As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will - before I proceed further on the subject - offer some other 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 Almighty God 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, 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 person, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it...
It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. 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 for him...
When I am told that a 14-year-old female called the “Virgin Mary” said that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not. Such a circumstance requires much stronger evidence than just their bare word for it. But we don’t even have this – for neither Mary or Joseph wrote of any such matter themselves; it is only reported by others that they said so – it is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not choose to rest my belief upon such evidence...
Revelation is a communication of something that the person to whom that thing is revealed did not know before. For if I have done a thing, or seen it done, it needs no revelation to tell me I have done it, or seen it, nor to enable me to tell it, or to write it. Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done on Earth, of which man himself is the actor or witness; and consequently all the historical and anecdotal parts of the Bible – which is almost the whole of it – is not within the meaning and comprehension of the word “revelation,” and therefore is not the word of God…
When Samson ran off with the gateposts of Gaza (if he ever did so), or when he visited his fabled Delilah, or caught his foxes, or did anything else, what has revelation to do with these things? If they were facts he could tell them himself, or his secretary – if he kept one – could write them, if they were worth either telling or writing. And if they were fiction, revelation could not make them true...and whether true or not, we are neither better nor wiser for knowing them...
When we contemplate the immensity of the Creator of the Universe, who directs and governs the incomprehensible whole of His Creation, of which the utmost perception of human sight can discover just a part, we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry stories the “word of God.”
As to the account of the Creation, with which the Book of Genesis opens, it has all the appearance of being a tradition that the Jews had among them before they came into Egypt; and after their departure from that country they put it at the head of their history, without telling (as it is most probable) that they did not know how they came by it.
The manner in which the account opens shows it to be traditional. It begins abruptly; it is nobody that speaks; it is nobody that hears; it is addressed to nobody; it has neither first, second, nor a third person; it has every criterion of being a tradition; it has no voucher. Moses does not take it upon himself by introducing it with the formality that he uses on other occasions, such as that of saying, “The Lord spake to Moses, saying…”
Why it has been called the Mosaic account of Creation I am at a loss to conceive. Moses, I believe, was too good a judge of such subjects to put his name to that account. He had been educated among the Egyptians, who were a people well skilled in science – particularly in astronomy – as any people of their day. And the silence and caution that Moses observes in not authenticating the account is good negative evidence that he neither told it nor believed it...
The truth of the matter is that every nation of people has had their saviors of the world, and the Jews had as much a right to set up the trade of world-saving as any of the rest; and as Moses was not an Israelite, he might have chose not to contradict the tradition. The account, however is harmless; and this is more than can be said of many other parts of the Bible, including the fabled Book of Revelations…
No one will deny or dispute the power of Almighty God 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, 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 person, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it...
It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. 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 for him...
When I am told that a 14-year-old female called the “Virgin Mary” said that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not. Such a circumstance requires much stronger evidence than just their bare word for it. But we don’t even have this – for neither Mary or Joseph wrote of any such matter themselves; it is only reported by others that they said so – it is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not choose to rest my belief upon such evidence...
Revelation is a communication of something that the person to whom that thing is revealed did not know before. For if I have done a thing, or seen it done, it needs no revelation to tell me I have done it, or seen it, nor to enable me to tell it, or to write it. Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done on Earth, of which man himself is the actor or witness; and consequently all the historical and anecdotal parts of the Bible – which is almost the whole of it – is not within the meaning and comprehension of the word “revelation,” and therefore is not the word of God…
When Samson ran off with the gateposts of Gaza (if he ever did so), or when he visited his fabled Delilah, or caught his foxes, or did anything else, what has revelation to do with these things? If they were facts he could tell them himself, or his secretary – if he kept one – could write them, if they were worth either telling or writing. And if they were fiction, revelation could not make them true...and whether true or not, we are neither better nor wiser for knowing them...
When we contemplate the immensity of the Creator of the Universe, who directs and governs the incomprehensible whole of His Creation, of which the utmost perception of human sight can discover just a part, we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry stories the “word of God.”
As to the account of the Creation, with which the Book of Genesis opens, it has all the appearance of being a tradition that the Jews had among them before they came into Egypt; and after their departure from that country they put it at the head of their history, without telling (as it is most probable) that they did not know how they came by it.
The manner in which the account opens shows it to be traditional. It begins abruptly; it is nobody that speaks; it is nobody that hears; it is addressed to nobody; it has neither first, second, nor a third person; it has every criterion of being a tradition; it has no voucher. Moses does not take it upon himself by introducing it with the formality that he uses on other occasions, such as that of saying, “The Lord spake to Moses, saying…”
Why it has been called the Mosaic account of Creation I am at a loss to conceive. Moses, I believe, was too good a judge of such subjects to put his name to that account. He had been educated among the Egyptians, who were a people well skilled in science – particularly in astronomy – as any people of their day. And the silence and caution that Moses observes in not authenticating the account is good negative evidence that he neither told it nor believed it...
The truth of the matter is that every nation of people has had their saviors of the world, and the Jews had as much a right to set up the trade of world-saving as any of the rest; and as Moses was not an Israelite, he might have chose not to contradict the tradition. The account, however is harmless; and this is more than can be said of many other parts of the Bible, including the fabled Book of Revelations…
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