Samuel, in the account given of him in the first of those books, chap.
ix. 13 called the seer; and it is by this term that Saul enquires after him, ver. 11, "And as they [Saul and his servant] went up the hill to the city, they found young maidens going out to draw water; and they said unto
them, Is the seer here? " Saul then went according to the direction of these maidens, and met Samuel without knowing him, and said unto him, ver.
18, "Tell me, I pray thee, where the seer's house is? and Samuel answered Saul, and said, I am the seer. "
As the writer of the book of Samuel relates these questions and an-
swers, in the language or manner of speaking used in the time they are
said to have been spoken, and as that manner of speaking was out of use
when this author wrote, he found it necessary, in order to make the story understood, to explain the terms in which these questions and answers
are spoken; and he does this in the 9th verse, where he says, " Before-time in Israel, when a man went to enquire of God, thus he spake, Come let us go to the seer; for he that is now called a prophet, was before-time called a seer." This proves, as I have before said, that this story of Saul, Samuel, and the asses, was an ancient story at the time the book of Samuel was written, and consequently that Samuel did not write it, and
that the book is without authenticity,
25.The text of Ruth does not imply the unpleasant sense Paine's words are likely to
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But if we go further into those books the evidence is still more positive that Samuel is not the writer of them; for they relate things that did not happen till several years after the death of Samuel. Samuel died before
Saul; for i Samuel, xxviii. tells, that Saul and the witch of Endor conjured Samuel up after he was dead; yet the history of matters contained in
those books is extended through the remaining part of Saul's life, and to the latter end of the life of David, who succeded Saul. The account of the death and burial of Samuel (a thing which he could not write himself) is
related in i Samuel xxv.; and the chronology affixed to this chapter
makes this to be B.C. 1060; yet the history of this first book is brought down to B.C. 1056, that is, to the death of Saul, which was not till four years after the death of Samuel.
The second book of Samuel begins with an account of things that did
not happen till four years after Samuel was dead; for it begins with the
reign of David, who succeeded Saul, and it goes on to the end of David's
reign, which was forty-three years after the death of Samuel; and, there-
fore, the books are in themselves positive evidence that they were not
written by Samuel.
I have now gone through all the books in the first part of the Bible, to
which the names of persons are affixed, as being the authors of those
books, and which the church, styling itself the Christian church, have imposed upon the world as the writings of Moses, Joshua and Samuel; and
I have detected and proved the falsehood of this imposition.—-And now
ye priests, of every description, who have preached and written against
the former part of the Age of Reason, what have ye to say? Will ye with all this mass of evidence against you, and staring you in the face, still have the assurance to march into your pulpits, and continue to impose these
books on your congregations, as the works of inspired penmen and the word of God? when it is as evident as demonstration can make truth appear, that the persons who ye say are the authors, are not the authors, and that ye know not who the authors are. What shadow of pretence have ye
now to produce for continuing the blasphemous fraud? What have ye
still to offer against the pure and moral religion of deism, in support of your system of falsehood, idolatry, and pretended revelation? Had the
cruel and murdering orders, with which the Bible is filled, and the num-
berless torturing executions of men, women, and children, in con-
sequence of those orders, been ascribed to some friend, whose memory
you revered, you would have glowed with satisfaction at detecting the
falsehood of the charge, and gloried in defending his injured fame. It is because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in 87
the honour of your Creator, that ye listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference. The evidence I have produced,
and shall still produce in the course of this work, to prove that the Bible is without authority, will, whilst it wounds the stubbornness of a priest, relieve and tranquillize the minds of millions: it will free them from all those hard thoughts of the Almighty which priestcraft and the Bible had
infused into their minds, and which stood in everlasting opposition to all their ideas of his moral justice and benevolence.
I come now to the two books of Kings, and the two books of Chron-
icles.-—Those books are altogether historical, and are chiefly confined to the lives and actions of the Jewish kings, who in general were a parcel of rascals: but these are matters with which we have no more concern than
we have with the Roman emperors, or Homer's account of the Trojan
war. Besides which, as those books are anonymous, and as we know
nothing of the writer, or of his character, it is impossible for us to know what degree of credit to give to the matters related therein. Like all other ancient histories, they appear to be a jumble of fable and of fact, and of probable and of improbable things, but which distance of time and place,
and change of circumstances in the world, have rendered obsolete and
uninteresting.
The chief use I shall make of those books will be that of comparing
them with each other, and with other parts of the Bible, to show the con-
fusion, contradiction, and cruelty in this pretended word of God.
