This is precisely what the Christian clergy maintain in attempting to explain the indecencies and incongruities of the Old Testament. Only, instead of allowing the interpretation to those who have the key to these seeming incongruities, they have assumed to themselves the office and right, by divine proxy, to interpret these in their own way. They have not only done that but have gradually deprived the Hebrew clergy of the means to interpret their Scriptures as their fathers did; so that to find among the Rabbis in the present century a well-versed kabalist, is quite rare. The Jews have themselves forgotten the key! How could they help it? Where are the original manuscripts? The oldest Hebrew manuscript in existence is said to be the Bodleian Codex, which is not older than between eight and nine hundred years. The break between Ezra and this Codex is thus fifteen centuries. In 1490 the Inquisition caused all the Hebrew Bibles to be burned; and Torquemada alone destroyed 6,000 volumes at Salamanca. Except a few manuscripts of the Tora Ketubim and Nebiim, used in the synagogues, and which are of quite a recent date, we do not think there is one old manuscript in existence which is not punctuated, hence — completely misinterpreted and altered by the Masorets. Were it not for this timely invention of the Masorah, no copy of the Old Testament could possibly be tolerated in our century. It is well known that the Masorets while transcribing the oldest manuscripts put themselves to task to take out, except in a few places which they have probably overlooked, all the immodest words and put

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in places sentences of their own, often changing completely the sense of the verse. “It is clear,” says Donaldson, “that the Masoretic school at Tiberias were engaged in settling or unsettling the Hebrew text until the final publication of the Masorah itself.” Therefore, had we but the original texts — judging by the present copies of the Bible in our possession — it would be really edifying to compare the Old Testament with the Vedas and even with the Brahmanical books. We verily believe that no faith, however blind, could stand before such an avalanche of crude impurities and fables. If the latter are not only accepted but enforced upon millions of civilized persons who find it respectable and edifying to believe in them as divine revelation, why should we wonder that Brahmans believe their books to be equally a Sruti, a revelation?

Let us thank the Masorets by all means, but let us study at the same time both sides of the medal.

Legends, myths, allegories, symbols, if they but belong to the Hindu, Chaldean, or Egyptian tradition, are thrown into the same heap of fiction. Hardly are they honored with a superficial search into their possible relations to astronomy or sexual emblems. The same myths — when and because mutilated — are accepted as Sacred Scriptures, more — the Word of God! Is this impartial history? Is this justice to either the past, the present, or the future? “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon,” said the Reformer, nineteen centuries ago. “Ye cannot serve truth and public prejudice,” would be more applicable to our own age. Yet our authorities pretend they serve the former.

There are few myths in any religious system but have an historical as well as a scientific foundation. Myths, as Pococke ably expresses it, “are now proved to be fables, just in proportion as we misunderstand them; truths, in proportion as they were once understood. Our ignorance it is which has made a myth of history; and our ignorance is an Hellenic inheritance, much of it the result of Hellenic vanity.”

Bunsen and Champollion have already shown that the Egyptian sacred books are by far older than the oldest parts of the Book of Genesis. And now a more careful research seems to warrant the suspicion — which with us amounts to a certainty, that the laws of Moses are copies from the code of the Brahmanic Manu. Thus, according to every probability, Egypt owes her civilization, her civil institutions, and her arts, to India. But against the latter assumption we have a whole army of “authorities” arrayed, and what matters if the latter do deny the fact at present? Sooner or later they will have to accept it, whether they belong to the German or French school. Among, but not of those

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