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The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old Part 14

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Indeed, miracles in the two first centuries were allowed very little weight in proving doctrines. Since the Christians did not deny, that the heathens performed miracles in behalf of their G.o.ds, and that the heretics performed them as will as the orthodox. This accounts for the perfect indifference of the heathens to the miracles said to have been performed by the founders of Christianity. Hierocles speaks with great contempt of what he calls "the little tricks of Jesus," And Origen, in his reply to Celsus, waves the consideration of the Christian miracles: ?for (says he) the very mention of these things sets you heathens upon the. broad grin.? Indeed, that they laughed very heartily at what in the eighteenth century is read with a grave face, is evident from the few fragments of their works written against Christianity which has escaped the burning zeal of the fathers, and the Christian emperors; who piously sought for, and burned up, these mischievous volumes to prevent their doing mischief to posterity. This conduct of theirs is very suspicious. Why burn writing they could so triumphantly refute, if they were refutable? They should have remembered the just reflection of Arn.o.bius, their own apologist, against the heathens, who were for abolishing at once such writings as promoted Christianity.--"Intercipere scripta et publicatam velle submergere lectionem, non est Deos defendere, sed veritatis testificationem timere."[Arn.o.b. contra Gentes. Liber ni.]--E.

* Before going into the consideration of the following prophecies, the author would warn the reader to bear in mind, that whether these prophecies ever will be fulfilled, is a question of no import in the world to the question under consideration, which is--whether they have been fulfilled eighteen hundred years ago, in the person of Jesus Christ, who is a.s.serted by Christians to be the person foretold in these prophecies, and to have fulfilled their predictions. This question can be easily decided, and only, we think, by appealing to past history, and to the scenes pa.s.sing around us, and comparing them with these predictions.--E.

* The word in the original being Vayikra, in the Kal or Active form of the verb, and not Vayikare the Niphal or Pa.s.sive form.--D.

# reprove or argue.--D.

* Or, in righteousness.--D.

# Mr. English very properly takes notice of the disjunctive accent (Pasek) occurring here in the text.--D.

# For a more correct enumeration of the thirteen cabalistic rules of exposition, the English reader is referred to vol. 1, page 209, of the ?Conciliator? of B. Mena.s.seh ben Israel, translated by E, H. Lindo, Esqr.--D.

# Mr. E. was, doubtless, aware that this is an exposition given by Jewish Commentators.--D.

# There exists an English translation of this work by Abraham de Sola.

--D.

* The person here spoken of by Isaiah is said to make his grave with the wicked, and be with the rich in his death. Whereas Jesus did exactly the contrary. He was with the wicked (i. e., the two thieves) in his death, and with the rich (i.e., Joseph of Arimathea) in his grave, or tomb. In the original, the words may be translated that ?he shall avenge, or recompence upon the wicked his grave, and his death upon the rich.? Thus does the Targum and the Arabic version interpret the place, and Ezekiel ix. 10, uses the verb in the verse in Isaiah under consideration translated (in The English version)--?He made,? &c--in the same sense, given to this place in Isaiah, by the Targum, and the Arabic, as said above. See the place in Ezekiel, where it is translated--?I will recompence their way upon their head.? See also Deut. xxi. 8, in the original. The Syriac has it--?The wicked contributed to his burial, and the rich to his death.? The Arabic--?I will punish the wicked for his burial, and the rich for his death.? The Targum--?He shall send the wicked into h.e.l.l, and the rich who put him to a cruel death.?--E.

# Or, shall destroy.--D.

* The remainder of this chapter is taken from Levi and Wagenseil.--E.

