Endnotes
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Science and Christian Tradition, p. 18 (Lon. ed., 1894). ↩
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It is, however, necessary to except the declamation which says that God “visits the sins of the fathers upon the children.” This is contrary to every principle of moral justice. ↩
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The French work has here: Quoi qu’il en soit, ce verteux réformateur, ce révolutionnaire trop peu imité, trop oublié, trop méconnu, perdit la vie pour l’une ou pour l’autre de ces suppositions. “However this may be, for one or the other of these suppositions this virtuous reformer, this revolutionist, too little imitated, too much forgotten, too much misunderstood, lost his life.” —Conway ↩
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The French work has: cédant à une gourmandise effrénée. “yielding to an unrestrained appetite.” —Conway ↩
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The French work has aveugle et (“blind and”) preceding “dismal.” —Conway ↩
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The French work has frédaine (“prank”). —Conway ↩
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It must be borne in mind that by the “Bible” Paine always means the Old Testament alone. —Conway ↩
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As there are many readers who do not see that a composition is poetry, unless it be in rhyme, it is for their information that I add this note.
Poetry consists principally in two things—imagery and composition. The composition of poetry differs from that of prose in the manner of mixing long and short syllables together. Take a long syllable out of a line of poetry, and put a short one in the room of it, or put a long syllable where a short one should be, and that line will lose its poetical harmony. It will have an effect upon the line like that of misplacing a note in a song.
The imagery in those books called the Prophets appertains altogether to poetry. It is fictitious, and often extravagant, and not admissible in any other kind of writing than poetry.
To show that these writings are composed in poetical numbers, I will take ten syllables, as they stand in the book, and make a line of the same number of syllables, (heroic measure) that shall rhyme with the last word. It will then be seen that the composition of those books is poetical measure. The instance I shall first produce is from Isaiah:—
“Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth
’Tis God himself that calls attention forth.Another instance I shall quote is from the mournful Jeremiah, to which I shall add two other lines, for the purpose of carrying out the figure, and showing the intention of the poet.
“O, that mine head were waters and mine eyes
Were fountains flowing like the liquid skies;
Then would I give the mighty flood release
And weep a deluge for the human race.”91 -
1 Chronicles 15:1. —Conway ↩
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1 Samuel 18:10. —Conway ↩
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As those men who call themselves divines and commentators are very fond of puzzling one another, I leave them to contest the meaning of the first part of the phrase, that of an evil spirit of God. I keep to my text. I keep to the meaning of the word “prophesy.” ↩
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This paragraph is not in the French work. —Conway ↩
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“A man named Jesus, and he about thirty years, chose us out.”
—Gospel according to the Hebrews—Conway ↩
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τεχτων, a skilled worker in wood, stone, or iron; a builder; not necessarily a carpenter. —Conway ↩
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One of the few errors traceable to Paine’s not having a Bible at hand while writing Part I. There is no indication that the family was poor, but the reverse may in fact be inferred. —Conway ↩
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French: Je réponds hardiment que nous ne sommes point condamnés à ce malheur. (“I boldly answer that we are not condemned to this misfortune.”) —Conway ↩
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The French translator has substituted for this a version of the same psalm by Jean Baptiste Rousseau. —Conway ↩
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The French here has plutôt (“rather”). —Conway ↩
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French: La suprême intelligence instead of “God.” —Conway ↩
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French: La théologie naturelle. —Conway ↩
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In the French is added: et que même, par l’ignorance que les gouvernemens modernes ont répandue, il soit très-rare aujourd’hui, que ces personnes s’en doutent (“and, such is the ignorance prevailing under modern governments, it is now even very rare for such persons to think about it”). —Conway ↩
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French: C’est un mensonge, une fraude pieuse. —Conway ↩
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French: ce nonsense arithmetique. The words “Christian system” do not occur in the clause. —Conway ↩
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Instead of “Christian systems of faith,” the French has ce tissu d’ absurdités. —Conway ↩
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French: aride. —Conway ↩
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I cannot discover the source of this statement concerning the ancient author whose Irish name Feirghill was Latinized into Virgilius. The British Museum possesses a copy of the work (Decalogiunt) which was the pretext of the charge of heresy made by Boniface, Archbishop of Mayence, against Virgilius, Abbot—bishop of Salzburg, These were leaders of the rival “British” and Roman parties, and the British champion made a countercharge against Boniface of “irreligious practices.” Boniface had to express a “regret,” but none the less pursued his rival. The Pope, Zachary II, decided that if his alleged “doctrine, against God and his soul, that beneath the earth there is another world, other men, or sun and moon,” should be acknowledged by Virgilius, he should be excommunicated by a Council and condemned with canonical sanctions. Whatever may have been the fate involved by condemnation with “canonicis sanctionibus,” in the middle of the eighth century, it did not fall on Virgilius. His accuser, Boniface, was martyred, 755, and it is probable that Virgilius harmonied his Antipodes with orthodoxy. The gravamen of the heresy seems to have been the suggestion that there were men not of the progeny of Adam. Virgilius was made Bishop of Salzburg in 768. He bore until his death, 789, the curious title, “Geometer and Solitary,” or “lone wayfarer” (Solivagus). A suspicion of heresy clung to his memory until 1233, when he was raised by Gregory IX to sainthood beside his accuser, St. Boniface. —Conway ↩
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It is impossible for us now to know at what time the heathen mythology began; but it is certain, from the internal evidence that it carries, that it did not begin in the same state or condition in which it ended. All the gods of that mythology, except Saturn, were of modern invention. The supposed reign of Saturn was prior to that which is called the heathen mythology, and was so far a species of theism that it admitted the belief of only one God. Saturn is supposed to have abdicated the government in favour of his three sons and one daughter, Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune, and Juno; after this, thousands of other gods and demigods were imaginarily created, and the calendar of gods increased as fast as the calendar of saints and the calendar of courts have increased since.