The first book of Kings begins with the reign of Solomon, which, ac-
cording to the Bible chronology, was B.C. 1015; and the second book
ends B.C. 588, being a little after the reign of Zedekiah, whom
Nebuchadnezzar, after taking Jerusalem and conquering the Jews, car-
ried captive to Babylon. The two books include a space of 427 years.
The two books of Chronicles are an history of the same times, and in
general of the same persons, by another author; for it would be absurd to suppose that the same author wrote the history twice over. The first book of Chronicles (after giving the genealogy from Adam to Saul, which
takes up the first nine chapters) begins with the reign of David; and the last book ends, as in the last book of Kings, soon after the reign of
Zedekiah, about B.C. 588. The last two verses of the last chapter bring the history 52 years more forward, that is, to 536. But these verses do not belong to the book, as I shall show when I come to speak of the book of
Ezra.
The two books of Kings, besides the history of Saul, David, and So-
lomon, who reigned over all Israel, contain an abstract of the lives of 88
seventeen kings, and one queen, who are stiled kings of Judah; and of
nineteen, who are stiled kings of Israel; for the Jewish nation, immedi-
ately on the death of Solomon, split into two parties, who chose separate kings, and who carried on most rancorous wars against each other.
These two books are little more than a history of assassinations, treach-
ery, and wars. The cruelties that the Jews had accustomed themselves to
practise on the Canaanites, whose country they had savagely invaded,
under a pretended gift from God, they afterwards practised as furiously
on each other. Scarcely half their kings died a natural death, and in some instances whole families were destroyed to secure possession to the successor, who, after a few years, and sometimes only a few months, or less, shared the same fate. In 2 Kings x., an account is given of two baskets full of children's heads, seventy in number, being exposed at the entrance of
the city; they were the children of Ahab, and were murdered by the or-
ders of Jehu, whom Elisha, the pretended man of God, had anointed to
be king over Israel, on purpose to commit this bloody deed, and assas-
sinate his predecessor. And in the account of the reign of Menahem, one
of the kings of Israel who had murdered Shallum, who had reigned but
one month, it is said, 2 Kings xv. 16, that Menahem smote the city of
Tiphsah, because they opened not the city to him, and all the women
therein that were with child he ripped up.
Could we permit ourselves to suppose that the Almighty would dis-
tinguish any nation of people by the name of his chosen people, we must suppose that people to have been an example to all the rest of the world
of the purest piety and humanity, and not such a nation of ruffians and
cut-throats as the ancient Jews were,-—a people who, corrupted by and
copying after such monsters and imposters as Moses and Aaron, Joshua,
Samuel, and David, had distinguished themselves above all others on
the face of the known earth for barbarity and wickedness. If we will not
stubbornly shut our eyes and steel our hearts it is impossible not to see, in spite of all that long-established superstition imposes upon the mind, that the flattering appellation of his chosen people is no other than a Lie which the priests and leaders of the Jews had invented to cover the baseness of their own characters; and which Christian priests sometimes
as corrupt, and often as cruel, have professed to believe.
The two books of Chronicles are a repetition of the same crimes; but
the history is broken in several places, by the author leaving out the
reign of some of their kings; and in this, as well as in that of Kings, there is such a frequent transition from kings of Judah to kings of Israel, and from kings of Israel to kings of Judah, that the narrative is obscure in the 89
reading. In the same book the history sometimes contradicts itself: for example, in 2 Kings, i. 17, we are told, but in rather ambiguous terms, that after the death of Ahaziah, king of Israel, Jehoram, or Joram, (who was of the house of Ahab), reigned in his stead in the second year of Jehoram, or Joram, son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah; and in viii. 16, of the same
book, it is said, "And in the fifth year of Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Jehoshaphat being then king of Judah, Jehoram, the son of Je-
hoshaphat king of judah, began to reign." That is, one chapter says Joram of Judah began to reign in the second year of Joram of Israel; and the other chapter says, that Joram of Israel began to reign in the fifth year of Joram of Judah.
Several of the most extraordinary matters related in one history, as
having happened during the reign of such or such of their kings, are not
to be found in the other, in relating the reign of the same king: for ex-
ample, the two first rival kings, after the death of Solomon, were Reho-
boam and Jeroboam; and in i Kings xii. and xiii. an account is given of
Jeroboam making an offering of burnt incense, and that a man, who is
there called a man of God, cried out against the altar (xiii. 2): "O altar, altar! thus saith the Lord: Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name, and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the
high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be
burned upon thee." Verse 4: "And it came to pass, when king Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God, which had cried against the altar in
Bethel, that he put forth his hand from the altar, saying, Lay hold on him; and his hand which he put out against him dried up, so that he could not pull it again to him. "
One would think that such an extraordinary case as this, (which is
spoken of as a judgement,) happening to the chief of one of the parties,
and that at the first moment of the separation of the Israelites into two nations, would, if it had been true, have been recorded in both histories.
