The Secret Vault presents: The Christian and Pagan Creeds Collated. Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
By the Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
[LN. characters mentioned in this chapter include, Archelaus. Bacchus Roman god of wine, same as the Greek Dionysus. Chemosh, god of the Moabites and Amorites, and equivalent of the Moloch or Molech of the Canaanites. Hercules. Herod. Ipthegenia (Iphigenia) daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Josephus the historian. Moses. Pharisees. Pontius Pilate. Sadducees. Samson.]
Chapter. IV. - The state of the Jews ... The Jews the grand exception to the prevalence of universal toleration ... They plagiarized Pagan fables into their pretended divine theology ... Were as gross idolaters as the Heathens ... Truth of Judaism not essential to the truth of Christianity ... The Pharisees ... The Sadducees ... The Cabbala ... The Jews had no notion of the immortality of the soul; while the Heathens had more practical faith therein, than any Christians of the present day.
The grand exception to the harmonious universalism of religions, and to that entire prevalence, as far as religion was concerned, of "peace on earth and good will among men," which arose from the practical conviction of? sentiment which had passed into a common proverb, "Deorum injuriae, Diis curae," that "The wrongs of the gods were the concerns of the gods" occurred among a melancholy and misanthropic horde of exclusively superstitious barbarians, who, from their own and the best account that we have of them, were colonized from their captivity, by a Babylonian prince, on the sterile soil of Judea, about twenty-three hundred years ago; and, by the exclusive, unsocial, and uncivilized character of their superstition, were exposed to frequent wars and final dispersion.
The exclusive character of their superstition, and the constant intermarriage with their own caste or sect, have, to this day, preserved to them, in all countries, a distinct character. These barbarians, who resented the consciousness of their inferiority in the scale of rational being, by an invincible hatred of the whole human race, being without wit or invention to devise for themselves any original system of theology, adopted from time to time the various conceits of the various nations, by whom their rambling and predatory tribes had been held in subjugation. They plagiarized the religious legends of the nations, among whom their characteristic idleness and inferiority of understanding had caused them to be vagabonds; and pretended that the furtive patchwork was a system of theology intended by heaven for their exclusive benefit.
There is, however, nothing extraordinary in this; the miserable and the wretched always seek to console themselves for the absence of real advantages, by an imaginary counterbalance of spiritual privilege. And let them be the caterers, they shall always be the favourites of Omnipotence, and their afflictions in this world, shall be to be overpaid with a "far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory," in another in some instances it will be found, that the means of detecting the original idea has been washed down the stream of time. The Jews, who, probably, always were, as they are at present, the old-clothes-men of the world, have had but little difficulty in scratching up a sufficient freshness of nap upon borrowed or stolen theology, to disguise its original character. Very often, however, has their idleness betrayed their policy, and left us scarcely so much as an alteration of names to put us to the trouble of a doubt.
[LN. And later Pope Paul the 4th [1555-9], issued his first Bulls, 'Cum nimis absurdum', which reconfirms the Jews as Christ killers, and thus should be treated as slaves, they were restricted to selling second-hand clothing and food, and those who had businesses were forced to sell them at a loss, and any possessions of worth were likewise sold. It is from this time that the areas that the Jews who had long been confined to were called Ghettos. Quoted from 'The March of the Antichrists' by Lux Nova.]
They give us the story of the sacrifice of Ipthegenia, the daughter of Agamemnon, as an original legend of a judge of Israel, who had immolated his daughter to Yahouh, or Jao, without so much as respecting the wish to be deceived, not even being at the pains to vary the name of the heroine of the fable. By a division of the syllables into two words, Ipthi-geni is literally Jeptha's daughter; and even the name of Moses himself, as, it stands in the Greek text, is composed of the same consonant letters as Mises, the Arabian name of Bacchus, of whom precisely the same adventures were related, and behoved, many ages before there existed a race known on earth as the nation of Israel, or any individual of that nation capable of committing either truth or falsehood to written documents. There have been dancing bears, sagacious pigs, and learned horses in the world, but the Jews are as innocent as any of them of the faculty of original invention.
