Chapter II: Part 2

In the whole history of human cruelty and wickedness, there is nothing to equal, in cool and diabolical atrocity, the plunder and massacre of the Midianites. The horrible narrative partakes but little of the miraculous; yet, as Jahouh was said to be without a material body, and purely spiritual, it has been matter of wonder what he was going to do with the thirty-two young virgins who "had not known a man by lying with him," and who were awarded as his share of the spoil. This is a mystery which we must hold in silent reverence, as being altogether unaccountable, unless we surmise that his priests kindly intended to relieve him of so numerous a seraglio.*

* Horror succeeds to wonder, when it is known that by the
original meaning of the word, everything _devoted_ to the
"Lord," _was assuredly sacrificed_, unless redeemed.

The speech of Balaam's ass, of edifying and sacred, memory with our holy church, had many precedents in antiquity. The cows of Mount Olympus had been distinguished for supernaturally inspired orations; the doves, the fountains, and even the oaks of Dodona, had delivered heavenly oracles; Xanthus, one of the horses of Achilles, predicted his master's death before the walls of Troy. Livy and Suetonius (we are sorry for them as they ought to have known better) furnish other examples.

Almost the same exploits have been attributed by the Jews to Samson that were related by the Phoenicians of their Hercules (according to Yarro, there were forty-four Herculeses), and the imitation is palpably servile in the story of the gates of _Gaza_, and that of Hercules with the pillars of _Gadez_. Lion-killing was imitated also. Hercules was one of the numerous personifications or emblems of the power of the sun; and the Arabian name _Shams-on_, or _Samson_, signifies the sun. Hercules is made prisoner by the Egyptians, who want to sacrifice him; but while they are preparing to slay him, he breaks loose and kills them all. Samson, when tied with new ropes, is given up to the Philistines, who want to kill him; he breaks the ropes, and kills a thousand of them with the jaw-bone of an ass. The fables are identical. Even the story of the fox-tails is rooted in astronomy.* About the time when the corn is cut down in Palestine and Lower Egypt, and shortly after the setting of the rainy constellation Hyades, the sign of the fox arose, _in whose tail or train came the fires or torches of the dog-days_.

* See "New Researches."

The fable of Jephtha's sacrificing his daughter has some resemblance to the immolation of Iphigenia by her father, Agamemnon, in the famous expedition against Troy, which must have been taken by the Greeks many centuries before the Jews were _known_ to have writings, or even a name.

The legend about the tower of Babel seems to have originated thus: The wise men of Egypt were jealous of the Chaldean philosophers; the former said that the latter were so proud of their knowledge in astronomy that they presumptuously endeavored to erect a column of science as high as the stars; but that their pride was humbled when all their efforts failed to complete the work.

The hideously unjust dogma of original sin might have grown out of the Pagan fable of Pandora's box, the occult meaning of which most probably was the evils arising from theology and priestcraft. However, it is high time that our Christian priesthoods should invent for it some less ridiculous origin than the apple story, for that is too absurd to serve their ends any longer.

Ludicrous as the whale fable of Jonah is, the copy is fairly outmatched by the original from which it is taken. It is a Jewish version of that of Hercules, who was enclosed for three days in the belly of a whale; but, being more witty and adroit than Jonah, he contrived to live sumptuously all the while, by feasting on the liver of the monster, which, by some means or other, he contrived to broil! Here, for once, the Jew is outdone at his own weapons--the romance run mad. It must surely have been in ridicule of these and similar god-fables that Lucian wrote his "True History."

Isaiah says (xxxvii., 36), "Then the angel of the Lord went forth and smote, in the camp of the Assyrians, 185,000; and when _they_ arose in the morning, behold, they were all 'dead corpses.'" The Jonah of the Jew was completely thrown into the shade by Hercules, but here he is himself again. This miracle of miracles is altogether unmatched in heathen mythology; for we have 185,000 men, who were murdered in the night, getting up in the morning merely to find _themselves_ "dead corpses." A commentator of the true impudent breed will easily explain all this by affirming that the prodigy was typical of the resurrection.

The three hours of an eclipse, which is said to have taken place on the death of one of our Christian gods, is a very modest imitation of the Pagan original, from which it has every appearance of being taken. We say modest, because on the death of the godling Phaeton, his father Phoebus withheld his light from the earth a whole day.

All the Jewish and Christian fictions about resurrections and ascensions into what is called heaven, are also clumsily taken copies of originals in the ancient polytheism. The Egyptian Osiris died, returned again to life, and afterwards obtained divine honors; he was designated "_the holy word_" The god Atys was called the "_God our Savior_." Bacchus died, was buried, descended into, and slept three nights in Tartarus* (the only hell they had in those times), from whence he brought up his mother, with whom he ascended into heaven, and made her a goddess. His return to life was annually celebrated by the virgins and matrons of Delphi.

* All the tales about Tophet, Gehenna, Tartarus, or Hell,
had no foundation whatever "but the practice of burning
mankind, either on the funeral pile, or as a sacrifice to
the gods. The Greek word, Ades, or Hades, occurs eleven
times in the New Testament, and is _falsely_ translated
_Hell_ in all except one, where it is rightly translated
'the grave,' signifying the _invisible state_."

Ouranos, coelus, or heaven, merely signified the earth's
atmosphere in the summer months.

