*Chapter xvi., v. 13. In the Douay this is translated, 'And she called the name of the Lord that spoke unto her, thou the God who hast seen me; for she said, verily here have I seen the hinder parts of him that seeth me.' The reader will perceive a strange difference in the two texts. If the Douay be the correct translation, where are the hinder parts of a God who is without parts? (vide thirty-nine articles).
*Chapter xvii., v. 1. 'And the Lord appeared to Abraham.' Verse 3. 'And Abraham fell on his face.' Verse 17. 'Then Abraham fell on his face.' Verse 23. 'And he left off talking with him; and God went up from Abraham.'
The intent of this chapter is to induce a belief that the Lord appeared in person to Abraham; and that, after he had talked with him for some time, he left and went up. It is also intended to convey that Abraham showed his respect to the Lord bv falling down before him; and, according to the Douay, 'flat on his face.' I have before remarked on this going up and coming down, which is utterly inconsistent with any idea of an infinite and omnipotent God. I do not wish to fill my pages with mere repetitions, and shall, therefore, at once deal with Genesis, chap, xvii., v. 1 and 22, chap, xviii., v. 1, 2, 7, and 8, chap, xxii., v. 11 and 15, chap, xxvi., v. 2 and 24, chap. xxviii., v. 13, chap, xxxii., v. 30, and chap, xxxv., v. 7, 9, and 13. It is quite clear that the author of these verses in Genesis considered not only God was material, and could be seen, but also considered God in the light of a superior or more powerful being than man, yet of somewhat the same form and passions. Man is represented as made in the image of God. Men, Gods, and Angels are strangely confused together; angels are spoken of in three characters--viz., as intermediatory messengers, as inferior Gods, and as God. This would be sufficient of itself to cause great confusion. God is spoken of in this book as eating, talking, walking, going up and down, grieving, repenting, and swearing, making impossible covenants and never keeping them, fearing lest man should eat of the tree of life and live for ever, or that he should build a tower which should reach to heaven. In the eighteenth chapter, the terms 'Angels,' 'Men,' and 'Lord,' are indiscriminately used in reference to the same persons.
In the twenty-second chapter, the angel of the Lord calls from heaven to Abraham. What are angels? Voltaire says--
'Angel, in Greek, envoy. The reader will hardly be the wiser for being told that the Persians had their peris, the Hebrews their melakim, and the Greeks their demonoi.
'But it is, perhaps, better worth knowing that one of the first of man's ideas has always been, to place intermediate beings between the Divinity and himself; such were those demons, those genii, invented in the ages of antiquity. Man always made the Gods after his own image; princes were seen to communicate their orders by messengers; therefore, the Divinity had also his couriers. Mercury and Iris were couriers or messengers. The Jews, the only people under the conduct of the Divinity himself, did not, at first, give names to the angels whom God vouchsafed to send them; they borrowed the names given them by the Chaldeans, when the Jewish nation was captive in Babylon; Michael and Gabriel are named for the first time by Daniel, a slave among those people. The Jew Tobit, who lived at Nineveh, knew the angel Raphael, who travelled with his son to assist him in recovering the money due to him from the Jew Gabael.
'In the laws of the Jews, that is, in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, not the least mention is made of the existence of the angels, much less of the worship of them; neither did the Sadducees believe in the angels.
'But, in the histories of the Jews, they are much spoken of. The angels were corporeal; they had wings at their backs, as the Gentiles feigned that Mercury had at his heels; sometimes they concealed their wings under their clothing. How could they be without bodies, since they all ate and drank?
'The ancient Jewish tradition, according to Ben Maimon, admits ten degrees, ten orders of angels.
'The Christian religion is founded on the fall of the angels. Those who revolted were precipitated from the spheres which they inhabited into hell, in the centre of the earth, and became devils. A devil, in the form of a serpent, tempted Eve, and damned mankind. Jesus came to redeem mankind, and to triumph over the devil, who tempts us still. Yet this fundamental tradition is to be found nowhere but in the apochryphal book of Enoch; and there it is in a form quite different from that of the received tradition.
'It is not known precisely where the angels dwell--whether in the air, in the void, or in the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.'
*Chapter xvii., v. 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14. According to the latter verse, no uncircumcised man will be admitted into heaven; so the Mahomedans would get in and Christians be excluded. The following will be found in the Philosophical Dictionary under the head 'Circumcision.' '"It appears," says Herodotus, in his book Euterpe, 'that the inhabitants of Colchis sprang from Egypt. I judge so from my own observations, rather than from hearsay; for I found that, at Colchis, the ancient Egyptians were more frequently recalled to my mind than the ancient customs of Colchis were, when I was in Egypt.
'"These inhabitants of the shores of the Euxine sea stated themselves to be a colony founded by Sesostris. As for myself, I should think this probable, not merely because they are dark and wooly-haired, but because the inhabitants of Colchis, Egypt, and Ethiopia, are the only people in the world who, from time immemorial, have practised circumcision; for the Phoenicians and the people of Palestine confess that they adopted the practice from the Egyptians. The Syrians, who at present inhabit the banks of Thermodon, acknowledge that it is, comparatively, but recently that they have conformed to it. It is principally from this usage that they are considered of Egyptian origin.
