_“But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their
heart.”—2 Cor. 3:15._
THE first five books of the Old Testament, supposed by many to have been
written by Moses, are called the Pentateuch. In the early chapters of
Genesis, in the “Authorized Version,” there is placed at the head of the
page in the margin, “a. m. 1,” which mean Anno Mundi—the year of the
world—one, and immediately below it are the letters “b. c.”—which mean
Before Christ—“4004.” This is the system of chronology established by
Archbishop Ussher, and means that 4004 years before Christ the world was
_one_ year old. It is claimed that Moses promulgated the law about 1451
b. c., and this must have been about two thousand five hundred and
fifty-three years after the Creation, which added to 1890, the present
date, would make the world just five thousand eight hundred and
ninety-four years old. Lyell, a most judicious geologist estimated the
delta of the Mississippi at one hundred thousand years, and some persons
think these figures should have been doubled. Professor John Fiske
thinks the glacial period began two hundred and forty thousand years
ago, and that human beings inhabited Europe at least one hundred and
sixty thousand years earlier, thus giving an antiquity to our race of
not less than four hundred thousand years. Other scientists talk of
hundreds of thousands, and even _millions_, of years, but we attach no
importance to specific figures. We simply insist upon an antiquity which
very far exceeds six thousand years.
Learned Egyptologists place Rameses II., the Pharaoh of the Jewish
captivity, whose mummy is now to be seen in the museum at Cairo, at 1390
years b. c. It seems strange that his mummy should be on exhibition in a
museum when “he and all his hosts were swallowed up in the Red Sea.” If
we are told that Rameses II. was succeeded by Sethi II., we find from
Egyptian records that both of these kings lived to a good old age, and
the mummy of each has been preserved, and not even a hint is given that
either of them was drowned. But we have, according to the tables of
Abydos and Bunsen, which are generally accepted, three thousand six
hundred and twenty years before Christ as the time in which Menes, the
first monarch of Egypt, reigned, making two thousand two hundred and
thirty years as the period of the Egyptian monarchy before the reign of
Rameses II.
But I contend that Egyptian civilization extends back at least seven
thousand years, and Miss Amelia
B. Edwards, the Egyptologist, who has recently lectured in our
Pennsylvania University course, thinks ten thousand years not too
high an estimate. In support of ibis hypothesis, the great
antiquity of man, which no scholar now disputes, carries us back
many thousands of years beyond Menes, and there are many facts
which favor the assumption that the valley of the Nile was one of
the places inhabited for an indefinite period. The works of
art—monuments, architecture, paintings, etc.—show an antiquity that
cannot be estimated. Manetho, an Egyptian priest, who wrote a
history of Egypt, by request of Ptolemy II., two hundred and
eighty-six years before Christ, carries us back more than seven
thousand years.
The Pentateuch is a compilation by several authors, and hence its
patchwork character. Professors Ewald and Kuenen and others have proved
this, and Dean Stanley, of the English Establishment, has admitted it.
Some portions may have been compiled eight hundred or nine hundred years
before Christ, but not the two contradictory accounts of the creation
and fall of man. The Assyrian cuneiform tablets, which were discovered
in 1873 and 1874 a. d., and which are now in the British Museum, show
that this ancient people had this story about two thousand years before
the time of Moses. The Jews learned it in Babylon, and none of the other
Old-Testament writings contain any notice of it, because it was not
known until after the return of the Jews from their captivity in
Babylon, five hundred and eighteen years before Christ. Is it not
reasonable to suppose that the various Old-Testament writers would have
made some reference to the Pentateuch had they known of its existence?
Professor François Lenormant of the National Library of France, a most
learned archaeologist and palaeontologist, and a most devout Christian,
in his _Beginnings of History_ admits that the Jews borrowed
substantially the story of the creation and the fall from more ancient
nations, and furnishes the original copies. The legends recorded in
Genesis are found among many ancient peoples who lived many centuries
before Moses; and Berosus, a priest of the temple of Belus, who wrote
two hundred and seventy-six years before Christ, affirms that fragments
of Chaldean history can be traced back 15 Sadi or 150,000 years. I have
mentioned these things because they are germane to what is to follow.
