The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets
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Title: The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets
Creator: Richard B. Westbrook
Release date: March 25, 2012 [eBook #39268]
Most recently updated: December 21, 2021
Language: English
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Credits: David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ELIMINATOR; OR, SKELETON KEYS TO SACERDOTAL SECRETS ***
*THE ELIMINATOR*
*or, SKELETON KEYS to SACERDOTAL SECRETS*
_By_
*Richard B. Westbrook, D.D., L.L.D.*
_1894_
CONTENTS
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
PREFACE
SKELETON KEYS TO SACERDOTAL SECRETS
CHAPTER I. THE WHOLE TRUTH
CHAPTER II. SACERDOTALISM IMPEACHED
CHAPTER III. THE FABULOUS CLAIMS OF JUDAISM
CHAPTER IV. MOSES AND THE PENTATEUCH
CHAPTER V. ANCIENT SYMBOLISM AND MODERN LITERALISM
CHAPTER VI. ASTRAL KEYS TO BIBLE STORIES
CHAPTER VII. THE FABLE OF THE FALL
CHAPTER VIII. SEARCH FOR THE “LAST ADAM”
CHAPTER IX. WHAT IS KNOWN OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
CHAPTER X. THE DRAMA OF THE GOSPELS
CHAPTER XI. THE IDEAL CHRIST
CHAPTER XII. JESUS AND OTHER CHRISTS
CHAPTER XIII. A REVERENT CRITIQUE ON JESUS
CHAPTER XIV. A FEW FRAGMENTS
CHAPTER XV. BLOOD-SALVATION
CHAPTER XVI. THINGS THAT REMAIN
INDEX
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
THE Eliminator has now been before the public nearly two years. I have
seen nothing worthy of the name of criticism respecting it. A few
Unitarian ministers have said that Christ must have been a person
instead of a personification, for the reason that men could not have
conceived of such a perfect character without a living example, and that
the great influence exercised by him for so long a time, over so many
people, proves him to have been an historic character. These arguments
are anticipated and fully answered. (See pp. 283, 284, 306.)
Our Unitarian friends are the greatest _idealists_ upon the globe! They
only accept the Gospel biography of Jesus (and we have no other) just so
far as the story accords with what they think it ought to be. They deny
the immaculate conception and miraculous birth of the Christ, and have
very great doubts about his crucifixion and resurrection. Their Christ
is purely _ideal_. The fact is that Christendom has worshipped the
literal Jesus for the ideal Christ for nearly twenty centuries, though
their conceptions of him have been manifold and contradictory. No wonder
that so many intelligent Christian sects in the early ages of the
church utterly denied the existence of Jesus as an historic person.
(See pp. 266, 267, 357.) But there is indubitable evidence that this
_Christ character_ (called by many Unitarians the “Universal Christ”)
was mainly _mythical, drawn from the astrological riddles of the older
Pagan mythologies._
In fact, almost everything in Christianity seems to have been an
_afterthought_. It is the least original of any of the ten great
religions of the world, and the great mistake has been in making almost
everything _literal_ which the wise men of ancient times regarded as
_allegorical_. This comes from the priestly attempt to identify the
_Jewish Jesus_ with the _Oriental Christ_ Tradition is, in fact, the
main foundation of the Christian scheme, and cunning sacerdotalists have
done by artifice what history, in fact, has failed to do. But for its
moral precepts and its “enthusiasm of humanity,” Christianity would not
survive for a single century. The so-called “Apostles’ Creed” (which was
not formulated until centuries after the last Apostle slept in the
grave), and which is repeated in so many churches every Sunday, has a
greater number of historical and theological misstatements than any
other writing of the same length now extant!
There is in our day a general disposition to magnify the virtues of the
Christ of the New Testament, connected with a proposition to unite all
Christians in his leadership. This device will not succeed, because it
is as impossible to found a perfect religion upon an imperfect man as it
is upon a fallible Book. Lovers of the truth will show that the
traditional Christ is not a perfect model. (See Chapter xiii.) There is
a most significant sense in which it may be truthfully said: “Never man
spake like this man,” as no great moral teacher ever uttered so many
things that needed to be revised and explained!
May it not be the fact that both Catholic and Protestant Christians are
under a great delusion as to the facts of religion? I think so. I
believe so. I well know how difficult it is to explode a delusion that
is nearly twenty centuries old, and that is supported by a sacerdotalism
of vast wealth and learning, and whose votaries by “this craft have
their wealth.”
I nail these _Thèses_ to the church doors of all the Catholics and
Protestants in Christendom, and with Martin Luther, at the Diet of
Worms, I exclaim, “Here I stand. I cannot move! God help me!” If I am
mistaken, then my reason is at fault and all history is a lie! It is
said that when Renan died, the Pope inquired whether he had confessed
before his de-cease, and upon being told that he had not, replied,
“Well, then God will have to save him for his sincerity!” I am ready to
be judged on this ground. I sum up my latest conclusions thus: The Jesus
of the Gospels is _traditional_, the Christ of the New Testament is
_mythical_.
R. B. WESTBROOK.
1707 Oxford Street,
Philadelphia.
October 1, 1894.
PREFACE
Many things in this book will greatly shock, and even give heartfelt
pain to, numerous persons whom I greatly respect. I have a large share
of the love of approbation, and naturally desire the good opinion of
those with whom I have been associated in a long life. There is no
pleasure in the fact that I have to stand quite alone in the eyes of
nearly all Christendom. There is no satisfaction in being deemed a
disturber of the peace of the great majority of those “professing and
calling themselves Christians.” But, at the same time, I must not be
indifferent in matters where I believe truth is concerned.
Before I withdrew from the orthodox ministry I used to wonder why God in
his gracious providence had not seen fit to so order events as to give
us a credible and undoubted history of the incarnation and birth of his
Son Jesus Christ, and why that Saviour, who had come to repair the great
evils inflicted upon our race by Adam, had never once mentioned that
unfortunate fall.
I do not deny that there was a person named Jesus nearly nineteen
hundred years ago. I think there were several persons bearing this name
and who were contemporaneous, and that several of them were very good
men; but that any one of them was _such_ a person as is described in the
Gospels I cannot believe. I lay special emphasis on the word such.
Admitting for the sake of the argument the real, historical personality
of Jesus of Nazareth, he has by the process of _idealization_ become an
_impersonation_, and I have so attempted to make it appear; and I cannot
but think that this view is not inconsistent with the most enlightened
piety and religious devotion, while this explanation relieves us of many
things which are absurd and contradictory.
I desire to explain more fully than appears in the _Table of Contents_
the plan of this book. I first combat the policy of _suppression and
deception_, and insist that the whole truth shall be published, and have
shown that sacerdotalism is responsible for the fact that it has not
been done. As so-called Christianity is based upon Judaism, I undertake
to show the fabulous character of many of the claims of the Jews,
disclaiming all intention to asperse the character of Israelites of the
present generation.
I thought it proper in this connection to give the substance of an _open
letter_ to the Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on
_Moses and the Pentateuch_—to which His Honor never responded—showing
that the “law of Sinai was not the first of which we have any
knowledge,” and that Moses was not “the greatest statesman and lawgiver
the world had ever produced,” as the Chief-Justice had affirmed in a
lecture before the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Presenting brief views of the symbolic character of the Old Testament,
and showing how “Astral Keys” unlock many Bible stories, I undertake to
show that the so-called fall of Adam is a _fable_, nothing more; and
then, as the _first_ Adam is shown to be a _myth_, I go in search for
the “_last Adam_.” Finding no knowledge of such a person except in the
New Testament, I deem it necessary to briefly show the character of this
book, that it may be determined how far it should be received as
evidence in a matter of so much importance. Then in five chapters, more
or less connected, I combat the idea of the historical, or rather
_traditional_, Jesus, and follow with an examination of the evangelical
dogma of _Blood-Salvation_, and close with a very brief summary of the
_Things that Remain_ as the foundation of faith.
I do not expect _caste_ clergymen to read this book any farther than is
necessary to denounce it. It is their way of meeting questions like
those herein discussed. I am prepared to have certain _dilettanti_
sneer-ingly say, “This book is of no critical value.” They are so
accustomed to “scholarly essays” which “are poetically sentimental and
floridly vague” that they have little respect for anything else. The
book is intended for the common people, and not for the professional
critics.
I do not expect everybody to agree with me, especially at first. Truth
can afford to wait, and in years to come many points that I have made,
which are now so startling, will be calmly and intelligently accepted.
There are probably mistakes in the book—mistakes in names, in dates, and
perhaps in facts; but these will not affect the main argument. No man
knows everything. Until recently it was never suspected by the learned
world that _The Contemplative Life_ was not written by Philo nearly
nineteen centuries ago, instead of being written by a monk in the third
century of the Christian era. Even Macaulay and Bancroft have made
mistakes, and so have many other authors of good repute.
I have always tried to preserve a _reverent spirit_—a genuine respect
for true religion and morality. I have always been profoundly religious,
and cannot remember the time when I was not devout. But I do not believe
that it is ever proper “to do evil that good may come.” In this work I
have sought only the _truth_, in the firm conviction that superstition
and falsehood cannot promote a course of _right living_, which is the
object and aim of all true religion.
I have a supreme disregard for literary fame. I do not shrink from being
called a _compiler_ or even a _plagiarist_. There is absolutely very
little of real _originality_ in the world. I could have followed the
course of many writers and _absorbed or assimilated_, and thus seemingly
made my own what they had written; but I have chosen to quote freely,
and so have substantially given the words of many authors of repute, and
at the same time saved myself the labor of a re-coining, which does not,
after all, deceive the intelligent reader. The books from which I
largely quote are mainly voluminous and very expensive, and some of them
are out of print. I am indebted to the learned foot-notes of Evan Powell
Meredith in his prize essay on _The Prophet of Nazareth_ for several
things, and must not fail to acknowledge my obligations to certain
living authors for valuable assistance, and especially to my friend Dr.
Alexander Wilder, who prepared at my request the substance of Chapter
X., _The Drama of the Gospels_, and who, in my judgment, has few
superiors in classical and Oriental literature.
I sympathize with those persons who will complain-ingly exclaim, “You
have taken away my Saviour, and I know not where you have laid him.” But
suppose that we do not _need a Saviour_ in the evangelical sense?
Suppose that man has not _fallen_, but that the race has been _rising_
these many centuries; and that while we have mainly to save ourselves,
all the good and great men of all ages have aided us in the work of
salvation by what they have said and done and suffered, so that instead
of one savior we really have had many saviors. I think that this view is
more reasonable and consoling than the commercial device of what is
called the “scheme of redemption,” besides having scientific facts to
sustain it.
I have preserved on the title-page some of my college degrees, to
indicate my professional studies of theology and law, and not from
motives of pedantry.
R. B. WESTBROOK.
1707 Oxford Street,
Philadelphia.
SKELETON KEYS TO SACERDOTAL SECRETS
CHAPTER I. THE WHOLE TRUTH
_“For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid
that shall not be known. Therefore, whatsoever ye have spoken in
darkness, shall be heard in the light, and that which ye have spoken in
the ear, in closets, shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.”—Luke 12:
2, 3._
THE assumption is general that if the faith of the common people should
be unsettled as to some things which they have heretofore been taught
regarding religion, they would immediately reject all truth, and fall
into a most deplorable state of skepticism and infidelity, and that the
existing institutions of religion would be destroyed, and public virtue
so undermined as to endanger the very foundations of morality and civil
government. This is not only the fear of conservative and timid
clergymen, but many of our prominent statesmen seem anxious lest the
enlightenment of the people in matters in which they have been cruelly
deceived should so weaken the restraints of police and governmental
authority as to result in universal anarchy and a general disregard of
the rights of property, and even of the sacredness of human life.
These foolish fears show a great want of confidence in human nature, and
falsely assume that moral character depends mainly upon an unquestioning
faith in certain dogmas which, in point of fact, have no necessary
connection with it.
The statistics of crime show that a very large majority of those who
have been seized by the strong arm of the law as dangerous members of
society are those who most heartily believe in those very dogmas of
theology which we are warned not to criticise, though we may know them
to be accretions of ignorance and superstition, and that some of them
have a natural tendency to fetter the essential principles of true
religion and that higher code of morality which alone can stand strong
under all circumstances. It is safe to affirm that ninety-nine
hundredths of the criminal class believe, or profess to believe, in the
dogmas of the dominant theology, Romish and Protestant; which are
essentially the same.
It is too often forgotten that the very first condition of good
government is faith in human nature, confidence in the people. You
always excite dishonor and dishonesty by treating men as if you think
them all rogues, and as if you expect nothing good from them, but every
conceivable evil, only as they may be restrained by the fear of pains
and penalties in this life and after death.
One great fundamental mistake of theologians and dogmatic pietists is
the baseless assumption that religion is something supernatural, not to
say anti-natural; something external to human nature and of foreign
origin; something to be received by transfusion as the result or
consequence of faith in certain dogmas or the observance of external
rites; something bottled up by the Church, like rare and precious
medicines in an apothecary-shop, to be dealt out to those who are
willing to follow priestly prescriptions and pay the required price.
The fact is, churches and scriptures and dogmas are the outcome of that
religious element which is inherent in human nature. It cannot be too
often or too strongly urged that the religious principle is _innate_ and
_ineradicable_ in mankind, and that you might as well try to destroy
man’s love of the beautiful, his desire for knowledge, his love of home
and kindred, or even his appetite for food, as to try to destroy it. It
is as natural to feel the want of religion as it is to be hungry. You
_cannot_ destroy the foundations of religion. They rest in _nature_ and
antedate all creeds and churches, and will survive them.
Even Professor Tyndall says: “The facts of religious feeling are to me
as certain as the facts of physics.”
... “The world will have religion of some kind.”... “You who have
escaped from these religions into the high and dry light of intellect
may deride them, but in doing so you deride accidents of form merely,
and fail to touch the immovable basis of the religious sentiment in the
nature of man. To yield this sentiment reasonable satisfaction is the
problem of problems at this hour.”
Renan also writes thus: “All the symbols which serve to give shape to
the religious sentiment are imperfect, and their fate is to be one after
another rejected. But nothing is more remote from the truth than the
dream of those who seek to imagine a perfected humanity without
religion.”... “Devotion is as natural as egoism to a true-born man. The
organization of devotion _is_ religion. Let no one hope, therefore, to
dispense with religion or religious associations. Each progression of
modern society will render this want more imperious.”
We use the word religion as it was used by Cicero, in the sense of
_scruple_, implying the consciousness of a natural obligation wholly
irrespective of what one may believe concerning the gods. Religion in
its true meaning is the great fact of _duty, of oughtness_, consisting
in an honest and persistent effort to realize ideal excellence and to
transform it into actual character and practical life. Religion as a
_spirit_ and a life is objected to by none, but is admired and commended
by all. It is superstition, bigotry, credulity, and dogma that are
detestable. The religious instinct has been perverted, turned into wrong
channels, made subservient to priestcraft and kingcraft, but its basic
principle remains for ever firm. If it _could_ have been destroyed, the
machinations of priests would have annihilated it long ago. Give
yourselves no anxiety about the corner-stone of religion, but look well
to the rotten superstructures that have been reared upon it. Its
professed friends are often its real enemies. It is the false prophet
who is afraid to have his oracles subjected to tests of reason and
history. It is the evil-doer who is afraid of the light, the conscious
thief who objects to being searched. An honest man would say, “Let the
truth be published, though the heavens fell.”
The whole truth should be published, as a matter of common honesty, if
nothing more. We have no moral right to conceal the truth, any more than
we have to proclaim falsehood. He who deliberately does the one will not
hesitate long about doing the other. And this is one of the most serious
aspects of this subject. He who can bring himself to practise deceit
regarding religion will soon be a villain at heart, even if worldly
prudence is strong enough to keep him out of the penitentiary.
As a rule, the unfaithful teacher inflicts a greater evil upon his own
soul than upon his unsuspecting dupe. The deceiver is sure to be
overtaken by his own deceit. Mean men become more mean, and liars come
to believe their own oft-repeated falsehoods. This principle may in part
account for the fact that in all ages dishonest, mercenary, designing
priests have been most corrupt citizens and ready tools in the hands of
tyrants to oppress and enslave the people.
Every deceptive act blunts the moral sense, defiles and sears the
conscience, until at last the hypocrite degenerates into a slimy, subtle
human serpent that always crawls upon its belly and eats dust.
Secretiveness and deceitfulness become a second nature, and show
themselves continually even in the ordinary affairs of life. The reflex
influence of deception upon the deceiver himself is its most bitter
condemnation.
But modern preachers have a way of justifying their evasions and
prevarications by saying that even Jesus himself withheld from his own
disciples some things, for the reason that they were “not able to bear
them,” quite overlooking the fact that he is also reported to have said,
“When the Spirit of truth has come, he will teach you all things,” and
that other passage (Luke 12: 2), where Jesus is represented as saying,
“For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid
that shall not be known. Therefore, whatsoever ye have spoken in
darkness, shall be heard in the light, and that which ye have spoken in
the ear, in closets, shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.”
If after eighteen hundred years of Christian teaching the time has not
yet come to proclaim the whole truth, it is not likely to come for many
ages in the future. If religion is a mystery too great to be
comprehended, too sacred for reverent but untrammelled investigation,
something that can only exist with a blind, unreasoning credulity and
the utter stultification of the natural faculties of a true manhood,
then religion is not worth what it costs and should be exposed as a
delusion and a snare.
The time for the religious _Kabala_ has passed, and ambiguities,
concealments, and evasions are no longer to be tolerated. Martin Luther
builded better than he knew when he proclaimed the right of private
judgment in matters of religion. It has taken two hundred years for this
fundamental principle to become thoroughly accepted by the people; but
so firmly is it now established that bigoted ecclesiastics might as well
attempt to resist the trend of an earthquake, stop the rising of the
sun, and turn the light of noonday into the darkness of midnight as to
attempt to arrest the progress of a true religious rationalism. The mad
ravings of fanatics will have no more influence than the pope’s bull had
on the comet. Learning is no longer monopolized by a few monks and
ministers. For every five clergymen who are abreast with the times, the
progress of modern thought, and the conclusions of science, there are
fifty laymen who are familiar with the writings of Humboldt, Darwin,
Huxley, Spencer, Tyndall, and scores of other scientists, to whom the
world is more indebted for true progress than to all the lazy monks and
muttering priests who have lived since the world began. The fact is, the
old delusion that men must look to the sacerdotal class exclusively, or
even mainly, for religious truth, has been for ever banished from the
minds of intelligent men. The literature of the day is full of free
thought and downright rationalism, and even the secular newspaper is a
missionary of religious progress and reform, and brings stirring
messages of intellectual progress every day to our breakfast-tables. The
world moves, and those who attempt to stop it are sure to be crushed.
The pretence that anything is too sacred for investigation and
publication will not stand the light of this wide-awake nineteenth
century.
It is often said that the common people are not ready for the whole
truth. In 1873, Dr. J. G. Holland, then editor of _Scribner’s Monthly_,
wrote to Dr. Augustus Blauvelt declining to publish an article on “The
Divine and Infallible Inspiration of the Bible,” and added, “I believe
you are right. I should like to speak your words to the world; but if I
do speak them it will pretty certainly cost me my connection with the
magazine. This sacrifice I am willing to make if duty requires it. I am
afraid of nothing but doing injury to the cause I love.... In short, you
see that I sincerely doubt whether the Christian world is ready for this
article.... Instead of the theologians the _people_ would howl.... I
cannot yet carry my audience in such a revolution. Perhaps I shall be
able to do so by and by, but as I look at it to-day it seems
impossible.... My dear friend, I believe in you. You are in advance of
your time. You have great benefits in your hands for your time. You are
free and true. And I mourn sadly and in genuine distress that I cannot
speak your words with a tongue which all my fellow-Christians can hear.
They will not hear them yet. They will some time....”
Dr. Holland has passed away and cannot reply to criticism. Let us be
kind and charitable. He intended to be right, but he was mistaken. The
people do not howl when the truth is published, even though their
prejudices may be aroused; and no tedious preparation is now necessary
to be able to hear the whole truth. The masses of the people are hungry
for knowledge, and it is high time that they be honestly fed. They now
more than half suspect that they have been deceived by those some of
whom they have educated by their charities and liberally paid to teach
them the truth. When, in 1875, _Scribner’s Monthly_ did publish Dr.
