 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Steve Brown. The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, Part 2, Section 5 Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than Moses. If this account be true, here is an order to butcher the boys to massacre the mothers and debauch the daughters. Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers, one child murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in the hands of an executioner. Let any daughter put herself in the situation of those daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a mother and a brother, and what will be their feelings. It is in vain that we attempt to impose upon nature, for nature will have her course, and the religion that tortures all her social ties is a false religion. After this detestable order follows an account of the plunder taken, and the manner of dividing it, and here it is that the profaneness of priestly hypocrisy increases the catalog of crimes. Verse 37-40 In short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many other parts of the Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read, or for decency to hear. For it appears from the 35th verse of this chapter that the number of women children consigned to debauchery by the order of Moses was 32,000. People in general do not know what wickedness there is in this pretended word of God, brought up in habits of superstition. They take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good. They permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens, it is quite another thing. It is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy. For what can be greater blasphemy than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty? But to return to my subject, that of showing that Moses is not the author of the books ascribed to him, and that the Bible is spurious. The two instances I have already given would be sufficient, without any additional evidence. To invalidate the authenticity of any book that pretended to be four or five hundred years more ancient than the matters it speaks of, or refers to as facts. For in the case of pursuing them unto Dan, and of the kings that reigned over the children of Israel, not even the flimsy pretense of prophecy can be pleaded. The expressions are in the preter tense, and it would be downright idiotism to say that a man could prophecy in the preter tense. But there are many other passages scattered throughout those books that unite in the same point of evidence. It is said in Exodus, another of the books ascribed to Moses, chapter 16, verse 34. And the children of Israel did eat manna forty years until they came to a land inhabited. They did eat manna until they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan. Whether the children of Israel ate manna or not, or what manna was, or whether it was anything more than a kind of fungus or small mushroom, or other vegetable substance common to that part of the country makes nothing to my argument. All that I mean to show is that it is not Moses that could write this account, because the account extends itself beyond the life and time of Moses. Moses, according to the Bible, but it is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe, or whether any. Died in the wilderness and never came upon the borders of the land of Canaan, and consequently it could not be he that said what the children of Israel did, or what they ate when they came there. This account of eating manna, which they tell us was written by Moses, extends itself to the time of Joshua, the successor of Moses, as appears by the account given in the book of Joshua. After the children of Israel had passed the river Jordan and came unto the borders of the land of Canaan, Joshua chapter 5 verse 12, and the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land. Neither had the children of Israel manna any more, but they did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year. But a more remarkable instance than this occurs in Deuteronomy, which, while it shows that Moses could not be the writer of that book, shows also the fabulous notions that prevailed at that time about giants. In the third chapter of Deuteronomy, among the conquests said to be made by Moses, is an account of the taking of Ag, king of Bashan, verse 2. For only Ag, king of Bashan, remained of the remnant of giants. Behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron. Is it not in rabbith of the children of a mom? Nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man. A cubit is one foot nine, eight hundred and eighty eight, to one thousandths inch. The length therefore of the bed was sixteen feet four inches, and the breadth seven feet four inches. Thus much for this giant's bed, now for the historical part, which, though the evidence is not so direct and positive as in the former cases, it is nevertheless very presumable and corroborating evidence, and is better that the best evidence on the contrary side. The writer, by way of proving the existence of this giant, refers to his bed as an ancient relic, and says, Is it not in rabbith, or rabah, of the children of a mom? Meaning that it is, for such is frequently the Bible method of our affirming, I think. But it could not be Moses that said this, because Moses could know nothing about rabah, or of what was in it. Rabah was not a city belonging to this giant king, nor was it one of the cities that Moses took. The knowledge, therefore, that this bed was at rabah, and of the particulars of its dimensions, must be referred to the time when rabah was taken, and this was not till four hundred years after the death of Moses, for which see 2 Samuel chapter 12 verse 26. And Joab, David's general, fought against rabah of the children of Amman, and took the royal city. As I am not undertaking to point out all the contradictions in time, place, and circumstance that abound in the books ascribed to Moses, and which prove to a demonstration that those books could not be written by Moses, nor in the time of Moses, I proceed to the book of Joshua, and to show that Joshua is not the author of that book, and that it is anonymous and without authority. The evidence I shall produce is contained in the book itself. I will not go out of the Bible for proof against the supposed authenticity of the Bible. False testimony is always good against itself. Joshua, according to the first chapter of Joshua, was the immediate successor of Moses. He was, moreover, a military man, which Moses was not, and he continued as chief of the people of Israel 25 years. That is, from the time that Moses died, which, according to the Bible chronology, was 1,451 years before Christ, until 1,426 years before Christ, when, according to the same chronology, Joshua died. If, therefore, we find in this book said to have been written by Joshua references to facts done after the death of Joshua, it is evidence that Joshua could not have been the author, and also that the book could not have been written till after the time of the latest fact which it records. As to the character of the book, it is horrid. It is a military history of repine and murder, as savage and brutal as those recorded of his predecessor in villainy and hypocrisy, Moses. And the blasphemy consists, as in the form of books, in ascribing those deeds to the orders of the Almighty. In the first place, the book of Joshua, as is the case in the preceding books, is written in the third person. It is the historian of Joshua that speaks, for it would have been absurd and vanglorious that Joshua should say of himself, as is said of him in the last verse of the sixth chapter, that his fame was noised throughout all the country. I now come more immediately to the proof. In the 24th chapter, verse 31, it is said, In Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that overlived Joshua. Now, in the name of common sense, can it be Joshua that relates what people had done after he was dead? This account must not only have been written by some historian that lived after Joshua, but that lived also after the elders that outlived Joshua. There are several passages of a general meaning with respect to time scattered throughout the book of Joshua, that carries the time in which the book was written to a distance from the time of Joshua, but without marking by exclusion any particular time, as in the passage above quoted. In that passage, the time that intervened between the death of Joshua and the death of the elders is excluded descriptively and absolutely, and the evidence substantiates that the book could not have been written until after the death of the last. But though the passages to which I allude, in which I am going to quote, do not designate any particular time by exclusion, they imply a time far more distant from the days of Joshua, than is contained between the death of Joshua and the death of the elders, such as the passage chapter 10 verse 14, where after giving an account that the sun stood still upon Gibeon and the moon in the valley of Ajalan at the command of Joshua, a tale only fit to amuse children, the passage says, and there was no day like that, before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man. This tale of the sun standing still upon Mount Gibeon and the moon in the valley of Ajalan is one of those fables that detects itself, such a circumstance could not have happened without being known all over the world. One half would have wondered why the sun did not rise and the other why it did not set, and the tradition of it would be universal, whereas there is not a nation in the world that knows anything about it. But why must the moon stand still? What occasion could there be for moonlight in the daytime and that too while the sun shone? As a poetical figure, the whole is well enough. It is akin to that in the song of Deborah and Barak. The stars in their courses fought against Cicera, but it is inferior to the figurative declaration of Muhammad to the persons who came to expostulate with him on his goings-on. Weren't thou, said he, to come to me with the sun in thy right hand and the moon in thy left, it should not alter my career. For Joshua to have exceeded Muhammad, he should have put the sun and moon one in each pocket and carried them as Guy Faux carried his dark lantern and taken them out to shine as he might happen to want them. The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again. The account, however, abstracted from the poetical fancy shows the ignorance of Joshua, for he should have commanded the earth to have stood still. End of section 5. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine. Part 2, section 6. Recording by Steve Brown. The time implied by the expression after it, that is, after that day, being put in comparison with all the time that passed before it, must, in order to give any expressive signification to the passage, mean a great length of time. For example, it would have been ridiculous to have said so the next day, or the next week, or the next month, or the next year, to give, therefore, meaning to the passage, comparative with the wonder it relates and the prior time it alludes to, it must mean centuries of years, less, however, than one would be trifling, and less than two would be barely admissible. A distant but general time is also expressed in the 8th chapter where, after giving an account of the taking of the city of I, it is said, verse 28. And Joshua burned I, and that made it a heap forever, even a desolation unto this day. And again, verse 29, where, speaking of the king of I, whom Joshua had just hanged and buried at the entering of the gate, it is said, and he raised thereon a great heap of stones, which remaineth unto this day. That is, unto the day or time in which the writer of the book of Joshua had lived. And again, in the 10th chapter where, after speaking of the five kings whom Joshua had hanged on five trees, and then thrown in the cave, it is said, and he laid great stones on the cave's mouth, which remain unto this very day. In enumerating the several exploits of Joshua and of the tribes, and of the places which they conquered or attempted, it is said, chapter 15, verse 63. As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out, but the Jebusites dwelt with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day. The question upon this passage is, at what time did the Jebusites and the children of Judah dwell together at Jerusalem? As this matter occurs again in the first chapter of Judges, I shall reserve my observations until I come to that part. Having thus shown from the book of Joshua itself without any auxiliary evidence whatever, that Joshua is not the author of that book and that it is anonymous, and consequently without authority, I proceed as before mentioned to the book of Judges. The book of Judges is anonymous on the face of it, and therefore even the pretense is wanting to call it the word of God. It has not so much as a nominal voucher, it is altogether fatherless. This book begins with the same expression as the book of Joshua. That of Joshua begins chapter 1 verse 1 now after the death of Moses, etc. and this of the Judges begins now after the death of Joshua, etc. This and the similarity of style between the two books indicate that they are the work of the same author, but who he was is altogether unknown. The only point that the book proves is that the author lived long after the time of Joshua. For though it begins as if it followed immediately after his death, the second chapter is an epitome or abstract of the whole book which according to the Bible chronology extends its history through a space of 306 years, that is from the death of Joshua, 1426 years before Christ, to the death of Samson, 1120 years before Christ, and only 20 years before Saul went to seek his father's asses and was made king. But there is good reason to believe that it was not written till the time of David, at least, and that the book of Joshua was not written before the same time. In the first chapter of Judges, the writer, after announcing the death of Joshua, proceeds to tell what happened between the children of Judah and the native inhabitants of the land of Canaan. In this statement, the writer, having abruptly mentioned Jerusalem in the seventh verse, says immediately after, in the eighth verse, by way of explanation, now the children of Judah had fought against Jerusalem and had taken it. Consequently, this book could not have been written before Jerusalem had been taken. The reader will recollect the quotation I have just before made from the fifteenth chapter of Joshua, verse 63, where it is said that the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah had Jerusalem unto this day, meaning the time when the book of Joshua was written. The evidence I have already produced to prove that the books I have hitherto treated of were not written by the persons to whom they are ascribed, nor till many years after their death if such persons ever lived is already so abundant that I can afford this passage with less weight than I am entitled to draw from it. For the case is that so far as the Bible can be credited as a history, the city of Jerusalem was not taken till the time of David, and consequently, that the books of Joshua and of Judges were not written till after the commencement of the reign of David, which was 307 years after the death of Joshua. The name of the city that was afterward called Jerusalem was originally Jebus or Jebusai and was the capital of the Jebusites. The account of David's taking this city is given in 2 Samuel, chapter 5, verse 4, etc. also in 1 Chronicles, chapter 14, verse 4, etc. There is no mention in any part of the Bible that it was ever taken before, nor any account that favors such an opinion. It is not said, either in Samuel or in Chronicles, that they utterly destroyed men, women and children, that they left not a soul to breathe, as is said of their other conquests. And the silence here observed implies that it was taken by capitulation and that the Jebusites, the native inhabitants, continued to live in the place after it was taken. The account, therefore, given in Joshua, that the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem until this day, corresponds to no other time than after the taking of the city by David. Having now shown that every book in the Bible, from Genesis to Judges, is without authenticity, I come to the book of Ruth, an idle, bungling story, foolishly told, nobody knows by whom, about a strolling country girl creeping slyly to bed with her cousin Boaz. Pretty stuff, indeed, to be called the Word of God. It is, however, one of the best books in the Bible, for it is free from murder and repine. I come next to the two books of Samuel and to show that those books were not written by Samuel, nor till a great length of time after the death of Samuel and that they are, like all the former books, anonymous and without authority. To be convinced that these books have been written much later and consequently not by him, it is only necessary to read the account which the writer gives of Saul going to seek his father's asses and of his interview with Samuel, of whom Saul went to inquire about those lost asses as foolish people nowadays go to a conjurer to inquire after lost things. The writer in relating this story of Saul, Samuel and the asses does not tell it as a thing that has just then happened, but as an ancient story in the time this writer lived, for he tells it in the language or terms used at the time that Samuel lived, which obliges the writer to explain the story in the terms or language used in the time the writer lived. Samuel, in the account given of him, is called the seer and it is by this term that Saul inquires after him, verse two. And as they, Saul and his servant went up the hill to the city, they found young maidens going out to draw water and they said unto them, is the seer here? Saul then went according to the direction of these maidens and met Samuel without knowing him and said unto him, verse 18, tell me I pray thee where the seer's house is? And Samuel answered Saul and said, I am the seer. As the writer of the book of Samuel relates these questions and answers in the language or manner of speaking used in the time they are said to have been spoken and speaking was out of use when this author wrote. He found it necessary in order to make the story understood to explain the terms in which these questions and answers are spoken and he does this in the ninth verse