There is good reason for thinking that the book of Deuteronomy was
written about six hundred and twenty-one years before Christ, and the
remaining books of the Pentateuch were of later date, coming down to
four hundred and fifty years before Christ. This Professor Kuenen has
demonstrated beyond controversy in his _Religion of Israel_, to which I
must refer for his arguments in detail. The best scholarship of the
world does not believe that what is called the Law of Moses was written
prior to the fifth or sixth century before Christ, and learned men in
Holland, Germany, and England, as well as the most advanced thinkers in
America, now accept this opinion. Professor Robertson Smith, in the
_Encyclopœdia Britannica_, adopts this view, and Dean Stanley, in his
_Jewish Church_, does not leave us in doubt as to his opinion.
Take the following as an example of what I mean (Gen. 12:6): “And the
Canaanite was then in the land;” whereas the expulsion of the Canaanites
did not occur until several centuries after the death of Moses, when
this must have been written. In Gen. (36: 31) we read, “Before there
reigned any king over Israel.” This must have been two hundred years
after the death of Moses. “The nations that were before you” (Lev. 13:
8) of course presupposes that the Canaanites had already been subdued.
“Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men that were upon the
face of the earth” (Num. 12:13), could hardly have been written by Moses
himself. The expression “unto this day” frequently occurs, and shows
that the time was long after the events took place. It is also implied
in various places that the writer resided in Palestine, and so it could
not have been Moses. In Deuteronomy (19: 14) we read, “Thou shalt not
remove thy neighbor’s landmark which they of old time have set in thine
inheritance.” They had no landmark to remove, unless this was written
concerning the land of Canaan long after the death of Moses. They are
reproached for not keeping the Sabbath in the past for a long time, and
this is given as a reason for the Captivity; and hence Leviticus 26:34,
35, 43 was written after the Captivity, which began in 597 b. c. In Gen.
14:14, Lot is taken prisoner and rescued from his captors, whom they
“pursued unto Dan.” Now, there was no such place as Dan until after the
entrance into Canaan. We read in Judg. 18:27, 29 that this city was
called Laish, which was burned by the Israelites, and then they built a
city, and they called it “Dan, after the name of their father: howbeit
the name of the city was Laish at first.” This “trout in the milk” is as
striking as if some one should write of Chicago when the Declaration of
Independence was signed. In Gen. 36:31 we read, “And these are the kings
that reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any king over the
children of Israel.” This passage shows that it was written after there
had been kings in Israel, and could not have been written by Moses. I
could show similar incongruities concerning the manna in Gen. 16: 35,
compared with Josh. 5: 12. So Deut. 24: 14 must have been written after
the entrance into Canaan, as until then they had no _lands_, and there
were no gates and no “strangers within their gates.” The same might be
said of the fourth commandment of the Decalogue: the Israelites had no
_gates_ until after they entered Canaan. It could not have been written
by Moses in the wilderness of Arabia.
These illustrations might be produced indefinitely, but enough have been
given to show that the Pentateuch was written several hundred years
after the death of Moses, and that we are justifiable in fixing the date
for most of it in the fourth, fifth, or sixth century before the
Christian era. The Pentateuch abounds in duplicate traditions of the
same transactions, and also in diversity and contradictions. These
numerous repetitions are fatal to the supposition that it was written by
Moses. If Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, we should expect to
find a good many hints of this in other parts of the Bible; whereas we
have no reference to Sinai and its awful thunders, and, although Moses
is mentioned in the New Testament, it only shows the existence of
traditions to that effect at that time. Not until the time that
Christianity arose, about thirteen hundred years after the death of
Moses, did the tradition obtain currency that he was the author of the
Pentateuch.
The fact is, the Jews are a comparatively modern people, and were not
known as a nation until the time of Alexander the Great (356-325 b. c.),
and Herodotus, by never mentioning them, so indicates. While the
Hindoos, Egyptians, Grecians, Romans, Chaldeans, and Babylonians had
their men of science, literature, and law, whose fame only brightens
with the flight of time, the Jews have no _history_ except what was
written by themselves, and that is so absurd, impossible, and
contradictory that nobody can believe it.
