J. M. Wheeler

“ The widespread custom of blood-covenanting illustrates most clearly, as Dr. Tylor points out, "the great principle of old-world morals, that man owes friendship, not to mankind at large, but only to his own kin; so that to entitle a stranger to kindness and good faith he must become a kinsman by blood."* That any sane man seated at a table ever said, "Take eat, this is my body," and "Drink, this is my blood," is ridiculous. ”

“ On the one hand we have seen that it has been customary to kill the human or animal god in order to save his divine life from being weakened by the inroads of age. On the other hand we have seen that it has been customary to have a general expulsion of evils and sins once a year. Now, if it occurred to people to combine these two customs, the result would be the employment of the dying god as scapegoat. ”

“ The modern priest, who is supposed by muttering a formula to change the nature of consecrated elements or by his prayers to bring blessings on the people, betrays his lineal descent from the primitive rain-makers and sorcerers of savagery.
The Bible is full of magic and sorcery. Its heroes are magicians, from Jahveh Elohim, who puts Adam into a sleep and then makes woman from his rib, to Jesus who casts out devils and cures blindness with clay and spittle, and whose followers perform similar works by the power of his name. The most esteemed persons among the Jews were magicians. ”

“ So strange, so repugnant to reason as such a doctrine is, it was quite consonant to the thoughts of those who held the belief in salvation by similars. If Paul said, since by man came death by man came also the resurrection of the dead, the development of the doctrine necessitated that if it is God who damns it is also God who saves. Any casual reader of Paul must have been struck by the antithesis which he constantly draws between the law and the Gospel, works and faith, the fall of man, and the redemption through "the second Adam." ”

“ The origin and meaning of sacrifices constitute a central problem of ancient religion. It links indeed the stronghold of orthodox Christianity—its doctrine of the Atonement—with the most barbarous customs of primitive savages. When we hear of the Lamb slain for sinners, the very phrase takes us back to the time when sins were formally placed upon the heads of unconscious animals that they might be held accursed instead of man; and to the yet older notion of human sacrifice as a most acceptable offering to the gods. ”

“ When Solomon praises her she replies with praises of her beloved peasant swain. She longs for him by day and seeks him in dreams by night. Solomon offers to place her above his "threescore queens and fourscore concubines and virgins without number"; but she is home-sick, and prefers the embraces of her lover to those of the lascivious king. Her humble vineyard is more to her than all the king's riches. The moral is, "Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: If a man would give all the substance of his house for love he would utterly be condemned." ”

“ We have read the Bible, they will say, and never saw these things. That is because they read it without knowledge, or without attention. Reading is not done with the eyes only, but also with the brain ”

“ In the Jewish Church no one under the age of thirty was permitted to read the Song of Songs, a prohibition which may have assisted to give it its sacred character. It is, nevertheless, not more indelicate than many other portions of God's Holy Word, and viewed in its proper light as an Oriental dramatic love poem, although it cannot be acquitted of outraging modern notions of decency, it is not, I think, so much, as some other portions of the Bible, open to the charge of teaching immorality. ”

“ Disease and death were so constantly thought of as the penalties of breaking taboo that cases are on record of those who, having unwittingly done this, have died of terror upon recognising their error. ”

“ Hence the children of one mother are termed "of the same blood." In a state of continual warfare the only safe alliances were with those who recognised the family bond. Those who would be friends must be sharers in the same blood. Hence we find all oyer the savage world rites of blood-covenanting, of drinking together from the same blood, thereby symbolising community of nature. Like eating and drinking together, it was a sign of communion and the substitution of bread and wine for flesh and blood is a sun-worshipping refinement upon more primitive and cannibalistic communion. ”

“ All the Old Testament heroes, from Lamech downwards, were polygamists. Indeed, both polygamy and concubinage were practised by those Hebrew saints who were most distinguished by their piety, faith, and communion with Jahveh. Abraham not only took Hagar as a secondary wife, but turned her adrift in the wilderness when it suited his own goodwill and pleasure. Jacob, who lived under the special guidance of God, married two sisters at the same time, and each of them presented him with concubines. ”

“ Christ in order to become the Savior had to become the curse, had to die and had to descend to hell, though of course, being God, he could not stay there. Hence his being likened to the brazen serpent, that remnant of early Jewish fetichism which was smashed by Hezekiah (2 Kings xviii. 4) . John makes Jesus himself teach that "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness [as a cure for serpent bites] even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life." ”

“ If we ask why a dying god should be selected to take upon himself and carry away the sins and sorrow of the people, it may be suggested that in the practice of using the divinity as a scapegoat, we have a combination of two customs which were at one time distinct and independent. ”

“ To arrive at the truth in regard to the question whether human sacrifice was at one time a portion of the Jewish religion, or whether it was, as the orthodox generally assert, simply a corruption copied from the surrounding heathen nations, it is necessary to bear in mind that every portion of the Jewish law is of later date than the prophets. ”

