deluge, the bible paints a pleasing picture of the world after all the bad people in it had been drowned:

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.*

An ideal state! To educate the races of the world to dwell together as one great family, speaking the same language and cherishing the same hopes — is not that the object of all our efforts? But this was precisely what the God of the bible is represented as not desiring. When Jehovah looked down from heaven and saw the state of harmony in which these people dwelt, and the energy and unanimity with which they labored to erect a tower which in their simplicity they thought would protect future generations from such a deluge as had destroyed their fathers and mothers, he was very much alarmed, and, as the text says, he decided to break up this happy family, and to make strangers and wanderers of its members over the whole earth. Could anything be more inconsistent!

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one (that, he did not like), and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.†

This picture of human concord and purpose displeased the being, one of whose supposed titles is “Our Father in Heaven." Nor did he enjoy the sight of a united people, building a city, and a tower to defend themselves against the fury of nature; in other words,

* Genesis xi, 1. + Genesis xi, 5, 6.

progress and science provoked the anger of Jehovah. And so the Lord said:

Let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.*

What an occupation for a "good" God! Instead of blessing their union and brotherhood, he destroys them. And this is the being whose fatherhood is to be the basis of human brotherhood! Even as Adam was expelled from the garden, “lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever," the people dwelling in peace and laboring in unison must be scattered lest they become great and happy. And is this the book which is to teach us human brotherhood?

The brotherhood of man existed; but the bible-God destroyed it. “And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one." Is not that brotherhood? They were not fighting one another; they were not persecuting one another; they were not idle; they were not working at cross-purposes. But after the Lord had sown the seeds of discord, this unity was no more. How different is the bible from what people think it is!

But it would be easier to make a list of the consistencies to be found in the Old Testament than to undertake to call attention even to a limited number of its most glaring inconsistencies. The Old Testament, being miraculous from beginning to end, is but a mass of mutually destructive statements, from the Mosaic commandment, which forbids a man to trim the cor

* Genesis xi, 7, 8. † Genesis iii, 22.

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ners of his beard," to the saying of the Lord that he himself will turn barber and shave the people:

In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired the head, and the hair of the feet; and it shall also consume the beard.*

A sane word in the bible is as rare as an oasis in a desert. The Old Testament is mostly paradox and platitude.

Serious Discrepancies in the Story of Jesus

BUT

OUT what about the New Testament? The Jesus story is as miraculous as the Mosaic, and, therefore, equally well stocked with contradictions. In presenting to us the narrative of the birth of Jesus, the first evangelist, Saint Matthew, states that Joseph "took the young child (Jesus) and his mother by night and departed into Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod. But when Herod was dead . . . he (Joseph) arose and took the young child and his mother and came . . and dwelt in a city called Nazareth."+ The Evangelist Luke, on the other hand, not only ignores the flight to Egypt, but leaves absolutely not a shadow of a foundation for the story as told in Matthew, which is, that as soon as the wise men from the East had departed, an angel of the Lord ordered the "Holy Family" to Egypt. This was to protect the infant Jesus from the machinations of King Herod. It is also clearly stated that they remained in Egypt until

* Isaiah vii, 20. The hair of the feet. The translators were too civilized to render this sentence into plain English, so they substituted the word "feet" in place of the objectionable word in the Hebrew.

Matthew ii, 14-23.

"the death of Herod." But according to Luke, Jesus did not leave the country at all, nor did he avoid Jerusalem, where Herod reigned:

And when the days of her purification, according to the laws of Moses, were accomplished (eight days after birth of the child) they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord. And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth.*

When, then, did they visit Egypt?

According to the law of Moses, Mary, the mother of Jesus, having given birth to a child, could not appear in public until the days of her purification were over, and Jesus, the child, was required by another law, equally binding, to be circumcised on the eighth day, which he was, according to Luke's Gospel:

And when the eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called Jesus.†

But if Mary and her son remained in the land to perform these ceremonies, and if they appeared in the temple at Jerusalem, where Herod could have easily seized him, if he was really looking for him, what becomes of the story in Saint Matthew, that Jesus fled by night from Bethlehem to a foreign country, where he remained in hiding until Herod died? Matthew says, Jesus fled to Egypt; Luke says, he did not go to Egypt at all, but was taken to Jerusalem, and publicly circumcised in the temple, after which he and his parents went to live in Nazareth.

If Jesus followed the course laid down by Matthew, he could not possibly have gone to Jerusalem, eight

* Luke ii, 22-39.

† Luke ii, 21.

days after his birth, and thence to Nazareth; if, on the other hand, he did as Luke reports, then it was a physical impossibility for him to have fled to Egypt. Is it not evident from these random and careless statements that the writers are not reporting actual events, but merely reproducing floating gossip?

Let us quote another instance: Mark says that "immediately" after his baptism, Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, and that he remained there for forty days. Note the words "immediately" and "for forty days," and then read what John says about what Jesus did after he was baptized. According to this evangelist, Jesus, three days after he was baptized, went to a wedding in Cana of Galilee, where he turned water into wine. Will the interpreters of the Scriptures please tell us how Jesus could have gone to the wilderness immediately after his baptism and remained there for forty days, if, according to another report, he went to a marriage feast three days after his baptism? A historical account in which such contradictions occur would lose, and deserves to lose, the confidence of the reader.

Perhaps few events are so essential to the Christian plan of salvation as the alleged crucifixion of Jesus. But there is not a consistent report of even this allimportant occurrence in the Gospels. Mark has it that Jesus was crucified at the third hour; John thinks that Jesus was not crucified until some time after the sixth hour. Now, if Jesus were really crucified, and these reporters were in Jerusalem at the time, and were also present at the crucifixion, they would have known, even without inspiration, at what hour the awful tragedy took place. The very fact that they report the time of