"Man is born in ignorance of everything around him; and this
ignorance of natural causes begat terror; terror,
superstition; superstition, priests and the priesthood:
whose interests and unbending efforts are exerted to
perpetuate the ignorance, the fear, and the superstition
that gave them birth"
THE ignorance of the natural causes of the effects which man sees around
him, has ever been the foundation upon which the fabricators of all
religions have built the whole machinery of those delusions by which the
human race in all ages has been duped.. These impostors have
invariably relied on their artful jugglery in the pretended science of
supenaturalism, for the success of their respective systems; and of all
such means of deception, that of working miracles by legerdemain, or
collusive agency, has been the most successfully palmed off upon the
credulous multitude in all countries; whilst men of knowledge and
reflection have in all times rejected the pretended infractions of the
immutable course of nature, as the inventions of knavery to delude
and thereby prey upon ignorance. The faith reposed in these delusive
prodigies was always in proportion to the degree of simplicity in the
deceived; they were not generally believed by those who saw, but most
firmly by those who did _not_ see, them performed; and though not true
at first, that is but a trivial matter, as time has established the
veracity of those of the Jews and primitive Christians; and now when
they are upheld by overwhelming clerical riches and power, backed by
political corruption, they will continue to degrade, and be the grossest
outrage upon common sense and experience, until the great and salutary
moral change shall take place, when the mind of youth shall no longer be
mortgaged to the priest in education.
Though a miracle, or pseudo violation of Nature's laws, be the most
certain method of exciting the admiration of the vulgar, it is contrary
to reason that anything of the kind should be true; but it is by no
means contrary to the testimony of experience, that impostors might have
lived two or three thousand years ago, and propagated falsehood. This
conclusion is fully corroborated by all modern experience, in which we
find that deception and falsehood form the medium through which knavery
rules simple ignorance; and to such a degree do these ingredients
pervade the whole of society, that they in a great measure constitute
the religious and moral element in which man lives at the present
day; and so besotted has the breathing of this atmosphere of error and
delusion rendered him, that the more outrageous a miracle, or other
theological fable, is against rational light and common sense, the more
greedily has it ever been received by the unthinking and priest-ridden
million, who delight in the marvellous and the incredible--believing
everything, and examining nothing:--hence the success of the ludicrous
medley that makes up our Christian _Polytheism_. Admitting, for a
moment, the possibility of such physical prodigies being true, what do
we gain by them,--do they either confer additional authority on moral
truth, or prove it false? Can they make right wrong, or wrong right?
It is a melancholy fallacy to attribute to them any such power or
influence, and implies a lamentably low estimate of the dignity and
greatness of moral truth. All that we gain by pretended violations of
Nature's laws, is dogmatism, bigotry, spiritual fear, intolerance, and
superstition; together with all the other curses which come in the train
of religion, when backed by authority.
A modern philosopher has given the quietus to miracles in the following
death-blow:--"A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a
firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof
against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any
argument from experience can possibly be imagined; and, therefore, no
testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, _unless the testimony be
of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the
fact which it endeavors to establish_" This argument is absolutely
invincible. The boundless plenum of Nature--the revolution of hundreds
of millions of globes round a million of suns, may be called miraculous,
but in all this, Nature, or the material universe in motion,* is still
invariable, and acting by _self-existing qualities or properties_, which
are therefore inviolable and immutable. If it is asked, "cannot a law
that is made by the Supreme Power be suspended by its author?" we reply,
that the innate or essential properties of matter, being _principles_,
could have no author--no antecedent--no beginning:--they are co-eternal
as matter and motion, or the immutable Power which we call Nature. This
hypothesis is plain, simple, easy, and rational: but the theory of your
personified, localised artificer, is the reverse of all this; for he
himself would stand a thousand times more in need of an artificer
or author than does the material universe. We _know that matter
exists:**--_there can be only one infinite--ergo, matter _must_ be that
infinite.
* Lalande says that at the age of nineteen, he thought the
heavens proved a personified God (the anthropomorphism of
the Jews). but now, says he, I see in them nothing but
matter and motion. He said also that Materialism was beyond
the vulgar, to whom it would be neither agreeable nor
useful.
** Begging my Lord of Cloyne's pardon.
In their secret doctrines, the philosophers and priests of antiquity
admitted no miraculous powers; and when they said that a certain thing
was done by a god, or "the gods," they were merely using words suited to
the capacity of the multitude, while the mystic or esoteric meaning
was, that the thing arose from the concatenation of natural causes and
effects, or the eternal order of necessity; and not, as the ignorant
imagine, that the laws of nature were suspended by the interference of
some personified god. With the above two classes of the initiated, all
their mysteries were rooted in, and had constant allusion to zodiacal
objects, and the physical powers of Nature; which objects and powers
were, by the prosopopoeia, converted into abstract existences, called
gods and goddesses. This was done by all the priests of antiquity, as
their varied schemes of superstition gained footing so as to foster
ignorance and mental blindness amongst their dupes; and herein they were
imitated by their successors, the Christians, who likewise claimed a
power in their gods, to suspend or make infractions in the unalterable
course of Nature. Judaism was a barbarous version of some of the
beautiful and lively fables of the Pagans; and the present superstition
of Europe is a rude polytheistical caricature of the whole.
The miracle-working Deity of the Jews appears to have been of Egyptian
extraction; and had his prototype in the god _Jahouh_, who held a high
rank in the polytheism of the Thebans. This Jahouh was a personification
of that power which giveth forms to matter (viz., motion), and organises
animal and vegetable life, _alias_ soul of the world. Moses, who is said
to have been a priest of Isis, or Nature, the secret of whose mysteries
was the unity of the supreme Power,* seems to have been wishful of
preserving that unity in the Deity he had borrowed of the Thebans, as is
stated by Strabo, in his Geography,** who informs us that Moses taught
his followers to worship the god Jahouh _without representing it by
emblem_.
* Moses borrowed this of the Egyptians. Cudworth, in his
Intellectual System, and Hyde, in his treatise on the
religion of the Persians, acknowledge that the unity of God
was the foundation of the religion of the Egyptians,
Chaldeans, and Persians.
** Strabo's account is corroborated by his contemporary,
Diodorus Siculus, and also by Plutarch. Diodorus's account
of Moses not being-agreeable to the Church, has been
suppressed.--See Translation of the Abbe Terrasson.
There can be no doubt as to the identity of this name and that of
Jehovah. That Moses adopted this deity, and that the name when first
introduced, was new to the Jews, appears from Exod. vi., 3. Neither
Philo nor Josephus deny that the Jews borrowed circumcision from the
Egyptians; why, then, might they not borrow a god also?*
As every nation had its cosmogony to account for the origin of things,
the Jews must have theirs likewise; so the scribes, who compiled their
legends, imitated very closely the Zoroastrian fable, according to which
the gods made the world in six gahanbars, or periods; of which the story
in Genesis, even to the detail of work done in each day, is a mere copy;
but the Jewish compiler mistook the matter so far as to put _days_ in
place of periods, or _gahanbars_; which word was significant of the six
summer months, when the sun, by his genial and all-powerful impulse,
makes a fresh creation every year. The learned have farther declared
that, in the Talmuds, the expression in the first verse of Genesis is in
the plural, viz. "the Elohim" (the gods) placed in order the heavens and
the earth that in the same verse, the word "barah," which signifies to
arrange, to place in order, has been mistranslated "created" In like
manner the words "ruh elohim," in the second verse, have been falsely
rendered "spirit of God," though their true meaning is, _the wind of the
gods_.***
* Dr. Geddes, however, is of opinion that Moses learnt the
name of Jehovah in Midian, while he resided with his father-
in-law.
