THE PROPHETS MOHAMMED, JESUS, AND MOSES CHARLATANS OR VICTIMS OF MENTAL
AND PHYSICAL DISEASE
_The prophet or seer is a man of strong imaginative powers, which
have not been calmed by education. The ideas which occur to his mind
often present themselves to his eyes and ears in corresponding
sights and sounds.... Prophets have existed in all countries and at
all times; but the gift becomes rare in the same proportion as
people learn to read and write_.
WINWOOD READE.
Religious apologists are forever reminding us that we must interpret
both the lives and the works of their prophets and recorders in the
spirit and meaning of the ages in which they lived. To this I agree; but
the apologists have so mutilated the meaning of the words of the seers
and built about them such a mass of nonsense, myth, and fable that it
becomes nearly impossible after the lapse of centuries to differentiate
the actual man from the fabled man. But there are certain facts that do
come down to us recorded by disinterested observers from which can be
derived finally some conception of their mode of life, and the content
and significance of their teachings.
Although time causes great changes in customs and manners, it only
effects a negligible variation in the vast majority of diseases which
affect the body and mind of man. We know from the examination of the
skeletal remains of prehistoric man that the diseases of the bone of
thousands of years ago were similar in their manifestations to those
same diseases of bone of today. From the writings of the early Egyptian,
Greek, and Roman physicians we identify diseases by their symptoms, and
recognize that the symptoms of these diseases have not changed
throughout the ages. Therefore, with the knowledge of the signs and
symptoms of various diseases which we have today, we can safely assert
that if an ancient complained of the same group of signs and symptoms
(which is now termed a "disease complex"), he was suffering from the
same disease which we can identify in modern man.
What applies to physical disease is just as applicable to mental
disease. In speaking of mental disease, it is important for the layman
to keep in mind a few fundamental principles held by the physician. The
physician in speaking of mental disease means a more or less permanent
departure from the normal or usual way of thinking, acting, or feeling.
In the examination of a patient with mental disease the physician looks
for delusions, illusions, and hallucinations.
A delusion is a false belief, concerning which the individual who holds
it is unable to admit evidence such as would be admitted by ordinary
individuals.
An illusion is a deception of the senses, a misinterpretation of sensory
impressions; the normal person can be convinced of this deception. The
mirage, for example, is an optical illusion which has a starting point
in an external stimulus.
A hallucination is a deception of any of the five senses, in which there
is no starting point but it is fabricated in a disordered mind.
Illustrations of hallucinations are the hearing of voices when none are
present, smelling of odors, the seeing of visions in a vacuum.
With the elementary understanding of fundamental symptoms of mental
diseases as a point of departure, let us consider the cases of Mohammed,
Jesus, and Moses, three of the most influential prophets in the history
of civilization.
MOHAMMED
Of the three, Mohammed should be considered before the others for
several reasons. First, there is no question regarding the actual
existence of Mohammed. We know that he was born at Mecca about 571 A.D.
and died at Medina on June 8th, 632 A.D. From the facts of his life and
the religion which he founded we are able to see the manner in which
legend and superstition were superimposed on its original simple form.
The historical records of his life and teachings are easier of access
since he is nearer our time than the other two prophets, and we can get
a better understanding of his character.
It was Gibbon who said, "It may be expected that I should balance his
faults and his virtues, that I should decide whether the title of
enthusiast or impostor more properly belongs to that extraordinary
man.... At the distance of twelve centuries, I darkly contemplate his
shade through a cloud of incense."
In attempting to peer through this cloud of religious incense we find
the following facts: In the city of Mecca, probably in August, in the
year 571, Mohammed, the Prophet of Allah, was born. There seems little
doubt that he was descended from those lofty Koreish, whose opposition,
which at first nearly succeeded in holding his name in perpetual
oblivion, eventually caused him to emerge into the light of deathless
fame.
His birth was surrounded by all manner of signs and omens, we are told.
The labor of his mother, Amina, was entirely painless, earthquakes
loosed the bases of mountains and caused great bodies of water, whose
names were unfortunately not specified, to wither away or overflow; the
sacred fire of Zoroaster which, under the jealous care of the Magi, had
spouted ceaseless flames for nearly a thousand years, was extinguished.
All the idols in the world except the Kaaba tumbled to earth.
Immediately after the babe was born an ethereal light dazzled the
surrounding territory, and, on the very moment when his eyes were first
opened, he lifted them to heaven and exclaimed: "God is great! There is
no God but Allah and I am his Prophet!" All these poetic fancies have
been appropriately denounced by Christian scribes, who have claimed that
nature would never have dignified the birth of a pagan like Mohammed
with such marvelous prodigies as undoubtedly attended the advent of
Christ.
However, Mohammed was born shortly after the death of his father. At the
age of six his mother died also, and he spent the first ten years among
the Bedouins under the care of a foster-mother named Halima. At the age
of four it was noticed that the child had signs of convulsive seizures
which later commentators thought were of an epileptic nature. He was
brought up under the care of his uncle Abu Talib, and his early manhood
was spent in caring for the flock and in attending caravan expeditions.
