God and His Book/Chapter 4

by Saladin

CHAPTER IV.

Ezra Proves Useful to his Maker—Indispensables in Bible-Writing—Ambiguity and Obscurity—Inadvisability of Translating Bibles—Bibles not Read, even when Translated—Testimony of the Fathers that the Bible was Written by Ezra—Thus not Necessary that the Previous Bible-Writers should have been Inspired—Theories of Inspiration.

God appears to have approved of the proposition of Ezra to write a book to take the place of the one that had been burnt, and that worthy, in forty days, with the assistance of five scribes, performed the task.^[1] So the Bible had been destroyed by fire, and was reproduced by six men in forty days. This, no doubt, saved the Lord a great deal of trouble, and spared him the pain of referring to a number of old-world matters of an unpleasant nature, such as six days of hard work at "creating," followed by a day on which he "rested" and kicked up his divine heels; and all the half-forgotten bother he had over Eve and the apple, and the pranks of that talking serpent, and the doctoring of the wicked world with the cold-water cure, and all in vain.

Ezra, being "a ready scribe," proved remarkably useful to his maker in the reproduction of the burnt book. Of a verity he was "a scribe of the law of the God of Heaven."^[2] It is easier to reproduce a lost book for "the God of Heaven" than some seem disposed to think. God does not approve of able writing; he prefers the "babe and suckling" style. He is not at all particular as to facts; and he cares not a jot for dates. With him one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. All he required of Ezra and his five assistants was that they should have a good running hand, only a very few brains, some inventive faculty, and that they should be liars. They did the whole thing in forty days. If they had taken an extra ten days, they might have made a better job of it; but God seems satisfied, and why should not I?

One indispensable in Bible-writing is ambiguity; and, in the vague, equivocal, and obscure, Ezra was a perfect master. In writing a human book it is necessary to make it convey some specific meaning; but, in writing a divine book, care has to be taken to give it no meaning in particular: make it mean anything or nothing, and always leave a loophole through which the apologist can slip out and explain away whatever may oppose the particular position for which he contends. If you are writing a Bible and find yourself degenerating into anything like explicable common sense, it is incumbent on you to mix your sentence up with candlesticks and wheat, and beasts and chariots, and horns, and souls of men, and trumpets and millstones, and dragons and stars, and phials and earthquakes, till no sane person would write such a passage and no sane person would read it; then it will have all the better chance to pass unchallenged as "the word of God." A God or an oracle should never utter anything that has not, at least, two meanings.

Gods and oracles have usually observed this rule. Bible readers do not require to be directed to any particular instance of Jehovah's divine ambiguity, and classical readers will readily remember the cleverly equivocal utterances of the Delphic Oracle. Pyrrhus desired to know what would be the result of his projected expedition against Rome. The Oracle replied:—

"Credo te, Æacida, Romanos vincere posse."^[3]

The same Oracle replied to Crœsus, King of Lydia:—

Χροισος Ἀλυν διαθας, μεγαλην αρχην διαλυσει.^[4]

Those who would write Bibles, or even explain them, would do well to found their style on these two utterances of the Delphic Oracle.

Bible-making is easily enough executed if you, or Ezra, or any one else, only keep up a due blending and admixture of ambiguity and incomprehensibility. Speak to the vulgar in language they understand, and they think you are simply one of themselves. But it is very different when you, or Ezra, or any one else, burst out into, "And they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. When they went they went upon their four sides; and they turned not when they went. As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four. And when the living creatures went the wheels went by them; and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up."^[5] If you want to gull the multitude out of first their reason and then their coppers, keep firmly on the lines of the mysterious. It is an oft-spoken whim of the cynics—and possibly something more—that the doctors give their prescriptions in Latin so as to afford their ignorant patients the benefit of a little imagination. Bolus Panificum sounds a good deal more important than "bread-pill." Some years ago, in a Rhode Island Legislature, a member moved to translate all the Latin phrases in the statutes, so that the people could understand them. A Mr. Updike took the ground that it was no advantage to have the people understand the laws. He said they were not afraid of anything they understood; that it was the Latin words they were afraid of; and proceeded to illustrate as follows: "Mr. Speaker, there was a man in South Kingston, about twenty years ago, who was a perfect nuisance, and nobody knew how to get rid of him. One day he was hoeing corn, and he saw the sheriff coming with a paper, and asked him what it was. Now, if he had been told it was a writ, what would he have cared? But the sheriff told him it was a capias satisfaciendum, and the man dropped his hoe and ran, and has not been heard of since."

