The place that is called Dan in the Bible was originally a town of the

Gentiles, called Laish; and when the tribe of Dan seized upon this

town, they changed its name to Dan, in commemoration of Dan, who was

the father of that tribe, and the great grandson of Abraham.

To establish this in proof, it is necessary to refer from Genesis to

chapter xviii. of the book called the Book of judges. It is there said

(ver. 27) that “they (the Danites) came unto Laish to a people that

were quiet and secure, and they smote them with the edge of the sword

[the Bible is filled with murder] and burned the city with fire; and

they built a city, (ver. 28,) and dwelt therein, and [ver. 29,] they

called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan, their father;

howbeit the name of the city was Laish at the first.”

This account of the Danites taking possession of Laish and changing it

to Dan, is placed in the book of Judges immediately after the death of

Samson. The death of Samson is said to have happened B.C. 1120 and that

of Moses B.C. 1451; and, therefore, according to the historical

arrangement, the place was not called Dan till 331 years after the

death of Moses.

There is a striking confusion between the historical and the

chronological arrangement in the book of judges. The last five

chapters, as they stand in the book, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, are put

chronologically before all the preceding chapters; they are made to be

28 years before the 16th chapter, 266 before the 15th, 245 before the

13th, 195 before the 9th, 90 before the 4th, and 15 years before the

1st chapter. This shews the uncertain and fabulous state of the Bible.

According to the chronological arrangement, the taking of Laish, and

giving it the name of Dan, is made to be twenty years after the death

of Joshua, who was the successor of Moses; and by the historical order,

as it stands in the book, it is made to be 306 years after the death of

Joshua, and 331 after that of Moses; but they both exclude Moses from

being the writer of Genesis, because, according to either of the

statements, no such a place as Dan existed in the time of Moses; and

therefore the writer of Genesis must have been some person who lived

after the town of Laish had the name of Dan; and who that person was

nobody knows, and consequently the book of Genesis is anonymous, and

without authority.

I come now to state another point of historical and chronological

evidence, and to show therefrom, as in the preceding case, that Moses

is not the author of the book of Genesis.

In Genesis xxxvi. there is given a genealogy of the sons and

descendants of Esau, who are called Edomites, and also a list by name

of the kings of Edom; in enumerating of which, it is said, verse 31,

“And these are the kings that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any

king over the children of Israel.”

Now, were any dateless writing to be found, in which, speaking of any

past events, the writer should say, these things happened before there

was any Congress in America, or before there was any Convention in

France, it would be evidence that such writing could not have been

written before, and could only be written after there was a Congress in

America or a Convention in France, as the case might be; and,

consequently, that it could not be written by any person who died

before there was a Congress in the one country, or a Convention in the

other.

Nothing is more frequent, as well in history as in conversation, than

to refer to a fact in the room of a date: it is most natural so to do,

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

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

once; and this manner of speaking by circumstances implies as

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

When a person in speaking upon any matter, says, it was before I was

married, or before my son was born, or before I went to America, or

before I went to France, it is absolutely understood, and intended to

be understood, that he has been married, that he has had a son, that he

has been in America, or been in France. Language does not admit of

using this mode of expression in any other sense; and whenever such an

expression is found anywhere, it can only be understood in the sense in

which only it could have been used.

The passage, therefore, that I have quoted—that “these are the kings

that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king over the children

of Israel,” could only have been written after the first king began to

reign over them; and consequently that the book of Genesis, so far from

having been written by Moses, could not have been written till the time

of Saul at least. This is the positive sense of the passage; but the

expression, any king, implies more kings than one, at least it implies

two, and this will carry it to the time of David; and, if taken in a

general sense, it carries itself through all times of the Jewish

monarchy.

Had we met with this verse in any part of the Bible that professed to

have been written after kings began to reign in Israel, it would have

been impossible not to have seen the application of it. It happens then

that this is the case; the two books of Chronicles, which give a

history of all the kings of Israel, are professedly, as well as in

fact, written after the Jewish monarchy began; and this verse that I

have quoted, and all the remaining verses of Genesis xxxvi. are, word

for word, In 1 Chronicles i., beginning at the 43d verse.

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

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

before there reigned any king over the children of Israel,” because he

was going to give, and has given, a list of the kings that had reigned

in Israel; but as it is impossible that the same expression could have

been used before that period, it is as certain as any thing can be

proved from historical language, that this part of Genesis is taken

from Chronicles, and that Genesis is not so old as Chronicles, and

probably not so old as the book of Homer, or as Æsop’s Fables;

admitting Homer to have been, as the tables of chronology state,

contemporary with David or Solomon, and Æsop to have lived about the

end of the Jewish monarchy.

Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which

only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there

remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables,

and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies. The

story of Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and his ark, drops to a level

with the Arabian Tales, without the merit of being entertaining, and

the account of men living to eight and nine hundred years becomes as

fabulous as the immortality of the giants of the Mythology.

Besides, the character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most

horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the

wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the

pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation,

committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the

history of any nation. Of which I will state only one instance:

When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and

murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi.

13): “And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the

congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was

wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands,

and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said

unto them, ‘Have ye saved all the women alive?’ behold, these caused

the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit

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

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

among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by

lying with him; but all the women-children that have not known a man by

lying with him, keep alive for Yourselves.’”

Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have

disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than

Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys,

to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters.

Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers, one child

murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in the hands of an

executioner: let any daughter put herself in the situation of those

daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a mother and a

brother, and what will be their feelings? It is in vain that we attempt

to impose upon nature, for nature will have her course, and the

religion that tortures all her social ties is a false religion.

After this detestable order, follows an account of the plunder taken,

and the manner of dividing it; and here it is that the profaneings of

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

the Lord’s tribute of the sheep was six hundred and threescore and

fifteen; and the beeves were thirty and six thousand, of which the

Lord’s tribute was threescore and twelve; and the asses were thirty

thousand, of which the Lord’s tribute was threescore and one; and the

persons were sixteen thousand, of which the Lord’s tribute was thirty

and two.” In short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as

in many other parts of the Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read,

or for decency to hear; for it appears, from the 35th verse of this

chapter, that the number of women-children consigned to debauchery by

the order of Moses was thirty-two thousand.

People in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended

word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for

granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit

themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of

the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught

to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! it is quite

another thing, it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy; for

what can be greater blasphemy, than to ascribe the wickedness of man to

the orders of the Almighty!

But to return to my subject, that of showing that Moses is not the

author of the books ascribed to him, and that the Bible is spurious.

The two instances I have already given would be sufficient, without any

additional evidence, to invalidate the authenticity of any book that

pretended to be four or five hundred years more ancient than the

matters it speaks of, refers to, them as facts; for in the case of

pursuing them unto Dan, and of the kings that reigned over the children

of Israel; not even the flimsy pretence of prophecy can be pleaded. The

expressions are in the preter tense, and it would be downright idiotism

to say that a man could prophecy in the preter tense.

But there are many other passages scattered throughout those books that

unite in the same point of evidence. It is said in Exodus, (another of

the books ascribed to Moses,) xvi. 35: “And the children of Israel did

eat manna until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat manna until

they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan.”

Whether the children of Israel ate manna or not, or what manna was, or

whether it was anything more than a kind of fungus or small mushroom,

or other vegetable substance common to that part of the country, makes

no part of my argument; all that I mean to show is, that it is not

Moses that could write this account, because the account extends itself

beyond the life time of Moses. Moses, according to the Bible, (but it

is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which

part to believe, or whether any) died in the wilderness, and never came

upon the borders of ‘the land of Canaan; and consequently, it could not

be he that said what the children of Israel did, or what they ate when

they came there. This account of eating manna, which they tell us was

written by Moses, extends itself to the time of Joshua, the successor

of Moses, as appears by the account given in the book of Joshua, after

the children of Israel had passed the river Jordan, and came into the

borders of the land of Canaan. Joshua, v. 12: “And the manna ceased on

the morrow, after they had eaten of the old corn of the land; neither

had the children of Israel manna any more, but they did eat of the

fruit of the land of Canaan that year.”