When the prophet was twenty-five years old, his uncle secured for him a
position with a caravan owned by a wealthy widow, Khadija. Thanks to
Mohammed's keen business sense the caravan was highly successful, and he
was induced to personally report his success to Khadija. That lady, a
wealthy widow of forty years, and the mother of three children, was
highly pleased at Mohammed's story. As she listened to the proof of his
business ability and fondly scanned his large, nobly formed head, his
curling coal-black hair, his piercing eyes, and his comely form, it
naturally occurred to her that this vigorous and handsome young fellow
would make an excellent successor to her deceased husband. She had her
way and they were married. During the next fifteen years Mohammed led a
tranquil life. His future was provided for and he had plenty of leisure
to occupy himself as he chose. In these years Mohammed and his wife
continued to be conventional worshipers of idols, who nightly performed
rites in honor of various gods and goddesses, among whom were Allah and
his female consoler Al-Lat. And so, by the year 610, Mohammed, at the
age of forty, was nothing more than a respectable but unknown tradesman
who had experienced no extraordinary crises, whose few existing
utterances were dull and insipid, and whose life seemed destined to
remain as insignificant and unsung as any other Arab's.
At this time, he began to retire for days at a time to a cave in the
foothills of Mount Hira, a hill several miles north of Mecca. Meanwhile
his business languished. As the months passed, he still continued to act
in the same incomprehensible manner; it was noticed that little by
little certain members of his immediate family attended him to his
refuge or gathered with him in some one of their houses. This continued
for several years until it was rumored that Mohammed, the camel driver,
was confidently claiming the honor of having made a great discovery;
namely, that "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet."
By what process of thought had Mohammed come to exalt Allah not merely
above all Arabian gods, but above the gods of all times? Furthermore,
why was he so certain of his own intimate association with Allah? We
can understand this if we consider Mohammed in the light of a victim of
mental disease.
One account informs us that as Mohammed was wandering near the cave at
Mount Hira, "an angel from the sky cried to him, 'O Mohammed, I am
Gabriel!'" He was terrified and hurried home to impart his experience to
his wife.
"I see a light," he said to his wife, "and I hear a sound. I fear that I
am possessed." This idea was most distressing to a pious man. He became
pale, haggard; he wandered about on the hill near Mecca crying for help
to God. More than once he drew near the edge of the cliff and was
tempted to hurl himself down, and so put an end to his misery at once.
He lived much in the open air, gazing on the stars, watching the dry
ground grow green beneath the gentle rain. He pondered also on the
religious legends of the Jews, which he had heard related on his
journeys; and as he looked and thought, the darkness was dispelled, the
clouds disappeared, and the vision of God in solitary grandeur rose
within his mind, and there came upon him an impulse to speak of God.
There came upon him a belief that he was a messenger of God sent on
earth to restore the religion of Abraham, which the pagan Arabs had
polluted with idolatry, the Jews in corrupting their holy books. At the
same time he heard a Voice, and sometimes he felt a noise in his ears
like the tinkling of bells or a low deep hum, as if bees were swarming
round his head.
At this period of his life the chapters of the Koran were delivered in
throes of pain. The paroxysms were preceded by depression of spirit, his
face became clouded, his extremities turned cold, he shook like a man in
an ague, and he called for coverings. His face assumed an expression
horrible to see, the vein between his eyebrows became distended, his
eyes were fixed, his head moved to and fro, as if he was conversing,
and then he gave forth the oracle or Sura.
The hitherto mentally and emotionally normal trader, husband, and father
was thus suddenly swept off his feet and carried irresistibly away on a
mighty tide. His perturbed spirit now soared to the heights of Heaven,
now plunged into the chasms of hell. Moments of ethereal bliss would be
followed by periods of profoundest melancholy.
"It is related that the Angel Gabriel, who thus far had labored only in
the field of Christian endeavor, was chosen by Allah as bearer of the
divine revelation to Mohammed. One day, while the trader-poet was
wrestling with his doubts among the foothills of Mount Hira, he saw a
wondrous apparition floating downward on celestial wings. 'Thou art
God's Prophet, and I am Gabriel,' announced the awe-inspiring guest
before he departed to receive the blessing of Allah for having so
successfully executed the heavenly command. Gabriel was a very valuable
ambassador, for through the to-and-fro journeying of this indefatigable
messenger Allah was able to remain at ease in heaven, thus keeping up
the appearance of intangible, majestic remoteness so necessary for
dignified gods. And thus Mohammed came into his own. From that moment
Mohammed looked upon himself as Allah's vice regent, through whom
Allah's incontestable decrees were to be given to man." (_Mohammed_--_R.
F. Dibble._) Mohammed's every doubt had now vanished, his soul was
completely at ease, and from his lips there burst the wildly exultant
chant, "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His Prophet."
The obliging Gabriel, he said, had borne him on a winged steed over
Medina to the Temple of Jerusalem, and from there he continued his
celestial journey until he was carried completely out of this world to
those ethereal realms of bliss where the Seven Heavens are. Up and up he
flew, while he carefully noted the order of precedence of those prophets
whose model he had proclaimed himself to be. Jesus and John were in the
second or third--he was not quite sure which--Moses was in the sixth,
while Abraham alone had the supreme distinction of residing in the
Seventh Heaven. There, at the apex of indescribable glory, Mohammed had
entered the awful presence of his Maker, Who, after some chit-chat,
charged him to see that all Moslems should hereafter prostrate
themselves in prayer toward the Temple of Solomon five times a day. The
truth of this narrative rests upon two solid facts: from that day to
this, all devout Moslems have continued to bow themselves five times
daily in prayer, and sceptics may still see, upon the rock where stands
the Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem, the identical print of the Prophet's
foot where he leaped upon the Heavenly Charger.
