"God caused a wind to rise that drove the quails within and about the
camp of the Israelites; and it is in this that the miracle consists,
that they were brought so seasonably to this place, and in so great
numbers as to suffice above a million of persons above a month. Some
authors affirm, that in those eastern and southern countries, quails
are innumerable, so that in one part of Italy within the compass of five
miles, there were taken about an hundred thousand of them every day for
a month together; and that sometimes they fly so thick over the sea,
that being weary they fall into ships, sometimes in such numbers, that
they sink them with their weight."
No wonder Mr. Cruden believed the Mosaic account.
Must we believe that God made an arrangement with hornets for the
purpose af securing their services in driving the Canaanites from
the land of promise? Is this belief necessary unto salvation? Must we
believe that God said to the Jews that he would send hornets before them
to drive out the Canaanites, as related in the twenty-third chapter of
Exodus, and the second chapter of Deuteronomy? How would the hornets
know a Canaanite? In what way would God put it in the mind of a hornet
to attack a Canaanite? Did God create hornets for that especial purpose,
implanting an instinct to attack a Canaanite, but not a Hebrew? Can
we conceive of the Almighty granting letters of marque and reprisal to
hornets? Of course it is admitted that nothing in the world would
be better calculated to make a man leave his native land than a few
hornets. Is it possible for us to believe that an infinite being would
resort to such expedients in order to drive the Canaanites from their
country? He could just as easily have spoken the Canaanites out of
existence as to have spoken the hornets in. In this way a vast amount of
trouble, pain and suffering would have been saved. Is it possible that
there is, in this country, an intelligent clergyman who will insist that
these stories are true; that we must believe them in in order to be good
people in this world, and glorified souls in the next?
We are also told that God instructed the Hebrews to kill the Canaanites
slowly, giving as a reason that the beasts of the field might increase
upon his chosen people. When we take into consideration the fact that
the Holy Land contained only about eleven or twelve thousand square
miles, and was at that time inhabited by at least twenty-one millions of
people, it does not seem reasonable that the wild beasts could have been
numerous enough to cause any great alarm. The same ratio of population
would give to the State of Illinois at least one hundred and twenty
millions of inhabitants. Can anybody believe that, under such
circumstances, the danger from wild beasts could be very great? What
would we think of a general, invading such a State, if he should order
his soldiers to kill the people slowly, lest the wild beasts might
increase upon them? Is it possible that a God capable of doing the
miracles recounted in the Old Testament could not, in some way, have
disposed of the wild beasts? After the Canaanites were driven out, could
he not have employed the hornets to drive out the wild beasts? Think of
a God that could drive twenty-one millions of people out of the promised
land, could raise up innumerable stinging flies, and could cover
the earth with fiery serpents, and yet seems to have been perfectly
powerless against the wild beasts of the land of Canaan!
Speaking of these hornets, one of the good old commentators, whose
views have long been considered of great value by the believers in the
inspiration of the Bible, uses the following language:--"Hornets are a
sort of strong flies, which the Lord used as instruments to plague
the enemies of his people. They are of themselves very troublesome and
mischievous, and those the Lord made use of were, it is thought, of an
extraordinary bigness and perniciousness. It is said they live as the
wasps, and that they have a king or captain, and pestilent stings
as bees, and that, if twenty-seven of them sting man or beast, it is
certain death to either. Nor is it strange that such creatures did drive
out the Canaanites from their habitations; for many heathen writers give
instances of some people driven from their seats by frogs, others by
mice, others by bees and wasps. And it is said that a Christian city,
being besieged by Sapores, king of Persia, was delivered by hornets; for
the elephants and beasts being stung by them, waxed unruly, and so the
whole army fled."
Only a few years ago, all such stories were believed by the Christian
world; and it is a historical fact, that Voltaire was the third man of
any note in Europe, who took the ground that the mythologies of Greece
and Rome were without foundation. Until his time, most Christians
believed as thoroughly in the miracles ascribed to the Greek and Roman
gods as in those of Christ and Jehovah. The Christian world cultivated
credulity, not only as one of the virtues, but as the greatest of them
all. But, when Luther and his followers left the Church of Rome, they
were compelled to deny the power of the Catholic Church, at that time,
to suspend the laws of nature, but took the ground that such power
ceased with the apostolic age. They insisted that all things now
happened in accordance with the laws of nature, with the exception of a
few special interferences in favor of the Protestant Church in answer
to prayer. They taught their children a double philosophy: by one, they
were to show the impossibility of Catholic miracles, because opposed to
the laws of nature; by the other, the probability of the miracles of the
apostolic age, because they were in conformity with the statements of
the Scriptures. They had two foundations: one, the law of nature, and
the other, the word of God. The Protestants have endeavored to carry
on this double process of reasoning, and the result has been a gradual
increase of confidence in the law of nature, and a gradual decrease of
confidence in the word of God.
