Читать книгу Religion in the Heavens; Or, Mythology Unveiled in a Series of Lectures - Logan Mitchell - Страница 6

* Oh! what a mountain of faith and prejudice is required to

hide this glaring, this palpable truth!

** See Lucian's "Alexander."

It appears an awkward business that the omniscient Jehovah could not safely undertake the midnight massacre of Egypt's firstborn, without some sign to prevent the possibility of his committing a blunder, by falling foul of his chosen Goshenites; and, therefore, another general order is issued, to smear their doorposts with blood as a mark of security, while the butchery was going on. This shocking tale might have arisen out of the historical fact, that the seventh Ptolemy caused all the young men of Alexandria to be murdered. This inference may be objected to on account of the supposed anachronism, respecting which we shall make a short digression. Precise historical dates have been carefully avoided or obscured by the Bible-makers; and there is scarcely any allusion to time, that is supported by concurrent testimony; and, therefore, it is only by a cross-examination of its internal evidence, that we can judge of the various periods when the Old Testament was compiled.*

* All the narrative writings of the Jews, which betrayed too

openly a recent composition, such as the Maccabees (which in

a historical point of view, are the most valuable parts of

the Bible), and many others were excluded, and declared

apocryphal by the Old Testament composers; yet numerous

tell-tale proofs escaped them; for instance, Nehemiah speaks

of "Darius the Persian." Now, between Cyrus and that prince,

there reigned fourteen kings of Persia, during a period of

280 years. Therefore, not only were the Jew books written

after their Babylonian slavery, but many centuries afterwards.

The Decalogue, Chronicles, and other narrative parts, may have been written under the order of Hilkiah and Ezra, shortly after the Babylonian slavery; yet there is great reason to believe that many poetical rants called prophecies, and even some parts of the Pentateuch, were written after the Jews began to congregate at Alexandria, when the events which the itinerant Jewish bards pretended to foretel, had already taken place: for instance, Ezekiel makes the Lord say, "And I will make Pathros desolate." Can the cunning alteration made in the first syllable of this word conceal the evident allusion to that "wonder of the world," the famous light tower of Pharos, which was built by two of the Ptolemies! Daniel could not speak of the third being "like unto the Son of God," before the dogma was invented that god had a son.* Moreover, if it can be shown (as hath been affirmed) that the prophecies were partly translated and modelled from Greek originals, at a period subsequent to the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, what becomes of their antiquity? We repeat that most of the books of this collection contain abundant proofs of their having been fabricated from materials as aforesaid, at various periods between the Babylonian captivity and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, in the time of Vespasian.

We have seen that the passage of the Red Sea is drawn from the fable of the triumphal march of Bacchus, when from Egypt he went to conquer India. Josephus, though he often renders the romances of his countrymen still more monstrous, was ashamed to make a miracle of this story, and compares it to the passage of the Pamphylian Sea, by Alexander. In a jovial mood Bacchus drew wine from a rock by a stroke of his rod; but herein the imitator deviates from the original, wisely preferring water to wine in an arid wilderness.

The manna miracle has long been detected and exposed. Josephus tells us that, in his time, it was found in great quantities in Arabia; and the plant that produces it is now cultivated in Sicily and Southern Italy. Bishop Talleyrand, in a letter which he is said to have written to the Pope, after their quarrel, told his holiness that the real manna of Moses was the plunder he got in the desert by his robberies and murders; these were counted so many godsends.

* The Talmud acknowledges that the forgeries of Daniel,

Esdras, and others, were prodigious.

** Talleyrand tells the Pope also, that, of the numerous

blunders committed by Moses, not the least was his fixing

the time of the Creation at an epoch when the earth did not

only exist, but had an immense population, and actually

reckoned 50,000 years of civilisation: besides his

pretending to look upon the Hebrews as the most ancient

people on earth, forgetting or feigning to forget, that they

were a mere gang of slaves who had originally escaped from

Idumea, during the intestine wars which desolated that

country. After having passed into Egypt, where they were

again made slaves, it was after the lapse of many years, and

after having robbed their masters (as their forefathers had

robbed the Idumeans), that, induced by Moses, they crossed

the Red Sea in Ethiopian vessels; and having gained the wood

of Henon, in Arabia Deserta, they maintained themselves

there during forty years, living by the robberies they

committed on travellers and the people in the neighborhood.

As it is not necessary to notice these miracles in Bible order, it may here be observed, that the fable about Lot's wife might have been taken from that of Euodia; but, more probably, from the ancient fiction of Baucis and Philemon, as the first and this are essentially the same. Irenæus and Tertullian affirm that, in their times, the statue of Lots wife regularly menstruated at the usual period of women! Reader, these men were no unfair sample of the Christian fathers.

It was a part of military discipline amongst the Persians, and other nations of the East, when marching large armies through the deserts, to carry in the van, during the night, fires, made with such combustible matter as would make a great flame of fire, which was elevated so high as to be distinctly seen by all in the rear, appearing, in the distance, as "a pillar of fire," and serving to point out the line of march. To direct this line during the day, such combustibles were burnt as would produce the greatest cloud or "pillar of smoke." This military usage is mentioned both by Herodotus and Quintus Curtius; and Alexander himself adopted it of the Persians. If Moses was so well provided in a supernatural fire-and-smoke conductor, why was he so anxious and pressing to get his brother-in-law Hobab (against his will) to guide the march, and to "be to them instead of eyes" in leading them to proper places for encampment?* Here we have a striking instance of the matchless effrontery of the Jewish fabricators, in thus turning a common usage into a miracle.