His thoughts, whether conceived in a white heat of frenzy, or with
deliberate coolness and sly calculations for the main chance, were
probably not written down in any definite manner during his lifetime. It
is not even certain whether he could read or write. He delighted in the
appellation, "The Illiterate Prophet," possibly on account of his
humility and possibly because he knew that inspired ignorance had been
the indisputable prerogative of all successful prophets in the past.
Indeed, the very fact that he was unlearned was rightly supposed to
increase the miraculous nature of his revelations. As he tossed the
divine emanations from his lips, they were sometimes recorded by
hireling scribes upon palm leaves, leather, stones, the shoulder blades
or ribs of camels and goats. But often they were not immediately written
down at all; the Prophet would go around spouting forth his utterances
to his followers, who, trained from infancy to memorize verses and songs
of every sort with infallible precision, would piously commit them to
memory. Such is the Koran, and through its instrumentality, Allah the
Wise, The Only Wise, revealed his immutable decrees: to the good, the
rewards of a Paradise that utterly beggared the Christian Heaven; to the
bad, the punishments of a Hell that contained an infinity of such
refined tortures of heat, and even of cold as neither the most
imaginatively gifted Jew or Christian had yet conceived.
Reinach aptly states, "It is humiliating to the human intellect to think
that this mediocre literature has been the subject of innumerable
commentaries and that millions of men are still wasting time in
absorbing it." Over one hundred and sixty million are adherents of the
Koran.
In an objective analysis, excluding the emotional factors of religious
bias, Mohammed would as unquestionably be considered a victim of mental
disturbances as an individual living in our own day and manifesting the
same symptoms.
Mohammed was the subject of illusions, hallucinations, and delusions. He
had suicidal tendencies, and he had alternating periods of exhilaration
and depression. To simply assert that he was an epileptic does not
explain these symptoms. For epileptics cannot throw a fit at will.
However, we know that ten per cent of epileptics develop mental
diseases, no particular psychosis but a loss of mental and moral sense.
There are two types of individuals who can produce seizures such as
Mohammed was wont to evoke at will. One type is the hysterical, and the
other is that degraded individual who for the sake of collecting alms
will place a piece of soap in his mouth, enter a crowded street, fall
to the ground, and proceed to foam at the mouth and twist and contort
himself as an epileptic does. That is the charlatan, the faker, and that
brings us to the second aspect of his (Mohammed's) character.
"Outside of Arabia, Paganism was in general disrepute. The dissolute and
declining Romans were cracking lewd jokes in the very faces of their
gods, the myriad followers of Confucius, Buddha and Zoroaster were
either too remote or too helpless to matter in one way or another.
Talmudic Judaism and Oriental Christianity despised idolatry and
worshipped the same Jehovah, even though they disputed with each other,
and indeed, among themselves, concerning the various attributes, amorous
pursuits, and lineal descendants of the Godhead. Now, to one who chose
to regard himself as a prophet, Monotheism had distinct advantages over
Polytheism." (_Mohammed--R. F. Dibble._)
In the first place, it was rather confusing to attempt to obey the
behests of conflicting deities; in the second place, the different
prophets of Jehovah in Judaism and Christendom had, so far as Mohammed
knew, been uniformly successful, for he was familiar with the glorious
history of Abraham, Moses, and David, and he always held to the perverse
conception that Jesus was not crucified. However deep in the dumps
prophets may have been on occasion, they have invariably believed one
thing: victory for their particular cause would inevitably come. Neither
an unbroken series of worldly failures nor the chastisement of his god
have ever shaken the faith of a first-class prophet in himself or, as he
would doubtless prefer to say, in his Divinity. Arabia, broken,
unorganized, inglorious, idolistic Arabia, obviously lacked one Supreme
Being whose prerogative was greater than all other Supreme Beings, and
that Being, in turn, needed a messenger to exploit His supremacy. The
messengers who had served Jehovah had certainly prospered well; but
Jehovah Himself appeared to be on the decline. His Unity was steadily
disintegrating into a paradoxical Trinity. Why, therefore, not give
Allah, the leading icon in Arabia, an opportunity? Such considerations
quite probably never entered the head of Mohammed with any definiteness;
yet his behavior for the rest of his days seems to indicate that these,
or similar conceptions, were subconsciously egging him on.
Of certain facts, moreover, he was definitely aware. He may have had
little or no formal education, but his memory was retentive and
capacious, and his caravan journeys, together with the scores of
conversations he had held at the yearly fairs, as well as at Mecca, with
many cultivated strangers, had packed his mind with a mass of highly
valuable matter. In these ways he had learned both the strength and the
weakness of the Jews and Christians; their fanatical enthusiasm and
despairs; their spasmodic attempts to proselytize as well as the
widespread defection from their faiths. "Since his conception of
religion was largely personal, for he looked upon Moses, Jesus, and the
rest of the prophets as merely capable men who had founded and
promulgated religions; and since Arabia had no pre-eminent ruler, why
should he not seize the reins of power and carry on the great tradition
of prophethood? What a magnificent opportunity beckoned, and how
fortunate that he had been the first to recognize the call! By keeping
only what was best of the Arabic faith, the Kaaba and the Black Stone,
and by a judicious selection of the most feasible ideas which lay
imbedded in Jewish and Christian precepts, he might establish a code
that would supersede all others, and then might dictate to all Arabs
alike. What prophets had done, he would also do and do better."
