*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 64500 ***

Transcribed from the 1871 George P. Bacon edition by David Price.

                                                                   [No 11.

                         BIOLOGY VERSUS THEOLOGY.





                                THE BIBLE
                 IRRECONCILABLE WITH SCIENCE, EXPERIENCE,
                       AND EVEN ITS OWN STATEMENTS.


                                BY JULIAN.

                                * * * * *

    “Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas
    Quique metus omnes et inexorabile fatum—
    Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari.”

                                                                   VIRGIL.

    “Know, then, thyself—Presume not God to scan;
    The proper study of Mankind is Man.”

                                                      POPE’S ESSAY ON MAN.

    “If it be possible to perfect mankind, the means of doing so will be
    found in the Medical Sciences.”

                                                                DESCARTES.

                                * * * * *

                                * * * * *

                                  Lewes:
                 GEORGE P. BACON, STEAM PRINTING OFFICES.

                                  1871.




CONTENTS.

                                                           PAGE.
INTRODUCTION                                                   3
PART I.—SCRIPTURE IRRECONCILABLE WITH SCIENCE.
  (1)  The Mosaic Cosmogony                                    5
  (2)  The Fall                                               11
  (3)  The Flood                                              13
PART II.—SCRIPTURE IRRECONCILABLE WITH HUMAN EXPERIENCE.
  (Miracles)                                                  16
  (1)  Pre-historic Man                                       21
  (2)  Increase of Man                                        24
  (3)  Armies of the Jews, and numbers slain in               26
  battle
  (4)  Incredible Statements                                  28
PART III.—THE BIBLE IRRECONCILABLE WITH ITSELF.
  (a)  Historic Errors                                        31
  (b)  Erroneous Figures                                      33
  (c)  Misstatements                                          39
PART III.—SECOND DIVISION.—SCRIPTURE CONTRADICTS SCRIPTURE.
  Contradictory Texts                                         46
CONCLUSION                                                    61




INTRODUCTION.


“THE myths of paganism,” says Professor Huxley, {3} “are as dead as
Osiris or Zeus, and the man who should revive them, in opposition to the
knowledge of our time, would be justly laughed to scorn; but the coeval
imaginations current among the rude inhabitants of Palestine, recorded by
writers whose very name and age are admitted by every scholar to be
unknown, have unfortunately not yet shared their fate; but even at this
day are regarded by nine-tenths of the civilised world as the
authoritative standard of fact, and the criterion of the justice of
scientific conclusions in all that relates to the origin of things, and
among them of species.

“In this 19th century, as at the dawn of modern physical science, the
cosmogony of the semi-barbarous Hebrew is the incubus of the philosopher
and the opprobrium of the orthodox.  Who shall number the patient and
earnest seekers after truth . . . whose lives have been embittered and
good name blasted by the mistaken zeal of bibliolaters?  Who shall count
the host of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the
effort to harmonise impossibilities,—whose life has been wasted in the
attempt to force the generous new wine of science into the old bottle of
Judaism?  It is true that if philosophers have suffered, their cause has
been amply avenged.  Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of
every science, as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and
history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly
opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding
and crushed, if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain.  But orthodoxy
is the Bourbon of the world of thought: it learns not, neither can it
forget; and though at present bewildered and afraid to move, it is as
willing as ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis contains the
beginning and the end of sound science, and to visit with such petty
thunderbolts as its half-paralysed hands can hurl those who refuse to
degrade Nature to the level of primitive Judaism.”

We purpose, in this pamphlet, with all possible brevity, to show that
Scripture is irreconcilable with science, experience, and even with its
own statements.




PART I.
SCRIPTURE IRRECONCILABLE WITH SCIENCE.


(1.)  _The Mosaic Cosmogony_.


IT is not our intention to go with any minuteness into the thrice-told
tale of the antagonism between the Mosaic cosmogony and the revelations
of geology.  That only five days intervened between the creation of
heaven and that of man is contradicted by every stratum of the earth.

We readily admit that the word “day” is used in Scripture in a very vague
sense, and that even the limiting phrase “evening and morning” by no
means circumscribes the interval to twenty-four hours.  As the sun did
not even exist till the fourth of these days, the three preceding ones
could not possibly have been divided by its setting and rising.

In like manner it may be admitted that Daniel’s “vision of the evening
and morning” (viii., 26) covers a period of 2,300 days, and his “seventy
weeks” (ix., 24) may be 490 years, that is seventy weeks of years; but
all this gives very little relief to the real difficulties.  It is not
true that there ever was a period like that called by Moses “the third
day;” a period when the earth was drained, the sea gathered into its bed,
the rivers and lakes confined to their proper boundaries, grass growing
on the mountains, trees in the forests, fruits in the vineyards, and all
the vegetable kingdom complete; yet no fish in the waters, no creeping
thing on the earth, no bird in the air.  Even in the Cambrian period may
be traced the rudiments of animal life; and in the Silurian, long before
any trace of land plants can be detected, certain molluscs were so
abundant that the period of this formation has been distinctly called
“The age of brachiopods.”

Next to the Silurian or mollusc period comes the Devonian or “age of
fishes,” when the seas literally swarmed with inhabitants, and it is not
till we arrive at the coal formation that we come to the “vegetable age.”
And what were these vegetables? principally ferns and mosses, a rank
production, which can in no wise answer to the description: “The earth
brought forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding
fruit after his kind . . . and the evening and the morning were the third
day.”

But of this enough.  Come we to the physical features of the heavens and
the earth according to the writers of the Old and New Testaments.

The earth is represented by these writers as immovable in the centre of
the universe, and the heavenly bodies are described as revolving round
it.  The clouds (_rakia_) are supposed to be a solid body sustaining an
ocean of water similar to the seas: “God said, let there be a firmament
(_rakia_) in the midst of [or between] the waters, and let it divide the
waters [of the sea] from the waters [of the clouds], and it was so.”
This solid firmament, or roof of the earth, is said to have windows or
casements in it, which are opened to let the rain fall through.

The New Testament makes no advance upon these primitive notions.  We are
told (Matt, iv., 8) that the devil on one occasion took Jesus to a high
mountain, and showed him thence “all the kingdoms of the world.”  Of
course the writer supposed the world to be a flat surface, the whole of
which could be seen from one spot, if of sufficient elevation.  In like
manner the solidity of the clouds is taken for granted, for thrones are
set upon them, and Christ, it is said, will show himself hereafter
“sitting on the clouds,” attended with his court of angels.

We grant that many expressions of daily use will not bear a close
analysis.  Thus we talk of being “charmed” and “enchanted” without the
remotest idea of incantation; and when we say “the sun rises and sets” we
ignore the active character of these phrases.  These, and hundreds of
other words, have acquired a conventional meaning: thus charmed means
“greatly delighted,” and the phrases “rising in the east” and “setting in
the west,” applied to the sun, mean simply that it shows itself at
daybreak in the east, and as the day closes disappears in the west.

This conventional use of words is a very different matter to the
endorsing of vulgar errors.  To say that the sun rises and sets can
mislead no one.  It teaches nothing beyond an optical fact, and can in no
wise justify such teaching as this: The earth is a vast plane, buoyed up
on a bed of water; and under this water is the region of hell, where
Satan rules supreme over the fallen angels.  The clouds are a solid roof
sustaining an aerial ocean, the fountain of our rain; and above this is
the region of heaven, where God rules as an earthly potentate, and where
are mansions, streets, rivers, and trees, after the fashion of this
earth.

It is said again, if Moses had written like a modern geologist, no one
would have understood him.  Apply this to Newton, or any early teacher of
a new science.  What would be said of Newton, if he had taught the myths
of Scandinavian mythology under a similar plea?  If his discoveries of
light and gravitation were not new, they were no discoveries at all; but
if they were new they were unknown.  It is the part of a teacher to
teach, to correct errors, and not to perpetuate them; to tell what is not
known, and not confirm the folly of ignorance and superstition.

Once more.  It is said that the object of the Bible is to teach religion
and not science.  Granted.  And the object of an astronomer is to teach
astronomy, of a geologist to teach geology.  What then?  Is the
astronomer and geologist free to revel in all sorts of errors provided
they do not affect his special science?  No one would advance such a plea
except for a sinister purpose.  But admitting it for the sake of
argument, what is gained by the admission?  The express object of the
first chapter of Genesis is to teach science.  It professes to tell us
how the world was made; and all its teaching is wrong.  The object of
Genesis vii. and viii. is to teach history.  It professes to tell us how
the world was destroyed by a flood; and the teaching is all wrong.  The
object of Genesis xi. is to teach ethnology.  It professes to tell us how
men became dispersed over the earth, and how it is that different nations
speak different tongues; and the teaching is all wrong.  It is no
justification to plead that Moses was not skilled in geology, history,
and ethnology.  If he knew nothing about these matters, why did he
profess to teach them, and why give it out that what he taught was told
him by God?  If God is the God of truth he can no more teach false
science than false morals; it is equally untruthful to falsify a
scientific or historical fact, as to falsify a moral precept or church
doctrine.

It is said that the writers of Scripture were inspired by divine wisdom
to write nothing but truth.  Now either the world was made in six days or
it was not; either the flood covered the whole world or it did not;
either the sun stood still at the bidding of Joshua or it did not; either
Balaam’s ass spoke Hebrew and the serpent in the garden spoke the
language of Adam, or they did not.  If these things are not positive
facts they are fictions, and could only deceive as they still do.  It is
inconceivable that Professor Airy or Huxley, knowing certain facts,
should write a book and wholly ignore that knowledge.  It would be
puerile in the extreme if they were to plead in excuse for such folly
that they were writing on another subject.  The true question is this:
were they knowingly stating fiction and falsehoods as veritable facts?
If they knew that man was not made of dust, nor woman of a rib taken out
of Adam while he was asleep; if they knew that the world was not made in
six days, but affirmed that it was; if they knew that the serpent was not
doomed to crawl on the ground and eat dust because the devil chose to
assume its shape, but said that it did, then are they altogether to
blame, and it is a matter wholly indifferent whether they were writing
science or theology.  So with the “inspired penmen.”  They profess to
write truth, to write facts, and if the words they utter are not truths,
and the events they record are not facts, it is quite beside the question
whether they pertain to the immediate object of their books or not.

Lastly, it is said that science at present is unsettled, and therefore it
is too early to pronounce upon the scientific teaching of the Bible.  No
doubt there are questions in science still _in nubibus_, and others _sub
judice_, but what of that?  Because a science is still not fully
developed, is it worth nothing? has it no voice, no authority?  It is
still doubtful whether some of the nebulæ are unfinished stars, or stars
so thickly clustered together that at this distance they look like a
“cloud.”  Because this question is not fully determined, must we ignore
the fact that the earth is a globe; that the planets roll round the sun;
that the clouds are due to evaporation, and rain to a change of
temperature?  The Bible says the earth is a plane, and the clouds a solid
flooring; that the sun, moon, and stars are set in the atmosphere between
the upper and lower waters.  We are told to suspend judgment on these
points, because there are problems of astronomy and geology yet unsolved.
This indeed is clinging to a hopeless hope; it is the obstinacy of a
Gambetta, who finding no help in man, dreamt in his enthusiasm that the
stars in their courses would fight for France against the Prussians.

To return to the Mosaic notion of creation.  The writer tells us that man
was made in the image of God—a male and a female.  “Let us make man in
our image, after our likeness.  So God created man in his own image; in
the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”  This
seems to imply an Isis as well as an Osiris, a female as well as a male
deity, and no doubt Moses, who derived his inspiration from the Egyptian
priests, believed this sexual divinity.  But what is meant by “the image
and likeness of God?”  We are told over and over again that God has no
image, no bodily form, and we are forbidden to make any likeness of any
creature and look on it as a likeness of God.  Theologians tell us the
likeness referred to is righteousness and true holiness.  But why say
“the image and likeness?” _image_ seems to point to bodily form.
Besides, Adam was not like God in holiness and true righteousness, for he
hearkened to temptation, and if he was “like God,” it implies that Satan
might delude even God, and that God might by possibility fall like Adam.

Having made man, the writer says: “God ended his work” (Gen. ii., 2).  He
made man and ceased the work of creation.  Strange, that the writer
should say this, and yet in the very same chapter contradict the
statement, by the “new creation” of a woman!  The dogma, however, that
the creative work of God was sealed up, never to be re-opened when man
was made, is in direct antagonism to the whole reading of the rocks.
Geology shows us worlds of extinct vegetables and animals, the types of
which, in one geological period differed entirely from those which
existed at a succeeding one, and every anterior period had a flora and a
fauna wholly unlike any of those with which we are familiar.  There are
hosts of creations at every era, and there has never been a period from
the mystical “Beginning,” when the creative force has ceased from its
operations.  At one period we see nothing superior to shell-fish and
sea-worms, and for a time the work of creation seems ended; but another
set of rocks unfold themselves, and show us myriads of molluscs,
especially of the arm-footed kind, trilobites and graptolites,
stone-lilies and corals.  Again a change comes over created things:
mountains are upheaved, but no grass grows upon their sides, the ocean
bed is contracted, and the waters are tenanted by innumerable swarms of
fishes, for the most part unlike any which now exist.  This dynasty of
the fishy tribe gives place in time to the “age of ferns and mosses,” and
the lizard race makes its appearance; but it is not till we come to the
“secondary group of rocks” that we meet with the fish-lizards and the
predacious plesiosaur, the bird-beaked saurian, and the labyrinthodon.
Ages roll on, ages past all calculation, and new families of molluscs,
fishes, and reptiles put in their appearance for the first time:
ammonites and belemnites among the molluscs; eryons and horse-shoes among
crustaceans; pterodactyls, teliosaurs, steneosaurs, and megalosaurs among
reptiles, with here and there a sort of opossum, the first type of the
mammal family.  In the air flew the giant pterodactyl; on the dry land
stalked the ponderous megalosaurus; in the sea whole hosts of marine
lizards pursued their carnivorous instincts.  Huge turtles crept along
the muddy coasts, and strange fishes swam in the deep ocean; but no man
existed; no flocks fed upon the mountains; no birds carrolled in the
groves.  The lordly lion commanded not in the forest; the majestic eagle
was not the king of birds.  The master spirits were saurians, whose sway
was universal; and this brings us to the third great era, that of the
tertiary rocks.  This third series of rocks contain fossils more and more
nearly allied to existing plants and animals; we meet with mammals in
considerable numbers, but by far the largest number of them are
thick-skinned, and, as a rule, they were both more bulky and longer in
the legs than those which now exist.

Coming at last to the age of man and existing species, we still find the
work of creation has not ceased.  Every new manufacture brings forth some
new form of plant or animal, so that creative force can no more cease
from operation than any other form of force.  If God is the Creator he
must create; there can be no _was_ or _has been_ with deity; deity must
of necessity be always the universal _Now_, the great _I am_.  Infinite
love must always be loving, for love without loving is no longer love.
Infinite power must always be potential, for to remit the potentiality of
power is to lose the power.  Power and force are not latent faculties,
but active only.  In man it is otherwise, because man, as man, has a
beginning and therefore an end, and the works of such a creature must
have the same limits; but power, as power, cannot possibly begin and end;
if it has a beginning that beginning must be the result of _previous_
power, which is absurd; and if it has an end it is no longer power, which
is a contradiction.

Man is the creature of a day, and when the day is over it can be said of
man he _was_, and of the works of man they _once were_.  As with man
there is a past, so must there be a future.  To every _was_ there must
belong a _shall be_.  Man, therefore, can be an inventor, a doer, a
maker, and cease inventing, doing, making, as he can cease living, or
exhaust the limit of his faculties; but God cannot be a creator one day
and not another, a doer yesterday and not to-morrow, an agent at one time
and not another, or his works would have a past, and if a past a future
also; and whatever has a past and future must belong to time; nay more,
whatever has a past and future must of necessity be finite, limited, and
imperfect.  If God is infinite, the great “I Am,” the “same yesterday,
today, and for ever,” it can never be said of His operations they once
were, but are now ended; He was once a Creator, but is so no longer; His
power to create was once active in its potentiality, but has ever since
been in abeyance.  Every faculty of the infinite, every act and attribute
must itself be infinite, with no remission, and no shadow of turning.  To
say that God ended His work of creation on the sixth day and ceased from
His labour, is to predicate change in the unchangeable, limitation in the
infinite, rest in activity, repose in motion.  It is to humanise deity,
mortalise immortality, temporise eternity, limit infinity, and make a
past to the everlasting “Now.”  It is to make God a man, differing only
in degree; eternity time, differing only in extension; the ever present a
mere _now_ between a “was” and a “will be.”  Facts, therefore, as well as
reflection must show the untruth of the dogma that for six days God was a
creator, and then ended His work, and ceased from His labour.