Thus the compilers of the Jew books had exemplars in, and drew their fables from, Paganism; and were themselves imitated in turn by the fabricators of the new Testament: the stories of the manna, and the twenty loaves of Elisha, very naturally suggested the wonderful growth of Jesus' loaves and fishes; and the manner in which that prophet turned brackish into pure water, would clearly point out how that element might be turned into wine, at the feast of Cana. The above are only a few of the numerous instances which might be quoted, wherein the ignorance of the Jewish scribes, disfigured the elegant and lively fables of Paganism; and it cannot escape observation that the rude recoinage in their barbarous mint has turned that which was pretty and amusing into the deformed and hideous, in a manner quite characteristic of their own semi-savage condition.

Having given a few specimens of the miracles attributed to the deity adopted by Moses, and their Pagan prototypes, we will take a retrospective glance at his general conduct and character, as depicted in his _old Jewish Will_. Never were higher qualities and powers ascribed to any god; and never were they so badly sustained; he is represented as omniscient, yet always taken by surprise; an omnipotent being, whose designs are commonly frustrated; immutable, yet ever changing; sufficient to his own happiness, yet always "jealous;" perfection itself, yet continually making imperfections, and repenting of that which he had previously approved; finally, he makes an _eternal_ Being, about as powerful as himself, and for no other apparent purpose than to be crossed and circumvented in all his projects. Sometimes Moses and he had sharp bickerings, such as that tavern squabble in Egypt (Exodus iv., 2--4), when the god lurked about the inn,* "seeking to kill" his protege.

* We do not mean to say that he frequented inns or taverns,
but it appears he was fond of a cheerful glass of wine. See
Judges ix. 13. Being composed of flesh and blood, Gen. vi.,
8.

At other times they were good friends, merry, and frolicksome, playing at bo-peep among the rocks (Exodus xxxiii., 22), the god showing his "back parts" only, for "no man could see his face and live"; yet on other occasions he talked "face to face" with his intimate friends. He forfeited all pretensions to the attributes of omniscience and omnipresence, when he confessed that he must "_go down now and see_" what the men of Sodom had been doing (Gen. xviii., 21). Nor could he, from his villa beyond the clouds, discover the Tower of Babel, but was under the necessity of coming "down to see" (Gen. xi.). That from his Egyptian greatness he was reduced, by Moses and his priests, to be merely a provincial deity, appears in various texts, as in Deuteronomy iv., 7, where it is said he was located near or living "nigh to them" (the Jews). A district god of this kind was fashionable all over Syria at that time, each petty state or tribe having one of its own; such as Astarte, _with the cross_, of the Phoenicians; Moloch, of the Ammonites; Astoroth and Dagon, of the Philistines; Tammuz, or Adonis, of the Sidonians; Chemosh,* of the Moabites, etc., etc.; and why should not the Jews be armed with a god as well as their neighbors? Well might Jahouh exclaim, "_save me from my friends_;" for his historians have represented him as a passionate, blustering, vengeful changeling, extremely "jealous" of all the other petty gods around him, and exciting nothing but fear and dislike in his followers; hence the Theocrat and his priesthood were continually struggling to keep the grist at their own mill, by preventing the people from "whoring after" the more amiable rites of Astarte and Adonis. In the seventeenth chapter of 1 Chronicles this deity gives intimation that, owing to a change of habits, he was not particularly desirous of living in a house;** that ever since he left Egypt, he had accustomed himself to go about "_from tent to tent, and from one tabernacle to another_" There is something exceedingly ludicrous in this; yet we trust that the "long-ear'd rout," the _true believers_, will have no difficulty in preserving their gravity. In short, of all the personified deities of antiquity, Moses has caricatured his the most egregiously. All these local or provincial gods were immeasurably inferior to the Jupiter of the Greeks, who, although he "liked the lasses," always sustained an awful dignity of character.

* See Judges xi., 24.

** The deity set up by priests stands in no want of a house
whilst among wandering tribes, who build none for
themselves; but while he is amongst the stationary
cultivators of the soil he requires one, in which his
_immaterial presence_ is requested on stated days to hear
his own praise sung: men are fond of praise, therefore it
undoubtedly follows that the deity must be fond of it
likewise.

In additional proof that the Jew books have no just claim to antiquity, there is not a vestige of authentic testimony to show that they were in existence before the King of Babylon gave the Jews permission to settle in Palestine, after their slavery. The first thirteen of these appear to have been then fabricated from loose and unconnected traditions; of which the Pentateuch was in all probability compiled the last, as there is no mention of it either in Joshua, Judges, the two books of Samuel, Psalms, or in Kings or Chronicles, until the time of Josiah, that is, about 900 years after the pretended time of Moses.* If a man, without slavish fear or prejudice, will impartially examine the stories in 2 Kings xxii., and 2 Chron. xxxiv., xxxv., he will see palpably the collusion between the high priest Hilkiah and his pupil, the young king Josiah, aided by the prophet Jeremiah, Shaphan the scribe, and the prophetess Huldah. These persons, some of whom must have learnt to write while at Babylon, acted in concert under the high priest, in manufacturing the books of the law, which they pretended to have found in an old chest, where, according to their story, they must have mouldered for upwards of 900 years; _yet Shaphan could read them as fluently as if he had written them himself_. The object of this fraud being to wean the Jews from the gods of the Chaldean priests, it is probable that the books of the law only were forged on this occasion; for we find that the compilation of a large portion of the Bible traditions fell to the share of Esdras (who was identically Ezra the scribe), as he distinctly tells us in the fourteenth chapter of his second book, viz., that under the orders of the Lord (read, _the high priest_), he had a number of clerks engaged for forty days, during which time they completed amongst them 204 books or chapters.** As all these men had been captives in Babylon, and could nowhere else be taught to write, how could these books be composed in any other than the Chaldee character? The third chapter of the book of Chronicles gives a list of the Jewish kings from David to Zedekiah, and even to four generations after his time. Now, as Zedekiah was one of those who were carried to Babylon, we have a strong, an irrefragable proof that those books were written after that captivity.