(_Mohammed--R. F. Dibble._)
Such are the thoughts of a charlatan and _a_ demagogue. If Mohammed
actually had such ideas, we can never know; but a study of his further
actions and conquests surely shows that he must have had something of
the same trend of thought in mind.
His "fits" before the oncoming of a new Sura have been mentioned.
Eventually, he so perfected his technique that he could throw a
cataleptic fit and produce a message without any previous preparation.
He would drum up a crowd with his ludicrous snortings and puffings until
the resounding cry, "Inspiration hath descended on the Prophet!" assured
him that he had a sufficiently large audience to warrant the
out-spurting of a new Sura. While in a room that was obviously empty, he
declared that all seats were occupied by angels; he cultivated suave and
benign expression; he flattered and astounded his followers by telling
them facts which he had presumably acquired through private information;
he took the most painstaking care of his person, painting his eyes and
perfuming his entire body daily, and wearing his hair long. Ayesha, one
of the Prophet's wives, remarked that the Prophet loved three things:
women, scent and food, and that he had his heart's content of the first
two, but not of the last. In fact, Mohammed, himself, argued that these
two innocuous diversions intensified the ecstasy of his prayers. In the
Koran's description of heaven so much emphasis was put on food that a
jolly Jew objected on the grounds that such continual feasting must of
necessity be followed by a purgation. The Prophet, however, swore that
it would not even be necessary to blow the nose in Paradise, since all
bodily impurities would be carried off by a perspiration "as odoriferous
as musk."
When his wife Khadija was dying he comforted her with the assurance that
she, together with three other well-known women, the Virgin Mary,
Potiphar's wife, and "Kulthum," Moses' sister, would occupy his chamber
in Paradise.
On Mohammed's escape to Medina, a long series of holy wars began which,
like all holy wars, were characterized by extreme brutality. The Koran
of the period contains such pacific doctrines as these: "The sword is
the key of Heaven and Hell; a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a
night spent in arms is of more avail than two months of fasting or
prayer; whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven. At the day of
Judgment his wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion, and odoriferous
as musk; and the loss of limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels
and cherubim ... God loveth not the Transgressors; kill them wheresoever
ye find them."
Mohammed, no less than many other religiously-minded emperors and tsars,
appears to have conducted himself in battle according to the wise
principle that a head without a halo is infinitely more desirable than a
halo without a head. Yet he was profoundly convinced that the ultimate
victory of Islam depended upon the sword. The Koran of this period
breathes defiance against the enemies of Islam on almost every page. Its
profuse maledictions, once confined to the evildoers of Mecca, now
include all unbelievers everywhere. When Mohammed once had captured a
fortress inhabited by a tribe of Jews, his judgment was, "The men shall
be put to death, the women and children sold into slavery, and the spoil
divided amongst the army." Then, trenches were dug, some seven hundred
men were marched out, forced to seat themselves in rows along the top of
the trenches, beheaded, and then tumbled into a long gaping grave.
Meanwhile, the Prophet looked on until, tiring of the monotonous
spectacle, he departed to amuse himself with a Jewess whose husband had
just perished.
He continued these conquests until, at his death, in 632, he was the
master of nearly all Arabia and revered almost as a god. Yet, when Omar,
his first lieutenant, captured Jerusalem in 636, he ensured the
conquered Jews and Christians free exercise of their religion, and the
security of their persons and their goods. But when the Crusaders took
Jerusalem in 1099, they massacred all the Mohammedans, and burnt the
Jews alive. It is estimated that 70,000 persons were put to death in
less than a week to attest the superior morality of the Christian faith.
The successors of Mohammed, the Caliphs, in less than a century
conquered Syria, Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, Turkestan, Spain, Northern
Africa, Sicily, and Southern France. Today, 160,000,000 are followers of
Mohammed,--a man who began as a humble religious leader, and ended as an
adroit politician and powerful general; a man who hid during battles,
who often broke faith with friend and foe alike, a charlatan and
demagogue of general intellectual incompetency, and a victim of mental
disease.
JESUS
When we come to consider the life of Jesus, a far different and more
intricate problem is met with. None but the most illogical and purposely
ignorant of religious apologists will admit that the life of Jesus has
been misrepresented by his followers to suit their particular aims. Had
the followers of the moralist Epictetus or the Rabbi Hillel written
lives of these two teachers they would be quite similar to the reputed
life of Jesus. The moral sentiments attributed to Christ in the Gospels
were borrowed from the Jewish rabbis and the numerous cults that
flourished in that age. The birth, death, and resurrection of Christ is
quite similar to the myths of that time concerning the savior gods
Adonis, Isis, Osiris, Attis, Mithra, and a multitude of others. (_For a
full exposition of the subject, the reader is referred to E. Carpenter,
"Pagan and Christian Creeds."_)
The evidence for the point of view that Jesus was actually a historic
character is so slight that such scholars as J. M. Robertson, Prof. W.
