There is a striking confusion between the historical and the

chronological arrangement in the book of judges. The last five 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, go before the 4th, and 15 years before the 1st chapter. This

shews 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 twenty 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 a

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 come 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 Genesis xxxvi. 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 writing 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,

because a fact fixes itself in the memory better than a date; secondly,

because the fact includes the date, and serves to give two ideas at

once; and this manner of speaking by circumstances implies as positively

that the fact alluded to is past, as if it was so expressed. When a

person in 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 has 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 only it

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 itself through all times 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 give 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 Genesis xxxvi. are, word for word, In 1

Chronicles i., beginning at the 43d verse.

It was with consistency that the writer of the Chronicles could say as

he has said, 1 Chron. i. 43, "These are the kings that reigned in Edom,

before there reigned any king ever 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 any thing 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 as the

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 xxxi. 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 counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against

the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the

congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, 'kill every male among the

little ones, and kill every woman that hath known 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 profaneings of

priestly hypocrisy increases the catalogue of crimes. Verse 37, "And the

Lord's tribute of the sheep was six hundred and threescore and fifteen;

and the beeves were thirty and six thousand, of which the Lord's tribute

was threescore and twelve; and the asses were thirty thousand, of which

the Lord's tribute was threescore and one; and the persons were sixteen

thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was thirty and two." 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 know not 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!

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, refers to, them 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,) xvi. 35: "And the children of Israel did

eat manna 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 no

part of 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 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 Canaan; 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 into the

borders of the land of Canaan. Joshua, v. 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

Deuteronomy iii. 11, among the conquests said to be made by Moses, is

an account of the taking of Og, king of Bashan: "For only Og, king

of Bashan, remained of the race of giants; behold, his bedstead was a

bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine

cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after

the cubit of a man." A cubit is 1 foot 9 888/1000 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, is nevertheless very presumable and corroborating

evidence, and is better than 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 relick, 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. xii. 26: "And Joab

[David's general] fought against Rabbah of the children of Ammon, and

took the royal city," etc.

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 demonstration that those books could not be written by

Moses, nor in the time of Moses, I proceed to the book of Joshua, and

to shew 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 Joshua i., 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 twenty-five years; that is, from the time

that Moses died, which, according to the Bible chronology, was B.C.

1451, until B.C. 1426, when, according to the same chronology, Joshua

died. If, therefore, we find in this book, said to have been written

by Joshua, references 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 vainglorious 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 Joshua xxiv. 31, it is said "And Israel served the Lord all the days

of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that over-lived 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 out-lived 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, x.

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) [NOTE: This tale of the sun standing still

upon Motint 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 whilst the sun shined? 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 Faux carried his

dark lanthorn, 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, shews

the ignorance of Joshua, for he should have commanded the earth to have

stood still.--Author.] the passage says: "And there was no day like

that, before it, nor after it, that the Lord hearkened to the voice of a

man."

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 chapter viii.; where,

after giving an account of the taking the city of Ai, it is said, ver.

28th, "And Joshua burned Ai, and made it an heap for ever, a desolation

unto this day;" and again, ver. 29, where speaking of the king of Ai,

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 chapter x. 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, xv. 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 judges i. I shall reserve my

observations till I come to that part.

Having thus shewn 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. 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 stile 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, B.C. 1426 to the

death of Samson, B.C. 1120, 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 Judges i., 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 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 Joshua xv. 63,

where it said that the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at

Jerusalem at 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 an history, the city of

Jerusalem was not taken till the time of David; and consequently, that

the book 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 2 Samuel, v. 4, etc.; also in 1

Chron. xiv. 4, etc. There is no mention in any part of the Bible that it

was ever taken before, nor any account that favours 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 at this day,

corresponds to no other time than after taking 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 slily to bed to her cousin Boaz. [The text of

Ruth does not imply the unpleasant sense Paine's words are likely to

convey.--Editor.] 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 shew 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 enquire about those lost asses, as foolish people now-a-days go to a

conjuror to enquire after lost things.

