world, each of many thousands of years; the Jews, ignorant of astronomy,
and fond of the marvellous, comprised all within six common days. Their
firmament or heaven of crystal, and its windows, are absurdities not
peculiar to them; the feast of the Pascha, which signifies passage, is
of Egyptian origin, and was in reverence for the passage of the sun at
the vernal equinox: the sacrifices of calves or oxen, the ceremony of
the scape-goat, are Egyptian and Indian; the latter, in particular, have
a ceremony altogether the same with that of the scapegoat. It is too
long to insert here, but I refer my readers to Mr. Halhed's introduction
to the code of Gentoo laws for information on this head. The distinction
between pure and impure animals was first made by the Egyptians; the
ladder seen in Jacob's vision, is exactly a copy of that with seven
steps in the cave of Milthra, representing the seven spheres of the
planets, by means of which souls ascended and descended. It is also the
mythology of the Hindoos, whose antiquity no man at the present day
can venture to deny. The seven candlesticks, and the twelve stones are
Egyptian, and were emblems of the seven planets, and twelve signs of
the Zodiac. The serpent is the most famous Egyptian hieroglyphic; it
signifies eternity, or the sum of all things. The fasts before feasts
are also derived from this nation. The Jewish high-priest, like the
Egyptian, wore an image of sapphire, being the emblematic picture of
truth, upon, his breast: in short, the Egyptians, their masters, gave
them the first ideas of mysteries, which, in the course of time, they
mingled with the Chaldaic; and Manetho informs us, in the extract given
by Josephus in his first book against Appian, that, in authors of great
authority, he found the Jews to have been distinguished in Egypt by the
name of captive pastors, which Josephus artfully enough has attempted
to convert into captive kings. These are the men whom sacred historians
pretend to have taught the Egyptians all their arts. These wretches,
despised of all nations, were themselves the emphatical admirers of the
wisdom of the East. Their legislator was an Egyptian priest, and learned
all that he knew from them; and you would persuade us that a set of
Arabian hordes had founded the Egyptian empire, simply because they,
like the Irish, are pleased to say that they were antedeluvians. I
pardon the Jews for their credulity; but Europeans in the 18th century
ought not to think as the inhabitants of Palestine. If we give credit to
all the reports of the origin of nations, we may give up all pretensions
to common sense.
The immortality of the soul is shown, by the learned but superstitious
Warburton, never to have been mentioned in the Pentateuch; nor the
notion of hell, or of future rewards and punishments. There is nothing
more certain, however, than that the Pharisees, long before Christ,
strenuously maintained the immortality of the soul, and in some measure
adopted the doctrine of transmigration of souls, which they had got from
the Greeks and other nations.
The Sadducees, founding themselves upon the Bible, fervently denied
a future life. The Essenians, according to Philostratus, were
Pythagoreans, both in their morals, belief, and mode of life, except
that a few of the Jewish articles of faith, such as the necessity
of circumcision, were mingled with their creed. Josephus himself
acknowledges the similarity between the Essenians and the Plisti among
the Thracians, to whom Zamolxis, the disciple of Pythagoras, taught
his doctrines: The Therapeutes, the pattern and ori--gin of Christian
morals, were reckoned amongst the Jews to be the most holy among the
Essenians. They sacrificed their passions to God; they never swore,
but made simple affirmations; they lived, as it were, in convents; they
despised bodily pain: when they entered their state of perfection, they
abandoned their property, wives, children, and all earthly concerns;
they lived upon bread and water and salt; and spent the six days of the
week in interpreting the allegorical sense of the Bible. They revered
the Sabbath with a most scrupulous exactness; then they assembled in
places set apart for religion, the men ranged on one side, and the
women on the other, separated by a division four feet high, to prevent
temptation. Then they sung praises to God, and preached; they obeyed
all the laws of their country, but never would execute any order to
hurt another person. They, like the Pythagoreans, thought themselves
possessed of the gift of prophecy; they, like the Pythagoreans, believed
in the great year, whence arose the famous millennium of the Christians.
The three sects of Jews--Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenians, lived all
in perfect harmony; the incredulous Sadducees not being considered as
heretics, but often attaining the dignity of high-priests. This suffices
to show, that the Jews borrowed from other nations those very mysteries
which the ignorance of writers has misled mankind to consider as the
special revelations of Jesus Christ.
