The Project Gutenberg eBook, Biology versus Theology. The Bible: irreconcilable with Science, Experience, and even its own statements, by Julian This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: Biology versus Theology. The Bible: irreconcilable with Science, Experience, and even its own statements Author: Julian Release Date: February 8, 2021 [eBook #64500] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIOLOGY VERSUS THEOLOGY. THE BIBLE: IRRECONCILABLE WITH SCIENCE, EXPERIENCE, AND EVEN ITS OWN STATEMENTS***
Transcribed from the 1871 George P. Bacon edition by David Price.
[No 11.
BIOLOGY VERSUS THEOLOGY.
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.
PAGE. |
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Introduction |
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Part I.—Scripture irreconcilable with Science. |
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(1) The Mosaic Cosmogony |
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(2) The Fall |
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(3) The Flood |
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Part II.—Scripture irreconcilable with Human Experience. |
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(Miracles) |
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(1) Pre-historic Man |
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(2) Increase of Man |
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(3) Armies of the Jews, and numbers slain in battle |
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(4) Incredible Statements |
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Part III.—The Bible irreconcilable with Itself. |
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(a) Historic Errors |
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(b) Erroneous Figures |
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(c) Misstatements |
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Part III.—Second Division.—Scripture contradicts Scripture. |
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Contradictory Texts |
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Conclusion |
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“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 p. 4orthodoxy 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.
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 p. 6the 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, p. 7no 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 p. 8on 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 p. 9likeness 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, p. 10the 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 p. 11future 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.
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 p. 12which 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.
p. 13Again, 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.
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.
p. 14We 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 p. 15and 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 p. 16period 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.
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 p. 17sea 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.
p. 18But 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 p. 19or 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 p. 20canonical 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 p. 21are 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.
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 p. 22still 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 p. 23human 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]
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 p. 25256 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 p. 26taskmasters, 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]
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 p. 27the 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 p. 28counties 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.
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.”
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.
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.
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 (!).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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).
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 p. 31sterling 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.
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.
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, p. 32where 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.”
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.
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.
The writer is speaking of Judas, who returned the money casting it down before the priests. This money was used for p. 33the 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.)
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.”
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.)
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.
Here the writer says that twenty-nine cities towards the coast of Edom were awarded to the tribe of Judah, and he p. 34gives 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.
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.)
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.
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.
One would have thought that no diversity could possibly exist respecting David, the favourite king; but what is the p. 35fact? 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.)
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.
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.
p. 36What 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.
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.
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 p. 37was 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.
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, p. 38“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 p. 39to 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.
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?
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 p. 40for 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.
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.]
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.
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.
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.
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],
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.
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.”
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.
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 p. 43many, from Adam to John, talked to them familiarly, and they have lived.
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.
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].
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.
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 p. 44Red Sea to Spain, and certainly Jehoshaphat would not have chosen that harbour for building ships for the Mediterranean.
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.
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.”
p. 45Here, 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.
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.
In the former part of this division numerous examples have been brought together to prove that the scope of Scripture p. 46in 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. The direction given by God to Noah was—“Of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark . . . they shall be male and [its] female; of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee to keep them alive.” Nothing can be more explicit. It 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. vii., 2. This plain, positive direction is altered in the very next chapter, and a distinction is made between clean and unclean animals: “Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female.” Seven pairs (or 14 animals) is a very wide deviation from the direction, two only of every sort shall be taken into the ark to keep them alive. |
