The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine

[_Maksutov]

The evidence that I shall produce in this case is from the books
themselves, and I shall confine myself to this evidence only. Were I
to refer for proof to any of the, ancient authors whom the advocates
of the Bible call profane authors, they would controvert that
authority, as I controvert theirs; I will therefore meet them on their
own ground, and oppose them with their own weapon, the Bible.

In the first place, there is no affirmative evidence that Moses is
the author of those books; and that he is the author, is an altogether
unfounded opinion, got abroad nobody knows how. The style and
manner in which those books were written give no room to believe, or
even to suppose, they were written by Moses, for it is altogether the
style and manner of another person speaking of Moses. In Exodus,
Leviticus and Numbers (for everything in Genesis is prior to the time of
Moses, and not the least allusion is made to him therein), the
whole, I say, of these books is in the third person; it is always, the
Lord said unto Moses, or Moses said unto the Lord, or Moses said
unto the people, or the people said unto Moses; and this is the
style and manner that historians use in speaking of the persons
whose lives and actions they are writing. It may be said that a man
may speak of himself in the third person, and therefore it may be
supposed that Moses did; but supposition proves nothing; and if the
advocates for the belief that Moses wrote these books himself have
nothing better to advance than supposition, they may as well be
silent.

But granting the grammatical right that Moses might speak of
himself in the third person, because any man might speak of himself in
that manner, it cannot be admitted as a fact in those books that it is
Moses who speaks, without rendering Moses truly ridiculous and
absurd. For example, Numbers, chap. xii. ver. 3. Now the man Moses
was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the
earth. If Moses said this of himself, instead of being the meekest of
men, he was one of the most vain and arrogant of coxcombs; and the
advocates for those books may now take which side they please, for
both sides are against them; if Moses was not the author, the books
are without authority; and if he was the author, the author is without
credit, because to boast of meekness is the reverse of meekness, and
is a lie in sentiment.

In Deuteronomy, the style and manner of writing marks more
evidently than in the former books that Moses is not the writer. The
manner here used is dramatical; the writer opens the subject by a
short introductory discourse, and then introduces Moses in the act
of speaking, and when he has made Moses finish his harangue, he (the
writer) resumes his own part, and speaks till he brings Moses
forward again, and at last closes the scene with an account of the
death, funeral, and character of Moses.

This interchange of speakers occurs four times in this book;
from the first verse of the first chapter to the end of the fifth
verse, it is the writer who speaks; he then introduces Moses as in the
act of making his harangue, and this continues to the end of the
40th verse of the fourth chapter; here the writer drops Moses, and
speaks historically of what was done in consequence of what Moses,
when living, is supposed to have said, and which the writer has
dramatically rehearsed.

The writer opens the subject again in the first verse of the fifth
chapter, though it is only by saying, that Moses called the people
of Israel together; he then introduces Moses as before, and
continues him, as in the act of speaking, to the end of the 26th
chapter. He does the same thing, at the beginning of the 27th chapter;
and continues Moses, as in the act of speaking, to the end of the 28th
chapter. At the 29th chapter the writer speaks again through the
whole of the first verse and the first line of the second verse, where he
introduces Moses for the last time, and continues him, as in the act
of speaking, to the end of the 33rd chapter.

The writer having now finished the rehearsal on the part of Moses,
comes forward, and speaks through the whole of the last chapter; he
begins by telling the reader that Moses went to the top of Pisgah;
that he saw from thence the land which (the writer says) had been
promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; that he, Moses, died there,
in the land of Moab, but that no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto
this day; that is, unto the time in which the writer lived who wrote
the book of Deuteronomy. The writer then tells us, that Moses was
120 years of age when he died- that his eye was not dim, nor his
natural force abated; and he concludes by saying that there arose
not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom, says this
anonymous writer, the Lord knew face to face.

Having thus shown, as far as grammatical evidence applies, that
Moses was not the writer of those books, I will, after making a few
observations on the inconsistencies of the writer of the book of
Deuteronomy, proceed to show from the historical and chronological
evidence contained in those books, that Moses was not, because he
could not be, the writer of them, and consequently that there is no
authority for believing that the inhuman and horrid butcheries of men,
women, and children, told of in those books, were done, as those
books say they were, at the command of God. It is a duty incumbent
on every true Deist, that he vindicate the moral justice of God against
the calumnies of the Bible.

The writer of the book of Deuteronomy, whoever he was, (for it
is not an anonymous work), is obscure, and also in contradiction
with himself, in the account he has given of Moses.

After telling that Moses went to the top of Pisgah (and it does
not appear from any account that he ever came down again), he tells
us that Moses died there in the land of Moab, and that he buried him
in a valley in the land of Moab; but as there is no antecedent to the
pronoun he, there is no knowing who he was that did bury him. If the
writer meant that he (God) buried him, how should he (the writer)
know it? or why should we (the readers) believe him? since we know
not who the writer was that tells us so, for certainly Moses could not
himself tell where he was buried.

The writer also tells us, that no man knoweth where the
sepulchre of Moses is unto this day, meaning the time in which this
writer lived; how then should he know that Moses was buried in a
valley in the land of Moab? for as the writer lived long after the
time of Moses, as is evident from his using the expression of unto
this day, meaning a great length of time after the death of Moses,
he certainly was not at his funeral; and on the other hand, it is
impossible that Moses himself could say that no man knoweth where
the sepulchre is unto this day. To make Moses the speaker, would be
an improvement on the play of a child that hides himself and cries
nobody can find me; nobody can find Moses!

This writer has nowhere told us how he came by the speeches
which he has put into the mouth of Moses to speak, and therefore we
have a right to conclude, that he either composed them himself, or
wrote them from oral tradition. One or the other of these is the
more probable, since he has given in the fifth chapter a table of
commandments, in which that called the fourth commandment is
different from the fourth commandment in the twentieth chapter of
Exodus. In that of Exodus, the reason given for keeping the seventh
day is, "because (says the commandment) God made the heavens and
the earth in six days, and rested on the seventh;" but in that of
Deuteronomy, the reason given is that it was the day on which the
children of Israel came out of Egypt, and therefore, says this
commandment, the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the
sabbath day. This makes no mention of the creation, nor that of the
coming out of Egypt. There are also many things given as laws of
Moses in this book that are not to be found in any of the other books;
among which is that inhuman and brutal law, chapter xxi., verses 18,
19, 20 and 21, which authorizes parents, the father and the mother, to
bring their own children to have them stoned to death for what it is
pleased to call stubbornness. But priests have always been fond of
preaching up Deuteronomy, for Deuteronomy preaches up tithes; and
it is from this book, chap. xxv., ver. 4, that they have taken the
phrase, and applied it to tithing, that thou shall not muzzle the ox
when he treadeth out the corn; and that this might not escape
observation, they have noted it in the table of contents at the head of
the chapter, though it is only a single verse of less than two lines. Oh,
priests! priests! ye are willing to be compared to an ox, for the sake of
tithes. Though it is impossible for us to know identically who the
writer of Deuteronomy was, it is not difficult to discover him
professionally, that he was some Jewish priest, who lived, as I
shall show in the course of this work, at least three hundred and
fifty years after the time of Moses.

[_Maksutov]

I come now to speak of the historical and chronological
evidence. The chronology that I shall use is the Bible chronology, for
I mean not to go out of the Bible for evidence of anything, but to
make the Bible itself prove, historically and chronologically, that
Moses is not the author of the books ascribed to him. It is,
therefore, proper that I inform the reader (such a one at least as may
not have the opportunity of knowing it), that in the larger Bibles,
and also in some smaller ones, there is a series of chronology printed
in the margin of every page, for the purpose of showing how long the
historical matters stated in each page happened, or are supposed to
have happened, before Christ, and, consequently, the distance of
time between one historical circumstance and another.

I begin with the book of Genesis. In the 14th chapter of
Genesis, the writer gives an account of Lot being taken prisoner in
a battle between the four kings against five, and carried off; and
that when the account of Lot being taken, came to Abraham, he armed
all his household and marched to rescue Lot from the captors, and that
he pursued them unto Dan (ver. 14).

To show in what manner this expression pursuing them unto Dan
applies to the case in question, I will refer to two circumstances,
the one in America, the other in France. The city now called New York,
in America, was originally New Amsterdam; and the town in France,
lately called Havre Marat, was before called Havre de Grace. New
Amsterdam was changed to New York in the year 1664; Havre de
Grace to Havre Marat in 1793. Should, therefore, any writing be found,
though without date, in which the name of New York should be
mentioned, it would be certain evidence that such a uniting could
not have been written before, but must have been written after New
Amsterdam was changed to New York, and consequently, not till after
the year 1664, or at least during the course of that year. And, in
like manner, any dateless writing with the name of Havre Marat would
be certain evidence that such a writing must have been written after
Havre de Grace became Havre Marat, and consequently not till after
the year 1793, or at least during the course of that year.