(2.)  _The Fall_.


As a supplement to the cosmogony, comes the legend of the Fall.  Of
course, the object of this tale is to account for the fancied
imperfection of the works of God.  The gist of the matter is this: Adam
and Eve were commanded to abstain from a certain tree growing in Eden.
This abstinence was to be the test of their obedience.  The devil tempted
Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit, and Eve induced Adam to do the same.
In consequence of this disobedience, God cursed the serpent whose form
Satan had assumed;—he cursed the ground, causing it to bring forth thorns
and thistles; cursed Eve in her instincts of love and maternal functions,
and Adam in assigning him the toil of working for his daily bread.  Over
all came the sentence of death: “By one man sin entered into the world,
and death by sin” (Rom. v., 12).

According to this legend, “death is the wages of sin.”  It was Adam’s
apostacy that brought both sin and death into the world, but neither sin
nor death can possibly be due to such a cause.  Adam’s apostacy could not
bring “sin” into the world.  _The very act of disobedience is a proof
that_ “_sin_” _already existed_.  The sin preceded the overt act, was the
cause of it, and the cause must inevitably exist before its effect.  It
was sin that produced apostacy, and not apostacy which produced sin.
Take the case of Cain: It is said that Cain slew his brother Abel.  What
would be thought of the logician who should affirm that because Cain slew
Abel, hatred was introduced into the heart of man, and that death should
follow as a perpetual punishment?  Should we not reply, it was because
Cain hated Abel that he rose up and slew him?  The passion of hatred
preceded the act of murder.  It was malice aforethought, and if anything
resulted from the misdeed, it was not hatred but contrition, not thoughts
of evil but thoughts of bitter grief.  Hatred was the cause of murder,
and murder the parent of sorrow.  So with Adam and Eve.  If there had not
been already “an evil heart of unbelief,” there never would have been an
act of disobedience.  Eve sinned, not because she was innocent, but
because she was sinful.  She disobeyed, not because she was obedient, but
because her heart “was not right with God.”  The bare act was nothing,
the sin was there already, and if she had never eaten of the tree, the
thought of her heart would have been sin.  It is not true, therefore,
that sin is the consequence of Adam’s apostacy, inasmuch as it produced
the apostacy itself.  By one man’s disobedience sin did _not_ enter into
the world, neither is it true that death is “the wages of sin.”

Below the surface of the earth for the depth of some six or eight miles,
thousands and millions of once living creatures lie buried in the rocks;
creatures which lived and died before man had any being.  Of these
creatures, myriads were carnivorous; and one specimen, at least, has been
disinterred of a fossil animal inclosed in the body of another, by whom
it had been devoured for food.

Hence, death existed long, long before the very creation of man; millions
upon millions of animals were buried in the rocks before Eve was made of
the sleeper’s rib.  So says geology, and what is the testimony of
physiology?

Every leaf and blade of grass, every drop of water, and even the
invisible air, are crowded with insects and animalcules; insomuch that
not a leaf can be eaten, not a drop of water can be drank, not a gasp of
air can be inhaled, without destroying the life of some insect creatures.
If, however, only one insect or animalcule died before the Fall; if by
the effect of earthquake or volcano, the force of tempest, the rending of
rocks, the slip of an avalanche, the fall of a tree, or even by accident,
one animal lost its life, the point is proved; for that one animal at
least died, and therefore death was not the consequence of a disobedience
not yet incurred.

Again, it is well known that carnivorous beasts and birds of prey have an
anatomy adapted to their predacious habits.  Their teeth or beak, their
paws or talons, their whole structure and digestive organs, prove that
they live on carrion, and a lion could no more eat straw like an ox, than
an ox could eat carrion like a lion.  If, therefore, there was no death
before the Fall, we are reduced to one or other of these dilemmas: Either
there were no animals that lived on prey, or else at the Fall all
predacious animals were wholly recreated, their teeth and jaws were
re-constructed, their beaks and talons, their organs of deglutition and
digestion; in short, their entire anatomical structure.  A gratuitous
assertion wholly incapable of proof, and contradicted by every animal
fossil in the pre-Adamite world.



(3.)  _The Noachian Flood_.


What we said of the cosmogony we repeat under this head also: it is not
our intention to enter upon this subject at any length.  It has been
proved to demonstration that no single trace of such a cataclysm can be
detected in the rocks or features of the earth; but all these rocks and
all these features bear their testimony against such an event.

No doubt the stratified rocks speak of the agency of water, but that
agency was not the deluge.  No doubt the gravel and the boulders found so
extensively accumulated over the northern hemisphere were carried from
their native places by the force of water; but that water was not the
flood.  No doubt traces of marine animals may be discovered on every high
mountain, no matter how far that mountain may be distant from the main
ocean; but these fossils were not deposited there by the breaking up of
the great deep and the 40 days of incessant rain which fell upon the ark.
These fossils extend downwards for some six or eight miles in depth, and
how could a flood of some few months in duration make such a deposit?
The fossils of the rocks are all deposited in the nicest order; those of
one period are never mixed with the fossils of another.  No antiquarian
could sort his specimens with more order.  No museum could observe more
method in its arrangements.  A deluge would sweep down everything in
confusion and bury plants, animals, and minerals in one common ruin; such
is not the character of the rocks—every fossil reveals the rocks from
which it was dug, and every rock will tell the searcher what fossils he
may expect to find there.

We are told that the animals taken into the ark were the same as those
which existed on the earth when the flood came, and that the animals
preserved by Noah were the parents of existing species; but the fossils
of the rocks are wholly different to any existing specimens of plant or
animal.  Shell fish are found upon inland mountains, but not the shell
fish of our present system.  Bones of animals are found far from the
native haunts of the living creatures, but they are altogether strange
bones, and never belonged to the animals of the ark.  They are all relics
of extinct species, and amongst all the fossils no trace of man can be
detected.  No trace of the houses built by Cain and his offspring.  No
trace of the iron and brass instruments forged by Tubal-Cain and his
descendants.  We find traces of the most delicate leaves of plants,
traces of birds, and beasts, and creeping things; but none of man, or of
the works of man.  If the same flood swept away both man and beast, bird
and fish, reptile and insect, tree and boulder, how is it we never find
them buried in the same bed—overwhelmed in the same grave?  Demonstration
could not go further.  The whole earth from its lowest depth to its
surface denies the universality of the flood, and not one particle of
proof can be pointed out in confirmation of the legend.

Moses says that the fountains of the great deep were broken up (Gen.
vii., 11).  He believed that there was a subterranean abyss of water
under the earth, {14a} and the Rev. William Kirby, in one of the
“Bridgewater Treatises,” {14b} actually attempts to justify this notion.
It would be an insult to the understanding of our reader to waste
arguments on such a hypothesis.  It is enough to state it, and it must
fall with the weight of its own worthlessness.

Again.  Moses says, “And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth,
and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered.
Fifteen cubits upwards did the waters prevail, and the mountains were
covered” (Gen. vii., 19, 20).  Moses says the depth of the water was 15
cubits, and that all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were
covered.  Of course the writer was ignorant of that simple principle,
known now to every schoolboy, that water finds its level.  He supposed
that it would follow the irregularities of the earth’s surface, here
investing a mountain and there dipping into the valleys, so that a
uniform depth was preserved throughout, the highest hills being covered
with a depth of 15 cubits like the valleys.  We must, per force, believe
this, or we are driven to the more unlikely hypothesis, that Moses
supposed a level of some 30 feet deep of water would suffice to cover the
loftiest mountains. {15}  Whichever solution is taken, the inference is
the same—that the statement is wholly irreconcilable with science.

Once more.  After the waters had prevailed for about a year, Noah sent
forth a dove, and the dove came back to the ark with an “olive leaf
plucked off” (Gen. viii., 11).  This olive tree withstood the pelting
rain, withstood the rush of the subsiding water, withstood the wind that
drove the waters back to their abyss; but what is stranger still, it
blossomed under water, and when its head was left towering above the
flood which enveloped its trunk, its branches had put forth leaves.
Probably the grass was not injured by the flood, as the beasts were
dismissed from the ark to find their own food.  Strange that trees and
herbs, covered with a depth of 30 feet of water, should grow just as well
as in the sunshine; but small inconsistencies of this sort are as nothing
to the glaring impossibility of the whole legend.

Many other examples of a similar contrariety might be added, but the mere
multiplication of evidence can serve no useful purpose when enough has
been brought forth to establish the point in question.  We might refer to
the miracle of Joshua (x., 12.) in proof of the vulgar notion that it is
the sun which moves over the earth, not the earth round the sun; we might
direct attention to Gen. ix., 13, in proof that Moses supposed the
rainbow to be a miraculous exhibition of God’s power in confirmation of
his covenant with Noah; or we might dwell on the 2nd Epistle of Peter
(iii., 10–12) to show that the prince of the Apostles believed that the
heavens could be burnt with fire, like the roof of a house, and the
elements be melted by fervent heat.  We might cite a whole host of verses
to prove that the Scripture writers believed the earth to be a vast plane
with an abyss, and the whole rigidly fixed on a solid foundation wholly
immovable.

Or we might turn to the physiological notions of the Bible writers to
show that they were no more in advance of the period than their notions
of astronomy, geology, and general history.  They referred intellectual
operations to the kidneys or reins:—“My reins instruct me in the night
season” (Ps. xvi., 7).  The affections they ascribe to the heart, and
bodily pain to the bones.  They believed epilepsy to result from
demoniacal possession; that mandrakes provoked fecundity in women (Gen.
xxx., 14–16; Cant. vii., 13.); that peeled withes, placed before pregnant
ewes, would affect the colour of their lambs (Gen. xxx., 37.); that ants
eat corn and lay up for themselves a store for winter (Prov. v., 6.);
that bees can be generated from a dead carcase (Judges xiv., 8.); that
falling meteors or stars prognosticate evil (Ezek. xxxii., 7.; Matt,
xxiv., 29.); that spittle contains a charm to cure blindness and other
maladies (John ix., 6, 7.; Mark vii., 33–35.; viii., 23, 24.); and that
the stars exercise an influence on the lot of our life (Judges v., 20).
But to enumerate all the instances of contrariety between Scripture and
science would occupy more than all the pages of the present pamphlet;
suffice it to say, that every false notion of the age is endorsed as an
inspired fact, and no single error is corrected, or new truth brought to
light.  We must now leave this part of our subject and proceed to the
next division.




PART II.
SCRIPTURE IRRECONCILABLE WITH HUMAN EXPERIENCE.


It is not our intention to dwell at any length upon what are termed the
miracles of Scripture.  Of course they are contrary to experience, but
then they are acknowledged miracles, and those who believe such things
possible satisfy their minds by the persuasion that He who made the laws
of nature can suspend them at will, or can introduce some new factor at
need to bring about preternatural results.

Thus, if any one were to object to the statement made in the Book of
Numbers (xxii., 28.) respecting the ass of the Prophet of Pethor, which
spoke like a man, and knew the will of Jehovah better than his master,
the answer would be, the Lord, who made the ass, could make it talk also.
Again, if any one were to say that Peter could no more walk on the sea
than any other man, the reply would be, that Jesus was a divine being,
and sustained his rash disciple by His omnipotent power.  So, if anyone
were to demur to the chariot and horses which fetched Elijah from the
banks of the Jordan, and carried him through the air to that mysterious
country called by the Hebrews “heaven,” he would be told—well, I hardly
know what he would be told, but certainly the miracle was substantially
repeated when the crucified but risen Christ mounted through the air
without either chariot or horses, and followed Elijah to the same
mysterious region.

Not a few of the “miracles” of the Bible appear quite purportless, mere
exhibitions of super-human power; but, as they are miracles, nothing more
can be said.  What end could be answered by that miracle performed by the
bones of Elisha, recorded in the Book of Kings?  It is said that the
Moabites were burying a man, and being disturbed, cast the dead body into
the grave of Elisha; but when it touched the bones of the prophet, it
“revived and stood upon its feet” (2 Kings, xiii., 21).  In fact the
restoration of life is certainly the commonest of all miracles.  We have
the widow’s son restored to life by Elijah; the son of the widow of Nain;
the daughter of Jairus; Lazarus, Jesus, and the many saints which came
out of their graves after the resurrection, and appeared unto many
(Matthew xxvii., 52, 53).  Shakespeare was quite mistaken when he spoke
of the grave as “that bourne from which no traveller returns.”  Many have
returned, but what is passing strange is that none have left any record
of the land of shadows, and no curiosity seems ever to have arisen in any
living being to learn from these resuscitated ones the secrets of the
dead.  This certainly is contrary to human experience.  If some now in
their graves were to go to London and “appear unto many,” they would be
beset with questions—questions of infinite interest, questions of untold
influence; but of all the numerous dead who came to revisit the earth,
not one has left behind a single item of information, and if we except
Lazarus and Jesus, not even the name of anyone has escaped.  Some are
called “saints;” but were these saints taken from Paradise, and sent to
live again in this “vale of tears?”  One was a Moabite, was he snatched
from the “burning lake” to live a new life and die a second time in
battle?  It is past finding out; and truly so contrary to experience, so
altogether strange, so objectless, so incredible, that those who relate
such things must bear the responsibility.

But if several of the scripture “miracles” are mere wanton exhibitions of
super-human power, not a few others are puerile in the extreme.  Witness
that of Elijah beating the Jordan with his cloak to make himself a
passage across the river (2 Kings, ii., 8), a “miracle” repeated by
Elisha, after the ascent of the Tishbite (2 Kings, ii., 14).  Witness the
tale told of Elisha respecting the woodman’s axe: The woodman dropped his
axe in the river, and Elisha attracted the iron head to the surface of
the water, merely by “casting a stick into the river” (2 Kings, vi., 6).
Witness the petty wrath of the Shunamite against the children of Bethel.
These thoughtless children mocked him, saying, “Go up, bald-pate!” and
the enraged prophet “cursed the children in the name of the Lord,” when,
lo! “two she-bears out of the wood tare forty-and-two of them.”  In
regard to Elisha, however, it must be said that his miracles outnumber
all the rest of the miracles of the Old Testament put together, and they
are none of them free from serious objection.

The whole argument generally advanced in support of the miracles of Jesus
is singularly weak.  It is said that miracles were needful to show that
Jesus was the “Sent of God;” that the working of miracles is the seal of
the Almighty to the credentials of Christ, as Nicodemus pleaded (John
iii., 2), “No one can do these miracles which thou doest, except God be
with him,” and Christ himself endorsed the same plea when he said to the
disbelieving Jews, “Believe me for my works’ sake” (John xiv., 11).  It
is notorious that false prophets, and even Satan himself, are said to be
workers of miracles.  It is said that miracles are performed to deceive
and lead astray, as well as to convince and lead to God.  In fact
miracles prove nothing—neither mission from God, nor approval of God, nor
the truth of a doctrine, nor the power of God working in the person who
performs them.  They are restricted to the Jews, and nobody knows
anything of the historians who have avouched them.  Thus the great
miracle workers of the Old Testament were Elijah and Elisha; but no one
knows who wrote the Books of Kings, which describe their wonderful works,
nor whether those records were compiled before or after the Captivity.
The miracles of Christ are recorded in four Gospels, and who were the
authors of these memorials?  Luke was no eye-witness—he himself
acknowledges that his Gospel was compiled from several existing ones (i.,
1–4); but we are nowhere told by what guiding power he made his
selection, nor why his compilation is better or more worthy of credit
than the originals.  Mark, like Luke, was no apostle, and no one knows
who he was, when he wrote, or where his Gospel was written.  The very
fact that he was the John Mark referred to in the Acts (xii., 25) is a
mere conjecture, and even if admitted would not prove that he was one of
those who “companied” with the apostles from the baptism to the
resurrection.  The Fourth Gospel, like the First Epistle of John, is
notoriously doubtful, as Bretschneider has shown in his “Probabilia;”
parts are certainly spurious, and the whole seems to belong to the latter
half of the second century. {19}  We are, therefore, reduced to one
Gospel—that of Matthew—and even of this it may be said, that no one knows
whether it was written in Greek or Hebrew, for no one has seen the
original.  It is certain that parts of our present text are
interpolations, and although it would appear that Matthew wrote what is
termed the “Logia” (or sayings of Christ), it is far from certain that
the “Logia” is the same as our First Gospel.  The fact seems to be this:
that Matthew noted down the discourses and parables of Christ; and
unknown authors from time to time added to the original work, till
ultimately it assumed its present form and proportions.