Blauvelt’s articles on “Modern Skepticism,” it was not the people that
“howled.” It was the clergy. Some of them demanded a new editor; others
warned the people from the pulpit not to patronize _Scribner_; and one
distinguished man declared that the magazine must be “stamped out,” and
at once organized a most powerful ecclesiastical combination against the
freedom of the press; and yet the _North American Review_ and other
similar magazines are today doing more to settle long-mooted religious
questions than all the pulpits in Christendom; and the people do not
howl. No respectable enterprising publisher now hesitates to publish a
book of real merit, however much its doctrines may differ from the
dominant faiths. The masses of the people are determined to know all
that can be known of the history, philosophy, and principles of
religion; and the greater the effort to conceal and suppress the truth
the stronger will be the demand for its full and undisguised
proclamation.
That there is a general drifting away from the old formulas of religious
doctrine everybody knows, and yet there is more practical religion in
the world to-day than in any previous age. It does not consist in
fastings and attendance upon ecclesiastical rites and ordinances; but it
takes the form of universal education, of providing homes for friendless
infancy and old age, of the prevention of cruelty to children and even
to brute animals, of the more rational and humane treatment of lunatics,
paupers, and criminals, ameliorating the miseries of prisons and
hospitals,—in short, of elevating and improving the condition of
universal humanity. These truly religious works do not depend upon any
particular statement of religious belief, for all sects and persons of
no sect are equally engaged in them.
Charities would not cease if all creeds should be abandoned or should be
so revised as not to be recognized by the disciples of Calvin and
Wesley, and if every priest in the land should henceforth give up the
mummeries and puerilities of the Dark Ages.
Religion, as the “enthusiasm of humanity,” the cultivation of all the
virtues, and the practice of the highest morality growing out of the
inalienable rights of man in all the relations of life, is a fixed fact.
It is a natural endowment, coeval with humanity in its development and
progress, and is as absolutely indestructible as manhood itself.
So far from being true is the assumption that religion would be
imperilled by the exposure of the false dogmas of theology and the
heathenish rites and superstitious ceremonies of ecclesiasticism, it is
clear to many minds that the myths of dogmatic theology and the
absurdities of primitive ages are the chief obstacles in the way of the
free course of true religion; and it may safely be affirmed that the
distinguishing dogmas of the dominant theology, Catholic and Protestant,
as will hereafter be shown, are essentially demoralizing and logically
_tend_ to undermine and corrupt public virtue. It is not intended to
affirm that churches and theologians do no good and that their entire
influence is bad. They teach much that is humane in principle and moral
in practice, and so do good for society. Nevertheless, it is true that
much of the rotten morality of the times can be philosophically traced
to the influence of a false theology. The main dogmas of Romish and
orthodox Protestant creeds are false, and it is absurd to suppose that a
pure system of public virtue can be founded upon ignorance,
superstition, and falsehood.
But, after all, we are asked, Does it make any odds what one believes if
he is only sincere in his faith?
The obvious answer is, that the more sincerely you believe a lie the
more dangerous is your faith. The more trustfully you build upon a sandy
foundation the sooner and greater will be the fall and ruin of the
superstructure. The more implicitly you confide in a dishonest partner
or agent the more successful will be his robbery. There is no safety in
error and falsehood. The Westminster divines well said, “Truth is in
order to righteousness.” There can be no true righteousness inherent in
a system of superstition and falsehood. The failure of the Church to
reach the masses and to establish a condition of public honesty superior
to the ancient heathen morality shows that there must be some serious
defect in its methods.
But the crushing objection to theological agitation and free discussion
is the common one that “it is unwise to unsettle and destroy the faith
of the people in the dominant theology unless there is something better
to offer them as a substitute.”
There is something better. Truth is always better and safer than
falsehood. In the discussions which are to follow an attempt will be
made to show that there is a _natural religion_ which accords with
enlightened reason, and which cannot fail to furnish a firm scientific
foundation for _the highest morality_. The common saying, that “it is
better to have a false religion than no religion,” contains two
groundless assumptions—viz. that it is possible for a man to have _no_
religion, and that that which is false may be dignified with the name
_religion_. It is about time that things should be called by their right
names, and that superstition and falsehood should not be deemed
necessary to public morality.
For a religion (so called) of superstition and falsehood there must be a
religion of _natural science_ that cannot be overthrown, and which cannot
fail to make its way among men as knowledge shall increase and the
principles of true religious philosophy shall be better
understood. We should not be frightened at the cowardly cry of
“destructive criticism.” We _must_ pull down before we can reconstruct.
CONCLUSIONS.
(1) To imitate the example of the early Christian Fathers in fraud,
falsehood, and forgery for the promotion of religion is a policy
that is too shocking to the moral sense of civilized men
everywhere to be tolerated. To withhold or suppress the truth is a
crime against humanity and contrary to the spirit of this age; and
those who do it are the enemies of progress and unworthy to be
recognized as the authoritative teachers of the world.
(2) Those who publish that which is false or suppress what is true not
only do a great wrong to the people, but, if possible, do a
greater wrong to their own souls, and must suffer the
consequences. They must have an awful reckoning with eternal,
retributive justice.
(3) It is a most egregious mistake to suppose that the people cannot
be trusted with the whole truth—that their sense of right is so
dull and flimsy that on the slightest discovery of the errors in
which they have been instructed from infancy they would lose
confidence in all truth and rightfulness and rush riotously to
ruin. If the people must be hoodwinked for ever, then the
distinguishing principle of the Protestant Reformation and the
basic principles of our American Declaration of Independence and
republican government are false and delusive, and we should return
to mediæval times and to feudal and autocratic government in
Church and State.
(4) It is high time that men should see that dogma is not religion;
that blind faith is more to be feared than rational skepticism and
scientific investigation; that whatever is opposed to reason and
science in theology can be spared, not only without any loss, but
greatly to the advantage of true religion and sound morality. All
the religion that is worth having is _natural and rational_, and
corresponds with the facts of the universe as they are
demonstrated by the crucibles of science and the inductions of a
sound philosophy. The principal moral obligations of men grow out
of their relations to each other in life, and nothing can be more
complete than the Golden Rule, emphasized in the Sermon on the
Mount, but as clearly taught in the Jewish _Babylonian Talmud_,
and in the twenty-fourth Maxim of the Chinese philosopher
Confucius, and many others centuries before the Christian era.
(5) Instead of loading down religion with Oriental myths and fables,
instead of a gorgeous ritualism and surpliced priests, borrowed
literally from the ancient paganism, instead of dogmas and creeds
and unquestioning faith and blind submission to ecclesiastical
dictation and rule, we want sound moral instruction in the great
fundamental truths of nature and of science, which will always be
found to strengthen and confirm the principles of true religion.
These are the sources from which to gain light. We want less creed
and more ethical culture, less profession and paraphernalia in
religious worship and more practical philosophy and common sense.
(6) The man who in scientific matters would make false representations
and conceal the real truth would be deemed an impostor, and the
time has come when hypocrites and cowards in theology should be
made to feel their degradation and be forced into an open
abandonment of “ways that are dark and tricks that are vain.” If
we would scorn delusions in natural philosophy, if we would
correct errors in oceanic charts, astronomical diagrams, and
geographical maps, why should we hesitate to correct the most
egregious blunders regarding those things which are infinitely
more important? Can we with any proper sense of propriety and
right connive at falsehood and uphold and strengthen it by our
silence and cowardly negligence in failing to expose it? Are not
all delusions debasing and opposed to the progress of truth and
the elevation of mankind? In all the departments of human
knowledge religion and morality are most imperative in their
demands for pure and unadulterated truth; and he who does not
recognize this fact sins grievously against his own soul, against
the human family, and against the truth and its eternal Author,
the God of all truth.
(7) Finally, let it not be overlooked that it will not, for many
reasons, be possible much longer to keep the people in ignorance,
and to palm off upon them myths for veritable history and a system
of theology plainly at variance with the conclusions of science,
the facts of history, and the spiritual and moral consciousness of
every true and well-developed man. The schoolmaster is abroad, and
the spirit of fearless investigation is in the air, and men
_will,_ sooner or later, find out what is true; and when they come
to understand how they have been imposed upon by their cowardly
teachers, a fearful _reaction_ will be the result; and woe to the
hypocrite and time-server when that time comes! It is therefore
not only good principle, but good policy, to tell the whole truth
now. The following copy of a book-notice well describes the
prevalent policy regarding matters of faith:
“A theory of religious philosophy which is much commoner among us than
most of us think, but which has never been expressed so fully or so
attractively as in the story of Marius.
“‘Submit,’ it seems to say, ‘to the religious order about you, accept
the common beliefs, or at least behave as if you accepted them, and live
habitually in the atmosphere of feeling and sensation which they have
engendered and still engender; surrender your feeling while still
maintaining the intellectual citadel intact; pray, weep, dream with the
majority while you think with the elect; only so will you obtain from
life all it has to give, its most delicate flavor, its subtlest aroma.’”
Against such a _sham_ the writer heartily protests, as against the
villainous maxim, quoted from memory, accredited to Aristotle: “_Think_
with the sages and philosophers, but _talk_ like the common people.”
Come what may, let us cease to profess what we have ceased to believe.
“The two learned people of the village,” says Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes,
telling of his fanciful Arrowhead Village, “were the rector and the
doctor. These two worthies kept up the old controversy between the
professions which grows out of the fact that one studies nature from
below upward, and the other from above downward. The rector maintained
that physicians contracted a squint which turns their eyes inwardly,
while the muscles which roll their eyes upward become palsied. The
doctor retorted that theological students developed a third eyelid—the
_nictitating membrane_, which is so well known in birds, and which
serves to shut out, not all light, but _all the light they do not
want._”
The Presbyterians have provided for a _revision_ of their creed, though
they have stultified themselves by certain restrictions, _shutting out
the light they do not want!_ Let us hope that the time will soon come
when men will be honest enough and brave enough to follow the truth
wherever it may lead. Let there be perfect veracity above all things,
more especially in matters of religion. It is not a question of
courtesies which deceive no one. To profess what is not believed is
immoral. Immorality and untruth can never lead to morality and virtue;
all language which conveys untruth, either in substance or appearance,
should be amended so that words can be understood in their recognized
meanings, without equivocal explanations or affirmations. Let historic
facts have their true explanation.
CHAPTER II. SACERDOTALISM IMPEACHED
_“The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for
hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money.”—Micah 3: 11._
_“Put me, I pray thee, into one of the priests’ offices, that I may eat
a piece of bread.”—1 Sam. 2: 36._
THE cognomens priest, prophet, presbyter, preacher, parson, and pastor
have certain things in common, and these titles may therefore be used
interchangeably.
As far back as history extends, the office or order now represented by
the clerical profession existed. It was as common among pagan tribes in
the remotest periods as among Jews and Christians in more modern times.
Service done to the gods by the few in behalf of the many is the primary
idea of the priestly function. It has always and everywhere been the
profession and prerogative of the priests to pretend to approach nearest
to the gods and to propitiate them; on account of which they have always
been supposed to have special influence with the reigning deity and to
be the authorized expounders and interpreters of the divine oracles. The
priesthood has always been a _caste, a “holy order;”_ and it was no less
so among ancient Jews than among modern Christians. In all churches
clergymen _ex-officio_ exercise certain sacred prerogatives. They occupy
select seats in every sanctuary. They lead in every act of worship. They
preside over every sacred ceremony. They exclusively administer the
ordinances of religion. They baptize the children and give or withhold
the “Holy Communion.” They celebrate our marriages, visit our sick, and
conduct our funerals. In Romish churches and in some of our Protestant
churches they pretend to pronounce “absolution” and to seal the
postulant for the heavenly rest. It is not necessary, now and here, to
speak of the evil influence that these pretensions exert upon the common
people, nor of the light in which intelligent, thinking women and men
commonly regard them; but it is appropriate to note the reflex influence
which such assumptions have upon the clergy themselves, disqualifying
them for such rational presentation of doctrinal truth as their hearers
have a right to expect.
The pride of his order makes it humiliating for the priest to admit that
what he does not know is worth knowing. Claiming to be the authorized
expounder of God’s will, how can he admit that he can possibly be in
error in any matter relating to religion? In view of the high
pretensions of his order, founded, as he claims, upon a
plenarily-inspired and infallible book-revelation, and he professing to
be specially called and sanctified by God himself as his representative,
it would be ecclesiastical treason to admit, even by implication, that
he is not in possession of all truth. Regarding his creed as a finality,
his mind becomes narrow, circumscribed, and unprogressive. He was taught
from childhood that “to doubt is to be damned,” and through all his
novitiate he was warned against being unsettled by the delusions of
reason and the wiles of infidelity. His professional education has been
narrow, one-sided, sectarian. He has seldom, if ever, read anything
outside of his own denominational literature, and has heard little from
anybody but his own theological professors and associates. He suspects
that Humboldt, Spencer, Huxley, and Tyndall are all infidels, and that
the sum and substance of Evolution, as taught by Darwin, is that man is
the lineal descendant of the monkey.
Some persons think that ministers are often selected from among
weaklings in the family fold. However, this may be, the absorption of
the “holy-orders” idea, and the natural self-assurance and
self-satisfaction that belong to a caste profession, render delusive the
hope that anything original can ever come from such a source. Whether
weak at first or not, the habits of thought and the peculiar training of
young ecclesiastics are almost sure to dwarf them intellectually for
life. The theological student has become the _butt_ in wide-awake
society everywhere, and his appearance in public is the occasion for
jests and ridicule over his sanctimonious vanity and silly pride. The
extreme clerical costume which he is sure to assume excites the disgust
of sensible people, though he may march through the street and up the
aisle with the regulation step of the “order,” and suppose himself to be
the object of reverent admiration on the part of all beholders. No
wonder that the churches complain that few young men of ability enter
the ministry in these modern times.
The priestly office has always been deemed one of great influence, so
that ancient kings were accustomed to assume it. This was true of the
kings of ancient Egypt, and the practice was kept up among the Greeks
and Romans. Even Constantine, the first Christian emperor (so called),
continued to exercise the function of a pagan priest after his professed
conversion to Christianity, and he was not initiated into the Christian
Church by baptism until just before his death. One excommunicated king
lay for three days and nights in the snow in the courtyard before the
Pope would grant him an audience! The “Pontifex-Maximus” idea of the
Roman emperors was the real foundation of the “temporal power” claimed
by the bishops of Rome. Kingcraft and priestcraft have always been in
close alliance. When the king was not a priest he always used the
priest; and the priest has generally been willing to be used on the side
of the king as against the people when liberally subsidized by the
reigning potentate. Moreover, priestcraft has always been ambitious for
power, and sometimes has been so influential as to make the monarch
subservient to the monk. More than one proud crown has been humbly
removed in token of submission to priestly authority, and powerful
sovereigns have been obliged to submit to the most menial exactions and
humiliations at ecclesiastical mandates. The priestly rôle has always
been to utilize the religious sentiment for the subjection of the
credulous to the arbitrary influence of the caste or order.
Priestcraft never could afford to have a conscience, so admitted, and
therefore it has not shrunk from the commission of any crime that could
augment its dominion. Its greatest success has been in the work of
demoralization. It has always been the corrupter of religion. The
ignorance and superstition of the people and the perversions of the
religious sentiment, innate in man, have been the stock in trade of the
craft in all ages, and are to-day.
It will be shown later how the whole system of dogmatic theology, Romish
and Protestant (for the system is the same), has been formed so as to
aggrandize the priest, perpetuate his power, and hold the masses in
strict subjection. This is a simple matter of fact. History is
philosophy teaching by example, and often repeats itself, and it seldom
gives an example of a priestly caste or “holy” order of men leading in a
great practical reform. The dominant priestly idea is to protect the
interests of the _order_, not to promote the welfare of the people.
In view of these principles and facts, and others which might be
presented, it is reasonable to conclude that we cannot expect the whole
living, unadulterated truth, even if they had it, from the professional
clergy. The caste idea renders it essentially unnatural and
philosophically impossible.
But there are other potent reasons why such expectation is vain. All
Christendom is covered with numerous sects in the form of ecclesiastical
judicatories, each claiming to be the true exponent of all religious
truth. The Romish Church is pre-eminently priestly and autocratic. The
priesthood is the Church, and the people only belong to the Church; that
is, belong to the priesthood, and that, too, in a stronger sense than at
first seems to attach to the word _belong_. Then the priesthood itself
is subdivided into castes.:
“Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas; and so—ad infinitum”
When Patrick J. Ryan was installed Archbishop in Philadelphia, an office
conferred by a foreign potentate, our own city newspapers in flaming
headlines called it “The Enthronement of a Priest!” And so it was. He
sat upon a throne and received the honors of a prince. He is called “His
Grace,” and wears the royal purple in the public streets. Bishops are
higher than the “inferior clergy,” and the priest, presbyter, or elder
is of a higher caste than the deacon, and all are higher and more holy
than the people. All ministers exercise functions which would be deemed
sacrilege in a layman. The same odious spirit of caste prevails in fact,
if not so prominently in form, in all orthodox denominations, especially
as to the distinction between the clergy and the laity. Even Quakers
have higher seats for “recommended ministers.”
Moreover, priests have laid down creeds containing certain affirmations
and denials which are called “Articles of Religion,” to which all
students of divinity and candidates for holy orders must subscribe
before they can be initiated into the sacred arcana.
The professor in the theological seminary, who perhaps was selected for
the chair quite as much for his conservatism as for his learning, has
taken a pledge, if not an oath, that he will teach the young aspirant
for ecclesiastical honors nothing at variance with the standards of his
denomination; which covenant he is very sure to keep (having other
professors and aspirants for professorships to watch him) in full view
of the penalty of dismission from his chair and consequent
ecclesiastical degradation. The very last place on this earth where one
might expect original research, thorough investigation, and fearless
proclamation of the whole truth is in a theological school. A horse in a
bark-mill becomes blind in consequence of going round and round in the
same circular path; and the theological professor in his treadmill
cannot fail to become purblind as regards all new truth.
What can be expected from the _graduates_ of such seminaries?
The theological novitiate sits with trembling reverence at the feet of
the venerable theological Gamaliel. From his sanctified lips he is to
learn all wisdom. Without his approbation he cannot receive the coveted
diploma. Without his recommendation he will not be likely to receive an
early call to a desirable parish.
The student is _obliged_ to find in the Bible just what his Church
requires, and nothing more and nothing less. In order to be admitted
into the clerical caste and have holy hands laid upon his youthful head
he must believe or profess to believe, _ipsissima verba_, just what the
“Confession” and “Catechism” contain. The Rev. Dr. Samuel Miller once
said in a sort of confidential undertone, “What is the use of examining
candidates for the ministry at all as to what they believe? The fact
that they apply for admission shows that they intend to answer all
questions as we expect them to answer; else, they very well know, we
would not admit them.”
The ecclesiastical system is emphatically an iron-bedstead system. If a
candidate is too long, it cuts him shorter; and if too short, it
stretches him. He must be made to fit. Then, after “ordination” or
“consecration,” the new-fledged theologian enters upon his public work
so pressed by the cares of his charge and the social and professional
demands upon his time that he finds it impossible to prepare a lecture
and two original sermons a week; so he falls back upon the “notes” he
took from the lips of his “old professor” in the divinity school, or
upon some of those numerous “skeletons” and “sketches” of sermons
expressly published for the “aid” of busy young ministers; and he gives
to “his people” a dish of theological hash, if not of re-hash, instead
of pouring out his own living words that should breathe and thoughts
that should burn.
Hence it is easy to see why one scarcely ever gets a fresh, living truth
from the pulpit. It is almost always the same old, old story of
commonplace fossils that the wide-awake world has outgrown long ago, and
that modern science has fearlessly consigned to the “bats and the moles”
of the Dark Ages. No wonder the pulpit platitudes fail to attract the
masses of earnest men, especially in our great cities.