I now come to the application of those cases, and to show that
there was no such place as Dan, till many years after the death of
Moses, and consequently, that Moses could not be the writer of the
book of Genesis, where this account of pursuing them unto Dan is
given. The place that is called Dan in the Bible was originally a town
of the Gentiles called Laish; and when the tribe of Dan seized upon
this town, they changed its name to Dan, in commemoration of Dan,
who was the father of that tribe, and the great grandson of Abraham.

To establish this in proof, it is necessary to refer from Genesis,
to the 18th chapter of the book called the Book of Judges. It is there
said (ver. 27) that they (the Danites) came unto Laish to a people
that were quiet and secure, and they smote them with the edge of the
sword (the Bible is filled with murder), and burned the city with
fire; and they built a city (ver. 28), and dwelt therein, and they
called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan, their
father, howbeit the name of the city was Laish at the first.

This account of the Danites taking possession of Laish and
changing it to Dan, is placed in the Book of Judges immediately
after the death of Sampson. The death of Sampson is said to have
happened 1120 years before Christ, and that of Moses 1451 before
Christ; and, therefore, according to the historical arrangement, the
place was not called Dan till 331 years after the death of Moses.

There is a striking confusion between the historical and the
chronological arrangement in the book of Judges. The five last
chapters, as they stand in the book, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, are put
chronologically before all the preceding chapters; they are made to be
28 years before the 16th chapter, 266 before the 15th, 245 before
the 13th, 195 before the 9th, 90 before the 4th, and 15 years before
the 1st chapter. This shows the uncertain and fabulous state of the
Bible. According to the chronological arrangement, the taking of Laish
and giving it the name of Dan is made to be 20 years after the death
of Joshua, who was the successor of Moses; and by the historical order
as it stands in the book, it is made to be 306 years after the death
of Joshua, and 331 after that of Moses; but they both exclude Moses
from being the writer of Genesis, because, according to either of
the statements, no such place as Dan existed in the time of Moses;
and therefore the writer of Genesis must have been some person who
lived after the town of Laish had the name of Dan; and who that
person was nobody knows, and consequently the book of Genesis is
anonymous and without authority.

I proceed now to state another point of historical and
chronological evidence, and to show therefrom, as in the preceding
case, that Moses is not the author of the book of Genesis.

In the 36th chapter of Genesis there is given a genealogy of the
sons and descendants of Esau, who are called Edomites, and also a
list, by name, of the kings of Edom, in enumerating of which, it is
said, (verse 31), And these are the kings that reigned in Edom, before
there reigned any king over the children of Israel.

Now, were any dateless writings to be found in which, speaking
of any past events, the writer should say, These things happened
before there was any Congress in America, or before there was any
Convention in France, it would be evidence that such writing could not
have been written before, and could only be written after there was
a Congress in America, or a Convention in France, as the case might
be; and, consequently, that it could not be written by any person
who died before there was a Congress in the one country or a
Convention in the other.

Nothing is more frequent, as well in history as in conversation,
than to refer to a fact in the room of a date; it is most natural so
to do, first, because a fact fixes itself in the memory better than
a date; secondly, because the fact includes the date, and serves to
excite two ideas at once; and this manner of speaking by
circumstances implies as positively that the fact alluded to is past as if
it were so expressed. When a person speaking upon any matter, says,
it was before I was married, or before my son was born, or before I
went to America, or before I went to France, it is absolutely
understood, and intended to be understood, that he had been married,
that he has had a son, that he has been in America, or been in France.
Language does not admit of using this mode of expression in any other
sense; and whenever such an expression is found anywhere, it can
only be understood in the sense in which it only could have been used.

The passage, therefore, that I have quoted- "that these are the
kings that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king over the
children of Israel"- could only have been written after the first
king began to reign over them; and, consequently, that the book of
Genesis, so far from having been written by Moses, could not have
been written till the time of Saul at least. This is the positive sense
of the passage; but the expression, any king, implies more kings
than one, at least it implies two, and this will carry it to the
time of David; and if taken in a general sense, it carries it
through all the time of the Jewish monarchy.

Had we met with this verse in any part of the Bible that professed
to have been written after kings began to reign in Israel, it would
have been impossible not to have seen the application of it. It
happens then that this is the case; the two books of Chronicles, which
gave a history of all the kings, of Israel, are professedly, as well
as in fact, written after the Jewish monarchy began; and this verse
that I have quoted, and all the remaining verses of the 36th chapter
of Genesis, are word for word in the first chapter of Chronicles,
beginning at the 43d verse

It was with consistency that the writer of the Chronicles could
say, as he has said, 1st Chron., chap. i., ver. 43, These are the
kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before any king reigned over
the children of Israel, because he was going to give, and has given, a
list of the kings that had reigned in Israel; but as it is
impossible that the same expression could have been used before that
period, it is as certain as anything that can be proved from
historical language that this part of Genesis is taken from Chronicles
and that Genesis is not so old as Chronicles, and probably not so
old as the book of Homer, or as Aesop's Fables, admitting Homer to
have been, as the tables of Chronology state, contemporary with
David or Solomon, and Aesop to have lived about the end of the
Jewish monarchy.

Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on
which only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood,
and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of
stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of
downright lies. The story of Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and his
ark, drops to a level with the Arabian tales, without the merit of being
entertaining; and the account of men living to eight and nine
hundred years becomes as fabulous immortality of the giants of the
Mythology.

Besides, the character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the
most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was
the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the
pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation,
committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the
history of any nation, of which I will state only one instance.

When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and
murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows: Numbers, chap.
xxxi., ver. 13:

"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 council 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 a man by lying with him; but all the women-children,
that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for
yourselves."

Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have
disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than
Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the
boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters.

Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers;
one child murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in
the hands of an executioner; let any daughter put herself in the
situation of those daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a
mother and a brother, and what will be their feelings? It is in vain
that we attempt to impose upon nature, for nature will have her
course, and the religion that tortures all her social ties is a
false religion.

After this detestable order, follows an account of the plunder
taken, and the manner of dividing it; and here it is that the
profaneness of priestly hypocrisy increases the catalogue of crimes.
Ver. 37 to 40, "And the lord's tribute of sheep was six hundred and
three score and fifteen; and the beeves were thirty and six
thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was three score and twelve;
and the asses were thirty thousand and five hundred, of which the
Lord's tribute was three score and one; and the persons were sixteen
thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was thirty and two persons."
In short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many
other parts of the Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read or for
decency to hear, for it appears, from the 35th verse of this
chapter, that the number of women-children consigned to debauchery
by the order of Moses was thirty-two thousand.

People in general do not know what wickedness there is in this
pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take
it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they
permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they
form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have
been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens!
it is quite another thing; it is a book of lies, wickedness, and
blasphemy; for what can be greater blasphemy than to ascribe the
wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty?

[_Maksutov]

But to return to my subject, that of showing that Moses is not the
author of the books ascribed to him, and that the Bible is spurious.
The two instances I have already given would be sufficient without any
additional evidence, to invalidate the authenticity of any book that
pretended to be four or five hundred years more ancient than the
matters it speaks of, or refers to, as facts; for in the case of
pursuing them unto Dan, and of the kings that reigned over the
children of Israel, not even the flimsy pretence of prophecy can be
pleaded. The expressions are in the preter tense, and it would be
downright idiotism to say that a man could prophecy in the preter
tense.

But there are many other passages scattered throughout those
books that unite in the same point of evidence. It is said in Exodus,
(another of the books ascribed to Moses), chap. xvi. verse 34, "And
the children of Israel did eat manna forty years until they came to
a land inhabited; they did eat manna until they came unto the
borders of the land of Canaan.

Whether the children of Israel ate manna or not, or what manna
was, or whether it was anything more than a kind of fungus or small
mushroom, or other vegetable substance common to that part of the
country, makes nothing to my argument; all that I mean to show is,
that it is not Moses that could write this account, because the
account extends itself beyond the life and time of Moses. Moses,
according to the Bible, (but it is such a book of lies and
contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe, or whether
any), died in the wilderness and never came upon the borders of the
land of Cannan; and consequently it could not be he that said what the
children of Israel did, or what they ate when they came there. This
account of eating manna, which they tell us was written by Moses,
extends itself to the time of Joshua, the successor of Moses; as
appears by the account given in the book of Joshua, after the children
of Israel had passed the river Jordan, and came unto the borders of
the land of Canaan. Joshua, chap. v., verse 12. "And the manna
ceased on the morrow, after they had eaten of the old corn of the
land; neither had the children of Israel manna any more, but they
did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year."

