Chapter 6 Part II-1

It is often said that anything can be proved by the Bible, but before anything can be proved by the Bible, the Bible itself must first be proved to be true; doubt, it has no authority, and cannot be used as proof of anything. All Christians who interpret the "Bible", all Christian priests and missionaries, often impose the "Bible" on the world as a collection of truths and the way of God in practice; Conceived meanings, contradicted, quarreled, and even cursed: one insisted that a certain verse should be interpreted in this way; Meaning; that's what they call understanding the Bible.

Coincidentally, all the answers I have seen to the first part of "The Age of Reason" were written by priests; "; what everyone knows is different from each other, but each thinks he knows best; they have nothing in common, but they all tell the reader that Thomas Paine didn't know it. Now to avoid wasting their time and exacerbating their uncontrollable quarrels about the teachings of the Bible, they should understand, and if they do not know, it is polite to tell them, first of all, whether there is enough authority to make people Do you believe that the Bible is the word of God?In that book, some things are said to have been done by God's decree.These things are as appalling to mankind and to all our notions of morality and justice, as did Robespierre, Carrier, and Joseph in France, and the British government in the East Indies The same, or exactly the same as any modern assassination.When we read the so-called books of Moses, Joshua, etc., saying that they (Israelites) secretly violated the peoples of all countries, as history shows, those peoples did not offend them; It is unavoidable to use military force with white hair and yellow mouth.Men, women, children, all were massacred; they left no one alive.These accounts, repeated over and over again in those books, have become more and more brutal; can we be sure that these are the facts?Can we be sure that these acts were ordered by the Creator?Can we be sure that the books that record these things were written under his authority?

The age is no proof that the story is true.On the contrary, it is an unbelievable symbol; for the more ancient any history is, the more it appears to be an allegory (or myth).The origin of a nation is often concealed by a mythical legend, and the origin of the Jews is as dubious as that of other nations.To attribute all actions to Almighty God is a crime according to their own nature and every criterion of moral justice, just as all assassination, and especially the murder of an infant, is a crime. The Bible tells us that those assassinations were ordered by God.Therefore, to believe that the Bible is true, we must overthrow all our beliefs in God's moral justice; because how can a baby's crying and laughing go hand in hand?Again, to read the "Bible" without fear, we must give up all the thoughts of tenderness, sympathy and kindness in people's hearts.As far as I am concerned, if I believe the Bible to be true and sacrifices must be made, then the absence of other evidence that it is false is enough for me to decide what to take and what to give up.

But in addition to all the moral evidence against the Bible, I present in this work other evidence which even a priest cannot deny; It has no right to be the word of God. ① refers to God. - translator But before I undertake such a search, I shall point out the points in which the Bible differs from other ancient writings, and the nature of the evidence used to establish its authenticity.It is more appropriate to do so, since the proponents of the Bible, in their answer to the previous part of The Age of Reason, base their argument and emphasize that the Bible is as correct as other ancient writings: It seems that since one believes in one, according to the principle, one should believe in the other.