I have insisted so much upon this circumstance, because there is not a
single article of Christian morals, nor one religious tenet, contained
in the New Testament, that was not known before Jesus Christ was born.
And the Christian religion, like that of the Jews, is a corruption of
the mythologies of the nations they brand with the name of infidels.
I return to your book. It is now needless to answer your logical
inference, that if Esdras is the compiler of the books of the
Pentateuch, they may still be true. I have already said, that we are not
to sacrifice our reason to the compilations or works of a Jewish scribe,
who borrowed evidently so much, and who pretended to divine inspiration
and conversations with the angels. When I began to read your book, I
was impressed with the idea of your candour; sorry am I to see
the malevolence with which you treat Mr. Paine, and how much you
misrepresent his just aspersions on the conduct of Moses. Your language
almost persuades me that you do not differ from the gentlemen of your
profession. Could Moses affirm, as you pretend he might, that he never
persecuted any man? What! that monster, who, although married with a
Midianite, ordered thousands of his credulous followers to be murdered,
because one of them had slept with a Midianite, whom Josephus states was
his wife! What! when his brother and coadjutor makes a golden calf to
the people, this impostor, instead of punishing him, orders 3,000 men to
be murdered, and appoints Aaron his successor! Because Korah, Da-than,
and Abiram, could not suffer to see him usurping all the power, he
murders them, although Korab was the descendant of Levi. This is Moses,
who says, like Bishop Watson, that he "was a very meek man!" Were these
continual murders necessary to instruct ignorant idolaters who followed
the example of their priests? Have not the founders of our faith been
the most cruel murderers? But all this we are told was the immediate
orders of the Lord Jehovah, a merciful God. How feeble appears the power
of this great God! He is continually repenting, and always obliged to
renew his covenants with a set of wretches, who, although they enjoyed
his special protection, always forsook him, and only fulfilled his
commands strictly when they were ordered to massacre. They might have
been the favourite people of God, but I am sure they were the disgrace
of men. You talk of idolatrous nations sunk in vice. I know of none so
barbarous as the Jews, whose legislator was obliged to fly from Egypt
for murder, a perfect assassin. The laws concerning paternal power,
which you support, are horrid. Their having been adopted by many
nations, is a proof of the general prevalence of superstition,
ignorance, and despotism. I have nothing to answer to your discourses on
tythes. The Bible is preached up, because it teaches passive obedience,
donations to the church, and such other acts of _public utility_.
LETTER III.
After what I have observed above, it will be useless to say much as to
your third letter, in which you examine minutely the passages Thomas
Paine has pointed out to prove the Pentateuch not genuine. First, As to
the objection taken from the name of Dan, I never thought it specious.
This is not the case with the very next one, which is of very great
weight. The writer, after enumerating a number of Arabian names,
concludes in these words, "These are the kings that reigned in Edom,
before there reigned any king over the children of Israel." Contrary
to my expectations, you acknowledge this to have been written after
the Jews had kings. Many of your brethren have attempted to deny it by
quibbles! but you say that this does not invalidate the authority of the
book: wonderful! if your _alma-mater_ taught you, that an evident lie
or contradiction in any book, particularly of remote antiquity, and
relating histories unsupported by impartial authors, does not create
a suspicion, which approaches to certainty, that the book is not
authentic; if you think so, I must give up arguing with you. It may be
an interpolation, you observe. How did you learn this? You will at least
leave, me the right to suppose, and you cannot deny that the presumption
is against you, an absurdity in a book is a reason for distrusting
the rest. I have probability on my side; for the Jew who forged this
passage, either from piety or ignorance, might have forged the whole
book, or so interpolated it, as to destroy its credibility. At any rate,
the detection of falsehood in a history, is not a motive to suppose it
true. It requires an excess of piety to break through all the rules of
logic and common sense. How does it happen, that the Lord Jahovah does
not provide better against such mistakes creeping into the book of
the law of his favourite people? It could seem as if he had done it
on purpose to create incredulity, and enjoy the pleasure of punishing
unbelievers, as of old, he hardened Pharaoh's heart, that he might have
a pretext to inflict calamities on him and his people.