We are told, in this inspired account, that the clothing of the Jewish
people did not wax old, and that their shoes refused to wear out. Some
commentators have insisted that angels attended to the wardrobes of the
Hebrews, patched their garments, and mended their shoes. Certain it is,
however, that the same clothes lasted them for forty years, during the
entire journey from Egypt to the Holy Land. Little boys starting out
with their first pantaloons, grew as they traveled, and their clothes
grew with them.
Can it be necessary to believe a story like this? Will men make better
husbands, fathers, neighbors, and citizens, simply by giving credence
to these childish and impossible things? Certainly an infinite God could
have transported the Jews to the Holy Land in a moment, and could, as
easily, have removed the Canaanites to some other country. Surely there
was no necessity for doing thousands and thousands of petty miracles,
day after day for forty years, looking after the clothes of three
millions of people, changing the nature of wool and linen and leather,
so that they would not "wax old." Every step, every motion, would wear
away some part of the clothing, some part of the shoes. Were these
parts, so worn away, perpetually renewed, or was the nature of things
so changed that they could not wear away? We know that whenever matter
comes in contact with matter, certain atoms, by abrasion, are lost. Were
these atoms gathered up every night by angels, and replaced on the soles
of the shoes, on the elbows of coats, and on the knees of pantaloons, so
that the next morning they would be precisely in the condition they were
on the morning before? There must be a mistake somewhere.
Can we believe that the real God, if there is one, ever ordered a man
to be killed simply for making hair oil, or ointment? We are told in
the thirtieth chapter of Exodus, that the Lord commanded Moses to take
myrrh, cinnamon, sweet calamus, cassia, and olive oil, and make a
holy ointment for the purpose of anointing the tabernacle, tables,
candlesticks and other utensils, as well as Aaron and his sons; saying,
at the same time, that whosoever compounded any like it, or whoever put
any of it on a stranger, should be put to death. In the same chapter,
the Lord furnishes Moses with a recipe for making a perfume, saying,
that whoever should make any which smelled like it, should be cut off
from his people. This, to me, sounds so unreasonable that I cannot
believe it. Why should an infinite God care whether mankind made
ointments and perfumes like his or not? Why should the Creator of all
things threaten to kill a priest who approached his altar without having
washed his hands and feet? These commandments and these penalties would
disgrace the vainest tyrant that ever sat, by chance, upon a throne.
There must be some mistake. I cannot believe that an infinite
Intelligence appeared to Moses upon Mount Sinai having with him a
variety of patterns for making a tabernacle, tongs, snuffers and dishes.
Neither can I believe that God told Moses how to cut and trim a coat for
a priest. Why should a God care about such things? Why should he insist
on having buttons sewed in certain rows, and fringes of a certain color?
Suppose an intelligent civilized man was to overhear, on Mount Sinai,
the following instructions from God to Moses:--
"You must consecrate my priests as follows:--You must kill a bullock
for a sin offering, and have Aaron and his sons lay their hands upon the
head of the bullock. Then you must take the blood and put it upon the
horns of the altar round about with your finger, and pour some blood at
the bottom of the altar to make a reconciliation; and of the fat that
is upon the inwards, the caul above the liver and two kidneys, and
their fat, and burn them upon the altar. You must get a ram for a burnt
offering, and Aaron and his sons must lay their hands upon the head of
the ram. Then you must kill it and sprinkle the blood upon the altar,
and cut the ram into pieces, and burn the head, and the pieces, and the
fat, and wash the inwards and the lungs in water and then burn the whole
ram upon the altar for a sweet savor unto me. Then you must get another
ram, and have Aaron and his sons lay their hands upon the head of that,
then kill it and take of its blood, and put it on the top of Aaron's
right ear, and on the thumb of his right hand, and on the great toe of
his right foot. And you must also put a little of the blood upon the
top of the right ears of Aaron's sons, and on the thumbs of their right
hands and on the great toes of their right feet. And then you must take
of the fat that is on the inwards, and the caul above the liver and the
two kidneys, and their fat, and the right shoulder, and out of a basket
of unleavened bread you must take one unleavened cake and another of oil
bread, and one wafer, and put them on the fat of the right shoulder. And
you must take of the anointing oil, and of the blood, and sprinkle it on
Aaron, and on his garments, and on his sons' garments, and sanctify
them and all their clothes."--Do you believe that he would have even
suspected that the creator of the universe was talking?