Everybody knows that the ancient Jews were the constitutional imitators
of other peoples. They have always been the second-hand clothes-dealers
of the world. As a race they never have been noted for originality, but
have always been ready to borrow what belonged to other people, and
then, with characteristic self-complacency, have claimed to be the
“original Jacobs” of everything good and great. We intend this as no
reflection upon the Jews of the present day.
C. Staniland Wake, an English writer, in his great work on the
_Evolution of Morality_, vol. ii., page 59, thus expresses his
views: “Judging from this fact, many persons imagine—or at least,
from the superstitious reverence that they have for the Decalogue,
appear to do so—that until the time of the Hebrew lawgiver the most
ordinary rules of morality were unknown. The mere fact of Egypt
being the starting-point of the Exodus ought to be sufficient to
disabuse the mind of this idea, without reference to the contents
of the code itself. But the moral laws given in the Decalogue are
of so primitive a character that it is absurd to suppose, except on
the assumption that the Hebrews were at that period in a condition
of pure savagery, that God would personally appear to give his
immediate sanction to them. The commands, Honor thy father and thy
mother, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou
shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy
neighbor, Thou shalt not covet, were simply _reiterations_ of laws
to which the Hebrews had been subject during their whole sojourn in
Egypt, and which must, in fact, have been familiar to them before
their ancestors left their traditional Chaldean home.”
Then we must bear in mind that Moses himself was an Egyptian by birth,
and that he was brought up at the court of Pharaoh until he was forty
years of age, and in Acts 7: 22 we are told that “Moses was learned in
all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.”
The whole matter relating to the Pentateuch is thus summed up by the
late Prof. John Wm. Draper, M. D., LL.D., late of the University of New
York, in his _Conflict between Religion and Science_: “No man may dare
to impute them (the books of the Pentateuch) to the inspiration of
Almighty God, their inconsistencies, incongruities, and impossibilities,
as exposed by many learned and pious modern scholars, both German and
English, are so great. It is the decision of these critics that Genesis
is a narrative based upon legends; that Exodus is not historically true;
that the whole Pentateuch is _unhistoric_ and _un-Mosaic_: it contains
the most extraordinary contradictions and impossibilities, sufficient to
involve the credibility of the whole—imperfections so conspicuous that
they would destroy the authenticity of any modern historical work.”...
“To the critical eye they all present peculiarities which demonstrate
that they were written on the banks of the Euphrates, and not in the
desert of Arabia. They contain many Chaldaisms.”... “From such Assyrian
sources the legends of the creation of the earth and heavens, the Garden
of Eden, the making of man from clay and the woman from one of his ribs,
the temptation of the serpent, etc.,... were obtained by Ezra.” “I agree
in the opinion of Hupfeld, that the discovery that the Pentateuch is put
together out of the various sources of original documents is beyond all
doubt, is not only one of the most important and most pregnant with
consequences for the interpretation of the historical books of the Old
Testament—or rather for the whole of theology and history—but it is also
one of the most certain discoveries which have been made in the domain
of criticism and the history of literature.”
But not only do the laws of Egypt antedate the laws accredited to Moses,
but the Hindoos had laws which were yet more ancient. The writings of
Buddha, who died in 477 b. c., refer to older books and quote from them,
and these again refer to still older books, until we reach laws which
existed many thousands of years before the Law of Moses, as the laws of
Manu were drawn from the “immemorial customs” of the nation and
constitute a kind of _common law_. “The most accurate scholars point to
India as the origin of Egyptian civilization,” says Le Renouf, the
learned Egyptologist.
If Egyptian literature was derived in a remote period from India, what
must be the date of old India’s laws as compared with the laws of the
Hebrews? It is no wonder that Max Müller, professor in the orthodox
University of Oxford, says (in Chips, vol. i., p. 11): “After carefully
examining every possible objection that can be made against the date of
the Vedic hymns, their claim to that high antiquity which is ascribed to
them has not, as far as I can judge, been shaken.” The same learned
Sanskrit scholar says, “The opinion that the pagan religions were mere
corruptions of the religion of the Old Testament, once supported by men
of high authority and great learning, is now as completely surrendered
as the attempt at explaining Greek and Latin as corruptions of Hebrew”
(_Science of Religion_, p. 24). This great Sanskrit scholar admits in
many places in his voluminous writings the greater antiquity of the
pagan scriptures, and gives many weighty reasons to show how impossible
and absurd it is to suppose that they have been changed and interpolated
to adapt them to more modern times.
