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+Project Gutenberg's How the Bible was Invented, by M. M. Mangasarian
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: How the Bible was Invented
+       A Lecture Delivered Before the Independent Religious Society
+
+Author: M. M. Mangasarian
+
+Release Date: July 5, 2011 [EBook #36627]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW THE BIBLE WAS INVENTED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Not to Undeceive is to Deceive"
+
+How the Bible Was Invented
+
+A Lecture Delivered
+Before the Independent
+Religious Society
+Orchestra Hall
+Chicago, Illinois
+Sunday at 11 A. M.
+
+[Illustration: Logo]
+
+Tenth Edition
+
+By
+M. M. MANGASARIAN
+
+
+
+
+How the Bible Was Invented
+
+
+Many good people believe that the Bible was given by inspiration of God.
+The wording of my subject suggests that it is the work of men, and not
+always of honest men, either. Am I trying to offend people by intimating
+that the Bible was _invented_? On the contrary, I am exposing myself to
+criticism by telling these good people the truth about the Bible, which
+their own preachers, for some reason or other, have withheld from them.
+
+One of the texts in the Bible, attributed to Jesus, says that, It were
+better for a man to have a millstone tied about his neck, and he were
+cast into the sea, than that he should offend, that is to say, unsettle
+the faith of, "one of these little ones." According to this saying of
+Jesus, a man must keep his questionings and his doubts to himself. He
+shall not talk where he is liable to upset the faith of some believing
+soul,--some aged mother, some Sunday-school lad or lassie. The man who
+will go about disturbing people's religious peace, deserves to be
+drowned with a millstone about his neck! What is your opinion of such a
+suggestion?
+
+
+If you approve of this sentiment, attributed to the founder of
+Christianity, then the work which we are doing here, every Sunday, is
+quite wicked; a millstone around our necks is what we deserve, and the
+bottom of the sea is where we belong.
+
+Psychologists tell us that there is great power in suggestion. With all
+my love and reverence for whatever is sweet and sane in the Gospels, I
+must protest against this text, because it is a suggestion to violence
+and persecution. If Jesus suggests a millstone for the neck of the
+heretic who upsets people's illusions and makes inquirers out of
+believers, and intimates further that drowning is too good for them, why
+not take the hint and act upon it? He expresses a wish, shall we not
+fulfill it? Alas, we know, too well, that in less enlightened ages, the
+suggestion of Jesus was not only carried out, but vastly improved
+upon--by the Spanish Inquisition, for instance.
+
+Let us be fair. When a man is accused, it is his privilege to defend
+himself. If Jesus suggests that the investigator who unsettles people's
+beliefs should be drowned, before the suggestion is acted upon, the
+disturber should be given a chance to be heard. Would that be asking too
+much? Let us see, then, just what it means to command a man to suppress
+whatever might disturb a neighbor's faith: It means that if I am
+announced to speak on the Bible, I must say nothing to which the weakest
+or the most credulous among my hearers might object. If I do, I shall
+deserve to be tied to a millstone and drowned! But let us turn this
+proposition about to see how it would work: Having discovered a truth,
+and yearning in my soul to express it, suppose I were to say, that if
+any man in this audience shall scare me into silence,--shall cheat me
+out of the joy and duty of imparting that truth to my world, by
+threatening to be offended, or to be unsettled by it,--he ought to have
+a millstone tied to his neck and be cast into the sea. How would that
+do?
+
+Again, an illustration, which I have used before, can with great aptness
+be repeated here: A woman is given a ring with a stone in it. Not being
+herself a _connaisseur_ of precious stones, she is easily made to
+believe that her jewel is the most costly in the world. This is told her
+in order to make her happy, and to fancy herself as the possessor of a
+gem of great value. Observe, now, how much it costs to keep up this
+deception. All her friends have to agree to say nothing that may
+unsettle her faith in her imitation jewel. Indeed, they must pretend not
+to know the difference between the genuine and the sham stone. To
+preserve this woman's illusion, they must prevaricate and even openly
+lie, if pressed to do so, lest the poor woman's eyes should open, or her
+faith in her jewel be lost. Is it fair to demand so great a sacrifice to
+prolong the fantasy of a foolish woman?
+
+Apply this illustration now to the Bible. Here are some people who have
+been told when they were young, that this book, which is placed in their
+hands, is a personal message to them from God. This makes the book,
+certainly, more precious than any jewel. God, the owner and disposer of
+everything, with his own hand has inscribed an epistle to them, and this
+is it! What joy! What a treasure! Now these people, not being students
+themselves, accepted implicitly what they were told by their teachers,
+just as the woman, not being an expert herself, took her jeweler's word
+about the value of the stone in her ring. In order not to offend this
+child-like faith in the Bible, word is sent out to everybody to hush.
+Hush! not a word! not a whisper!--Hush! hush! is the cry of all. To
+uphold this conspiracy of silence, arrangements are made to dictate what
+may and what may not be said in public. A preacher in praying or
+preaching might give away the secret,--he might inadvertently say
+something which may prick this pretty bubble of illusion. Hence, in the
+Catholic and Episcopal Churches, all the prayers are printed, and the
+preachers pray according to the book. Do you think the Church will let a
+man close his eyes and open his mouth and say whatever comes into his
+head? Indeed, not! He must pray by the book. In the protestant
+denominations there is the creed, to which you swear your allegiance
+before you can open your mouth in one of their churches, and the moment
+you are caught talking beyond what the creed allows, your ordination is
+taken from you and your mouth is shut. Dear me! all this regime is for
+the purpose of encouraging the conceit that man has been favored with a
+hand-written, personal message, from the Creator of the universe.
+
+If this were all, we, ourselves, would not take notice of it. But we,
+too, are compelled to join this conspiracy of silence and suppression,
+and to lie in the interests of the delicate believers whose faith cannot
+stand the least strain. Darwin must beware how he writes about the
+origin of species, or the descent of man. Some believer, hugging
+ecstatically his Bible to his bosom, might read his books and lose his
+blissful conceit. Do not think, do not invent, do not announce your
+truth, ye philosophers, scientists and reformers! without first
+consulting the prejudices of the "little ones" in the faith; for if you
+unsettle the faith of a single believer, it were better that you were
+weighted down into the sea by a millstone hanging about your necks. And
+you, whose love and genius give us our daily victory over disease and
+error,--whose thought is our daily bread and beauty,--you, too, must
+hush, you must become sterile, or be content to speak by rote, lest you
+should disturb the repose of the believer who has laid himself down to
+sleep. The theological babe must not be awakened. It will bawl and cry
+if aroused, and better than cause one of these babes to cry, let there
+be no intellectual life in the world!
+
+Our American author, Thoreau, was right when he said that, "The modern
+Christian is a man who has consented to say all the prayers in the
+liturgy, provided you will let him go straight to bed and sleep quietly
+afterward." That is to say, he does not wish to be disturbed. "All his
+prayers begin with," says Thoreau, "Now I lay me down to sleep."
+_Sleep_, seems to be his quest, intellectual as well as physical, "and
+he is forever looking forward to the time when he shall go to his
+'_long_ rest.'" He looks forward to a future of inactivity. All effort,
+especially intellectual effort, is distasteful to him, and is apt to
+offend and unsettle him. Hence the intellectual life must not be real;
+what must be real is the _sleep_.
+
+Those of you who support these lectures, as well as those of you who
+only hear them, know that our position is the very reverse of what Jesus
+and the Church recommend. We do not believe in persecution. We do not
+even suggest that anybody should be drowned; but if our human nature is
+so depraved that persecution and murder are inevitable, then, in our
+humble opinion, it will be more economical to drown the people who will
+not permit a Darwin to give his thought to the world, than to drown a
+Darwin. The man who is offended at freedom of speech, can be dispensed
+with more safely than the man who avails himself of this divine
+privilege. If my freedom of speech offends my neighbor, his fear of
+freedom is a greater offense to me. Which of us deserves most to be
+drowned?
+
+But in the next place the suggestion that people who rob their weaker
+fellows of their illusions should be drowned, even when it does not lead
+to persecution, is an encouragement to _hypocrisy_ and _imposture_, as
+the story of the composition of the Bible which will now be told, shows.
+
+You have to listen as closely as you can, if you do not wish to do me
+the injustice of misrepresenting me. I have traveled extensively in the
+Orient, and have conversed with and read the works of eminent scholars
+who have enjoyed a first-hand acquaintance with eastern people, and the
+unanimous testimony is that one of the besetting sins of Oriental races,
+is lying. It is not because the Asiatics are wickeder than European
+nations, for in other respects they are as good, if not better, than
+ourselves. The average of morality is perhaps about the same in all
+countries. But the notorious vice of all Asiatic peoples is lying. They
+lie with a freedom and a fluency,--with such plausibility and so
+straight a face,--that one can hardly distinguish their lie from their
+truth. Curious though it may seem, people who are given to lying are
+often the first to be deceived by their own lies. They
+
+
+     "Keep on till their own lies deceive them.
+     And oft' repeating, at length believed 'em."
+
+
+Now, then, I am going to look this audience in the face, and then I am
+going to say just this:
+
+_The Bible is an Oriental book._
+
+When, in reading the Bible, I find in it exaggeration, invention, and
+even unscrupulous misrepresentation, I am not astonished, because I know
+that it is an Oriental book. But the orthodox believer, in order to
+excuse or explain away, for instance, these violations of the law of
+veracity, resorts frequently to sophistry, subterfuge, and even, alas,
+to lies more unscrupulous than any found in the Bible. This is as sad as
+it is true. But to defend one lie, or to make it look like the truth,
+more lying becomes necessary.
+
+There are numerous instances of the Oriental practice of lying in the
+Bible. Abraham suppressed the truth about his wife, and declared she was
+his sister. Jacob deceived his father, Isaac, and made him believe he
+was Esau, and stole his blessing. The same patriarch deceived his
+father-in-law, and stole his gods. God himself instructs Samuel to tell
+a falsehood to Saul, to whom he is sent on a mission. "I will send them
+a lying spirit," threatens Jehovah, when he is out of temper. And, in
+the New Testament, the Apostle Paul is Oriental enough, though in many
+respects a great soul, to resort to "craft and guile," and to be "all
+things to all men," and even to lie for the glory of God. Aside from
+this being his own policy, he imagined that it was also the policy of
+God. "And for this cause," he says in his Epistle to the Thessalonians,
+"God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe in a
+lie." Reflect upon that. To send a delusion to people means to trip or
+trap them,--to catch them in a snare. People tell a falsehood, either to
+protect themselves, or to hurt others. God needed not to resort to this
+means to protect himself. Paul tells us he does this to hurt others.
+"God shall send them strong delusion, that they might believe a lie that
+_they all might be damned_." How could Paul, an exceptionally
+intelligent man, be guilty of such blasphemy? How could he so damage the
+character of the God he loved? My answer is that he was an Asiatic, and
+he did not look upon lying in the same light that Europeans do. The
+Asiatic conscience for veracity has never enjoyed a very high
+reputation. The Apostle Paul even boasts that, "being crafty, I caught
+you with guile."
+
+A very curious controversy took place some years ago, between Herbert
+Spencer and a religious Weekly. Quoting the words of Paul to the Romans,
+where he says, "For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my
+lie unto his glory, etc.," Spencer condemned Paul for this; the
+religious Weekly objected that Paul was only speaking ironically. And
+Mr. Spencer generously admitted that such a supposition was quite
+possible. We are ourselves willing to give Paul every opportunity to
+exonerate himself, and will not press the charge too vehemently against
+him. But whatever Paul may have meant in his argument with the Romans,
+what shall we say about his defense of "guile and craft," in his Epistle
+to the Thessalonians? And what about his general policy, to be all
+things to all men,--that is to say, to trim and compromise?
+
+Moreover, the practice of the Church during the early centuries,
+confirms the criticism of such representative writers as Mosheim,
+Ellicott, Warburton, Lecky, Gibbon, Jortin, Gieseler, and other equally
+reliable authorities, that "The pernicious maxim that those who make it
+their business to deceive with a view of promoting the cause of truth,
+were deserving rather of commendation than of censure."
+
+"History forces upon us," writes Bishop Ellicott, "the recognition of
+pious fraud as a principle which was by no means inoperative in the
+earliest ages of Christianity." It reflects credit upon this
+Bishop,--this European,--to admit that the early Christians cultivated
+the Oriental practice of "lying for the glory of God." Eusebius, the
+saint who invented Constantine's vision of the cross, boasted that "_he
+had written what redounded to the glory_ and suppressed whatever tended
+to the disgrace of religion."
+
+"No faith with the heretics," was the cry of the Christian church for
+centuries.
+
+My object in speaking of this is to show that even as our Oriental-born
+religion, brought over into Europe the germ of monasticism, religious
+intolerance, the practise of burning men and women alive,--absolutism in
+matters of faith, determining by authority of councils what shall and
+what shall not be the truth,--not one of which institutions previously
+existed in Europe; it also brought over, the Oriental practice of pious
+lying, and gave it a vogue which it had never before enjoyed in Europe.
+
+It is universally admitted that beside the four Gospels which the
+churches believe to be genuine, there were, in the early centuries,
+hundreds of Gospels which have been rejected as spurious. Pause for a
+moment, and think of what that means. Why were there so many lying
+Gospels? The very fact that our four Gospels were chosen from a pile of
+manuscripts, everyone of which claimed to be genuine, is a sad
+commentary upon the morality of the early churchmen. I trust you duly
+appreciate the significance of this. What was it that gave an impetus to
+the industry of imposture? How explain the vogue which lying for
+religion enjoyed after the conversion of the Roman Empire? Was it so
+profitable to manufacture Gospels that everybody tried his hand at it? I
+cannot get away from the tremendous fact that by the admission of the
+churches themselves, there were a great number of apocryphal Gospels
+thrown upon the religious market as soon as Christianity became well
+established in Europe. What made lying so popular and profitable all at
+once? If it is true, and it is, that our four Gospels had to be voted
+upon from among a heap of other manuscripts; and if it is true, as one
+Church father reports, that a great number of manuscripts were placed
+under a table, and that prayers were then offered to induce the genuine
+Gospels to jump upon the table, and that four of them did so, while the
+rest, failing to jump upon the table, were disowned; and if it is also
+true, and we know it is, that some of the Christian fathers claimed that
+only four Gospels could be genuine because the earth has four corners,
+and four winds. If all this is true--then, speaking as a student of
+history, whether it unsettles you or not, I am constrained to say that
+this Oriental religion, as soon as it set foot in Europe, lifted both
+superstition and lying to the dignity of a vocation.
+
+But when we come to the four Gospels themselves, pronounced to be
+canonical, do you know, my hearers, that there are upwards of 150,000
+different readings of these same Gospels? That is to say, the same
+passages read one way in one manuscript, and another, in another, while
+they may be absent altogether from a third, etc. In view of all these
+facts, reflect upon the intelligence of the man who, Sunday after
+Sunday, holds up the Gospels as the infallible word of God. He does so
+because he is speaking by the creed, to which he has sworn allegiance
+for the rest of his life. One hundred and fifty thousand various
+readings of the New Testament! And think of the centuries of bloodshed
+and controversy over these various readings!
+
+Open, if you please, your New Testaments and read the seventh verse of
+the fifth chapter of the first epistle of John, then look for the same
+verse in the Revised Version, and you will not find it there. After
+being regarded as the word of God for two thousand years, it has been
+expurgated. Today, according to one Bible (the King James Version), this
+passage is inspired; according to another Bible (the Revised Version),
+it is an imposture. Let me quote the text:
+
+
+      "For there are three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, the
+      Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one."
+
+
+What better proof of the Trinity do we need? On black and white, in the
+Bible, John, the Apostle, declares by the power of the Holy Ghost, that
+there are three in heaven, gives their names, and adds that these three
+are one.
+
+Some lying scribe, some crabbed sectarian, some unconscionable copyist,
+bribed by his party, must have invented this text, which, for twenty
+centuries, has been worshiped as the word of God. Wicked sceptics, two
+thousand years ago, denounced the clumsy imposture, but they were
+silenced by the halter and the sword. It has taken the Christian Church
+nearly two thousand years to discover that the sceptics were right. It
+has taken the church two thousand years of evolution in honesty and
+intelligence to throw out this spurious text. It has taken the church,
+claiming to be under the guidance of the Spirit of God, twenty hundred
+years in which to acquire the courage and love of truth of the wicked
+sceptics who first called attention to this lie hiding behind an
+apostle's name. Reflect upon this! After using every means, even the
+most cruel, to force this Trinitarian text upon the world, the Revised
+Version blushes with shame to retain it any longer.
+
+It would be unnecessary to multiply illustrations, but let my readers
+also consult the words in the margin of the last chapter of the Gospel
+of Mark, in the Revised Bible. Eleven entire verses of this chapter
+after having been palmed off for two thousand years as the word of God;
+after being repeatedly quoted as representing God's mind on matters of
+faith; after causing untold misery, cruel wars, persecutions, diabolical
+tortures, and more than all these, such mental anguish in millions of
+sensitive minds as no repentance can atone for,--these verses, among
+which is the following: "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel
+to the whole Creation.... He that believeth and is baptised shall be
+saved, _but he that believeth not shall be damned_,"--has been placed
+under an interrogation mark. Ah, for how much misery is the above
+damnatory clause responsible! How many lives this leprous falsehood has
+blasted! How this cruel imposture, like a malignant cancer, ate away the
+sound parts in human nature, for twenty long centuries!
+
+Among these eleven verses are also Jesus' promise of miraculous power to
+his disciples, such as casting out devils, juggling with live serpents,
+drinking deadly poisons, laying hands on the sick,--which has filled our
+world with charlatans without number. But now comes the Revised Version,
+and quietly dismisses from the Word of God these eleven Verses, with
+these words in the margin: "The two oldest Greek manuscripts, and some
+other authorities, omit from verse 9 to the end (verse 20). Some other
+authorities have a different ending to the Gospel." Read the above
+carefully and reflect. The old translators suppressed all this
+information, and gave us to believe that we were not only reading the
+word of God, but the only word of God in existence. The revisers say,
+"Some other authorities have a _different_ ending to the Gospel." Is not
+that edifying? How did they decide which "ending of the Gospel" to print
+as the Word of God? And why did the translators of the Bible wait two
+thousand years before they gave out this information? Is it to their
+increasing honesty that we owe this admission, or is it the increasing
+power of the non-churchgoing world which has compelled this admission
+from their lips? Yes, yes, pause and think of how an organization must
+have become gangrened with imposture to have successfully resisted every
+claim of truth and honor for two thousand years! This is a question of
+conscience as well as a question of knowledge. Why did the translators
+suppress the fact until a few years ago that, "Some other authorities
+have a different ending to the Gospel"?, and that "the _two oldest_
+Greek manuscripts and some other authorities omit from verse 9 to the
+end"? Time forbids me to give other illustrations of the--I regret to
+say it--manipulations of the Word of God by its custodians. The heart
+bleeds with mingled pain and indignation at the temerity and effrontery
+of the pious crew, who, to advance their "ism" or to make converts, did
+not hesitate to pervert history.