It must not be forgotten that our present canon of the New Testament was
not established till the year 494; the canon recognised at the council of
Laodicea (360–4) repudiated the Book of Revelations.  The primitive
Christians never refer to any book of the New Testament, and few
quotations from it were made by the apostolic fathers.  It is not till
the close of the second century that we meet with any definite and
distinct mention of New Testament Scriptures at all.  Eusebius recognises
as canonical books the four Gospels and Acts, the Epistles of Paul, and
the first Epistles of John and Peter; but he considers the rest of the
books as doubtful; and speaks of others as equally worthy of credit or
rather discredit, such as the Acts of Paul, the Book of the Shepherd
[Hermas], the Kerugma of Peter, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Clementine
Epistles, the Doctrines of the Apostles, and the Gospel of the Hebrews;
all these, except the first are mentioned by Irenæus, Clement of
Alexandria, and Origen, on whose authority our selection of Canonical New
Testament Scriptures mainly depends.

It is not a little strange that none of the books cited by the authors of
the Bible as their authority form any part of our canonical Scriptures.
Thus Joshua (x., 13) and the prophet Samuel (2 bk., i., 18) refer to the
“Book of Jasher;” Moses (Nos. xxi., 14) refers to the “Book of the Wars;”
the Chronicles refer to the “Book of Nathan the Prophet,” the “Prophecy
of Ahijah the Shilonite,” the “Vision of Isaiah,” the “Vision of Iddo the
Seer,” the “Book of Shemaiah the Prophet,” the “Book of Iddo concerning
Genealogies,” the “Lamentations of Jeremiah for king Josiah,” and the
“Story [history] of Iddo” (2 Chron., ix., 29; xii., 15; xiii., 22;
xxxii., 32; xxxv., 25); the writer of the first book of Kings (xiv., 19,
29) to the “Diary of the Kings of Judah,” and to another of the “Kings of
Israel;” {20a} in 1 Kings iv., 29–33, we have mention of several works of
Solomon unknown to us; in Acts, vii., 42, allusion is made to the “Book
of the Prophets;” Paul refers more than once to his “own Gospel” (Rom.,
ii., 16; xvi., 25); {20b} and Jude (14) to the “Book of Enoch,” none of
which form any part of our Bible.

In regard to the New Testament the number of books professing to set
forth the words and deeds of Christ was very numerous, even when the
Gospel of Luke was compiled, and when the canon was fixed by “uninspired”
authority, the claimants were legion.  The present selection was made by
persons wholly incompetent to weigh evidence, and their only rule was
what they arbitrarily judged to be orthodox, which, of course, means in
agreement with their own religious opinions.  This being the case, on
what does the testimony of miracles rest? certainly not on eye-witnesses,
not even on the authority of contemporaries.  Paley says the men suffered
persecution and even death in proof of their belief, but Paley has no
ground for this assertion: first, because he knows nothing about any of
the four Evangelists, and cannot tell whether they suffered persecution
or not; and, secondly, he cannot know whether the names attached to these
evangelists are real names or not.  But allowing Paley’s assertion to be
true, what is gained by it?  It is by no means true that a willingness to
suffer is a proof of truth.  It may be a proof of obstinacy, of
conviction, or even of cowardice, but can be no proof of truth.  A boy
who has stolen from a schoolfellow will often suffer greatly to maintain
a lie; indeed the expression, “it was worthy a better cause,” is a
proverbial proof that men suffer and labour for the wrong as well as for
the right.  Allowing, therefore, that the early disciples did suffer, it
proves nothing, and certainly it will not prove the truth of the gospel
narratives.  It is now admitted by all biblical scholars that large parts
of our Gospels are interpolations, some of the epistles are known to be
spurious, and probably the only part of the New Testament at all worthy
of credit is that taken from the “Logia,” or sayings of Christ.  But we
have run somewhat from our subject.  In stating that Scripture
contradicts experience, we would wholly set aside miracles, and limit our
examples to matters more tangible.  Our first observations shall be
respecting the Mosaic account of prehistoric man.



(1.)  _The Biblical prehistoric man not reconcilable with historic
experience_.


The writer of the Book of Genesis represents Cain as a tiller of the
ground.  His son was Enoch, who built a city called Enoch; and during the
lifetime of Adam lived Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal-Cain, all sons of Lamech.
The first of these was the “father of such as dwell in tents,” the second
the inventor of both “harp and organ,” and the third a forger of “every
artifice in brass and iron.”

The Flood came and swept away the whole race of man except the arkites;
but the grandsons of Noah were Mizraim, Cush, and Canaan, sons of Ham;
Asshur, Elam, Lud, Madai, Javan, and Tiras, the founders of the
Egyptians, Cushites, and Canaanites, the Assyrians, Elamites or Persians,
Lydians, Medes, Ionians, and Thracians; while Canaan and Cush gave birth
to Sidon, founder of the Sidonians, and Nimrod the despot, who founded a
vast empire, “the beginning of which was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calah
the great city.”

Here we are introduced to agriculture from the very beginning: Adam
tilled the garden of Eden; Cain, the first earth-born man, was a farmer;
and Noah, the representative of the new race, was the planter of a
vineyard.  While Adam still lived we have tents invented, musical
instruments, and “every artifice in brass and iron;” while Noah was still
alive we have the fathers born of all the great empires, which have to
the present day perpetuated their names.  Is this credible?  Is it not
rather of a piece with the old system of taking the names of places,
cities, and empires, and concocting personages to account for them?  We
all know that the ancient Greeks and Romans did so; we all know that
Geoffrey of Monmouth has done as much for our own country.  Thus Britain,
Cornwall, Devon, and so on, suggested the mythical heroes, Bryt, Corin,
and Debon.  The people or place suggest the name, and the founder is a
mere myth.  It is wholly irreconcilable with all the experience of
geology and history, that the very first families of the earth should be
founders of empires, inventors of brass and iron works, tents and musical
instruments, tillage and vine dressing; in fact, the men immediately
following Adam and Noah were like those which Moses had seen in Egypt,
and he never dreamt of a more primitive race. {22}

Now, what says science and history of prehistoric man?  The earliest
traces of which we have authentic record prove that men lived in caves,
not cities like that of Enoch; they lived by hunting and fishing, not by
agriculture and breeding sheep, like Cain and Abel; far less by
vine-dressing, like Noah.  They had small hands, for the implements found
give room for only three fingers of an ordinary man; their skulls were
long, and their legs more nearly allied to the monkey type.

There is no trace in the palæolithic period of any such human beings as
Moses describes; none even in the next period, styled by Sir John Lubbock
the later or “polished stone age,” like Tubal-Cain, a “worker in brass
and iron,” none like Jubal, who could “handle the harp and organ.”  Long,
long before the “age of bronze” dawned upon the earth, ages upon ages of
a ruder and still ruder race lived and passed away; a race whose
instruments were stone, first rough and subsequently smooth and polished.

It is impossible in the present state of human knowledge to determine
what length of time elapsed before the palæolithic age glided into the
neolithic, but it must have been very great, and even then the rude life
which presents its records to observation shows that man was far removed
from the Mosaic description of the immediate children of Cain and
grandsons of Noah.  There were no builders of cities, no founders of
empires; but as we ascend higher and higher from the drift, we trace a
certain knowledge in pottery and a goodly skill in working up stone into
warlike and other implements.  The gallery graves of the earth, even in
the latest age of the neolithic period, resemble Eskimo huts more than
regular cities and palaces, and it is not till we arrive at the evening
of this long day that we discover any trace of herdsmen and tillers of
the soil.

All this vast history of man finds no place in the Book of Genesis.  As
the writer of that book knew nothing of the rocks and their mighty
revelations, he knew nothing of man but in the state of civilised
society.  The one and the other are wholly irreconcilable with the logic
of facts, and deserve no higher place than the wild legends of India and
China, Greece, Rome, and our own Britain.  What would Sir John Lubbock
say to the legend: that Noah the first man, so to speak, was a
vinedresser; that within a century his offspring were building a tower,
the top of which was to reach the skies, a tower described as a most
finished and extraordinary work of art?  What would he say to the
statement that primitive man, long before the neolithic or even
palæolithic period produced the founders of such grand empires as
Babylon, Assyria, Persia, and old Greece?  It is an insult to our
understanding, a contradiction to our eyes, a gainsaying of the
infallible records of the rocks, to place credence in such legends.  They
are palpably untrue, wholly impossible, and as wholly irreconcilable with
history and the experience of facts. {23}



(2.)  _The Scripture accounts of the increase of man wholly
irreconcilable with experience and history_.


We shall confine our remarks under this head to three instances—the
builders of Babel, the age of Abraham, and the Exodus from Egypt.  Other
instances will doubtless recur to the reader, but the scope of argument
would be much the same in every example.

The builders of Babel are placed about 100 years after the flood.  The
general impression left by the Bible account is, that the race of man was
pretty numerous.  “The whole earth,” says the writer, “was of one
language and one speech.”  This would not be said of a clan or a nation,
but must refer to several nations.  It would be absurd to call Sussex or
Kent “the whole earth,” nor less so to say it was all of “one language
and one speech.”  It would be scarcely less impertinent to say all
England, or all France, spoke one and the same language.  But to say that
all Germany, Russia, Spain, Italy, England, and Sweden, spoke one
language and used one speech would be far otherwise.  When, therefore,
the historian makes the statement that “the whole earth was of one
language and one speech,” he virtually says there were several different
nations, and a good round number of peoples.  The writer continues—“And
it came to pass as they (?) journeyed from the east they found a plain in
the land of Shinar and dwelt there,” and they “made bricks” (!) and used
“slime for mortar,” and said one to another, “Let us build a city, and a
tower whose top may reach to heaven;” but the Lord scattered them abroad
from thence upon the face of all the earth. [Gen. xi., 1–9.]

Now, at the abatement of the flood the earth contained just four men and
four women.  According “to experience,” a population under the most
favourable circumstances possible may double itself in 25 years; {24} but
let us take the increase of the prolific race of Abraham, which,
according to Scripture authority, doubled itself in 20 years [Gen. xlvi.,
27].  This would make the entire population of the earth at the
dispersion 256 souls.  Suppose half males and half females, we get 128 of
each sex, and supposing one-third to be adults and two-thirds children,
we have somewhat less than 43 adult males, and this was the entire
population of grown men in “the whole earth.”  These 43 men “were all of
one language and one speech.”  These 43 men “made bricks,” and said one
to another, “let us build a city and a tower whose top shall reach to
heaven,” and the speech of these 43 was confounded, and the two score and
three were “scattered over the whole earth.”  Nothing of comment need be
added.

The next event we would advert to is the period of Abraham.  There were
then several large empires and populous nations.  Egypt had its regular
court and standing army; Nineveh was older still; China and India were
certainly advanced in organisation.  We read of nine kings who made war
“in the vale of Siddim, which is the Salt Sea” [Gen. xiv.]; some of the
Greek states, as Argos and Attica, were founded; and Etruria must have
been in its hey-day.  This would demand a population of some hundreds of
millions at the least; but what was the fact, according to the Bible
reading?

Noah was scarcely dead when Abraham was born; some calculate that he had
been dead two years, while others think the two lives overlapped each
other.  As Noah was 950 years old at death, and 600 when he entered the
ark, we are not left to conjecture respecting the interval, which, of
course, was 350 years.  There were four men and four women when the flood
ceased; and suppose the increase to be the extraordinary one of doubling
five times in a century, we have 256 souls at the end of the 1st century,
8,192 at the close of the 2nd, and one-and-a-half million at the death of
Noah; say two millions at the birth of Abraham, a population inferior to
that of Lancashire, and only two-thirds that of London.  These two
millions are supposed to have furnished forth several large empires, most
of which would require more than the whole number.  Again we leave the
subject without adding a word of comment.

The number of the Exodus has already been considered in No. 8 of this
series.  It is given by the author of the book as 600,000 “fighting men”
or adult males; and if the women equalled the men, and the children were
two to one, we have 600,000 adults of each sex, and 1,200,000 children of
each sex, somewhat more than three-and-a-half millions, say three
millions.  The increase of 70 souls in 215 years, although oppressed by
taskmasters, and although for 80 years of the time the decree of Pharaoh
to put to death every male infant at birth, was supposed to be in force.
Taking the same rate as that given above, the 70 at the close of the
first century would have been 2,240, and 124,540 at the time of the
Exodus.  Allowing the children to be twice as many as the adults, this
would give us 6,703 as the number of “fighting men,” or, in round
numbers, 6,000 instead of 600,000.

Presuming the Bible text to be correct, the three millions led by Moses
into the wilderness would require daily for food 3,000 oxen and 30,000
sheep, that is allowing half-a-pound of food per head.  Of course meat
might be replaced by bread, but it would not decrease the difficulty to
have corn to carry across the Red Sea.{26a}  As it was 45 days before
manna was supplied, the fugitives must have driven before them 1,135,000
sheep, and 135,000 oxen.  Hence there were three million of men, women,
and children, a mixed multitude of camp followers, more than a million
sheep, and 135,000 head of oxen to lead in flight across the Red Sea,
with the horsemen and chariots of Pharaoh in pursuit.  Of course, on the
reduced scale of 6,000 instead of 600,000, all this would be divided by
100; and although there would still remain above a thousand oxen and
eleven thousand sheep, the numbers would be much more manageable; but the
writer of the Book of Exodus is responsible for the larger numbers, and
with them only are we concerned. {26b}



(3.)  _The armies of the Jews_, _and the numbers slain in war
irreconcilable with experience and history_.


Akin to the above is the extravagant numbers given in Scripture of the
fighting men mustered on several occasions by the petty kingdom of Israel
before it was divided, and of the still more petty states of Judah and
Israel after the revolt of the ten tribes.  The whole undivided kingdom
was nominally 60 miles broad, and 140 miles long, less than the county of
Yorkshire.  Much of this never came into the power of the Hebrews, and
more than three-fourths was desert.  After the division each kingdom was
about the size of Norfolk and Suffolk. {27a}

Let us first take two examples of the undivided kingdom.  At the close of
David’s reign, the number of fighting men is given (2 Samuel, xxiv., 9)
as 1,300,000; and, after the revolt, Abijah, grandson of Solomon, is said
to have headed an army of 400,000 chosen men against Jeroboam, who had
800,000 men under him.  This gives 1,200,000 fighting men in two petty
kingdoms, the aggregate of which was less than the principality of Wales.
But what will be said of the sequel? the 400,000 men under Abijah slew
500,000 of the enemy! with swords and bows!! {27b}

The late unhappy, but gigantic contest between Germany and France, makes
us pretty familiar with war, the size of armies, and the number slain by
the most murderous instruments ever used by man.  Suppose Gambetta had
said 400,000 Frenchmen had slain 500,000 Prussians, should we believe it?
Suppose he had said that 500,000 out of 800,000 had fallen by the sword,
should we believe it?  It is wholly irreconcilable with experience, and
most incredible.

Come we now to an example or two of the divided kingdom.  The kingdom of
Judah was about equal in area to the two counties of Norfolk and Suffolk,
but what are we told of its army?

[2 Chronicles, xiv., 8.]  Asa, grandson of Rehoboam, King of Judah, had
300,000 heavy-armed troops, and 280,000 light-armed, nearly 600,000, and
“all mighty men of valour!!”