The writer, in relating this story of Saul, Samuel, and the asses, does

not tell it as a thing that had 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. 13 called the seer; and it is by this term that Saul enquires after

him, ver. 11, "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, where he says,

"Before-time in Israel, when a man went to enquire of God, thus he

spake, Come 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 the 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 i Samuel, xxviii. tells, that Saul and the witch

of Endor conjured Samuel up after he was dead; yet the history of

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 i Samuel xxv.; and the chronology

affixed to this chapter makes this to be B.C. 1060; yet the history of

this first book is brought down to B.C. 1056, that is, to 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.

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 murdering 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. It is because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition,

or feel no interest in the honour 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 still produce in the course of this

work, to prove that the Bible is without authority, will, whilst it

wounds the stubbornness of a priest, relieve and tranquillize 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 books 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 B.C. 1015; and the second

book ends B.C. 588, 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 an 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 B.C. 588. The last two verses of the last chapter

bring the history 52 years more forward, 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

seventeen kings, and one queen, who are stiled kings of Judah; and

of nineteen, who are stiled 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 afterwards

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 2 Kings

x., 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 orders 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, 2 Kings

xv. 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 imposters 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 2 Kings, i. 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 viii. 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, Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat 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 or 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 xii. and xiii. an account is given

of Jeroboam making an offering of burnt incense, and that a man, who

is there called a man of God, cried out against the altar (xiii. 2): "O

altar, altar! thus saith the Lord: Behold, a child shall be born unto

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 burned 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 again to him."

One would think that such an extraordinary case as this, (which is

spoken of as a judgement,) 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 later times, have believed all that the

prophets have said unto them, it does appear that those prophets, or

historians, disbelieved each other: they knew each other too well.

A long account also is given in Kings about Elijah. It runs through

several chapters, and concludes with telling, 2 Kings ii. 11, "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; and that

this man of God (ver. 24) "turned back, and looked upon them, and cursed

them in the name of the Lord; and there came forth two she-bears out of

the wood, and tare forty and two children of them." He also passes over

in silence the story told, 2 Kings 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 up on 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 the Chronicles is as silent as any writer of the

present day, who did not chose 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 Hezekiab, is

mentioned in Kings, and again in Chronicles, when these histories 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; though, according to the Bible chronology,

they lived within the time those histories were written; and some of

them 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 those 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 B.C. 588; 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, with the time in which they lived before Christ,

and also before the books of Kings and Chronicles were written:

Years Years before

NAMES. before Kings and Observations.

Christ. Chronicles.

Isaiah............... 760 172 mentioned.

(mentioned only in

Jeremiah............. 629 41 the last [two] chapters

of Chronicles.

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.

Zepbaniah............ 630 42 not mentioned.

Haggai Zechariah all three after the year 588 Medachi [NOTE In 2 Kings

xiv. 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.--Author.]

This table is either not very honourable for the Bible historians, or

not very honourable 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 of 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 more observation 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

xxxvi. 31, which evidently refers to a time, after that kings began to

reign over the children of Israel; and I have shown that as this

verse is verbatim the same as in 1 Chronicles i. 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 1 Chronicles iii. 15,

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, B.C. 588, and consequently more than

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 other 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 than 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, and tending to inspire immoral and mischievous

notions of honour; 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 shew 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 first

three verses in Ezra, and the last two in 2 Chronicles; for by what kind

of cutting and shuffling has it been that the first three verses in Ezra

should be the last two verses in 2 Chronicles, or that the last two in 2

Chronicles should be the first three in Ezra? Either the authors did not

know their own works or the compilers did not know the authors.

Last Two Verses of 2 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.

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.

***

First Three 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 the 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.

*** The last verse in Chronicles is broken abruptly, and ends 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. [NOTE 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, 1 Samuel xiii. 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 the verse, that Saul reigned

one year has no sense, since it does not tell us what Saul did, nor

say any thing 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 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:--Ver. 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 host 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 this story is broken off in the middle, or it is a story told

by some Jewish humourist 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 humour 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 every thing 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. xxxii. 1.--Author.

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 B.C. 536. 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. Nebemiah, 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 those accounts are nothing to us, nor to any

other person, 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 Ezra ii., 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 (ii. 3): "The

children of Parosh, two thousand one hundred seventy and four." 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 any thing?

[Here Mr. Paine includes the long list of numbers from the Bible of all

the children listed and the total thereof. This can be had directly from

the Bible.]

