The Age of Reason - Thomas Paine (read aloud books TXT) 📗

assurances from the Lord that their sufferings shall have an end, and that their children should return again to their own land. But I leave the verses to speak for themselves, and the Old Testament to testify against the New.

Jeremiah 31:15⁠—“Thus saith the Lord, a voice was heard in Ramah (it is in the preter tense), lamentation and bitter weeping: Rachel weeping for her children, refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not.”

Verse 16⁠—“Thus saith the Lord, Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears; for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord, and they shall come again from the land of the enemy.”

Verse 17⁠—“And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, and thy children shall come again to their own border.”

By what strange ignorance or imposition is it, that the children of which Jeremiah speaks (meaning the people of the Jewish nation, scripturally called children of Israel, and not mere infants under two years old), and who were to return again from the land of the enemy, and come again into their own borders, can mean the children that Matthew makes Herod to slaughter? Could those return again from the land of the enemy, or how can the land of the enemy be applied to them? Could they come again to their own borders? Good heavens! how has the world been imposed upon by Testament-makers, priestcraft, and pretended prophecies! I pass on to the fifth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.

This, like two of the former, is introduced by a dream. Joseph dreamed another dream, and dreameth of another angel. And Matthew is again the historian of the dream find the dreamer. If it were asked how Matthew could know what Joseph dreamed, neither the Bishop nor all the Church could answer the question. Perhaps it was Matthew that dreamed and not Joseph; that is, Joseph dreamed by proxy, in Matthew’s brain, as they tell us Daniel dreamed for Nebuchadnezzar. But be this as it may, I go on with my subject.

The account of this dream is in Matthew, 2:19⁠–⁠23⁠—“But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child’s life. And he arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither; notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream (here is another dream), he turned aside into the parts of Galilee: and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene.”

Here is good circumstantial evidence that Matthew dreamed, for there is no such passage in the Old Testament; and I invite the Bishops and all the priests in Christendom, including those of America, to produce it. I pass on to the sixth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.

This, as Swift says on another occasion, is lugged in head and shoulders; it needs only to be seen in order to be hooted as a forced and farfetched piece of imposition.

Matthew, 4:12⁠—“Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee. And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the seacoast, in the borders of Zabulun and Nepthalim: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias (Isaiah) the prophet, saying, The land of Zabuluu and the land of Nepthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the Gentiles: the people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.”

I wonder Matthew has not made the cris-cross-row, or the Christ-cross-now (I know not how the priests spell it) into a prophecy. He might as well have done this as cut out these unconnected and undescriptive sentences from the place they stand in, and dubbed them with that title.

The words, however, are in Isaiah, 9:1⁠–⁠2, as follows:⁠—

“Nevertheless, the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali, and afterwards did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations.”

All this relates to two circumstances that had already happened at the time these words in Isaiah were written. The one, where the land of Zebulun and Naphtali had been lightly afflicted, and afterwards more grievously, by the way of the sea.

But, observe, reader, how Matthew has falsified the text. He begins his quotation at a part of the verse, where there is not so much as a comma, and thereby cuts off everything that relates to the first affliction. He then leaves out all that relates to the second affliction, and by this means leaves out everything that makes the verse intelligible, and reduces it to a senseless skeleton of names of towns.

To bring this imposition of Matthew clearly and immediately before the eye of the reader, I will repeat the verse, and put between brackets [ ] the words he has left out, and put in italics those he has preserved.

[Nevertheless, the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation when at first he lightly afflicted] the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, [and did afterwards more grievously afflict her] by the way of the sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations.

What gross imposition is it to gut, as the phrase is, a verse in this manner, render it perfectly senseless, and then puff it off on a credulous world as a prophecy! I proceed to the next verse.

Verse 2⁠—“The people that