Then if a clergyman should discover, after years of thought and study,
that he has been in error in some matters, and that a pure rational
interpretation of the Bible is possible, and he really feels that the
creeds, as well as the Scriptures, need revising, what can he do? If he
lets his new light shine, he will share the fate of Colenso, Robertson
Smith, Augustus Blauvelt, Professor Woodrow, and scores of others. He
knows that heresy-hunters are on the scent of his track. The mad-dog cry
of _Heretic_ would be as fatal as a sharp shot from the ecclesiastical
rifle. Proscription, degradation, ostracism, stare him in the face. Few
men who have the _esprit de corps_ of ecclesiasticism and a reasonable
regard for personal comfort and preferment are heroic enough to face the
social exclusion, financial ruin, and beggary for themselves and
families which are almost sure to follow a trial and condemnation for
heresy. If the newly-enlightened minister escapes the inquisition of a
heresy trial by declaring himself independent, he has a gauntlet to run
in which many poisoned arrows will be sure to pierce his quivering
spirit. It is true that some sects have no written creed and no trials
for heresy; but even among them there is an _implied_ standard of what
is “regular,” and more than one grand soul knows by a sorrowful
experience, what it is to belong to the “left wing” of the Liberal army,
and to follow the “spirit of truth” outside of the implied creed.
Another reason why the whole truth cannot be expected from the regular
clergy is, the influence of their pecuniary dependence upon those to
whom they minister. The Jews have always been great borrowers and
imitators. It was quite natural that they should adopt the
“price-current list” of the ancient Phœnicians, whose priests not only
exacted the tribute of “first-fruits,” but a fee in kind of each
sacrifice. Then the judicial functions exercised by Jewish priests
became a fruitful source of revenue, as the fines for certain offences
were paid to the priests (2 Kings 12: 16; Hosea 4: 8; Amos 2: 8).
According to 2 Sam. 8: 18 and 2 Bangs 10: 11, also 12: 2, the priests of
the royal sanctuaries became the grandees of the realm, while the petty
priests were generally poor enough—just as is well known to be the case
among the Christian clergy of to-day, some receiving a salary of
twenty-five thousand dollars and more per annum, while many of the
“inferior clergy” hardly average two hundred and fifty dollars a year.
That the Christian clerical profession was borrowed from the Jews, just
as the latter copied it from the heathen, is evident from the fact that
Paul, while refusing for himself pecuniary support, preferring to “work
with his own hands” (weaving tent-cloth), “living in his own hired
house,” nevertheless defended the principle of ministerial support,
mainly on the ground of the Mosaic law (Deut. 25: 4), “Thou shalt not
muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn” (1 Cor. 9: 9; 1 Tim. 5:
18). It is a striking illustration of the inconsistency of the modern
clergy that they quote, in reference to a salaried ministry, the words
ascribed to Jesus (Matt. 10: 10), “The workman is worthy of his meat,”
or, as it is rendered in Luke 10: 7, “The laborer is worthy of his
hire,” very conveniently forgetting to quote the connecting words
requiring them to “provide neither gold nor silver nor brass in their
purse, nor scrip for their journey, neither two coats, neither shoes,
nor yet staves,” but to enter unceremoniously into any house, accepting
any proffered hospitality, “eating such things as might be set before
them.” The fact is, the first disciples of Jesus, according to our
Gospels, were mendicant monks, leading lives of asceticism and poverty.
There is no evidence that one of them ever received a salary; they made
themselves entirely dependent on public charity and hospitality. The
idea of a “church living” or “beneficed clergy” or a salaried ministry
never entered into the mind of Him of whom it is said he “had not where
to lay his head.”
It is enough for the present argument to emphasize the point that, in
the very nature of things, it is not reasonable to expect the whole
truth from a salaried ministry. Those who have a large salary naturally
desire to retain it; those who have small and insufficient salaries
naturally desire to have them increased.
This can only be done by carefully preserving a good orthodox standing
according to the sectarian _shibboleth_, and in pleasing the people who
rent the pews or who dole out their penurious subscriptions for “the
support of the gospel.” High-salaried ministers are most likely to be
proud, arrogant, bigoted, sectarian. Starveling ministers become broken
in spirit, fawning, and crouching, and they generally have an
unconscious expression of appeal for help, of importunity and
expectancy, stamped upon their faces. The millstone of pecuniary
dependence hangs so heavily about their necks that they seldom hold up
their heads like men, and they can never utter a new truth or a
startling sentiment without pausing to consider what effect it may have
on the bread and butter of a dependent and generally numerous family.
Ministers with high salaries are almost sure to be spoiled, and those
with low ones are sure to be stultified and dwarfed intellectually and
morally; so that we cannot depend upon either class for the highest and
latest truths. Those who have a “living,” provided in a State Church,
and those who depend upon voluntary contributions from the people, are
alike manacled and handicapped. We must look elsewhere than to the
modern pulpit for that truth which alone can give freedom and true
manliness. Perfect indifference as to ecclesiastical standing, backed by
pecuniary independence, is an essential condition for untrammelled
investigation and the fearless proclamation of the whole truth.
It was noticed in the recent convention of scientists in this city (the
American Association) that it was the salaried professors in Church
colleges who professed to find no conflict between Geology and Genesis.
It will always be so until the ecclesiastical tyranny is greatly
weakened or destroyed, and men can utter their boldest thoughts without
fear or favor, and when teachers can afford to have a conscience by
making themselves free from Church control and menial dependence upon
those to whom they minister for the necessaries of a mere livelihood.
Science itself has made progress only as it has been fearless of
priestly maledictions; and when it shall throw off the incubus of Church
patronage it will astonish the world in showing the eternal antagonisms
between the dogmas of the dominant theology and the essential truths of
natural religion and morality.
CONCLUSIONS.
The following conclusions follow from what has been said:
(1) The clerical fraternity claims to be more than a mere profession.
It is essentially a caste, a “holy order,” borrowed from the
ancient paganism, but somewhat modified by Judaism and a perverted
Christianity.
(2) From such a caste or order the whole truth is not to be expected,
especially when the truth would show the order to be an imposture.
The assumptions of peculiar sanctity, official pre-eminence,
functional prerogatives, and special spiritual authority make such
a hope unnatural and quite impossible.
(3) The church system, with its tests of orthodoxy, its ecclesiastical
handcuffs, and its worse than physical thumb-screws, puts an end
to all independent thinking, and results in an enforced conformity
inconsistent with intellectual progress and the discovery and full
publication of the whole truth.
(4) The pecuniary stipend upon which professional preachers are
dependent has a demoralizing and degrading influence, so that the
doctrinal teaching of the pulpit should not be received without
hesitation and distrust. The common law excludes the testimony of
interested witnesses, and, though modern statutes admit such
testimony, the courts take it for what it is worth, but always
with many grains of allowance. “A gift perverteth judgment,” and
self-interest may sway the convictions of a man who intends and
desires to be fairly honest.
(5) The existing systems of ministerial education and support deter
many superior men from entering the profession, and have placed
preaching upon a commercial or mercantile basis, which has
manacled and crippled the pulpit, and must sooner or later result
in the consideration of the question whether the services of the
clergy are worth what they cost, and whether the truth must not be
sought for in some other direction. More than two hundred and
fifty thousand priests and ministers (of whom about one hundred
thousand are in the United States) are maintained at an annual
expense of more than five hundred millions of dollars; and, as a
rule, where priests are most numerous, people are poorest and
public morality lowest.
A member of the Canadian Parliament (Hon. James Beatty) has recently
published a book in which he opposes the whole system of a salaried
clergy on scriptural and other grounds; and many other thoughtful men
are beginning to inquire how it is that the Society of Friends get along
so well without a “hireling ministry.”
(6) It is a great mistake to suppose that we must look mainly to
professional clergymen for instruction in divine things. It is a
significant fact that the most able and important books that have
been published within the last decade have been written by laymen
or by persons, like Emerson, who have outgrown the narrow garments
of a caste profession and have laid them off. How to get along
without professional ministers has been well answered by Capt.
Robert C. Adams (quoted in the writer’s book, Man—Whence and
Whither? pp. 218, 219).
If ministers would give up the _holy-orders_ idea, cast into the sea the
millstone incumbrance of pecuniary dependence, engage earnestly in some
legitimate work to support themselves, they would then for the first
time begin to realize what soul-freedom is, and they could then preach
with an intelligence and power and with a satisfaction to themselves of
which they now know nothing. Let them try it for themselves and learn a
lesson. Whether the clerical order is so divine an institution that we
have no right to call it into question or to abolish it altogether, is a
question that must be practically considered soon.
(7) There is a deep impression widely prevailing among thoughtful and
sincerely religious persons that the infidelity of the pulpit is
largely responsible for the prevailing skepticism of the age. The
word “infidelity” is here specially used in a strict philological
sense—_infidele_, not faithful, unfaithfulness to a trust—but it
is also used in its more general sense of _disbelief_ in certain
religious dogmas.
We impeach and arraign the clergy (admitting a few honorable exceptions)
on the general charge of _infidelity_ in the strictest and broadest
sense of the word—
1st. In that they fail to qualify themselves to be the leaders of
thought in the great, living questions affecting religion and morality.
We have elsewhere said: “Not one minister in a thousand ‘discerns the
signs of the times’ or is prepared for the crisis. Few pastors ever read
anything beyond their own denominational literature. Their education is
partial, one-sided, professional. They cling to mediaeval superstitions
with the desperate grasp of drowning men. The great majority of the
clergy are not men of broad minds and wide and deep research, and have
not the ability to meet the vexed questions of to-day.”
It is an admitted policy, especially among the orthodox clergy (so
called), not to read or to listen to anything that might unsettle their
faith in what they have accepted as a finality; whereas no man can
intelligently _believe_ anything until he has candidly considered the
reasons assigned by other men for not believing what he does. “He that
is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbor cometh and
searcheth him.”
Professor Fisher, the champion of Yale-College orthodoxy, has recently
admitted in the _North American Review_ that at least one of the causes
of the decline of clerical authority and influence is the increased
intelligence of the laity. If the people cannot get what they desire
from the pulpit, they will seek it from the platform and the press.
Truth is no longer to be concealed in cloisters and smothered in
theological seminaries, but it is to be proclaimed from housetops and in
language understood in every-day life.
It was once said that “the lips of the priest give knowledge,” but it
may now be truly said that modern scientists and philosophers among the
laity are the principal teachers of mankind, and that publications like
the _North American Review_ and _The Forum_, and last, but not least,
the secular daily newspapers, are doing more to instruct the people in
living truths than the whole brood of ecclesiastical parrots.
2d. We charge that many professional clergymen suppress things which
they do believe to be true, and not unfrequently suggest things, at
least by implication, which they do know to be false.
Dr. Edward Everett Hale recently published an article in the _North
American Review_ entitled “Insincerity in the Pulpit;” and the Rev. Dr.
Phillips Brooks of Boston, who recently received episcopal honors in
Massachussetts, has confirmed in the _Princeton Review_ what Dr. Hale
charged in the _North American Review_ regarding clerical
disingenuousness. Dr. Brooks wrote thus:
“A large acquaintance with clerical life has led me to think that almost
any company of clergymen, talking freely to each other, will express
opinions which would greatly surprise, and at the same time greatly
relieve, the congregations who ordinarily listen to these ministers....
How many men in the ministry to-day believe in the doctrine of verbal
inspiration which our fathers held? and how many of us have frankly told
the people that we do not believe it?... How many of us hold that the
everlasting punishment of the wicked is a clear and certain truth of
revelation? But how many of us who do not have ever said a word?”
The same principle of prevarication and deceit was practised by the
early Fathers of the Christian Church, who not only concealed the truth
from the masses of the people, but did not hesitate to deceive and
mislead them.
Mosheim, an ecclesiastical historian of high authority, testifies that
“in the fourth century it was an almost universally adopted maxim that
it was an act of virtue to deceive and lie when by such means the
interests of the Church might be promoted.” He further says of the fifth
century, “Fraud and impudent imposture were artfully proportioned to the
credulity of the vulgar.”
Milman, in his _History of Christianity_, says: “It was admitted and
avowed that to deceive into Christianity was so valuable a service as to
hallow deceit itself.” He further says in the same historical work,
“That some of the Christian legends were deliberate forgeries can
scarcely be questioned.” There is not a Bible manuscript or version that
has not been manipulated by ecclesiastics for century after century.
Many of these priests were both ignorant and vicious. From the fifth to
the fifteenth century crimes not fit to be mentioned prevailed among the
clergy.
Dr. Lardner says that Christians of all sorts were guilty of fraud, and
quotes Cassaubon as saying, “In the earliest times of the Church it was
considered a capital exploit to lend to heavenly truth the help of their
own inventions.” Dr. Thomas Burnet, in a Latin treatise intended for the
clergy only, said, “Too much light is hurtful to weak eyes;” and he
recommended the practice of deceiving the common people for their own
good. I _know_ that this same policy is in vogue in our day. This same
nefarious doctrine of the exoteric and esoteric, one thing for the
priest and another for the people, is far from being dead in this
nineteenth century. It has always been, and now is, the real priestly
policy to keep the common people in ignorance of many things; and if all
do not accept the maxim of Gregory, that “Ignorance is the mother of
Devotion,” many ministers _privately_ hold in our day that “where
ignorance is bliss ’Tis folly to be wise.”
3d. The third article of impeachment, under the general charge of
infidelity is, that sacerdotalists teach dogmas which they do not
believe themselves. They do not all believe, _ex animo_, the distinctive
dogmas of the orthodox creeds—that God is angry with the great body of
mankind, that his wrath is a burning flame, and that there is, as to a
majority of men, but a moment’s time and a point of space between them
and eternal torture more terrible than imagination can conceive or
language describe. It is well said that “Actions speak louder than
words;” and we need only ask the question, “Do ministers who profess to
believe these horrible dogmas preach as if they really believed them?”
Notice the general deportment of the clergy at the summer resort, at the
seaside, or on the mountain-top, and say whether they can possibly
believe what for eight or nine months they have been preaching in their
now closed churches. Listen to the private conversation of our
evangelists at the camp-meeting or at the meetings of ecclesiastical
bodies, and then conclude, if you can, that they believe what they
teach.
Take, if you please, the case of one of our best-known evangelical
ministers, a member of the strictest of our orthodox sects, who spends a
large proportion of his time in studying the ways of insects, and who
would chase a pismire across the continent to find out its habits. Can a
pastor believe in his heart the dogmas of the Westminster Confession,
and yet devote so much time to ants? It is impossible. He may deceive
himself; he cannot deceive others.
4th. Our fourth article of impeachment under the general charge is, that
the pulpit is the great promoter of skepticism called infidelity, in
that it insists upon the belief of dogmas which are absurd upon their
face, such as the miraculous conception of Jesus, the dogma of the
Trinity, the origin and fall of man, vicarious atonement,
predestination, election and reprobation, eternal torture for the
majority, and many other absurdities which no rational mind can now
consistently accept.
True, these dogmas may be found in the Bible; and when men ate told with
weekly reiterations that the Bible is purely divine, supernatural, and
infallible, and they find that it is purely human, natural, and very
fallible, they cannot believe the Bible, though they find many inspiring
and helpful things in it. When ministers tell thinking men that they
must believe all or reject all, they accept the foolish alternative and
reject all. And so it might be further shown how, in very many ways, the
pulpit is the great promoter of skepticism and infidelity, and that the
professed teachers of religion are its greatest enemies, its most
effective clogs and successful antagonists. No wonder that the most
thoughtful and intelligent men and women in every community have drifted
away from the popular faith, and are anxiously inquiring, What next?
President Thomas Jefferson, in writing to Timothy Pickering, well said:
“The religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of
Jesus, so muffled them in mysticisms, fancies and falsehoods, have
caricatured them into forms so monstrous and inconceivable, as to shock
reasonable thinkers to revolt them against the whole, and drive them
rashly to pronounce its founder an impostor.” Writing to Dr. Cooper, he
said: “_My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel if
there had never been a priest._”
We would not abolish the office, or, if you please, the profession, of
_public moral teacher_, but we would banish from the world the caste
idea, the _holy-order_ pretence. When simple-minded young men and grave
and surpliced bishops talk about taking “holy orders,” sensible and
thoughtful men know that they are talking holy nonsense. No man has a
right to assume that he is more holy than other men, or that he has
authority to exercise religious functions that other men have not.
Nor have we any objection that moral teachers should be paid for their
services as other teachers are paid; but when educated men can afford to
teach without pecuniary compensation, we think it would be well for them
to do so; and when the teacher of morals adopts the example of St. Paul,
“working with his own hands” and “living in his own hired house,” we
think the world will be the better for it. Let us hope that the day will
soon dawn when clergymen will consider themselves moral teachers only,
and for ever repudiate the false pretence of special authority and
priestly sanctimoniousness, and clearly understand that mediocrity and
stupidity will not much longer be tolerated because of the so-called
sacredness of a profession.
That the estimate here made of sacerdotalists may not seem extreme and
unjustifiable, I add the testimony of one of the most honored
ecclesiastics of the Established Church of England, Canon Farrar, who in
a recent sermon on priestcraft said: “In all ages the exclusive
predominance of priests has meant the indifference of the majority and
the subjection of the few. It has meant the slavery of men who will not
act, and the indolence of men who will not think, and the timidity of
men who will not resist, and the indifference of men who do not care.”
Alas that “holy hands” should so often be laid “upon skulls that cannot
teach and will not learn”!
Let me here quote from Professor Huxley an admirable statement of the
facts in the case:
“Everywhere have they (sacerdotalists) broken the spirit of wisdom and
tried to stop human progress by quotations from their Bibles or books of
their saints. In this nineteenth century, as at the dawn of modern
physical science, the cosmogony of the semi-barbarous Hebrew is the
incubus of the philosopher and the opprobrium of the orthodox. Who shall
number the patient and earnest seekers after truth, from the days of
Galileo until now, whose lives have been embittered and their good name
blasted by the mistaken zeal of bibliolaters? Who shall count the host
of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the effort to
harmonize impossibilities; whose life has been wasted in the attempt to
force the generous new wine of science into the old bottles of Judaism,
compelled by the outcry of the same strong party? It is true that if
philosophers have suffered, their cause has been amply avenged.
Extinguished theologies lie about the cradle of every science as the
strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that
whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has
been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not
annihilated, scotched if not slain. But orthodoxy learns not, neither
can it forget; and though at present bewildered and afraid to move, it
is as willing as ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis
contains the beginning and the end of sound science, and to visit with
such petty thunderbolts as its half-paralyzed hands can hurl those who
refuse to degrade nature to the level of primitive Judaism.” “Religion,”
he also elsewhere writes, “arising like all other knowledge out of the
action and interaction of man’s mind, has taken the intellectual
coverings of Fetishism, Polytheism, of Theism or Atheism, of
Superstition or Rationalism; and if the religion of the present differs
from that of the past, it is because the theology of the present has
become more scientific than that of the past; not because it has
renounced idols of wood and idols of stone, but it begins to see the
necessity of breaking in pieces the idols built up of books and
traditions and fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs, and of cherishing the
noblest and most human of man’s emotions by worship, ‘for the most part
of the silent sort,’ at the altar of the _unknown and unknowable_”...
“If a man asks me what the politics of the inhabitants of the moon are,
and I reply that I know not, that neither I nor any one else have any
means of knowing, and that under these circumstances I decline to
trouble myself about the subject at all, I do not think he has any right
to call me a skeptic.” Again: “What are among the moral convictions most
fondly held by barbarous and semi-barbarous people? They are the
convictions that authority is the soundest basis of belief; that merit
attaches to a readiness to believe; that the doubting disposition is a
bad one, and skepticism a sin; and there are many excellent persons who
still hold by these principles.”... “Yet we have no reason to believe
that it is the improvement of our faith nor that of our morals which
keeps the plague from our city; but it is the improvement of our natural
knowledge. We have learned that pestilences will only take up their
abode among those who have prepared unswept and ungarnished residences
for them. Their cities must have narrow, un watered streets full of
accumulated garbage; their houses must be ill-drained, ill-ventilated;
their subjects must be ill-lighted, ill-washed, ill-fed, ill-clothed;
the London of 1665 was such a city; the cities of the East, where plague
has an enduring dwelling, are such cities; we in later times have
learned somewhat of Nature, and partly obey her. Because of this partial
improvement of our natural knowledge, and that of fractional obedience,
we have no plague; but because that knowledge is very imperfect and that
obedience yet incomplete, typhus is our companion and cholera our
visitor.”
CHAPTER III. THE FABULOUS CLAIMS OF JUDAISM
“Not giving heed to Jewish fables.”—Tit. 1: 14.