'"With respect to Ethiopia and Egypt, as this ceremony is of great antiquity in both nations, I cannot by any means ascertain which has derived it from the other. It is, however, probable that the Ethiopians received it from the Egyptians; while, on the contrary, the Phoenicians have abolished the practice of circumcising new-born children since the enlargement of their commerce with the Greeks."
'From this passage of Herodotus, it is evident that many people had adopted circumcision; but no nation ever pretended to have received it from the Jews. To whom, then, can we attribute the origin of this custom; to a nation from whom five or six others acknowledge they took it, or to another nation, much less powerful, less commercial, less warlike, hid away in a corner of Arabia Petraea, and which never communicated any one of its usages to any other people?
'The Jews admit that they were, many ages since, received in Egypt out of charity. Is it not probable that the lesser people imitated a usage of the superior one, and that the Jews adopted some customs from their masters?
'Clement of Alexandria relates that Pythagoras, when travelling among the Egyptians, was obliged to be circumcised, in order to be admitted to their mysteries. It was, therefore, absolutely necessary to be circumcised to be a priest in Egypt. Those priests existed when Joseph arrived in Egypt. The government was of great antiquity, and the ancient ceremonies of the country were observed with the most scrupulous exactness. (Joseph was married into the family of the Priest of the Sun before his relations had established any religious system.)
'The Jews acknowledge that they remained in Egypt two hundred and five years (the Bible says four hundred and thirty). They say that, during that period, they did not become circumcised. It is clear, then, that for two hundred and five years, the Egyptians did not receive circumcision from the Jews. Would they have adopted it from them after the Jews had stolen the vessels which they had lent them, and, according to their own account, fled with their plunder into the wilderness? Will a master adopt the principal symbol of the religion of a robbing and runaway slave? It is not in human nature.
'It is stated in the book of Joshua that the Jews were circumcised in the wilderness. "I have delivered you from what constituted your reproach among the Egyptians." But what could this reproach be, to a people living between Phoenicians, Arabians, and Egyptians, but something which rendered them contemptible to these three nations?' *Chapter xviii., v. 1. The Lord appeared, according to verse 2, in the shape of three men, who wash their feet and sit down under a tree, and eat cakes, butter, milk, and veal, until the tenth verse, when they become only one, and it is 'he said.' This he would, according to verse 13, appear to be the Lord; but, in verse 16, we go back to 'the men' again, who walk with Abraham. During the walk, the Lord speaks (verse 17), and, in verse 22, the Lord is mentioned separately from 'the men.' Verses 20 and 21. This is scarcely the language to be expected from an omniscient God. It is here stated that a report of the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah has reached God; that God is uncertain and ignorant as to the correctness of the report, and that he is determined to go down to the city to ascertain the truth for himself. This is just what an ignorant and superstitious man might fancy, but not that which we should expect a God would reveal. The argumentative conversation between God and Abraham, and the strange comment, that, after the conversation was finished, 'the Lord went his way,' are worthy of notice. The Douay Bible explains this chapter in a foot-note, as follows:--'The Lord here accommodates his discourse to the way of speaking and acting amongst men, for he knoweth all things, and needeth not to go anywhere for information. Note here that two of the three angels went away immediately for Sodom, while the third, who represented the Lord, remained with Abraham.' How is this ascertained? This comment is, like all the rest, a barefaced attempt to make falsehood appear like truth; but failing in the attempt, because, like upon the contact of fire with water, a loud hiss is always raised against those who endeavour to mix falsehood with truth.
*Chapter xix. My original publishers and my present printer, more moral than the Queen's printers, decline to print or publish any comment upon, or any quotations from, the obscene part of this chapter. In defence of the publishers, I may observe that, if this chapter was in any book but the Bible, and was published by any one not well protected by the aristocracy, he would be most assuredly prosecuted by the Society for Suppression of Vice; Regent Street, a few Lords, a Duke or Marauis, a Bishop, or the Bible, will, however, cover with mystery, and varnish over with fashion, that, which if stript of its tawdry gewgaws or solemn black cloak, is nothing but disgusting and degrading immorality.
I shall, therefore, pass with but scant notice, and without the slightest attempt at examination, all those chapters or verses which may be classed under the head 'obscene.'
It is said that the Bible would not be an authentic history unless it contained such chapters as this, and that the relation is given for the purpose of showing that God condemned and punished such conduct, and as a warning and example to futurity. Now, I feel that 'evil communications corrupt good manners,' and, although I regret that God made such an unfortunate mistake in selecting a family who trained up such bad children, when he drowned everybody beside, yet I cannot admire and reverence his conduct in leaving them to fall into disgusting crime for the purpose of furnishing us with the horrid scene of the inhabitants of two cities burnt alive.
Lot's wife being changed into a pillar of salt, is a chemical problem not easy of solution. 'Looking back' seems scarcely sufficient to account for the transmutation. Jesus told his disciples that they were the salt of the earth; perhaps they were descended from Lot's wife.