But a more remarkable instance than this occurs in Deuteronomy,
which, while it shows that Moses could not be the writer of that book,
shows also the fabulous notions that prevailed at that time about
giants. In the third chapter of Deuteronomy, among the conquests
said to be made by Moses, is an account of the taking of Og, king of
Bashan, v. II. "For only Og, king of Bashan, remained of the remnant
of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in
Rabbath of the children of Ammom? Nine cubits was the length
thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a
man." A cubit is 1 foot 9 888-1000ths inches; the length, therefore,
of the bed was 16 feet 4 inches, and the breadth 7 feet 4 inches; thus
much for this giant's bed. Now for the historical part, which,
though the evidence is not so direct and positive as in the former
cases, it is nevertheless very presumable and corroborating
evidence, and is better that the best evidence on the contrary side.

The writer, by way of proving the existence of this giant,
refers to his bed as an ancient relic, and says, Is it not in
Rabbath (or Rabbah) of the children of Ammon? meaning that it is;
for such is frequently the Bible method of affirming a thing. But it
could not be Moses that said this, because Moses could know nothing
about Rabbah, nor of what was in it. Rabbah was not a city belonging
to this giant king, nor was it one of the cities that Moses took.
The knowledge, therefore, that this bed was at Rabbah, and of the
particulars of its dimensions, must be referred to the time when
Rabbah was taken, and this was not till four hundred years after the
death of Moses; for which see 2 Sam. chap. xii., ver. 26. "And Joab
(David's general) fought against Rabbah of the children of Ammon,
and took the royal city."

As I am not undertaking to point out all the contradictions in
time, place, and circumstance that abound in the books ascribed to
Moses, and which prove to a demonstration that those books could not
have been written by Moses, nor in the time of Moses, I proceed to the
book of Joshua, and to show that Joshua is not the author of that
book, and that it is anonymous and without authority. The evidence I
shall produce is contained in the book itself; I will not go out of
the Bible for proof against the supposed authenticity of the Bible.
False testimony is always good against itself.

Joshua, according to the first chapter of Joshua, was the
immediate successor of Moses; he was, moreover, a military man,
which Moses was not, and he continued as chief of the people of Israel
25 years, that is, from the time that Moses died, which, according
to the Bible chronology, was 1451 years before Christ, until 1426
years before Christ, when, according to the same chronology, Joshua
died. If, therefore, we find in this book, said to have been written
by Joshua, reference to facts done after the death of Joshua, it is
evidence that Joshua could not be the author; and also that the book
could not have been written till after the time of the latest fact
which it records. As to the character of the book, it is horrid; it is
a military history of rapine and murder, as savage and brutal as those
recorded of his predecessor in villainy and hypocrisy, Moses; and
the blasphemy consists, as in the former books, in ascribing those
deeds to the orders of the Almighty.

In the first place, the book of Joshua, as is the case in the
preceding books, is written in the third person; it is the historian
of Joshua that speaks, for it would have been absurd and vain-glorious
that Joshua should say of himself, as is said of him in the last verse
of the sixth chapter, that "his fame was noised throughout all the
country." I now come more immediately to the proof.

In the 24th chapter, ver. 31, it is said, "And Israel served the
Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that
overlived Joshua." Now, in the name of common sense, can it be
Joshua that relates what people had done after he was dead? This
account must not only have been written by some historian that lived
after Joshua, but that lived also after the elders that outlived
Joshua.

There are several passages of a general meaning with respect to
time scattered throughout the book of Joshua, that carries the time in
which the book was written to a distance from the time of Joshua,
but without marking by exclusion any particular time, as in the
passage above quoted. In that passage, the time that intervened
between the death of Joshua and the death of the elders is excluded
descriptively and absolutely, and the evidence substantiates that
the book could not have been written till after the death of the last.

But though the passages to which I allude, and which I am going to
quote, do not designate any particular time by exclusion, they imply a
time far more distant from the days of Joshua than is contained
between the death of Joshua and the death of the elders. Such is the
passage, chap. x., ver. 14, where, after giving an account that the
sun stood still upon Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon,
at the command of Joshua (a tale only fit to amuse children), the
passage says, "And there was no day like that, before it, or after it,
that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man."

[_Maksutov]

This tale of the sun standing still upon mount Gibeon, and the
moon in the valley of Ajalon, is one of those fables that detects
itself. Such a circumstance could not have happened without being
known all over the world. One half would have wondered why the sun
did not rise, and the other why it did not set; and the tradition of it
would be universal, whereas there is not a nation in the world that
knows anything about it. But why must the moon stand still? What
occasion could there be for moonlight in the daytime, and that too
while the sun shone? As a poetical figure, the whole is well enough;
it is akin to that in the song of Deborah and Barak, The stars in
their courses fought against Sisera; but it is inferior to the
figurative declaration of Mahomet to the persons who came to
expostulate with him on his goings on: "Wert thou," said he, "to
come to me with the sun in thy right hand and the moon in thy left, it
should not alter my career." For Joshua to have exceeded Mahomet,
he should have put the sun and moon one in each pocket, and carried
them as Guy Fawkes carried his dark lantern, and taken them out to
shine as he might happen to want them.

The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it
is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime
makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the
sublime again; the account, however, abstracted from the poetical
fancy, shows the ignorance of Joshua, for he should have commanded
the earth to have stood still.

The time implied by the expression after it, that is, after that
day, being put in comparison with all the time that passed before
it, must, in order to give any expressive signification to the
passage, mean a great length of time: for example, it would have
been ridiculous to have said so the next day, or the next week, or the
next month, or the next year; to give, therefore, meaning to the
passage, comparative with the wonder it relates and the prior time
it alludes to, it must mean centuries of years; less, however, than
one would be trifling, and less than two would be barely admissible.

A distant but general time is also expressed in the 8th chapter,
where, after giving an account of the taking of the city of A.I., it
is said, ver. 28, "And Joshua burned A.I., and made it a heap forever,
even a desolation unto this day;" and again, ver. 29, where,
speaking of the king of A.I., whom Joshua had hanged, and buried at
the entering of the gate, it is said, "And he raised thereon a great
heap of stones, which remaineth unto this day," that is, unto the
day or time in which the writer of the book of Joshua lived. And
again, in the 10th chapter, where, after speaking of the five kings
whom Joshua had hanged on five trees, and then thrown in a cave, it
is said, "And he laid great stones on the cave's mouth, which remain
unto this very day."

In enumerating the several exploits of Joshua, and of the
tribes, and of the places which they conquered or attempted, it is
said, chap. xv., ver. 63: "As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of
Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out; but the
Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day.
The question upon this passage is, at what time did the Jebusites
and the children of Judah dwell together at Jerusalem? As this
matter occurs again in the first chapter of Judges, I shall reserve my
observations until I come to that part.

Having thus shown from the book of Joshua itself without any
auxiliary evidence whatever, that Joshua is not the author of that
book, and that it is anonymous, and consequently without authority,
I proceed as before mentioned, to the book of Judges.

The book of Judges is anonymous on the face of it; and, therefore,
even the pretence is wanting to call it the word of God; it has not so
much as a nominal voucher; it is altogether fatherless.

This book begins with the same expression as the book of Joshua.
That of Joshua begins, chap. i., verse 1, "Now after the death of
Moses," etc., and this of the Judges begins, "Now after the death of
Joshua," etc. This, and the similarity of style between the two books,
indicate that they are the work of the same author, but who he was
is altogether unknown; the only point that the book proves, is that
the author lived long after the time of Joshua; for though it begins
as if it followed immediately after his death, the second chapter is
an epitome or abstract of the whole book, which, according to the
Bible chronology, extends its history through a space of 306 years;
that is, from the death of Joshua, 1426 years before Christ, to the
death of Samson, 1120 years before Christ, and only 25 years before
Saul went to seek his father's asses, and was made king. But there
is good reason to believe, that it was not written till the time of
David, at least, and that the book of Joshua was not written before
the same time.

In the first chapter of Judges, the writer, after announcing the
death of Joshua, proceeds to tell what happened between the children
of Judah and the native inhabitants of the land of Canaan. In this
statement, the writer, having abruptly mentioned Jerusalem in the
7th verse, says immediately after, in the 8th verse, by way of
explanation, "Now the children of Judah had fought against
Jerusalem, and had taken it;" consequently this book could not have
been written before Jerusalem had been taken. The reader will
recollect the quotation I have just before made from the 15th
chapter of Joshua, ver. 63, where it is said that the Jebusites
dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day, meaning
the time when the book of Joshua was written.