+
+For two thousand years, for anyone to dare breathe a word against this
+Bible-inventing party, meant hell here and hereafter. Mark Antony
+invited Rome to weep over the prostrate form of assassinated Cæsar. I
+wish I could provoke you to a burning blush of indignation over the
+prostrate majesty of Europe and America at the feet of these
+unconscionable inventors of inspired texts. Blessed be the day which
+humbled the pride of the ecclesiastic, and wrested from his hands the
+power to suppress the truth!
+
+But aside from doctoring their own Gospels, the early Christians did not
+hesitate to submit the writings of the great pagans,--Seneca, Pliny,
+Tacitus, Suetonious, Marcus Aurelius and the Jewish historian, Josephus,
+to the same indignity, by slipping passages into their works favorable
+to the Christian religion. Perhaps I am to be blamed for taking this
+matter so seriously, but how can I help it? I feel the wrong, the shame,
+and the crime of it, deep in my bones--when I picture to myself an
+Asiatic scribbler, a sectarian, a clown, a rogue, a cheat, tampering
+with the works of a dead master,--pushing and squeezing his imposture
+into the mouth of the mighty dead,--defiling the thought of the
+philosopher with the foulness of his superstition! It makes my heart
+rise and knock with vehemence against my ribs until I feel as if they
+would break. Not only were individual passages invented and slipped into
+the Pagan writings, but a number of books were written and attributed to
+the greatest shining lights of the old Roman world. Dr. Gieseler, a
+prominent Christian historian of modern Germany, who has made, as most
+German students do, a painstaking study of the early centuries, says
+that, when the Christians were accused of inventing manuscripts, they
+"quieted their consciences respecting the forgery with the idea of their
+good intentions." "It was an age of literary fraud," declares Bishop
+Ellicott.
+
+There is shown at the library in Jena, a letter purported to have been
+written by Publius Lentulus, the supposed predecessor of Pontius Pilate.
+The impostor who concocted this epistle and affixed the signature of a
+Roman governor to it, makes him tell the Roman Senate, "that there had
+appeared (in Judea) a man endowed with great powers, whose name is Jesus
+Christ." The earmarks of fraud are so plain that even the orthodox are
+ashamed of this clumsy manufacture. Another Gospel is attributed to
+Pontius Pilate. Nicodemus is made the author of still another. The
+Emperor Aurelius, is made to recommend the Christians to the Senate for
+their valor; Tiberius even gives his testimony in their favor; Jesus,
+himself, is made the author of a treatise in his own behalf; the Virgin
+Mary writes the story of her wonderful child; Adam, even, testifies to
+the truth of the Christian religion, though he is supposed to have lived
+nearly four thousand years before Jesus. There is no end to the list of
+inventions.
+
+But one of the most daring forgeries is the following passage in
+Josephus:
+
+
+      "About that time appeared Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it be
+      right to speak of him as a man, for he was a performer of
+      wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with
+      pleasure. He drew after him many of the Jews as well as of the
+      Gentiles. _This same was the Christ._ And though Pilate, by the
+      judgment of the chief rulers among us, delivered him up to be
+      crucified ... he showed himself alive on the third day...."
+
+
+That this famous passage in Josephus is an interpolation, is now
+generally admitted. Breaking suddenly in the midst of a paragraph, the
+great Jewish historian pauses to announce that Jesus was the Christ, and
+that he really rose from the dead, etc., etc. This, if true, makes
+Josephus a Christian, which he was not. The early fathers, Justin
+Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, never referred to this famous
+passage, which they certainly would have done, had such a passage
+existed. What better evidence could they desire in their controversy
+with the Jews than to point to this wonderful confession of their
+principal author and historian, that the Jesus whom they crucified was
+the Christ, and that he rose from the dead! But in the Josephus with
+which they were acquainted there was no such text. Origen, the Christian
+Father, admits in his writings that Josephus was not a believer in
+Christ. How, then, did this passage creep into the works of the Jewish
+historian? The man who discovered this passage in Josephus was the same
+man who invented Constantine's vision, and the fable of the Seventy,
+who, he says, shut up in seventy separate cells, produced the Septuagint
+translation of the Old Testament, a translation, which, he adds, was
+surely the work of the Holy Ghost, because when the Seventy separate
+translations were compared, they were found to be in every detail alike,
+without even the difference of a punctuation mark in them all. To
+further prove this story, Eusebius tells us that he himself saw the
+seventy cells which the translators had occupied four hundred years
+before. This is the kind of churchman who first discovered the Josephus
+passage. After quoting the interpolated passage, Eusebius wonders how
+any Jew can have the impudence not to believe that Jesus was the Christ.
+In one of his essays, De Quincy says that only lunatics now believe in
+the genuineness of this passage, while a bishop of the Anglican
+Church,--Warburton--calls it "a stupid forgery."
+
+But the early Christians made even the pagan gods to testify for Jesus.
+They composed verses in praise of the Christian religion and attributed
+them to the pagan Sibyls. The oracles of Rome were made to prophesy the
+coming of Christ,--his passion, and resurrection, and to admit their
+inferiority to him. For many hundred years these Sibylline verses were
+quoted as genuine, until the advancement of education laughed the
+disgraceful fabrication out of existence.
+
+Again, pious ecclesiastics in their zeal for their "ism," invented also
+an _Apostles' Creed_, which the apostles never saw, and an _Apostolic
+Constitution_, containing directions how a Christian Church or State
+should be governed. They invented also the _Decretal Epistles_, by which
+Constantine transfers all his property to the Bishop of Rome,--his
+sword, his diadem, his throne,--and makes a prince of the pope, and an
+empire of his church. Here is the passage which was forged into
+Constantine's mouth by the Spanish priest Isidore:
+
+
+      "We ascribe to the See of St. Peter all dignity, all glory, all
+      imperial power.... Besides, we give to Sylvester (bishop of Rome)
+      and his successor, our palace of the Lateran which is beyond
+      question the most beautiful place on earth. We give him our crown,
+      our mitre, our diadem, and all our imperial vestments; we remit to
+      him the imperial dignity. We give as a pure gift, to the holy
+      pontiff, the city of Rome and all the Western cities of Italy, as
+      well as the Western cities of other countries. In order to give
+      place to him, we yield our dominion over all these provinces by
+      removing the seat of our empire to Byzantium, considering it not
+      right that a terrestrial emperor should preserve the least power
+      where God had established the head of religion."
+
+
+How lovely! No wonder that Cardinal Newman regarded Constantine as a
+pattern for all future monarchs.
+
+But enough! Let us draw the curtain upon that early Christian age of
+invention and imposture. Why was it, we ask again, that Europe became a
+market for forgeries, immediately after its conversion to the Asiatic
+cult?
+
+Yet we must not forget that hand in hand with this dishonest work of
+invention, went the shameful destruction of whatever was deemed
+unfavorable to the new religion. Many of the masterpieces of pagan
+literature were destroyed when they could not be tampered with. The rare
+volumes of history, philosophy and poetry were reduced to ashes, that
+they might not live to bear witness to the greatness of the
+pre-Christian world. Even as they destroyed the monuments and temples of
+Athens and Rome, they destroyed also the precious manuscripts of Greek
+and Roman authors. From the following confession of St. Ambrose, Bishop
+of Milan, we may gauge the temper of the early Christian Church: "I
+myself would willingly assume the guilt (of destroying pagan buildings)
+and say that 'I have set them in flames that there may be not a place
+left in which Christ is denied.'"
+
+
+Let us now briefly, tell the story of the invention of the Old
+Testament: When Moses finished writing the book of the law, he called
+the elders of the people before him and commanded them to "_take the
+book of the law_ and put it into the side" or the inside "of the ark of
+the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness."
+The ark was a chest or box constructed after specific directions from
+God, and was placed in the holy place in the temple, under or behind a
+veil, which also covered the mercy seat upon the ark. As you must know,
+even Aaron the high priest was cautioned against approaching this place
+too often, for it was very holy. According to this account, God gives a
+book to his people, but he locks it up in a box, and places the box
+behind a veil, then fixes a seat upon the box which He Himself,
+occupies. How could the people, under these circumstances, get at the
+book? But it was not meant that they should. Ah, we have here a fine
+illustration of what we may call the craft of the priest, or
+priestcraft. They announce a revelation from God, but they will not
+permit anyone to take it home and read it. It is locked up in a box, and
+God himself is made to sit on the box.
+
+The grass dies without air and light. The birds pine away in a cage.
+Even the worms which creep in damp holes, come out for a glimpse of the
+light, now and then; but the word of God hides in the darkness of the
+ark, and fears the searching gaze of man! Was it born to be buried in a
+wooden tomb,--born to be locked up in a shittim-wood chest,--born to
+blink at the light! Ah, the precious priests! The sun may be seen by
+everybody, the stars shine in the open, but the Word of God, like a
+bashful maid, shrinks from observation, and sneaks into a closet. To
+this day, the Catholics have to go to a closet--that is to say they have
+to secure permission, before they can read the Word of God.[1]
+
+To show that we have Bible authority for the statements made above, we
+will quote from the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter xxxi, verse 24, etc:
+
+
+      "And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the
+      words of this law in a book, until they were finished. That Moses
+      commanded the Levites which bare the Ark of the Covenant of the
+      Lord, saying: Take this book of the law, and put it in the side of
+      the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, your God, that it may be
+      there for a witness against thee."
+
+
+The directions are specific. And the people's reverence for the ark or
+the chest containing the inspired words of God increased a thousandfold.
+
+Let us continue: The book of the law is now in the box, with the lid
+closed, and the deity sitting on the lid. Surely, it will be impossible
+for the book ever to get lost. But it did get lost. We will tell its
+story presently. But first let us speak of the jealousy with which the
+priests watched the ark. In times of war when the Jews were compelled to
+move the ark from one place to another, everybody was strictly forbidden
+from touching it, or looking into it. On one occasion, while they had
+the chest containing the two tables of stone and the Book of the Law, on
+an ox-cart, moving it to a place of safety, the cart jostled and the ark
+tipped. One of the drivers, Uzzah, instinctively, put forth his hand to
+steady the sacred chest. He was instantly killed. He touched the ark,
+and that was a crime. One must not even touch the box to save it from
+falling, much less read and investigate the book hidden therein. Every
+precaution was taken to protect the Bible from being investigated. God
+did not guard the tree of knowledge more zealously than did the priests
+the book of the law.
+
+There were some people, however, who were curious enough to peep into
+the ark, in spite of the threats of the rabbis. To scare these people,
+the awful words,--sacrilege, impiety, profanity,--_blasphemy_,--were
+invented. When these failed, murder was resorted to. Listen to this
+story: The people of Beth-Shemesh, being of an inquiring mind, one day,
+they approached the ark and peeped into it, or tried to. Well; riot and
+massacre followed! The Lord "smote the men of Beth-Shemesh because they
+had looked into the ark of the Lord, even he smote of the people fifty
+thousand and three score and ten men,"--fifty thousand and seventy. The
+rabbis charged this wholesale massacre to the deity. All successful
+murderers do the same. But we must admit the priests took excellent care
+of the ark and its contents. Unfortunately, however, it is now nearly
+three thousand years since the ark was last heard of. Where is it now?
+
+But to return to our story:
+
+Many years after the time we are now speaking of, when King Solomon
+finished his magnificent temple, in Jerusalem, he ordered the ark to be
+opened. How he dared to disobey the priests, I cannot tell, but kings
+enjoy special privileges, and perhaps, he had never heard that there was
+a prohibition against even touching the ark. When the ark was opened,
+lo! and behold! the Book of the Law which Moses had commanded to be put
+inside the ark was not there.
+
+_It was not there!_
+
+In 2nd Kings, eighth chapter, ninth verse, we read that when they opened
+the ark:
+
+
+      "There was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone."
+
+
+In other words, the book which we read about in the former quotation
+from the Bible, and which contained most valuable divine instructions to
+the people, had disappeared. The ark contained only two stones, which
+too, in due time, went the way of the book, and no one knows where they
+are at the present time. Ark and stones and book, as they are nowhere
+to be found, there is a bare possibility that they have returned to
+heaven whence they came.
+
+But let us follow the story: The book was not in the ark.
+
+What fate had befallen it? Was it never put there? When Uzzah, and the
+five thousand and seventy men were killed for touching the ark, was it
+empty? Solomon had the lid of the chest removed, and he found therein no
+"Book of the Law," which was ordered to be placed there "as a witness."
+
+Then followed a stretch of centuries in which the Book of the Law is not
+heard of. Oblivion now began to spread its dusty wings upon the memory
+of it. Yet, suggests Saladin, the old world jogged along as usual; the
+sun rose and set; the moon, as ever before shed its romantic light upon
+sea and shore. Lovers paired, and children, like a flock of swallows,
+visited our earth. They toiled, grew old and died--without any Book of
+the Law.
+
+There is a third chapter in the biography of the Bible. Three hundred
+and fifty years after Solomon had fallen asleep with his fathers, one
+morning,--I cannot tell whether it was on a fair or on a foul day,
+Hilkiah,--remember that name,--Hilkiah! the high priest, knocked on the
+door of Shaphan, King Josiah's private secretary, and begged for a
+private interview,--a _tete-a-tete_, as the French would say. Leaning
+over, he whispered in the ears of the King's minister, slowly and
+solemnly, as one who is burdened with some compelling
+news,--that--he--had--just--found--"The Book of the Law" which had been
+lost for three hundred and fifty years!
+
+The two men paused and looked at each other for a moment. Yes, Hilkiah,
+the high priest, had found the book which had been lost for three
+hundred and fifty years! And where? In the Temple! Had the king's
+minister been in an inquiring mood, he might have asked some questions:
+Was the book lying there all these years and not a man stumbled upon it?
+Or was it just put there for Hilkiah to find it? If it had been lost for
+three hundred years or more, how could Hilkiah tell that the book he
+found was the same that Moses wrote and ordered kept in the shittim-wood
+chest? If Hilkiah made any changes in the book, how is the world to know
+which is Hilkiah's and which is Moses' contribution to the Bible? But
+the questions were not asked. Besides, faith can shut its small eye to
+even greater difficulties than are involved in Hilkiah's discovery.
+
+When the King heard this extraordinary news, he must have doubted the
+word of the high priest, for he appointed a committee, whose names are
+given in the Bible, to present a report on this newly-found book. What
+did the committee do? Did it study the book? Did it invite native and
+foreign scholars to pronounce upon it? Did it encourage the noblest,
+bravest, most truthful men and women in the world to express their free
+opinion about it, or to cross-examine the high priest? Indeed not! The
+committee took the book and went to a medium. They believed that the
+prophetess Huldah, the medium, or the witch, was the sole person capable
+of passing upon the genuineness of inspired documents. No thinker, no
+conscientious student, patiently collecting facts, and fearlessly
+exposing error, could compare with the witch Huldah in inspiration. She
+was to the Jewish nation, at this time, what Plato and Aristotle were to
+the heathen Greeks. Huldah, the medium, represented the highest culture
+of the country and its people. She was the one light in Jerusalem. The
+confidence of Minot, Savage, Heber, Newton and publisher Funk, in Mrs.
+Piper, is not a circumstance to the faith of King Josiah's committee in
+prophetess Huldah. And she did not require time to study the book, or to
+make investigations. What kind of a prophetess would she have been if
+she could not answer any questions offhand?
+
+Of course, Huldah's opinion was the Lord's opinion, because she began
+her decision with the words, "Thus saith the Lord." And although, like
+all mediums, she is very careful not to commit herself, she seems to
+have satisfied the delegation from the King that the priest, Hilkiah,
+had found the lost book of the law. For some reason which we are unable
+to divine the book was not put back into the Ark. Perhaps they had found
+a safer place.
+
+How do Christian scholars explain this Hilkiah episode? Let us quote
+from the _Encyclopedia Biblica_, one of the best known commentaries on
+the Bible:--"What led Hilkiah to say that he had found the Book of the
+Law is not recorded." Perhaps it was not convenient to do so: "He may
+merely have meant," adds the commentator, feeling fearfully the strain
+of his orthodoxy, "Here is the best and fullest law-book, about which
+thou hast been asking." Is not this ingenious? "I have found the Book of
+the Law," may only have meant, according to this clergyman's
+interpretation, "Here is the best and fullest law-book about which thou
+hast been asking." But why should Hilkiah have meant one thing and said
+another? And what about the fact that Solomon failed to find the Book of
+the Law in the Ark, and that for three hundred and fifty years there is
+silence about this same book? And why did they go to medium Huldah, if
+everybody knew what the book was? But the explanations of the orthodox
+scholars which I have quoted prove what I said about the believer being
+compelled to twist and cramp his conscience even worse than the reputed
+authors of the Scriptures have done, in order to smooth over the
+offenses against truth and honor in the Bible.
+
+The authors of the _Encyclopedia Biblica_ are among the most scholarly
+and progressive of the Christian clergy, and their answer to questions
+about the High Priest Hilkiah is as good as can be expected, under the
+circumstances. But we know of a safer answer than that--_silence_.
+
+There is a concluding chapter in the history of the Bible. It appears
+that when Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Persians, the city was
+pillaged, the temple destroyed, and the Book of the Law which Hilkiah
+had discovered, was burned. Once more, Israel is without a book. Driven
+into captivity, the Jews lived among the heathen without a temple and
+without a bible. Then Cyrus, the King of Persia, is represented in the
+book of Ezra, as issuing a proclamation to the Jews to return to their
+country and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. At this time, Cyrus,
+graciously delivered to the Jews "the vessels of the house of the Lord,
+which Nebuchadnezzar had brought out of Jerusalem, and had put them in
+the house of his gods." Among the articles restored to the Temple, no
+mention is made of the Book of the Law. But Ezra, who is called "a
+scribe of the words of the commandment of the Lord," appears to have not
+only rebuilt the temple, but also to have restored the burned Book of
+the Law. In forty days, by the help of forty associates, everything that
+was ever reported to have been done of the Lord was put to writing and
+read aloud to the congregation which kept standing as Ezra read to
+them. Such is the story in the Book of _Esdras_.
+
+That Ezra was the restorer of the destroyed law seems to have been the
+opinion of almost all the early church Fathers. "Whether you choose to
+call Moses the author of the Pentateuch, or Ezra the restorer of the
+same book, I make no objection," wrote St. Jerome. Clement, of
+Alexandria, another church Father, writes, that, "The writings having
+been destroyed, Ezra, the Levite, having become inspired, prophesied,
+restoring again all the old writings." Eusebius and Irenaeus seem to be
+of the same opinion, and the famous Tertullian, a pillar of the church,
+gives his testimony that, "Jerusalem having been destroyed by the
+Babylonian siege, it appears that every instrument of Jewish literature
+was restored by Esdras."
