Owing to the presumptive challenge of a recent reader who claimed that our brief review of Paine's Age of Reason just happened to pick on the 10% of AR that was done when Paine wasn't feeling well; and owing as well to that AR is indeed still often used as an authoritative source by Skeptics, we have decided to engage in a lengthier and more thorough review of the text. I have taken this text from the Secular Web's library and will not edit out any material where Paine deals with the Bible. I will omit, however, such things as Chapter I where Paine speaks of his profession of faith as this contains no arguments as such; or such places as he does not address the Bible itself. My comments shall be made in green and not everything will be commented upon as it is not always necessary to comment. You may verify the text of AR at this location if you are a desperate Skeptic who wants to make an accusation against me.
Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all. Fair enough. Either one is right and the others are wrong, or none are right. At least Paine is consistent here; but that is in contrast to how he contradicts himself as before, hypocritcally, in that he certainthing thinks he is right.
As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into the subject, offer some observations on the word 'revelation.' Revelation when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man.
No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and, consequently, they are not obliged to believe it. Of course this is why Deut. 18:22 speaks of testing the prophets. The Bible is well aware of the need to test things (1 Th. 5:21) and would not expect Paine to just believe simply because someone says so (though Paine is also in error about hearsay -- this is perhaps where Skeptics get their beef against hearsay, rather than from studying actual legal writings). Beyond that it would have been interesting to know what parts of the Bible Paine classed as "revelation". Beyond any idea of inspiration, texts like the Gospels report history. Now we also wonder whether Paine was any more consistent in rejecting the works of, say, Josephus or Tacitus on these same grounds, regardless of whether they were reporting miracles or private conversations. Today most resolve this inevitable leading to a panic-button view of knowledge and knowing by remaining inconsistent. They are doubters on religious matters only, or at best on things far removed from their life -- but never have such doubts when they buy groceries or go to the drivers' license office.
It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. At this point I wondered who, if anyone, was calling something a "revelation" that was second hand. Paine is perhaps being too atomistic; if I say that Isaiah contains "revelations" I do not do so saying that they are revelations to me. After this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him. Epistemically, this complaint is a farce. Paine has dipsy-doodled from an argument that "it is no longer a revelation" from God (to the second party, no; the the first, yes) to an argument that the transmission means he is not obliged to believe it. The former is a red herring (since no one ever claims such a thing as he argues against!) while the latter is an absurdity (for it means we are not even obliged to believe Paine's second-hand testimony in AR; yet he didn't seem to think this should stop him from writing it).
When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the commandments from the hand of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so; Excuse me? I know Paine did not believe it, but in the accounts Israel had just come out of Egypt, witnessed mighty works of God, heard His voice, seen his pillar of glory, and Moses had done many miraculous works and led them out of Egypt, and Paine is saying they were not obliged to believe Moses? and I have no other authority for it than some historian telling me so, Paine of course lived before verifying archaeological evidence, and so can be somewhat pardoned; meanwhile, we wonder if he was consistent and rejected the works of other historians on the same grounds -- not merely because he chose not to believe of his own decision. As it is, this formulation is epistemically disastrous and reduces all recorded history to nought. Paine opened the door but didn't notice that he had been stampeded after he opened it. the commandments carrying no internal evidence of divinity with them. They contain some good moral precepts such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver or a legislator could produce himself, without having recourse to supernatural intervention. We would like, then, to know what Paine would envision coming from supernatural intervention. If he can tell us, then he has just shown that no recourse to such intervention is needed, either! In short he has put the idea of laws from a divinity out of the reach of proof. However, that said, Paine can be partly forgiven for not being aware of social and legal data showing that the Pentateuchal laws were a significant moral step over comparable law codes of the period. We would furthermore expect the laws to reflect human needs regardless of source. [NOTE: It is, however, necessary to except the declamation which says that God 'visits the sins of the fathers upon the children'. This is contrary to every principle of moral justice. -- Author.] Every principle, perhaps, of Paine's sense of justice as a more modern individualist; moreover he has not understood the text well. As we note here:
Deut. 5:9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me...
Deut. 24:16 Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.
Do these verses reveal a major contradiction in the Bible? Does one teach individual responsibility for sin, while another teaches that one can be punished for the sin of another?
A couple of years ago, when I first faced this "contradiction" in reply to Jim Merritt, I gave this brief and rather off-the-cuff answer:
(Deuteronomy 24:16) refers to punishments meted out for crimes, as does Ezekiel. Isaiah and the others refer to punishments and sufferings that are the natural results of one persons' actions "rolling downhill" on another person. In other words, if Dad goes alone and robs the Hickory Farms store and steals all the weinerschnitzel, then Junior doesn't get thrown in the slammer if he wasn't part of it. But if Dad is a smoker, then Junior's lungs will get polluted; if Mom drinks too much when pregnant, Junior may be born with fetal alcohol syndrome. If Dad brags about robbing the Hickory Farms store or seems content with his lot in jail, and Junior hears or finds out about it, Junior might be inspired to a life of crime also!
To this I also added the point that "four generations" in Deut. 5:9 and elsewhere refers to the normal lifespan of a human being, so that essentially, the verse means that punishment will be meted out over the lifetime a person alone -- to which I will add here, that punishment is not the same as guilt. Thus my explanation above is somewhat correct -- but far from complete.
It is with great pleasure that I engage this topic more thoroughly now. To begin, let's lay out the verses claimed to be on each side of the issue. We'll list them first, then examine each in turn. Starting with the "individual responsibility" side, there are three that are cited:
Dt. 24:16 Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.
Jer. 31:29-31 "In those days people will no longer say, 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.' Instead, everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes--his own teeth will be set on edge. "The time is coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah."
Ezekiel 18:20 The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him.
Now, from what we might call the "other responsibility" side -- verses which are cited as teaching that one person can be punished for the sins of another:
Ex. 20:5//Deut. 5:9 (cf. Ex. 34:7) You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me...
2 Sam. 12:14 "But because by doing this you have made the enemies of the LORD show utter contempt, the son born to you will die."
Is. 14:21 Prepare a place to slaughter his sons for the sins of their forefathers; they are not to rise to inherit the land and cover the earth with their cities.
Rom. 5:19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
A few of these really don't fit the bill, and we need to separate the wheat from the chaff. Is. 14:21 comes from a song of vengeance that it is predicted will be sung by the Israelites; it isn't expressing doctrine at all. Rom. 5:19 has to do with "original sin" -- not in the same category. But the rest are good to go for our purposes, and are supposed to stand in contrast to the three "individual" verses above.
The answer comes in two parts, for there is one answer for the Deut. cite, and another for the two cites from Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and both are found by considering social data.
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A key to understanding this business is a concept called vicarious punishment that is found in the law codes of the ANE. Greenberg [Chr.SPPS, 295] offers these examples:
A creditor who has maltreated the distrained sin of his debtor that he dies, must lose his own son. If a man struck the pregnant daughter of another so that she miscarried and died, his own daughter must be put to death. A seducer must deliver his wife to the seduced girl's father for prostitution. In another class are penalties which involve the substitution of a dependent for the offerer -- the Hittite laws compelling a slayer to deliver so many persons to the kinsmen of the slain, or prescribing that a man who has pushed another into a fire must give over his son...
Now it is precisely this kind of punishment, which was prescribed in every law code in the Near East, that Deut. 24:16 is intended to forbid. The verse is not a universal motto, but a time-specific law intended as a direct counter to the practices listed above. "The proper understanding of this requires...that it be recognized as a judicial provision, not a theological dictum." [Chr.SPPS, 296, 298] It is of a different order than verses and situations like the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, Deut. 5:9, Exod. 20:5, the destruction of the Canaanites, Achan's sin (Josh. 7), the son of David and Bathsheba (2 Sam. 12) and the vengeance of the Gibeonites on Saul's sons (2 Sam. 21, where a national treaty was violated by God's chosen king), which all involve "direct affronts to the majesty of God." Such affronts were dealt with quite differently than internal human affairs, and therefore, there is no contradiction whatsoever between these kinds of verses and those that teach individual responsibility. They apply to two entirely different contexts.
|The issue of Dt. 24:16 is thereby explained, but what about the other two cites? Some call this an obvious "contradiction" which was maintained among the Jews for so long...and do not why, in spite of these verses, Jerry and Zeke elsewhere in their books affirm the concept of corporate punishment. Those who see some sort of developmental process here stand against scholarship familiar with the texts of the period, represented by von Rad [VR.Dt, 152; see also Wein.Dt111, 299], who writes:
A thorough study of early legal history, including that outside Israel, has shown that the conception of a general development from collective to individual liability is incorrect. The principle of personal responsibility was by no means unknown in the earlier times.
Nevertheless, there is a developmental process of a sort. Jeremiah and Ezekiel do "transfer this judicial provision to the theological realm" [Chr.SPPS, 296], for when Jerry and Zeke say what they do (not, as Dornbusch supposes, as some kind of counter to the Mosaic ethic of collective punishment, but rather, as a response to a saying then in currency among the exiled Jews who thought they, personally, were being punished unfairly for the sins of their ancestors), we argue that they are indeed offering a bit of progressive revelation leading into individual charges for sin.
But there is more. Kaminsky [Kam.CHRB] explains that in the context of the Exile, these passages, acting as responses to the popular proverb among the people in which they complained that they were being punished for the sins of their fathers, is hardly to be read as a repudiation of corporate responsibility, for both Jerry (2:30, 3:25, 6:11-12, etc.) and Zeke (9:5-6, 21:8-9) elsewhere affirm that principle. No, what they wrote here was something quite different: And we say it served a twofold purpose -- the first revealed by Kaminsky:
...(C)hildren may not hide behind a theology of corporate solidarity and moral extension that absolves them of personal responsibility for their own destiny.
Or, as Matties [Matt.Zk18, 158-9] describes it:
Ezekiel understands that the concept of holiness demands complete purging, and so he articulates the corporate guilt and judgment. But he recognizes that the basis for experience of Yahweh's saving presence is the faithfulness of the individual Israelite. The focus of law, and here on the individual, is to begin the work of reconstituting a covenant community...