But though men, in later times, have believed all that the prophets have said unto them, it does appear that those prophets, or historians, disbelieved each other: they knew each other too well.
A long account also is given in Kings about Elijah. It runs through sev-
eral chapters, and concludes with telling, 2 Kings ii. 11, "And it came to pass, as they (Elijah and Elisha) still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder, and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven." Hum! this the author of Chronicles, miraculous as the story is, makes no mention of,
though he mentions Elijah by name; neither does he say anything of the
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story related in the second chapter of the same book of Kings, of a parcel of children calling Elisha bald head; and that this man of God (ver. 24)
"turned back, and looked upon them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord; and there came forth two she-bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them." He also passes over in silence the story told, 2
Kings xiii., that when they were burying a man in the sepulchre where
Elisha had been buried, it happened that the dead man, as they were let-
ting him down, (ver. 21) "touched the bones of Elisha, and he (the dead man) revived, and stood up on his feet. " The story does not tell us whether they buried the man, notwithstanding he revived and stood upon his
feet, or drew him up again. Upon all these stories the writer of the
Chronicles is as silent as any writer of the present day, who did not
chuse to be accused of lying, or at least of romancing, would be about stories of the same kind.
But, however these two historians may differ from each other with re-
spect to the tales related by either, they are silent alike with respect to those men styled prophets whose writings fill up the latter part of the
Bible. Isaiah, who lived in the time of Hezekiah, is mentioned in Kings,
and again in Chronicles, when these histories are speaking of that reign; but except in one or two instances at most, and those very slightly, none of the rest are so much as spoken of, or even their existence hinted at;
though, according to the Bible chronology, they lived within the time
those histories were written; and some of them long before. If those
prophets, as they are called, were men of such importance in their day,
as the compilers of the Bible, and priests and commentators have since
represented them to be, how can it be accounted for that not one of those histories should say anything about them?
The history in the books of Kings and of Chronicles is brought for-
ward, as I have already said, to the year B.C. 588; it will, therefore, be proper to examine which of these prophets lived before that period.
Here follows a table of all the prophets, with the times in which they
lived before Christ, according to the chronology affixed to the first
chapter of each of the books of the prophets; and also of the number of
years they lived before the books of Kings and Chronicles were written:
Table of the Prophets, with the time in which they lived before Christ,
and also before the books of Kings and Chronicles were written:
• Name: Isaiah
Years before Christ: 760
91
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 172
Observations: mentioned.
• Name: Jeremiah
Years before Christ: 629
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 41
Observations: mentioned only in the last [two] chapters of
Chronicles.
• Name: Ezekiel
Years before Christ: 595
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 7
Observations: not mentioned.
• Name: Daniel
Years before Christ: 607
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 19
Observations: not mentioned.
• Name: Horsea
Years before Christ: 785
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 97
Observations: not mentioned.
• Name: Joel
Years before Christ: 800
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 212
Observations: not mentioned.
• Name: Amos
Years before Christ: 789
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 199
Observations: not mentioned.
• Name: Obadiah
Years before Christ: 789
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 199
Observations: not mentioned.
• Name: Jonah
Years before Christ: 862
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 274
Observations: see the note.26
26.In 2 Kings xiv. 25, the name of Jonah is mentioned on account of the restoration of a tract of land by Jeroboam; but nothing further is said of him, nor is any allusion made to the book of Jonah, nor to his expedition to Nineveh, nor to his encounter with the whale.—Author.
92
• Name: Micah
Years before Christ: 750
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 162
Observations: not mentioned.
• Name: Nahum
Years before Christ: 713
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 125
Observations: not mentioned.
• Name: Habakkuk
Years before Christ: 620
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 38
Observations: not mentioned.
• Name: Zephaniah
Years before Christ: 630
Years before Kings and Chronicles: 42
Observations: not mentioned.
• Name: Haggai
Years before Christ: (after the year 588)
• Name: Zechariah
Years before Christ: (after the year 588)
• Name: Malachi
Years before Christ: (after the year 588)
This table is either not very honourable for the Bible historians, or not very honourable for the Bible prophets; and I leave to priests and commentators, who are very learned in little things, to settle the point
of etiquette between the two; and to assign a reason, why the authors of Kings and of Chronicles have treated those prophets, whom, in the
former part of the Age of Reason, I have considered as poets, with as much degrading silence as any historian of the present day would treat
Peter Pindar.