“Neither give heed to fables.”—1 Tim. 1: 4.
“But refuse profane and old wives’ fables.”—1 Tim. 4: 7.
IT is impossible to understand modern Christian ecclesiasticism without
a careful study of ancient Judaism. It is reported that Jesus himself
said, “_Salvation is of the Jews._” The gospel was to be preached “to
the Jews first.” The common belief to-day is, that the Christian Church
represents the substance of what Judaism was the promise, and that the
New Testament contains the fulfilment and realization of what was
foreshadowed in the Old Testament.
All well-informed theologians understand that the Christian Church is
held to have had its origin in what is denominated the “call of
Abraham,” and that what is known in orthodox parlance as the “Abrahamic
covenant” lies at the foundation of the orthodox theory of grace and of
all other systems of doctrine falsely designated as evangelical. It is a
suggestive fact that while Christians hold that their religion is the
very quintessence and outcome of Judaism, they most cordially hate the
Jews, and the Jews in return, have a supreme contempt for Christians and
stoutly deny the relationship of parent and child.
Now that the descent of the Jews from the Chaldean Abram, whom they
affect to call their father, is discredited by all scholars who reject
the inspirational and infallible theory of the Old Testament, it is very
difficult to find out the real origin of this strange people. All modern
writers on Jews and Judaism admit that outside of the Old Testament
there is little or no history of the Jews down to the time of Alexander,
and that there is very little reliable history even in the collection of
books known as the Hebrew Scriptures. It cannot be doubted now that the
Pentateuch, improperly called the five books of Moses, was mostly
written after the return of the Jews from their captivity in Babylon,
about 538 b. c., and what is found in these books mainly corresponds
with the religion and literature of the Assyrians, and was learned
during their sojourn in that country, and not, as has ignorantly been
supposed, from the mythical Abram, the reputed immigrant from Ur of the
Chaldees. What is recorded in the Pentateuch, not being mentioned in
other Old-Testament writings, shows that such records had no existence
when those books were written, and therefore could have no recognition.
It will be shown hereafter that there is little or nothing in the
Pentateuch that is strictly original, much less strictly historical.
Indeed, the tales of the Old Testament generally were written for a
religious or patriotic purpose, with little regard for time, place, or
historical accuracy. Persons, real or mythical, are often used to
represent different tribes, while allegory is the rule rather than the
exception in what is ignorantly accepted as history. This is admitted by
many eminent Christian writers.
The word “Jew” first occurs in 2 Kings 16: 6 to denote the inhabitants
of Judea, but they should properly have been called “Judeans.” The very
name _Jew_ is probably mythological, derived from _Jeoud_, the name of
the only son of Saturn, though, like Abraham, he had several other sons.
It cannot be doubted that the stories of Saturn and Abraham are slightly
varied versions of the same fable.
The Jews never deserved to be called a _nation_, at least not until in
comparatively modern times. They were inclined from the first to mingle
with and intermarry with other peoples, and so became _mongrels_ at an
early period.
There was no race distinction, we are told, between the Canaanites,
Idumeans, and Israelites. Ishmael married an Egyptian woman, and so did
Joseph, the son of Jacob. Esau married a daughter of Ishmael, also two
other women, called daughters of Canaan, one a Hittite and the other a
Hivite. Judah and Simeon each married Canaanites. We read in Judges 3:
5, 6, “The children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and
Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites; and they took
their daughters to be their wives, and gave their [own] daughters to
their sons, and served their gods.”
In Ezekiel 16th it is written: “Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem,
Thy birth and thy nativity was in the land of Canaan; thy father was an
Amorite and thy mother an Hittite. Your mother was an Hittite and your
father an Amorite—thine elder sister, Samaria, and thy youngest sister,
Sodom.”
In Deut. 7: 7 the Jews are told, “The Lord did not set his love upon you
because ye were more in number than any other people, for ye were
_fewest_ of all people.” In Josh. 12: 24 they are reminded that it was
necessary to “send them hornets which drove them (the Canaanites) out
before you, even the two kings of the Amorites;” and in Ex. 23: 28, 29
it is said, “I will send hornets before thee which shall drive out the
Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before thee. I will not
drive them out from before thee in one year, lest the land become
desolate and the beasts of the field multiply against thee.” This does
not look as if the Jews were very numerous or valorous in the little
territory not much larger than the State of Connecticut.
Josephus makes certain notes to show that the Lacedemonians claimed
original kinship with the Jews, and some writers make the same claim for
the Afghans and several other peoples. Nothing is more certain, in my
judgment, than that the Jews are the most thoroughly _mongrel_ race upon
the face of the earth. That they have certain idiosyncrasies in common,
and even certain distinguishing _facial_ and other physical marks, can
easily be accounted for on other grounds than the assumption of unity of
race.
The common story of the origin of the Jews is certainly fabulous.
Major-General Forlong, of the British Army, says: “They were probably in
the beginning a wandering tribe of Bedouin Arabs who got possession of
the rocky parts of Palestine, which were never made better by their
presence. They are a comparatively modern people. The first notice of
Jews is possibly that of certain Shemitic rulers in the Aram paying
tribute about 850 b. c. to Vul-Nirari, the successor of Shalmaneser of
Syria; regarding which, however, much more is made by biblicists than
the simple record warrants. This is the case also where Champollion
affirms that mention is made on the Theban temples of the capture of
certain towns of the land we call Judæa, this being thought to prove the
existence of Jews. Similar assumption takes place in regard to the
hieratic papyri of the Leyden Museum, held to belong to the time of
Rameses II., an inscription read on the rocks of El-Hamamat, and the
discovery of some names like Chedorlaomer in the records of Babylonia;
but this is all the (so-called) evidence as to the existence of ancient
Jews which has been advanced; and the most is made of it in Dr. Birch’s
opening address on the _Progress of Biblical Archaeology_ at the
inauguration of the Archaeological Society. Of Jews we hear nothing
during all the Thothmik wars, unless they be included among the
phallic-worshipping Hermonites who were mentioned as inhabiting the
highlands of Syria. We have no real historical evidence of the persons
or kingdoms of David or Solomon, though we may grant the Jewish stories
_cum grano salis_, seeing how outrageously they have always exaggerated
in everything pertaining to their own glorification.
“The only logical conclusion justifiable when we give up the inspiration
theory is, that Arabs and Syro-Phœnicians were known to Assyrians and
Egyptians, and this none would deny. Indeed, we readily grant, with Dr.
Birch, that under the nineteenth and twentieth Egyptian dynasties the
influence of the Aramæan nations is distinctly marked; that not only by
blood and alliances had the Pharaohs been closely united with the
princes of Palestine and Syria, but that the language of the period
abounds in Semitic words quite different from the Egyptian, with which
they were embroidered and intermingled. Could it possibly be otherwise?
Is it not so to this day? Is a vast and rapidly-spawning Shemitic
continent like Arabia not to influence the narrow delta of a river
adjoining it or the wild highlands of Syria to the north? Of course
Arabs or Shemites were everywhere spread over Egypt, Syria, and
Phœnicia, as well as in their ancient seats of empire in Arabia, Irak
(Kaldia), and on the imperial mounds of Kalneh and Koyunjik; but not
necessarily as Jews. I cannot find that these last were anything more
than a peculiar religious sect of Arabs who settled down from their
pristine nomadic habits and obtained a _quasi_ government under petty
princes or sheiks, such as we have seen take place in the case of
numerous Arabian and Indian sects.
“Only about two hundred years or so after their return from Babylon did
the Jews seem to consolidate into a nation, and the collection and
translation of their old mythic records—deciphered with much difficulty
by the diligent librarians of Ptolemy Philadelphus from “old shreds and
scraps of leather”—no doubt materially aided in consolidating the people
and in welding them into what they became—clans proud of a sort of a
mythic history built up by Ezra and other men acquainted with Babylonian
records and popular cosmogonies.”
No efforts, say the leaders of the Biblical Archaeological Society, have
been able to find either amidst the numerous engravings on the rocks of
Arabia Petrea or Palestine, _any save Phœnician inscriptions_; not even
a record of the Syro-Hebrew character, which was once thought to be the
peculiar property of Hebrews. Most of those inscriptions hitherto
discovered do not date anterior to the Roman empire. Few, if _any_
monuments (of Jews) have been found in Palestine or the neighboring
countries of any useful antiquity save the Moabite Stone, and the value
of this last is all in favor of my previous arguments on these points.
At the pool of Siloam we have an “inscription in the Phœnician character
as old as the time of the Kings;... it is incised upon the walls of a
rock-chamber apparently dedicated to Baal, who is mentioned on it. So
that here, in a most holy place of this peculiar people, we find only
Phœnicians, and these worshipping the Sun-god of Fertility, as was
customary on every coast of Europe from unknown times down to the rise
of Christianity.”
The Biblical Archaeological Society and British Museum authorities tell
us frankly and clearly that no Hebrew square character can be proved to
exist till after the Babylonian captivity, and that, at all events, this
inscription of Siloam shows “that the curved or Phœnician character was
in use in Jerusalem itself under the Hebrew monarchy, as well as the
conterminous Phœnicia, Moabitis, and the more distant Assyria. No
monument, indeed,” continues Dr. Birch, “of greater antiquity inscribed
in the square character (Hebrew) has been found as yet _older than the
fifth century A. D._ [the small capitals are mine], and the coins of the
Maccabean princes, as well as those of the revolter Barcochab, are
impressed with _Samaritan_ characters. So that here we have the most
complete confirmation of all that I assert as to the mythical history of
a Judean people prior to a century or so b. c., and even then only under
such a government as Babylonian administrators had taught them to form
and the lax rule of the Seleukidæ, followed by intermittent Roman
government, permitted of.”
Another modern writer says: “Soon after the death of Alexander the Jews
first came into notice under Ptolemy I. of Egypt, and some of their
books were collected at the new-built city of Alexandria.”
Such was the insignificance of the Jews as a people that the historical
monuments preceding the time of Alexander the Great, who died 323 years
b. c., make not the slightest mention of any Jewish transaction. The
writings of Thales, Solon, Pythagoras, Democritus, Plato, Herodotus, and
Xenophon, all of whom visited remote countries, contain no mention of
the Jews whatever. Neither Homer nor Aristotle, the preceptor of
Alexander, makes any mention of them. The story of Josephus, that
Alexander visited Jerusalem, has been proved to be a fabrication.
Alexander’s historians say nothing about it. He did pass through the
coast of Palestine, and the only resistance he encountered was at Gaza,
which was garrisoned by Persians (Wyttenbach’s _Opuscula_, vol. ii. pp.
416, 421).
For half a century after its destruction, says Dr. Robinson, there is no
mention of Jerusalem in history; and even until the time of Constantine
its history presents little more than a blank (vol. i. pp. 367, 371).
General Forlong says: “The area of Judea and Samaria is, according to
the above authority, 140 X 40 = 5600 square miles, which I think is
certainly one-fourth too much, my own triangulation of it giving only
4500, or a figure of about 130 X 35. I will, however, concede the
allotment of 5600, but we must remember that, as a rule, the whole is a
dismal, rocky, arid region, with only intersecting valleys, watered by
springs and heavy rain from November to February inclusive, and having
scorching heats from April to September. Even the inhabitable portions
of the country could only support the very sparsest population, and I
speak after having marched over it and also a considerable portion of
the rest of the world. In India we should look upon it as a very poor
province; in some respects very like the hilly tracts of Mewar or
Odeypoor in Kajpootana, but in extent, population, and wealth it is less
than that small principality.
“The chief importance of Palestine in ancient history was due to its
lying on the high-road between the great kingdoms of Egypt, Babylon, and
Assyria, and as giving the Arabs a hiding- and abiding-place which
they—Jews included—could not obtain if they ventured out on the plains
south and east. The holes and fastnesses of the hills were their
safeguards, and, as they assure us, very much used indeed. The Jewish
strip is divided into Samaria as a centre, with Galilee north and Judea
south, giving to the two former eight-tenths, and the latter two-tenths;
that is, two tribes; 5600 X 2/10 so that the Judean area would be about
5600 X 8/10 = 20 square miles, against the 4480 of the latter; and the
population would be somewhat in this proportion, for the extreme
barrenness of all the country south and east of Jerusalem would be in
some degree made up for by this town being perhaps a little larger than
those in the north.
“We are thus prepared to state the population of the entire land in
terms of its area, as was done for the Judean capital, and with equally
startling results. The whole Turkish empire yields at present less than
twenty-four persons to the square mile, and in the wild and warring ages
we are here concerned with we may safely say that there were less than
twenty per square mile, of which half were females and one-third of the
other half children and feeble persons, unable to take the field whether
for war or agriculture. The result is disastrous to much biblical
matter, and far-reaching; upsetting the mighty armies of Joshua and the
Judges, no less than those of David and Solomon, who are thought for a
few short years to have united the tribes: nay, the stern facts of
figures destroy all the subsequently divided kings or petty chiefs who
lasted down to the sixth century or so b. c., and show us that Jews have
ever been insignificant in the extreme, especially when compared with
the great peoples who generally ruled them, and far and wide around
them.
“So that this paltry thirty thousand to forty thousand is the very most
which the twelve tribes could, and only for these few years, bring to
the front. In general, the tribes warred with one another and with their
neighbors, so that, for the purposes of foreign war, the Jewish race
represented only two or three tribes at a time, or, say, ten thousand
able men. Thus one tribe—as, for example, Judah—would have only from
three thousand to four thousand men in all, supposing every man left his
fields and home to fight, while Assyrian armies not unusually numbered
one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand men.”
In the above statistics also we have taken a greater area than I think
the tribes occupied. There is not a sign of a Jewish people till about
what is called their “Eastern Captivity,” and the Rev. Mr. Rodwell
writes in the _Trans. of the Biblical Archaeological Society_ that “_the
Hebrew of the Bible is no other than a dialectic variety of the
Canaanitish or Phœnician tongue expressed in the Chaldean character_,
not brought, as has been taught, by Abram himself from Ur of the
Chaldees, but adopted by the Israelites during their long captivities.”
“Could it possibly be otherwise when we look at the facts? The Jews were
a poor, ignorant, weak Arab tribe, living on the outskirts of a land
occupied for long ages previously by the most famous race of all
antiquity—a people from whom Greece, Rome, and Carthage alike borrowed
the ideas of their earliest art and architecture. Homer called this race
_Phens_ Poludaidaloi—‘artists of varied skill,’ and later Romans prized
them above all others for their constructive talent. Pliny, Seneca, and
Varro praise them in words which will never die; Jews said that David
solicited their skilled labor, and that Solomon’s temple, small and
simple though it was, could not be raised without their help; nay,
though Ezra says he had these ensamples before him, and had seen all the
fine buildings of Babylon, yet he too had to solicit their aid, else the
walls of the city of Jehovah and Zerub-babel’s second shrine could never
have been constructed. In all arts, trades, and manufactures this
extraordinary people excelled every ancient race, and from the very
earliest times down and into the Roman period. Is it surprising, then,
that their language and customs prevailed wherever their skilled aid was
required? that Africa in its writing was no less Punic—that is,
Phœnician—than Libyan, guided by these wondrous Pheni or “Tyrii
bilingues”? The history of Britain during some past generations as the
first great manufacturing country of modern times shows how
civilization, power, and progress must ever follow industry and
usefulness, and Phœnicians to a great extent in early days controlled
‘the sinews of war’ where this was their interest; but it too often
proved more profitable to deal in swords and helmets than in ‘Tyrian
purple’ and costly brocade stuffs. Manufacturers are not much given to
writing, and these Pheni have been so parsimonious in their vowels and
lavish and indifferent in the use of b’s, dfs, r’s, and s’s that few
philological students have attempted the translation of Phœnician
writings, though Phœnician, and not Hebrew, is what alone we find traces
of in Syria and Palestine.”
It has been substantially said by William Henry Burr, in a work not now
in the market, that “very erroneous ideas prevail in regard to the
magnitude of the nation and country of the Jews and their importance in
history. Most maps of ancient Palestine assign far too much territory to
that nation. They make the greatest length of the country from 160 to
175 miles, and its greatest breadth from 70 to 90, inclosing an area of
from 10,000 to 12,000 square miles—a little larger than the State of
Vermont. They not only include the entire Mediterranean coast for 160
miles, but a considerable mountain-tract on the north, above Dan, and a
portion of the desert on the south, below Beer-sheba, besides running
the eastern boundary out too far. Moreover, they lengthen the distances
in every direction. From Dan to Beersheba, the extreme northern and
southern towns, the distance on Mitchell’s map is 165 miles, and on
Colton’s, 150; but on a map accompanying _Biblical Researches in
Palestine_, by Edward Robinson, D. D., which is one of the most recent
and elaborate, and will doubtless be accepted as the best authority, the
distance is only 128 miles.
“Now, the Israelites were never able to drive out the Canaanites from
the choicest portion of the country—the Mediterranean coast—nor even
from most parts of the interior (Judges 1: 16-31; 1 Kings 9: 20, 21).
The Phœnicians, a powerful maritime people, occupied the northern
portion of the coast, and the Philistines the southern; between these
the Jebusites or some other people held control, so that the Israelites
were excluded from any part of the Mediterranean shore. The map of their
country must therefore undergo a reduction of a strip on the west at
least 10 miles wide by 160 long, or 1600 square miles. A further
reduction must be made of about 400 square miles for the Dead Sea and
Lake of Tiberias. This leaves at most 9000 square miles by Colton’s map.
But on this map the extreme length of the country is 175 miles, which is
47 miles too great: for the whole dominion of the Jews extended only
from Dan to Beersheba, which Dr. Robinson places only 128 miles apart.
We must therefore make a further reduction of an area about 47 by 60
miles, or 2800 square miles. Then we must take off a slice on the east,
at least 10 miles broad by 60 long, or 600 square miles. Thus we reduce
the area of Colton’s map from 11,000 square miles to 5600—a little less
than the State of Connecticut.
“But now, if we subtract from this what was wilderness and desert, and
also what was at no time inhabited and controlled by the Israelites, we
further reduce their habitable territory about one-half. The land of
Canaan being nearly all mountainous and bounded on the south and east by
a vast desert which encroached upon the borders of the country, a great
part of it was barren wilderness. Nor did but one-fifth of the
Israelites (two and a half tribes) occupy the country east of the
Jordan, which was almost equal in extent to that on the west, the proper
Land of Promise. The eastern half, therefore, must have been but thinly
populated by the two and a half tribes, who were only able to maintain a
precarious foothold against the bordering enemies. So, then, it is not
probable that the Israelites actually inhabited and governed at any time
à territory of more than 3000 square miles, or not much if any larger
than the little State of Delaware. At all events, it can hardly be
doubted that Delaware contains more good land than the whole country of
the Jews ever did.
“The promise to Abraham in Gen. 15: 18 is ‘from the river of Egypt to
the river Euphrates.’ But the Jewish possessions never reached the Nile
by 200 miles. In Ex. 33: 31 the promise is renewed, but the river of
Egypt is not named. The boundaries are ‘from the Red Sea to the Sea of
the Philistines (the Mediterranean), and from the desert to the river.’
By ‘the river’ was doubtless meant the Euphrates; and assuming that by
‘the desert’ was meant the eastern boundary (though Canaan was bounded
on the south also by the same great desert which reached to the Red
Sea), we have in this promise a territory 600 miles long by an average
of about 180 broad, making an area of about 100,000 square miles, or ten
times as much as the Jews ever could claim, and nearly one-half of it
uninhabitable. So, then, the promise was never fulfilled, for the
Israelites were confined to a very small central portion of their land
of promise, and whether they occupied 3000 or 12,000 square miles in the
period of their greatest power, the fact is not to be disputed that
their country was a very small one.
“Lamartine describes the journey from Bethany to Jericho as singularly
toilsome and melancholy—neither houses nor cultivation, mountains
without a shrub, immense rocks split by time, pinnacles tinged with
colors like those of an extinct volcano. ‘From the summit of these
hills, as far as the eye can reach, we see only black chains, conical or
broken peaks, a boundless labyrinth of passes rent through the
mountains, and those ravines lying in perfect and perpetual stillness,
without a stream, without a wild animal, without even a flower, the
relics of a convulsed land, with waves of stone’ (vol. ii., p. 146).”
But lest it may be thought that these dismal features are due to modern
degeneracy, let us take the testimony of an early Christian Father, St.