Thus Zeke's goal -- and that of Jeremiah, to a lesser extent -- was "to shape the virtuous life, to establish responsibility for moral choice, and to motivate the transformation toward a new and cohesive social order." [ibid., 219] The purpose of these passages, then, is motivational and pastoral, and should be understood in that context -- and therefore, offer no contradiction to verses indicating corporate guilt and punishment.
Jerry and Zeke's purpose, then, was not so much theological as it was pastoral. At the same time, they revealed that God's second covenant with the people would be on new terms. But this hardly served as a repudiation of corporate responsibility and judgment at all.
When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven, and brought to Mahomet by an angel, the account comes to near the same kind of hearsay evidence and second hand authority as the former. I did not see the angel myself, and therefore I have a right not to believe it. Yes, he can test Muslim claims as well if he wants to. But he is still releasing epistemic disaster with this careless argument about "hearsay" which he was obviously too insenseate to recognize.
When also I am told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: The classic example, of course, and a bad one: as we note here it is quite obvious that this is something beyond accessible proof. The closest proof comes from the general notion of Jesus as a miracle-worker for whom such a conception would be a possibility. but we have not even this; for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves. This is a patch of Paine's graphocentric bigotry coming through. He can be forgiven somewhat, having no knowledge of the reliability of oral tradition among the ancients, and the lack of need to have things written. We also wonder, would Paine have believed it had Joseph or Mary written something? Is this a real "complaint" he is making or is he just stacking? It is only reported by others that they said so. It is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not chose to rest my belief upon such evidence. See link above on hearsay -- Paine's standard is stricter than even modern American legal ones! We wonder if Paine himself acted like this is real life. When Uranus was discovered, did he see it from his own telescope, or did he hear it -- hearsay -- from someone else, who heard it from someone else?
It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given to the story of Jesus Christ being the Son of God. He was born when the heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the world, and that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of such a story. Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods. As we have noted several times in our copycat series there is simply no comparison here. None of the mythological figures was conceived virginally. If anything the closest parallel is the creation of the world by divine fiat in Genesis. Paine may as well have cut out the middleman. Of course, showing that men easily could have believed such things does not in any way affect whether the event actually took place or not. Paine appears to be merely painting a bigoted portrait of stupid primitives for rhetorical purposes. It was not a new thing at that time to believe a man to have been celestially begotten; the intercourse of gods with women was then a matter of familiar opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their accounts, had cohabited with hundreds; the story therefore had nothing in it either new, wonderful, or obscene; it was conformable to the opinions that then prevailed among the people called Gentiles, or mythologists, and it was those people only that believed it. Actually, it was substantially contrary to several deeply-held views, notably in Judaism. Paine himself essentially acknowledges this in the next sentence. The Jews, who had kept strictly to the belief of one God, and no more, and who had always rejected the heathen mythology, never credited the story. Beyond converts, they did not; yet does this mean anything? They had no more evidence against than Paine did. No medical report to the contrary. It comes down to what we said in the linked article above: The VC is accepted or rejected based on prior orientation, not evidence. Moreover, if this is right, then Paine never tells us what compelled Jews (the early Christians) to come up with such a story.
It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian Church, sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A direct incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the reputed founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that then followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality, which was about twenty or thirty thousand. Hardly so. Paine had no conception of the true background of the Trinity in ANE hypostatic speculations and Jewish Wisdom theology. Where he gets the 20-30K figure from I cannot say, but as we show in that article:
In order to support the traditional Christian view of the relationship of Jesus to the Father, we must understand the background for certain claims about the nature and identity of Jesus in the New Testament. Our general argument may be outlined as follows:
Jesus, as God's Word and Wisdom, was and is eternally an attribute of God the Father. Just as our own words and thoughts come from us and cannot be separated from us, so it is that Jesus cannot be completely separate from the Father. But there is more to this explanation, related to the distinction between functional subordination and ontological equality. We speak of Christ as the "Word" of God, God's "speech" in living form. In Hebrew and Ancient Near Eastern thought, words were not merely sounds, or letters on a page; words were things that "had an independent existence and which actually did things." Throughout the Old Testament and in the Jewish intertestamental Wisdom literature, the power of God's spoken word is emphasized (Ps. 33:6, 107:20; Is. 55:11; Jer. 23:29; 2 Esd. 6:38; Wisdom 9:1). "Judaism understood God's Word to have almost autonomous powers and substance once spoken; to be, in fact, 'a concrete reality, a veritable cause.'" (Richard N. Longenecker, The Christology of Early Jewish Christianity , 145.) But a word did not need to be uttered or written to be alive. A word was defined as "an articulate unit of thought, capable of intelligible utterance." (C. H. Dodd, Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, 263. It cannot therefore be argued that Christ attained existence as the Word only "after" he was "uttered" by God. Some of the second-century church apologists followed a similar line of thinking, supposing that Christ the Word was unrealized potential within the mind of the Father prior to Creation.) This agrees with Christ's identity as God's living Word, and points to Christ's functional subordination (just as our words and speech are subordinate to ourselves) and his ontological equality (just as our words represent our authority and our essential nature) with the Father. A subordination in roles is within acceptable Biblical and creedal parameters, but a subordination in position or essence (the "ontological" aspect) is a heretical view called subordinationism.
Background: The background with Wisdom Christology is found in the concept of hypostasis. What is a hypostasis? Broadly defined, it is a quasi-personification of attributes proper to a deity, occupying an intermediate position between personalities and abstract beings. In the ANE here are some examples:
Wisdom in Proverbs 8, and Wisdom in Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon, and Philo's logos, all fit hand in glove with these. Now let's look at some cites, starting with Prov. 8.
Proverbs 8:22-30 The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: When he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth: Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him...
This passage is one of several in the Old Testament (see Ps. 58:10, 107:42; Job 11:14) in which abstract qualities are personified, following an Ancient Near Eastern tradition of personification. (Derek Kidner, The Wisdom of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes, 44.) Here, and in other parts of Proverbs, Wisdom "makes claims for herself which are elsewhere made only by, or for, God." The verb used by Wisdom to call attention to its messages is the same used by the prophets to call for returning to God in repentance. (R. N. Whybray, Proverbs, 44) The speech made by Wisdom in this chapter is "a lengthy self-recommendation in which (Wisdom) boasts of her power and authority and of the gifts she is able to bestow," following a known Ancient Near Eastern literary genre in which a divinity praises itself. "Wisdom is intended to be understood as an attribute or heavenly servant of the sole God Yahweh to whom he has delegated certain powers with regard to his relations with mankind." Finally, to complete the picture, Proverbs 2:6 tells us, "For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding." God is the source of Wisdom; Wisdom is one of God's characteristics and attributes. (Bruce Vawter, "Proverbs 8:22: Wisdom and Creation," Journal of Biblical Literature 99/2 (1980): 205-216, argues that Proverbs 8 depicts Wisdom as a separate deity that Yahweh "acquired." I follow Hurtado in replying that "this language of personification [used in Judaism as a whole] does not necessarily reflect a view of these divine attributes as independent entities alongside God." Such personifications "must be understood within the context of the ancient Jewish concern for the uniqueness of God, the most controlling religious idea of ancient Judaism." Thus he regards claims like that of Vawter's, that Wisdom here is depicted as an "independent deity," as something that is "simply unwarranted and imports into such passages connotations never intended by the writers." Larry W. Hurtado, One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism, 46-7. For more on this verb, see here.)
We will now examine Jewish speculations that accorded "the Wisdom of God" a quasi-personal status. We will then be able to see a continuity between the intertestamental literature and the New Testament that defines the nature of the relationship between God the Father and Jesus Christ. Dunn puts it succinctly: "What pre-Christian Judaism said of Wisdom and Philo also of the Logos, Paul and the others say of Jesus. The role that Proverbs, ben Sira, etc. ascribe to Wisdom, these earliest Christians ascribe to Jesus." James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making , 167. This conception of Wisdom parallels a less significant, general Jewish explanation of how a transcendent God could participate in a temporal creation. The Aramaic Targums resolved this problem by equating God with His Word: thus in the Targums, Exodus 19:17, rather than saying the people went out to meet God, says that the people went out to meet the word of God, or Memra. This term became a periphrasis for God; whether it could have been reckoned as a separate person, as in Christian Trinitarianism, is a matter of debate. The risk involved with making Wisdom/Word an independent deity was too great for the rabbis to speculate further, but Christians found in the Wisdom tradition an ideal categorical conception within which to place the person of Jesus. N.T. Wright observes in Who Was Jesus? [48-9] that Jewish monotheism "was never, in the Jewish literature of the crucial period, an analysis of the inner being of God, a kind of numerical statement about, so to speak, what God was like on the inside." Rather, it was "always a polemical statement directed outwards against the pagan nations." Rabbis of Jesus' time had no difficulty in personifying separate aspects of God's personality - His Wisdom, His Law (Torah), His Presence (Shekinah), and His Word (Memra), for example. This division had the philosophical purpose of "get(ting) around the problem of how to speak appropriately of the one true God who is both beyond the created world and active within it."
Similarly, Brad Young writes:
Within Judaism, the 'hypostatization' of Wisdom or Torah did not seem to undermine monotheism, since ultimately it was a kind of periphrasis used to circumvent the implication of direct contact between the transcendent God and the creation.
This concept, Young continues, did not challenge God's "ultimate originality and sovereignty" at all. Hence, the idea of Christianity identifying an actual person in such a way is not problematic for monotheism in any sense. Nor is a trinitarian concept entirely foreign to Judaism. O'Neill [JCO.WD, 94] records the words of the Jewish historian Philo, a contemporary of Jesus, who laid out this exposition upon the three men who came to visit Abraham in Genesis 18:2, and were presumed to be divine figures:
...the one in the middle is the Father of the Universe, who in the sacred scriptures is called by his proper name, I am that I am; and the beings on each side are those most ancient powers which are always close to the living God, one of which is called his creative power, and the other his royal power.