Their strong man (Samson) carrying away the gates of Gaza, is scarcely a various reading from the story of Hercules' pillars at Gades, Cades, or Cadiz. [LN., It is reported that on seeing a great statue of Alexandra the Great in the Temple of Hercules at Gades (modern Cadiz in Spain.), in 69 BC, he was brought to ponder the fact that by his age Alexander had conquered the best part of the known world. While he had achieved so little.]
That this melancholy race of rambling savages, have derived the principal features of their theology from the deities of Egypt, is demonstrable from the literal identity of the name of the god of Memphis, Jao, with that of the boasted god of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, who are each of them believed to have been either natives or very long residents of that country.
Moses and Egypt
Moses himself, on the face of their own report, was confessedly an Egyptian priest. The Jewish Elohim were the decans of the Egyptians; the same as the genii of the months and planets among the Persians and Chaldeans; and Jao, or Yahouh, considered merely as one of these beings generically called Elohim or Alehim, appears to have been only a national or topical deity. [LN., El Elyon, was God most high of the Canaanites and Elohim, were the sons of El, Deuteronomy 32-8. When El Elyon (God most high) divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam (Elohim), he set bounds of the people- according to the number of children of Israel (GODS). Numbers 24-16. He hath said, which heard the words of God, and knew the knowledge of the 'Most High,' (El Elyon), which saw a vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open.]
We find one of the presidents of the Jewish horde, negotiating with a king of the Amorites, precisely on these terms of a common understanding between them "Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh, thy Alehim, giveth thee to possess? So, whomsoever Jao, our Alehim, shall drive out from before us, them will we possess." [Judges 11-24.] [Chemosh, was linked to Malik, as Chemosh king, and also Astar, thus Asarte, and was considered the god of the Moabites and Amorites, and associated like Moloch, or Molech, thus child sacrifice.]
Nor is it at all concealed, that the power of Jao, as much as of any other topical god, was confined to the province over which he presided. "The Jao Alehim of Israel, fought for Israel [Joshua 10-42.] and Jao drove out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron." [i] the God of Israel was no match for the tutelary deities of the valley. The first commandment of the decalogue involves a virtual recognition of the existence, and rival, if not equal claims of other deities. "Thou shalt have none other gods but we," is no mandate that could have issued from one who had been entirely satisfied of his own supremacy, and that those to whom he had once revealed himself, were in no danger of giving a preference to the idols of the Gentiles. To say nothing of the highest implied compliment to those idols, in the confession of Jao, that he was jealous of his people's attachment. "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God" Exod. 20. He was Lord of heaven and earth, &c. in such sense as the Emperor of China, the Grand Sultan, &c, - by courtesy.
[i] Judges i. 19. And note well, that this Chemosh, called in I. Kings xi. 7. the abomination of Moab, is none other than the Christian Messiah, or Sun of Righteousness, of Malachi iii. 20, or iv. 2]
It would be difficult to imagine, and surely impossible to find, among all the formularies of ancient Paganism, any manner of speaking ascribed to their deities more truly contemptible, more egregiously absurd and revolting to common sense, than the language which their lively oracles put into the mouth of their deity. Sometimes he is described as roaring like a lion, at others as hissing like a snake, as burning with rage, and unable to restrain his own passions, as kicking, smiting, cursing, swearing, smelling, vomiting, repenting, being grieved at his heart, his fury coming up in his face, his nostrils smoking, &c
Excuses
For which our Christian divines have invented the apology, "that these things are spoken thus, in accommodation to the weakness of human conceptions," and [GK] as humanly suffering; without, however, allowing benefit of the same apology, to throw any sort of palliation over the grossness of the literal sense of the Pagan theology. It is well known, that the Pagan worship by no means involved such a real prostration of intellect, and such an absolute surrender of the senses and reason, as is involved in the Christian notion of paying divine honours. It often meant no more than a habit of holding the thing so said to be worshipped, in a particular degree of attachment, as many Christians carry about them a lucky penny, or a curious pebble, keepsakes or mementos of past prosperity, or something which is to recall to their minds those agreeable associations of idea, which
"Lingering haunt the greenest spot on memories waste."
