to suppose, and you cannot deny that the presumption is against you, an absurdity in a book is a reason for distrusting the rest. I have probability on my side; for the Jew who forged this passage, either from piety or ignorance, might have forged the whole book, or so interpolated it, as to destroy its credibility. At any rate, the detection of falsehood in a history, is not a motive to suppose it true. It requires an excess of piety to break through all the rules of logic and common sense. How does it happen, that the Lord Jahovah does not provide better against such mistakes creeping into the book of the law of his favourite people? It could seem as if he had done it on purpose to create incredulity, and enjoy the pleasure of punishing unbelievers, as of old, he hardened Pharaoh's heart, that he might have a pretext to inflict calamities on him and his people.
My Lord, what credit would we give to a history of William the Conqueror that had the following sentence, after naming different persons,And these were the names of the Kings of England before George the Third came to the throne; for what purpose could any person insert such a passage? He must have been absolutely mad. It could only get into the work from its being compiled during the reign of George the Third, and arising from a forgetfulness of the writer, or ignorance of the transcriber: in no case could it be inserted in a book, which you say was kept in the public records, and over whose purity the whole Jewish learned men would watch; you must either give up your argument from the public records of this people, and no longer deem them great authority; or, if you persist in it, I leave you to reconcile the most palpable interpolations and forgeries with the scrupulous attention with which you suppose the Jews preserved the word of God. But what is most curious in this passage is, that we find it verbatim in 2 Chronicles, chap. i. ver. 43, and you seem to glory in discovering this similarity of the passages. "Why might not," you say at the end of your fourth letter, "the author of the book of Chronicles have taken them, (meaning the names of the kings of Edom, &c.), as he has taken many other genealogies, supposing them to have been written in the book of Genesis by Samuel?" Another acknowledgment of more interpolations in Genesis.
But, Sir, who gave you the right, you who exclaim so much against the unsupported assertions of Thomas Paine, to suppose that the author of Chronicles copied an interpolation from Genesis, knowing, as he must have done, that it was interpolated by Samuel?
Would he not rather, to make the book consistent, expunge it? Could he be so ignorant as not to see the contradiction? What is more strange, how came Samuel to introduce such a passage? The tendency of it could only be to weaken the authority of Genesis; but, allowing all your groundless suppositions to be true, do you not see that they only prove the ignorance of Samuel and of the Jewish history writers, and at once destroy the superstructure you have in your following letters raised upon the supposed accurate records of the Jews? The supposition of Samuel being the author of the interpolation, is like an historian, who, to the history of Charles the First, should add some accounts, concluding with observing, that all this took place before George the Second, or should even venture further, and instruct us in some prominent features of the French revolution: yet this is the case with the passage in question; for it is unquestionable that the Jews had never a king till the time of Saul; that, under Moses and the Judges, they held kings in detestation. The fact is very plain. In Chronicles, the passage has an obvious and clear sense; for there an account of the kings of Israel is given, and the sentence now under consideration precedes it. Indeed, the whole chapter xxxvi. of Genesis is almost literally the same with chapter first of Chronicles; and every unbiassed man will conclude, that the former is copied from the latter. That little concluding expression, beforethere reigned any king over Israel, certainly marks its date; and there is nothing more probable, than that when Esdras and the scribes compiled these books, they should insert in Genesis the posterity of Esau, as far as the history of Genesis went, and that this unlucky passage should by mistake be copied too. I acknowledge, that an interpolation, when we can prove the period of its insertion, does not destroy the validity of a book, if the rest of the facts are consistent, and supported by collateral proofs; but the Bible is an unconnected rhapsody, written by we know not whom, without order, arrangement, or a shadow of method. Besides, it is the word of God; and what, in a profane writer, would be a slight error, is here a most material fault; if our future happiness depends, as you suppose, on our believing this book, which certainly can never take place while such reasons for scepticism remain. In proportion to the importance of an event, so we must be careful in examining the grounds upon which it stands, or else we must be like those whimsical men, who will require the best evidence for the truth of a trifling report, but find no repugnance in crediting the most marvellous events upon trust.