* Numbers x., 29 to 32.

It was wise in Moses to retire to the top of a hill, when he played off his fire and smoke thunder-cloud to the astonishment of the dupes below. His Deity wrought a clever miracle in creating the universe in six days; but what a falling off was there, when he required nearly seven times as long to engrave two tables of stone, which a man might "take in his hand." As a proof that this job could not be done in less than forty days, the same time precisely was taken to cut the second tables, after Moses had (forgetting his meekness) smashed the first. His well-dissembled rage about the affair of the golden calf* was, no doubt, the result of a cunning scheme, concerted between him and brother Aaron, in order to possess themselves of the gold that had been swindled from the Egyptians. To gull the fools, and save this gold for themselves, the priest had only to paint a wooden calf yellow, which was easily reduced to powder—gold could not, by burning: a little powdered charcoal would do the people no harm. When the sun was in Taurus (the Bull), at the vernal equinox, the astronomising priests of Egypt turned bulls and calves into gods, that were quite good enough for the vulgar; and when the sun entered the sign of the ram, a lamb answered equally well for a god, and does so to the present day.

* In the story about this calf, our translation very

modestly says, the people "rose up to play," though it

acknowledges they "were naked;" but Dr. Clarke has had the

singular honesty to tell us that, in the Hebrew Bible, this

rising up to play was preparatory to pairing for open sexual intercourse. Bruce tells us that this open intercourse was common, and formed an essential part of festive entertainments amongst the Abyssinians. There is reason to believe that it was usual In many countries, both in Africa and Asia.

The deity of Moses was rather extravagant in fitting out his tabernacle and ark. The latter was his travelling box, to afford him ease and comfort when making long marches, and was composed of very costly materials; but, in point of room and convenience, we should think it must have been inferior to some of Punch's portable palaces. However, the God grew so fond of, and so "jealous" about, his box, that, on one occasion, he perpetrated a tremendously bloody miracle, in killing 50,070 of the "glowrin' byke," for peeping into it. Putting aside the monstrosity of this story, in relation to number, could this offence arise from looking into an empty box? Certainly not. Sir William Drummond, in his "Ædipus Judaicus," asserts that, according to the Hebrew, the Jews carried about their idol in this box,* as was customary with the migrating hordes of the desert, all of whom, as well as the Jews, kept an ark for that purpose! Sir William's assertion is justified by the Bible itself, where it says that the Philistines were afraid, because the Jews brought their god into the battle when the ark was taken, a misfortune which their deity, with all his omnipotence, could not prevent; but he took terrible revenge on the captors by smiting them with emerods: hence the story in Rabelais against a certain most unholy and unsanctified use of that book.

* The Christian translators of the Bible, no doubt, did all

in their power to suppress the fact, that a representation

of the Jewish idol was kept in this box. The Levites being

the constituted priests of this idol, Micah, when he had his

god made of the stolen silver, did not consider it by any

means sufficient to have one of his own sons as priest. Why?

Because his new idol represented the Jewish deity; and,

therefore, a Levite as his priest was indispensable; for

then, says he, "I know the Lord will do me good." (See

Judges, xvii.) That this god was afterwards located at

Jerusalem, as the other district gods of the country were

stationed in their respective towns, we have many proofs in

the Bible. (See 1 Kings xii; Ezra i., 3; vii., 15, 19.)

** Did not the priests of Jupiter Ammon carry the magnet

with, them, in a compass-box, as the ark of the covenant of their god, which, it was death for the unsanctifled to look into.

The stupendous prodigy performed by that free-booter and murderer, Joshua, in laying an embargo upon, the sun and moon, in order to get time to kill a few thousands more of the Amorites, showed a ferocious thirst of blood, and was wholly uncalled for, victory being already secured through the powerful aid of Jahouh, who, sitting astride on the corner of a dark cloud was pelting the Amorites with great stones. Let us suppose that both the sun and the moon were in view at the same time, and that they stood still as commanded, would that make the massacre of the Amorites one iota less cruel and ferocious? It would only prove that Joshua's god was neither just nor merciful. This tale is, no doubt, a varied version of the fable of Jupiter's sending a shower of large hailstones upon the rebellious sons of Neptune. This may be coupled with another enormous fiction, the dial of Ahaz, upon which, by a bolder manoeuvre still, the sun is commanded to go backwards. Moses and Joshua appear to have had a sun and moon, as well as a Deity of their own. From all this does it not appear that the compilers of these fables, though under heavenly inspiration, were so ignorant as to suppose that the sun's motion caused the day, and that this globe stood still? Is it not evident also, that they took the stars to be little bright spangles set in a solid firmament (which had windows), as jewellers set brilliants in metal? The man who seriously believes in the literality of our version of these fables, is so stupidly and piteously credulous, as to be an object of compassion rather than of contempt. The two last miracles had more than one archetype in Pagan mythology:—the sun and moon were arrested by Bacchus on his march to India. In one of the love intrigues of Jupiter, he stayed the sun in order to get a double night in the arms of the fair Alcmena, when she conceived of the great Hercules. In later times the Christian priests performed a similar miracle in favor of the Emperor Charles V.

If Amphion, by the music of his lyre, made the stones dance into building order, so as to raise the walls of Thebes, why should not Joshua reverse the miracle, by tumbling down the walls of Jericho, to a tune played upon rams' horns by priests?

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 Hyadês, 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 Phæton, 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 protégé.

* 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 Astartê, 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 Astartê 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 Judæus, 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 Therapeutæ, 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."