Can any one now tell why God commanded the Jews, when they were upon the
desert of Sinai, to plant trees, telling them at the same time that they
must not eat any of the fruit of such trees until after the fourth year?
Trees could not have been planted in that desert, and if they had been,
they could not have lived. Why did God tell Moses, while in the desert,
to make curtains of fine linen? Where could he have obtained his flax?
There was no land upon which it could have been produced. Why did he
tell him to make things of gold, and silver, and precious stones, when
they could not have been in possession of these things? There is but one
answer, and that is, the Pentateuch was written hundreds of years after
the Jews had settled in the Holy Land, and hundreds of years after Moses
was dust and ashes.
When the Jews had a written language, and that must have been long after
their flight from Egypt, they wrote out their history and their laws.
Tradition had filled the infancy of the nation with miracles and special
interpositions in their behalf by Jehovah. Patriotism would not allow
these wonders to grow small, and priestcraft never denied a miracle.
There were traditions to the effect that God had spoken face to face
with Moses; that he had given him the tables of the law, and had, in a
thousand ways, made known his will; and whenever the priests wished to
make new laws, or amend old ones, they pretended to have found something
more that God said to Moses at Sinai. In this way obedience was more
easily secured. Only a very few of the people could read, and, as a
consequence, additions, interpolations and erasures had no fear of
detection. In this way we account for the fact that Moses is made to
speak of things that did not exist in his day, and were unknown for
hundreds of years after his death.
In the thirtieth chapter of Exodus, we are told that the people, when
numbered, must give each one a half shekel after the shekel of the
_sanctuary_. At that time no such money existed, and consequently the
account could not, by any possibility, have been written until after
there was a shekel of the sanctuary, and there was no such thing until
long after the death of Moses. If we should read that Caesar paid his
troops in pounds, shillings and pence, we would certainly know that the
account was not written by Caesar, nor in his time, but we would know
that it was written after the English had given these names to certain
coins.
So, we find, that when the Jews were upon the desert it was commanded
that every mother should bring, as a sin offering, a couple of doves to
the priests, and the priests were compelled to eat these doves in the
most holy place. At the time this law appears to have been given, there
were three million people, and only three priests, Aaron, Eleazer and
Ithamar. Among three million people there would be, at least, three
hundred births a day. Certainly we are not expected to believe that
these three priests devoured six hundred pigeons every twenty-four
hours.
Why should a woman ask pardon of God for having been a mother? Why
should that be considered a crime in Exodus, which is commanded as a
duty in Genesis? Why should a mother be declared unclean? Why should
giving birth to a daughter be regarded twice as criminal as giving birth
to a son? Can we believe that such laws and ceremonies were made and
instituted by a merciful and intelligent God? If there is anything in
this poor world suggestive of, and standing for, all that is sweet,
loving and pure, it is a mother holding in her thrilled and happy arms
her prattling babe. Read the twelfth chapter of Leviticus, and you will
see that when a woman became the mother of a boy she was so unclean
that she was not allowed to touch a hallowed thing, nor to enter the
sanctuary for forty days. If the babe was a girl, then the mother was
unfit for eighty days, to enter the house of God, or to touch the sacred
tongs and snuffers. These laws, born of barbarism, are unworthy of our
day, and should be regarded simply as the mistakes of savages.
Just as low in the scale of intelligence are the directions given in the
fifth chapter of Numbers, for the trial of a wife of whom the husband
was jealous. This foolish chapter has been the foundation of all appeals
to God for the ascertainment of facts, such as the corsned, trial by
battle, by water, and by fire, the last of which is our judicial oath.