The Vedas, the sacred writings of the Hindoos, according to Sir William
Jones the Orientalist, “cannot be denied to have an antiquity the most
distant.” According to the Brahmans, they are coeval with the creation,
and the Sama-Veda says, “They were formed of the soul of Him who exists
by, or of, himself.” The Hindoo laws were codified by Manu and copied by
all antiquity, notably by Rome in the compilation or digest of the laws
of all nations called the Code of _Justinian_, which has been adopted as
the foundation of all modern legislation. I could, did time permit,
furnish the laws of Manu, the Justinian Code, and the Civil Code of
Napoleon in parallel columns, in a way to show their common origin
beyond a doubt. Laws of betrothal and marriage, paternal authority,
tutelage, and adoption; property, contract, deposit, loan, sale,
partnership, donation, and testamentary bequest,—all were elaborately
promulgated by the Code of Manu in 2680 _slocas_.
Laws were arranged under eighteen principal heads, concerning as many
different causes for which laws are enacted: Debts, deposits and loans
for use, sale without ownership, gifts, non-payment of wages,
agreements, sale and purchase, disputes, boundaries, assaults, slander,
robbery and violence, adultery, altercation between man and wife,
inheritance, and gaming. “The court of Brahma with four faces” is where
four learned Brahmans sat in judgment, one of whom was the king’s chief
counsellor.
One of their trite sayings was, “When justice, having been wounded by
iniquity, approaches the court, and the judges extract not the arrow or
dart, they also shall be wounded by it.”
The mode of conducting lawsuits was, in a great degree, similar to that
used in all civilized countries of the present day. The oath taken by
witnesses was as follows: “What ye know to have been transacted in the
matter before us, between the parties reciprocally, declare at large and
with truth, for your evidence in the cause is required.”
“The witness who speaks falsely shall be fast bound under water in the
snaky cords of Varuna, and be wholly deprived of power to escape torment
during a hundred transmigrations.”
Brahmans were banished for giving false evidence, but all others were
punished by blows on the abdomen, the tongue, feet, eyes, nose, and
ears, and in capital cases blows were inflicted upon the whole body.
Some of the moral sayings of the Hindoos run thus: “He who bestows gifts
for worldly fame, while he suffers his family to live in distress,
touches his lips with honey, but swallows poison. Such virtue is
counterfeit. Even what he does for his spiritual body, to the injury of
those he is bound to maintain, shall bring him ultimate misery, both in
this world and the next.
“Content, returning good for evil, resistance to sensual appetite,
abstinence from illicit gains, knowledge of the Vedas, knowledge of the
Supreme Spirit, veracity, and freedom from wrath, form the tenfold
system of duties.
“Honor thy father and thy mother. Forget not the favors thou hast
received. Learn whilst thou art young. Seek the society of the good.
Live in harmony with others. Remain in thine own place.
“Speak ill of none. Ridicule not bodily infirmities. Pursue not a
vanquished foe. Deceive even not thy enemies. Forgiveness is sweeter
than revenge. The sweetest bread is that earned by labor. Knowledge is
riches.
“What one learns in his youth is as lasting as graven on stone. The wise
is he who knows himself. Speak kindly to the poor. Discord and gaming
lead to misery. He misconceives his interest who violates his promise.
“There is no tranquil sleep without a good conscience, nor any virtue
without religion. To honor thy mother is the most acceptable worship. Of
women the fairest ornament is modesty.”
The following, from the laws of Manu (lib. iii. Sloca 55), will contrast
strangely with the law of Moses regarding the treatment of women and the
esteem in which they should be held:
“Women should be nurtured with every tenderness and attention by their
fathers, their brothers, their husbands, and their brothers-in-law, if
they desire great prosperity.”
