The Bible of Bibles; Or, Twenty-Seven "Divine" Revelations

by Kersey Graves; Lydia M. Graves

CHAPTER LV.—"ALL SCRIPTURE IS GIVEN BY INSPIRATION OF GOD."

If this statement be true, then God must have "led a very busy life;" for the world is literally loaded down with scriptures. There are not less than eleven hundred and fifty pious effusions that may come under this head, and at least that number claiming to have originated from the fountain of divine inspiration; but the religious sects and religious orders will tell us that but one of those eleven hundred and fifty scriptures is the product of the Divine Mind, and but one of them has received the seal and sanction of Almighty God. Then our salvation hangs by a very slender thread; for no rule has been furnished us by Infinite Wisdom by which we can distinguish which is the spurious and which the genuine, or which is the scripture given by inspiration of God. All pious nations have had their scriptures in profusion. Let us hold a court, and hear the testimony of some of the witnesses with respect to the validity of their respective claims. Here is a Hindoo, a pious soul of the Brahmin order. "Well, brother, we wish you to tell us whether you know any thing about the scriptures given by inspiration of God."—"Most certainly I do." Well, where and what are they? "Why, after existing in the mind of the great God Brahma from all eternity, they were revealed by him, about nine thousand years ago, to the holy richis (prophets), who penned them into a Holy Book for the instruction and salvation of the world, now known as the Vedas. They are pure, holy and divine, and point out the only sure road to salvation."

Here comes a Chinese mandarin. Well, brother, what light can you throw upon this subject? Have you ever seen "the scriptures given by inspiration of God"? "That is a question easily answered. The Five Volumes are the purest, the holiest, and the most sublime production ever given to the world. There is nothing immoral, no obscene language, to be found in this 'Holy Book.' Its precepts are matchless; and it is the only book whose teachings are calculated to 'make wise unto salvation.' It will save all men who receive it, and obey it."

Take a seat: we want now to hear from a disciple representing the land of Iran. Brother Persian, the question is, Where is "the scripture given by inspiration of God"? "Your question surprises me. The Holy Zenda Avesta has been circulating for thousands of years; and have you not seen it? It points out the only sure road to the kingdom of eternal bliss, and contains the only true religion for the human race." Very well: be seated. There is yet another class of devout worshipers we wish to interrogate on this all-important subject. Brother Mahomedan, will you please to step forward, and help us solve this difficult problem? Where are "the scriptures given by inspiration of God"? "Have you never read that holy and inspired book, the Koran? If so, you ought to be able to answer the question; and, if not, you are risking your eternal salvation by remaining ignorant of its beautiful truths: for it consigns to an endless fiery hell all who disbelieve and reject its sublime teachings, and refuse to travel the road it has marked out to paradise and eternal bliss." Thus we are making but little progress toward settling the question, Where is "the scripture given by inspiration of God"? We will now question the Christian Church. Here we are met at the very threshold with two hundred answers. "Join our church, and beware of counterfeits," meets us at every church-door. We do not mean to say that every church has a separate Bible, though virtually it almost amounts to this, as each denies to all others that use of the Bible and construction of its doctrine and teachings which alone can insure salvation. But, in a broader sense, there are two hundred answers to the question, Where are we to find "the only scriptures given by inspiration of God"? The two hundred translators and four hundred commentators make out more than two hundred distinct systems of faith, and virtually more than two hundred Bibles. When we look at the numerous and widely different translations of the Bible, and the numerous collection of books by different churches which have been made to constitute the Bible at different periods, and the numerous alterations which Christian writers tell us have been made in all of the books of the Bible, and the great number of gospels and epistles floating over the world at one period and afterwards denounced as spurious, and the constant alteration of the Bible by adding some books and rejecting others, we can see at once that it is impossible ever to find any way of determining which are "the scriptures given by inspiration of God." Here let it be noted, that, for nearly three hundred years, the Christian world had no Bible but the Old Testament, and that, during that period, hundreds of gospels and epistles were written, and thirty-six Acts of the Apostles, by all kinds of scribblers, or, as one Christian writer calls them, "ignorant asses." These were put in circulation as constituting "the only scriptures given by inspiration of God." Most of them were afterwards condemned by the Church fathers as being the product of the Devil, and as being calculated to lead every soul down to hell who should read and believe them. But there never was any agreement among church-leaders as to which of the three hundred gospels and epistles in circulation were spurious, and which were genuine; nor has there ever been any rule for distinguishing them, or determining which was which. How, then, was it possible to know which were "the scriptures given by inspiration of God"? Here arises a query of most striking import, which should sink deep into the mind of every honest investigator of this subject. Should it not be set down as a moral impossibility that an all-wise God would inspire men to write gospels and epistles for the instruction of mankind and the salvation of the world, and then let them get mixed up with hundreds of others "inspired by the Devil," and calculated to lead to perdition"? It must have been the means of effecting the eternal ruin of thousands, if not millions, of immortal souls.