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 (vii. 8):

"The children of Parosh, two thousand three hundred and seventy-two;"

and so on through all the families. (The list differs in several of the

particulars from that of Ezra.) In ver. 66, 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 make a total but of 31,089, so that the error here is 11,271. These

writers may do well enough for Bible-makers, but not for any thing where

truth and exactness is necessary.

The next book in course is the book of Esther. If Madam Esther thought

it any honour 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 endeavours to keep

a guard upon it, and seems determined, in the midst of accumulating

ills, to impose upon himself the hard duty of contentment.

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 an 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) [In a later work Paine notes that in "the Bible" (by which

he always means the Old Testament alone) the word Satan occurs also in 1

Chron. xxi. 1, and remarks that the action there ascribed to Satan is

in 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, attributed to Jehovah ("Essay on Dreams"). In these

places, however, and in Ps. cix. 6, Satan means "adversary," and is so

translated (A.S. version) in 2 Sam. xix. 22, and 1 Kings v. 4, xi. 25.

As a proper name, with the article, Satan appears in the Old Testament

only in Job and in Zech. iii. 1, 2. But the authenticity of the passage

in Zechariah has been questioned, and it may be that in finding the

proper name of Satan in Job alone, Paine was following some opinion

met with in one of the authorities whose comments are condensed in his

paragraph.--Editor.] 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 any

thing 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 any thing that is to be found in the Bible that the Jews

knew any thing 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. [Paine's Jewish critic, David

Levi, fastened on this slip ("Defence of the Old Testament," 1797, p.

152). In the original the names are Ash (Arcturus), Kesil' (Orion),

Kimah' (Pleiades), though the identifications of the constellations in

the A.S.V. have been questioned.--Editor.]

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; Proverbs xxxi. i, is an evidence of this: it is there

said, The word of king Lemuel, the prophecy which 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 Proverbs

xxx.,--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 says, "The words

of Agur, the son of Jakeh, even the prophecy:" here the word prophecy

is used with the same application it has in the following chapter of

Lemuel, unconnected with anything of prediction. The prayer of Agur is

in the 8th and 9th verses, "Remove far from me vanity and lies; give

me neither riches nor poverty, but 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,

or riches.--Author. (Prov. xxx. 1, and xxxi. 1) the word "prophecy" in

these verses is translated "oracle" or "burden" (marg.) in the revised

version.--The prayer of Agur was quoted by Paine in his plea for the

officers of Excise, 1772.--Editor.]

The Bible-makers, and those regulators of time, the Bible 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 serve to 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 aera of B.C. 1520, 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 practice 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

now-a-days both by statuary and by painting; but it does not follow from

this that they worshipped 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 now-a-days, 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

is 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

your French songs, or 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 with 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 shewn 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 xxv. i,

"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. [A "Tom

Paine's Jest Book" had appeared in London with little or nothing of

Paine in it.--Editor.]

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. [Those that look out of the window shall

be darkened, is an obscure figure in translation for loss of

sight.--Author.] 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.

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 pretensions to wisdom,

discover it beforehand, he merited, unpitied, the mortification he

afterwards 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 those

things is the study of 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 grey, was

always his mistress. He was never without an object; for when we cease

to have an object we become like an invalid in an hospital waiting for

death.

Solomon's Songs, 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 aera of B.C. 1014, 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 honey-moon 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 ii. 8, I got me men-singers,

and women-singers [most probably to sing those songs], and musical

instruments 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

part of the Bible; they are sixteen in number, beginning with Isaiah and

ending with Malachi, of which I have given a list in the observations

upon Chronicles. Of these sixteen prophets, all of whom except the

last three 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 the first two or

three 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 translation) that kind of composition and false taste

that is properly called prose run mad.

The historical part begins at chapter xxxvi., and is continued to the

end of chapter xxxix. It relates 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 glassen slipper, the

story of the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, etc., etc.

I have already shown, in the instance of the last two verses of 2

Chronicles, and the first three 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 an compilation, because it is more than presumptive

evidence that the compilers are 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 an 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 [Isaiah] are in the following

words: "That saith of Cyrus, he is my shepherd, and shall perform all

my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, thou shalt be built; and to

the temple thy foundations shall be laid: thus saith the Lord to his

enointed, 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

B.C. 698; and the decree of Cyrus, in favour of the Jews returning to

Jerusalem, was, according to the same chronology, B.C. 536; 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 school-boy'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 are 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 (Isa. vii. I4), 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 towards Jerusalem.