*Chapter xx. This has been before adverted to in the general remarks on Abraham. Newman, in his 'Phases of Faith,' asks, 'What was I to make of God's anger with Abimelech, whose sole offence was the having believed Abraham's lie? for which a miraculous barrenness was sent on all the females of Abimelech's tribe, and was bought off only by splendid presents to the favoured deceiver.'
According to verse 6, Abimelech was not free and responsible; this makes the punishment still more remarkable; and why punish others for Abimelech's offence (if offence was really committed)? If God withheld Abimelech from committing sin, why is he not as merciful to every one? it would be more Godlike to prevent sin than to punish the sinner.
*Chapter xxi., v. 12 and 14. The sending Hagar and Ishmael into the desert with only one bottle of water is cruel and barbarous conduct. Abraham does not seem to have had much parental affection; his first-born son he turned out into the desert with a small amount of food and water, and he prepared to cut the throat of his second son without the slightest hesitation.
God informed Abraham that in Isaac should the great promise be fulfilled; and on this Ishmael was sent away. Voltaire says--
'It was in Isaac that the race of the Patriarch was to be blessed; yet Isaac was father only of an unfortunate and contemptible nation, who were for a long period slaves, and have, for a still longer, been dispersed. Ishmael, on the contrary, was the father of the Arabs; who, in course of time, established the empire of the Caliphs, one of the most powerful and most extensive in the world.'
Verses 30 and 31. In chap, xxvi., v. 25, 32, and 33, we are told that it was not Abraham, but the servants of Isaac who digged the well; and that it was not Abraham, but Isaac who called the name of the place Beersheba. Which is correct, or were there two Beer-shebas? The thirty-third verse reads, 'Therefore the name of the city is Beersheba unto this day.' The Rev. Dr. Giles adds, 'It is sufficient to remark that no city of Beersheba existed in the time of Moses; consequently, the Book in which it is found could not have been written by Moses or any of his contemporaries.'
*Chapter xxii., v. 1. 'God did tempt Abraham.' It is quite clear that James, 'a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,' did not believe this verse; for, in his epistle to the twelve tribes, chap, i., v. 13, he says, that God never tempteth any man.
Verse 2. In the Douay, Abraham is told to go 'into the land of vision,' in our version, 'into the land of Moriah.' The Bible is so much made up of dreams and visions, that we cannot wonder the preachers should chiefly discourse upon castles in the air and crowns in heaven, not to be looked at in the present life, but to be enjoyed without stint in the next. It is one drawback that we are all to die first, because men may well doubt whether their decaying and decayed remains will rise again with capacity to enjoy the good things. This influences all; per example, assuming a bishop to be a sincere believer, we all know that he is reluctant to retire without his five shillings in this world, even while upheld by his faith in the crown he is to receive in the world to come. Any doubter can satisfy his conscience by reference to the late debates on the retiring bishop's bill.
Verse 4. Abraham does not speak the truth when he tells the young men that he and the young lad will return after worshipping, because at that time he intends to kill Isaac. I do not wish to imply by this criticism that I expect to find Abraham speaking the truth, because such an implication would not be justified. Abraham might have respected truth, perhaps did, but he kept a long way from it very often (vide his before-mentioned adventures with Pharaoh and Abimelech). Abraham even deceived his own son; see verses 7 and 8. On this Voltaire remarks--
'It seems astonishing that God, after causing Isaac to be born of a centenary father and a woman of ninety-five, should afterwards have ordered that father to murder the son whom he had given him, contrary to every expectation. This strange order from God seems to show that, at the time when this history was written, the sacrifice of human victims was customary amongst the Jews, as it afterwards became in other nations, as witness the vow of Jephtha.'
Newman adds, 'Paul and James agree in extolling Abraham as the pattern of faith; James and the author of the epistle to the Hebrews specify the sacrifice of Isaac as a first-rate fruit of faith; yet, if the voice of morality is allowed to be heard, Abraham was (in heart and intention) not less guilty than those who sacrificed their children to Molech.' See also 'Phases of Faith,' p. 91.
Verse 14. 'And Abraham called the name of the place Jehovah jireh;' in Exodus, chap, vi., v. 3, God says positively that he was not known to Abraham by the name Jehovah; which is true? If Abraham called the name of the place Jehoveh jireh, he must have known the Lord by that name; either the account as to Abraham is untrue, or God had forgotten or made a mistake in Exodus. Which ever supposition is adopted, the Bible ceases to have any claim on us as a revelation from a truthful deity.
Verse 16. 'By myself have I sworn.' Can my readers imagine any form of oath an omnipotent, eternal, and infinite God would be like to use? Is God's oath to be considered more binding than his word? In our day, if a man swear to an untruth, We call it perjury; but, although God did not keep his oath, we must remember that his ways are not as our ways.
*Chapter xxiii., verses 2 and 19, and verses 15 and 16 have been before noticed on page 5.
*Chapter xxiv., v. 1. Abraham, in his old age, was more vigorous than in his youth and prime of life; for, by chap, xxv., v. 1 to 3, we learn that after this he took another one, and had six sons, and, by chap, xxv., v. 6, it would appear that he had other wives and children.