Onions, food or gods?
Thus, the Egyptian's worship of onions, however at first view ridiculous and childish, and exposing him to the scorn and sarcasm both of Christian and Heathen satirists; [j] in his own view and representation of the matter, (which surely is as fairly to be taken into the account as the representations of those who would never give themselves the trouble to investigate what had once moved their laughter,) by no means implied that he took the onion itself to be a god, or forgot or neglected its culinary uses as a vegetable. The respect he paid to it referred to a high and mystical order of astronomical speculations and was purely emblematical. The onion presented to the eye of the Egyptian visionary, the most curious type in nature of the disposition and arrangement of the great solar system. "Supposing the root and top of the head to represent the two poles, if you cut any one transversely or diagonally, you will find it divided into the same number of spheres, including each other, counting from the sun or centre to the circumference, as they knew the motions or courses of the orbs (or planets) divided the fluid system of the heavens into; and so the divisions represented the courses of those orbs." This observation of Mr. Hutchinson [His works, Vol. 4. p. 262.] has since been made or borrowed by Dr Shaw, who observes, that "the onion, upon account of the root of it, which consists of many coats enveloping each other, like the orbs (orbits) in the planetary system, was another of their sacred vegetables." [Shaw's Travels, p. 356.] Our use of these observations, however, is only to supply a demonstration that the grossest forms of apparent nonsense and absurdity in which Paganism ever existed, were never more distressed for a good excuse, or the pretence of some plausible emblematical and mystical sense, than Judaism, and that, if we acquit the Jewish religion from the charge of extreme folly, there was never any religion on earth that could be fairly convicted of it. [LN., the using of onions as food, dates back into lost time, they certainly formed part of the diet of the ancient Egyptians, Persians and Chinese, so while the had symbolic usages they were not worshipped, for who would entertain eating the flesh of their god? Casting aside the bread and wine? The traces of onion were found in the eye sockets of Ramesses the 4th. And when the first settlers moved to America they found the onion in abundance and in widespread use, having in their ignorance taken so much trouble to take their own with them, LOL. The learned Pliny the Elder, writes of the many uses of onions, not only for eating and cooking but also as a remedy for many ailments. And a man who doesn't know his onions is of little use.]
[j] Porrum et cepe nefas violare et frangere morsu. O sanctas gentes, quibus haec nascuntur in hortis Numina! Juvenal Sat. 15. lin. 9. 11. Translation: -A sin, forsooth, to violate and break by biting the leek and onions. A holy people, in whose gardens these divinities are born!]
The plurality of the Hebrew word Aleim, for God, in the first chapter of Genesis, and in the Old Testament throughout, is urged by orthodox divines as an argument for their favourite doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The Jews find their text thus burthened with a sense which they themselves disclaim. A similar plural word - the heavens - expressive of precisely the same sense, where plurality is by no means the leading idea, is found in our own language, and among all nations whose ideas of deity were drawn as our own evidently are, from the visible heavens, the imaginary ceiling of an upper story, in which the Deity was supposed to reside. [LN., Considering Aleim, (El, Elyon, Elohim, Alehim, and that the Latin Alium, = Garlic, and Alium Cepa, is the general name of onions in general; and the foolish use of garlic to ward off evil, we might refer to it as 'the onion of God?]
The Hebrew [HB] Shemmim, and the Chaldee [HB] Shemmai, are in like manner plural words - literally, the heavens, and used synonymously with [HB] Alchim - the gods - for God. [k]
The Pagans used the same plural words, the gods, for God, although it was to one being alone that in the stricter sense that title was applicable. We use precisely the same plural form, "Heavens defend us! Synecdochally for God defend us! as in that beautiful and moral apostrophe of King Lear -
"-------------Take physic, pomp!
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
that thou may'st shake the superflux to them,
and show the heavens more just." Shakespeare.
that is, show God more just.
[k] Daniel iv. 26. "Thy kingdom shall be sure unto thee after that thou shall have known that the heavens do rule," i.e. that God, i.e. that the Most-High, above our heads, doth rule. By the heavens, says Parkhurst, are signified the true Aleim, or persons of Jehovah. Heb. Lex. p. 741. 1.]