But a more remarkable instance than this occurs in Deuteronomy; which,

while it shows that Moses could not be the writer of that book, shows

also the fabulous notions that prevailed at that time about giants’ In

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

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

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

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

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

the cubit of a man.” A cubit is 1 foot 9 888/1000 inches; the length

therefore of the bed was 16 feet 4 inches, and the breadth 7 feet 4

inches: thus much for this giant’s bed. Now for the historical part,

which, though the evidence is not so direct and positive as in the

former cases, is nevertheless very presumable and corroborating

evidence, and is better than the best evidence on the contrary side.

The writer, by way of proving the existence of this giant, refers to

his bed, as an ancient relick, and says, is it not in Rabbath (or

Rabbah) of the children of Ammon? meaning that it is; for such is

frequently the bible method of affirming a thing. But it could not be

Moses that said this, because Moses could know nothing about Rabbah,

nor of what was in it. Rabbah was not a city belonging to this giant

king, nor was it one of the cities that Moses took. The knowledge

therefore that this bed was at Rabbah, and of the particulars of its

dimensions, must be referred to the time when Rabbah was taken, and

this was not till four hundred years after the death of Moses; for

which, see 2 Sam. xii. 26: “And Joab [David’s general] fought against

Rabbah of the children of Ammon, and took the royal city,” etc.

As I am not undertaking to point out all the contradictions in time,

place, and circumstance that abound in the books ascribed to Moses, and

which prove to demonstration that those books could not be written by

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

to shew that Joshua is not the author of that book, and that it is

anonymous and without authority. The evidence I shall produce is

contained in the book itself: I will not go out of the Bible for proof

against the supposed authenticity of the Bible. False testimony is

always good against itself.

Joshua, according to Joshua i., was the immediate successor of Moses;

he was, moreover, a military man, which Moses was not; and he continued

as chief of the people of Israel twenty-five years; that is, from the

time that Moses died, which, according to the Bible chronology, was

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

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

written by Joshua, references to facts done after the death of Joshua,

it is evidence that Joshua could not be the author; and also that the

book could not have been written till after the time of the latest fact

which it records. As to the character of the book, it is horrid; it is

a military history of rapine and murder, as savage and brutal as those

recorded of his predecessor in villainy and hypocrisy, Moses; and the

blasphemy consists, as in the former books, in ascribing those deeds to

the orders of the Almighty.

In the first place, the book of Joshua, as is the case in the preceding

books, is written in the third person; it is the historian of Joshua

that speaks, for it would have been absurd and vainglorious that Joshua

should say of himself, as is said of him in the last verse of the sixth

chapter, that “his fame was noised throughout all the country.”—I now

come more immediately to the proof.

In Joshua xxiv. 31, it is said “And Israel served the Lord all the days

of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that over-lived Joshua.” Now,

in the name of common sense, can it be Joshua that relates what people

had done after he was dead? This account must not only have been

written by some historian that lived after Joshua, but that lived also

after the elders that out-lived Joshua.

There are several passages of a general meaning with respect to time,

scattered throughout the book of Joshua, that carries the time in which

the book was written to a distance from the time of Joshua, but without

marking by exclusion any particular time, as in the passage above

quoted. In that passage, the time that intervened between the death of

Joshua and the death of the elders is excluded descriptively and

absolutely, and the evidence substantiates that the book could not have

been written till after the death of the last.

But though the passages to which I allude, and which I am going to

quote, do not designate any particular time by exclusion, they imply a

time far more distant from the days of Joshua than is contained between

the death of Joshua and the death of the elders. Such is the passage,

x. 14, where, after giving an account that the sun stood still upon

Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, at the command of Joshua,

(a tale only fit to amuse children) [NOTE: This tale of the sun

standing still upon Motint Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of

Ajalon, is one of those fables that detects itself. Such a circumstance

could not have happened without being known all over the world. One

half would have wondered why the sun did not rise, and the other why it

did not set; and the tradition of it would be universal; whereas there

is not a nation in the world that knows anything about it. But why must

the moon stand still? What occasion could there be for moonlight in the

daytime, and that too whilst the sun shined? As a poetical figure, the

whole is well enough; it is akin to that in the song of Deborah and

Barak, The stars in their courses fought against Sisera; but it is

inferior to the figurative declaration of Mahomet to the persons who

came to expostulate with him on his goings on, Wert thou, said he, to

come to me with the sun in thy right hand and the moon in thy left, it

should not alter my career. For Joshua to have exceeded Mahomet, he

should have put the sun and moon, one in each pocket, and carried them

as Guy Faux carried his dark lanthorn, and taken them out to shine as

he might happen to want them. The sublime and the ridiculous are often

so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One

step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the

ridiculous makes the sublime again; the account, however, abstracted

from the poetical fancy, shews the ignorance of Joshua, for he should

have commanded the earth to have stood still.—Author.] the passage

says: “And there was no day like that, before it, nor after it, that

the Lord hearkened to the voice of a man.”

The time implied by the expression after it, that is, after that day,

being put in comparison with all the time that passed before it, must,

in order to give any expressive signification to the passage, mean a

great length of time:—for example, it would have been ridiculous to

have said so the next day, or the next week, or the next month, or the

next year; to give therefore meaning to the passage, comparative with

the wonder it relates, and the prior time it alludes to, it must mean

centuries of years; less however than one would be trifling, and less

than two would be barely admissible.

A distant, but general time is also expressed in chapter viii.; where,

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

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

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

whom Joshua had hanged, and buried at the entering of the gate, it is

said, “And he raised thereon a great heap of stones, which remaineth

unto this day,” that is, unto the day or time in which the writer of

the book of Joshua lived. And again, in chapter x. where, after

speaking of the five kings whom Joshua had hanged on five trees, and

then thrown in a cave, it is said, “And he laid great stones on the

cave’s mouth, which remain unto this very day.”

In enumerating the several exploits of Joshua, and of the tribes, and

of the places which they conquered or attempted, it is said, xv. 63,

“As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of

Judah could not drive them out; but the Jebusites dwell with the

children of Judah AT JERUSALEM unto this day.” The question upon this

passage is, At what time did the Jebusites and the children of Judah

dwell together at Jerusalem? As this matter occurs again in judges i. I

shall reserve my observations till I come to that part.

Having thus shewn from the book of Joshua itself, without any auxiliary

evidence whatever, that Joshua is not the author of that book, and that

it is anonymous, and consequently without authority, I proceed, as

before-mentioned, to the book of Judges.

The book of Judges is anonymous on the face of it; and, therefore, even

the pretence is wanting to call it the word of God; it has not so much

as a nominal voucher; it is altogether fatherless.

This book begins with the same expression as the book of Joshua. That

of Joshua begins, chap i. 1, Now after the death of Moses, etc., and

this of the Judges begins, Now after the death of Joshua, etc. This,

and the similarity of stile between the two books, indicate that they

are the work of the same author; but who he was, is altogether unknown;

the only point that the book proves is that the author lived long after

the time of Joshua; for though it begins as if it followed immediately

after his death, the second chapter is an epitome or abstract of the

whole book, which, according to the Bible chronology, extends its

history through a space of 306 years; that is, from the death of

Joshua, B.C. 1426 to the death of Samson, B.C. 1120, and only 25 years

before Saul went to seek his father’s asses, and was made king. But

there is good reason to believe, that it was not written till the time

of David, at least, and that the book of Joshua was not written before

the same time.

In Judges i., the writer, after announcing the death of Joshua,

proceeds to tell what happened between the children of Judah and the

native inhabitants of the land of Canaan. In this statement the writer,

having abruptly mentioned Jerusalem in the 7th verse, says immediately

after, in the 8th verse, by way of explanation, “Now the children of

Judah had fought against Jerusalem, and taken it;” consequently this

book could not have been written before Jerusalem had been taken. The

reader will recollect the quotation I have just before made from Joshua

xv. 63, where it said that the Jebusites dwell with the children of

Judah at Jerusalem at this day; meaning the time when the book of

Joshua was written.

The evidence I have already produced to prove that the books I have

hitherto treated of were not written by the persons to whom they are

ascribed, nor till many years after their death, if such persons ever

lived, is already so abundant, that I can afford to admit this passage

with less weight than I am entitled to draw from it. For the case is,

that so far as the Bible can be credited as an history, the city of

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

the book of Joshua, and of Judges, were not written till after the

commencement of the reign of David, which was 370 years after the death

of Joshua.