Verse 3. The conduct of Abraham and of God, as previously detailed, as to oath-taking, is disapproved in Matthew, chap, v., v. 34 to 37, and James, chap, v., v. 12.
*Chapter xxv., v. 5 and 6. If Abraham gave 'all that he had' unto Isaac, what kind of gifts did his other children get?
Verse 8. One would scarcely fancy when reading the life of Abraham and this conclusion, that he had died younger than any of his predecessors on record. The Douay has it, 'and decaying, he died in a good old age, and having lived a long time.' Why, instead of dying in a good old age, he had lived a much shorter period than any of his ancestors, and the verse, to be in accordance with the previous chapters, ought to have lamented his premature death.
Verse 23. God seems to have a preference for younger sons; the dutiful Ishmael (who, though turned out into the desert to starve, forgot his wrongs, and attended to place his father's body in the grave) was set aside for his younger brother Isaac. The truthful, manly, and forgiving elder born Esau is supplanted by the crafty, cowardly, and untruthful Jacob.
*Chapter xxvi., v. 7 to 11. Of this adventure happening a third time in the history of father and son, and a second time in the same country, Professor Newman says, 'Allowing that such a thing was barely not impossible, the improbability was so intense as to demand the strictest and most cogent proof; yet, when we asked who testified it, no proof appeared that it was Moses; or, supposing it to be he, what his sources of knowledge were'--and, on chap, xxvii.,' Was it at all credible that the lying and fraudulent Jacob should be so specially loved by God?'
Verse 34. These wives are differently named and described in chap, xxxvi., v. 2 and 3.
*Chapter xxviii., v. 11. Even in a dream, the idea of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven to enable God and his angels to go up and down is rather ludicrous. The Douay says that Jacob 'saw the ladder in his sleep.' A dream, in Genesis, is intended to have a stronger significance than we should attach to it; we are told that God often appeared to various persons in dreams. The writer of Genesis evidently conceived a ladder necessary to enable God to get up to heaven, in the same style in which you or I might ascend to the roof of a house.
Verse 20. The inference from this conditional statement is, that if God does not keep, clothe, and feed Jacob, then he shall not be Jacob's God. Jacob was rather a shrewd fellow; he did not want to be religious for nothing.
Verse 22. How can a stone be God's house, and what benefit would tithes be to God?
*Chapter xxix., v. 5. Laban was the son of Bethuel, not the son of Nahor; see chap, xxv., v. 20. Verse 17. The Douay says that Leah was blear-eyed. Verse 25. The cunning Jacob was outwitted by Laban, his uncle.
The bickerings between Jacob and his wives, and the curious mode of cheating Laban (chap, xxx., v. 32 to 42), need no comment other than that of surprise that a special providence should interfere to make women fruitful or barren, or to make sheep of divers colours, white, black, brown, speckled, spotted, grisled, and ringstraked--extraordinary sheep those. In the Douay and Breeches Bibles, the word 'sheep' stands instead of 'cattle' in our version. Perhaps the authorised translators had never seen sheep so peculiar as those first described:
*Chapter xxxi., v. 53. Who is the God of Nahor?
*Chapter xxxii., v. 1. Who are the 'Angels of God?'
Verses 24 to 30. If any meaning is intended to be conveyed by; these verses, it is that the omnipotent and infinite God and his creature Jacob wrestled all night, and that in the morning God, finding that Jacob was as strong and clever at wrestling as himself, unfairly puts Jacob's thigh out of joint; notwithstanding which, Jacob refused to let let go his hold of God Almighty until he had given him his blessing. I will not comment on this, because, to Freethinkers, the matter is too absurd, and, to Believers, too outrageous for remark.
On verse 32, the Rev. Dr. Giles remarks, 'This reference to a custom still existing among the Israelites, seems decidedly to indicate a later date than that of Moses. No one has ventured to assert that the Mosaic Law was observed by the Jews before it was instituted by Moses. Now, the words of the passage before us seem to show that the Israelites had, for a long time, abstained from eating the sinew which shrank. Moses, being conscious that this custom was ordained by himself, could hardly have used such language, or have claimed such great antiquity as the words seem to indicate.'
Verse 3 to 22, and chap, xxxiii., v. 1 to 15. Read this account attentively, and then ask yourselves which of the brothers was the more worthy of the promise--Esau, cozened out of his birthright, swindled out of his father's blessing, yet forgetting and forgiving when he had the power to crush and punish; or Jacob, the cheater, the liar, and the coward.
*Chapter xxxiii., v. 19: In the Douay, instead of 'a hundred pieces of money,' we are told that Jacob gave the children of Hamor 'a hundred lambs.'
Verse 20 is thus translated; 'And raising an altar there, he invoked upon it the most mighty God of Israel.'
Whether Douay or Protestant translation be correct, it is quite certain that Jacob was a little too fast--there was no [--------] (al alei ishral)--Jacob was not called Israel until chap, xxxv., v. 10--so that the 'El-elohe-Israel' of our version, and the 'most mighty God of Israel' of the Douay, are both out of place unless Jacob used the words in the spirit of prophecy, which will explain many difficult passages.