All the corruptions that have taken place, in theology and in religion have been produced by admitting of what man calls “revealed religion.” The mythologists pretended to more revealed religion than the Christians do. They had their oracles and their priests, who were supposed to receive and deliver the word of God verbally on almost all occasions.
Since then all corruptions down from Moloch to modern predestinarianism, and the human sacrifices of the heathens to the Christian sacrifice of the Creator, have been produced by admitting of what is called “revealed religion,” the most effectual means to prevent all such evils and impositions is, not to admit of any other revelation than that which is manifested in the book of Creation., and to contemplate the Creation as the only true and real word of God that ever did or ever will exist; and everything else called the word of God is fable and imposition. ↩
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French: ce moine (“this monk”) instead of “Luther.” —Conway ↩
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French: la civilisation instead of “liberality.” —Conway ↩
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The same school, Thetford in Norfolk, that the present Counsellor Mingay went to, and under the same master.92 ↩
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The pamphlet “Common Sense” was first advertised, as “just published,” on January 10, 1776. His plea for the Officers of Excise, written before leaving England, was printed, but not published until 1793. Despite his reiterated assertion that “Common Sense” was the first work he ever published the notion that he was “Junius” still finds some believers. An indirect comment on our Paine-Junians may be found in Part II of this work where Paine says a man capable of writing Homer “would not have thrown away his own fame by giving it to another.” It is probable that Paine ascribed the Letters of Junius to Thomas Hollis. His friend F. Lanthenas, in his translation of The Age of Reason (1794) advertises his translation of the Letters of Junius from the English “(Thomas Hollis).” This he could hardly have done without consultation with Paine. Unfortunately this translation of Junius cannot be found either in the Bibliotheque Nationale or the British Museum, and it cannot be said whether it contains any attempt at an identification of Junius. —Conway ↩
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This sentence is not in the French work. —Conway ↩
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No doubt Paine’s aunt, Miss Cooke, who managed to have him confirmed in the parish church at Thetford. —Conway ↩
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As this book may fall into the hands of persons who do not know what an orrery is, it is for their information I add this note, as the name gives no idea of the uses of the thing. The orrery has its name from the person who invented it. It is a machinery of clockwork, representing the universe in miniature: and in which the revolution of the earth round itself and round the sun, the revolution of the moon round the earth, the revolution of the planets round the sun, their relative distances from the sun, as the center of the whole system, their relative distances from each other, and their different magnitudes, are represented as they really exist in what we call the heavens. ↩
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Allowing a ship to sail, on an average, three miles in an hour, she would sail entirely round the world in less than one year, if she could sail in a direct circle, but she is obliged to follow the course of the ocean. ↩
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Those who supposed that the Sun went round the earth every twenty-four hours made the same mistake in idea that a cook would do in fact, that should make the fire go round the meat, instead of the meat turning round itself towards the fire. ↩
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With reference to the omision of any mention of Uranus, see the Introduction. In the New York edition, 1794, edited by Col. John Fellows, occurs this footnote: “Mr. Paine had made no mention of the planet Herschel, which was first discovered, by the person whose name it bears, in 1781. It is at a greater distance from the Sun than either of the other planets and consequently occupies a greater length of time in performing its revolutions.” —Conway ↩
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If it should be asked, how can man know these things? I have one plain answer to give, which is, that man knows how to calculate an eclipse, and also how to calculate to a minute of time when the planet Venus, in making her revolutions round the Sun, will come in a strait line between our earth and the Sun, and will appear to us about the size of a large pea passing across the face of the Sun. This happens but twice in about a hundred years, at the distance of about eight years from each other, and has happened twice in our time, both of which were foreknown by calculation. It can also be known when they will happen again for a thousand years to come, or to any other portion of time. As therefore, man could not be able to do these things if he did not understand the solar system, and the manner in which the revolutions of the several planets or worlds are performed, the fact of calculating an eclipse, or a transit of Venus, is a proof in point that the knowledge exists; and as to a few thousand, or even a few million miles, more or less, it makes scarcely any sensible difference in such immense distances. ↩
