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CHAPTER II
HEBREW HOLY FORGERIES
"Hinneh lash-sheqer asah et sheqer sepharim -- Behold, the
lying pen of the scribes hath wrought lies." Jeremiah, viii. 8.
SUNDRY HOLY HEBREW men of old, we are told on the authority of
the name of the pseudo-first Jewish-Christian Pope, "spake as they
were moved by the Holy Ghost" (2 Peter, i, 21). These literary
movings of the Spirit were sometime reduced to writing in "Sacred
Scriptures"; and again later Christian authority assures: "All
scripture is given by inspiration of God" (2 Tim. iii, 16), --
though this is a falsified rendition: the true reading is: "Every
scripture suitable for edification is divinely inspired," as the
original Greek text is quoted by Father Tertullian. (ANF. iv, 16.)
It is the popular supposition that the 66 -- (Catholic Bible
73) -- "little books" which comprise the Bible as we know it, are
the whole sum of Hebrew and Christian "sacred writings," which have
claimed and have been accorded the sanction of Divine inspiration
and "treated by the Church as canonical." The term "canonical" in
ecclesiastical parlance means Books accepted as divinely inspired;
books which "were definitely canonized, or adjudged to have a
uniquely Divine or authoritative quality," as is the authorative
definition. (CE. iii, 267.) "Canonicity depends on inspiration."
(EB. i, 653.) The holy Hebrew "canon" was closed, or the last
inspired Book of the Old Testament written, according to Jewish
"Tradition," by Ezra, about 444 B.C. (Ib. i, 658, 662.) In truth,
however, several of the Books of the Old Testament were written
much later, and were never heard of by Ezra; and "some found their
way in, others not, on grounds of taste -- the taste of the
period," says Wellhausen. (Einleitung, p. 652, 6th Ed.)
The popular idea is that when the "moving" of the above
inspired 66 sacred writings was ended, the moving Spirit retired
from the field of Hebrew, and later of Christian literature, and
thus closed the "sacred canon" of the respective Hebrew and
Christian Testaments. This will be seen to be a mistake, in the
judgment of the True Christian Church, according to which the Jews
evidently did not know their own inspired writings, and curiously
omitted from their "canon" a number of divinely "moved" books and
scraps of books, which the better-instructed Christian Church has
adopted as full of inspiration into its own present official Bible,
as we shall notice in its place. There is also a much greater
number of such books, of both Hebrew and Christian origin, which
the inspired Church formerly and for ages regarded as inspired and
"canonical," but which it now repudiates as "apocryphal" and
acknowledges as forgeries; as we shall also duly note.
There is, indeed, an eminence mass of religious writings, the
work of Jewish or Christian priests or professional religious
persons, or composite productions of both sets of forgers, which
are generally known as "apocrypha" or pious forgeries; but which
each and all have been held by the Church through many ages of
faith as of the highest inspired sanctity and accredited with the
full rank of "canonical" truth of God.
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The term apocryphal or forged "takes in those compositions
which profess to have been written either by Biblical personages or
men in intimate relation with them." (CE. i, 601.) "Since these
[apocryphal] books were forgeries, the epithet in common parlance
today denotes any story or document which is false or spurious, ...
apocryphal in the disparaging sense of bearing names to which they
have no right; all come under the definition above, for each of
then has at one tine or another been treated as canonical." (EB. i,
249-250.)
That the above 66 (or 73) Books of the accepted Bible of
Christianity come exactly, both as to manner of spurious origin and
matter of fictional content, within the above definition of
apocrypha or forgery, shall be made exceedingly evident. A brief
review of these acknowledged religious forgeries in the name of God
and of his inspired biographers, will afford a curious and
instructive study of the workings of the fervid, credulous and
contorted priestly mind, reckless of truth, and shed a floodlight
of understanding on the origins and incredibility of the so-called
"canonical" Books of the Bible, Hebrew and Christian alike.
While speaking here immediately of the Jewish Apocrypha or
pious forgeries, it is to be noted and borne in mind that it is the
Holy-Ghost-guided True Christian Church which alone has accepted
and cherished these spurious productions of Jewish priestcraft --
(scornfully repudiated by the Jews), has adulterated and re-forged
them to more definite deceptive purposes of Christian propaganda,
and has outdone Jewry by adding innumerable like forgeries, -- "a
whole literature" of fabrications -- to its own spurious
hagiography, or sacred writings. There will thus occur some
necessary and unavoidable over-lappings of Jewish and Christian
forgeries in the course of our treatment.
"It must be confessed," admits the Catholic Encyclopedia,
"that the early Fathers and the Church, during the first three
centuries, were more indulgent towards Jewish pseudograph [i.e.
forged writings] circulating under venerable Old Testament, names.
The Book of Henoch [Enoch] and the Assumption of Moses had been
cited by the canonical Epistle of Jude. Many Fathers admitted the
inspiration of Fourth Esdras. Not to mention the Shepherd of
Hermas, the Acts of St. Paul (at least in the Thecla portion) and
the Apocalypse of St. Peter were highly revered at this and later
periods. ... In the Middle Ages ... many pseudographic [i.e.
forged] writings enjoyed a high degree of favor among both clerics
and laity." (CE. i, 615.)
A curious and edifying side-light on the chronic clerical
flair for forgery is thrown by a sentence from the paragraph above
quoted from the Catholic Encyclopedia. The earliest papal decree
condemning certain of these pious forgeries is itself a Christian
forgery! "The so-called 'Decretum de recipiendis et non recipiendis
libris,' which contained a catalogue of some half-hundred works
condemned as apocryphal, was attributed to Pope Gelasius (495),
but, in reality is a compilation dating from the beginning of the
Sixth century." (CE,. i, 615.)
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And, be it noted, these Christian forgeries were not at all
condemned by the Church as forgeries and pious lies, but simply
because they contained some dogmatic doctrines which were regarded
by the Orthodox as "heresies" they were condemned "always, however,
with a preoccupation against heresy." And again in the same
article: "Undoubtedly it was the large use heretical Circles,
especially the Gnostics made of this insinuating literature which
first called out the animadversions of the official guardians of
doctrinal purity." (lb. p. 615.)
The same authority cautiously and clerically explains, that
"ancient literature, especially in the Orient, used methods much
more free and clastic than those permitted by our modern and
occidetital culture. Pseudographic [falsified] compositions was in
vogue among the Jews in the two centuries before Christ and for
some time later. This holds good for the so-called 'Wisdom of
Solomon,' written in and belonging to the Church's sacred cannon.
-- [This admits that this book of the Catholic Bible is spurious.]
In other cases, where the assumed name did not stand as a symbol of
a type of a certain kind of literature, the intention was not
without a degree of at least literary dishonesty." (Ib. p. 601.)
Apocryphal religious literature consists of several classes,
one of the most important subdivisions being that designated as
"apocalyptic," and which consists of "pretended prophecies and
revelations of both Jewish and Christian authorship, and dating
from about 200 B.C. to about 150 A.D.," the latter being the
approximate date of the new "canonical" Books of the New Testament,
Their general subject is the problem of the final triumph of what
is called the Kingdom of God. Speaking particularly of the
apocalypses, the best known of which are the Hebrew Book of Daniel,
written about 165 B.C., and the Jewish-Christian Book of Revelation
imputed to the Apostle John of Patmos, a recent secular authority
(corroborated at all points by clerical authorities) points out
that many if not all of the Jewish apocalypses are adulterated with
"alterations and interpolations by Christian hands, making the
alleged predictions, point more definitely to Jesus," which pious
tempering "gave certain of these Jewish works a very wide
circulation in the early Church. ... The revelations and
predictions are set forth as though actually received and written
or spoken by ancient worthies, as Enoch, Moses, etc. ... They were
once widely accepted as genuine prophecies, and found a warm
reception in Jewish and early Christian circles." (The New
International, Encyclopedia, vol. i, p. 745.) This form of pious
fraud is admitted as quite the expected thing: "Naturally baaing
itself upon the Pentateuch and the Prophets, it clothed itself
fictitiously with the authority of a patriarch or prophet who was
made to reveal the transcendent future" (CE. i, 602), -- most
usually long ex post facto.
The vast and varied extent of Jewish-Christian forgery of
religious books is shown by the groupings under which the several
kinds of apocrypha forgeries are quite exhaustively considered in
the technical works treating of them, such as the Catholic
Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia Biblica, as well as the more
popular Britannica and New International Encyclopedias, where the
subject is fully discussed. "Speaking broadly," says the first,
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"The Apocrypha of Jewish origin are coextensive with what are
styled of the Old Testament, and those of Christian origin the
apocrypha of the New Testament. The subject will be treated
["according to their origin"] -- as follows: (I) Apocrypha of
Jewish origin: (II) Jewish Apocrypha with Christian accretions;
(III) apocrypha of Christian origin, comprising (1) apocryphal
Gospels; (2) Pilate literature and other apocrypha concerning
Christ; (3) apocryphal Acts of Apostles; (4) apocryphal doctrinal
works; (5) apocryphal Epistles; (6) apocryphal Apocalypses, (IV)
the apocrypha and the Church." (CE. i, 601.)
What a catalogue of confessed ecclesiastical forgers, and
fraud in the name of God, Christ and his Apostles, and the Church
of God, for the propaganda of priestly frauds as "our Most Holy
Faith"!
What will probably -- In view of the foregoing and what is yet
to come -- be appreciated by many as a peculiarly rare bit of
apocrypha (in its secondary sense) is the following, uttered
apparently with the due and usual ecclesiastical solemnity, in the
celebrated Dictatus of Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085), stating the
presumptuous pretenses of the Papacy:
"The Roman Church has never erred, nor will it err to all
eternity. No one may be considered a Catholic Christian who
does not agree with the Catholic Church. No book is
authoritative unless it has received the papal sanction. ...
The pope is the only person whose feet are to be kissed
by all princes"; "the Pope may depose emperors and absolve
subjects from allegiance to an unjust ruler." (Cited by
Robinson, 'The Ordeal of Civilization, pp. 126, 128; Library
of Original Sources, vol. iv, p. 126-321.)
This puts the stamp of canonical inspiration and verity on
some dozen Jewish books and parts of books of the Catholic Bible
which the Jews and the whole body of otherwise discordant sects of
Protestants hesitate not unanimously to pronounce apocryphal and
forged. These "apocrypha" are either entire rejected Jewish books,
all doubtless with Christian "interpolations," or apocryphal
chapters or parts, interpolated probably by the same industry into
the equally apocryphal books of the accepted Jewish canon. The
names of these books, original and interpolations, and which are
not included in the Hebrew Old Testament, -- but are in the True
Church Bible, -- are: Tobit, Judith, Baruch, with the Epistle of
Jeremiah, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach (or
Ecclesiastics), I and II Maccabees, Prayer of Manasseh, Additions
to Esther, and Additions to the Book of Daniel, consisting of the
Prayer of Azarias, the Song of the Three Holy Children (in the
Fiery Furnace), the History of Susannah, the History of Bel and the
Dragon, and sundry such precious fables. (See CE. iii, pp. 267,
270; iv, 624, passim.) These are all included in the Greek
Septuagint and in the Latin Vulgate, were read as Scripture in
early Christian Church, and were declared by the Council of Trent,
at its Fourth Session, in 1546, -- under the Curse of God on all
skeptical doubters, -- to be "inspired and canonical"; and they are
so held by the Roman, and some of the Greek and Oriental Catholic
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Churches, but are declared "apocrypha" and forged by Jewry and all
the rest of Christendom. To several of these extra-revelations of
Judaism included in the Christian True Bible, head-notes apologetic
for their inclusion are attached, of which that to the celebrated
Book of Tobit or Tobias is typical: "Protestants have left it out
of their modern Bibles, alleging that it is not in the canon of the
Jews. But the Church of Christ, which received the Scriptures not
from the Jews, but from the Apostles of Christ, -- [who were all
Jews, to believe the Christian record] -- by traditions from them,
has allowed this book a place in the Christian [sic] Bible from the
beginning." (See Cath. Bible, Tobit, et passim). We may admire in
synopsis the divine inspiration of
THE INSPIRED FABLE OF TOBIT
This Book of Tobit, or Tobias, scoffed both by Jews and
Protestants as a ridiculous fable, but held by all True Believers
as a precious revelation of God, to disbelieve which is to be
damned, is a veritable treasure-trove of exalted heavenly
inspiration, for the preservation of which Jew and Gentile alike
may be dubiously grateful to the pious "tradition" of the Apostles
of Christ, as above said. This Tobias was a very pious and stubborn
Israelite of the Captivity, who, before departing, had cached all
his available cash with his kinsman Gabelus, of Rages, a city of
the Medes, "taking a note of his hand" for its repayment on demand.