+
+If Esdras, indeed, restored the burned book, which Hilkiah had found in
+the Temple after it had been lost for three hundred and fifty years,
+then, the question whether Moses was inspired or not,--a question which
+has vexed the world so much--loses all its importance. Was Ezra
+inspired? That is the crucial question? If he was not, how can Moses'
+inspiration help us since his writings were burned by the Persians, even
+if they were not stolen from the ark and revised by Hilkiah? The
+inventor of the Old Testament was Ezra, "a scribe of the words of the
+commandment of the Lord," that is to say, the clerk or amanuensis of
+God, a title which aptly describes not the interpreter, but the author
+of the Book of the Law. What kind of a man was this compiler or inventor
+of the Book of the Law? What does Christian Scholarship think of his
+character? Let us hear the doctors of divinity on Ezra.
+
+The authors of the _Encyclopedia Biblica_ whom we nave already quoted,
+admit that the man who bears the name of Ezra manipulated, if he did not
+invent, the narrative which he tells in the Bible:--"He partly mutilates
+it by removing a portion, partly makes it almost unintelligible by
+placing it in a connection to which it does not belong, and by making
+interpolations, etc." Could we ask for a stronger proof that the Bible
+is the work of men--and not of honest men, at that? But is it fair to
+include the whole Bible in this accusation? I wish I could feel that
+some portions of the Bible are free from suspicion, but I cannot. Alas!
+it is impossible to point to a single book in the Bible of the
+authorship of which we may speak with assurance. The marks of political
+and theological imposture in the Bible are like leopard's spots, they
+cannot be removed.
+
+Well! It must not be thought that we have now disarmed the bibliolaters.
+They have still a powerful weapon left with which to defend the Bible:
+Suppose Ezra did compose or compile the Book! Is it not, nevertheless,
+true that the Bible teaches righteousness? The argument is something
+like this: The Bible may not be true, but it is very moral. In our
+opinion, however, it is even less moral than it is true. A book which
+commands murder, plunder, persecution for opinion sake, slavery and
+credulity of the most abject kind, can not very well be recommended as a
+moral text-book. Of course, there are in the Bible, as also in the Vedas
+or the Koran, splendid passages of truth and beauty, but by selecting
+only one set of passages and ignoring the rest any book could be made
+pure.
+
+Matthew Arnold professes to have discovered in the Old Bible "the
+Eternal, not ourselves, making for Righteousness," one of his proofs
+being Ps. 50:23: "To him that ordereth his conversation _right_ shall be
+shown the salvation of God." But the Revised Version has robbed the
+Oxford professor of his text by completely changing its meaning: "Whoso
+offereth the sacrifice of thanksgiving glorifieth me, and prepareth a
+way that I may show him the salvation of God" (See margin of Revised
+Version). There is nothing in the original about "ordering one's conduct
+or conversation right," it was put there by the translators whose moral
+culture was far superior to the authors they were rendering into
+English.
+
+Moreover, Matthew Arnold, fully conceding the conclusions of the "higher
+critics," e. g., that the events narrated in the Bible are in most cases
+pure fabrications; that they are the work of myth-mongers who sought to
+pass as genuine and divine, documents which they had themselves forged
+for partisan purposes--who plagiarized from Assyrian liturgies, and
+wilfully misrepresented as well as interpolated the history of their
+nation--asks us, nevertheless, to look upon these political schemers and
+_poseurs_, as having but one all-consuming passion--_righteousness_!
+
+In conclusion: The inspiration of the Bible is not a question of
+belief, it is a question of evidence. If believing a book inspired could
+make it so, then, the books of Mohammed and Buddha, of Confucius and
+Zoroaster, must be inspired too. In fact, any book could be made
+infallible, if believing it to be so, were all that was required. But
+does the evidence which I have offered prove that the Bible was
+invented? I sincerely believe it does, but still, I may be mistaken, and
+am therefore open to any evidence which may be furnished that the four
+gospels, for instance, were not invented by religious partisans, who,
+while suppressing their own names, paraded those of the apostles as
+their real authors, notwithstanding that the apostles had been dead long
+ago. I shall consider, conscientiously, any evidence which might be
+furnished that Ezra was not the real reproducer, if not the original
+author of the Jewish code, after his return from Babylonia. And, I
+promise to retract and apologize for the position I have maintained in
+this lecture, if the theologians, who are at home on this subject, will
+prove that there were no spurious gospels, no impostures, no lying
+manuscripts thrown upon the religious market as soon as the pagan state
+embraced Christianity, I will also listen to any arguments which may be
+produced to show that _the Apostles' Creed_ was written by the apostles;
+that Constantine abdicated in favor of the pope; that the Pagan Sibyls
+prophesied of Christ, and that Josephus acknowledged Jesus to have been
+the Messiah.
+
+I sincerely trust some learned divine into whose hands this lecture
+might fall, will present the other side, if he thinks there is another
+side, of the story I have presented. By the word invented it is not
+meant that the names, events, etc, were all manufactured, but that
+stories borrowed largely from mythical sources were edited and altered
+to serve partisan and political purposes.
+
+And why have I told this story?
+
+Do you know of any good reason, reader, why every other subject may be
+independently discussed or investigated, except religion? And do you
+know why, if Shakespeare can stand criticism, the Bible should shrink
+from it?
+
+If it is possible to disagree with, or to advance beyond, Plato,
+Socrates, Spencer, Darwin, Goethe, Emerson,--please! why is it a heresy
+to differ from Moses, Solomon, Jonah or Jesus? Why is it proper to
+disagree with a Greek or a Roman, but blasphemy to disagree with a Jew?
+
+The Bible has for centuries blocked the way of progress. As an
+infallible book it has enslaved conscience, and encouraged intolerance.
+To defend its many puerilities, and even immoral tales, men have
+resorted to casuistry and dissimulation. I believe that men will be more
+honest, more tolerant, more progressive, more independent and more
+manly, if they could be delivered from the bondage of the Bible. To
+overthrow its tyranny and to prove that a book can not be the master of
+living and growing men, to make man free, to raise him from his knees,
+to bring back the color to his cheeks white with fear, and to give to
+his arrested mind movement--is my aim and my joy![2]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] See Saladin's _God and His Book_.
+
+[2] Those who wish to read further on this subject should consult the
+author's _The Truth About Jesus--Is He a Myth?_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Publications by the Same Author
+
+
+      A NEW CATECHISM. Fifth Edition, Revised and Enlarged, with
+      Portrait of Author, $1.00.
+
+      THE TRUTH ABOUT JESUS: IS HE A MYTH? A new book of 295 pages.
+      Illustrated. Cloth $1.00. Paper $0.50.
+
+      MANGASARIAN-CRAPSEY DEBATE ON THE HISTORICITY OF JESUS. 25c.
+
+      PEARLS. (New Edition) Brave Thoughts from Brave Minds. Selected
+      and arranged by M. M. Mangasarian. 25c.
+
+
+Lectures
+
+10 cents a Copy
+
+
+      THE CHURCH IN POLITICS--AMERICANS BEWARE!
+
+      WOMAN SUFFRAGE, OR THE CHILD-BEARING WOMAN AND CIVILIZATION.
+
+      THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN GENEVA UNDER CALVIN.
+
+      THE MARTYRDOM OF HYPATIA.
+
+      MORALITY WITHOUT GOD.
+
+      WHAT WAS THE RELIGION OF SHAKESPEARE.
+
+      CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ANALYZED AND ANSWERED.
+
+      THE RELIGION OF WASHINGTON, JEFFERSON AND FRANKLIN.
+
+
+PUBLICATIONS OF M. M. MANGASAMAN Orchestra Hall Building
+
+
+A NEW CATECHISM
+
+Containing six new chapters, making altogether 22 chapters, with an
+introduction, and a photograph of the author, bound in cloth, 270 pages.
+Fourth edition. Price, one dollar.
+
+
+AN OPINION
+
+Sir. George Jacob Holyoake, of England, the friend and neighbor of the
+late Herbert Spencer, says this of "A New Catechism":
+
+
+      "+It is the boldest, the brightest, the most varied and informing
+      of any work of the kind extant. The book is a cyclopedia in a
+      nutshell.+" --+_Literary Guide, London, Eng._+
+
+
+Prof. C. S. Laisant, one of the leading educators of France, and a
+member of the faculty of the College of France, says:
+
+"Admiration is too feeble a word to express my opinion of 'A New
+Catechism.' It is a marvelous manual of rationalistic philosophy and
+scientific morality. To disseminate this book is to aid the cause of
+European democracy--the emancipation of the people. We congratulate
+Frenchmen for the opportunity of reading in their own language so
+beautiful and beneficent a book."
+
+M. Vandervelde, member of the Parliament of Belgium, says:
+
+"I know of no other work of its kind which is as lucid, as loyal to
+truth, and as attractive to the daily toiler, as it is to the
+philosopher."--_In Introduction to French Edition._
+
+Mr. Geo. W. Foote, of England, in _The Freethinker_:
+
+"Mr. Mangasarian's well-known 'Catechism' promises to have a great sale
+in France and Belgium. The English edition ought to be widely circulated
+in this country. It is written with power, knowledge, and dexterity.
+Placed in the hands of young people, in particular, it should do a world
+of good for Free-thought."
+
+
+WHAT THE EUROPEAN PAPERS SAY OF "A NEW CATECHISM"
+
+
+      "Grapples with the problems that underlie all the creeds and all
+      the systems of science and philosophy."--_Glasgow Herald._
+
+      "The author shows good judgment in devising questions and great
+      fertility of resource in answering them. The book is well worth a
+      perusal."--_Educational News, London._
+
+      "Mr. Mangasarian seems to us to have hit upon a happy union of the
+      brevity which is the soul of wit with the amplitude which conduces
+      to enlightenment.... It is acute, stimulating and suggestive....
+      It is eminently readable, and we trust it will have the extensive
+      sale which its intrinsic merit deserves."--_Literary Guide,
+      London._
+
+
+CHRISTIAN SCIENCE A Comedy in Four Acts
+
+The book is meant for those in whom the spirit of inquiry is not
+hopelessly stifled. People who enjoy doing their thinking, will relish
+reading this comedy. The motto of the book is: "The light is known to
+have failed against folly sometimes, the laugh never." 80 pages. Cloth
+25c, paper 10c.
+
+The above should be read in connection with the author's pamphlet
+lecture on Why Mrs. Eddy's Teachings Appeal to Women, or _Christian
+Science Analysed_. Price, 10c.
+
+
+A FEW OF THE PRINTED LECTURES Of M. M. Mangasarian
+
+
+      "HOW THE BIBLE WAS INVENTED."
+
+      "MORALITY WITHOUT GOD."
+
+      "SUNDAY SERMONS AND SUNDAY SPORTS"
+
+      "ORTHODOX ATTACKS" (Mr. Mangasarian's answer to _The Outlook's_
+      attack on "A New Catechism").
+
+      "PRAYER."
+
+      "THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN AMERICA" (Being a reply to the Archbishop
+      of Chicago).
+
+      "CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ANALYZED AND ANSWERED," 2nd Edition.
+
+      "CHRISTIAN SCIENCE--A COMEDY."
+
+      "BRYAN ON RELIGION."
+
+      "WHAT WAS THE RELIGION OF SHAKESPEARE?"
+
+      "SHAKESPEARE, THE RATIONALIST."
+
+
+10c per copy. Orchestra Hall Building, Chicago.
+
+
+The Independent Religious Society
+
+Lectures are delivered every Sunday morning at 11 by M. M. Mangasarian,
+in Orchestra Hall, Michigan Avenue and Adams Street.
+
+The aim, spirit, and fellowship, of the Society, are clearly expressed
+in the following selection from Ralph Waldo Emerson:
+
+"The new church will be founded on moral science. Poets, artists,
+musicians, philosophers, will be its prophet teachers. The noblest
+literature of the world will be its bible. Love and labor, its holy
+sacraments--and instead of worshipping one saviour, it will gladly build
+an altar in the heart for every one who has suffered for humanity."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's How the Bible was Invented, by M. M. Mangasarian
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+
+
+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's How the Bible was Invented, by M. M. Mangasarian
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: How the Bible was Invented
+       A Lecture Delivered Before the Independent Religious Society
+
+Author: M. M. Mangasarian
+
+Release Date: July 5, 2011 [EBook #36627]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW THE BIBLE WAS INVENTED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="bold">"Not to Undeceive is to Deceive"</p>
+
+<h1><span>How the Bible Was<br />Invented</span><br /><br /><span class='smaller'>
+A Lecture Delivered<br />Before the Independent<br />Religious Society<br />
+Orchestra Hall<br />Chicago, Illinois<br />Sunday at 11 A. M.<br /><br />
+<span class="center"><img src="images/logo.jpg" width='74' height='120' alt="Logo" /></span><br />
+<br />Tenth Edition</span><br /><span id="id1">By</span> <span>M. M. MANGASARIAN</span></h1>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>How the Bible Was Invented</span></h2>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p>Many good people believe that the Bible was given by inspiration of God.
+The wording of my subject suggests that it is the work of men, and not
+always of honest men, either. Am I trying to offend people by intimating
+that the Bible was <i>invented</i>? On the contrary, I am exposing myself to
+criticism by telling these good people the truth about the Bible, which
+their own preachers, for some reason or other, have withheld from them.</p>
+
+<p>One of the texts in the Bible, attributed to Jesus, says that, It were
+better for a man to have a millstone tied about his neck, and he were
+cast into the sea, than that he should offend, that is to say, unsettle
+the faith of, "one of these little ones." According to this saying of
+Jesus, a man must keep his questionings and his doubts to himself. He
+shall not talk where he is liable to upset the faith of some believing
+soul,&mdash;some aged mother, some Sunday-school lad or lassie. The man who
+will go about disturbing people's religious peace, deserves to be
+drowned with a millstone about his neck! What is your opinion of such a
+suggestion?</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>If you approve of this sentiment, attributed to the founder of
+Christianity, then the work which we are doing here, every Sunday, is
+quite wicked; a millstone around our necks is what we deserve, and the
+bottom of the sea is where we belong.</p>
+
+<p>Psychologists tell us that there is great power in suggestion. With all
+my love and reverence for whatever is sweet and sane in the Gospels, I
+must protest against this text, because it is a suggestion to violence
+and persecution. If Jesus suggests a millstone for the neck of the
+heretic who upsets people's illusions and makes inquirers out of
+believers, and intimates further that drowning is too good for them, why
+not take the hint and act upon it? He expresses a wish, shall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> we not
+fulfill it? Alas, we know, too well, that in less enlightened ages, the
+suggestion of Jesus was not only carried out, but vastly improved
+upon&mdash;by the Spanish Inquisition, for instance.</p>
+
+<p>Let us be fair. When a man is accused, it is his privilege to defend
+himself. If Jesus suggests that the investigator who unsettles people's
+beliefs should be drowned, before the suggestion is acted upon, the
+disturber should be given a chance to be heard. Would that be asking too
+much? Let us see, then, just what it means to command a man to suppress
+whatever might disturb a neighbor's faith: It means that if I am
+announced to speak on the Bible, I must say nothing to which the weakest
+or the most credulous among my hearers might object. If I do, I shall
+deserve to be tied to a millstone and drowned! But let us turn this
+proposition about to see how it would work: Having discovered a truth,
+and yearning in my soul to express it, suppose I were to say, that if
+any man in this audience shall scare me into silence,&mdash;shall cheat me
+out of the joy and duty of imparting that truth to my world, by
+threatening to be offended, or to be unsettled by it,&mdash;he ought to have
+a millstone tied to his neck and be cast into the sea. How would that do?</p>
+
+<p>Again, an illustration, which I have used before, can with great aptness
+be repeated here: A woman is given a ring with a stone in it. Not being
+herself a <i>connaisseur</i> of precious stones, she is easily made to
+believe that her jewel is the most costly in the world. This is told her
+in order to make her happy, and to fancy herself as the possessor of a
+gem of great value. Observe, now, how much it costs to keep up this
+deception. All her friends have to agree to say nothing that may
+unsettle her faith in her imitation jewel. Indeed, they must pretend not
+to know the difference between the genuine and the sham stone. To
+preserve this woman's illusion, they must prevaricate and even openly
+lie, if pressed to do so, lest the poor woman's eyes should open, or her
+faith in her jewel be lost. Is it fair to demand so great a sacrifice to
+prolong the fantasy of a foolish woman?</p>
+
+<p>Apply this illustration now to the Bible. Here are some people who have
+been told when they were young, that this book, which is placed in their
+hands, is a personal message<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> to them from God. This makes the book,
+certainly, more precious than any jewel. God, the owner and disposer of
+everything, with his own hand has inscribed an epistle to them, and this
+is it! What joy! What a treasure! Now these people, not being students
+themselves, accepted implicitly what they were told by their teachers,
+just as the woman, not being an expert herself, took her jeweler's word
+about the value of the stone in her ring. In order not to offend this
+child-like faith in the Bible, word is sent out to everybody to hush.
+Hush! not a word! not a whisper!&mdash;Hush! hush! is the cry of all. To
+uphold this conspiracy of silence, arrangements are made to dictate what
+may and what may not be said in public. A preacher in praying or
+preaching might give away the secret,&mdash;he might inadvertently say
+something which may prick this pretty bubble of illusion. Hence, in the
+Catholic and Episcopal Churches, all the prayers are printed, and the
+preachers pray according to the book. Do you think the Church will let a
+man close his eyes and open his mouth and say whatever comes into his
+head? Indeed, not! He must pray by the book. In the protestant
+denominations there is the creed, to which you swear your allegiance
+before you can open your mouth in one of their churches, and the moment
+you are caught talking beyond what the creed allows, your ordination is
+taken from you and your mouth is shut. Dear me! all this regime is for
+the purpose of encouraging the conceit that man has been favored with a
+hand-written, personal message, from the Creator of the universe.</p>
+
+<p>If this were all, we, ourselves, would not take notice of it. But we,
+too, are compelled to join this conspiracy of silence and suppression,
+and to lie in the interests of the delicate believers whose faith cannot
+stand the least strain. Darwin must beware how he writes about the
+origin of species, or the descent of man. Some believer, hugging
+ecstatically his Bible to his bosom, might read his books and lose his
+blissful conceit. Do not think, do not invent, do not announce your
+truth, ye philosophers, scientists and reformers! without first
+consulting the prejudices of the "little ones" in the faith; for if you
+unsettle the faith of a single believer, it were better that you were
+weighted down into the sea by a millstone hanging about your necks. And
+you, whose love and genius give us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> our daily victory over disease and
+error,&mdash;whose thought is our daily bread and beauty,&mdash;you, too, must
+hush, you must become sterile, or be content to speak by rote, lest you
+should disturb the repose of the believer who has laid himself down to
+sleep. The theological babe must not be awakened. It will bawl and cry
+if aroused, and better than cause one of these babes to cry, let there
+be no intellectual life in the world!</p>
+
+<p>Our American author, Thoreau, was right when he said that, "The modern
+Christian is a man who has consented to say all the prayers in the
+liturgy, provided you will let him go straight to bed and sleep quietly
+afterward." That is to say, he does not wish to be disturbed. "All his
+prayers begin with," says Thoreau, "Now I lay me down to sleep."