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This speculation has been confirmed by nineteenth-century astronomy. “The stars, speaking broadly, are suns.” (Clarke’s System of the Stars, chapter III). See Herschel’s Outlines of Astronomy, Part III chapter XV. —Conway ↩
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The French work has plusieurs planètes (“many planets”) instead of “six worlds.” —Conway ↩
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The French work has triste. —Conway ↩
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The French work has: leur mouvement mêmes est le premier éveil, la prèmiere instruction de la raison dans l’homme. (“Their motion itself is the first awakening, the first instruction of the reason in man.”) —Conway ↩
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Such constant rebirth of the Son was the doctrine of the Master Eckhardt (4th cent.). —Conway ↩
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In the French work: du verbe “croire.” —Conway ↩
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“In the childhood of the world,” according to the first (French) version; and the strict translation of the final sentence is: “Deism was the religion of Adam, supposing him not an imaginary being; but none the less must it be left to all men to follow, as is their right, the religion and worship they prefer.” —Conway ↩
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It must be borne in mind that throughout this work Paine generally means by “Bible” only the Old Testament, and speaks of the New as the “Testament.” —Conway ↩
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This is an allusion to the essay which Paine wrote at an earlier part of 1793. See Introduction. —Conway ↩
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These excited Americans do not seem to have understood or reported the most important item in Vadeer’s reply, namely that their application was “unofficial,” i.e. not made through or sanctioned by Gouverneur Morris, American Minister. For the detailed history of all this see vol. III. —Conway ↩
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The officer who at Yorktown, Virginia, carried out the sword of Cornwallis for surrender, and satirically offered it to Rochambeau instead of Washington. Paine loaned him £300 when he (O’Hara) left the prison, the money he had concealed in the lock of his cell-door. —Conway ↩
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“Demand that Thomas Paine be decreed of accusation, for the interest of America, as well as of France.” ↩
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Euclid, according to chronological history, lived three hundred years before Christ, and about one hundred before Archimedes; he was of the city of Alexandria, in Egypt. ↩
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An elegant pocket edition of Paine’s Theological Works (London, R. Carlile, 1822) has in its title a picture of Paine, as a Moses in evening dress, unfolding the two tables of his Age of Reason to a farmer from whom the Bishop of Llandaff (who replied to this work) has taken a sheaf and a lamb which he is carrying to a church at the summit of a well stocked hill. —Conway ↩
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This tale of the sun standing still upon Motint Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, is one of those fables that detects itself. Such a circumstance could not have happened without being known all over the world. One half would have wondered why the sun did not rise, and the other why it did not set; and the tradition of it would be universal; whereas there is not a nation in the world that knows anything about it. But why must the moon stand still? What occasion could there be for moonlight in the daytime, and that too whilst the sun shined? As a poetical figure, the whole is well enough; it is akin to that in the song of Deborah and Barak, “The stars in their courses fought against Sisera”; but it is inferior to the figurative declaration of Muhammad to the persons who came to expostulate with him on his goings on, “Wert thou,” said he, “to come to me with the sun in thy right hand and the moon in thy left, it should not alter my career.” For Joshua to have exceeded Muhammad, he should have put the sun and moon, one in each pocket, and carried them as Guy Faux carried his dark lantern, and taken them out to shine as he might happen to want them. The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again; the account, however, abstracted from the poetical fancy, shows the ignorance of Joshua, for he should have commanded the earth to have stood still. ↩
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The text of Ruth does not imply the unpleasant sense Paine’s words are likely to convey. —Conway ↩
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In 2 Kings 14:25, the name of Jonah is mentioned on account of the restoration of a tract of land by Jeroboam; but nothing further is said of him, nor is any allusion made to the book of Jonah, nor to his expedition to Nineveh, nor to his encounter with the whale. ↩
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I observed, as I passed along, several broken and senseless passages in the Bible, without thinking them of consequence enough to be introduced in the body of the work; such as that, 1 Samuel 13:1, where it is said, “Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel, Saul chose him three thousand men,” etc. The first part of the verse, that Saul reigned one year has no sense, since it does not tell us what Saul did, nor say anything of what happened at the end of that one year; and it is, besides, mere absurdity to say he reigned one year, when the very next phrase says he had reigned two for if he had reigned two, it was impossible not to have reigned one.