B. Smith, Professor Drews, Dr. P. L. Couchoud, and many others deny the
historic reality of Christ on the ground that the Gospels are totally
unreliable as history, that Paul bears no witness to a human Jesus, and
that the pagan and Jewish writers are strangely silent about the Messiah
Jesus.
There are in existence only twenty-four lines from Jewish and Pagan
writers referring to Jesus. These include a reference in Tacitus'
Annals, and brief references by Suetonius and Pliny the Younger. These
three references are considered spurious by many scholars, and even if
they were all to be accepted it would mean that the total pagan
testimony as to the historicity of Jesus is confined to three very vague
and brief references written a century after the reputed time of Jesus.
The longest reference to Jesus is in the writings of the Jewish
historian, Josephus. The passage referring to Jesus in his "Jewish
Antiquities" has been considered as spurious even by conservative
scholars. A group of scholars has always deemed it very probable,
however, that this spurious reference may have replaced an unfavorable
reference to Jesus in the original. Working on this theory, Dr. Eisler
has purged of interpolations this work by a painstaking and scholarly
investigation.
However, it must be pointed out that with regard to Jesus' actual
existence, what divided the Christians and non-Christians was not the
question whether or not Jesus existed; but the vastly more pertinent
and essentially different question whether or not the obscure Galilean
carpenter, executed by a Roman governor as king of the Jews, was really
a superhuman being who had overcome death, the longed-for-savior of
mankind, foretold by the Prophets, the only-begotten Son of God Himself.
To the Jews, Jesus was indeed a heretic and an agitator of the lower
orders; to the pagans, he was a magician who through sham miracles and
with subversive words had incited the people to rebellion, and as a
leader of a gang of desperate men had attempted to seize the royal crown
of Judaea, as others had done before and after him. The non-Christian
writers referred to Jesus as a wizard, a demagogue, and a rebel.
We are fortunate, at this date, to have brought to our attention a
masterful work by Dr. Robert Eisler, a work which will be as
revolutionary to the study of Christianity as was Darwin's "Origin of
the Species" in the realms of science; and, similarly, the former work
will be the basis upon which much progress will be made in a great
field. Dr. Eisler unfolds a great mass of hitherto unknown information
concerning the life, the actual appearance, and the doings of Jesus. He
definitely establishes the proof of Jesus' actual existence, and makes
clear many hitherto obscure utterances and deeds of this Prophet.
The descriptions which follow are based on the material in this work of
Dr. Eisler, "The Messiah Jesus."
In the complete statement of Josephus on Pilate's governorship, we find,
"At that time there appeared a certain man of magical power, if it is
permissible to call him a man, whom certain Greeks call a Son of God,
but his disciples, the True Prophet, said to raise the dead, and heal
all diseases. His nature and his form were human; a man of simple
appearance, mature age, small in stature, three cubits high,
_hunchbacked_, with a long face, long nose, and meeting eyebrows, so
that they who see him might be affrighted, with scanty hair but with a
parting in the middle of his head, after the manner of the Nazarites,
and with an undeveloped beard. Only in semblance was he superhuman for
he gave some astonishing and spectacular exhibitions. But again, if I
look at his commonplace physique, I, for one, cannot call him an angel.
And everything whatsoever he wrought through some invisible power, he
wrought through some word and a command. Some said of him, 'Our first
law giver is risen again, and displays many healings and magic arts.
Others said, 'He is sent from God.' Howbeit in many things he disobeyed
the law and kept not the Sabbath according to our fathers' custom.
"And many of the multitude followed after him and accepted his
teachings, and many souls were excited, thinking that thereby the Jewish
tribes might be freed from Roman hands. But it was his custom most of
the time to abide over against the city on the Mount of Olives, and
there, too, he bestowed his healings upon the people. And there
assembled unto him of helpers one hundred and fifty, and a multitude of
the mob.
"Now, when they saw his power, how he accomplished whatsoever he would
by a magic word, and when they had made known to him their will, that he
should enter into the city, cut down the Roman troops, and Pilate and
rule over us, he disdained us not. And having all flocked into
Jerusalem, they raised an uproar against Pilate, uttering blasphemies
alike against God and against Caesar.
"And when knowledge of it came to the Jewish leaders, they assembled
together, with the high priests and spake, 'We are powerless and too
weak to withstand the Romans. But seeing that the 'bow is bent,' we will
go and impart to Pilate what we have heard, and we shall be safe, lest
he hear of it from others and we be robbed of our substance and
ourselves slaughtered, and the children of Israel dispersed.
"And they went and imparted the matter to Pilate, and he sent and had
many of the multitude slain. And he had that wonder-worker brought up,
and after instituting an inquiry concerning him, he passed this sentence
upon him, 'He is a malefactor, a rebel, a robber thirsting for the
crown.' And they took him and crucified him according to the custom of
their fathers."
Such is the history of Jesus as contrasted with the myth of Jesus in the
New Testament. This description of the actual appearance of Jesus for
the first time gives us a clue to the mental and physical
characteristics of this Prophet.
It must be borne in mind that at the time that Jesus achieved manhood,
his people and his nation were under the complete domination of Rome,
and oppressed by a race whom the Jews looked upon as cursed barbarians
and idolaters. The country was overrun with religious zealots who
stormed over the cities and villages preaching the immediate destruction
of the world and the proximity of the long-awaited coming of the
Messiah.