I have one more observation to make on the book of Chronicles; after
which I shall pass on to review the remaining books of the Bible.
In my observations on the book of Genesis, I have quoted a passage
from xxxvi. 31, which evidently refers to a time, after that kings began to reign over the children of Israel; and I have shewn that as this verse is verbatim the same as in 1 Chronicles i. 43, where it stands consistently
with the order of history, which in Genesis it does not, that the verse in Genesis, and a great part of the 36th chapter, have been taken from
Chronicles; and that the book of Genesis, though it is placed first in the Bible, and ascribed to Moses, has been manufactured by some unknown
93
person, after the book of Chronicles was written, which was not until at
least eight hundred and sixty years after the time of Moses.
The evidence I proceed by to substantiate this, is regular, and has in it but two stages. First, as I have already stated, that the passage in Genesis refers itself for time to Chronicles; secondly, that the book of Chronicles, to which this passage refers itself, was not begun to be written until at least eight hundred and sixty years after the time of Moses. To prove
this, we have only to look into 1 Chronicles iii. 15, where the writer, in giving the genealogy of the descendants of David, mentions Zedekiah; and it was in the time of Zedekiah that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, B.C. 588, and consequently more than 860 years after Moses. Those
who have superstitiously boasted of the antiquity of the Bible, and par-
ticularly of the books ascribed to Moses, have done it without examina-
tion, and without any other authority than that of one credulous man
telling it to another: for, so far as historical and chronological evidence applies, the very first book in the Bible is not so ancient as the book of Homer, by more than three hundred years, and is about the same age
with Æsop's Fables.
I am not contending for the morality of Homer; on the contrary, I think
it a book of false glory, and tending to inspire immoral and mischievous
notions of honour; and with respect to Æsop, though the moral is in gen-
eral just, the fable is often cruel; and the cruelty of the fable does more injury to the heart, especially in a child, than the moral does good to the judgment.
Having now dismissed Kings and Chronicles, I come to the next in
course, the book of Ezra.
As one proof, among others I shall produce to shew the disorder in
which this pretended word of God, the Bible, has been put together, and
the uncertainty of who the authors were, we have only to look at the first three verses in Ezra, and the last two in 2 Chronicles; for by what kind of cutting and shuffling has it been that the first three verses in Ezra should be the last two verses in 2 Chronicles, or that the last two in 2 Chronicles should be the first three in Ezra? Either the authors did not know their
own works or the compilers did not know the authors.
Last Two Verses of 2 Chronicles.
Ver. 22. Now in the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia, that the word of the Lord, spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be accomplished, the
Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a pro-
clamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, 94
23. Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, all the kingdoms of the earth hath
the Lord God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to build him
an house in Jerusalem which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all
his people? the Lord his God be with him, and let him go up.2728
First Three Verses of Ezra.
Ver. 1. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of
the Lord, by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred
27.The last verse in Chronicles is broken abruptly, and ends in the middle of the phrase with the word up without signifying to what place. This abrupt break, and the appearance of the same verses in different books, shew as I have already said, the disorder and ignorance in which the Bible has been put together, and that the compilers of it had no authority for what they were doing, nor we any authority for believing what they have done.
28.[NOTE I observed, as I passed along, several broken and senseless passages in the Bible, without thinking them of consequence enough to be introduced in the body of the work; such as that, 1 Samuel xiii. 1, where it is said, "Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel, Saul chose him three thousand men," &c.
The first part of the verse, that Saul reigned one year has no sense, since it does not tell us what Saul did, nor say any thing of what happened at the end of that one year; and it is, besides, mere absurdity to say he reigned one year, when the very next phrase says he had reigned two for if he had reigned two, it was impossible not to have reigned one. Another instance occurs in Joshua v. where the writer tells us a story of an angel (for such the table of contents at the head of the chapter calls him) appearing unto Joshua; and the story ends abruptly, and without any conclusion.
The story is as follows:-—Ver. 13. "And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand; and Joshua went unto him and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?" Verse 14, "And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship and said unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant?" Verse 15, "And the captain of the Lord's host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standeth is holy. And Joshua did so."-—And what then?
nothing: for here the story ends, and the chapter too. Either this story is broken off in the middle, or it is a story told by some Jewish humourist in ridicule of Joshua's pretended mission from God, and the compilers of the Bible, not perceiving the design of the story, have told it as a serious matter. As a story of humour and ridicule it has a great