No one would question that Philo was a Jewish monotheist; yet here we have an exposition perfectly compatible with the Trinity: the Father, The Creative Power (the Son, or the Word), and the Royal Power (the Holy Spirit). Similarly, in the apocryphal Baruch 4:22, we read:
For I have set hope for your salvation on the Eternal One; and joy has come to me from the Holy One, at the mercy which will soon be present for you from your Eternal Saviour.
Now we move to passages concerned directly with Wisdom.
Ecclesiasticus 1:1-4 All wisdom cometh from the Lord, and is with him for ever. The sand of the sea, and the drops of the rain, And the days of eternity who shall number? The height of the heaven and the breadth of the earth And the deep and wisdom, who shall search them out? Wisdom hath been created before all things, And the understanding of prudence from everlasting.
The book of Ecclesiasticus was written by Jesus the son of Sirach in about 100 B.C. It describes Wisdom as having been "created before all things," as being "from everlasting" and as comparable to "the days of eternity." In this we are in harmony with the Trinitarian view of Jesus as created or generated by the Father eternally, that is, finding his source in the Father and having no existence apart from Him, yet also having existed eternally as God does. Sirach writes further:
I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, And covered the earth as a mist. I dwelt in high places, And my throne is in the pillar of the cloud. Alone I compassed the circuit of the heaven, And walked in the depth of the abyss. (Ecclesiasticus 24:3-5)
He created me from the beginning of the world, And to the end I shall not fail. (Ecclesiasticus 24:4)
This is another speech of self-praise of the sort found in Proverbs, only this time, the speech takes place in the heavenly court -- a place where only God would offer self-praise. Wisdom says of herself: "I came forth from the mouth of the Most High" (the "Word" of God) and "my throne was in the pillar of the cloud" -- an allusion to the Old Testament sign of the divine presence. Wisdom also says that it has "encircled the vault of heaven, and walked in the depths of the abyss...ruled over the waves of the sea and over all the earth, and over every people and nation." In the book of Job (12, 28), these things are what God asks whether Job can do, with the implication that only God can do them.
Finally, Sirach says, "(God) searches out both the deep and the heart, and he perceives all their cunning devices. For the Most High knows all, and he sees the signs of the age. He declares changes that occur, and reveals the searching out of hidden things. He does not lack insight, and nothing escapes him. The might of his wisdom he measures out, He is the same from eternity. Nothing is added and nothing is withdrawn, and there is no need for anyone to instruct him." (42:18-21) Wisdom is an attribute of God, and is co-eternal with Him -- otherwise, Wisdom is a thing "added" to Him, or someone has "instructed" Him. Bauckham makes a similar observation concerning a much later passage: "2 Enoch 33:4, in an echo of Deutero-Isaiah (Isa. 40:13), says that God had no advisor in his work of creation, but that his Wisdom was his advisor. The meaning is clearly that God had no one to advise him. His Wisdom, who is not someone else but intrinsic to his own identity, advised him." Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament , 21.
The Wisdom of Solomon: In this intertestamental work written under the persona of Solomon, Wisdom is described as the artificer of all things (7:22), "the breath of the power of God and a pure effluence flowing from the Almighty" (7:25), and is spoken of as the "image" (eikon -- for the significance of this term, see Chapter 1 of my book, The Mormon Defenders) of the goodness of God (7:26), able to do all things and make all things new. "Wisdom" was also envisioned as sharing God's throne, having been present with God from all eternity, and was thought of as proceeding from God. God's Wisdom and Word are equated in verse 9:2 -- "O God of my fathers, the Lord of mercy, who hast made all things with thy word, and ordained men through thy wisdom." Wisdom is also credited with performing miracles, like the parting of the Red Sea (Wisdom of Solomon 10:18-19).
Philo. The Jewish philosopher Philo was a contemporary of Jesus and the author of several philosophical and historical works. Philo calls Wisdom (which he also refers to as the logos) the "image (eikon) of God," refers to the Wisdom of God as the one through whom the universe came into being, and describes Wisdom as God's "firstborn son," as neither unbegotten like God or begotten like men, as Light and as "the very shadow of God." He regarded the logos as one of several attributes of God which he referred to collectively as "powers," with the logos as the chief power in the hierarchy.
Now that we have concluded our brief survey of Jewish intertestamental literature, some observations are in order before proceeding to the New Testament evidence. As we will show, what these writers said of Wisdom, the authors of the New Testament also said about Christ. But we are not necessarily arguing for direct dependence by Paul or John or any New Testament writer on Philo or any particular writer. Rather, we are establishing that there existed in Judaism certain set motifs about Wisdom with which the writers of the New Testament worked, and that, as Hurtado (44, 46) puts it, "ancient Judaism provided the first Christians with a crucial conceptual category" that was applied to the risen and exalted Jesus. We will now show that Jesus identified himself with Wisdom, and thereby identified himself with its qualities, including co-eternality, functional subordination, and ontological equality with God.
Matthew 8:20//Luke 9:58 Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.
Witherington notes that the image of this saying "had been used earlier of Wisdom having no place to dwell until God assigned her such a place (cf. Sir. 24:6-7 to 1 Enoch 42:2), with Enoch speaking of the rejection of Wisdom ('but she found no dwelling place')." Witherington also notes the parallel to Sirach 36:31, "So who can trust a man that has no nest, but lodges wherever night overtakes him?" The use of these allusions "suggests that Jesus envisions and articulates his experience in light of sapiential traditions..." (Jesus Quest, 188)
Matthew 11:16-19//Luke 7:31-2 To what, then, can I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to each other: "'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not cry.'"For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, 'He has a demon. 'The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and "sinners."' But wisdom is proved right by all her children."
Proverbs 1:24-28 Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech: "How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge? If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you and made my thoughts known to you. But since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand, since you ignored all my advice and would not accept my rebuke, I in turn will laugh at your disaster; I will mock when calamity overtakes you-- when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you. "Then they will call to me but I will not answer; they will look for me but will not find me.
This passage provides some important clues once we have the social data in hand, and add in the factor of Jesus' communal meals with the dregs of society. Witherington notes passages like Proverbs 9:1-6, "which speaks of a feast set by Wisdom herself where she invites very unlikely guests to the table" for the sake of helping them acquire wisdom. Witherington therefore argues that Jesus dined with sinners and tax collectors because he was "acting out the part of Wisdom." (187-8)
Matthew 11:29-30 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Sirach 6:19-31 Come to (Wisdom) like one who plows and sows. Put your neck into her collar. Bind your shoulders and carry her...Come unto her with all your soul, and keep her ways with all your might...For at last you will find the rest she gives...Then her fetters will become for you a strong defense, and her collar a glorious robe. Her yoke is a golden ornament, and her bonds a purple cord.
Sirach 51:26 Put your neck under the yoke, and let your soul receive instruction: she is hard at hand to find .
Jesus is clearly alluding to the passages in the very popular work of Sirach. His listeners would have recognized that he was associating himself with Wisdom.
Matthew 12:42//Luke 11:31 The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here.
Noting the association of Solomon with the Wisdom literature, Witherington writes (186, 192):
If it is true that Jesus made a claim that something greater than Solomon was present in and through his ministry, one must ask what it could be...Surely the most straightforward answer would be that Wisdom had come in person.
Matthew 23:34//Luke 11:49 Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city... Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and persecute...
In Matthew's version, Jesus says, "I will send them prophets..." Luke specifically identified Jesus with Wisdom.
The Gospel of John identifies Jesus with Wisdom in a number of ways. Jesus speaks in long discourses characteristic of Wisdom (Prov. 8, Sir. 24, Wisdom of Solomon 1-11). John's emphasis on "signs" mirrors that of the Wisdom of Solomon, and John uses the same Greek word for them (semeion). Finally, John's overwhelming use of the term "Father" (115 times) matches the emphasis on that title in the late Wisdom literature.
John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
The prologue to John's gospel makes a precise identification of Christ with Wisdom, describing the Logos' Christological role (1:3), its role as the ground of human knowledge (1:9) and as the mediator of special revelation (1:14) -- the three roles of the pre-existent Logos/Wisdom. In calling Jesus God's Logos, John was affirming Jesus' eternality and ontological oneness with the Father by connecting him with the Wisdom tradition.
Now consider these parallels with John's prologue and the Wisdom literature:
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Wisdom of Solomon 9:9 With you (God) is Wisdom, who knows your works and was present when you made the world.
John 1:4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
Proverbs 8:35 For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the LORD.
John 1:11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not. (1:11)
1 Enoch 42:2 Wisdom went forth to make her dwelling among the children of men, and found no dwelling place.
John 1:14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
Sirach 24:8 The one who created me assigned a place for my tent. And he said: 'Make your dwelling in Jerusalem.'
John 6:27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.
Wisdom of Solomon 16:26 On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval. So that your children, whom you loved, O Lord, might learn that it is not the production of crops that feeds humankind but that your word sustains those who trust in you.
John 14:15 If you love me, you will obey what I command.
Wisdom of Solomon 16:18 And love of Wisdom is the keeping of her laws, and giving heed to her laws is assurance of immortality.
The letters of Paul continue the identification of Jesus with God's Wisdom. 1 Corinthians 1:24, 30 is the most clear: Christ is explicitly identified as "the power of God and the wisdom of God." Elsewhere in 1 Cor. of relevance:
Colossians 1:15-18 Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.
This passage is full of allusions to the Wisdom literature. Note the following parallels:
Colossians 1:15a He is the image of the invisible God...
Wisdom of Solomon 7:26 (Wisdom is) a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness.
Colossians 1:15b ...the firstborn over all creation.
Philo's reference to Wisdom as the "firstborn son" and offspring of God. For more on this matter see here.
Colossians 1:16a ...by him all things were created..
Wisdom of Solomon 1:14 "for he created all things that they might exist"
Sirach 1:4 and Philo refer to Wisdom as the "master workman" of creation.
Colossians 1:17b He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Wisdom of Solomon 1:7 ...that which holds all things together knows what is said...