Jerome, who lived a long time in Bethlehem, four miles south of
Jerusalem. In the year 414 he wrote to Dardanus thus: “I beg of those
who assert that the Jewish people after coming out of Egypt took
possession of this country (which to us, by the passion and resurrection
of our Saviour, has become truly the land of promise), to show us what
this people possessed. Their whole dominions extended only from Dan to
Beersheba, hardly 160 Roman miles in length (147 geographical miles).
The Scriptures give no more to David and Solomon, except what they
acquired by alliance after conquest.... I am ashamed to say what is the
breadth of the land of promise, lest I should thereby give the pagans
occasion to blaspheme. It is but 47 miles (42 geographical miles) from
Joppa to our little town of Bethlehem, beyond which all is a frightful
desert” (vol. ii., p. 605).
Elsewhere he describes the country as the “refuse and rubbish of
nature.” He says that “from Jerusalem to Bethlehem there is nothing but
stones, and in the summer the inhabitants can scarcely get water to
drink.”
“In the year 1847, Lieut. Lynch of the U. S. Navy was sent to explore
the river Jordan and the Dead Sea. He and his party with great
difficulty crossed the country from Acre to the Lake of Tiberias, with
trucks drawn by camels. The only roads from time immemorial were
mule-paths. Frequent détours had to be made, and they were compelled
actually to make some portions of their road. Even then the last
declivity could not be overcome until all hands turned out and hauled
the boats and baggage down the steep places; and many times it seemed as
if, like the ancient herd of swine, they would all rush precipitately
into the sea. Over three days were required to make the journey, which
in a straight line would be only twenty-seven miles. For the first few
miles they passed over a pretty fertile plain, but this was the ancient
Phœnician country, which the Jews never conquered. The rest of the route
was mountainous and rocky, with not a tree visible nor a house outside
the little walled villages (pp. 135 to 152).
“The ancient Sea of Galilee has a prominent place in Jewish geography
and commerce, yet on this insignificant body of water, twelve miles long
by seven wide, all the commerce of the Jews was carried on, except when
they had the use of a port on the Red Sea.
“In a book entitled _The Holy Land, Syria_, etc., by David Roberts, R.
A. (London, 1855), the valley of the Jordan is thus described:
“‘A large portion of the valley of the Jordan has been from the earliest
time almost a desert. But in the northern part the great number of
rivulets which descend from the mountains on both sides produce in many
places a luxuriant growth of wild herbage. So too in the southern part,
where similar rivulets exist, as around Jericho, there is even an
exuberant fertility; but those rivulets seldom reach the Jordan and have
no effect on the middle of the Ghor. The mountains on each side are
rugged and desolate, the western cliffs overhanging the valley at an
elevation of 1000 or 1200 feet, while the eastern mountains fall back in
ranges of from 2000 to 2500 feet.’”
What was the size of ancient Jerusalem? We know pretty nearly what it is
now and how many inhabitants it contains. It is three-quarters of a mile
long by half a mile wide, and its population is not more than ,500
(_Biblical Researches_, vol i., p. 421), a large proportion of whom are
drawn thither by the renowned sanctity of the place. Dr. Robinson
measured the wall of the city, and found it to be only 12,978 feet in
circumference, or nearly two and a half miles (vol. i., p. 268).
“In a book entitled _An Essay on the Ancient Topography of Jerusalem_,
by James Fergusson (London, 1847), a diagram is given of the walls of
ancient and modern Jerusalem, from which it appears that the greatest
length of the city was at no time more than 6000 feet, or a little more
than a mile, and its greatest width about three-quarters of a mile;
while the real Jerusalem of old was but a little more than a quarter
that size.
“With these measurements Mr. Fergusson undertakes to estimate the
probable population of the ancient city, as follows:
“‘If we allow the inhabitants of the first-named cities fifty yards to
each individual, and that one-half of the new city was inhabited at the
rate of one person to each one hundred yards, this will give a permanent
population of 23,000 souls. If, on the other hand, we allow only
thirty-three yards to each of the old cities, and admit that the whole
of the new was as densely populated as London, or allowing one hundred
yards to each inhabitant, we obtain 37,000 souls for the whole; which I
do not think it at all probable that Jerusalem ever could have contained
as a permanent population.’ “‘In another part of the book (p. 47) he
says:
“If we were to trust Josephus, he would have us believe that Jerusalem
contained at one time, or could contain, two and a half or three
millions of souls, and that at the siege of Titus 1,100,000 perished by
famine and the sword, 97,000 were taken captive, and 40,000 allowed by
Titus to go free.
“In order to show the gross exaggeration of these numbers, he cites the
fact that the army of Titus did not exceed, altogether, 30,000, and that
Josephus himself enumerates the fighting-men of the city at 23,400,
which would give a population something under 100,000. But even this he
believes to be an exaggeration. For, says he,
“‘In all the sallies it cannot be discovered that at any time the Jews
could bring into the field 10,000 men, if so many.... Titus enclosed the
city with a line four and a half miles in extent, which, with his small
army, was so weak a disposition that a small body of the Jews could
easily have broken through it; but they never seem to have had numbers
sufficient to be able to attempt it.’
“The author guesses that the Jews might have mustered at the beginning
of the siege about 10,000 men, and that the city might have contained
altogether about 40,000 inhabitants, permanent and transient, in a space
which in no other city in the world could accommodate 30,000 souls. But
the wall of Agrippa was built, as the same author states, twelve or
thirteen years after the Crucifixion; hence prior to that time the area
of Jerusalem was only 756,000 yards, and it was capable of containing
only 23,000 inhabitants at most, but probably never did contain more
than 15,000.
“Allowing to Jerusalem, in the period of the greatest prosperity of the
Jews, a population of even 20,000, is it at all probable that the whole
country could have contained anything like even the lowest estimate to
be gathered from the Scripture record? In 1 Chron. 21: 5, 6 we read that
the number of ‘men that drew the sword of Israel and Judah amounted to
1,570,000, not counting the tribes of Levi and Benjamin. In 2 Sam. 24:
9, the number given at the same census is 1,300,000, and no omission is
mentioned. Assuming the larger number to be correct, and adding only
one-eighth for the two tribes of Levi and Benjamin, which may have been
the smallest, we have 1,766,000 fighting-men. This would give, at the
rate of one fighting-man to four inhabitants, a total population of over
7,000,000 souls. But if we adopt a more reasonable ratio, of one to six,
we have a population of over 10,500,000 souls. And then we omit the
aliens. These numbered 153,600 working-men only two years later (2
Chron. 2: 17), and the total alien population, therefore, must have been
about 500,000, which, added to the census, would make the total
population from 7,500,000 to 11,000,000, or more. Can any intelligent
man believe that a mountainous, barren country, no larger than
Connecticut, without commerce, without manufactures, without the
mechanical arts, without civilization, ever did or could subsist even
two millions of people? Much less can it be believed that it subsisted
‘seven nations greater and mightier than the Israelitish nation itself’
(Deut. 7: 1)—i e. not less than 14,000,000.
“That the Jews were a very barbarous people is undeniable. Slavery
necessarily makes a people barbarous. Not only were the Israelites a
nation of slaves, according to their own record, but after their entry
into Canaan they were six times reduced to bondage in their own land of
promise. During a period of 281 years they were in slavery 111 years.
“That the Jews were far behind their surrounding neighbors in
civilization is shown by the fact that in the first battle they fought
under their first king, Saul, they had in the whole army ‘neither sword
nor spear in the hand of any of the people,’ except Saul and Jonathan (1
Sam. 13:22). Nor was any ‘smith found throughout all the land of Israel’
(ver. 19), but ‘all the Israelites went down to the Philistines to
sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his
mattock’ (ver. 20.) This was 404 years after the Exodus and only 75
years prior to the building of Solomon’s temple. Their weapons of war
were those of the rudest savage.
“As another evidence of the barbarism of the Jews, when David resolved
to build a house for himself he had no native artisans, but had to send
to Hiram, king of Tyre, for masons and carpenters (2 Sam. 5: 11). Even
the wood itself had to be brought from Tyre, it would seem that even in
those days, as now, the mountains of Canaan were destitute of trees—a
sure sign of a sterile country. The wood of course had to be carried
overland. Wheel-carriages were unknown to the Israelites, except in the
form of chariots of iron used by their enemies, which prevented Judah,
even with the help of the Lord, from driving out the inhabitants of the
valleys (Judg. 1: 19). David captured 1000 chariots in about the
sixteenth year of his reign, of which he preserved only 100, disabling
all the horses (1 Ghron. 18: 3.) Prior to this event neither chariots
nor horses had been used by the Israelites, nor was much use made of
them by the subsequent kings. Oxen and asses were their beasts of
burden; camels were rare even long after Solomon’s reign. How, then, was
the wood brought from Tyre over the mountains, unless it was carried on
the backs of oxen or asses or dragged along the ground?”
That a considerable number of Jews at one time sojourned in Egypt is
highly probable. How they got there, and how they came to leave, is not
so certain. An eminent Egyptologist writes in a leading London journal:
“The presence of large numbers of Semites in ancient Egypt has always
been a puzzle to historians, and what first led to their migrating from
Mesopotamia to the land of the Pharaohs has never hitherto been made
clear. Quite recently, however, the British Museum has become possessed
of a number of cuneiform tablets which throw considerable light on the
subject. Early in the present year a number of these tablets were
offered for sale in Cairo. They had been dug up from the grave of a
royal scribe of Amenophis III. and IV. of the eighteenth dynasty, which
had given up its records, and not only records, but seals and papyri of
great historical and artistic value. Some went to the Boulak Museum,
some to Berlin, others to private persons, and eighty-one have found
their way to the British Museum. These last have now been arranged and
catalogued by Mr. Budge, the well-known Egyptologist, whose
investigations have brought to light a most interesting chapter in the
history of ancient Egypt. Not only do the tablets explain the historical
crux mentioned above, but they introduce us to the family life of the
early kings. They picture to us the splendors of the royal palaces; they
enable us to assist at the betrothal of the kings’ daughters and to
follow the kings to their hunting-grounds. Most of the tablets are
letters addressed to Amenophis III., and some are from Tushratta, king
of Mesopotamia.
“Amenophis III. was a mighty hunter, and once on a shooting-trip into
Mesopotamia after big game he, like a king in a fairy-tale, met and
loved Ti, the daughter of Tushratta. They were married in due time, and
Ti went down into Egypt with three hundred and seventeen of her
principal ladies. This brought a host of their Semitic countrymen along,
who found in Egypt a good field for their business capacities, and
gradually, like the modern Jews in Russia, got possession of the lands
and goods of their hosts. The influence of the Semitic queen is attested
by the very fact that this library of cuneiform tablets was preserved.
And under the feeble sovereigns who followed, her countrymen doubtless
held their own. But at last came the nineteenth dynasty and the Pharaoh
‘who knew not Joseph.’ Then they were set to brick-making and
pyramid-building, till the outbreak which led to the Red Sea triumph.
“Mr. Budge, of the British Museum, has translated three of the letters.
One is from Tushratta to Ameno-phis. After many complimentary
salutations, he proposes to his son-in-law that they should continue the
arrangement made by their fathers for pasturing doublehumped camels, and
in this way he leads up to the main purport of his epistle. He says that
Manie, his great-nephew, is ambitious to marry the daughter of the king
of Egypt, and he pleads that Manie might be allowed to go down to Egypt
to woo in person. The alliance would, he considers, be a bond of union
between the two countries, and he adds, as though by an after-thought,
that the gold which Amenophis appears to have asked for should be sent
for at once, together with ‘large gold jars, large gold plates, and
other articles made of gold.’ After this meaning interpolation he
returns to the marriage question, and proposes to act in the matter of
the dowry in the same way in which his grandfather acted, presumably on
a like occasion. He then enlarges on the wealth of his kingdom, where
‘gold is like dust which cannot be counted,’ and he adds an inventory of
presents which he is sending, articles of gold, inlay, and harness, and
thirty eunuchs.”
In speaking of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, Dr. Knappert
says: “According to the tradition preserved in Genesis, it was the
promotion of Jacob’s son, Joseph, to be viceroy of Egypt that brought
about the migration of the sons of Israel from Canaan to Goshen. The
story goes that this Joseph was sold as a slave by his brothers, and
after many changes of fortune received the viceregal office at Pharaoh’s
hands through his skill in interpreting dreams. Famine drives his
brothers, and afterward his father, to him, and the Egyptian prince
gives them the land of Goshen to live in. It is by imagining all this
that the legend tries to account for the fact that Israel passed some
time in Egypt. But we must look for the real explanation in a migration
of certain tribes which could not establish or maintain themselves in
Canaan, and were forced to move farther on.”
The author of the _Religion of Israel_ says: “The history of the
religion of Israel must start from the sojourn of the Israelites in
Egypt. Formerly it was usual to take a much earlier starting-point, and
to begin with a discussion of the religious ideas of the patriarchs. And
this was perfectly right so long as the accounts of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob were considered historical. But now that a strict investigation
has shown us that these stories are entirely unhistorical, of course we
have to begin the history later on.” The author of _The Spirit History
of Man_ says: “The Hebrews came out of Egypt and settled among the
Canaanites. They need not be traced beyond the Exodus; that is their
historical beginning. It was very easy to cover up this remote event by
the recital of mythical traditions, and to prefix to it an account of
their origin in which the gods (patriarchs) should figure as their
ancestors.”
But how about the Jewish exodus from Egypt? What was the real cause?
Whom shall we credit, the writer of the book called Exodus or other
writers? What follows differs very much from the Hebrew story.
Lysimachus relates that “a filthy disease broke out in Egypt, and the
oracle of Ammon, being consulted on the occasion, commanded the king to
purify the land by driving out the Jews (who were infected with leprosy,
etc.), who were hateful to the gods. The whole multitude of the people
were accordingly collected and driven out into the wilderness.”
Diodorus Siculus says: “In ancient times Egypt was afflicted with a
great plague, which was attributed to the anger of God on account of the
multitude of foreigners in Egypt, by whom the rites of the native
religion were neglected. The Egyptians accordingly drove them out. The
most notable of them went under Cadmus and Danaus to Greece, but the
greater number followed Moses, a wise and valiant leader, to Palestine.”
Tacitus, the Roman historian, says: “In this clash of opinions one point
seems to be universally admitted—a pestilential disease, disfiguring the
race of man and making the body an object of loathsome deformity,
spreading all over Egypt. Bocchoris, at that time the reigning monarch,
consulted the oracle of Jupiter Hammon, and received for answer that the
kingdom must be purified by exterminating the infected multitude, as a
race of men detested by the gods. After diligent search the wretched
sufferers were collected together, and in a wild and barren desert
abandoned to their misery. In that distress, while the vulgar herd was
sunk in deep despair, Moses, one of their number, reminded them that by
the wisdom of his counsels they had been already rescued out of
impending danger. Deserted as they were by men and gods, he told them
that if they did not repose their confidence in him as their chief by
divine commission they had no resource left. His offer was accepted.
Their march began, they knew not whither. Want of water was their chief
distress. Worn out with fatigue, they lay stretched on the bare earth,
heartbroken, ready to expire, when a troop of wild asses, returning from
pasture, went up the steep ascent of a rock covered with a grove of
trees. The verdure of the herbage round the place suggested the idea of
springs near at hand. Moses traced the steps of the animals, and
discovered a plentiful vein of water. By this relief the fainting
multitude was raised from despair.”
In a learned work on Egypt by Mr. William Oxley of England, published in
1884, the author writes: “Taking the records as we find them, if they
are real history, and as Palestine is contiguous to Egypt, we should
naturally expect to find some reference to the Israelites in the
Egyptian annals, but what does appear in regard to Palestine is
certainly not favorable to the assumption that it was the home of the
Israelites as a nation. I cull the following from such materials as are
at present within reach, partly taken from the _Records of the Past_:
“It has been generally acknowledged by Egyptian biblicists that ‘the
cruel bondage of the Israelites, culminated under the reign of Rameses
II., nineteenth dynasty, and that the Exodus took place under his
successor, Menephtah I., 1326 b. c., who was drowned in the Red Sea with
all his host in his attempt to bring the wanderers back again. But, as I
have already said, the tomb of this very king at Thebes contains an
inscription to the effect that he had lived to a good old age, and was a
child of good-fortune from his cradle to the grave. In the annals of
Rameses III., who reigned some fifty or sixty years after the Israelites
_ought to have been_ settled in their own land, many references are made
to the country in which they were located (according to biblical
accounts). The king goes to what is known to us as Palestine, Phœnicia,
and Syria to receive the annual tribute from the chiefs/ whom he calls
Khetas. In the enumeration of his conquests, extending from Egypt east
and northward, he enumerates thirty-eight tribes and peoples, and says:
‘I have smitten every land, and have taken every land in its extent.’ In
his reminder to the God Ptah of the benefits he had conferred on the
god, the king says: ‘I gave to thy temple from the store-houses of
Egypt, Tar-neter, and Kharu (i, e. Palestine and Syria) more numerous
offerings than the sand of the sea, as well as cattle and slaves’
(Syrians). He also built a temple to Ammon in the same country, to which
‘the nations of the Rutenna came and brought their tribute.’ Making full
allowance for the usual Egyptian flattery, the fact is clear that in the
time of this king the Israelites could not have been a settled and
distinct people; and the incident of their Exodus would have been too
fresh and recent to be passed over without some comment by this
vainglorious monarch.
“From a papyrus translated in the _Records of the Past_ (ii. 107),
entitled _Travels of an Egyptian_, who gives a full account of
Palestine, etc., it appears there was a fortress there which had been
built by Rameses II., and which was still belonging to Egypt. This would
be about 1350 B. C.; but not the slightest hint of any such people as
Israelites, although he tells us ‘he visited the country to get
information respecting the country, with the manners and customs of its
inhabitants.’
“The next is Rameses XII., some two hundred years after the Exodus, who
is the hero of the story of the possessed princess. He was in
Mesopotamia at the time when the chief of the Bakhten brought his
daughter, who afterward became queen of Egypt. ‘His Majesty was there
registering the annual tributes of all the princes of the countries,’
among whom he enumerates Tar-neter (Palestine), but no mention of
Israelites.
“I find no further trace until the time of Herodotus (about 420 B. c.);
and here we come on historical ground. This great historian travelled
through Egypt and Palestine in the reign of one of the kings of the
Persian dynasty, about forty or fifty years after the alleged return of
the Jews from their captivity in Babylon, and when the temple had been
built and the city fortified. He repeatedly alludes to the Phœnicians
and Syrians, whose country extended from the coast of the Levant down to
the Egyptian frontier, including the isthmus and Sinaitic Peninsula. He
says that Necho (about 670 b. c.) fought with the Syrians, and took a
large city, Cadytis; but he makes no mention of Jews nor yet of
Jerusalem. If they had been there, it is incredible that such a careful
and grasping historian should have explored the land without noticing
them in some way or other.
“The next is from a tablet erected to Alexander II. by Ptolemy, at that
time viceroy under the Persian king, but who soon after himself became
king of Egypt, 305 b. c. The inscription states that ‘Alexander marched
with an army of Ionians to the Syrians’ land, who were at war with him.
He penetrated its interior and took it at one stroke, and led their
princes, cavalry, ships, and works of art to Egypt.’
