The Decalogue, Chronicles, and other narrative parts, may have been written under the order of Hilkiah and Ezra, shortly after the Babylonian slavery; yet there is great reason to believe that many poetical rants called prophecies, and even some parts of the Pentateuch, were written after the Jews began to congregate at Alexandria, when the events which the itinerant Jewish bards pretended to foretel, had already taken place: for instance, Ezekiel makes the Lord say, "And I will make Pathros desolate." Can the cunning alteration made in the first syllable of this word conceal the evident allusion to that "wonder of the world," the famous light tower of Pharos, which was built by two of the Ptolemies! Daniel could not speak of the third being "like unto the Son of God," before the dogma was invented that god had a son.* Moreover, if it can be shown (as hath been affirmed) that the prophecies were partly translated and modelled from Greek originals, at a period subsequent to the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, what becomes of their antiquity? We repeat that most of the books of this collection contain abundant proofs of their having been fabricated from materials as aforesaid, at various periods between the Babylonian captivity and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, in the time of Vespasian.
We have seen that the passage of the Red Sea is drawn from the fable of the triumphal march of Bacchus, when from Egypt he went to conquer India. Josephus, though he often renders the romances of his countrymen still more monstrous, was ashamed to make a miracle of this story, and compares it to the passage of the Pamphylian Sea, by Alexander. In a jovial mood Bacchus drew wine from a rock by a stroke of his rod; but herein the imitator deviates from the original, wisely preferring water to wine in an arid wilderness.
The manna miracle has long been detected and exposed. Josephus tells us that, in his time, it was found in great quantities in Arabia; and the plant that produces it is now cultivated in Sicily and Southern Italy. Bishop Talleyrand, in a letter which he is said to have written to the Pope, after their quarrel, told his holiness that the real manna of Moses was the plunder he got in the desert by his robberies and murders; these were counted so many godsends.
* The Talmud acknowledges that the forgeries of Daniel,
Esdras, and others, were prodigious.
** Talleyrand tells the Pope also, that, of the numerous
blunders committed by Moses, not the least was his fixing
the time of the Creation at an epoch when the earth did not
only exist, but had an immense population, and actually
reckoned 50,000 years of civilisation: besides his
pretending to look upon the Hebrews as the most ancient
people on earth, forgetting or feigning to forget, that they
were a mere gang of slaves who had originally escaped from
Idumea, during the intestine wars which desolated that
country. After having passed into Egypt, where they were
again made slaves, it was after the lapse of many years, and
after having robbed their masters (as their forefathers had
robbed the Idumeans), that, induced by Moses, they crossed
the Red Sea in Ethiopian vessels; and having gained the wood
of Henon, in Arabia Deserta, they maintained themselves
there during forty years, living by the robberies they
committed on travellers and the people in the neighborhood.
As it is not necessary to notice these miracles in Bible order, it may here be observed, that the fable about Lot's wife might have been taken from that of Euodia; but, more probably, from the ancient fiction of Baucis and Philemon, as the first and this are essentially the same. Irenæus and Tertullian affirm that, in their times, the statue of Lots wife regularly menstruated at the usual period of women! Reader, these men were no unfair sample of the Christian fathers.
It was a part of military discipline amongst the Persians, and other nations of the East, when marching large armies through the deserts, to carry in the van, during the night, fires, made with such combustible matter as would make a great flame of fire, which was elevated so high as to be distinctly seen by all in the rear, appearing, in the distance, as "a pillar of fire," and serving to point out the line of march. To direct this line during the day, such combustibles were burnt as would produce the greatest cloud or "pillar of smoke." This military usage is mentioned both by Herodotus and Quintus Curtius; and Alexander himself adopted it of the Persians. If Moses was so well provided in a supernatural fire-and-smoke conductor, why was he so anxious and pressing to get his brother-in-law Hobab (against his will) to guide the march, and to "be to them instead of eyes" in leading them to proper places for encampment?* Here we have a striking instance of the matchless effrontery of the Jewish fabricators, in thus turning a common usage into a miracle.
* Numbers x., 29 to 32.
It was wise in Moses to retire to the top of a hill, when he played off his fire and smoke thunder-cloud to the astonishment of the dupes below. His Deity wrought a clever miracle in creating the universe in six days; but what a falling off was there, when he required nearly seven times as long to engrave two tables of stone, which a man might "take in his hand." As a proof that this job could not be done in less than forty days, the same time precisely was taken to cut the second tables, after Moses had (forgetting his meekness) smashed the first. His well-dissembled rage about the affair of the golden calf* was, no doubt, the result of a cunning scheme, concerted between him and brother Aaron, in order to possess themselves of the gold that had been swindled from the Egyptians. To gull the fools, and save this gold for themselves, the priest had only to paint a wooden calf yellow, which was easily reduced to powder—gold could not, by burning: a little powdered charcoal would do the people no harm. When the sun was in Taurus (the Bull), at the vernal equinox, the astronomising priests of Egypt turned bulls and calves into gods, that were quite good enough for the vulgar; and when the sun entered the sign of the ram, a lamb answered equally well for a god, and does so to the present day.
* In the story about this calf, our translation very
modestly says, the people "rose up to play," though it
acknowledges they "were naked;" but Dr. Clarke has had the
singular honesty to tell us that, in the Hebrew Bible, this
rising up to play was preparatory to pairing for open
sexual intercourse. Bruce tells us that this open
intercourse was common, and formed an essential part of
festive entertainments amongst the Abyssinians. There is
reason to believe that it was usual In many countries, both
in Africa and Asia.
The deity of Moses was rather extravagant in fitting out his tabernacle and ark. The latter was his travelling box, to afford him ease and comfort when making long marches, and was composed of very costly materials; but, in point of room and convenience, we should think it must have been inferior to some of Punch's portable palaces. However, the God grew so fond of, and so "jealous" about, his box, that, on one occasion, he perpetrated a tremendously bloody miracle, in killing 50,070 of the "glowrin' byke," for peeping into it. Putting aside the monstrosity of this story, in relation to number, could this offence arise from looking into an empty box? Certainly not. Sir William Drummond, in his "Ædipus Judaicus," asserts that, according to the Hebrew, the Jews carried about their idol in this box,* as was customary with the migrating hordes of the desert, all of whom, as well as the Jews, kept an ark for that purpose! Sir William's assertion is justified by the Bible itself, where it says that the Philistines were afraid, because the Jews brought their god into the battle when the ark was taken, a misfortune which their deity, with all his omnipotence, could not prevent; but he took terrible revenge on the captors by smiting them with emerods: hence the story in Rabelais against a certain most unholy and unsanctified use of that book.