The name of the city that was afterward called Jerusalem was originally

Jebus, or Jebusi, and was the capital of the Jebusites. The account of

David’s taking this city is given in 2 Samuel, v. 4, etc.; also in 1

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

it was ever taken before, nor any account that favours such an opinion.

It is not said, either in Samuel or in Chronicles, that they “utterly

destroyed men, women and children, that they left not a soul to

breathe,” as is said of their other conquests; and the silence here

observed implies that it was taken by capitulation; and that the

Jebusites, the native inhabitants, continued to live in the place after

it was taken. The account therefore, given in Joshua, that “the

Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah” at Jerusalem at this day,

corresponds to no other time than after taking the city by David.

Having now shown that every book in the Bible, from Genesis to Judges,

is without authenticity, I come to the book of Ruth, an idle, bungling

story, foolishly told, nobody knows by whom, about a strolling

country-girl creeping slily to bed to her cousin Boaz. [The text of

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

convey.—Editor.] Pretty stuff indeed to be called the word of God. It

is, however, one of the best books in the Bible, for it is free from

murder and rapine.

I come next to the two books of Samuel, and to shew that those books

were not written by Samuel, nor till a great length of time after the

death of Samuel; and that they are, like all the former books,

anonymous, and without authority.

To be convinced that these books have been written much later than the

time of Samuel, and consequently not by him, it is only necessary to

read the account which the writer gives of Saul going to seek his

father’s asses, and of his interview with Samuel, of whom Saul went to

enquire about those lost asses, as foolish people now-a-days go to a

conjuror to enquire after lost things.

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

not tell it as a thing that had just then happened, but as an ancient

story in the time this writer lived; for he tells it in the language or

terms used at the time that Samuel lived, which obliges the writer to

explain the story in the terms or language used in the time the writer

lived.

Samuel, in the account given of him in the first of those books, chap.

ix. 13 called the seer; and it is by this term that Saul enquires after

him, ver. 11, “And as they [Saul and his servant] went up the hill to

the city, they found young maidens going out to draw water; and they

said unto them, Is the seer here?” Saul then went according to the

direction of these maidens, and met Samuel without knowing him, and

said unto him, ver. 18, “Tell me, I pray thee, where the seer’s house

is? and Samuel answered Saul, and said, I am the seer.”

As the writer of the book of Samuel relates these questions and

answers, in the language or manner of speaking used in the time they

are said to have been spoken, and as that manner of speaking was out of

use when this author wrote, he found it necessary, in order to make the

story understood, to explain the terms in which these questions and

answers are spoken; and he does this in the 9th verse, where he says,

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

spake, Come let us go to the seer; for he that is now called a prophet,

was before-time called a seer.” This proves, as I have before said,

that this story of Saul, Samuel, and the asses, was an ancient story at

the time the book of Samuel was written, and consequently that Samuel

did not write it, and that the book is without authenticity.

But if we go further into those books the evidence is still more

positive that Samuel is not the writer of them; for they relate things

that did not happen till several years after the death of Samuel.

Samuel died before Saul; for i Samuel, xxviii. tells, that Saul and the

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

matters contained in those books is extended through the remaining part

of Saul’s life, and to the latter end of the life of David, who

succeeded Saul. The account of the death and burial of Samuel (a thing

which he could not write himself) is related in i Samuel xxv.; and the

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

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

the death of Saul, which was not till four years after the death of

Samuel.

The second book of Samuel begins with an account of things that did not

happen till four years after Samuel was dead; for it begins with the

reign of David, who succeeded Saul, and it goes on to the end of

David’s reign, which was forty-three years after the death of Samuel;

and, therefore, the books are in themselves positive evidence that they

were not written by Samuel.

I have now gone through all the books in the first part of the Bible,

to which the names of persons are affixed, as being the authors of

those books, and which the church, styling itself the Christian church,

have imposed upon the world as the writings of Moses, Joshua and

Samuel; and I have detected and proved the falsehood of this

imposition.—And now ye priests, of every description, who have preached

and written against the former part of the ‘Age of Reason,’ what have

ye to say? Will ye with all this mass of evidence against you, and

staring you in the face, still have the assurance to march into your

pulpits, and continue to impose these books on your congregations, as

the works of inspired penmen and the word of God? when it is as evident

as demonstration can make truth appear, that the persons who ye say are

the authors, are not the authors, and that ye know not who the authors

are. What shadow of pretence have ye now to produce for continuing the

blasphemous fraud? What have ye still to offer against the pure and

moral religion of deism, in support of your system of falsehood,

idolatry, and pretended revelation? Had the cruel and murdering orders,

with which the Bible is filled, and the numberless torturing executions

of men, women, and children, in consequence of those orders, been

ascribed to some friend, whose memory you revered, you would have

glowed with satisfaction at detecting the falsehood of the charge, and

gloried in defending his injured fame. It is because ye are sunk in the

cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honour of your

Creator, that ye listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them

with callous indifference. The evidence I have produced, and shall

still produce in the course of this work, to prove that the Bible is

without authority, will, whilst it wounds the stubbornness of a priest,

relieve and tranquillize the minds of millions: it will free them from

all those hard thoughts of the Almighty which priestcraft and the Bible

had infused into their minds, and which stood in everlasting opposition

to all their ideas of his moral justice and benevolence.

I come now to the two books of Kings, and the two books of

Chronicles.—Those books are altogether historical, and are chiefly

confined to the lives and actions of the Jewish kings, who in general

were a parcel of rascals: but these are matters with which we have no

more concern than we have with the Roman emperors, or Homer’s account

of the Trojan war. Besides which, as those books are anonymous, and as

we know nothing of the writer, or of his character, it is impossible

for us to know what degree of credit to give to the matters related

therein. Like all other ancient histories, they appear to be a jumble

of fable and of fact, and of probable and of improbable things, but

which distance of time and place, and change of circumstances in the

world, have rendered obsolete and uninteresting.

The chief use I shall make of those books will be that of comparing

them with each other, and with other parts of the Bible, to show the

confusion, contradiction, and cruelty in this pretended word of God.

The first book of Kings begins with the reign of Solomon, which,

according to the Bible chronology, was B.C. 1015; and the second book

ends B.C. 588, being a little after the reign of Zedekiah, whom

Nebuchadnezzar, after taking Jerusalem and conquering the Jews, carried

captive to Babylon. The two books include a space of 427 years.

The two books of Chronicles are an history of the same times, and in

general of the same persons, by another author; for it would be absurd

to suppose that the same author wrote the history twice over. The first

book of Chronicles (after giving the genealogy from Adam to Saul, which

takes up the first nine chapters) begins with the reign of David; and

the last book ends, as in the last book of Kings, soon, after the reign

of Zedekiah, about B.C. 588. The last two verses of the last chapter

bring the history 52 years more forward, that is, to 536. But these

verses do not belong to the book, as I shall show when I come to speak

of the book of Ezra.

The two books of Kings, besides the history of Saul, David, and

Solomon, who reigned over all Israel, contain an abstract of the lives

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

of nineteen, who are stiled kings of Israel; for the Jewish nation,

immediately on the death of Solomon, split into two parties, who chose

separate kings, and who carried on most rancorous wars against each

other.

These two books are little more than a history of assassinations,

treachery, and wars. The cruelties that the Jews had accustomed

themselves to practise on the Canaanites, whose country they had

savagely invaded, under a pretended gift from God, they afterwards

practised as furiously on each other. Scarcely half their kings died a

natural death, and in some instances whole families were destroyed to

secure possession to the successor, who, after a few years, and

sometimes only a few months, or less, shared the same fate. In 2 Kings

x., an account is given of two baskets full of children’s heads,

seventy in number, being exposed at the entrance of the city; they were

the children of Ahab, and were murdered by the orders of Jehu, whom

Elisha, the pretended man of God, had anointed to be king over Israel,

on purpose to commit this bloody deed, and assassinate his predecessor.

And in the account of the reign of Menahem, one of the kings of Israel

who had murdered Shallum, who had reigned but one month, it is said, 2

Kings xv. 16, that Menahem smote the city of Tiphsah, because they

opened not the city to him, and all the women therein that were with

child he ripped up.

