THE BIBLE AND HISTORY.
About one-half of the books of the Bible purport to be, to a
considerable extent at least, historical. But from Genesis to
Revelation there is scarcely a book which can be accepted as a reliable
record of events. Nearly all of them abound with manifest absurdities,
exaggerations, and contradictions. Their authors, for the most part,
deal with matters concerning which the ancient profane historians take
no cognizance; and this, in a measure, conceals their errors. But
when they do refer to known historical events, they exhibit such
an ignorance of the facts, or such a desire to pervert them, as to
destroy their credibility. In this chapter will be presented some
"sacred" history which reason rejects or the demonstrated facts of
profane history disprove.
1.
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
The Bible, it is affirmed, contains a connected and reliable historical
and chronological record of events from the Creation down to the
universally accepted dates of profane history. And yet between the
three versions of the Jewish Bible there is an utter disagreement. The
creation of the world, according to these versions, was as follows:
Hebrew, 4004 B.C.
Samaritan, 4700 B.C.
Septuagint, 5872 B.C.
The Talmud and Josephus, based upon the above, agree with neither,
nor with each other. According to the Talmud, the Creation occurred
5344 B.C.; according to Josephus, 4658 B.C.
2.
"And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about
six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside children. And
a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds,
even very much cattle. Even the selfsame day it came to pass, that
all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt" (Ex. xii,
37, 38, 41).
"And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused
the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night.... And
the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry
ground.... Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of
the Egyptians" (Ex. xiv, 21, 22, 30).
The Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt is represented as having taken
place in an incredibly brief space of time. It was after midnight when
Moses was ordered to notify his people to depart. Before morning they
were all en route from Rameses to the Red Sea, which they reached in
three days and crossed in a few hours.
As there were 600,000 men, the total number of persons must have
been nearly 3,000,000. Three millions is a number easily spoken and
quickly written. But neither the author of this story nor those who
accept it as history have the slightest conception of its meaning. They
evidently think that three million people--old and young; men, women,
and children; the sick and the lame, together with their flocks and
herds, their household effects and provisions--could be moved with
the celerity of a few hundred men. When Napoleon crossed the Nieman
in 1812, it took his army of trained soldiers, inured to hardships
and accustomed to rapid marches, three days and nights to cross the
river in close file on three bridges. Had his army been as large as
this body of Israelites, to have crossed the river on one bridge,
allowing the necessary time for rest, would have taken six months. It
would have required months to notify, assemble, and organize this vast
population of slaves in readiness for their migration. And when the
journey began, if the head of the column had left Rameses in the spring
the rear of the column would not have been able to move before autumn.
3.
"Behold the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel
for a possession" (Deut. xxxii, 49).
In the twelfth chapter of Joshua is given a list of thirty-one
kingdoms which were conquered by them. This was in the fifteenth
century B.C. From this time forward they are represented as a mighty
nation by Bible historians.
Rameses III. overran Canaan and conquered it between 1280 and 1260
B.C. The Egyptian records give a list of all the tribes inhabiting
it. The children of Israel--the Hebrews--were not there. In the fifth
century B.C., when Herodotus, the father of history, was collecting
materials for his immortal work, he traversed nearly every portion
of Western Asia. He describes all its principal peoples and places;
but the Jews and Jerusalem are of too little consequence to merit a
line from his pen. Not until 332 B.C. do the Jews appear upon the stage
of history, and then only as the submissive vassals of a Grecian king.
4.
1. "Elhanan, the son of Jair, the Bethlehemite, slew Goliath of Gath,
the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam" (2 Sam. xxi, 19,
H. V.).
2. "Elhanan the son of Jair slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath the
Gittite, whose spear staff was like a weaver's beam" (1 Chron. xx, 5).
3. "Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim, a Bethlehemite, slew the brother
of Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's
beam" (2 Sam. xxi, 19, A. V.).
The above are three versions of the same passage. The first is a
correct translation of the passage as it appears in the Hebrew. It is
a part of one of the two discordant narratives used by the compiler of
Samuel. The compiler of Chronicles saw the discrepancy and interpolated
the words "Lahmi the brother of." Our translators interpolated the
words "the brother of."
Critics admit that if the killing of Goliath is a historical event,
which is improbable, it was Elkanah, and not David, who slew him. The
story of David and Goliath given by the other narrator in 1 Samuel is
a myth. This writer says: "And David took the head of the Philistine,
and brought it to Jerusalem," evidently believing that the Israelites
then occupied Jerusalem, whereas the duel between David and Goliath
is said to have occurred 1062 B.C., while the conquest and occupancy
of Jerusalem by the Israelites did not occur until 1047 B.C., fifteen
years later.
5.
"And Solomon sent to Hiram, saying, ... Behold, I purpose to build an
house unto the name of the Lord my God, ... and my servants shall be
with thy servants, and unto thee will I give hire for thy servants"
(1 Kings v, 2, 5, 6).
"And Solomon had three score and ten thousand that bare burdens,
and four score thousand hewers in the mountains; beside the chief
of Solomon's officers which were over the work, three thousand and
three hundred" (15, 16).
"So was he seven years in building it" (vi, 38)
"And the house which King Solomon built for the Lord, the length
thereof was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits,
and the height thereof thirty cubits" (2).