My Lord, what credit would we give to a history of William the Conqueror
that had the following sentence, after naming different persons, _And
these were the names of the Kings of England before George the Third
came to the throne_; for what purpose could any person insert such a
passage? He must have been absolutely mad. It could only get into the
work from its being compiled during the reign of George the Third,
and arising from a forgetfulness of the writer, or ignorance of the
transcriber: in no case could it be inserted in a book, which you say
was kept in the public records, and over whose purity the whole Jewish
learned men would watch; you must either give up your argument from the
public records of this people, and no longer deem them great authority;
or, if you persist in it, I leave you to reconcile the most palpable
interpolations and forgeries with the scrupulous attention with which
you suppose the Jews preserved the word of God. But what is most curious
in this passage is, that we find it verbatim in 2 Chronicles, chap. i.
ver. 43, and you seem to glory in discovering this similarity of the
passages. "Why might not," you say at the end of your fourth letter,
"the author of the book of Chronicles have taken them, (meaning
the names of the kings of Edom, &c.), as he has taken many other
genealogies, supposing them to have been written in the book of Genesis
by Samuel?" Another acknowledgment of more interpolations in Genesis.
But, Sir, who gave you the right, you who exclaim so much against the
unsupported assertions of Thomas Paine, to suppose that the author of
Chronicles copied an interpolation from Genesis, knowing, as he must
have done, that it was interpolated by Samuel?
Would he not rather, to make the book consistent, expunge it? Could he
be so ignorant as not to see the contradiction? What is more strange,
how came Samuel to introduce such a passage? The tendency of it could
only be to weaken the authority of Genesis; but, allowing all your
groundless suppositions to be true, do you not see that they only prove
the ignorance of Samuel and of the Jewish history writers, and at once
destroy the superstructure you have in your following letters raised
upon the supposed accurate records of the Jews? The supposition of
Samuel being the author of the interpolation, is like an historian,
who, to the history of Charles the First, should add some accounts,
concluding with observing, that all this took place before George
the Second, or should even venture further, and instruct us in some
prominent features of the French revolution: yet this is the case with
the passage in question; for it is unquestionable that the Jews had
never a king till the time of Saul; that, under Moses and the Judges,
they held kings in detestation. The fact is very plain. In Chronicles,
the passage has an obvious and clear sense; for there an account of
the kings of Israel is given, and the sentence now under consideration
precedes it. Indeed, the whole chapter xxxvi. of Genesis is almost
literally the same with chapter first of Chronicles; and every unbiassed
man will conclude, that the former is copied from the latter. That
little concluding expression, before _there reigned any king over
Israel_, certainly marks its date; and there is nothing more probable,
than that when Esdras and the scribes compiled these books, they should
insert in Genesis the posterity of Esau, as far as the history of
Genesis went, and that this unlucky passage should by mistake be copied
too. I acknowledge, that an interpolation, when we can prove the period
of its insertion, does not destroy the validity of a book, if the rest
of the facts are consistent, and supported by collateral proofs; but the
Bible is an unconnected rhapsody, written by we know not whom, without
order, arrangement, or a shadow of method. Besides, it is the word of
God; and what, in a profane writer, would be a slight error, is here a
most material fault; if our future happiness depends, as you suppose, on
our believing this book, which certainly can never take place while such
reasons for scepticism remain. In proportion to the importance of an
event, so we must be careful in examining the grounds upon which it
stands, or else we must be like those whimsical men, who will require
the best evidence for the truth of a trifling report, but find no
repugnance in crediting the most marvellous events upon trust.
Mr. Paine properly concludes, that Genesis is a book of stories, fables,
traditions, or invented absurdities, or downright lies; and this I not
only affirm with him, but will prove to my readers, that it is in no
respect deserving of more credit than the fabulous and early history of
all nations. Next follows your rhapsody upon the beauty of the Bible and
the truth of it. Pardon me if I think it like a madman's reveries. Even
the men of your profession have long ago given up such a ridiculous
conceit. Whoever has read eastern literature, or the late translation
from the Shanscrit, will find that the same style with that of the Bible
pervades all eastern compositions. In all of them we find the frequent
use of allegory, and a quaint and formal manner of expression. Divest
the Bible of its Oriental garb, and put it into common language,
you will find, except the episode of Joseph, and two or three other
passages, it is absolutely illegible. I have already shown the
Pentateuch to have been a very modern work, and the Jews to have
borrowed every thing from other nations. No wonder then that the _Abram_
should resemble the _Brama_ of the Hindoos, or that a few names in the
supposed genealogies of the Jews should be like those of the Assyrians,
Medes, &c. Genesis gives a description of creation truly beautiful! We
did not spring from grasshoppers, nor the world from an egg; but the
wise Moses informs us, that we were made of clay and a little breath.