While captive in a strange and pagan land, Tobias wan visited by a
piteous calamity, for "as he was sleeping, hot dung out of a
swallows nest fell upon his eves, and he was made blind"; which
affliction Tobias looked reverently to the Lord as visiting upon
him as "revenge for my sins"; as a result Tobias became extremely
poor, and his wife took in work. At that time there lived in the
city of Rages another pious Israelite by name Raguel, who had a
marriageable -- or rather muchly married daughter, Sara, who was
under grave reproach and even imputation of murder, "Because she
had been given to seven husbands, and a devil named Asmodeus had
killed them, at their first going in unto her," so that she
complained that though sevenfold a widow she remained yet a virgin.
At this juncture Tobias bethought himself of the good money he
had left with Gabelus of Rages, and after much palaver decided to
send his son, Tobias, Jr., a comely youth, with the note of hand in
his pocket, and his dog (name unrevealed), on the long journey to
recoup the fortune of ten talents of silver. As Tobias, Jr. started
on the journey, a beautiful young man, who was really the Archangel
Raphael, met him and introduced himself as Azarias, son of Ananias,
-- (Ananias must have written the account) -- and offered to
accompany and guide him upon his journey, which offer was
gratefully accepted. As the two journeyed they came to the river
Tigris; Tobias waded in to wash his feet, when, lo, "a monstrous
fish came up to devour him," whereat Tobias called to his companion
for help. The Angel told him to take the monster fish by the gill
and haul him out, which Tobias seems to have had no trouble in
doing. The Angel then directed Tobias to open the yet live and
"panting" fish, "and lay up his heart, his gall, and his liver, for
thee; for these are necessary for useful medicines"; this done,
they cooked the fish and carried it all along for provisions for
the trip. As they journeyed, Tobias asked the Angel what these
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medicinal scraps were good for; "and the Angel answering said, if
thou put a little piece of its heart upon coals, the smoke thereof
driveth away all kinds of devils, either from man or from woman, so
that they come no more to them. And the gull is good for anointing
the eyes, in which there is a white speck, and they shall be
cured."
So discoursing pleasantly and instructively, the twain arrived
at Rages, and the Angel guided Tobias straight to the house of
Raguel and his daughter Sara, his sole heiress, and told Tobias to
ask for her in marriage. Tobias said that he was afraid of Sara,
for he had heard of what happened to those seven other men; but the
Angel reassured him, that he would show him how to overcome the
devil Asmodeus; that he should marry Sara and go to bed with her
for three nights, but should continently confine his activities "to
nothing else but to prayers with her", and, assured the Angel, on
the first night "lay the liver of the fish on the fire, and the
devil shall be driven away," other holy marvels happening on the
succeeding nights; "and when the third night is past, thou shalt
take the virgin with the fear of the Lord, moved rather for love of
children than for lust." The affair was arranged according to these
prescriptions; with Sara and her parents; after the wedding supper,
the newlyweds were left alone in their boudoir; Tobias did nothing
but pray and put a part of the fish liver in the fire, whereupon
"the Angel Raphael took the devil, and bound him in the desert of
Upper Egypt"; then both prayed some more, the fervid prayers being
repeated verbatim. In the morning, Raguel, out of force of habit,
called his servants and ordered them to go into the garden and dig
an eighth grave for the reception of Tobias; when the maidservant
went to the room to arrange for the removal of the corpse, she to
her great surprise "found them safe and sound, sleeping both
together." The empty grave was filled up, a big banquet prepared,
and the happy bridal couple spent two weeks with the bride's
family, while the Angel took the note of hand, went to Gabelus,
collected the money, and paid it over to Tobias; Raguel gave Tobias
one-half of all his property, and executed a writing to give him
one-half of the remainder upon the death of Raguel and wife. Tobias
sent the Angel back to Gabelus, to invite him to his wedding, and
the Angel made him Come.
To proceed swiftly to the climax of marvel, Tobias; and the
Angel, leaving the hymeneal cortege to follow as best it could,
with such impedimenta of wealth, hastened back to the home of
Tobias, Sr., where blind father and the mother were in great grief
over the supposed loss of their son and the money with him. But at
the behest of the Angel, Tobias, Jr. ran into the house, though
"the dog, which had been with them in the way, ran before, and
coming as if he had brought the news, showed his joy by his fawning
and wagging his tail," an act which has since become habitual with
dogs which have enough tail to wag. After kissing his mother and
father, as the Angel had suggested, Tobias, Jr. took the remaining
fish gall out of his traveling bag, and anointed with it the eyes
of his father; "and he stayed about half an hour; and a white skin
began to come out of his eyes, like the skin of an egg. And Tobias
took hold of it, and drew it from his eyes, and immediately he
recovered his sight. And they glorified God," and Tobias, Sr.
dutifully said "I bless thee, Lord God of Israel, because thou hast
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chastised me, and thou hast saved me: and behold I see Tobias my
son." Then, "after seven days Sara his son's wife, and all the
family arrived safe, and the cattle, and the camels, and abundance
of money of his wife's, and that money also which he had received
of Gabelus"; they all feasted for seven days "and rejoiced with all
great joy"; then, when Tobias, Sr. suggested doing something
handsome for the "holy man" through whom all their good fortune had
come, the Angel introduced himself as really not Azariah, son of
Ananias, but "The Angel Raphael, one of the Seven, who stand before
the Lord"; and he explained, "I seemed indeed to eat, and to drink
with you, but I use an invisible meat and drink, which cannot be
seen by men"; thereupon in true angel style he dissipated into thin
air and they could see him no more. The whole Tobias family then,
"lying prostrate for three hours upon their face, blessed God: and
rising up they told all his wonderful works." Thus endeth happily
the reading of the lesson, dictated by the Holy Ghost to the pious
Ananias who recorded it for the edification of True Believers. Let
us pray that it is true.
THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING
Until the Council of Trent, in 1546, there was no infallibly
defined sanction of inspiration of these Jewish "apocrypha"; like
the "canon" sacred Books of the Hebrew Bible, all alike were more
or lest; eclectically accepted and used in the True Church; but, as
said: "The Tridentine decree from which the above list is extracted
was the first infallible and effectually promulgated pronouncement
on the Canon, addressed to the Church universal. Being dogmatic in
its purport, it implies that the Apostles bequeathed the same Canon
to the Church as a part of the depositum fidei. ... We should
search the pages of the New, Testament in vain for any trace of
such action. ... We affirm that such a status points to Apostolic
sanction, which in turn must have rested on revelation either by
Christ or the Holy Spirit." (CE. iii, 270.)
This is luminous clerical reasoning: a lot of anonymous Jewish
fables, derided by Jews and all the rest of the world for want of
even common plausibility of fact or truth, and as to which the
"inspired" Christian books said to emanate from Apostles, are
silent as the grave, are declared after 1500 years to have the ear-
marks of Apostolic sanction, which "must have" been founded on
divine revelation to them "either by Christ or the Holy Spirit," --
which the Church claims are one and the same person; and it is
curious that the "infallible" Council couldn't say which was which,
but vaguely and uncertainly opined it must have been one or the
other. So much for infallible cock-suredness as to "inspiration" of
holy Scriptures. Even the Old Testament itself, says our logician
of inspiration, "reveals no formal notion of inspiration," though,
again, "the later Jews must have possessed the idea." (Ib. p. 269.)
The cursory notice which we shall take of the Old Testament books
will serve to confirm that they reveal no notion at all of
inspiration; that the later Jews must have had the idea that they
were inspired, does not much help the case for them.
In addition to these rejected Jewish books admitted into full
canonical fellowship by the inerrant True Church, there are several
other Jewish apocrypha which are only semi-canonical and admitted
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into a sort of bar-sinister fellowship with the legitimates. They
have a place in the Orthodox Bible for the "edification" of the
Faithful, but are usually printed in the Appendix as suggestive to
the devout that they will not be damned for not fully believing
these particular forgeries,
Among these are two very celebrated books forged in the name
of the great Restorer of Israel, Ezra, under the titles of Third
and Fourth Esdras, as the name is written in the True Bibles.
"Third Esdras," says the Encyclopedia, "Is, one of the three
uncanonical books appended to the official edition of the Vulgate.
... It enjoyed exceptional favor in the early ages of the Church,
being quoted as Scripture with implicit faith by the leading Greek
and Latin Fathers." (CE,. i, 605.) In like errant faith was
regarded its companion forgery, Fourth Esdras, of which the same
ecclesiastical authority says: "The personage serving as the screen
of the author of this book is Esdras (Ezra). ... Both Greek and
Latin Fathers cite it as prophetical. ... Notwithstanding this
widespread reverence for it, in early times, it is a REMARKABLE
FACT that the book never got a foothold in the Canon or liturgy of
the Church ... and even after the Council of Trent, together with
Third Esdras. it was placed in the appendix to the official edition
of the Vulgate. ... The dominant critical dating assigns it to a
Jew writing in the reign of Domitian, A.D. 81-98," -- the "screen"
Ezra being gathered to his fathers since about 444 B.C. (Ib. p.
603-604; v, 537-8; EB. i, 653, 1393.) It is curious that it is
regarded as "remarkable" that the Holy Ghost did not "fall" for
this particular forgery, when it did for so many others!
EZRA "RESTORES" THE LAW
A remarkable apocryphal tale relating to the Hebrew Scriptures
is enshrined by pseudo-inspiration in chapter 14 of this Fourth of
Esdras, regarding the miraculous restoration of Hebrew Holy Writ
after its total perishment. In the calamity of the capture and
destruction of the Holy City by Nebuchadnezzar, 586 B.C., the
Temple of Solomon was destroyed, together with the entire
collection of the sacred Rolls of Scriptures, so that not a scratch
of inspired pen remained to tell the tale of theocratic Hebrew
history and its "revealed" religion. This inconsolable and
apparently irreparable loss affected the holy People all the time
of the of the Babylonian captivity. But upon their return to the
restored City of God, and over a century after their loss, God, we
are told in Fourth Esdras, inspired Ezra and commissioned him to
reproduce the sacred lost Books, which, judging from the result, of
his inspired labors, were many more than the supposed twenty and
two of the supposed old Hebrew canon. Accordingly Ezra, employing
five scribes, dictated to them (from inspired memory) the textual
contents of the lost sacred books, and in just forty days and
nights reproduced a total of 94 sacred books, of which he
designated 24 as the sacred canon, the remaining 70 being termed
esoteric and reserved fir the use of only the wisest. This inspired
fable was eagerly accepted for truth by the early Church Fathers,
many of whom, from Irenaeus on, "admitted its inspiration"; and it
was frequently quoted and commented on as canonical by such Church
luminaries as Tertullian, St. Ambrose, Clement Alexandrensis,
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Origen, Eusebius, St. Jerome, et als., and was prevalently accepted
as Scripture throughout the scholastic period. (EB. i, 654, 139 2-
94; CE. i 537-8, 601-615.)
This legend, however, had, through a better understanding of
"the powers of ordinary human memory," quite faded out by the time
of the Reformation, but only to make way for a more modern and
rationalistic one, invented by the Jew Levita, who died in 1549.