Mr. Paine properly concludes, that Genesis is a book of stories, fables, traditions, or invented absurdities, or downright lies; and this I not only affirm with him, but will prove to my readers, that it is in no respect deserving of more credit than the fabulous and early history of all nations. Next follows your rhapsody upon the beauty of the Bible and the truth of it. Pardon me if I think it like a madman's reveries. Even the men of your profession have long ago given up such a ridiculous conceit. Whoever has read eastern literature, or the late translation from the Shanscrit, will find that the same style with that of the Bible pervades all eastern compositions. In all of them we find the frequent use of allegory, and a quaint and formal manner of expression. Divest the Bible of its Oriental garb, and put it into common language, you will find, except the episode of Joseph, and two or three other passages, it is absolutely illegible. I have already shown the Pentateuch to have been a very modern work, and the Jews to have borrowed every thing from other nations. No wonder then that theAbramshould resemble theBramaof the Hindoos, or that a few names in the supposed genealogies of the Jews should be like those of the Assyrians, Medes, &c. Genesis gives a description of creation truly beautiful! We did not spring from grasshoppers, nor the world from an egg; but the wise Moses informs us, that we were made of clay and a little breath. This may be sublime to you; but the philosopher is never elated by fables so absurd. It is not true that Genesis is the oldest, nor a very old book. Sanchoniato, the Hindoo books, those of the Egyptians and Chinese, are of much higher antiquity than Moses. In vain has Mr. Maurice struggled to dazzle our understandings with his incoherent suppositions, to prove that the Hindoos borrowed their religion from the Jews, from a set of Arabian hordes, from the slaves of the Egyptians, from a petty nation, who, as Julian says, never produced a single work, and whose credulity has ever been proverbial. The astronomical records of the Chinese prove, that there were men and astronomers in that country at the time when the wretched Jews would make us believe the world was inundated from the windows of heaven, and no creatures existing but Noah, his family, and the beasts in the ark. Further, Souciet mentions an eclipse of the sun recorded in the Chinese history, which happened 2155 years before Christ, which is but 236 years after the Deluge; a time when, the Bible informs us, the earth was only inhabited by the sons of Noah, while Egypt was then so peopled, that 90,000 cities could not contain the inhabitants, and China was not less so. The Hindoo astronomical observations, as far as they have been examined by the most learned astronomers of the age, such as Baillie, Le Gentil, and others, carry their antiquity between four and five thousands beyond our æra; for a proof of which, I refer you to Mr. Playfair's excellent paper, in the second volume of the Edinburgh Philosophical Transactions. The Hindoo religious books contain, besides, a great many of the ideas afterwards adopted by the Jews. The long lives of antedeluvians, in particular, are the exact copy of the Iogues of the Indians. The Dwapaar Iogue, the latter part of which answers to the period of Noah, was when men's lives were limited to a thousand years; and Methuselah we know did not live so long. They have, too, their mythological deluge, or the incarnation of Vishnu into a fish. For an account of which I refer my readers to Volney, and to Mr. Maurice himself. The former gentleman is a good judge of ancient literature; he pretends that he can prove, that most of the chapters of Genesis, supposed to contain names of persons, are mythological: the posterity of Noah is, according to Volney, no more than a geography of the world as known to the Jews. I have not read Mr. Volney's memoir which I understand he has published on this subject; but, when I consider the late period when Genesis and the other books were composed, and how much the Jews borrowed from the Egyptians and Babylonians, how much the deluge of Noah and his ark resemble the emblems of Osiris; in short, when I reflect on the unintelligibility and apparent absurdity of Genesis, on the impossibility of the Deluge, and of the not less absurdity of the population of the world so soon after that calamity, I confess I am much inclined to despise the whole performance. There have been various suppositions upon the meaning of the names mentioned in Genesis. Adam has been said to signify, in many parts of Asia, the first day of the week; and Enoch, the seventh successor of Adam, to be the same with Saturn, or the seventh day. Thus Assur, Elam, Lud, Madai, Javan, and Tiras, which are said to be the founders of the Assyrians, the Elamites, the Lydians, the Medes, the Ionians, and the Thracians, may very probably be nothing else than the enunciation of the names of these countries; for, between Assur and Assyria, or Lud and Lydia, there is not a very great difference. We know that Egypt is by the Arabs calledMasr, which has the same consonants with the HebrewMisraim, whose plural termination implies properly the inhabitants of Egypt. In the Bible,Misraimis called the founder of that kingdom. We also know, that Syria is calledBarr-el-sham, or the country to the left. The inhabitants of Thebaid are called the sons of Cush. Again, we find several names of towns very much resembling those of the supposed founders of these monarchies; Sur, or Tyre, is not unlike Assur. These are conjectures; I pretend to found nothing upon them; but, at least, they are probable. Your Genesis, on the contrary, as it is commonly explained, contains palpable lies. It supposes a deluge, which neither did nor could take place; it destroys the human race, when we know that nations were then in existence. Lastly, it talks of the founders of nations, which existed long before that period. But, even had Genesis been written at the time of Moses, it might be worth while to inquire into the import of his genealogies; but, being a very modern compilation, collected by an ignorant people, partly from tradition, partly from scattered and mutilated records, it does not deserve the serious attention of the philosopher.
