The Bible: what it is Part 5

Verse 3 to 22, and chap, x.x.xiii., v. 1 to 15. Read this account attentively, and then ask yourselves which of the brothers was the more worthy of the promise--Esau, cozened out of his birthright, swindled out of his father's blessing, yet forgetting and forgiving when he had the power to crush and punish; or Jacob, the cheater, the liar, and the coward.

*Chapter x.x.xiii., v. 19: In the Douay, instead of 'a hundred pieces of money,' we are told that Jacob gave the children of Hamor 'a hundred lambs.'

Verse 20 is thus translated; 'And raising an altar there, he invoked upon it the most mighty G.o.d of Israel.'

Whether Douay or Protestant translation be correct, it is quite certain that Jacob was a little too fast--there was no [--------] (al alei ishral)--Jacob was not called Israel until chap, x.x.xv., v. 10--so that the 'El-elohe-Israel' of our version, and the 'most mighty G.o.d of Israel' of the Douay, are both out of place unless Jacob used the words in the spirit of prophecy, which will explain many difficult pa.s.sages.

*Chapter x.x.xiv. Upon this chapter Voltaire indulges in criticism more pungent than before:--

'Here our critics exclaim in terms of stronger disgust than ever. What!

say they, the son of a king is desirous to marry a vagabond girl; the marriage is approved; Jacob, the father, and Dinah, the daughter, are loaded with presents; the King of Sichem deigns to receive those wandering robbers, called patriarchs, within his city; he has the incredible politeness or kindness to undergo, with his son, his court, and his people, the rite of circ.u.mcision, thus condescending to the superst.i.tion of a petty horde that could not call half a league of territory their own! And, in return for this astonishing hospitality and goodness, how do our holy patriarchs act? They wait for the day when the process of circ.u.mcision generally induces fever; when Simeon and Levi run through the whole city with poignards in their hands and ma.s.sacre the king, the prince his son, and all the inhabitants. We are precluded from the horror appropriate to this infernal counterpart of the tragedy of St. Bartholomew, only by a sense of its absolute impossibility. It is an abominable romance; but it is evidently a ridiculous romance. It is impossible that two men could have slaughtered in quiet the whole population of a city. The people might suffer, in a slight degree, from the operation which had preceded; but, notwithstanding this, they would have risen in self-defence against two diabolical miscreants; they would have instantly a.s.sembled, would have surrounded them, and destroyed them with the summary and complete vengeance merited by their atrocity.

'But there is a still more palpable impossibility. It is that, according to the accurate computation of time, Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, could be only four or five years old; and that, even by forcing up chronology as far as possible in favour of the narrative, she could, at the very most, be only eight. It is here, then, that we are a.s.sailed with bursts of indignant exclamation. What! it is said, what! is it this book--the book of a rejected and reprobate people--a book so long unknown to all the world--a book in which sound reason and decent manners are outraged in every page--that is held up to us as irrefragable, holy, and dictated by G.o.d himself? Is it not even impious to believe it? or could anything less than the fury of cannibals urge to the persecution of sensible and modest men for not believing it?'

*Chapter x.x.xv., v. 11. Although kings were to come out of Jacob's loins by promise, Esau's issue have been quite as successful, in fact rather more so, without any of G.o.d's a.s.sistance.

Verse 22, and chap, xlix., v. 3 and 4. The family to whom G.o.d promised 'the land,' seem to have been as immoral and vicious as any on record.

Abraham has been noticed; the conduct of Lot, his family, and neighbours I dare not comment on; Isaac was pretty free from blame, except in the matter of Rebekah; but his goodness is overborne by the rascality of his son Jacob and his wife, Rachel, who (worthy partner of such a husband) robs her own father--the cutthroat propensities of Simeon and Levi--and the licentiousness of Reuben. {42} *Chapter x.x.xv., end of verse 22 to verse 26. Dr. Giles speaks of the inaccuracy of the last verse, as follows:--

'"These are the sons of Jacob, which were born to him in Padan-Aram."

'But it is well known that Benjamin was born some years after Jacob returned to Canaan. The text, therefore, is incorrect, and creates a serious difficulty, if we suppose that Moses, writing in the presence of G.o.d, could have been liable to such an error.'