The main building of Solomon's Temple, then, was about 96 feet long,
32 feet wide, and 48 feet high. One hundred and fifty thousand men
engaged seven years in building a house as large as a village church
or a country store! The mountain labored and brought forth a mouse!
6.
"And the children of Israel fled before Judah: and God delivered
them into their hand. And Abijah and his people slew them with great
slaughter: so there fell down slain of Israel five hundred thousand
chosen men" (2 Chron. xiii, 16, 17).
Five hundred thousand slain in one battle! At the battle of Gettysburg,
one of the greatest battles of modern times, for three long days,
two mighty armies of America engaged in deadly conflict, and when it
was ended, the defeated army had less than five thousand killed. And
yet we are asked to believe that this puny race of Hebrews, too
insignificant to attract the notice of ancient historians, marshaled
in battle two contending armies, the carnage of which equaled that
of a hundred Gettysburgs.
Talk about oriental exaggeration! If you wish to find its choicest
specimens, search not the pages of Persian and Arabian romance,
but read a chapter of sacred history.
7.
"And Pul the king of Assyria came against the land; and Menahem gave
Pul a thousand talents of silver, that his hand might be with him to
confirm the kingdom in his hand" (2 Kings xv, 19).
The king who reigned in Assyria at this time was Iva-lush. Assyria
never had a king named Pul.
8.
"Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords,
and drank wine before the thousand. Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the
wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father
Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem;
that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might
drink therein" (Dan. v, 1, 2).
"In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand and wrote over
against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king's
palace" (5).
"And this is the writing that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN"
(25).
"In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans [Babylon]
slain. And Darius the Median took the kingdom" (30, 31).
As a dramatic piece of fiction Belshazzar's Feast is good; as a
chapter of ancient history it is bad. Belshazzar was not the son of
Nebuchadnezzar; neither was he king of Babylon. Darius the Mede did
not take the kingdom.
9.
"And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from
Cæsar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing
was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)... And Joseph
also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea,
unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem (because he was of
the house and lineage of David), to be taxed with Mary his espoused
wife, being great with child" (Luke ii, 1-5).
This cannot be accepted as historical for the following reasons:
1. Cæsar Augustus never issued a decree that all the world should be
taxed, nor even one that all the Roman world should be taxed.
2. If he had issued such a decree Joseph and Mary would not have been
subject to taxation, because they lived in Galilee, an independent
province.
3. Had they been subject to taxation they would have been enrolled
in their own country and not in some distant kingdom.
4. Cyrenius did not become governor of Syria until nearly ten years
after the death of Herod, and Jesus was born, it is claimed, in the
days of Herod.
10.
"Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was
exceeding wroth, and sent forth and slew all the children that were in
Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under"
(Matt. ii, 16).
The statement that Herod the Great, who was firmly established in
his government, and who had full-grown male heirs to succeed him,
was afraid that the babe of an obscure Nazareth carpenter would
supplant him in his kingdom, is enough to cause a Covenanter to laugh
on Sunday. Had Herod issued such a decree his friends, instead of
executing it, would have had him confined in a madhouse. The fact that
the Roman and Jewish historians of that age--one of whom, an enemy,
gives a full and complete record of his life--know nothing of this
awful tragedy, that an anonymous author writing nearly two centuries
afterward is the only one who mentions it, is of itself sufficient
to brand it as an atrocious falsehood.
11.
"That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth,
from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of
Barachias whom ye slew between the temple and the altar" (Matt. xxiii,
35).
The divine historian ascribes these words to Jesus. Jesus was
crucified, it is claimed, about 29 A.D. Zacharias was slain in 69 A.D.,
forty years after the death of Jesus. Some contend that Jesus refers
to the Zachariah mentioned in 2 Chronicles (xxiv, 20, 25). But this
Zachariah was the son of Jehoiada. Besides, the accusation of Jesus
is intended to cover all time from the first to the last offense,
and to name this Zachariah would be to admit that they had shed no
righteous blood for 850 years.
12.
"For before these days rose up Theudas, boasting himself to be
somebody; to whom a number of men, about four hundred, joined
themselves: who was slain; and all, as many as obeyed him, were
scattered, and brought to nought.
"After this man rose up Judas of Galilee in the days of the taxing, and
drew away much people after him: he also perished" (Acts v, 36, 37).
According to Acts the sedition of Theudas occurred before the taxing,
which was about 6 A.D. It really occurred while Fadus was procurator
of Judea, about 46 A.D.--forty years after the date assigned in Acts.
The Bible is largely a medley of fables, mythologies, and
legends. These legends contain a modicum of truth--how much cannot
be determined. The reliable historian faithfully presents the facts
contained in the materials at his command. These so-called sacred
historians do not. With them history is secondary to theology and
made subservient to it. Every event is represented as a special act of
divine Providence and is tortured to uphold and serve their theological
notions. Referring to the author or compiler of Judges, Dr. Oort
says: "The writer has drawn most of his narratives from trustworthy
sources.... Our gratitude to him would indeed be still greater than it
is, if he had given us all that he found in his authorities unmixed
and unaltered. But to an Israelite historian this seems to have been
a simple impossibility" (Bible for Learners, Vol. I., p. 363).