* The proof that Moses could not possibly be the author of
the Pentateuch did not escape the luminous mind of Mr.
Paine. In Genesis xiv., 14, it is said, "And Abraham pursued
them to Dan." Now, there was no place called Dan until the
time of the Judges. See Judges xviii., 28 and 29.

In Genesis xxxvi., 31, it is said, "And these are the kings
that reigned in the land of Edom _before the children of
Israel had any king_" Therefore several kings, viz., Saul,
David, Solomon, etc., must have reigned before the first
book of the Pentateuch was written.

In the forty-ninth chapter the writer gives an account of
the ultimate fate of the tribes (forgetting the tribe of
Manasseh altogether). How could Moses know anything of this?
How could he speak of the sceptre of Judah? If it is said
that this was prophetic of Jesus, we reply that the sceptre
_was not_ in Judah when he (Jesus), was bora.

St. Jerome, said to be one of the most learned of the
Fathers, confesses he dare not affirm that Moses was the
author of the Pentateuch. He even adds that he has no
objection to allow that it was written by Esdras. His words
are: "Sive Mosem dicere volueris auctorem Pentateuchi sive
Esdram ejusdem instauratorem operis, non recuso."

** That Esdras composed these books is further proved in his
first book, chap. 8, where it is said that he "had very
great skill, and omitted nothing of the law" of the Lord,
i.e., the laws of the king, and high priest.

Moreover, learned critics have shewn that the Bible names of angels, such as Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael, Michael, Satan, etc., are purely Chaldean or Persian! And this is confirmed by the Talmud of Jerusalem, which says expressly that the Jews borrowed the names of the angels from the Babylonians. Even the name Israel is not a Hebrew but a Chaldee word, as was fully explained by Philo Judaeus, when on his embassy to the Emperor Caligula. This corroborates the opinion that, in the portions of the Pentateuch which existed only in tradition, previous to the captivity at Babylon, the angels had no names, and that they were afterwards added when these traditions were written. For instance, when Abraham entertained Jehovah and the two angels with roasted veal,* the party gave themselves no names; and those heavenly messengers whose virginity was so much endangered by the men of Sodom, when they honored Lot with a visit, were anonymous also; as was likewise the one that appeared to Manoah. The legend contained in the book said to be written by Enoch, concerning the war in heaven, fall of the angels, etc., must have travelled from India to Chaldea, where it was picked up by the Jews. It arose from one of the astro-fables in that most ancient of all books, the Shastras of the Brahmins, wherein it is recorded that heavenly beatitude was disturbed by the pride and ambition of Mozazor and Raabon, two princes of the angelic bands, who stirred up sedition, and drew after them myriads of angels in rebellion against the _Eternal_, who sent against them his vicegerent Brahma, with his two lieutenants, Vishnu and Siva, armed with almighty power, who hurled the rebels from heaven down to a place of darkness, called Ondera. This ancient fable of the Brahmins was probably the groundwork also of the Grecian fable of the Titan war.

* This story is taken from an old fable related in the Fasti
of Ovid, how Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury, having supped
with an old man named Hyriens, and finding that impotence
was the cause of his having no children, each of the three
urined upon the skin of the calf 'that had been killed for
supper, and this celestial water impregnated the skin,
which, after nine months' inhumation, produced a beautiful
child, which became the constellation Orion. The learned say
that the true translation of the words which the angels
addressed to Abraham, is thus:--A child shall be born of
your calf.

A word more respecting Abraham. The planet Saturn was the Israel of the Chaldees; and it was personified both by them and the Phoenicians under the name of Abraham, which signifies the _Father of a people_ figuratively, the stars of heaven, which are called "his seed for ever." Saturn was the son of _Terra_ (the earth); Abraham was the son of Terah; Saturn married his own sister Rhea, a star; Abraham married his own sister Sarai or Sarah, which signifies a star (Sirius, the ever beautiful and young); Saturn had many sons, but only one whom he loved and protected as an _only_ son; Abraham had many sons, though he is said to have had an only son named Isaac, whom he loved. According to the famous Sanchoniatho, Saturn offered up his beloved son Jeoud, as a holocaust, or burnt offering wholly consumed; Abraham was about to offer up his beloved son Isaac,* but a ram (zodiacal) was found as substitute. The planet Saturn was called _Israel_ by the Phoenicians and Chaldees; the patriarch Abraham is synonymous with the name Israel throughout the Bible. Saturn, from his exceedingly remote situation in the solar system, and the long period taken to circle his immense orbit, was the emblem of time; hence the many Bible phrases about Abraham, as connected with time, such as "before Abraham was,"--i.e., before time was. Priests! are these merely chance coincidences?

* In this horrible story, as understood literally, Abraham
receives quite coolly, and without either surprise or
remonstrance, the order to sacrifice Isaac; which shows,
even in allegory, that among the Jews the sacrifice of the
first-born son by the father was nothing uncommon.