The evidence I have already produced to prove that the books I
have hitherto treated of were not written by the persons to whom
they are ascribed, nor till many years after their death, if such
persons ever lived, is already so abundant that I can afford to
admit this passage with less weight than I am entitled to draw from
it. For the case is, that so far as the Bible can be credited as a
history, the city of Jerusalem was not taken till the time of David;
and consequently that the books of Joshua and of Judges were not
written till after the commencement of the reign of David, which was
370 years after the death of Joshua.

The name of the city that was afterward called Jerusalem was
originally Jebus, or Jebusi, and was the capital of the Jebusites. The
account of David's taking this city is given in II. Samuel, chap.
v., ver. 4, etc.; also in I. Chron. chap. xiv., ver. 4, etc. There
is no mention in any part of the Bible that it was ever taken
before, nor any account that favors such an opinion. It is not said,
either in Samuel or in Chronicles, that they utterly destroyed men,
women and children; that they left not a soul to breathe, as is said
of their other conquests; and the silence here observed implies that
it was taken by capitulation, and that the Jebusites, the native
inhabitants, continued to live in the place after it was taken. The
account therefore, given in Joshua, that the Jebusites dwell with
the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day corresponds to no
other time than after the taking of the city by David.

Having now shown that every book in the Bible, from Genesis to
Judges, is without authenticity, I come to the book of Ruth, an
idle, bungling story, foolishly told, nobody knows by whom, about a
strolling country-girl creeping slyly to bed with her cousin Boaz.
Pretty stuff indeed to be called the word of God! It is, however,
one of the best books in the Bible, for it is free from murder and
rapine.

I come next to the two books of Samuel, and to show that those
books were not written by Samuel, nor till a great length of time
after the death of Samuel; and that they are, like all the former
books, anonymous and without authority.

To be convinced that these books have been written much later
than the time of Samuel, and consequently not by him, it is only
necessary to read the account which the writer gives of Saul going
to seek his father's asses, and of his interview with Samuel, of
whom Saul went to inquire about those lost asses, as foolish people
nowadays go to a conjuror to inquire after lost things.

The writer, in relating this story of Saul, Samuel and the
asses, does not tell it as a thing that has just then happened, but as
an ancient story in the time this writer lived; for he tells it in the
language or terms used at the time that Samuel lived, which obliges
the writer to explain the story in the terms or language used in the
time the writer lived.

Samuel, in the account given of him, in the first of those
books, chap ix., is called the seer; and it is by this term that
Saul inquires after him, ver. II, "And as they (Saul and his
servant) went up the hill to the city, they found young maidens
going out to draw water; and they said unto them, Is the seer here?"
Saul then went according to the direction of these maidens, and met
Samuel without knowing him, and said unto him, ver. 18, "Tell me, I
pray thee, where the seer's house is? and Samuel answered Saul, and
said, I am the seer."

As the writer of the book of Samuel relates these questions and
answers, in the language or manner of speaking used in the time they
are said to have been spoken, and as that manner of speaking was out
of use when this author wrote, he found it necessary, in order to make
the story understood, to explain the terms in which these questions
and answers are spoken; and he does this in the 9th verse, when he
says "Before-time, in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God,
thus he spake, Come, and let us go to the seer; for he that is now
called a Prophet, was before-time called a Seer." This proves, as I
have before said, that this story of Saul, Samuel and the asses, was
an ancient story at the time the book of Samuel was written, and
consequently that Samuel did not write it, and that that book is
without authenticity.

But if we go further into those books the evidence is still more
positive that Samuel is not the writer of them; for they relate things
that did not happen till several years after the death of Samuel.
Samuel died before Saul; for the 1st Samuel, chap. xxviii., tells that
Saul and the witch of Endor conjured Samuel up after he was dead;
yet the history of the matters contained in those books is extended
through the remaining part of Saul's life, and to the latter end of
the life of David, who succeeded Saul. The account of the death and
burial of Samuel (a thing which he could not write himself) is related
in the 25th chapter of the first book of Samuel, and the chronology
affixed to this chapter makes this to be 1060 years before Christ; yet
the history of this first book is brought down to 1056 years before
Christ; that is, till the death of Saul, which was not till four years
after the death of Samuel.

The second book of Samuel begins with an account of things that
did not happen till four years after Samuel was dead; for it begins
with the reign of David, who succeeded Saul, and it goes on to the end
of David's reign, which was forty-three years after the death of
Samuel; and, therefore, the books are in themselves positive
evidence that they were not written by Samuel.

[_Maksutov]

I have now gone through all the books in the first part of the
Bible to which the names of persons are affixed, as being the
authors of those books, and which the Church, styling itself the
Christian Church, have imposed upon the world as the writings of
Moses, Joshua and Samuel, and I have detected and proved the
falsehood of this imposition. And now, ye priests of every description,
who have preached and written against the former part of the Age of
Reason, what have ye to say? Will ye, with all this mass of evidence
against you, and staring you in the face, still have the assurance to
march into your pulpits and continue to impose these books on your
congregations as the works of inspired penmen, and the word of God,
when it is as evident as demonstration can make truth appear, that
the persons who ye say are the authors, are not the authors, and that
ye know not who the authors are. What shadow of pretence have ye
now to produce for continuing the blasphemous fraud? What have ye
still to offer against the pure and moral religion of Deism, in support of
your system of falsehood, idolatry, and pretended revelation? Had the
cruel and murderous orders with which the Bible is filled, and the
numberless torturing executions of men, women and children, in
consequence of those orders, been ascribed to some friend whose
memory you revered, you would have glowed with satisfaction at
detecting the falsehood of the charge, and gloried in defending his
injured fame. Is it because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition,
or feel no interest in the honor of your Creator, that ye listen to the
horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference? The
evidence I have produced, and shall produce in the course of this
work, to prove that the Bible is without authority, will, while it
wounds the stubbornness of a priest, relieve and tranquilize the minds
of millions; it will free them from all those hard thoughts of the
Almighty which priestcraft and the Bible had infused into their minds,
and which stood in everlasting opposition to all their ideas of his
moral justice and benevolence.

I come now to the two books of Kings, and the two books of
Chronicles. Those books are altogether historical, and are chiefly
confined to the lives and actions of the Jewish kings, who in
general were a parcel of rascals; but these are matters with which
we have no more concern than we have with the Roman emperors or
Homer's account of the Trojan war. Besides which, as those works are
anonymous, and as we know nothing of the writer, or of his
character, it is impossible for us to know what degree of credit to
give to the matters related therein. Like all other ancient histories,
they appear to be a jumble of fable and of fact, and of probable and
of improbable things; but which distance of time and place, and
change of circumstances in the world, have rendered obsolete and
uninteresting.

The chief use I shall make of those books will be that of
comparing them with each other, and with other parts of the Bible,
to show the confusion, contradiction, and cruelty in this pretended
word of God.

The first book of Kings begins with the reign of Solomon, which,
according to the Bible chronology, was 1015 years before Christ; and
the second book ends 588 years before Christ, being a little after the
reign of Zedekiah, whom Nebuchadnezzar, after taking Jerusalem and
conquering the Jews, carried captive to Babylon. The two books
include a space of 427 years.

The two books of Chronicles are a history of the same times, and
in general of the same persons, by another author; for it would be
absurd to suppose that the same author wrote the history twice over.
The first book of Chronicles (after giving the genealogy from Adam
to Saul, which takes up the first nine chapters), begins with the
reign of David; and the last book ends as in the last book of Kings,
soon after the reign of Zedekiah, about 588 years before Christ. The
two last verses of the last chapter bring the history forward 52 years
more, that is, to 536. But these verses do not belong to the book,
as I shall show when I come to speak of the book of Ezra.

The two books of Kings, besides the history of Saul, David and
Solomon, who reigned over all Israel, contain an abstract of the lives
of 17 kings and one queen, who are styled kings of Judah, and of 19,
who are styled kings of Israel; for the Jewish nation, immediately
on the death of Solomon, split into two parties, who chose separate
kings, and who carried on most rancorous wars against each other.

These two books are little more than a history of
assassinations, treachery and wars. The cruelties that the Jews had
accustomed themselves to practise on the Canaanites, whose country
they had savagely invaded under a pretended gift from God, they
afterward practised as furiously on each other. Scarcely half their
kings died a natural death, and in some instances whole families
were destroyed to secure possession to the successor; who, after a
few years, and sometimes only a few months or less, shared the same
fate. In the tenth chapter of the second book of Kings, an account
is given of two baskets full of children's heads, seventy in number,
being exposed at the entrance of the city; they were the children of
Ahab, and were murdered by the order of Jehu, whom Elisha, the
pretended man of God, had anointed to be king over Israel, on
purpose to commit this bloody deed, and assassinate his predecessor.
And in the account of the reign of Menahem, one of the kings of Israel
who had murdered Shallum, who had reigned but one month, it is
said, II. Kings, chap. xv., ver. 16, that Menahem smote the city of
Tiphsah, because they opened not the city to him, and all the women
therein that were with child he ripped up.