Could we permit ourselves to suppose that the Almighty would

distinguish any nation of people by the name of his chosen people, we

must suppose that people to have been an example to all the rest of the

world of the purest piety and humanity, and not such a nation of

ruffians and cut-throats as the ancient Jews were,—a people who,

corrupted by and copying after such monsters and imposters as Moses and

Aaron, Joshua, Samuel, and David, had distinguished themselves above

all others on the face of the known earth for barbarity and wickedness.

If we will not stubbornly shut our eyes and steel our hearts it is

impossible not to see, in spite of all that long-established

superstition imposes upon the mind, that the flattering appellation of

his chosen people is no other than a LIE which the priests and leaders

of the Jews had invented to cover the baseness of their own characters;

and which Christian priests sometimes as corrupt, and often as cruel,

have professed to believe.

The two books of Chronicles are a repetition of the same crimes; but

the history is broken in several places, by the author leaving out the

reign of some of their kings; and in this, as well as in that of Kings,

there is such a frequent transition from kings of Judah to kings of

Israel, and from kings of Israel to kings of Judah, that the narrative

is obscure in the reading. In the same book the history sometimes

contradicts itself: for example, in 2 Kings, i. 17, we are told, but in

rather ambiguous terms, that after the death of Ahaziah, king of

Israel, Jehoram, or Joram, (who was of the house of Ahab), reigned in

his stead in the second Year of Jehoram, or Joram, son of Jehoshaphat,

king of Judah; and in viii. 16, of the same book, it is said, “And in

the fifth year of Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Jehoshaphat

being then king of Judah, Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat king of

judah, began to reign.” That is, one chapter says Joram of Judah began

to reign in the second year of Joram of Israel; and the other chapter

says, that Joram of Israel began to reign in the fifth year of Joram of

Judah.

Several of the most extraordinary matters related in one history, as

having happened during the reign of such or such of their kings, are

not to be found in the other, in relating the reign of the same king:

for example, the two first rival kings, after the death of Solomon,

were Rehoboam and Jeroboam; and in i Kings xii. and xiii. an account is

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

who is there called a man of God, cried out against the altar (xiii.

2): “O altar, altar! thus saith the Lord: Behold, a child shall be born

unto the house of David, Josiah by name, and upon thee shall he offer

the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men’s

bones shall be burned upon thee.” Verse 4: “And it came to pass, when

king Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God, which had cried

against the altar in Bethel, that he put forth his hand from the altar,

saying, Lay hold on him; and his hand which he put out against him

dried up so that he could not pull it again to him.”

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

spoken of as a judgement,) happening to the chief of one of the

parties, and that at the first moment of the separation of the

Israelites into two nations, would, if it,. had been true, have been

recorded in both histories. But though men, in later times, have

believed all that the prophets have said unto them, it does appear that

those prophets, or historians, disbelieved each other: they knew each

other too well.

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

several chapters, and concludes with telling, 2 Kings ii. 11, “And it

came to pass, as they (Elijah and Elisha) still went on, and talked,

that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire, and

parted them both asunder, and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into

heaven.” Hum! this the author of Chronicles, miraculous as the story

is, makes no mention of, though he mentions Elijah by name; neither

does he say anything of the story related in the second chapter of the

same book of Kings, of a parcel of children calling Elisha bald head;

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

and cursed them in the name of the Lord; and there came forth two

she-bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.” He

also passes over in silence the story told, 2 Kings xiii., that when

they were burying a man in the sepulchre where Elisha had been buried,

it happened that the dead man, as they were letting him down, (ver. 21)

“touched the bones of Elisha, and he (the dead man) revived, and stood

up on his feet.” The story does not tell us whether they buried the

man, notwithstanding he revived and stood upon his feet, or drew him up

again. Upon all these stories the writer of the Chronicles is as silent

as any writer of the present day, who did not chose to be accused of

lying, or at least of romancing, would be about stories of the same

kind.

But, however these two historians may differ from each other with

respect to the tales related by either, they are silent alike with

respect to those men styled prophets whose writings fill up the latter

part of the Bible. Isaiah, who lived in the time of Hezekiab, is

mentioned in Kings, and again in Chronicles, when these histories are

speaking of that reign; but except in one or two instances at most, and

those very slightly, none of the rest are so much as spoken of, or even

their existence hinted at; though, according to the Bible chronology,

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

them long before. If those prophets, as they are called, were men of

such importance in their day, as the compilers of the Bible, and

priests and commentators have since represented them to be, how can it

be accounted for that not one of those histories should say anything

about them?

The history in the books of Kings and of Chronicles is brought forward,

as I have already said, to the year B.C. 588; it will, therefore, be

proper to examine which of these prophets lived before that period.

Here follows a table of all the prophets, with the times in which they

lived before Christ, according to the chronology affixed to the first

chapter of each of the books of the prophets; and also of the number of

years they lived before the books of Kings and Chronicles were written:

TABLE of the Prophets, with the time in which they lived before Christ,

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

Years Years before

NAMES. before Kings and Observations.

Christ. Chronicles.

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

(mentioned only in

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

of Chronicles.

Ezekiel.............. 595 7 not mentioned.

Daniel............... 607 19 not mentioned.

Hosea................ 785 97 not mentioned.

Joel................. 800 212 not mentioned.

Amos................. 789 199 not mentioned.

Obadiah.............. 789 199 not mentioned.

Jonah................ 862 274 see the note.

Micah................ 750 162 not mentioned.

Nahum................ 713 125 not mentioned.

Habakkuk............. 620 38 not mentioned.

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

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

xiv. 25, the name of Jonah is mentioned on account of the restoration

of a tract of land by Jeroboam; but nothing further is said of him, nor

is any allusion made to the book of Jonah, nor to his expedition to

Nineveh, nor to his encounter with the whale.—Author.]

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

not very honourable for the Bible prophets; and I leave to priests and

commentators, who are very learned in little things, to settle the

point of etiquette between the two; and to assign a reason, why the

authors of Kings and of Chronicles have treated those prophets, whom,

in the former part of the ‘Age of Reason,’ I have considered as poets,

with as much degrading silence as any historian of the present day

would treat Peter Pindar.

I have one more observation to make on the book of Chronicles; after

which I shall pass on to review the remaining books of the Bible.

In my observations on the book of Genesis, I have quoted a passage from

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

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

is verbatim the same as in 1 Chronicles i. 43, where it stands

consistently with the order of history, which in Genesis it does not,

that the verse in Genesis, and a great part of the 36th chapter, have

been taken from Chronicles; and that the book of Genesis, though it is

placed first in the Bible, and ascribed to Moses, has been manufactured

by some unknown person, after the book of Chronicles was written, which

was not until at least eight hundred and sixty years after the time of

Moses.

The evidence I proceed by to substantiate this, is regular, and has in

it but two stages. First, as I have already stated, that the passage in

Genesis refers itself for time to Chronicles; secondly, that the book

of Chronicles, to which this passage refers itself, was not begun to be

written until at least eight hundred and sixty years after the time of

Moses. To prove this, we have only to look into 1 Chronicles iii. 15,

where the writer, in giving the genealogy of the descendants of David,

mentions Zedekiah; and it was in the time of Zedekiah that

Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, B.C. 588, and consequently more

than 860 years after Moses. Those who have superstitiously boasted of

the antiquity of the Bible, and particularly of the books ascribed to

Moses, have done it without examination, and without any other

authority than that of one credulous man telling it to another: for, so

far as historical and chronological evidence applies, the very first

book in the Bible is not so ancient as the book of Homer, by more than

three hundred years, and is about the same age with Æsop’s Fables.

I am not contending for the morality of Homer; on the contrary, I think

it a book of false glory, and tending to inspire immoral and

mischievous notions of honour; and with respect to Æsop, though the

moral is in general just, the fable is often cruel; and the cruelty of

the fable does more injury to the heart, especially in a child, than

the moral does good to the judgment.

Having now dismissed Kings and Chronicles, I come to the next in

course, the book of Ezra.

As one proof, among others I shall produce to shew the disorder in

which this pretended word of God, the Bible, has been put together, and

the uncertainty of who the authors were, we have only to look at the

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

what kind of cutting and shuffling has it been that the first three

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

the last two in 2 Chronicles should be the first three in Ezra? Either

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

the authors.