Gen. xlvi., 27; Deut. x., 22. In the books of Moses we are more than once told that all the souls of the house of Jacob which came into Egypt were “three score and ten.” |
Acts, vii., 14. By what authority does the martyr Stephen increase this positive assertion by the addition of five more? saying “all the kindred [of 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. |
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The Amalekites burnt Ziklag, and drove off the women as captives. Three days afterwards David and “his men” came to the place and saw the calamity which had befallen it. David consulted the ephod, and was told to pursue the “rovers,” for he should not only overtake them, but should recover all that they had taken captive. “So David went, he and the six hundred men that were with him, and came to the brook Besor.” Here David left behind 200 of the men, and with the remaining 400 overtook the spoilers, and extirpated them, for “he smote them from the twilight even unto the evening of the next day, and there escaped not a man of them, save 400 who fled on camels.” |
1 Chron., xii., 20–22. How is this transaction recorded by the chronicler? When David reached Ziklag, eight captains “of thousands” came to him, and helped him against the Amalekite raiders, and so many men flocked to his standard to help him, that his army was “a great host, like the host of God.” Certainly it seems very improbable that 400 men should be able to extirpate the whole army of the Amalekites which must have been pretty numerous, seeing 400 men mounted on camels managed to escape; but these 400 are spoken of as mere ciphers, for David and his men slew all the whole army, except these [few] young men who were on camels. |
2 Sam., ii., 10. Ishbosheth, the rival king of David, is said to have reigned two years; and during these two years, David reigned over Judah only. |
2 Sam., ii., 11. In the very next verse we are informed that David reigned seven years and a half over Judah only, during all which time Ishbosheth reigned over the rest of the tribes. |
2 Sam., viii., 4, 5. David, says the writer of this book, took from Hadadezer, (?) King of Zobah, 1,000 chariots, and seven hundred horsemen, and 22,000 footmen. |
1 Chron., xviii., 4. In the corresponding passage recorded in the book of Chronicles, we are told that the number of horsemen was not 700, but seven thousand. The name of the king is here called Hadarezer. |
2 Sam., x., 6, 18. Hadarezer hired 33,000 Syrians to oppose David; but David came against the allied army and “slew seven hundred chariots of the Syrians, and forty thousand horsemen.” |
1 Chron., xix., 18. In the book of Chronicles David is said to have slain seven thousand men, which fought in chariots, and forty thousand footmen. |
|
The “fighting men” at the close of David’s reign are stated in the book of Samuel to have been 1,300,000 (!); of these 800,000 were of Israel, and 500,000 of Judah. |
1 Chron., xxi., 5. In the book of Chronicles the number of fighting men is even more astounding. It is given as 1,570,000; of which 1,100,000 belonged to Israel, and 470,000 to Judah. |
2 Sam., xxiv., 13. When David numbered the people, a choice of three evils was given him. According to Samuel, the evils were: seven years of famine, three months pursuit by his enemies, or three days’ pestilence. |
1 Chron., xxi., 12. According to Chronicles, the choice was: three years of famine, and not seven. |
2 Sam., xxiv., 24. In the book of Samuel, David is said to have given to Araunah for the threshing-floor fifty shekels of silver [£5 13s. 6d.]. |
Chron., xxi., 25. In the book of Chronicles, he is said to have given for it 600 shekels of gold [£547 10s.]. |
1 Kgs., vii., 26. According to the book of Kings, Solomon’s brazen laver held 2,000 baths [15,000 gallons]. |
2 Chron., iv., 5. According to the book of Chronicles, it held 3,000 baths [about 22,500 gallons]. |
2 Kgs., viii., 26. The writer of the book of Kings tells us that Ahaziah was 22 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned one year. |
2 Chron., xxii., 2. We are here informed that Ahaziah was 42 when he began to reign, and not 22. Both agree in the length of his reign. |
2 Kgs., xiv., 7. In the book of Kings, Amaziah is said to have slain 10,000 Edomites in the Valley of Salt. |
2 Chron., xxv., 11–12. In the book of Chronicles he is said to have slain twice that 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. The author of the book of Kings tells us that “Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and [he] reigned in Jerusalem three months.” |
2 Chron., xxxvi., 9. The author of the book of Chronicles says that “Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem.” |
|
David, we are here told, bequeathed to Solomon for the temple the fabulous sum of 100,000 talents of gold, and a million talents of silver. In English money this would be seven thousand million sterling (say 7,000,000,000!). |
1 Chron., xxix., 4. In this chapter the bequest is stated to have been only 3,000 talents of gold, and 7,000 of silver. This would amount to £166,650,000 English money. A good round sum for a petty state not bigger than Yorkshire, but still considerably reduced from that given in the previous record. |
2 Chron. iii., 15. According to the chronicler the height of the two pillars made by Solomon for the temple was 35 cubits in the shaft, on which was a chapiter of five cubits. Altogether about 80 feet!! |
Jeremiah lii., 21, 22. Jeremiah tells us the shaft of each was only 18 cubits high. He agrees in the height of the chapiter (five cubits). According to Jeremiah the entire height was about 40 feet, or half that of the chronicler. |
Jeremiah lii., 28–30. The “prophet” informs us that the total number of captives taken from Judah to Babylon was only 4,600. A modest number enough, compared with the number of fighting men, which averaged 300,000, according to the Bible historians. |
Ezra ii., 64. Ezra states that of the captives taken to Babylon only 42,360 were willing to return. All the rest preferred to remain where they were. No doubt Ezra would give us to understand that more remained in Babylon than went up 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. Here we read “After six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John, and bringeth them up into a high mountain . . . and was transfigured before them.” |
Luke ix., 28. Luke says “About an eight days after . . . he took Peter, John, and James, and went up into a mountain, and was transfigured.” |
Mark vi., 40. Mark says of the 5000 who were fed with five barley loaves and two fishes: “They sat down in ranks, by hundreds and by fifties.” |
Luke ix., 14. Luke says that Jesus directed his disciples “to make them sit down by fifties in a company.” |
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 p. 50accuracy. 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.
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.
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.
“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 p. 51spoken; it held the sceptre 460 years, and it departed from Judah 580 years before Shiloh came.
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.
Saul is called “a choice young man and a goodly,” yet had he at the time a son in man’s estate.
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.)
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 p. 52the king, who had even tried to kill him, and yet neither Saul nor Abner had ever seen him or known his name.
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.)
“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.
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.
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.”
p. 53Not 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.
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 p. 54Obed 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.
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 p. 62Jehoash, 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.
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).
[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.
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