MOD.—Are not the words creator and creation used in the Bible? what do they mean?
LUCIAN.—The learned confess that we have a very false translation of that book. In the Talmud of Jerusalem, creator and creation merely signify the giver, and the act of giving forms to matter* There is not one word in the Bible about a creation from nothing; this notion, according to Mosheim,** was the invention of the Christians. All identities of matter arise from motion alone; and as no portion of it can ever cease to be in motion, that motion is perpetually destroying existing forms, and out of these producing fresh identities of matter; but this is change of form alone, and chemistry has proved the self-existence of the material principle, in the demonstration that no particle of it can be annihilated.
* The word Tsour has been adopted in Genesis, where it is,
say the learned, falsely translated creator, though it
merely signifies, "the giver of forms." According to Volney,
that name is also one of the definitions of Osiris.
** Appendix to Cudworth.
MOD.—In our Bible account of the creation, there are certainly some apparent contradictions, or incongruities, such as the getting up of three whole days before the sun was "made and set in the firmament;" now it appears to us that, as the sun is the sole source of day, they were a little preposterous in forgetting to make him first.
LUCIAN.—It must appear plain to every one not blinded by his slavish fears and prejudices, that the writer of Genesis (the cosmographical part) was entirely ignorant even of the rudiments of natural science. The god he set up, and the handiwork he makes him perform, are proofs of this. The Jupiter of the pretty and lively mythology of the Pagans, was frequently engaged in ludicrous amours;* but in general he preserved an awful dignity, and was never represented in the discharge of those mean and servile offices, which the Jews depict their Jehovah as performing; though these were nothing to the ferocious, cruel, and disgusting caricatures which are everywhere drawn of him in their books. Allowing for a moment the possibility that poor deluded man can be guilty of impiety towards the all-ruling Power, certainly his mind could not devise anything more blasphemous than to personify that power into such a deity as that set up by Moses. Ignorance of the operations of matter or Nature, has made man invent deities as causes of the effects he sees produced; these deities were so many chimeras, and these chimeras have been the basis of all religions.
* When Diagoras of Melos declared that there were no such
beings in existence as Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo, etc., their
priests offered a talent for his head, or two talents if
taken alive. In the latter case, the higher sum was probably
offered, that they might have the pleasure of torturing him.
In the 15th century what would Christian priests have done
to the "blasphemer," who would haye been so impiously wicked
as to assert, that the above gods did still exist in full
power? Priests are ever the same; but gods change names and
wills, going in and out of power, like Whigs and Tories.
MOD.—I confess that in the all-important matters of morality, the Bible presents exceeding great difficulties. Truth, justice, and mercy are immutable principles, and must not be subverted to uphold any system of religion whatsoever. That which is cruel and wicked in a man, cannot be admitted or defended in a god; and every moral feeling of the virtuous mind must be discarded ere we cease to doubt the truth of a religion based upon the desecration of these principles. Besides, it is repugnant, if not impossible to reconcile the god of Moses with the reverential and sublime idea, which superior minds are capable of forming of the almighty power.
LUCIAN.—As the man who takes a priest for his guide will be led astray; so, if the Bible has been his sole instructor, he is likely ever to remain in ignorance; the first will not teach him anything useful—the latter cannot. Previous to the time when it is said the Bible lawgiver entered upon his murderous invasion of the Canaanitish countries, each of them had its local god or goddess, some of whom we have elsewhere mentioned; these were so many personifications of the sun, moon, stars, elements, and seasons, and served as objects of adoration amongst the ignorant. As a priest of Heliopolis, Moses must have known all this, and wishing to be like his new neighbors, he set up his barbarous deity in imitation, changing his Theban name of Jahouh into Jehovah (see Strabo's Geography), charging his followers not to represent it by any emblem, as he was in vain wishful of preserving the Egyptian unity of the Supreme Power. But as the sun was then in Taurus, or the Bull, the Egyptian priests had taught the illiterate Israelites to worship a calf; and as they were desirous of clinging to their calf adoration, Aaron, as every other priest would have done, took advantage of this religious folly, to despoil them of the gold ornaments, which, by Jahouh's command, they had swindled from the Egyptians. In this affair Moses and his brother, no doubt, understood each other well. To rob upon religious pretences, is not altogether a modern invention.
MOD.—In the supposed time of Moses, the religion of Egypt being polytheistic, Jahouh must have been one amongst many deities that were worshipped by the Egyptians; so that if Moses borrowed that deity of the Thebans, he could not at the same time borrow his doctrine of the unity of god.
LUCIAN.—The learned Egyptian priests appear to have been decidedly Materialists. Infinitely above the minor deities which they invented for the ignorant populace, they believed in the great material principle,* acting by self-existing energies and properties; infinite, therefore causeless; and constituting the unity of the Supreme Power. They represent this power by no emblem, conceiving that to be impossible; but the Greeks personified it in the god Pan. Thus the unity of the Supreme Power was the basis of the hierarchical religion of Egypt, as is acknowledged by the learned Hyde, and also by Cudworth. As an Egyptian priest, Moses (admitting his existence) must have known this, and was therefore wishful of preserving this unity in his Theban deity; though that availed nothing when neutralised by the discordant and inconsistent qualities attributed to him. In order to be justified as an invader and plunderer of peaceful countries, Moses was under the necessity of endowing his god with fierce and barbarous passions, which on most occasions led him to be cruel and unjust; as when he issued his ferocious and bloody mandate to his priests, the sons of Levi, (Exod. xxxii., 27) to sacrifice about three thousand "Brothers, companions, and neighbors," in cold blood,* You say, "materiality cannot think—do you know of any thinking without it? Pray how does immateriality think?"