Stupidity itself, if honest and free from prejudice, would at once see and acknowledge the perfect sameness, the absolute identity of these astro-fables; and that the personal existence of Abraham rests precisely on the same ground as that of any other mythological or metaphysical existence whatsoever. But what will our gospel-grace baby of fifty say, when he has the mortification to see the truth of the above interpretations antecedently confirmed and justified by the gospel itself? Paul, in his epistle to the Galatians says: "For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond-maid, the other by a free woman, _which things are an allegory_," that is, a fable. This story, then, no more belongs to the Hebrews than it does to the Laplanders, but is wholly Chaldaic, and was plagiarised by the Jews while slaves in Babylon; but the Chaldee priests would take special care that they should see only the _veil_ that covered the allegory. Thus it is clear that Abraham's personal existence was as fictitious as that of Saturn, Jupiter, Orion, Mercury, Apollo, etc. He is also identified in the Hindu Brahma, with no other difference than a transposition of the letters of the name. The god Jehovah of the Bible announces himself to Abraham and Moses in almost the same terms as does the supreme god of India to Brahma, as recorded in the Bhagavat Pourana, the _Holy Bible_ of the Hindus, translated from the Sanscrit by Sir William Jones, who allows the vastly higher antiquity of the Brahmin allegories.

We shall now touch slightly upon the curious question, whether the Jews did ever in reality possess any territory not subject to a higher power. The narrative of their colonisation by Cyrus is liable to much doubt and objection. No authentic historian of ancient times, Josephus excepted, has ever in any way mentioned them as an independent nation or state, or as being in possession of Palestine, or any part of Great Syria, before or in the time of Alexander. As a nation they appear to have been entirely unknown to Herodotus, and all other Greek historians. What had become of them when Xenophon wrote of the eastern nations, which was only 150 years after their alleged return from Babylon? He mentions the Syrians of Palestine as under the Persian government, but not a word about the Jews. Herodotus mentions two invasions of the Scythians, through Syria, even to the borders of Egypt; but acknowledges no Jews or Israelites. In the fragments that remain of Sanchoniatho, Ctesias, Berosus, and Manetho, they are not noticed even as a petty or subject state, so that we have the fullest negative evidence that in the times of these historians, no part of Syria was a Jewish country. Diodorus, in detailing the events in that country, the siege of Tyre, etc., during Alexander's conquests, says not a word of the Jews as forming a state or colony, or of their boasted city of Jerusalem: and he is equally silent as to their existence as a nation during the times of Alexander's immediate successors; nor have we any historical account of them deserving of credit until the time of Antiochus the 4th (Epiphanes), under whom they lived, and he was subject to the Romans. If the territory of Judea was given to them by the King of Babylon, only about 200 years before the Macedonian conqueror went to the east, why did not he and his historians find them there? The plain and simple truth is, the Jews NEVER formed an independent state; and that part of Syria called Palestine, was, in all known ages, subject either to the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks or Romans (according to the tide of conquest), as it now is to the Turks. In Bible times the Jews were much more ignorant than they now are, and this is all the difference in their condition; they were always the old-clothes'-men and gold clippers of the world. They were permitted by the King of Babylon to build a temple to their idol in the rocky district of Judea, which formed a nucleus--a Jewish Mecca--to which they congregated from all parts for worship. Josephus, while he speaks of his masters, the Romans, is tolerably correct; but when he treats of the "antiquities" of his countrymen he is not for a moment to be trusted, because he was then merely copying their legendary tales, and he frequently far exceeds the wild romance of the tales themselves. The pretended interview between Alexander and the high priest Jaddua, is evidently plagiarised from the well-authenticated scene that took place between that prince and the high priest of Jupiter Ammon.

From the times of Porphyry, Celsus, and Hierocles, to the present day, it has been the wonder of the rational philosopher, how a disjointed collection of writings, made by an obscure and barbarous race of people, came to have such mighty importance attached to them, more especially as their tendency has ever been inimical to, and subversive of, human happiness; but this sad anomaly may be accounted for. All such tyrants as Constantine saw in these books examples of the most unqualified despotism; and knew that, through the medium of carefully fostered ignorance, man is an animal that can be made to believe and bear anything, however absurd and tyrannical. Conquerors and devastators of countries found in them justifying precedents for all their enormities, and the rivers of blood which ambition and Christian fanaticism have shed in every part of the world. The Crusades, where millions upon millions of fanatics perished, are never-dying witnesses of this. Would any unshackled mind believe that the Spaniards could have been guilty of such inhuman and monstrous cruelties towards the simple and unoffending natives of America, if such horrid butcheries had not been sanctioned, nay, commanded, and pompously set forth, in the detailed massacres of the Bible? Here we have the exploits of some generals of banditti--blood-thirsty robbers, who blasphemously declare that their unequalled cruelties were committed by command of the ruling power of the universe! That the Spaniards thought themselves justified by the Bible, appears by the book which Sepulvado wrote for the express purpose of vindicating them in the murder of twelve millions of Indians, "_by the example of the Israelites towards the people of Canaan_." Las Casas says: "I have seen in the Islands of St. Domingo and Jamaica, gibbets erected all over the country to hang thirteen Indians at a time, _in honor of the thirteen apostles_.--I have seen," continues he, "young children thrown to dogs* to be devoured alive." In charging the shocking barbarities of the Bible upon the Jewish deity, the fanatic devoutly accuses him of crimes and acts of wicked injustice that are hardly ever committed, even by the worst of men, such as visiting the offences of the fathers upon the children, and requiring the sacrifice of the innocent to expiate the crimes of the guilty. To what a state of mental degradation, O man, have thy priests and thy superstition reduced thee!