You next attempt to justify the conduct of God towards the Canaanites, whose great crime was to defend their own country, and to adore their own gods instead of the God of the Jews. When a man makes an apology for such conduct, we only can answer by an appeal to the feelings of men, from which alone we derive notions of humanity. It was natural for the adorers of a Phenician Jehovah to be the enemies of the Babylonish Baal: both these gods sprang from the wild fancies of men. The jealous God of the Jews, the all-wise, omnipotent, and benevolent, could not convert the worshippers of another god, without exterminating whole nations, even to the little children; but this barbarous mandate came from the priests, who have in all countries, and all systems of Religion, adopted this method of conversion. You state, that Moses "gave an order that the boys and women should be put to death; but, that the young maidens should be kept alive for themselves;" and, that you "see nothing in the proceeding, but good policy combined with mercy. The young men might have become dangerous avengers of what they would esteem their country's wrongs; the mothers might have again allured the Israelites to the love of licentious pleasures, and the practice of idolatry, and brought another plague upon the congregation; but the young maidens, not being polluted by the flagitious habits of their mothers, not likely to create disturbance by rebellion, were kept alive:" and you add, that "the women children were not reserved for the purposes of debauchery, but of slavery; a custom (you acknowledge) abhorrent from our manners, but every where practised in former times, and still preserved in countries where the benignity of the Christian religion has not softened the ferocity of human nature." Is extermination an example of the mercy of priests and their gods, "whose justice is subservient to mercy," "whose punishments originate in his abhorrence to sin,"—and whose commands to massacre, to butcher, and to exterminate, "are only benevolent warnings?"—You dare Mr. Paine to prove, that the young women were kept for debauchery; and you triumphantly add, "that if he does, you will allow Moses to be the horrid monster he describes him, and the Bible a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy." Do you think, that consigning to slavery thirty-two thousand maids, is consistent with the benignity of God? I do not hesitate to consider this worse than merely making them the partners of licentious pleasures. But, in what consisted the wonted wisdom of a God, whom you describe as ever solicitous to lessen the influence of sin? Let me ask you, if the young women were not as liable to incite the passions of the Jews as their mothers, and whether their slavery would not increase the opportunities for debauchery? Could it be consistent with humanity, much less with the mercy of an all powerful God, to put to death all the boys of a nation, merely because they might in time revenge the insolent invaders of their country? Were all the male children already polluted from their birth? It would have been easy for them to convert them to another religion, but to your God it was impossible. The bloody invaders of America pursued not another plan, even after "the benignity of the Christian religion softened the ferocity of human nature." Have these Christian invaders any where respected the chastity of women when they made them slaves? And have the Jews, God's chosen nation, at any period, either while under his protection, or since he abandoned them, shown themselves more virtuously inclined than other people; were they ever prevented by the striking manifestations of his mercy, his power, and his justice, from going away to adore other gods, and falling into all sorts of wickedness? In short, if the Bishop rests his defence of Moses and the Bible upon this passage, I am willing to appeal to the judgement of all mankind. If any person can believe it consistent with the benevolence of omnipotence, to sacrifice whole nations to be massacred and plundered by a few hordes of bloody Jews; if he can think this to be part of a grand scheme for the good of mankind, he must give up all pretensions to reason, common sense, and humanity. But it is time the world should see, that this holy book the Bible, "which, in weight of authority, and extent of utility, exceeds all the libraries of the philosophers," contains pretences for all bad actions, and stifles the laws of humanity and morality. Upon this book have inquisitors, crusaders, and religious men, founded pretences for the most diabolical persecutions, avowedly undertaken for the express purpose of unrooting infidelity, and for the glory of the Lord. Every man who reads the word of God is warranted to reason thus: God has ordered murder and robbery; he has instigated his favourite people to exterminate whole nations; therefore I can do no better than to imitate the Almighty; and every crusader may pretend to have the same authority from God as Moses; and miracles are never wanting to prove it. Because Abraham was a pimp, and his wife a prostitute, so may any person be, without losing the patronage of the God of Abraham. Every man, in short, may imitate the meek Moses, the humane David, without fearing to incur the displeasure of the Almighty. Thus Ravaillac thought he was doing as holy a deed, when he attempted the life of Henry; as Dominic, or Torquemada, when butchering the wretched heretics, who had the misfortune to fall a prey to their bloody zeal. The whole Old Testament is so filled with barbarous stories, that if they did not excite laughter by their improbability, they would freeze the blood in, the veins of any man endowed with humanity. What an irksome task have those undertaken, who have attempted to reconcile the horrible crimes of the Jews with the mercy and wisdom of the Creator? Has ferocity forsaken Christians as you insinuate? Have the modern religious fanatics yielded in cruelty to the Jews? Those two religions have successively inundated the