+<i>Sleep</i>, seems to be his quest, intellectual as well as physical, "and
+he is forever looking forward to the time when he shall go to his
+'<i>long</i> rest.'" He looks forward to a future of inactivity. All effort,
+especially intellectual effort, is distasteful to him, and is apt to
+offend and unsettle him. Hence the intellectual life must not be real;
+what must be real is the <i>sleep</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Those of you who support these lectures, as well as those of you who
+only hear them, know that our position is the very reverse of what Jesus
+and the Church recommend. We do not believe in persecution. We do not
+even suggest that anybody should be drowned; but if our human nature is
+so depraved that persecution and murder are inevitable, then, in our
+humble opinion, it will be more economical to drown the people who will
+not permit a Darwin to give his thought to the world, than to drown a
+Darwin. The man who is offended at freedom of speech, can be dispensed
+with more safely than the man who avails himself of this divine
+privilege. If my freedom of speech offends my neighbor, his fear of
+freedom is a greater offense to me. Which of us deserves most to be drowned?</p>
+
+<p>But in the next place the suggestion that people who rob their weaker
+fellows of their illusions should be drowned, even when it does not lead
+to persecution, is an encouragement to <i>hypocrisy</i> and <i>imposture</i>, as
+the story of the composition of the Bible which will now be told, shows.</p>
+
+<p>You have to listen as closely as you can, if you do not wish to do me
+the injustice of misrepresenting me. I have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> traveled extensively in the
+Orient, and have conversed with and read the works of eminent scholars
+who have enjoyed a first-hand acquaintance with eastern people, and the
+unanimous testimony is that one of the besetting sins of Oriental races,
+is lying. It is not because the Asiatics are wickeder than European
+nations, for in other respects they are as good, if not better, than
+ourselves. The average of morality is perhaps about the same in all
+countries. But the notorious vice of all Asiatic peoples is lying. They
+lie with a freedom and a fluency,&mdash;with such plausibility and so
+straight a face,&mdash;that one can hardly distinguish their lie from their
+truth. Curious though it may seem, people who are given to lying are
+often the first to be deceived by their own lies. They</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>"Keep on till their own lies deceive them.</div>
+<div>And oft' repeating, at length believed 'em."</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Now, then, I am going to look this audience in the face, and then I am
+going to say just this:</p>
+
+<p><i>The Bible is an Oriental book.</i></p>
+
+<p>When, in reading the Bible, I find in it exaggeration, invention, and
+even unscrupulous misrepresentation, I am not astonished, because I know
+that it is an Oriental book. But the orthodox believer, in order to
+excuse or explain away, for instance, these violations of the law of
+veracity, resorts frequently to sophistry, subterfuge, and even, alas,
+to lies more unscrupulous than any found in the Bible. This is as sad as
+it is true. But to defend one lie, or to make it look like the truth,
+more lying becomes necessary.</p>
+
+<p>There are numerous instances of the Oriental practice of lying in the
+Bible. Abraham suppressed the truth about his wife, and declared she was
+his sister. Jacob deceived his father, Isaac, and made him believe he
+was Esau, and stole his blessing. The same patriarch deceived his
+father-in-law, and stole his gods. God himself instructs Samuel to tell
+a falsehood to Saul, to whom he is sent on a mission. "I will send them
+a lying spirit," threatens Jehovah, when he is out of temper. And, in
+the New Testament, the Apostle Paul is Oriental enough, though in many
+respects a great soul, to resort to "craft and guile," and to be "all
+things to all men," and even to lie for the glory of God. Aside from
+this being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> his own policy, he imagined that it was also the policy of
+God. "And for this cause," he says in his Epistle to the Thessalonians,
+"God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe in a
+lie." Reflect upon that. To send a delusion to people means to trip or
+trap them,&mdash;to catch them in a snare. People tell a falsehood, either to
+protect themselves, or to hurt others. God needed not to resort to this
+means to protect himself. Paul tells us he does this to hurt others.
+"God shall send them strong delusion, that they might believe a lie that
+<i>they all might be damned</i>." How could Paul, an exceptionally
+intelligent man, be guilty of such blasphemy? How could he so damage the
+character of the God he loved? My answer is that he was an Asiatic, and
+he did not look upon lying in the same light that Europeans do. The
+Asiatic conscience for veracity has never enjoyed a very high
+reputation. The Apostle Paul even boasts that, "being crafty, I caught
+you with guile."</p>
+
+<p>A very curious controversy took place some years ago, between Herbert
+Spencer and a religious Weekly. Quoting the words of Paul to the Romans,
+where he says, "For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my
+lie unto his glory, etc.," Spencer condemned Paul for this; the
+religious Weekly objected that Paul was only speaking ironically. And
+Mr. Spencer generously admitted that such a supposition was quite
+possible. We are ourselves willing to give Paul every opportunity to
+exonerate himself, and will not press the charge too vehemently against
+him. But whatever Paul may have meant in his argument with the Romans,
+what shall we say about his defense of "guile and craft," in his Epistle
+to the Thessalonians? And what about his general policy, to be all
+things to all men,&mdash;that is to say, to trim and compromise?</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the practice of the Church during the early centuries,
+confirms the criticism of such representative writers as Mosheim,
+Ellicott, Warburton, Lecky, Gibbon, Jortin, Gieseler, and other equally
+reliable authorities, that "The pernicious maxim that those who make it
+their business to deceive with a view of promoting the cause of truth,
+were deserving rather of commendation than of censure."</p>
+
+<p>"History forces upon us," writes Bishop Ellicott, "the recognition of
+pious fraud as a principle which was by no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> means inoperative in the
+earliest ages of Christianity." It reflects credit upon this
+Bishop,&mdash;this European,&mdash;to admit that the early Christians cultivated
+the Oriental practice of "lying for the glory of God." Eusebius, the
+saint who invented Constantine's vision of the cross, boasted that "<i>he
+had written what redounded to the glory</i> and suppressed whatever tended
+to the disgrace of religion."</p>
+
+<p>"No faith with the heretics," was the cry of the Christian church for centuries.</p>
+
+<p>My object in speaking of this is to show that even as our Oriental-born
+religion, brought over into Europe the germ of monasticism, religious
+intolerance, the practise of burning men and women alive,&mdash;absolutism in
+matters of faith, determining by authority of councils what shall and
+what shall not be the truth,&mdash;not one of which institutions previously
+existed in Europe; it also brought over, the Oriental practice of pious
+lying, and gave it a vogue which it had never before enjoyed in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>It is universally admitted that beside the four Gospels which the
+churches believe to be genuine, there were, in the early centuries,
+hundreds of Gospels which have been rejected as spurious. Pause for a
+moment, and think of what that means. Why were there so many lying
+Gospels? The very fact that our four Gospels were chosen from a pile of
+manuscripts, everyone of which claimed to be genuine, is a sad
+commentary upon the morality of the early churchmen. I trust you duly
+appreciate the significance of this. What was it that gave an impetus to
+the industry of imposture? How explain the vogue which lying for
+religion enjoyed after the conversion of the Roman Empire? Was it so
+profitable to manufacture Gospels that everybody tried his hand at it? I
+cannot get away from the tremendous fact that by the admission of the
+churches themselves, there were a great number of apocryphal Gospels
+thrown upon the religious market as soon as Christianity became well
+established in Europe. What made lying so popular and profitable all at
+once? If it is true, and it is, that our four Gospels had to be voted
+upon from among a heap of other manuscripts; and if it is true, as one
+Church father reports, that a great number of manuscripts were placed
+under a table, and that prayers were then offered to induce<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> the genuine
+Gospels to jump upon the table, and that four of them did so, while the
+rest, failing to jump upon the table, were disowned; and if it is also
+true, and we know it is, that some of the Christian fathers claimed that
+only four Gospels could be genuine because the earth has four corners,
+and four winds. If all this is true&mdash;then, speaking as a student of
+history, whether it unsettles you or not, I am constrained to say that
+this Oriental religion, as soon as it set foot in Europe, lifted both
+superstition and lying to the dignity of a vocation.</p>
+
+<p>But when we come to the four Gospels themselves, pronounced to be
+canonical, do you know, my hearers, that there are upwards of 150,000
+different readings of these same Gospels? That is to say, the same
+passages read one way in one manuscript, and another, in another, while
+they may be absent altogether from a third, etc. In view of all these
+facts, reflect upon the intelligence of the man who, Sunday after
+Sunday, holds up the Gospels as the infallible word of God. He does so
+because he is speaking by the creed, to which he has sworn allegiance
+for the rest of his life. One hundred and fifty thousand various
+readings of the New Testament! And think of the centuries of bloodshed
+and controversy over these various readings!</p>
+
+<p>Open, if you please, your New Testaments and read the seventh verse of
+the fifth chapter of the first epistle of John, then look for the same
+verse in the Revised Version, and you will not find it there. After
+being regarded as the word of God for two thousand years, it has been
+expurgated. Today, according to one Bible (the King James Version), this
+passage is inspired; according to another Bible (the Revised Version),
+it is an imposture. Let me quote the text:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"For there are three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, the
+Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>What better proof of the Trinity do we need? On black and white, in the
+Bible, John, the Apostle, declares by the power of the Holy Ghost, that
+there are three in heaven, gives their names, and adds that these three are one.</p>
+
+<p>Some lying scribe, some crabbed sectarian, some unconscionable copyist,
+bribed by his party, must have invented this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> text, which, for twenty
+centuries, has been worshiped as the word of God. Wicked sceptics, two
+thousand years ago, denounced the clumsy imposture, but they were
+silenced by the halter and the sword. It has taken the Christian Church
+nearly two thousand years to discover that the sceptics were right. It
+has taken the church two thousand years of evolution in honesty and
+intelligence to throw out this spurious text. It has taken the church,
+claiming to be under the guidance of the Spirit of God, twenty hundred
+years in which to acquire the courage and love of truth of the wicked
+sceptics who first called attention to this lie hiding behind an
+apostle's name. Reflect upon this! After using every means, even the
+most cruel, to force this Trinitarian text upon the world, the Revised
+Version blushes with shame to retain it any longer.</p>
+
+<p>It would be unnecessary to multiply illustrations, but let my readers
+also consult the words in the margin of the last chapter of the Gospel
+of Mark, in the Revised Bible. Eleven entire verses of this chapter
+after having been palmed off for two thousand years as the word of God;
+after being repeatedly quoted as representing God's mind on matters of
+faith; after causing untold misery, cruel wars, persecutions, diabolical
+tortures, and more than all these, such mental anguish in millions of
+sensitive minds as no repentance can atone for,&mdash;these verses, among
+which is the following: "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel
+to the whole Creation.... He that believeth and is baptised shall be
+saved, <i>but he that believeth not shall be damned</i>,"&mdash;has been placed
+under an interrogation mark. Ah, for how much misery is the above
+damnatory clause responsible! How many lives this leprous falsehood has
+blasted! How this cruel imposture, like a malignant cancer, ate away the
+sound parts in human nature, for twenty long centuries!</p>
+
+<p>Among these eleven verses are also Jesus' promise of miraculous power to
+his disciples, such as casting out devils, juggling with live serpents,
+drinking deadly poisons, laying hands on the sick,&mdash;which has filled our
+world with charlatans without number. But now comes the Revised Version,
+and quietly dismisses from the Word of God these eleven Verses, with
+these words in the margin: "The two oldest Greek manuscripts, and some
+other authorities, omit from verse 9<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> to the end (verse 20). Some other
+authorities have a different ending to the Gospel." Read the above
+carefully and reflect. The old translators suppressed all this
+information, and gave us to believe that we were not only reading the
+word of God, but the only word of God in existence. The revisers say,
+"Some other authorities have a <i>different</i> ending to the Gospel." Is not
+that edifying? How did they decide which "ending of the Gospel" to print
+as the Word of God? And why did the translators of the Bible wait two
+thousand years before they gave out this information? Is it to their
+increasing honesty that we owe this admission, or is it the increasing
+power of the non-churchgoing world which has compelled this admission
+from their lips? Yes, yes, pause and think of how an organization must
+have become gangrened with imposture to have successfully resisted every
+claim of truth and honor for two thousand years! This is a question of
+conscience as well as a question of knowledge. Why did the translators
+suppress the fact until a few years ago that, "Some other authorities
+have a different ending to the Gospel"?, and that "the <i>two oldest</i>
+Greek manuscripts and some other authorities omit from verse 9 to the
+end"? Time forbids me to give other illustrations of the&mdash;I regret to
+say it&mdash;manipulations of the Word of God by its custodians. The heart
+bleeds with mingled pain and indignation at the temerity and effrontery
+of the pious crew, who, to advance their "ism" or to make converts, did
+not hesitate to pervert history.</p>
+
+<p>For two thousand years, for anyone to dare breathe a word against this
+Bible-inventing party, meant hell here and hereafter. Mark Antony
+invited Rome to weep over the prostrate form of assassinated C&aelig;sar. I
+wish I could provoke you to a burning blush of indignation over the
+prostrate majesty of Europe and America at the feet of these
+unconscionable inventors of inspired texts. Blessed be the day which
+humbled the pride of the ecclesiastic, and wrested from his hands the
+power to suppress the truth!</p>
+
+<p>But aside from doctoring their own Gospels, the early Christians did not
+hesitate to submit the writings of the great pagans,&mdash;Seneca, Pliny,
+Tacitus, Suetonious, Marcus Aurelius and the Jewish historian, Josephus,
+to the same indignity, by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> slipping passages into their works favorable
+to the Christian religion. Perhaps I am to be blamed for taking this
+matter so seriously, but how can I help it? I feel the wrong, the shame,
+and the crime of it, deep in my bones&mdash;when I picture to myself an
+Asiatic scribbler, a sectarian, a clown, a rogue, a cheat, tampering
+with the works of a dead master,&mdash;pushing and squeezing his imposture
+into the mouth of the mighty dead,&mdash;defiling the thought of the
+philosopher with the foulness of his superstition! It makes my heart
+rise and knock with vehemence against my ribs until I feel as if they
+would break. Not only were individual passages invented and slipped into
+the Pagan writings, but a number of books were written and attributed to
+the greatest shining lights of the old Roman world. Dr. Gieseler, a
+prominent Christian historian of modern Germany, who has made, as most
+German students do, a painstaking study of the early centuries, says
+that, when the Christians were accused of inventing manuscripts, they
+"quieted their consciences respecting the forgery with the idea of their
+good intentions." "It was an age of literary fraud," declares Bishop Ellicott.</p>
+
+<p>There is shown at the library in Jena, a letter purported to have been
+written by Publius Lentulus, the supposed predecessor of Pontius Pilate.
+The impostor who concocted this epistle and affixed the signature of a
+Roman governor to it, makes him tell the Roman Senate, "that there had
+appeared (in Judea) a man endowed with great powers, whose name is Jesus
+Christ." The earmarks of fraud are so plain that even the orthodox are
+ashamed of this clumsy manufacture. Another Gospel is attributed to
+Pontius Pilate. Nicodemus is made the author of still another. The
+Emperor Aurelius, is made to recommend the Christians to the Senate for
+their valor; Tiberius even gives his testimony in their favor; Jesus,
+himself, is made the author of a treatise in his own behalf; the Virgin
+Mary writes the story of her wonderful child; Adam, even, testifies to
+the truth of the Christian religion, though he is supposed to have lived
+nearly four thousand years before Jesus. There is no end to the list of inventions.</p>
+
+<p>But one of the most daring forgeries is the following passage in Josephus:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p><blockquote><p>"About that time appeared Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it be
+right to speak of him as a man, for he was a performer of
+wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with
+pleasure. He drew after him many of the Jews as well as of the
+Gentiles. <i>This same was the Christ.</i> And though Pilate, by the
+judgment of the chief rulers among us, delivered him up to be
+crucified ... he showed himself alive on the third day...."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>That this famous passage in Josephus is an interpolation, is now
+generally admitted. Breaking suddenly in the midst of a paragraph, the
+great Jewish historian pauses to announce that Jesus was the Christ, and
+that he really rose from the dead, etc., etc. This, if true, makes
+Josephus a Christian, which he was not. The early fathers, Justin
+Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, never referred to this famous
+passage, which they certainly would have done, had such a passage
+existed. What better evidence could they desire in their controversy
+with the Jews than to point to this wonderful confession of their
+principal author and historian, that the Jesus whom they crucified was
+the Christ, and that he rose from the dead! But in the Josephus with
+which they were acquainted there was no such text. Origen, the Christian
+Father, admits in his writings that Josephus was not a believer in
+Christ. How, then, did this passage creep into the works of the Jewish
+historian? The man who discovered this passage in Josephus was the same
+man who invented Constantine's vision, and the fable of the Seventy,
+who, he says, shut up in seventy separate cells, produced the Septuagint
+translation of the Old Testament, a translation, which, he adds, was
+surely the work of the Holy Ghost, because when the Seventy separate
+translations were compared, they were found to be in every detail alike,
+without even the difference of a punctuation mark in them all. To
+further prove this story, Eusebius tells us that he himself saw the
+seventy cells which the translators had occupied four hundred years
+before. This is the kind of churchman who first discovered the Josephus
+passage. After quoting the interpolated passage, Eusebius wonders how
+any Jew can have the impudence not to believe that Jesus was the Christ.
+In one of his essays, De Quincy says that only lunatics now believe in
+the genuineness of this passage, while a bishop<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> of the Anglican
+Church,&mdash;Warburton&mdash;calls it "a stupid forgery."</p>
+
+<p>But the early Christians made even the pagan gods to testify for Jesus.