This, our adherence to the Pagan phrase, happens to be consecrated by the text of the New Testament [l] In which the kingdom of the heavens, and the kingdom of God, and God, and the heavens, are perfectly synonymous, and used indifferently for the expression of precisely the same sense. Not a plurality of three, then, nor of any definite number, was implied by that plural noun used with the verb singular, in the Jewish Mehhu, but merely that vague reference to the planets, from which the very name of God is derived, [m] and to which the primitive idea of all the multifarious modifications of idolatry or piety, superstition or religion, may ultimately be traced. The Jews themselves are as justly chargeable with polytheism, as the nations whose spiritual advantages they affect to despise.
[l] Matt. xxi. 25.- Mark xi. 30, 31. Luke xv. 18. xx. 4, 5, - John iv. 27. The kingdom of the heavens and the or kingdom of God are throughout Matthew and Mark interchangeable.]
[m] [...GK...] which is the source of the AEolic dialect, or Latin Deus, from - [GK] currere, to run as do the planets. The Grecian philosophers generally believed that nature is God. No authors of any order of Christians whatever, in any of their writings, give us any positive idea on the subject, nor indeed any negative one, not derived from some or other of those philosophers.
"The Yesus of the New Testament preached only a sort of indeterminate, or at most, only Pharisaical deism. Those who have professed and called themselves Christians, have been 'hardly such characters as any rational mind could imagine to have been the followers of such a master. Animated only with a furious zeal against idolatry, to which Yesus does not allude, these iconoclasts (image-breakers) seem to have maintained few positive metaphysical dogmata, till they wanted excuses for plundering from one another the plunder of Paganism.' I take this sentence from a treatise, entitled, Various Definitions of an Important Word, p. 18, in a printed but unpublished work of a learned and excellent friend."]
Considerations
Their historian, Josephus, who lived and wrote about sixty years after Christ, sought in vain for the testimony of Egyptian authors to support the high pretensions he advanced. Not one has so much as mentioned the prodigies of Moses or held out the least glimpse of probability or coincidence to his romantic tale.
The whole fable of Moses, however, will be found in the Orphic verses sung in the orgies of Bacchus, as celebrated in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and Greece, for ages before such a people as the Jewish nation were known to be in existence. (See the chapter on Bacchus, in this DlEGESIS.)
Jesus or Moses?
Christianity, however, is not so essentially connected with the Jewish religion as to stand or fall with it. Paley and other of the shrewder advocates of the established faith have intimated their wish that the two systems were considered as more independent of each other than they are generally held to be. There might be evidence enough left for the Christian religion, though the Mosaic dispensation were considered as altogether fabulous; and some have thought, that the evidence of Christianity would gain by a dissolution of partnership; and a man might be the better Christian, as he certainly would be better able to defend his Christianity, by throwing over the whole of the Old Testament as indefensible and contenting himself entirely with the sufficient guidance and independent sanctions of the New. "The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ," [John 1-17.] is an apothegm which Christians receive as of the highest authority: and yet no conceivable sense can be found in those words, short of an indication not only of distinctness, but of absolute contrariety of character, between the two religions. "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ," in the antithesis, can imply nothing else than that neither grace nor truth came by Moses; to say nothing of those innumerable contemptuous manners of speaking of the old dispensation, as "those weak and beggarly elements," [Galatians v ix.] and that "burthen which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear;" [Acts 15-10.] "all that ever came before me are thieves and robbers;" [John 10-8.] in which Christ and the Apostles themselves refer to the religion of Moses. Certainly, none with whom we have to deal would ever care to defend Judaism, if once induced to doubt the independent challenges of Christianity. If this be untenable, that may very well be left to shift for itself in the wardrobes of Hollywell-street and the Minories. [LN., with reference to Josephus, he tells us emphatically that Moses was considered by the Jews to be the Messiah, and it was Moses they awaited, not Jesus, that perhaps accounts for the New Testaments folly, in the Transfiguration, where they pretend Jesus is seen talking, or at least standing beside Moses, but the two would appear to be complete opposites?]