“ Jacob wrestles with him; and when things do not go as they wish, Moses, Joshua, David and Job no more hesitate to remonstrate with their deity than the African hesitates to chide the fetish that does not answer his prayers.
In the early books Jahveh is irascible and unjust. His temper is soon up, and his vengeance usually falls on the wrong parties. Eve eats the forbidden fruit and all her female descendants are condemned to pains at childbirth. ”

“ The earliest known Egyptian and Chaldean psalms and hymns are spells against sorcery or the influence of evil spirits, just as the invocation taught to Christian children—
Matthew, Mark, Luke And John Bless The Bed That I Lie On.
The belief in magic, though it shows a survival in Theosophy, as ghost belief does in Spiritism, is dying slowly; and with it, in the long run, must die those religious doctrines and practices founded upon it. No magic can endure scientific scrutiny. Almost expelled from the physical world, it takes refuge in the domain of psychology ”

“ Many instances are found in the Bible of the blessing of a large family. "Happy is the man who has his quiver full." The blessing on the typical servant of Jahveh is that "he shall see his seed," It was the duty of the next of kin to see that the family stock did not diminish. We find at the beginning of Genesis that, when Abel was slain, God gave Seth "instead." In patriarchal life, as exhibited by the Bedouins, the "next of kin," the goel, is a most important personage. To him the tribe looks to avenge or redeem a kinsman's death or misfortune. ”

“ By God's law a man was permitted to dismiss a wife when she found "no favor in his eyes," by simply writing out a bill of divorcement. There is no mention of the woman having any similar power of getting quit of her lord and master. If he suspected her fidelity he could compel her to go through an ordeal in which the priest administered to her the water of jealousy, which if guilty would cause her to rot, but which was harmless if she was innocent. ”

“ Jahveh, unlike Jesus, had no partiality for the unmarried state. He liked a real sacrifice of blood. To lament childlessness was a common ancient custom, and even the Greek and Latin poets have represented their heroines who were similarly doomed to an early death, such as Antigone, Polyxena, and Iphigenia, as actually lamenting in a very similar manner their virginity or unmarried condition. There is no single instance in the Old Testament of a woman being set apart as a virgin, though, as we have seen, there are numerous indications of human sacrifices. ”

“ Among the early Christians, sorcery was recognised as illegal miracle; and magic arts, such as turning men into beasts, calling up familiar demons, raising storms, etc., are mentioned, not in a sceptical spirit, but with reprobation. In the changed relations of the state to the church under Constantine, the laws against magic served the new purpose of proscribing the rites of the Greek and Roman religion, whose oracles, sacrifices and auguries, once carried on under the highest public sanction, were put under the same ban with the low arts of the necromancer and the witch. ”

“ Not only do the Egyptian enchanters work miracles and the witch of Endor raise Samuel, but the power of evil spirits over men is the occasion of most of the miracles of Jesus. The very doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible, so cherished by Protestant Christians, is but a part of that doctrine of men being possessed by spirits, good and evil, which is the substratum of belief in witchcraft. ”

“ And further, if a spirit returned from the dead to tell Saul he should die and go to Sheol—where Samuel was, for he says "to-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me"—why should not spirits now return to tell us we are immortal? If the witch of Endor could raise spirits, why not Lottie Fowler or Mr. Eglinton? Such are the arguments of the spiritists. We venture to think they cannot be answered by the orthodox. To us, however, the fact that the beliefs of the spiritists find their countenance in the beliefs of savages like the early Jews is their sufficient refutation. ”

“ A woman who has once taken her seat is not allowed to return home till one of the strangers throws a silver coin into her lap, and takes her with him beyond the holy ground. When he throws the coin he says these words—'The goddess Mylitta prosper thee" (Venus is called Mylitta by the Assyrians) . The silver coin may be of any size; it cannot be refused, for that is forbidden by the law, since once thrown it is sacred. The woman goes with the first man who throws her money, and rejects no one. ”

“ Matthew Henry, the great Bible commentator, writing upon our text, at a time when the statutes against witchcraft were still in force, said: "By our law, consulting, covenanting with, invoking, or employing, any evil spirit to any intent whatsoever, and exercising any enchantment, charm, or sorcery, whereby hurt shall be done to any person whatsoever, is made felony without benefit of clergy; also, pretending to tell where goods lost or stolen may be found, or the like, is an iniquity punishable by the judge, and the second offence with death. ”

“ Commentators have been puzzled to account for this evident relic of serpent worship in a religion so abhorrent of idolatry as that of the Jews. These gentry usually shut their eyes very close to the many evidences that the god-guided people were always falling into the idolatries of the surrounding nations. Now we know that the Babylonians, in common with all the great nations of antiquity, worshipped the serpent. It has been thought, indeed, that the name Baal is an abbreviation of Ob-el, "the serpent god." ”