According to his new fable Ezra and the Talmudic "Men of Great
Synagogue" simply united into one volume the 24 books which until
that time had circulated separately, and divided them into the
three great divisions yet recognized, of the Law the Prophets, and
the Hagiography or holy writings. This fabulous statement of Levita
"became the authoritative doctrine of the orthodoxy of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries." (EB. i, 654.) This new
legend is cited simply to show how prone is the credulous clerical
mind to accept as truth the most baseless fables; and how, when one
of their precious bubbles of faith is pricked by tardy exposure or
common sense, they eagerly catch at the next which comes floating
by.
THE "FINDING OF THE LAW"
Another ancient priestly fiction, which to this day passes
current among the credulous as inspired truth of God, is the fabled
"finding of the Law" as recorded in the Word of God. We are all
familiar with the notable "finding" by the late lamented Prophet.
Joseph Smith -- thereto led by the Angel Moroni -- of the golden
plates containing the hieroglyphic text of Book of Mormon, near
Palmyra N.Y. in 1823-1827. (Book of Mormon, Introd.) History
repeated itself. A like remarkable discovery was made in the year
621 B.C., this time by a priest, with the help of a witch or lady
fortune-teller. As related in 2 Kings xxii, corroborated by 2
Chronicles xxxiv, in the eighteenth year of the "good king" Josiah
of Judah, while some repair work was being done in the Temple,
Hilkiah the priest of a sudden "found the book of the law of Yahweh
given by Moses," over 800 years before, and never heard of since.
Hilkiah called in Shaphan the scribe, and they took the great
"find" to Josiah the King. To verify the veracity of the high-
priest, Huldah the lady prophet was consulted; being intimately
familiar with the sentiments of God, she at once declared that
Yahweh was very angry about it, "because," as the King said, "our
fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book, to do after
all that is written in this book"; and the King at once set about
to carry into effect the laws prescribed in Deuteronomy, -- just
then for the first time in the history of Israel ever heard of or
acted upon. This "book of the law given to Moses" 800 years before
was doubtless the priestly work of Hilkiah, palmed off under the
potent name of Moses to force its very reluctant observance and
belief on the superstitious Jews. That this is the fact is the
consensus of the scholars, as summarized in the Encyclopedia
Biblies, and any modern work of O.T. criticism. An examination of
the Bible texts themselves, as made in my previous work,
demonstrates that this holy "law of Mosses" was totally unknown and
unobserved through all the History of Israel from its beginnings
until Josiah, and was composed by his priests and enlarged into the
present Pentateuch during and after the captivity in Babylon.
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THE "SEPTUAGINT" TRANSLATION INTO GREEK
As priestly forged tales were fabricated to account for the
origin and preservation of the sacred Hebrew Books, so like pious
fraud was adopted to account for their very notable translation
into Greek, in what is known as the Sepuagint, Version. After the
conquests by Alexander the Great and his establishment of the city
of Alexandria in Egypt, immense numbers of Jews were settled in the
new city, which quickly became the commercial and intellectual
center of the ancient world, with Greek the universal language. The
holy Hebrew language had became a dead language to the Jews of the
"Dispersion"; their synagogue services could not be conducted in
the mother tongue. The Alexandrian Jews were accordingly under
necessity to render the "Law" into Greek for their public use; and
this was gradually done by such of them as thought themselves able
to do such work. But this common-place mode of rendering the sacred
Hebrew into a Gentile speech did not satisfy the pious wonder-
craving Jewish mind. Accordingly, somewhere about 200 B.C., an
anonymous Jew invented a more satisfactory tale, which has had
incalculable influence on the Christian faith and dogmas. This
pious Israelite had the customary recourse to religions forgery; he
forged a letter in the name of one Aristeas, an official of Ptolemy
II, Philadelphus, the Greek king of Egypt, 285-247 B.C., purporting
to be addressed to his brother, Philocrates, and giving a marvelous
history of the Translation.
Here, in substance, is what we read of the first origin of the
Version, limited therein to the "law" of Moses, as first related by
Josephus. Ptolemy had recently established a library at Alexandria,
which he purposed should contain a copy of every obtainable
literary work extant. This Library became the most extensive and
celebrated of the ancient world, containing some 700000 manuscript
books at the time it was savagely destroyed, in 391 A.D., by the
benighted Christian zeal and fury of Bishop Theophilus of
Alexandria and his crazy monks of Nitria, as related in Kingsley's
Hypatia or any history of the times. CE. xiv, 625.) At the
suggestion of Demetrius, his Librarian, fables the pseudo-Aristeas
through Josephus, that he should enrich the Library with a copy of
the sacred law of the Jews Ptolemy wrote to Eleazar the chief
priest at Jerusalem, sending the letter and magnificent presents
"to God" by the hand of a delegation including Aristeas, requesting
a copy of the Law and a number of learned Jews competent to
translate it into Greek. The embassy was successful; a richly
ornamented copy of the holy law, written in letters of gold, was
sent to the King, together with seventy-two Doctors of Israel,
deputed to deliver the Book and to carry out the wishes of the
King. They were received with great honor, says pseudo-Aristeas,
and duly feted for several days; they were then conducted across
the long causeway to the Island of Pharos to the place which was
prepared for them, "which was a house that was built near the
shore, and was a quiet place, and fit for their discoursing
together about their work, ... Accordingly they made an accurate
interpretation, with great zeal and great pains," working until the
ninth hour each day, and visiting Ptolemy every morning. "Now when
the Law was transcribed, and the labor of interpretation was over,
which came to its conclusion in seventy-two days," the work was
read over to the assembled Jews, who rejoiced that "the
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interpretation was happily finished"; they were enjoined to report
any errors or emissions which they might discover, to the
"Seventy," who would make the necessary corrections in their work.
(Josephus, Antiq. Jews, Bk. XII, chap. 2; CE. xiii, 722.) Thus the
translation wag only of "The Law," the Five Books of Moses; and it
was open team-work, all the Seventy-two working together, comparing
and discussing as they proceeded, and expressly enjoining the Jews
to note and report for correction all errors of omission or
commission which they might discover.
Thus the pseudo-Aristeas, as cited by Josephus; though, as a
matter of fact, this Septuagint Version, so-called because of the
legendary Seventy-(two), was in the grossest manner inaccurate, and
imported innumerable errors into the Christian religion which was
based upon and propagated for several centuries only through the
Septuagint texts. Indeed, "the text of the Septuagint was regarded
as so unreliable, because of its freedom in rendering, and of the
alterations which had been introduced into it, etc., that, during
the second century of our era it was discarded by the Church." (CE.
iv, 625.) We shall notice the fearful error of Isaiah's "virgin-
birth" text; for other well-known instances, it makes out Creation
1195 years earlier than the Hebrew and Vulgate, 4004 B.C., and the
venerable Methuselah is made to survive the Flood by fourteen
years.
Despite, however, its patently legendary character, the
pseudo-Aristeas' account, the forged letter and the story, were
eagerly accepted as genuine and authentic by Fathers, Popes and
ecclesiastic writers until the sixteenth century, when their
spurious character was revealed by the nascent modern criticism.
"The authenticity of the letter, called in question first by Louis
Vives (1492-1540), professor at Louvain, is now universally
denied." (CE. xiii, 722.)
The Fathers, however, could not rest content with this
unvarnished original fabrication in the name of Aristeas, of an
ordinary human and errant translation of the "Law"; they avidly set
about embellishing it in the accepted clerical style, adding
fanciful and lying details to emphasize the miraculous and inspired
origin of the Version. As this notable instance serves admirably to
illustrate the childish and uncritical credulity of the Fathers,
their reckless disregard of truth, their chronic zest for any
untruth or fable quotable to pander to the glory of God and enhance
the pious superstition of the Faithful, let us here watch the
growth of this simple human yarn of the Jewish aristeas-forger into
the wonderful and ever more embellished miracle as it passes from
Father to Father, -- exactly as the Gospel-fables grew from "Mark"
to "John." According to Fathers Tertullian, St. Augustine, St.
Jerome, et als., the 72 were inspired by God each severally for the
entire work; in translating they did not consult with one another;
they had been shut up incomunicados in separate cells on Pharos,
either singly or in pairs, and their several translations, when
finished and compared, were found to agree entirely both as to
sense and the expressions employed, with the original Hebrew text
and with each other (St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Irenaeus,
Justin Martyr). Finally, the 72 translated not only the Law, but
the entire Old Testament, -- several of whose Books were not yet at
the time written.
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Father Justin Martyr adds near-eye-witness verification to the
false and already embroidered history, saying that the "Seventy"
were, by order of the King, "shut up in as many separate cells, and
were obliged by him, each to translate the whole Bible apart, and
without any communication with each other, yet all their several
translations were found to agree verbatim from the beginning to the
end, and were by that means demonstrated to be of divine
inspiration"; and he adds, for confirmation of faith! -- like Paul,
protesting he is not lying in anticipation of the accusation:
"These things, ye men of Greece, are no fable, nor do we narrate
fictions; but we ourselves having been in Alexandria, saw the
remains of the little [cells] at the Pharos still preserved." (Ad
Graec. ch. xiii; ANF. i, 278-9.) But in repeating the tale to the
Roman Emperor, Father Justin makes the unhappy blunder of saying,
that Ptolemy "sent to Herod, who was at that time king of the Jews,
requesting that the books of the prophets [pseudo-Aristeas said the
"Law"] be sent to him; and the king did indeed send them" (I Apol.
ch. xxxi; ANF. i, 173); whereas Herod lived some 300 years after
Ptolemy died. This forged fable is time and again repeated as sober
truth. Bishop Saint Irenaeus emphasizes the miraculous nature of
the translation of all the Books, saying that when the 72 identical
translations were compared, "God was indeed glorified, and the
Scriptures were acknowledged an truly divine; ... even the Gentiles
present perceived that the Scriptures had been interpreted by the
inspiration of God. And there was nothing astonishing in God having
done this. ... He inspired Esdras the priest (after the return from
captivity) to recast all the words of the former prophets, and to
reestablish with the people of God the Mosaic legislation." (Adv.
Haer. III, xxi, 2; ANF. i, 451-2.)
In the course of a century or two before the Christian Era,
the other Hebrew sacred books were likewise translated into Greek
for the use of the Greek-speaking Jews of "the Dispersion,"
together with numbers of the forged Jewish apocrypha, and all these
were added to the rolls of "Scriptures." This final and adulterated
form of the Septuagint "was the vehicle which conveyed these
additional Scriptures [i.e. the apocryphal Tobias, etc.] into the
Catholic Church." (CE. iii, 271.) This vagary of the Holy Ghost in
certifying the ill-translated and tempered Septuagint for the
foundations of Christian Faith, was very disastrous, as CE. points
out: "The Church had adopted the Septuagint as its own; this
differed from the Hebrew not only by the addition of several books
and passages but also by innumerable variations of text, due partly
to the ordinary process of corruption in the transcription of
ancient books, partly to the culpable temerity, as Origen called
it, of correctors who used not a little freedom in making
'corrections,' additions, and suppressions, partly to mistakes in
translation, and finally in great part to the fact that the
original Septuagint had been made from a Hebrew text quite
different from that fixed at Jamnia as the one standard by the
Jewish Rabbis." (CE. vii, 316.) So Yahveh only knows what he
actually said and did in the 4004 years up to the time his Son came
to try to "redeem" his people from some of the tangles of his Holy
Law.
Matters grew worse as time progressed: the ex-Pagan Greek
Fathers who founded Christianity, propagated the new Faith for
several centuries only from the tortuous texts of this falsified
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Septuagint, which was the only Old Testament "Scriptures" known to
and used by them as the source of the "prophecies fulfilled by
Jesus Christ" and the holy mysteries of the Jewish-Christian Faith.