when he says, before time in Israel when a man went to inquire of God thus he spake, come and let us go to the seer time called a seer. This proves as I have before said that this story of Saul Samuel and the asses was an ancient story at the time of the book of Samuel was written and consequently that Samuel did not write it and that that book is without authenticity but if we go further into those books the evidence is still more positive there were late things that did not happen till several years after the death of Samuel Samuel died before Saul for the first Samuel chapter 28 tells that Saul and the witch of Endor conjured Samuel up after he was dead yet the history of the matters contained in those books is extended through the remaining part of Saul's life at the end of the life of David who succeeded Saul the account of the death and burial of Samuel a thing which he could not write himself is related in chapter 25 of the first book of Samuel and the chronology affixed to this chapter makes this to be 1060 years before Christ yet the history of this first book is brought down 6 years before Christ that is to the death of Saul which is not till 4 years after the death of Samuel the second book of Samuel begins with an account of things that did not happen until 4 years after Samuel was dead for it begins with the reign of David who succeeded Saul and it goes on to the end of David's reign which was 43 years before the death of Saul I have now gone through all the books in the first part of the Bible to which the names of persons are affixed as being the authors of those books and which the church styling itself the Christian church has imposed upon the world as the writings of Moses Joshua and Samuel and I have detected improved the falsehood of this imposition And now ye priests of every description who have preached and written against the former part of the age of reason, what have ye to say? Will ye, with all this mass of evidence against you and staring you in the face, still have the assurance to march into your pulpits and continue to impose these books on your congregations as the works of inspired penman and the word of God when it is as evident as demonstration can make truth appear that the persons who ye say are the authors are not the authors and that ye know not who the authors are. What shadow of pretence have ye now to produce for continuing the blasphemous fraud would have ye still to offer against the pure and moral religion of deism in support of your system of falsehood, idolatry, and pretendent revelation? Had the cruel and murdering orders with which the Bible is filled and the numberless torturing executions of men, women, and children in consequence of those orders been ascribed to some friend whose memory you revered, you would have glowed with satisfaction at detecting the falsehood of the charge and gloried in defending his injured fame. It is because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition or feel no interest in the honor of your Creator that ye listen to the horrid tales of the Bible or hear them with callous indifference. The evidence I have produced and shall still produce in the course of this work to prove that the Bible is without authority will, whilst it wounds the stubbornness of a priest, relieve and tranquilize the minds of millions. It will free them from all those hard thoughts of the Almighty which priestcraft and the Bible had infused into their minds and which stood an everlasting opposition to all their ideas of his moral justice and benevolence. I come now to the two books of kings and the two books of chronicles. Those books are altogether historical and are chiefly confined to the lives and actions of the Jewish kings, who in general were a parcel of rascals, but these are matters with which we have no more concern than we have with the Roman emperors or Homer's account of the Trojan War. Besides which, as those books are anonymous and as we know nothing of the writer or of his character, it is impossible for us to know what degree of credit to give to the matters related therein. Like all other ancient histories, they appear to be a jumble of fable and of fact and of probable and of improbable things, but which distance of time and place and change of circumstances in the world have rendered obsolete and uninteresting. The chief use I shall make of those books will be that of comparing them with each other and with other parts of the Bible to show the confusion, contradiction and cruelty in this pretended word of God. The first book of kings begins with the reign of Solomon, which according to the Bible chronology was 1,015 years before Christ and the second book ends 588 years before Christ being a little after the reign of Zedekiah, whom Nebuchadnezzar, after taking Jerusalem and conquering the Jews, carried captive to Babylon. The two books include a space of 427 years. The two books of chronicles are a history of the same times and in general of the same persons by another author, for it would be absurd to suppose that the same author wrote the history twice over. The first book of chronicles, after giving the genealogy from Adam to Saul, which takes up the first nine chapters, begins with the reign of David and the last book ends as in the last book of kings, soon after the reign of Zedekiah about 588 years before Christ. The last two verses of the last chapter bring the history 52 years more forward, that is, to 536. But these verses do not belong to the book as I shall show when I come to speak of the book of Ezra. The two books of kings besides the history of Saul, David and Solomon, who reigned over all Israel, contain an abstract of the lives of 17 kings and one queen who are styled kings of Judah and of 19 who are styled kings of Israel. For the Jewish nation immediately on the death of Solomon split into two parties who chose separate kings and who carried on the most rancorous wars against each other. Those two books are little more than a history of assassinations, treachery and wars. The cruelties that the Jews had accustomed themselves to practice on the Canaanites, whose country they had savagely invaded under a pretended gift from God, they afterwards practiced as furiously on each other. Scarcely half their kings died a natural death and in some instances whole families were destroyed to secure possession to the successor who after a few years and sometimes only a few months or less shared the same fate. In the 10th chapter of the second book of kings an account is given of two baskets full of children's heads, 70 in number, being exposed at the entrance of the city. They were the children of Ahab and were murdered by the order of Jehu whom Elisha, the pretended man of God, had anointed to be king over Israel on purpose to commit this bloody deed and assassinate his predecessor. And in the account of the reign of Mennahem, one of the kings of Israel who had murdered Shalom, who had reigned but one month, it is said, two kings, chapter 15 verse 16, that Mennahem smote the city of Tipsha because they opened not the city to him and all the women therein that were with child he ripped up. End of section six. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Steve Brown. The Age of Reason by Thomas Payne, part two, section seven. Could we permit ourselves to suppose that the Almighty would distinguish any nation of people by the name of his chosen people? We must suppose that people to have been an example to all the rest of the world of the purest piety and humility and not such a nation of ruffians and cutthroats as the ancient Jews were, a people who corrupted by and copying after such monsters and imposters as Moses and Aaron, Joshua, Samuel, and David had distinguished themselves above all others on the face of the known earth for barbarity and wickedness. If we will not stubbornly shut our eyes and steal our hearts, it is impossible not to see, in spite of all that long-established superstition imposes upon the mind, that the flattering appellation of his chosen people is no other than a lie which the priests and leaders of the Jews had invented to cover the baseness of their own characters and which Christian priests, sometimes as corrupt and often as cruel, have professed to believe. The two books of Chronicles are a repetition of the same crimes, but the history is broken in several places by the author leaving out the reign of some of their kings and in this as well as in that of kings. There is such a frequent transition from kings of Judah to kings of Israel and from kings of Israel to kings of Judah that the narrative is obscure in the reading. In the same book the history sometimes contradicts itself. For example in the second book of Kings chapter 1 verse 17 we are told but rather in ambiguous terms that after the death of Ahaziah king of Israel Jehoram or Joram who was of the house of Ahab reigned in his stead in the second year of Jehoram or Jorah son of Jehoshaphat king of Judah and in chapter 8 verse 16 of the same book it is said and in the fifth year of Joram the son of Ahab king of Israel Jehoshaphat being then king of Judah Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat king of Judah began to reign. That is one chapter says Joram of Judah began to reign