[2 Chronicles, xvii., 14–18.]  Jehoshaphat, son of Asa, had an army of
1,160,000 soldiers, “all mighty men of valour!”

[2 Chronicles, xxv., 5, 6.]  Amaziah, King of Judah, had 300,000 “choice
men, handling spear and shield, above 20 years old,” and a mercenary
contingent of 100,000 Israelites, which he hired for 100 talents of
silver (£34,200).

[2 Chronicles, xxvi., 12–13.]  Uzziah’s army consisted of 307,500 trained
soldiers “under 2,600 chief officers.”

No such armies as these correspond with our experience.  Compare the
armies of Europe with those of these petty princes, and see how wholly
irreconcilable are these statements to the plain unvarnished statements
of dry facts.

We have given one instance of slaughter under Abijah, king of Judah, and
will now add one example of Pekah, king of Israel.

[2 Chronicles, xxviii., 6, 8.]  Pekah is said to have slain in one day
120,000 valiant men of Judah, and to have carried away captive 200,000
souls, with much spoil.

Mr. Cardwell proposes to raise our army to 108,000 men.  “This,” says
_The Times_, “is more than twice as large as the largest army ever taken
into battle by Wellington, and three times as large as [the English
contingent of] that with which he conquered at Waterloo.”  What would
_The Times_ say of the armies of Judah and Israel?

Where there is no motive for exaggeration the numbers are much more
modest.  Thus the army of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, no doubt, was
very formidable, but it dwindles to nothing compared to the gigantic
armies of Judah and Israel.  The army of the “great king” amounted only
to 185,000 men (2 Kings, xix., 35); if Judah could muster its million or
even half million of valiant men, all in the prime of life, there was no
need of a miracle to lay the invaders in the dust.

We will conclude this part of our subject with a few examples of
incredible statements, which cannot be classed under the foregoing heads.



(4.)  _Incredible Marvels or Statements_.


Joshua, vi., 20.


A procession of priests is said to have walked round the fortifications
of Jericho, and when they blew with their trumpets “the walls fell down
flat.”


Judges, iii., 31.


Shamgar, we are told, slew 600 of the Philistines with an ox-goad.  Doeg,
the Edomite (1 Sam., xxii., 18), “with his own hand,” slew in one day 85
persons “who wore a linen ephod,” besides “all the men and women,
children and sucklings, asses, oxen, and sheep,” of the town of Nob.
Abishai, David’s brother-in-law (2 Sam., xxiii., 18), slew 300 with his
own spear; but Adino, the Eznite, (v. 8), slew with his own hand in one
battle 800 men (!)  Impossible as these statements undoubtedly are, they
dwindle into insignificance before the exploit attributed to Samson
(Judges, xv., 16), who, “with a new jawbone of an ass,” slew 1000
Philistines (!!).  A thousand men laid low by one with no other
instrument than an ass’s jaw (!!); but the marvel does not end here, for
when Samson had thrown away his weapon, “there came water from a hollow
place in the jaw,” and the thirsty Samson drank thereof to revive his
fainting spirit.


Ruth, iv., 21, 22.


Boaz was great grandfather of David, and the mother of Boaz was Rahab the
harlot.  In this brief space is to be crowded all the events recorded in
the book of Joshua, the book of Judges, the book of Ruth, and part of the
First Book of Samuel, a period of about 400 years.

Take a familiar case.  George III. was grandfather of our Queen, and he
was grandson of George II.  This exactly corresponds with the text; but
400 years would carry us back not to George II., but to Edward IV.  What
would be thought of an historian who said that Edward IV. was the father
of Queen Victoria’s great grandfather?  But the statement referred to is
identical thereto.


1 Kings, xx., 30.


We are informed by the writer of the book of Kings that some of the
routed host of Benhadad fled to Aphek, when a wall fell, and by its fall
crushed to death 27,000 of them (!).


2 Kings, i., 9–12.


Elijah is said to have brought fire from heaven by his bare word, and by
this means were consumed two companies sent to arrest him, each company
consisting of 50 men.


Jonah.


The prophet Jonah is said to have been swallowed by a whale.  Presuming
it possible for a whale to swallow a man, no man could live three days
and three nights in the belly of a fish, and then be cast by it on dry
land.


Deuteronomy, viii., 4.


Moses tells us that in forty years’ time the “raiment of his three
million wanderers” waxed not old, and though marching all that time about
the hot desert, “their feet did not swell” from the scorching sand.


1 Chronicles, xix., 6, 7.


Hanun of Ammon sent 1000 talents of silver (£342,000) to Mesopotamia, for
the hire of 32,000 chariots (!!).  Is not this wholly at variance with
sober history?  Is it credible?  In the parallel account given in 2 Sam.
x., 6, there is no mention of these 32,000 chariots of war.


2 Chronicles, xiv., 9.


It is stated that Mareshah, in Judea, was invaded in the reign of Asa, by
a million Ethiopians and 300 chariots (!!).

These are a few specimens of the unhistoric character of the history of
the Old Testament.  We will add one or two instances of the equally
incredible statements of the wealth of Bible Kings.


2 Samuel, viii., 7; 1 Chronicles, xviii., 7.


Hadarezer’s army is represented to have been furnished with shields of
gold.  We read occasionally of some rich prince, like Glaucus, having
golden armour, but never of a whole army being equipped with golden
shields.  We are told also that Solomon made 300 shields of gold for the
temple; but these were mere ornamental plates, “3 pounds of gold went to
one shield,” the value of these was not above half-a-million of English
money, they were mere playthings compared to those in Hadarezer’s army (1
Kings x. 17).


2 Chronicles, vii., 5.


At the dedication of the temple, we are informed that Solomon “offered in
sacrifice 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep.”  Compare this with the
sacrifice of Hezekiah, “70 bullocks, 100 rams, and 200 lambs” (2 Chron.
xxix., 32).


1 Chronicles, xxii., 14.


This profusion of wealth, unexampled as it may be, is wholly eclipsed by
king David, who laid up for Jehovah about 7,000 millions sterling (!!);
that is to say, a million talents of silver and 100,000 talents of gold;
in English money 342 millions sterling in silver, and 5,500 millions
sterling in gold.  Truly the principality of Wales could never compete in
wealth with this Pactolus of a kingdom! {31}  Come we now to our last
division.




PART III.
THE BIBLE IRRECONCILABLE WITH ITSELF.


We shall subdivide this head into two parts.  Under the first we will
bring forward biblical blunders or misstatements, and under the second
positive contradictions.

The two former parts of this paper were concerned with the dogma of
_general_ inspiration; this part looks to the _verbal_ inspiration of the
Bible.  There surely can be no safe mean between verbal inspiration and
no inspiration at all.  Give up the verbal inspiration and the wedge is
introduced which must inevitably destroy the whole dogma; but if one
single blunder can be pointed out, that one blunder will be fatal to the
notion of verbal inspiration.

As the errors of Scripture are very numerous, nothing like an exhaustive
list can be included in a small pamphlet like this, but every end will be
served by the instances subjoined, which we have arranged in groups, for
the purpose of preserving something like order.



(_a_.)  _Historical Errors_.


2 Sam. xxi., 8.


The first example we would bring forward refers to Saul’s daughter
Michal, who is called in the book of Samuel “the wife of Adriel.”  Now,
Adriel did not marry Michal (Saul’s youngest daughter), but Merab.
Michal married first David and then Phalti.

This will be evident by a reference to 1 Sam. xviii., 19, 27, where it is
said: “When Merab, Saul’s daughter, should have been given to David, she
was given to Adriel to wife.  And Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved David;
and Saul gave him Michal, his daughter, to wife.”

During the persecution, David fled from the presence of the king, and
Saul then “gave Michal to another husband, whose name was Phalti” (1 Sam.
xxv., 44).  It is, therefore, an historical error to call Michal the
“wife of Adriel.”


2 Chron. xv., 17.


Speaking of Asa, king of Judah, the chronicler says, his “heart was
perfect all his days, [but] the high places were not taken away out of
Israel.”  Where Israel obviously ought to be Judah.  The kingdom of David
was divided into Judah and Israel, and Asa had nothing whatever to do
with the latter.

A similar blunder occurs in 2 Chron. xxi., 3, where Jehoshaphat is called
“the King of Israel,” whereas he was King of Judah, as will appear
evident from 1 Kings, xxii., 41, where it is said “Jehoshaphat, son of
Asa, began to reign over Judah in the fourth year of Ahab, king of
Israel.”  (_See also_ 2 Chron. xxiii., 2.)

And again, 2 Chron. xxviii., 27, we have the same error repeated; for,
speaking of Ahaz, king of Judah, the writer says, “they buried him in
Jerusalem, but brought him not into the sepulchres of the Kings of
Israel,” meaning the kings of Judah.


2 Chron. xxi., 12.


Here we have a very glaring error.  Elijah is represented as sending a
threatening letter to Jehoram, king of Judah; but the Tishbite had been
“taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire” during the reign of
Jehoshaphat, Jehoram’s father; and the prophet alluded to should be
Elisha, and not Elijah.

The blunder arises from a confusion in the mind of the chronicler between
Jehoram king of Israel, and Jehoram king of Judah.  This will be
understood by turning to 2 Kings, viii., 20, where the revolt of the
Edomites, which preceded the “threatening letter,” is narrated.  The
translation of Elijah is given six chapters further back, viz. 2 Kings,
ii., 11.


Matt, xxvii., 9.


The writer is speaking of Judas, who returned the money casting it down
before the priests.  This money was used for the purchase of a field to
bury strangers in, and the Evangelist adds: “Then was fulfilled that
which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying: ‘They took the 30 pieces
of silver . . . and gave them for the potter’s field.’”  These are not
the words of Jeremiah at all, but of Zechariah. (xi., 12, 13.)


Mark ii., 26.


Here we have an historical error made by Christ himself.  The disciples
had been blamed for plucking ears of corn on the Sabbath day; whereupon
Jesus retorted—“Have ye not read what David did when he had need and was
an hungered . . . how he went into the house of God in the days of
Abiathar, the High Priest, and did eat the shew bread?”  The High Priest
alluded to was not Abiathar, but Ahimelech.  The account will be found 1
Sam. xxi., 1–6.  “Then came David to Nob, to Ahimelech the [High] Priest
. . . and said to him . . . give me [the] five loaves [under thine hand]
. . .  And the priest answered . . . ‘There is no common bread under mine
hand, but [only] the hallowed bread, . . .  So the priest gave him [the]
hallowed bread.”


Acts, vii., 15, 16.


Here again we have an unpardonable historical error.  The writer says:
“So Jacob died, and our fathers, and were carried over into Sychem, and
laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons
of Emmor.”  This was not Abraham, but Jacob.  Abraham bought of Ephron
the Hittite, the field of Machpelah (_see_ Gen. xxiii., 16, &c.); it was
Jacob who bought the “parcel of a field at the hand of the children of
Hamor [Emmor], Shechem’s father, for 100 pieces of money.”  (Gen.
xxxiii., 19; and Joshua, xxiv., 32.)



(_b_.)  _Erroneous figures_.


These are so numerous it is universally allowed that no dependence is to
be placed upon them; but the instances subjoined are sufficiently
striking, and in any book except the Bible would be termed errors.


Joshua, xv., 21–32.


Here the writer says that twenty-nine cities towards the coast of Edom
were awarded to the tribe of Judah, and he gives the names; but if any
one will count the names set down he will find they amount to
thirty-eight.

The enumeration occupies twelve verses, two of which contain four names,
and the other ten verses three each.


Judges, xii., 6.


This is a very gross error or exaggeration.  The writer says that 42,000
Ephraimites were slain at the passage of the Jordan, because they “could
not frame to pronounce” the word Shibboleth aright.  By turning to the
census (Numbers, xxvi., 37) it will be seen that the entire population of
the tribe was only 32,500, and by comparing this census with the previous
one it will be further seen that the tribe of Ephraim was on the
decrease, but even in its palmiest days it never amounted to 42,000.
(_See_ Numbers, i., 33.)


2 Sam., xv., 7.


Here we have the tale of Absalom’s revolt.  Having murdered his
half-brother Amnon, he fled to Gesher, the court of his grandfather; but
after the lapse of three years he was permitted to return to Jerusalem,
on condition that he kept away from court for two years.  At the
expiration of this time he became reconciled to the aged king, and
“tarried forty years,” when he revolted.

This of course is a blunder.  The whole reign of David was only forty
years, and this was towards its close.  Probably “forty years” should be
forty _days_, but the correction is only a guess, and the text is
responsible for the mistake.


1 Chron., i., 13–15.


The First Book of Chronicles begins with a genealogy from Adam down to
David.  The subject occupies several chapters, but any attempt to
reconcile the numerous genealogies of Scripture is quite hopeless.  Let
any one, for example, take the two tables of Matthew and Luke, and it
will presently appear how little they correspond; or take the genealogy
of Simeon given in Gen., xlvi., 10, and 1 Chron., iv., 24, and compare
them together; or that of the sons of Benjamin given in Gen., xlvi., 21;
1 Chron., vii., 6; and 1 Chron., viii., 1.  In Genesis his sons are said
to be ten, in Chron., vii., they are three, in Chron., viii., they are
five.


1 Chron., ii., 14.


One would have thought that no diversity could possibly exist respecting
David, the favourite king; but what is the fact?  The Bible writers agree
neither respecting his father’s family nor his own.

The reference given above states David to be “the seventh son of Jesse;”
but in 1 Sam., xvi., 10, 11, he is represented to be the eighth son.  The
writer says, “Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel; and Samuel
said: Are these all thy children? and (Jesse answered) there remaineth
yet the youngest, and he keepeth the sheep.”

Similarly, in regard to the sons of David, compare 1 Chron., iii., 6–8,
and 1 Chron., xiv., 5–7, with 2 Sam., v., 15–16.  If anyone had known
about David one would suppose that Samuel would have been that man, but
Samuel says only seven sons were born to David in Jerusalem, whereas the
chronicler says he had nine, viz., (1) Ibhar, (2) Elishua, (3) ELIPHELET,
(4) Nogah, (5) Nepheg, (6) Japhia (7), Elishama, (8) Eliada, (9)
ELIPHELET.  It will be seen that the name Eliphelet occurs twice in the
Book of Chronicles but only once in the book of Samuel.  The other name
omitted by the prophet is Nogah.

Now we are upon the subject of genealogy we would direct attention to two
other examples.  In 1 Chron., iii., 22, we read that the “sons of
Shemaiah [were] Hattush, Igeal, Bariah, Neariah, and Shaphat, six;” but
only five names are given, so that “six” should have been _five_.

The other example is 1 Chron., vii., 14–15, compared with Numbers,
xxvii., 1.  The chronicler says: The children of Manasseh were first
Ashriel, and “the name of the second was Zelophehad, who had daughters;”
but the author of the book of Numbers says Zelophehad was the “son of
Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh,” and
that no mistake may possibly exist respecting the Zelophehad referred to,
the writer expressly mentions that it was the Zelophehad who had “the
daughters.”  (_See_ verse 7.)


1 Chron., vi., 57–60.


Here the chronicler enumerates the cities given to Aaron, and says: “All
their cities were 13;” but according to the list subjoined the number
should have been eleven.


2 Chron., xxi., 20.


We are told that Jehoram at death was 40 years old.  “He was 32 when he
began to reign, and reigned eight years.”  Next chapter [xxii., 2] we are
told that his son, who immediately succeeded him, was 42 years old when
he began to reign; so that Ahaziah was two years older than his father.

What makes the blunder worse is this: Ahaziah was the youngest of several
children [2 Chron., xxi., 17 {36}]; but the blunders do not end even
here, for we are furthermore informed [2 Chron., xxii., 8] that Jehu
“slew the Princes of Judah [even] the sons of the brethren of Ahaziah,”
_i.e._, the grandsons of Jehoram.  The number thus slain was 42 [2 Kings,
x., 13–14], only the author of the book of Kings does not call them
grandsons, but “brethren of Ahaziah.”  Let whichever of these records be
accepted, the error is equally palpable.  If the princes slain by Jehu
were the brothers of Ahaziah, then Jehoram, who died at the age of 40,
had 43 sons, the youngest of which was 42 years old at his father’s
death.  If, on the other hand, the princes referred to were the
grandchildren of Jehoram, then had he 42 grandsons at the age of 40.