Last Two Verses of 2 Chronicles.

Ver. 22. Now in the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia, that the word

of the Lord, spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be accomplished,

the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a

proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing,

saying.

earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to

build him an house in Jerusalem which is in Judah. Who is there among

you of all his people? the Lord his God be with him, and let him go up.

***

First Three Verses of Ezra.

Ver. 1. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word

of the Lord, by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be fulfilled, the Lord

stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a

proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing,

saying.

2. Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven hath given

me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him

an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

3. Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and

let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of

the Lord God of Israel (he is the God) which is in Jerusalem.

*** The last verse in Chronicles is broken abruptly, and ends in the

middle of the phrase with the word ‘up’ without signifying to what

place. This abrupt break, and the appearance of the same verses in

different books, show as I have already said, the disorder and

ignorance in which the Bible has been put together, and that the

compilers of it had no authority for what they were doing, nor we any

authority for believing what they have done. [NOTE I observed, as I

passed along, several broken and senseless passages in the Bible,

without thinking them of consequence enough to be introduced in the

body of the work; such as that, 1 Samuel xiii. 1, where it is said,

“Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel,

Saul chose him three thousand men,” &c. The first part of the verse,

that Saul reigned one year has no sense, since it does not tell us what

Saul did, nor say any thing of what happened at the end of that one

year; and it is, besides, mere absurdity to say he reigned one year,

when the very next phrase says he had reigned two for if he had reigned

two, it was impossible not to have reigned one.

Another instance occurs in Joshua v. where the writer tells us a story

of an angel (for such the table of contents at the head of the chapter

calls him) appearing unto Joshua; and the story ends abruptly, and

without any conclusion. The story is as follows:—Ver. 13. “And it came

to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and

looked, and behold there stood a man over against him with his sword

drawn in his hand; and Joshua went unto him and said unto him, Art thou

for us, or for our adversaries?” Verse 14, “And he said, Nay; but as

captain of the host of the Lord am I now come. And Joshua fell on his

face to the earth, and did worship and said unto him, What saith my

Lord unto his servant?” Verse 15, “And the captain of the Lord’s host

said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place

whereon thou standeth is holy. And Joshua did so.”—And what then?

nothing: for here the story ends, and the chapter too.

Either this story is broken off in the middle, or it is a story told by

some Jewish humourist in ridicule of Joshua’s pretended mission from

God, and the compilers of the Bible, not perceiving the design of the

story, have told it as a serious matter. As a story of humour and

ridicule it has a great deal of point; for it pompously introduces an

angel in the figure of a man, with a drawn sword in his hand, before

whom Joshua falls on his face to the earth, and worships (which is

contrary to their second commandment;) and then, this most important

embassy from heaven ends in telling Joshua to pull off his shoe. It

might as well have told him to pull up his breeches.

It is certain, however, that the Jews did not credit every thing their

leaders told them, as appears from the cavalier manner in which they

speak of Moses, when he was gone into the mount. As for this Moses, say

they, we wot not what is become of him. Exod. xxxii. 1.—Author.

The only thing that has any appearance of certainty in the book of Ezra

is the time in which it was written, which was immediately after the

return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, about B.C. 536. Ezra

(who, according to the Jewish commentators, is the same person as is

called Esdras in the Apocrypha) was one of the persons who returned,

and who, it is probable, wrote the account of that affair. Nebemiah,

whose book follows next to Ezra, was another of the returned persons;

and who, it is also probable, wrote the account of the same affair, in

the book that bears his name. But those accounts are nothing to us, nor

to any other person, unless it be to the Jews, as a part of the history

of their nation; and there is just as much of the word of God in those

books as there is in any of the histories of France, or Rapin’s history

of England, or the history of any other country.

But even in matters of historical record, neither of those writers are

to be depended upon. In Ezra ii., the writer gives a list of the tribes

and families, and of the precise number of souls of each, that returned

from Babylon to Jerusalem; and this enrolment of the persons so

returned appears to have been one of the principal objects for writing

the book; but in this there is an error that destroys the intention of

the undertaking.

The writer begins his enrolment in the following manner (ii. 3): “The

children of Parosh, two thousand one hundred seventy and four.” Ver. 4,

“The children of Shephatiah, three hundred seventy and two.” And in

this manner he proceeds through all the families; and in the 64th

verse, he makes a total, and says, the whole congregation together was

forty and two thousand three hundred and threescore.

But whoever will take the trouble of casting up the several

particulars, will find that the total is but 29,818; so that the error

is 12,542. What certainty then can there be in the Bible for any thing?

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

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

from the Bible.]

Nehemiah, in like manner, gives a list of the returned families, and of

the number of each family. He begins as in Ezra, by saying (vii. 8):

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

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

particulars from that of Ezra.) In ver. 66, Nehemiah makes a total, and

says, as Ezra had said, “The whole congregation together was forty and

two thousand three hundred and threescore.” But the particulars of this

list make a total but of 31,089, so that the error here is 11,271.

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

thing where truth and exactness is necessary.

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

it any honour to offer herself as a kept mistress to Ahasuerus, or as a

rival to Queen Vashti, who had refused to come to a drunken king in the

midst of a drunken company, to be made a show of, (for the account

says, they had been drinking seven days, and were merry,) let Esther

and Mordecai look to that, it is no business of ours, at least it is

none of mine; besides which, the story has a great deal the appearance

of being fabulous, and is also anonymous. I pass on to the book of Job.

The book of Job differs in character from all the books we have

hitherto passed over. Treachery and murder make no part of this book;

it is the meditations of a mind strongly impressed with the

vicissitudes of human life, and by turns sinking under, and struggling

against the pressure. It is a highly wrought composition, between

willing submission and involuntary discontent; and shows man, as he

sometimes is, more disposed to be resigned than he is capable of being.

Patience has but a small share in the character of the person of whom

the book treats; on the contrary, his grief is often impetuous; but he

still endeavours to keep a guard upon it, and seems determined, in the

midst of accumulating ills, to impose upon himself the hard duty of

contentment.

I have spoken in a respectful manner of the book of Job in the former

part of the ‘Age of Reason,’ but without knowing at that time what I

have learned since; which is, that from all the evidence that can be

collected, the book of Job does not belong to the Bible.

I have seen the opinion of two Hebrew commentators, Abenezra and

Spinoza, upon this subject; they both say that the book of Job carries

no internal evidence of being an Hebrew book; that the genius of the

composition, and the drama of the piece, are not Hebrew; that it has

been translated from another language into Hebrew, and that the author

of the book was a Gentile; that the character represented under the

name of Satan (which is the first and only time this name is mentioned

in the Bible) [In a later work Paine notes that in “the Bible” (by

which he always means the Old Testament alone) the word Satan occurs

also in 1 Chron. xxi. 1, and remarks that the action there ascribed to

Satan is in 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, attributed to Jehovah (“Essay on Dreams”).

In these places, however, and in Ps. cix. 6, Satan means “adversary,”

and is so translated (A.S. version) in 2 Sam. xix. 22, and 1 Kings v.

4, xi. 25. As a proper name, with the article, Satan appears in the Old

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

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

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

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

in his paragraph.—Editor.] does not correspond to any Hebrew idea; and

that the two convocations which the Deity is supposed to have made of

those whom the poem calls sons of God, and the familiarity which this

supposed Satan is stated to have with the Deity, are in the same case.