The book of Hebrews, while never identifying Jesus directly as Wisdom, does indicate an equivalence. In verse 3 the rare Greek term apaygasma is used to describe Jesus as the "brightness of God's glory," just as the word is used in Wisdom of Solomon (7:25-26) to describe Wisdom's radiance. Hebrews ascribes to Jesus the same functions that the Philonic/Alexandrian Wisdom literature assigned to Wisdom: mediator of divine revelation, agent and sustainer of creation, and reconciler of God and man (Wisdom of Solomon 7:21-8:1). For more on this word see here.
Hebrews also says of Jesus what Philo says of the Logos. Philo referred to Wisdom as the "charakter of the eternal Word" just as Hebrews uses this term of Jesus. Hebrews also "asserts the superiority of Jesus over a group of individuals and classes that served mediatorial functions in Alexandrian thought," including angels, Moses, Melchizidek, and the high priest. Finally, in Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom, though universal in scope, by God's decree rests in Jerusalem, and is regarded as having the role of the priesthood: "In the holy tabernacle I ministered before him, and so I was established in Zion." (24:10) Compare this proclamation with what is found in the Book of Hebrews chapters 3-10 describing Christ as our "high priest" ministering at a heavenly tabernacle.
The statue of Mary succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus. The deification of heroes changed into the canonization of saints. The Mythologists had gods for everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything. All of these are much later developments of a church syncretizing in the late 2nd-5th century -- having nothing to do with the origins of the movement and not proving anything except by an illicit "guilt by association" spread across centuries and geography. Furthermore, the replacement of Diana with Mary and heroes with saints is appealed to fallaciously; it is hardly as though ANY society or movement would not have heroes or leaders as a simple practical matter. This is like Paine claiming a parallel in that both Jesus and Muhammed had eyes, a nose, and a mouth. The church became as crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other; and Rome was the place of both. Not the original place; what of Jerusalem? In any event, this is a meaningless point to make, as noted The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud. This chapter obviously merely laid some groundwork, but it is telling of Paine's methodology and lack of scholarship -- not all his culpability, living as early as he did -- in AR as a whole.
CHAPTER III - CONCERNING THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST, AND HIS
HISTORY.
NOTHING that is here said can apply, even with the most distant
disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and an
amiable man. The morality that he preached and practiced was of the most
benevolent kind; and though similar systems of morality had been preached by
Confucius, and by some of the Greek philosophers, many years before, by the
Quakers since, and by many good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by
any. These few kind words are to Paine's credit, but we'd like to know why he should be obliged to believe anything recorded about Jesus as it is all hearsay. How does he know praise is not due to someone else? How does he know Jesus was actually virtuous and amiable? Paine obviously accepts what he wants to accept, and rejects what he wants to reject, and that is his real reason for his attitude.
Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or anything else. Not a line of what is called the New Testament is of his writing. Which is not a problem, other than by Paine's graphocentric bigotry; as we note in the links above:
"P." wrote in recently and brought me this inquiry based on his discussions with a skeptic of Christianity:
The question XXXX has asked me several times is why didn't Jesus write down a gospel for himself instead of relying on others to record his words. I have never found a discussion of this in apologetics anywhere.
This is actually a very good question, but it is one that does not take into account the social background data. There are two factors that should be taken into account:
Ancient literacy was no higher than 10 percent at any given time, so the primary method of communication was oral. Memory capabilities were correspondingly much stronger, so that it can not be said that oral transmission was unreliable, or that because something was important, it "ought to have been written down". Neither Jesus nor anyone else in ancient society would share this modern sentiment. (For more on this, see here. For a full overview of the ancient view of writing as a less-trusted "supplement" to orality, see Tony Lentz, Orality and Literacy in Hellenic Greece.)
This point is further elucidated by Achtemeier in his article "Omne Verbatim Sonat" (JBL, 109, 1990, 3-27). He stresses that in antiquity the "normal mode of composition" was to dictate to a scribe. "Dictation was recommended over writing in one's own hand by Dio Chrysostem, and famous personages, we are told, were regularly accompanied by a slave prepared at any time to take dictation" -- even if they were on horseback, or in the public baths! Though there was some disagreement on this preference (Quintillian preferred writing himself to dictation), it is clear that Jesus "doing it himself" was not a requirement.
Thus the general objection that Jesus did not write anything misses the point, because it anachronistically assumes a modern view of the importance of writing upon ancient peoples. (I have had a skeptical respondent who tendered the objection that if Jesus had written things himself, it would have meant less controversy over what he said! This is rather naive -- I can see the Jesus Seminar offering just as many obfuscations ["It was added by a later writer."] as now! And, what an overly optimistic assessment of human nature!) But if that is not enough (as it should be), then ask your friend this: Why didn't Socrates write anything down himself, either?
The history of him is altogether the work of other people; and as to the account given of his resurrection and ascension, it was the necessary counterpart to the story of his birth. Didn't he just say this? Paine sets the tone for modern Skeptics who endlessly repeat the same point over and over 657 different ways. His historians, having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground. Whatever point THAT was meant to prove. If Jesus had indeed been divine, what does Paine expect? That Jesus would leave Palestine by taking a hike into the woods?
The wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told, exceeds everything that went before it. The first part, that of the miraculous conception, was not a thing that admitted of publicity; and therefore the tellers of this part of the story had this advantage, that though they might not be credited, they could not be detected. They could not be expected to prove it, because it was not one of those things that admitted of proof, and it was impossible that the person of whom it was told could prove it himself. Which makes it impossible or unhistorical? Not at all. Paine never could step that far, and this smear of character was the best he could do. In any event Paine mistakenly thinks of the virginal conception as a first-order proof, which as we have noted, it is not and was never meant to be.
But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his ascension through the air, is a thing very different, as to the evidence it admits of, to the invisible conception of a child in the womb. The resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken place, admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noon day, to all Jerusalem at least. A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal; Skeptics like to repeat this sort of line endlessly, but it is a bit of trickery at the core. The appeal that we need to see the resurrection and ascension directly strikes a chord of emotion and the desire to remain with what we prefer to believe; yet the ability to sift through the relevant questions -- "Would this have been able to be fabricated?"; "Is Christianity something that could have survived without sufficient evidence?" -- provides the same equity as does access to the resurrected Jesus in person. Why not? If Paine wished to be particular, we could give him access to the resurrected Jesus, and he could remain stubborn, as many moderns do, and adopt some hypothesis of a Jesus who never died, or of an evil twin Jesus, or of a space alien Jesus. This is really polemical trickery, for Paine only had to go far enough to say that X did not happen, so he needn't believe. He implies he would believe with X, yet why take his word for it? In the end Paine is simply being spoiled and demanding, as though he was so special that he deserved his own dog and pony show. the public visibility of this last related act was the only evidence that could give sanction to the former part, the whole of it falls to the ground, because that evidence never was given. Instead of this, a small number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are introduced as proxies for the whole world, to say they saw it, and all the rest of the world are called upon to believe it. Very well, we ask: Then what happened to the body of Jesus? Paine never offers an answer. He also forgets that Paul notes over 500 persons as proxies, and of course comes nowhere near addressing any sort of apologetic for the resurrection, which means his work here is thoroughly inadequate to task. But it appears that Thomas did not believe the resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I; and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas. The problem is, Thomas comes off as a stubborn fool for disbelieving. He had travelled with his cohorts for years, seen Jesus perform miracles, knew he could raise the dead. He did not disbelieve in the possibility of resurrection, for it was an accepted belief of the Jews. So what worthy excuse was there for his disbelief? None at all. If anything Paine's example of Thomas proves exactly what he does not want it to -- that the problem is not what demonstrations one has performed, but what orientation one prefers to follow.
It is in vain to attempt to palliate or disguise this matter. The story, so far as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it. Easy to say, obviously, and of no worth in terms of actually saying it is fraud. Paine took pleasure in vague generalities and accusations, just as modern Skeptics do; he never tells us what these "marks" are or what qualified him to say that they were there.. Who were the authors of it is as impossible for us now to know, as it is for us to be assured that the books in which the account is related were written by the persons whose names they bear. This gets deeply into questions of determining authorship which Paine, no less most than modern Skeptics, said nothing about. As we say in that article:
The "anonymity" of the Gospels authors is something that many skeptics hang their hat upon. Yet I have noted that in making this argument, critics never explain to us how their arguments would work if applied equally to secular ancient documents whose authenticity and authorship is never (or is no longer) questioned, but are every bit as "anonymous" in the same sense that the Gospels are. If it is objected that the Gospel authors nowhere name themselves in their texts -- and this is a very common point to be made, even among traditionalists -- then this applies equally to numerous other ancient documents, such as Tacitus' Annals. Authorial attributions are found not in the text proper, but in titles, just like the Gospels. Critics may claim that these were added later to the Gospels, but they need to provide textual evidence of this (i.e., an obvious copy of Matthew with no title attribution to Matthew, and dated earlier or early enough to suggest that it was not simply a late, accidental ommission), and at any rate, why is it not supposed that the titles were added later to the secular works as well?
In order for readers to appreciate the magnitude of this situation, I would like to present here a listing of external evidences for the authorship of the works of Tacitus. I wish to thank Roger Pearse for helpfully sending me copies of relevant pages from the works of the Tacitean scholar Mendell, from Tacitus: The Man and His Work. Mendell surveys evidence for knowledge of Tacitus throughout history; we will only look at evidence up to the sixth century (for reasons noted in Mendell below). In doing this we would challenge potential respondents to compare this record to that of the Gospels. We will present Mendell's comments and intersperse our own.
THE Annals were probably "published" in 116, the last of the works of Tacitus to appear. Only Pliny of Tacitus' contemporaries mentions him, and his writings and the evidence of subsequent use up to the time of Boccaccio is slight. It is not true, however, that Tacitus and his writings were practically unknown. They were neglected----possibly, in part at least, because of his strong republican bias on the one hand and because, on the other, the church fathers felt him to be unfair to Christianity. Vopiscus in his life of the emperor Tacitus (chapter 10) indicates the state of affairs in the third century: "Cornelium Tacitum, scriptorem historiae Augustae, quod parentem suum eundem diceret, in omnibus bibliothecis conlocari iussit neve lectorum incuria deperiret, librum per an-nos singulos decies scribi publicitus evicos archiis iussit et in bibliothecis poni" (the text is obviously corrupt in the reading evicos archiis).