** The Indians had their Vedas and Pouranas; the Egyptians,
the five books of Hermes; the Persians, the cosmogony of
Zoroaster; the Greeks, that of Hesiod; the Phoenicians, that
of Sanchoniatho. The Phoenician, though written in the style
of history, is made up of personifications of time, the sun,
the stars, earth, seasons, etc.
*** In St. John's Gospel iii, 5 and 6, the Greek word pneuma
(air or wind), is translated spirit; and in the 8th verse it
is translated, "wind" and "spirit" both. In Luke i, 85, is
not this word pneuma translated "Ghost"?
Thus, in the very first two verses of this pretended "word of God," we
have no less than three instances of false translation. The learned Dr.
Parkhurst has translated and shown that this word elohim or gods means
the seven planetary bodies, as known to the ancients. He calls them _the
disposers of the affairs of men_; an influence still attributed to them
by the astronomical quacks called astrologers. These seven planets were
the cabiri of the Egyptians and Phoenicians; of which Baal, "the Lord,"
was the chief, being added as the eighth. Baal (the Sun) was also one
of the names of the Jewish god, Jehovah. See Hosea ii., 16. That the
astro-theology of the eastern nations had exclusive allusion to physical
objects--the elements, seasons, etc., was well known to all the learned
Jews. Maimonides says: "We must not, like the vulgar, understand
literally what is written in the book of the creation (Genesis);
otherwise our men of old would not have so earnestly recommended to
conceal its meaning, _and refrain from raising the allegorical veil
which covereth the truth under it. Understood literally, this work
presenteth us with ideas of the deity which are most ridiculously
absurd. The true meaning of the six days' work ought never to be
divulged_" The treatises of Philo Judaeus have hardly any other object
than the allegorical explanation of the Jewish scripture. The great
Origen himself treated all these stories as astronomical emblems. "What
man of sense," says he, "can persuade himself that there was a first, a
second, and a third day, and that each of those days had a night, when
there was yet neither sun,* moon, nor stars!!!"
* Of all the glaring blunders committed by the compiler of
Genesis, the most unfortunate was the miraculous production
of three whole days before he thought of _making_ the sun.
Dupuis says, speaking of the astronomical origin of all religions: "The
first six signs of the zodiac may be considered as forming the empire of
God or Oromazdes; the remaining signs as that of the Devil or Ahrimanes
(cold and darkness). After the evil principle has reigned during the six
winter months, from the autumnal to the vernal equinox, the sun resumes
his empire, bringing with him warmth and animation for a fresh creation;
and causing the day to triumph over the night. The vernal equinox was
therefore universally considered to be the time: of creation. It is then
that the Persians, who call April the month of Paradise, celebrate their
Neurouz or the new revolution. The Jesuit Petavius has remarked that
the Rabbis, when speaking of the creation, use the word _Bara_, which
signifies to arrange, or rather to renew."
Syncellus, Cedremus, St. Cyril, and others, agree that the word
_creation_ alludes to the vernal equinox; at which time they expect
the coming of their god, who, as Cedrenus tells us, will arrive at _the
Lord's Passover_; or the passage of the sun as he crosses the line of
the equator at the vernal equinox point. Formerly, when the sun was in
Taurus or the Bull, that sign presided over the vernal equinox, and
it was to the Bull that the Persians attributed those ideas of
_regeneration_, which a more recent superstition (the Christian) has
naturally transferred to Aries, a sign called by the Persians 'the
Lamb.'
But if the vernal equinox point be now in Pisces or the fishes,
Christians have nothing more to do with the Ram, as he is the "_Lamb of
God_" no longer; and therefore they should adopt, as of old, when the
sun was in Pisces, the famous savior fish Oannes, which used to preach
so prettily upon the banks of the Nile and the Euphrates. At that
exceedingly remote period, say nearly 26,000 years ago, this fish must
have been a principal god amongst the Egyptians and Chaldeans; and
certainly, while the sun occupied the fishy sign in the zodiac at the
vernal equinox, nothing could be more appropriate than that the
emblem god should appear in the shape of a fish, to preach the annual
salvation.* Each sign in succession has, by the slow precession of
equinoxes, enjoyed a similar honor.
* The first of the nine incarnations of the Indian Redeemer,
Vishnu, was in the form of a fish.
That the Jewish priests, from not having science within themselves, were
apt to be too late in borrowing their emblem gods from the more learned
hierophants of Egypt, Chaldea, and Persia, appears in that _unhandy_
mistake committed by Jeroboam (1 Kings xiii., 4), in sacrificing to the
golden calf, the old representative of the sign Taurus, which was then
out of date, when he ought to have been paying his respects to the "Lamb
of God," the accredited envoy of the sign of the Ram, which had come
into play by the Sun's having entered it some time previously. By the
mouth of his messenger, "the Lord" (the Sun) seems to reproach Jeroboam
in terms something like the following: "What ignorant ninnies you and
your priests are, not to know that, having left my bull-house in the
zodiacal town,* and taken a two thousand one hundred and fifty years'
lease at the _sign_ of the Ram, I have now nothing to do with calves:
go, ye shallow novices, and learn better of your masters, my older and
more scientific priests, the Magi and Chaldees, that the appropriate
symbol of my worship, is now a Lamb, called the Lamb of God."**
*The New Jerusalem.
**April-fools are no doubt of vast antiquity; but Jeroboam
is perhaps the first we met with in the Bible. This reproach
was incurred by those who, like him, persisted in calf
adoration, after its archetype the Bull, or sign Taurus, had
ceased to be the "House of the Sun," at the-vernal equinox;
that is, after the Bull of April had given place to the Ram,
or Lamb of March; and, according to the Rev. Mr. Maurice,
that point could not have coincided with the first degree of
Aries, later than 1800 years before our era.
Wherever such digressions as the above are made in the course of these
Lectures, they are intended to show that, although we treat the Bible
according to its literal meaning, the respect we have for it, _so far as
it is a book of hidden science_, induces us to give such explanations,
as they alone do it justice according to knowledge. But since its
priests and their ignorant dupes insist on adopting the outward, or
sense nonsensical, the best way to expose their folly is to take them at
their word..
The legend about the first man may have been taken from Apollodorus'
fable of Prometheus, who made the first man and woman with clay, and
afterwards animated them with fire which he had stolen from the chariot
of the sun; or was the first creation in Genesis imitated from Plato's
story of the androgynae, or double _homo_, possessing both sexes? Such
was the hermaphrodite, or first creation in Genesis; the second was
purely masculine, and only one of his ribs turned into the feminine. In
the ancient Persian traditions, there were two distinct fables about the
creation of man, from which those in Genesis appear to have been taken:
but the compiler of that book, knowing both of the stories, and being at
a loss which to prefer, has foolishly mingled them together, yet still
preserving the two creations. Thus it seems pretty certain that the
Jewish fable about the first man and woman is of Persian origin. Henry
Lord, in a book written at Surat, on the cosmogonies of India and
Persia, and dedicated to the Archbishop of Canterbury, says: "In the
Persian cosmogony, the name of the first man was _Adamoh_ and of the
woman _Hevah_. From hence come the Adam and Eve of the book of Genesis.
Hevah is the name given to the woman, in an English edition of the
Bible, printed in 1583."
In the Zoroastrian and Chaldean mysteries, the above supposed originals
of the human race were personifications of the zodiacal signs, Bootes
and Virgo; and their _fall_, or expulsion from the summer garden of
fruits and flowers, was emblematical of the solar year, after the
autumnal equinox. Anciently, in India and Chaldea, the phaenomenon of
the starry heavens was called Aden, or the Celestial Garden. In all
probability the Jews picked up these shreds of figurative astronomy when
they were slaves to the Babylonians, and, ignorantly taking them in
the literal sense, foisted them into their heterogeneous miscellany.