in the second year of Joram of Israel and the other chapter says that Joram of Israel began to reign in the fifth year of Joram of Judah. Several of the most extraordinary matters related in one history as having happened during the reign of such and such of their kings are not to be found in the other in relating the reign of the same king. For example the two first rival kings after the death of Solomon were Rehoboam or Jeoroboam and in one kings chapter 12 and 13 an account is given of Jeoroboam making an offering of burnt incense and that a man who was there called a man of God cried out against the altar chapter 13 verse 2 oh altar altar thus saith the Lord behold a child shall be born in the house of David hosiah by the name and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee and men's bones shall be burnt upon thee verse four and it came to pass when King Jeoroboam heard the saying of the man of God which had cried against the altar in Bethel that he put forth his hand from the altar saying lay hold on him and his hand which he put out against him dried up so that he could not pull it in again to him one would think that such an extraordinary case as this which is spoken of as a judgment happening to the chief of one of the parties and that of the first moment of the separation of the Israelites into two nations would if it had been true have been recorded in both histories but though men in latter times have believed all that the prophets have said unto him it does not appear that these prophets or historians believed each other they knew each other too well a long account also is given in Kings about Elijah it runs through several chapters and concludes with telling two Kings chapter 2 verse 11 and it come to pass as they Elijah and Alicia went on and talked that behold there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire imparted them both asunder and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into the heaven hum this the author of chronicles miraculous as the story is makes no mention of though he mentions Elijah by name neither does he say anything of the story related in the second chapter of the same book of Kings of a parcel of children calling Alicia bald head bald head and that this man of God verse 24 turned back and looked on them and cursed them in the name of the Lord and there came forth two she bears out of the wood and tore forty and two children of them he also passes over in silence the story told two Kings chapter 13 that when they were burying a man in the sepulchre where Alicia had been buried it happened that the dead man as they were letting him down verse 21 touched the bones of Alicia and he the dead man revived instead upon his feet the story does not tell us whether they buried the man not withstanding he revived instead upon his feet or drew him up again upon all these stories the writer of chronicles is as silent as any writer of the present day who did not choose to be accused of lying or at least of romancing would be about stories of the same kind but however these two historians may differ from each other with respect to the tales related by either they are silent alike with respect to those men styled prophets whose writings fill up the latter part of the bible Isaiah who lived in the time of Hezekiah is mentioning kings and again in chronicles when these historians are speaking of that reign but except in one or two instances at most and those very slightly none of the rest are so much as spoken of or even their existence hinted at although according to the bible chronology they lived within the time those histories were written some of their long before if those prophets as they are called were men of such importance in their day as the compilers of the bible and priests and commentators have since represented them to be how can it be accounted for that not one of these histories should say anything about them the history in the books of kings and of chronicles is brought forward as i have already said to the year 588 before christ it will therefore be proper to examine which of these prophets live before that period here follows a table of all the prophets with the times in which they lived before christ according to the chronology affixed to the first chapter of each of the books of the prophets and also of the number of years they lived before the books of kings and chronicles were written here is shown the table of the prophets with the names of the prophet in the first column the time in which they lived before christ years before christ being the second column and also before the books of kings years before kings and chronicles the third column and observations being the fourth column isaia 760 years 172 years mentioned Jeremiah 629 years 41 years mentioned only in the last two chapters of chronicles Ezekiel 595 years 7 years not mentioned Daniel 607 years 19 years not mentioned Hosea 785 years 97 years not mentioned Joel 800 years 212 years not mentioned Amos 787 years 199 years not mentioned Jonah 862 years 274 years see footnote Micah 750 years 162 years not mentioned Nahum 713 years 125 years not mentioned Habakkuk 620 years 38 years not mentioned Zephaniah 630 years 42 years not mentioned Haggai Zechariah Malichi Obadiah after the year 588 this table is either not very honorable for the bible historians or not very honorable for the bible prophets and I leave to priests and commentators who are very learned in little things to settle the point of etiquette between the two and to assign a reason why the authors of kings and chronicles have treated those prophets whom in the former part of the age of reason I have considered as poets with as much degrading silence as any historian of the present day would treat Peter pinder footnote in two kings chapter 24 verse 25 the name of Jonah is mentioned on account of the restoration of a tract of land by Jeroboam but nothing further is said of him nor is any illusion made to the book of Jonah nor to his expedition to Nineveh nor to his encounter with the whale and footnote end of section 7 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Steve Brown the age of reason part 2 section 8 I have one observation more to make on the book of chronicles after which I shall pass on to review the remaining books of the bible in my observations on the book of Genesis I have quoted a passage from the 36th chapter verse 31 which evidently refers to a time after kings began to reign over the children of Israel and I have shown that as this verse is verbatim the same as in chronicles chapter 1 verse 43 where it stands consistently with the order of history which in Genesis it does not that the verse in Genesis and a great part of the 36th chapter have been taken from chronicles and that the book of Genesis though it is placed first in the bible and described to Moses has been manufactured by some unknown person after the book of chronicles was written which was not until at least 860 years after the time of Moses the evidence I proceed by to substantiate this is regular and has in it but two stages first as I have already stated that the passage in Genesis refers itself for time to chronicles secondly that the book of chronicles to which this passage refers itself was not begun to be written until at least 860 years after the time of Moses to prove this we have only to look into the 13th verse of the third chapter of the first book of chronicles where the writer in giving the genealogy of the descendants of David mentions Zedekiah and it was in the time of Zedekiah that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem 588 years before Christ and consequently more than 860 years after Moses those who have surreptitiously boasted of the antiquity of the bible and particularly of the book described to Moses have done it without examination and without any authority than that of one credulous man telling it to another for so far as historical and chronological evidence applies the very first book in the bible is not so ancient as the book of Homer by more than 300 years and is about the same age with Esop's fables I am not contending for the morality of Homer on the contrary I think a book of false glory tending to inspire immoral and mischievous notions of honor and with respect to Esop though the moral is in general just the fable is often cruel and the cruelty of the fable does more injury to the heart especially in a child than the moral does good to the judgment having now dismissed kings and chronicles I come to the next in course the book of Ezra as one proof among others I shall produce to show the disorder in which this pretended word of God the bible has been put together and the uncertainty of who the authors were we have only to look at the three first verses in Ezra and the last two in chronicles for by what kind of cutting and shuffling has it been that the three first verses in Ezra should be the two last verses in chronicles or that the two last in chronicles should be the first three in Ezra hither the authors did not know their own works or the compilers did not know the authors the last verse in chronicles is broken abruptly and in the middle of the phrase with the word up without signifying to a place this abrupt break and the appearance of