God and His Book/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II.
Neither Christ's nor the sea-gull's writings have found their way into the inspired volume (although, here and there, something alarmingly like them have), so the entire Scriptures are the work of Jehovah and the Ghost, with a little touch up here and there by that "worm of the dust," John Smith.
From the remnants from his pen which he has graciously vouchsafed to us, we cannot claim for Jehovah-jireth commanding talent as a writer. How could he be a writer? The god or man who would write well must know much of the world and much of books. To get a few paces abreast of his fellows, he must have unconquerable self-respect and immaculate purity of moral aim and aspiration. He must have the bone and the sinew to work while others rest, to toil while others sleep, the self-consciousness of talent or even genius based upon an indomitable will, a tireless energy, and a lofty but tender humanity. He may make himself sociable; but he has no time to be frivolous. Now, if these be the characteristics of a writer born to lead the straggling files of human opinion, it must be admitted that Jehovah had few or none of them, unless his biographer, the Ghost, has done him grievous injustice. He is jealous, ignorant, and narrow, and quite lacking in that literary turn of the wrist, unteachable, untaught, which distinguishes him who, by an inexorable law of heredity, was born a writer from him who was made a writer, on the principle that you can make a silken purse out of a sow's ear. And, then, as to frivolity, Jehovah was an incorrigible trifler. He occupied much of his time with patterns for tents and toggery for priests, with fringes and candlesticks and snuffers and tongs. He also turned his attention in the Eugene Rimmel direction, and manufactured a certain kind of holy hair-oil,[1] and threatened to put to death any one who would make a perfume to smell like it—his way of taking out a patent. This is not the sort of trifling in which he, who would be a writer, can afford to indulge. And candour compels me to admit that the three inscrutables rolled into one inscrutable could not produce "Childe Harold," even with all the assistance they might get from the "worm of the dust," John Smith.
How long, O Lord, how long? There is a grievous injustice done thee somewhere. Arise and avenge thyself. Thy works have got so inextricably mixed up with those of Smith that I, for one, am utterly at a loss what to read devoutly as thine, and what to read with reprehension as a spurious imitation of thy style. For thy greater honour and glory, I herewith furnish thee with thy servant Dupin's[2] list of the various books that have been attributed to thee by Jews and Christians:—
Books now Considered Canonical by Jews and Christians.
The five Books of Moses.
The Book of Joshua.
The Book of Judges.
The Book of Samuel, or the first and second Books of Kings.
The third and fourth Books of Kings.
Isaiah.
Jeremiah.
Ezekiel.
The Twelve Minor Prophets.
The Book of Job.
The Hundred and Fifty Psalms.
The Proverbs of Solomon.
The Ecclesiastes.
The Canticles.
Daniel.
The Chronicles.
Esdras, divided into two Books.
Books Received as Canonical by some Jews and Rejected by Others.
Esther, Ruth.
Books Excluded the Jewish Canon, and Reckoned as Apocryphal by some of the Ancient Christians, but Allowed as Canonical of late by the Church of Rome.
Baruch, Tobit, Judith, the Book of Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, the two Books of the Maccabees.
The Song of the three Children in the Fiery Furnace.
The History of Susanna.
The History of Bel and the Dragon.
Books that are Excluded the Canon without Apparent Reason.
The Prayer of Manasseh, inserted in the Apocrypha.
The third and fourth Books of Esdras (ibid).
The third and fourth Books of Maccabees, in the Septuagint Bible.
The Genealogy of Job, and his Wife's Speech, at the end of the Greek text of the Book of Job.
The 151st Psalm, at the end of the Greek Psalms.
A Discourse of King Solomon, at the end of the Book of Wisdom.
The Preface before the Lamentations of Jeremiah, in the vulgar Latin and Greek text.
Other Apocryphal Books of the same Nature, which are Lost.
The Book of Enoch.
The Book of the Assumption of Moses.
The Assumption, Apocalypse, or Secrets of Elias.
The Secrets of Jeremiah.
Books Full of Fables and Errors, which are Lost.
The Generation, or the Creation of Adam.
The Revelation of Adam.
Of the Genealogy, or of the sons and daughters of Adam.
Cham's Book of Magic.
A Treatise, entitled Seth.
The Assumption of Abraham.
Jetsira, or concerning the Creation ascribed to Abraham.
The Book of the Twelve Patriarchs.
The Discourses of Jacob and Joseph.
The Prophecy of Habakkuk.
A Collection of the Prophecies of Ezekiel.
The Prophecy of Eldad and Medad.
The Treatise of Jannes and Jambres.
The Book of King Og.
Jacob's Ladder, and several other Tracts.