* The reader is requested to consider the reasoning in the last paragraph. The prophecy in the second chapter of Daniel, is commonly supposed to relate to the four Great Empires, the Babylonian, Persian, Grecian and Roman. This last, it is (according to this interpretation,) foretold, should be divided into many kingdoms, and that ?in the latter days of these kingdoms,? (which are now subsisting) G.o.d would set up a kingdom which would never be destroyed,--that of the Messiah. Of course, according to this interpretation, the kingdom of the Messiah was not to be not only sustain after the destruction of the Roman Empire, but not till the latter days of the kingdoms which grew up out of its ruins; whereas, Jesus was born in the time of Augustus, i. e., precisely when the Roman Empire itself was in the highest of its splendour and vigour.

This is a remarkable, and very striking, repugnance, to the claims of the New Testament, and, if substantiated, must overset them entirely.--E.

* The sum of our argument may be expressed thus. G.o.d is represented in the prophecies of the Old Testament as designing to send into the world an eminent deliverer, descended from David, the peace and prosperity of whose reign should far exceed all that went before him, in whom all the glorious things foretold by the prophets should receive their entire completion; and who should be distinguished by the character of the Messiah or Christ. This is an article of faith common to Christians and Jews. But that Jesus of Nazareth should be esteemed this Messiah, and that Christians can support that opinion, by alledging the prophecies of the Hebrew scriptures as belonging to, and fulfilled in, him, is what we can by no means allow, and that especially on account of these inconsistencies.

1. Because, these prophecies, acknowledged on both sides to point out the Messiah, could not otherwise answer the end of inspiring them than by an accomplishment so plain and sensible as might sufficiently distinguish the person meant by them to be that Messiah. But no such accomplishment, we contend, can possibly be discerned in Jesus, and, consequently, he cannot be the person meant by them.

2. Because, several predictions which Christians apply to Jesus, are wrested to a meaning which quite destroys the historical sense of scripture, and breaks the connexion of the pa.s.sages from whence they are taken. Thus many shreds and loose sentences are culled out for this purpose, which do not appear to have any relation to Jesus, or to the Messiah either; but to have received their proper and intended completion in some other person, whom the prophet, as is manifest, had then only in view.

3. Because, in their forced applications of the prophecies, Christians, finding themselves hard pressed by the simple and natural construction, forsake the literal, and take shelter in spiritual and mystical senses; fly to hyperboles and strained metaphors, and thus expound the true meaning and importance of the prophecies quite away; the intent whereof being to instruct men in so necessary a point of faith as that relating to the Messiah, it is reasonable to think they would be delivered in the most perspicuous and intelligible terms. Since ambiguous expressions (capable of such strange meanings as they pretend,) would be too slippery a foundation to build such a point of faith upon; would be of no use, or worse than none; would be unable to teach the clear truth, and apt to ensnare men into dangerous errors, by leaving too great a lat.i.tude for fanciful interpretations, and introducing darkness and confusion, and contradiction inexplicable.

4. Because, admitting (as indeed it never was, or can be denied) that many pa.s.sages of scripture, and of prophetical scripture especially, must be figuratively taken; yet, we must always put a wide difference between a sense not just as the words in their first signification import, and a sense directly the contrary of what they import. And yet we complain that this latter is the sense which Christians labour to obtrude upon the gainsayers. We say, that a kingdom of this world, and not of this world; contempt and adoration; poverty and magnificence; persecution and peace; sufferings and triumph; a cross and a throne; the scandalous death of a private man upon a gibbet, and the everlasting dominion of a universal monarch, must be reconciled, and mean the self same thing, before the prophecies appealed to, can do their cause any service. Granting, then, the goodness of G.o.d (according to them,) to have been better than his word, by giving spiritual blessings, instead of temporal; yet, what will become of the truth of G.o.d, if He act contrary to his word, even when it would be for our advantage, if He misleads people by expressions, which, if they mean any thing at all, must mean what the Jews understand by them?