Could we permit ourselves to suppose that the Almighty would
distinguish any nation of people by the name of His chosen people,
we must suppose that people to have been an example to all the rest
of the world of the purest piety and humanity, and not such a nation of
ruffians and cut-throats as the ancient Jews were; a people who,
corrupted by and copying after such monsters and impostors as Moses
and Aaron, Joshua, Samuel and David, had distinguished themselves
above all others on the face of the known earth for barbarity and
wickedness. If we will not stubbornly shut our eyes and steel our
hearts, it is impossible not to see, in spite of all that
long-established superstition imposes upon the mind, that the
flattering appellation of His chosen people is no other than a lie
which the priests and leaders of the Jews had invented to cover the
baseness of their own characters, and which Christian priests,
sometimes as corrupt and often as cruel, have professed to believe.

The two books of Chronicles are a repetition of the same crimes,
but the history is broken in several places by the author leaving
out the reign of some of their kings; and in this, as well as in
that of Kings, there is such a frequent transition from kings of Judah
to kings of Israel, and from kings of Israel to kings of Judah, that
the narrative is obscure in the reading. In the same book the
history sometimes contradicts itself; for example, in the second
book of Kings, chap, i., ver. 17, we are told, but in rather ambiguous
terms, that after the death of Ahaziah, king of Israel, Jehoram, or
Joram (who was of the house of Ahab), reigned in his stead, in the
second year of Jehoram or Joram, son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah;
and in chap. viii., ver. 16, of the same book, it is said, and in
the fifth year of Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel,
Jehoshaphat being then king of Judah, began to reign; that is, one
chapter says Joram of Judah began to reign in the second year of
Joram of Israel; and the other chapter says, that Joram of Israel
began to reign in the fifth year of Joram of Judah.

Several of the most extraordinary matters related in one
history, as having happened during the reign of such and such of their
kings, are not to be found in the other, in relating the reign of
the same king; for example, the two first rival kings, after the death
of Solomon, were Rehoboam and Jeroboam; and in I. Kings, chap. xii
and xiii, an account is given of Jeroboam making an offering of burnt
incense, and that a man, who was there called a man of God, cried
out against the altar, chap. xiii., ver. 2: "O altar, altar! thus
saith the Lord; Behold, a child shall be born to the house of David,
Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high
places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burnt
upon thee." Verse 4: "And it came to pass, when king Jeroboam heard
the saying of the man of God, which had cried against the altar in
Bethel, that he put forth his hand from the altar, saying, Lay hold on
him. And his hand which he put out against him dried up, so that he
could not pull it in again to him."

One would think that such an extraordinary case as this (which
is spoken of as a judgment), happening to the chief of one of the
parties, and that at the first moment of the separation of the
Israelites into two nations, would, if it had been true, have been
recorded in both histories. But though men in latter times have
believed all that the prophets have said unto him, it does not
appear that these prophets or historians believed each other; they
knew each other too well.

[_Maksutov]

A long account also is given in Kings about Elijah. It runs
through several chapters, and concludes with telling, Il. Kings, chap.
ii., ver. II, "And it came to pass, as they (Elijah and Elisha)
still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of
fire and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder, and Elijah went
up by a whirlwind into heaven." Hum! this the author of Chronicles,
miraculous as the story is, makes no mention of, though he mentions
Elijah by name; neither does he say anything of the story related in
the second chapter of the same book of Kings, of a parcel of
children calling Elisha bald head, bald head; and that this man of
God, verse 24, "Turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in
the name of the Lord; and there came forth two she-bears out of the
wood, and tore forty-and-two children of them." He also passes over in
silence the story told, II. Kings, chap. xiii., that when they were
burying a man in the sepulchre where Elisha had been buried, it
happened that the dead man, as they were letting him down, (ver.
21), touched the bones of Elisha, and he (the dead man) revived, and
stood upon his feet." The story does not tell us whether they buried
the man, notwithstanding he revived and stood upon his feet, or drew
him up again. Upon all these stories the writer of Chronicles is as
silent as any writer of the present day who did not choose to be
accused of lying, or at least of romancing, would be about stories
of the same kind.

But, however these two historians may differ from each other
with respect to the tales related by either, they are silent alike
with respect to those men styled prophets, whose writings fill up
the latter part of the Bible. Isaiah, who lived in the time of
Hezekiah, is mentioned in Kings, and again in Chronicles, when these
historians are speaking of that reign; but, except in one or two
instances at most, and those very slightly, none of the rest are so
much as spoken of, or even their existence hinted at; although,
according to the Bible chronology, they lived within the time those
histories were written; some of their long before. If those
prophets, as they are called, were men of such importance in their day
as the compilers of the Bible and priests and commentators have
since represented them to be, how can it be accounted for that not
one of these histories should say anything about them?

The history in the books of Kings and of Chronicles is brought
forward, as I have already said, to the year 588 before Christ; it
will, therefore, be proper to examine which of these prophets lived
before that period.

Here follows a table of all the prophets, with the times in
which they lived before Christ, according to the chronology affixed to
the first chapter of each of the books of the prophets; and also of
the number of years they lived before the books of Kings and
Chronicles were written.

TABLE OF THE PROPHETS.
Names. Years Years before Observations.
before Kings and
Christ. Chronicles
Isaiah 760 172 mentioned.
Jeremiah 629 41 mentioned only in the
last chap. of Chron.
Ezekiel 595 7 not mentioned.
Daniel 607 19 not mentioned.
Hosea 785 97 not mentioned.
Joel 800 212 not mentioned.
Amos 789 199 not mentioned.
Obadiah 789 199 not mentioned.
Jonah 862 274 see the note.*
Micah 750 162 not mentioned.
Nahum 713 125 not mentioned.
Habakkuk 620 38 not mentioned.
Zephaniah 630 42 not mentioned.
Haggai - after the year 588
Zachariah- after the year 588
Malachi - after the year 588

*In II. Kings, chap. xiv., verse 25, the name of Jonah is mentioned
on account of the restoration of a tract of land by Jeroboam; but
nothing further is said of him, nor is any allusion made to the book
of Jonah, nor to his expedition to Nineveh, nor to his encounter
with the whale.

This table is either not very honorable for the Bible
historians, or not very honorable for the Bible prophets; and I
leave to priests and commentators, who are very learned in little
things, to settle the point of etiquette between the two, and to
assign a reason why the authors of Kings and Chronicles have treated
those prophets whom, in the former part of the Age of Reason, I have
considered as poets, with as much degrading silence as any historian
of the present day would treat Peter Pindar.

I have one observation more to make on the book of Chronicles,
after which I shall pass on to review the remaining books of the
Bible.

In my observations on the book of Genesis, I have quoted a
passage from the 36th chapter, verse 31, which evidently refers to a
time after kings began to reign over the children of Israel; and I have
shown that as this verse is verbatim the same as in Chronicles,
chap. i, verse 43, where it stands consistently with the order of
history, which in Genesis it does not, that the verse in Genesis,
and a great part of the 36th chapter, have been taken from
Chronicles; and that the book of Genesis, though it is placed first in
the Bible, and ascribed to Moses, has been manufactured by some
unknown person after the book of Chronicles was written, which was
not until at least eight hundred and sixty years after the time of
Moses.


The evidence I proceed by to substantiate this is regular and
has in it but two stages. First, as I have already stated that the
passage in Genesis refers itself for time to Chronicles; secondly,
that the book of Chronicles, to which this passage refers itself,
was not begun to be written until at least eight hundred and sixty
years after the time of Moses. To prove this, we have only to look
into the thirteenth verse of the third chapter of the first book of
Chronicles, where the writer, in giving the genealogy of the
descendants of David, mentions Zedekiah; and it was in the time of
Zedekiah that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, 588 years before
Christ and consequently more then 860 years after Moses. Those who
have superstitiously boasted of the antiquity of the Bible, and
particularly of the books ascribed to Moses, have done it without
examination, and without any authority than that of one credulous
man telling it to another; for so far as historical and
chronological evidence applies, the very first book in the Bible is
not so ancient as the book of Homer by more then three hundred
years, and is about the same age with Aesop's Fables.

I am not contending for the morality of Homer; on the contrary,
I think it a book of false glory, tending to inspire immoral and
mischievous notions of honor; and with respect to Aesop, though the
moral is in general just, the fable is often cruel; and the cruelty of
the fable does more injury to the heart, especially in a child, than
the moral does good to the judgment.

Having now dismissed Kings and Chronicles, I come to the next in
course, the book of Ezra.