2 Chron., xxviii., 7.


This is another example similar to the one above.  Zichri, we are told,
was “a mighty man of Ephraim,” and he “slew Maaseiah, the son of king
Ahaz.”  In the 1st verse of the chapter we are informed that “Ahaz was 20
years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 16 years;” so that his
age at death was 36, and he was succeeded by Hezekiah, his son.

The next chapter [2 Chron., xxix, 1] opens thus—“Hezekiah began to reign
when he was 25 years old;” so that Ahaz at the age of 20, had at least
two sons, one of which was grown to man’s estate, and the other was half
the age of his father.  We read of early marriages, but it is most
unusual for any father to have a son at the early age of four or five,
and it is more likely that the chronicler is in error than that such an
event should be rigidly true.


2 Chron., xxxiv., 1.


A similar statement is made respecting Josiah, who had four sons, and at
least two wives before he was 16.  His four sons were Johanan, Jehoiakim,
Zedekiah, and Shallum [1 Chron., iii., 15].  Shallum, his youngest son,
succeeded him [Jer. xxii., 11]; this young man was also called Jehoahaz,
if the author of the book of Chronicles may be relied on [2 Chron.,
xxxvi., 2].

He was 23 years old at his father’s death, and as Josiah died at the age
of 39, Shallum was born when his father was 16 [2 Chron., xxxiv., 1].  He
reigned only three months, and was then succeeded by Jehoiakim, an elder
brother, who was 25 years old [2 Kings, xxiii., 30]; so that Josiah was
only 14 when his second son was born.  His eldest son Johanan must have
been above 26 years of age, and this would make Josiah under 13 at the
birth of his first-born.

Now, the age of hundreds of persons have been given in the Bible, but no
single example can be found to induce a belief that the Jews were
precocious fathers.  We never find it said that so and so was 4 or 5, 10
or 12 years old, and begat sons and daughters.  The age stated is about
the same as with ourselves, and there is every reason to believe that the
instances referred to above are oversights.


Ezra i., 7–11.


This shall be the last example under this division of our subject, though
far more remains behind than we have here brought under notice.

In this passage Ezra gives the number of gold and silver vessels restored
by Cyrus.  They are the sacred vessels carried by Nebuchadnezzar into
Babylon, and the number restored is estimated at 5,400; but the articles
specified amount to only 2,499.  There were 30 gold chargers, and 30 gold
basins, 1,000 silver chargers, with 1,000 other vessels in silver, 410
silver basins, and 29 knives.  The deficiency, therefore, is 2901.

This miscalculation is sufficiently strange, but the statement becomes
infinitely more astounding when we read the account given us in the book
of Kings respecting the spoliation of these vessels [2 Kings, xxiv., 13].
It is said that Nebuchadnezzar “cut in pieces all the vessels of gold
which Solomon had made.”  This was in the reign of Coniah or Jehoiachin.

In the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar, in the reign of Zedekiah the captain
of the Babylonian army “broke in pieces” the brazen vessels, but took the
brass; and he broke in pieces the gold and silver vessels, but took the
gold and silver with him to Babylon.  So that the gold and silver vessels
were twice reduced to metal [2 Kings, xxv., 13–16].  Jeremiah [lii.,
17–23] enters into minute details.

These vessels seem to have possessed a wonderful recreative power.  They
were always being taken away to supply a temporary want of money, yet
were always in the temple ready for a new spoliation.

(1)  Shishak, king of Egypt, in the 5th year of king Rehoboam, “took away
the treasures of the house of the Lord; he even took away _all_; and he
took away all the shields of gold which Solomon had made” [1 Kings, xiv.,
25–26].
(2)  Asa followed the example of Shishak, for he also “took _all_ the
silver and gold left in the treasures of the house of the Lord” to give
to Benhadad king of Syria. [1 Kings, xv., 18.]
(3)  Jehoash, king of Judah, could not take away Solomon’s vessels of
gold and silver, because they were gone already, but he “took all the
hallowed things that Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, and Ahaziah had dedicated, and
his own hallowed things, and all the gold found in the treasures of the
house of the Lord . . . and sent it to Hazael king of Syria.” [2 Kings,
xii. 18.]
(4)  Jehoash, king of Israel, also “took _all_ the gold and silver, and
all the vessels found in the house of the Lord,” and returned to Samaria
with his spoils. [2 Kings, xiv., 14.]
(5)  Ahaz, king of Judah, wanted money, and followed the example of his
predecessors, for he also “took the silver and the gold found in the
house of the Lord,” and sent it to the king of Assyria. [2 Kings, xvi.,
8.]
(6)  We have not to tarry long before we come to Hezekiah, who “gave the
king of Assyria all the silver found in the house of the Lord,” and “cut
off the gold from the doors and pillars to give to the king of Assyria.”
[2 Kings, xviii., 15–16.]
(7)  Once more the temple was spoiled, before we come to the final
spoliations by the king of Babylon, in the 8th year of Jehoiachim king of
Judah.  This has been alluded to already.

It will be observed that it is not always said that the vessels were
taken out of the temple, but in several of the spoliations it is said
simply that the treasures were taken out of the house of the Lord; by
turning, however, to 1 Kings, vii., 51, it will be seen that the
“treasures” include the vessels, for we are told that “the silver, and
the gold, and the vessels, did Solomon put among the treasures of the
house of the Lord.”

Hence Shishak took away all the treasures of the temple, all the silver
and the gold and the vessels that Solomon had placed there.  If _all_ in
this case means less than all we have Asa to follow, who took away “all
that was left.”  Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, Ahaziah, and Jehoash, made new
vessels and hallowed things, but Jehoash gave all these to Hazael king of
Syria; and though all the treasures were given away already, the king of
Israel makes a raid on the temple and carries off to Samaria “all the
vessels” both of silver and of gold; Ahaz does the same; Hezekiah takes
all the silver vessels and cuts off all the gold ornaments of the doors
and pillars.  After this comes Nebuchadnezzar, who finds all the vessels
of Solomon somehow still treasured in the temple, and seizing on them he
cuts them to pieces, but they are not yet destroyed nor even lost, for
some 10 or 11 years afterwards Nebuzzar-adan, captain of the guard of the
king of Babylon, lays his hand on the sacred vessels, and took them “in
gold and in silver” to Nebuchadnezzar.  Ezra tells us the number amounted
to 5400, but how they could be given to so many, cut to pieces and
repaired, sent to Assyria, Samaria, and Syria, yet be all wonderfully
found safe and sound in a temple in Babylon, is, to say the least, past
understanding.  Come we now to another class of errors.



(_c_.)  _Misstatements_.


Exod. vi., 3.


God is represented as saying: “I appeared unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
by the name God Almighty [El Shadday], but by my name JEHOVAH was I not
known to them.”

Now the name Jehovah occurs over and over again in the Book of Genesis,
and has given rise to the Jehovistic and Elohistic controversy, made
familiar to English readers by Bishop Colenso.  Abraham, we are told,
built an altar to Jehovah near Bethel [Gen. xii. 8.], and another in
Hebron [Gen. xiii., 18.] but stranger still, when the sacrifice of Isaac
was stopped, the patriarch called the spot Jehovah-Jireh [Gen. xxii. 14].
How could he call it so, if the very name Jehovah was unknown to him?


Exod. xvii., 8–13.


The children of Israel had scarcely entered the “wilderness” when the
Amalekites came to oppose them.  A severe battle ensued, in which the
Israelites were at first worsted, but ultimately the foe was “put to the
sword.”

The whole history leads to the belief that the people left Egypt unarmed.
They were slaves, and it is not at all likely that Pharaoh would have
suffered 600,000 slaves to carry swords.  It is very true that our
English version says “the children of Israel went up _harnessed_ out of
the land of Egypt” [Exod. xiii., 18.], but the marginal reading is “by
five in a rank,” which seems the more probable.  No time was given for
preparation, for the people were “urgent to send them away in haste,”
they had not even time to prepare food before they left, but “took their
dough before it was leavened” [Exod. xii., 34].  Having crossed the Red
Sea, they would have no opportunity of procuring swords, so that this
battle must remain a mystery.


1 Sam. xvii., 54.


Here we are told that David, having cut off the head of Goliath, “carried
it to Jerusalem.”  How could this be, seeing that Jerusalem at the time
was in the hand of the Jebusites, and did not fall into the hand of the
Israelites till several years afterwards?  When David slew the giant he
was a mere stripling, say 15 or 16 years of age, but when he took
Jerusalem from the Jebusites he was above 30. [2 Sam. v., 6.]


2 Sam. vii., 12, 13, 16.


The prophet Nathan is commanded by God to say that the Lord “will set up
his seed after him, and establish the kingdom of David for ever;” and
again “thine house and thy kingdom,” says Nathan, “shall be established
for ever, thy throne shall be established for ever.”  What is the fact?
Solomon reigned 40 years, but towards the close of his reign, sat on a
very tottering throne; no sooner did Rehoboam succeed than 10 parts out
of 12 revolted; and in 380 years more the kingdom of Judah had ceased to
exist; so that the repeated promise of Nathan that the kingdom should
endure for ever proved altogether a failure.


Jeremiah, xxxv., 18, 19.


Precisely the same promise was made to the Rechabites, with precisely the
same results: “Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, because
ye have obeyed the commandment of Jonadab your father [to drink no wine],
Jonadab, the son of Rechab, shall not want a man to stand before me for
ever.”  Great efforts have been made to show that the Rechabites still
exist; but I apprehend that few scholars will place any reliance on the
conflicting accounts.  Brett professes they are in Hungary; Niebuhr says
they are in Medina; the “Bible Cyclopædia” asserts that they live in
Mecca; the missionary Wolff maintains that they live near Jerusalem;
Signor Pierotti affirms that he found them in the vicinity of the Dead
Sea.


1 Kings, xxii., 19–23; 2 Chron. xviii., 22.


We are here told that God himself sent lying spirits into His prophets,
not by way of punishment, but in order to mislead; so that, admitting
certain books to have been written by prophets, and even that God sent
His “spirit” to inspire them, it by no means follows that the books are
worthy of credit.  It is not enough to be a prophet, it is not enough to
be moved by the spirit, it is not enough that the spirit comes from God,
we must ourselves decide the all important question whether the spirit is
a “lying spirit” or the “spirit of truth.”  The two kings Ahab and
Jehoshaphat enquired of the prophets whether or not they should make war
against the Syrians, 400 prophets agreed in the answer, go, for “the Lord
will deliver them into your hands.”  Nothing could be plainer, nothing
more decisive; but Michaiah says, don’t believe the prophets, “for the
Lord has put a lying spirit into all their mouths” to compass the
destruction of the two kings.  Here were 400 who said “go,” and one who
said “no,” the prophets have been deceived by a spirit of falsehood.  Is
it at all credible that the God of truth would employ spirits of untruth
to go upon his missions?  How can it be said that God abhors lies when he
employs lying spirits as his ministers?  But, without doubt, the lying
prophet is recognised in Scripture, for besides these 400 we have the
lamentable tale of the old prophet of Bethel, who told the prophet of
Judah to go home with him, declaring that the Lord had sent him, but “he
lied,” and the prophet of Judah was slain by a lion for trusting the word
of his brother prophet [1 Kings, xiii., 18].  There is an inconsistency
in all this revolting to common sense; and so, indeed, is there in the
notion of the parliament referred to in the book of Job [ii., 1], “there
is a day when the sons of God present themselves before Jehovah, and
Satan is present amongst them,” and God speaks to Satan and employs him
to do His bidding.  Paul says there is no fellowship between God and
Belial, light and darkness, and he is right.


2 Kings, iii., 15–20.


Elisha said to the king of Israel, “The Lord will deliver the Moabites
into your hands,” and that Israel should smite “every fenced city of
Moab, and every choice city.”  None of this prophecy came true, and why?
Because the king of Moab, when “he saw the battle was too sore for him,
sacrificed his eldest son on the wall for a burnt offering.”  The
Israelites, seeing this, were panic struck, fled, and left the prophecy
unfulfilled [_see_ verses 26, 27],


2 Chron. xvi., 1.


There is some great mistake here.  “In the thirty-sixth year of the reign
of Asa,” says the chronicler, “Baasha, King of Israel, came up against
Judah, and built Ramah;” but what says the book of Kings?  “In the third
year of Asa, King of Judah, began Baasha to reign over Israel, and he
reigned twenty-four years” [1 Kings, xv., 33]; if this latter statement
is correct Baasha died in the twenty-seventh year of the reign of Asa,
and could not have waged war against him nine years afterwards.


Dan. i., 1.


The writer says that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, laid siege to
Jerusalem in the _third year of Jehoiakim_; but Jeremiah says [xxv., 1.]
that the _fourth_ year of Jehoiakim was the _first_ of Nebuchadnezzar’s
reign.  So that he was not king at all in the “3rd year of Jehoiakim.”


Matt., i., 17.


Matthew says, “all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen;
and from David to the captivity are fourteen; and from the captivity to
the birth of Christ are fourteen.”  This is true in no sense.  The
“periods” are quite unequal in length; the “genealogies” are not alike in
number; and fourteen in no case is correct.  According to Bible
chronology the first period was 911 years, the second 497, and the third
584.


John, i., 18.


The evangelist says—“No man hath seen God at any time;” similarly we read
in Exodus [xxxiii., 20], “There shall no man see my face and live.”  How
does this agree with Gen. xxxii., 24–30, where Jacob is said to have
wrestled all night with a mysterious being, and “called the name of the
place Peniel, for I have seen God face to face, and my life is
preserved.”  Sarah also “looked upon God” when she was told that her
husband would have a son [Gen. xvi., 13].  Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and
Abihu, with the 70 elders of Israel “saw the God of Israel . . . they saw
God, and did eat and drink” [Exod. xxiv., 9–11].  Moses was on two
occasions 40 days with God, and saw his “similitude,” and spake to him
“mouth to mouth” [Numbers, xii., 8].  Numerous other instances will occur
to every reader; if anything is revealed in Scripture more positively
than another, it is that God has appeared to many, from Adam to John,
talked to them familiarly, and they have lived.


John, xxi., 25.


John says, “There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which,
if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself
could not contain the books that should be written.”  I will not go this
length respecting the mis-statements and errors of Scripture; but it
would be no exaggeration to say, if all were written down, this pamphlet
would not contain them.

 *** _We will conclude this part of our subject with one or two errors of
                            a different sort_.


Deut. i., 1.


The writer says—“These are the words which Moses spake to all Israel on
this side Jordan, in the plain over against the Red Sea.”

At the time he was as near Jordan, and about as far from the Red Sea as
he well could be.  The expression “On this side Jordan” means in this
verse _east_ of the river, but after the Israelites had come into the lot
of their inheritance, “this side Jordan” meant _west_ of the river, and
east of it was called “beyond Jordan” [Joshua, ix., 1, 10].


Judges, vii., 3.


This is another geographical error.  It is stated that Gideon ordered it
to be proclaimed throughout his host that all who had no stomach for the
pending fight with the Midianites were at liberty to depart early from
Mount Gilead.

Now, the encampment of Gideon was in the valley of Jezreel, west of the
Jordan; whereas Mount Gilead is beyond Jordan, far away from the site of
the battle.


2 Chron. xx., 35–37.


This is a third example of geographical confusion, similar to those
marvellous blunders of old Homer.  The chronicler says that Jehoshaphat
built ships in “Ezion-gaber to go to Tarshish.”  Ezion-gaber was a
harbour in the Red Sea, and Tarshish is generally supposed to be
Tartessus, the famous Phœnician emporium near the mouth of the
Guadalquiver, and not far from the modern Cadiz.  It was far more than
the navigators of Jewry could have accomplished to sail from the Red Sea
to Spain, and certainly Jehoshaphat would not have chosen that harbour
for building ships for the Mediterranean.


Prov. vi., 6–8; xxx., 25.