Although, as far as I know, there is only one ancient work that has authority and can command the consent and confidence of the whole world, and that is Euclid's "Principles of Geometry" ①, the reason is that this book has self-evident arguments, and the author has absolutely nothing to rely on, nor does it involve everything related to time, place, environment, etc.Had the things contained in that book been written by anyone else, or by an anonymous person, or by an author unknown, the book would have had the same prestige as it does now, because it is certain The question of who is the author has nothing to do with what we believe about what is contained in the book.But this is very different from the writings called Moses, Joshua, Samuel, etc., which are books of proof, and what they prove is naturally unbelievable, so we have all doubts about the authenticity of those books. Faith, first, rests in assuming that they were written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, and secondly, that their testimonies are true.We can trust the first, that is, we can trust that the authorship belongs to them, but not their testimony; in the same way we can trust someone to testify in a case without trusting the evidence he presents.If once it were discovered that the books which were previously attributed to Moses, Joshua, and Samuel were not written by them, then the authority and accuracy of those books would be ruined at once, because forgery or fiction is impossible; There will be no anonymous testimony, especially something that is naturally unreliable; such as talking to God face to face, or such as man can order the sun and moon to stop moving.As for other ancient books, the vast majority are the works of geniuses, among which are known as Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Cicero.Here again, the importance we attach to any one of these works has very little to do with who the author is; for works of genius, even if their author is anonymous, will enjoy the same reputation as they now enjoy. .No one believes that Homer's story about the special city is true-for only the poet is admired; the story is false, but the poet's merit remains.But we don't believe the things described by the "Bible" writers (such as Moses) any more than we believe the stories described by Homer, then in our evaluation, Moses left nothing else, but was just a liar. As for the ancient The historians, from Holledodes to Tacitus, we praise only to what they describe as probable and plausible, to the extent of our belief. For if we go beyond this limit, We must then believe that Persilon's description of the two miracles of Wyspasian, of healing a lame man and a blind man, are exactly the same things and in the same way that the historians of Christ describe Christ. We also The miracles cited by Josephus of opening the Sea of ​​Pamphylia for the passage of Alexander and their troops are exactly the same as those of the Red Sea. These miracles, like the miracles of the Bible, are attested to be true, yet we do not believe them; and therefore the evidence necessary for us to believe what is naturally implausible, whether in Scripture or elsewhere, is to a far greater extent than we believe what is naturally plausible; Advocates of the Bible cannot ask us to believe the Bible because we believe the things described in other ancient books, because we believe that the statements in other ancient books are also limited to probable and plausible, or because they are self-evident, as in Euclid; or praise them for their fine art, like Homer; or approve of them because they are solemn (peaceful) like Plato; or they are judgmental, like Aristotle. I These things have been suggested, and now Euclid, according to the annals, lived three hundred years before Jesus Christ, and about a hundred years before Archimedes; and he came from Alexandria, Egypt.—Author

The reliability of the Bible will then be examined, starting with five books that are said to belong to Moses: Genesis, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.My intention is to show that those books are forgeries, and to show that Moses was not their author; what is more, that they were not written in Moses' time; nor were they written within hundreds of years after Moses; They are nothing more than an attempt to write the history of Moses' life, and the history of what he is said to have lived, and also of times before him, by a very ignorant and foolish man pretending to be a writer, hundreds of years after his death. What people write is the same as modern people write the history of things that happened or imagined hundreds or thousands of years ago.

In this case the evidence I shall present is drawn from the books themselves, and I must limit myself to this type of evidence.The ancient writers whom I testify against are those which the adherents of the Bible call blasphemy, who would refute that authority as I refuted theirs; Weapon - "Bible" to fight back against them. First, There is no definite proof that Moses was the author of those books; to say that he was the author is an entirely unfounded opinion, traveling abroad, and no one knows how.Nor is the style and manner in which these books were written to be convincing, and it is even presumed that they were written by Moses; for this is entirely the style and manner of another man who spoke of Moses.In, Leviticus, and Numbers (since everything in Genesis precedes the time of Moses, and there is no mention of him here), I say that these books all use the Three persons; often: God said to Moses, or Moses said to God; or Moses said to the people, or the people said to Moses.This is the style and manner in which historians refer to that man when they write about his life and actions.Or one could say that a man can also speak of himself in the third person, so it can be assumed that Moses did so; but the assumption proves nothing.If anyone supports the belief that Moses himself wrote those books, and can go no better than supposing, they might as well "keep their mouths shut."

But even by grammatical rights, Moses could have spoken of himself in the third person, as anyone could have spoken of himself that way, and we cannot therefore take the fact of the book that the speaker was Moses without making Moses truly ridiculous and absurd. For example, "Numbers" chapter 12, verse 3 says, "Moses was exceedingly meek, above all the people that are on the face of the earth." If Moses used such words about himself, then he was not the most meek man, but He is the most conceited and arrogant of the dandy children.Advocates of those books, then, can now take sides as they please, since both sides are against them.If Moses had not been the author, the books would have no authority; if he had been the author, the author could not be trusted, for boasting of meekness is the opposite of meekness, which is an emotional lie.