In short, it seems to me, that if Providence has, in truth, any concern with the predictions of the Old Testament, it could not have taken more effectual care to justify the unbelief and obstinacy of the Jews, than by ordering matters so, that the life and death of Jesus should be so exactly, and so entirely, the very reverse of all those ideas under which their prophets had constantly described, and the Hebrew nation as constantly expected of their Messiah, and his coming; and to suppose that the Supreme Being meant to describe and point out such a person as Jesus by such descriptions of the Messiah as are contained in the Old Testament, is certainly substantially to accuse him of the moat unjustifiable prevarication, and mockery of his creatures.

In order that the subject we are examining, and the arguments we make use of, may be clearly understood by the reader, he is requested to bear in mind, that the author reasons all along upon the supposed Divine authority of the Old Testament; which is admitted by both Jews and Christians. Whether the supernatural claims of the Old Testament be just, or not, is of no consequence in the world to the controversy we are considering. For the dispute of the Jew with the Christian is one thing, and his dispute with the sceptic is another, totally different.

For whether such a personage as the Messiah is described to be, has appeared eighteen hundred years ago, is quite a different thing from the question, whether such a personage will appear at all. The Christian says, that he has appeared in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. This the Jew denies, but looks forward to the future fulfilment of the promises of his Bible, while the Sceptic denies that the Messiah has come, or ever will.

But the subject at present under consideration is the dispute of the Jew with the Christian, who acknowledges the Old Testament to be a Revelation, upon which a new Revelation, that of the New Testament, is founded and erected. To him the Jew argues, that if the Old Testament be a Divine Revelation, then the New Testament cannot be a Revelation, because it contradicts, and is repugnant to, the Old Testament, the more ancient, and acknowledged Revelation. Now G.o.d cannot be the author of two Revelations, one of which is repugnant to the other. One of them is certainly false. And if the Christian, conscious of the difficulty of reconciling the New, with the Old, Testament, attempts to support the New, at the expense of the Old, Testament, upon which the former is, and was, built by the founders of Christianity; then the Jew would tell him, that he acts as absurdly as would the man who should expect to make his house the firmer, by undermining, and weakening its foundation.

So that whether the Christian affirms, or denies, he is ruined either way. For he is reduced to this fatal dilemma. If the Old Testament contains a Revelation from G.o.d, then the New Testament is not from G.o.d, for G.o.d cannot contradict himself: and it can be proved abundantly, that the New Testament is contradictory, and repugnant to the Old and to itself too. If, on the other hand, the Old Testament contains no Revelation from G.o.d, then the New Testament must go down at any rate because it a.s.serts that the Old Testament does contain a Revelation from G.o.d, and builds upon it, as a foundation.--E.

* There was nothing which gave the author, in writing this Book, so much uneasiness, at the apprehension of being supposed to entertain disrespectful sentiments of the Founder of the Christian Religion. I would most earnestly entreat the reader to believe my solemn a.s.surances, that by nothing that I have said, or shall be under the necessity of saying, do I think, or mean to intimate the slightest disparagement to the moral character of one, whose purity of morals, and good intentions, deserve any thing else but reproach. That he was an enthusiast, I do not doubt, that he was a wilful impostor I never will believe. And I protest before G.o.d, that from the apprehensions above-mentioned alone, I would have confined the contents of this volume to myself, did I not feel compelled to justify myself for having quitted a profession: and did I not, above all, think it my duty, to make a well meant attempt, which I hope will be seconded, to vindicate the unbelief of an unfortunate nation, who, on that account, have for almost eighteen hundred years, been made the victim of rancorous prejudice, the most infernal cruelties, and the most atrocious wickedness. If the Christian religion be, in truth, not well founded, surely it is the duty of every honest and every humane, man, to endeavour to dispel an illusion, which certainly has been, notwithstanding any thing that can be said to the contrary, the bona fide, and real cause of unspeakable misery, and of repeated, and remorseless plunderings, and ma.s.sacres, to an unhappy people; the journal of whose sufferings, on account of it, forms the blackest page in the history of the human race, and the most detestable one in the history of human superst.i.tion.--E.