+They composed verses in praise of the Christian religion and attributed
+them to the pagan Sibyls. The oracles of Rome were made to prophesy the
+coming of Christ,&mdash;his passion, and resurrection, and to admit their
+inferiority to him. For many hundred years these Sibylline verses were
+quoted as genuine, until the advancement of education laughed the
+disgraceful fabrication out of existence.</p>
+
+<p>Again, pious ecclesiastics in their zeal for their "ism," invented also
+an <i>Apostles' Creed</i>, which the apostles never saw, and an <i>Apostolic
+Constitution</i>, containing directions how a Christian Church or State
+should be governed. They invented also the <i>Decretal Epistles</i>, by which
+Constantine transfers all his property to the Bishop of Rome,&mdash;his
+sword, his diadem, his throne,&mdash;and makes a prince of the pope, and an
+empire of his church. Here is the passage which was forged into
+Constantine's mouth by the Spanish priest Isidore:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"We ascribe to the See of St. Peter all dignity, all glory, all
+imperial power.... Besides, we give to Sylvester (bishop of Rome)
+and his successor, our palace of the Lateran which is beyond
+question the most beautiful place on earth. We give him our crown,
+our mitre, our diadem, and all our imperial vestments; we remit to
+him the imperial dignity. We give as a pure gift, to the holy
+pontiff, the city of Rome and all the Western cities of Italy, as
+well as the Western cities of other countries. In order to give
+place to him, we yield our dominion over all these provinces by
+removing the seat of our empire to Byzantium, considering it not
+right that a terrestrial emperor should preserve the least power
+where God had established the head of religion."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>How lovely! No wonder that Cardinal Newman regarded Constantine as a
+pattern for all future monarchs.</p>
+
+<p>But enough! Let us draw the curtain upon that early Christian age of
+invention and imposture. Why was it, we ask again, that Europe became a
+market for forgeries, immediately after its conversion to the Asiatic cult?</p>
+
+<p>Yet we must not forget that hand in hand with this dishonest work of
+invention, went the shameful destruction of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>whatever was deemed
+unfavorable to the new religion. Many of the masterpieces of pagan
+literature were destroyed when they could not be tampered with. The rare
+volumes of history, philosophy and poetry were reduced to ashes, that
+they might not live to bear witness to the greatness of the
+pre-Christian world. Even as they destroyed the monuments and temples of
+Athens and Rome, they destroyed also the precious manuscripts of Greek
+and Roman authors. From the following confession of St. Ambrose, Bishop
+of Milan, we may gauge the temper of the early Christian Church: "I
+myself would willingly assume the guilt (of destroying pagan buildings)
+and say that 'I have set them in flames that there may be not a place
+left in which Christ is denied.'"</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Let us now briefly, tell the story of the invention of the Old
+Testament: When Moses finished writing the book of the law, he called
+the elders of the people before him and commanded them to "<i>take the
+book of the law</i> and put it into the side" or the inside "of the ark of
+the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness."
+The ark was a chest or box constructed after specific directions from
+God, and was placed in the holy place in the temple, under or behind a
+veil, which also covered the mercy seat upon the ark. As you must know,
+even Aaron the high priest was cautioned against approaching this place
+too often, for it was very holy. According to this account, God gives a
+book to his people, but he locks it up in a box, and places the box
+behind a veil, then fixes a seat upon the box which He Himself,
+occupies. How could the people, under these circumstances, get at the
+book? But it was not meant that they should. Ah, we have here a fine
+illustration of what we may call the craft of the priest, or
+priestcraft. They announce a revelation from God, but they will not
+permit anyone to take it home and read it. It is locked up in a box, and
+God himself is made to sit on the box.</p>
+
+<p>The grass dies without air and light. The birds pine away in a cage.
+Even the worms which creep in damp holes, come out for a glimpse of the
+light, now and then; but the word of God hides in the darkness of the
+ark, and fears the searching gaze of man! Was it born to be buried in a
+wooden tomb,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>&mdash;born to be locked up in a shittim-wood chest,&mdash;born to
+blink at the light! Ah, the precious priests! The sun may be seen by
+everybody, the stars shine in the open, but the Word of God, like a
+bashful maid, shrinks from observation, and sneaks into a closet. To
+this day, the Catholics have to go to a closet&mdash;that is to say they have
+to secure permission, before they can read the Word of God.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>To show that we have Bible authority for the statements made above, we
+will quote from the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter xxxi, verse 24, etc:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the
+words of this law in a book, until they were finished. That Moses
+commanded the Levites which bare the Ark of the Covenant of the
+Lord, saying: Take this book of the law, and put it in the side of
+the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, your God, that it may be
+there for a witness against thee."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The directions are specific. And the people's reverence for the ark or
+the chest containing the inspired words of God increased a thousandfold.</p>
+
+<p>Let us continue: The book of the law is now in the box, with the lid
+closed, and the deity sitting on the lid. Surely, it will be impossible
+for the book ever to get lost. But it did get lost. We will tell its
+story presently. But first let us speak of the jealousy with which the
+priests watched the ark. In times of war when the Jews were compelled to
+move the ark from one place to another, everybody was strictly forbidden
+from touching it, or looking into it. On one occasion, while they had
+the chest containing the two tables of stone and the Book of the Law, on
+an ox-cart, moving it to a place of safety, the cart jostled and the ark
+tipped. One of the drivers, Uzzah, instinctively, put forth his hand to
+steady the sacred chest. He was instantly killed. He touched the ark,
+and that was a crime. One must not even touch the box to save it from
+falling, much less read and investigate the book hidden therein. Every
+precaution was taken to protect the Bible from being investigated. God
+did not guard the tree of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> knowledge more zealously than did the priests
+the book of the law.</p>
+
+<p>There were some people, however, who were curious enough to peep into
+the ark, in spite of the threats of the rabbis. To scare these people,
+the awful words,&mdash;sacrilege, impiety, profanity,&mdash;<i>blasphemy</i>,&mdash;were
+invented. When these failed, murder was resorted to. Listen to this
+story: The people of Beth-Shemesh, being of an inquiring mind, one day,
+they approached the ark and peeped into it, or tried to. Well; riot and
+massacre followed! The Lord "smote the men of Beth-Shemesh because they
+had looked into the ark of the Lord, even he smote of the people fifty
+thousand and three score and ten men,"&mdash;fifty thousand and seventy. The
+rabbis charged this wholesale massacre to the deity. All successful
+murderers do the same. But we must admit the priests took excellent care
+of the ark and its contents. Unfortunately, however, it is now nearly
+three thousand years since the ark was last heard of. Where is it now?</p>
+
+<p>But to return to our story:</p>
+
+<p>Many years after the time we are now speaking of, when King Solomon
+finished his magnificent temple, in Jerusalem, he ordered the ark to be
+opened. How he dared to disobey the priests, I cannot tell, but kings
+enjoy special privileges, and perhaps, he had never heard that there was
+a prohibition against even touching the ark. When the ark was opened,
+lo! and behold! the Book of the Law which Moses had commanded to be put
+inside the ark was not there.</p>
+
+<p><i>It was not there!</i></p>
+
+<p>In 2nd Kings, eighth chapter, ninth verse, we read that when they opened the ark:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"There was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>In other words, the book which we read about in the former quotation
+from the Bible, and which contained most valuable divine instructions to
+the people, had disappeared. The ark contained only two stones, which
+too, in due time, went the way of the book, and no one knows where they
+are at the present time. Ark and stones and book, as they are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> nowhere
+to be found, there is a bare possibility that they have returned to
+heaven whence they came.</p>
+
+<p>But let us follow the story: The book was not in the ark.</p>
+
+<p>What fate had befallen it? Was it never put there? When Uzzah, and the
+five thousand and seventy men were killed for touching the ark, was it
+empty? Solomon had the lid of the chest removed, and he found therein no
+"Book of the Law," which was ordered to be placed there "as a witness."</p>
+
+<p>Then followed a stretch of centuries in which the Book of the Law is not
+heard of. Oblivion now began to spread its dusty wings upon the memory
+of it. Yet, suggests Saladin, the old world jogged along as usual; the
+sun rose and set; the moon, as ever before shed its romantic light upon
+sea and shore. Lovers paired, and children, like a flock of swallows,
+visited our earth. They toiled, grew old and died&mdash;without any Book of the Law.</p>
+
+<p>There is a third chapter in the biography of the Bible. Three hundred
+and fifty years after Solomon had fallen asleep with his fathers, one
+morning,&mdash;I cannot tell whether it was on a fair or on a foul day,
+Hilkiah,&mdash;remember that name,&mdash;Hilkiah! the high priest, knocked on the
+door of Shaphan, King Josiah's private secretary, and begged for a
+private interview,&mdash;a <i>tete-a-tete</i>, as the French would say. Leaning
+over, he whispered in the ears of the King's minister, slowly and
+solemnly, as one who is burdened with some compelling
+news,&mdash;that&mdash;he&mdash;had&mdash;just&mdash;found&mdash;"The Book of the Law" which had been
+lost for three hundred and fifty years!</p>
+
+<p>The two men paused and looked at each other for a moment. Yes, Hilkiah,
+the high priest, had found the book which had been lost for three
+hundred and fifty years! And where? In the Temple! Had the king's
+minister been in an inquiring mood, he might have asked some questions:
+Was the book lying there all these years and not a man stumbled upon it?
+Or was it just put there for Hilkiah to find it? If it had been lost for
+three hundred years or more, how could Hilkiah tell that the book he
+found was the same that Moses wrote and ordered kept in the shittim-wood
+chest? If Hilkiah made any changes in the book, how is the world to know
+which is Hilkiah's and which is Moses' contribution to the Bible? But
+the questions were not asked. Besides, faith<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> can shut its small eye to
+even greater difficulties than are involved in Hilkiah's discovery.</p>
+
+<p>When the King heard this extraordinary news, he must have doubted the
+word of the high priest, for he appointed a committee, whose names are
+given in the Bible, to present a report on this newly-found book. What
+did the committee do? Did it study the book? Did it invite native and
+foreign scholars to pronounce upon it? Did it encourage the noblest,
+bravest, most truthful men and women in the world to express their free
+opinion about it, or to cross-examine the high priest? Indeed not! The
+committee took the book and went to a medium. They believed that the
+prophetess Huldah, the medium, or the witch, was the sole person capable
+of passing upon the genuineness of inspired documents. No thinker, no
+conscientious student, patiently collecting facts, and fearlessly
+exposing error, could compare with the witch Huldah in inspiration. She
+was to the Jewish nation, at this time, what Plato and Aristotle were to
+the heathen Greeks. Huldah, the medium, represented the highest culture
+of the country and its people. She was the one light in Jerusalem. The
+confidence of Minot, Savage, Heber, Newton and publisher Funk, in Mrs.
+Piper, is not a circumstance to the faith of King Josiah's committee in
+prophetess Huldah. And she did not require time to study the book, or to
+make investigations. What kind of a prophetess would she have been if
+she could not answer any questions offhand?</p>
+
+<p>Of course, Huldah's opinion was the Lord's opinion, because she began
+her decision with the words, "Thus saith the Lord." And although, like
+all mediums, she is very careful not to commit herself, she seems to
+have satisfied the delegation from the King that the priest, Hilkiah,
+had found the lost book of the law. For some reason which we are unable
+to divine the book was not put back into the Ark. Perhaps they had found
+a safer place.</p>
+
+<p>How do Christian scholars explain this Hilkiah episode? Let us quote
+from the <i>Encyclopedia Biblica</i>, one of the best known commentaries on
+the Bible:&mdash;"What led Hilkiah to say that he had found the Book of the
+Law is not recorded." Perhaps it was not convenient to do so: "He may
+merely have meant," adds the commentator, feeling fearfully the strain
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> his orthodoxy, "Here is the best and fullest law-book, about which
+thou hast been asking." Is not this ingenious? "I have found the Book of
+the Law," may only have meant, according to this clergyman's
+interpretation, "Here is the best and fullest law-book about which thou
+hast been asking." But why should Hilkiah have meant one thing and said
+another? And what about the fact that Solomon failed to find the Book of
+the Law in the Ark, and that for three hundred and fifty years there is
+silence about this same book? And why did they go to medium Huldah, if
+everybody knew what the book was? But the explanations of the orthodox
+scholars which I have quoted prove what I said about the believer being
+compelled to twist and cramp his conscience even worse than the reputed
+authors of the Scriptures have done, in order to smooth over the
+offenses against truth and honor in the Bible.</p>
+
+<p>The authors of the <i>Encyclopedia Biblica</i> are among the most scholarly
+and progressive of the Christian clergy, and their answer to questions
+about the High Priest Hilkiah is as good as can be expected, under the
+circumstances. But we know of a safer answer than that&mdash;<i>silence</i>.</p>
+
+<p>There is a concluding chapter in the history of the Bible. It appears
+that when Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Persians, the city was
+pillaged, the temple destroyed, and the Book of the Law which Hilkiah
+had discovered, was burned. Once more, Israel is without a book. Driven
+into captivity, the Jews lived among the heathen without a temple and
+without a bible. Then Cyrus, the King of Persia, is represented in the
+book of Ezra, as issuing a proclamation to the Jews to return to their
+country and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. At this time, Cyrus,
+graciously delivered to the Jews "the vessels of the house of the Lord,
+which Nebuchadnezzar had brought out of Jerusalem, and had put them in
+the house of his gods." Among the articles restored to the Temple, no
+mention is made of the Book of the Law. But Ezra, who is called "a
+scribe of the words of the commandment of the Lord," appears to have not
+only rebuilt the temple, but also to have restored the burned Book of
+the Law. In forty days, by the help of forty associates, everything that
+was ever reported to have been done of the Lord was put to writing and
+read aloud to the congregation which kept standing as Ezra<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> read to
+them. Such is the story in the Book of <i>Esdras</i>.</p>
+
+<p>That Ezra was the restorer of the destroyed law seems to have been the
+opinion of almost all the early church Fathers. "Whether you choose to
+call Moses the author of the Pentateuch, or Ezra the restorer of the
+same book, I make no objection," wrote St. Jerome. Clement, of
+Alexandria, another church Father, writes, that, "The writings having
+been destroyed, Ezra, the Levite, having become inspired, prophesied,
+restoring again all the old writings." Eusebius and Irenaeus seem to be
+of the same opinion, and the famous Tertullian, a pillar of the church,
+gives his testimony that, "Jerusalem having been destroyed by the
+Babylonian siege, it appears that every instrument of Jewish literature
+was restored by Esdras."</p>
+
+<p>If Esdras, indeed, restored the burned book, which Hilkiah had found in
+the Temple after it had been lost for three hundred and fifty years,
+then, the question whether Moses was inspired or not,&mdash;a question which
+has vexed the world so much&mdash;loses all its importance. Was Ezra
+inspired? That is the crucial question? If he was not, how can Moses'
+inspiration help us since his writings were burned by the Persians, even
+if they were not stolen from the ark and revised by Hilkiah? The
+inventor of the Old Testament was Ezra, "a scribe of the words of the
+commandment of the Lord," that is to say, the clerk or amanuensis of
+God, a title which aptly describes not the interpreter, but the author
+of the Book of the Law. What kind of a man was this compiler or inventor
+of the Book of the Law? What does Christian Scholarship think of his
+character? Let us hear the doctors of divinity on Ezra.</p>
+
+<p>The authors of the <i>Encyclopedia Biblica</i> whom we nave already quoted,
+admit that the man who bears the name of Ezra manipulated, if he did not
+invent, the narrative which he tells in the Bible:&mdash;"He partly mutilates
+it by removing a portion, partly makes it almost unintelligible by
+placing it in a connection to which it does not belong, and by making
+interpolations, etc." Could we ask for a stronger proof that the Bible
+is the work of men&mdash;and not of honest men, at that? But is it fair to
+include the whole Bible in this accusation? I wish I could feel that
+some portions of the Bible are free from suspicion, but I cannot. Alas!
+it is impossible to point to a single<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> book in the Bible of the
+authorship of which we may speak with assurance. The marks of political
+and theological imposture in the Bible are like leopard's spots, they
+cannot be removed.</p>
+
+<p>Well! It must not be thought that we have now disarmed the bibliolaters.
+They have still a powerful weapon left with which to defend the Bible:
+Suppose Ezra did compose or compile the Book! Is it not, nevertheless,
+true that the Bible teaches righteousness? The argument is something
+like this: The Bible may not be true, but it is very moral. In our
+opinion, however, it is even less moral than it is true. A book which
+commands murder, plunder, persecution for opinion sake, slavery and
+credulity of the most abject kind, can not very well be recommended as a
+moral text-book. Of course, there are in the Bible, as also in the Vedas
+or the Koran, splendid passages of truth and beauty, but by selecting
+only one set of passages and ignoring the rest any book could be made pure.</p>
+
+<p>Matthew Arnold professes to have discovered in the Old Bible "the
+Eternal, not ourselves, making for Righteousness," one of his proofs
+being Ps. 50:23: "To him that ordereth his conversation <i>right</i> shall be
+shown the salvation of God." But the Revised Version has robbed the
+Oxford professor of his text by completely changing its meaning: "Whoso
+offereth the sacrifice of thanksgiving glorifieth me, and prepareth a
+way that I may show him the salvation of God" (See margin of Revised
+Version). There is nothing in the original about "ordering one's conduct
+or conversation right," it was put there by the translators whose moral
+culture was far superior to the authors they were rendering into English.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, Matthew Arnold, fully conceding the conclusions of the "higher
+critics," e. g., that the events narrated in the Bible are in most cases
+pure fabrications; that they are the work of myth-mongers who sought to
+pass as genuine and divine, documents which they had themselves forged
+for partisan purposes&mdash;who plagiarized from Assyrian liturgies, and
+wilfully misrepresented as well as interpolated the history of their
+nation&mdash;asks us, nevertheless, to look upon these political schemers and
+<i>poseurs</i>, as having but one all-consuming passion&mdash;<i>righteousness</i>!</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion: The inspiration of the Bible is not a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>question of
+belief, it is a question of evidence. If believing a book inspired could
+make it so, then, the books of Mohammed and Buddha, of Confucius and
+Zoroaster, must be inspired too. In fact, any book could be made
+infallible, if believing it to be so, were all that was required. But
+does the evidence which I have offered prove that the Bible was
+invented? I sincerely believe it does, but still, I may be mistaken, and
+am therefore open to any evidence which may be furnished that the four
+gospels, for instance, were not invented by religious partisans, who,
+while suppressing their own names, paraded those of the apostles as
+their real authors, notwithstanding that the apostles had been dead long
+ago. I shall consider, conscientiously, any evidence which might be
+furnished that Ezra was not the real reproducer, if not the original
+author of the Jewish code, after his return from Babylonia. And, I
+promise to retract and apologize for the position I have maintained in
+this lecture, if the theologians, who are at home on this subject, will
+prove that there were no spurious gospels, no impostures, no lying
+manuscripts thrown upon the religious market as soon as the pagan state
+embraced Christianity, I will also listen to any arguments which may be
+produced to show that <i>the Apostles' Creed</i> was written by the apostles;
+that Constantine abdicated in favor of the pope; that the Pagan Sibyls
+prophesied of Christ, and that Josephus acknowledged Jesus to have been the Messiah.</p>
+
+<p>I sincerely trust some learned divine into whose hands this lecture
+might fall, will present the other side, if he thinks there is another
+side, of the story I have presented. By the word invented it is not
+meant that the names, events, etc, were all manufactured, but that
+stories borrowed largely from mythical sources were edited and altered
+to serve partisan and political purposes.</p>
+
+<p>And why have I told this story?</p>
+
+<p>Do you know of any good reason, reader, why every other subject may be
+independently discussed or investigated, except religion? And do you
+know why, if Shakespeare can stand criticism, the Bible should shrink from it?</p>
+
+<p>If it is possible to disagree with, or to advance beyond, Plato,
+Socrates, Spencer, Darwin, Goethe, Emerson,&mdash;please! why is it a heresy
+to differ from Moses, Solomon, Jonah or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> Jesus? Why is it proper to
+disagree with a Greek or a Roman, but blasphemy to disagree with a Jew?</p>
+
+<p>The Bible has for centuries blocked the way of progress. As an
+infallible book it has enslaved conscience, and encouraged intolerance.