"The lion preys not upon carcases!"
It is unquestionable, however, that even if the gospel story were altogether a romance, and all its dramatis personae, as connected with what is called in poetical language, its machinery, merely imaginary, it is still a romance of that character, which mixes up its fantastical personages with real characters, and fastens events which never happened, speeches which were never spoken, and doings which were never done, on persons, times, and places that had a real existence, and stood in the relations assigned to them. So that the romance is properly dramatical, and answers to the character of such ingenious and entertaining fictions, as in our own days are called romances of the particular century to which they are assigned, in which of course we have the Sir Rowlands, Sir Olivers, and Sir Mortimers of the authors invention, transacting business and holding dialogues with the Saladins, King Richards, Henrys, and Edwards of real history. Nor are there wanting instances of plagiarism in the department of fiction. A shrewd novelist will often avail himself of an old story, will change the scene of action from one country to another, throw it further back, or bring it lower down, in the order of time; and make the heroes of the original conceit, contemporaries and comrades of either an earlier or a later race of real personages.
"Josephus, and heathen authors have made mention of Herod, Archelaus, Pontius Pilate, and other persons of note, whose names we meet with in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, and have delivered nothing material- concerning their characters, posts, and honours, that is different from what the writers of the New Testament have said of them."
Such is the first of Dr Lardner's arguments for the credibility of the gospel history, the sophism of which will in an instant start into observance, upon putting the simple questions - What is material? And is it no fatal deficiency, that they should have omitted to mention what they by no possibility could have omitted to mention, had the personages so spoken of been so concerned in the gospel history, as they are therein represented to have been? [LN., We know now that as evil as Herod turned out to be, he had nothing to do with matters dumped on him, by the gospel writers?]
One of the most striking coincidences of the scriptural and profane history, is the reference to the death of Herod, in Acts 12-21. 23, as compared with the account given by Josephus, whose words are, "Having now reigned three whole years over all Judea, Herod went to the city Caesarea. Here he celebrated shows in honour of Caesar. On the second day he came into the theatre dressed in a robe of silver of most curious workmanship. The rays of the sun, then just rising, reflected from so splendid a garb, gave him a majestic and awful appearance. In a short time, they began in several parts of the theatre flattering acclamations, which proved pernicious to him. They called him a god, and entreated him to be propitious to them, saying, 'Hitherto we have respected you as a man, but now we acknowledge you to be more than mortal.'
The King neither reproved those persons, nor rejected the impious flattery. Soon after this, casting his eyes upwards, he saw an owl sitting upon a rope over his head. [Antiq. lib. 19. C. 8. sect. 2.] He perceived it to be a messenger of evil to him, as it had been before of his prosperity, and was grieved at heart. Immediately after this he was affected with extremely violent pains in his bowels, and turning to his friends, in anguish said, 'I, your God, am required to leave this world; fate instantly confuting the false applauses you have bestowed on me; I, who have been called immortal, am hurried away to death; but God's appointment must be submitted to.' These pains in his bowels continually tormenting him, he died on the fifth day, in the fifty-fourth year of his age, and of his reign the seventh."
There is a curious ambiguity in the Greek word for messenger (angelos), of which Eusebius availing himself, says nothing about the owl, but gives as the text of Josephus, that he beheld an angel hanging over his head upon a rope, and this he knew immediately to be an omen of evil. [Eusb. Ec. His. Lib. 2. C. 9. B] [LN. As curious as this may be to us today, having gotten use to the great fraud that owls were connected to wisdom, they were originally from Sumerian times at least seen as omens of death and evil, and were consorts of Venus.]
Lardner justly reproves this fault in Eusebius but has no reproof for the author of the Acts of the Apostles, who was privileged to improve the story still farther by adding that the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the clary, (i. e. the spangles and gaudery of his silver dress.) This Herod was a deputy king holding his power under the appointment of Caius Caligula. [Lardner, Nathaniel, 1684 to 1768, an English theologian.]