In Deuteronomy, the style and manner of writing show more clearly than in the previous books that Moses was not the author.The method used here is dramatic: the author begins the topic with a short introductory talk, then draws out Moses in the act of speaking, and when he has let Moses finish his tirade, he (the author) speaks anew about himself. and continue on until he draws Moses out again, and conclude the scene with a description of Moses' death, funeral, and character.There are four places in this book where the speakers alternate in this way.From the first stanza of the first chapter to the end of the fifth stanza, it is the author who speaks;From here on, the author put Moses aside, and made a historical account of what was presumed to be what Moses did after he spoke in his lifetime, that is, what had been dramatically reenacted.

In the first section of the fifth chapter, the author started to write the title again using the previous method, although he only said: Moses called all Israel together; then Moses was drawn out as before, and the story of him continued, as in conversation, till the end of the twenty-sixth chapter.At the beginning of chapter twenty-seven, he does the same.He continues with Moses speaking until the end of chapter twenty-eight.In the twenty-ninth chapter, throughout the first stanza and the first line of the second stanza, the author writes in this way again, where he introduces Moses for the last time, and then speaks of Moses, and by the end of the thirty-third chapter until.

Now that the author has finished writing the reenactment on the part of Moses, he now proceeds a step further to describe it in its entirety in the last chapter.He begins by telling the reader that Moses climbed to the top of Pisgah; there he saw (says the author) the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and that there he (Moses) died, in In the land of Moa, but until now, as long as the author of Deuteronomy lived, no one knew where his tomb was.The author also tells us that Moses lived to die at the age of one hundred and ten years--his eyes were still full, and his natural powers were not atrophied; and he concludes that Israel has since produced no prophet like Moses. , and, according to the anonymous author, Moses was known by God who had seen him face to face. As far as the grammatical evidence goes, I have pointed out that Moses was not the author of those books, and from Deuteronomy After making some observations where the author contradicts himself, I would go further from the historical and chronological evidence in those books to show that Moses was not, since he could not have been the author of those books and therefore had no right to teach people to believe The inhumane and horrific massacre of men, women, and children was, as the book says, an order of God.This is the unshirkable duty of every true deistic believer. They should come out and argue that this is the "Bible" slandering God's moral justice. Whoever the author of Deuteronomy (for it is an anonymous work) is unclear, and there are contradictions in his account of Moses. Since it was told that Moses went to the top of Pisgah (there is no mention of him going down again in any record), we are only told that Moses died in the land of Moa, and that "he" buried him in the land of Moa However, since there is no antecedent before the pronoun "he", no one knows who the so-called "he" who buried him here refers to.If the author meant that "he" (God) buried him, how did "he" (the author) know about it? Or why we (the readers) should believe him?Since we do not know who the author was who told us this, since Moses himself certainly could not tell where he was buried. The author also tells us that until today (that is, when the author was alive) no one knew where Moses' tomb was, so how could he know that Moses was buried in a valley in Moa?For since the author grew up a long time after Moses, it is evident from his use of the expression "until today" that he meant a long time after Moses' death, and he certainly did not attend Moses' funeral. On the other hand, it is certainly impossible for Moses himself to say that to this day no one knows where the tomb is. If Moses is regarded as the person who said this, it is not like a child hiding himself and shouting "no one can find me" when playing games. Now it is improved to "no one can find Moses". Nowhere does this author tell us how he got what he said was said in the mouth of Moses, so we are entitled to conclude that he either made it up himself, written out.Of the two, the one must be the more probable, since he makes a list of commands in chapter five, in which he calls the fourth commandment, which is different from the fourth commandment in chapter twentieth.In Deuteronomy the reason for keeping the seventh day is, "For (the commandment says) God created the heaven and the earth in six days, and rested on the seventh day"; but in Deuteronomy the reason is in On that day the children of Israel came out of Egypt, so this commandment says, Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath.This