The fact that Jesus had to bear the hard fate of a deformed body may go
far in helping to explain this remarkable character. It is common
knowledge how frequently weak and deformed children have to suffer from
the cruelty and neglect of environment, a factor which cannot but
produce a peculiar reaction on the childish mind which has a
far-reaching effect in later life. This accounts for Jesus' indifference
towards his mother and brothers; of a delicate constitution, he must
have suffered from insults a great deal more than the others, which
throws some light on the severe punishment demanded by Jesus for
comparatively harmless insults. Under such circumstances it is easy to
explain how every "neighbor," and next-of-kin, although to the weak
naturally an "enemy," came to be included in the sphere of that
all-embracing love which is the nucleus of Jesus' teaching. For the
cripple has to face the dilemma either of warping everything into a
powerful, misanthropic hatred, or else to overcome this feeling of
revenge for the high moral superiority of a Plato, Mendelssohn, or a
Kant. Jesus chose the latter of the two courses, and we may well imagine
that it was not at Golgotha that he had the first occasion to cry out,
"Father, forgive them for they know not what they do!"
In the case of Jesus, the whole paradoxical thought of his being the
vicarious sin-offering and world redeemer can best be understood as the
solution, proposed in the Deutero-Isaiah, of the question which had
occupied Job--to wit: Why must the innocent suffer? If the maimed in
body refuse to consider himself as forsaken by his God, as a sinner
punished for some guilt of which he is unconscious, he cannot but assume
that there is such a thing as a vocation to suffering, and believe in
the inscrutable plan of salvation in which his own life and sufferings
are called upon to play some part. Nothing but this conviction of being
thus elected can afford him the desired compensation for his depressed
and hampered ego.
A repressed nature of this type will, in seeking such a compensation,
escape from the harsh reality into the realm of dreams. This is the
basis of what the physician recognizes in hysteria, and in the mental
disease termed "Dementia Praecox." The glorious daydreams of the
millennium, the time of bliss when all strife and all hate will
disappear from the earth, when all the crooked will be made straight,
find their best explanation in this peculiarity. They console the
suffering and heavy-laden for the bitter reality which, in the light of
the old messianic prophecies, appears only as a nightmare, promptly to
be chased away by the dawn of a new day, a new, a perfect era. The
Davidic Jesus, in spite or rather because of his servile form, feels
that he is himself the secret incognito king of that wonderful realm,
the monarch whom God some time in the future, nay, right here and before
the passing of the present generation, will transform while at the same
time "revealing" his kingdom.
It is but natural that in the mental development of such individuals
they should seek to be great, glorious, and to achieve the supernatural,
since they, themselves, are denied the ordinary satisfactions. If, in
addition, such individuals believe that they have had a divine call, if
the disability of the body so preys on the mind that the sensitive
structure gives way to delusions, then there results an aberration from
the normal and usual processes of thought,--to be sure not the rabid,
violent form of mental disease, but yet a deviation from the normal
manner of thinking. Such was the case with the Prophet Jesus.
Afflicted in body but endowed with a sensitive mind, exposed to an
unusual environment of seething unrest and political ferment, and firmly
convinced in the current fancies regarding the approaching destruction
of the world, the conquest of the Evil Power, and the Reign of God,
Jesus became the subject of a delusion that he was the only true Messiah
who had been presaged by the prophets of old.
The greatest difficulty encountered in every attempt to present the life
and work of Jesus according to the evidence of his own words preserved
in the sources is the sharp, irreconcilable contradiction between the
so-called "fire and sword" sayings on the one side, and the beatitudes
on the peacemakers and the meek, the prohibition to kill, to be angry,
to resist wrong, and the command to love one's enemy, contained in the
Sermon on the Mount, on the other.
In the early period of his messianic career, the period of the Sermon on
the Mount, Jesus was a thorough quietist. But if we realize that the
delusion that he was "The Messiah" had entered his mind so vehemently
that he firmly believed that the end of the world was imminent, and that
it was his duty to save as many as possible, we can understand his
acquiescence to the violence which followed.
Moreover, he was clearly forced to the fatal road by the idea that he
must set on foot a movement of hundreds of thousands, the picture of the
exodus from Egypt with the fantastic figures given in the Old Testament.
The Messianic rising he was to initiate could not be regarded as
realized if he left the country with a band of some hundred elect. If he
wished, however, to put at least two-fifths of the population in motion,
the method of sending out messengers had proved altogether
unsatisfactory. He must try the effect of his own words in a place
where, and at a time when, he was sure to reach the greatest multitude
of his people. That could only be in Jerusalem, at the time of the great
pilgrimage at the feast of the Passover. Moreover, the desired result
could only be obtained of course if he openly proclaimed himself to be
the Messiah.