It may also be observed, that the book shows itself to be the

production of a mind cultivated in science, which the Jews, so far from

being famous for, were very ignorant of. The allusions to objects of

natural philosophy are frequent and strong, and are of a different cast

to any thing in the books known to be Hebrew. The astronomical names,

Pleiades, Orion, and Arcturus, are Greek and not Hebrew names, and it

does not appear from any thing that is to be found in the Bible that

the Jews knew any thing of astronomy, or that they studied it, they had

no translation of those names into their own language, but adopted the

names as they found them in the poem. [Paine’s Jewish critic, David

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

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

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

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

That the Jews did translate the literary productions of the Gentile

nations into the Hebrew language, and mix them with their own, is not a

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

said, The word of king Lemuel, the prophecy which his mother taught

him. This verse stands as a preface to the proverbs that follow, and

which are not the proverbs of Solomon, but of Lemuel; and this Lemuel

was not one of the kings of Israel, nor of Judah, but of some other

country, and consequently a Gentile. The Jews however have adopted his

proverbs; and as they cannot give any account who the author of the

book of Job was, nor how they came by the book, and as it differs in

character from the Hebrew writings, and stands totally unconnected with

every other book and chapter in the Bible before it and after it, it

has all the circumstantial evidence of being originally a book of the

Gentiles. [The prayer known by the name of Agur’s Prayer, in Proverbs

xxx.,—immediately preceding the proverbs of Lemuel,—and which is the

only sensible, well-conceived, and well-expressed prayer in the Bible,

has much the appearance of being a prayer taken from the Gentiles. The

name of Agur occurs on no other occasion than this; and he is

introduced, together with the prayer ascribed to him, in the same

manner, and nearly in the same words, that Lemuel and his proverbs are

introduced in the chapter that follows. The first verse says, “The

words of Agur, the son of Jakeh, even the prophecy:” here the word

prophecy is used with the same application it has in the following

chapter of Lemuel, unconnected with anything of prediction. The prayer

of Agur is in the 8th and 9th verses, “Remove far from me vanity and

lies; give me neither riches nor poverty, but feed me with food

convenient for me; lest I be full and deny thee and say, Who is the

Lord? or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God in

vain.” This has not any of the marks of being a Jewish prayer, for the

Jews never prayed but when they were in trouble, and never for anything

but victory, vengeance, or riches.—Author. (Prov. xxx. 1, and xxxi. 1)

the word “prophecy” in these verses is translated “oracle” or “burden”

(marg.) in the revised version.—The prayer of Agur was quoted by Paine

in his plea for the officers of Excise, 1772.—Editor.]

The Bible-makers, and those regulators of time, the Bible

chronologists, appear to have been at a loss where to place and how to

dispose of the book of Job; for it contains no one historical

circumstance, nor allusion to any, that might serve to determine its

place in the Bible. But it would not have answered the purpose of these

men to have informed the world of their ignorance; and, therefore, they

have affixed it to the aera of B.C. 1520, which is during the time the

Israelites were in Egypt, and for which they have just as much

authority and no more than I should have for saying it was a thousand

years before that period. The probability however is, that it is older

than any book in the Bible; and it is the only one that can be read

without indignation or disgust.

We know nothing of what the ancient Gentile world (as it is called) was

before the time of the Jews, whose practice has been to calumniate and

blacken the character of all other nations; and it is from the Jewish

accounts that we have learned to call them heathens. But, as far as we

know to the contrary, they were a just and moral people, and not

addicted, like the Jews, to cruelty and revenge, but of whose

profession of faith we are unacquainted. It appears to have been their

custom to personify both virtue and vice by statues and images, as is

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

follow from this that they worshipped them any more than we do.—I pass

on to the book of,

Psalms, of which it is not necessary to make much observation. Some of

them are moral, and others are very revengeful; and the greater part

relates to certain local circumstances of the Jewish nation at the time

they were written, with which we have nothing to do. It is, however, an

error or an imposition to call them the Psalms of David; they are a

collection, as song-books are now-a-days, from different song-writers,

who lived at different times. The 137th Psalm could not have been

written till more than 400 years after the time of David, because it is

written in commemoration of an event, the captivity of the Jews in

Babylon, which did not happen till that distance of time. “By the

rivers of Babylon we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We

hanged our harps upon the willows, in the midst thereof; for there they

that carried us away captive required of us a song, saying, sing us one

of the songs of Zion.” As a man would say to an American, or to a

Frenchman, or to an Englishman, sing us one of your American songs, or

your French songs, or your English songs. This remark, with respect to

the time this psalm was written, is of no other use than to show (among

others already mentioned) the general imposition the world has been

under with respect to the authors of the Bible. No regard has been paid

to time, place, and circumstance; and the names of persons have been

affixed to the several books which it was as impossible they should

write, as that a man should walk in procession at his own funeral.

The Book of Proverbs. These, like the Psalms, are a collection, and

that from authors belonging to other nations than those of the Jewish

nation, as I have shewn in the observations upon the book of Job;

besides which, some of the Proverbs ascribed to Solomon did not appear

till two hundred and fifty years after the death of Solomon; for it is

said in xxv. i, “These are also proverbs of Solomon which the men of

Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied out.” It was two hundred and fifty

years from the time of Solomon to the time of Hezekiah. When a man is

famous and his name is abroad he is made the putative father of things

he never said or did; and this, most probably, has been the case with

Solomon. It appears to have been the fashion of that day to make

proverbs, as it is now to make jest-books, and father them upon those

who never saw them. [A “Tom Paine’s Jest Book” had appeared in London

with little or nothing of Paine in it.—Editor.]

The book of Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher, is also ascribed to Solomon,

and that with much reason, if not with truth. It is written as the

solitary reflections of a worn-out debauchee, such as Solomon was, who

looking back on scenes he can no longer enjoy, cries out All is Vanity!

A great deal of the metaphor and of the sentiment is obscure, most

probably by translation; but enough is left to show they were strongly

pointed in the original. [Those that look out of the window shall be

darkened, is an obscure figure in translation for loss of

sight.—Author.] From what is transmitted to us of the character of

Solomon, he was witty, ostentatious, dissolute, and at last melancholy.

He lived fast, and died, tired of the world, at the age of fifty-eight

years.

Seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines, are worse than none;

and, however it may carry with it the appearance of heightened

enjoyment, it defeats all the felicity of affection, by leaving it no

point to fix upon; divided love is never happy. This was the case with

Solomon; and if he could not, with all his pretensions to wisdom,

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

afterwards endured. In this point of view, his preaching is

unnecessary, because, to know the consequences, it is only necessary to

know the cause. Seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines would

have stood in place of the whole book. It was needless after this to

say that all was vanity and vexation of spirit; for it is impossible to

derive happiness from the company of those whom we deprive of

happiness.

To be happy in old age it is necessary that we accustom ourselves to

objects that can accompany the mind all the way through life, and that

we take the rest as good in their day. The mere man of pleasure is

miserable in old age; and the mere drudge in business is but little

better: whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical

science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of

the gloomy dogmas of priests, and of superstition, the study of those

things is the study of the true theology; it teaches man to know and to

admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation,

and are unchangeable, and of divine origin.

Those who knew Benjamin Franklin will recollect, that his mind was ever

young; his temper ever serene; science, that never grows grey, was

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

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

death.

Solomon’s Songs, amorous and foolish enough, but which wrinkled

fanaticism has called divine.—The compilers of the Bible have placed

these songs after the book of Ecclesiastes; and the chronologists have

affixed to them the aera of B.C. 1014, at which time Solomon, according

to the same chronology, was nineteen years of age, and was then forming

his seraglio of wives and concubines. The Bible-makers and the

chronologists should have managed this matter a little better, and

either have said nothing about the time, or chosen a time less

inconsistent with the supposed divinity of those songs; for Solomon was

then in the honey-moon of one thousand debaucheries.

It should also have occurred to them, that as he wrote, if he did

write, the book of Ecclesiastes, long after these songs, and in which

he exclaims that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, that he included

those songs in that description. This is the more probable, because he

says, or somebody for him, Ecclesiastes ii. 8, I got me men-singers,

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

instruments of all sorts; and behold (Ver. ii), “all was vanity and

vexation of spirit.” The compilers however have done their work but by

halves; for as they have given us the songs they should have given us

the tunes, that we might sing them.

The books called the books of the Prophets fill up all the remaining

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

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

observations upon Chronicles. Of these sixteen prophets, all of whom

except the last three lived within the time the books of Kings and

Chronicles were written, two only, Isaiah and Jeremiah, are mentioned

in the history of those books. I shall begin with those two, reserving,

what I have to say on the general character of the men called prophets

to another part of the work.

Whoever will take the trouble of reading the book ascribed to Isaiah,

will find it one of the most wild and disorderly compositions ever put

together; it has neither beginning, middle, nor end; and, except a

short historical part, and a few sketches of history in the first two

or three chapters, is one continued incoherent, bombastical rant, full

of extravagant metaphor, without application, and destitute of meaning;

a school-boy would scarcely have been excusable for writing such stuff;

it is (at least in translation) that kind of composition and false

taste that is properly called prose run mad.