earth with the blood of innocent victims. Have not the followers of Christ constantly preached passive obedience to the church, have they not frequently relieved the people of their oaths, and have they not fomented most of the civil wars that laid waste all Europe? It is well that priests have not been able to persuade mankind of late, that the minister was the oracle of God. The pride and foolishness of science has put this out of their power; they cannot lead nations as they did the Jews; we are not so easily persuaded of the immediate manifestations of God's commands to the priest. We know science too well to believe that the pillar of fire that went before the Israelites was God himself. We might have shown the people, that a pan with red-hot substances would have the appearance of a fire by night, and a cloud of smoke by day, a custom practised, from time immemorial, by the caravans. Although, my Lord, the wisdom of God may be foolishness to man, I acknowledge I am neither fond of crediting absurdities, nor have I so much faith as to take the work of priests for supernatural mandates of Providence; when they speak in their usual senseless and unintelligible language, I conclude that it is either to dazzle the ignorant multitude, or I look upon their dreams as the consequence of dire superstition, the first effect of which is to make us unacquainted with ourselves, under the imposing aspect of familiarising us with imaginary beings. At the conclusion of my remarks upon the Old Testament, I shall give a few extracts from those books, wherein my readers may see the character of the Jews and their God in glaring colours, and judge whether any honest man would not tremble at the thoughts of having done as much injustice, and committed such atrocities as this Jehovah.
You enter again upon your favourite topic, genuineness and authenticity. I shall not repeat what I have already said. I confess my great surprise at your laying such stress upon the most trifling and false of your arguments. You now strive to prove, that a book may contain a true history, although it should be anonymous. Pray, my Lord, do you think, that to prove a book spurious, when it is believed to be genuine, is a demonstration of the truth of the contents? You thus leave us uncertain whether Joshua be a genuine book. You have sadly confused yourself in the maze you have created. To put it beyond a doubt that the sun stood still, you appeal to the book of Jasher, which Joshua mentions in the following words, "Is not this written in the book of Jasher?" And in like manner, you refer to other books frequently quoted as authorities in the Bible. Does your zeal blind you so far as not to let you perceive, that this very argument may with redoubled strength be retorted against you? for if an author, who is said to write his own history, appeals to another book for a proof of his actions, that book must be of much greater authority than his own: we cannot avoid believing the writer of the work alluded to had better information. In short, the book appealed to contains the only authentic testimony. Now, permit me to ask you, who could be better authority than Joshua himself, writing at a time when we must suppose many of his soldiers who had witnessed the miracle were alive? What is this anterior book which Joshua respects so much? Was it written by himself, then it would be idle to quote it; and, at any rate, whoever had written it, it is evident that the author of the book of Joshua has no proofs of his own, but rests solely upon the book of the Holy, or of Jasher. This circumstance proves clearly, that the writer of the Book of Joshua composed his book out of some more ancient memoirs, which being lost, we can say no more of their authority than for that of any old tales. You talk of the public records of the Jews as confidently as a Member of Parliament speaks of the papers in the Tower. Do you know at what period the Jews began to keep written records, and do you also know, whether those that were kept existed when the books of the Old Testament were compiled? Had you been instructed in these particulars, and had you been not altogether divested of candour, you might have informed your readers, that, previous to the time of kings, we have not a shadow of proof of the existence of any historical records among the Jews. We, no doubt, read, that there was a book of the law of Moses, in which Joshua wrote something too respecting the renewal of a covenant. This seems to be the only written record among the Jews, and it contained nothing but religious precepts, or the law, strictly speaking. In Joshua, chap. viii. ver. 31, we read, "As Moses the servant of the Lord commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses and ver. 32, He wrote there upon the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he wrote in the presence of the children of Israel and ver. 35, He read all the words of the law, the blessings, and curses, according to all that is written in the book of the law of the Lord, and there was not a word of all that Moses commanded which Joshua read not before the congregation of Israel." We know, likewise, that this law was written in the circumference of an altar composed of twelve stones. This is the only book either Moses or Joshua were ever said to have written; the writers of the Pentateuch, and of the other books, certainly never meant to inscribe them to Moses, Joshua, &c.; they bore the names of books of Moses, of Joshua, Judges, &c. because they treated of these personages. What then do you infer from the quotation of books by the Bible authors, except that they all wrote in very modern times, when they wanted the corroboration of more ancient books, whose date and authority we are equally strangers to? This book of the law, which you so triumphantly mention as a book written and existing a few years after Moses, turns out to be nothing more than what is contained in Exodus, chap. xx. to chap. xxiv. to which Joshua added some detail about the third covenant of God.