Thus did kings, conquerors, and corrupt rulers of nations see the justifying precedents to be drawn from these books for all their enormities; and as for the fathers or heads of the Christian sect, and other religious impostors, they could be at no loss to find in them just whatever suited their respective schemes of deception. The learned amongst the early fathers saw and acknowledged the astro-allegories about Adam, Eve, the serpent, Garden of Eden, and fall of man; but their successors, about the beginning of the 4th century, when they decided upon getting up a _new will and testament_ for Jehovah, in order to make their system hold together, thought it necessary to cause his departure from the usual practice of testators--that he should not be allowed to revoke the old Jewish will, which for good reasons, was to be retained in full force. Without this document their most essential dogmas would have had no foundation; and as it "would have been too bare-faced a fable to make Jesus die on account of an allegorical tree," the forbidden one of Genesis must be converted into a real tree; for then it would, together with its accompaniments, furnish mystical pegs upon which to hang the indispensable dogmas of original sin and redemption.

* In Hosea xiii., 16, we have a declaration "That their
infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with
child shall be ripped up"!!! This and the Midianitish
slaughter and extermination, together with that of the
Amalekites, will perhaps stand for ever unmatched in the
history of human cruelties.

These appear to have been the ruling motives of those who gradually manufactured the Christian scheme (for it was done by piecemeal, by a number of hands, and in different centuries) and in adopting the Old Testament it was necessary, by this affiliation, to connect its list of fabulous prodigies with the new code,* or fresh series of miracles which had been invented for, and are recorded in, the new will of the Jewish deity:--**

"Ay, and sound ones too,
Seen, heard, attested, every thing--but true"

In forcing this connexion still closer, the fabricators had no difficulty in finding that, in their series of wonders, the principal violations of Nature's laws had been foretold in the Jewish prophets.*** This was a clincher which served to confirm the supernatural texture of their religion, quite as well as the cloud-conveyed Shastras did that of Brahma, the laws of Moses from the cloud-capped Sinai, or any other of the numerous human laws which have originated beyond the clouds, and been palmed upon ignorance by impostors. Clouds, shadows, phantoms, ghosts, etc., have ever been the favorite machinery of priests. According to the notoriously false prediction of St. Paul, Jesus, on his second coming, was to be cloud-delivered; and this advent, it was positively asserted, would take place during his own (Paul's) lifetime.

* Matthew pretends that Jeremiah foretold that Christ should
be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver. Where is this to be
found in Jeremiah?

** When the latent astronomical sense of these two
testaments is made manifest, a necessary connexion between
them is perceived; owing to their common foundation in Solar
adoration, and that of the other physical powers of Nature.

*** These prophets were in reality nothing but strolling
soothsayers, fortune-tellers, psalmists or palmists; and
being mob orators by education and profession, with a
capability of reading and writing, they were fitted to
deceive the ignorant in many ways. Dodwell, De Jure
Laicorum, asserts that they prepared themselves to prophecy
_by drinking wine_. They were also jugglers, musicians,
etc., etc.

But our church mystagogues will very easily reconcile this unfortunate failure with "_gospel truth_." As the Old Testament compilers had made up their collection chiefly of any traditionary or legendary shreds they could gather,* so did their successors, the Christians, in their new miscellany. The Therapeutae, or Egyptian monks, had supplied a large portion, as is confessed even by Eusebius himself (see Lecture Second), but by a luckless anachronism, the spurious writings that were selected to form the new will of god, were not (according to the best authorities) finally _voted_ to be such until the Council of Laodicea;** so that the present document had no existence till _three hundred and sixty-eight years after the death of the testator_, for it is quite orthodox to say that Jesus was "God the Testator."

* The Pharisees of the second temple chose the books they
liked best among a multitude of forgeries. The Talmud
relates that this synagogue were about to reject by far the
best books of the Bible--viz., Proverbs, Job and
Ecclesiastes; not owing to their not being Jewish, but Pagan
writings, _but because they were contradictory to the law of
god_. It was not only the opinion of Ebenezra, but even of
Jerome himself, that Job is not a Hebrew book.

** The deadly animosity and quarrelling for which the
Council of Nice was so famous, would prevent anything like
decision; and, therefore, it is much more probable that the
finishing hand in _voting_ what should form the New
Testament, was put at Laodicea, and not at Nice, especially
as we know that the book of Revelation was rejected at
Council of Laodicea; but again admitted long afterwards.

From the discordant and immoral tendency of the greater portion of the old will of the Jewish god, there could arise but little hope that his new one would benefit the human race; so according to the spirit of its own terrible denunciation (Matt, x., 34, 35, 36), we find that its votaries, the religious fanatics both of early and modern times, have not yielded in the slightest degree but been fully equal in _holy cruelty_ to the Jews, who were utterly inaccessible to every feeling of pity or humanity. These two superhuman Testaments now form a book, which, from its ill-deserved conventional pre-eminence, and the hydra-priesthoods which it quarters upon industry, is the chief scourge of modern Europe. The contemptible ignorance, credulity, and fraud which support its tyrannous authority as a supernatural revelation; the futile attempt to enforce a belief in its literal meaning as indispensable to the happiness of mankind; and the universal degradation and misery which it perpetuates, by the inbred hostility which all its priesthoods have ever evinced towards every improvement that would enlighten and elevate the human mind, have done more to disgust and misanthropize all ingenuous and rational minds, and to inspire them with a settled aversion for the ways of man and his institutions, than all the other moral and physical evils now experienced in Christendom. While these master curses are maintained in their pestiferous sway, it will be impossible for their victim, man, to taste of happiness through the attainment of civil liberty to any beneficial extent, or to approach truth and virtue by philosophical researches in the path of Nature; for there is no arriving at these but by the utter extermination of all the fraudulent and idolatrous religions pretending to supernatural revelation.