Ahaz and his people became alarmed, and the account says (Is. vii. 2),

Their hearts were moved 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 cant 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, "And

before this child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good,

the land which 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 shall 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

consequences 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 interest 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 afterwards married, whom they call a

virgin, seven hundred years after this foolish story was told; a theory

which, speaking for myself, I hesitate not to believe, and to say, is as

fabulous and as false as God is true. [In Is. vii. 14, 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-shalalhash-baz, and

that of Mary was called Jesus.--Author.]

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 2 Chronicles, xxviii;

and which is, that instead of these two kings failing in their attempt

against Ahaz, king of Judah, as Isaiah had pretended to foretel in the

name of the Lord, they succeeded: Ahaz was defeated and destroyed; an

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 imposter

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 interest of Nebuchadnezzar. Every thing relating to

Jeremiah shows him to have been a man of an equivocal character: in

his metaphor of the potter and the clay, (ch. 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 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 me

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, "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 will repent me 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.

It appears, from the account of chapter xxxvii. that the army of

Nebuchadnezzer, which is called the army of the Chaldeans, had besieged

Jerusalem some time; and on their hearing that the army of Pharaoh of

Egypt was marching against them, they raised the siege and retreated for

a time. It may here be proper to mention, in order to understand this

confused history, that Nebuchadnezzar had besieged and taken Jerusalem

during the reign of Jehoakim, the redecessor of Zedekiah; and that it

was Nebuchadnezzar who had make Zedekiah king, or rather viceroy; and

that this second siege, of which the book of Jeremiah treats, was in

consequence of the revolt of Zedekiah against Nebuchadnezzar. This

will in some measure account for the suspicion that affixes

itself to Jeremiah of being a traitor, and in the interest of

Nebuchadnezzar,--whom Jeremiah calls, xliii. 10, the servant of God.

Chapter xxxvii. 11-13, says, "And it came to pass, that, when the army

of the Chaldeans was broken up from Jerusalem, for fear of Pharaoh's

army, that Jeremiah went forth out of Jerusalem, to go (as this account

states) into the land of Benjamin, to separate himself thence in the

midst of the people; and when he was in the gate of Benjamin a captain

of the ward was there, whose name was Irijah... and he took Jeremiah the

prophet, saying, Thou fallest away to the Chaldeans; then Jeremiah said,

It is false; I fall not away to the Chaldeans." Jeremiah being thus

stopt and accused, was, after being examined, committed to prison, on

suspicion of being a traitor, where he remained, as is stated in the

last verse of this chapter.

But the next chapter gives an account of the imprisonment of Jeremiah,

which has no connection with this account, but ascribes his imprisonment

to another circumstance, and for which we must go back to chapter

xxi. It is there stated, ver. 1, that Zedekiah sent Pashur the son of

Malchiah, and Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah the priest, to Jeremiah,

to enquire of him concerning Nebuchadnezzar, whose army was then before

Jerusalem; and Jeremiah said to them, ver. 8, "Thus saith the Lord,

Behold I set before you the way of life, and the way of death; he that

abideth in this city shall die by the sword and by the famine, and by

the pestilence; but he that goeth out and falleth to the Chaldeans that

besiege you, he shall live, and his life shall be unto him for a prey."

This interview and conference breaks off abruptly at the end of the 10th

verse of chapter xxi.; and such is the disorder of this book that we

have to pass over sixteen chapters upon various subjects, in order to

come at the continuation and event of this conference; and this brings

us to the first verse of chapter xxxviii., as I have just mentioned. The

chapter opens with saying, "Then Shaphatiah, the son of Mattan, Gedaliah

the son of Pashur, and Jucal the son of Shelemiah, and Pashur the son of

Malchiah, (here are more persons mentioned than in chapter xxi.) heard

the words that Jeremiah spoke unto all the people, saying, Thus saith

the Lord, He that remaineth in this city, shall die by the sword, by

famine, and by the pestilence; but he that goeth forth to the Chaldeans

shall live; for he shall have his life for a prey, and shall live";

[which are the words of the conference;] therefore, (say they to

Zedekiah,) "We beseech thee, let this man be put to death, for thus he

weakeneth the hands of the men of war that remain in this city, and the

hands of all the people, in speaking such words unto them; for this man

seeketh not the welfare of the people, but the hurt:" and at the 6th

verse it is said, "Then they took Jeremiah, and put him into the dungeon

of Malchiah."