*Chapter xxxiv. Upon this chapter Voltaire indulges in criticism more pungent than before:--
'Here our critics exclaim in terms of stronger disgust than ever. What! say they, the son of a king is desirous to marry a vagabond girl; the marriage is approved; Jacob, the father, and Dinah, the daughter, are loaded with presents; the King of Sichem deigns to receive those wandering robbers, called patriarchs, within his city; he has the incredible politeness or kindness to undergo, with his son, his court, and his people, the rite of circumcision, thus condescending to the superstition of a petty horde that could not call half a league of territory their own! And, in return for this astonishing hospitality and goodness, how do our holy patriarchs act? They wait for the day when the process of circumcision generally induces fever; when Simeon and Levi run through the whole city with poignards in their hands and massacre the king, the prince his son, and all the inhabitants. We are precluded from the horror appropriate to this infernal counterpart of the tragedy of St. Bartholomew, only by a sense of its absolute impossibility. It is an abominable romance; but it is evidently a ridiculous romance. It is impossible that two men could have slaughtered in quiet the whole population of a city. The people might suffer, in a slight degree, from the operation which had preceded; but, notwithstanding this, they would have risen in self-defence against two diabolical miscreants; they would have instantly assembled, would have surrounded them, and destroyed them with the summary and complete vengeance merited by their atrocity.
'But there is a still more palpable impossibility. It is that, according to the accurate computation of time, Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, could be only four or five years old; and that, even by forcing up chronology as far as possible in favour of the narrative, she could, at the very most, be only eight. It is here, then, that we are assailed with bursts of indignant exclamation. What! it is said, what! is it this book--the book of a rejected and reprobate people--a book so long unknown to all the world--a book in which sound reason and decent manners are outraged in every page--that is held up to us as irrefragable, holy, and dictated by God himself? Is it not even impious to believe it? or could anything less than the fury of cannibals urge to the persecution of sensible and modest men for not believing it?'
*Chapter xxxv., v. 11. Although kings were to come out of Jacob's loins by promise, Esau's issue have been quite as successful, in fact rather more so, without any of God's assistance.
Verse 22, and chap, xlix., v. 3 and 4. The family to whom God promised 'the land,' seem to have been as immoral and vicious as any on record. Abraham has been noticed; the conduct of Lot, his family, and neighbours I dare not comment on; Isaac was pretty free from blame, except in the matter of Rebekah; but his goodness is overborne by the rascality of his son Jacob and his wife, Rachel, who (worthy partner of such a husband) robs her own father--the cutthroat propensities of Simeon and Levi--and the licentiousness of Reuben. *Chapter xxxv., end of verse 22 to verse 26. Dr. Giles speaks of the inaccuracy of the last verse, as follows:--
'"These are the sons of Jacob, which were born to him in Padan-Aram."
'But it is well known that Benjamin was born some years after Jacob returned to Canaan. The text, therefore, is incorrect, and creates a serious difficulty, if we suppose that Moses, writing in the presence of God, could have been liable to such an error.'
*Chapter xxxvi., v. 2 and 3, are contradicted in chap, xxvi., v. 34.
Verses 14, 16, and 18. It is difficult to discover from this whether Korah was the son or grandson of Esau, as he is described in both characters.
Verse 31 has been referred to on page 6. In Dr. Giles's 'Hebrew Records,' page 140, the critical reader will find the matter discussed more fully than my pages allow.
*Chapter xxxvii., v. 1. In the Douay, instead of 'wherein his father was a stranger,' it reads,' wherein his father sojourned;' and, in verse 2, instead of 'seventeen,' it reads 'sixteen,' and states that Joseph 'accused his brethren to his father of a most wicked crime.'
Verses 25, 27, and 28. These verses are criticised in the 'Hebrew Records' as follows:--
'Here the merchants, to whom Joseph is sold, are twice called Ishmaelites, and once Midianites. Bishop Patrick explains the inconsistency in the following extraordinary manner:--
'"Ishmaelites. They are called below Midianites. These people were near neighbours to each other, and were joined together in one company, or caravan, as it is now called. It is the custom, even to the present day, in the East, for merchants and others to travel through the deserts in large companies, for fear of robbers or wild beasts."
'If the passage to which these comments are annexed, occurred in one of the famous Greek or Latin historians--Livy, Thucydides, or any other--such a note would not, for one instant, be taken as sound criticism, because none of those able writers would be guilty of such an absurdity as applying two names, known to be distinct, to the same people, within the space of four lines. If some idle and weakly written tale contained the inconsistency, the mode of interpreting it, which Bishop Patrick applies to the passage before us, might be passed over, but, even then, more from its being of no importance, than from its soundness or its propriety. But, when we find this discrepancy in a work which professes to be inspired, it is highly desirable that such an inconsistency or discrepancy should be cleared up. Why have none of the commentators remarked on the singular circumstance of there being Ishmaelitish merchants at all, in the time when Joseph was sold into Egypt? Ishmael was Jacob's uncle, being brother to Isaac, Jacob's father. The family of Ishmael could not have increased to such an extent in the time of which the history treats. The mention of Ishmaelites, in the text before us, indicates that the writer lived many generations later, when Ishmaelitish merchants were well known. Still less likely is it that there were Midianitish merchants in those days; for Midian was also one of the sons of Abraham, and fifty-four years younger than Isaac; see chap, xxv., y. 2. At all events, the variation in the name of this tribe of merchantmen renders it impossible that Moses could have written the narrative, unless we suppose that, when he had it in his power to describe the matter accurately and definitely, he rather chose to relate it in such a manner as to puzzle all future ages as to its exact meaning.'