And nearly all Christian writers admit there was no way of distinguishing the poisonous and pernicious productions from the "inspired." It is also admitted that the former were more read than the latter. Now, we must assume that a God would be essentially lacking in the ingredients of good sense (or rather would be a mere imaginary being) who would do business in such a bungling and reckless manner as to furnish man with a revelation of his will, hang his salvation upon it, and then abandon the field for three hundred years, and let every thing run to ruin. Such a God ought to "repent, and be grieved to the heart." Look what kind of stuff the people swallowed for gospel during that period! The Gospel of the Infancy, which was afterwards condemned as the work of devils and impostors, was, during this period, accepted as inspired by nearly the whole Christian world; and see what it contains. In the first chapter it is related that a woman had a son who was, by the intervention of some witches, turned into an ass, when she hastened off to the mother of the young Messiah (Jesus), and related her grievance to that amiable personage, which so excited her compassion that she forthwith seized the young child Jesus, and set him astride the ass's neck, when, "lo and behold!" it took all the ass properties out of the animal, and restored him back to manhood, or rather boyhood. And all the biped asses then in Christendom swallowed this assinine story as "scripture given by inspiration of God," The same book relates that various sick and impotent persons visited the child Jesus, and were cured of their diseases by having his swaddling-clothes wrapped about their heads, necks, or other portions of the body, and forthwith the devils departed (on one occasion in the shape of a dog). If there is a lower plane of senseless superstition than this, I pray God I may never know it. And all this was gospel and "inspired scripture," for whole centuries, with the majority of Christendom. Both preachers and laymen read and believed those "Holy Scriptures." This is about as senseless as the story of some devils coming out of a woman, and taking up their abode in a herd of swine. These stories are all "chips of the same block," and all equally incredible.

CHARACTER OF THE VOTERS WHO DECIDED WHAT SCRIPTURES SHOULD BE CONSIDERED INSPIRED.

It is now well known that the first authentic collection of Gospels and Epistles, called "the Bible," was made by the Council of Nice 325 A.D.,—a body of drunken bishops and lawless bacchanalians. The Christian writer, Mr. Tyndal, says they got drunk, came to blows, and kicked and cuffed each other; and that "the love of contention and ambition overcame their reason." They claimed to be under the influence of "the spirit." Undoubtedly they were; but it was a kind of spirit that men hold intercourse with by uncorking the bottle, and not the spirit of gentleness and peace. He says, "They fell afoul of each other;" and such was the severity of their blows, that one member was mortally wounded, and died a short time after. It was simply a disgusting and disgraceful row,—a scene of rowdyism of at first seventeen hundred, and finally about three hundred, Christian bishops, without a character for either virtue, sobriety, or honesty. One-writer says, "They were abandoned to every species of immorality, and addicted to the most abominable crimes:" and such was their extreme ignorance, that but few of them could write their names. Their method of deciding which Gospels ana epistles were divinely inspired was quite unique. It is stated they were all placed under the communion-table; and, when the proper signal was given (so says Irenæus), the inspired Gospels "hopped on to the table," which separated them from the spurious. Why the spurious Gospels did not possess the hopping power and propensity is not stated. Two of the bishops, Crysante, and Musanius, died during the council, before the vote was taken; but such was the importance of the occasion, that they did not withhold their votes on that account. The proper documents being prepared and carried and placed near their defunct bodies, they mustered all the force their dead bodies could command, and signed them; and thus, between the living and the dead, we have got a Bible which, it is presumed, contains all the scripture given by "inspiration of God" under the new dispensation. The Gospels and Epistles thus voted into favor were not arranged together in the form of an authentic Bible until nearly sixty years after.

This was done by the Council of Laodicea in the year 363. After this, council after council was called to vote in or vote out some of the books adopted by previous councils, and to settle some important church dogmas. The first council voted the Acts of the Apostles and Revelation out of the Bible (i.e., voted them down); but the second council, which met in 363, voted them in again. Another council, which met in 406, voted them, with several other books, out of the Bible again. And thus were books and dogmas voted in and voted out of "the infallible and inspired word of God," and altered and corrected, time after time and century after century, by twenty-four different councils, composed of bigoted bishops and clergymen, so quarrelsome and belligerent that they resorted to fisticuff fighting in several of the councils; and thus was "God's Holy Word" and "perfect revelation" tossed to and fro like a battledore,—this book voted in, and that one voted out, and sometimes half a dozen at a time. And where was the "all scripture given by inspiration of God" at the end of this revolutionary and demolishing clerical crusade? And where was its author, that he would suffer the whole thing to be taken out of his hands, altered and corrupted till he could not know his own book, and would not have been willing to father it if he had been able to recognize it? William Penn says, that "some of the scriptures which were taken in by one council as inspired were rejected by another council as uninspired; and that which was left out by the former council as apocryphal was taken in by the latter as canonical. And certain it is that they contradict each other. And how do we know that the council which first collected and voted on the scriptures—voting some up, and some down—were able to discern the true from the false?"

Here the whole thing is set in its proper light by a devout Quaker preacher. The extract contains a volume of instruction, and shows the impossibility of our determining the "all scripture given by inspiration of God."