Then it was that the Prophet of quiet reversed his words and armed his
disciples. Jesus was fully aware of the illegality of this arming of his
disciples and of his own direction to purchase a weapon; none the less,
he saw no escape from this bitter necessity. The prediction of the
prophet must be fulfilled, according to which the righteous servant of
the Lord must be numbered among the lawless transgressors. True it is
that he did not lead the revolt himself, but tarried with his disciples
at the Last Supper at a house near by the fighting. When he becomes
aware that his secret hiding place on the Mount of Olives has been
betrayed, Jesus hopes for a miracle from God up to the last. Captured,
he is led away to the palace of the high priest's family on the Mount of
Olives, where, while Jesus is questioned by the high priest, Peter,
unrecognized, warms himself at the fire in the courtyard and thrice
denies his master. He was then taken to the Roman governor's
court-martial, where sentence was passed and he was led off to the place
of execution and there deserted by all his followers except a few
Galilean women. Then was heard the last despairing cry of the desolate,
dying martyr, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
Thus ended the career of this deformed Prophet with the sensitive
deluded mind; a martyr who attempted only to effect reforms amongst his
own people, in his own small locality.
MOSES
With regard to the life, the deeds, and the words of the Prophet Moses
we have no history; only myth and legend. The existence of Moses is not
demonstrated by the Biblical books which are falsely ascribed to him,
yet we cannot be certain that such a character did not exist. In any
event, we must judge his character from the writings ascribed to him.
The legend of the child cast upon the waters is to be found in the
folklore of all nations. This legend, concerning Moses, relates that one
day Pharaoh's daughter, while bathing with her maids in the Nile, found
a Hebrew child exposed on the waters in obedience to a new decree. She
adopted the boy, gave him an Egyptian name, and brought him up in her
palace as a prince. She had him educated and the fair inference is that
he was schooled in the culture of the Egyptians. The royal lady made of
the Hebrew slave-child an Egyptian gentleman.
Yet, although his face was shaved, and outwardly he appeared to be an
Egyptian, at heart he remained a Hebrew. One day, when he was grown,
Moses went slumming among his own people to look at their burdens, and
he spied an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew. He was so overcome by passion at
this scene that he killed the man on the spot. The crime became known,
there was a hue and cry raised, and the king had a search made for Moses
with the intention of slaying him. With all hope of a career in Egypt
ended, Moses escaped to the Peninsula of Sinai, and entered the family
of an Arab sheik.
The Peninsula of Sinai lies clasped between two arms of the Red Sea. It
is a wilderness of mountains covered with a thin, almost transparent
coating of vegetation which serves as pasture to the Bedouin flocks.
Among the hills that crown the high plateau there is one which at the
time of Moses was called the "Mount of God." It was holy ground to the
Egyptians, and also to the Arabs, who ascended as pilgrims and drew off
their sandals when they reached the top. Now is it strange that Sinai
should have excited reverence and dread? It is indeed a weird land. Vast
and stern stand the mountains, with their five granite peaks pointing to
the sky. Avalanches like those of the Alps, but of sand, not of snow,
rush down their naked sides with a clear tinkling sound. A peculiar
property resides in the air, the human voice can be heard at a
surprising distance and swells out into a reverberating roar, and
sometimes there rises from among the hills a dull booming sound like the
distant firing of heavy guns.
Let us attempt to realize what Moses must have felt when he was driven
out of Egypt into such a harsh and rugged land. Imagine this man, the
adopted son of a royal personage, who was accustomed to all the splendor
of the Egyptian court, to the busy turmoil of the streets of the
metropolis, to reclining in a carpeted gondola or staying with a noble
at his country house. In a moment all is changed. He dwells in a tent,
alone on the mountain side, a shepherd with a crook in his hand. He is
married to the daughter of a barbarian; his career is at an end.
He realizes that never again will he enter that palace where once he was
received with honor, where now his name is uttered only with contempt.
Never again will he discourse with grave and learned men in his favorite
haunts, and never again will he see the people of his tribe whom he
loves and for whom he endures this miserable fate. They will suffer but
he will not help them; they will mourn, but he will not hear them. In
his dreams he hears and sees them. He hears the whistling of the lash
and the convulsive sobs and groans. He sees the poor slaves toiling in
the fields and sees the daughters of Israel carried off to the harem
with struggling arms and streaming hair. He sees the chamber of the
woman in labor, the seated, shuddering, writhing form, the mother
struggling against maternity, dreading her release, for the king's
officer is standing by the door, ready, as soon as a male child is born,
to put it to death.
The Arabs who gave him shelter were also children of Abraham, and they
related to him legends of the ancient days. They told him of the
patriarchs who lay buried in Canaan with their wives; they spoke of the
God whom his fathers had worshiped. Then, as one who returns to a long
lost home, the Egyptian returned to the faith of the desert, to the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As he wandered on the mountain heights,
he looked to the west and saw a desert; beyond it lay Canaan, the home
of his ancestors, a land of peace and soon to be a land of hope. For
now, new ideas rose tumultuously within him. _He began to see visions
and to dream dreams._ He heard voices and beheld no form; he saw trees
which blazed with fire and yet were not consumed. He became a prophet
and entered into the ecstatic stage. _That is, he began to have
illusions and hallucinations._
Dwelling on the misery and suffering of his people, his mind becomes
deluded with the idea that he has been chosen by his new-found God to
liberate his people from the tyranny of their oppressors.
Meanwhile the king had died, and a new Pharaoh had ascended the throne.
Moses returns to Egypt to carry out the great designs which he had
formed. He announces to the elders of his people, to the heads of the
houses, and the sheiks of the tribes that the God of Abraham had
appeared to him in Sinai and had revealed his true name. It was Jehovah.
He had been sent by Jehovah to Egypt to bring away his people, to lead
them to Canaan.