These two accounts are different and contradictory. The one ascribes his

imprisonment to his attempt to escape out of the city; the other to his

preaching and prophesying in the city; the one to his being seized by

the guard at the gate; the other to his being accused before Zedekiah

by the conferees. [I observed two chapters in I Samuel (xvi. and xvii.)

that contradict each other with respect to David, and the manner he

became acquainted with Saul; as Jeremiah xxxvii. and xxxviii. contradict

each other with respect to the cause of Jeremiah's imprisonment.

In 1 Samuel, xvi., it is said, that an evil spirit of God troubled Saul,

and that his servants advised him (as a remedy) "to seek out a man who

was a cunning player upon the harp." And Saul said, ver. 17, "Provide me

now a man that can play well, and bring him to me. Then answered one

of his servants, and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse, the

Bethlehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty man, and a man of

war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the Lord is with

him; wherefore Saul sent messengers unto Jesse, and said, Send me David,

thy son. And (verse 21) David came to Saul, and stood before him, and

he loved him greatly, and he became his armour-bearer; and when the

evil spirit from God was upon Saul, (verse 23) David took his harp, and

played with his hand, and Saul was refreshed, and was well."

But the next chapter (xvii.) gives an account, all different to this, of

the manner that Saul and David became acquainted. Here it is ascribed

to David's encounter with Goliah, when David was sent by his father to

carry provision to his brethren in the camp. In the 55th verse of

this chapter it is said, "And when Saul saw David go forth against the

Philistine (Goliah) he said to Abner, the captain of the host, Abner,

whose son is this youth? And Abner said, As thy soul liveth, 0 king, I

cannot tell. And the king said, Enquire thou whose son the stripling is.

And as David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took

him and brought him before Saul, with the head of the Philistine in his

hand; and Saul said unto him, Whose son art thou, thou young man? And

David answered, I am the son of thy servant, Jesse, the Betblehemite,"

These two accounts belie each other, because each of them supposes Saul

and David not to have known each other before. This book, the Bible, is

too ridiculous for criticism.--Author.]

In the next chapter (Jer. xxxix.) we have another instance of the

disordered state of this book; for notwithstanding the siege of the

city by Nebuchadnezzar has been the subject of several of the preceding

chapters, particularly xxxvii. and xxxviii., chapter xxxix. begins as

if not a word had been said upon the subject, and as if the reader was

still to be informed of every particular respecting it; for it begins

with saying, ver. 1, "In the ninth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in

the tenth month, came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and all his army,

against Jerusalem, and besieged it," etc.

But the instance in the last chapter (lii.) is still more glaring; for

though the story has been told over and over again, this chapter still

supposes the reader not to know anything of it, for it begins by saying,

ver. i, "Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign,

and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem, and his mother's name was

Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah." (Ver. 4,) "And it came

to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, that

Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his army, against

Jerusalem, and pitched against it, and built forts against it," etc.

It is not possible that any one man, and more particularly Jeremiah,

could have been the writer of this book. The errors are such as could

not have been committed by any person sitting down to compose a work.

Were I, or any other man, to write in such a disordered manner, no

body would read what was written, and every body would suppose that the

writer was in a state of insanity. The only way, therefore, to

account for the disorder is, that the book is a medley of detached

unauthenticated anecdotes, put together by some stupid book-maker, under

the name of Jeremiah; because many of them refer to him, and to the

circumstances of the times he lived in.

Of the duplicity, and of the false predictions of Jeremiah, I shall

mention two instances, and then proceed to review the remainder of the

Bible.