+To defend its many puerilities, and even immoral tales, men have
+resorted to casuistry and dissimulation. I believe that men will be more
+honest, more tolerant, more progressive, more independent and more
+manly, if they could be delivered from the bondage of the Bible. To
+overthrow its tyranny and to prove that a book can not be the master of
+living and growing men, to make man free, to raise him from his knees,
+to bring back the color to his cheeks white with fear, and to give to
+his arrested mind movement&mdash;is my aim and my joy!<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Saladin's <i>God and His Book</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Those who wish to read further on this subject should
+consult the author's <i>The Truth About Jesus&mdash;Is He a Myth?</i></p></div></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="block"><p class="bold">Publications by the Same Author</p>
+
+<p>A NEW CATECHISM. Fifth Edition, Revised and Enlarged, with
+Portrait of Author, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p>THE TRUTH ABOUT JESUS: IS HE A MYTH? A new book of 295 pages.
+Illustrated. Cloth $1.00. Paper $0.50.</p>
+
+<p>MANGASARIAN-CRAPSEY DEBATE ON THE HISTORICITY OF JESUS. 25c.</p>
+
+<p>PEARLS. (New Edition) Brave Thoughts from Brave Minds. Selected
+and arranged by M. M. Mangasarian. 25c.</p>
+
+<p class="bold">Lectures</p>
+
+<p class="center">10 cents a Copy</p>
+
+<p>THE CHURCH IN POLITICS&mdash;AMERICANS BEWARE!</p>
+
+<p>WOMAN SUFFRAGE, OR THE CHILD-BEARING WOMAN AND CIVILIZATION.</p>
+
+<p>THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN GENEVA UNDER CALVIN.</p>
+
+<p>THE MARTYRDOM OF HYPATIA.</p>
+
+<p>MORALITY WITHOUT GOD.</p>
+
+<p>WHAT WAS THE RELIGION OF SHAKESPEARE.</p>
+
+<p>CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ANALYZED AND ANSWERED.</p>
+
+<p>THE RELIGION OF WASHINGTON, JEFFERSON AND FRANKLIN.</p></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="block"><p class="bold2">PUBLICATIONS<br />OF<br />M. M. MANGASARIAN<br />Orchestra Hall Building</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="bold2">A NEW CATECHISM</p>
+
+<p>Containing six new chapters, making altogether 22 chapters, with an
+introduction, and a photograph of the author, bound in cloth, 270 pages.
+Fourth edition. Price, one dollar.</p>
+
+<p class="bold">AN OPINION</p>
+
+<p>Sir. George Jacob Holyoake, of England, the friend and neighbor of the
+late Herbert Spencer, says this of "A New Catechism":</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"<b>It is the boldest, the brightest, the most varied and informing
+of any work of the kind extant. The book is a cyclopedia in a
+nutshell."&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&mdash;<i>Literary Guide, London, Eng.</i></b></p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Prof. C. S. Laisant, one of the leading educators of France, and a
+member of the faculty of the College of France, says:</p>
+
+<p>"Admiration is too feeble a word to express my opinion of 'A New
+Catechism.' It is a marvelous manual of rationalistic philosophy and
+scientific morality. To disseminate this book is to aid the cause of
+European democracy&mdash;the emancipation of the people. We congratulate
+Frenchmen for the opportunity of reading in their own language so
+beautiful and beneficent a book."</p>
+
+<p>M. Vandervelde, member of the Parliament of Belgium, says:</p>
+
+<p>"I know of no other work of its kind which is as lucid, as loyal to
+truth, and as attractive to the daily toiler, as it is to the
+philosopher."&mdash;<i>In Introduction to French Edition.</i></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Geo. W. Foote, of England, in <i>The Freethinker</i>:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Mangasarian's well-known 'Catechism' promises to have a great sale
+in France and Belgium. The English edition ought to be widely circulated
+in this country. It is written with power, knowledge, and dexterity.
+Placed in the hands of young people, in particular, it should do a world
+of good for Free-thought."</p>
+
+<p class="bold">WHAT THE EUROPEAN PAPERS SAY OF "A NEW CATECHISM"</p>
+
+<p>"Grapples with the problems that underlie all the creeds and all
+the systems of science and philosophy."&mdash;<i>Glasgow Herald.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The author shows good judgment in devising questions and great
+fertility of resource in answering them. The book is well worth a
+perusal."&mdash;<i>Educational News, London.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Mangasarian seems to us to have hit upon a happy union of the
+brevity which is the soul of wit with the amplitude which conduces
+to enlightenment.... It is acute, stimulating and suggestive....
+It is eminently readable, and we trust it will have the extensive
+sale which its intrinsic merit deserves."&mdash;<i>Literary Guide,
+London.</i></p></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="block"><p class="bold">CHRISTIAN SCIENCE<br />A Comedy in Four Acts</p>
+
+<p>The book is meant for those in whom the spirit of inquiry is not
+hopelessly stifled. People who enjoy doing their thinking, will relish
+reading this comedy. The motto of the book is: "The light is known to
+have failed against folly sometimes, the laugh never." 80 pages. Cloth
+25c, paper 10c.</p>
+
+<p>The above should be read in connection with the author's pamphlet
+lecture on Why Mrs. Eddy's Teachings Appeal to Women, or <i>Christian
+Science Analysed</i>. Price, 10c.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="bold">A FEW OF THE PRINTED LECTURES<br />Of M. M. Mangasarian</p>
+
+<p>"HOW THE BIBLE WAS INVENTED."</p>
+
+<p>"MORALITY WITHOUT GOD."</p>
+
+<p>"SUNDAY SERMONS AND SUNDAY SPORTS"</p>
+
+<p>"ORTHODOX ATTACKS" (Mr. Mangasarian's answer to <i>The Outlook's</i>
+attack on "A New Catechism").</p>
+
+<p>"PRAYER."</p>
+
+<p>"THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN AMERICA" (Being a reply to the Archbishop
+of Chicago).</p>
+
+<p>"CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ANALYZED AND ANSWERED," 2nd Edition.</p>
+
+<p>"CHRISTIAN SCIENCE&mdash;A COMEDY."</p>
+
+<p>"BRYAN ON RELIGION."</p>
+
+<p>"WHAT WAS THE RELIGION OF SHAKESPEARE?"</p>
+
+<p>"SHAKESPEARE, THE RATIONALIST."</p>
+
+<p class="center">10c per copy. Orchestra Hall Building, Chicago.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="bold2">The Independent Religious Society</p>
+
+<p>Lectures are delivered every Sunday morning at 11 by M. M. Mangasarian,
+in Orchestra Hall, Michigan Avenue and Adams Street.</p>
+
+<p>The aim, spirit, and fellowship, of the Society, are clearly expressed
+in the following selection from Ralph Waldo Emerson:</p>
+
+<p>"The new church will be founded on moral science. Poets, artists,
+musicians, philosophers, will be its prophet teachers. The noblest
+literature of the world will be its bible. Love and labor, its holy
+sacraments&mdash;and instead of worshipping one saviour, it will gladly build
+an altar in the heart for every one who has suffered for humanity."</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's How the Bible was Invented, by M. M. Mangasarian
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+Project Gutenberg's How the Bible was Invented, by M. M. Mangasarian
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: How the Bible was Invented
+       A Lecture Delivered Before the Independent Religious Society
+
+Author: M. M. Mangasarian
+
+Release Date: July 5, 2011 [EBook #36627]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW THE BIBLE WAS INVENTED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Not to Undeceive is to Deceive"
+
+How the Bible Was Invented
+
+A Lecture Delivered
+Before the Independent
+Religious Society
+Orchestra Hall
+Chicago, Illinois
+Sunday at 11 A. M.
+
+[Illustration: Logo]
+
+Tenth Edition
+
+By
+M. M. MANGASARIAN
+
+
+
+
+How the Bible Was Invented
+
+
+Many good people believe that the Bible was given by inspiration of God.
+The wording of my subject suggests that it is the work of men, and not
+always of honest men, either. Am I trying to offend people by intimating
+that the Bible was _invented_? On the contrary, I am exposing myself to
+criticism by telling these good people the truth about the Bible, which
+their own preachers, for some reason or other, have withheld from them.
+
+One of the texts in the Bible, attributed to Jesus, says that, It were
+better for a man to have a millstone tied about his neck, and he were
+cast into the sea, than that he should offend, that is to say, unsettle
+the faith of, "one of these little ones." According to this saying of
+Jesus, a man must keep his questionings and his doubts to himself. He
+shall not talk where he is liable to upset the faith of some believing
+soul,--some aged mother, some Sunday-school lad or lassie. The man who
+will go about disturbing people's religious peace, deserves to be
+drowned with a millstone about his neck! What is your opinion of such a
+suggestion?
+
+
+If you approve of this sentiment, attributed to the founder of
+Christianity, then the work which we are doing here, every Sunday, is
+quite wicked; a millstone around our necks is what we deserve, and the
+bottom of the sea is where we belong.
+
+Psychologists tell us that there is great power in suggestion. With all
+my love and reverence for whatever is sweet and sane in the Gospels, I
+must protest against this text, because it is a suggestion to violence
+and persecution. If Jesus suggests a millstone for the neck of the
+heretic who upsets people's illusions and makes inquirers out of
+believers, and intimates further that drowning is too good for them, why
+not take the hint and act upon it? He expresses a wish, shall we not
+fulfill it? Alas, we know, too well, that in less enlightened ages, the
+suggestion of Jesus was not only carried out, but vastly improved
+upon--by the Spanish Inquisition, for instance.
+
+Let us be fair. When a man is accused, it is his privilege to defend
+himself. If Jesus suggests that the investigator who unsettles people's
+beliefs should be drowned, before the suggestion is acted upon, the
+disturber should be given a chance to be heard. Would that be asking too
+much? Let us see, then, just what it means to command a man to suppress
+whatever might disturb a neighbor's faith: It means that if I am
+announced to speak on the Bible, I must say nothing to which the weakest
+or the most credulous among my hearers might object. If I do, I shall
+deserve to be tied to a millstone and drowned! But let us turn this
+proposition about to see how it would work: Having discovered a truth,
+and yearning in my soul to express it, suppose I were to say, that if
+any man in this audience shall scare me into silence,--shall cheat me
+out of the joy and duty of imparting that truth to my world, by
+threatening to be offended, or to be unsettled by it,--he ought to have
+a millstone tied to his neck and be cast into the sea. How would that
+do?
+
+Again, an illustration, which I have used before, can with great aptness
+be repeated here: A woman is given a ring with a stone in it. Not being
+herself a _connaisseur_ of precious stones, she is easily made to
+believe that her jewel is the most costly in the world. This is told her
+in order to make her happy, and to fancy herself as the possessor of a
+gem of great value. Observe, now, how much it costs to keep up this
+deception. All her friends have to agree to say nothing that may
+unsettle her faith in her imitation jewel. Indeed, they must pretend not
+to know the difference between the genuine and the sham stone. To
+preserve this woman's illusion, they must prevaricate and even openly
+lie, if pressed to do so, lest the poor woman's eyes should open, or her
+faith in her jewel be lost. Is it fair to demand so great a sacrifice to
+prolong the fantasy of a foolish woman?
+
+Apply this illustration now to the Bible. Here are some people who have
+been told when they were young, that this book, which is placed in their
+hands, is a personal message to them from God. This makes the book,
+certainly, more precious than any jewel. God, the owner and disposer of
+everything, with his own hand has inscribed an epistle to them, and this
+is it! What joy! What a treasure! Now these people, not being students
+themselves, accepted implicitly what they were told by their teachers,
+just as the woman, not being an expert herself, took her jeweler's word
+about the value of the stone in her ring. In order not to offend this
+child-like faith in the Bible, word is sent out to everybody to hush.
+Hush! not a word! not a whisper!--Hush! hush! is the cry of all. To
+uphold this conspiracy of silence, arrangements are made to dictate what
+may and what may not be said in public. A preacher in praying or
+preaching might give away the secret,--he might inadvertently say
+something which may prick this pretty bubble of illusion. Hence, in the
+Catholic and Episcopal Churches, all the prayers are printed, and the
+preachers pray according to the book. Do you think the Church will let a
+man close his eyes and open his mouth and say whatever comes into his
+head? Indeed, not! He must pray by the book. In the protestant
+denominations there is the creed, to which you swear your allegiance
+before you can open your mouth in one of their churches, and the moment
+you are caught talking beyond what the creed allows, your ordination is
+taken from you and your mouth is shut. Dear me! all this regime is for
+the purpose of encouraging the conceit that man has been favored with a
+hand-written, personal message, from the Creator of the universe.
+
+If this were all, we, ourselves, would not take notice of it. But we,
+too, are compelled to join this conspiracy of silence and suppression,
+and to lie in the interests of the delicate believers whose faith cannot
+stand the least strain. Darwin must beware how he writes about the
+origin of species, or the descent of man. Some believer, hugging
+ecstatically his Bible to his bosom, might read his books and lose his
+blissful conceit. Do not think, do not invent, do not announce your
+truth, ye philosophers, scientists and reformers! without first
+consulting the prejudices of the "little ones" in the faith; for if you
+unsettle the faith of a single believer, it were better that you were
+weighted down into the sea by a millstone hanging about your necks. And
+you, whose love and genius give us our daily victory over disease and
+error,--whose thought is our daily bread and beauty,--you, too, must
+hush, you must become sterile, or be content to speak by rote, lest you
+should disturb the repose of the believer who has laid himself down to
+sleep. The theological babe must not be awakened. It will bawl and cry
+if aroused, and better than cause one of these babes to cry, let there
+be no intellectual life in the world!
+
+Our American author, Thoreau, was right when he said that, "The modern
+Christian is a man who has consented to say all the prayers in the
+liturgy, provided you will let him go straight to bed and sleep quietly
+afterward." That is to say, he does not wish to be disturbed. "All his
+prayers begin with," says Thoreau, "Now I lay me down to sleep."
+_Sleep_, seems to be his quest, intellectual as well as physical, "and
+he is forever looking forward to the time when he shall go to his
+'_long_ rest.'" He looks forward to a future of inactivity. All effort,
+especially intellectual effort, is distasteful to him, and is apt to
+offend and unsettle him. Hence the intellectual life must not be real;
+what must be real is the _sleep_.
+
+Those of you who support these lectures, as well as those of you who
+only hear them, know that our position is the very reverse of what Jesus
+and the Church recommend. We do not believe in persecution. We do not
+even suggest that anybody should be drowned; but if our human nature is
+so depraved that persecution and murder are inevitable, then, in our
+humble opinion, it will be more economical to drown the people who will
+not permit a Darwin to give his thought to the world, than to drown a
+Darwin. The man who is offended at freedom of speech, can be dispensed
+with more safely than the man who avails himself of this divine
+privilege. If my freedom of speech offends my neighbor, his fear of
+freedom is a greater offense to me. Which of us deserves most to be
+drowned?
+
+But in the next place the suggestion that people who rob their weaker
+fellows of their illusions should be drowned, even when it does not lead
+to persecution, is an encouragement to _hypocrisy_ and _imposture_, as
+the story of the composition of the Bible which will now be told, shows.
+
+You have to listen as closely as you can, if you do not wish to do me
+the injustice of misrepresenting me. I have traveled extensively in the
+Orient, and have conversed with and read the works of eminent scholars
+who have enjoyed a first-hand acquaintance with eastern people, and the
+unanimous testimony is that one of the besetting sins of Oriental races,
+is lying. It is not because the Asiatics are wickeder than European
+nations, for in other respects they are as good, if not better, than
+ourselves. The average of morality is perhaps about the same in all
+countries. But the notorious vice of all Asiatic peoples is lying. They
+lie with a freedom and a fluency,--with such plausibility and so
+straight a face,--that one can hardly distinguish their lie from their
+truth. Curious though it may seem, people who are given to lying are
+often the first to be deceived by their own lies. They
+
+
+     "Keep on till their own lies deceive them.
+     And oft' repeating, at length believed 'em."
+
+
+Now, then, I am going to look this audience in the face, and then I am
+going to say just this:
+
+_The Bible is an Oriental book._
+
+When, in reading the Bible, I find in it exaggeration, invention, and
+even unscrupulous misrepresentation, I am not astonished, because I know
+that it is an Oriental book. But the orthodox believer, in order to
+excuse or explain away, for instance, these violations of the law of
+veracity, resorts frequently to sophistry, subterfuge, and even, alas,
+to lies more unscrupulous than any found in the Bible. This is as sad as
+it is true. But to defend one lie, or to make it look like the truth,
+more lying becomes necessary.
+
+There are numerous instances of the Oriental practice of lying in the
+Bible. Abraham suppressed the truth about his wife, and declared she was
+his sister. Jacob deceived his father, Isaac, and made him believe he
+was Esau, and stole his blessing. The same patriarch deceived his
+father-in-law, and stole his gods. God himself instructs Samuel to tell
+a falsehood to Saul, to whom he is sent on a mission. "I will send them
+a lying spirit," threatens Jehovah, when he is out of temper. And, in
+the New Testament, the Apostle Paul is Oriental enough, though in many
+respects a great soul, to resort to "craft and guile," and to be "all
+things to all men," and even to lie for the glory of God. Aside from
+this being his own policy, he imagined that it was also the policy of
+God. "And for this cause," he says in his Epistle to the Thessalonians,
+"God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe in a
+lie." Reflect upon that. To send a delusion to people means to trip or
+trap them,--to catch them in a snare. People tell a falsehood, either to
+protect themselves, or to hurt others. God needed not to resort to this
+means to protect himself. Paul tells us he does this to hurt others.
+"God shall send them strong delusion, that they might believe a lie that
+_they all might be damned_." How could Paul, an exceptionally
+intelligent man, be guilty of such blasphemy? How could he so damage the
+character of the God he loved? My answer is that he was an Asiatic, and
+he did not look upon lying in the same light that Europeans do. The
+Asiatic conscience for veracity has never enjoyed a very high
+reputation. The Apostle Paul even boasts that, "being crafty, I caught
+you with guile."
+
+A very curious controversy took place some years ago, between Herbert
+Spencer and a religious Weekly. Quoting the words of Paul to the Romans,
+where he says, "For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my
+lie unto his glory, etc.," Spencer condemned Paul for this; the
+religious Weekly objected that Paul was only speaking ironically. And
+Mr. Spencer generously admitted that such a supposition was quite
+possible. We are ourselves willing to give Paul every opportunity to
+exonerate himself, and will not press the charge too vehemently against
+him. But whatever Paul may have meant in his argument with the Romans,
+what shall we say about his defense of "guile and craft," in his Epistle
+to the Thessalonians? And what about his general policy, to be all
+things to all men,--that is to say, to trim and compromise?
+
+Moreover, the practice of the Church during the early centuries,
+confirms the criticism of such representative writers as Mosheim,
+Ellicott, Warburton, Lecky, Gibbon, Jortin, Gieseler, and other equally
+reliable authorities, that "The pernicious maxim that those who make it
+their business to deceive with a view of promoting the cause of truth,
+were deserving rather of commendation than of censure."