*Chapter x.x.xvi., v. 2 and 3, are contradicted in chap, xxvi., v. 34.

Verses 14, 16, and 18. It is difficult to discover from this whether Korah was the son or grandson of Esau, as he is described in both characters.

Verse 31 has been referred to on page 6. In Dr. Giles's 'Hebrew Records,' page 140, the critical reader will find the matter discussed more fully than my pages allow.

*Chapter x.x.xvii., v. 1. In the Douay, instead of 'wherein his father was a stranger,' it reads,' wherein his father sojourned;' and, in verse 2, instead of 'seventeen,' it reads 'sixteen,' and states that Joseph 'accused his brethren to his father of a most wicked crime.'

Verses 25, 27, and 28. These verses are criticised in the 'Hebrew Records' as follows:--

'Here the merchants, to whom Joseph is sold, are twice called Ishmaelites, and once Midianites. Bishop Patrick explains the inconsistency in the following extraordinary manner:--

'"_Ishmaelites_. They are called below Midianites. These people were near neighbours to each other, and were joined together in one company, or caravan, as it is now called. It is the custom, even to the present day, in the East, for merchants and others to travel through the deserts in large companies, for fear of robbers or wild beasts."

'If the pa.s.sage to which these comments are annexed, occurred in one of the famous Greek or Latin historians--Livy, Thucydides, or any other--such a note would not, for one instant, be taken as sound criticism, because none of those able writers would be guilty of such an absurdity as applying two names, known to be distinct, to the same people, within the s.p.a.ce of four lines. If some idle and weakly written tale contained the inconsistency, the mode of interpreting it, which Bishop Patrick applies to the pa.s.sage before us, might be pa.s.sed over, but, even then, more from its being of no importance, than from its soundness or its propriety. But, when we find this discrepancy in a work which professes to be inspired, it is highly desirable that such an inconsistency or discrepancy should be cleared up. Why have none of the commentators remarked on the singular circ.u.mstance of there being Ishmaelitish merchants at all, in the time when Joseph was sold into Egypt? Ishmael was Jacob's uncle, being brother to Isaac, Jacob's father. The family of Ishmael could not have increased to such an extent in the time of which the history treats. The mention of Ishmaelites, in the text before us, indicates that the writer lived many generations later, when Ishmaelitish {43} merchants were well known. Still less likely is it that there were Midianitish merchants in those days; for Midian was also one of the sons of Abraham, and fifty-four years younger than Isaac; see chap, xxv., y. 2. At all events, the variation in the name of this tribe of merchantmen renders it impossible that Moses could have written the narrative, unless we suppose that, when he had it in his power to describe the matter accurately and definitely, he rather chose to relate it in such a manner as to puzzle all future ages as to its exact meaning.'

Verse 35. In the Douay, the word 'h.e.l.l' is subst.i.tuted for the word 'grave.' The Hebrew is [------] (shale). Jacob believed his son devoured by wild beasts, and, therefore, could have hardly expected to find him in his grave; and, although h.e.l.l might, perhaps, be the appropriate receptacle for one who had been so great a rascal as Jacob, yet, I much doubt whether he ever expressed his intention to go there to find his son. I must refer my more precise readers to the various controversial works written by various shades of Catholic and Protestant divines, on the words 'purgatory,' 'limbo,' 'h.e.l.l,' and 'grave.'

Verse 36. The word [------] translated 'officer,' means eunuch, and is so translated in the Douay; if this be correct, we can scarcely wonder at the conduct of Potiphar's wife, as detailed in chap, x.x.xix.

*Chapter x.x.xviii Judah and his children are a still further ill.u.s.tration of the happy and moral family in whom all the nations of the world were to be blessed. The following is quoted from Voltaire:--

'The Rev. Father Dom Calmet makes this reflection, in alluding to the thirty-eighth chapter of Genesis:--"Scripture," he observes, "gives us the details of a history, which, on the first perusal, strikes our minds as not of a nature for edification; but the hidden sense which is shut up in it is as elevated, as that of the mere letter appears low to carnal eyes. It is not without good reasons that the Holy Spirit has allowed the histories of Tamar, of Rahab, of Ruth, and of Bathsheba, to form a part of the genealogy of Jesus Christ."