Nevertheless, Tacitus is mentioned or quoted in each century down to and including the sixth. In fact, the seventh and eighth are the only centuries that have as yet furnished no evidence of knowing him. The following are the known references to Tacitus or use of Tacitean material after the day of Tacitus and Pliny until the time of Boccaccio. The material was well collected in 1888 and published at Wetzler by Emmerich Cornelius, but a considerable amount of new material has turned up from time to time since.
About the middle of the second century Ptolemy published his Gewgrafikh& 'Ufh&ghsij. In 2. 11. 12 (ed. C. Muller, Paris, 1883) he lists in succession along the northern shore of Germany the towns of Flhou&m, and Siatouta&nda. The latter name occurs nowhere else and has a dubious sound. The explanation is to be found in Tacitus, Ann. 4. 72, 73: "Rapti qui tributo aderant milites et patibulo adfixi; Olennius infensos fuga prae-venit, receptus castello, cui nomen Flevum; et haud spernenda illic civium sociorumque manus litora Oceani praesidebat." The governor of lower Germany takes prompt action, the account of which winds up: "utrumque exercitum Rheno devectum Frisiis intulit, soluto iam castelli obsidio et ad sua tutanda degressis rebellibus." The source of Ptolemy's mistake is obvious.
Note here that Ptolemy's obvious use of Tacitus is taken as a signal of the Annals existing. This is in stark contrast to how quotes in patristic writers from the Gospels are excused asway as "floating, independent tradition" rather than evidence of the Gospels. Note as well that Ptolemy does not name Tacitus. We still do not have an attribution of authorship to work with some 40-50 years after the writing.
It is hard to believe that Cassius Dio (who published shortly after A.D. 200) did not know at least the Agricola. In 38. 50 and 66. 20 he mentions Gnaeus Julius Agricola as having proved Britain to be an island and in the later instance tells the story of the fugitive Usipi. If we make allowance for the method of Tacitus, which leaves his account far from clear, and for the use of a different language by Dio, there can be little if any doubt that Tacitus is the source for Dio. We know also of no other possible source today. The last part of the section, dealing with Agricola's return and death, confirms the conclusion that Dio drew from Tacitus, and it sounds as though Tacitus had left the impression he desired.
Notice we still do not have an attribution, and we are now 80 and more years past the publication of these works by Tacitus. We are already at or past the number of years Papias was from the Gospels.
In the third century Tertullian cites Tacitus with a hostile tone. He had spoken without respect of the Jews and had implied that the Christians were an undesirable sect of the Jews. It is not a surprise, therefore, to have Tertullian (early third century) refer to him as ille mendaciorum loquacissimus. The Apologist is defending the Christians against the charge that they worshiped an ass. The origin of this scandal he ascribes to Tacitus, Hist. 5. 3, 9. Apologeticus 16...
This is the first direct attribution of something to Tacitus -- apparently over 100 years later! Tertullian also cited Tacitus in two other places.
Lactantius, in the time of Diocletian, is at least once (Div. inst. 1. 18. 8) somewhat reminiscent of Tacitean style but that is as far as it is safe to go in claiming him as a reader of Tacitus, in spite of something of a resemblance between Lactantius 1. 11, 12 and Germ. 40.
At about the same date, Eumenius of Autun, in his Panegyricus ad Constantinum 9, quite clearly has Agric. 12 before him. He follows Tacitus in the error of thinking that the nights are always short, and he assigns as reasons the same that the Roman had...Not only the actual quotation from Tacitus is of interest but the careful substitution of synonyms.
Vopiscus, still in the fourth century, cites Tacitus with Livy, Sallust, and Trogus as the greatest of Roman historians...Ammianus Marcellinus, about 400, published his history, which began where Tacitus left off, indicating a knowledge at least of what Tacitus had written. At about the same time Sulpicius Severus of Aquitaine wrote his Chronicorum libri and, in 2. 28. 2 and 2. 29. 2, used Tacitus, Ann. 15. 37 and 44 as his source. On the detailed matter of Nero's marriage with Pythagoras and the punishment of the Christians the verbal resemblances make it impossible to think that he was drawing on any other source....Jerome in his commentary on Zacchariah 14. 1, 2 (3, p. 914) cites Tacitus: "Cornelius quoque [i.e. as well as Josephus] Tacitus, qui post Augustum usque ad mortem Domitiani vitas Caesarum triginta voluminibus exaravit." He gives no proof of having read Tacitus----he may not even have seen his works at all----but he did know of a tradition in which the thirty books were numbered consecutively. Claudian cannot be safely claimed as a reader of Tacitus in spite of his suggestive references to Tiberius and Nero. 8, Fourth Consulship of Honorius...Servius, on the other hand, at the end of the fourth century, while his reference is to a lost part of Tacitus, evidently had read the text. Hegesippus made a free Latin version of Josephus' Jewish War with independent additions, many of which seem to come from Tacitus' Histories. An example is 4. 8: "denique neque pisces neque adsuetas aquis et laetas mergendi usu aves." Compare Hist. 5.6: "neque vento impellitur neque pisces aut suetas aquis volucres patitur." There is a certain studied attempt at variation of wording without concealment of the source. Of the fifth-century writers, two, Sidonius Apollinaris and Orosius, have left evidence of considerable familiarity with Tacitus as well as respect for him as a writer. In Ep. 4. 22. 2 Sidonius makes a pun on the name Tacitus. After comparing himself and Leo to Pliny and Tacitus he says that should the latter return to life and see how eloquent Leo was in the field of narrative, he would become wholly Tacitus. The name as he gives it is Gaius Cornelius Tacitus. Again in Ep. 4. 14. 1 he quotes Gaius Tacitus as an ancestor of his friend Polemius. He was, says Sidonius, a consular in the time of the Ulpians: "Sub verbis cuiuspiam Germanici ducis in historia sua rettulit dicens : cum Vespasiano mihi vetus amicitia" etc...The citations in Orosius are naturally quite different from these casual references and general estimates. Orosius is always after material for argument, and it is the content rather than the style that interests him. He refers to Tacitus explicitly and at length. He compares critically the statements of Cornelius Tacitus and Pompeius Trogus and again of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Josephus. The quotations and citations from Tacitus are all in the Adversus paganos and all from the Histories. In 1. 5. 1 Orosius says: "Ante annos urbis conditae MCLX confinem Arabiae regionem quae tune Pentapolis vocabatur arsisse penitus igne caeleste inter alios etiam Cornelius Tacitus refert, qui sic ait: Haud procul inde campi . . . vim frugiferam perdidisse. Et cum hoc loco nihil de incensis propter peccata hominum civitatibus quasi ignarus expresserit, paulo post velut oblitus consilii subicit et dicit: Ego sicut inclitas . . . cor-rumpi reor." The quotation is from Hist. 5.7 and, in spite of some interesting variants, it is reasonably exact. The same is true of his quotation of Hist. 5. 3 in Adv. pag. 1. 10. 1...
Cassiodorus is a sixth-century writer who seems to have used Tacitus as source material. He does not, however, seem to know much about his source, for he speaks of "a certain Cornelius"; but he draws on Germania 45...Perhaps a hundred years or less after Cassiodorus, Jordanes wrote his De origine actibusque getarum which he took largely from Cassiodorus' history of the Goths. That one or the other of these two must have known Agric. 10 is shown by the following passage in Jordanes (2. 12, 13): "Mari tardo circumfluam quod nec remis facile impellentibus cedat, nec ventorum flatibus intumescat, credo quia remotae longius terrae causas motibus negant. Quippe illic latius quam usquam aequor extenditur . . . Noctem quoque clariorem in extrema eius parte menima quam Cornelius etiam annalium scriptor enarrat. . . Labi vero per earn multa quam maxima relabique flumina gemmas margaritasque volventia." The textual confusion memma quam is usually taken to come from minimamque but we should expect brevemque. The very last item is probably from Mela. The Scholiast to Juvenal 2. 99 and 14. 102 refers to the Histories, ascribing them in the one case to Cornelius, in the other to Cornelius Tacitus. The first note is as follows: "Hunc incomparabilis vitae bello civili Vitellius vicit apud Bebriacum campum. Horum bellum scripsit Cornelius, scripsit et Pompeius Planta, qui sit Bebriacum vicum a Cremona vicesimo lapide." The second is a twofold description of Moses: (a) "sacerdos vel rex eius gentis"; (b) "aut ipsius quidem religionis inventor, cuius Cornelius etiam Tacitus meminit" (cf. Hist. 5. 3).
Comparably speaking, this evidence is vanishingly small compared to the incredible number of attestations and attributions by patristic writers, some few earlier than (but many as late as) those listed for Tacitus above. How can someone dealing with the evidence fairly claim to be sure of Tacitus' authorship of his various works (where such external evidence is concerned) and dismiss the Gospels, which have far better external evidence? I have recently checked a book titled Texts and Tranmission (Clarendon Press, 1993) which records similar data for other ancient works. Throughout the book classic works from around the time of the NT whose authorship and date no one questions (though some have textual issues, just like the NT) are recorded as having the earliest copy between 5th and 9th century, earliest attributions at the same period (for example, Celsus' De medicina is attested no earlier than 990 AD, and then not again until 1300!), and having so little textual support that if they were treated as the NT is, all of antiquity would be reduced to a blank wall of paranoid unknowingness. If the Gospels are treated consistenly, there will be no question at all about their provenance, but that is clearly the last thing critics want to do.
Not that lack of a name on a text automatically equates with anonymous authorship anyway: In this era prior to publishing, and just prior to the advent of the codex, the equivalent to a spine or dust jacket was a tag on the outside of a scroll identifying the work in question -- since there would be no other concrete way to discern what was inside a scroll and differentiate it from other scrolls (other than external appearance). Whenever and by whomever the Gospels were written, it would not be left "unauthorized" or "unidentified" if for no other reasons than practical ones: It would need a title/descriptor at the very least, especially if it was intended to be read by more than one person or small group of people. Hengel notes [Heng.4G, 48]:
Anonymous works were relatively rare and must have been given a title in libraries. They were often given the name of a pseudepigraphical author....Works without titles easily got double or multiple titles when names were given to them in different libraries.