It is very easy to believe that in those days a guilty woman would
be afraid to drink the water of jealousy and take the oath, and that,
through fear, she might be made to confess. Admitting that the deception
tended not only to prevent crime, but to discover it when committed,
still, we cannot admit that an honest god would, for any purpose, resort
to dishonest means. In all countries fear is employed as a means of
getting at the truth, and in this there is nothing dishonest, provided
falsehood is not resorted to for the purpose of producing the fear.
Protestants laugh at Catholics because of their belief in the efficacy
of holy water, and yet they teach their children that a little holy
water, in which had been thrown some dust from the floor of the
sanctuary, would, work a miracle in a woman's flesh. For hundreds of
years our fathers believed that a perjurer could not swallow a piece of
sacramental bread. Such stories belong to the childhood of our race, and
are now believed only by mental infants and intellectual babes.
I cannot believe that Moses had in his hands a couple of tables of
stone, upon which God had written the Ten Commandments, and that when he
saw the golden calf, and the dancing, that he dashed the tables to the
earth and broke them in pieces. Neither do I believe that Moses took a
golden calf, burnt it, ground it to powder, and made the people drink it
with water, as related in the thirty-second chapter of Exodus.
There is another account of the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses,
in the nineteenth and twentieth chapters of Exodus. In this account not
one word is said about the people having made a golden calf, nor about
the breaking of the tables of stone. In the thirty-fourth chapter of
Exodus, there is an account of the renewal of the broken tables of
the law, and the commandments are given, but they are not the same
commandments mentioned in the twentieth chapter. There are two accounts
of the same transaction. Both of these stories cannot be true, and yet
both must be believed. Any one who will take the trouble to read
the nineteenth and twentieth chapters, and the last verse of the
thirty-first chapter, the thirty-second, thirty-third, and thirty-fourth
chapters of Exodus, will be compelled to admit that both accounts cannot
be true.
From the last account it appears that while Moses was upon Mount Sinai
receiving the commandments from God, the people brought their jewelry
to Aaron and he cast for them a golden calf. This happened before any
commandment against idolatry had been given. A god ought, certainly,
to publish his laws before inflicting penalties for their violation. To
inflict punishment for breaking unknown and unpublished laws is, in
the last degree, cruel and unjust. It may be replied that the Jews knew
better than to worship idols, before the law was given. If this is so,
why should the law have been given? In all civilized countries, laws are
made and promulgated, not simply for the purpose of informing the people
as to what is right and wrong, but to inform them of the penalties to be
visited upon those who violate the laws. When the Ten Commandments
were given, no penalties were attached. Not one word was written on
the tables of stone as to the punishments that would be inflicted for
breaking any or all of the inspired laws. The people should not have
been punished for violating a commandment before it was given. And yet,
in this case, Moses commanded the sons of Levi to take their swords and
slay every man his brother, his companion, and his neighbor. The brutal
order was obeyed, and three thousand men were butchered.. The Levites
consecrated themselves unto the Lord by murdering their sons, and their
brothers, for having violated a commandment before it had been given.
It has been contended for many years that the Ten Commandments are the
foundation of all ideas of justice and of law. Eminent jurists have
bowed to popular prejudice, and deformed their works by statements to
the effect that the Mosaic laws are the fountains from which sprang all
ideas of right and wrong. Nothing can be more stupidly false than such
assertions. Thousands of years before Moses was born, the Egyptians
had a code of laws. They had laws against blasphemy, murder, adultery,
larceny, perjury, laws for the collection of debts, the enforcement
of contracts, the ascertainment of damages, the redemption of property
pawned, and upon nearly every subject of human interest. The Egyptian
code was far better than the Mosaic.
Laws spring from the instinct of self-preservation. Industry objected
to supporting idleness, and laws were made against theft. Laws were made
against murder, because a very large majority of the people have always
objected to being murdered. All fundamental laws were born simply of the
instinct of self-defence. Long before the Jewish savages assembled at
the foot of Sinai, laws had been made and enforced, not only in Egypt
and India, but by every tribe that ever existed.
It is impossible for human beings to exist together, without certain
rules of conduct, certain ideas of the proper and improper, of the right
and wrong, growing out of the relation. Certain rules must be made,
and must be enforced. This implies law, trial and punishment. Whoever
produces anything by weary labor, does not need a revelation from heaven
to teach him that he has a right to the thing produced. Not one of
the learned gentlemen who pretend that the Mosaic laws are filled with
justice and intelligence, would live, for a moment, in any country where
such laws were in force.