'It might have been well, if Dom Calmet had explained these sound reasons, by which we might have cleared up the doubts, and appeased the scruples, of all the honest and timorous souls who are anxious to comprehend how this Supreme Being, the Creator of the world, could be born in a Jewish village, of a race of plunderers and of prost.i.tutes.

This mystery, which is not less inconceivable than other mysteries, was a.s.suredly worthy the explanation of so able a commentator.'

*Chapter x.x.xix. is inserted, I presume, by way of contrast, to heighten the effect produced by the previous chapter.

*Chapter xl., v. 5, 8, 9, 12, and 16--chap, xli., v. 15 and 25. In Leviticus, chap, xix., v. 26, we find these words according to the Douay, 'You shall not divine nor observe dreams.'

*Chapter xli., v. 38 and 39. One would imagine, by these verses, that Joseph and the Egyptians worshipped the same G.o.d, but this is not the fact; Pharaoh speaks to Moses of the Lord _your_ G.o.d, and if the Egyptians had spoken in their usual manner, it would have been {44} not to have praised Joseph for the Spirit of G.o.d being in him, but rather to have upbraided the infidel prisoner with having obtained his knowledge from the devil, unless, indeed, we are to a.s.sume that the religious Egyptians were more humane than the religious Christians. If Joseph had lived a few years later, he would have stood a fair chance of being stoned to death, for his divinations and fortune-telling (_vide_ Exodus, chap, xxii., v. 18, and Deuteronomy, chap, xviii., v. 10, 11, and 12).

Verses 45 and 50. Potipherah is here called priest of On; in the Douay, he is denominated priest of Heliopolis. In plain truth, he was priest of the sun; and it might be instructive if it were possible to ascertain the reasons which induced the translators to hide Joseph's close connexion with sun worship.

Verse 56. This famine was over the whole earth, so that the favoured family of Abraham were worse off than the Egyptians, to whom G.o.d gave seven years' notice, to enable them to prepare against the coming trouble. We have all heard of people living on hope; and the children of Isaac might have hoped for the fulfilment of the promise, but such would be very unsubstantial food during a seven years' famine.

*Chapter xliii., v. 32. How could it be considered an abomination for the Egyptians to eat with the Hebrews? the latter were only the descendants of Abraham, few in number, and the Egyptians could not have known of their existence until they made acquaintance with Joseph; and, by giving him the daughter of the high priest to wife, they had conferred great honour and favour on him--he was the first in the land, and the only Hebrew amongst them.

*Chapter xliv., v. 5 and 15. Joseph, according to this, used to divine in a cup. My grandmother used to inspect the dregs of her tea cup, and prophesy wondrously; but it is really too much to expect us to find a creed in such a cup.

*Chapter xlvi., v. 1 to 3. G.o.d again appeared in a vision at night, that is, Jacob dreamed that he saw G.o.d.

The Rev. Dr. Giles observes on verses 8 to 26:--

'An error is found also in the other catalogue of Jacob's children, who accompanied him into Egypt. The names occupy from verse 8 to 25 of Genesis, chap. xlvi. In verse 26 it is said:--

'"All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins, besides Jacob's sons' wives, all the souls were three score and six."

'This total is erroneous, for the names, added properly, amount to sixty-seven; and a still greater difference is found between the Hebrew text and the Septuagint, in the twenty-seventh verse; the former makes "all the souls of the house of Jacob," to be "three score and ten,"

whereas the latter states them to have been seventy-five.

