Age of Reason I. Chapter VII - Examination of the Old Testament.
by Thomas Paine
These books, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelations,
(which, by the bye, is a book of riddles that requires a revelation
to explain it) are, we are told, the word of God. It is, therefore,
proper for us to know who told us so, that we may know what credit to
give to the report. The answer to this question is, that nobody can
tell, except that we tell one another so. The case, however,
historically appears to be as follows:
When the church mythologists established their system, they collected
all the writings they could find, and managed them as they pleased.
It is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the
writings as now appear under the name of the Old and the New
Testament, are in the same state in which those collectors say they
found them; or whether they added, altered, abridged, or dressed them
up.
Be this as it may, they decided by vote which of the books out of the
collection they had made, should be the Word of God, and which should
not. They rejected several; they voted others to be doubtful, such as
the books called the Apocrypha; and those books which had a majority
of votes, were voted to be the word of God. Had they voted otherwise,
all the people since calling themselves Christians had believed
otherwise; for the belief of the one comes from the vote of the
other. Who the people were that did all this, we know nothing of.
They call themselves by the general name of the Church; and this is
all we know of the matter.
As we have no other external evidence or authority for believing
these books to be the word of God, than what I have mentioned, which
is no evidence or authority at all, I come, in the next place, to
examine the internal evidence contained in the books themselves.
In the former part of this essay, I have spoken of revelation. I now
proceed further with that subject, for the purpose of applying it to
the books in question.
Revelation is a communication of something, which the person, to whom
that thing is revealed, did not know before. For if I have done a
thing, or seen it done, it needs no revelation to tell me I have done
it, or seen it, nor to enable me to tell it, or to write it.
Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done upon earth
of which man is himself the actor or the witness; and consequently
all the historical and anecdotal part of the Bible, which is almost
the whole of it, is not within the meaning and compass of the word
revelation, and, therefore, is not the word of God.
When Samson ran off with the gate-posts of Gaza, if he ever did so,
(and whether he did or not is nothing to us,) or when he visited his
Delilah, or caught his foxes, or did anything else, what has
revelation to do with these things? If they were facts, he could tell
them himself; or his secretary, if he kept one, could write them, if
they were worth either telling or writing; and if they were fictions,
revelation could not make them true; and whether true or not, we are
neither the better nor the wiser for knowing them. When we
contemplate the immensity of that Being, who directs and governs the
incomprehensible whole, of which the utmost ken of human sight can
discover but a part, we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry
stories the word of God.
As to the account of the creation, with which the book of Genesis
opens, it has all the appearance of being a tradition which the
Israelites had among them before they came into Egypt; and after
their departure from that country, they put it at the head of their
history, without telling, as it is most probable that they did not
know, how they came by it. The manner in which the account opens,
shows it to be traditionary. It begins abruptly. It is nobody that
speaks. It is nobody that hears. It is addressed to nobody. It has
neither first, second, nor third person. It has every criterion of
being a tradition. It has no voucher. Moses does not take it upon
himself by introducing it with the formality that he uses on other
occasions, such as that of saying, "The Lords spake unto Moses,
saying."
Why it has been called the Mosaic account of the creation, I am at a
loss to conceive. Moses, I believe, was too good a judge of such
subjects to put his name to that account. He had been educated among
the Egyptians, who were a people as well skilled in science, and
particularly in astronomy, as any people of their day; and the
silence and caution that Moses observes, in not authenticating the
account, is a good negative evidence that he neither told it nor
believed it. -- The case is, that every nation of people has been
world-makers, and the Israelites had as much right to set up the
trade of world-making as any of the rest; and as Moses was not an
Israelite, he might not chose to contradict the tradition. The
account, however, is harmless; and this is more than can be said for
many other parts of the Bible.
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries,
the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness,
with which more than half the Bible [NOTE: It must be borne in mind
that by the "Bible" Paine always means the Old Testament alone. --
Editor.] is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the
word of a demon, than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness,
that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my own
part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.
We scarcely meet with anything, a few phrases excepted, but what
deserves either our abhorrence or our contempt, till we come to the
miscellaneous parts of the Bible. In the anonymous publications, the
Psalms, and the Book of Job, more particularly in the latter, we find
a great deal of elevated sentiment reverentially expressed of the
power and benignity of the Almighty; but they stand on no higher rank
than many other compositions on similar subjects, as well before that
time as since.
The Proverbs which are said to be Solomon's, though most probably a
collection, (because they discover a knowledge of life, which his
situation excluded him from knowing) are an instructive table of
ethics. They are inferior in keenness to the proverbs of the
Spaniards, and not more wise and oeconomical than those of the
American Franklin.
All the remaining parts of the Bible, generally known by the name of
the Prophets, are the works of the Jewish poets and itinerant
preachers, who mixed poetry, anecdote, and devotion together -- and
those works still retain the air and style of poetry, though in
translation. [NOTE: As there are many readers who do not see that a
composition is poetry, unless it be in rhyme, it is for their
information that I add this note.
Poetry consists principally in two things -- imagery and composition.