I beg the reader will observe, that the writer of the Book of Joshua does not mention the second, third, or any other book of Moses, but simply notices the book of the law of God. Now this great book was written upon twelve stones, and in Exodus we find the precise commandment of Moses to build the altar, and to read the commandments at the feast of tabernacles; so that it contained not one line of history, and could have no authority. It was a law written upon stones, which Moses, in Exod. chap. xxiv. v. 7, is said to have read to the people: "And he took the book of the covenant, and read it in the audience of the people." This covenant, and particularly the repetition of it after the disobedience of the Jews, is the only part of the Scriptures that Moses ordered to be preserved with a religious care. Nothing of the most important parts of Genesis or the other five books is ever mentioned in the commandments of the law of God: the writer of the law certainly knew not that the Pentateuch existed. Had Moses written such a work, would he have failed to recommend to the Levites to keep the precious records of mankind, the sublime account of the creation? Did not the whole of the faith of the Jews depend on their being acquainted with the history of their forefathers, who were under the immediate protection of God? The ten commandments every person knows from the light of nature; no nation has ever mistaken them; but the origin of mankind is a subject of great darkness, and which the Jews ought to have preserved most carefully. Certain, however, it is, that excepting a few rites, the Jews lost not only their books, but even the recollection of their feasts, during their captivity. The other books referred to in the Bible prove, that those left are mere collections of borrowed stories, and pretended abridgements of books of greater authority, which are unfortunately lost, and leave a wide field for scepticism, particularly upon improbable or contradictory accounts. As to the belief that the books of the Old Testament are inspired, it is a tale, which, after what we have stated, even a child would laugh at.
You next seriously endeavour to corroborate the ridiculous miracle of the sun and moon standing still. You are as unsuccessful in historical as in scientifical arguments. The story in question is so stupid, that the bare mention of it marks a man's credulity, so as to render him the object of compassion. That an ignorant fanatic should attempt to defend such absurdities, would be a matter of no surprise; but to witness a Regius Professor of Divinity, a natural philosopher, bring forward facts from profane history to prove the truth of so bare-faced a lie, denotes at least your want of prudence. I cannot persuade myself that you seriously believed what you wrote; I cannot think you capable of falling at once into the most gross astronomical and historical error. I shall state the matter briefly. There was a tradition in all antiquity, and particularly among the Egyptians, relating to that motion of the earth's axis which has been observed by astronomers, and whose complete revolution round the four cardinal points takes up no less than 9,160,000 years. In the course of this revolution, it necessarily happens, that the sun will rise where it sets, that north will be south, and so on. The Egyptian priests pretended that this revolution had taken place in their country without changing the climate, while the Babylonians maintained, in the time of Alexander, that 140,000 years had elapsed since their first astronomical observations. This, no doubt, was the time that must have elapsed since the earth moved north and south. The Egyptian priests, long before Herodotus, had lost their knowledge of astronomy, which accounts for their mistake. It is evident, that the displacement of the earth's axis must be accompanied by the heaviest gravitating matter, and, therefore, what is now land, has been and will, in the course of ages, become sea. Now, my Lord, what has the Egyptian tradition to do with the sun stopped by the robber Joshua? What connection has the stoppage of the sun, or rather the earth's motion, with the sun rising where it sets? Were the thing possible, the sun would nevertheless rise in the east. Besides, does Joshua say the sun changed its course? Had this been the case, (I am ashamed even of the supposition), how could the earth change its axis in an hour, without shattering the whole globe, without inundating vast tracts of country, and tearing others asunder to reestablish the equilibrium of gravity? Study and consider; do not attempt to ridicule the little learning of Thomas Paine, when you fall into such absurdities. Read Chinese history, and you will find that their careful astronomers did not perceive the long day and night. It was probably the sun of Judea only that altered its course; they did not seem to be enlightened by the same luminary. Those who believed that heaven was made of crystal, could find no difficulty in crediting this silly story. I have insisted so much upon this, because you ought to know the common principles of astronomy, and somewhat of history. Here again you appeal to the book of Jasher: it deserves no more consideration. To deem an appeal to a lost book evidence of a prodigy, because the author affirms it, is a degree of credulity which may gain the kingdom of heaven; but, in the republic of letters, such believer will pass for a very contemptible reasoner.