the same verses in different books show as I have already said the disorder and ignorance in which the bible has been put together and that the compilers of it had no authority for what they were doing nor we any authority for believing what they have done see footnote two last verses of chronicles verse 22 now in the first year of Cyrus king of persia that the word of the lord spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished the lord stirred up the spirit of cyrus king of persia that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and put it also in writing saying 23 thus saith cyrus king of persia all the kingdoms of the earth hath the lord god of heaven given me and he hath charged me to build him and house in jerusalem which is in judah who is there among you of all his people the lord his god be with him and let him go up three first verses of Ezra verse one now in the first year of cyrus king of persia that the word of the lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled the lord stirred up the spirit of cyrus king of persia that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and put it also in writing saying two thus saith cyrus king of persia the lord god of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of earth and he hath charged me to build him and house at jerusalem which is in judah three who is there among you of all his people his god be with him and let him go up to jerusalem which is in judah and build the house of the lord god of israel he is the god which is in jerusalem the only thing that has any appearance of certainty in the book of Ezra is the time in which it was written which was immediately after the return of the jews from the Babylonian captivity about 536 years before christ Ezra who according to the jewish commentators is the same person as is called ezdras in the apocrypha was one of the persons who returned and who it is probable wrote the account of that affair Nehemiah whose book follows next to Ezra was another of the returned persons and who it is also probable wrote the account of the same affair in the book that bears his name but these accounts are nothing to us nor to any other persons unless it be to the jews as a part of the history of their nation and there is just as much of the word of god in those books as there is in any of the histories of france or rapids history of england or the history of any other country but even in matters of historic record neither of those writers are to be depended upon in the second chapter of Ezra the writer gives a list of tribes and families and of the precise number of souls of each that returned from Babylon to Jerusalem and this enrollment of the persons so returned appears to have been one of the principal objects for writing the book but in this there is an error that destroys the intention of the undertaking the writer begins his enrollment in the following manner chapter two verse three the children of parosh two thousand and the hundred seventy and two verse four the children of sheffataya three hundred seventy and two and in this manner he proceeds through all the families and in the sixty fourth verse he makes a total and says the whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and three score but whoever will take the trouble of casting up the several particulars will find that the total is but twenty nine thousand eight hundred and eighteen so that the error is twelve thousand five hundred and forty two see footnote certainly then can there be in the bible for anything nehemiah in like manner gives a list of the returned families and of the number of each family he begins as an Ezra by saying chapter seven verse eight the children of parosh two thousand a hundred seven and two and so on through all the families the list differs in several of the particulars from that of Ezra in this sixty sixth verse nehemiah makes a total and says as Ezra had said the whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and three score but the particulars of this list makes a total of but thirty one thousand eighty nine so that the error here is eleven thousand two hundred seventy one these writers may do well enough for bible makers but not for anything or truth in exactness is necessary the next booking course is the book of esther if madam esther thought it any honor to offer herself as a captain mistress to ahasuras or as a rival to queen vashti who had refused to come to a drunken king in the midst of a drunken company to be made a show of for the account says they had been drinking seven days and or mary let esther and mordecai look to that it is no business of ours at least it is none of mine besides which the story has a great deal the appearance of being fabulous and is also anonymous i pass on to the book of job the book of job differs in character from all the books we have hitherto passed over treachery and murder make no part of this book it is the meditations of a mind strongly impressed with the vicissitudes of human life and by turns sinking under and struggling against the pressure it is a highly wrought composition between willing submission and involuntary discontent and shows man as he sometimes is more disposed to be resigned than he is capable of being patience has but a small share in the character of the person of whom the book treats on the contrary his grief is often impetuous but he still endeavors to keep a guard upon it and seems determined in the midst of accumulating ills to impose upon himself the hard duty of contentment i have spoken in a respectful manner of the book of job in the former part of the age of reason but without knowing at that time what i have learned since which is that from all the evidence that can be collected the book of job does not belong to the bible i have seen the opinion of two hebrew commentators ebanesra and spinoza upon this subject they both say that the book of job carries no internal evidence of being a hebrew book that the genius of the composition and the drama of the piece are not hebrew that it has been translated from another language into hebrew and that the author of the book was a Gentile that the character represented under the name of satan which is the first and only time this name is mentioned in the bible does not correspond to any hebrew idea and that the two convocations which the deity is supposed to have made of those whom the poem calls sons of god and the familiarity which this supposed satan is stated to have with the deity are in the same case it may also be observed that the book shows itself to be the production of a mind cultivated in science which the jews so far from being famous for were very ignorant of the illusions to objects of natural philosophy are frequent and strong and are of a different cast to anything in the books known to be hebrew the astronomical names the 80s orion and arcturus are greek and not hebrew names and it does not appear from anything that it is to be found in the bible that the jews knew anything of astronomy or that they studied it they had no translation of those names into their own language but adopted the names as they found them in the poem that the jews did translate the literary productions of the gentile nations into the hebrew language and mixed them with their own is not a matter of doubt the 31st chapter of proverbs is an evidence of this it is there said chapter five verse one the words of king lemuel the prophecy that his mother taught him this first stands as a preface to the proverbs that follow in which are not the proverbs of solemn but of lemuel and this lemuel was not one of the kings of israel nor of juda but of some other country and consequently a gentile the jews however have adopted his proverbs and as they cannot give any account who the author of the book of joe was nor how they came by the book and as it differs in character from the hebrew writings and stands totally unconnected with every other book and chapter in the bible before it and after it it has all the circumstantial evidence of being originally a bible of the gentiles see footnote footnote one i observed as i passed along several broken and senseless passages in the bible without thinking them of consequence enough to be introduced in the body of the work such as that samuel one chapter 13 verse one where it is said saul reigned over one year and when he had reigned two years over israel saul chose him 3000 men etc the first part of verse that saul reigned one year has no sense since it does not tell us what saul did nor say anything of what happened at the end of that one year and it is besides mere absurdity to say he reigned one year when the very next phrase says he had reigned two if he had reigned two it was impossible not to have reigned one another instance occurs in joshua chapter five where the writer tells the story of an angel for such the table of contents at the head of the chapter calls him appearing into joshua and the story ends abruptly and without any conclusion the story is as follows verse 13 and it came to pass when joshua was by jericho that he lifted up his eyes and looked and behold there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand and joshua went unto him and said unto him are thou for us or for our adversaries