one does not mention the creation, nor does it mention the coming out of Egypt.In this book also many things are recorded as the laws of Moses; these things are not found in other books; and in his books only inhuman and barbarous laws are found; in the tenth chapter of the twenty-first chapter Verses 8, 19, 20, and 21 authorize parents to bring out their own children and stone them to death, for the tenacity of pleasure to say.But the churchmen always like to preach "Deuteronomy" because "Deuteronomy" preaches (accepted in the diocese) the year, and they take that phrase from the fourth chapter of the twenty-fifth chapter of this book, and Applied to annual endowment.The original text in the book is: "When an ox is treading grain, do not muzzle his mouth"; this sentence may not escape their observation, and they have already noticed this verse. The opening part of a chapter, although this sentence is in a stanza of less than two lines.what!Priests!Priests!For the sake of age, you are willing to be compared to a cow. Although it is impossible for us to know exactly who the author of "Deuteronomy" is, it is not difficult to find him professionally and think that he is a certain Jewish priest.In this book I will point out that he lived after Moses for at least three hundred and fifty years. Now I come to the historical and chronological evidence.For chronology, I will use the Bible chronology; for I have no intention of seeking proof of anything beyond the scope of Scripture.So the chronology I'm going to use is to use the Bible itself as a history and a chronology to prove that Moses was not the author of the writings that are said to belong to him.So I thought it appropriate to tell the reader (at least to someone who might not have had the opportunity to know it) that in the large Bibles, and in some smaller ones, there is a series of dates printed on the margin of each page. records, the purpose of which is to indicate how long ago the historical events recorded on each page occurred, or to refer to events supposed to have occurred before Christ, and the time distance between one historical environment and another historical environment. I start with Genesis.In the fourteenth chapter of "Genesis", the author narrates that Lot was captured in a war between four kings and five kings. When the news of Lot's capture reached Abram, he Armed with his entire family, he rescued Lot from his captors and chased them to Dan. (See Section 14.) To show how chasing them down to how the phrase "but" is used in questionable situations, I will offer two situations: one in America and one in France.The city in the United States is now called New York and was originally called New Amsterdam.As for the city in France, formerly known as Havre de Grace and later as Havre Mara, Amsterdam was renamed New York in 1664.As for Harvard de Grace changed its name to Harvard Mara, it was in 1793.So if any writing is found, though undated, the name of New York is supposed to be mentioned, that is sure proof that such writing was not written in former days, but must have been written after Amsterdam was changed to New York .Therefore, it can be said that it must be after the year, at least in this year.In the same way, any undated writing bearing the name Harvard Malla is a definitive proof that such a work must have been written after Harvard de Grace's change of name to Harvard Malla.It must therefore have been written after 1793, or at least during that year. I will now quote those circumstances and point out that the name "Dan" did not exist until many years after the death of Moses.From this it can be seen that Moses could not have been the author of the book of Genesis, which records the story of chasing them to "Dan". The place called "Dan" in the "Bible" was originally a town in Centitiers called Lai; later a tribe called "Dan" occupied the town and renamed it "Dan" to commemorate The ancestors of this tribe were the great-grandsons of Abram. In order to establish this proof, reference must be made from Genesis to Judges 18. There it is said (v. 27) that they (Danites) entered Laish, and seeing the people living in peace, slew them with the sword (the Bible is full of murders) and set fire to that town ; They built a city and settled there (Section 28), and they changed the name of the town originally called Layi to "Dan" after the name of their ancestors Dan. The account of the capture of Laish by Dan, who renamed it "Dan," appears in the Book of Judges immediately after Sampson's death.It is said that the death of Sampson occurred 1120 years before Christ, and the death of Moses was 1451 years before Christ, so according to the historical arrangement, the place was not renamed "Dan" until 331 years after Moses' death. Hence the remarkable confusion between historical and chronological arrangements in Judges.The last five chapters of the book, the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, twenty, and twenty-first chapters, according to the arrangement in the present book, precede the previous chapters chronologically. Twenty-eight years before Chapter 6, 