Supported by the sound knowledge of Philo, and all the learned Jews,
Origen again shows his contempt for those who understood Genesis
literally, and cries out: "What man can be stupid enough to believe that
God, acting the part of a gardener, had planted a garden in the east;
that the tree of life was a real tree, and that the fruit of it had the
virtue of making those who eat of it live for ever?"* The first four
chapters of that book contain parts of three, if not four distinct
fables, all evidently derived from different sources. The rest of this
extraordinary medley, called the Old Testament, is made up of some
dramatic fragments of the Egyptians and Persians (as the plague,
miracles, and the book of Job), fabulous legends plagiarized by the
Jews, barbarous narrative, and the rhapsodies of vagrant minstrels, who
sung of past events, seemingly in the future tense.
* St. Augustine, in his "City of God," allows that in his
time, the whole story about Adam, Eve, the serpent, and the
garden of Eden, with its forbidden fruit, was considered as
allegorical. There was not one, but there were _two_
prohibited trees!
The Emperor Julian, with that wisdom which characterised
him, observed that, "If there ever had been, or could be a
tree of knowledge, instead of God forbidding man to eat
thereof, it would be that of which he would order him to eat
the most." Reason is the real forbidden tree of priestcraft.
From a mass of ill-strung fables, derived from such a variety of
sources--a chaos of revolting prodigies, mixed up with a few probable
facts, such as the expulsion or flight from Egyptian slavery, the
murders and devastations in Southern Syria, etc., we cannot, in the
bounds of a lecture, notice more than a few of the most prominent
miracles, all of which had Pagan prototypes.
As every oriental country had its cosmogony, accounting very clearly,
though contrarily to each other, for the origin of things, so all
had traditionary floods, which each nation quoted as proof of its
antiquity.* Why should not the Jews have one also? The Chaldeans said
that theirs happened 25,000 years before the war of Troy, when the
immense surface now occupied by the Mediterranean Sea was inundated..
The Egyptians had their inundations; and hence their ark of Osiris (the
archetype of the Noah's ark) the same as the constellation Argo. The
Greeks had their floods of Ogyges and Deucalion; the latter of which,
was fully treated of by Berosus, and after him by Lucian, in his Syrian
goddess; but the Jews, who took everything from their masters, borrowed
the Chaldean pilot _Noe_, made him skipper of their ark, slightly
changing his name to _Noah_, and appropriated to themselves the flood
of Deucalion,** with all its details, almost word for word as fabled
by Berosus and Lucian.. That this tradition was not adopted by the Jews
until long after the alleged time of Jehovah's flood, is proved by
the orders which he gave Noah respecting clean and unclean beasts, the
distinction whereof not being made until several hundred years after the
assumed time of Noah. Nothing can be more probable than that, amongst
the initiated few, all these floods had secret reference to the supposed
influence of the winter or watery constellations.
* Even the long lives of the antediluvians, according to the
Jews, are the exact copy of the Iogues of the Hindu
Indians.
** The flood of Xisuthrus was almost the same as that of
Deucalion.
The Pentateuch, or first five books of the old Jewish "_will of God_"
have been attributed to Moses; though, from their internal evidence, it
is altogether impossible that he could be the author, even if we allow
him to have been a real personage. These books were most likely compiled
and got up in imitation of the _five books_ of the Egyptian Hermes, who
was at one time the personified genius of the constellation Sirius; at
another, of the planet Mercury. That the god Bacchus was the archetype
of Moses, seems to have been the opinion of many learned men,
particularly the celebrated Bishop Huet, and I. Vossius, who agree that
the Arabian name of Bacchus is _Meses;_ and the identity is further
proved, inasmuch as the etymon of the two words is the same, signifying
_saved from the waters_. Justin, in his "Historium Judaerum," seems also
to favor the fact that Moses was a fabulous person, where he says that
it was not he, but Abraham, who led the Jews out of Egypt; that their
number was 6,000, not 600,000;* and that they were turned out of the
land for uncleanness, being all lepers.
* On almost all occasions, the Jewish tales, in relation to
numbers, whether of men or other animals, are so
ridiculously exaggerated, that if we adopt the scale of
allowing them one for every hundred enumerated in their
books, we shall do them ample justice. This gives Solomon
ten in place of his thousand ladies: a harem still
abundantly numerous to produce "vexation of spirit."
A vast and sublime idea was attached to the attributes of _Jahouh_,
whilst he was at home in Egyptian Thebes; but, in accompanying Moses and
his barbarians into the Arabian desert, we find him completely shorn of
all grandeur and dignity of character. He was there drilled and
moulded into a god, whose will and commands were precisely those of the
robber-in-chief and his priests, jointly and severally; by whom he was
converted into the Jewish Juggernaut, delighting in blood; and on
all occasions standing forward to prompt and justify their villainous
schemes of devastation and murder.* At a very early stage of his
connexion with Moses, he is degraded by being brought into contact with
the dramatic jugglers of lower Egypt; of whose legerdemain tricks we
have a sample in the stage representation of what are called the plague
miracles. As a priest, Moses was no doubt initiated into all the arts of
these sleight-of-hand impostors. In the trial of skill exhibited by the
contending operators in these conjurations, we have a tissue of the most
absurd and ridiculous fooleries imaginable,--the writer having taken
leave of his senses, _we have the hyperbole run mad_. Much of this
jugglery was done by means of real or counterfeit serpents! After all
the water in Egypt, even the great river Nile itself, had been turned
into blood, the magicians do the same miracle, though Aaron had not left
them a drop of water in all Egypt! Then follow other romances, wherein
the "God" appears far more blameable than Pharaoh, whose sin of
obstinacy is visited upon the innocent cattle; and in succeeding
plagues, all the horses, asses, camels, oxen and sheep, having many
lives, are killed over and over again. The story of the locusts is not
miraculous; but we have an outrageous prodigy in a darkness for three
_days_; to say nothing of its substantial property of being felt or
handled. Why did not the Goshenites (who had their usual light) avail
themselves of so good an opportunity to run away? They were waiting
until "the Lord" should issue his general order to commit the robbery
on the Egyptians. Though all Pharaoh's horses had been twice or thrice
killed during these plagues, he finds no difficulty in mustering a
numerous cavalry to pursue the fugitives. Moses being a mere copy of
Bacchus, all the above stage trickery--the dividing of the Red Sea
and the Jordan, are rude imitations of the exploits of the latter,
who performed marvellous feats and gambols, _turning water into blood,
drying up rivers, converting water into wine_, etc., etc.
* Oh! what a mountain of faith and prejudice is required to
hide this glaring, this palpable truth!
** See Lucian's "Alexander."
It appears an awkward business that the omniscient Jehovah could not
safely undertake the midnight massacre of Egypt's firstborn, without
some sign to prevent the possibility of his committing a blunder, by
falling foul of his chosen Goshenites; and, therefore, another general
order is issued, to smear their doorposts with blood as a mark of
security, while the butchery was going on. This shocking tale might have
arisen out of the historical fact, that the seventh Ptolemy caused
all the young men of Alexandria to be murdered. This inference may be
objected to on account of the supposed anachronism, respecting which
we shall make a short digression. Precise historical dates have been
carefully avoided or obscured by the Bible-makers; and there is scarcely
any allusion to _time_, that is supported by concurrent testimony; and,
therefore, it is only by a cross-examination of its internal evidence,
that we can judge of the various periods when the Old Testament was
compiled.*
* All the narrative writings of the Jews, which betrayed too
openly a recent composition, such as the Maccabees (which in
a historical point of view, are the most valuable parts of
the Bible), and many others were excluded, and declared
apocryphal by the Old Testament composers; yet numerous
tell-tale proofs escaped them; for instance, Nehemiah speaks
of "Darius the Persian." Now, between Cyrus and that prince,
there reigned fourteen kings of Persia, during a period of
280 years. Therefore, not only were the Jew books written
after their Babylonian slavery, _but many centuries
afterwards_.
