The Creation of God, Jacob Hartmann [e manga reader TXT] 📗

Whether it is Elijah or Elisha, leaders of the Jehova party, or Queen Jezebel, leader of the Baal prophets of the other party, the result always depends upon numbers and clever leadership.

Ferocious brutality never ceases but for a short while. There is not a spark of humanity, no mercy, not an act of kindness or consideration.

Menahem was king of Israel 772 B.C. He smote Tipsha and all that were therein. “And all the women therein that were with child he ripped up” (2 Kings xv, 16).

Thus we have page after page marked with bloody crime in the book called sacred history, scripture, and what not. And alas! this is God’s work, God’s own book, God’s own people.

Much has been said about the inaccuracies in the Bible—the contradictions, the errors that are found. We are not concerned in any of them. We are interested in directing the attention of the reader to the book called holy scripture, a book believed to have been written by supernatural inspiration, relating to certain acts done by God; and these acts, accompanied by wonders, were performed for a people especially selected by him, that were under his protection, guidance, direct supervision; and their leaders, lawgivers, kings, priests, prophets, and teachers were by reason of their holiness in communication with this God, either directly or indirectly, and thereby were endowed with powers that rendered them capable of doing things contrary to the fixed laws of nature.

We have endeavored to point to a few of the acts of the greatest and best men figuring in that book called scripture. These men were not divine nor were their acts divine. Their acts were not humane, nor anything approaching what is understood to be humane at the present age. On the contrary, their acts were barbarous, savage, brutal, cruel, and in many instances outrageous.

They, the Hebrews, were no better than their neighbors the heathens, whatever their name or nationality might be. The heathen with their idols were just as good in war, in battle, as, if not better than, the Jews were with their God, their Jehova, and the ark, and finally succeeded in subduing the Jews, burning their Temple with God’s ark, vessels, etc., taking them captives, and destroying them as a nation.

It is evident from history that the principal men of the nation were corrupt; that both the kingdom of Israel and that of Judah were rotten to the core. They were continually warring with each other, as with other nations. Their abuses gave rise to public agitators, who always found supporters.

Men of the Elijah and Elisha stamp never lose an opportunity, and they made the most of all of it while they lived.

They introduced a school of thought and action that laid the foundation for new sects that culminated in the remote future. The belief in medical miracles was more firmly fastened upon the minds of their followers by the prophets, fortune-tellers, and healers, than by any class previous.

Other nations meantime were progressing in civilization—literature, the art of warfare, etc. Greece was gaining laurels. Homer appeared. Hesiod wrote about 900 B.C. Tyrtæus’s Elegies, Archilochus’s Satires, etc., about 700 B.C. The Persians and Romans were rising and making rapid progress and conquest, soon to sweep smaller peoples and nations aside. These heathen made conquests, gained victories, transplanted the captives, and were altogether far more prosperous and successful with their idols than the Hebrews were with their God. Nothing else better proves that the struggles for supremacy among the human families were perfectly natural, each side depending always on their leaders, their skill in fighting, their bravery, and their organization; that their Gods, their idols, their oracles, and their priests played but a small part in the transactions of life; and that all the gods, whether idols, or mythological, or Jehovistic, and no matter of what nationality, had all about the same material value, power, and importance.

From our modern standpoint all the gods may be classed in one category. We may safely pronounce them to be creatures of imagination, sprung into existence through ignorance, fears, and superstition. They are all alike false, frivolous, and foolish. They have not a particle of truth in them. And the Gods that are now held in such high esteem by many people, are no better than the Chaldean idols.

Judah is still struggling to retain her grip on her national life. Every effort prolongs the agony. Hezekiah is king 717 B.C. Isaiah is the prophet. Romantic dreamer, songster, critic, and man of visions, he sees distress, ruin, and misery before him; recalls the glories of the past, but sees none of the faults; sees the greatness of the nation of Solomon, David, and Saul, and now beholds the national degradation. He laments this dreadful condition with a bitterness of feeling. Then he hopes against hope that something will happen in the future that will bring about a happy state of his nation and reproduce the golden prosperity of those glittering ages that are gone. This man is a close observer, a visionary man, and a critic. He writes and sings of his own people, of his own country. In the introduction which he gives himself in Isaiah i and ii, he presents his vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem, etc. He reproaches them for their sin, iniquity, corruption, etc.: “Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers” (i, 7).