* Jerome, in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, says, that ?The Church of Christ was not gathered from the Academy, or the Lyceum, but from the lowest of the people.? [Vili Plebecula.] And Coecilius, in Minutius Felix, says, that the Christian a.s.semblies were made up ?de ultima faece collectis, imperitioribus, et mulieribus credulis s.e.xus suae facilitate labentibus,? i. e. ?that they consisted of the lowest of the mob, simple and unlearned, men, and credulous women.?

The president of a province is introduced, by Prudentius as thus addressing a martyr:--?Tu qui Doctor, ait, seris novellum Commenti genus, ut Leves Puellae, Lucos dest.i.tuunt, Jovem relinquant; d.a.m.nes, si sapias, ANILE DOGMA.?

The Christian Fathers confess, and glory in it, that the greater part of their congregations consisted of women and children, slaves, beggars, and vagabonds.

The Jewish Christians were, as appears evidently from the New Testament, exceedingly poor, and therefore there is frequent mention made of contributions for ?the poor Saints at Jerusalem.? From thence it was that the Jewish Christians got the name of Ebionites, i. e. Poor. The Jewish Christian Church consisted of the dregs of the Jewish people, simple and ignorant men, Samaritans, &c. No person in Judea of eminence, or learning, appears to have joined the sect of the Nazarenes, except Paul; after the destruction of Jerusalem they gradually dwindled in number, and became extinct.--E.

* I will here lay before the reader the arguments advanced by the Mahometans in behalf of the miracles of their prophet, extracted from the learned Reland?s account of Mehometanism. They say that--?the miracles of Mahomet and his followers have been recorded in innumerable volumes of the most famous, learned, pious, and subtle Doctors of the Mahometan Faith, who let nothing pa.s.s without the strictest and severest examination, and whose tradition, therefore, is unexceptionable among them; that they were known throughout all the regions of Arabia, and transmitted by common and universal tradition from father to son, from generation to generation. That the books of Interpreters and Commentators on the Koran, the books of Historians, especially such as give an account of Mahomet?s life and actions, the books of annalists and lawyers, the books of mathematicians and philosophers, and, last of all, the books of both Jews and Christians concerning Mahomet, are full of his miracles. That if the authority of so many great and wise doctors be denied, then, for their part, they cannot see but that a universal scepticism as to all other accounts of miracles must obtain among people of all persuasions. For authority being the only proof of facts done out of our time, or out of our sight, if that be denied, there is no way to come to the certainty of any such, without immediate inspiration; and all accounts of matters recorded in history, must be doubtful and precarious.?

?And these witnesses would not have dared to a.s.sert these miracles unless they were true; for such as forged any miracles for his, which he really did not, lay under a hearty curse from the prophet. For it was a received tradition among the faithful, that Mahomet denounced h.e.l.l and d.a.m.nation to all those who should tell any lies of him. So that none who believed in Mahomet, durst attribute miracles to him which he was not concerned in; and those who believed not in him, would certainly never have given him the honour of working any, unless he had done so.?

Christian reader, thou seest how much can be said, and how many respectable witnesses and authorities can be adduced to prove that Mahomet wrought miracles. Canst thou adduce more, or better, authorities in behalf of the miracles of the New Testament? Art thou not rather satisfied how fallacious the evidence of testimony is in all such cases?

This is not all that the Mahometan might urge in behalf of his prophet, for he might tell the Christian, boasting that Jesus and his Apostles converted the Roman world from idolatry, that they overthrew one system of idolatry, only to build up another, since the worship of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and the Saints, and their images was established in a few hundred years after Jesus, and continues to this day; an idolatry as rank, and much more inexcusable than the worship of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Whereas, Mahomet cut ?up root and branch, both Christian and Pagan idolatry, and proclaimed one only G.o.d as the object of adoration; and if the Christian should urge the rapid propagation of Christianity, the Mahometan might reply, that Mahomet was a poor camel-driver, but that Islamism made more progress in one hundred years, than Christianity did in a thousand; that it was embraced by the n.o.ble, the great, the wise, and the learned, almost as soon as it appeared; whereas, Christianity was skulking and creeping among the mob of the Roman Empire for some hundred years before it dared to raise its head in public view.