This may be sublime to you; but the philosopher is never elated by
fables so absurd. It is not true that Genesis is the oldest, nor a very
old book. Sanchoniato, the Hindoo books, those of the Egyptians and
Chinese, are of much higher antiquity than Moses. In vain has Mr.
Maurice struggled to dazzle our understandings with his incoherent
suppositions, to prove that the Hindoos borrowed their religion from the
Jews, from a set of Arabian hordes, from the slaves of the Egyptians,
from a petty nation, who, as Julian says, never produced a single work,
and whose credulity has ever been proverbial. The astronomical records
of the Chinese prove, that there were men and astronomers in that
country at the time when the wretched Jews would make us believe
the world was inundated from the windows of heaven, and no creatures
existing but Noah, his family, and the beasts in the ark. Further,
Souciet mentions an eclipse of the sun recorded in the Chinese history,
which happened 2155 years before Christ, which is but 236 years after
the Deluge; a time when, the Bible informs us, the earth was only
inhabited by the sons of Noah, while Egypt was then so peopled, that
90,000 cities could not contain the inhabitants, and China was not
less so. The Hindoo astronomical observations, as far as they have been
examined by the most learned astronomers of the age, such as Baillie,
Le Gentil, and others, carry their antiquity between four and five
thousands beyond our æra; for a proof of which, I refer you to Mr.
Playfair's excellent paper, in the second volume of the Edinburgh
Philosophical Transactions. The Hindoo religious books contain, besides,
a great many of the ideas afterwards adopted by the Jews. The long lives
of antedeluvians, in particular, are the exact copy of the Iogues of
the Indians. The Dwapaar Iogue, the latter part of which answers to the
period of Noah, was when men's lives were limited to a thousand years;
and Methuselah we know did not live so long. They have, too, their
mythological deluge, or the incarnation of Vishnu into a fish. For
an account of which I refer my readers to Volney, and to Mr. Maurice
himself. The former gentleman is a good judge of ancient literature;
he pretends that he can prove, that most of the chapters of Genesis,
supposed to contain names of persons, are mythological: the posterity of
Noah is, according to Volney, no more than a geography of the world
as known to the Jews. I have not read Mr. Volney's memoir which I
understand he has published on this subject; but, when I consider the
late period when Genesis and the other books were composed, and how
much the Jews borrowed from the Egyptians and Babylonians, how much the
deluge of Noah and his ark resemble the emblems of Osiris; in short,
when I reflect on the unintelligibility and apparent absurdity of
Genesis, on the impossibility of the Deluge, and of the not less
absurdity of the population of the world so soon after that calamity, I
confess I am much inclined to despise the whole performance. There have
been various suppositions upon the meaning of the names mentioned in
Genesis. Adam has been said to signify, in many parts of Asia, the first
day of the week; and Enoch, the seventh successor of Adam, to be the
same with Saturn, or the seventh day. Thus Assur, Elam, Lud, Madai,
Javan, and Tiras, which are said to be the founders of the Assyrians,
the Elamites, the Lydians, the Medes, the Ionians, and the Thracians,
may very probably be nothing else than the enunciation of the names of
these countries; for, between Assur and Assyria, or Lud and Lydia,
there is not a very great difference. We know that Egypt is by the Arabs
called _Masr_, which has the same consonants with the Hebrew _Misraim_,
whose plural termination implies properly the inhabitants of Egypt.
In the Bible, _Misraim_ is called the founder of that kingdom. We also
know, that Syria is called _Barr-el-sham_, or the country to the left.
The inhabitants of Thebaid are called the sons of Cush. Again, we
find several names of towns very much resembling those of the supposed
founders of these monarchies; Sur, or Tyre, is not unlike Assur. These
are conjectures; I pretend to found nothing upon them; but, at least,
they are probable. Your Genesis, on the contrary, as it is commonly
explained, contains palpable lies. It supposes a deluge, which neither
did nor could take place; it destroys the human race, when we know that
nations were then in existence. Lastly, it talks of the founders of
nations, which existed long before that period. But, even had Genesis
been written at the time of Moses, it might be worth while to
inquire into the import of his genealogies; but, being a very modern
compilation, collected by an ignorant people, partly from tradition,
partly from scattered and mutilated records, it does not deserve the
serious attention of the philosopher.