As one proof, among others I shall produce, to show the disorder
in which this pretended word of God, the Bible, has been put together,
and the uncertainty of who the authors were, we have only to look at
the three first verses in Ezra, and the last two in Chronicles; for by
what kind of cutting and shuffling has it been that the three first
verses in Ezra should be the two last verses in Chronicles, or that
the two last in Chronicles should be the three first in Ezra? Hither
the authors did not know their own works, or the compilers did not
know the authors.

The last verse in Chronicles is broken abruptly, and end in the
middle of the phrase with the word up, without signifying to what
place. This abrupt break, and the appearance of the same verses in
different books, show, as I have already said, the disorder and
ignorance in which the Bible has been put together, and that the
compilers of it had no authority for what they were doing, nor we
any authority for believing what they have done.

[_Maksutov]

Two last verses of Chronicles.

Ver. 22. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that
the word of the Lord, spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be
accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia,
that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it
also in writing, saying,

23. Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the
earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me: and he hath charged me
to build him an house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there
among you of all his people? the Lord his God be with him, and let him
go up.

Three first verses of Ezra.
Ver. 1. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the
word of the Lord, by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be fulfilled, the
Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a
proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing,
saying,

2. Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, the Lord God of heaven hath
given me all the kingdoms of earth; and he hath charged me to build
him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

3. Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with
him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build
the house of the Lord God of Israel (he is the God,) which is in
Jerusalem.

*I observed, as I passed along, several broken and senseless
passages in the Bible, without thinking them of consequence enough
to be introduced in the body of the work; such as that, I. Samuel,
chap. xiii. ver. 1, where it is said, "Saul reigned one year; and when
he had reigned two years over Israel, Saul chose him three thousand
men," &c. The first part of verse, that Saul reigned one year, has
no sense, since it does not tell us what Saul did, nor say anything of
what happened at the end of that one year; and it is, besides, mere
absurdity to say he reigned one year, when the very next phrase says
he had reigned two; for if he had reigned two, it was impossible not
to have reigned one.

Another instance occurs in Joshua, chap. v, where the writer tells
us a story of an angel (for such the table of contents at the head
of the chapter calls him) appearing unto Joshua; and the story ends
abruptly, and without any conclusion. The story is as follows: Verse
13, "And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted
up his eyes and looked, and behold there stood a man over against
him with his sword drawn in his hand; and Joshua went unto him and
said unto him, Art thou for us or for our adversaries?" Verse 14, "And
he said, Nay; but as captain of the hosts of the Lord am I now come.
And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said
unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant?" Verse 15, "And the
captain of the Lord's host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off
thy foot: for the place whereon thou standeth is holy. And Joshua
did so." And what then? nothing, for here the story ends, and the
chapter too.

Either the story is broken off in the middle, or it is a story
told by some Jewish humorist, in ridicule of Joshua's pretended
mission from God; and the compilers of the Bible, not perceiving the
design of the story, have told it as a serious matter. As a story of
humor and ridicule it has a great deal of point, for it pompously
introduces an angel in the figure of a man, with a drawn sword in
his hand, before whom Joshua falls on his face to the earth and
worships (which is contrary to their second commandment); and then
this most important embassy from heaven ends in telling Joshua to
pull off his shoe. It might as well have told him to pull up his breeches.
It is certain, however, that the Jews did not credit everything
their leaders told them, as appears from the cavalier manner in
which they speak of Moses, when he was gone into the mount. "As for
this Moses" say they, "we wot not what is become of him." Exod.
chap. xxxii, ver. I.

The only thing that has any appearance of certainty in the book of
Ezra, is the time in which it was written, which was immediately after
the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, about 536
years before Christ. Ezra (who, according to the Jewish
commentators, is the same person as is called Esdras in the
Apocrypha), was one of the persons who returned, and who, it is
probable, wrote the account of that affair. Nehemiah, whose book
follows next to Ezra, was another of the returned persons; and who, it
is also probable, wrote the account of the same affair in the book
that bears his name. But these accounts are nothing to us, nor to
any other persons, unless it be to the Jews, as a part of the
history of their nation; and there is just as much of the word of
God in those books as there is in any of the histories of France, or
Rapin's History of England, or the history of any other country.

But even in matters of historical record, neither of those writers
are to be depended upon. In the second chapter of Ezra, the writer
gives a list of the tribes and families, and of the precise number
of souls of each, that returned from Babylon to Jerusalem: and this
enrolment of the persons so returned appears to have been one of the
principal objects for writing the book; but in this there is an
error that destroys the intention of the undertaking.
The writer begins his enrolment in the following manner, chap.
ii., ver. 3: "The children of Parosh, two thousand a hundred seventy
and two." Ver. 4, "The children of Shephatiah, three hundred seventy
and two." And in this manner he proceeds through all the families; and
in the 64th verse, he makes a total, and says, "The whole
congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and
threescore."

But whoever will take the trouble of casting up the several
particulars will find that the total is but 29,818; so that the
error is 12,542.* What certainty, then, can there be in the Bible
for anything?

*Particulars of the Families from the second Chapter of Ezra.
Chap. ii

Brought forward: 12,243 15,953 24,144
Verse 3 2172 Verse 14 2056 Verse 25 743 Verse 36 973
4 372 15 454 26 621 37 1052
5 775 16 98 27 122 38 1247
6 2812 17 323 28 223 39 1017
7 1254 18 112 29 52 40 74
8 945 19 223 30 156 41 128
9 760 20 95 31 1254 42 139
10 642 21 123 32 320 53 392
11 623 22 56 33 725 60 652
12 1222 23 128 34 345
13 666 24 42 35 3630
- ------ ------ ------ -----
12,243 15,953 24,144 Total 29,818

Nehemiah, in like manner, gives a list of the returned families,
and of the number of each family. He begins, as in Ezra, by saying,
chap. vii., ver. 8, "The children of Parosh, two thousand a hundred
seven and two; and so on through all the families. The list differs in
several of the particulars from that of Ezra. In the 66th verse,
Nehemiah makes a total, and says, as Ezra had said, "The whole
congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and
threescore." But the particulars of this list makes a total of but
31,089, so that the error here is 11,271. These writers may do well
enough for Bible-makers, but not for anything where truth and
exactness is necessary.

The next book in course is the book of Esther. If Madame Esther
thought it any honor to offer herself as a kept mistress to Ahasuerus,
or as a rival to Queen Vashti, who had refused to come to a drunken
king in the midst of a drunken company, to be made a show of, (for
the account says they had been drinking seven days and were merry),
let Esther and Mordecai look to that; it is no business of ours; at
least it is none of mine; besides which the story has a great deal the
appearance of being fabulous, and is also anonymous. I pass on to
the book of Job.

The book of Job differs in character from all the books we have
hitherto passed over. Treachery and murder make no part of this
book; it is the meditations of a mind strongly impressed with the
vicissitudes of human life, and by turns sinking under, and struggling
against the pressure. It is a highly-wrought composition, between
willing submission and involuntary discontent, and shows man, as he
sometimes is, more disposed to be resigned than he is capable of
being. Patience has but a small share in the character of the person
of whom the book treats; on the contrary, his grief is often
impetuous, but he still endeavors to keep a guard upon it, and seems
determined in the midst of accumulating ills, to impose upon himself
the hard duty of contentment.

[_Maksutov]

I have spoken in a respectful manner of the book of Job in the
former part of the Age of Reason, but without knowing at that time
what I have learned since, which is, that from all the evidence that
can be collected the book of Job does not belong to the Bible.

I have seen the opinion of two Hebrew commentators, Abenezra
and Spinoza, upon this subject. They both say that the book of Job
carries no internal evidence of being a Hebrew book; that the genius of
the composition and the drama of the piece are not Hebrew; that it
has been translated from another language into Hebrew, and that the
author of the book was a Gentile; that the character represented
under the name of Satan (which is the first and only time this name is
mentioned in the Bible) does not correspond to any Hebrew idea, and
that the two convocations which the Deity is supposed to have made
of those whom the poem calls sons of God, and the familiarity which
this supposed Satan is stated to have with the Deity, are in the same
case.

It may also be observed, that the book shows itself to be the
production of a mind cultivated in science, which the Jews, so far
from being famous for, were very ignorant of. The allusions to objects
of natural philosophy are frequent and strong, and are of a
different cast to anything in the books known to be Hebrew. The
astronomical names, Pleiades, Orion, and Arcturus, are Greek and not
Hebrew names, and it does not appear from anything that is to be
found in the Bible, that the Jews knew anything of astronomy or that
they studied it; they had no translation of those names into their own
language, but adopted the names as they found them in the poem.