It appears from chapter xxxviii. that when Jeremiah was in prison,

Zedekiah sent for him, and at this interview, which was private,

Jeremiah pressed it strongly on Zedekiah to surrender himself to the

enemy. "If," says he, (ver. 17,) "thou wilt assuredly go forth unto the

king of Babylon's princes, then thy soul shall live," etc. Zedekiah was

apprehensive that what passed at this conference should be known; and

he said to Jeremiah, (ver. 25,) "If the princes [meaning those of Judah]

hear that I have talked with thee, and they come unto thee, and say unto

thee, Declare unto us now what thou hast said unto the king; hide it not

from us, and we will not put thee to death; and also what the king said

unto thee; then thou shalt say unto them, I presented my supplication

before the king that he would not cause me to return to Jonathan's

house, to die there. Then came all the princes unto Jeremiah, and

asked him, and "he told them according to all the words the king had

commanded." Thus, this man of God, as he is called, could tell a lie, or

very strongly prevaricate, when he supposed it would answer his purpose;

for certainly he did not go to Zedekiah to make this supplication,

neither did he make it; he went because he was sent for, and he

employed that opportunity to advise Zedekiah to surrender himself to

Nebuchadnezzar.

In chapter xxxiv. 2-5, is a prophecy of Jeremiah to Zedekiah in these

words: "Thus saith the Lord, Behold I will give this city into the hand

of the king of Babylon, and he will burn it with fire; and thou

shalt not escape out of his hand, but thou shalt surely be taken, and

delivered into his hand; and thine eyes shall behold the eyes of the

king of Babylon, and he shall speak with thee mouth to mouth, and thou

shalt go to Babylon. Yet hear the word of the Lord; O Zedekiah, king,

of Judah, thus saith the Lord, Thou shalt not die by the sword, but thou

shalt die in Peace; and with the burnings of thy fathers, the former

kings that were before thee, so shall they burn odours for thee, and

they will lament thee, saying, Ah, Lord! for I have pronounced the word,

saith the Lord."

Now, instead of Zedekiah beholding the eyes of the king of Babylon,

and speaking with him mouth to mouth, and dying in peace, and with the

burning of odours, as at the funeral of his fathers, (as Jeremiah had

declared the Lord himself had pronounced,) the reverse, according to

chapter Iii., 10, 11 was the case; it is there said, that the king of

Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes: then he put out the

eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him in chains, and carried him to Babylon,

and put him in prison till the day of his death.

What then can we say of these prophets, but that they are impostors and

liars?

As for Jeremiah, he experienced none of those evils. He was taken into

favour by Nebuchadnezzar, who gave him in charge to the captain of the

guard (xxxix, 12), "Take him (said he) and look well to him, and do

him no harm; but do unto him even as he shall say unto thee." Jeremiah

joined himself afterwards to Nebuchadnezzar, and went about prophesying

for him against the Egyptians, who had marched to the relief of

Jerusalem while it was besieged. Thus much for another of the lying

prophets, and the book that bears his name.

I have been the more particular in treating of the books ascribed to

Isaiah and Jeremiah, because those two are spoken of in the books of

Kings and Chronicles, which the others are not. The remainder of the

books ascribed to the men called prophets I shall not trouble myself

much about; but take them collectively into the observations I shall

offer on the character of the men styled prophets.

In the former part of the 'Age of Reason,' I have said that the word

prophet was the Bible-word for poet, and that the flights and metaphors

of Jewish poets have been foolishly erected into what are now called

prophecies. I am sufficiently justified in this opinion, not only

because the books called the prophecies are written in poetical

language, but because there is no word in the Bible, except it be the

word prophet, that describes what we mean by a poet. I have also said,

that the word signified a performer upon musical instruments, of which

I have given some instances; such as that of a company of prophets,

prophesying with psalteries, with tabrets, with pipes, with harps, etc.,

and that Saul prophesied with them, 1 Sam. x., 5. It appears from this

passage, and from other parts in the book of Samuel, that the word

prophet was confined to signify poetry and music; for the person who was

supposed to have a visionary insight into concealed things, was not a

prophet but a seer, [I know not what is the Hebrew word that corresponds

to the word seer in English; but I observe it is translated into French

by Le Voyant, from the verb voir to see, and which means the person who

sees, or the seer.--Author.]

[The Hebrew word for Seer, in 1 Samuel ix., transliterated, is

chozeh, the gazer, it is translated in Is. xlvii. 13, "the

stargazers."--Editor.] (i Sam, ix. 9;) and it was not till after the

word seer went out of use (which most probably was when Saul banished

those he called wizards) that the profession of the seer, or the art of

seeing, became incorporated into the word prophet.