226 years before Chapter 15, 245 years before Chapter 13, 195 years before Chapter 9, 90 years before Chapter 4, and 10 years before Chapter 1 Written in five years.This shows the uncertain and unbelievable state of the Bible.According to the chronological arrangement, the occupation of Laish and the naming of Dan was 20 years after the death of Joshua, the successor of Moses; according to the book, according to the order of history, it was 306 years after the death of Joshua , and three or three years after the death of Moses; and neither of them says that Moses was the author of Genesis, for either way there is no mention of the place "Dan" existing in the time of Moses ; Therefore, the author of "Genesis" must have lived after the city of Laish was changed to Dan; no one knows who that person is; therefore, the author of "Genesis" is anonymous and has no authority of. I will now proceed to another point of historical and chronological evidence, and point out that here, as in the above case, the author of Genesis was not Moses. In the thirty-sixth chapter of Genesis, the genealogy of Esau's sons and their descendants is recorded.These are called the descendants of Esau, and there is also a list of the kings of Edom. Among the list of names, verse 31 says: "These were the kings who ruled over Edom before the sons of Israel were ruled by kings. .” Suppose now that any undated writing is found, in which any past event is mentioned, the author should state that these events took place before there was a Congress in America, or before there was a National Assembly in France.This proves that such writings could not have been written before the United States had a Congress or France had a National Assembly, but only after them, which may be the case.Hence a work of this kind cannot be written in one country by a man who died before there was a Parliament, and in another country by a man who died before a National Assembly. In history and in conversation, nothing is more common than to substitute a fact for a date; and it is perfectly natural to do so, because a fact is better kept in mind than a date.The second point is that because the facts, including the date, can kill two birds with one stone; this method of speaking according to the situation means affirming that the facts mentioned are in the past, as if the facts are very thorough.When a man talks about something, he says it was before I got married, or before my son was born, before I went to America, before I went to France, which is absolutely understandable and expresses his intention What is clear is that he has been married, he has borne a son, he has been to America, or he has been to France.Language does not allow this mode of expression to be employed in any other sense, and such expressions are sometimes found elsewhere, which can only be understood as being employed in this sense only. Therefore, the verse I quoted earlier—"These were kings over Edom before the Israelites had a king over them" can only be written after the first king who began to rule over them; Genesis is far from being written by Moses, or at least not by anyone before Saul.This is the positive meaning of this verse.But the term any king, which includes more than one king, at least two, goes all the way down to David.In a general sense, it has been throughout the entire period of the Jewish kingdom. Had we encountered this verse in any other part of the Bible, avowedly written after the kings had begun to rule over Israel, it would be impossible not to see this phrase in use.Thus it happens that this happens; the two Chronicles, which give the history of all the kings of Israel, were written after the beginning of the kingdom of Judaea, and the verse I have quoted, and the thirty-sixth chapter of Genesis The remainder of the chapter is written verbatim in the first chapter of Chronicles, beginning with verse 43. The writer of Chronicles would have said, and he has said, that the first chapter of Chronicles, verse 43, says, "Before any king ruled over Israel, these were the kings over Edom", for He will make and has given a list of kings who governed Israel; but it is unlikely that the same phrases will be used before that period.Likewise, anything can be proven in the language of history.That is to say, this part of "Genesis" is derived from "Chronicles", and it can be said that "Genesis" is not as ancient as "Chronicles", perhaps not as ancient as "Homer" Old, or not so old.According to the Chronicle, it is admitted that Homer was a contemporary of David and Solomon, while Aesop lived at the end of the Jewish kingdom. Leaving aside the belief that Moses was the author from Genesis, there is only a strange belief at this point that God said so.Besides, Genesis is nothing but an anonymous storybook with tales, parables, traditional or artificial absurdities, or, so to speak, a book of outrageous lies.The stories of Eve and the Serpent, Noah and the Ark descend to the level of the Arabian Nights without the engrossing strengths.As for people who live to be eight or nine hundred years old, it is as absurd as to