+
+"History forces upon us," writes Bishop Ellicott, "the recognition of
+pious fraud as a principle which was by no means inoperative in the
+earliest ages of Christianity." It reflects credit upon this
+Bishop,--this European,--to admit that the early Christians cultivated
+the Oriental practice of "lying for the glory of God." Eusebius, the
+saint who invented Constantine's vision of the cross, boasted that "_he
+had written what redounded to the glory_ and suppressed whatever tended
+to the disgrace of religion."
+
+"No faith with the heretics," was the cry of the Christian church for
+centuries.
+
+My object in speaking of this is to show that even as our Oriental-born
+religion, brought over into Europe the germ of monasticism, religious
+intolerance, the practise of burning men and women alive,--absolutism in
+matters of faith, determining by authority of councils what shall and
+what shall not be the truth,--not one of which institutions previously
+existed in Europe; it also brought over, the Oriental practice of pious
+lying, and gave it a vogue which it had never before enjoyed in Europe.
+
+It is universally admitted that beside the four Gospels which the
+churches believe to be genuine, there were, in the early centuries,
+hundreds of Gospels which have been rejected as spurious. Pause for a
+moment, and think of what that means. Why were there so many lying
+Gospels? The very fact that our four Gospels were chosen from a pile of
+manuscripts, everyone of which claimed to be genuine, is a sad
+commentary upon the morality of the early churchmen. I trust you duly
+appreciate the significance of this. What was it that gave an impetus to
+the industry of imposture? How explain the vogue which lying for
+religion enjoyed after the conversion of the Roman Empire? Was it so
+profitable to manufacture Gospels that everybody tried his hand at it? I
+cannot get away from the tremendous fact that by the admission of the
+churches themselves, there were a great number of apocryphal Gospels
+thrown upon the religious market as soon as Christianity became well
+established in Europe. What made lying so popular and profitable all at
+once? If it is true, and it is, that our four Gospels had to be voted
+upon from among a heap of other manuscripts; and if it is true, as one
+Church father reports, that a great number of manuscripts were placed
+under a table, and that prayers were then offered to induce the genuine
+Gospels to jump upon the table, and that four of them did so, while the
+rest, failing to jump upon the table, were disowned; and if it is also
+true, and we know it is, that some of the Christian fathers claimed that
+only four Gospels could be genuine because the earth has four corners,
+and four winds. If all this is true--then, speaking as a student of
+history, whether it unsettles you or not, I am constrained to say that
+this Oriental religion, as soon as it set foot in Europe, lifted both
+superstition and lying to the dignity of a vocation.
+
+But when we come to the four Gospels themselves, pronounced to be
+canonical, do you know, my hearers, that there are upwards of 150,000
+different readings of these same Gospels? That is to say, the same
+passages read one way in one manuscript, and another, in another, while
+they may be absent altogether from a third, etc. In view of all these
+facts, reflect upon the intelligence of the man who, Sunday after
+Sunday, holds up the Gospels as the infallible word of God. He does so
+because he is speaking by the creed, to which he has sworn allegiance
+for the rest of his life. One hundred and fifty thousand various
+readings of the New Testament! And think of the centuries of bloodshed
+and controversy over these various readings!
+
+Open, if you please, your New Testaments and read the seventh verse of
+the fifth chapter of the first epistle of John, then look for the same
+verse in the Revised Version, and you will not find it there. After
+being regarded as the word of God for two thousand years, it has been
+expurgated. Today, according to one Bible (the King James Version), this
+passage is inspired; according to another Bible (the Revised Version),
+it is an imposture. Let me quote the text:
+
+
+      "For there are three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, the
+      Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one."
+
+
+What better proof of the Trinity do we need? On black and white, in the
+Bible, John, the Apostle, declares by the power of the Holy Ghost, that
+there are three in heaven, gives their names, and adds that these three
+are one.
+
+Some lying scribe, some crabbed sectarian, some unconscionable copyist,
+bribed by his party, must have invented this text, which, for twenty
+centuries, has been worshiped as the word of God. Wicked sceptics, two
+thousand years ago, denounced the clumsy imposture, but they were
+silenced by the halter and the sword. It has taken the Christian Church
+nearly two thousand years to discover that the sceptics were right. It
+has taken the church two thousand years of evolution in honesty and
+intelligence to throw out this spurious text. It has taken the church,
+claiming to be under the guidance of the Spirit of God, twenty hundred
+years in which to acquire the courage and love of truth of the wicked
+sceptics who first called attention to this lie hiding behind an
+apostle's name. Reflect upon this! After using every means, even the
+most cruel, to force this Trinitarian text upon the world, the Revised
+Version blushes with shame to retain it any longer.
+
+It would be unnecessary to multiply illustrations, but let my readers
+also consult the words in the margin of the last chapter of the Gospel
+of Mark, in the Revised Bible. Eleven entire verses of this chapter
+after having been palmed off for two thousand years as the word of God;
+after being repeatedly quoted as representing God's mind on matters of
+faith; after causing untold misery, cruel wars, persecutions, diabolical
+tortures, and more than all these, such mental anguish in millions of
+sensitive minds as no repentance can atone for,--these verses, among
+which is the following: "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel
+to the whole Creation.... He that believeth and is baptised shall be
+saved, _but he that believeth not shall be damned_,"--has been placed
+under an interrogation mark. Ah, for how much misery is the above
+damnatory clause responsible! How many lives this leprous falsehood has
+blasted! How this cruel imposture, like a malignant cancer, ate away the
+sound parts in human nature, for twenty long centuries!
+
+Among these eleven verses are also Jesus' promise of miraculous power to
+his disciples, such as casting out devils, juggling with live serpents,
+drinking deadly poisons, laying hands on the sick,--which has filled our
+world with charlatans without number. But now comes the Revised Version,
+and quietly dismisses from the Word of God these eleven Verses, with
+these words in the margin: "The two oldest Greek manuscripts, and some
+other authorities, omit from verse 9 to the end (verse 20). Some other
+authorities have a different ending to the Gospel." Read the above
+carefully and reflect. The old translators suppressed all this
+information, and gave us to believe that we were not only reading the
+word of God, but the only word of God in existence. The revisers say,
+"Some other authorities have a _different_ ending to the Gospel." Is not
+that edifying? How did they decide which "ending of the Gospel" to print
+as the Word of God? And why did the translators of the Bible wait two
+thousand years before they gave out this information? Is it to their
+increasing honesty that we owe this admission, or is it the increasing
+power of the non-churchgoing world which has compelled this admission
+from their lips? Yes, yes, pause and think of how an organization must
+have become gangrened with imposture to have successfully resisted every
+claim of truth and honor for two thousand years! This is a question of
+conscience as well as a question of knowledge. Why did the translators
+suppress the fact until a few years ago that, "Some other authorities
+have a different ending to the Gospel"?, and that "the _two oldest_
+Greek manuscripts and some other authorities omit from verse 9 to the
+end"? Time forbids me to give other illustrations of the--I regret to
+say it--manipulations of the Word of God by its custodians. The heart
+bleeds with mingled pain and indignation at the temerity and effrontery
+of the pious crew, who, to advance their "ism" or to make converts, did
+not hesitate to pervert history.
+
+For two thousand years, for anyone to dare breathe a word against this
+Bible-inventing party, meant hell here and hereafter. Mark Antony
+invited Rome to weep over the prostrate form of assassinated Caesar. I
+wish I could provoke you to a burning blush of indignation over the
+prostrate majesty of Europe and America at the feet of these
+unconscionable inventors of inspired texts. Blessed be the day which
+humbled the pride of the ecclesiastic, and wrested from his hands the
+power to suppress the truth!
+
+But aside from doctoring their own Gospels, the early Christians did not
+hesitate to submit the writings of the great pagans,--Seneca, Pliny,
+Tacitus, Suetonious, Marcus Aurelius and the Jewish historian, Josephus,
+to the same indignity, by slipping passages into their works favorable
+to the Christian religion. Perhaps I am to be blamed for taking this
+matter so seriously, but how can I help it? I feel the wrong, the shame,
+and the crime of it, deep in my bones--when I picture to myself an
+Asiatic scribbler, a sectarian, a clown, a rogue, a cheat, tampering
+with the works of a dead master,--pushing and squeezing his imposture
+into the mouth of the mighty dead,--defiling the thought of the
+philosopher with the foulness of his superstition! It makes my heart
+rise and knock with vehemence against my ribs until I feel as if they
+would break. Not only were individual passages invented and slipped into
+the Pagan writings, but a number of books were written and attributed to
+the greatest shining lights of the old Roman world. Dr. Gieseler, a
+prominent Christian historian of modern Germany, who has made, as most
+German students do, a painstaking study of the early centuries, says
+that, when the Christians were accused of inventing manuscripts, they
+"quieted their consciences respecting the forgery with the idea of their
+good intentions." "It was an age of literary fraud," declares Bishop
+Ellicott.
+
+There is shown at the library in Jena, a letter purported to have been
+written by Publius Lentulus, the supposed predecessor of Pontius Pilate.
+The impostor who concocted this epistle and affixed the signature of a
+Roman governor to it, makes him tell the Roman Senate, "that there had
+appeared (in Judea) a man endowed with great powers, whose name is Jesus
+Christ." The earmarks of fraud are so plain that even the orthodox are
+ashamed of this clumsy manufacture. Another Gospel is attributed to
+Pontius Pilate. Nicodemus is made the author of still another. The
+Emperor Aurelius, is made to recommend the Christians to the Senate for
+their valor; Tiberius even gives his testimony in their favor; Jesus,
+himself, is made the author of a treatise in his own behalf; the Virgin
+Mary writes the story of her wonderful child; Adam, even, testifies to
+the truth of the Christian religion, though he is supposed to have lived
+nearly four thousand years before Jesus. There is no end to the list of
+inventions.
+
+But one of the most daring forgeries is the following passage in
+Josephus:
+
+
+      "About that time appeared Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it be
+      right to speak of him as a man, for he was a performer of
+      wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with
+      pleasure. He drew after him many of the Jews as well as of the
+      Gentiles. _This same was the Christ._ And though Pilate, by the
+      judgment of the chief rulers among us, delivered him up to be
+      crucified ... he showed himself alive on the third day...."
+
+
+That this famous passage in Josephus is an interpolation, is now
+generally admitted. Breaking suddenly in the midst of a paragraph, the
+great Jewish historian pauses to announce that Jesus was the Christ, and
+that he really rose from the dead, etc., etc. This, if true, makes
+Josephus a Christian, which he was not. The early fathers, Justin
+Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, never referred to this famous
+passage, which they certainly would have done, had such a passage
+existed. What better evidence could they desire in their controversy
+with the Jews than to point to this wonderful confession of their
+principal author and historian, that the Jesus whom they crucified was
+the Christ, and that he rose from the dead! But in the Josephus with
+which they were acquainted there was no such text. Origen, the Christian
+Father, admits in his writings that Josephus was not a believer in
+Christ. How, then, did this passage creep into the works of the Jewish
+historian? The man who discovered this passage in Josephus was the same
+man who invented Constantine's vision, and the fable of the Seventy,
+who, he says, shut up in seventy separate cells, produced the Septuagint
+translation of the Old Testament, a translation, which, he adds, was
+surely the work of the Holy Ghost, because when the Seventy separate
+translations were compared, they were found to be in every detail alike,
+without even the difference of a punctuation mark in them all. To
+further prove this story, Eusebius tells us that he himself saw the
+seventy cells which the translators had occupied four hundred years
+before. This is the kind of churchman who first discovered the Josephus
+passage. After quoting the interpolated passage, Eusebius wonders how
+any Jew can have the impudence not to believe that Jesus was the Christ.
+In one of his essays, De Quincy says that only lunatics now believe in
+the genuineness of this passage, while a bishop of the Anglican
+Church,--Warburton--calls it "a stupid forgery."
+
+But the early Christians made even the pagan gods to testify for Jesus.
+They composed verses in praise of the Christian religion and attributed
+them to the pagan Sibyls. The oracles of Rome were made to prophesy the
+coming of Christ,--his passion, and resurrection, and to admit their
+inferiority to him. For many hundred years these Sibylline verses were
+quoted as genuine, until the advancement of education laughed the
+disgraceful fabrication out of existence.
+
+Again, pious ecclesiastics in their zeal for their "ism," invented also
+an _Apostles' Creed_, which the apostles never saw, and an _Apostolic
+Constitution_, containing directions how a Christian Church or State
+should be governed. They invented also the _Decretal Epistles_, by which
+Constantine transfers all his property to the Bishop of Rome,--his
+sword, his diadem, his throne,--and makes a prince of the pope, and an
+empire of his church. Here is the passage which was forged into
+Constantine's mouth by the Spanish priest Isidore:
+
+
+      "We ascribe to the See of St. Peter all dignity, all glory, all
+      imperial power.... Besides, we give to Sylvester (bishop of Rome)
+      and his successor, our palace of the Lateran which is beyond
+      question the most beautiful place on earth. We give him our crown,
+      our mitre, our diadem, and all our imperial vestments; we remit to
+      him the imperial dignity. We give as a pure gift, to the holy
+      pontiff, the city of Rome and all the Western cities of Italy, as
+      well as the Western cities of other countries. In order to give
+      place to him, we yield our dominion over all these provinces by
+      removing the seat of our empire to Byzantium, considering it not
+      right that a terrestrial emperor should preserve the least power
+      where God had established the head of religion."
+
+
+How lovely! No wonder that Cardinal Newman regarded Constantine as a
+pattern for all future monarchs.
+
+But enough! Let us draw the curtain upon that early Christian age of
+invention and imposture. Why was it, we ask again, that Europe became a
+market for forgeries, immediately after its conversion to the Asiatic
+cult?
+
+Yet we must not forget that hand in hand with this dishonest work of
+invention, went the shameful destruction of whatever was deemed
+unfavorable to the new religion. Many of the masterpieces of pagan
+literature were destroyed when they could not be tampered with. The rare
+volumes of history, philosophy and poetry were reduced to ashes, that
+they might not live to bear witness to the greatness of the
+pre-Christian world. Even as they destroyed the monuments and temples of
+Athens and Rome, they destroyed also the precious manuscripts of Greek
+and Roman authors. From the following confession of St. Ambrose, Bishop
+of Milan, we may gauge the temper of the early Christian Church: "I
+myself would willingly assume the guilt (of destroying pagan buildings)
+and say that 'I have set them in flames that there may be not a place
+left in which Christ is denied.'"
+
+
+Let us now briefly, tell the story of the invention of the Old
+Testament: When Moses finished writing the book of the law, he called
+the elders of the people before him and commanded them to "_take the
+book of the law_ and put it into the side" or the inside "of the ark of
+the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness."
+The ark was a chest or box constructed after specific directions from
+God, and was placed in the holy place in the temple, under or behind a
+veil, which also covered the mercy seat upon the ark. As you must know,
+even Aaron the high priest was cautioned against approaching this place
+too often, for it was very holy. According to this account, God gives a
+book to his people, but he locks it up in a box, and places the box
+behind a veil, then fixes a seat upon the box which He Himself,
+occupies. How could the people, under these circumstances, get at the
+book? But it was not meant that they should. Ah, we have here a fine
+illustration of what we may call the craft of the priest, or
+priestcraft. They announce a revelation from God, but they will not
+permit anyone to take it home and read it. It is locked up in a box, and
+God himself is made to sit on the box.
+
+The grass dies without air and light. The birds pine away in a cage.
+Even the worms which creep in damp holes, come out for a glimpse of the
+light, now and then; but the word of God hides in the darkness of the
+ark, and fears the searching gaze of man! Was it born to be buried in a
+wooden tomb,--born to be locked up in a shittim-wood chest,--born to
+blink at the light! Ah, the precious priests! The sun may be seen by
+everybody, the stars shine in the open, but the Word of God, like a
+bashful maid, shrinks from observation, and sneaks into a closet. To
+this day, the Catholics have to go to a closet--that is to say they have
+to secure permission, before they can read the Word of God.[1]
+
+To show that we have Bible authority for the statements made above, we
+will quote from the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter xxxi, verse 24, etc:
+
+
+      "And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the
+      words of this law in a book, until they were finished. That Moses
+      commanded the Levites which bare the Ark of the Covenant of the
+      Lord, saying: Take this book of the law, and put it in the side of
+      the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, your God, that it may be
+      there for a witness against thee."
+
+
+The directions are specific. And the people's reverence for the ark or
+the chest containing the inspired words of God increased a thousandfold.
+
+Let us continue: The book of the law is now in the box, with the lid
+closed, and the deity sitting on the lid. Surely, it will be impossible
+for the book ever to get lost. But it did get lost. We will tell its
+story presently. But first let us speak of the jealousy with which the
+priests watched the ark. In times of war when the Jews were compelled to
+move the ark from one place to another, everybody was strictly forbidden
+from touching it, or looking into it. On one occasion, while they had
+the chest containing the two tables of stone and the Book of the Law, on
+an ox-cart, moving it to a place of safety, the cart jostled and the ark
+tipped. One of the drivers, Uzzah, instinctively, put forth his hand to
+steady the sacred chest. He was instantly killed. He touched the ark,
+and that was a crime. One must not even touch the box to save it from
+falling, much less read and investigate the book hidden therein. Every
+precaution was taken to protect the Bible from being investigated. God
+did not guard the tree of knowledge more zealously than did the priests
+the book of the law.
+
+There were some people, however, who were curious enough to peep into
+the ark, in spite of the threats of the rabbis. To scare these people,
+the awful words,--sacrilege, impiety, profanity,--_blasphemy_,--were
+invented. When these failed, murder was resorted to. Listen to this
+story: The people of Beth-Shemesh, being of an inquiring mind, one day,
+they approached the ark and peeped into it, or tried to. Well; riot and
+massacre followed! The Lord "smote the men of Beth-Shemesh because they
+had looked into the ark of the Lord, even he smote of the people fifty
+thousand and three score and ten men,"--fifty thousand and seventy. The
+rabbis charged this wholesale massacre to the deity. All successful
+murderers do the same. But we must admit the priests took excellent care
+of the ark and its contents. Unfortunately, however, it is now nearly
+three thousand years since the ark was last heard of. Where is it now?
+
+But to return to our story:
+
+Many years after the time we are now speaking of, when King Solomon
+finished his magnificent temple, in Jerusalem, he ordered the ark to be
+opened. How he dared to disobey the priests, I cannot tell, but kings
+enjoy special privileges, and perhaps, he had never heard that there was
+a prohibition against even touching the ark. When the ark was opened,
+lo! and behold! the Book of the Law which Moses had commanded to be put
+inside the ark was not there.
+
+_It was not there!_
+
+In 2nd Kings, eighth chapter, ninth verse, we read that when they opened
+the ark:
+
+
+      "There was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone."