This is a pretty long catalogue, O Lord of Hosts; but you have, of course, had all eternity to produce it. Now, inter nos, which on the list did you write, and which did you not write? I think I have detected thy bold Roman hand in the Book of Tobit. Am I right? I think I could point you out seventeen lines in the Book of Gad that you could not look me in the face and say you did not write. I think Ruth is all by thee; it is quite in thy style. O Ancient of Days, am I right? I deem thy son's letter to Abgarus quite genuine, more especially since thy son could not write. I recognise in the speech of Job's wife flashes from the pen of the Most High. Numbers is written by you, especially the thirty-first chapter. Several of the Psalms, too, are thine, especially the psalm of curses.[3] A good deal of Genesis is thine, especially the two accounts of the Creation, which flatly contradict each other, and which are, nevertheless, both true. This sort of writing undoubtedly takes a God to write it and a devil to understand it; and for this and all thy other mercies, make us truly thankful. These, O Shaddai, I mention from the mass of books in which thy Jewish and Christian followers have supposed thee to have had a finger. But there are a great many of the books in regard to which, O Lord, I humbly confess before thee, I cannot for my life determine where Smith ends and Jehovah begins. O Lord, help thou my literary discrimination, or else strengthen my faith ad libitum. I should like wings and glory, and should be sorry to miss them through not knowing whether to attribute the Book of Susanna and the Book of Og to Smith or to thee, O Mighty One of Israel.
It is with due deference that I suggest to the Lord that, when he again writes a book upon which the salvation or perdition of untold millions of mankind is destined to hang, he should take some reasonable care that that book be not lost or destroyed. He has not been at all careful with the Bible; he has more than once permitted it to disappear altogether and to be reproduced by worms of the dust, just in whatever way might please their fancy. First, when God produced his book he gave it in keeping to the Jews. "Unto them were committed the oracles of God."[4] They were not to read it (he seems never to have intended his book should be read), but to place it in the ark, a shittim-wood box of holy nick-nacks, in which he took great interest, coming down now and again to dance upon the lid, or, rather, to shine as a schekinah—something or other that gave nearly as much light as a halfpenny candle. "Take the book of the law and put it into the side [i.e., inside] of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee."[5]
When any ordinary mortal writes a book he takes some pains to give all the world an opportunity of reading it. When a god writes a book it is far otherwise. The Lord commanded his book to be put inside the ark, and ordered that the ark be kept in the most holy inner recess of the tabernacle or temple—a recess to which the high priest alone had access. Moreover, the place was too sacred for even the high priest to visit it whenever it might enter his head to do so; for Aaron was cautioned not to come "at all times into the holy place within the veil before the mercy-seat which is upon the ark, that he die not."[6] From this it is obvious that, if the Lord had peculiar notions as to how to write a book, he had even more curious notions as to how to publish one. His mode of publishing was to put his MS. into a closed box, place the box in a recess where only one person was permitted to visit it, and that very cautiously and at stated times, under peril of being struck dead on the spot. This is slightly different from the way publishing is carried on in Paternoster Row and its environs; but, of course, there is some dissimilarity between Jehovah-nissi and Anthony Froude, as also between London and Kirjath-jearim. The men of Beth-shemesh were of an inquiring turn of mind, and one or two of them, on one occasion, ventured a peep into the box or ark in which the Lord kept his book. But the Lord, whose son said, "Search the Scriptures," did not approve of his book and his box being peeped at, so he "smote the men of Beth-shemesh because they had looked into the ark of the Lord, even he smote of the people 50,000 and three score and ten men."[7] It is evident Jehovah had attached some importance to his book, since he slew 50,070 men because one or two out of that number had craned their necks to look into his book box. I repeat, Jehovah's ideas of publishing are just a trifle peculiar.
Seeing that nobody was permitted to read the Book of the Law, or even to approach within several feet of it, it was obliging of Jehovah to come down and sit on the lid of the box that contained his book, and talk over matters with his friend Moses. "There I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee, from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims which are upon the ark of the testimony of all things, which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel."[8] So a performing Jehovah came down and sat on the top of his shittim-wood box, just as you have seen a performing monkey sit on the top of a travelling hurdy-gurdy. This was very condescending on his part. Business must have been slack in heaven when he could afford the time to come and sit on the top of that box, like a parrot on a perch, between the two gew-gaws of sacred fowls, which he is pleased to call chererubims. But he would have saved himself all this humiliation and trouble if he had only permitted his book to be read. He wrote the Law, and then came down to the lid of the box and delivered it orally; in short, he kept a dog and yet did the barking himself.
- ↑ Exodus xxx., passim
- ↑ "History of the Canon and Writers of the Old and New Testament."
- ↑ Psalm cix.
- ↑ Romans iii. 2.
- ↑ Deuteronomy xxxi. 26.
- ↑ Leviticus xvi. 2.
- ↑ 1 Samuel vi. 19.
- ↑ Exodus XXV. 22.