Verse 35. In the Douay, the word 'hell' is substituted for the word 'grave.' The Hebrew is [------] (shale). Jacob believed his son devoured by wild beasts, and, therefore, could have hardly expected to find him in his grave; and, although hell might, perhaps, be the appropriate receptacle for one who had been so great a rascal as Jacob, yet, I much doubt whether he ever expressed his intention to go there to find his son. I must refer my more precise readers to the various controversial works written by various shades of Catholic and Protestant divines, on the words 'purgatory,' 'limbo,' 'hell,' and 'grave.'
Verse 36. The word [------] translated 'officer,' means eunuch, and is so translated in the Douay; if this be correct, we can scarcely wonder at the conduct of Potiphar's wife, as detailed in chap, xxxix.
*Chapter xxxviii Judah and his children are a still further illustration of the happy and moral family in whom all the nations of the world were to be blessed. The following is quoted from Voltaire:--
'The Rev. Father Dom Calmet makes this reflection, in alluding to the thirty-eighth chapter of Genesis:--"Scripture," he observes, "gives us the details of a history, which, on the first perusal, strikes our minds as not of a nature for edification; but the hidden sense which is shut up in it is as elevated, as that of the mere letter appears low to carnal eyes. It is not without good reasons that the Holy Spirit has allowed the histories of Tamar, of Rahab, of Ruth, and of Bathsheba, to form a part of the genealogy of Jesus Christ."
'It might have been well, if Dom Calmet had explained these sound reasons, by which we might have cleared up the doubts, and appeased the scruples, of all the honest and timorous souls who are anxious to comprehend how this Supreme Being, the Creator of the world, could be born in a Jewish village, of a race of plunderers and of prostitutes. This mystery, which is not less inconceivable than other mysteries, was assuredly worthy the explanation of so able a commentator.'
*Chapter xxxix. is inserted, I presume, by way of contrast, to heighten the effect produced by the previous chapter.
*Chapter xl., v. 5, 8, 9, 12, and 16--chap, xli., v. 15 and 25. In Leviticus, chap, xix., v. 26, we find these words according to the Douay, 'You shall not divine nor observe dreams.'
*Chapter xli., v. 38 and 39. One would imagine, by these verses, that Joseph and the Egyptians worshipped the same God, but this is not the fact; Pharaoh speaks to Moses of the Lord your God, and if the Egyptians had spoken in their usual manner, it would have been not to have praised Joseph for the Spirit of God being in him, but rather to have upbraided the infidel prisoner with having obtained his knowledge from the devil, unless, indeed, we are to assume that the religious Egyptians were more humane than the religious Christians. If Joseph had lived a few years later, he would have stood a fair chance of being stoned to death, for his divinations and fortune-telling (vide Exodus, chap, xxii., v. 18, and Deuteronomy, chap, xviii., v. 10, 11, and 12).
Verses 45 and 50. Potipherah is here called priest of On; in the Douay, he is denominated priest of Heliopolis. In plain truth, he was priest of the sun; and it might be instructive if it were possible to ascertain the reasons which induced the translators to hide Joseph's close connexion with sun worship.
Verse 56. This famine was over the whole earth, so that the favoured family of Abraham were worse off than the Egyptians, to whom God gave seven years' notice, to enable them to prepare against the coming trouble. We have all heard of people living on hope; and the children of Isaac might have hoped for the fulfilment of the promise, but such would be very unsubstantial food during a seven years' famine.
*Chapter xliii., v. 32. How could it be considered an abomination for the Egyptians to eat with the Hebrews? the latter were only the descendants of Abraham, few in number, and the Egyptians could not have known of their existence until they made acquaintance with Joseph; and, by giving him the daughter of the high priest to wife, they had conferred great honour and favour on him--he was the first in the land, and the only Hebrew amongst them.
*Chapter xliv., v. 5 and 15. Joseph, according to this, used to divine in a cup. My grandmother used to inspect the dregs of her tea cup, and prophesy wondrously; but it is really too much to expect us to find a creed in such a cup.
*Chapter xlvi., v. 1 to 3. God again appeared in a vision at night, that is, Jacob dreamed that he saw God.
The Rev. Dr. Giles observes on verses 8 to 26:--
'An error is found also in the other catalogue of Jacob's children, who accompanied him into Egypt. The names occupy from verse 8 to 25 of Genesis, chap. xlvi. In verse 26 it is said:--
'"All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins, besides Jacob's sons' wives, all the souls were three score and six."
'This total is erroneous, for the names, added properly, amount to sixty-seven; and a still greater difference is found between the Hebrew text and the Septuagint, in the twenty-seventh verse; the former makes "all the souls of the house of Jacob," to be "three score and ten," whereas the latter states them to have been seventy-five.