That the Jews did translate the literary productions of the
Gentile nations into the Hebrew language, and mix them with their
own, is not a matter of doubt; the thirty-first chapter of Proverbs is an
evidence of this; it is there said, v. i: "The words of King Lemuel,
the prophecy that his mother taught him." This verse stands as a
preface to the Proverbs that follow, and which are not the proverbs of
Solomon, but of Lemuel; and this Lemuel was not one of the kings of
Israel, nor of Judah, but of some other country, and consequently a
Gentile. The Jews, however, have adopted his proverbs, and as they
cannot give any account who the author of the book of Job was, nor
how they came by the book, and as it differs in character from the
Hebrew writings, and stands totally unconnected with every other
book and chapter in the Bible, before it and after it, it has all
the circumstantial evidence of being originally a book of the
Gentiles.*

*The prayer known by the name of Agur's prayer, in the 30th
chapter of Proverbs, immediately preceding the proverbs of Lemuel,
and which is the only sensible, well-conceived and well-expressed
prayer in the Bible, has much the appearance of being a prayer taken
from the Gentiles. The name of Agur occurs on no other occasion than
this; and he is introduced, together with the prayer ascribed to him, in
the same manner, and nearly in the same words, that Lemuel and his
proverbs are introduced in the chapter that follows. The first verse
of the 30th chapter says, "The words of Agur, the son of Jakeh, even
the prophecy." Here the word prophecy is used in the same
application it has in the following chapter of Lemuel, unconnected
with any thing of prediction. The prayer of Agur is in the 8th and 9th
verses, "Remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither poverty
nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me; lest I be full and
deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal,
and take the name of my God in vain." This has not any of the marks
of being a Jewish prayer, for the Jews never prayed but when they
were in trouble, and never for anything but victory, vengeance and
riches.

The Bible-makers and those regulators of time, the
chronologists, appear to have been at a loss where to place and how
to dispose of the book of Job; for it contains no one historical
circumstance, nor allusion to any, that might determine its place in
the Bible. But it would not have answered the purpose of these men
to have informed the world of their ignorance, and therefore, they
have affixed it to the era of 1520 years before Christ, which is
during the time the Israelites were in Egypt, and for which they
have just as much authority and no more than I should have for
saying it was a thousand years before that period. The probability,
however, is that it is older than any book in the Bible; and it is the
only one that can be read without indignation or disgust.
We know nothing of what the ancient Gentile world (as it is
called) was before the time of the Jews, whose practise has been to
calumniate and blacken the character of all other nations; and it is
from the Jewish accounts that we have learned to call them heathens.
But, as far as we know to the contrary, they were a just and moral
people, and not addicted, like the Jews, to cruelty and revenge, but
of whose profession of faith we are unacquainted. It appears to have
been their custom to personify both virtue and vice by statues and
images, as is done nowadays both by statuary and by painting; but it
does not follow from this that they worshiped them, any more than we
do.

I pass on to the book of Psalms, of which it is not necessary to
make much observation. Some of them are moral, and others are very
revengeful; and the greater part relates to certain local
circumstances of the Jewish nation at the time they were written, with
which we have nothing to do. It is, however, an error or an imposition
to call them the Psalms of David. They are a collection, as song-books
are nowadays, from different song-writers, who lived at different
times. The 137th Psalm could not have been written till more than
400 years after the time of David, because it was written in
commemoration of an event, the captivity of the Jews in Babylon,
which did not happen till that distance of time. "By the rivers of
Babylon we sat down; yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We
hanged our harps upon the willows, in the midst thereof; for there
they that carried us away captive required of us a song, saying, Sing
us one of the songs of Zion." As a man would say to an American, or
to a Frenchman, or to an Englishman, "Sing us one of your American
songs, or of your French songs, or of your English songs." This remark,
with respect to the time this Psalm was written, is of no other use
than to show (among others already mentioned) the general
imposition the world has been under in respect to the authors of the
Bible. No regard has been paid to time, place and circumstance, and
the names of persons have been affixed to the several books, which it
was as impossible they should write as that a man should walk in
procession at his own funeral.

The Book of Proverbs. These, like the Psalms, are a collection,
and that from authors belonging to other nations than those of the
Jewish nation, as I have shown in the observations upon the book of
Job; besides which some of the proverbs ascribed to Solomon did not
appear till two hundred and fifty years after the death of Solomon;
for it is said in the 1st verse of the 25th chapter, "These are also
proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah,
copied out." It was two hundred and fifty years from the time of
Solomon to the time of Hezekiah. When a man is famous and his name
is abroad, he is made the putative father of things he never said or
did, and this, most probably, has been the case with Solomon. It
appears to have been the fashion of that day to make proverbs, as it
is now to make jest-books and father them upon those who never saw
them.

The book of Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher, is also ascribed to
Solomon, and that with much reason, if not with truth. It is written
as the solitary reflections of a worn-out debauchee, such as Solomon
was, who, looking back on scenes he can no longer enjoy, cries out,
"All is vanity!" A great deal of the metaphor and of the sentiment
is obscure, most probably by translation; but enough is left to show
they were strongly pointed in the original.* From what is
transmitted to us of the character of Solomon, he was witty,
ostentatious, dissolute, and at last melancholy. He lived fast, and
died, tired of the world, at the age of fifty-eight years.

*Those that look out of the window shall be darkened, is an
obscure figure in translation for loss of sight.

Seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines are worse than
none, and, however it may carry with it the appearance of heightened
enjoyment, it defeats all the felicity of affection by leaving it no
point to fix upon. Divided love is never happy. This was the case with
Solomon, and if he could not, with all his pretentions to wisdom,
discover it beforehand, he merited, unpitied, the mortification he
afterward endured. In this point of view, his preaching is
unnecessary, because, to know the consequences, it is only necessary
to know the cause. Seven hundred wives, and three hundred
concubines would have stood in place of the whole book. It was
needless, after this, to say that all was vanity and vexation of spirit;
for it is impossible to derive happiness from the company of those
whom we deprive of happiness.

To be happy in old age, it is necessary that we accustom ourselves
to objects that can accompany the mind all the way through life, and
that we take the rest as good in their day. The mere man of pleasure
is miserable in old age, and the mere drudge in business is but little
better; whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical
science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite
of the gloomy dogmas of priests and of superstition, the study of
these things is the true theology; it teaches man to know and to
admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation,
and are unchangeable and of divine origin.

Those who knew Benjamin Franklin will recollect that his mind
was ever young, his temper ever serene; science, that never grows
gray, was always his mistress. He was never without an object, for
when we cease to have an object, we become like an invalid in a
hospital waiting for death.

Solomon's Songs are amorous and foolish enough, but which
wrinkled fanaticism has called divine. The compilers of the Bible have
placed these songs after the book of Ecclesiastes, and the
chronologists have affixed to them the era of 1014 years before Christ,
at which time Solomon, according to the same chronology, was
nineteen years of age, and was then forming his seraglio of wives and
concubines. The Bible-makers and the chronologists should have
managed this matter a little better, and either have said nothing about
the time, or chosen a time less inconsistent with the supposed divinity
of those songs; for Solomon was then in the honeymoon of one
thousand debaucheries.

It should also have occurred to them that, as he wrote, if he
did write, the book of Ecclesiastes long after these songs, and in
which he exclaims, that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, that
he included those songs in that description. This is the more
probable, because he says, or somebody for him, Ecclesiastes, chap.
ii. ver. 8, "I gat me men singers and women singers (most probably
to sing those songs), as musical instruments and that of all sorts;
and behold, (ver. II), all was vanity and vexation of spirit." The
compilers, however, have done their work but by halves, for as they
have given us the songs, they should have given us the tunes, that
we might sing them.

The books called the Books of the Prophets fill up all the
remaining parts of the Bible; they are sixteen in number, beginning
with Isaiah, and ending with Malachi, of which I have given you a list
in my observations upon Chronicles. Of these sixteen prophets, all
of whom, except the three last, lived within the time the books of
Kings and Chronicles were written, two only, Isaiah and Jeremiah,
are mentioned in the history of those books. I shall begin with
those two, reserving what I have to say on the general character of
the men called prophets to another part of the work.

Whoever will take the trouble of reading the book ascribed to
Isaiah will find it one of the most wild and disorderly compositions
ever put together; it has neither beginning, middle, nor end; and,
except a short historical part and a few sketches of history in two or
three of the first chapters, is one continued, incoherent, bombastical
rant, full of extravagant metaphor, without application, and destitute
of meaning; a school-boy would scarcely have been excusable for
writing such stuff; it is (at least in the translation) that kind of
composition and false taste that is properly called prose run mad.