"Copies of the Septuagint." says CE., "were multiplied, and, as
might be expected, many changes, deliberate as well as involuntary,
crept in." (CE. xiii, 723.) Indeed, the itch for Scripture-
scribbling was so rife among such ex-Pagan Christians as could
write and get hold of a copy, that St. Augustine complains: "It is
possible to enumerate those who have translated the Scriptures from
Hebrew into Greek, but not those who have translated them into
Latin. In sooth, in the curly days of the faith whoso possessed a
Greek manuscript and thought he had some knowledge of both tongues
was daring enough to undertake a translation." (De Doct. Christ.
II, xi; CE. ix, 20.) So the Faith was founded on befuddlement of
the Blessed Word of God as any nondescript scribbler palmed it off
to be.
We shall more than abundantly see that Holy Church never
possessed or used a single book of "Scripture" or other document of
importance, to the glory of God and the glorification of the
Church, which was not a rank original forgery and bristled besides
with "many deliberate changes" or forged interpolations.
THE SEPTUAGINT AND THE "VIRGIN-BIRTH" FRAUD
The most colossal of the blunders of the Septuagint
translators, supplemented by the most insidious, persistent and
purposeful falsification of text, is instanced in the false
translation of the notoriously false pretended "prophecy" of Isaiah
vii, 14, -- frauds which have had the most disastrous and fatal
consequences for Christianity, and to humanity under its blight;
the present exposure of which should instanter destroy the false
Faith built on these frauds.
The Greek priest who forged the "Gospel according to St.
Matthew," having before him the false Septuagint translation of
Isaiah, fables the Jewish Mary yielding to the embraces of the
Angel Gabriel to engender Jesus, and backs it up by appeal to the
Septuagint translation of Isaiah vii, 14:
"Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth
a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel." (Matt. i, 23.)
Isaiah's original Hebrew, with the mistranslated words
underscored, reads: "Hinneh ha-almah harah ve-yeldeth ben ve-karath
shem-o immanuel"; -- which, falsely translated by the false pen of
the pious translators, runs thus in the English: "Behold, a virgin
shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel"
(Isa. vii, 14.) The Hebrew words ha-almah mean simply the young
woman; and harah is the Hebrew past or perfect tense, "conceived,"
which in Hebrew, as in English, represents past and completed
action. Honestly translated, the verse reads: "Behold, the young
woman has conceived -- [is with child) -- and beareth a son and
calleth his name Immanuel."
Almah means simply a young woman, of marriageable age, whether
married or not, or a virgin or not; in a broad general sense
exactly like girl or maid in English, when we say shop-girl,
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parlor-maid, bar-maid, without reference to or vouching for her
technical virginity, which, in Hebrew, is always expressed by the
word bethulah. But in the Septuagint translation into Greek, the
Hebrew almah was erroneously rendered into the Greek parthenos,
virgin, with the definite article 'ha' in Hebrew, and e in Greek,
(the), rendered into the indefinite "a" by later falsifying
translators. (See Is It God's Word? pp. 277-279; EB. ii, 2162; New
Commentary on the Holy Scripture, Pt. I, p. 439.) And St. Jerome
falsely used the Latin word virgo.
"As early as the second century B.C.," says the distinguished
Hebrew scholar and critic, Salomon Reinach, "the Jews perceived the
error and pointed it out to the Greeks; but the Church knowingly
persisted in the false reading, and for over fifteen centuries she
has clung to her error." (Orpheus, p, 197.) The truth of this
accusation of conscious persistence in known error through the
centuries is proved by confession of St. Jerome, who made the
celebrated Vulgate translation from the Hebrew into Latin, and
intentionally "clung to the error," though Jerome well knew that it
was an error and false; and thus he perpetuated through fifteen
hundred years the myth of the "prophetic virgin birth" of Jesus
called Christ.
Being criticized by many for this falsification, St. Jerome
thus replies to one of his critics, Juvianus: "I know that the Jews
are accustomed to meet us with the objection that in Hebrew the
word Almah does not mean a virgin, but a young woman. And, to speak
truth, a virgin is properly called Bethulah, but a young woman, or
a girl, is not Almah, but Naarah"! (Jerome, Adv. Javianum I, 32;
N&amp;PNF, vi, 370.) So insistent was the criticism, that he was driven
to write a book on the subject, in which he makes a very notable
confession of the inherent incredibility of the Holy Ghost
paternity-story "For who at that time would have believed the
Virgin's word that she had conceived of the Holy Ghost, and that
the angel Gabriel had come and announced the purpose of God? and
would not all have given their opinion against her as an
adulteress, like Susanna? For at the present day, now that the
whole world has embraced the faith, the Jews argue, that when
Isaiah says, 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,' the
Hebrew the Hebrew word denotes a young woman, not a virgin, that is
to say, the word is ALMAH, not BETHULAH"! (Jerome, The Perpetual
Virginity of Blessed Mary, N&amp;PNF, vi, 336.)
So the Greek Father or priest who forged the false "virgin-
birth" interpolation into the manuscript of "Matthew," drags in
maybe ignorantly the false Septuagint translation of Isaiah vii,
14, which the Latin Father St. Jerome purposely perpetuated as a
pious "lie to the glory of God." The Catholic and King James
Versions purposely retain this false translation; the Revised
Version keeps it in, but with a gesture of honesty, which is itself
a fraud, sticks into the margin in fine type, after the words "a
virgin" and "shall conceive," the words, "Or, the maiden is with
child and beareth," -- which not one in thousands would ever see or
understand the significance of. So it is not some indefinite "a
virgin" who 750 years in the future "shall conceive" and "shall
bear" a son whose name she "shall call" Immanuel, Jesus; but it was
some known and definite young female, married or un-married -- but
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not a "virgin" -- who had already conceived and was already
pregnant, and who beareth a son and calleth his name Immanuel, ...
who should be the "sign" which "my lord" should give to Ahaz of the
truth of Isaiah's false prophecy regarding the pending war with
Israel and Syria, as related in Isaiah vii, and of which the total
falsity is proven in 2 Chronicles xxviii, as all may read.
Although Papal Infallibility has declared that "it will never
be lawful to grant ... that the sacred writers could have made a
mistake" (Leo XIII, Eneyc. Provid. Deus; CE. ii, 543), yet, the
fraud being notorious and exposed to the scorn of the world, and
being driven by force of modern criticism, CE. definitely and
positively -- though with the usual clerical soft-soaping,
confesses this age-long clerical fraud and falsification of Holy
Writ, and relegates it to the junk-heap of discredited -- but not
discarded -- dogmatic myth:
"Modern theology does not grant that Isaiah vii, 14, contains
a real prophecy fulfilled in the virgin birth of Christ; it must
maintain, therefore, that St. Matthew misunderstood the passage
when he said: 'Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled
which the Lord spoke by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall
be with child, and bring forth a son, etc."! (CE. xv, 451.)
Thus is apparent, and confessed, the dishonesty of "Matthew"
and of the Church of Christ in perverting this idle, false and
falsified text of Isaiah into a "prophecy of the virgin birth of
Jesus Christ," and in persisting in retaining this falsity in their
dishonest Bibles as the basis of their own bogus theology unto this
day of the Twentieth Century. The Church, full knowing its falsity,
yet, clings to this precious lie of Virgin Birth and all the
concatenated consequences. Thus it declares its own condemnation as
false. Some other viciously false translations of sacred Scripture
will be duly noticed in their place.
As Thomas Jefferson prophetically wrote, -- as is being
verified:
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by
the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be
classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of
Jupiter"!
OTHER HEBREW SACRED FORGERIES
The marvels of the canonical apocrypha of the Hebrew sacred
Books, or of the whole 94 miraculously "restored" by Ezra, could
not slake the thirst of the Jewish intellect for such edifying
histories, and their priests were very industrious in supplying the
demands of piety and marvel-craving. Making use, as above admitted,
of the most "venerable Old Testament names," they forged a
voluminous literature of fanciful and fantastic fairy-tales in the
guise of sacred history, revelations, oracles or predictions, all
solemnly "set forth as thought actually received, and written or
spoken by ancient worthies, as Enoch, Moses, etc., which were
widely accepted as genuine, and found a warm reception in Jewish
and early Christian circles." Scarcely is there a Biblical notable
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of Israel in whose name these pious false writings were not forged,
including Adam and Eve and most of the ante- and post-Diuvian
Patriarchs. It is impossible here to much more than mention the
names of some of the principal ones of these extra-canonical
apocrypha and forgeries of the Jews, as listed in the Catholic
Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia Biblica, most of them worked over
with surcharge of added Christian forgeries, to adapt them to their
pious propaganda.
The names of these "intriguing" volumes of forgotten lore,
listed somewhat after the order of their distinguished pretended
authors and times, are: Life of Adam and Eve; Testament of Adam;
The Book of Creation; the Books of Seth (son of Adam); Book of
Enoch (grandson of Adam); Secrets of Enoch; Parables of Enoch; Book
of Lamech; Book of Noah; Book of Zoroaster (identified with Ham,
son of Noah); Apocalypse of Noah; Apocalypse of Abraham; Testament
of Abraham; Testament of Isaac; Testament of Jacob; The Testaments
of the Twelve Patriarchs; Testament of the Three Patriarchs;
Testament of Naphthali; The Prayer of Menassch; The Prayer of
Joseph; The Story of Asenath (wife of Joseph); Prayer of Asenath;
The Marriage of Asenath; The Assumption of Moses; The Testament of
Moses; Book of Jannes and Mambres (the Egyptian magicians with whom
Moses contended); Penitence of Jannes and Mambres; The Magical
Books of Moses; The Book of Jubilees. or Little Genesis; Book of Og
the Giant, Treatise of the Giants, Josippon; Book of Jasher; The
Liber Antiquitatem Bibliarum, ascribed to Philo; The Chronicles of
Jerameel; Testament of Job; Psalm CLI of David, "when he fought
with Goliath"; Testament of Solomon; The Contradictio Salomonis (a
contest in wisdom between Solomon and Hiram); The Psalms of
Solomon; Apocalypse of Elijah; Apocalypse of Baruch; The Rest of
the Words of Baruch; History of Daniel; Apocalypse of Daniel;
Visions of Daniel; Additions to Daniel, viz.: The History of
Susanne (Chap. 13), the Song of the Three Children, Story of Bel
and the Dragon (Chap. 14); Tobit; Judith; Additions to Esther; The
Martyrdom of Isaiah; The Ascension of Isaiah; III and IV Esdras;
Apocalypse of Esdras; Story of the Three Pagans, in I Esdras; I,
II, III, and IV Mitceabee"; The Prophecy of Eldad and Medad;
Apocalypse of Zephaniah, Stories of Artaphanus; Eupolemus; Story of
Aphikia, wife of Jesus Sirach; The Letter of Aristeas to
Philocrates; The Sibylline Oracles.
Quite half of the above Jewish false-writings, separately
listed under the grouping of "Jewish with Christian Accretions,"
the Catholic Encyclopedia describes with comments such as "recast
or freely interpolated by Christians," "many Christian
interpolations," etc., "presenting in their ensemble a fairly full
Christology" (CE. i, 606). If the pious Christians, confessedly,
committed so many and so extensive forgeries and frauds to adapt
these popular Jewish fairy-tales of their God and holy Worthies to
the new Christian Jesus and his Apostles, we need feel no surprise
when we discover these same Christians forging outright new wonder-
tales of their Christ under the fiction of the most noted Christian
names and in the guise of inspired Gospels, Epistles, Acts and
Apocalypses.