No Bible, if it is to retain its influence, should ever be translated into a language understood, or even half understood, by the people. Well the Church of Rome knew this, and determinedly it resisted translation out of "the original tongues." The Bible of the Christian is not exceptional in this respect. While I write I learn that what is likely to prove one of the most deadly blows to Hinduism has just been inflicted by the latest issue from the vernacular press of India. This consists of the first of eight parts of a complete translation of the Rig Veda. The mass of the Hindus, and even multitudes of educated men among them, have always fallen back upon the Vedas as the foundation of their faith, and as a mine of unknown spiritual wealth. Pressed in religious discussion at the many vulnerable points of Hinduism, they could always believe that in the Vedas as known to their pundits was a spiritual revelation that cast even Christianity into the shade. This belief, of course, derived all its strength from ignorance, and, as long as the Veda remained unknown, might continue unshaken. A scholarly native officer of the Civil Service, Romesh Chunder Dutt, who is collector and magistrate of Burisaul, therefore resolved to translate the first great literary work of his race into Bengali. The shrewder champions of Hinduism at once took alarm when they heard of his purpose to unveil to the common people the secrets of the hitherto mysterious book, being well aware that this would undoubtedly destroy the veneration secured for it from ignorance; and, with more courage than wisdom, a leading Hindu, Shoshodhor Tarko Churamoni, has assailed the work of the translator. But Romesh Baboo had prudently secured beforehand the sympathy and aid of the leading Sanscrit scholars of Bengal, and, though his translation may have to pass through a scathing fire of criticism, it is certain to remain substantially unaffected, and the spiritual emptiness of the Vedas will now become apparent to all. As the Indian Baptist pithily remarks, the new garb that the Rig Veda is putting on will prove to be its graveclothes. The well-informed upholders of orthodox Hinduism know this, and they are gnashing their teeth.

But there is one effective set-off against the evil of translating the Bible: few really read it, even after it has been translated. If you find a man here and there who has really read the Bible, he is always more or less of an "Infidel." The true Christian dees not read it; he only praises it. He gives it a conspicuous place in his house—in some parts of England I have seen it, large and gilt, do duty as an ornament for the window-sill; it is in his hand every Sunday at least, and I know one or two saints who carry it constantly in their pockets; and yet they know nothing of where it came from, and next to nothing of what is in it.

 

"One day a flash of lightning struck a mortal;
The ghost he didn't yield —
Above his heart and in his bosom pocket
A Bible was his shield.

"A marvellous deliverance, and worthy
Of any poet's rhyme;
But just suppose that mortal had been reading
His Bible at the time!"

 

However, the lightning did not find him reading it, and it will require to take three or four more shies at him before it does find him reading it.

If anything at all be certain in regard to such a doubtful quantity as the Old Testament, it is certain that it is the production of Ezra. Besides the evidence on this point I have already quoted, that Ezra reproduced the lost Bible was the uniform opinion of the early Christian Church. Clement of Alexandria writes: "In the captivity by Nebuchodonosor, the writings having been destroyed, in the time of Artaxerxes, King of the Persians, Esdras, the Levite, having become inspired, prophesied, restoring again all the old writings."^[6]

Tertullian writes: "Jerusalem having been destroyed by the Babylonian siege, it appears that every instrument of Jewish literature was restored by Esdras."^[7]

Eusebius quotes Irenæus as saying: "And it is not at all wonderful that God wrought this, who also in the captivity of the people in the time of Nebuchodonosor, when the writings had been destroyed, and the Jews came back after seventy years to their own land, then in the time of Artaxerxes, the King of the Persians, inspired Esdras, the priest of the tribe of Levi, to set forth all the words of the prophets who had gone before, and to restore to the people the legislation given through Moses."^[8]

Jerome writes: "Certainly the present day is to be deemed of that time in which the history itself was put together: whether you choose to call Moses the author of the Pentateuch, or Ezra the restorer of the same work, I make no objection."^[9] Basilius, Chrysostom, Athanasius, Leo Byzantinus, and others of the Christian Fathers give similar testimony.

It is evident that, for the production of the Bible, only one inspiration was requisite—the inspiration of Ezra. Clearly it matters not a jot whether Moses was inspired or not. Whatever Moses' writings had been like, they had got destroyed, so it was of no moment whether they had been inspired ten times over. If Ezra produced the lost twenty-two books, he must have suffered from a far more severe attack of inspiration than Moses had had, who produced only five books, against Ezra's twenty-two. In fact, the amount of inspiration which had been sufficient for the whole staff that had produced the lost Bible must have been let loose upon Ezra. Suffering in his person from inspiration sufficient for the entire staff of the Bible, the wonder is that, from the over-dose, Ezra did not burst, his pieces flying from Dan even unto Beersheba.

I am not extravagant in this solicitude lest Ezra should have burst. One theory at least of inspiration held by theologians would not be quite incompatible with the inspired one bursting, and thereby leaving his study in a state more easily conceived than described. For, after the manner of the Pythian prophetess, the spirit that possessed those inspired was believed to "swell and blow up their bodies, especially their breasts and bellies, like a bladder or bottle."^[10] Another theory of the action of inspiration was that the Holy Ghost came upon the Bible-writer like "a rushing, mighty wind."^[11] To receive the gust necessary to writing a whole lost Bible, Ezra may, of course, have chained himself firmly to the trunk of a tree; but, even then, such a tempest of inspiration was enough to have blown the very teeth out of his head.