“Next follows the third Ptolemy, 238 b. c. (see the Decree of Canopus,
_Records of the Past_, viii., 81), who invaded the two lands of Asia,
and brought back to Egypt all the treasures which had been carried away
by Cambyses and his successors. He ‘imported corn from East Rutenna and
Kafatha’—i. e. from Syria and Phœnicia. It was the father of this king
who is credited with sending to Judea for the seventy-two men who
translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek; and yet neither of these
Ptolemaic kings makes mention of Judea, Jerusalem, or the Jews! The
inference is obvious: _they were not there._
“Many historiographers, when writing of Jewish annals, use the Ptolemaic
and other monumental and papyrian accounts as applying to the Jews, and
consequently use the term ‘Jews,’ but this is unwarrantable, inasmuch as
the accounts themselves speak of ‘Syrians, Phœnicians,’ etc., but _not_
of ‘Jews.’ According to the best cyclopædists, ‘there is little or
nothing known of the Jews or Jerusalem until the time of Christ;’ and
even then it is taken chiefly from Josephus, who, to my view, is
scarcely admissible as a chronographer of actual history. No mention is
made by the Ptolemies—say 250 or even less years b. c.—of the Jews of
Jerusalem, and as the Roman emperor Hadrian (from 117 to 138 A. D.) is
credited with changing the name of the city to _Ælia Capitolina_, it
could only have been known as Jerusalem for a few centuries at most. The
Arch of Titus in Rome is taken as conclusive proof that it was erected
to commemorate his victories over the rebellious Jews and the successful
siege of Jerusalem. But even this, I apprehend, is taken chiefly from
Josephus. When in Rome last year I closely inspected this arch,
expecting to find an inscription to this effect, but I was disappointed
at seeing only a Latin one over the arch, which reads (in English): ‘The
Senate and Roman People to the Divine Titus, (Son) of the divine
Vespasian,’ and another, by Pius VII., recording its restoration. It is
true, I saw the alto-reliefs on the inside of the arch, showing a table,
trumpets, and a seven-branched lamp; but these were used in many
temples, and would as well refer to the Syrian or Phœnician temples,
which undoubtedly existed at that time, and in the absence of direct
Roman testimony to the name of the city and people (of which I am
unaware), it cannot be accepted as indubitable evidence of its reference
to a city called and known to them as Jerusalem, and to a people known
to them as Jews. Unless this can be established, it only amounts to an
inference resting on Josephus.
“As the result of my researches, I place Jewish historians, so called,
upon the same footing as the Christian ecclesiastical ones, whose works,
while containing a base of more or less historical reference and truth,
are yet too much overweighted with unhistorical myths to be regarded as
genuine, sober history. To my view, the Jews were, at the period I am
referring to, in a not dissimilar position to the Druses of Lebanon of
the present day. As is well known to a certain class of writers who have
come in contact with them, they form a community held together not so
much by national ties as by semi-religious ones, which are based upon
Cabalistic and theurgic rites and ceremonies. Like what I conceive the
Jews to have been in the centuries preceding the Christian era, they are
an _order_ rather than a nation, the remains of systems which have
continued and survived from ancient times. In this light the Jewish
records are intelligible as writings veiled in allegory, treating of
their mystic lore, albeit expressed in verbiage that bears a literal
meaning upon its surface. I give this as the only solution that presents
itself of the mysterious problem under review.”
I now propose to state a few points from the Jewish writings themselves
(collated from Bishop Colenso) to show the fabulous character of the
history of this pretentious people.
The number of fighting-men who marched out of Egypt is nowhere estimated
at less than 600,000, and if this represented only one-fourth of the
population, the latter must have reached 3,000,000. If we cut this down
one-third, so as to be sure of our figures, we make it 2,000,000 souls.
The number of the children of Israel who went into Egypt was 70 (Ex. 1:
5). They sojourned in Egypt 215 years. It could not have been 430 years,
as would appear from Ex. 11:40. The marginal chronology makes the period
215 years, and there were only four generations to the Exodus—namely,
Levi, Kohath, Amram, and Moses (Ex. 6: 16, 18, 20). How could these
people have increased in 215 years from 70 souls so as to number 600,000
warriors? It would have required an average number of 46 children to
each father. The 12 sons of Jacob had between them only 53 sons. At this
rate of increase, in the fourth generation there would have been only
6311 males (provided they were all living at the time of the Exodus),
instead of 1,000,000. If we add the fifth generation, who would be
mostly children, the total number of males would not have exceeded
28,465.
All the first-born males from a month old and upward, of those that were
numbered, were 22,273 (Num. 3: 43). The lowest computation of the whole
number of the people at that time is 2,000,000. The number of males
would be 1,000,000. Dividing the latter number by the number of
first-born, gives 44, which would be the average number of boys in each
family, or about 88 children by each mother. Or, if where the first-born
were females, the males were not counted, the number of children by each
mother would be reduced to 44.
Dan in the first generation had but one son (Gen. 46: 23), and yet in
the fourth generation his descendants had increased to 62,700 warriors
(Num. 2: 26), or 64,400 (Num. 26: 43). Each of his sons and grandsons
must have had about 80 children of both sexes. On the other hand, the
Levites increased the number of “males from a month old and upward”
during the 38 years in the wilderness only from 22,000 to 23,000 (Num.
3: 39; 26: 62), and the tribe of Manasseh during the same time increased
from 32,200 (Num. 1: 35) to 52,700 (26: 34).
The whole population of Israel were instructed in one single day to keep
the passover, and actually did keep it (Ex. 12). At the first notice of
any such feast Jehovah said, “I will pass through the land of Egypt _this
night_.” The passover was to be killed “_at even_” on the same day that
Moses received the command.
The women were at the same time ordered to borrow jewels of their
neighbors, the Egyptians. After midnight of the same day the Israelites
received notice to start for the wilderness. No one was to go out of his
house till morning, when they were to take their hurried flight with
their cattle and herds. How could 2,000,000 people, scattered about over
a wide district, as they must have been with their cattle and herds,
have gotten ready and taken a simultaneous hurried flight at twelve
hours’ notice?
The Israelites, with their flocks and herds, reached the Red Sea, a
distance of from fifty to sixty miles over a sandy desert, in three
days! Marching fifty abreast, the able-bodied warriors alone would have
filled up the road for seven miles, and the whole multitude would have
made a column twenty-two miles long, so that the last of the body could
not have been started until the front had advanced that distance—more
than two days’ journey for such a mixed company. Then the sheep and
cattle must have formed another vast column, covering a much greater
tract of ground in proportion to their number. Upon what did these two
millions of sheep and oxen feed in the journey to the Red Sea over a
desert region, sandy, gravelly, and stony alternately? How did the
people manage with the sick and infirm, and especially with the seven
hundred and fifty births that must have taken place in the three days’
march?
Judah was forty-two years old when he went down with Jacob into Egypt,
being three years older than his brother Joseph, who was then
thirty-nine. For “Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before
Pharaoh” (Gen. 41: 46); and from that time nine years elapsed (seven of
plenty and two of famine) before Jacob came down into Egypt. Judah was
born in the fourth year of Jacob’s double marriage (Gen. 29: 35), being
the fourth of the seven children of Leah born in seven years; and Joseph
was born of Rachel in the seventh year (Gen. 30: 24, 26; 21: 41). In
these forty-two years of Judah’s life the following events are recorded
in Gen. 38:
He grows up, marries, and has three sons. His eldest son grows up,
marries, and dies. The second son marries his brother’s widow and dies.
The third son, after waiting to grow to maturity, declines to marry the
widow. The widow then deceives Judah himself, and bears him twins—Pharez
and Zarah. One of these twins grows up and has two sons—Hez-ron and
Hamul—bom to him before Jacob goes down into Egypt.
In Ex. 30:11-13, Jehovah commanded Moses to take a census of the
children of Israel, and in doing it to collect half a shekel of the
sanctuary as atonement-money. This expression “shekel of the sanctuary”
is put into the mouth of Jehovah six or seven months before the
tabernacle was made. In Ex. 38: 26 we read of such a tribute being paid,
but nothing is there said of any _census_ being taken, only that the
number of those who paid, from twenty years old and upward, was 603,550
men. In Num. 1: 1-46, more than six months after this occasion, an
account of an actual census is given, but no _atonment-money_ is
mentioned. If in the first instance a census was taken, but accidentally
omitted to be mentioned, and in the second instance the tribute was
paid, but accidentally omitted likewise, it was nevertheless surprising
that the number of adult males should have been identically the same
(603,550) on both occasions, six months apart.
Aaron and his two sons were the only priests during Aaron’s lifetime.
They had to make all the burnt-offerings on a single altar nine feet
square (Ex. 37: 1), besides attending to other priestly duties for
2,000,000 people. At the birth of every child both a burnt-offering and
a sin-offering had to be made. The number of births must be reckoned as
at least two hundred and fifty a day, for which consequently five
hundred sacrifices would have to be offered daily—an impossible duty to
be performed by three priests. For poor women pigeons were accepted
instead of lambs. If half of them offered pigeons, and only one instead
of two, it would have required 90,000 pigeons annually for this purpose
alone. Where did they get the pigeons? How could they have had them at
all under Sinai? There were thirteen cities where the presence of these
three priests was required (Josh. 21: 19). The three priests had to eat
a large portion of the bumt-offerings (Num. 18: 10) and all the
sin-offerings—two hundred and fifty pigeons a day—more than eighty for
each priest.
In keeping the second passover under Sinai, 150,000 lambs must have been
killed—i. e. one for each family (Ex. 12: 3, 4). The Levites slew them,
and the three priests had to sprinkle the blood from their hands (1
Chron. 30: 16; 35: 11). The killing had to be done “between two
evenings” (Ex. 12: 6), and the sprinkling had to be done in about two
hours. The killing must have been done in the court of the tabernacle
(Lev. 1: 3, 5; 17: 2-6). The area of the court could have held but 5000
people at most. Here the lambs had to be sacrificed at the rate of 1250
a minute, and each of the three priests had to sprinkle the blood of
more than 400 lambs every minute for two hours.
The number of warriors of the Israelites, as recorded at the Exodus, was
600,000 (Ex. 7: 37); subsequently it was 603,550 (Ex. 38: 25-28), and at
the end of their wanderings it was 601,730 (Num. 26: 51). But in 2
Chron. 13:3, Abijah, king of Judah, brings 0,000 men against Jeroboam,
king of Israel, with 0,000, and “there fell down slain of Israel 500,000
chosen men” (ver. 17). On another occasion, Pekah, king of Israel, slew
of Judah in one day, 120,000 valiant men (2 Chron. 28: 6.)
The Israelites at their Exodus were provided with tents (Ex. 16: 16), in
which they undoubtedly encamped and dwelt. They did not dwell in tents
in Egypt, but in “houses” with “doors,” “sideposts,” and “lintels.”
These tents must have been made either of hair or of skin (Ex. 26: 7,
14; 36: 14, 19)—most probably of the latter—and were therefore much
heavier than the modern canvas tents. At least 200,000 were required to
accommodate 2,000,000 people. Supposing they took these tents from
Egypt, how did they carry them in their hurried march to the Red Sea?
The people had burdens enough without them. They had to carry their
kneading-troughs with the dough unleavened, their clothes, their cooking
utensils, couches, infants, aged and infirm persons, and food enough for
at least a month’s use, or until manna was provided for them in the
wilderness, which was “on the fifteenth day of the second month after
their departure out of the land of Egypt” (Ex. 16:1). One of these
tents, with its poles, pegs, etc., would be a load for a single ox, so
that they would have needed 0.000 oxen to carry the tents. But oxen are
not usually trained to carry goods on their backs, and will not do so
without training. Then it is written:
“These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel” (Deut. 1: 1).
“And Moses called all Israel and said unto them” (Deut. 5:1).
“There was not a word of all that Moses commanded, which Joshua read not
before all the congregation of Israel, with the women, and the little
ones, and the strangers that were conversant among them” (Josh. 8: 35).
How was it possible to do this before at least
2,000,000 people? Could Moses or Joshua, as actual eye-witnesses, have
expressed themselves in such extravagant language? Surely not.
The camp of the Israelites must have been at least a mile and a half in
diameter. This would be allowing to each person on the average a space
three times the size of a coffin for a full-grown man. The ashes, offal,
and refuse of the sacrifices would therefore have to be carried by the
priest in person a distance of three-quarters of a mile “without the
camp, unto a clean place” (Lev. 4:11, 12.) There were only three
priests—namely, Aaron, Eleazar, and Ithamar—to do all this work for
2,000,000 people. All the wood and water would have to be brought into
this immense camp from the outside. Where could the supplies have been
got while the camp was under Sinai, in a desert, for nearly twelve
months together? How could so great a camp have been kept clean?
But how huge does the difficulty become if we take the more reasonable
dimensions of twelve miles square for this camp; that is, about the size
of London! Imagine at least half a million of men having to go out daily
a distance of six miles and back to the suburbs for the common
necessities of nature, as the law directed.
The Israelites undoubtedly had flocks and herds of cattle (Ex. 34: 3).
They sojourned nearly a year before Sinai, where there was no food for
cattle; and the wilderness in which they sojourned nearly forty years is
now and was then a desert (Deut. 32: 10; 8: 15). The cattle surely did
not subsist on manna!
Among other prodigies of valor, 12,000 Israelites are recorded in Num.
31 as slaying all the male Midianites, taking captive all the females
and children, siezing all their cattle and flocks, numbering 808,000
head, taking all their goods and burning all their cities, without the
loss of a single man. Then they killed all the women and children except
32,000 virgins, whom they kept for themselves. There would seem to have
been at least 80,000 females in the aggregate, of whom 48,000 were
killed, besides (say) 20,000 boys. The number of men slaughtered must
have been about 48,000. Each Israelite therefore must have killed 4 men
in battle, carried off 8 captive women and children, and driven home 67
head of cattle. And then after reaching home, as a pastime, by command
of Moses, he had to murder 6 of his captive women and children in cold
blood.
Now, I respectfully submit that, judging from the account of the Exodus
of the Jews, which they have written themselves, we cannot credit it.
The narrative is full of contradictions, and is so absurd and
incredible, and even impossible, that we must regard it as a _huge
myth_. There may have been an Exodus from Egypt, of which this account
is an exaggeration, but it bears so many evidences of the _fabulous_
that we cast it aside and are led to doubt whether the Jews were ever in
Egypt except as tramps and vagabonds, and to suspect that the whole
story is an _adapted_ history of some great exodus of some ancient
tribes written for a _purpose._
I think it has been shown that the Jews were not the people that they
have been supposed to be. They are a modern people in the world’s
history, antedated by many highly-civilized and powerful nations. They
are not descendants of Abram, as will be shown more fully hereafter, and
their population never reached the fabulous numbers that are given in
what is called their sacred history. Indeed, there is so much of the
_fabulous_ about them, so much of _false pretence_ that upon the very
face is impossible and incredible, that the wonder is that Christians
should ever have seriously thought of regarding them and their
institutions as the source and substance of what Christianity is. We
have no prejudice against the Jews. We cast no reflection upon the
so-called Hebrews of the present day. They are not responsible for their
ancestors, any more than Gladstone, Huxley, Tyndall, Spencer, and other
brainy Englishmen are responsible for the savagery and barbarism of
_their_ forefathers.
It has been our object in this chapter to show the _Munchausenish_
character of Jewish history, upon which the whole superstructure of
modern theology rests. If anybody is proud of his descent from such a
people, he is welcome to the glory.
CHAPTER IV. MOSES AND THE PENTATEUCH
_“But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their
heart.”—2 Cor. 3:15._
THE first five books of the Old Testament, supposed by many to have been
written by Moses, are called the Pentateuch. In the early chapters of
Genesis, in the “Authorized Version,” there is placed at the head of the
page in the margin, “a. m. 1,” which mean Anno Mundi—the year of the
world—one, and immediately below it are the letters “b. c.”—which mean
Before Christ—“4004.” This is the system of chronology established by
Archbishop Ussher, and means that 4004 years before Christ the world was
_one_ year old. It is claimed that Moses promulgated the law about 1451
b. c., and this must have been about two thousand five hundred and
fifty-three years after the Creation, which added to 1890, the present
date, would make the world just five thousand eight hundred and
ninety-four years old. Lyell, a most judicious geologist estimated the
delta of the Mississippi at one hundred thousand years, and some persons
think these figures should have been doubled. Professor John Fiske
thinks the glacial period began two hundred and forty thousand years
ago, and that human beings inhabited Europe at least one hundred and
sixty thousand years earlier, thus giving an antiquity to our race of
not less than four hundred thousand years. Other scientists talk of
hundreds of thousands, and even _millions_, of years, but we attach no
importance to specific figures. We simply insist upon an antiquity which
very far exceeds six thousand years.
Learned Egyptologists place Rameses II., the Pharaoh of the Jewish
captivity, whose mummy is now to be seen in the museum at Cairo, at 1390
years b. c. It seems strange that his mummy should be on exhibition in a
museum when “he and all his hosts were swallowed up in the Red Sea.” If
we are told that Rameses II. was succeeded by Sethi II., we find from
Egyptian records that both of these kings lived to a good old age, and
the mummy of each has been preserved, and not even a hint is given that
either of them was drowned. But we have, according to the tables of
Abydos and Bunsen, which are generally accepted, three thousand six
hundred and twenty years before Christ as the time in which Menes, the
first monarch of Egypt, reigned, making two thousand two hundred and
thirty years as the period of the Egyptian monarchy before the reign of
Rameses II.
But I contend that Egyptian civilization extends back at least seven
thousand years, and Miss Amelia
B. Edwards, the Egyptologist, who has recently lectured in our
Pennsylvania University course, thinks ten thousand years not too
high an estimate. In support of ibis hypothesis, the great
antiquity of man, which no scholar now disputes, carries us back
many thousands of years beyond Menes, and there are many facts
which favor the assumption that the valley of the Nile was one of
the places inhabited for an indefinite period. The works of
art—monuments, architecture, paintings, etc.—show an antiquity that
cannot be estimated. Manetho, an Egyptian priest, who wrote a
history of Egypt, by request of Ptolemy II., two hundred and
eighty-six years before Christ, carries us back more than seven
thousand years.
The Pentateuch is a compilation by several authors, and hence its
patchwork character. Professors Ewald and Kuenen and others have proved
this, and Dean Stanley, of the English Establishment, has admitted it.
Some portions may have been compiled eight hundred or nine hundred years
before Christ, but not the two contradictory accounts of the creation
and fall of man. The Assyrian cuneiform tablets, which were discovered
in 1873 and 1874 a. d., and which are now in the British Museum, show
that this ancient people had this story about two thousand years before
the time of Moses. The Jews learned it in Babylon, and none of the other
Old-Testament writings contain any notice of it, because it was not
known until after the return of the Jews from their captivity in
Babylon, five hundred and eighteen years before Christ. Is it not
reasonable to suppose that the various Old-Testament writers would have
made some reference to the Pentateuch had they known of its existence?
Professor François Lenormant of the National Library of France, a most
learned archaeologist and palaeontologist, and a most devout Christian,
in his _Beginnings of History_ admits that the Jews borrowed
substantially the story of the creation and the fall from more ancient
nations, and furnishes the original copies. The legends recorded in
Genesis are found among many ancient peoples who lived many centuries
before Moses; and Berosus, a priest of the temple of Belus, who wrote
two hundred and seventy-six years before Christ, affirms that fragments
of Chaldean history can be traced back 15 Sadi or 150,000 years. I have
mentioned these things because they are germane to what is to follow.
There is good reason for thinking that the book of Deuteronomy was
written about six hundred and twenty-one years before Christ, and the
remaining books of the Pentateuch were of later date, coming down to
four hundred and fifty years before Christ. This Professor Kuenen has
demonstrated beyond controversy in his _Religion of Israel_, to which I
must refer for his arguments in detail. The best scholarship of the
world does not believe that what is called the Law of Moses was written
prior to the fifth or sixth century before Christ, and learned men in
Holland, Germany, and England, as well as the most advanced thinkers in
America, now accept this opinion. Professor Robertson Smith, in the
_Encyclopœdia Britannica_, adopts this view, and Dean Stanley, in his
_Jewish Church_, does not leave us in doubt as to his opinion.
Take the following as an example of what I mean (Gen. 12:6): “And the
Canaanite was then in the land;” whereas the expulsion of the Canaanites
did not occur until several centuries after the death of Moses, when
this must have been written. In Gen. (36: 31) we read, “Before there
reigned any king over Israel.” This must have been two hundred years
after the death of Moses. “The nations that were before you” (Lev. 13:
8) of course presupposes that the Canaanites had already been subdued.
“Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men that were upon the
face of the earth” (Num. 12:13), could hardly have been written by Moses
himself. The expression “unto this day” frequently occurs, and shows
that the time was long after the events took place. It is also implied
in various places that the writer resided in Palestine, and so it could
not have been Moses. In Deuteronomy (19: 14) we read, “Thou shalt not
remove thy neighbor’s landmark which they of old time have set in thine
inheritance.” They had no landmark to remove, unless this was written
concerning the land of Canaan long after the death of Moses. They are
reproached for not keeping the Sabbath in the past for a long time, and
this is given as a reason for the Captivity; and hence Leviticus 26:34,
35, 43 was written after the Captivity, which began in 597 b. c. In Gen.