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THE "INSPIRED" HEBREW SCRIPTURES
The processes of the formation of the Hebrew Old Testament
Scriptures are, however, interesting and intriguing, if sacred
tradition is true. According to priestly lore, the man Moses,
"learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians" (another Christian
assurance; Acts vii, 22), sat down in the Wilderness of Sinai and
under divine inspiration wrote his Five Books of prehistorical
history, codes of post-exilic divine Law, and chronicles of
contemporary and future notable events, including four different
names of his father-in-law -- (Wz.: Jethro, Ex. iii, 1; Reuel, Ex.
ii, 18; Jether, Ex. iv, 18, and Raguel, Num. x, 29, while a fifth
name, Hobab, is awarded him in Judges iv, II), together with a
graphic account of his own death and burial, and of the whole month
afterwards spent by all Israel mourning his death. He also records
the death of his brother Aaron at Mt. Hor (Num. xx, 28; xxxiii,
38), just six months before his own death; though, in amazing
contradiction, he elsewhere records Aaron as having died at Mosera,
just after leaving Sinai (Deut. x, 6), thirty-nine years previously
-- and thus nullifies the entire history of the wonderful career
and deeds of Aaron as high priest during the whole 40 years of
wandering in the Wilderness, of which the Books of Exodus,
Leviticus and Numbers are largely filled; as also many other
matters and things occurring for some centuries after his death,
and known as "post-Mosaica" to the scholars.
Joshua, the successor of Moses, next wrote the history of his
life and times, working in, too, a sketch of his own death and
funeral obsequies (Josh. xxiv, 29-30), and quoting the celebrated
miracle of the nun standing still, of which he says, "Is it not
written in the Book of Jasher?" -- which Book of Jasher was not
itself written until several hundred years later, at least in or
after the time of David; for it is recorded: "And he [David] bade
them teach the children of Judah the use of the bow; behold, it is
written in the Book of Jasher." (2 Sam. i, 18.)
The Book of Judges was written by nobody knows whom, nor when,
except that it was long "post-exilic." It relates that, "Now the
children of Judah had fought against Jerusalem, and had taken it"
(Jud. i, 18); whereas it was not until David had reigned seven
years and six months in Hebron, that "the King and his men went to
Jerusalem" and failed to capture it, "nevertheless, David took the
stronghold of Zion, and called it the City of David." (2 Sam. v,
5-9.) It is further recorded in Judges that the tribe of Dan made
a silver idol of the Hebrew God and hired a grandson of Moses to
serve it, and "he and his sons were priests to the tribe of Dan
until the captivity of the land" (Jud. xviii, 30) -- about a
thousand years later.
The gifted Samuel. Prophet of the heathen High Places of Baal
worship, gives his name and inspiration to two books of mythical
history written piecemeal until the "return from captivity," as
above indicated, and early in his work he records the historic
episode of the calling up of his own ghost from the dead by the
famous Witch of En-dor. (I Sam. xviii, 1, 7-19.)
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The ex-bandit David, "man after God's own heart" -- after
murdering a man to get his adulterous wife, and engendering of her
his all-wise son and hero, Solomon, wrote the 150 songs of the
Hebrew Hymn Book, many of his psalms singing of the long posthumous
Babylonian Captivity.
Solomon himself, who was son-in-law to nearly everybody in the
heathen nations round about who had eligible daughters, wrote the
wisdom of the ages into his Book of Proverbs, though not one of
them is by Solomon, and in his lighter (headed or hearted) spells
penned his erotic Canticles, which for realistic lubricity quite
outdo Boccaccio, and would be really unmailable under the Postal
laws if they weren't in the Holy Bible and clerically captioned
"The Church's Love unto Christ." These are indeed but one
collection out of the great many pornographic stories of The Holy
Ghost's Decameron, enshrined in God's Holy Word for delectation of
the Puritans of Faith.
Other divinely inspired and anonymous writers, falsely
entitling their effusions under the names of this or that Prophet
or other wholly fictitious personage, as Job, Esther, Ruth, Daniel,
gave forth yet other inspired histories, books of oracles or
prophecies, apocalypses or high powered visions into Futurity, and
a miscellany of sacred novels, love-stories and nondescript musings
or ravings known collectively as the hagiographa or holy writings
of the Jews. All these together, now thirty-nine in number,
comprise the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. It being out of
question to review each of these here, it may be stated with
assurance that not one of them bears the name of its true author;
that every one of them is a composite work of many hands
"interpolating" the most anachronistic and contradictory matters
into the original writings, and often reciting as accomplished
facts things which occurred many centuries after the time of the
supposed writer, as Psalms, isaiah, Daniel, and the so-called
"historical" books. For scientific detailed demonstration of this
the Encyclopedia Biblica digests the most competent authorities; my
own Is It God's Word? makes the proofs from the sacred texts
themselves. See the recent "Religions Book of the Month Club's"
notable Unraveling the Book of Books, by Trattner. (1929.)
But as the Christian religion depends more vitally on Genesis
and Moses than on all the other sacred writings and writers, we may
appeal to the admissions of CE., thereto driven by force of modern
criticism, for the destruction and abandonment of the Moses Myths.
"It is true that the Pentateuch, so long attributed to Moses,
is now held by the vast majority of non-Catholic, and by an
increasing number of Catholic, scholars to be a compilation of four
independent sources put together in final shape soon after the
Captivity." (CE. i, 622.)
This scores strongly for Hebrew-Christian forgery and fraud in
attributing this primitive system of Bible "science" and barbarous
law to a god as a pretext for priestly domination of the
superstitious people. That God-given forged law thus prescribes for
priestcraft: "The man that will do presumptuously, and will not
hearken unto the priest, ... even that man shall die." (Deut. xvii,
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12.) The whole Five Books of Moses are thus a confessed forgery in
the names of Moses and of God; every one of the Thus saith the Lord
a thousand times repeated, with speeches and laws put into the
mouth of the God, are false and forged. Speaking of the
"difficulty, in the present condition of Old Testament criticism,
of recognizing more than a small portion of the Peritateuch as
documentary evidence contemporary with Moses," -- who, if he ever
lived, which may be confidently denied, -- never wrote a line of
it, CE. further confesses to the natural evolution -- not the
"divine revelation" -- of the Hebrew mythology into a (no less
mythological) monotheistic religion: "The Hegelian principle of
evolution ... applied to religion, has powerfully helped to beget
a tendency to regard the religion of Israel as evolved by processes
not transcending nature, from a polytheistic worship of the
elements to a spiritual and ethical monotheism." (CE. i, 493.) But
this finally and very late evolved monotheism is neither a tardy
divine revelation to the Jews, nor a novel invention by them; it
was a thousand years antedated by Amenhotep IV and Tut-ankh-amen in
Egypt, -- nor were even they the pioneers. We have seen the
admission that the Zoroastrian Mithra religion was "a divinely
revealed Monotheism" (CE., ii, 156). But the Hebrews were confessed
and notorious idolaters and polytheists until after the Captivity;
that fact is a thousand times alleged throughout the Scriptures as
the sole reason for their troubles and captivity. As above
suggested, and as thoroughly demonstrated by the texts in my other
book, the Hebrew God Yahveh was but one of the many gods worshipped
by the Hebrews; and Yahveh never claimed more than to be a "God
above all gods," to be preferred before them all; -- as at Sinai he
enacted: "Thou shalt have no other gods before [in preference to]
me," -- thus admitting the other gods.
FORGERY BY CONTRADICTIONS
Contradictions throughout the Bible, Old and New Testaments
alike, abound by the many thousands, and in virtually every book of
both Testaments, -- as every one knows who has read the Bible even
casually. See some thousand and more of the most notorious and
vital ones as cited in "deadly parallel" in my Is It God's Word? as
one of the most conclusive proofs of uninspired human origin and of
confusion worse confounded of tinkering, "interpolation" and
forgery outright, by the pious priests of Israel and Judah, and the
Ezra "school" of forgers of the "Law and the Prophets."
OUR "PHONY" CHRISTIAN ERA
"It was a monk of the 6th century, named Dionysiug Exiguus
(Dennis the Little), who fixed our present Christian era, laying
down that Jesus Christ was born on the 25th of December, A.U.C.
753, and commencing the new era from the following year, 754. That
date, as we shall see, cannot be correct and, instead of being an
improvement on, is farther from the truth than the dates assigned
by the early Fathers, St. Irenaeus and Tertullian, who fixed the
date of the Nativity in the 41st year of Augustus, that is to say,
3 years B.C., or A.U.C, 751 ... All this points to the fact that
Herod died in the year 4 B.C., and that our Savior must have been
born before that date ... Our Savior was born some time before
Herod's death, probably two years or more. So that, if Herod died
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in the year 4 B.C., we should be taken to 6 or 7 B.C. as the year
of the Nativity" (CE. 735-6).
This, of course, discredits the date given by the inspiration
of [71] Luke, and demonstrates that both he and Matthew merely
alleged fictitious dates for what in all human probability was a
purely fictitious event. The new Era of Christ was, however, very
slow in gaining recognition; the first official secular document
dating by it was a charter of Charlemagne, after 800 A.D., and it
did not come into general use until about 1000 A.D. I may mention
a fiery sermon I once heard, in which the expounder of truth
vindicated the glory of God by declaiming that every Jew and
Infidel confessed to Jesus Christ every time he dated a letter or
mentioned the year of an event. Being simply a hearer of the Word,
I could not rise to suggest, that by the same token we confess more
to the Pagan gods than to the Christian, -- for more than half the
months and every day of the week are named for Pagan deities, and
we name them much more often than we do the years of grace and
salvation of Christ. After this bad start from Gospel error and
contradiction, we now turn to further evidences of "Gospel truth"
in contradictions and forgery.
Among the most signal of these incessant contradictions and
scientific impossibilities of Divine Inspiration, are those
relating to the capital matter, -- for the credit of the Christian
Religion, of the time and manner of Creation of earth and Man,
based on Holy Writ and on the "chronology" worked out, with several
hundred disparate results, from the inspired pedigrees of the ante-
Diluvian Patriarchs. So fatally important is this to Christianity,
that the 'True Church -- "which never deceived anyone" and "has
never erred," -- speaking through CE., thus admits that
Christianity stands or falls with -- "the literal, historical sense
of the first three chapters of Genesis in as far as they bear on
the facts touching the foundations of the Christian religion, e.g.,
the creation of all things by God at the beginning of time, the
especial creation of man, the formation of the first woman from the
first man, the unity of the human race"! (Papal Biblical
Commission, June 30, 1909; CE. vii, 313). Thus: No Adam and Eve, no
Garden of Eden and Talking Snake, no "Fall" and Curse -- therefore:
No Savior Jesus Christ, no Plan of Salvation, no truth in the
Christian Religion! The fatal point is elucidated with inexorable
logic and dogmatic truth by the "Reformed" ex-Father Peter Martyr:
"So important is it to comprehend the work of creation that we see
the creed of the Church take this as its starting point. Were this
Article taken away, there would be no original sin; the promise of
Christ would become void, and all the vital force of our religion
would be destroyed"! Father Luther inherited the same faith and
bequeathed it to his dissident following: "Moses spoke properly and
plainly, and neither allegorically nor figuratively; and therefore
the world with all creatures was created in six days." Calvin, in
his "Commentary on Genesis," argues that the Genesis account of
Creation is literally true, and warns those who dare to believe
otherwise, and thus "basely insult the Creator, to expect a Judge
who will annihilate them." Again he says: "We know on the authority
of Moses, that longer ago than 6000 years the world did not exist."
So too, the Westminster Confession of Faith, in full Protestant
force and effect today -- specially lays it down as "necessary to
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salvation to believe that all things visible and invisible were
created not only out of nothing but exactly in six days." And the
Churches have murdered countless thousands to impress this
beautiful impossible truth.
Notwithstanding the crushing disproofs of those primitive
forged "Fables of Moses," by every fact of astronomy, geology,
anthropology, biology, and kindred sciences, known to schoolboys
today, Faith clings fatuously to its fetches: Arkansas ("Now
laugh!"), Mississippi, Tennessee, three States of the Twentieth
Century United States, have made it crime by Law to teach the
sciences which discredit the Genesis Myths, upon which Christian
Superstition utterly depends;, and like medieval laws are sought to
be imposed in all our States. The True Church, like all the others,
still founds its "Faith and Morals" upon these old Hebrew forgeries
of Genesis and peddles them to its Faithful; but it knows better.