The Decalogue, Chronicles, and other narrative parts, may have
been written under the order of Hilkiah and Ezra, shortly after the
Babylonian slavery; yet there is great reason to believe that many
poetical rants called prophecies, and even some parts of the Pentateuch,
were written after the Jews began to congregate at Alexandria, when
the events which the itinerant Jewish bards pretended to foretel, had
already taken place: for instance, Ezekiel makes the Lord say, "And I
will make _Pathros_ desolate." Can the cunning alteration made in the
first syllable of this word conceal the evident allusion to that "wonder
of the world," the famous light tower of Pharos, which was built by two
of the Ptolemies! Daniel could not speak of the third being "like unto
the Son of God," before the dogma was invented that god had a son.*
Moreover, if it can be shown (as hath been affirmed) that the prophecies
were partly translated and modelled from Greek originals, at a period
subsequent to the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, what becomes of their
antiquity? We repeat that most of the books of this collection contain
abundant proofs of their having been fabricated from materials as
aforesaid, at various periods between the Babylonian captivity and the
destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, in the time of Vespasian.
We have seen that the passage of the Red Sea is drawn from the fable
of the triumphal march of Bacchus, when from Egypt he went to conquer
India. Josephus, though he often renders the romances of his countrymen
still more monstrous, was ashamed to make a miracle of this story, and
compares it to the passage of the Pamphylian Sea, by Alexander. In a
jovial mood Bacchus drew wine from a rock by a stroke of his rod; but
herein the imitator deviates from the original, wisely preferring water
to wine in an arid wilderness.
The manna miracle has long been detected and exposed. Josephus tells us
that, in his time, it was found in great quantities in Arabia; and the
plant that produces it is now cultivated in Sicily and Southern Italy.
Bishop Talleyrand, in a letter which he is said to have written to
the Pope, after their quarrel, told his holiness that the real manna of
Moses was the plunder he got in the desert by his robberies and murders;
these were counted so many godsends.
* The Talmud acknowledges that the forgeries of Daniel,
Esdras, and others, were prodigious.
** Talleyrand tells the Pope also, that, of the numerous
blunders committed by Moses, not the least was his fixing
the time of the Creation at an epoch when the earth did not
only exist, but had an immense population, and actually
reckoned 50,000 years of civilisation: besides his
pretending to look upon the Hebrews as the most ancient
people on earth, forgetting or feigning to forget, that they
were a mere gang of slaves who had originally escaped from
Idumea, during the intestine wars which desolated that
country. After having passed into Egypt, where they were
again made slaves, it was after the lapse of many years, and
after having robbed their masters (as their forefathers had
robbed the Idumeans), that, induced by Moses, they crossed
the Red Sea in Ethiopian vessels; and having gained the wood
of Henon, in Arabia Deserta, they maintained themselves
there during forty years, living by the robberies they
committed on travellers and the people in the neighborhood.
As it is not necessary to notice these miracles in Bible order, it may
here be observed, that the fable about Lot's wife might have been taken
from that of Euodia; but, more probably, from the ancient fiction of
Baucis and Philemon, as the first and this are essentially the same.
Irenaeus and Tertullian affirm that, in their times, _the statue of Lots
wife regularly menstruated at the usual period of women!_ Reader, these
men were no unfair sample of the Christian fathers.
It was a part of military discipline amongst the Persians, and other
nations of the East, when marching large armies through the deserts, to
carry in the van, during the _night_, fires, made with such combustible
matter as would make a great flame of fire, which was elevated so high
as to be distinctly seen by all in the rear, appearing, in the distance,
as "a pillar of fire," and serving to point out the line of march. To
direct this line during the day, such combustibles were burnt as would
produce the greatest cloud or "pillar of smoke." This military usage is
mentioned both by Herodotus and Quintus Curtius; and Alexander
himself adopted it of the Persians. If Moses was so well provided in
a supernatural fire-and-smoke conductor, why was he so anxious and
pressing to get his brother-in-law Hobab (against his will) to guide the
march, and to "_be to them instead of eyes_" in leading them to
proper places for encampment?* Here we have a striking instance of the
matchless effrontery of the Jewish fabricators, in thus turning a common
usage into a miracle.
* Numbers x., 29 to 32.
It was wise in Moses to retire to the top of a hill, when he played off
his fire and smoke thunder-cloud to the astonishment of the dupes below.
His Deity wrought a clever miracle in creating the universe in six days;
but what a falling off was there, when he required nearly seven times
as long to engrave two tables of stone, which a man might "take in his
hand." As a proof that this job could not be done in less than forty
days, the same time precisely was taken to cut the second tables,
after Moses had (forgetting his meekness) smashed the first. His
well-dissembled rage about the affair of the golden calf* was, no doubt,
the result of a cunning scheme, concerted between him and brother Aaron,
in order to possess themselves of the gold that had been swindled from
the Egyptians. To gull the fools, and save this gold for themselves, the
priest had only to paint a wooden calf yellow, which was easily reduced
to powder--gold could not, by burning: a little powdered charcoal would
do the people no harm. When the sun was in Taurus (the Bull), at the
vernal equinox, the astronomising priests of Egypt turned bulls and
calves into gods, that were quite good enough for the vulgar; and when
the sun entered the sign of the ram, a lamb answered equally well for a
god, and does so to the present day.
* In the story about this calf, our translation very
modestly says, the people "rose up to play," though it
acknowledges they "were naked;" but Dr. Clarke has had the
singular honesty to tell us that, in the Hebrew Bible, this
rising up to play was preparatory _to pairing for open
sexual intercourse_. Bruce tells us that this open
intercourse was common, and formed an essential part of
festive entertainments amongst the Abyssinians. There is
reason to believe that it was usual In many countries, both
in Africa and Asia.
The deity of Moses was rather extravagant in fitting out his tabernacle
and ark. The latter was his travelling box, to afford him ease and
comfort when making long marches, and was composed of very costly
materials; but, in point of room and convenience, we should think it
must have been inferior to some of Punch's portable palaces. However,
the God grew so fond of, and so "jealous" about, his box, that, on
one occasion, he perpetrated a tremendously bloody miracle, in killing
50,070 of the "glowrin' byke," for peeping into it. Putting aside the
monstrosity of this story, in relation to number, could this offence
arise from looking into an _empty_ box? Certainly not. Sir William
Drummond, in his "AEdipus Judaicus," asserts that, according to the
Hebrew, the Jews carried about their idol in this box,* as was customary
with the migrating hordes of the desert, all of whom, as well as the
Jews, kept an ark for that purpose! Sir William's assertion is justified
by the Bible itself, where it says that the Philistines were afraid,
_because the Jews brought their god into the battle_ when the ark was
taken, a misfortune which their deity, with all his omnipotence, could
not prevent; but he took terrible revenge on the captors by smiting
them with emerods: hence the story in Rabelais against a certain most
_unholy_ and _unsanctified_ use of that book.
* The Christian translators of the Bible, no doubt, did all
in their power to suppress the fact, that a representation
of the Jewish idol was kept in this box. The Levites being
the constituted priests of this idol, Micah, when he had his
god made of the stolen silver, did not consider it by any
means sufficient to have one of his own sons as priest. Why?