“Where women live in affliction the family soon becomes extinct; but
when they are loved and respected, and cherished with tenderness, the
family grows and prospers in all circumstances.”
“When women are honored the divinities are content; but when we honor
them not all acts of piety are sterile.”
“The households cursed by the women to whom they have not rendered due
homage find ruin weigh them down and destroy them as if smitten by some
secret power.”
“In the family where the husband is content with his wife, and the wife
with her husband, happiness is assured for ever.”
That there were many trivial things in the ancient pagan laws, and many
practices prevailed among a portion of the people which seem idolatrous,
we freely admit; but the same is true of many of the Hebrew laws, which
are too obscene for quotation here. We also find among the Hebrews all
forms of _nature-worship_, such as sun-worship, tree-worship,
fire-worship, ser-pent-worship, and phallic-worship. Of this more later
on.
Besides the Hindoos and the Egyptians, there were many nations more
ancient than the Hebrews. The Grecian Argos was founded 1807 b. c.
Athens and Sparta existed 1550 b. c. Then there were the Phœnicians, a
maritime people who flourished more than five thousand years ago, whose
monuments and inscriptions are found in Palestine to-day, while the
Hebrews have left us neither monument nor inscription. The Chaldeans
established a monarchy four thousand or five thousand years ago, and
three thousand five hundred or four thousand years back the Assyrians
became masters of the valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and from
these people the Jews got all they ever knew about things subsequently
recorded in the Pentateuch.
The Jewish and Christian religions (for they are claimed to be one) are
next to being the _youngest_, or most modern, of any of the _great
religions_ of the world, the Mohammedan being the last. Each claimed
divine authority; all had their lawgivers, priests, and prophets, who
wrote, as they claimed, their bibles by _divine_ inspiration. The error
of Judaism is in claiming the greatest antiquity, as well as claiming to
be the only religion having the divine sanction.
I cannot refrain from mentioning some things which cannot be regarded as
wholly irrelevant. Moses had a very remarkable experience in his
infancy. At his birth he was placed in an ark and set afloat on the
Nile, and was rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter, who called a nurse for him
who proved to be his mother. We have many counterparts of this in
Grecian and Egyptian mythology. _Perseus_ was shut up in a chest and
cast into the sea by the king of Argos, and was found by Dictys, who
educated him. _Bacchus_ was confined in a chest by order of the king of
Thebes, and was cast upon the Nile. He had two mothers—natural and
adopted. _Osiris_, the Egyptian divinity, was confined in a coffer and
thrown into the river. He floated to Phœnicia. His mother wandered in
silence and grief to Byblos, and was selected by the king’s servants and
taken to the palace, and was made _the nurse_ of the young prince. We
could give several other parallel cases, but we pause and wonder
whether the reported experience of Moses was not another version of the
same myth.
We next find this “greatest of statesmen and lawgivers” a fugitive from
justice (Ex. 2: 11-15). He had killed a man and buried him in the sand,
and when he learned that the murder was known by the Hebrews, and
Pharaoh sought to slay him, he fled to the land of Midian and tended the
flocks of Jethro, a priest, until he was eighty years old. He knew then
that it was wrong to kill just as well as he did after receiving the Ten
Commandments; for he “looked this way and that” to find out whether any
one saw him, and “he feared, and said, Surely this is known.” He showed
a sense of _guilt_. He always seemed afraid of Pharaoh on account of
this murder.
He was next commissioned to deliver his brethren from their bondage in
Egypt, and was instructed to say that “_I Am that I Am_” had sent him
(Ex. 3: 14). Now, it seems to me very strange that Nuk-Pa-Nuk was the
Egyptian name for God, and means, “_I Am that I Am!_” (Bonwick,
_Egyptian Belief_, p. 395). This name was found upon an Egyptian
temple, according to Higgins (_Anacalypsis_, vol. ii. p. 17),
who says, “_I Am_ was a divine name understood by all the initiated
among the Egyptians;” and Bunsen affirms, in his _Keys of St. Peter_,
that the “_I Am_ of the Hebrews was the same as the _I Am_ of the
Egyptians.”