Thus the whole True Faith is shipwrecked by these heretical
confessions of CE., forced from it by the truths of heretical
Modernism, in full face of the fierce inspired fulminations of the
Syllabus of Errors: "In an article on Bible chronology it is hardly
necessary in these days to discuss the date of the Creation. At
least two hundred dates have been suggested, varying from 3483 to
6934 year B.C. all based on the supposition that the Bible enables
us to settle the point. But it does nothing of the kind. ... The
literal interpretation has now been entirely abandoned; and the
world is admitted to be of immense antiquity"! (CE. iii, 731.)
Again the "sacred science" of Genesis and of Christianity is
further admitted to be false, and the fabulous "Septuagint" Bible
on which Christianity was founded before the era of the second
century forgeries of Gospels and Epistles, to be a holy fraud, in
these further excerpts accrediting the true revelations of modern
Science as against those of Moses:
"The church ... does not attach decisive influence to the
chronology of the Vulgate, the official version of the Western
Church, since in the Martyrology for Christmas day, the creation of
Adam is put down in the year 5199 B.C., which is the reading of the
Septuagint. It is, however, certain that we cannot confine the
years of man's sojourn on earth to that usually set down. ...
Various explanations have been given of chapter v (Genesis) to
explain the short time it seems to allow between the Creation and
the Flood. ... The total number of years in the Hebrew, Samaritan,
and Septuagint differs, in the Hebrew it being 1656, in the
Samaritan 1307, and in the Septuagint 2242. ... According to
Science the length of this period was much greater than appears
from the genealogical table. ... In any case, whether we follow the
traditional or critical view, the numbers obtained from the
genealogy of the Patriarchs in chapter xi must be greatly
augmented, in order to allow time for such a development of
civilization, language, and race type as had been reached by the
time of Abraham." (CE. iii, 731-3.)
FORGERY BY FALSE TRANSLATIONS
We have noted the capital forgery wrought by the Church in
consciously and unconscionably adopting and perpetuating the false
translation in the Septuagint, of the "virgin shall conceive"
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pretended prophecy of Isaiah vii, 14. Indisputably the whole forged
fabric of supernatural Christianity is based on, and depends upon,
this one monumental forgery falsely used to give credit to the
Christian forgery of "the Gospel according to Matthew" as to the
Divine and miraculous "Virgin birth of Jesus Christ." Out of scores
of other notoriously falsified translations of the sacred Old
Testament texts, attention is here called only to several of the
most signal ones which vitally affect and destroy the validity of
the most essential pretensions of truth of the Christian religion.
These frauds of translation and others, have been thoroughly
examined and supported by numerous texts from the original Hebrew,
and falsified verses of the English versions, in my 'Is It God's
Word?,' to which references must be made for a more complete
treatment than is here pertinent. Those now cited in summary are
all of them deliberate falsifications and forgeries in translation
which go to the vitals of the Hebrao-Christian system of holy
imposture.
If the Hebrew originals had been truthfully translated, we
should have no such false pretenses for faith as the Hebrew One God
anciently revealed to Adam, and to Moses, no Adam, no man "but
little lower than the angels" because of his immortal soul, no
unique "revelation' of the "Ineffable Name" Jehovah to Moses; all
that we would have, -- all that the Hebrew texts reveal -- is a
primitive polytheistic idolatry of the crudest and most
superstitious order. Let us see.
(a) The "God" Forgery
The first sentence of the translated Bibles is a falsification
and forgery of the highest importance. We read with awed solemnity
of faith: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth"
(Gen. i, 1). The Hebrew word for God is el; the plural is elohim,
gods. The Hebrew text of Genesis i, 1, reads: "Bereshith bara
elohim," etc., -- "In-beginning created gods the-heavens and-the-
earth." And, in the same chapter we read in Hebrew honestly
translated, -- thirty times the word "elohim" gods, to whom are
attributed all the works of creation in the six peculiar "days" of
Genesis. This is plainly evident from the Hebrew texts of Genesis
i, which even false intention could not hide in the translation,
"And-said elohim (gods), let-US-make man (adam) in-image-OUR,
after-likeness-OUR" (i, 26). And when "adam" had eaten of the
forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge, "the Lord God" said,
"Behold, the-man has become like one of US, to know good and evil"
(iii, 27). And when the Tower of Babel was abuilding, "The Lord
[Heb. Yahveh] said ... Come, let US go down," etc. And thus, some
2570 times the plural, elohim, gods, is used in the Hebrew texts,
but is always falsely translated "God" in the false singular, when
speaking of the Hebrew deity, Yahveh.
In the three Genesis verses above quoted, we have three
different designations of the Hebrew deity or deities: elohim,
gods, falsely translated "God"; "Lord God" (Heb. Yahveh-elohim);
and "Lord" (Heb. Yahveh). Yahveh is the proper name of the Hebrew
God, in English rendered Jehovah: Yahveh-elohim is a Hebrew
"construct-form" honestly meaning "Yahveh-of-the-gods." Invariably
(with rare exceptions to be noted), these personal names are
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falsely rendered "Lord" and "Lord God," respectively, for purposes
of pious fraud which we shall now expose to the shame of a theology
of imposture. We will return to this after noting a pair of others.
(b) The "Adam" Forgery
There was no first man "Adam," according to the Hebrew texts
of the story. The word adam in Hebrew is a common noun, meaning man
in a generic sense; in Genesis i, 26, we have read: "And elohim
(gods) said, Let us make adam (man)"; and so "elohim created ha-
adam (the-man); ... male and female created he them" (i. 27). And
in the second story, where man is first made alone: "Yahveh formed
ha-adan (the-man) out of the dust of ha-adamah-the ground" (ii, 7).
Man is called in Hebrew adam because formed out of adamah, the
ground; just as in Latin man is called homo because formed from
humus, the ground, -- homo ex humo, in the epigram of Father
Lactantius. (Lact., Divine Institutes, ii, 58; ANF. vii, 58.) The
forging by the common noun adam into a mythical proper name Adam,
was a post-exilic fraud in the forging of fictitious genealogies
from "in the beginning" to Father Abraham.
(c) The "Soul" Forgery
In Genesis i is the account of the creation of elohim -- gods
-- on the fifth day, of "nephesh hayyah -- the moving creature that
hath life," and of "nephesh hayyah -- every living creature" -- out
of the waters (i, 20, 21); and on the sixth day of "nephesh hayyah
-- the living creature" out of the ground (i, 24); and he gave to
ha-adam -- the-man dominion over "kol nephesh hagyah, -- everything
wherein there is life," (i, 30.) So reads the Hebrew text -- all
these dumb animal living creatures are by God called "nephesh
hayyah," "literally "living soul," as will be found stuck into the
margins of the Authorized Version. In chapter ii we have the
history of ha-adam made from ha-adamah; and, in wonderful contrast
to these lowly "living creatures" (nephesh hayyah), Yahveh-clohim
"breathed into his nostrils nishmath hayyim -- (living breaths),
and ha-adam became nephesh hayyah -- a living soul"! (ii, 7.) In
Hebrew nephesh everywhere and simply means soul, and hayyah
(living) is the feminine singular adjective from hai, life. Man,
therefore, was created exactly the same as the other animals; all
had or were nephesh hayyah -- living souls, indistinctly. The
"false pen of the scribes," who in translation made the dumb
animals merely living creatures, and "Creation's micro-cosmical
masterpiece, Man," a "living soul," falsely altered these plain
words so as to deceive into a belief of a special God-breathed soul
in man, far different from the brute animal that perisheth.
(d) The "Mosaic Revelation" Forgery
When Yahveh appeared to Moses in the Burning Bush, and
announced himself as "the God of thy fathers," he was a total
stranger to Moses; Moses did not at all know him, had never heard
of him; so that he asked, "What is thy name?" -- so that he could
report it to the people back home in Egypt, who had never heard it.
After some intermission, the God came directly to the point, and
declared -- l quote the exact words -- one of the most notorious
falsities in Holy Writ:
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"And elohim spake unto Moses, and said unto him., anoki Yahveh
-- I am the Lord!
"And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by
the name of el-shaddai, but by my name Yahvch (JEHOVAH) was I not
known to them." (Ex. vi, 2, 8.)
Here we have the positive averment of the Hebrew God himself
to the effect that here, for the first time since the world began,
is "revealed" to mankind the "ineffable name" of Yahveh, here first
appearing in the Bible translations, and there printed as JEHOVAH
in capital letters; for more vivid and awe-inspiring impression.
But this is a capital Lie of the Lord, or of his biographer who
imputed it to him. In verse 4 of Genesis ii, the name YAHVEH first
appears; "in the day that Yahveh-elohim made the earth and the
heavens." Its first recorded use in the mouth of a mystical
personage, was when Mother Eve "conceived, and bare Cain, and said,
I have gotten a man from Yahveh -- the Lord." (Gen. iv, 1.) One
hundred and fifty-six times the personal name YAHVEH occurs in the
Book of Genesis alone; and scores of times in the mouths of
Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, as any one may read in Genesis,
with the assurance that every single time that the title "the Lord"
and "the Lord God" appears, it is a false translation by the
priests for the Hebrew personal name YAHVEH. Throughout the Hebrew
"Scriptures" the Divine Name thousands of times occurs: "The sacred
name occurs in Genesis about 156 times; ... in round numbers it is
found in the Old Testament 6000 times, either alone or in
conjunction with another Divine name." (CE. viii, 829, 331.) More
exactly, "What is called the Tetragrammaton, YHVH, appears in the
Old Testament 6823 times as the proper name of God as the God of
Israel. As such it serves to distinguish him from the gods of the
other nations." (EB. iii, 3320.) Thus was the Hebrew tribal god
YAHVEH distinguished from Bel, and Chemosh, and Dagon, and Shamash,
and the scores of "gods of the nations"; just as Bill distinguishes
its bearer from Tom, Dick, and Harry. This was precisely the Hebrew
usage -- to distinguish one heathen god from another. And this the
false translators sought to hide, giving names to all the "other
gods," but suppressing a name for the Hebrew deity, who as "the
Lord," or "the Lord God," was high and unique, "a god above all
gods," -- the one and only true God.
But yet more malicious and evil-intentioned of deception: 6828
times is the name of the Hebrew God concealed by false rendition
for the deliberate purpose of forging the whole Hebrew Bible, as
translated, into semblance of harmony with the false avowal of
Exodus vi, 3, that "by my name YAHVEH was I not know unto them."
Search as one may, outside Exodus vi, 3, the god-name YAHVEH
(Jehovah) is never to be found in the translations in a single
instance, except in Psalm lxxxiii, 18, and Isaiah xii, 2 and xxvi,
4. The false translations thus "make truth to be a liar," the lie
of Exodus vi, 3 to seem the truth; and a barbarous heathen tribal
god among a hundred neighbor and competitive gods to be the
nameless One Lord God of the Universe. The Hebrew-Christian One God
is a patent Forgery and Myth; a mycological Father-god can have no
"only begotten Son"; Jesus Christ is a myths even before he is
mythically born in the fancies of the Church Fathers, as we shall
soon have ample evidence to prove.
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With respect to the mythical Hebrew-Christian God or gods, we
may safely say, as says Father Justin Martyr apropos of the other
mythic Pagan gods: "And we confess that we are atheists, so far as
gods of this sort are concerned." (First Apology, ch. vi; ANF. i,
169.)
THE ANCIENT IDEA OF "HISTORY"
We may pause a moment to catch a vitutable view which will be
of great aid to understanding the mental processes of the ancient
writers in their portrayal of events, real or fanciful, which they
set about to record as "history." These pioneers of historical
literature lived in an age of simple-minded credulity, and
everything which they saw recorded or heard related, however
extravagant and seemingly incredible or impossible, passed all as
perfectly good history in their receptive and uncritical minds.