Because his new idol represented the Jewish deity; and,
therefore, a Levite as his priest was indispensable; for
then, says he, "I know the Lord will do me good." (See
Judges, xvii.) That this god was afterwards located at
Jerusalem, as the other district gods of the country were
stationed in their respective towns, we have many proofs in
the Bible. (See 1 Kings xii; Ezra i., 3; vii., 15, 19.)
** Did not the priests of Jupiter Ammon carry the magnet
with, them, in a compass-box, as the _ark of the covenant of
their god_, which, it was death for the unsanctifled to look
into.
The stupendous prodigy performed by that free-booter and murderer,
Joshua, in laying an embargo upon, the sun and moon, in order to get
time to kill a few thousands more of the Amorites, showed a ferocious
thirst of blood, and was wholly uncalled for, victory being already
secured through the powerful aid of Jahouh, who, sitting astride on the
corner of a dark cloud was pelting the Amorites with great stones. Let
us suppose that both the sun and the moon were in view at the same time,
and that they stood still as commanded, would that make the massacre of
the Amorites one iota less cruel and ferocious? It would only prove that
Joshua's god was neither just nor merciful. This tale is, no doubt,
a varied version of the fable of Jupiter's sending a shower of large
hailstones upon the rebellious sons of Neptune. This may be coupled
with another enormous fiction, the dial of Ahaz, upon which, by a bolder
manoeuvre still, the sun is commanded to go backwards. Moses and Joshua
appear to have had a sun and moon, as well as a Deity of their own. From
all this does it not appear that the compilers of these fables, though
under heavenly inspiration, were so ignorant as to suppose that the
sun's motion caused the day, and that this globe stood still? Is it not
evident also, that they took the stars to be little bright spangles set
in a solid firmament (which had windows), as jewellers set brilliants in
metal? The man who seriously believes in the literality of our version
of these fables, is so stupidly and piteously credulous, as to be an
object of compassion rather than of contempt. The two last miracles
had more than one archetype in Pagan mythology:--the sun and moon were
arrested by Bacchus on his march to India. In one of the love intrigues
of Jupiter, he stayed the sun in order to get a double night in the arms
of the fair Alcmena, when she conceived of the great Hercules. In later
times the Christian priests performed a similar miracle in favor of the
Emperor Charles V.
If Amphion, by the music of his lyre, made the stones dance into
building order, so as to raise the walls of Thebes, why should not
Joshua reverse the miracle, by tumbling down the walls of Jericho, to a
tune played upon rams' horns by priests?
In the whole history of human cruelty and wickedness, there is nothing
to equal, in cool and diabolical atrocity, the plunder and massacre
of the Midianites. The horrible narrative partakes but little of the
miraculous; yet, as Jahouh was said to be without a material body, and
purely spiritual, it has been matter of wonder what he was going to do
with the thirty-two young virgins who "had not known a man by lying with
him," and who were awarded as his share of the spoil. This is a
mystery which we must hold in silent reverence, as being altogether
unaccountable, unless we surmise that his priests kindly intended to
relieve him of so numerous a seraglio.*
* Horror succeeds to wonder, when it is known that by the
original meaning of the word, everything _devoted_ to the
"Lord," _was assuredly sacrificed_, unless redeemed.
The speech of Balaam's ass, of edifying and sacred, memory with our holy
church, had many precedents in antiquity. The cows of Mount Olympus had
been distinguished for supernaturally inspired orations; the doves, the
fountains, and even the oaks of Dodona, had delivered heavenly oracles;
Xanthus, one of the horses of Achilles, predicted his master's death
before the walls of Troy. Livy and Suetonius (we are sorry for them as
they ought to have known better) furnish other examples.
Almost the same exploits have been attributed by the Jews to Samson that
were related by the Phoenicians of their Hercules (according to Yarro,
there were forty-four Herculeses), and the imitation is palpably servile
in the story of the gates of _Gaza_, and that of Hercules with the
pillars of _Gadez_. Lion-killing was imitated also. Hercules was one of
the numerous personifications or emblems of the power of the sun; and
the Arabian name _Shams-on_, or _Samson_, signifies the sun. Hercules
is made prisoner by the Egyptians, who want to sacrifice him; but while
they are preparing to slay him, he breaks loose and kills them all.
Samson, when tied with new ropes, is given up to the Philistines, who
want to kill him; he breaks the ropes, and kills a thousand of them with
the jaw-bone of an ass. The fables are identical. Even the story of the
fox-tails is rooted in astronomy.* About the time when the corn is cut
down in Palestine and Lower Egypt, and shortly after the setting of the
rainy constellation Hyades, the sign of the fox arose, _in whose tail or
train came the fires or torches of the dog-days_.
* See "New Researches."
The fable of Jephtha's sacrificing his daughter has some resemblance
to the immolation of Iphigenia by her father, Agamemnon, in the famous
expedition against Troy, which must have been taken by the Greeks many
centuries before the Jews were _known_ to have writings, or even a name.
The legend about the tower of Babel seems to have originated thus: The
wise men of Egypt were jealous of the Chaldean philosophers; the former
said that the latter were so proud of their knowledge in astronomy that
they presumptuously endeavored to erect a column of science as high
as the stars; but that their pride was humbled when all their efforts
failed to complete the work.
The hideously unjust dogma of original sin might have grown out of the
Pagan fable of Pandora's box, the occult meaning of which most probably
was the evils arising from theology and priestcraft. However, it is
high time that our Christian priesthoods should invent for it some less
ridiculous origin than the apple story, for that is too absurd to serve
their ends any longer.
Ludicrous as the whale fable of Jonah is, the copy is fairly outmatched
by the original from which it is taken. It is a Jewish version of that
of Hercules, who was enclosed for three days in the belly of a whale;
but, being more witty and adroit than Jonah, he contrived to live
sumptuously all the while, by feasting on the liver of the monster,
which, by some means or other, he contrived to broil! Here, for once,
the Jew is outdone at his own weapons--the romance run mad. It must
surely have been in ridicule of these and similar god-fables that Lucian
wrote his "True History."
Isaiah says (xxxvii., 36), "Then the angel of the Lord went forth and
smote, in the camp of the Assyrians, 185,000; and when _they_ arose in
the morning, behold, they were all 'dead corpses.'" The Jonah of the Jew
was completely thrown into the shade by Hercules, but here he is himself
again. This miracle of miracles is altogether unmatched in heathen
mythology; for we have 185,000 men, who were murdered in the night,
getting up in the morning merely to find _themselves_ "dead corpses." A
commentator of the true impudent breed will easily explain all this by
affirming that the prodigy was typical of the resurrection.
The three hours of an eclipse, which is said to have taken place on the
death of one of our Christian gods, is a very modest imitation of the
Pagan original, from which it has every appearance of being taken.
We say modest, because on the death of the godling Phaeton, his father
Phoebus withheld his light from the earth a whole day.
All the Jewish and Christian fictions about resurrections and ascensions
into what is called heaven, are also clumsily taken copies of originals
in the ancient polytheism. The Egyptian Osiris died, returned again to
life, and afterwards obtained divine honors; he was designated "_the
holy word_" The god Atys was called the "_God our Savior_." Bacchus died,
was buried, descended into, and slept three nights in Tartarus* (the
only hell they had in those times), from whence he brought up his
mother, with whom he ascended into heaven, and made her a goddess. His
return to life was annually celebrated by the virgins and matrons of
Delphi.
* All the tales about Tophet, Gehenna, Tartarus, or Hell,
had no foundation whatever "but the practice of burning
mankind, either on the funeral pile, or as a sacrifice to
the gods. The Greek word, Ades, or Hades, occurs eleven
times in the New Testament, and is _falsely_ translated
_Hell_ in all except one, where it is rightly translated
'the grave,' signifying the _invisible state_."
Ouranos, coelus, or heaven, merely signified the earth's
atmosphere in the summer months.