No wonder that the inspired ones were blown up and bulged out in abdomen and breast; for the "Holy Ghost," if properly translated, would be nothing more or less than the "Holy Wind." The Greek word πνευμα stands, in the New Testament, for wind, ghost, and spirit. The translators did not find it their business to make a correct translation from the "original;" but they did find it their business to gull the unlearned, and so, when they met with πνευμα, they rendered it wind in one place, ghost in another, and spirit in another—not with any regard to critical and philological nicety, but with due regard to making mysterious and imposing sentences, that should cause the wayfaring man to feel that he could not wrestle with Scriptural inscrutabilities, and that, therefore, to make all mysteries plain, it would be well to build a church and pay a parson to explain. The poor dupe, in his millions, has done so: the churches have been built, and the parsons explain; and, of course, they have always found it their interest to make the inexplicable, if possible, more inexplicable still. One of the most flagrant instances of tampering with πνευμα is to be found in the verse, "The wind bloweth where it listeth…and so is every one that is born of the Spirit."^[12] The same Greek word is actually translated wind in one part of the same verse and spirit in another! And the "spirit" is no common "Spirit" either, but begins with a capital s, to make it look more mysterious and terrible to the untutored multitude who can be gulled into the building of churches and the paying for parsons. If what I say be not true, let all the learning of all their universities contradict me. Usually, when a parson finds himself in a fix, he remarks: "In the original, my dear Christian brethren, we find that our blessed Lord made use of the Greek word so-and-so," taking it for granted that his pious dupes will, at "the Greek word so-and-so," open their mouths wide in reverent ignorance, and let the most holy and deeply-erudite man of God have it all his own way. What a poor, detected charlatan the parson would seem if only a scholar or two could be found to be fools enough to listen to his pulpit drivel, and confront him with the damning truth, "Rev. Sir, there is, as you are very well aware, no 'original.' The oldest MS. is not older than the fourth century, and it is notoriously imperfect; and, even if there were an 'original,' by all the canons of scholarship, it would not bear the translation you thrust upon your version. Would it not be more manly, Rev. Sir, more honourable, to take a spade or an axe and work honestly for your daily bread, than thus to get up into your gospel-box and, for a living, impose upon the ignorance of the ignorant?"

Paul—other "holy men of God" may possibly do likewise—occasionally writes on his own account, but with a kind of vague conjecture that the Holy Ghost or Holy Wind would approve what he writes:

"After my judgment; and I think also I have the Spirit of God."^[13]

This means that, at times, Paul did not feel so afflicted with sacred flatulency that he was quite sure he was "inspired." Did he test the extent of inspiration by striking his hand against his abdomen to ascertain whether it were sufficiently inflated with the Holy Wind? If, under a blow from his fist, his abdomen boomed like a drum, did he take this as an omen that he was thoroughly under the influence of inspiration? The "holy men of God"—the Ezras, the Pauls, and the rest of them—sitting, pen in hand, with terribly-distended abdomens, producing the Bible, "the source of England's greatness," is a burlesque well worthy the burlesque of a book they have produced, and the tragic burlesque of millions of mankind taking it for a sporadic and exceptional expression of supernal wisdom. Leeze me upon the πνευμα. The Holy Spirit = Holy Wind theory of inspiration. In beatific vision, I behold the holy men of God, who spake as they were moved by the Holy Wind, each time they dip the pen into the ink with the one hand they give their abdomen a blow with the other to try whether it is tense enough to emit the drum-like sound indicative that the possessor is just in the proper key for Bible-writing and for acting as the amanuensis of Jehovah Tsidkenu. The whole affair began in wind, and it is ending in smoke.

 

1. See 2 Esdras xiv. 21-44.
2. Ezra vii. 6.
3. This reads either, "I believe that thou wilt conquer the Romans," or "I believe that the Romans will conquer thee." Pyrrhus was defeated and slain; but the Oracle held that its infallibility was unshaken, and that it was no fault of its that Pyrrhus had adopted the former reading and rejected the latter.
4. If Crœsus pass over the Halys, he will destroy a great empire." And so he did; but that great empire was his own.
5. Ezekiel i. 16-19.
6. Strom. i. 22.
7. "De Cultu. fœm.," c. 3.
8. "Hist. Ecc," v. 8.
9. "Adv. Helvidium," tom, iv., p. 134.
10. "The Divine Authority of the Holy Scriptures," p. 17, by Dr. Samuel Clark.
11. Acts xi.^{[err 1]} 2.
12. John iii. 8.
13. 1 Cor. vii 40.

1. [Erratum: Acts ii.]