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These chapters are a compliment to Cyrus, who permitted the Jews to
return to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity, to rebuild
Jerusalem and the temple, as is stated in Ezra. The last verse of the
44th chapter, and the beginning of the 45th [Isaiah] are in the
following words: "That saith of Cyrus, he is my shepherd, and shall
perform all my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, thou shalt be
built; and to the temple thy foundations shall be laid: thus saith
the Lord to his enointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden to
subdue nations before him, and I will loose the loins of kings to
open before him the two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be
shut; I will go before thee," etc.
What audacity of church and priestly ignorance it is to impose this
book upon the world as the writing of Isaiah, when Isaiah, according
to their own chronology, died soon after the death of Hezekiah, which
was B.C. 698; and the decree of Cyrus, in favour of the Jews
returning to Jerusalem, was, according to the same chronology, B.C.
536; which is a distance of time between the two of 162 years. I do
not suppose that the compilers of the Bible made these books, but
rather that they picked up some loose, anonymous essays, and put them
together under the names of such authors as best suited their
purpose. They have encouraged the imposition, which is next to
inventing it; for it was impossible but they must have observed it.
When we see the studied craft of the scripture-makers, in making
every part of this romantic book of school-boy's eloquence bend to
the monstrous idea of a Son of God, begotten by a ghost on the body
of a virgin, there is no imposition we are not justified in
suspecting them of. Every phrase and circumstance are marked with the
barbarous hand of superstitious torture, and forced into meanings it
was impossible they could have. The head of every chapter, and the
top of every page, are blazoned with the names of Christ and the
Church, that the unwary reader might suck in the error before he
began to read.
Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son (Isa. vii. I4), has
been interpreted to mean the person called Jesus Christ, and his
mother Mary, and has been echoed through christendom for more than a
thousand years; and such has been the rage of this opinion, that
scarcely a spot in it but has been stained with blood and marked with
desolation in consequence of it. Though it is not my intention to
enter into controversy on subjects of this kind, but to confine
myself to show that the Bible is spurious, -- and thus, by taking
away the foundation, to overthrow at once the whole structure of
superstition raised thereon, -- I will however stop a moment to
expose the fallacious application of this passage.
Whether Isaiah was playing a trick with Ahaz, king of Judah, to whom
this passage is spoken, is no business of mine; I mean only to show
the misapplication of the passage, and that it has no more reference
to Christ and his mother, than it has to me and my mother. The story
is simply this:
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