Since even critics admit that the Gospels were intended for a wide audience (at the very least, a "community" of believers) they must explain why these practical factors would be irrelevant and allow a Gospel to remain "anonymous" and then later not be attributed to multiple authors. Skeptics and critics would have a better case if they could find a copy of Matthew that is instead attributed to, say, Andrew, or to no one at all; or a copy of what is obviously Mark that is attributed to Barnabas. But the titles are unanimous and unequivocal -- there is no variation in them at all, and critics have also not provided any examples of Gospel texts with no title, and cannot: "There is no trace of such anonymity [concerning the Gospels]," and the testimony to their authorship is unanimous across broad geographic and chronological lines [Heng.4G, 54]. It is hard to see why this evidence is not enough for the Gospels when far, far less is accepted for secular works and their attribution.
Notwithstanding such titular subscriptions: How do secular historians determine authorship (and date) of an ancient document? Since we have started with Tacitus' Annals, we'll work with that example where we can. (As we have noted elsewhere, in the 19th century there were some who alleged that all of Tacitus' works were late forgeries -- in spite of the titles attached to them! -- Tacitean studies has long left that issue in the dust, and if the evidence used by secular historians is good enough for Tacitus, then it should be good enough for the Gospels.)
Interior corroborative evidence. Needless to say, if a work of Tacitus tells us that Nero opened a refrigerator, took out a burrito, and stuck it in the microwave oven, we have some cause to doubt a second-century author like Tacitus was responsible for that material! On the other hand, one would also expect that Tacitus would write his works like a government official of Rome would write; he would have a high level of education, decent grammar, and a sophisticated tone suitable to the Roman upper-crust. He would not have a work full of spelling errors and country-bumpkin mistakes; he would get governmental terms right (but maybe not, say, farming terms); he would exhibit a certain attitude common to a member of high-class Roman society.
We will see that some of the individual objections to the Gospels center upon supposed words and/or concepts that are supposed not have existed when the authors wrote their work. We will also see that some objections argue that a certain individual would not write a certain way. Of course, if there are no word- or concept-anachronisms, and if the work shows signs of having been written in a style that the named author would write, then this is positive evidence for that person's authorship. A number of NT commentators (even in the traditionalist camp) tend to treat such evidence as less than definitive; I would ask, if it is good enough for secular scholars to use as confirmation, why not here also?
External corroborative evidence. If Tacitus is referred to by other people, or if he is found in other records, and if others attribute a work to him, then this is clear testimony that he wrote the document in question (see above). On the other hand, if some writer at some point (the closer to the time of Tacitus, the "better") either denies that Tacitus wrote a given work attributed to him, or else attributes (without reference to Tacitus) the work to another, we may have reason to suspect Tacitus' authorship. At the same time, if the works of Tacitus are found referred to in other documents, this may be taken as evidence for the date of Tacitus' works, in accordance with the dates of the works quoted, again as noted above. (Absence of such quotes would not necessarily prove a later date, but it would add suspicions if other reasons to be suspicious were present.)
In light of these considerations -- which offer nothing radical or new -- we may now ask these general questions:
With these general considerations, we now offer these mini-essays on each Gospel.
The best surviving evidence we now have respecting this affair is the Jews. They are regularly descended from the people who lived in the time this resurrection and ascension is said to have happened, and they say 'it is not true.' Now this is a vast inconsistency. Paine has just told us that we can't accept hearsay from 2, 3, or 4 passes down; but he takes the word of Jews of his time, several hundred steps away?!? It has long appeared to me a strange inconsistency to cite the Jews as a proof of the truth of the story. It is just the same as if a man were to say, I will prove the truth of what I have told you, by producing the people who say it is false. What line of reasoning Paine refers to here I do not know, and he does not quote any person who uses it. Perhaps it was similar to those who appealed to the survival of the Jews as proof of God (not of Christianity). If so it is a false comparison.
That such a person as Jesus Christ existed, and that he was crucified, which was the mode of execution at that day, are historical relations strictly within the limits of probability. He preached most excellent morality, and the equality of man; but he preached also against the corruptions and avarice of the Jewish priests, and this brought upon him the hatred and vengeance of the whole order of priest-hood. The accusation which those priests brought against him was that of sedition and conspiracy against the Roman government, to which the Jews were then subject and tributary; and it is not improbable that the Roman government might have some secret apprehension of the effects of his doctrine as well as the Jewish priests; neither is it improbable that Jesus Christ had in contemplation the delivery of the Jewish nation from the bondage of the Romans. Between the two, however, this virtuous reformer and revolutionist lost his life. We do wonder what Paine would have made of modern Christ-mythers. It is an irony that Earl Dohetry has published under the imprint of Age of Reason publications -- referring to a document that staunchly disagrees with his central thesis.
CHAPTER IV - OF THE BASES OF CHRISTIANITY.
IT is upon this plain
narrative of facts, together with another case I am going to mention, that the
Christian mythologists, calling themselves the Christian Church, have erected
their fable, which for absurdity and extravagance is not exceeded by anything
that is to be found in the mythology of the ancients.
The ancient mythologists tell us that the race of Giants made war against Jupiter, and that one of them threw a hundred rocks against him at one throw; that Jupiter defeated him with thunder, and confined him afterwards under Mount Etna; and that every time the Giant turns himself, Mount Etna belches fire. It is here easy to see that the circumstance of the mountain, that of its being a volcano, suggested the idea of the fable; and that the fable is made to fit and wind itself up with that circumstance.
The Christian mythologists tell that their Satan made war against the Almighty, who defeated him, and confined him afterwards, not under a mountain, but in a pit. It is here easy to see that the first fable suggested the idea of the second; for the fable of Jupiter and the Giants was told many hundred years before that of Satan. It's not "easy" to see at all; Paine was a precursor here of the Skeptic who makes comparisons by the lowest common denominator method whereby similairties are overplayed or described in similar terms, and differences are ignored or described in amenable terms. As we showed here this is an easy game to play even with real history. On the side, it appears that Paine is mixing up passages from Revelation. Satan was made war against and thrown out of heaven to earth (Rev. 12), but was not locked in a pit until later (Rev. 20 -- in my view, corresponding to 70 AD.) But as we note in that prior article:
Hello. Welcome again to the year 3740. This is Teachminder Phonias J. Futz, and since my revolutionary conclusion that Abraham Lincoln was a myth my students have been scouring literature left from prior to the catastrophe for more evidence to support this thesis. And we have indeed been fortunate, though in ways unexpected. We have uncovered two biographies of one of 20th-century Usa's most popular leaders, J. Fitzgerald Kennedy: John F. Kennedy by Mills, and Jack: A Life Like No Other by Perret. The biographies are in poor condition, but we have gleaned enough information for at least one report which has led us to a new thesis: That many alleged events in the life of Lincoln, as reported in the 20th century, relied on written antecedents recording the life of Kennedy, who lived prior to the time that the most detailed biographies of Lincoln were written.
As I read these Kennedy bios, I noticed echoes of the life of Lincoln, especially in the detailed bio of Lincoln by Donald -- parallels between the two men, then between their wives, then between their surrounding characters and persons. Both Lincoln and Kennedy demonstrated a fascination with civil rights, defense of the nation, and came to a similar end. Sometimes the similarities in accounts obtain even at the level of word choice and minor plot elements. I have come to conclude that writers of Lincoln bios wanted their readers to detect their use of Kennedy -- directly, if not subliminally. But the Lincoln biographers did not steal from these Kennedy biographers or from Kennedy's life; they also transvalued them by making Lincoln look more virtuous and more powerful than Kennedy. However, their imitation was not servile; they used disguises such as altering the vocabulary, varying the order, length, and structure of sentences, improving the content, and generating a series of formal transformations. They were experienced authors who borrowed from many sources (not just Kennedy bios), blending the works as a buzzstripe gathers nectar. And interestingly, it appears that readers in the 20th century were blind to this important aspect of the Lincoln biographers' project.
We will have many examples of this to present as our research continues, but for now we will use as an exemplar the most significant -- the parallels between Lincoln and Kennedy in their deaths. We believe that we will show without a doubt that Lincoln's life, as recorded and reworked in the 20th century, was built upon the foundation of Kennedy. We will begin by explaining a few of the parallels in detail and their significance, and then compile all of the parallels in columns.
Warnings Against Their Travel. On the day of his assassination, several of Lincoln's advisers "urged him not to go to the theater. Before going on a mission to Richmond, Lincoln's regular bodyguard, Lamon, begged him, "Promise me you will not go out at night while I am gone, particularly to the theater." Lamon issued such warnings so often, however, that he merely replied that he would "do the best" he could. Stanton, one of Lincoln's aides, "repeatedly warned Lincoln against mingling with promiscuous crowds at the theater." This night was regarded as most dangerous becase of rumors that General Grant, the hated military leader under Lincoln, would be joining Lincoln.
In the time before his assassination, Kennedy received several warnings not to visit the place of his demise -- Dallas, Texas. Mills: "The president has been warned over and over again to stay away from Dallas." Representaive Hale Boggs thought Kennedy would be going into "a hornet's nest." Senator William Fulbright warned: "Dallas is a very dangerous place." An editor of a Texas newspaper said that Kennedy would "not get through this without something happening to him." Governor Connally recommended that Kennedy not visit Dallas.
It should be noted that the timing of these events is significant. Kennedy made his visit shortly before the holiday known as Thanksgiving, a celebration of the founding of Usa. Lincoln biographers copied and transvalued this event by having Lincoln killed on the Good Friday holiday, just prior to Easter. Kennedy died just before a holiday commemorating the birth of the nation, but Lincoln was to be associated with a holiday linked to the death of Jesus Christ -- the only way one could conceivably transvalue such timing.
Ironic loss of protection. Lincoln asked several people to come with him. One of these was Thomas Eckert, a man so strong that he broke several cast-iron pokers by striking them across his left arm. But Eckert was needed elsewhere and declined the invitation.
