



Produced by David Widger from page images generously
provided by Google Books







THE BIBLE UNVEILED

By M. M. Mangasarian


1911


When I seriously believe a thing, I say so in a few words, leaving the
reader to determine what my belief is worth. But I do not choose
to temper down every expression of personal opinion into courteous
generalities. Let us learn to speak plainly and intelligibly first, and,
if it may be, gracefully afterwards.--John Ruskin.

|TO make it possible for a man to be as honest in his religion as he
would like to be in his business; to make him as unafraid in church as
he aims to be anywhere else, and to help make him as impatient of a lie
on Sunday as he is on any other day of the week, is the object of these
studies on the bible. I wish to be able to kindle in the breast of every
free citizen of this free country the love of truth, irrespective of
whether it helps or hurts; I wish to shame cowardice and cant out of
every man and woman who speaks the English language.




CONTENTS

An Extraordinary Book

A Word with the Reader--Protestant and Catholic

A Word with the Jews


PART I.

I. The Neglected Book

What Makes a Book Inspired?

The Sects and Their Bibles

Catholic and Protestant Bibles

Catholics Make Their Own Bible


PART II.

I. The Tercentenary of the English Bible

Some Lay Defenders of the Bible--Bryan's Challenge

Bryan's Defense of the Bible

II. Roosevelt on the Bible

III. "Let Them Produce It"

What Is the Best Thing That Can Be Said in Favor of the Bible?

IV. How to Test a Book

Speak According to Knowledge


PART III.

I. The First Chapter of the Bible

The First Verse of the Bible

Theologians Discover That Six Days Means Six Periods

The Great Tragedy

II. Taboo and Totem.

The Totem

III. The Bible and Magic

The Unbelievable in the Bible

IV. The Strangest Story in the Bible


PART IV.

I. God and His Book

The Deity Demands Human Flesh

II. The Portrait of God in the Bible

A Bible Saint

III. The Bible and Judaism

IV. Bible and Talmud

V. The Masterpiece of the Bible--Solomon's Temple


PART V.

Contradictions in the Bible

Serious Discrepancies in the Story of Jesus

One Writer Makes Jesus Affirm What Another Made Him Deny


PART VI.

I. What Was The Bible Meant to Teach?

II. The Bible and Religion

III. Does the Bible Teach Morality?

IV. Righteousness in the Bible

V. The Ten Commandments

VI. The Commandments Broken

VII. Thou Shalt Despise Women

VIII. The Sermon on the Mount

IX. The Parables of Jesus


PART VII.

I. A Better Bible

Conclusion. The Book of God and the Book of Man




An Extraordinary Book

|A BOOK which claims infallibility; which aspires to absolute authority
over mind and body; which demands unconditional surrender to all its
pretensions upon penalty of eternal damnation, is an extraordinary book
and should, therefore, be subjected to extraordinary tests.

Neither Christian priests nor Jewish rabbis approve of applying to the
bible the same tests by which _other_ books are tried.

Why?

Because it will help the bible?

It can not be that.

Because it might _hurt_ the bible?

We can think of no other reason.

But why devote so much space and time to the discussion of a book in
which the educated world no longer believes? Why not take up issues that
are more alive and more useful? I am of the opinion that the people who
leave the bible alone do so, not because they think the book has ceased
to hurt, but because they are still afraid of it, or its clientele. The
generality of reformers would rather fight giants than the great _paper_
idol of the churches--because it is _safer_.

Clergymen with liberal tendencies seek to dull the edge of all criticism
against the bible by admitting in advance the conclusions of scholarship
in reference to it, but still pretending to find a unique use for the
book as "literature." Indeed! And since when has the bible, from being a
divine revelation, fallen to the level of mere letters? If the bible is
mere literature, would the mails accept it in its present form? Would it
be tolerated in the homes of the people? And why should there be a paid
army of men in the service of a book which is only literature? Why so