According to the modern meaning of the word prophet and prophesying, it

signifies foretelling events to a great distance of time; and it became

necessary to the inventors of the gospel to give it this latitude of

meaning, in order to apply or to stretch what they call the prophecies

of the Old Testament, to the times of the New. But according to the Old

Testament, the prophesying of the seer, and afterwards of the prophet,

so far as the meaning of the word "seer" was incorporated into that of

prophet, had reference only to things of the time then passing, or very

closely connected with it; such as the event of a battle they were going

to engage in, or of a journey, or of any enterprise they were going to

undertake, or of any circumstance then pending, or of any difficulty

they were then in; all of which had immediate reference to themselves

(as in the case already mentioned of Ahaz and Isaiah with respect to the

expression, Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,) and not

to any distant future time. It was that kind of prophesying that

corresponds to what we call fortune-telling; such as casting nativities,

predicting riches, fortunate or unfortunate marriages, conjuring for

lost goods, etc.; and it is the fraud of the Christian church, not that

of the Jews, and the ignorance and the superstition of modern, not that

of ancient times, that elevated those poetical, musical, conjuring,

dreaming, strolling gentry, into the rank they have since had.

But, besides this general character of all the prophets, they had also

a particular character. They were in parties, and they prophesied for

or against, according to the party they were with; as the poetical and

political writers of the present day write in defence of the party they

associate with against the other.

After the Jews were divided into two nations, that of Judah and that of

Israel, each party had its prophets, who abused and accused each other

of being false prophets, lying prophets, impostors, etc.

The prophets of the party of Judah prophesied against the prophets of

the party of Israel; and those of the party of Israel against those

of Judah. This party prophesying showed itself immediately on the

separation under the first two rival kings, Rehoboam and Jeroboam. The

prophet that cursed, or prophesied against the altar that Jeroboam had

built in Bethel, was of the party of Judah, where Rehoboam was king; and

he was way-laid on his return home by a prophet of the party of Israel,

who said unto him (i Kings xiii.) "Art thou the man of God that came

from Judah? and he said, I am." Then the prophet of the party of Israel

said to him "I am a prophet also, as thou art, [signifying of Judah,]

and an angel spake unto me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him

back with thee unto thine house, that he may eat bread and drink

water; but (says the 18th verse) he lied unto him." The event, however,

according to the story, is, that the prophet of Judah never got back

to Judah; for he was found dead on the road by the contrivance of the

prophet of Israel, who no doubt was called a true prophet by his own

party, and the prophet of Judah a lying prophet.

In 2 Kings, iii., a story is related of prophesying or conjuring that

shews, in several particulars, the character of a prophet. Jehoshaphat

king of Judah, and Joram king of Israel, had for a while ceased their

party animosity, and entered into an alliance; and these two, together

with the king of Edom, engaged in a war against the king of Moab. After

uniting and marching their armies, the story says, they were in great

distress for water, upon which Jehoshaphat said, "Is there not here a

prophet of the Lord, that we may enquire of the Lord by him? and one of

the servants of the king of Israel said here is Elisha. [Elisha was of

the party of Judah.] And Jehoshaphat the king of Judah said, The word of

the Lord is with him." The story then says, that these three kings went

down to Elisha; and when Elisha [who, as I have said, was a Judahmite

prophet] saw the King of Israel, he said unto him, "What have I to do

with thee, get thee to the prophets of thy father and the prophets of

thy mother. Nay but, said the king of Israel, the Lord hath called these

three kings together, to deliver them into the hands of the king of

Moab," (meaning because of the distress they were in for water;) upon

which Elisha said, "As the Lord of hosts liveth before whom I stand,

surely, were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat, king

of Judah, I would not look towards thee nor see thee." Here is all

the venom and vulgarity of a party prophet. We are now to see the

performance, or manner of prophesying.

Ver. 15. "'Bring me,' (said Elisha), 'a minstrel'; and it came to pass,

when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him." Here

is the farce of the conjurer. Now for the prophecy: "And Elisha said,

[singing most probably to the tune he was playing], Thus saith the Lord,

Make this valley full of ditches;" which was just telling them what

every countryman could have told them without either fiddle or farce,

that the way to get water was to dig for it.

But as every conjuror is not famous alike for the same thing, so neither

were those prophets; for though all of them, at least those I have

spoken of, were famous for lying, some of them excelled in cursing.