verse 14 and he said nay but as captain of the hosts of the lord i am now come and joshua fell on his face to the earth and did worship and said unto him what sayeth my lord unto his servant verse 15 and the captain of the lord's host said unto joshua loose thy shoe from off thy foot for the place whereon thou standeth is holy and joshua did so and what then nothing for here the story ends and the chapter two either the story is broken off in the middle or it is a story told by some jewish humorist in ridicule of joshua's pretended mission from god and the compilers of the bible not perceiving the design of the story have told it as a serious matter as a story of humor and ridicule and it has a great deal of point for it pompously introduces an angel in the figure of a man with a drawn sword in his hand before whom joshua falls on his face to the earth and worships which is contrary to their second commandment and then this most important embassy from heaven ends in telling joshua to pull off his shoe it might as well have told him to pull up his britches it is certain however that the jews did not credit everything their leaders told them as appears from the cavalier manner in which they speak of moses when he was gone into the mount as for this moses they say we want not what has become of him exod chapter 32 verse 1 end of footnote footnote 2 particulars of the families from the second chapter of esra chapter 2 verse 3 2172 verse 4 372 verse 5 775 verse 6 2812 verse 7 1254 verse 8 945 verse 9 760 verse 10 642 verse 11 623 verse 12 1222 verse 13 666 brought forward 12243 verse 14 2056 verse 15 454 verse 16 98 verse 17 323 verse 18 112 verse 19 223 verse 20 95 verse 21 123 verse 22 56 verse 23 128 verse 24 42 brought forward 15958 verse 25 743 verse 26 621 verse 27 122 verse 28 223 verse 29 52 verse 30 156 verse 31 1254 verse 32 320 verse 33 725 verse 34 345 verse 35 36 30 brought forward 24144 verse 36 973 verse 37 1052 verse 38 1247 verse 39 1017 verse 40 74 verse 41 128 verse 42 139 verse 53 392 verse 60 652 total 29 818 end footnote footnote 3 the prayer known by the name of agar's prayer in the 30th chapter of Proverbs immediately preceding the Proverbs of Lemuel in which is the only sensible well-conceived and well-expressed prayer in the Bible has much the appearance of being a prayer taken from the Gentiles the name of agar occurs on no other occasion than this and he is introduced together with the prayer ascribed to him in the same manner and nearly in the same words that Lemuel and his Proverbs are introduced in the chapter that follows the first verse of the 30th chapter says the words of agar the son of jacka even the prophecy here the word prophecy is used in the same application it has in the following chapter of lemuel unconnected with anything of prediction the prayer of agar is in the 8th and 9th verses remove far from me vanity and lies give me neither poverty nor riches feed me with food convenient for me lest I be full and deny thee and say who is the Lord or lest I be poor and steal and take the name of my God in vain this is not any of the marks of being a Jewish prayer for the Jews never prayed but when they were in trouble and never for anything but victory vengeance and riches and footnote end of section 8 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Steve Brown the age of reason by Thomas Payne part 2 section 9 the Bible makers in those regulators of time the chronologists appear to have been at a loss where to place and how to dispose of the book of Job for it contains no one historical circumstance nor illusion to any that might determine its place in the Bible but it would not have answered the purpose of these men to have informed the world of their ignorance and therefore they have affixed it to the era of 1520 years before Christ which is during the time the Israelites were in Egypt and for which they have just as much authority and no more than I should have for saying it was a thousand years before that period the probability however is that it is older than any book in the Bible and it is the only one that can be read without indignation or disgust we know nothing of what the ancient Gentile world as it is called was before the time of the Jews whose practice has been to culminate and blacken the character of all other nations and it is from the Jewish accounts that we have learned to call them heathens but as far as we know to the contrary they were a just and moral people and not addicted like the Jews to cruelty and revenge but of whose profession of faith we are unacquainted it appears to have been their custom to personify both virtue and vice by statues and images as is done nowadays both by statuary and by painting but it does not follow from this that they worship them any more than we do I pass on to the book of Psalms of which it is not necessary to make much observation some of them are moral and others are very revengeable and the greater part relates to certain local circumstances of the Jewish nation at the time they were written with which we have nothing to do it is however an error or an imposition to call them the Psalms of David they are a collection as song books are nowadays from different songwriters who lived at different times the 137th Psalm could not have been written till more than 400 years after the time of David because it was written in commemoration of an event the captivity of the Jews in Babylon which did not happen till that distance of time by the rivers of Babylon we sat down yay we wept when we remembered Zion he hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof for there that they carried us away captive required of us a song saying sing us one of the songs of Zion as a man would say to an American or to a Frenchman or to an Englishman sing us one of your American songs or of your French songs or of your English songs this remark with respect to the time this Psalm was written is of no other use than to show among others already mentioned the general imposition the world has been under in respect to the authors of the bible no regard has been paid to time place in circumstance and the names of persons have been affixed to the several books which it was as impossible they should write as that a man should walk in procession at his own funeral the book of Proverbs these like the Psalms are a collection and that from authors belonging to other nations than those of the Jewish nation as I have shown in the observations upon the book of Job besides which some of the Proverbs ascribed Solomon did not appear till 250 years after the death of Solomon for it is said in the first verse of the 25th chapter these are also Proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied out it was 250 years from the time of Solomon to the time of Hezekiah when a man is famous and his name is abroad he is made the putative father of things he never said or did and this most probably has been the case with Solomon it appears to have been the fashion of that day to make Proverbs as it is now to make just books and father them upon those who never saw them the book of Ecclesiastes or the preacher is also ascribed to Solomon and that with much reason if not with truth it is written as the solitary reflections of a worn out debauchy such as Solomon was who looking back on scenes he can no longer enjoy cries out all his vanity a great deal of the metaphor end of the sentiment is obscure most probably by translation but enough is left to show that they were strongly pointed in the original seafoot note from what is transmitted to us of the character of Solomon he was witty ostentatious dissolute and at last melancholy he lived fast and died tired of the world at the age of 58 years 700 wives and 300 concubines are worse than none and however it may carry with it the appearance of heightened enjoyment it defeats all the felicity of affection by leaving it no point to fix upon divided love is never happy this was the case with Solomon and if he could not with all of his pretensions to wisdom discover it beforehand he merited unpeddied the modification he afterward endured in this point of view his preaching is unnecessary because to know the consequences it is only necessary to know the cause 700 wives and 300 concubines would have stood in place of the whole book it was needless after this to say that all was vanity and vexation of spirit for it is impossible to derive happiness from the company of those who we deprive of happiness to be happy in old age it is necessary that we accustom ourselves to objects that can accompany the mind all the way through life and that we take the rest as good in their day the mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age and the mere drudge in business is but little better whereas natural philosophy mathematical and mechanical science are a continual source of tranquil pleasure and in spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests and superstition the study of these things is the true theology it teaches man to know and to admire the creator for the principles of science are in the creation and are unchangeable and of divine origin those who knew benjamin franklin will recollect that his mind was ever young his temper ever serene science that never