There is another peculiarity about Moses that seems strange to me. In
his statue in Fairmount Park he is represented as having horns, and he
is so portrayed in the statue by Michael Angelo. Now the sun-god Bacchus
had _horns_, and so had Zeus, the Grecian supreme deity. _Bacchus_ was
called “the Lawgiver,” and it is said that his laws were written upon
_two tables of stone_. It is also said that he and his army enjoyed the
_light of the sun_ (pillar of fire) during the night-time, and he, like
Moses, had a _rod_ with which divers miracles were wrought. The Persian
legend relates that Zoroaster received from Ormuzd the Book of the Law
upon a _high mountain. Minos_ received on Mount Dicta, from Zeus, the
supreme god, _the law_. There are many such cases. Even Mohammed, it is
said, so received the Koran.
Then the crossing of the Red Sea by Moses and his three millions of
absconding slaves “dry-shod,” and the “rock in the wilderness giving
forth water when struck by the rod of Moses,” both have several
parallels. Orpheus, the earliest poet of Greece, relates how _Bacchus_
had crossed _the Red Sea dry-shod_ at the head of his army, and how he
“divided the waters” of the rivers Orontes and Hydaspis and passed
through them “dry-shod,” and how he _drew water from the rock
with his wonderful rod_. Professor Steinthal notes the fact “that almost
all the acts of Moses correspond to those of the _sun-gods_.” It may
seem strange that the Hebrews were acquainted with Grecian mythology,
yet we know this was the fact. Rev. Dr. Isaac M. Wise says, “The Hebrews
adopted forms, terms, ideas, and myths of all nations with whom they
came in contact, and, like the Greeks, in their way cast them all in a
peculiar Jewish religious mould.”
Moreover, there are strange inconsistencies and contradictions connected
with the alleged giving of the Law to Moses. In both Exodus and
Deuteronomy God is represented as _speaking_ the words, and in Deut.
5:22 it is said God “_wrote_ them on two tables of stone” after speaking
them, and in Ex. 24: 28 _Moses_ is represented as doing the writing:
“And _he_ wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten
commandments.” We here find a hundred commandments, more or less, of a
ceremonial character, and only _one_ of the original ten, the one
relating to the Sabbath, and we here find “earing-time and harvest” made
a season of rest just as much as the Sabbath. Then there are different
reasons given for the observance of the Sabbath in Ex. 20 and Deut.
5—the one that God “rested on the seventh day” after creating all things
in six days (of course this was in six days of twenty-four hours each,
else there was no pertinency in the reason); and the other, that it was
in commemoration of the deliverance of the Hebrews from the bondage in
Egypt.
It has been claimed that at least the Sabbath is an institution first
established in the Decalogue of Exodus, and yet even this must be
denied. Evidences of the observance of the seventh day as sacred are
found in the calendars of the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians, and the
_Records of the Past_ assert that Sabbath observance was in existence at
least eleven hundred years before Moses or Exodus among the Accadians,
Chaldeans, and Assyrians.
There are also great variances in the language of the two accounts in
Exodus and Deuteronomy, which could not have existed if copied from what
God had written in stone. The second table of stone was an exact copy of
the first (Deut. 10:2). When Moses got excited at Aaron’s golden calf
and broke the two tables of stone containing the Law, and God was going
to destroy the people, Moses dissuaded him from doing so by telling him
what the Egyptians would then say about him! (Num. 14; 13-16.)
It is worthy of note that the first commandment is of doubtful
_monotheism_: Thou shalt have no “other gods before me,” implying that
there were other gods. Then there is something not pleasant in the idea
of a “jealous God,” as used in this commandment and frequently in other
places. Contrast this with the Hindoo _Geeta_, where God is represented
as saying, “They who serve even other gods, with a firm belief in doing
so, involuntarily worship Me. I am He who partaketh of all worship, and
I am their reward.” God is defined in the Hindoo _Vedas_ as, “He who
exists by himself, and who is in all because all is in him; whom the
spirit can alone perceive; who is imperceptible to the organs of sense;
who is without visible parts, Eternal, the Soul of all being, and whom
none can comprehend.” “God is one, immutable, without form or parts,
infinite, omnipresent, and omnipotent.” No need to prohibit the making
of a “graven image” to represent such a god.
