Chosen People II

Thomas Paine on the character of Moses.

With the “Promised Land” of Israel enmeshed in slaughter, it seems a timely tmoment o revisit Thomas Paine’s account of the Holy Land and its protagonists, the Israelites. Readers may recall that the previous entry [The Chosen People] concluded with a quotation taken from Paine’s Age of Reason (1794) in which Paine had some hard words for the chief figures in the Bible account. In particular, “Moses and Aaron, Joshua, Samuel, and David,” Paine wrote, “distinguished themselves above all others on the face of the known earth for barbarity and wickedness.” [emphasis ours - 21CR]. That’s quite an accusation. Readers would be justified to think Paine may have engaged in exaggeration or hyperbole for the sake of shock value, to draw attention. To the contrary, however, Paine documented and presented probative evidence for the claim.

“… the character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretense of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the history of any nation. Of which I will state only one instance: When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi.13): ‘And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth [angry] with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him; but all the women-children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.’

Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters. Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers, one child murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in the hands of an executioner: let any daughter put herself in the situation of those daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a mother and a brother, and what will be their feelings? It is in vain that we attempt to impose upon nature, for nature will have her course, and the religion that tortures all her social ties is a false religion.

After this detestable order, follows an account of the plunder taken, and the manner of dividing it; and here it is that the profaneness of priestly hypocrisy increases the catalogue of crimes. Verse 37, ‘And the Lord's tribute of the sheep was six hundred and threescore and fifteen; and the beeves were thirty and six thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was threescore and twelve; and the asses were thirty thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was threescore and one; and the persons were sixteen thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was thirty and two.’ In short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many other parts of the Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read, or for decency to hear; for it appears, from the 35th verse of this chapter, that the number of women-children consigned to debauchery by the order of Moses was thirty-two thousand.

People in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! it is quite another thing, it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy; for what can be greater blasphemy, than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty!”
Thomas Paine
Age of Reason
Chapter 1: The Old Testament

Detail of a bust of Thomas Paine by American artist John Wesley Jarvis (1780 or 1781 – January 14, 1839). Taken from life in 1806-1807 when Paine was 70 or 71 years. Paine roomed with Jarvis in New York City from November 1806 to the following spring and said Paine was “one of the most pleasant companions I have met with for an old man.” (Dickson, Harold E. John Wesley Jarvis, American Painter, 1780-1840, with a Checklist of His Works. New York: New York Historical Society, 1949. 97-104).