Nothing can be more wonderful than the medical ideas of Jehovah. He
had the strangest notions about the cause and cure of disease. With
him everything was miracle and wonder. In the fourteenth chapter of
Leviticus, we find the law for cleansing a leper:--"Then shall the
priest take for him that is to be cleansed, two birds, alive and clean,
and cedar wood, and scarlet, and hyssop. And the priest shall command
that one of the birds be killed in an _earthen_ vessel, over _running_
water. As for the living bird, he shall take it, and the cedar wood, and
the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall dip them, and the living bird,
in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water. And he
shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy, seven
times, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird
loose into the open field."
We are told that God himself gave these directions to Moses. Does
anybody believe this? Why should the bird be killed in an _earthen_
vessel? Would the charm be broken if the vessel was of wood? Why over
_running_ water? What would be thought of a physician now, who would
give a prescription like that?
Is it not strange that God, although he gave hundreds of directions for
the purpose of discovering the presence of leprosy, and for cleansing
the leper after he was healed, forgot to tell how that disease could be
cured? Is it not wonderful that while God told his people what animals
were fit for food, he failed to give a list of plants that man might
eat? Why did he leave his children to find out the hurtful and the
poisonous by experiment, knowing that experiment, in millions of cases,
must be death?
When reading the history of the Jewish people, of their flight from
slavery to death, of their exchange of tyrants, I must confess that my
sympathies are all aroused in their behalf. They were cheated,
deceived and abused. Their god was quick-tempered, unreasonable, cruel,
revengeful and dishonest. He was always promising but never performed.
He wasted time in ceremony and childish detail, and in the exaggeration
of what he had done. It is impossible for me to conceive of a character
more utterly detestable than that of the Hebrew god. He had solemnly
promised the Jews that he would take them from Egypt to a land flowing
with milk and honey. He had led them to believe that in a little while
their troubles would be over, and that they would soon in the land of
Canaan, surrounded by their wives and little ones, forget, the stripes
and tears of Egypt. After promising the poor wanderers again and again
that he would lead them in safety to the promised land of joy and
plenty, this God, forgetting every promise, said to the wretches in his
power:--"Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness and your children
shall wander until your carcasses be wasted." This curse was the
conclusion of the whole matter. Into this dust of death and night faded
all the promises of God. Into this rottenness of wandering despair fell
all the dreams of liberty and home. Millions of corpses were left to rot
in the desert, and each one certified to the dishonesty of Jehovah. I
cannot believe these things. They are so cruel and heartless, that my
blood is chilled and my sense of justice shocked. A book that is equally
abhorrent to my head and heart, cannot be accepted as a revelation from
God.
When we think of the poor Jews, destroyed, murdered, bitten by serpents,
visited by plagues, decimated by famine, butchered by each other,
swallowed by the earth, frightened, cursed, starved, deceived, robbed
and outraged, how thankful we should be that we are not the chosen
people of God. No wonder that they longed for the slavery of Egypt, and
remembered with sorrow the unhappy day when they exchanged masters.
Compared with Jehovah, Pharaoh was a benefactor, and the tyranny of
Egypt was freedom to those who suffered the liberty of God.
While reading the Pentateuch, I am filled with indignation, pity and
horror. Nothing can be sadder than the history of the starved and
frightened wretches who wandered over the desolate crags and sands of
wilderness and desert, the prey of famine, sword, and plague. Ignorant
and superstitious to the last degree, governed by falsehood, plundered
by hypocrisy, they were the sport of priests, and the food of fear. God
was their greatest enemy, and death their only friend.
It is impossible to conceive of a more thoroughly despicable, hateful,
and arrogant being, than the Jewish god. He is without a redeeming
feature. In the mythology of the world he has no parallel. He, only, is
never touched by agony and tears. He delights only in blood and pain.
Human affections are naught to him. He cares neither for love nor music,
beauty nor joy. A false friend, an unjust judge, a braggart, hypocrite,
and tyrant, sincere in hatred, jealous, vain, and revengeful, false in
promise, honest in curse, suspicious, ignorant, and changeable, infamous
and hideous:--such is the God of the Pentateuch.