'We might set aside the authority of the Septuagint as inferior to that of the Hebrew in such a matter, were it not, that in St. Stephen's speech, in the Acts of the Apostles, chap, vii., v. 14, the number 75 is repeated; and an awkward dilemma is created, from which it is {45} impossible to extricate ourselves, if these conflicting accounts, both written by inspiration, are to be considered as having come down to us in their original state. This may, with justice, be called in question; for Dean Shuckford, who supposes that the transcribers have added something in chap, x.x.xv., accuses them of having omitted something in chap, xlvi., of having added a verse in xlvi., 27, of the Septuagint, which is more full than the Hebrew, and, lastly, of having altered seventy into seventy-five, in chap. vii. of the Acts. It is difficult to imagine how a book, with which such liberties have been taken, can properly be regarded as an immaculate record. But the same mode of interpretation is entirely inapplicable to explain the remarkable fact, that, among those who accompanied Jacob into Egypt, are enumerated, in chap, xlvi., v. 21, ten sons of Benjamin, and, in v. 12, two grandsons of Judah, Hezron and Hamul. Jacob surely went into Egypt soon after the famine began; and Benjamin was then a lad, if we may trust the chronologers, under twenty years of age. The grandsons of Judah, through his son Pharez, could not have been born until many years later; for Pharez, their father, was only two or three years old when the whole family first entered the land of their servitude.

'In verse 34 it is said, as a reason for the Israelites being placed in the land of Goshen, that "every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians." But it appears, from every other part of the history of Joseph and Pharaoh, that there was no such enmity between them. This is also the opinion of Dr. Shuckford, whose account of the matter is as follows:--

'"There is, indeed, one pa.s.sage in Genesis which seems to intimate that there was that religious hatred, which the Egyptians were afterwards charged with, paid to creatures even in the days of Joseph; for we are informed that he put his brethren upon telling Pharaoh their profession, in order to have them placed in the land of Goshen, for, or because, 'every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians,' Genesis, xlvi., v. 34. I must freely acknowledge that I cannot satisfy myself about the meaning of this pa.s.sage; I cannot see that shepherds were really, at this time, an abomination to the Egyptians; for Pharaoh himself had his shepherds, and, when he ordered Joseph to place his brethren in the land of Goshen, he was so far from disapproving of their employment, that he ordered him, if he knew any men of activity amongst them, that he should make them rulers of his cattle; nay, the Egyptians were, at this time, shepherds themselves as well as the Israelites, for we are told, when their money failed, they brought their cattle of all sorts unto Joseph, to exchange them for corn, and, among the rest, their flocks of the same kind with those which the Israelites were to tell Pharaoh that it was their profession to take care of, as will appear to any one that will consult the Hebrew text in the places referred to. Either, therefore, we must take the expression that every shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians to mean no more than that they thought meanly of the employment, that it was a lazy, idle, and inactive profession, as {46} Pharaoh seemed to question whether there were any men of activity amongst them, when he heard what their trade was; or, if we take the words to signify a religious aversion to them, which does, indeed, seem to be the true meaning of the expression, from the use made of it in other parts of Scripture, then I do not see how it is reconcilable with Pharaoh's inclination to employ them himself, or with the Egyptians being many of them, at this time, of the same profession themselves, which the heathen writers agree with Moses in supposing them to be.

[Diod. Sic., lib. 1],'" Though learned men have observed that there are several interpolations in the books of the Scriptures, which were not the words of the Sacred Writers, some persons, affecting to show their learning, when they read over the ancient MSS., would sometimes put a short remark in the margin, which they thought might give a reason for, or clear the meaning of, some expression in the text against which they placed it, or to which, they adjoined it; and from hence it happened, now and then, that the transcribers from ma.n.u.scripts so remarked upon, did, through mistake, take a marginal note or remark into the text, imagining it to be a part of it. Whether Moses might not end his period in this place with the words, _that ye may dwell in the land of Goshen_; and whether what follows, _for every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians_, may not have been added to the text in this way, is entirely submitted to the judgment of the learned. Connexion Book 5, vol. i., p.

341."

'The learned writer of this extract is more correct in his statement of the difficulty, than in its solution. It is a principle in criticism to consider a book as free from interpolation, until it is proved that interpolations have certainly been made. The charge of interpolation is brought against the books of the Old Testament for no other reason, than to reduce them into harmony with the preconceived opinion that they were written by the authors to whom they are commonly ascribed. In the present instance, there has been no interpolation.