Solomon says: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard—which provideth her meat in
the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.”  No doubt it was a
vulgar error of very wide diffusion that ants feed upon corn, and lay up
a store of grain in harvest time for winter use.  Pliny, Ælian, Ovid,
Virgil, Horace, {44} and several in our own country, have endorsed the
instruction of Solomon, but what is the real fact?  In the first place,
ants are dormant in winter; and in the next place, they do not feed upon
corn, but chiefly on animal food.  What Solomon and others supposed to be
grains of corn are in reality the cocoons which they bring out of their
nests in fine weather to air, and after they have exposed them to the sun
they carry them back again.  Efforts have been made to prove that there
is a species of ant which lives on grain; but even if such could be
found, it is not the exception, but the rule which must characterise the
animal.  No one would say to a person, you are “white as a rose,” or
“black as a cherry;” though there are white roses and black cherries.  In
all proverbial expressions and general allusions, the ordinary character
is referred to, and not the exceptions.


Matt, xiii., 31, 32; Mark, iv., 31, 32.


Jesus said: “A grain of mustard-seed . . . is the least of all seeds, but
when it is grown it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so
that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.”

It is not correct that the “grain of mustard is the least of all seeds.”
Many seeds are smaller, as that of the foxglove and tobacco plant; nor is
it correct that mustard anywhere grows into a tree, “so that the birds of
the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.”

The exaggeration in the corresponding verse of the second Gospel is even
greater than that of Matthew.  Mark says: “It is less than [any of] the
seeds that be sown in the earth . . . but becometh greater than all
herbs, and shooteth out great branches.”

Here, again, critics have come forward to prove that the mustard seed of
the text was not mustard seed, but something else.  Some one fancies he
has discovered a seed which better answers the description, and says
Jesus did not mean mustard, but the seed of the critic.  Such puerile
defence does more harm than good.  Moses did not mean “six days” by _six
days_; Joshua did not mean that the “sun was to stand still,” when he
commanded it so to do; Solomon did not mean “ants” by _ants_; nor Jesus,
“mustard-seed” by _mustard seed_.  In fact, words have no meaning, but
may be fitted with a sliding scale to fit the wishes and knowledge of
every reader.  The dishonesty of this practice is palpable, and any
system which needs such shoring should be suffered to fall through its
own weakness.


1 Chron. iv., 17; and 1 Chron. vii., 14.


Being on the subject of blunders, we would commend our readers to the two
verses referred to above—“The _sons_ of Ezra were Jether, Mered . . . and
Jalon; and _she_ bare Miriam, Shammai, and Ishbah.”

Again.  “The _sons_ of Manasseh [were] Ashriel, whom _she_ bare . . . and
the name of the second was Zelophehad.”  I know not if the reader can
understand these verses; I must candidly confess I am wholly unable to
attach any meaning whatever to them.

Another puzzle will be seen in Ecclesiastes, vii., 27–29, but probably
the translation is in great measure responsible for the obscurity of this
passage.  The preacher says: “Behold, this have I found, counting one by
one to find out the account; which yet my soul seeketh, but I find not:
one man among a thousand have I found, but a woman among all those have I
not found.”  It would be no easy matter to make out what the preacher
“has found,” which requires such a blowing of trumpets.  The original
Hebrew may throw some light upon his meaning, but I am certain that if
any candidate for the civil service had written those verses, no examiner
would commend their perspicuity.



PART III.—SECOND DIVISION.
SCRIPTURE CONTRADICTS SCRIPTURE.


In the former part of this division numerous examples have been brought
together to prove that the scope of Scripture in one place is not
reconcilable with the statement given in another; it now remains to go
one step further, and show that one Scripture positively contradicts
another.  In the former part the passages alluded to are obviously in
error; in this part one text will be contrasted with another
contradictory text, but it will not be possible to pronounce which is
right, or whether both are not equally in fault.  It will suffice in many
cases simply to set one statement against another statement in separate
columns, and leave the reader to form his own judgment; but in some few
instances a remark or two will be given to point out the scope of the
error to which attention is directed.

        Gen. vi., 19, 20.                     Gen. vii., 2.

The direction given by God to       This plain, positive direction is
Noah was—“Of every living thing     altered in the very next chapter,
of _all flesh_, two of every sort   and a distinction is made between
shalt thou bring into the ark       clean and unclean animals: “Of
. . . they shall be male and [its]  every clean beast thou shalt take
female; of fowls after their        to thee by _sevens_, the male and
kind, and of cattle after their     his female.”
kind, of every creeping thing of
the earth after his kind, _two of   Seven pairs (or 14 animals) is a
every sort_ shall come unto thee    very wide deviation from the
to keep them alive.”                direction, two only of every sort
                                    shall be taken into the ark to
Nothing can be more explicit.  It   keep them alive.
is even expressly said that the
_cattle_ were not to exceed two;
it was to be two “of _all_
flesh;” two of “every sort.”
  Gen. xlvi., 27; Deut. x., 22.              Acts, vii., 14.

In the books of Moses we are more   By what authority does the martyr
than once told that all the souls   Stephen increase this positive
of the house of Jacob which came    assertion by the addition of five
into Egypt were “three score and    more? saying “all the kindred [of
ten.”                               Jacob which came into Egypt] were
                                    three score and 15 souls.”
We read in Gen. xlvi., 26, that the number, exclusive of Joseph and
his two sons, who were already in Egypt, and of Jacob himself, the
founder of the race, “all the souls were three score and six;” but
including these four, the number amounted to “three score and ten.”
By adding together the names set down in Gen. xlvi., 15, 18, 22, 25,
it will be found that the number amounts to 70; the five, therefore,
added by Stephen, had no existence.
     1 Sam., xxx., 1–10, 17.              1 Chron., xii., 20–22.

The Amalekites burnt Ziklag, and    How is this transaction recorded
drove off the women as captives.    by the chronicler?  When David
Three days afterwards David and     reached Ziklag, eight captains
“his men” came to the place and     “of thousands” came to him, and
saw the calamity which had          helped him against the Amalekite
befallen it.  David consulted the   raiders, and so many men flocked
ephod, and was told to pursue the   to his standard to help him, that
“rovers,” for he should not only    his army was “a great host, like
overtake them, but should recover   the host of God.”
all that they had taken captive.
“So David went, he and the _six     Certainly it seems very
hundred men_ that were with him,    improbable that 400 men should be
and came to the brook Besor.”       able to extirpate the whole army
Here David left behind 200 of the   of the Amalekites which must have
men, and with the remaining 400     been pretty numerous, seeing 400
overtook the spoilers, and          men mounted on camels managed to
extirpated them, for “he smote      escape; but these 400 are spoken
them from the twilight even unto    of as mere ciphers, for David and
the evening of the next day, and    his men slew all the whole army,
there escaped not a man of them,    except these [few] young men who
save 400 who fled on camels.”       were on camels.
         2 Sam., ii., 10.                    2 Sam., ii., 11.

Ishbosheth, the rival king of       In the very next verse we are
David, is said to have reigned      informed that David reigned
_two years_; and during these two   _seven years and a half_ over
years, David reigned over Judah     Judah only, during all which time
only.                               Ishbosheth reigned over the rest
                                    of the tribes.
       2 Sam., viii., 4, 5.                1 Chron., xviii., 4.

David, says the writer of this      In the corresponding passage
book, took from Hadadezer, (?)      recorded in the book of
King of Zobah, 1,000 chariots,      Chronicles, we are told that the
and _seven hundred_ horsemen, and   number of horsemen was not 700,
22,000 footmen.                     but _seven thousand_.  The name
                                    of the king is here called
                                    Hadarezer.
        2 Sam., x., 6, 18.                 1 Chron., xix., 18.

Hadarezer hired 33,000 Syrians to   In the book of Chronicles David
oppose David; but David came        is said to have slain _seven
against the allied army and “slew   thousand_ men, which fought in
_seven hundred chariots_ of the     chariots, and forty thousand
Syrians, and forty thousand         _footmen_.
_horsemen_.”
        2 Sam., xxiv., 9.                   1 Chron., xxi., 5.

The “fighting men” at the close     In the book of Chronicles the
of David’s reign are stated in      number of fighting men is even
the book of Samuel to have been     more astounding.  It is given as
1,300,000 (!); of these 800,000     1,570,000; of which 1,100,000
were of Israel, and 500,000 of      belonged to Israel, and 470,000
Judah.                              to Judah.
        2 Sam., xxiv., 13.                 1 Chron., xxi., 12.

When David numbered the people, a   According to Chronicles, the
choice of three evils was given     choice was: _three_ years of
him.  According to Samuel, the      famine, and not seven.
evils were: _seven_ years of
famine, three months pursuit by
his enemies, or three days’
pestilence.
        2 Sam., xxiv., 24.                  Chron., xxi., 25.

In the book of Samuel, David is     In the book of Chronicles, he is
said to have given to Araunah for   said to have given for it 600
the threshing-floor _fifty_         shekels of _gold_ [£547 10s.].
shekels of _silver_ [£5 13s.
6d.].
        1 Kgs., vii., 26.                   2 Chron., iv., 5.

According to the book of Kings,     According to the book of
Solomon’s brazen laver held 2,000   Chronicles, it held 3,000 baths
baths [15,000 gallons].             [about 22,500 gallons].
        2 Kgs., viii., 26.                 2 Chron., xxii., 2.

The writer of the book of Kings     We are here informed that Ahaziah
tells us that Ahaziah was 22        was 42 when he began to reign,
years old when he began to reign,   and not 22.  Both agree in the
and he reigned one year.            length of his reign.
         2 Kgs., xiv., 7.                 2 Chron., xxv., 11–12.

In the book of Kings, Amaziah is    In the book of Chronicles he is
said to have slain 10,000           said to have slain twice that
Edomites in the Valley of Salt.     number: 10,000 he smote, and
                                    10,000 he cast down from the top
                                    of a rock, whereby “they were all
                                    broken in pieces” (!)
        2 Kgs., xxiv., 8.                  2 Chron., xxxvi., 9.

The author of the book of Kings     The author of the book of
tells us that “Jehoiachin was       Chronicles says that “Jehoiachin
_eighteen years_ old when he        was _eight years_ old when he
began to reign, and [he] reigned    began to reign, and he reigned
in Jerusalem three months.”         three months and ten days in
                                    Jerusalem.”
       1 Chron., xxii., 14.                1 Chron., xxix., 4.

David, we are here told,            In this chapter the bequest is
bequeathed to Solomon for the       stated to have been only 3,000
temple the fabulous sum of          talents of gold, and 7,000 of
100,000 talents of gold, and a      silver.  This would amount to
million talents of silver.  In      £166,650,000 English money.  A
English money this would be seven   good round sum for a petty state
thousand million sterling (say      not bigger than Yorkshire, but
7,000,000,000!).                    still considerably reduced from
                                    that given in the previous
                                    record.
        2 Chron. iii., 15.                Jeremiah lii., 21, 22.

According to the chronicler the     Jeremiah tells us the shaft of
height of the two pillars made by   each was only 18 cubits high.  He
Solomon for the temple was 35       agrees in the height of the
cubits in the shaft, on which was   chapiter (five cubits).
a chapiter of five cubits.          According to Jeremiah the entire
Altogether about 80 feet!!          height was about 40 feet, or half
                                    that of the chronicler.
      Jeremiah lii., 28–30.                   Ezra ii., 64.

The “prophet” informs us that the   Ezra states that of the captives
total number of captives taken      taken to Babylon only 42,360 were
from Judah to Babylon was only      willing to return.  All the rest
4,600.  A modest number enough,     preferred to remain where they
compared with the number of         were.  No doubt Ezra would give
fighting men, which averaged        us to understand that more
300,000, according to the Bible     remained in Babylon than went up
historians.                         to the land of their fathers.
The “prophet” has made a mistake in his sum.  The three captivities
were 3,320 + 832 + 745=4,897, not 4,600.  One is puzzled to
understand how 4,000 captives should have so stripped the kingdom as
to leave it a wilderness; we find hundreds of thousands falling in a
single battle without exhausting the country at all.
        Matt. xvii., 1–2.                     Luke ix., 28.

Here we read “After _six_ days      Luke says “About an _eight_ days
Jesus taketh Peter, James, and      after . . . he took Peter, John,
John, and bringeth them up into a   and James, and went up into a
high mountain . . . and was         mountain, and was transfigured.”
transfigured before them.”
          Mark vi., 40.                       Luke ix., 14.

Mark says of the 5000 who were      Luke says that Jesus directed his
fed with five barley loaves and     disciples “to make them sit down
two fishes: “They sat down in       by fifties in a company.”
ranks, by hundreds and by
fifties.”

These last two examples are not very weighty, but in a book which
professes to be inspired, and demands unreserved and unconditional
belief, we expect minute accuracy.  The argument we advance is
accumulative.  Probably no book of good reputation has so many
contradictory passages as the Bible; the examples referred to in this
pamphlet form but a small part of what might be brought forward, if we
allowed ourselves a larger space.

The examples given above are more or less connected with figures.  The
rest of the examples to be stated are independent of such sources of
error.  A few shall be given in detail and others in parallel columns.


Gen., i., 27.


Adam and Eve, we are here told, were created on the sixth day.  The words
are quite explicit, “male and female created he them, and God blessed
them . . . and the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”

We are little prepared to hear in the very next chapter that God did not
create them a male and female on the sixth day, and of course did not
bless them.  What is still more strange is that the chapter opens with
the words: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host
of them, and on the seventh day God _ended_ his work which he had made.”

According to v. 21 we find that God did not rest from his work at the
close of the sixth day, nor was his work ended, nor was woman yet made;
for after this “rest,” or during this “sabbath,” we are not told which,
Adam being thrown into a deep sleep, one of his ribs was abstracted, and
out of this rib was Eve made.


Gen., iv. 14.


After Cain had killed his brother Abel he was “driven by God from the
face of the earth;” and Cain said: “My punishment is greater than I can
bear . . .  I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth, and it
shall come to pass that everyone that findeth me shall slay me.”

One would suppose from this that the world was populated at the time, and
not that Cain was the first-born of the human race.


Gen., xlix., 10.


“The sceptre shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh come.”  We are told
that Shiloh [_the peaceful one_] means “the son of peace,” the Messiah,
Jesus Christ.  If so, how thoroughly did facts contradict this prophecy.
Judah had no sceptre till David’s time, 650 years after these words were
spoken; it held the sceptre 460 years, and it departed from Judah 580
years before Shiloh came.


Exodus, xx.


The chapter contains the decalogue read in the Anglican churches every
Sunday morning.  Moses broke the first pair of stone tables, but having
prepared two others Jehovah “wrote upon them the words that were on the
first tables.”

By comparing Exod. xxxiv. with Exod. xx., it will be found that there is
very little resemblance between the first and second decalogue.  Only
three of the ten commandments are at all alike, the other seven of the
first pair of tables find no counterpart in the second.


1 Sam., ix., 2.


Saul is called “a choice young man and a goodly,” yet had he at the time
a son in man’s estate.


1 Sam., xv., 7–20.


Saul positively affirms that he had “utterly destroyed all the
Amalekites, except Agag,” and him Samuel “hewed to pieces.”  Some twenty
years after this extirpation, David is appointed to destroy the very same
people, and he also “smote them from the twilight even unto the evening
of the next day, and there escaped not a man of them, save 400 young men,
which fled on camels.”  (1 Sam. xxx., 17.)  (_See also_ 1 Chron., iv.,
41–43.)


1 Sam., xvi., 18.


When David was introduced to king Saul, he is described as “a mighty
valiant man, and a man of war;” but in the next chapter he is called a
“stripling unpracticed in arms,” and unused to armour.

In the former of these two chapters (v. 21), he is represented as Saul’s
companion, who “stood before the king, and Saul loved him greatly;” in
the latter (xvii., 55, 56), he becomes a stripling wholly unknown to the
monarch and his officers, for Saul asks Abner “whose son is this youth?
and Abner said, As thy soul liveth, O king, I cannot tell.  And Saul
said, Inquire whose son the stripling is.”  Yet this stripling was a
“mighty man of valour,” who had actually been Saul’s “armour bearer” and
beloved companion.  He had lived with Saul, had played to him in his
moody fits, and charmed away his ill-temper, had been a cause of jealousy
to the king, who had even tried to kill him, and yet neither Saul nor
Abner had ever seen him or known his name.