END OF LECTURE FIRST.

LECTURE SECOND. CHRISTIAN SUPERNATURALISM FURTHER CONSIDERED

"Lest you start at these bold truths, and fly
These lines, as maxims of impiety,
Consider that Religion did, and will
CONTRIVE, PROMOTE, and ACT the greatest ill."
Lucretius.

IN the foregoing Lecture, it has been shown that the Jewish deity of Moses, on his being adopted and continued in power by the early sect of Christians, who were themselves Jews, was induced by his new hierarchy, as soon as they were established, to make a new _Will_ (the old Jewish one not being altogether sufficient for their ends), into which they gradually, as occasion required, foisted different codicils, by which they multiplied the objects of worship, by introducing into partnership with him two colleagues, who, being each no other than himself, the three, quite arithmetically, made but "one God." But by this cunning and masterly manoeuvre, he soon found himself fairly outwitted by his priests, who were the sole gainers by this poly-theistical stratagem; whilst the supremacy which he held in the time of Moses dwindled into division, and he was obliged to share with the other two, and even with the mother* of one of them, the worship of his new votaries. Even the gods themselves, when Juno, the sister and wife of Jupiter, had divine honors paid to her; why then refuse the same to the mother of one of the "Christian Gods?"

* When the people of Ephesus were informed that the Fathers
of the Council had declared they might call the Virgin Mary
"_The Mother of God_" they were transported with joy; they
kissed the hands of the bishops--they embraced their knees,
and the whole city resounded with acclamations! St. Cyrils
Letter.

When they get entangled in the meshes of priestcraft, are seldom able to burst the trammels; and so it has happened in the case before us. The "New Will" was a most ingenious invention on the part of the Fathers of Christianism, as it afforded them an opportunity not only of re-modelling their deity, in person and family, but of abrogating or amending all such of his old laws as no longer suited the times or their views; and of making every change that was necessary to establish the new hierarchy in riches and power. The tithe of industry and settled money revenues must now be substituted for the bloody altars, and delectable viands of Jehovah's former priests; and as he was precisely a personification of the interests of these, so has he continued to be of those of their successors, who, having that object alone in view, have been but little solicitous about rendering him either more consistent or amiable; but on the contrary, they have sublimated his cruelty, by the invention of eternal fire torments, an idea so enormously absurd and wicked, that it never entered his head while he was merely Theocrat of the Jews.

Matters being thus settled by the rejection of the numerous theogony of which Jupiter was the head, and the adoption of unity in the godhead, under the Jehovah of the Jews, it was still considered necessary, in order to reconcile the polytheists, to preserve some vestiges of polytheism; and these were readily suggested by the waking dreams and spiritual speculations of Plato, whose "three _hypostases_" seemed wonderfully well adapted to form the basis of our triune mythology. Hence the _divinity_ of Plato.

As the third part of that godhead which is now worshipped in modern Europe, was, as well as the other parts, borrowed from the heathen trinity, and forms an important dogma in our superstition, a sketch of its history may not be unnecessary. Like the metaphysical invention of the soul's immortality, it is altogether unacknowledged in the Old Testament, as a personified deity; for the "spirit of the Lord," if rightly translated, merely signifies _wind of the gods_, or wind that has a genial and salutary influence, as that of summer. This addition made to the Christian mythology by the Platonist writers of the New Testament, was eagerly embraced and improved upon by the Fathers, as the grand source, or fountain head, from whence they could continually draw their infallible inspirations. In accordance with its occult sense in the mysteries of the Gentile trinity, they very properly made their holy ghost "proceed from" the other two "persons," though he more immediately emanates from the "son" (i. e. the sun), and, by the apotheosis, they armed him with authority; but as a regularly constituted and personified god, he did not come fairly into play until the beginning of the fifth century, when he came in for his third share of godhead thus:--From council to council, new creeds and dogmas were hatched; and in that of Chalcedon, in 401, _the first New Testament_ was set in the midst of the assembly, as the great appeal. The ecclesiastics who composed this council, found considerable difficulty in adding this third apotheosis to complete their trinity, until a priest, more cunning and more deceitful than the others, suggested an expedient, which was nothing less than to add to the beginning of St. John's Gospel that passage from Plato which now forms its first verse.

In the occult sense in which this windy metaphor is used in the New Testament, it is allegorical of the first winds of summer, "proceeding from" the increased power of the sun, which have a vivifying and salutary influence upon all animal and, vegetable life. The writer of the Gospel attributed to St. John astro-nomises, perhaps, a little too openly in chap. 7, v. 39, by declaring: "For as yet there was no Holy Ghost, because Jesus was not yet glorified."*

* This is the true translation from the Greek.