These are the miracles, and the histories, better attested than the History of the Twelve Knights Of Charles the Great, and such other foolish tales. Surely, none can believe that 19,000 men fought against the Midianites, and murdered a prodigious number, without having lost a man, and disbelieve the famous battles of the knights, in many of which six men fought several thousands; the conversation of the devil with Cromwell, or the miraculous appearance of God to almost all the knights and warriors among the Catholics. The sacred phial of Rheims, and the chapel of Loretto, were both conveyed in a manner you know well, and which few men in the two countries dare controvert. They too appeal to their books of Jasher. The tale of making the sun stand still has not even the merit of novelty; this luminary had long before stopt his career, out of respect to Bacchus. Neither is the shower of hail-stones new, for Jupiter of old sent a shower of hail upon the rebellious sons of Neptune.
As to Joshua having written the book that goes under his name, we have, besides what has been stated, the strongest evidence against the genuineness of this performance. The death of Joshua is recorded in chap. xxiv. and it is related exactly in the same style as what precedes it. The writer even mentions several events posterior to the death of the son of Nun. You have passed over the arguments of Thomas Paine drawn from this passage, "The Jebusites dwelt with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day." It was natural for you to overlook a passage, which demonstrates that the book of Joshua was not written until after David, when, and not before, the conquest of the Jebusites took place. It is beyond a doubt, that they never dwelt with the Jews in the time of Joshua, since, in the first part of the above quoted passage, he says, "As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out." How then did the Jews inhabit Jerusalem in the days of Joshua? I refer the reader to the Age of Reason, and to an answer to it by Mr. David Wilson, for further information, on this head. In the latter, he will be amazed at the weak subterfuges used by the author to evade the strength of the objection by Mr. Paine. But this is not the only event related in Joshua, which did not take place till some time after his death. Almost the whole of chap. xvii. contains facts of this nature. Where the portion of Manasseh is described, it is said, in ver. 12, "Yet the children of Manasseh could not drive out the inhabitants of those cities, but the inhabitants would dwell in that land." It is added, "And it came to pass, when the children of Israel waxed strong, that they put the Canaanites to tribute; but did not utterly drive them out." Now this certainly did not take place during the life of Joshua, for in the very same chapter, he promises those of the tribe of Manasseh success against the Canaanites. In the preceding chapter, v. 10, there is a passage of the same kind, "And they (the Ephraimites) drove not out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer; but the Canaanites dwelt among the Ephraimites unto this day, and some under tribute." This needs no comment: let any person ask himself when this came to pass, and they will at once find out the credit due to books containing such shameful anachronisms and falsehoods. In chapter first of Judges, purporting to contain the history of the Jews after Joshua, the reader will find a faithful copy of the passages quoted, not excepting the taking of Jerusalem. Let himc ompare ver. 8, 27, 28, 29, and following, with the detail of distribution of lots to the tribes, in chap. xvi. and xvii. of Joshua the same events are told in the very words, and apply to two different periods. This is a strong instance of the disorder that pervades the whole of these books, and how undeserving of credit, even in the most probable events, is what you call sacred writ. We are constantly reading over accounts of the same events, sometimes said to be written by dead men, and never marking time; forit came to pass, which is the Bible phrase, does not fix the period when the event took place. These books bear all the marks of being the productions of some persons at a very late period, and to have suffered great interpolations. Joshua is, in the face of it, a continuation of Deuteronomy, Judges of Joshua, and so on through the remainder.