Elisha, whom I have just mentioned, was a chief in this branch of

prophesying; it was he that cursed the forty-two children in the name

of the Lord, whom the two she-bears came and devoured. We are to suppose

that those children were of the party of Israel; but as those who will

curse will lie, there is just as much credit to be given to this story

of Elisha's two she-bears as there is to that of the Dragon of Wantley,

of whom it is said:

Poor children three devoured be,

That could not with him grapple;

And at one sup he eat them up,

As a man would eat an apple.

There was another description of men called prophets, that amused

themselves with dreams and visions; but whether by night or by day

we know not. These, if they were not quite harmless, were but little

mischievous. Of this class are,

EZEKIEL and DANIEL; and the first question upon these books, as upon all

the others, is, Are they genuine? that is, were they written by Ezekiel

and Daniel?

Of this there is no proof; but so far as my own opinion goes, I am more

inclined to believe they were, than that they were not. My reasons for

this opinion are as follows: First, Because those books do not contain

internal evidence to prove they were not written by Ezekiel and Daniel,

as the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, Samuel, etc., prove they were

not written by Moses, Joshua, Samuel, etc.

Secondly, Because they were not written till after the Babylonish

captivity began; and there is good reason to believe that not any book

in the bible was written before that period; at least it is proveable,

from the books themselves, as I have already shown, that they were not

written till after the commencement of the Jewish monarchy.

Thirdly, Because the manner in which the books ascribed to Ezekiel and

Daniel are written, agrees with the condition these men were in at the

time of writing them.

Had the numerous commentators and priests, who have foolishly employed

or wasted their time in pretending to expound and unriddle those books,

been carred into captivity, as Ezekiel and Daniel were, it would greatly

have improved their intellects in comprehending the reason for this mode

of writing, and have saved them the trouble of racking their invention,

as they have done to no purpose; for they would have found that

themselves would be obliged to write whatever they had to write,

respecting their own affairs, or those of their friends, or of their

country, in a concealed manner, as those men have done.

These two books differ from all the rest; for it is only these that are

filled with accounts of dreams and visions: and this difference arose

from the situation the writers were in as prisoners of war, or prisoners

of state, in a foreign country, which obliged them to convey even

the most trifling information to each other, and all their political

projects or opinions, in obscure and metaphorical terms. They pretend to

have dreamed dreams, and seen visions, because it was unsafe for them to

speak facts or plain language. We ought, however, to suppose, that the

persons to whom they wrote understood what they meant, and that it

was not intended anybody else should. But these busy commentators

and priests have been puzzling their wits to find out what it was not

intended they should know, and with which they have nothing to do.

Ezekiel and Daniel were carried prisoners to Babylon, under the first

captivity, in the time of Jehoiakim, nine years before the second

captivity in the time of Zedekiah. The Jews were then still numerous,

and had considerable force at Jerusalem; and as it is natural to suppose

that men in the situation of Ezekiel and Daniel would be meditating the

recovery of their country, and their own deliverance, it is reasonable

to suppose that the accounts of dreams and visions with which these

books are filled, are no other than a disguised mode of correspondence

to facilitate those objects: it served them as a cypher, or secret

alphabet. If they are not this, they are tales, reveries, and nonsense;

or at least a fanciful way of wearing off the wearisomeness of

captivity; but the presumption is, they are the former.

Ezekiel begins his book by speaking of a vision of cherubims, and of a

wheel within a wheel, which he says he saw by the river Chebar, in

the land of his captivity. Is it not reasonable to suppose that by the

cherubims he meant the temple at Jerusalem, where they had figures of

cherubims? and by a wheel within a wheel (which as a figure has always

been understood to signify political contrivance) the project or means

of recovering Jerusalem? In the latter part of his book he supposes

himself transported to Jerusalem, and into the temple; and he refers

back to the vision on the river Chebar, and says, (xliii- 3,) that this

last vision was like the vision on the river Chebar; which indicates

that those pretended dreams and visions had for their object the

recovery of Jerusalem, and nothing further.

As to the romantic interpretations and applications, wild as the dreams

and visions they undertake to explain, which commentators and priests

have made of those books, that of converting them into things which they

call prophecies, and making them bend to times and circumstances as far

remote even as the present day, it shows the fraud or the extreme folly

to which credulity or priestcraft can go.