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

end of chapter xxxix. It relates some matters that are said to have

passed during the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah, at which time

Isaiah lived. This fragment of history begins and ends abruptly; it has

not the least connection with the chapter that precedes it, nor with

that which follows it, nor with any other in the book. It is probable

that Isaiah wrote this fragment himself, because he was an actor in the

circumstances it treats of; but except this part there are scarcely two

chapters that have any connection with each other. One is entitled, at

the beginning of the first verse, the burden of Babylon; another, the

burden of Moab; another, the burden of Damascus; another, the burden of

Egypt; another, the burden of the Desert of the Sea; another, the

burden of the Valley of Vision: as you would say the story of the

Knight of the Burning Mountain, the story of Cinderella, or the glassen

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

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

Chronicles, and the first three in Ezra, that the compilers of the

Bible mixed and confounded the writings of different authors with each

other; which alone, were there no other cause, is sufficient to destroy

the authenticity of an compilation, because it is more than presumptive

evidence that the compilers are ignorant who the authors were. A very

glaring instance of this occurs in the book ascribed to Isaiah: the

latter part of the 44th chapter, and the beginning of the 45th, so far

from having been written by Isaiah, could only have been written by

some person who lived at least an hundred and fifty years after Isaiah

was dead.

These chapters are a compliment to Cyrus, who permitted the Jews to

return to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity, to rebuild Jerusalem

and the temple, as is stated in Ezra. The last verse of the 44th

chapter, and the beginning of the 45th [Isaiah] are in the following

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

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

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

enointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden to subdue nations

before him, and I will loose the loins of kings to open before him the

two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut; I will go before

thee,” etc.

What audacity of church and priestly ignorance it is to impose this

book upon the world as the writing of Isaiah, when Isaiah, according to

their own chronology, died soon after the death of Hezekiah, which was

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

Jerusalem, was, according to the same chronology, B.C. 536; which is a

distance of time between the two of 162 years. I do not suppose that

the compilers of the Bible made these books, but rather that they

picked up some loose, anonymous essays, and put them together under the

names of such authors as best suited their purpose. They have

encouraged the imposition, which is next to inventing it; for it was

impossible but they must have observed it.

When we see the studied craft of the scripture-makers, in making every

part of this romantic book of school-boy’s eloquence bend to the

monstrous idea of a Son of God, begotten by a ghost on the body of a

virgin, there is no imposition we are not justified in suspecting them

of. Every phrase and circumstance are marked with the barbarous hand of

superstitious torture, and forced into meanings it was impossible they

could have. The head of every chapter, and the top of every page, are

blazoned with the names of Christ and the Church, that the unwary

reader might suck in the error before he began to read.

Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son (Isa. vii. I4), has been

interpreted to mean the person called Jesus Christ, and his mother

Mary, and has been echoed through christendom for more than a thousand

years; and such has been the rage of this opinion, that scarcely a spot

in it but has been stained with blood and marked with desolation in

consequence of it. Though it is not my intention to enter into

controversy on subjects of this kind, but to confine myself to show

that the Bible is spurious,—and thus, by taking away the foundation, to

overthrow at once the whole structure of superstition raised thereon,—I

will however stop a moment to expose the fallacious application of this

passage.

Whether Isaiah was playing a trick with Ahaz, king of Judah, to whom

this passage is spoken, is no business of mine; I mean only to show the

misapplication of the passage, and that it has no more reference to

Christ and his mother, than it has to me and my mother. The story is

simply this:

The king of Syria and the king of Israel (I have already mentioned that

the Jews were split into two nations, one of which was called Judah,

the capital of which was Jerusalem, and the other Israel) made war

jointly against Ahaz, king of Judah, and marched their armies towards

Jerusalem. Ahaz and his people became alarmed, and the account says

(Is. vii. 2), Their hearts were moved as the trees of the wood are

moved with the wind.

In this situation of things, Isaiah addresses himself to Ahaz, and

assures him in the name of the Lord (the cant phrase of all the

prophets) that these two kings should not succeed against him; and to

satisfy Ahaz that this should be the case, tells him to ask a sign.

This, the account says, Ahaz declined doing; giving as a reason that he

would not tempt the Lord; upon which Isaiah, who is the speaker, says,

ver. 14, “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold a

virgin shall conceive and bear a son;” and the 16th verse says, “And

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

the land which thou abhorrest or dreadest [meaning Syria and the

kingdom of Israel] shall be forsaken of both her kings.” Here then was

the sign, and the time limited for the completion of the assurance or

promise; namely, before this child shall know to refuse the evil and

choose the good.

Isaiah having committed himself thus far, it became necessary to him,

in order to avoid the imputation of being a false prophet, and the

consequences thereof, to take measures to make this sign appear. It

certainly was not a difficult thing, in any time of the world, to find

a girl with child, or to make her so; and perhaps Isaiah knew of one

beforehand; for I do not suppose that the prophets of that day were any

more to be trusted than the priests of this: be that, however, as it

may, he says in the next chapter, ver. 2, “And I took unto me faithful

witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of

Jeberechiah, and I went unto the prophetess, and she conceived and bare

a son.”

Here then is the whole story, foolish as it is, of this child and this

virgin; and it is upon the barefaced perversion of this story that the

book of Matthew, and the impudence and sordid interest of priests in

later times, have founded a theory, which they call the gospel; and

have applied this story to signify the person they call Jesus Christ;

begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom they call holy, on the body of a

woman engaged in marriage, and afterwards married, whom they call a

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

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

as fabulous and as false as God is true. [In Is. vii. 14, it is said

that the child should be called Immanuel; but this name was not given

to either of the children, otherwise than as a character, which the

word signifies. That of the prophetess was called Maher-shalalhash-baz,

and that of Mary was called Jesus.—Author.]

But to show the imposition and falsehood of Isaiah we have only to

attend to the sequel of this story; which, though it is passed over in

silence in the book of Isaiah, is related in 2 Chronicles, xxviii; and

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

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

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

hundred and twenty thousand of his people were slaughtered; Jerusalem

was plundered, and two hundred thousand women and sons and daughters

carried into captivity. Thus much for this lying prophet and imposter

Isaiah, and the book of falsehoods that bears his name. I pass on to

the book of Jeremiah. This prophet, as he is called, lived in the time

that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, in the reign of Zedekiah, the

last king of Judah; and the suspicion was strong against him that he

was a traitor in the interest of Nebuchadnezzar. Every thing relating

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

his metaphor of the potter and the clay, (ch. xviii.) he guards his

prognostications in such a crafty manner as always to leave himself a

door to escape by, in case the event should be contrary to what he had

predicted. In the 7th and 8th verses he makes the Almighty to say, “At

what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a

kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and destroy it, if that nation,

against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent me

of the evil that I thought to do unto them.” Here was a proviso against

one side of the case: now for the other side. Verses 9 and 10, “At what

instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to

build and to plant it, if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my

voice, then I will repent me of the good wherewith I said I would

benefit them.” Here is a proviso against the other side; and, according

to this plan of prophesying, a prophet could never be wrong, however

mistaken the Almighty might be. This sort of absurd subterfuge, and

this manner of speaking of the Almighty, as one would speak of a man,

is consistent with nothing but the stupidity of the Bible.

As to the authenticity of the book, it is only necessary to read it in

order to decide positively that, though some passages recorded therein

may have been spoken by Jeremiah, he is not the author of the book. The

historical parts, if they can be called by that name, are in the most

confused condition; the same events are several times repeated, and

that in a manner different, and sometimes in contradiction to each

other; and this disorder runs even to the last chapter, where the

history, upon which the greater part of the book has been employed,

begins anew, and ends abruptly. The book has all the appearance of

being a medley of unconnected anecdotes respecting persons and things

of that time, collected together in the same rude manner as if the

various and contradictory accounts that are to be found in a bundle of

newspapers, respecting persons and things of the present day, were put

together without date, order, or explanation. I will give two or three

examples of this kind.