Now take Moses’ description of God. He only saw his “back parts” (Ex.
33: 22, 23), and God held his hand over him when in the cleft of the
rocks while he passed by, that he might not see his glory. And, while it
is said, “Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me and
live” (Ex. 33: 20), yet “the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a
man speaketh unto his friend” (Ex. 33:11). He was with him in the
mountain forty days and nights, and saw him and talked to him, and so
did at least seventy-three other persons (Ex. 24: 9). Yet we are told in
John 1:18, “No man hath seen God at any time.”
Then there are many other “commandments” in the Bible which cannot be
reconciled with the “Ten Commandments,” and very many acts regarded as
criminal in this nineteenth century which are not forbidden, but
indirectly or tacitly sanctioned. One of the “Ten Commandments” is,
“Thou shalt not kill,” but husbands are directed to _kill_ their wives
if they propose to them a change of religion, and killing is commanded
in numerous instances and for trivial offences, such as picking up
sticks to make a fire on the Sabbath.
Take the following as specimens of the cruelty of Moses:
“But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give
thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save nothing alive that breatheth”
(Deut. 20:16).
Here is another of his injunctions: “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel,
Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate
throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his
companion, and every man his neighbor” (Ex. 32:27).
Here is another: “Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember that which
Amalek did to Israel [some four hundred years before], how he laid wait
for him,” etc. “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that
they have; slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep,
camel and ass” (1 Sam. 15: 2, 3). This was sweeping, merciless revenge
on the innocent.
He commands the Jews to swindle the Egyptians by false pretence,
“spoiling” them of their jewelry (Ex. 3:19-22). He authorized them to
take _usury_ of strangers, but not of one another; and to sell the
“flesh of animals that had died of themselves” to strangers and aliens,
but not to run the risk of poisoning themselves (Deut. 14:21).
In the affair with the Midianites _Moses was more cruel than the
officers and common soldiery_. He was “_wroth with them_” because they
had saved all the women alive, and required that they should go back and
finish the brutal butchery. I cannot do this subject justice without
transcribing a large portion of Num. 31:
“And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses;
and they slew all the males.
“And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were
slain; namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of
Midian; Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword.
“And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and
their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their
flocks, and all their goods.
“And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their
goodly castles, with fire.
“And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of
beasts.
“And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses
and Eleazar the priest, and unto the congregation of the children of
Israel, unto the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by Jordan near
Jericho.
“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 man by lying with him.
“But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with
him, keep alive for yourselves.”
What shall we say when we remember that Moses found a refuge with the
Midianites for forty years when he was a fugitive from justice for the
murder of the Egyptian, and the Midianites were the first to show the
Jews hospitality when they escaped from the bondage of Egypt? Moreover,
Moses had married a woman of Midian, and might have been supposed to
have some regard for her kinswomen. It cannot be claimed that Moses was
compelled by the low condition of the people to treat the Midianites
thus, for he was the _sole author_ of this extreme butchery of women and
children, and was “wroth” with his officers for not committing the
atrocity in the first place. True, he charges the women with having
“caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit
trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor but this could not
justify the butchery of some forty-eight thousand women and twenty
thousand boys, besides the old men. And then the thirty-two thousand
virgins had a fate _worse than death_, though called the ’Lord’s
tribute’,” and the priests got their full share of the spoil. For those
who would justify such cruelty and wholesale butchery, as they would
justify famine and pestilence the effect of natural laws, I can have no
very great respect.
It has been said, “Cruel as many of the Mosaic punishments undoubtedly
were, it is well to remember that two hundred years ago the criminal
code of England was almost, if not equally, bloody. If Moses stoned
adulteresses to death, it is not very long since we put witches and
Quakers to death, while in many other countries the stake and the fagot
were the chief arguments in aid of orthodoxy. It would not be just to
judge of the punishments inflicted over three thousand years ago from
the standpoint of the present century, when the Mosaic dispensation has
passed away and that of the law of love substituted. There was no mercy
in the smoking rocks of Sinai. There was nothing but the law in all its
sternness.”