+
+
+In other words, the book which we read about in the former quotation
+from the Bible, and which contained most valuable divine instructions to
+the people, had disappeared. The ark contained only two stones, which
+too, in due time, went the way of the book, and no one knows where they
+are at the present time. Ark and stones and book, as they are nowhere
+to be found, there is a bare possibility that they have returned to
+heaven whence they came.
+
+But let us follow the story: The book was not in the ark.
+
+What fate had befallen it? Was it never put there? When Uzzah, and the
+five thousand and seventy men were killed for touching the ark, was it
+empty? Solomon had the lid of the chest removed, and he found therein no
+"Book of the Law," which was ordered to be placed there "as a witness."
+
+Then followed a stretch of centuries in which the Book of the Law is not
+heard of. Oblivion now began to spread its dusty wings upon the memory
+of it. Yet, suggests Saladin, the old world jogged along as usual; the
+sun rose and set; the moon, as ever before shed its romantic light upon
+sea and shore. Lovers paired, and children, like a flock of swallows,
+visited our earth. They toiled, grew old and died--without any Book of
+the Law.
+
+There is a third chapter in the biography of the Bible. Three hundred
+and fifty years after Solomon had fallen asleep with his fathers, one
+morning,--I cannot tell whether it was on a fair or on a foul day,
+Hilkiah,--remember that name,--Hilkiah! the high priest, knocked on the
+door of Shaphan, King Josiah's private secretary, and begged for a
+private interview,--a _tete-a-tete_, as the French would say. Leaning
+over, he whispered in the ears of the King's minister, slowly and
+solemnly, as one who is burdened with some compelling
+news,--that--he--had--just--found--"The Book of the Law" which had been
+lost for three hundred and fifty years!
+
+The two men paused and looked at each other for a moment. Yes, Hilkiah,
+the high priest, had found the book which had been lost for three
+hundred and fifty years! And where? In the Temple! Had the king's
+minister been in an inquiring mood, he might have asked some questions:
+Was the book lying there all these years and not a man stumbled upon it?
+Or was it just put there for Hilkiah to find it? If it had been lost for
+three hundred years or more, how could Hilkiah tell that the book he
+found was the same that Moses wrote and ordered kept in the shittim-wood
+chest? If Hilkiah made any changes in the book, how is the world to know
+which is Hilkiah's and which is Moses' contribution to the Bible? But
+the questions were not asked. Besides, faith can shut its small eye to
+even greater difficulties than are involved in Hilkiah's discovery.
+
+When the King heard this extraordinary news, he must have doubted the
+word of the high priest, for he appointed a committee, whose names are
+given in the Bible, to present a report on this newly-found book. What
+did the committee do? Did it study the book? Did it invite native and
+foreign scholars to pronounce upon it? Did it encourage the noblest,
+bravest, most truthful men and women in the world to express their free
+opinion about it, or to cross-examine the high priest? Indeed not! The
+committee took the book and went to a medium. They believed that the
+prophetess Huldah, the medium, or the witch, was the sole person capable
+of passing upon the genuineness of inspired documents. No thinker, no
+conscientious student, patiently collecting facts, and fearlessly
+exposing error, could compare with the witch Huldah in inspiration. She
+was to the Jewish nation, at this time, what Plato and Aristotle were to
+the heathen Greeks. Huldah, the medium, represented the highest culture
+of the country and its people. She was the one light in Jerusalem. The
+confidence of Minot, Savage, Heber, Newton and publisher Funk, in Mrs.
+Piper, is not a circumstance to the faith of King Josiah's committee in
+prophetess Huldah. And she did not require time to study the book, or to
+make investigations. What kind of a prophetess would she have been if
+she could not answer any questions offhand?
+
+Of course, Huldah's opinion was the Lord's opinion, because she began
+her decision with the words, "Thus saith the Lord." And although, like
+all mediums, she is very careful not to commit herself, she seems to
+have satisfied the delegation from the King that the priest, Hilkiah,
+had found the lost book of the law. For some reason which we are unable
+to divine the book was not put back into the Ark. Perhaps they had found
+a safer place.
+
+How do Christian scholars explain this Hilkiah episode? Let us quote
+from the _Encyclopedia Biblica_, one of the best known commentaries on
+the Bible:--"What led Hilkiah to say that he had found the Book of the
+Law is not recorded." Perhaps it was not convenient to do so: "He may
+merely have meant," adds the commentator, feeling fearfully the strain
+of his orthodoxy, "Here is the best and fullest law-book, about which
+thou hast been asking." Is not this ingenious? "I have found the Book of
+the Law," may only have meant, according to this clergyman's
+interpretation, "Here is the best and fullest law-book about which thou
+hast been asking." But why should Hilkiah have meant one thing and said
+another? And what about the fact that Solomon failed to find the Book of
+the Law in the Ark, and that for three hundred and fifty years there is
+silence about this same book? And why did they go to medium Huldah, if
+everybody knew what the book was? But the explanations of the orthodox
+scholars which I have quoted prove what I said about the believer being
+compelled to twist and cramp his conscience even worse than the reputed
+authors of the Scriptures have done, in order to smooth over the
+offenses against truth and honor in the Bible.
+
+The authors of the _Encyclopedia Biblica_ are among the most scholarly
+and progressive of the Christian clergy, and their answer to questions
+about the High Priest Hilkiah is as good as can be expected, under the
+circumstances. But we know of a safer answer than that--_silence_.
+
+There is a concluding chapter in the history of the Bible. It appears
+that when Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Persians, the city was
+pillaged, the temple destroyed, and the Book of the Law which Hilkiah
+had discovered, was burned. Once more, Israel is without a book. Driven
+into captivity, the Jews lived among the heathen without a temple and
+without a bible. Then Cyrus, the King of Persia, is represented in the
+book of Ezra, as issuing a proclamation to the Jews to return to their
+country and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. At this time, Cyrus,
+graciously delivered to the Jews "the vessels of the house of the Lord,
+which Nebuchadnezzar had brought out of Jerusalem, and had put them in
+the house of his gods." Among the articles restored to the Temple, no
+mention is made of the Book of the Law. But Ezra, who is called "a
+scribe of the words of the commandment of the Lord," appears to have not
+only rebuilt the temple, but also to have restored the burned Book of
+the Law. In forty days, by the help of forty associates, everything that
+was ever reported to have been done of the Lord was put to writing and
+read aloud to the congregation which kept standing as Ezra read to
+them. Such is the story in the Book of _Esdras_.
+
+That Ezra was the restorer of the destroyed law seems to have been the
+opinion of almost all the early church Fathers. "Whether you choose to
+call Moses the author of the Pentateuch, or Ezra the restorer of the
+same book, I make no objection," wrote St. Jerome. Clement, of
+Alexandria, another church Father, writes, that, "The writings having
+been destroyed, Ezra, the Levite, having become inspired, prophesied,
+restoring again all the old writings." Eusebius and Irenaeus seem to be
+of the same opinion, and the famous Tertullian, a pillar of the church,
+gives his testimony that, "Jerusalem having been destroyed by the
+Babylonian siege, it appears that every instrument of Jewish literature
+was restored by Esdras."
+
+If Esdras, indeed, restored the burned book, which Hilkiah had found in
+the Temple after it had been lost for three hundred and fifty years,
+then, the question whether Moses was inspired or not,--a question which
+has vexed the world so much--loses all its importance. Was Ezra
+inspired? That is the crucial question? If he was not, how can Moses'
+inspiration help us since his writings were burned by the Persians, even
+if they were not stolen from the ark and revised by Hilkiah? The
+inventor of the Old Testament was Ezra, "a scribe of the words of the
+commandment of the Lord," that is to say, the clerk or amanuensis of
+God, a title which aptly describes not the interpreter, but the author
+of the Book of the Law. What kind of a man was this compiler or inventor
+of the Book of the Law? What does Christian Scholarship think of his
+character? Let us hear the doctors of divinity on Ezra.
+
+The authors of the _Encyclopedia Biblica_ whom we nave already quoted,
+admit that the man who bears the name of Ezra manipulated, if he did not
+invent, the narrative which he tells in the Bible:--"He partly mutilates
+it by removing a portion, partly makes it almost unintelligible by
+placing it in a connection to which it does not belong, and by making
+interpolations, etc." Could we ask for a stronger proof that the Bible
+is the work of men--and not of honest men, at that? But is it fair to
+include the whole Bible in this accusation? I wish I could feel that
+some portions of the Bible are free from suspicion, but I cannot. Alas!
+it is impossible to point to a single book in the Bible of the
+authorship of which we may speak with assurance. The marks of political
+and theological imposture in the Bible are like leopard's spots, they
+cannot be removed.
+
+Well! It must not be thought that we have now disarmed the bibliolaters.
+They have still a powerful weapon left with which to defend the Bible:
+Suppose Ezra did compose or compile the Book! Is it not, nevertheless,
+true that the Bible teaches righteousness? The argument is something
+like this: The Bible may not be true, but it is very moral. In our
+opinion, however, it is even less moral than it is true. A book which
+commands murder, plunder, persecution for opinion sake, slavery and
+credulity of the most abject kind, can not very well be recommended as a
+moral text-book. Of course, there are in the Bible, as also in the Vedas
+or the Koran, splendid passages of truth and beauty, but by selecting
+only one set of passages and ignoring the rest any book could be made
+pure.
+
+Matthew Arnold professes to have discovered in the Old Bible "the
+Eternal, not ourselves, making for Righteousness," one of his proofs
+being Ps. 50:23: "To him that ordereth his conversation _right_ shall be
+shown the salvation of God." But the Revised Version has robbed the
+Oxford professor of his text by completely changing its meaning: "Whoso
+offereth the sacrifice of thanksgiving glorifieth me, and prepareth a
+way that I may show him the salvation of God" (See margin of Revised
+Version). There is nothing in the original about "ordering one's conduct
+or conversation right," it was put there by the translators whose moral
+culture was far superior to the authors they were rendering into
+English.
+
+Moreover, Matthew Arnold, fully conceding the conclusions of the "higher
+critics," e. g., that the events narrated in the Bible are in most cases
+pure fabrications; that they are the work of myth-mongers who sought to
+pass as genuine and divine, documents which they had themselves forged
+for partisan purposes--who plagiarized from Assyrian liturgies, and
+wilfully misrepresented as well as interpolated the history of their
+nation--asks us, nevertheless, to look upon these political schemers and
+_poseurs_, as having but one all-consuming passion--_righteousness_!
+
+In conclusion: The inspiration of the Bible is not a question of
+belief, it is a question of evidence. If believing a book inspired could
+make it so, then, the books of Mohammed and Buddha, of Confucius and
+Zoroaster, must be inspired too. In fact, any book could be made
+infallible, if believing it to be so, were all that was required. But
+does the evidence which I have offered prove that the Bible was
+invented? I sincerely believe it does, but still, I may be mistaken, and
+am therefore open to any evidence which may be furnished that the four
+gospels, for instance, were not invented by religious partisans, who,
+while suppressing their own names, paraded those of the apostles as
+their real authors, notwithstanding that the apostles had been dead long
+ago. I shall consider, conscientiously, any evidence which might be
+furnished that Ezra was not the real reproducer, if not the original
+author of the Jewish code, after his return from Babylonia. And, I
+promise to retract and apologize for the position I have maintained in
+this lecture, if the theologians, who are at home on this subject, will
+prove that there were no spurious gospels, no impostures, no lying
+manuscripts thrown upon the religious market as soon as the pagan state
+embraced Christianity, I will also listen to any arguments which may be
+produced to show that _the Apostles' Creed_ was written by the apostles;
+that Constantine abdicated in favor of the pope; that the Pagan Sibyls
+prophesied of Christ, and that Josephus acknowledged Jesus to have been
+the Messiah.
+
+I sincerely trust some learned divine into whose hands this lecture
+might fall, will present the other side, if he thinks there is another
+side, of the story I have presented. By the word invented it is not
+meant that the names, events, etc, were all manufactured, but that
+stories borrowed largely from mythical sources were edited and altered
+to serve partisan and political purposes.
+
+And why have I told this story?
+
+Do you know of any good reason, reader, why every other subject may be
+independently discussed or investigated, except religion? And do you
+know why, if Shakespeare can stand criticism, the Bible should shrink
+from it?
+
+If it is possible to disagree with, or to advance beyond, Plato,
+Socrates, Spencer, Darwin, Goethe, Emerson,--please! why is it a heresy
+to differ from Moses, Solomon, Jonah or Jesus? Why is it proper to
+disagree with a Greek or a Roman, but blasphemy to disagree with a Jew?
+
+The Bible has for centuries blocked the way of progress. As an
+infallible book it has enslaved conscience, and encouraged intolerance.
+To defend its many puerilities, and even immoral tales, men have
+resorted to casuistry and dissimulation. I believe that men will be more
+honest, more tolerant, more progressive, more independent and more
+manly, if they could be delivered from the bondage of the Bible. To
+overthrow its tyranny and to prove that a book can not be the master of
+living and growing men, to make man free, to raise him from his knees,
+to bring back the color to his cheeks white with fear, and to give to
+his arrested mind movement--is my aim and my joy![2]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] See Saladin's _God and His Book_.
+
+[2] Those who wish to read further on this subject should consult the
+author's _The Truth About Jesus--Is He a Myth?_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Publications by the Same Author
+
+
+      A NEW CATECHISM. Fifth Edition, Revised and Enlarged, with
+      Portrait of Author, $1.00.
+
+      THE TRUTH ABOUT JESUS: IS HE A MYTH? A new book of 295 pages.
+      Illustrated. Cloth $1.00. Paper $0.50.
+
+      MANGASARIAN-CRAPSEY DEBATE ON THE HISTORICITY OF JESUS. 25c.
+
+      PEARLS. (New Edition) Brave Thoughts from Brave Minds. Selected
+      and arranged by M. M. Mangasarian. 25c.
+
+
+Lectures
+
+10 cents a Copy
+
+
+      THE CHURCH IN POLITICS--AMERICANS BEWARE!
+
+      WOMAN SUFFRAGE, OR THE CHILD-BEARING WOMAN AND CIVILIZATION.
+
+      THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN GENEVA UNDER CALVIN.
+
+      THE MARTYRDOM OF HYPATIA.
+
+      MORALITY WITHOUT GOD.
+
+      WHAT WAS THE RELIGION OF SHAKESPEARE.
+
+      CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ANALYZED AND ANSWERED.
+
+      THE RELIGION OF WASHINGTON, JEFFERSON AND FRANKLIN.
+
+
+PUBLICATIONS OF M. M. MANGASAMAN Orchestra Hall Building
+
+
+A NEW CATECHISM
+
+Containing six new chapters, making altogether 22 chapters, with an
+introduction, and a photograph of the author, bound in cloth, 270 pages.
+Fourth edition. Price, one dollar.
+
+
+AN OPINION
+
+Sir. George Jacob Holyoake, of England, the friend and neighbor of the
+late Herbert Spencer, says this of "A New Catechism":
+
+
+      "+It is the boldest, the brightest, the most varied and informing
+      of any work of the kind extant. The book is a cyclopedia in a
+      nutshell.+" --+_Literary Guide, London, Eng._+
+
+
+Prof. C. S. Laisant, one of the leading educators of France, and a
+member of the faculty of the College of France, says:
+
+"Admiration is too feeble a word to express my opinion of 'A New
+Catechism.' It is a marvelous manual of rationalistic philosophy and
+scientific morality. To disseminate this book is to aid the cause of
+European democracy--the emancipation of the people. We congratulate
+Frenchmen for the opportunity of reading in their own language so
+beautiful and beneficent a book."
+
+M. Vandervelde, member of the Parliament of Belgium, says:
+
+"I know of no other work of its kind which is as lucid, as loyal to
+truth, and as attractive to the daily toiler, as it is to the
+philosopher."--_In Introduction to French Edition._
+
+Mr. Geo. W. Foote, of England, in _The Freethinker_:
+
+"Mr. Mangasarian's well-known 'Catechism' promises to have a great sale
+in France and Belgium. The English edition ought to be widely circulated
+in this country. It is written with power, knowledge, and dexterity.
+Placed in the hands of young people, in particular, it should do a world
+of good for Free-thought."
+
+
+WHAT THE EUROPEAN PAPERS SAY OF "A NEW CATECHISM"
+
+
+      "Grapples with the problems that underlie all the creeds and all
+      the systems of science and philosophy."--_Glasgow Herald._
+
+      "The author shows good judgment in devising questions and great
+      fertility of resource in answering them. The book is well worth a
+      perusal."--_Educational News, London._
+
+      "Mr. Mangasarian seems to us to have hit upon a happy union of the
+      brevity which is the soul of wit with the amplitude which conduces
+      to enlightenment.... It is acute, stimulating and suggestive....
+      It is eminently readable, and we trust it will have the extensive
+      sale which its intrinsic merit deserves."--_Literary Guide,
+      London._
+
+
+CHRISTIAN SCIENCE A Comedy in Four Acts
+
+The book is meant for those in whom the spirit of inquiry is not
+hopelessly stifled. People who enjoy doing their thinking, will relish
+reading this comedy. The motto of the book is: "The light is known to
+have failed against folly sometimes, the laugh never." 80 pages. Cloth
+25c, paper 10c.
+
+The above should be read in connection with the author's pamphlet
+lecture on Why Mrs. Eddy's Teachings Appeal to Women, or _Christian
+Science Analysed_. Price, 10c.
+
+
+A FEW OF THE PRINTED LECTURES Of M. M. Mangasarian
+
+
+      "HOW THE BIBLE WAS INVENTED."
+
+      "MORALITY WITHOUT GOD."
+
+      "SUNDAY SERMONS AND SUNDAY SPORTS"
+
+      "ORTHODOX ATTACKS" (Mr. Mangasarian's answer to _The Outlook's_
+      attack on "A New Catechism").
+
+      "PRAYER."
+
+      "THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN AMERICA" (Being a reply to the Archbishop
+      of Chicago).
+
+      "CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ANALYZED AND ANSWERED," 2nd Edition.
+
+      "CHRISTIAN SCIENCE--A COMEDY."
+
+      "BRYAN ON RELIGION."
+
+      "WHAT WAS THE RELIGION OF SHAKESPEARE?"
+
+      "SHAKESPEARE, THE RATIONALIST."
+
+
+10c per copy. Orchestra Hall Building, Chicago.
+
+
+The Independent Religious Society
+
+Lectures are delivered every Sunday morning at 11 by M. M. Mangasarian,
+in Orchestra Hall, Michigan Avenue and Adams Street.
+
+The aim, spirit, and fellowship, of the Society, are clearly expressed
+in the following selection from Ralph Waldo Emerson:
+
+"The new church will be founded on moral science. Poets, artists,
+musicians, philosophers, will be its prophet teachers. The noblest
+literature of the world will be its bible. Love and labor, its holy
+sacraments--and instead of worshipping one saviour, it will gladly build
+an altar in the heart for every one who has suffered for humanity."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's How the Bible was Invented, by M. M. Mangasarian
+
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