'We might set aside the authority of the Septuagint as inferior to that of the Hebrew in such a matter, were it not, that in St. Stephen's speech, in the Acts of the Apostles, chap, vii., v. 14, the number 75 is repeated; and an awkward dilemma is created, from which it is impossible to extricate ourselves, if these conflicting accounts, both written by inspiration, are to be considered as having come down to us in their original state. This may, with justice, be called in question; for Dean Shuckford, who supposes that the transcribers have added something in chap, xxxv., accuses them of having omitted something in chap, xlvi., of having added a verse in xlvi., 27, of the Septuagint, which is more full than the Hebrew, and, lastly, of having altered seventy into seventy-five, in chap. vii. of the Acts. It is difficult to imagine how a book, with which such liberties have been taken, can properly be regarded as an immaculate record. But the same mode of interpretation is entirely inapplicable to explain the remarkable fact, that, among those who accompanied Jacob into Egypt, are enumerated, in chap, xlvi., v. 21, ten sons of Benjamin, and, in v. 12, two grandsons of Judah, Hezron and Hamul. Jacob surely went into Egypt soon after the famine began; and Benjamin was then a lad, if we may trust the chronologers, under twenty years of age. The grandsons of Judah, through his son Pharez, could not have been born until many years later; for Pharez, their father, was only two or three years old when the whole family first entered the land of their servitude.
'In verse 34 it is said, as a reason for the Israelites being placed in the land of Goshen, that "every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians." But it appears, from every other part of the history of Joseph and Pharaoh, that there was no such enmity between them. This is also the opinion of Dr. Shuckford, whose account of the matter is as follows:--
'"There is, indeed, one passage in Genesis which seems to intimate that there was that religious hatred, which the Egyptians were afterwards charged with, paid to creatures even in the days of Joseph; for we are informed that he put his brethren upon telling Pharaoh their profession, in order to have them placed in the land of Goshen, for, or because, 'every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians,' Genesis, xlvi., v. 34. I must freely acknowledge that I cannot satisfy myself about the meaning of this passage; I cannot see that shepherds were really, at this time, an abomination to the Egyptians; for Pharaoh himself had his shepherds, and, when he ordered Joseph to place his brethren in the land of Goshen, he was so far from disapproving of their employment, that he ordered him, if he knew any men of activity amongst them, that he should make them rulers of his cattle; nay, the Egyptians were, at this time, shepherds themselves as well as the Israelites, for we are told, when their money failed, they brought their cattle of all sorts unto Joseph, to exchange them for corn, and, among the rest, their flocks of the same kind with those which the Israelites were to tell Pharaoh that it was their profession to take care of, as will appear to any one that will consult the Hebrew text in the places referred to. Either, therefore, we must take the expression that every shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians to mean no more than that they thought meanly of the employment, that it was a lazy, idle, and inactive profession, as Pharaoh seemed to question whether there were any men of activity amongst them, when he heard what their trade was; or, if we take the words to signify a religious aversion to them, which does, indeed, seem to be the true meaning of the expression, from the use made of it in other parts of Scripture, then I do not see how it is reconcilable with Pharaoh's inclination to employ them himself, or with the Egyptians being many of them, at this time, of the same profession themselves, which the heathen writers agree with Moses in supposing them to be. [Diod. Sic., lib. 1],'" Though learned men have observed that there are several interpolations in the books of the Scriptures, which were not the words of the Sacred Writers, some persons, affecting to show their learning, when they read over the ancient MSS., would sometimes put a short remark in the margin, which they thought might give a reason for, or clear the meaning of, some expression in the text against which they placed it, or to which, they adjoined it; and from hence it happened, now and then, that the transcribers from manuscripts so remarked upon, did, through mistake, take a marginal note or remark into the text, imagining it to be a part of it. Whether Moses might not end his period in this place with the words, that ye may dwell in the land of Goshen; and whether what follows, for every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians, may not have been added to the text in this way, is entirely submitted to the judgment of the learned. Connexion Book 5, vol. i., p. 341."
'The learned writer of this extract is more correct in his statement of the difficulty, than in its solution. It is a principle in criticism to consider a book as free from interpolation, until it is proved that interpolations have certainly been made. The charge of interpolation is brought against the books of the Old Testament for no other reason, than to reduce them into harmony with the preconceived opinion that they were written by the authors to whom they are commonly ascribed. In the present instance, there has been no interpolation.
The compiler, relating the honours paid to the family of Jacob in Egypt, and endeavouring to harmonise them with the state of things in his own times, 1,000 years later, when the Egyptians, by their religious absurdities, had been made to entertain an enmity towards shepherds, has given us a description which, in this particular, is inconsistent with itself. In short, the Egyptians held shepherds in aversion in the fifth, but not in the fifteenth, century before the Christian era.'
It is scarcely necessary to add to the above; but, if it were, it would be hard to reconcile there being an abomination with the eleventh verse of chap, xlvii., in which it is stated that Pharaoh gave these very people 'the best of the land, in the land of Rameses.'