Thus the compilers of the Jew books had exemplars in, and drew their
fables from, Paganism; and were themselves imitated in turn by the
fabricators of the new Testament: the stories of the manna, and the
twenty loaves of Elisha, very naturally suggested the wonderful growth
of Jesus' loaves and fishes; and the manner in which that prophet turned
brackish into pure water, would clearly point out how that element might
be turned into wine, at the feast of Cana. The above are only a few of
the numerous instances which might be quoted, wherein the ignorance
of the Jewish scribes, disfigured the elegant and lively fables of
Paganism; and it cannot escape observation that the rude recoinage in
their barbarous mint has turned that which was pretty and amusing into
the deformed and hideous, in a manner quite characteristic of their own
semi-savage condition.
Having given a few specimens of the miracles attributed to the
deity adopted by Moses, and their Pagan prototypes, we will take a
retrospective glance at his general conduct and character, as depicted
in his _old Jewish Will_. Never were higher qualities and powers
ascribed to any god; and never were they so badly sustained; he is
represented as omniscient, yet always taken by surprise; an omnipotent
being, whose designs are commonly frustrated; immutable, yet ever
changing; sufficient to his own happiness, yet always "jealous;"
perfection itself, yet continually making imperfections, and repenting
of that which he had previously approved; finally, he makes an _eternal_
Being, about as powerful as himself, and for no other apparent purpose
than to be crossed and circumvented in all his projects. Sometimes
Moses and he had sharp bickerings, such as that tavern squabble in Egypt
(Exodus iv., 2--4), when the god lurked about the inn,* "seeking to
kill" his protege.
* We do not mean to say that he frequented inns or taverns,
but it appears he was fond of a cheerful glass of wine. See
Judges ix. 13. Being composed of flesh and blood, Gen. vi.,
8.
At other times they were good friends, merry, and frolicksome, playing
at bo-peep among the rocks (Exodus xxxiii., 22), the god showing his
"back parts" only, for "no man could see his face and live"; yet on
other occasions he talked "face to face" with his intimate friends.
He forfeited all pretensions to the attributes of omniscience and
omnipresence, when he confessed that he must "_go down now and see_"
what the men of Sodom had been doing (Gen. xviii., 21). Nor could he,
from his villa beyond the clouds, discover the Tower of Babel, but was
under the necessity of coming "down to see" (Gen. xi.). That from his
Egyptian greatness he was reduced, by Moses and his priests, to be
merely a provincial deity, appears in various texts, as in Deuteronomy
iv., 7, where it is said he was located near or living "nigh to them"
(the Jews). A district god of this kind was fashionable all over Syria
at that time, each petty state or tribe having one of its own; such as
Astarte, _with the cross_, of the Phoenicians; Moloch, of the Ammonites;
Astoroth and Dagon, of the Philistines; Tammuz, or Adonis, of the
Sidonians; Chemosh,* of the Moabites, etc., etc.; and why should not the
Jews be armed with a god as well as their neighbors? Well might
Jahouh exclaim, "_save me from my friends_;" for his historians have
represented him as a passionate, blustering, vengeful changeling,
extremely "jealous" of all the other petty gods around him, and exciting
nothing but fear and dislike in his followers; hence the Theocrat and
his priesthood were continually struggling to keep the grist at their
own mill, by preventing the people from "whoring after" the more amiable
rites of Astarte and Adonis. In the seventeenth chapter of 1 Chronicles
this deity gives intimation that, owing to a change of habits, he was
not particularly desirous of living in a house;** that ever since he
left Egypt, he had accustomed himself to go about "_from tent to tent,
and from one tabernacle to another_" There is something exceedingly
ludicrous in this; yet we trust that the "long-ear'd rout," the _true
believers_, will have no difficulty in preserving their gravity.
In short, of all the personified deities of antiquity, Moses has
caricatured his the most egregiously. All these local or provincial gods
were immeasurably inferior to the Jupiter of the Greeks, who, although
he "liked the lasses," always sustained an awful dignity of character.
* See Judges xi., 24.
** The deity set up by priests stands in no want of a house
whilst among wandering tribes, who build none for
themselves; but while he is amongst the stationary
cultivators of the soil he requires one, in which his
_immaterial presence_ is requested on stated days to hear
his own praise sung: men are fond of praise, therefore it
undoubtedly follows that the deity must be fond of it
likewise.
In additional proof that the Jew books have no just claim to antiquity,
there is not a vestige of authentic testimony to show that they were in
existence before the King of Babylon gave the Jews permission to settle
in Palestine, after their slavery. The first thirteen of these appear
to have been then fabricated from loose and unconnected traditions; of
which the Pentateuch was in all probability compiled the last, as there
is no mention of it either in Joshua, Judges, the two books of Samuel,
Psalms, or in Kings or Chronicles, until the time of Josiah, that is,
about 900 years after the pretended time of Moses.* If a man, without
slavish fear or prejudice, will impartially examine the stories in
2 Kings xxii., and 2 Chron. xxxiv., xxxv., he will see palpably the
collusion between the high priest Hilkiah and his pupil, the young
king Josiah, aided by the prophet Jeremiah, Shaphan the scribe, and the
prophetess Huldah. These persons, some of whom must have learnt to
write while at Babylon, acted in concert under the high priest, in
manufacturing the books of the law, which they pretended to have
found in an old chest, where, according to their story, they must have
mouldered for upwards of 900 years; _yet Shaphan could read them as
fluently as if he had written them himself_. The object of this fraud
being to wean the Jews from the gods of the Chaldean priests, it is
probable that the books of the law only were forged on this occasion;
for we find that the compilation of a large portion of the Bible
traditions fell to the share of Esdras (who was identically Ezra the
scribe), as he distinctly tells us in the fourteenth chapter of his
second book, viz., that under the orders of the Lord (read, _the high
priest_), he had a number of clerks engaged for forty days, during
which time they completed amongst them 204 books or chapters.** As all
these men had been captives in Babylon, and could nowhere else be
taught to write, how could these books be composed in any other than the
Chaldee character? The third chapter of the book of Chronicles gives
a list of the Jewish kings from David to Zedekiah, and even to four
generations after his time. Now, as Zedekiah was one of those who were
carried to Babylon, we have a strong, an irrefragable proof that those
books were written after that captivity.
* The proof that Moses could not possibly be the author of
the Pentateuch did not escape the luminous mind of Mr.
Paine. In Genesis xiv., 14, it is said, "And Abraham pursued
them to Dan." Now, there was no place called Dan until the
time of the Judges. See Judges xviii., 28 and 29.
In Genesis xxxvi., 31, it is said, "And these are the kings
that reigned in the land of Edom _before the children of
Israel had any king_" Therefore several kings, viz., Saul,
David, Solomon, etc., must have reigned before the first
book of the Pentateuch was written.
In the forty-ninth chapter the writer gives an account of
the ultimate fate of the tribes (forgetting the tribe of
Manasseh altogether). How could Moses know anything of this?
How could he speak of the sceptre of Judah? If it is said
that this was prophetic of Jesus, we reply that the sceptre
_was not_ in Judah when he (Jesus), was bora.
St. Jerome, said to be one of the most learned of the
Fathers, confesses he dare not affirm that Moses was the
author of the Pentateuch. He even adds that he has no
objection to allow that it was written by Esdras. His words
are: "Sive Mosem dicere volueris auctorem Pentateuchi sive
Esdram ejusdem instauratorem operis, non recuso."
** That Esdras composed these books is further proved in his
first book, chap. 8, where it is said that he "had very
great skill, and omitted nothing of the law" of the Lord,
i.e., the laws of the king, and high priest.