If the Christian should reply to this, by ascribing the success of Mahometanism to the sword, the Mahometan might reply, with truth, that it was a vulgar error; for that vastly more nations embraced Islamism voluntarily, than there were who freely received Christianity; and he might remind him, how much Christianity owed to the accession of Constantine; to Charlemagne; and the Teutonic Knights; and bid him recollect that the monks were a.s.sisted by soldiers to convert to Christianity almost every nation in Modern Europe.--E.

# Compare the above with Maimonides, Hilchot Yessode Hattorah, from chapter 7.--D.

* The reader is requested by the author to understand, and bear in mind, that it is not at all intended by any of the observations contained in this chapter on the histories of the four evangelists, to reflect upon, or to disparage, the characters of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, under whose names they go; because he believes, and thinks it is proved in this chapter, that the real authors of these histories were very different persons from the Apostles of Jesus; and that, in fact, the accounts were not written till the middle of the second century, about a hundred year?s after the supposed authors of them were dead. Of course, none of the observations contained in the chapter relative to these histories, ware considered, or intended, to apply to any of the twelve apostles, who were not men who could make such mistakes as will be pointed out. These mistakes belong entirely to the authors who have a.s.sumed their names.--E.

* That the pretended Gospel of Matthew was not written by Matthew, or by an, inhabitant of Palestine, may also be inferred, I think, from the blundering attempts of the author of it to give the meaning of some expressions uttered by Jesus, and used by the Jews, in the language of the country, which was the Syro Chaldaic; and which the real Matthew could hardly be ignorant of. For instance, he says that Golgotha signifies--?the place of a skull.? Matthew xxvii. 33. Now, this is not true, for Golgotha, or as it should have been written, Golgoltha, does not signify ?the place of a skull,? but simply ?a skull.? The Gospels according to Mark, and John, are guilty of the same mistake, and thus betray the same marks of Gentilism. Again, the pretended Matthew says, that Jesus cried on the cross, ?Eli Eli lama, sabackthani,? which he says meant, ?My G.o.d, My G.o.d, why hast thou forsaken me?? (Matthew xxvii. 46.) If the reader will look at what Michaelis, in his introduction to the New Testament, says upon this subject, he will find the real Syro Chaldaic expression which must have been used by Jesus, to be so different from the one given by the supposed Matthew, that he will, (and the observation is not meant as a disparagement to the real Matthew, who certainly had no hand in the imposition of the Gospel covered with his name) I suspect be inclined to believe, that this pretended Matthew?s knowledge of the vulgar language of the Jews, used in Christ?s time, must have been about upon a par with the honest sailor?s knowledge of French; who a.s.sured his countrymen, on his return home, that the French called a horse a shovel and a hat a chopper!--E.

* See Addenda, No. 2.

* The author had prepared, in order to subjoin in this place, an examination of the Mosaic Code, and a development of its principles, which he thinks would have satisfied the reader of the truth of what he has said in the last paragraph. But as it would have too much increased the bulk of the volume, it has been omitted. It is an inst.i.tution however curious enough to be the subject of an interesting discussion, which he should be happy to see from the hands of one able to do it justice.--E.

# Mr. English, it will be perceived, differs in his translation of the Hebrew word ?nebelati,? which is, certainly, in the singular number, and not plural. The correct rendering is, doubtless, ?with my dead body they,? &c.; but this weakens not at all his argument, which is essentially a Jewish one. See the Commentators, Chizoook Emunah, &c.

&c.--D.

# This was, originally, a note; but, in order not to divert too much the reader?s attention, it has been thought advisable to insert it here.--D.

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