This is all very well, but we should remember that the cruel criminal
codes of modern times got their cruelty from the Mosaic code. “Thou
shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Ex. 22: 18) was one of the laws of
Moses, and from first to last thirty thousand witches were’ executed in
Great Britain and two hundred thousand in Germany. Sir Matthew Hale
pronounced the death-sentence on a “witch,” and Blackstone, the great
commentator, thought that witchcraft must be real because the Bible said
there were witches! Scotland continued to burn witches until 1722, and
Germany until 1780, while in 1515 there were five thousand witches
burned at Geneva. I am ashamed to speak of our own hanging of witches in
Massachusetts, but it is very well known that it was done by authority
of the law of Moses: “A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit,
or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them
with stones: their blood shall be upon them” (Lev. 20: 27).(1)
Rev. Rabbi Hirsch sums up his conclusions as the result of his study of
the Pentateuch:
“The non-authenticity of the Pentateuch is shown by the work itself. It
is indicated by—(1) The impossible occurrences in the desert; (2) The
various contradictions and repetitions, as in the descriptions of the
festivals; the provision of the officiators for the sacrifices; the
appropriations of the tithes; the rules for sacrificing the first-born
children to Deity—the law regulating these matters varying in
Deuteronomy and Numbers; (3) Certain phrases used, as “up to the present
day,” which lose all significance if applied to Moses. Thus the book
itself shows not one author, but many.
“The non-authenticity of the Pentateuch is shown also by lack of
reference to it in the prophetical and historical books. Jeremiah, when
denouncing in unmeasured terms the very sins prohibited by the
Decalogue, never uses the language of those cardinal rules of morality;
the prophecies show no trace of the priestly ordinances; and, though
most of the laws refer to Sinai, the name occurs in none of the
prophetical books.
(1) In 1865 the witch-laws were yet in force in South Carolina!
“It contains old songs; embodies the written law or judicial decisions
of the Israelites in the Book of the Covenant; springs from two currents
of history, the Elohist and Jehovist, the former composed of the younger
Elohist of the South and the older Elohist of the North; shows
Deuteronomy very much altered from its original form by emendations and
additions, being formerly without the first four and the closing
chapters, and the Levitical Law or Priestly Codex having been later
incorporated with Joshua and the books of Moses; and lastly it is marred
by changes made in accordance with the new religious spirit.”
We know very little about Moses. If there ever was such a man—which is
very doubtful, taking the writings accredited to him for authority—he is
not shown to have been “the greatest statesman and lawgiver the world
has ever produced.” Neither have the Jews ever developed, in ancient or
modern times, such a moral character as a people as to justify the
supposition that they had a great and inspired leader among them, and
that he taught them anything not well known for many centuries before to
more ancient and more intelligent nations.
The assumption that Moses was the author, under divine guidance, of what
is commonly called the _Ten Commandments,_ about one thousand four
hundred and fifty-one years before the Christian era, is _assumption_
only, without a particle of proof to sustain it. What are commonly
called the laws of Moses were written by some person or persons unknown
in the fifth or sixth centuries before the beginning of Christianity.
Most of the matter of what is called the Pentateuch was borrowed from
older and wiser nations—the Egyptians, the Hindoos, the Greeks, etc. But
for the unbounded credulity on this subject it would seem like an insult
seriously to discuss the question, Which are the older writings? and,
Which the substantial copies? Unless a man is ready to take assumptions
for demonstrated facts, to ignore the museums and libraries, to question
the conclusions of the profound-est antiquarians, and to make the stream
of history flow backward, he must admit that the Hebrews were the
borrowers.(1)
(1) The substance of this chapter was published in March, 1890, in _An
Open Letter_ to Hon. Edward M. Paxson, Chief-Justice of
Pennsylvania, who had affirmed in a lecture before the Law School
of the University of Pennsylvania that the “law of Sinai was the
first of which we have any knowledge,” and that “Moses was the
greatest statesman and lawgiver the world has ever produced.”