become immortal like giants in mythology. Furthermore, the character of Moses as told in the Bible is the most terrifying character imaginable.If those accounts are true, he was a great villain, who first started and continued wars under the pretense or pretense of religion;Let me give an example in this regard. After the return of the Jewish army from a campaign of killing and plundering, the account is found in the thirteenth chapter of Numbers. "Moses and Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the congregation went out to meet them outside the camp. Moses was angry with the officers who had returned from the battle—the commanders of thousands and commanders of centuries—and he said, Have you saved the lives of all the women? Women, because of Balaam's scheme, the Israelites offended the LORD in the matter of Peor, so that the congregation of God suffered a plague. Therefore, kill all the boys and all the married women. But among the girls, whoever Those who are not married, you can let them survive for your own sake. If this account be true, there has been no worse man than Moses among the loathsome villains that have insulted the name "man" in any age of the world.It was an order to slaughter boys, murder mothers and rape young girls. Put any mother in the position of those mothers; a child killed, another doomed to rape, while she herself is in the hands of the executioner; put any daughter in the position of those daughters , she is the victim of the murderer who killed her mother and brother, how do they feel?It is useless to ascribe such things to nature, for nature has her way, and every religion that afflicts her social relations is a false religion. After this repugnant commandment, the looting proceeds and how they were distributed; here the hypocrisy and blasphemy of the priests is shown, increasing the number of crimes.Verse 37 says, "The tribute to the LORD was six hundred and seventy-five sheep; all the oxen were thirty-six thousand, of which seventy-two were the tribute to the LORD; thirty thousand donkeys, of which the tribute Sixty-one horses were the tribute of Yahweh: There are thirty thousand mouths of men, and thirty-two mouths of them belong to the Lord." In short, the people and things contained in this chapter, like other parts of the "Bible", make people feel too inhumane to read, or I find it unsightly because from the thirty-fifth verse of this chapter onwards, there are as many as 32,000 women and children who have been insulted by a command of Moses. The common man does not know the sin of pretending to be the word of God.Those who have been brought up in superstitious habits take the truth of the Bible as a matter of course and good; Such concepts are recorded in the holy books taught since childhood, and they believe that the "Bible" is written by the authority of God.Weird!On the contrary, the Bible is a book of lies, sin and blasphemy (God).What greater blasphemy is there to attribute the sins of mankind to (God's) command? But to get down to the point, it is to show that Moses was not the author of the books that are supposed to belong to him, and to show that the Bible is a forgery.The two examples which I have given, without other evidence, are sufficient to discredit any writing purporting to be four or five hundred years earlier than the things stated or the facts involved; ” As with the king who ruled over the people of Israel, it was not yet possible to justify the implausible prophetic subterfuge.The terms used are past tense.To say that one can prophesy in the past tense is sheer nonsense. But there are many other chapters, scattered throughout those books, that unite for the same argument. (Another book called Moses) Chapter sixteenth verse thirty-fourth says: "Then the children of Israel ate 'manna' until they entered the inhabited land; and they ate manna until they reached the borders of Canaan." Whether children in Israel eat manna, what manna is, is it better than mushrooms or mushrooms or whatever, or vegetables that are common somewhere in that country, is irrelevant to my argument.The whole point I want to make is that it was not Moses who described this incident, because this account exceeds the life and financial period of Moses.According to the Bible (but this book is such a book of lies and contradictions, no one knows, which part is credible, or if there is such a part) Moses died in the wilderness, never reaching the southern frontier ; so it was not Moses who told what the children of Israel did, or what they ate when they got there.According to what they tell us, the story of eating "manna" was written by Moses, but it itself extended to the time of Joshua, the successor of Moses. It can be seen from the records in the book of "Joshua" that this matter It was when the children of Israel had crossed the Jordan River and reached the border of Canaan. The twelfth chapter of the fifth chapter of "Joshua" says: "They ate the grain there, and the 'manna' no longer existed on the second day, and the Israelites no longer had 'manna'. but they ate the fruit of the land of Canaan."