Here is a plain and unequivocal admission that even the very existence of the Holy Ghost depended on the glorification of Christ, the solution of which enigma is, that _May_ was not then come, for it was not until about the middle of that month that the Hely, or Holy wind of _Helios_, that is, God the Sun, was said to commence; and this constituted, _and is the only Holy Ghost_. But before that period, as the sun is not sufficiently elevated and clear, or in other words, clarified (glorified) from the denser clouds and contagious vapors of early spring, his personification, Christ, could not be said to be glorified.* Hence the Holy Ghost is an annual visitor, and with his benign influence, comes with the festival of Whitsuntide or Pentecost; but not till that is "fully come."** It was then that, symbolised in the blessed, holy, sun-heated wind, he was said to descend on the apostles, giving them "the gift of tongues," which gifts seem to have been quite in character, and fleeting as the _wind_, for they soon evaporated, leaving the possessors "unlearned and ignorant men."

That which is called the "sin against the Holy Ghost," or sinning against the _clearest light_, cannot be rationally interpreted as meaning anything else than the denial of, or refusal duly to appreciate, the sun's almighty power upon this globe--the one glorious fountain "on High," out of which springs the renovated creation, and the annual salvation of man.

It was at the famous festival of Whitsuntide also, after the sun entered the sign Gemini, or the Twin Children, that the personified sun, Christ, is very significantly made to say, "suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven"--that is, such is my present "house" in the zodiac.

With respect to the second deity in the Christian plan of polytheism,*** it may be justly asserted, that amongst the numerous _revealed_ religions that have from time to time plagued and enslaved the world, no set of theological dogmas, in any known age or country, has ever produced a tenth part of the contention, devastation and bloodshed that have arisen from those concerning Jesus Christ; and although Christendom has been the scene of the fiercest wars for more than fourteen centuries, for the absurd purpose of ascertaining his pedigree, rank and attributes, these preternatural problems are not only as far from being settled as ever, but strong doubts remain whether the person in question did ever exist in reality; many of the learned being of opinion that his positive existence rests on as visionary grounds as that of his Platonic colleague.

* Wherever the phrase, "The Glory of the Lord" is used
throughout the Bible, it signifies nothing else than the
brightness of the sun.

** Acts ii, 1, and iv. 18.

*** Jesus became God thus:--In the year 325, Constantine
having declared himself protector of the Church, convoked
the grand oecumenic council of Nice; and of all the Fathers
who composed that council, three hundred were of a contrary
opinion to that of Arius; _and these it was who determined
to acknowledge the_ "Divinity of Jesus." They added to the
tenets and symbols the words _consubstantial with the
Father_; and concluded by anathematising the Arians.

Christ, or Christos, is not a proper name, but like the word paraclete, is an epithet, and signifies a principle or quality that is good and useful to man, and has been applied to the sun, as savior, and to human reason.* This nearly agrees with the hypothesis of the famous Dr. Strauss--that "the history of Christ, as related in the Gospels, is mythic--a kind of imaginative amplification of certain _vague and slender traditions_, formed with the design of developing an ideal character of Jesus, and to harmonise with the Jewish notions of a Messiah." That some obscure person of the name of Jesus may have lived, and been put to death by the Jewish mob for ridiculing their superstition is very probable; but that the hero of the New Testament was born, and lived, and died under all the circumstances, and attended by such violations of Nature's laws as are represented in that book, without the emphatic record of any historian, either Greek, Jewish, or Roman, seems quite impossible.

* Christ, the anointed, is physically significative of the
Sun, as being the sole source of all that man can rationally
call good; and in the moral sense it is expressive of reason
and knowledge. The etymology of the names of the ruling gods
in different ages and countries, such as Brahma, Osiris,
Chrishna, Budha, Foe, Oromazedes, Jupiter, Bacchus, Jehovah
and Jesus Christ, etc., will show that they were merely
allegorical personifications of the Sun. Dr. Lamb, of
Cambridge, has found the etymon even of the word sabbath to
signify "Daughter of the Sun"

Our O, as used in admiration, was symbolical of the
orbicular figure of the Sun, as in the exclamation, "O Dens
Sol invicte Mithra!" Celsus declares that such Mithriacs
were the first Christians.

Mattathias, the father of Josephus, must have been a witness to the miracles which are said to have been performed by Jesus, and Josephus was born within two years after the crucifixion, yet in all his works he says nothing whatever about the life or death of Jesus Christ; as for the interpolated passage it is now universally acknowledged to be a forgery. The arguments of the "Christian Ajax,"* even Lardner himself, against it are these:--"It was never quoted by any of our Christian ancestors _before Eusebius_. It disturbs the narrative. The language is quite Christian. It is not quoted by Chrysostom, though he often refers to Josephus, and could not have omitted quoting it _had it been then in the text_. It is not quoted by Photius, though he has three articles concerning Josephus; and this: author expressly states that this historian has not taken the least notice of Christ.** Neither Justin Martyr, in his dialogue with Trypho the Jew; nor Clemens Alexandrinus, who made so many extracts from ancient authors; nor Origen against Celsus, have ever mentioned this testimony. But, on the contrary, in chap. 35th of the first book of that work, Origen openly affirms that Josephus, who had mentioned John the Baptist, _did not acknowledge Christ_. That this passage is a false fabrication, is admitted also by Ittigius, Blondel, Le Clerc, Vandale, Bishop Warburton, and Tanaquil Faber."*** Josephus was not friendly towards Herod, but rather at enmity with him; he conceals none of his faults or cruelties, which makes it appear surpassing strange that he should silently pass over that most horrible of all butcheries ever perpetrated by-man--the general massacre of the infants, to the amount, it has been said, of fourteen thousand.