2 Sam., viii., 17.


The writer says there were two high priests during the rebellion of
David, one elected by Saul and the other by David: they were, “Zadok son
of Ahitub, and Ahimelech son of Abiathar.”

If anyone will read the narrative with tolerable care he will see that
Ahimelech was dead, having been slain by Doeg when he put the city of Nob
to the sword (1 Sam. xxii., 18); besides Ahimelech was not the son but
the father of Abiathar, (1 Sam. xxii., 20; xxiii., 6), and the father of
Ahimelech was Ahitub, a “fact” repeated three times in as many verses, in
1 Sam. xxii., 9–12.

This blunder about Ahimelech has been copied into other places, for
example, 1 Sam. xx., 25; 1 Kings iv., 4; 1 Chronicles xviii., 16, but
there cannot be a shadow of doubt that Abiathar, and not Ahimelech, was
the high priest appointed by David: first, because Abiathar fled to David
for safety; secondly, because he was the high priest during the entire
reign of David; and finally, because he was deposed by Solomon, who told
him he would have put him to death if he had not served before David. (1
Kings ii., 26.)


Jeremiah, xxii., 29, 30.


“O earth, earth, earth!” exclaims the prophet, “hear the word of the
Lord—Thus saith the Lord: Write ye this man [Coniah] childless.”

According to 1 Chronicles, iii., 17, 18, Coniah, or Je-coniah had eight
sons, viz: Assir, Salathiel, Malchiram, Pedaiah, Shenazar, Jecamiah,
Hoshama, and Nedabiah.


Jeremiah, xxxvi., 30.


Jehovah told Jeremiah that Jehoiakim “should have none to sit on the
throne of David:” but we are told (2 Chronicles xxxvi., 8) that his son
succeeded him, and after his son his brother.


Ezekiel, xxx., 13.


This and the two following chapters speak of the conquest of Egypt by
Babylon.  The writer says that the country should be made desolate from
north to south, and that there should be “no more a prince of Egypt.”

Not one word of this corresponds with the known history of Egypt.
Herodotus does not give the slightest hint of such a calamity.  Merchants
frequented the country without interruption long after that, and if the
people had been scattered, the cities utterly wasted for 40 years, and
“no king had succeeded to the throne,” it must have been known.  The
silence of historians on this point is a most conclusive proof that the
logic of fact did not accord with the word of prophecy.

The same may be said of the Pharaoh drowned in the Red Sea.  No history
confirms this tale, and no king of Egypt can be made to tally with the
catastrophe.  But Egypt was not an insignificant kingdom like Judah,
which no one knew about; it was the foremost kingdom of the world, and if
one of its kings had been drowned in the sea with all his host, some
mention must have been made thereof.


GENEALOGY OF JESUS CHRIST.


Take another example.  Both Matthew and Luke labour to prove the
genealogy of Christ from David.  Luke traces Joseph to Adam, through
David (iii., 23–36), and Matthew gives the descendants of David down to
“Joseph, the husband of Mary.”  The object of both is to show that Jesus,
through Joseph, came in the direct line, and was therefore of the lineage
of David.

The interpolated miraculous conception, abandoned by biblical scholars,
{53} utterly stultifies the purpose of these pedigrees.  Matthew and Luke
“prove” that Jesus was of the lineage of David because Joseph, the
husband of Mary, was in the direct line.  The miraculous conception goes
to show that Joseph was _not_ the father of Jesus, and consequently that
Jesus was not of the line of David at all.  Here, then, is a dilemma:—_if
Jesus was the son of Joseph his divinity must be given up_; _if he was
not the son of Joseph_, _he was not of the line of David_, _and his
Messiahship must be given up_.

By casting an eye over the two genealogies, it will be seen that they
differ in all points except at certain nodes, and the usual answer is,
that Luke’s is the pedigree of Joseph, and Matthew’s that of Mary.  But
there is not the slightest indication of this difference in the Gospel
text; both profess to give the genealogy of Joseph.  Matthew says, “Jacob
begat _Joseph_, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born” (i., 16);
there cannot be a shadow of doubt that this is meant for the pedigree of
Joseph, the husband of Mary.  If not, the genealogy was that of Rahab the
harlot, for verse 5 tells us that Boaz was the husband of Rahab, of whom
Obed was born.  So again in verse 6, Bathsheba is given as the wife of
David, and mother of Solomon.  Luke says (iii., 23), Jesus was [as was
supposed] the son of Joseph, the son of Heli; and does not even mention
Mary.  The three words in brackets are a mere gloss, and could not have
been written by Luke, as they would destroy the very thing he was trying
to prove: Jesus was the son of Joseph, Joseph of Heli, and Heli was a
descendant of David, Abraham, and Seth.  If Jesus was not really the son
of Joseph, why trouble himself to show that Joseph was in the line of
David, Abraham, and Seth?

But it is quite evident that Matthew and Luke supposed Jesus to be the
son of Joseph.  So did the neighbours of Joseph and Mary, for they said
(Matt, xiii., 55), “Is not this the carpenter’s son?”  It never oozed out
in his native village that Mary’s son was other than her son in the usual
course of nature.  Even Mary herself says to Jesus “thy father and I have
sought thee sorrowing” (Luke ii., 48); Mary calls Joseph the father, and
not the reputed father, of Jesus, and never seems to have had a shadow of
doubt about it.  So was it with the disciples; their adherence to Jesus
had nothing to do with his divinity.  They none of them ever hint at such
a notion.  Philip said to Nathaniel “We have found him of whom Moses
spoke, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph” (John i., 45); not Jesus of
Nazareth, the son of Jehovah, but Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
All were anxious to prove his lineage from David, and none cared to set
aside so very important a point.  Of course they spoke of him as
“Christ,” but Christ was merely an accepted title for “King of the
theocracy,” and in order that Jesus might be the “Christ,” it was
absolutely essential that he should be a descendant of David. {54}  _The
interpolated legend of the miraculous conception is a fatal blunder_,
_and if accepted would utterly destroy the claim of Jesus to the
Messiahship_.

          Gen., ii., 17.                    Gen., iii., 17–19.

The Lord God said to Adam, “of      Unto Adam God said, “Because thou
the tree of the knowledge of good   hast eaten of the tree of which I
and evil thou shalt not eat of      commanded thee not to eat [not
it; for _in the day_ that thou      _thou shalt surely die_, but] in
eatest thereof thou shalt surely    the sweat of thy face shalt thou
die.”                               eat bread, till thou return unto
                                    the ground.”
Two things strike us in reading the latter passage: (1) Adam did not
“surely die” _on the day_ he ate of the forbidden fruit; and (2)
there is not the slightest hint to justify the common dogma that
_death_ was the penalty incurred by Adam, but simply _toil_—toil
_till_ he died.  “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread
_till_ thou return unto the ground.”

On the subject of death it may be here remarked that the scripture
makes mention of thousands and hundreds of thousands, who are not to
die at all.  We have the case of Enoch (Gen., v., 24), the case of
Elijah (2 Kings, ii., 11), and all the inhabitants of the earth who
will be alive “at the last day” (1 Corinthians, xv., 51).  Either
death is not “the wages of sin,” or these persons are not of the race
of Adam.  The “curse” is not transmitted to them; if not to them, why
to others?  And what becomes of the dogma of Adam and Christ as
federal heads?  The whole theory is utterly overturned.
1 Kings viii., 9; 2 Chron. v. 10.            Hebrews ix., 4.

The historic books of the Old       The writer of this book affirms
Testament agree in the fact that    that besides the tables of the
there was “nothing in the ark       covenant, there were in the ark
save the two tables which Moses     “the golden pot that had manna,
put therein at Horeb.”              and Aaron’s rod that budded.”
The pot of manna and Aaron’s rod ought to have been in the ark,
inasmuch as Moses was told to place them there (Exod. xvi., 33, 34.;
Numbers xvii., 10); but this is only another instance of the
inconsistency complained of.
     1 Kings, xxii., 48, 49.              2 Chron. xx., 35, 36.

The writer tells us that            In the Book of Kings we are told
“Jehoshaphat made ships of          that Jehoshaphat would not allow
Tarshish [_i.e. Spanish             Ahaziah to join in the adventure
galleons_] to go to Ophir for       to Ophir.  The chronicler says
gold. . . .  Then said Ahaziah to   that “Jehoshaphat joined Ahaziah”
Jehoshaphat, let my servants go     in making these galleons.
with thy servants in the ships,
but he would not.”
       2 Kings, ix., 11–13.                   Hosea, i., 4.

The royal historian distinctly      Hosea says: “The Lord said I will
says that Jehu was expressly        avenge the blood of Jezreel upon
raised by God to the throne of      the house of Jehu, and (because
Israel to extirpate the wicked      he extirpated the house of Ahab)
house of Ahab, and “avenge the      I will cause to cease the kingdom
blood of the prophets shed by       of the house of Israel.”
Jezebel.”
        2 Kings, ix., 27.                  2 Chron., xxii., 9.

The book of Kings informs us that   The chronicler says he was caught
when Jehu fell on the race of       by the agents of Jehu “hid in
Ahab, Ahaziah “fled to Megiddo,     Samaria,” and being taken captive
and there died.”                    to Jehu, was then slain.
         2 Kings, x., 17.                  2 Kings, x., 11, 12.

Here the slaughter of the house     Here it is placed in Jezreel, and
of Ahab is placed in Samaria.       _after_ Jehu had slain “all that
                                    remained of the house of Ahab,
                                    all his great men, and his
                                    kinsfolk, and his priests . . .
                                    he arose and departed and _came
                                    to Samaria_.”

                                    This agrees with Hosea, i., 4,
                                    cited above.
       1 Chron., xi., 1–3.                  2 Sam., ii., 1–11.

On the death of Saul we are here    Here we are informed that David
told that “Then _all Israel_        and his men went to Hebron at the
gathered themselves to David unto   death of Saul, “and the men of
Hebron, saying, . . . thou shalt    _Judah_ came and anointed him
be ruler over . . .  Israel . . .   king over the house of Judah.”
and David made a covenant with
them in Hebron . . . and they       But Abner took Ishbosheth, son of
anointed David king over Israel.”   Saul, and made him king over all
                                    _Israel_.  David was for seven
                                    years and six months king over
                                    the house of Judah only.
       2 Chron., xxiv., 22.                2 Chron., xxiv., 25.

Joash, it is said, “remembered      Here we are told that Joash slew
not the kindness of Jehoiada [his   not the _son_ of Jehoiada, but
foster father], but slew his        the _sons_; for the servants of
_son_,” _i.e._, Zechariah the       Joash conspired against him not
High Priest, see v. 20.             for the blood of Zechariah, but
                                    “for the blood of the sons of
                                    Jehoiada.”
        2 Kings, xii., 13.                 2 Chron., xxiv., 14.

When Jehoash repaired the temple    The chronicler contradicts this
he placed a money-box beside the    assertion point blank, and
altar for voluntary                 affirms that with the money so
contributions, but (says the        collected “were made vessels for
writer) there was not money         the house of the Lord, vessels to
enough collected to make “bowls     minister and to offer, and
of silver, snuffers, basins,        spoons, and vessels of gold and
trumpets, nor _any_ vessels of      silver.”
gold or silver.”
      2 Chron., xxxiii., 15.               2 Kings, xxiii., 6.

Manasseh is represented as having   But in the reign of Manasseh’s
taken the strange gods and idols    grandson, whose name was Josiah,
out of the house of the Lord . . .  these strange gods and idols were
and of having “cast them out of     still in the temple, for Josiah
the city.”                          “took them out of the house of
                                    the Lord . . . and stamped them
                                    to powder.”
        Psalm, lxxii., 20.                1 Chron., xvi., 7–36.

We read, here “the prayers          Here is given a psalm which the
[_i.e._, the psalms] of David,      chronicler says “David delivered
the son of Jesse, are ended.”       first.”  From verse 8 to 22 is
                                    Psalm cv., 1–15; the next 11
                                    verses are Psalm xcvi.; and the
                                    remaining verses are Psalm cvi.,
                                    1, 47, 48.

                                    In the “headings” 18 of the
                                    psalms, after the lxxii., are
                                    ascribed to David, viz., ciii.,
                                    cviii., cix., cx., cxxii.,
                                    cxxiv., cxxxi., cxxxiii.,
                                    cxxxviii., cxxxix., cxl.–cxlv.
          Matt., i., 23.                      Matt., i., 16.

Matthew says the birth of Jesus     The son of Mary was Jesus, called
fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah    the Christ.
(vii., 14), “Behold a virgin
shall conceive and bear a son,
and shall call his name Emmanuel”
[God with us.]
(1)  The child referred to by Isaiah was to be still an infant when
Rezin and Pekah should be cut off.  Isaiah says, “Before the child
[Emmanuel] shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, [Syria
and Israel] shall be [deprived] of both her kings.”  It required no
great penetration to foretell that the league of Ahaz with
Tiglath-pileser the great king, would soon annihilate the petty
princes of Damascus and Israel.

(2)  All scholars, both Jewish and Christian, agree that the child
referred to was the expected infant of Isaiah himself.  Within two
years Pekah fell by the hand of Hoshea, and Resin by the sword of the
Assyrians.

(3)  The Jews affirm that the word virgin [_almah_] does not of
necessity mean a maiden or unmarried woman.  If Isaiah in the text
referred to his wife, she was already mother of at least one child
two years old.  Joel, i., 8, applies the word to a _widow_ advanced
in life: “Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband
of her youth,” _see_ Prov., xxx., 19.
         Matthew, v., 1.                      Luke, vi., 17.

Jesus “seeing the multitude went    Jesus came down with his
up into a _mountain_, and when he   disciples, and _stood_ in the
was _set_, he opened his mouth      _plain_, and said: &c.  [Here
and taught the people.”  [Here      follow the beatitudes.]
follow the beatitudes.]
        Matt., viii., 28.            Mark, v., 1, 2; Luke, viii., 26,
                                                   27.
“When [Jesus] was come to the
other side [of the lake] into the   “When they came over unto the
country of the _Gergesenes_,        other side of the sea into the
there met him _two_ possessed       country of the _Gadarenes_, there
with devils, coming out of the      met him out of the tombs a
tombs.”                             certain man which had devils a
                                    long time.”
        Matt, xx., 20, 21.                   Mark, x., 35–37.

“The _mother_ of Zebedee’s          “James and John the _sons_ of
children . . . said unto [Jesus],   Zebedee came unto [Jesus] saying,
grant that these my two sons may    grant unto us that we may sit one
sit, the one on thy right hand      on thy right hand and the other
and the other on the left in thy    on thy left in thy glory.”
kingdom.”
        Matt., xxii., 46.                    Mark, xii., 34.

Here we are told that Jesus         Mark gives a different version.
puzzled the Pharisees with the      He says a certain scribe asked
question, “How can Christ be        Jesus, “Which is the first
David’s son, seeing that David      commandment of all?”  And when
calls him _lord_?”  “And no man,”   Jesus answered the scribe well,
adds the writer, “from that day     adds, “No man after that durst
forth, durst ask him any more       ask him any question.”
questions.”
                                              Luke, xx., 40.

                                    Luke agrees with neither of his
                                    brother evangelists.  He states
                                    the matter thus: The Sadducees
                                    tell Jesus of a woman who married
                                    seven times, and ask whose wife
                                    of the seven she would be in the
                                    resurrection.  After Jesus had
                                    replied, some of the scribes
                                    remarked, “Master, thou hast well
                                    said,” and Luke adds, “after that
                                    they durst not ask him any
                                    question.”  Which is right would
                                    be hard to say.  Only one can be
                                    so.
Matt., xxvi., 6, &c.; Mark, xiv.,           John, xii., 1, &c.
              3, &c.
                                    John places this anointing in the
Matthew and Mark say that Jesus     house of Lazarus, and says the
was banqueting in the house of      woman’s name was Mary, who took a
Simon the Leper, when a woman       pound of spikenard for the
came and anointed him with          purpose.
spikenard.
There cannot be a doubt that all these refer to the same event or
tradition.  It was just prior to the “entry into Jerusalem” which
brought about the trial and condemnation.  It is wholly incredible
that this anointing with spikenard should have been done twice at
about the same time.
        Matt., xxvi., 34.                    Mark, xiv., 30.