The Pharisees
The Pharisees were a sect of self-righteous and sanctimonious hypocrites, ready to play into and keep up any religious farce that might serve to invest them with an imaginary sanctity of character and increase their influence over the minds of the majority, whose good nature and ignorance in all ages and countries, is but ever too ready to subscribe the claims thus made upon it.
They were the Quakers of their day, a set of commercial, speculating thieves, who expressed their religion in the eccentricity of their garb; and, under professions of extraordinary punctiliousness and humanity, were the most over-reaching, oppressive, and inexorable of the human race. Of this sort was the apostolic chief of sinners, and this character he discovers through all accounts of his life and writings, that have entailed the curse of his example on mankind. [LN. Josephus had actually trained as a Pharisee but found it distasteful and it was as a Pharisee that Saul, later St Paul, watched as Stephen being stoned to death and later sort letters of Authority to arrest members of the Essene sect who had fled to Damascus.]
The Sadducees
The Sadducees were a set of materialists, who, as they were too sensible to be imposed on themselves, were the less disposed to cajole others. They were the most respectable part of the Jewish community, and by the influence of their more rational tenets and more moral example, served to infuse that leaven of reason and virtue, without which, the frame of society could hardly be held together.
It is enough to know, in addition to the more than enough that everybody may know, of the Mosaic institutions, that the pretensions of the Jews, as a nation, to philosophy, never exceeded that of the dark and hidden science which they called the Cabbala, which, like their hidden theology, was nothing more than the Oriental philosophy, plagiarized and modelled to their own conceit, and a crude jumble of the various melancholy notions, which had forced themselves upon their minds in the course of their ramblings into the adjacent countries of Egypt and Phoenicia, and the little that ignorance itself could not help learning, in the course of their traffic with the Greeks, Persians, and Arabians.
Cabul, Cabbala, Kabul,
A book of the hidden science of divine mysteries, which the Rabbis confirm was revealed to Moses and delivered with the law, unto Moses, and from him derived the successive relations unto posterity, -
(YET IT IS IN TRUTH NO BETTER THAN
A VAIN RABBLE
OF THEIR OWN TRADITIONS). Cotgrave see SV.
Their sacred scriptures of the Old Testament contain no reference to the Platonic doctrine of a future state. [a] Though the metaphysical notion of the immortality of the soul, had been inculcated and embraced in India, in Assyria, in Egypt, and in Gaul, and was believed with so influential and practical a faith, that its votaries would lend their money to be returned them again in the other world, [b] (a proof of sincerity less equivocal than martyrdom itself.) Yet this doctrine appears to have been wholly unknown to the Jewish legislator and is but darkly insinuated in any part of the prophetical writings: [c] Hence, the Sadducees, who, according to Josephus, respected only the authority of the Pentateuch (or five books of Moses), had no belief in a resurrection, angels or spirits, or any such chimerical hypostases. Nor does the Christ of the New Testament seem to have had the least idea of the possible existence of the soul, in a state of separation from the body. All his attempts to alarm the cowardice and weakness of his hearers, are founded on the assumption, that the body must accompany the soul in its anabasis to heaven, or its descent to hell, and indeed that there was no virtual distinction between them. It must, however, be admitted to be a good and valid apology for the omission - that none of his followers have been able to supply the deficiency.
[a] The only reward proposed for obedience to the law of God, was, that attached to the fifth, which is called by the Apostle, the first commandment with promise - "that thy days may be long in the land."
[b] Vetus ille mos Gallorum occurrit, (says Valerius Maximus, 1.2. c. 6. P. 10) quos memoria est, pecunias mutuas dare solitos quae his, apud inferos redderenter.
[c] It is better for thee to enter crippled into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell. It is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes, to he cast into hell, - Mark 9- 45. 47. Here was no idea of heaven, or the state of the blessed, above a hospital of incurables.
-o0o-
Next chapter V. - State of Philosophy ... A general prevailing debility of the human understanding ... Vitiation of morals ... Destruction of documents ... Maxims of deceiving the vulgar, and perpetuating ignorance, approved by St. Paul ... King's College, London ... Gnosticism ... Systems of philosophy.