“There was not a word of all that Moses commanded, which Joshua read not before all the congregation of Israel, with the women, and the little ones, and the strangers that were conversant among them” (Josh. 8: 35).
How was it possible to do this before at least
2,000,000 people? Could Moses or Joshua, as actual eye-witnesses, have expressed themselves in such extravagant language? Surely not.
The camp of the Israelites must have been at least a mile and a half in diameter. This would be allowing to each person on the average a space three times the size of a coffin for a full-grown man. The ashes, offal, and refuse of the sacrifices would therefore have to be carried by the priest in person a distance of three-quarters of a mile “without the camp, unto a clean place” (Lev. 4:11, 12.) There were only three priests—namely, Aaron, Eleazar, and Ithamar—to do all this work for 2,000,000 people. All the wood and water would have to be brought into this immense camp from the outside. Where could the supplies have been got while the camp was under Sinai, in a desert, for nearly twelve months together? How could so great a camp have been kept clean?
But how huge does the difficulty become if we take the more reasonable dimensions of twelve miles square for this camp; that is, about the size of London! Imagine at least half a million of men having to go out daily a distance of six miles and back to the suburbs for the common necessities of nature, as the law directed.
The Israelites undoubtedly had flocks and herds of cattle (Ex. 34: 3). They sojourned nearly a year before Sinai, where there was no food for cattle; and the wilderness in which they sojourned nearly forty years is now and was then a desert (Deut. 32: 10; 8: 15). The cattle surely did not subsist on manna!
Among other prodigies of valor, 12,000 Israelites are recorded in Num. 31 as slaying all the male Midianites, taking captive all the females and children, siezing all their cattle and flocks, numbering 808,000 head, taking all their goods and burning all their cities, without the loss of a single man. Then they killed all the women and children except 32,000 virgins, whom they kept for themselves. There would seem to have been at least 80,000 females in the aggregate, of whom 48,000 were killed, besides (say) 20,000 boys. The number of men slaughtered must have been about 48,000. Each Israelite therefore must have killed 4 men in battle, carried off 8 captive women and children, and driven home 67 head of cattle. And then after reaching home, as a pastime, by command of Moses, he had to murder 6 of his captive women and children in cold blood.
Now, I respectfully submit that, judging from the account of the Exodus of the Jews, which they have written themselves, we cannot credit it. The narrative is full of contradictions, and is so absurd and incredible, and even impossible, that we must regard it as a huge myth. There may have been an Exodus from Egypt, of which this account is an exaggeration, but it bears so many evidences of the fabulous that we cast it aside and are led to doubt whether the Jews were ever in Egypt except as tramps and vagabonds, and to suspect that the whole story is an adapted history of some great exodus of some ancient tribes written for a purpose.
I think it has been shown that the Jews were not the people that they have been supposed to be. They are a modern people in the world’s history, antedated by many highly-civilized and powerful nations. They are not descendants of Abram, as will be shown more fully hereafter, and their population never reached the fabulous numbers that are given in what is called their sacred history. Indeed, there is so much of the fabulous about them, so much of false pretence that upon the very face is impossible and incredible, that the wonder is that Christians should ever have seriously thought of regarding them and their institutions as the source and substance of what Christianity is. We have no prejudice against the Jews. We cast no reflection upon the so-called Hebrews of the present day. They are not responsible for their ancestors, any more than Gladstone, Huxley, Tyndall, Spencer, and other brainy Englishmen are responsible for the savagery and barbarism of their forefathers.
It has been our object in this chapter to show the Munchausenish character of Jewish history, upon which the whole superstructure of modern theology rests. If anybody is proud of his descent from such a people, he is welcome to the glory.