Another instance occurs in Joshua 5 where the writer tells us a story of an angel (for such the table of contents at the head of the chapter calls him) appearing unto Joshua; and the story ends abruptly, and without any conclusion. The story is as follows:—Ver. 13. “And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand; and Joshua went unto him and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?” Verse 14, “And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship and said unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant?” Verse 15, “And the captain of the Lord’s host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standeth is holy. And Joshua did so.”—And what then? nothing: for here the story ends, and the chapter too.
Either this story is broken off in the middle, or it is a story told by some Jewish humourist in ridicule of Joshua’s pretended mission from God, and the compilers of the Bible, not perceiving the design of the story, have told it as a serious matter. As a story of humour and ridicule it has a great deal of point; for it pompously introduces an angel in the figure of a man, with a drawn sword in his hand, before whom Joshua falls on his face to the earth, and worships (which is contrary to their second commandment;) and then, this most important embassy from heaven ends in telling Joshua to pull off his shoe. It might as well have told him to pull up his breeches.
It is certain, however, that the Jews did not credit everything their leaders told them, as appears from the cavalier manner in which they speak of Moses, when he was gone into the mount. As for this Moses, say they, we wot not what is become of him. Exodus 32:1. ↩
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Particulars of the families from Ezra 2:
Verse 3 2,172 4 372 5 775 6 2,812 7 1,254 8 945 9 760 10 642 11 623 12 1,222 13 666 14 2,056 15 454 16 98 17 323 18 112 19 223 20 95 21 123 22 56 23 128 24 42 25 743 26 621 27 122 28 223 29 52 30 156 31 1,254 32 320 33 725 34 345 35 3,630 36 973 37 1,052 38 1,247 39 1,017 40 74 41 128 42 139 58 392 60 652 Total 29,818 -
In a later work Paine notes that in “the Bible” (by which he always means the Old Testament alone) the word Satan occurs also in 1 Chronicles 21:1, and remarks that the action there ascribed to Satan is in 2 Samuel 24:1, attributed to Jehovah (“Essay on Dreams”). In these places, however, and in Psalms 109:6, Satan means “adversary,” and is so translated (A.S. version) in 2 Samuel 19:22, and 1 Kings 5:4, 11:25. As a proper name, with the article, Satan appears in the Old Testament only in Job and in Zechariah 3:1–2. But the authenticity of the passage in Zechariah has been questioned, and it may be that in finding the proper name of Satan in Job alone, Paine was following some opinion met with in one of the authorities whose comments are condensed in his paragraph. —Conway ↩
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Paine’s Jewish critic, David Levi, fastened on this slip (Defence of the Old Testament, 1797, p. 152). In the original the names are Ash (Arcturus), Kesil’ (Orion), Kimah’ (Pleiades), though the identifications of the constellations in the A.S.V. have been questioned. —Conway ↩
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The prayer known by the name of Agur’s Prayer, in Proverbs 30—immediately preceding the proverbs of Lemuel—and which is the only sensible, well-conceived, and well-expressed prayer in the Bible, has much the appearance of being a prayer taken from the Gentiles. The name of Agur occurs on no other occasion than this; and he is introduced, together with the prayer ascribed to him, in the same manner, and nearly in the same words, that Lemuel and his proverbs are introduced in the chapter that follows. The first verse says, “The words of Agur, the son of Jakeh, even the prophecy:” here the word prophecy is used with the same application it has in the following chapter of Lemuel, unconnected with anything of prediction. The prayer of Agur is in the 8th and 9th verses, “Remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither riches nor poverty, but feed me with food convenient for me; lest I be full and deny thee and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.” This has not any of the marks of being a Jewish prayer, for the Jews never prayed but when they were in trouble, and never for anything but victory, vengeance, or riches.93 ↩
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A “Tom Paine’s Jest Book” had appeared in London with little or nothing of Paine in it. —Conway ↩
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“Those that look out of the window shall be darkened,” is an obscure figure in translation for loss of sight. ↩
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In Isaiah 7:14, it is said that the child should be called Immanuel; but this name was not given to either of the children, otherwise than as a character, which the word signifies. That of the prophetess was called Maher-shalalhash-baz, and that of Mary was called Jesus. ↩
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I observed two chapters in 1 Samuel (16 and 17) that contradict each other with respect to David, and the manner he became acquainted with Saul; as Jeremiah 37 and 38 contradict each other with respect to the cause of Jeremiah’s imprisonment.