His dream and hope of the future: “And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (ii, 4).

This entire chapter, like most of the chapters of Isaiah, is a work of the imagination. It is the fancy of a dreamer who mentally sees the thing he longs for. In his nervous exaltation, visions appear, incoherent, meaningless, except to himself. He brings different parts of different objects together, representing things and scenes he is familiar with, in the form of pictures, natural in parts but unnatural and impossible as a whole.

“As for my people, children are their oppressors and women rule over them” (iii, 12). He describes the “tinkling ornaments” about their feet, and their cauls and their round tires like the moon, their chains and bracelets and mufflers, the bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands and the tablets and the earrings, and the rings and nose-jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping-pins, and the glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the vails, etc. This portion is no doubt realistic. It shows his mental condition and the mood he was in.

His humor changes: “Now I will sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard” (v, 1). In this chapter he touches upon everything that strikes his fancy. Hell, wind, land, instruments, lions, etc., etc., are all introduced. He rambles all over nature. Imaginary ideas are mixed with realities indiscriminately, for illustration, comparison, lamentation, or complaining. High in the temple he sees the Lord sit; sees the seraphim with six wings, etc. (vii). And in chapter viii he has a “great roll and writes in it with a man’s pen concerning Maher-shalal-hash-baz.” Verse 1: “And I went to the prophetess; and she conceived, and had a son. Then said the Lord to me, Call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz” (3).

Isaiah lived after the captivity of the Ten Tribes.

He also knows of the constant fighting between the Ten tribes and the two, Israel and Judah. Israel has been carried away captive to other lands and its country has been given to a people called Cutheans, or Samaritans. These cultivated and adopted in some measure the Jewish religion. In moments of despondency he refers to them as he refers to Moab and other nations elsewhere. The whole Christian faith seems to be based on the prophecy of the ninth chapter of Isaiah, 6th and 7th verses. Isaiah starts out in this chapter speaking of the time when God first lightly afflicted the land of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali, etc. In the 6th verse he says, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given,” etc. That man has no reference to Christ as Maher-shalal-hash-baz.

Chapter viii, verse 8: “And he shall pass through Judah; he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to the neck, and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of the land, O Immanuel.” This really means the son which the prophetess conceived, and called Maher-shalal-hash-baz.

Chapter ix, verse 21: “Manasseh and Ephraim, and Ephraim and Manasseh; and they together shall be against Judah,” etc. He talks in a confused, mystified fashion, alluding now to this people, now to that; at one time to the Tribes and at another to the Moabites, Assyrians, then to Egypt or Zion; dreams of tyrants, hypocrites, and his hopes revived about the remnants of Israel. When he speaks of the child he has not the remotest dream of Christ. He has no foreknowledge, except what his judgment suggests. He feels annoyed and irritated, then his hope and aspiration soothe and comfort him, and in chapter xi he describes a most happy state of affairs: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them” (verse 6). “And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like an ox” (xi, 7), etc.

The wildest and most extravagant kinds of interpretation are given to various passages in Isaiah. Into them the theologians force a meaning:

Chapter xxxv, 1: “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.” Christians say it means the joyful flourishing of Christ’s kingdom.

In chapter xliii, verse 2, Jehova declares: “I, even I, am the Lord; and beside me there is no savior.”

He repeats it in chapter xliv, verse 6: “I am the first, and I am the last, and beside me there is no God.”

Verse 8: “Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any.”

Chapter xlix: “Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken ye people from afar; the Lord hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name.” This is supposed to mean, Christ being sent to the Jews complaineth of them.

Chapter lv: “Thus saith the Lord, where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement, whom I have put away? or which creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold! for your iniquities you have sold yourselves, and for your transgression is your mother put away.” It is said that this means, Christ sheweth that the dereliction of the Jews is not to be imputed to him, by his ability to save. This is the Christian interpretation of the above passage. It is a misrepresentation of facts as well as meaning. Why twist, torture, and falsify it?

Isaiah lived in stirring times. After the captivity of the Ten Tribes, the government and the people were corrupt. An invasion was at hand. Sennacherib invades Judea 712–711 B.C. The Medes and Assyrians were also fighting for supremacy. Being an educated man, he knew the history of his nation—their trials,