You pass on to Judges. It requires neither great knowledge nor ingenuity to discover, that this book is an unconnected farrago put together by some unknown person. You do not attempt to say any thing in its favour. Sad falling off from the paths of faith! Formerly it would have been a heresy to assert that Judges was a book of no authority: now, even a Bishop has nothing to say in its defence. You then proceed to Ruth, and endeavour to blot out the apparent infamy of her conduct, with what success, I leave the reader to judge, after he has perused her history. Next follow your subtle distinctions between the inspired and non-inspired part of the Bible, which may be very intelligible to an inspired Bishop, but cannot fail to appear a mere dream to a man in his senses. Notwithstanding Austin and your other brethren, this distinction rests upon nothing but fancy. Your request is very moderate. "Receive the Bible," you say, "as composed by upright and well-informed, though in some points, fallible men, (for I exclude all fallibilitywhen they profess to deliverthe word of God), and you must receive it as a book revealed to you in many parts by the express will of God, and, in other parts, relating to you the ordinary history of the times." Bravo! A Catholic is as reasonable in his demands. He only asks a little credulity to believe the inspired whenthey profess to be so. It is truly a childish request, begging the question at every word. To believe the Bible to be inspired is the grand point. The reasoning you employ is in perfect consonance with the absurdity of your wishes. You disbelieve a history if you find it inconsistent, but revere it, and swear by the author, if he wrote by inspiration. Swedenburgh could not wish more faith in his adherents. You sayreceive it, as the inquisitors saidimprimatur; but philosophers weigh the ground of their belief; they detect the Bible writers, prophets, and inspired men, in palpable contradictions in history; and you will obstinately insist on our believing the most improbable of all their stories, because their absurdity persuades the faithful that they were revealed by their God in dreams.——You have acknowledged yourself, in a subsequent letter, that the history and mystery of the Bible are so interwoven, that if one falls the other cannot be maintained. Why did God mingle his important and sublime precepts with such ridiculous trash, so as to induce mankind to disbelieve them both? Suppose I should meet a peasant coming from a fair, pretending he had seen the king with his guards, and if I should find this to be untrue, would I not deserve to be laughed at, if I credited that he had wrestled with a spirit, or that he was carried up to heaven? This, however, is the case with the Bible. Here we are told that the sun stood Still to protract the bloodshed of that villain Joshua, while, in another place, we read that a city was taken 370 years before that event. Your vaunted prophets were soothsayers, psalmists, and orators, who were generally employed in writing the public records. It is a word applied in the Bible to holy men. These prophets, like the augurs of the heathen, were often detected in falsehoods, and, in the time of Samuel, it would appear, by the Bible itself, that to raise ghosts was a trade as common as that of tailors in our days.
You now come to Samuel. You are candid enough to acknowledge with Hartley, that he could not have been the author of the second book, nor of most of the first that go under his name, yet this has been the opinion of the church; and I know of no direct proofs that he wrote the remainder: by what logic do you or Hartley conclude, that Samuel wrote any part of the books ascribed to him? An author is proved not to have written most part of a work ascribed to him, who then would, without direct proofs, proclaim him the writer of some small passage, or any particular part of the work? Who but a clergyman would build a system upon a mutilated, spurious, and insignificant collection of absurdities and wonders? It is, I allow, probable that Samuel wrote something: your quotations prove no more; but what this was, we are, I presume, equally unacquainted with. That the scribes also composed some records of the lives of their kings, I will not deny. The question is, what degree of credit does the mutilated, contradictory, and fabulous collection, said to be made out of these records, deserve?
In the time of Charles the Great, some persons probably recorded his actions. Is this a reason for any man to believe the fabulous legends we have of him, written in the dark centuries? The legends of the Egyptian and Greek gods, and their collection of oracles, were not only credited by whole nations, but proclaimed true by councils much wiser than the synagogue. The records of the saints were undoubtedly made few years after their death, in ages far more enlightened, after the invention of the press, written by the then most learned men of society, (the monks), who certainly were not inferior to the Jewish scribes, yet these legends contain often nothing but collections of absurdities and miracles. Read theFlores Sanctorumof the Romish church, and you there will find miracles in every page, and the lives of saints a tissue of prodigies. I need not add, that very few learned men among the Papists give credit to the absurdities contained in these books. It is even the opinion of the best informed men, that the monks have written lives of saints who never existed.