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

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

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

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

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

this confused history, that Nebuchadnezzar had besieged and taken

Jerusalem during the reign of Jehoakim, the redecessor of Zedekiah; and

that it was Nebuchadnezzar who had make Zedekiah king, or rather

viceroy; and that this second siege, of which the book of Jeremiah

treats, was in consequence of the revolt of Zedekiah against

Nebuchadnezzar. This will in some measure account for the suspicion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

said, It is false; I fall not away to the Chaldeans.” Jeremiah being

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

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

last verse of this chapter.

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

which has no connection with this account, but ascribes his

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

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

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

Jeremiah, to enquire of him concerning Nebuchadnezzar, whose army was

then before Jerusalem; and Jeremiah said to them, ver. 8, “Thus saith

the Lord, Behold I set before you the way of life, and the way of

death; he that abideth in this city shall die by the sword and by the

famine, and by the pestilence; but he that goeth out and falleth to the

Chaldeans that besiege you, he shall live, and his life shall be unto

him for a prey.”

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

10th verse of chapter xxi.; and such is the disorder of this book that

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

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

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

mentioned. The chapter opens with saying, “Then Shaphatiah, the son of

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

Pashur the son of Malchiah, (here are more persons mentioned than in

chapter xxi.) heard the words that Jeremiah spoke unto all the people,

saying, Thus saith the Lord, He that remaineth in this city, shall die

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

to the Chaldeans shall live; for he shall have his life for a prey, and

shall live”; [which are the words of the conference;] therefore, (say

they to Zedekiah,) “We beseech thee, let this man be put to death, for

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

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

this man seeketh not the welfare of the people, but the hurt:” and at

the 6th verse it is said, “Then they took Jeremiah, and put him into

the dungeon of Malchiah.”

These two accounts are different and contradictory. The one ascribes

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

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

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

Zedekiah by the conferees. [I observed two chapters in I Samuel (xvi.

and xvii.) that contradict each other with respect to David, and the

manner he became acquainted with Saul; as Jeremiah xxxvii. and xxxviii.

contradict each other with respect to the cause of Jeremiah’s

imprisonment.

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

Saul, and that his servants advised him (as a remedy) “to seek out a

man who was a cunning player upon the harp.” And Saul said, ver. 17,

“Provide me now a man that can play well, and bring him to me. Then

answered one of his servants, and said, Behold, I have seen a son of

Jesse, the Bethlehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty man,

and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the

Lord is with him; wherefore Saul sent messengers unto Jesse, and said,

Send me David, thy son. And (verse 21) David came to Saul, and stood

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

and when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, (verse 23) David took

his harp, and played with his hand, and Saul was refreshed, and was

well.”

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

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

ascribed to David’s encounter with Goliah, when David was sent by his

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

verse of this chapter it is said, “And when Saul saw David go forth

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

host, Abner, whose son is this youth? And Abner said, As thy soul

liveth, 0 king, I cannot tell. And the king said, Enquire thou whose

son the stripling is. And as David returned from the slaughter of the

Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul, with the head

of the Philistine in his hand; and Saul said unto him, Whose son art

thou, thou young man? And David answered, I am the son of thy servant,

Jesse, the Betblehemite,” These two accounts belie each other, because

each of them supposes Saul and David not to have known each other

before. This book, the Bible, is too ridiculous for criticism.—Author.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

against Jerusalem, and besieged it,” etc.

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

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

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

saying, ver. i, “Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to

reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem, and his mother’s name

was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.” (Ver. 4,) “And it

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the circumstances of the times he lived in.

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

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

Bible.

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

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

Jeremiah pressed it strongly on Zedekiah to surrender himself to the

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

king of Babylon’s princes, then thy soul shall live,” etc. Zedekiah was

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

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

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

say unto thee, Declare unto us now what thou hast said unto the king;

hide it not from us, and we will not put thee to death; and also what

the king said unto thee; then thou shalt say unto them, I presented my

supplication before the king that he would not cause me to return to

Jonathan’s house, to die there. Then came all the princes unto

Jeremiah, and asked him, and “he told them according to all the words

the king had commanded.” Thus, this man of God, as he is called, could

tell a lie, or very strongly prevaricate, when he supposed it would

answer his purpose; for certainly he did not go to Zedekiah to make

this supplication, neither did he make it; he went because he was sent

for, and he employed that opportunity to advise Zedekiah to surrender

himself to Nebuchadnezzar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

word, saith the Lord.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

liars?

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

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

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

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

joined himself afterwards to Nebuchadnezzar, and went about prophesying

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

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

prophets, and the book that bears his name.

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

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

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

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

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

offer on the character of the men styled prophets.

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

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

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

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

because the books called the prophecies are written in poetical

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

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

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

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

prophesying with psalteries, with tabrets, with pipes, with harps,

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

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

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

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

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

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

into French by Le Voyant, from the verb voir to see, and which means

the person who sees, or the seer.—Author.]

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

the gazer, it is translated in Is. xlvii. 13, “the

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

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

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

seeing, became incorporated into the word prophet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

going to undertake, or of any circumstance then pending, or of any

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

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

respect to the expression, Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a

son,) and not to any distant future time. It was that kind of

prophesying that corresponds to what we call fortune-telling; such as

casting nativities, predicting riches, fortunate or unfortunate

marriages, conjuring for lost goods, etc.; and it is the fraud of the

Christian church, not that of the Jews, and the ignorance and the

superstition of modern, not that of ancient times, that elevated those

poetical, musical, conjuring, dreaming, strolling gentry, into the rank

they have since had.

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

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

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

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

associate with against the other.

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

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

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

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

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

Judah. This party prophesying showed itself immediately on the

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

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

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

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

Israel, who said unto him (i Kings xiii.) “Art thou the man of God that

came from Judah? and he said, I am.” Then the prophet of the party of

Israel said to him “I am a prophet also, as thou art, [signifying of

Judah,] and an angel spake unto me by the word of the Lord, saying,

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

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

however, according to the story, is, that the prophet of Judah never

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

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

own party, and the prophet of Judah a lying prophet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

of the Lord is with him.” The story then says, that these three kings

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

Judahmite prophet] saw the King of Israel, he said unto him, “What have

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

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

called these three kings together, to deliver them into the hands of

the king of Moab,” (meaning because of the distress they were in for

water;) upon which Elisha said, “As the Lord of hosts liveth before

whom I stand, surely, were it not that I regard the presence of

Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, I would not look towards thee nor see

thee.” Here is all the venom and vulgarity of a party prophet. We are

now to see the performance, or manner of prophesying.

Ver. 15. “‘Bring me,’ (said Elisha), ‘a minstrel’; and it came to pass,

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

Here is the farce of the conjurer. Now for the prophecy: “And Elisha

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

the Lord, Make this valley full of ditches;” which was just telling

them what every countryman could have told them without either fiddle

or farce, that the way to get water was to dig for it.

But as every conjuror is not famous alike for the same thing, so

neither were those prophets; for though all of them, at least those I

have spoken of, were famous for lying, some of them excelled in

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

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

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

suppose that those children were of the party of Israel; but as those

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

this story of Elisha’s two she-bears as there is to that of the Dragon

of Wantley, of whom it is said:

Poor children three devoured be,

That could not with him grapple;

And at one sup he eat them up,

As a man would eat an apple.

There was another description of men called prophets, that amused

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

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

mischievous. Of this class are,

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

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

Ezekiel and Daniel?

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

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

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

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

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

not written by Moses, Joshua, Samuel, etc.

Secondly, Because they were not written till after the Babylonish

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

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

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

written till after the commencement of the Jewish monarchy.

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

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

time of writing them.

Had the numerous commentators and priests, who have foolishly employed

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

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

greatly have improved their intellects in comprehending the reason for

this mode of writing, and have saved them the trouble of racking their

invention, as they have done to no purpose; for they would have found

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

political projects or opinions, in obscure and metaphorical terms. They

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

for them to speak facts or plain language. We ought, however, to

suppose, that the persons to whom they wrote understood what they

meant, and that it was not intended anybody else should. But these busy

commentators and priests have been puzzling their wits to find out what

it was not intended they should know, and with which they have nothing

to do.

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

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

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

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

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

meditating the recovery of their country, and their own deliverance, it

is reasonable to suppose that the accounts of dreams and visions with

which these books are filled, are no other than a disguised mode of

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

or secret alphabet. If they are not this, they are tales, reveries, and

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

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