Jesus said to Simon Peter:          Jesus said: “Verily I say unto
“Verily I say unto thee that this   thee that this day, even in this
night _before the cock crow_,       night, before the cock crow
thou shalt deny me thrice.”         _twice_, thou shalt deny me
                                    thrice.”
See also Luke, xxii., 34; and
John xiii., 38.
        Matt., xxvi., 73.                   John, xviii., 26.

Matthew describes the third         John says it was not “they that
“denial” thus: “After a while       stood by,” but “one of the
came _they that stood by_ and       servants of the High Priest,
said to Peter, surely thou art      whose ear Peter [had] cut off.”
one of them, for thy speech         This servant said, “Did not I see
bewrayeth thee.”                    thee in the garden with him,” and
                                    not that “thy speech bewrayeth
Mark and Luke give substantially    thee.”
the same account.
         Matt, xxvi., 74.                   Mark xiv., 68–72.

Matthew, in accordance with his     Mark has another tale to make
dictum, makes Simon Peter deny      good, and says that Simon Peter
thrice any knowledge of Jesus,      denied once, and the cock crew
and, having so done, “immediately   once; after this Peter denied
the cock crew.”                     twice more, and then the cock
                                    crew a second time.
         Matt, xxvii., 5.                     Acts, i., 18.

Matthew says that Judas, after he   Simon Peter says, “This man
had betrayed his master, “went      [Judas] purchased a field with
and hanged himself.”                the reward of iniquity, and
                                    falling headlong, he burst
                                    asunder, and all his bowels
                                    gushed out.”
Simon Peter says that Judas bought a field with the money he received
from the priests.  The evangelist says he flung the money down in the
temple, and the priests bought with it the potter’s field to bury
strangers in.  What is meant by “falling headlong” is very difficult
to make out.
       Matt, xxviii., 2–5.                   Mark xvi., 4, 5.

Matthew tells us that an angel      Mark says the stone was rolled
“rolled back the stone from the     away, and the visitors on
door of the sepulchre, and sat      “entering into the sepulchre saw
upon it; and the angel said,        [the angel] sitting on the right
‘Fear not . . .’”                   side.  And he said,” &c.  Luke
                                    [xxiv., 4] says there were _two
John xxi., 1.  We are told that     men_ who _stood_.  They had
Mary saw two angels _sitting_;      “shining garments,” and they
one at the head and the other at    said, “Why seek ye the living
the feet.                           among the dead?”
   Mark x., 46; Matt, xx., 29.               Luke xviii., 35.

Mark says, and Matthew agrees       Luke says it was not on leaving
with him, that Jesus met with       Jericho, but as he was about to
Bartimeus, the blind beggar, on     _enter_ the city.
_leaving_ Jericho.
          Mark xiv., 69.                     Luke xxii., 58.

In regard to the second denial of   Luke tells us the person was not
Simon Peter, Mark says “A _maid_    a woman, but a man; and Peter
saw him again, and said to _them    answered “Man, I am not,” _i.e._,
that stood by_, this is one of      not one of the disciples.
them.”
          Luke, ix., 1.                     Luke, ix., 38–40.

Here we read that Jesus “called     We are hardly prepared in the
his twelve disciples together,      same chapter to hear that the
and gave them power and authority   disciples had _not_ power to cast
over _all_ devils, and to cure      out devils, and cure diseases,
[all] diseases.”                    for a man says to Jesus, “Master,
                                    a spirit taketh my son and
                                    teareth him; and I brought him to
                                    thy disciples to cast it out, but
                                    they could not.”
          John xix., 6.                      John xviii., 31.

When Jesus was brought before the   This is very strange, seeing the
Roman procurator, Pilate said to    Jews had just said to Pilate, “It
the Jews, “Take ye him, and         is not lawful for us to put any
crucify him.”                       man to death.”
Would any Roman procurator have told the Jews to crucify a criminal,
knowing that it was strictly forbidden by the Roman senate?

CONCLUSION.


The apology that a certain degree of variance is a proof of independent
testimony is quite beside the present question, and so is the argument of
Dr. Whately about Napoleon.  No doubt half-a-dozen correspondents
describing any event in the late war would dwell on different incidents,
and see matters from different stand-points; one would have a bias
towards the French and another towards the Prussians, one would be cast
in a Tory mould and another would have Radical proclivities, one would
see with military eyes and another with the eyes of a civilian, one would
look towards the end and another would limit his vision to the present
action; but who claims for these correspondents divine inspiration? who
believes that they are all baptized into one spirit, and that the spirit
which guides them has guaranteed that they shall speak the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth?  They write as human beings, with
fallible judgments, and all the prejudices of caste, education, interest,
and special advocacy; with so many things to bias judgment, no doubt
there will be considerable variety of statement, but all this in no wise
applies to the Bible writers—they are not supposed to write from any of
these motives, but to be guided and directed by one and the same motive,
and all to be led by the Spirit of unerring truth.  With such writers
there may be considerable verbal difference, but no substantial variety;
there may be shades of variety, and different incidents may strike
different eye-witnesses, but there can be no positive contradiction, and
the same incident cannot be described as two antagonistic facts.  If
Samuel was right when he affirmed that David took from the king of Zobah
700 horsemen, the chronicler was wrong when he said the number was 7000.
If the chronicler was correct in saying that Jehoiachim was only eight
when he ascended the throne, his brother chronicler was in error when he
declared that he was eighteen.  If Jesus was the son of Joseph and Joseph
a descendant of David, then Jesus was of the lineage of David; but if he
was the son of quite another line he was not of the line of David.  If
the writer of the book of Kings was right in saying that no vessels of
gold and silver were made of the money collected in the temple by
Jehoash, the writer of the book of Chronicles could not be correct in
saying that all sorts of gold and silver vessels were made therefrom.  If
Matthew was right in saying that the soldiers arrayed Jesus in a “scarlet
robe,” Mark and John were wrong in pronouncing it to be a “purple
garment;” and if Jesus said to Peter, before the cock crow thou shalt
deny me thrice, he did not say before the cock crow _twice_ thou shalt
deny me thrice.  If the writers were eye and ear witnesses, and if the
guiding Spirit of God brought to their remembrance what Jesus said and
did, such discrepancies could not have occurred.

These contradictions, and their number is legion, are not the shades of
variety, the verbal differences of independent writers of truth, they are
irreconcilable statements, one of which must be wrong, and if both claim
to be guided by the Spirit of Infallible Truth, their claim cannot be
allowed.  It cannot be true that 22 is 42 and 7000 the same as 600; but
give up inspiration and place the Bible on the same platform as any other
ancient record, then everyone is at liberty to weigh its statements and
to hold fast just so much as is consistent with the advanced knowledge of
science, the general scope of experience, and the harmony of history.

                                * * * * *




SUBJECTS OF TWELVE OF THE SERIES.


No. 1.—“On the Identity of the Vital and Cosmical Principle.”  By R.
LEWINS, M.D., Staff Surgeon-Major to Her Majesty’s Forces.
No. 2.—“The Physical Theory of Animal Life.”  A Review by JULIAN.
No. 3.—“The Nature of Man Identical with that of other Animals.”  By
JULIAN.
No. 4.—BIOLOGY _versus_ THEOLOGY; or “Christ and the Christian Idea,
viewed from a Biological standpoint.”  By JULIAN.
No. 5.—BIOLOGY _versus_ THEOLOGY; or “The Mosaic and Christian Ideas
wholly without Originality.”  By JULIAN.
No. 6.—BIOLOGY _versus_ THEOLOGY; or “Life on the Basis of Hylozoism.”
By JULIAN.
No. 7.—BIOLOGY _versus_ THEOLOGY; or “Identity of the Vital and Cosmical
Principle, according to DR. LEWINS.”  By JULIAN.
No. 8.—BIOLOGY _versus_ THEOLOGY—“The Mission of Moses,” from the German
of Schiller.  Annotated by JULIAN.
No. 9.—BIOLOGY _versus_ THEOLOGY—“Christ not divine nor his death
vicarious.”  By JULIAN.
No. 10.—BIOLOGY _versus_ THEOLOGY—“The Curé Meslier and his Will,” from
the German of Strauss, with Preliminary Remarks by JULIAN.
No. 11.—BIOLOGY _versus_ THEOLOGY—“The Bible irreconcilable with science,
experience, and even its own statements.”  By JULIAN.
No. 12.—BIOLOGY _versus_ THEOLOGY.—“The Dinner of the Count de
Boulainvilliers from Voltaire,” with an Introduction by JULIAN (_in the
press_).




FOOTNOTES.


{3}  _Lay Sermons and Reviews_.  This paper, “On the Origin of Species,”
was originally published in the “Westminster Review,” of April, 1860.

{14a}  Job xxxviii., 8.

{14b}  “On the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God as manifested in the
creation of animals, and in their history, habits, and instincts,” by the
Rev. William Kirby, M.A., F.R.S., rector of Barham.

{15}  The common Hebrew cubit was about 22 inches.  The “royal cubit” was
three inches longer.  The Roman cubit was 18 inches.

{19}  See Dr. Davidson’s _Introduction to the New Testament_.  Baur,
Zeller, Hilgenfeld, &c., take the same view.  See also “Biology _versus_
Theology,” No. I.

{20a}  It is obvious that the Book of the Kings, whether of Judah or
Israel, is not the record called the first and second Book of Kings in
our Bible, for it is not unfrequently referred to in the Chronicles, for
“the rest of the acts” of certain kings, but the account in our Books of
Kings, in some cases at any rate, is far more meagre than that of the
Chronicles.  To give one example: 2 Chron. xxvii., 7, refers us for a
more detailed account to the book of the “Kings of Israel and Judah,” but
the record given in 2 Kings, xv., 36–38, is far less ample than that of
the Chronicler.  It is no less certain that the book called “The
Chronicles of the Kings of Israel” cannot be our books of Chronicles,
inasmuch as they wholly omit the Kings of Israel, and speak only of the
Kings of Judah.

{20b}  Perhaps this expression may mean “the general scope of his
preaching,” and not a book.  It may go for what it is worth, and can in
no wise affect the question at issue.

{22}  Take two examples of this etymology.  HEBREW is supposed to be
derived from Heber, sou of Salah, great-grandson of Shem, who is called
“the father of all the children of Heber” (Gen. x., 21–24); but Abraham,
the 6th remove from Heber, is called a Hebrew after he crossed over into
Canaan (Gen. xiv., 13).  The more probable derivation of the word is
_heber_ (an emigrant, one that has crossed over); if so, Abraham was
called a _hebrew_ because he was a sojourner who had crossed over into
the “land of promise.”

Again, CANAAN is said to have been so called from Canaan son of Ham, and
Canaan’s eldest son was, according to the same authority, Sidon, founder
of the Sidonians, and his other sons were founders of the Hittites,
Jebusites, Amorites, Girgasites, Hivites, Arkites, Sinites, Arvadites,
Zemarites, and Hamathites (Gen. x., 15–18).

All this is most improbable, although in keeping with the practice of
ancient chroniclers.  Modern historians find more probable derivations in
some local peculiarity or suggestive characteristic.  Thus Argos, in
Greece, is mythically derived from Argos, its 4th king; but Strabo tells
us the word means _a plain_.  Devonshire is not a corruption of Debon’s
share or lot (_Faery Queen_ ii., 10), but of the Saxon _defn-afon_ (deep
water).  Similarly Canaan means _low lands_, as opposed to “Aram” (the
highlands), and being suited to commerce from its nearness to the coast,
the word in time became a general term for “a trader.”

{23}  Arphaxad was born “two years after the flood” [Gen. xi., 10]; at
the age of 35 he had a son, Salah [v., 12], in thirty more years Salah
had his son Eber, and before Pelez was born, which was 34 years later,
the Dispersion had taken place.

{24}  It may be safely asserted that population, when unchecked,
increases in a geometrical progression of such a nature as to double
itself every 25 years.—_Encyclopædia Britannica_, vol. xviii., p. 3, col.
Practically, such an instance is rare, if not wholly uninstanced.  Take
the increase of England and Wales as an example.  In 1377 it was
2,092,978, in 1483 it was 4,689,000; in the 100 years, ending with 1800,
the population had increased from 5,475,000 to 8,675,000; and in the
century ending with 1860 it increased nearly threefold, the largest
increase we have experienced.  [In 1760 it was 6,736,000, in 1861 it was
20,062,725.]

{26a}  The average size of an ox in the herd is 60 stone (of 8 lbs.), and
of a sheep six stone.  When the Armistice of 28 days was lately proposed,
the supply of Paris for the time was estimated at 34,000 oxen, 8,000
sheep, 8,000 swine, 5,000 calves, 100,000 cwt. of salt meat, eight
million cwt. of hay and straw, 200,000 cwt. of meal, and 30,000 cwt. of
dried vegetables.  For the cooking of food, the estimate was 100,000 tons
of coals, and 14 million square feet of wood.

{26b}  The absurdity of such an increase as even the “small” supposition
of doubling every twenty years will be obvious to any one who will take
the trouble of working out the figures for 440 years, which would bring
us to the reign of David.  At the Exodus the number was three millions;
if they doubled every twenty years the people in the little kingdom of
David would have been twelve and a half trillion!!  And if the increase
of the book of Exodus is taken as the standard the numbers must be
increased a hundred-fold.  Now the whole population of the world is
somewhat more than 1,000 _millions_, so that in a space not so large as
Yorkshire, and three-fourths wilderness, would be gathered together more
than all the inmates of all the world twelve thousand times over.

{27a}  The nominal limits of “the promised land” were the Euphrates and
Mediterranean Sea on the east and west, the “entrance of Hamath” and
“river of Egypt” on the north and south, giving a surface of 60,000
square miles; but Sidonia and Philistia on the west, the land of the
Moabites and Ammonites on the east never belonged to the kingdom of
David, the real extent of which was about 45 miles broad and 100 miles
long.  Yorkshire is 90 by 130, the principality of Wales 65 by 150; so
that the entire kingdom of David in its greatest extent was considerably
smaller than Yorkshire or Wales, and only one quarter of it was
inhabited, the rest being desert or wilderness.

{27b}  Take Prussia.  Every Prussian is liable to be called into military
service as soon as he attains his 20th year, and after he has completed
his 27th year he enters the Landwehr.  Suppose war is proclaimed, then
every layman in Prussia between 20 and 27 is liable to be called into the
ranks, and would constitute a standing army of 200,000 strong; by adding
the Landwehr of the first call, 100,000 more would be supplied; and by
enrolling all who have not rendered their full service to the state, the
entire amount would be increased to 600,000.  How absurd, therefore, to
speak of double the number of soldiers in such a petty nation as Judah or
Israel!  The entire population of Yorkshire is less than two millions, of
Wales not equal to “David’s army;” yet the entire kingdom of David was
smaller than either, and more than three-fourths of it was uninhabited!!

{31}  Our national debt is not half a quarter of this sum, being somewhat
less than 800 millions sterling.  Suppose an English historian had told
us that a king of wealthy England had laid by money enough to pay off the
national debt eight times, what would be thought of the statement?  But
suppose we had been told that one of the kings of Wales or of Northumbria
had saved all this money for a church, would the most credulous believe
it?  France finds it no easy matter to raise 200 millions, and all Europe
would be puzzled to find the money _instanter_, but the king of a little
territory considerably smaller than Belgium managed to raise that sum
thirty-five times over.

{36}  Ahaziah was also called Jehoahaz and Azariah.

{44}  See Virgil, _Geor._ i., 184, 185; _Æneid_, iv., 402–406; Horace,
_Satires_, bk. i., _s._ i., 33 &c.

{53}  See No.  IX. of this Series.

{54}  Ut apud Persas _Arsaces_, apud Romanos _Cæsar_, apud Egyptios
_Pharao_, ita apud Judæos _Christus_ communi nomine rex appellatur.  _Ps.
Clem. Recog._ i., 45, p. 497.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 64500 ***