In 1 Samuel 16, it is said, that an evil spirit of God troubled Saul, and that his servants advised him (as a remedy) “to seek out a man who was a cunning player upon the harp.” And Saul said, ver. 17, “Provide me now a man that can play well, and bring him to me. Then answered one of his servants, and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the Lord is with him; wherefore Saul sent messengers unto Jesse, and said, Send me David, thy son. And” (verse 21) “David came to Saul, and stood before him, and he loved him greatly, and he became his armour-bearer; and when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul,” (verse 23) “David took his harp, and played with his hand, and Saul was refreshed, and was well.”
But the next chapter (17) gives an account, all different to this, of the manner that Saul and David became acquainted. Here it is ascribed to David’s encounter with Goliah, when David was sent by his father to carry provision to his brethren in the camp. In the 55th verse of this chapter it is said, “And when Saul saw David go forth against the Philistine (Goliah) he said to Abner, the captain of the host, Abner, whose son is this youth? And Abner said, As thy soul liveth, O king, I cannot tell. And the king said, Enquire thou whose son the stripling is. And as David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul, with the head of the Philistine in his hand; and Saul said unto him, Whose son art thou, thou young man? And David answered, I am the son of thy servant, Jesse, the Betblehemite,” These two accounts belie each other, because each of them supposes Saul and David not to have known each other before. This book, the Bible, is too ridiculous for criticism. ↩
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I know not what is the Hebrew word that corresponds to the word “seer” in English;94 but I observe it is translated into French by Le Voyant, from the verb voir “to see,” and which means the person who sees, or the seer. ↩
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I have read in an ancient Persian poem (Saadi, I believe, but have mislaid the reference) this phrase: “And now the whale swallowed Jonah: the sun set.” —Conway ↩
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The story of Abraham and the Fire-worshipper, ascribed to Franklin, is from Saadi. (See my Sacred Anthology, p. 61.) Paine has often been called a “mere scoffer,” but he seems to have been among the first to treat with dignity the book of Jonah, so especially liable to the ridicule of superficial readers, and discern in it the highest conception of Deity known to the Old Testament. —Conway ↩
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Mary, the supposed virgin, mother of Jesus, had several other children, sons and daughters. See Matthew 13:55–56. ↩
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From the birth of David to the birth of Christ is upwards of 1,080 years; and as the lifetime of Christ is not included, there are but twenty-seven full generations. To find therefore the average age of each person mentioned in the list, at the time his first son was born, it is only necessary to divide 1,080 by 27, which gives forty years for each person. As the lifetime of man was then but of the same extent it is now, it is an absurdity to suppose, that twenty-seven following generations should all be old bachelors, before they married; and the more so, when we are told that Solomon, the next in succession to David, had a house full of wives and mistresses before he was twenty-one years of age. So far from this genealogy being a solemn truth, it is not even a reasonable lie. The list of Luke gives about twenty-six years for the average age, and this is too much. ↩
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According to John, (19:14) the sentence was not passed till about the sixth hour (noon), and consequently the execution could not be till the afternoon; but Mark (15:25) says expressly that he was crucified at the third hour, (nine in the morning). ↩
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The Bishop of Llandaff, in his famous Apology, censured Paine severely for this insinuation against Mary Magdalene, but the censure really falls on our English version, which, by a chapter-heading (Luke 7), has unwarrantably identified her as the sinful woman who anointed Jesus, and irrevocably branded her. —Conway ↩
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Mark says “a young man,” and Luke “two men.” —Conway ↩
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This belongs to the late addition to Mark, which originally ended with 16:8. —Conway ↩
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The last nine verses of Mark being ungenuine, the story of the ascension rests exclusively on the words in Luke 24:51, “was carried up into heaven,”—words omitted by several ancient authorities. —Conway ↩
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The former part of The Age of Reason has not been published two years, and there is already an expression in it that is not mine. The expression is: “The book of Luke was carried by a majority of one voice only.” It may be true, but it is not I that have said it. Some person who might know of that circumstance, has added it in a note at the bottom of the page of some of the editions, printed either in England or in America; and the printers, after that, have erected it into the body of the work, and made me the author of it. If this has happened within such a short space of time, notwithstanding the aid of printing, which prevents the alteration of copies individually, what may not have happened in a much greater length of time, when there was no printing, and when any man who could write could make a written copy and call it an original by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John?95 ↩
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I have taken these two extracts from Boulanger’s Life of Paul, written in French; Boulanger has quoted them from the writings of Augustine against Fauste,96 to which he refers. ↩
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Boulanger in his Life of Paul, has collected from the ecclesiastical histories, and the writings of the fathers as they are called, several matters which show the opinions that prevailed among the different sects of Christians, at the time the Testament, as we now see it, was voted to be the word of God. The following extracts are from the second chapter of that work:
The Marcionists (a Christian sect) asserted that the evangelists were filled with falsities. The Manichaeans, who formed a very numerous sect at the commencement of Christianity, rejected as false all the New Testament, and showed other writings quite different that they gave for authentic. The Corinthians, like the Marcionists, admitted not the Acts of the Apostles. The Encratites and the Sevenians adopted neither the Acts, nor the Epistles of Paul. Chrysostom, in a homily which he made upon the Acts of the Apostles, says that in his time, about the year 400, many people knew nothing either of the author or of the book. St. Irene, who lived before that time, reports that the Valentinians, like several other sects of the Christians, accused the scriptures of being filled with imperfections, errors, and contradictions. The Ebionites, or Nazarenes, who were the first Christians, rejected all the Epistles of Paul, and regarded him as an impostor. They report, among other things, that he was originally a Pagan; that he came to Jerusalem, where he lived some time; and that having a mind to marry the daughter of the high priest, he had himself been circumcised; but that not being able to obtain her, he quarrelled with the Jews and wrote against circumcision, and against the observation of the Sabbath, and against all the legal ordinances.97
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“It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” Genesis 3:15. ↩
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Athanasius died, according to the Church chronology, in the year 371. ↩
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A fair parallel of the then unknown aphorism of Kant: “Two things fill the soul with wonder and reverence, increasing evermore as I meditate more closely upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” (Kritik Derpraktischen Vernunfe, 1788). Kant’s religious utterances at the beginning of the French Revolution brought on him a royal mandate of silence, because he had worked out from “the moral law within” a principle of human equality precisely similar to that which Paine had derived from his Quaker doctrine of the “inner light” of every man. About the same time Paine’s writings were suppressed in England. Paine did not understand German, but Kant, though always independent in the formation of his opinions, was evidently well acquainted with the literature of the Revolution, in America, England, and France. —Conway ↩
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This is an interesting and correct testimony as to the beliefs of the earlier Quakers, one of whom was Paine’s father. —Conway ↩
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According to what is called Christ’s sermon on the mount, in the book of Matthew, where, among some other [and] good things, a great deal of this feigned morality is introduced, it is there expressly said, that the doctrine of forbearance, or of not retaliating injuries, was not any part of the doctrine of the Jews; but as this doctrine is found in Proverbs, it must, according to that statement, have been copied from the Gentiles, from whom Christ had learned it. Those men whom Jewish and Christian idolators have abusively called heathen, had much better and clearer ideas of justice and morality than are to be found in the Old Testament, so far as it is Jewish, or in the New. The answer of Solon on the question, “Which is the most perfect popular government,” has never been exceeded by any man since his time, as containing a maxim of political morality, “That,” says he, “where the least injury done to the meanest individual, is considered as an insult on the whole constitution.” Solon lived about 500 years before Christ. ↩
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The book called the book of Matthew, says, (3:16,) that “the Holy Ghost descended in the shape of a dove.” It might as well have said a goose; the creatures are equally harmless, and the one is as much a nonsensical lie as the other. Acts 2:2–3, says, that it descended in a mighty “rushing wind,” in the shape of “cloven tongues”: perhaps it was cloven feet. Such absurd stuff is fit only for tales of witches and wizards. ↩
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The Bible-makers have undertaken to give us, in the first chapter of Genesis, an account of the creation; and in doing this they have demonstrated nothing but their ignorance. They make there to have been three days and three nights, evenings and mornings, before there was any sun; when it is the presence or absence of the sun that is the cause of day and night—and what is called his rising and setting that of morning and evening. Besides, it is a puerile and pitiful idea, to suppose the Almighty to say, “Let there be light.” It is the imperative manner of speaking that a conjuror uses when he says to his cups and balls, Presto, be gone—and most probably has been taken from it, as Moses and his rod is a conjuror and his wand. Longinus calls this expression the sublime; and by the same rule the conjurer is sublime too; for the manner of speaking is expressively and grammatically the same. When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous. The sublime of the critics, like some parts of Edmund Burke’s sublime and beautiful, is like a windmill just visible in a fog, which imagination might distort into a flying mountain, or an archangel, or a flock of wild geese. ↩
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The councils of Nice and Laodicea were held about 350 years after the time Christ is said to have lived; and the books that now compose the New Testament were then voted for by yeas and nays, as we now vote a law. A great many that were offered had a majority of nays, and were rejected. This is the way the New Testament came into being. ↩
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2 Chronicles 28:1. Ahaz was twenty years old when ho began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem, but he did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord.—Verse 5. Wherefore the Lord his God delivered him into the hand of the king of Syria, and they smote him, and carried away a great multitude of them captives, and brought them to Damascus: and he was also delivered into the hand of the king of Israel, who smote him with a great slaughter.—Verse 6. And Pekah, king of Israel, slew in Judah an hundred and twenty thousand in one day.—Verse 8. And the children of Israel carried away captive of their brethren, two hundred thousand women, sons, and daughters. ↩
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The word “devil” is a personification of the word “evil.” ↩
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In the second part of the Age of Reason, I have shown that the book ascribed to Isaiah is not only miscellaneous as to matter, but as to authorship; that there are parts in it which could not be written by Isaiah, because they speak of things one hundred and fifty years after he was dead. The instance I have given of this, in that work, corresponds with the subject I am upon, at least a little better than Matthew’s introduction and his quotation.