Moreover, learned critics have shewn that the Bible names of angels,
such as Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael, Michael, Satan, etc., are purely
Chaldean or Persian! And this is confirmed by the Talmud of Jerusalem,
which says expressly that the Jews borrowed the names of the angels
from the Babylonians. Even the name Israel is not a Hebrew but a Chaldee
word, as was fully explained by Philo Judaeus, when on his embassy to the
Emperor Caligula. This corroborates the opinion that, in the portions
of the Pentateuch which existed only in tradition, previous to the
captivity at Babylon, the angels had no names, and that they were
afterwards added when these traditions were written. For instance, when
Abraham entertained Jehovah and the two angels with roasted veal,* the
party gave themselves no names; and those heavenly messengers whose
virginity was so much endangered by the men of Sodom, when they honored
Lot with a visit, were anonymous also; as was likewise the one that
appeared to Manoah. The legend contained in the book said to be written
by Enoch, concerning the war in heaven, fall of the angels, etc., must
have travelled from India to Chaldea, where it was picked up by the
Jews. It arose from one of the astro-fables in that most ancient of
all books, the Shastras of the Brahmins, wherein it is recorded that
heavenly beatitude was disturbed by the pride and ambition of Mozazor
and Raabon, two princes of the angelic bands, who stirred up sedition,
and drew after them myriads of angels in rebellion against the
_Eternal_, who sent against them his vicegerent Brahma, with his two
lieutenants, Vishnu and Siva, armed with almighty power, who hurled
the rebels from heaven down to a place of darkness, called Ondera. This
ancient fable of the Brahmins was probably the groundwork also of the
Grecian fable of the Titan war.
* This story is taken from an old fable related in the Fasti
of Ovid, how Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury, having supped
with an old man named Hyriens, and finding that impotence
was the cause of his having no children, each of the three
urined upon the skin of the calf 'that had been killed for
supper, and this celestial water impregnated the skin,
which, after nine months' inhumation, produced a beautiful
child, which became the constellation Orion. The learned say
that the true translation of the words which the angels
addressed to Abraham, is thus:--A child shall be born of
your calf.
A word more respecting Abraham. The planet Saturn was the Israel of the
Chaldees; and it was personified both by them and the Phoenicians
under the name of Abraham, which signifies the _Father of a people_
figuratively, the stars of heaven, which are called "his seed for ever."
Saturn was the son of _Terra_ (the earth); Abraham was the son of Terah;
Saturn married his own sister Rhea, a star; Abraham married his
own sister Sarai or Sarah, which signifies a star (Sirius, the ever
beautiful and young); Saturn had many sons, but only one whom he loved
and protected as an _only_ son; Abraham had many sons, though he is said
to have had an only son named Isaac, whom he loved. According to the
famous Sanchoniatho, Saturn offered up his beloved son Jeoud, as a
holocaust, or burnt offering wholly consumed; Abraham was about to offer
up his beloved son Isaac,* but a ram (zodiacal) was found as substitute.
The planet Saturn was called _Israel_ by the Phoenicians and Chaldees;
the patriarch Abraham is synonymous with the name Israel throughout
the Bible. Saturn, from his exceedingly remote situation in the solar
system, and the long period taken to circle his immense orbit, was the
emblem of time; hence the many Bible phrases about Abraham, as connected
with time, such as "before Abraham was,"--i.e., before time was.
Priests! are these merely chance coincidences?
* In this horrible story, as understood literally, Abraham
receives quite coolly, and without either surprise or
remonstrance, the order to sacrifice Isaac; which shows,
even in allegory, that among the Jews the sacrifice of the
first-born son by the father was nothing uncommon.
Stupidity itself, if honest and free from prejudice, would at once see
and acknowledge the perfect sameness, the absolute identity of these
astro-fables; and that the personal existence of Abraham rests precisely
on the same ground as that of any other mythological or metaphysical
existence whatsoever. But what will our gospel-grace baby of fifty
say, when he has the mortification to see the truth of the above
interpretations antecedently confirmed and justified by the gospel
itself? Paul, in his epistle to the Galatians says: "For it is written
that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond-maid, the other by a free
woman, _which things are an allegory_," that is, a fable. This story,
then, no more belongs to the Hebrews than it does to the Laplanders,
but is wholly Chaldaic, and was plagiarised by the Jews while slaves
in Babylon; but the Chaldee priests would take special care that they
should see only the _veil_ that covered the allegory. Thus it is clear
that Abraham's personal existence was as fictitious as that of Saturn,
Jupiter, Orion, Mercury, Apollo, etc. He is also identified in the Hindu
Brahma, with no other difference than a transposition of the letters of
the name. The god Jehovah of the Bible announces himself to Abraham
and Moses in almost the same terms as does the supreme god of India to
Brahma, as recorded in the Bhagavat Pourana, the _Holy Bible_ of the
Hindus, translated from the Sanscrit by Sir William Jones, who allows
the vastly higher antiquity of the Brahmin allegories.
We shall now touch slightly upon the curious question, whether the Jews
did ever in reality possess any territory not subject to a higher power.
The narrative of their colonisation by Cyrus is liable to much doubt and
objection. No authentic historian of ancient times, Josephus excepted,
has ever in any way mentioned them as an independent nation or state, or
as being in possession of Palestine, or any part of Great Syria, before
or in the time of Alexander. As a nation they appear to have been
entirely unknown to Herodotus, and all other Greek historians. What had
become of them when Xenophon wrote of the eastern nations, which was
only 150 years after their alleged return from Babylon? He mentions the
Syrians of Palestine as under the Persian government, but not a word
about the Jews. Herodotus mentions two invasions of the Scythians,
through Syria, even to the borders of Egypt; but acknowledges no Jews
or Israelites. In the fragments that remain of Sanchoniatho, Ctesias,
Berosus, and Manetho, they are not noticed even as a petty or subject
state, so that we have the fullest negative evidence that in the times
of these historians, no part of Syria was a Jewish country. Diodorus,
in detailing the events in that country, the siege of Tyre, etc., during
Alexander's conquests, says not a word of the Jews as forming a state or
colony, or of their boasted city of Jerusalem: and he is equally silent
as to their existence as a nation during the times of Alexander's
immediate successors; nor have we any historical account of them
deserving of credit until the time of Antiochus the 4th (Epiphanes),
under whom they lived, and he was subject to the Romans. If the
territory of Judea was given to them by the King of Babylon, only about
200 years before the Macedonian conqueror went to the east, why did not
he and his historians find them there? The plain and simple truth is,
the Jews NEVER formed an independent state; and that part of Syria
called Palestine, was, in all known ages, subject either to the
Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks or Romans (according
to the tide of conquest), as it now is to the Turks. In Bible times
the Jews were much more ignorant than they now are, and this is all the
difference in their condition; they were always the old-clothes'-men and
gold clippers of the world. They were permitted by the King of Babylon
to build a temple to their idol in the rocky district of Judea, which
formed a nucleus--a Jewish Mecca--to which they congregated from all
parts for worship. Josephus, while he speaks of his masters, the Romans,
is tolerably correct; but when he treats of the "antiquities" of his
countrymen he is not for a moment to be trusted, because he was then
merely copying their legendary tales, and he frequently far exceeds the
wild romance of the tales themselves. The pretended interview between
Alexander and the high priest Jaddua, is evidently plagiarised from the
well-authenticated scene that took place between that prince and the
high priest of Jupiter Ammon.