The composition of poetry differs from that of prose in the manner of
mixing long and short syllables together. Take a long syllable out of
a line of poetry, and put a short one in the room of it, or put a
long syllable where a short one should be, and that line will lose
its poetical harmony. It will have an effect upon the line like that
of misplacing a note in a song.
The imagery in those books called the Prophets appertains altogether
to poetry. It is fictitious, and often extravagant, and not
admissible in any other kind of writing than poetry.
To show that these writings are composed in poetical numbers, I will
take ten syllables, as they stand in the book, and make a line of the
same number of syllables, (heroic measure) that shall rhyme with the
last word. It will then be seen that the composition of those books
is poetical measure. The instance I shall first produce is from
Isaiah: --
"Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth
'T is God himself that calls attention forth.
Another instance I shall quote is from the mournful Jeremiah, to
which I shall add two other lines, for the purpose of carrying out
the figure, and showing the intention of the poet.
"O, that mine head were waters and mine eyes
Were fountains flowing like the liquid skies;
Then would I give the mighty flood release
And weep a deluge for the human race." -- Author.]
There is not, throughout the whole book called the Bible, any word
that describes to us what we call a poet, nor any word that describes
what we call poetry. The case is, that the word prophet, to which a
later times have affixed a new idea, was the Bible word for poet, and
the word 'propesytng' meant the art of making poetry. It also meant
the art of playing poetry to a tune upon any instrument of music.
We read of prophesying with pipes, tabrets, and horns -- of
prophesying with harps, with psalteries, with cymbals, and with every
other instrument of music then in fashion. Were we now to speak of
prophesying with a fiddle, or with a pipe and tabor, the expression
would have no meaning, or would appear ridiculous, and to some people
contemptuous, because we have changed the meaning of the word.
We are told of Saul being among the prophets, and also that he
prophesied; but we are not told what they prophesied, nor what he
prophesied. The case is, there was nothing to tell; for these
prophets were a company of musicians and poets, and Saul joined in
the concert, and this was called prophesying.
The account given of this affair in the book called Samuel, is, that
Saul met a company of prophets; a whole company of them! coming down
with a psaltery, a tabret, a pipe, and a harp, and that they
prophesied, and that he prophesied with them. But it appears
afterwards, that Saul prophesied badly, that is, he performed his
part badly; for it is said that an "evil spirit from God [NOTE: As
thos; men who call themselves divines and commentators are very fond
of puzzling one another, I leave them to contest the meaning of the
first part of the phrase, that of an evil spirit of God. I keep to
my text. I keep to the meaning of the word prophesy. -- Author.] came
upon Saul, and he prophesied."
Now, were there no other passage in the book called the Bible, than
this, to demonstrate to us that we have lost the original meaning of
the word prophesy, and substituted another meaning in its place, this
alone would be sufficient; for it is impossible to use and apply the
word prophesy, in the place it is here used and applied, if we give
to it the sense which later times have affixed to it. The manner in
which it is here used strips it of all religious meaning, and shews
that a man might then be a prophet, or he might Prophesy, as he may
now be a poet or a musician, without any regard to the morality or
the immorality of his character. The word was originally a term of
science, promiscuously applied to poetry and to music, and not
restricted to any subject upon which poetry and music might be
exercised.
Deborah and Barak are called prophets, not because they predicted
anything, but because they composed the poem or song that bears their
name, in celebration of an act already done. David is ranked among
the prophets, for he was a musician, and was also reputed to be
(though perhaps very erroneously) the author of the Psalms. But
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not called prophets; it does not appear
from any accounts we have, that they could either sing, play music,
or make poetry.
We are told of the greater and the lesser prophets. They might as
well tell us of the greater and the lesser God; for there cannot be
degrees in prophesying consistently with its modern sense. But there
are degrees in poetry, and there-fore the phrase is reconcilable to
the case, when we understand by it the greater and the lesser poets.
It is altogether unnecessary, after this, to offer any observations
upon what those men, styled prophets, have written. The axe goes at
once to the root, by showing that the original meaning of the word
has been mistaken, and consequently all the inferences that have been
drawn from those books, the devotional respect that has been paid to
them, and the laboured commentaries that have been written upon them,
under that mistaken meaning, are not worth disputing about. -- In
many things, however, the writings of the Jewish poets deserve a
better fate than that of being bound up, as they now are, with the
trash that accompanies them, under the abused name of the Word of God.
If we permit ourselves to conceive right ideas of things, we must
necessarily affix the idea, not only of unchangeableness, but of the
utter impossibility of any change taking place, by any means or
accident whatever, in that which we would honour with the name of the
Word of God; and therefore the Word of God cannot exist in any
written or human language.
The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is
subject, the want of an universal language which renders translation
necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the
mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of
wilful alteration, are of themselves evidences that human language,
whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the Word of
God. -- The Word of God exists in something else.
Did the book called the Bible excel in purity of ideas and expression
all the books now extant in the world, I would not take it for my
rule of faith, as being the Word of God; because the possibility
would nevertheless exist of my being imposed upon. But when I see
throughout the greatest part of this book scarcely anything but a
history of the grossest vices, and a collection of the most paltry
and contemptible tales, I cannot dishonour my Creator by calling it
by his name.