The historical part begins at the 36th chapter, and is continued
to the end of the 39th chapter. It relates to some matters that are
said to have passed during the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah; at
which time Isaiah lived. This fragment of history begins and ends
abruptly; it has not the least connection with the chapter that
precedes it, nor with that which follows it, nor with any other in the
book. It is probable that Isaiah wrote this fragment himself,
because he was an actor in the circumstances it treats of; but, except
this part, there are scarcely two chapters that have any connection
with each other; one is entitled, at the beginning of the first verse,
"The burden of Babylon;" another, "The burden of Moab;" another
"The burden of Damascus;" another, "The burden of Egypt;" another,
"The burden of the desert of the sea;" another, "The burden of the
valley of vision"*- as you would say, "The story of the Knight of the
Burning Mountain," "The story of Cinderella," or "The Children in
the Wood," etc., etc.

*See beginning of chapters xiii, xv, xvii, xix, xxi and xxii.

[_huckelberry]

Is there some significance in the observation that Moses did not write the first five books of the Bible? Is there significance that some editor made questionable estimates on the time of Song of Solomon?

Heavens you mean some proverbs are shared with other cultures and may not be pristine from the mind of Solomon? Or from Solomon at all? Lands oh mercy! There are perhaps more weighty criticisms of the Bible.

I am struck by Paines failure to get value out of the Song of Solomon. Poetically deaf?

[_Maksutov]

I have already shown, in the instance of the two last verses of
Chronicles, and the three first in Ezra, that the compilers of the
Bible mixed and confounded the writings of different authors with each
other, which alone, were there no other cause, is sufficient to
destroy the authenticity of any compilation, because it is more than
presumptive evidence that the compilers were ignorant who the
authors were. A very glaring instance of this occurs in the book
ascribed to Isaiah; the latter part of the 44th chapter and the
beginning of the 45th, so far from having been written by Isaiah,
could only have been written by some person who lived at least a
hundred and fifty years after Isaiah was dead.

These chapters are a compliment to Cyrus, who permitted the Jews
to return to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity, to rebuild
Jerusalem and the temple, as is stated in Ezra. The last verse of
the 44th chapter and the beginning of the 45th, are in the following
words: "That saith of Cyrus; He is my shepherd and shall perform all
my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shall be built, and to the
temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. Thus saith the Lord to his
annointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue
nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before
him the two-leaved gates and the gates shall not be shut; I will go
before thee," etc.

What audacity of church and priestly ignorance it is to impose
this book upon the world as the writing of Isaiah, when Isaiah,
according to their own chronology, died soon after the death of
Hezekiah, which was 693 years before Christ, and the decree of
Cyrus, in favor of the Jews returning to Jerusalem, was, according
to the same chronology, 536 years before Christ, which is a distance
of time between the two of 162 years. I do not suppose that the
compilers of the Bible made these books, but rather that they picked
up some loose anonymous essays, and put them together under the
names of such authors as best suited their purpose. They have
encouraged the imposition, which is next to inventing it, for it was
impossible but they must have observed it.

When we see the studied craft of the Scripture-makers, in making
every part of this romantic book of schoolboy's eloquence bend to
the monstrous idea of a Son of God begotten by a ghost on the body
of a virgin, there is no imposition we are not justified in suspecting
them of. Every phrase and circumstance is marked with the barbarous
hand of superstitious torture, and forced into meanings it was
impossible they could have. The head of every chapter and the top of
every page are blazoned with the names of Christ and the Church,
that the unwary reader might suck in the error before he began to
read.

"Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son," Isaiah, chap.
vii. ver. 14, has been interpreted to mean the person called Jesus
Christ, and his mother Mary, and has been echoed through
Christendom for more than a thousand years; and such has been the
rage of this opinion that scarcely a spot in it but has been stained with
blood, and marked with desolation in consequence of it. Though it is
not my intention to enter into controversy on subjects of this kind, but
to confine myself to show that the Bible is spurious, and thus, by
taking away the foundation, to overthrow at once the whole structure
of superstition raised thereon, I will, however, stop a moment to
expose the fallacious application of this passage.

Whether Isaiah was playing a trick with Ahaz, king of Judah, to
whom this passage is spoken, is no business of mine; I mean only to
show the misapplication of the passage, and that it has no more
reference to Christ and his mother than it has to me and my mother.
The story is simply this: The king of Syria and the king of Israel, (I
have already mentioned that the Jews were split into two nations,
one of which was called Judah, the capital of which was Jerusalem,
and the other Israel), made war jointly against Ahaz, king of Judah,
and marched their armies toward Jerusalem. Ahaz and his people
became alarmed, and the account says, verse 2, "And his heart was
moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are
moved with the wind."

In this situation of things, Isaiah addresses himself to Ahaz, and
assures him in the name of the Lord (the can't phrase of all the
prophets) that these two kings should not succeed against him; and
to satisfy Ahaz that this should be the case, tells him to ask a sign.
This, the account says, Ahaz declined doing, giving as a reason that
he would not tempt the Lord upon which Isaiah, who is the speaker,
says, ver. 14, "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign,
Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son;" and the 16th verse
says, "For before this child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose
the good, the land that thou abhorrest, (or dreadest, meaning Syria
and the kingdom of Israel) shall be forsaken of both her kings."
Here then was the sign, and the time limited for the completion of the
assurance or promise, namely, before this child should know to
refuse the evil and choose the good.

Isaiah having committed himself thus far, it became necessary to
him, in order to avoid the imputation of being a false prophet and the
consequence thereof, to take measures to make this sign appear. It
certainly was not a difficult thing, in any time of the world, to find
a girl with child, or to make her so, and perhaps Isaiah knew of one
beforehand; for I do not suppose that the prophets of that day were
any more to be trusted than the priests of this. Be that, however,
as it may, he says in the next chapter, ver. 2, "And I took unto me
faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the
son of Jeberechiah, and I went unto the prophetess, and she
conceived and bare a son."

Here, then, is the whole story, foolish as it is, of this child
and this virgin; and it is upon the barefaced perversion of this
story, that the book of Matthew, and the impudence and sordid
interests of priests in later times, have founded a theory which
they call the Gospel; and have applied this story to signify the
person they call Jesus Christ, begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom
they call holy, on the body of a woman, engaged in marriage, and
afterward married, whom they call a virgin, 700 years after this
foolish story was told; a theory which, speaking for myself, I
hesitate not to disbelieve, and to say, is as fabulous and as false as
God is true.*

*In the 14th verse of the 7th chapter, it is said that the child
should be called Immanuel; but this name was not given to either of
the children otherwise than as a character which the word signifies.
That of the prophetess was called Maher-shalal-hash-baz, and that of
Mary was called Jesus.

But to show the imposition and falsehood of Isaiah, we have only
to attend to the sequel of this story, which, though it is passed over
in silence in the book of Isaiah, is related in the 28th chapter of
the second Chronicles, and which is, that instead of these two kings
failing in their attempt against Ahaz, king of Judah, as Isaiah had
pretended to foretell in the name of the Lord, they succeeded; Ahaz
was defeated and destroyed, a hundred and twenty thousand of his
people were slaughtered, Jerusalem was plundered, and two hundred
thousand women, and sons and daughters, carried into captivity. Thus
much for this lying prophet and impostor, Isaiah, and the book of
falsehoods that bears his name.

I pass on to the book of Jeremiah. This prophet, as he is
called, lived in the time that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, in
the reign of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah; and the suspicion was
strong against him that he was a traitor in the interests of
Nebuchadnezzar. Everything relating to Jeremiah shows him to have
been a man of an equivocal character; in his metaphor of the potter
and the clay, chap. xviii., he guards his prognostications in such a
crafty manner as always to leave himself a door to escape by, in case
the event should be contrary to what he had predicted.
In the 7th and 8th verses of that chapter he makes the Almighty to
say, "At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and
concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and destroy it.
If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their
evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them."
Here was a proviso against one side of the case; now for the other
side.

Verses 9 and 10, "And at what instant I shall speak concerning a
nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, if it do
evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice; then I shall repent of
the good wherewith I said I would benefit them." Here is a proviso
against the other side; and, according to this plan of prophesying,
a prophet could never be wrong, however mistaken the Almighty
might be. This sort of absurd subterfuge, and this manner of speaking
of the Almighty, as one would speak of a man, is consistent with
nothing but the stupidity of the Bible.

As to the authenticity of the book, it is only necessary to read
it, in order to decide positively that, though some passages
recorded therein may have been spoken by Jeremiah, he is not the
author of the book. The historical parts, if they can be called by
that name, are in the most confused condition; the same events are
several times repeated, and that in a manner different, and
sometimes in contradiction to each other; and this disorder runs
even to the last chapter, where the history upon which the greater
part of the book has been employed begins anew, and ends abruptly.
The book has all the appearance of being a medley of unconnected
anecdotes respecting persons and things of that time, collected
together in the same rude manner as if the various and contradictory
accounts that are to be found in a bundle of newspapers respecting
persons and things of the present day, were put together without date,
order, or explanation. I will give two or three examples of this kind.