grows gray was always his mistress he was never without an object for when we cease to have an object we become like an invalid in a hospital waiting for death salamence songs are amorous and foolish enough but which wrinkled fanaticism has called divine the compilers of the bible have placed these songs after the book of ecclesiasties and the chronologists have affixed to them the era of 1014 years before christ at which time salamon according to the same chronology was 19 years of age and was then forming his surroglio of wise and concubines the bible makers and the chronologists should have managed this matter a little better and either have said nothing about the time or chosen a time less and consistent with the supposed divinity of those songs for salamon was then in the honeymoon of 1000 debaucheries it should also have occurred to them that as he wrote if he did write the book of ecclesiasties long after these songs and in which he exclaims that all his vanity and vexation of spirit that he included those songs in that description this is the more probable because he says or somebody for him ecclesiasties chapter 2 verse 8 i got any men singers and women singers most probably to sing those songs as musical instruments and that of all sorts and behold verse 2 all was vanity and vexation of spirit the compilers however have done their work but by halves for as they have given us the songs they should have given us the tunes that we might sing them the books called the books of the prophets fill up all the remaining parts of the bible they are 16 in number beginning with isaia and ending with malachi of which i have given you a list in my observations upon chronicles of these 16 prophets all of whom except the three last lived within the time the books of kings and chronicles were written two only isaia and jeremiah are mentioned in the history of those books i should begin with those two reserving what i have to say on the general character of the men called prophets to another part of the work whoever will take the trouble of reading the book ascribed to isaia will find it one of the most wild and disorderly compositions ever put together it has neither beginning middle nor end and except a short historical part and a few sketches of history in two or three of the first chapters is one continued incoherent bombastical rant full of extravagant metaphor without application and destitute of meaning a schoolboy would scarcely have been excusable for writing such stuff it is at least in the translation that kind of composition and false taste that is properly called pros run mad the historical part begins at the 36th chapter and is continued to the end of the 39th chapter it relates to some matters that are said to have passed during the reign of hezekiah king of juda at which time isaia lived this fragment of history begins and ends abruptly it has not the least connection with the chapter that precedes it nor with that which follows it nor with any other in the book it is probable that isaia wrote this fragment himself because he was an actor in the circumstances it treats of but except this part there are scarcely two chapters that have any connection with each other one is entitled at the beginning of the first verse the burden of Babylon another the burden of Moab another the burden of Damascus another the burden of Egypt another the burden of the desert of the sea another the burden of the valley of vision see footnote as you would say the story of the night of the burning mountain the story of Cinderella or the children in the wood etc etc footnote one those that look out of the window shall be darkened is an obscure figure in translation for loss of sight end of footnote footnote two see beginning of chapters 13 15 17 19 21 and 22 and footnote end of section nine this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Steve Brown the age of reason by Thomas Payne part 2 section 10 I have already shown in the instance of the two last verses of Chronicles and the three first in Ezra that the compilers of the Bible mixed and confounded the writings of different authors with each other which alone where there are no other cause is sufficient to destroy the authenticity of any compilation because it is more than presumptive evidence that the compilers were ignorant who the authors were a very glaring instance of this occurs in the book ascribed to Isaiah the latter part of the 44th chapter and the beginning of the 45th so far from having been written by Isaiah could only have been written by some person who lived at least 150 years after Isaiah was dead these chapters are a compliment to Cyrus who permitted the Jews to return to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple as is stated in Ezra the last verse of the 44th chapter and the beginning of the 45th are in the following words that sayeth of Cyrus he is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasure even saying to Jerusalem thou shalt be built and to the temple thy foundation shall be laid thus sayeth the Lord to his anointed to Cyrus whose right hand I have holding to subdue nations before him and I will loose the loins of kings to open before him the two-leaved gates and the gates shall not be shut I will go before thee etc what audacity of church and priestly ignorance it is to impose this book upon the world as the writing of Isaiah when Isaiah according to their own chronology died soon after the death of Hezekiah which was 693 years before Christ and the degree of Cyrus in favor of the Jews returning to Jerusalem was according to the same chronology 536 years before Christ which is a distance of time between the two of 162 years I do not suppose that the compilers of the Bible made these books but rather that they picked up some loose anonymous essays and put them together under the names of such authors as best suited their purpose they have encouraged the imposition which is next to inventing it for it was impossible that they must have observed it when we see the studied craft of the scripture makers in making every part of this romantic book of schoolboys eloquence bend to the monstrous idea of a son of God begotten by a ghost on the body of a virgin there is no imposition we are not justified in suspecting in them of every phrase and circumstance is marked with the barbarous hand of superstitious torture and forced into meanings it was impossible they could have the head of every chapter and the top of every page are emblazoned with the names of Christ and the church that the unwary reader might suck in the air before he began to read behold a version shall conceive and bury son Isaiah chapter 7 verse 14 has been interpreted to mean the person called Jesus Christ and his mother Mary and has been echoed through Christendom for more than a thousand years and such has been the rage of this opinion that scarcely a spot in it but has been stained with blood and marked with desolation in consequence of it though it is not my intention to enter into controversy on subjects of this kind but to confine myself to show that the Bible is spurious and thus by taking away the foundation to overthrow at once the whole structure of superstition raised thereon I will however stop a moment to expose the fallacious application of this passage whether Isaiah was playing a trick with a haas king of Judah to whom this passage is spoken is no business of mine I mean only to show the misapplication of the passage and that it has no more reference to Christ and his mother than it has to me and my mother the story is simply this the king of Syria and the king of Israel I have already mentioned that the Jews were split into two nations one of which was called Judah the capital of which was Jerusalem and the other Israel made war jointly against a haas king of Judah and marched their armies toward Jerusalem a haas and his people became alarmed and the account says verse two and his heart was moved and the heart of his people as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind in this situation of things Isaiah addresses himself to a haas and assures him in the name of the lord the cant phrase of all the prophets that these two kings should not succeed against him and to satisfy a haas that this should be the case tells him to ask a sign this the account says a haas declined doing giving as a reason that he would not tempt the lord upon which Isaiah who is the speaker says verse 14 therefore the lord himself shall give you a sign behold a virgin shall conceive and bury sun and the sixth thing first says for before this child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good the land that thou abhorrest or dreadest meaning Syria and the kingdom of Israel shall be forsaken of both her kings here then was the sign and the time limited for the completion of the assurance or promise namely before this child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good Isaiah having committed himself thus far it became necessary to him in order to avoid the imputation of being a false prophet and the consequence thereof to take measures to make this sign appear it certainly was not a difficult thing in any time of the world to find a girl with child or to make her so and perhaps Isaiah knew of one