Speaking of the legendary, the traditional, the supernatural
stories, myths, folk-lore and fables, -- "in short, everything
which seemed to testify to the past," -- which formed the raw
material of the early historians, the Encyclopedia Biblica gives a
graphic picture of primitive history-writing, not only Hebraic but
Gentilic:
"Their sources, like those of the Greek logographers with whom
it is natural to compare them, were poems, genealogies, often
representing clan-groupings, tribal and local traditions of diverse
kinds, such as furnish the materials for most of the Book of
Judges; the historical traditions of sanctuaries; the sacred
legends of holy places, relating theophanies and other revelations,
the erection of the altar or sacred stone, the. origin of popular
usages -- e.g. Bethel; laws; myths of foreign or native origin;
folk-lore and fable, -- in short, everything which seemed to
testify of the past.
"To us the greater part of this material is not in any proper
sense historical at all; but for the early Israelite as for the
early Greek historian it was otherwise; our distinctions between
authentic history, legendary history, pure legend, and myth, he
made as little as he recognized our distinction of natural and
supernatural. It was all history to him; and if one part of it had
a better attestation than another, it was certainly the sacred
history as it was told at the ancient sanctuaries of the land.
The early Hebrew historians did not affix their names to their
works; they had, indeed, no idea of authorship. The traditions and
legends which they collected were common property, and did not
cease to be so when they were committed to writing; the written
book was in every sense the property of the scribe or the possessor
of the roll. Only a part of the great volume of tradition was
included in the first books. Transcribers freely added new matter
from the same sources on which the original authors had drawn, the
traditions of their own locality or sanctuary, variants of
historical traditions or legend. Every new copy was thus in some
measure a fresh rescension. ... Scribes compared different copies,
and combined their contents according to their own judgment or
interests. ... Of records or monuments there are but a few traces,
and these for the most part doubtful." (EB. ii, 2075-76.)
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To say nothing now of the Old or New Testament "canonical" and
"apocryphal" literature, countless examples of this imaginative
method of history-writing abound in all the ancient writers, as all
who are familiar with such classics as Herodotus, Thucydides,
Xenophon, Josephus, Livy, will readily recall. One of the most
inveterate forms of imaginative creation on the part of the old
historiographers was the invention of sayings and whole speeches
which, just as do the fiction-writers of today, they put entire
into the mouths of the personages of whom they were writing, which
discourses they not only invented whole, but always wrought them in
the style and manner of the writer and his epoch, and not in those
of their ancient subjects. All are familiar with such instances in
Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Milton, and which we all known are
pure inventions of those writers. Naming several of the ancient
historians above mentioned, and others, a distinguished philosopher
of history thus describes the art:
"Such speeches as we find in Thucydides (for example), of
which we can positively assert that they are not bona-fide
records. ... Thus Livy puts into the mouths of the old Roman
Kings, Consuls, and generals, such orations as would be
delivered by an accomplished advocate of the Livian era... In
the same way he gives us descriptions of battles, as if he had
been an actual spectator; but whose features would serve well
enough for battles in any period." (Hegel, The Philosophy of
History, i). 2.)
Speaking of much later times, and of a different class, but
like type, of writers, Hegel again says: "In the Middle Ages, we
except the Bishops, who were placed in the very center of the
political world, the Monks monopolized this category as maine
chroniclers." (Ib. p. 3.)
As typical illustration of the principles and practices above
described of the best of the ancient writers, but more especially
as an example of the kind of "history" written by the most learned
and illustrious historian of Jewry, fellow-countryman and
contemporary of the supposed Apostolic writers of the New Testament
books, it is of the highest significance to cite some of the solemn
historical recordation of Josephus, from two of his most famous
works; they will make more appreciated at their real value some of
the inspired historical recitals of contemporaneous sacred
history.'
In his Antiquities of the Jews Josephus follows closely the
subject matter and order of narration of the early Old Testament,
books, beginning with the Creation, giving the full substance of
those histories, and adding quaint comments all his own and
expansions and embellishments unknown to or unrecorded by Moses. In
Eden, not only the Talking Snake could speak, but all the now dumb
animals: "All living creatures had one language, at that time" (I,
i, 4). After our parents had eaten of the Fruit of Knowledge and,
discovering themselves naked, hid themselves from the Creator,
"This behavior surprised God," who delivers a lengthy speech of
reprieval not recorded by Moses (Ib.); and such orations are
plentiful and detailed between God and all the other notables who
came into personal contact with him; a gem is his oration to Noah.
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He relates the wars waged by the wicked posterity of Cain, to the
great distress of Adam, who predicted the two-fold destruction of
the earth, once by water and again by fire. As the Sethites were
good people and intelligent, and had made great discoveries in
astronomy, which they wished preserved for such posterity as might
survive the yet future Flood, "they made two pillars, the one of
brick, the other of stone; they inscribed their discoveries on them
both, that in case the pillar of brick should be destroyed by the
Flood, the pillar of stone might remain, and exhibit these
discoveries to mankind; and also inform them that there was another
pillar of brick erected by them. Now this remains in the land of
Siriad to this day." (lb., I, ii, 2.) He relates with naive and
realistic garnishment the tale of Sodom, and Lot and his daughters,
and of Lot's wife turned to a pillar of salt, which is Gospel
truth, "for I have seen it, and it remains at this day"! (Ib. 1,
xi, 4.) These historical drolleries might be quoted ad infinitum
from Jewry's greatest historian.
The name of Solomon was most potent conjure in the Orient
through all the succeeding centuries; the spells and charms,
amulets and fetishes inscribed with his mystic symbol and
pronounced in his name, were the terror of all the devils who so
populated the Jewish mind, and the Christian. A noted instance of
the potency of this Name, exhibited before the Roman Emperor
Vespasian and his court and army, and witnessed by Josephus
himself, so circumstantial, so faith-compelling, so artless and
childishly fabling, that I am constrained to quote it for the
lightit sheds on the "historical" methods of the "age of apocryphal
literature":
"God also enabled him [Solomon] to learn that skill which
expels demons, which is a science useful and sensitive to men.
He composed such incantations also by which distempers are
alleviated. And he left behind him the manner of using
exorcisms, by which they drive away demons, so that they never
return, and this method of cure is of great force unto this
day; for I have seen a certain man of my own country, whose
name was Eleazar, relieving people that were demoniacs in the
presence of Vespasian, and his sons, and his captains, and the
whole multitude of his soldiers. The manner of the cure was
this: he put a ring, that had a root of one of the sorts
mentioned by Solomon, to the nostrils of the demoniac, after
which he drew out the demon through his nostrils; and when the
man fell down immediately, he abjured him to return into him
no more, making still mention of Solomon, and reciting the
incantation which he composed. And when Eleazar would persuade
and demonstrate to the spectators that he had such a power, he
set a little way off a cup or basin full of water, and
commanded the demon, as he went out of the man, to overturn
it, and thereby to let the spectators know that he had left
the man; and when this was done, the skill and wisdom of
Solomon was shown very manifestly; for which reason it is,
that all men may know the vastness of Solomon's abilities, and
how he was beloved of God, and that the extraordinary virtues
of every kind with which this king was endowed, may not be
unknown to any people under the sun; for this reason, I say,
it is that we have proceeded to speak so largely of these
matters." (Josephus, Antiq. Jews, Bk. VIII, Ch. ii, 5;
Whiston's trans.)
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This is followed by the full text of the autograph letters
between Solomon and Hiram regarding the building of the Temple.
Whether the same kind of root of Solomon's magical powers just
above used by Eleazar, or one of another species of like power, it
was very difficult to obtain and the quest was attended with many
dangers, which of course enhanced the value and potency of its
magic; but here is Josephus's solemn description of the plant and
account of the eerie and risky manner of securing this treasure,
known locally as Baaras root:
"Its color is like that of flame, and toward evening it
sends out a certain ray like lightning: it is not easily taken
by such as would do it, but recedes from their hands, nor will
yield itself to be taken quietly, until either the urine of a
woman, or blood, be poured upon it; nay, even then it is
certain death to those that touch it, unless anyone take and
hang the root itself down from his hand, and so carry it away.
It may also be taken another way, without danger, which is
this: they dig a trench quite round about it, till the hidden
part of the root be very small, then they tie a dog to it,
and, when the dog tries hard to follow him that tied him, this
root is easily plucked up, but the dog dies immediately, as if
it were instead of the man that would take the plant away nor
after this need anyone be afraid of taking it into their
hands. Yet, after all this pains in getting, it is only
valuable on account of one virtue it hath, that if it be only
brought to sick persons, it quickly drives away those called
demons, which are no other than the spirits of the wicked,
that enter into any men that are alive and kill them, unless
they can obtain some help against them." (Josephus, Wars of
the Jews, Book VII. Chap. iv, 3.)
Instead of artful mendacity, some readers, in view of this,
may charitably impute artless simplicity of wit to some of the
devil-exorcising fable-mongers of the New Testament, the pious
Fathers who forged its Books.
If such examples are abounding in the most brilliant of Jewish
historians, distinguished for nobility of lineage, for
statesmanship and for literary ability, what may be expected from
the admittedly "ignorant and unlearned men" such as traditionally
wrote those Gospels and Epistles of the Christians? We may now
appreciate the full significance of the admission of the Catholic
Encyclopedia, speaking of the Church Fathers and writers through
all the Ages of Faith "before the eighteenth century," of whom it
says:
The early ecclesiastical writers were unconscious of
nearly all the problems to which criticism has given rise. ...
Looking at the Divine side, they deemed as of trifling account
questions of authorship, date, composition, accepting
unreservedly for these points such traditions as the Jewish
Church had handed down. ... The Fathers saw in every sentence
of the scripture a pregnant oracle of God. Apparent
contradictions and other difficulties were solved without
taking possible human imperfections into view. Except in
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regard to the preservation of the sacred text there was
nothing to elicit a critical view of the Bible in the age of
the Fathers, and this applies also to the Scholastic period."
(CE. iv, 492.)
CHRISTIAN "REVELATIONS" IN JEWISH FORGERIES
Christians no doubt believe in simple faith that the wonderful
inspired truths of their New Testament were original pronouncements
of Jesus Christ or directly revealed by him to his holy apostles,
who in turn revealed them to the populace for the first time as the
"good news" of the new religion for the salvation of sinful man.
Even a brief glance at a few of the most, notable of the Jewish
forgeries of the "age of apocryphal literature" will dispel that
pious belief, and show the most characteristic and essential
doctrines and dogmas of Christianity to be but refurbished vagaries
of the fanciful and fabulous tpectulations of already existing
Jewish apocryphal writings of the times just preceding and within
the new Christian era. These writings were put forth falsely as the
utterances of long since dead or wholly legendary Old Testament
notables, and were neither inspired nor revealed heavenly truth,
but simply vain and forged speculations of their fantastic writers.
We shall see the cardinal tenets of "revealed" Christianity in a
glance at a few of these Jewish pseudographs, and let the Christian
apologist explain.
This literature is of the highest value today because of the
light it throws on the growth of esehatological and Messianic
doctrines among the Jewish people just previous to the rise of
Christianity, especially since these doctrines have, in a purified
form, found a permanete place in the Christian system." (New Int.
Enyc. i, 745.)