Isaiah lived, the latter part of his life, in the time of Hezekiah, and it was about one hundred and fifty years from the death of Hezekiah to the first year of the reign of Cyrus, when Cyrus published a proclamation, which is given in the first chapter of the book of Ezra, for the return of the Jews to Jerusalem. It cannot be doubted, at least it ought not to be doubted, that the Jews would feel an affectionate gratitude for this act of benevolent justice; and it is natural that they would express that gratitude in the customary style, bombastical and hyperbolical as it was, which they used on extraordinary occasions, and which was, and still is, in practice with all the eastern nations.
The instance to which I refer, and which is given in the second part of the Age of Reason, is the last verse of the 44th chapter, and the beginning of the 45th, in these words: “That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him: and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut.”
This complimentary address is in the present tense, which shows that the things of which Isaiah speaks were in existence at the time of writing it; and, consequently, that the author must have been at least one hundred and fifty years later than Isaiah, and that the book which bears his name is a compilation. The Proverbs called Solomon’s, and the Psalms called David’s, are of the same kind. The two last verses of the second book of Chronicles and three first verses of the chapter of Ezra are word for word the same; which show that the compilers of the Bible mixed the writings of difierent authors together, and put them under some common head.
As we have here an instance, in the 44th and 45th chapters, of the introduction of the name of Cyrus into a book to which it cannot belong, it affords good ground to conclude that the passage in the 42nd chapter, in which the character of Cyrus is given without his name, has been introduced in like manner, and that the person there spoken of is Cyrus. ↩
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Whiston, in his Essay on the Old Testament, say that the passage of Zechariah, of which I have spoken, was, in the copies of the Bible of the first century, in the book of Jeremiah, from whence, says he, it was taken and inserted without coherence, in that of Zechariah. Well, let it be so, it does not make the ease a whit the better for the New Testament: but it makes the case a great deal the worse for the Old. Because it shows, as I have mentioned respecting some passages in a book ascribed to Isaiah, that the works of different authors have been so mixed and confounded together, they cannot now be discriminated, except where they are historical, chronological, or biographical, as is the interpolation in Isaiah. It is the name of Cyrus, inserted where it could not be inserted, as he was not in existence till 150 years after the time of Isaiah, that detects the interpolation and the blunder with it.
Whiston was a man of great literary learning, and, what is of much higher degree, of deep scientific learning. He was one of the best and most celebrated mathematicians of his time, for which he was made Professor of Mathematics of the University of Cambridge. He wrote so much in defence of the Old Testament, and of what he calls prophecies of Jesus Christ, that at last he began to suspect the truth of the Scriptures and wrote against them; for it is only those who examine them, that see the imposition. Those who believe them most are those who know least about them.
Whiston, after writing so much in defence of the Scriptures, was at last prosecuted for writing against them. It was this that gave occasion to Swift, in his ludicrous epigram on Ditton and Whiston, each of which set up to find out the longitude, to call one good master Ditton, and the other wicked Will Whiston. But as Swiit was a great associate with the Freethinkers of those days, such as Bolingbroke, Pope, and others, who did not believe the books called the Scriptures, there is no certainty whether he wittily called him wicked for defending the Scriptures, or for writing against them. The known character of Swift decides for the former. ↩
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Newton, Bishop of Bristol, in England, published a work in three volumes, entitled Dissertations on the Prophesies. The work is tediously written and tiresome to read. He strains hard to make every passage into a prophecy that suits his purpose. Among others, he makes this expression of Moses, “The Lord shall raise thee up a prophet like unto me,” into a prophecy of Christ, who was not born, according to the Bible chronologies, till fifteen hundred and fifty-two years after the time of Moses, whereas it was an immediate successor to Moses, who was then near his end, that is spoken of in the passage above quoted.