beforehand for I do not suppose that the prophets of that day were any more to be trusted than the priests of this be that however as it may he says in the next chapter verse 2 and I took unto me faithful witnesses to record Uriah the priest and Zechariah the son of Jebarakia and I went unto the prophetess and she conceived and bury sun here then is the whole story foolish as it is of this child and this version and it is upon the barefaced perversion of this story that the book of Matthew and the impudence and sordid interests of priests in later times have founded a theory which they call the gospel and have applied this story to signify the person they call Jesus Christ begotten they say by a ghost whom they call holy and on the body of a woman engaged in marriage and afterward married whom they call a virgin 700 years after this foolish story was told a theory which speaking for myself I hesitate not to disbelieve and to say is as fabulous and as false as God is true see footnote in the 14th verse of the 7th chapter it is said that the child should be called Emmanuel but this name was not given to either of his children otherwise this name was not given to either of the children otherwise than as a character which the word signifies that of the prophetess was called Maharshalal Hasbaz and that of Mary was called Jesus and footnote but to show the imposition and false sort of Isaiah we have only to attend to the sequel of this story which though it is passed over in silence in the book of Isaiah is related in the 28th chapter of the second chronicles and which is that instead of these two kings failing in their attempt against Ahaz king of Judah as Isaiah had pretended to foretell in the name of the Lord they succeeded Ahaz was defeated and destroyed 120,000 of his people were slaughtered Jerusalem was plundered and 200,000 women and sons and daughters carried into captivity this much for this lying prophet and impostor Isaiah and the book of falsehoods that bears his name I pass on to the book of Jeremiah this prophet as he is called lived in the time that Nebuchadnezzar beseeched Jerusalem in the reign of Zedekiah the last king of Judah and the suspicion was strong against him that he was a traitor in the interests of Nebuchadnezzar everything related to Jeremiah shows him to have been a man of equivocal character in his metaphor of the potter and the clay chapter 18 he guards his prognostications in such a crafty manner as always to leave himself a door to escape by in case the event should be contrary to what he had predicted in the seventh and eighth verses of that chapter he makes the Almighty to say at what instance I shall speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom to pluck up and to pull down and destroy it if that nation against to my a pronounced turn from their evil I will repent of the evil that I thought to do into them here was a proviso against one side of the case now for the other side verses 9 and 10 and at what instance I shall speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom to build and to plant it if I do evil in my sight that it obey not my voice then I shall repent of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them here is a proviso against the other side and according to this plan of prophecy a prophet could never be wrong however mistaken the Almighty might be this sort of absurd subterview and its manner of speaking of the Almighty as one would speak of a man is consistent with nothing but the stupidity of the Bible as to the authenticity of the book it is only necessary to read it in order to decide positively that though some passages recorded therein may have been spoken by Jeremiah he is not the author of the book the historical parts if they can be called by that name are in the most confused condition the same events are several times repeated and that in a matter different and sometimes in contradiction to each other and this disorder runs even to the last chapter where the history upon which the greater part of the book has been employed begins anew and ends abruptly the book has all the appearance of being a medley of unconnected anecdotes respecting persons and things of that time collected together in the same rude manner as if the various and contradictory accounts that are to be found in a bundle of newspapers respecting persons and things of the present day were put together without date order or explanation i will give two or three examples of this kind it appears from the account of a 37th chapter that the army of Nebuchadnezzar which is called the army of the cultians had besieged Jerusalem sometime and on their hearing that the army of Pharaoh of Egypt was marching against them they raised the siege and retreated for a time it may here be proper to mention in order to understand this confused history that Nebuchadnezzar had besieged and taken Jerusalem during the reign of Jehocham the predecessor of Jedokhaya and that it was Nebuchadnezzar who had made Jedokhaya king or rather viceroy and that this second siege of which the book of Jeremiah treats was inconsequenced of the revolt of Jedokhaya against Nebuchadnezzar this will in some measure account for the suspicion that affixes to Jeremiah of being a traitor and in the interest of Nebuchadnezzar whom Jeremiah calls in the 43rd chapter verse 10 of the servant of God end of section 10 this is the LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Steve Brown the age of reason by Thomas Paine part 2 section 11 the 11th verse of this chapter the 37th says and it came to pass that when the army of the cultians was broken up from Jerusalem the fear of Pharaoh's army that Jeremiah went forth out of Jerusalem to go as this account states into the land of Benjamin to separate himself thence in the midst of the people and when he was in the gate of Benjamin a captain of the ward was there whose name was Eriah the son of Shalamaya the son of Anania and he took Jeremiah the prophet saying thou fallest away to the cultians then said Jeremiah it is false I fall not away to the cultians Jeremiah being thus stopped and accused was after being examined committed to prison on suspicion of being a traitor where he remained as is stated in the last verse of this chapter but the next chapter gives an account of the imprisonment of Jeremiah which has no connection with this account but ascribes his imprisonment to another circumstance and for which we must go back to the 21st chapter it is there stated verse one that Zedekiah sent Pashur the son of Melchia and Zephaniah the son of Isaiah the priest to Jeremiah to inquire of him concerning Nebuchadnezzar whose army was then before Jerusalem and Jeremiah said unto them verse eight and nine thus sayeth the Lord behold I said before you the way of life and the way of death he that abideth in this city shall die by the sword and by the famine and by the pestilence but he that goeth out and falleth to the cultians that beseech you he shall live and his life shall be unto him for a pray this interview and conference breaks off abruptly at the end of the tenth verse of the 21st chapter and such is the disorder of this book that we have to pass over 16 chapters upon various subjects in order to come at the continuation and event of this conference and this brings us to the first verse of the 38th chapter as I have just mentioned the 38th chapter opens with saying then Zepetiah the son of Matan Gedalia the son of Bashur and Jakul the son of Shalamaya and Bashur the son of Melchia here are more persons mentioned than in the 21st chapter heard the words that Jeremiah had spoken unto all the people saying thus sayeth the Lord he that remaineth in this city shall die by the sword by the famine and by the pestilence but he that goeth forth to the cultians shall live for he shall have his life for pray and shall live which are the words of the conference therefore they said to Zepetiah we beseech thee let us not put this man to death for thus he weakeneth the hands of the men of war that remain in this city and the hands of all the people in speaking such words unto them for this man seeketh not the welfare of the people but the hurt and at that sixth verse it is said then took they Jeremiah and cast him into the dungeon of Melchia these two accounts are different and contradictory the one ascribes his imprisonment to his attempt to escape out of the city the other to his preaching and prophesying in the city the one to his being seized by the guard at the gate the other to his being accused before Zedekiah by the conferees footnote I observed two chapters 16th and 17th in the first book of Samuel that contradict each other with respect to David and the manner he became acquainted with Saul as the 37th and 38th chapters of the book of Jeremiah contradicts each other with respect to the cause of Jeremiah's imprisonment in the 16th chapter of Samuel it is said that an evil spirit of God troubled Saul and that his servants advised him as a remedy to seek out a man who was a cunning player upon the harp and Saul said for 17 provide me now a man that can play well and bring him to me then answered one of the servants and said behold I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite that is cunning in playing and a mighty