The compiler, relating the honours paid to the family of Jacob in Egypt, and endeavouring to harmonise them with the state of things in his own times, 1,000 years later, when the Egyptians, by their religious absurdities, had been made to entertain an enmity towards shepherds, has given us a description which, in this particular, is inconsistent with itself. In short, the Egyptians held shepherds in aversion in the fifth, but not in the fifteenth, century before the Christian era.'

It is scarcely necessary to add to the above; but, if it were, it would be hard to reconcile there being an abomination with the eleventh verse of chap, xlvii., in which it is stated that Pharaoh gave these very people 'the best of the land, in the land of Rameses.'

*Chapter xlviii., v. 22. Jacob's life contains no account of his wars with the Amorites; in fact, had it not been for these concluding words, I should have looked upon him as rather likely to gain victories by cozening and diplomatic swindling, than by his bow and sword.

*Chapter 1., v. 10 and 11. These verses could not have been {47} written by Moses, because Atad was not _beyond_ but on _this_ side Jordan to him. Joseph did not cross the Jordan to bury his rather.

Before quitting Genesis, I will endeavour, as briefly as possible, to sum up the effect of my partial examination (I say partial, because there are many differences in the readings of the various ma.n.u.scripts, and in the translation of the different versions, which I pa.s.sed without notice, because they have seemed to me to be of comparative unimportance). I have shown, in the foregoing pages--first, that in the authorised version the book claims our attention under false pretences, that, in fact, it is not, and in the original does not claim to be, the work of Moses; many pa.s.sages he could not have written, of the rest, some pa.s.sages are evidently taken from different ma.n.u.scripts, and badly joined or fitted in, so as to make up the text as we have it, forming, in many cases, a twice or even thrice told tale, as in the accounts of the creation, of the flood, the adventures of Abraham's wife, and of Jacob's wife, etc. Second, that it is impossible the book can be a revelation from G.o.d, because it contains pa.s.sages in relation to deity which are in themselves ridiculously absurd, because it speaks of more G.o.ds than one, treating some as superior and some as inferior G.o.ds, because it degrades the deity to the level of man, making him grieve and repent, and become subject to the same pa.s.sions and feelings as man, liable to heat and cold, etc, because it treats of the deity as a finite being, occupying a small portion of s.p.a.ce, travelling from one part of the earth to another, going up to heaven and coming down therefrom with the aid of a ladder; because it relates that G.o.d has, or sometimes a.s.sumes, a finite, substantial shape, which a man may lay hold of and wrestle with; because it pictures G.o.d as favouring, without apparent reason, some men in preference to others, and, in very many instances, choosing as the objects of his divine favour the worst possible characters, rewarding fraud and knavery with lands flowing with milk and honey, and discouraging and discountenancing virtuous conduct either by leaving it unnoticed or by depriving the unfortunate virtuous man of some benefit to which he appeared to be ent.i.tled; because it represents a just and Almighty G.o.d allowing the happiness of his own creatures to be destroyed by one of the animals he had created, and then cursing the tempted man and woman for being frail enough to fall at the first temptation, when, in fact, he (G.o.d) was the cause of that very frailty; because it represents the same Deity pledging his oath to a promise which he either never intended to perform, or which he did not possess the ability to perform, or which he afterwards wilfully broke.

Third.--That it cannot be relied on as a relation of actual occurrences, because, in the account of the creation, science has enabled us to detect several positively false statements in the account of the flood; also several gross and palpable mis-statements occur; because, in dealing with dates and genealogical statements, it contradicts and confuses its own narrative; because, even where it pretends to be the most real, it is alleged, in another book of the same Bible, to be purely allegorical. {48} Fourth.---That it ought not to be used as an educational work for the foregoing reasons, and because of the various obscene pa.s.sages spread throughout the book; because, also, the youthful scholar will find cunning, craft, and cheating rewarded and preferred, while honesty and n.o.ble conduct is unnoticed; because he will find the practice of sacrifice is encouraged, and sacrifice, either human or b.e.s.t.i.a.l, is degrading and debasing; because he will find cruelties detailed at which his nature must revolt or become deteriorated.

In Foxton's work on 'Popular Christianity,' a quotation is given from the _Prospective Review_, in which the writer suggests:--