Seating arrangements. At the Ford Theater a special arrangement had been made for Lincoln's party. Lincoln and his party sat in a presidential box, a balcony seat. The box was actually two boxes, but a partition had been removed to make way for Lincoln's full party. Lincoln preferred a rocking chair to the normal seating and the brother of the theater owner provided one. The box was so high that most of the audience could not see the President.
Kennedy rode in a vehicle called a Lincoln, manufactured by Ford. It was a custom vehicle, longer than most such models, and had two jump seats. The rear seat rose 10 1/2 inches at the flick of a switch. Also significantly, whereas Kennedy was adored by well-wishers hanging from windows above him, Lincoln was the one above the crowd in his box.
Assassins. The character of the assassins of these men bears some striking similiarities and the stories show signs of editing by Lincoln proponents. Oswald was a ne'er-do-well; it could hardly do to have Lincoln killed by such a humble person, and so Booth was created out of Oswald as a more celebrated version of that nobody. A tip of the hat to Booth's fictional origins can be found in that Oswald hid in a theater after his deed.
It also happens that the assassins injured more than their intended targets. Their weapons were obviously different, owing to the times; Oswald's high-powered rifle would not have been around in Lincoln's time and so was replaced with Booth's derringer and knife, more appropriate weapons for the era. Booth also hailed from the rebellious South, recently put down by Lincoln's Union forces. The atmosphere in the South is highly reminiscent of the atmosphere in Dallas at Kennedy's period, in which racism was prominent and Kennedy's name was booed in classrooms. A handbill distributed in Dallas had a picture of Kennedy and the words WANTED FOR TREASON. Significantly Booth reportedly yelled, "Thus always to tyrants" after shooting Lincoln -- a natural adjustment given that Lincoln had been depicted as being on the "winning" side of a civil war. Finally the danger is made greater for Lincoln as it is shown that there was a greater plot to assassinate others at the same time. The place of John Connally, also wounded when Kennedy was fired upon, is taken in part by Major Rathbone and in part by Lincoln's Secretary of State William Seward, who was nearly killed by one of Booth's co-conspirators.
Miscellaneous. In various ways Lincoln was made to look superior to Kennedy and appear to be a greater hero. Lincoln survived his wound by many hours; Kennedy survived only a short period. Donald is careful to note the opinion of Lincoln's doctors that "the average man could not survive the injury Lincoln had received for more than two hours..." It is also notable that while both men are carried to their place after being shot (Kennedy of course to a hospital, Lincoln not so, owing to the limitations of the time) special note is made that Lincoln was too big for the bed he was placed on.
We will now add impact to our case by placing the parallels in columns. Note that the parallels are dense and sequential:
| Life of Kennedy | Life of Lincoln |
|---|---|
| Kennedy was actively seeking re-election | Lincoln had just achieved re-election |
| Kennedy received warnings not to visit Dallas | Lincoln received warnings not to visit the theater |
| Dallas was a rebellious, racist and hostile place | Lincoln's assassin hailed from a rebellious, racist and hostile area |
| Kennedy was aware of the danger and proceeded with his trip | Lincoln was aware of the danger and proceeded with his trip |
| Kennedy visited Dallas just prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, on a Friday | Lincoln visited the theater just prior to the Easter holiday, on a Friday |
| Kennedy was offered a bulletproof car top, but declined | Lincoln offered to take a strong bodyguard to the theater, who declined |
| Kennedy rode in a Ford vehicle | Lincoln went to Ford's Theater |
| Kennedy's vehicle was equipped with special seating | Lincoln's theater box was equipped with special seating |
| Kennedy was accompanied by his wife and another couple, the Connallys | Lincoln was accompanied by his wife and another couple, the Rathbones |
| Kennedy was cheered and applauded by citizens in the windows above him | Lincoln was cheered and applauded by citizens in the theater below him |
| It was a sunny day in Dallas | It was dark inside the theater |
| An assassin acted alone | An assassin acted with two others |
| Oswald was a nobody, a former military man, member of an opposition group hostile to the nation | Booth was a celebrated actor, handsome, member of an opposition group hostile to the Union |
| Oswald entered the school book depsitory without incident | Booth entered the presidential box without incident |
| Oswald was an employee of the school book depository | Booth was employed in theaters like Ford's theater |
| Oswald shot Kennedy in the back of the head | Booth shot Lincoln in the back of the head |
| Oswald also injured John Connally, who survived | Booth also injured Major Rathbone, who survived |
| Kennedy's opponents in Dallas accused him of treason | Lincoln's opponent Booth accused him or tyranny |
| Those along the street were at first unsure of what had happened | Those in the theater were at first unsure of what had happened |
| The first reporter to see Kennedy, Merriman Smith, thought Kennedy had been fatally wounded | The first doctor to reach the box, Charles Leale, thought Lincoln had been fatally wounded |
| Kennedy slumped toward his wife, who wept bitterly | Lincoln was held upright in his chair by his wife, who wept bitterly |
| Kennedy's wife shouted: "They've killed him!" | Lincoln's wife shouted: "They have shot the President!" |
| Kennedy was carried on a stretcher into a hospital | Lincoln was carried across the street to a house |
| Kennedy's wife, over the protests of a nurse, went in to be in her husband's presence | Lincoln's wife, because of her constant protests, had to be removed from her husband's presence |
| Kennedy died after a half hour | Lincoln died after nine hours |
| Kennedy's assassin was shot by an follower of Kennedy | Lincoln's assassin was shot by follower of Lincoln |
| Kennedy's Vice-President, Lyndon Johnson, was confined for fear that there was a plot to assassinate America's leaders | Lincoln's Vice-President, Andrew Johnson, was also targeted as part of a plot to assassinate America's leaders |
The results of our study are obvious. Lincoln's death was molded upon, yet designed to supersede, the death of Kennedy.
Thus far the ancient and the Christian mythologists differ very little from each other. They differ vastly; they are similar only in the core premise of battles between spiritual beings. Where did Satan throw 100 rocks? Also, it was not God but Michael who defeated Satan, and Satan isn't running any volcano businesses. But the latter have contrived to carry the matter much farther. They have contrived to connect the fabulous part of the story of Jesus Christ with the fable originating from Mount Etna; and, in order to make all the parts of the story tie together, they have taken to their aid the traditions of the Jews; for the Christian mythology is made up partly from the ancient mythology, and partly from the Jewish traditions. This is the Skeptical do-si-do that remains today. They point to vague similarities; you point out vast differences; they shoot back that, well, of course there are differences, the stories evolved and changed and picked up other stuff. It's a makeshift effort from day 1 and never crosses the line from conspiracy theory to showing an actual exchange of ideas or explains the premise of their composition.
The Christian mythologists, after having confined Satan in a pit, were obliged to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the fable. He is then introduced into the garden of Eden in the shape of a snake, or a serpent, As noted, Paine is mixed up; Satan was at least 5000 years from the pit at this timing. You have to ask whether he really did read the Bible carefully. and in that shape he enters into familiar conversation with Eve, who is no ways surprised to hear a snake talk; which means little, as we have no prior history telling us whether she should have been and the issue of this tete-a-tate is, that he persuades her to eat an apple, and the eating of that apple damns all mankind. A rather peculiar and primitive understanding on three counts. First, in terms of what original sin was all about, but excuses for Paine, he had only Augustinian exegetical error to reply upon. Second, nothing in the text says it was an apple; Paine may be mixing the text with popular culture ideas of his day, which says even more about his lack of preparedness to be a worthwhile critic of the text. Third, there was nothing intrinsic in the act of the eating that was a sin -- the sin was disobedience; had the command been (as in Lewis' Perelandra) to not sleep in a certain place, the result would be the same. All other commands from God had benefits; the "eating not from the tree" command was seemingly arbitrary, but was a command simply for the sake of obedience without accessory benefits. True love could not be displayed unless such a command existed to be followed.
After giving Satan this triumph over the whole creation, one would have supposed that the church mythologists would have been kind enough to send him back again to the pit, again, an error on Paine's part or, if they had not done this, that they would have put a mountain upon him, (for they say that their faith can remove a mountain) or have put him under a mountain, as the former mythologists had done, to prevent his getting again among the women, and doing more mischief. Perhaps Paine would have liked to have been put under a mountain after his first sin? Or the second, or third? Not that it matters; who made the choice? Also Paine could have used the counsel of Rihbany on matters of the use of hyperbole by Easterners; but like Western literalists today, Paine seems to have thought faith was meant to literally move mountains. But instead of this, they leave him at large, without even obliging him to give his parole. The secret of which is, that they could not do without him; and after being at the trouble of making him, they bribed him to stay. They promised him ALL the Jews, ALL the Turks by anticipation, nine-tenths of the world beside, and Mahomet into the bargain. After this, who can doubt the bountifulness of the Christian Mythology? It's hard to tell whether Paine is trying to be funny or basing this on some distorted view of the Scriptures. The latter seems to refer to some idea of Satan declaring at Jesus' Temptation that the kingdoms of the civilized world were his -- as if that could be taken at his word to begin with, but without citations from Paine, who is mixed up about the "pit" references and admits later on that he owns no Bible himself -- who can tell? And by extension, how can one refute an argument that hits no known target?
Having thus made an insurrection and a battle in heaven, in which none of the combatants could be either killed or wounded actually, we don't know this at all -- Paine has assumed an epistemic understanding of the nature of angels for which he has no evidence; beyond this how about if the goal was not killing or wounding, but binding??? -- put Satan into the pit -- let him out again -- given him a triumph over the whole creation -- damned all mankind by the eating of an apple, there Christian mythologists bring the two ends of their fable together. As noted, Paine was off base on the pit and the apple, so what of his critique? And is he ready to be slapped in the pit for his sin now, or does he prefer mercy? Moreover, is he trying to say -- he never does say much of anything definitive here! -- that he thinks there would be no sin without that first temptation? They represent this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be at once both God and man, and also the Son of God, celestially begotten, on purpose to be sacrificed, because they say that Eve in her longing had eaten an apple.
CHAPTER V - EXAMINATION IN DETAIL OF THE PRECEDING BASES.