This bishop, the better to impose this passage on the world as a prophecy of Christ, has entirely omitted the account in the book of Numbers which I have given at length word for word, and which shows, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that the person spoken of by Moses is Joshua, and no other person.
Newton is but a superficial writer. He takes up things upon hearsay, and inserts them without examination or reflection, and the more extraordinary and incredible they are the better he likes them.
In speaking of the walls of Babylon (volume the first, page 263), he makes a quotation from a traveller of the name of Tavernier, whom he calls (by way of giving credit to what he says) a celebrated traveller, that those walls were made of burnt brick, ten feet square and three feet thick. If Newton had only thought of calculating the weight of such a brick, he would have seen the impossibility of their being used or even made. A brick ten feet square, and three feet thick, contains 300 cubic feet; and allowing a cubic foot of brick to be only one hundred pounds, each of the bishop’s bricks would weigh thirty thousand pounds; and it would take about thirty cart loads of clay (one-horse carts) to make one brick.
But this account of the stones used in the building of Solomon’s temple (vol. ii., page 211), far exceeds his bricks of ten feet square in the walls of Babylon; these are but brickbats compared to them.
The stones (says he) employed in the foundation, were in magnitude forty cubits, that is above sixty feet, a cubit (says he), being somewhat more than one foot and a half (a cubit is one foot nine inches), and the superstructure (says the bishop) was worthy of such foundations. There are some stones, says he, of the whitest marble, forty-five cubits long, five cubits high, and six cubits broad. These are the dimensions this bishop has given, which in measure of twelve inches to a foot, is 78 feet 9 inches long, 10 feet 6 inches broad, and 8 feet 3 inches thick, and contains 7,234 cubic feet. I now go to demonstrate the imposition of this bishop.
A cubic foot of water weighs sixty-two pounds and a half the specific gravity of marble to water is as two and a half is to one. The weight, therefore, of a cubic foot of marble is 156 pounds, which, multiplied by 7,234, the number of cubic feet in one of those stones, makes the weight of it to be 1,128,504 pounds, which is 503 tons. Allowing, then, a horse to draw about half-a-ton, it will require a thousand horses to draw one such stone on the ground; how, then, were they to be lifted into the building by human hands?
The bishop may talk of faith removing mountains, but all the faith of all the bishops that ever lived could not remove one of those stones, and their bodily strength given in.
This bishop also tells of great guns used by the Turks at the taking of Constantinople, one of which he says was drawn by seventy yoke of oxen, and by two thousand men. Vol. iii., page 117.
The weight of a cannon that carries a ball of 48 pounds, which is the largest cannon that is cast, weighs 8,000 pounds, about three tons and a half, and may be drawn by three yoke of oxen. Anybody may now calculate what the weight of the bishop’s great gun must be, that required seventy yoke of oxen to draw it. The bishop beats Gulliver.
When men give up the use of the divine gift of reason in writing on any subject, be it religious or anything else, there are no bounds to their extravagance, no limit to their absurdities.
The three volumes which this bishop has written on what he calls the prophecies, contain about 1,200 pages, and he says in vol. iii., page 117, “I have studied brevity.” This is as marvellous as the bishop’s great gun. ↩
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This footnote is not included in the French work. —Conway ↩
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This note is not in the French work. —Conway ↩
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Proverbs 30:1, and 31:1, the word “prophecy” in these verses is translated “oracle” or “burden” (marg.) in the revised version.—The prayer of Agur was quoted by Paine in his plea for the officers of Excise, 1772. —Conway ↩
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The Hebrew word for “Seer,” in 1 Samuel 9, transliterated, is chozéh, the gazer; it is translated in Isaiah 47:13, “the stargazers.” —Conway ↩
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The spurious addition to Paine’s work alluded to in his footnote drew on him a severe criticism from Dr. Priestley (Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever, p. 75), yet it seems to have been Priestley himself who, in his quotation, first incorporated into Paine’s text the footnote added by the editor of the American edition (1794). The American added: “Vide Moshiem’s (sic) Ecc. History,” which Priestley omits. In a modern American edition I notice four verbal alterations introduced into the above footnote. —Conway ↩
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This Bishop Faustus is usually styled “The Manichaean,” Augustine having entitled his book, Contra Faustum Manichaeum Libri XXXIII, in which nearly the whole of Faustus’ very able work is quoted. —Conway ↩
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Much abridged from the Exam. Crit. de la Vie de St. Paul, by N. A. Boulanger, 1770. —Conway ↩