In company with his brother, Aaron, Moses asked Pharaoh to liberate the
children of Israel, but after several vain attempts to dazzle Pharaoh
with his skill as a magician, he was met with an obstinate refusal.
Moses before Pharaoh descends to the level of a vulgar sorcerer, armed
with a magic wand, whose performances only draw our smiles. This
charlatanry having been unsuccessful, the wizard connives with his
accomplice Jehovah to have inflicted upon the Egyptians the ten plagues.
Then the loving and kind Father, having killed innumerable Egyptians, as
the story relates, so terrorizes the minds of his other children in
Egypt, that Pharaoh is finally convinced that he must allow the Chosen
People to leave his domain. The Israelites quitted Egypt carrying away
with them the gold and silver of their oppressors. They then entered
the desert.
The magic art of Moses enabled them to pass dry-footed through the Red
Sea, whereas the Pharaoh who was pursuing them was engulfed with his
whole army. Again the Chosen People are liberated by means of the death
of multitudes of Egyptians. Truly, Jehovah at that time must have loved
them well, or did some other Deity form the Egyptians? It matters not
that the crossing of the Red Sea and the drowning of Pharaoh are
romantic incidents, not only unknown to the Egyptian texts, but even to
the earliest of Hebrew prophets. It matters not, for the story is the
important thing, even though it is an inspired story, inspired by the
Jehovah who tortured and killed the Egyptians to show how well he loved
_his_ people.
This Wild West story, with its multitudes of slaughters, proceeds to the
wilderness of Sinai; and there again, the Prophet Moses goes into a
secret seance and finally announces that God had delivered laws to him,
which had been issued from the clouds.
What a great showman was this Prophet! Barnum must have been a devoted
admirer of Moses, for Moses was the first to create the two-ring circus;
for these laws given by Jehovah are described in two places, and the
circus varies in both places. Exodus XX and Exodus XXXIV are the two
texts which differ considerably.
To further convince the Children of Israel, Moses tells them the story
of how he had cajoled Jehovah into allowing him to see what no man had
hitherto seen, the form of Jehovah, for it appears that Jehovah was so
pleased with this murderer, charlatan, and wizard that he allowed him to
glimpse His hind quarters. At least, Jehovah had a sense of humor!
What a bag of tricks this Prophet had at his command! The Prophet waves
his arms and tugs at his gown, and lo and behold! The Lord has spoken!
The following is a specimen of the revelations which the Lord is
supposed to have dictated to Moses. (Leviticus XIV, 25.)
"The priest shall take some of the blood of the trespass offering and
put it upon the tip of the _right_ ear of him who is to be cleansed and
upon the thumb of his _right_ hand, and upon the great toe of his
_right_ foot, and the priest shall pour of the oil into the palm of his
own _left_ hand and shall sprinkle with his _right_ finger some of the
oil that is in his _left_ hand seven times before the Lord."
Surely, it must have been a God with a superior mentality who dictated
this, for it surpasses our feeble comprehension. And we can well imagine
Jehovah's wrath when the priest confuses his _right_ and _left_.
Twirling his arms again, Moses gives forth this oracle (Numbers XV,
37-41): "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 'Speak unto the Children
of Israel, and bid them that they make them a fringe upon the corner of
their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the
fringe of each corner a cord of blue, etc., etc."
Jehovah chooses Blue as the divine color. Royal Purple. Divine Blue.
Then there is the familiar myth of the Prophet's tapping of the rock to
bring forth water in the desert; the story of the manna; the tale of the
doves.
Thus can the fabled life of Moses be divided into two stages, the early
period of illusions, hallucinations, and delusions, and the later stage
of wizardry, charlatanry, and demagoguery. Neither must we think that we
moderns are the first to peer through this sham, for what the
Israelites thought of these laws appears from the bitter criticism of
Moses and Aaron, which the Haggadah put into the mouth of the rebel
Korah.
"When we were given the ten commandments, each of us learnt them
directly from Mount Sinai; there were only the ten commandments and we
heard no orders about 'offering cake' or 'gifts to priests' or
'tassels.' It was only in order to usurp the dominion for himself and to
impart honor to his brother Aaron, that Moses added all this."
Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed--these prophets whose adherents number
hundreds of millions, about whom there has been built up those vast
systems of theology,--what is there of the divine in their characters?
What supernatural in their deeds? What wisdom poured forth from their
lips which did not come from other philosophers? What immense structures
have been founded on these shifting sands, on this morass of ignorance
and childish fable? How long can these structures endure, aided by the
bolstering up of the theologists, and how long must it be before the
light of reason will pierce these foundations of blindness and force
them to topple over? How much longer before humanity can begin to build
on a sound foundation?
Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed; revolutionists three. Moses at the head of a
weak, squabbling, and disgruntled group of Hebrew desert marauders.
Jesus sanctioning the insurrection against Rome. Mohammed at the head of
his Arabian marauders.
If the freethinkers firmly believe that in them dwell the hope for a
better humanity, for an exhilarated progress, for universal freedom and
liberty for all mankind, and emancipation from fear and superstition,
then they, too, must destroy. They must first undo the wrong before they
can proceed to build on a right foundation.
They must build on the corner stone that all religion is human in its
origin, erroneous in its theories, and ridiculous in its threats and
rewards. Religion is the greatest impediment to the progress of human
happiness.