14:14, Lot is taken prisoner and rescued from his captors, whom they
“pursued unto Dan.” Now, there was no such place as Dan until after the
entrance into Canaan. We read in Judg. 18:27, 29 that this city was
called Laish, which was burned by the Israelites, and then they built a
city, and they called it “Dan, after the name of their father: howbeit
the name of the city was Laish at first.” This “trout in the milk” is as
striking as if some one should write of Chicago when the Declaration of
Independence was signed. In Gen. 36:31 we read, “And these are the kings
that reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any king over the
children of Israel.” This passage shows that it was written after there
had been kings in Israel, and could not have been written by Moses. I
could show similar incongruities concerning the manna in Gen. 16: 35,
compared with Josh. 5: 12. So Deut. 24: 14 must have been written after
the entrance into Canaan, as until then they had no _lands_, and there
were no gates and no “strangers within their gates.” The same might be
said of the fourth commandment of the Decalogue: the Israelites had no
_gates_ until after they entered Canaan. It could not have been written
by Moses in the wilderness of Arabia.
These illustrations might be produced indefinitely, but enough have been
given to show that the Pentateuch was written several hundred years
after the death of Moses, and that we are justifiable in fixing the date
for most of it in the fourth, fifth, or sixth century before the
Christian era. The Pentateuch abounds in duplicate traditions of the
same transactions, and also in diversity and contradictions. These
numerous repetitions are fatal to the supposition that it was written by
Moses. If Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, we should expect to
find a good many hints of this in other parts of the Bible; whereas we
have no reference to Sinai and its awful thunders, and, although Moses
is mentioned in the New Testament, it only shows the existence of
traditions to that effect at that time. Not until the time that
Christianity arose, about thirteen hundred years after the death of
Moses, did the tradition obtain currency that he was the author of the
Pentateuch.
The fact is, the Jews are a comparatively modern people, and were not
known as a nation until the time of Alexander the Great (356-325 b. c.),
and Herodotus, by never mentioning them, so indicates. While the
Hindoos, Egyptians, Grecians, Romans, Chaldeans, and Babylonians had
their men of science, literature, and law, whose fame only brightens
with the flight of time, the Jews have no _history_ except what was
written by themselves, and that is so absurd, impossible, and
contradictory that nobody can believe it.
Everybody knows that the ancient Jews were the constitutional imitators
of other peoples. They have always been the second-hand clothes-dealers
of the world. As a race they never have been noted for originality, but
have always been ready to borrow what belonged to other people, and
then, with characteristic self-complacency, have claimed to be the
“original Jacobs” of everything good and great. We intend this as no
reflection upon the Jews of the present day.
C. Staniland Wake, an English writer, in his great work on the
_Evolution of Morality_, vol. ii., page 59, thus expresses his
views: “Judging from this fact, many persons imagine—or at least,
from the superstitious reverence that they have for the Decalogue,
appear to do so—that until the time of the Hebrew lawgiver the most
ordinary rules of morality were unknown. The mere fact of Egypt
being the starting-point of the Exodus ought to be sufficient to
disabuse the mind of this idea, without reference to the contents
of the code itself. But the moral laws given in the Decalogue are
of so primitive a character that it is absurd to suppose, except on
the assumption that the Hebrews were at that period in a condition
of pure savagery, that God would personally appear to give his
immediate sanction to them. The commands, Honor thy father and thy
mother, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou
shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy
neighbor, Thou shalt not covet, were simply _reiterations_ of laws
to which the Hebrews had been subject during their whole sojourn in
Egypt, and which must, in fact, have been familiar to them before
their ancestors left their traditional Chaldean home.”
Then we must bear in mind that Moses himself was an Egyptian by birth,
and that he was brought up at the court of Pharaoh until he was forty
years of age, and in Acts 7: 22 we are told that “Moses was learned in
all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.”
The whole matter relating to the Pentateuch is thus summed up by the
late Prof. John Wm. Draper, M. D., LL.D., late of the University of New
York, in his _Conflict between Religion and Science_: “No man may dare
to impute them (the books of the Pentateuch) to the inspiration of
Almighty God, their inconsistencies, incongruities, and impossibilities,
as exposed by many learned and pious modern scholars, both German and
English, are so great. It is the decision of these critics that Genesis
is a narrative based upon legends; that Exodus is not historically true;
that the whole Pentateuch is _unhistoric_ and _un-Mosaic_: it contains
the most extraordinary contradictions and impossibilities, sufficient to
involve the credibility of the whole—imperfections so conspicuous that
they would destroy the authenticity of any modern historical work.”...
“To the critical eye they all present peculiarities which demonstrate
that they were written on the banks of the Euphrates, and not in the
desert of Arabia. They contain many Chaldaisms.”... “From such Assyrian
sources the legends of the creation of the earth and heavens, the Garden
of Eden, the making of man from clay and the woman from one of his ribs,
the temptation of the serpent, etc.,... were obtained by Ezra.” “I agree
in the opinion of Hupfeld, that the discovery that the Pentateuch is put
together out of the various sources of original documents is beyond all
doubt, is not only one of the most important and most pregnant with
consequences for the interpretation of the historical books of the Old
Testament—or rather for the whole of theology and history—but it is also
one of the most certain discoveries which have been made in the domain
of criticism and the history of literature.”
But not only do the laws of Egypt antedate the laws accredited to Moses,
but the Hindoos had laws which were yet more ancient. The writings of
Buddha, who died in 477 b. c., refer to older books and quote from them,
and these again refer to still older books, until we reach laws which
existed many thousands of years before the Law of Moses, as the laws of
Manu were drawn from the “immemorial customs” of the nation and
constitute a kind of _common law_. “The most accurate scholars point to
India as the origin of Egyptian civilization,” says Le Renouf, the
learned Egyptologist.
If Egyptian literature was derived in a remote period from India, what
must be the date of old India’s laws as compared with the laws of the
Hebrews? It is no wonder that Max Müller, professor in the orthodox
University of Oxford, says (in Chips, vol. i., p. 11): “After carefully
examining every possible objection that can be made against the date of
the Vedic hymns, their claim to that high antiquity which is ascribed to
them has not, as far as I can judge, been shaken.” The same learned
Sanskrit scholar says, “The opinion that the pagan religions were mere
corruptions of the religion of the Old Testament, once supported by men
of high authority and great learning, is now as completely surrendered
as the attempt at explaining Greek and Latin as corruptions of Hebrew”
(_Science of Religion_, p. 24). This great Sanskrit scholar admits in
many places in his voluminous writings the greater antiquity of the
pagan scriptures, and gives many weighty reasons to show how impossible
and absurd it is to suppose that they have been changed and interpolated
to adapt them to more modern times.
The Vedas, the sacred writings of the Hindoos, according to Sir William
Jones the Orientalist, “cannot be denied to have an antiquity the most
distant.” According to the Brahmans, they are coeval with the creation,
and the Sama-Veda says, “They were formed of the soul of Him who exists
by, or of, himself.” The Hindoo laws were codified by Manu and copied by
all antiquity, notably by Rome in the compilation or digest of the laws
of all nations called the Code of _Justinian_, which has been adopted as
the foundation of all modern legislation. I could, did time permit,
furnish the laws of Manu, the Justinian Code, and the Civil Code of
Napoleon in parallel columns, in a way to show their common origin
beyond a doubt. Laws of betrothal and marriage, paternal authority,
tutelage, and adoption; property, contract, deposit, loan, sale,
partnership, donation, and testamentary bequest,—all were elaborately
promulgated by the Code of Manu in 2680 _slocas_.
Laws were arranged under eighteen principal heads, concerning as many
different causes for which laws are enacted: Debts, deposits and loans
for use, sale without ownership, gifts, non-payment of wages,
agreements, sale and purchase, disputes, boundaries, assaults, slander,
robbery and violence, adultery, altercation between man and wife,
inheritance, and gaming. “The court of Brahma with four faces” is where
four learned Brahmans sat in judgment, one of whom was the king’s chief
counsellor.
One of their trite sayings was, “When justice, having been wounded by
iniquity, approaches the court, and the judges extract not the arrow or
dart, they also shall be wounded by it.”
The mode of conducting lawsuits was, in a great degree, similar to that
used in all civilized countries of the present day. The oath taken by
witnesses was as follows: “What ye know to have been transacted in the
matter before us, between the parties reciprocally, declare at large and
with truth, for your evidence in the cause is required.”
“The witness who speaks falsely shall be fast bound under water in the
snaky cords of Varuna, and be wholly deprived of power to escape torment
during a hundred transmigrations.”
Brahmans were banished for giving false evidence, but all others were
punished by blows on the abdomen, the tongue, feet, eyes, nose, and
ears, and in capital cases blows were inflicted upon the whole body.
Some of the moral sayings of the Hindoos run thus: “He who bestows gifts
for worldly fame, while he suffers his family to live in distress,
touches his lips with honey, but swallows poison. Such virtue is
counterfeit. Even what he does for his spiritual body, to the injury of
those he is bound to maintain, shall bring him ultimate misery, both in
this world and the next.
“Content, returning good for evil, resistance to sensual appetite,
abstinence from illicit gains, knowledge of the Vedas, knowledge of the
Supreme Spirit, veracity, and freedom from wrath, form the tenfold
system of duties.
“Honor thy father and thy mother. Forget not the favors thou hast
received. Learn whilst thou art young. Seek the society of the good.
Live in harmony with others. Remain in thine own place.
“Speak ill of none. Ridicule not bodily infirmities. Pursue not a
vanquished foe. Deceive even not thy enemies. Forgiveness is sweeter
than revenge. The sweetest bread is that earned by labor. Knowledge is
riches.
“What one learns in his youth is as lasting as graven on stone. The wise
is he who knows himself. Speak kindly to the poor. Discord and gaming
lead to misery. He misconceives his interest who violates his promise.
“There is no tranquil sleep without a good conscience, nor any virtue
without religion. To honor thy mother is the most acceptable worship. Of
women the fairest ornament is modesty.”
The following, from the laws of Manu (lib. iii. Sloca 55), will contrast
strangely with the law of Moses regarding the treatment of women and the
esteem in which they should be held:
“Women should be nurtured with every tenderness and attention by their
fathers, their brothers, their husbands, and their brothers-in-law, if
they desire great prosperity.”
“Where women live in affliction the family soon becomes extinct; but
when they are loved and respected, and cherished with tenderness, the
family grows and prospers in all circumstances.”
“When women are honored the divinities are content; but when we honor
them not all acts of piety are sterile.”
“The households cursed by the women to whom they have not rendered due
homage find ruin weigh them down and destroy them as if smitten by some
secret power.”
“In the family where the husband is content with his wife, and the wife
with her husband, happiness is assured for ever.”
That there were many trivial things in the ancient pagan laws, and many
practices prevailed among a portion of the people which seem idolatrous,
we freely admit; but the same is true of many of the Hebrew laws, which
are too obscene for quotation here. We also find among the Hebrews all
forms of _nature-worship_, such as sun-worship, tree-worship,
fire-worship, ser-pent-worship, and phallic-worship. Of this more later
on.
Besides the Hindoos and the Egyptians, there were many nations more
ancient than the Hebrews. The Grecian Argos was founded 1807 b. c.
Athens and Sparta existed 1550 b. c. Then there were the Phœnicians, a
maritime people who flourished more than five thousand years ago, whose
monuments and inscriptions are found in Palestine to-day, while the
Hebrews have left us neither monument nor inscription. The Chaldeans
established a monarchy four thousand or five thousand years ago, and
three thousand five hundred or four thousand years back the Assyrians
became masters of the valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and from
these people the Jews got all they ever knew about things subsequently
recorded in the Pentateuch.
The Jewish and Christian religions (for they are claimed to be one) are
next to being the _youngest_, or most modern, of any of the _great
religions_ of the world, the Mohammedan being the last. Each claimed
divine authority; all had their lawgivers, priests, and prophets, who
wrote, as they claimed, their bibles by _divine_ inspiration. The error
of Judaism is in claiming the greatest antiquity, as well as claiming to
be the only religion having the divine sanction.
I cannot refrain from mentioning some things which cannot be regarded as
wholly irrelevant. Moses had a very remarkable experience in his
infancy. At his birth he was placed in an ark and set afloat on the
Nile, and was rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter, who called a nurse for him
who proved to be his mother. We have many counterparts of this in
Grecian and Egyptian mythology. _Perseus_ was shut up in a chest and
cast into the sea by the king of Argos, and was found by Dictys, who
educated him. _Bacchus_ was confined in a chest by order of the king of
Thebes, and was cast upon the Nile. He had two mothers—natural and
adopted. _Osiris_, the Egyptian divinity, was confined in a coffer and
thrown into the river. He floated to Phœnicia. His mother wandered in
silence and grief to Byblos, and was selected by the king’s servants and
taken to the palace, and was made _the nurse_ of the young prince. We
could give several other parallel cases, but we pause and wonder
whether the reported experience of Moses was not another version of the
same myth.
We next find this “greatest of statesmen and lawgivers” a fugitive from
justice (Ex. 2: 11-15). He had killed a man and buried him in the sand,
and when he learned that the murder was known by the Hebrews, and
Pharaoh sought to slay him, he fled to the land of Midian and tended the
flocks of Jethro, a priest, until he was eighty years old. He knew then
that it was wrong to kill just as well as he did after receiving the Ten
Commandments; for he “looked this way and that” to find out whether any
one saw him, and “he feared, and said, Surely this is known.” He showed
a sense of _guilt_. He always seemed afraid of Pharaoh on account of
this murder.
He was next commissioned to deliver his brethren from their bondage in
Egypt, and was instructed to say that “_I Am that I Am_” had sent him
(Ex. 3: 14). Now, it seems to me very strange that Nuk-Pa-Nuk was the
Egyptian name for God, and means, “_I Am that I Am!_” (Bonwick,
_Egyptian Belief_, p. 395). This name was found upon an Egyptian
temple, according to Higgins (_Anacalypsis_, vol. ii. p. 17),
who says, “_I Am_ was a divine name understood by all the initiated
among the Egyptians;” and Bunsen affirms, in his _Keys of St. Peter_,
that the “_I Am_ of the Hebrews was the same as the _I Am_ of the
Egyptians.”
There is another peculiarity about Moses that seems strange to me. In
his statue in Fairmount Park he is represented as having horns, and he
is so portrayed in the statue by Michael Angelo. Now the sun-god Bacchus
had _horns_, and so had Zeus, the Grecian supreme deity. _Bacchus_ was
called “the Lawgiver,” and it is said that his laws were written upon
_two tables of stone_. It is also said that he and his army enjoyed the
_light of the sun_ (pillar of fire) during the night-time, and he, like
Moses, had a _rod_ with which divers miracles were wrought. The Persian
legend relates that Zoroaster received from Ormuzd the Book of the Law
upon a _high mountain. Minos_ received on Mount Dicta, from Zeus, the
supreme god, _the law_. There are many such cases. Even Mohammed, it is
said, so received the Koran.
Then the crossing of the Red Sea by Moses and his three millions of
absconding slaves “dry-shod,” and the “rock in the wilderness giving
forth water when struck by the rod of Moses,” both have several
parallels. Orpheus, the earliest poet of Greece, relates how _Bacchus_
had crossed _the Red Sea dry-shod_ at the head of his army, and how he
“divided the waters” of the rivers Orontes and Hydaspis and passed
through them “dry-shod,” and how he _drew water from the rock
with his wonderful rod_. Professor Steinthal notes the fact “that almost
all the acts of Moses correspond to those of the _sun-gods_.” It may
seem strange that the Hebrews were acquainted with Grecian mythology,
yet we know this was the fact. Rev. Dr. Isaac M. Wise says, “The Hebrews
adopted forms, terms, ideas, and myths of all nations with whom they
came in contact, and, like the Greeks, in their way cast them all in a
peculiar Jewish religious mould.”
Moreover, there are strange inconsistencies and contradictions connected
with the alleged giving of the Law to Moses. In both Exodus and
Deuteronomy God is represented as _speaking_ the words, and in Deut.
5:22 it is said God “_wrote_ them on two tables of stone” after speaking
them, and in Ex. 24: 28 _Moses_ is represented as doing the writing:
“And _he_ wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten
commandments.” We here find a hundred commandments, more or less, of a
ceremonial character, and only _one_ of the original ten, the one
relating to the Sabbath, and we here find “earing-time and harvest” made
a season of rest just as much as the Sabbath. Then there are different
reasons given for the observance of the Sabbath in Ex. 20 and Deut.
5—the one that God “rested on the seventh day” after creating all things
in six days (of course this was in six days of twenty-four hours each,
else there was no pertinency in the reason); and the other, that it was
in commemoration of the deliverance of the Hebrews from the bondage in
Egypt.
It has been claimed that at least the Sabbath is an institution first
established in the Decalogue of Exodus, and yet even this must be
denied. Evidences of the observance of the seventh day as sacred are
found in the calendars of the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians, and the
_Records of the Past_ assert that Sabbath observance was in existence at
least eleven hundred years before Moses or Exodus among the Accadians,
Chaldeans, and Assyrians.
There are also great variances in the language of the two accounts in
Exodus and Deuteronomy, which could not have existed if copied from what
God had written in stone. The second table of stone was an exact copy of
the first (Deut. 10:2). When Moses got excited at Aaron’s golden calf
and broke the two tables of stone containing the Law, and God was going
to destroy the people, Moses dissuaded him from doing so by telling him
what the Egyptians would then say about him! (Num. 14; 13-16.)
It is worthy of note that the first commandment is of doubtful
_monotheism_: Thou shalt have no “other gods before me,” implying that
there were other gods. Then there is something not pleasant in the idea
of a “jealous God,” as used in this commandment and frequently in other
places. Contrast this with the Hindoo _Geeta_, where God is represented
as saying, “They who serve even other gods, with a firm belief in doing
so, involuntarily worship Me. I am He who partaketh of all worship, and
I am their reward.” God is defined in the Hindoo _Vedas_ as, “He who
exists by himself, and who is in all because all is in him; whom the
spirit can alone perceive; who is imperceptible to the organs of sense;
who is without visible parts, Eternal, the Soul of all being, and whom
none can comprehend.” “God is one, immutable, without form or parts,
infinite, omnipresent, and omnipotent.” No need to prohibit the making
of a “graven image” to represent such a god.
Now take Moses’ description of God. He only saw his “back parts” (Ex.
33: 22, 23), and God held his hand over him when in the cleft of the
rocks while he passed by, that he might not see his glory. And, while it
is said, “Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me and
live” (Ex. 33: 20), yet “the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a
man speaketh unto his friend” (Ex. 33:11). He was with him in the
mountain forty days and nights, and saw him and talked to him, and so
did at least seventy-three other persons (Ex. 24: 9). Yet we are told in
John 1:18, “No man hath seen God at any time.”
Then there are many other “commandments” in the Bible which cannot be
reconciled with the “Ten Commandments,” and very many acts regarded as
criminal in this nineteenth century which are not forbidden, but
indirectly or tacitly sanctioned. One of the “Ten Commandments” is,
“Thou shalt not kill,” but husbands are directed to _kill_ their wives
if they propose to them a change of religion, and killing is commanded
in numerous instances and for trivial offences, such as picking up
sticks to make a fire on the Sabbath.
Take the following as specimens of the cruelty of Moses:
“But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give
thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save nothing alive that breatheth”
(Deut. 20:16).
Here is another of his injunctions: “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel,
Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate
throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his
companion, and every man his neighbor” (Ex. 32:27).
Here is another: “Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember that which
Amalek did to Israel [some four hundred years before], how he laid wait
for him,” etc. “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that
they have; slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep,
camel and ass” (1 Sam. 15: 2, 3). This was sweeping, merciless revenge
on the innocent.
He commands the Jews to swindle the Egyptians by false pretence,
“spoiling” them of their jewelry (Ex. 3:19-22). He authorized them to
take _usury_ of strangers, but not of one another; and to sell the
“flesh of animals that had died of themselves” to strangers and aliens,
but not to run the risk of poisoning themselves (Deut. 14:21).
In the affair with the Midianites _Moses was more cruel than the
officers and common soldiery_. He was “_wroth with them_” because they
had saved all the women alive, and required that they should go back and
finish the brutal butchery. I cannot do this subject justice without
transcribing a large portion of Num. 31:
“And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses;
and they slew all the males.