PUTTING
aside everything that might excite laughter by its absurdity, or detestation by
its profaneness, and confining ourselves merely to an examination of the parts,
it is impossible to conceive a story more derogatory to the Almighty, more
inconsistent with his wisdom, more contradictory to his power, than this story
is. Paine mastered well the art of this sort of polemic. Now Skeptics object when I do much the same? Wouldn't this be "ad hominem" if reversed onto Skeptics? Yet it is endorsed when used by Paine, if not directly, by silence in condemnation. Note as well that Paine throws out this conclusion based on what amounts so far to .008% of the Bible. What of my writer-in who complained of me covering only 10% (true or false) of AR? Note finally that he never explains WHY
In order to make for it a foundation to rise upon, the inventors were under the necessity of giving to the being whom they call Satan a power equally as great, if not greater, than they attribute to the Almighty. They have not only given him the power of liberating himself from the pit, false, as noted; what then of Paine's arguments hereafter that depend on this? after what they call his fall, but they have made that power increase afterwards to infinity. I have no idea where Paine gets such a notion, or of notions of Satan's omnipresence, etc. below. Perhaps he is overreading then-present ideas of demonic agency. Before this fall they represent him only as an angel of limited existence, as they represent the rest. After his fall, he becomes, by their account, omnipresent. He exists everywhere, and at the same time. He occupies the whole immensity of space. Again, no idea where Paine got this silly idea.
Not content with this deification of Satan, they represent him as defeating by stratagem, in the shape of an animal of the creation, all the power and wisdom of the Almighty. They represent him as having compelled the Almighty to the direct necessity either of surrendering the whole of the creation to the government and sovereignty of this Satan, or of capitulating for its redemption by coming down upon earth, and exhibiting himself upon a cross in the shape of a man. Again, it is hard to say where Paine gets this; he never quotes the Bible text, or even any theologians, that say this. "Compelled" is never used anywhere. The choice is reckoned as a free one by God performed out of love.
Had the inventors of this story told it the contrary way, that is, had they represented the Almighty as compelling Satan to exhibit himself on a cross in the shape of a snake, as a punishment for his new transgression, the story would have been less absurd, less contradictory. But, instead of this they make the transgressor triumph, and the Almighty fall. Practically speaking we address a related idea here and Glenn Miller does here. If freedom means failure, Paine was on the wrong side of the American Revolution.
That many good men have believed this strange fable, and lived very good lives under that belief (for credulity is not a crime) is what I have no doubt of. In the first place, they were educated to believe it, and they would have believed anything else in the same manner. Standard Skeptical Plea #1: "They were born that way, and that is why they believed." The same could be said of members of a political system, as well as Skepticism, but somehow that never comes out. Nor does it constitute proof of failure, though Paine is not explicitly making this appeal. There are also many who have been so enthusiastically enraptured by what they conceived to be the infinite love of God to man, in making a sacrifice of himself, that the vehemence of the idea has forbidden and deterred them from examining into the absurdity and profaneness of the story. Standard Skeptical Plea #2: "They believe because of emotion." Yet how many Skeptics have gone their way -- and will not admit it -- because of the emotional distaste they found for religion? They may well back it up later with arguments -- and so can we. The more unnatural anything is, the more is it capable of becoming the object of dismal admiration. As yet Paine didn't do, and never did, enough legwork and analysis to show that what he was critiquing was "unnatural" -- essentially he has plopped a few arguments, partly misinformed, called them absurd by assertion, and proceeded from there. It was, and has continued to be, symptomatic of freethinking arrogance to suppose that a few lines of text is enough to overturn such complex ideas.
When the church mythologists established their system, they collected all the
writings they could find, and managed them as they pleased. Yes, this is the source for the many ignorant statements Skeptics make about the canonizing process, rendered totally false here. It is telling that Skeptics take this word as authoritative rather than consult scholars like Metzger who have known their business. Note as well that Paine recites none of the history showing his "managed as they pleased" paradigm to be true. It is tempting to suggest that he didn't know anything about it, or else read a few pages about it, decided it was not worth the trouble, and created this description ad hoc. As we note in our article:
Having a specialty interest in literature, my personal view of the canon is arrived at in what some
would consider an unusual manner. What I have read of the so-called "non-canonical" books
indicates to me that there is an obvious literary difference between what they are and what the
canonical books are. I can see a difference, in the way they are written, and I attribute that
difference to the influence of the Holy Spirit. I do not suppose that most other people can see the
literary differences as well, and in the same way as I do, and I would not try to convince them of
the differences. Moreover, as those who have read my essay on Inerrancy and Human Ignorance will realize, I
do not consider belief in inerrancy to be essential to salvation. I do not even think that it is
necessary to believe in a fixed canon (although I do). Thus, it should make little difference to the
non-believer, in my mind, whether God had anything to do with the formation of the canon or not.
The basic claims of Christianity are still there in our faces, canon or no canon. The anecdote above, indeed, reveals the pointlessness of arguing about the canon. The natural
human tendency towards syncretism, and the application of personally-preferred truths to the
minimization of those found less comfortable, is inescapable, especially in our modern, post-modern environment. Whether God had a hand in the
selection and forming of the canon, or whether it was just a random assortment thrown together
by the winds of history, the result will be the same: There will always be those, believer and
non-believer alike, who will take mental pen in hand and "cross out" the parts of the Bible (or any
set of ideas, for that matter) that they find uncomfortable, or add on things that will personally give them a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. In a sense, we each form our own canon of acceptable ideas; we each have our own "apocrypha" of marginal thoughts, and our own collection of ideas which we discard into the void, dismissing them from our canon of thought entirely. Resistance to a fixed set of ideas, perceived as limiting our freedom to do as we please, is as old a tendency as humanity itself. However, if we believe in the inspiration of the Bible, then it is also reasonable to assume God's
hand in the matter of the compiliation of the canon. Although skeptical of many traditional
positions on the canon, McDonald rightly perceives that "(t)hose who would argue for the
inerrancy of scripture logically should also claim the same infallibility for the churches of the fourth and fifth centuries, whose decisions and historical circumstances have left us with our present Bible." [MacD.FormCB, 255] One cannot sensibly argue that God inspired certain books of the Bible and then allowed us to mix in books with it that were not inspired. It was either all inspired at its origination, or none of it at all, other than at a basic human level of inspiration - and though, thanks to transcription errors and the like, we have some chaff mixed in with the wheat at present, the ambiguity that is reality at the textual variant level does NOT affect our position on the canon level. This is all preparatory, of course, to our present work of the formation of the NT canon. We shall cover the matter of the OT canon in this article. We also recommend for this subject Glenn Miller's ongoing series on canonicity, which studies the impact of the OT canon model upon the NT canon formation.CHAPTER VI - OF THE TRUE THEOLOGY.
Paine here only provided a couple of transitional statements with no arguments as such. We move to Ch. 7.
CHAPTER VII - EXAMINATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
THESE books,
beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelations, (which, by the bye, is a
book of riddles that requires a revelation to explain it) I of course nailed Paine for his bigotry here in calling Revelation a "book of riddles" -- no regard for apocalyptic literature and those who understood and appreciated it is to be found here! Much less any attempt at exegesis of Revelation (which he wrongly spells with an S at the end) as we do here are, we are told, the
word of God. It is, therefore, proper for us to know who told us so, that we may
know what credit to give to the report. The answer to this question is, that
nobody can tell, except that we tell one another so. The case, however,
historically appears to be as follows:
Objections on the matter of the canon are seldom encountered, but there are two general categories that we can expect to encounter when considering the NT canon:
Such objections, when encountered, should be taken seriously ONLY if the arguer can offer some reason why the competing view or book itself ought to be taken seriously. They should also demonstrate some knowledge of the form and content of the book in question. Simply throwing titles in the air and shouting, "Why was/wasn't THIS in the canon, huh???" is not a sufficient form of argument; nor is pointing to this or that church somewhere and asking why they include a particular book in the canon and others do not. Without knowing the history behind such inclusions or exclusions, the argument is little more than parade confetti.
What factors decided the formation of the NT canon? Far from being an arbitrary process, the formation of the canon was the result of carefully-weighed choices over time by concerned church officials and members. Later votes on the canon were merely the most definitive steps taken at the end of a long and careful, sometimes difficult, process. Grant [Gran.FormNT, 10] notes that the NT canon was...
...not the product of official assemblies or even of the studies of a few theologians. It reflects and expresses the ideal self-understanding of a whole religious movement which, in spite of temporal, geographical, and even ideological differences, could finally be united in accepting these 27 diverse documents as expressing the meaning of God's revelation in Jesus Christ and to his church.
And what of those who happened to disagree with one or more choices of these councils, the "final arbiter," so to speak? Of course individual Christians are free to choose for themselves what books are infallible; but in doing so they should not demand that the church alter their own systems of belief to accommodate them. Any group or organization needs a set of rules or guidelines in order to function. To that end, attempts to change or significantly alter the rules should be put under careful consideration, and, if they significantly alter the purposes of the group, and are not acceptable to the majority, should be rejected. As with any group, of course, there are those who will protest the change or lack thereof; and (in a free organization) they are thereupon left with two choices: either take your lumps and live with the status quo, or leave. This should be kept in mind as we consider, later on, divergences in the early church, in particular those related to Gnosticism. For today, of course, we are free as always to choose what parts of the Bible we accept...Does the letter to the Ephesians offend thee? Pluck it out, and throw it away, and hope that it was not put there under divine guidance! Does the Shepherd of Hermas appeal to thee, or Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"? Get thee scissors and paste and add it in - and hope that the warning in Revelation about "adding on" to what has been written means something else other than adding to the Bible! Certainly no divine force stopped President Jefferson from clipping his own "Bible" from the original texts! At any rate, as we have alluded to earlier, if we believe that God had any part in the individual books of the Bible, then it is a necessary corollary that He also took a hand in the formation of the canon; and one who does believe in such influence by God should not take any choice of "which books they regard as infallible" lightly - unless they would care to proclaim themselves to be more "in" with God than those fourth- and fifth-century church councils; in which case, one might as well proclaim that all of us should prefer their choices to those of the councils! (Naturally, the councils should not be given a