* See Taylor's "Diegesis."

** How could Photius, in the 9th century, find that in
Josephus which Origen, in the 3rd century, had declared was
not in him?

*** Is it probable, is it even possible that Josephus, a Jew
extremely zealous and obstinate in his own religion, would
confess that to be true which every Jew most positively and
religiously denies; that is, acknowledge that Jesus was the
Christ? This is making Josephus talk like a Christian in
four or five lines only.

How is it that this event, so unparalleled that history cannot show its-equal in atrocity, should not only be unknown to three-of the evangelists, Mark, Luke, and John, but entirely escape the notice of the minute and circumstantial, historian of the Jews? Josephus is equally silent respecting the miraculous darkness, the new star which appeared in the east, and the graves that opened of themselves to eject the dead, who, being undisposed of afterwards, may still be walking the streets of Jerusalem.. The younger Seneca, a voluminous writer, was then about thirty-nine years of age, and must have been at Rome at the time; yet he says nothing whatever of those shocking cruelties and violations of Nature's laws. The elder* and the younger Pliny came into the highest repute not many years afterwards, one of whom was a most valuable historian, and could not possibly have omitted to mention such extraordinary doings and prodigies if they had taken place in any part of the empire.

If anything could be more unaccountable than the silence of the above historians, it would be that of Philo-Judaeus, who was contemporary with Caligula? "and in the folio edition of his works of 1552, he speaks of the state of the Jews, and their afflictions under Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula, the very period embracing the whole extent of Christ's life; but he says not a word of Christ, Christians, or Christianity." This silence of Philo, a man highly esteemed for his learning and veracity, a cotemporary historian, and a public functionary, being agent for the Jews at the time, is so inexplicable, that interested priests alone can explain it away.

* The elder Pliny, about the year seventy-five, wrote the
"History of His Own Time," in thirty-one books, and was the
most celebrated historian of that time, yet we find him as
ignorant as Josephus, or any of the other writers mentioned,
of the thing called Christianity, or sect of Christians;
though, as an historian, he was so minute and circumstantial
as to suffer nothing of importance to escape him. Why did
the Christians, in after times destroy the work above-
mentioned, and leave his "Natural History?" Because he did
not perform an impossibility; that is, he neither did nor
could take notice of their sect, which had no known
existence in his time.

A question naturally presents itself--did the populace of Jerusalem and villages adjacent, who were spectators and witnesses when the miracles in question were wrought, believe in them? No, they did not; to them the operator, whoever he was, must have appeared an impostor, as fully appears by the catastrophe. That such extraordinary events and performances should make no impression upon those who were witnesses to them, is contrary to the natural feelings of mankind, particularly as regards the populace, for in all such cases where the bulk of the people believe in the truth of reputed miracles, they are more actuated by sentiments of reverential awe towards the performer, than a desire to put him to death.

After a lapse of nearly two thousand years since the epoch of these miraculous events, it must ever remain impossible to ascertain whether the second person of this triune godhead had _bona fide_ an incarnate existence; or was merely a metaphorical personification of some principle, as the epithet _Christ_ implies;* but it is certain that this appellative was assumed by a sect of superstitionists known in Egypt, from time immemorial, under the name of therapeutae, or monks, whose tenets the Judaizing Christians adopted; and from whose writings they made selections in the compilation of their New Testament, as is proved by the testimony of Eusebius himself, who says in his history, book 2nd: "Those ancient therapeutae were Christians, AND THEIR ANCIENT WRITINGS WERE OUR GOSPELS."

* "Christos being strictly a Greek epithet, would the Jewish
populace give a Greek name to a Jew by birth?"

Thus it is proved by the most zealous of all the Christian fathers, that these gospels, though not brought upon the stage until nearly two centuries after the reputed death of Jesus, existed among the Egyptian monks long before the pretended origin of Christianity. As to the four which have been selected and fitted up by the Church to make part of "the word of God," no man has ever been able to tell by whom, when, or where they were written; nor are they acknowledged by any person but as the learned Christian bishop, Faustus, declared the forgers of them affirmed, "that what was written by themselves, was written 'according' to those persons to whom they ascribed them." It appears that these adopted gospels were first mentioned by Irenaeus, about the latter end of the second century; but as the writings of that saint must have come through the manufacturing hands of Eusebius, that early notice of them is rendered extremely suspicious; however, they were first known only as forming part of fifty-four gospels, all equally well authenticated; and some writers have asserted that it was this Irenaeus who first selected them out of the above spurious mass, and by his own fiat alone made them canonical. Was it out of respect for the high authority of this saint that the Holy Ghost confirmed his selection, at the Council of Nice, about 175 years afterwards? It has been allowed, even by the most learned Christian divines (as will be shown in a subsequent lecture) that fraud, religious lying and forgery, were then the common practice in promoting the cause of public deception; and, therefore, we have no difficulty in believing that Irenaeus had his full share in the fraudful traffic.

If the word of a saint is good for anything, we might quote that of Irenaeus in corroboration of what we have elsewhere said respecting the books of the Old Testament; for does he not tell us that "_they were fabricated' seventy years after the Babylonish captivity by Esdras_"? These are _revelations_ which Christians are extremely unwilling to meet, but they are much better authenticated than any of the artificial ones that claim a supernatural derivation.