From the times of Porphyry, Celsus, and Hierocles, to the present day,
it has been the wonder of the rational philosopher, how a disjointed
collection of writings, made by an obscure and barbarous race of people,
came to have such mighty importance attached to them, more especially
as their tendency has ever been inimical to, and subversive of, human
happiness; but this sad anomaly may be accounted for. All such tyrants
as Constantine saw in these books examples of the most unqualified
despotism; and knew that, through the medium of carefully fostered
ignorance, man is an animal that can be made to believe and bear
anything, however absurd and tyrannical. Conquerors and devastators of
countries found in them justifying precedents for all their enormities,
and the rivers of blood which ambition and Christian fanaticism have
shed in every part of the world. The Crusades, where millions upon
millions of fanatics perished, are never-dying witnesses of this. Would
any unshackled mind believe that the Spaniards could have been guilty of
such inhuman and monstrous cruelties towards the simple and unoffending
natives of America, if such horrid butcheries had not been sanctioned,
nay, commanded, and pompously set forth, in the detailed massacres
of the Bible? Here we have the exploits of some generals of
banditti--blood-thirsty robbers, who blasphemously declare that their
unequalled cruelties were committed by command of the ruling power of
the universe! That the Spaniards thought themselves justified by the
Bible, appears by the book which Sepulvado wrote for the express purpose
of vindicating them in the murder of twelve millions of Indians, "_by
the example of the Israelites towards the people of Canaan_." Las Casas
says: "I have seen in the Islands of St. Domingo and Jamaica, gibbets
erected all over the country to hang thirteen Indians at a time, _in
honor of the thirteen apostles_.--I have seen," continues he, "young
children thrown to dogs* to be devoured alive." In charging the shocking
barbarities of the Bible upon the Jewish deity, the fanatic devoutly
accuses him of crimes and acts of wicked injustice that are hardly ever
committed, even by the worst of men, such as visiting the offences
of the fathers upon the children, and requiring the sacrifice of the
innocent to expiate the crimes of the guilty. To what a state of mental
degradation, O man, have thy priests and thy superstition reduced thee!
Thus did kings, conquerors, and corrupt rulers of nations see the
justifying precedents to be drawn from these books for all their
enormities; and as for the fathers or heads of the Christian sect, and
other religious impostors, they could be at no loss to find in them
just whatever suited their respective schemes of deception. The learned
amongst the early fathers saw and acknowledged the astro-allegories
about Adam, Eve, the serpent, Garden of Eden, and fall of man; but their
successors, about the beginning of the 4th century, when they decided
upon getting up a _new will and testament_ for Jehovah, in order to make
their system hold together, thought it necessary to cause his departure
from the usual practice of testators--that he should not be allowed to
revoke the old Jewish will, which for good reasons, was to be retained
in full force. Without this document their most essential dogmas would
have had no foundation; and as it "would have been too bare-faced
a fable to make Jesus die on account of an allegorical tree," the
forbidden one of Genesis must be converted into a real tree; for then
it would, together with its accompaniments, furnish mystical pegs upon
which to hang the indispensable dogmas of original sin and redemption.
* In Hosea xiii., 16, we have a declaration "That their
infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with
child shall be ripped up"!!! This and the Midianitish
slaughter and extermination, together with that of the
Amalekites, will perhaps stand for ever unmatched in the
history of human cruelties.
These appear to have been the ruling motives of those who gradually
manufactured the Christian scheme (for it was done by piecemeal, by a
number of hands, and in different centuries) and in adopting the Old
Testament it was necessary, by this affiliation, to connect its list of
fabulous prodigies with the new code,* or fresh series of miracles which
had been invented for, and are recorded in, the new will of the Jewish
deity:--**
"Ay, and sound ones too,
Seen, heard, attested, every thing--but true"
In forcing this connexion still closer, the fabricators had no
difficulty in finding that, in their series of wonders, the principal
violations of Nature's laws had been foretold in the Jewish prophets.***
This was a clincher which served to confirm the supernatural texture of
their religion, quite as well as the cloud-conveyed Shastras did that of
Brahma, the laws of Moses from the cloud-capped Sinai, or any other of
the numerous human laws which have originated beyond the clouds, and
been palmed upon ignorance by impostors. Clouds, shadows, phantoms,
ghosts, etc., have ever been the favorite machinery of priests.
According to the notoriously false prediction of St. Paul, Jesus, on
his second coming, was to be cloud-delivered; and this advent, it was
positively asserted, would take place during his own (Paul's) lifetime.
* Matthew pretends that Jeremiah foretold that Christ should
be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver. Where is this to be
found in Jeremiah?
** When the latent astronomical sense of these two
testaments is made manifest, a necessary connexion between
them is perceived; owing to their common foundation in Solar
adoration, and that of the other physical powers of Nature.
*** These prophets were in reality nothing but strolling
soothsayers, fortune-tellers, psalmists or palmists; and
being mob orators by education and profession, with a
capability of reading and writing, they were fitted to
deceive the ignorant in many ways. Dodwell, De Jure
Laicorum, asserts that they prepared themselves to prophecy
_by drinking wine_. They were also jugglers, musicians,
etc., etc.
But our church mystagogues will very easily reconcile this unfortunate
failure with "_gospel truth_." As the Old Testament compilers had made
up their collection chiefly of any traditionary or legendary shreds they
could gather,* so did their successors, the Christians, in their new
miscellany. The Therapeutae, or Egyptian monks, had supplied a large
portion, as is confessed even by Eusebius himself (see Lecture Second),
but by a luckless anachronism, the spurious writings that were
selected to form the new will of god, were not (according to the best
authorities) finally _voted_ to be such until the Council of Laodicea;**
so that the present document had no existence till _three hundred and
sixty-eight years after the death of the testator_, for it is quite
orthodox to say that Jesus was "God the Testator."
* The Pharisees of the second temple chose the books they
liked best among a multitude of forgeries. The Talmud
relates that this synagogue were about to reject by far the
best books of the Bible--viz., Proverbs, Job and
Ecclesiastes; not owing to their not being Jewish, but Pagan
writings, _but because they were contradictory to the law of
god_. It was not only the opinion of Ebenezra, but even of
Jerome himself, that Job is not a Hebrew book.
** The deadly animosity and quarrelling for which the
Council of Nice was so famous, would prevent anything like
decision; and, therefore, it is much more probable that the
finishing hand in _voting_ what should form the New
Testament, was put at Laodicea, and not at Nice, especially
as we know that the book of Revelation was rejected at
Council of Laodicea; but again admitted long afterwards.
From the discordant and immoral tendency of the greater portion of the
old will of the Jewish god, there could arise but little hope that his
new one would benefit the human race; so according to the spirit of
its own terrible denunciation (Matt, x., 34, 35, 36), we find that its
votaries, the religious fanatics both of early and modern times, have
not yielded in the slightest degree but been fully equal in _holy
cruelty_ to the Jews, who were utterly inaccessible to every feeling
of pity or humanity. These two superhuman Testaments now form a
book, which, from its ill-deserved conventional pre-eminence, and the
hydra-priesthoods which it quarters upon industry, is the chief scourge
of modern Europe. The contemptible ignorance, credulity, and fraud which
support its tyrannous authority as a supernatural revelation; the futile
attempt to enforce a belief in its literal meaning as indispensable to
the happiness of mankind; and the universal degradation and misery which
it perpetuates, by the inbred hostility which all its priesthoods have
ever evinced towards every improvement that would enlighten and
elevate the human mind, have done more to disgust and misanthropize
all ingenuous and rational minds, and to inspire them with a settled
aversion for the ways of man and his institutions, than all the other
moral and physical evils now experienced in Christendom. While these
master curses are maintained in their pestiferous sway, it will be
impossible for their victim, man, to taste of happiness through the
attainment of civil liberty to any beneficial extent, or to approach
truth and virtue by philosophical researches in the path of Nature; for
there is no arriving at these but by the utter extermination of all
the fraudulent and idolatrous religions pretending to supernatural
revelation.