*Chapter xlviii., v. 22. Jacob's life contains no account of his wars with the Amorites; in fact, had it not been for these concluding words, I should have looked upon him as rather likely to gain victories by cozening and diplomatic swindling, than by his bow and sword.
*Chapter 1., v. 10 and 11. These verses could not have been written by Moses, because Atad was not beyond but on this side Jordan to him. Joseph did not cross the Jordan to bury his rather.
Before quitting Genesis, I will endeavour, as briefly as possible, to sum up the effect of my partial examination (I say partial, because there are many differences in the readings of the various manuscripts, and in the translation of the different versions, which I passed without notice, because they have seemed to me to be of comparative unimportance). I have shown, in the foregoing pages--first, that in the authorised version the book claims our attention under false pretences, that, in fact, it is not, and in the original does not claim to be, the work of Moses; many passages he could not have written, of the rest, some passages are evidently taken from different manuscripts, and badly joined or fitted in, so as to make up the text as we have it, forming, in many cases, a twice or even thrice told tale, as in the accounts of the creation, of the flood, the adventures of Abraham's wife, and of Jacob's wife, etc. Second, that it is impossible the book can be a revelation from God, because it contains passages in relation to deity which are in themselves ridiculously absurd, because it speaks of more Gods than one, treating some as superior and some as inferior Gods, because it degrades the deity to the level of man, making him grieve and repent, and become subject to the same passions and feelings as man, liable to heat and cold, etc, because it treats of the deity as a finite being, occupying a small portion of space, travelling from one part of the earth to another, going up to heaven and coming down therefrom with the aid of a ladder; because it relates that God has, or sometimes assumes, a finite, substantial shape, which a man may lay hold of and wrestle with; because it pictures God as favouring, without apparent reason, some men in preference to others, and, in very many instances, choosing as the objects of his divine favour the worst possible characters, rewarding fraud and knavery with lands flowing with milk and honey, and discouraging and discountenancing virtuous conduct either by leaving it unnoticed or by depriving the unfortunate virtuous man of some benefit to which he appeared to be entitled; because it represents a just and Almighty God allowing the happiness of his own creatures to be destroyed by one of the animals he had created, and then cursing the tempted man and woman for being frail enough to fall at the first temptation, when, in fact, he (God) was the cause of that very frailty; because it represents the same Deity pledging his oath to a promise which he either never intended to perform, or which he did not possess the ability to perform, or which he afterwards wilfully broke.
Third.--That it cannot be relied on as a relation of actual occurrences, because, in the account of the creation, science has enabled us to detect several positively false statements in the account of the flood; also several gross and palpable mis-statements occur; because, in dealing with dates and genealogical statements, it contradicts and confuses its own narrative; because, even where it pretends to be the most real, it is alleged, in another book of the same Bible, to be purely allegorical. Fourth.---That it ought not to be used as an educational work for the foregoing reasons, and because of the various obscene passages spread throughout the book; because, also, the youthful scholar will find cunning, craft, and cheating rewarded and preferred, while honesty and noble conduct is unnoticed; because he will find the practice of sacrifice is encouraged, and sacrifice, either human or bestial, is degrading and debasing; because he will find cruelties detailed at which his nature must revolt or become deteriorated.
In Foxton's work on 'Popular Christianity,' a quotation is given from the Prospective Review, in which the writer suggests:--
'That the Jews, like every other nation of antiquity, have framed for themselves a mythical history, which, with the lapse of time, has been received for fact. This at once releases us from the necessity of any elaborate contrivances for reconciling their belief with probability and the laws of nature; and exhibits a phenomenon so universal and so natural, that it would have been a miracle if the Jewish literature had been an exception to it. But the transition from regarding the first chapters of Genesis as an inspired record, to treating them as only a picture of the popular notions of the age in which they were produced, is too violent to be made at once by any large portion of the public. We are not sorry, therefore, that, from time to time, hypotheses are proposed which smooth the descent from one of these opinions to the other, and make the gradients safer. The clerical geologists would have been suspended by their diocesans, or hooted from their pulpits, if they had not been able, at first, to profess that their discoveries confirmed the Mosaic account of the deluge, and did not contravene that of the creation. Time has familiarised men with the idea that they are not to look into Scripture for geology; and we hope that its professors will soon come openly to avow this, and cease to torture the words of Genesis into a conformity with their science. Public opinion is so tyrannically intolerant, and its penal power so fearful, that we cannot expect the whole truth to be told, or even to be seen, at once. But while we admit the temporary value of such intermediate stages of opinion, we are bound to declare our judgment that they are merely temporary, and have no solid basis.'
My only object in collecting together these criticisms on the Bible, is to free the human family from the many evils which, in my opinion, attach to, and are consequent on, a belief in the divine origin of the Book.
The child is taught to believe the Bible is the word of God, at an age when he can scarcely read its words; he is taught to regard with horror every attempt to criticise its pages; and the result is, that when his senses point out a fact, and that fact clashes with his Bible, he is bewildered and confused, he knows not what to think, and unless he be of great mental power, he ends by not thinking at all, and becomes professedly a believer, but in reality a man who dares not reason.