You acknowledge the wickedness of the kings of Israel and Judah; but you take care to observe, that this was not owing to their religion. Impertinent assertion! Was not Saul dethroned because he was humane enough not to cut Agag in pieces? Did not the Lord Jehovah love the man after his own heart, who put the miserable inhabitants of Rabah under saws, axes, and arrows of iron; who made them pass through the brick-kiln? Did not this Jehovah approve the base murder of Adonias? Was it the same Jehovah who said to Jonah, that he was not so unjust as to sacrifice the whole city of Nineveh for their sins, because there were thousands in it who did not know between good and evil; and who yet, the Jews tell us, commanded the extermination of whole nations, without even sparing the little children? Did not the plagues which he sent to Pharaoh and David fall upon thousands of innocent individuals? At least, do not the Jewish books affirm it? Such horrors could only be respected by the Jews; such absurd miracles could only be credited by the most ignorant of men. You pretend, that the partiality of God to the Jews proceeded from their being the only nation that believed in the unity of God, and who have preserved their belief on this head unshaken till the present day. Are you in earnest, can you assert this before men of common information? Do you take Englishmen for idiots to be deceived by your assertions? Are you ignorant of the adoration of the Ethiopians? Do you forget that the wise men among the heathens said,Colitur forma pro Jove?Did you never peruse any account, of the Chinese, or of the Hindoos? Do they not admit one supreme agent, an all-wise, intelligent, &c. being, and whose inferior agents they represent by symbols? The Hindoos have even all the metaphysical refinement of our divines; and their definition of God is fully as perspicuous as that given in our Catechism. I have avoided to give long extracts in this pamphlet; but, that the authority of an English Bishop may not be a presumption to many that I am making false assertions, I shall transcribe a passage from a commentary upon the Reig Beid, a book unquestionably of the remotest antiquity.
"Glory be to Goneish! that which is exempt from all desires of the senses, the same is the mighty Lord. He is simple, and than him there is nothing greater. Brehm, (the spirit of God), is absorbed in self-contemplation; the same is the mighty Lord who is present in every part of space. Brehm is one, and to him there is no second; such is truly Brehm. His omniscience is self-inspired, and its comprehension includes all possible species," &c. It is true, we are not here told that God is a jealous God, that he visiteth the iniquities of the father even unto the fourth generation. I could adduce fifty passages from the Greeks and others to prove my position, but it is needless. The point is still to know whether these notions make men better, whether they are founded on truth, and, indeed, whether all gods are not the work of the fancy of man, nature allegorised.Primus in orbe Deos fecit timor, says the philosopher; can you disprove it? I suspect not, and that all the subtle reasoning of divines destroy themselves. The world is the ultimate of human reason. We adore the idols either of our hands or of the brain, and mistake them for existences. The region of chimeras exists beyond the universe; our prattling upon it is but a play of words. Jehovah himself, when he said, I am that I am, called himself pretty plainly Pan, or the great whole.
But if the unity of God be the only gracious belief in the eyes of the Creator, I do not see that Christians are entitled to his favour, because they make him three. What was the belief of the Jews? Had they any very refined ideas of their God? They thought him corporeal, incessantly speaking and moving among men, jealous, revengeful, powerful, whose angels ate with Abraham, who himself strove to kill Moses in a public house; they imagined him repenting of his deeds; and, in all respects, a poor contemptible being, the offspring of Jewish fancy. He is throughout the Bible an Asiatic Sultan, who, like the merciful God of Mahomet, puts to the sword, and smites with plagues thousands, as a tribute to his infinite mercy. I refer the reader to the collection of extracts from the Bible, in a subsequent letter, for proofs of my assertions. The Jews admitted, besides other gods, such as Chemosh, several beings subordinate to God, but superior to man, as the serpent which tempted the mother of mankind. They had exterminating angels and cherubims, the Elohim or Genii that made the world, &c. But why dwell upon such topics, when it is evident that all the Jewish mythology is of Chaldean origin, and our theology a copy of that of Plato?
You proceed in your attempt to reconcile the justice of God with his goodness, and, in the height of your reverie, you imagine that the sufferings of the Jews were parts of a grand scheme for the general good of mankind. What, and when are we to see the good effects of their barbarities? We may see reason counteracting the evil of superstition, rendering men humane; but I apprehend, that, if your reasoning was generally adopted, every highwayman would be much inclined to think himself sent by Providence for good and wise purposes, and if chance should bring about a happy event at the end of his career, which he thought the consequence of his deeds, he would triumph in his crimes, and, like Moor in the Robbers, exclaim, "If for ten I have destroyed, you make but one man blest, my soul may yet be saved!" This has been the language of persecutors. They destroy mankind to make them happy in the next world—tortures, burning, and beheading, are but purifications. The worst is, that the famous divine scheme of general good, has never been one jot more advanced than when the Jews were enduring the greatest calamities, and committing atrocities. I count not the effects of reason, for faith is alone the godly faculty; reason destroys it. I close my observations upon this subject with repeating the old question of Epicurus, which your brethren have as yet left unanswered; either God can prevent evil and does not choose it, or he chooses it and wants power to avert calamities from his creatures. In the first instance, he is a malevolent despot, a character we ought to abhor; in the second, we see him an impotent and secondary being, which raises our contempt. Reconcile this with his infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, and show us that he is not formed after the image of man, or else let unbelievers hold their opinions in peace.