Such texts show how indifferent the bible is to what we understand by morality. As to coveting: The whole of the biblical instructions was nothing more than a continuous encouragement to the Jews to covet everything that was their neighbors, from the jewelry of the Egyptian, to the lands, the cattle, the homes and daughters of the nations of the earth: And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him, saying I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession.* For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.† But it will be impossible to command people to rob and slay their neighbors, and to covet their homes and women, without at the same time, commanding them to hate them. Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself; thou shalt give it unto the stranger that he may eat it; or thou mayest sell it unto an alien.‡ Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother. unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury.§ Jesus improved upon the Old Testament by calling upon his followers to include in their hatred the members of their own family: If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.** Religious persecution is openly sanctioned both in the Old and the New Testaments. Every expression * Genesis xvii, 3, 8. § Deuteronomy xxiii, 19, 20. ** Luke xiv, 26. of independence, or disagreement with the priesthood, was blasphemy, and punishable by death. And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death.* The Bible gives a very long list of "blasphemies for which the death penalty is ordered from failing to circumcise one's children, to gathering sticks on the Sabbath. And as to those professing a different faith, the commandment was as follows: These are the statutes and judgments, which ye shall observe to do in the land, which the Lord God of thy fathers giveth thee to possess it, all the days that ye live upon the earth. Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree: And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.† Could intolerance go further than that! Other peoples are not to have any gods at all. Even as their lands will be taken away from them, so shall their gods. And since their Jehovah never intended to be the god of anybody else but a Hebrew, it followed that the Jews were the only people privileged to own a god. Why should "all the high places," where the other nations served their gods, be destroyed? Did not Moses go to Mount Sinai, a high place, to worship Jehovah? Why may not a Gentile have his own high *Leviticus xxiv, 16. † Deuteronomy xii, 1-4. place, as well as a Jew? Surely, the heathen gods on their mountains could not possibly have given a more unmerciful set of commandments than those which Jehovah dictated to Moses. There was no breadth in the God of the Jews. Live and let live, or Think and let think, is the conquest of modern thought for which we are indebted to Rationalism. We say it, reluctantly, but say it we must, Jehovah was a bigot. How long will the Jews continue to profess a religion which requires of them to live in Europe and America, and in the twentieth century, according to the ways of the desert? If Gentiles, in every country, are in great numbers forsaking Christianity, let the exodus of the Jews from the synagogue be equally earnest and pronounced. Cruelty was to be the accompaniment of religious persecution. The descriptions of acts of cruelty against the stranger seem to have given positive pleasure to the writers of the bible, for they enter into the most repulsive details in narrating them: For the Lord shall sell Sisera into the hand of a woman. Howbeit Sisera fled away on his feet to the tent of Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite: for there was peace between Jabin the king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite. And Jael went out to meet Sisera, and said unto him, Turn in, my lord, turn in to me; fear not. And when he had turned in unto her into the tent, she covered him with a mantle. Then Jael Heber's wife took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died. Behold, Sisera lay dead, and the nail was in his temples.* For this act of treacherous cruelty Jael was sainted: * Judges iv, 9, 17-23. Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall she be above women in the tent. She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen's hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples. So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord.* Superstitions of the most degrading type are recommended and their daily practice sanctioned. Though they claimed to be on talking terms with the deity, they had, nevertheless, to cast lots, and resort to sorcery and divination, to find out the mind of the Lord. Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon. And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds divided he not. And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram.† Could anything be more meaningless? And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed: and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.‡ Only the most hopeless ignorance could credit such a performance. And Jesus thought that by self-mutilation one could become a candidate for heaven: For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were *Judges v, 24-31. Genesis xv, 9-18. Exodus xvii, 11-13. made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.* And the four beasts said, Amen.† THE VII. Thou Shalt Despise Women 'HE most unfortunate person in the whole bible is a woman. How is it then that the bible has come to be regarded as really the emancipator of woman? Well, that is only one of many fictions about the "Holy" book. Not only is the responsibility for the fall of man, and the existence of such a place as hell, thrown upon woman, because she ate of the forbidden tree; but she is also introduced as a mere fragment of man, made out of one of his ribs. As soon as born she was sold into perpetual slavery. Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.t Never once did God promise a daughter to any of his favorites. And girls are completely left out from the family chronicle. In biblical genealogies there are no women. The Hebrew word used in the bible for female,'" says Joseph McCabe, "can not with decency be translated literally into English." Women were strictly excluded from the service of Jehovah. Nor were they privileged to repair to Jerusalem on the stated occasions required by the national worship to appear before Jehovah. It is no wonder that under * Matthew xix, 12. + Revelation v, 14. Genesis iii, 16. |