“And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were
slain; namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of
Midian; Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword.
“And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and
their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their
flocks, and all their goods.
“And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their
goodly castles, with fire.
“And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of
beasts.
“And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses
and Eleazar the priest, and unto the congregation of the children of
Israel, unto the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by Jordan near
Jericho.
“And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the
congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp.
“And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains
over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle.
“And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?
“Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of
Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and
there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord.
“Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every
woman that hath known man by lying with him.
“But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with
him, keep alive for yourselves.”
What shall we say when we remember that Moses found a refuge with the
Midianites for forty years when he was a fugitive from justice for the
murder of the Egyptian, and the Midianites were the first to show the
Jews hospitality when they escaped from the bondage of Egypt? Moreover,
Moses had married a woman of Midian, and might have been supposed to
have some regard for her kinswomen. It cannot be claimed that Moses was
compelled by the low condition of the people to treat the Midianites
thus, for he was the _sole author_ of this extreme butchery of women and
children, and was “wroth” with his officers for not committing the
atrocity in the first place. True, he charges the women with having
“caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit
trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor but this could not
justify the butchery of some forty-eight thousand women and twenty
thousand boys, besides the old men. And then the thirty-two thousand
virgins had a fate _worse than death_, though called the ’Lord’s
tribute’,” and the priests got their full share of the spoil. For those
who would justify such cruelty and wholesale butchery, as they would
justify famine and pestilence the effect of natural laws, I can have no
very great respect.
It has been said, “Cruel as many of the Mosaic punishments undoubtedly
were, it is well to remember that two hundred years ago the criminal
code of England was almost, if not equally, bloody. If Moses stoned
adulteresses to death, it is not very long since we put witches and
Quakers to death, while in many other countries the stake and the fagot
were the chief arguments in aid of orthodoxy. It would not be just to
judge of the punishments inflicted over three thousand years ago from
the standpoint of the present century, when the Mosaic dispensation has
passed away and that of the law of love substituted. There was no mercy
in the smoking rocks of Sinai. There was nothing but the law in all its
sternness.”
This is all very well, but we should remember that the cruel criminal
codes of modern times got their cruelty from the Mosaic code. “Thou
shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Ex. 22: 18) was one of the laws of
Moses, and from first to last thirty thousand witches were’ executed in
Great Britain and two hundred thousand in Germany. Sir Matthew Hale
pronounced the death-sentence on a “witch,” and Blackstone, the great
commentator, thought that witchcraft must be real because the Bible said
there were witches! Scotland continued to burn witches until 1722, and
Germany until 1780, while in 1515 there were five thousand witches
burned at Geneva. I am ashamed to speak of our own hanging of witches in
Massachusetts, but it is very well known that it was done by authority
of the law of Moses: “A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit,
or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them
with stones: their blood shall be upon them” (Lev. 20: 27).(1)
Rev. Rabbi Hirsch sums up his conclusions as the result of his study of
the Pentateuch:
“The non-authenticity of the Pentateuch is shown by the work itself. It
is indicated by—(1) The impossible occurrences in the desert; (2) The
various contradictions and repetitions, as in the descriptions of the
festivals; the provision of the officiators for the sacrifices; the
appropriations of the tithes; the rules for sacrificing the first-born
children to Deity—the law regulating these matters varying in
Deuteronomy and Numbers; (3) Certain phrases used, as “up to the present
day,” which lose all significance if applied to Moses. Thus the book
itself shows not one author, but many.
“The non-authenticity of the Pentateuch is shown also by lack of
reference to it in the prophetical and historical books. Jeremiah, when
denouncing in unmeasured terms the very sins prohibited by the
Decalogue, never uses the language of those cardinal rules of morality;
the prophecies show no trace of the priestly ordinances; and, though
most of the laws refer to Sinai, the name occurs in none of the
prophetical books.
(1) In 1865 the witch-laws were yet in force in South Carolina!
“It contains old songs; embodies the written law or judicial decisions
of the Israelites in the Book of the Covenant; springs from two currents
of history, the Elohist and Jehovist, the former composed of the younger
Elohist of the South and the older Elohist of the North; shows
Deuteronomy very much altered from its original form by emendations and
additions, being formerly without the first four and the closing
chapters, and the Levitical Law or Priestly Codex having been later
incorporated with Joshua and the books of Moses; and lastly it is marred
by changes made in accordance with the new religious spirit.”
We know very little about Moses. If there ever was such a man—which is
very doubtful, taking the writings accredited to him for authority—he is
not shown to have been “the greatest statesman and lawgiver the world
has ever produced.” Neither have the Jews ever developed, in ancient or
modern times, such a moral character as a people as to justify the
supposition that they had a great and inspired leader among them, and
that he taught them anything not well known for many centuries before to
more ancient and more intelligent nations.
The assumption that Moses was the author, under divine guidance, of what
is commonly called the _Ten Commandments,_ about one thousand four
hundred and fifty-one years before the Christian era, is _assumption_
only, without a particle of proof to sustain it. What are commonly
called the laws of Moses were written by some person or persons unknown
in the fifth or sixth centuries before the beginning of Christianity.
Most of the matter of what is called the Pentateuch was borrowed from
older and wiser nations—the Egyptians, the Hindoos, the Greeks, etc. But
for the unbounded credulity on this subject it would seem like an insult
seriously to discuss the question, Which are the older writings? and,
Which the substantial copies? Unless a man is ready to take assumptions
for demonstrated facts, to ignore the museums and libraries, to question
the conclusions of the profound-est antiquarians, and to make the stream
of history flow backward, he must admit that the Hebrews were the
borrowers.(1)
(1) The substance of this chapter was published in March, 1890, in _An
Open Letter_ to Hon. Edward M. Paxson, Chief-Justice of
Pennsylvania, who had affirmed in a lecture before the Law School
of the University of Pennsylvania that the “law of Sinai was the
first of which we have any knowledge,” and that “Moses was the
greatest statesman and lawgiver the world has ever produced.”
CHAPTER V. ANCIENT SYMBOLISM AND MODERN LITERALISM
_“Which things are an allegory.”—Gal. 4:24._
WORSHIP is natural to man, and all systems of religion, many think,
received their cult from Nature-worship. Typology, mythology, theology
followed each other as the links of a well-forged chain.
Cicero well suggested: “Do you not see how, from the beginning, from the
productions of nature and the useful inventions of men have arisen
fictitious and imaginary deities, which have been the foundations of
false opinions, pernicious errors, and miserable superstitions?” He
asserts that “if the sacred mysteries celebrated by the most ancient
peoples were properly understood, they would rather explicate the nature
of things than portray the knowledge of the gods.” Plato said he “would
exclude from his ideal republic the poems of Homer, because the young
would not be able to distinguish between what was allegorical and what
was actual.” Proclus alleges that even Plato himself drew many of his
peculiar dogmas from the symbolisms of the ancients. It is also said
that he was curious to find out what was the secret meaning of the
allegories of the more ancient sages and philosophers, while at the same
time he affirmed that what he should successfully find out he would keep
to himself. It is well known that the real offence of Socrates was in
publishing to the common people the wisdom secreted by other teachers.
Heyne has truly said that “from myths all the history and all the
philosophy of the ancients proceed.” Gerald Massey, in his great work
_The Natural Genesis_, claims that it is only in the symbolic stage of
expression that we can expect to recover the lost meanings of priestly
dogmas. These are preserved in the gesture-signs, ideographic types,
images, and myths scattered over the world. The symbolic extends beyond
the written or spoken language of any people now extant.
He well says that “ancient symbolism was a mode of expression which has
bequeathed a mould of thought that imprisons the minds of myriads as
effectually as the toad shut up in the rock in which it dwells is
confined.” Myths and allegories, anciently unfolded to initiates in the
mysteries, have been ignorantly adopted by modern priests and published
to the world as the literal truth. The main dogmas of modern theology
are based on distorted myths, “under the shadow of which we have been
cowering as timorously as birds in a stubble when an artificial kite in
the shape of a hawk is hovering overhead.” Modern dogmatic theology is
largely what Mr. Massey has tersely called “fossilized symbolism.” It
was the habit of the Oriental mind to personify almost everything.
Ancient mystics veiled all their thoughts in allegory and draped their
sacred lessons in symbols. They invented many poetic riddles and
fantastic stories, which the initiated knew to be fanciful, but which in
time came to be regarded by the masses as substantial historic facts. It
is well known that this method was not confined to the ancients, but
played a conspicuous part in the Middle Ages, and that its baneful
influence is not yet exhausted. It will hereafter be shown that in no
writings extant can be found so many illustrations of the symbolic
method of teaching as in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Even in
our day the common people have not outgrown this habit of
personification, and are wont to tell their children of Santa Claus and
Kriss Kringle who bring them presents at Christmastime, and of Jack
Frost who will bite them if they go out in the cold. Modern folk-lore is
full of symbolisms and personifications, as real to multitudes as are
the mythical stories found in writings supposed to contain an infallible
divine revelation.
A large number of learned authors favor the theory that all systems of
dogmatic theology are mythic suggestions of the phenomena of physical
nature, postulated by philosophers and poets in the most ancient periods
of the world. They maintain this hypothesis, in part from the well-known
fact that many of the most widely-separated peoples, who never could
have had any intercourse, directly or indirectly, have used the same
imagery and substantially adopted the same systems of religion. This
suggestion regarding Nature-worship is worthy of careful and reverent
examination. Primitive peoples, living mostly in the open air, were
brought in close contact with external natural objects and phenomena.
One of the most prevalent forms of religion in ancient times was
_tree-worship,_ and it entered largely into the religious thought of the
ancient Jews. The tree furnished the food, mainly, upon which our race
in its infancy depended for subsistence. The grove was called “the
retreat beloved by gods and men.” It furnished shelter from storm, and
shade from the tropical sun. It was a place of rest and a thing of
beauty. Mr. Barlow, in his excellent book on Symbolism, says the most
generally-received symbol of life was a tree. It was inseparable from
the ancient conception of a garden. It was the “tree of life” in the
mythic paradise. It was suggestive of passion and offspring in
connection with the serpent, which was an emblem of male virility. The
tree has many suggestions, not only in it leaves, but in its fruit and
mode of propagation. The sap of certain trees has an exhilarating, and
even an intoxicating, quality. The sacred soma was taken before reading
the Vedic hymns “to quicken the memory.” It was supposed to promote
spirituality and inspiration. Various trees and plants are suggestive of
fertility and fecundity in man. The lotus is the flower of Venus. There
is a “language of trees” as well as “language of flowers.” There are
poetic and symbolic reasons in the form of the stems and shape of the
leaves for the display of orange-blossoms as bridal decorations, as
thoughtful botanists can readily see. Much of the symbolism of the Old
Testament is identical with the Eastern tree-worship; and without some
knowledge of this form of imagery much of the Hebrew Scriptures must
remain a dead letter. The frequent references to palms, cedars, oaks,
vines, mandrakes, etc. etc., are vastly significant to the adept in
symbolism.
The Jewish Bible is full of Nature-worship to all whose eyes are not
veiled by sacerdotalism. The fact that God is said to have appeared to
Moses in the burning bush is suggestive of both tree- and fire-worship
(Ex. 3: 2). Josephus says, “The bush was holy before the flame appeared
in it and because it was holy it became the vehicle of the burning,
fiery, jealous God of the Jews. Even our Christmas evergreens contain a
recognition of the gods of the trees. The feet is, many of the religious
rites of both Jews and Christians are but slight modifications of the
ancient Nature-worship, as all well-read men know, but to which truth
our modern theologians are as blind as bats. Abraham, the alleged
progenitor of the Jewish nation (so called), is represented as a
dissenter from the religion of his native country; yet he, and his
descendants and followers after him for hundreds of years, employed the
same religious symbols and forms of worship used by the people of
Chaldea and other so-called idolatrous nations. Read the solemn
arraignment of the “chosen people” by the prophet, recorded in Ezek.
16:15 to the end of that chapter, if you would have proof of this
charge. The fact is, if we treat the story of Abraham and other
so-called Old-Testament patriarchs as we do the traditions of other
nations, we shall be forced to give it an esoteric interpretation rather
than a literal or an historic one. But more of this farther on.
_Serpent-worship_ is another form of sacred symbolism, and has an
intimate connection with phallic rites. The serpent was not at first a
personification of evil, but of wisdom, and is so used in our New
Testament, “... wise (shrewd) as serpents, harmless as doves.” It also
denotes the art or gift of healing, and was not only so used by
Esculapius, but also by Moses, and is recognized as a type by Jesus
himself: “... And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even
so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth on him
should not perish, but have, eternal life” (Num. 21:9; John 3:14, 15).
Indeed, the serpent has almost universally been regarded as a symbol of
immortal life, and especially, as frequently presented in ancient
sculptures, with its tail in its mouth, thus forming an endless circle.
This idea may have been suggested at first by its tenacity of life, and
its being so thoroughly alive in all its parts, its body and tail moving
and living after its head has been crushed; and, further, from the
periodic renewal of its skin, suggesting a new and continuous life. Then
there are other significant qualities in the serpent—viz. its power of
voluntary enlargement and self-erection, combined with its intense gaze
and wonderful secret of fascination and its noiseless and mysterious
movement—all suggestive of the _spirituel_. It is also a symbol of power
and divinity, and as such was embroidered upon ancient robes and flags
of royalty. Upon a decorative banner recently displayed upon the walls
of an edifice in Philadelphia wherein recently met the General Assembly
of the Presbyterian Church of the United States, the symbolic serpent
was prominent; and those who criticised it were silenced by a member’s
pointing to the fact that the serpent is engraved upon the seal of the
General Assembly itself. Think of Presbyterians perpetuating
serpent-symbolism!
It was doubtless the emblematic snakes which had been used in Ireland in
the Druidic worship, before the introduction of Christianity, that the
somewhat mythical St. Patrick drove out of the “Emerald Isle”—all the
snakes according to Romish tradition, now believed by millions of devout
worshippers to be strictly historical, though known by priests to be
mythical. He destroyed the emblematic serpents. It was not until after
the invention of the talking subtle serpent that tempted Eve in Eden
that the serpent became a symbol of evil. The Jews never heard of that
“old serpent the devil” until after their captivity in Babylon. We must
not fail, however, according to the Old Testament, to give King Hezekiah
credit for having been a sort of Hebrew St. Patrick, in attempting to
drive serpent-worship from among the Israelites after it had prevailed
among them for about seven hundred years.
In a line or two we sum up the symbolism of the serpent, as has been
suggested, in that it is thoroughly alive, has a fiery nature, is swift
in motion, and moves without bands or feet. It assumes a variety of
forms, is long-lived, and renews its youth by shedding its external
covering, and at pleasure stands erect, enlarges its size, is strong,
and is said to have the marvellous secret of fascination.
Initiates worshipped only the qualities or principles symbolized by
outward forms, while the ignorant may have really worshipped the
external or literal object. Every quality in the objects of the ancient
Nature-worship has suggested a religious dogma, which was first
incorporated into ancient systems of sacerdotalism, and can now be
traced in an occult and esoteric sense in all bodies of modern dogmatic
theology. Ninety-nine out of every one hundred of professional
ecclesiastics are as ignorant of these things as unborn babes, while the
select few know, but conceal, the truth. The larger class are honest
dupes and dunces, while the others are hypocrites and impostors.
_Phallieism_, the worship of the genital organs, was another form of
natural symbolism. Men saw that in some mysterious way the race was
propagated by the congress of the generative organs, male and female,
and soon naturally worshipped them as at least the symbols of the
unknown fecundating power of the universe.
This form of symbolism prevailed in the most distant ages, and has
continued in many countries unto the present time. Richard Payne Knight,
an honorable English gentleman, in 1865 wrote a quarto book, of which
only two hundred copies were printed, entitled _A Discourse on the
Worship of Priapus, and its Connection with the Theology of the
Ancients_, in which this whole subject is boldly discussed, and
phallicism illustrated by one hundred and thirty-eight engravings, many
of them copied from actual emblems now preserved in the British Museum
and in the Secret Museum in Naples. Major-General Forlong, of the
British army, has also fully presented this subject in his recent quarto
in two volumes, entitled _Rivers of Life; or, Sources and Streams of the
Faiths of Man in all Lands._
It would doubtless astound many modern theologians to be told that even
the Jews did not escape the influence of this form of Nature-worship,
and that our Bible, especially the Old Testament, contains many
evidences of it; and yet it is a fact. Circumcision was no doubt an
offshoot of phallicism. It did not originate with Abraham. It was known
by the Egyptians, Abyssinians, and African tribes long before the time
he is said to have lived. It was practised, according to Herodotus, at
least twenty-four hundred years before our era, and was even then an
ancient custom. When Jacob entered into a covenant with Laban, a pillar
was set up, surrounded by a heap of stones (Gen. 31:45-53), which was a
phallic emblem, and frequently used in the Old Testament. Hebrew
patriarchs desired numerous descendants, and hence the symbolic pillar
was well suited to their religious cult.
The name of the reputed father of Abraham, Terah, signifies “a maker of
images.” In Amos 5: 26 it is said that the Hebrews in the wilderness
worshipped a deity known by a name signifying “God of the Pillar,” as is
shown by the name Baal Tamar, which means the “fructifying god.” The
Semitic custom of giving sanction to an oath or sacred pledge by what
the Hebrews called the “putting of the hand under the thigh” is
explained by the Talmudists to be the touching of that part of the body
which is sealed and made holy by circumcision. The translations of the
Jewish Scriptures through motives of delicacy are full of these
euphemisms. Professor Joseph P. Lesley, in his _Man’s Origin and
Destiny_, suggests that phallicism converted all the older Arkite
symbols into illustrations of its own philosophical conceptions of the
mystery of generation, and thus gave to the various parts of the human
body those names which constitute the special vocabulary of obscenity of
the present day. Every scholar knows it to be a fact that certain words
and names now never spoken except by the vulgar abound in the original
Jewish writings, and are partly concealed by the convenient methods of
euphemism. When Abraham called his servant to take a solemn oath, he
required him to lay his hands upon his parts of generation as the most
sacred and revered parts of his body (Gen. 24:2), and Jacob, when dying,
made his son Joseph take the same form of oath (Gen. 47: 29). This was
but little more than the equivalent of the modern custom of laying the
hand upon the heart as a token of sincerity. The proper translation of
what the servant of Abraham was required to do is given in the margin of
Bagster’s _Comprehensive Bible_ thus: “In sectione circumcisionis meæ.”
We have in this form of phallic oath an important suggestion as to the
origin, or at least the use, of the words _testimony, testament,
testify_, and their cognates (_testis_, a witness), which cannot fail to
occur to the learned reader, but which cannot here be fully explained.
“_Caute lege_” (read carefully) was a warning of a secret or concealed
meaning which esoteric writers anciently put in the margin of their
books when they would call the special attention of the initiated to
what is now called “reading between the lines.” Until our readers
comprehend this hint they will not be able to understand what is really
meant by the “testimony” mentioned in connection with the “ark of the
covenant,” as it occurs in Ex. 16: 34, before any laws, or even altars,
were known in Sinai or its thunders heard of. In this hint may also be
found the true explanation of David’s nude dance before the ark, and of
the attending circumstances. Scores and scores of proofs could here be
furnished from the Old-Testament Scriptures, showing that the use of
phallic emblems was the rule rather than the exception for centuries
among the Jews; and the idols stolen by Rachel (teraphim) need no longer
be misunderstood, nor the meaning of the wedges upon which she sat and
refused to rise when the “custom of women was upon her” (Gen. 31:35).
She was engaged in an act of devotion. General Forlong asserts that at
this present day Queen Victoria of Christian England rules over more
than one hundred millions of phallic worshippers! Indeed, more than half
of the population of our globe still worship, as symbols of fertility
and fecundity, the genital organs.
A correspondent of the London Times, of April 8, 1875, says: “The Roman
Catholic Church still keeps up certain suggestions of phallicism. As the
ancient temple or dagoba was the womb or feminine principle of the god
Siva or Bod and others, so the new cardinal, Archbishop Manning, was
after his elevation conducted to his church, which is here entitled, in
its relation to him, bride or spouse, he calling it _sponsa mea_. The
cardinal was called the bridegroom, and the _actual building_ (the
shrine of St.
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