The Book of Enoch, forged in the name of the grandson of Adam,
is the fragmentary remains of a whole literature which circulated
under the pretended authorship of that mythical Patriarch. In its
present form, the work, of 104 chapters, is composed of five Books,
with the following titles, of which those of Books 3 and 4 are of
particular significance, namely: 1. The Rape of Women by Fallen
Angels, and the Giants that were Begotten of Them; 2. The Visions
of Enoch begun; 3. The Visions continued, with Views of the
essiah's Kingdom; 4. Man's Destiny revealed in Dreams from the
beginning to the End of the Messianic Kingdom; 5. The Warnings of
Enoch to his own Family and to Mankind. This work is a composite of
at least five unknown Jewish writers, and was composed during the
last two centuries B.C. The forged Book of Enoch is quoted as
genuine and inspired in the Christian Epistle of Jude (14, ef
seq.), and as "Scripture" in the near canonical Epistle of
Barnabas; with the early Church Fathers and Apologists, among whom
Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Athenagoras, Tertullian, Clement of
Alexandria, Anatolius, Origen, St, Augustine, etc., "it, had all
the wright of a canonical book," but was finally condemned as a
forgery by the forged Apostolic Constitutions, -- an instance of
the very dubious divine guidance of the inspired Church against all
error. Father Tertullian devotes an entire chapter "Concerning the
Genuineness of the Prophecy of Enoch." in which he gives fantastic
patristic reasons as to how the Book survived Noah's Flood, either
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by the providence of Noah himself or by the Providence of God as in
the mythical case of Esdras. In answer to the scoffing objections
that the Jews rejected the Book, "I suppose," he seriously argues,
"that they do not think that, having been published before the
Deluge, it could have safely survived that world-wide calamity, the
abolisher of all things." But, he urges, "let them recall to their
memory that Noah, the survivor of the deluge, was the great-grand-
son of Enoch himself," and that Noah probably preserved it at the
behest of Methuselah. But, again, "If Noah had not preserved it in
this way, there would still be this consideration to warrant our
assertion of the genuineness of this Scripture: he could equally
renewed it, under the Spirit's inspiration, after it, had been
destroyed by the violence of the Deluge, as, after the destruction
of Jerusalem by the Babylonian storming of it, every document of
the Jewish literature is generally agreed to have been restored
through Ezra." But the good Father had other and equally cogent
clerical reasons for accepting the Book as inspired Scripture: "But
since Enoch in the same Scripture has preached likewise concerning
the Lord, nothing at all must be rejected by us which pertains to
us; and we read that 'every Scripture suitable for edification is
divinely inspired.' ... To these considerations is added the fact
that Enoch possesses a testimony in the Apostle Jude." (On the
Apparel of Women, II, ii; ANF. iv, 15-16.) By this excerpt from the
pious Father may be judged the value of the "testimony" of Apostles
and Church Fathers as to the inspiration, truth and authenticity of
holy "Scriptures," -- which is nil.
Of the immense significance of these forged Jewish "sacred
writings" in general upon Christian "revelation," and of the
fabulous Book of Enoch in particular, with its elaborated myth of
the Messiah, CE. thus confesses: "Jewish Apocalyptic is an attempt
to supply the place of prophecy, which had been dead for centuries,
and has its roots in the sacred oracles of Israel. ... Naturally
basing itself upon the Pentateuch and the Prophets, it clothed
itself fictitiously with the authority of a patriarch or prophet
who was made to reveal the transcendent future. ... Messianism of
Course plays an important part in apocalyptic eschatology, and the
idea of the Messiahs in certain books received a very high
development. ... The parables of Henoch, with their pre-existent
Messiahs, mark the highest point of development -- (hence not
Divine Revelation) -- of the Messianic concept to be found in the
whole range of Hebrew literature." (CE. i, 601, 602.) From these
uninspired ravings of Jewish forgers came thus the "divine
revelation" of the co-eternal "Son of God" worked up instead of the
old "revealed" human King "of the seed of David."
The forged Book of Enoch, thus vouched for, is notable for
being "the earliest appearance of the Messiah in non-canonical
literature." It is of the greatest importance for its doctrine of
the Jewish Messiah, who here appears as wholly an earthly human
deliverer and King over Israel forever, and for the origin of the
exalted titles applied to the Messiah in the New Testament Books,
as well as of a number of supposedly distinctive Christian
doctrines, first "revealed" by Jesus the Christ. In this Book we
first find the lofty titles: "Christ" or "the Anointed One," "Son
of Man," "the Righteous One," "the Elect One," -- all of which were
boldly plagiarized by the later Christians and bestowed on Jesus of
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Nazareth The Messiah, just as in the New Testament of later times,
exists from the beginning (48, 2); he sits on the throne of God
(45,3); and all judgment is committed unto him (69, 27). The
acceptance of Enoch as a Messianic prophet by the Christians led to
his rejection by the Jews. Here is the earliest invention of the
Christian Hell of fire and brimstone for eternal torture: "The
wicked shall go down into the Sheol of darkness and fire and dwell
there forever"; this being "one of the earliest mentions of Sheol
as a hell of torment" (CE. i, 602-3; EB. i, 223-5). It is the
oldest piece of Jewish literature which teaches the general
resurrection of Israel, a doctrine expanded to include Gentiles in
later "interpolations" into New Testament books. It abounds in such
"Christian" doctrines as the Messianic Kingdom, Hell, the
Resurrection, and Demonology, the Seven Heavens, and the
Millennium, all of which have here their apocryphal Jewish
promulgation, after being plagiarized bodily from the Persian and
Babylonian myths superstitions, as we have seen confessed. There
are numerous quotations, phrases, clauses, or thoughts derived from
Enoch, or of closest kin with it, in several of the New Testament
Gospels and Epistles, which may be readily found and compared as
catalogued in the authorities below cited; -- Pagan-Jewish myths
and doctrines which shared in molding the analogous New Testament
"revelations" or formed the necessary link in the development of
doctrines from the Old to the New Testament. The CE. says of the
Book of Enoch:
"It had left its imprint on the New Testament and the
works of the early Fathers. ... Clement of Alexandria,
Tertullian, Origen, and even St. Augustine suppose the work to
be a genuine one of the patriarch. ... The work is a
compilation, and its component parts were written in Palestine
by Jews of the orthodox school ... in the latter part of the.
second century before Christ. (See CE. i, 602. passim; EB. v,
220-224.)
In Fourth Esdras, as in the Apocalypse of Baruch, we find for
the first time, the fatal phrase and doctrine, "all mankind sinned
with Adam" (CE. i, 604), whence Paul forged his fearful and
accursed dogma of original sin and eternal damnation. Fourth
Marcabees, erroneously ascribed by Eusebius and others to Josephus,
dates from about 4 B.C., just after the death of Harod. It is
strongly indoctrinated with the Stoic philosophy, from which the
author "derived his four cardinal virtues, Prudence, Justice,
Fortitude, Temperance; and it was through Fourth Maccabees that
this category was appropriated by early Christian ascetical
writers" (CE. i, 605-6), and later "canonized" by the Church. (CE.
xi, 391.)
The Assumption of Moses was forged in the name of that worthy
as its genuine author, about the beginning of, or early in the
Christian era, with the ostensible purpose of confirming the Mosaic
Laws in Deuteronomy. It gives the parting communications of Moses
to his successor, Joshua, and unfolds, in a series of oretended
predictions, delivered in written from, the course of Israel's
history down to Herold's time. Here is found the legend of the
dispute between Michael Archangel and Satan over the body of Moses,
which the Christian Epistle of Jude (v. 9) cites as God-inspired
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truth. (CE. i, 602-3.) The book of Jubilees, or little Geneses, is
a fabricated embellishment of the Old Testament Genesis, written in
the name of Moses somewhere between 135 B.C., or 60 A.D., and
purports to be a revelation made to Moses by the 'Angel of the
Face' of events from Adam to Moses' own day; the Patriarchs are
made the exponents of the writer's own Pharisaic views and hopes.
It is quoted as good "Scripture" by Greek and Latin Fathers down to
the twelfth century, when its forged character was discovered.
One of the most important of apocryphal forgeries is the
Apocalypse of Baruch, "a pseudograph with evident Christian
interpolations" (CE. i, 604), written by a Jewish Pharisee about
50-90 A.D., who speaks in the first person in the name of Baruch,
secretary of the Prophet Jeremiah. The book begins by declaring
that the word of the Lord came to him in the 25th year of King
Jeconiah, -- who reigned only three months, and was carried away
captive to Babylon eleven years before the fall of Jerusalem, 586
B.C., which event the forgery bewails; it is filled with the
Messianic hopes of Jewry at the time of the fall of Jerusalem in 70
A.D. The book furnishes a setting and background of many
distinctive New Testament doctrines and problems, treating of
Original Sin, which it traces to the sin of Adam, Forgiveness,
Works, Justification, Free Will, etc., and this enables us to
estimate the contributions made in this respect by Jewish forgeries
to inspired Christian thought as developed in the so-called Pauline
Epistles, -- which Paul never wrote. Some notable Fathers, such as
Athenagoras, St. Justin Martyr, and St. Irenaeus, cite Beruch as a
Prophet, and vouch for him as on the same footing as Jeremiah, just
as Irenaeus vouches for Susanna and Bel and the Dragon as the
inspired work of Daniel. (CE. i, 604; iii, 271; EB. i 220.)
Father Justin, in several chapters, accuse the Jews of having
"removed from Esdras and Jeremiah passages clearly mentioning the
Savior," as also from Psalms; he says: "they have altogether taken
away many Scriptures from the translation affected by those Seventy
elders who were with Ptolemy, and by which this very man was
crucified is proved to have been set forth expressly as God, and
man, and as having been crucified, and as dying." (Dial. Trypho,
chs. lxxi-lxxiv; ANF. i, 234-235.) But these passages, says
Middleton, were never in the Hebrew Scriptures; "they were not
erased by the Jews, but added [to their copies] by the Christians,
or forged by Justin." (Op. cit., 41, 42.)
To which extent these pious Jewish forgeries formed the
background and basis of the Christian doctrines and dogmas of
pretended direct "revelation," and informed the thought and
utterance of Jesus Christ -- the raw material and working tools of
the Christian propagandist, may be realized from this
acknowledgement:
"The most important and valuable of the extant Jewish
apocrypha are those which contain the visions and revelations of
the unseen world and the Messianic future. Jewish apocryphal
literature is a theme which deserves the attention of all
interested in the development of the religion of Israel, that body
of concepts and tendencies in which are fixed the roots of the
great doctrinal principles of Christianity itself, just as its
Divine Founder took his temporal generation from the stock of
orthodox Judaism.
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The Jewish apocryphas furnish the completing links in the
progress of Jewish theology and fill what would otherwise be a gap,
though a small one, between the advanced stage marked by the
deutero-canonical -- [i.e. long doubted but finally accepted] --
books and its full maturity so relatively perfect that Jesus could
suppose as existing in the popular consciousness, without teaching
de novo, the doctrines of Future Retribution, the Resurrection of
the body, and the existence, nature and office of angels." (CE. i,
601.)
All these divine and "revealed" doctrines of Christian faith
we have seen to be originally heathen Zoroastrian mythology, taken
over first by the Jews, then boldly plagiarized by the ex-Pagan
Christians. Dean Milman, of St. Paul's, thus describes the
universality of these notions among the heathens and the borrowing
by the Jews and Christians of what were originally Pagan
superstitions -- now become articles of Christian revelation:
"Satan, angels, immortality, resurrection -- all Persian
and Zoroastrian doctrines imbibed by the Jews. ... During the
whole life of Christ, and the early propagation of the
religion, it must be borne in mind, that they took place in an
age, and among a people, which superstition had made so
familiar with what were supposed to be preternatural events,
that the wonders awakened no emotion, or were speedily
superseded by some new demand on the every-ready belief."
(Milman, History of Christianity, I, 93.)
Thus, again, the most precious Christian truths, of supposed
divine "revelation" through God, Christ and apostles -- were
plagiarizations from forged Jewish pseudo-Scriptures, taken over
into them from long contact with the Zoroastrian Pensions. These
myths and superstitions Jesus the Son of God found ready at hand
"in the popular consciousness" of the ignorant wonder-craving
Jewish peasantry; and, Lo, our "revealed" Christian religion! We
may begin to suspect the later "inspired" books of the "Apostles"
as not beyond the taint of Pagan superstition and of the suspicion
of Christian forgery.
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