There are, then, it seems, persons to be found who hesitate at nothing, who falsify a passage of Scripture as intrepidly as if they were quoting its very words, and who hope to deceive mankind by their falsehoods, knowing them perfectly to be such. If such daring impostors are to be found now, we cannot help supposing, that before the invention of printing, which affords such facility, and almost certainty of detection, there existed a hundred times as many.
One of the most impudent falsifiers who have lately appeared, is the author of an infamous libel entitled "The Anti-Philosophic Dictionary," which truly deserves its title. But my readers will say, "Do not be so irritated; what is it to you that a contemptible book has been published?" Gentlemen, it is to the subject of Jephthah, to the subject of human victims, of the blood of men sacrificed to God, that I am now desirous of drawing your attention!
The author, whoever he may be, translates the thirty-ninth verse of the first chapter of the history of Jephthah as follows: "She returned to the house of her father, who fulfilled the consecration which he had promised by his vow, and his daughter remained in the state of virginity."
Yes, falsifier of the Bible, I am irritated at it, I acknowledge; but you have lied to the holy spirit; which you ought to know is a sin which is never pardoned.
The passage in the Vulgate is as follows:
"Et reversa est ad patrem suum, et fecit ei sicut voverat quæ ignorabat virum. Exinde mos increbruit in Israel et consuetudo servata est, ut post anni circulum conveniant in unum filiæ Israel, et plangant filiam Jephte Galaaditæ, diebus quatuor."
"And she returned to her father and he did to her as he had vowed, to her who had never known man; and hence came the usage, and the custom is still observed, that the daughters of Israel assemble every year to lament the daughter of Jephthah for four days."
You will just have the goodness, Mr. Anti-philosopher, to tell us, whether four days of lamentation every year have been devoted to weeping the fate of a young woman because she was consecrated?
Whether any nuns (religieuses) were ever solemnly appointed among a people who considered virginity an opprobrium?
And also, what is the natural meaning of the phrase, he did to her as he had vowed—"Fecit ei sicut voverat?"