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Horresco Referens
Published in the Agnostic Journal London, England 14 July, 1906 (pages 17-18)
"Simple Bible teaching"; such is the designation which is shortly going to be applied to thee undenominational (?) religious instruction of this country: an education which, instead of centering round the infantine virtues of our children, finds its expression in the maturer vices of their parents. By "vice," I take the word in its fullest sense, and mean by it all that is degrading, depraving, and corrupting; for any parent who places the Authorized Version in the hands of a child is thereby robbing that child of purity, innocence, and chastity;: and opening to its ignorant, susceptible mind, the road which leads to the prison, the brothel, and the gallows. No more would we think of placing Burton's "Arabian Nights" in the hands of our sons and daughters than we would of teaching them to lisp Pantagruelisms on their mother's knee. Why, then, should we place a book crammed with absurdities, redundant with crimes, crowded with contradictions, ignorant, credulous, superstitious, feculently immoral, and revoltingly obscene, on their school desks, for their perusal, with comment or without?
Comment! Does the following need it" That the world was peopled by incest (Genesis iv., 17, 26), that Abraham committed incest (Genesis xx., 12), also Reuben (Genesis xxxv., 22), also Absalom (2 Samuel xvi., 21-23), also Amnon (2 Samuel xiii., 1-22), etc., etc.
Does the following need comment? That Abraham trafficked with his wife's honour (Genesis xii., 11-19, xx., 2-18); so also did his son Isaac (Genesis xxvi., 6-12), or that God Almighty displayed his back parts to Moses (Exodus xxxiii., 23); or that Lot offered his daughters to a mob of lustful Sodomites (Genesis xix., 1-8); or the truly beautiful story concerning a certain concubine at Gibeah (Judges xix., 20-30).
What are our children to believe? Are they to believe, with the Prayer-book, that a man may not marry his sister, his son's wife, his brother's wife, or his wife's sister; and also at the same time believe with the Bible, that Abraham married his sister (Genesis xx., 12). that Judah had intercourse with his daughter-in-law (Genesis xxxviii., 13-27), that Onan was struck dead for marrying his brother's wife, Tamar (Genesis xxxviii., 7-10), and that Jacob married Rachel the sister of Leah (Genesis xxix., 23-30)?
Are they to believe in the singleness of human marriage, and at the same time be given a book describing the polygamous marriage of Abraham (Genesis xx., 12; xvi., 4), of Jacob (Genesis xxix., 23-30; xxx., 1-10), of David (2 Samuel v., 13; xii., 8; xx., 3) and Solomon (1 Kings xi., 1-3)? Are they to be read as a work of moral instruction—moral instruction indeed, which would make a de Sade shiver in his shroud, or an Aretino blush with very shame—a work replete with laws against indecency, unchastity, fornication, adultery, incest, beastiality and Sodomy; a book whose ideal heroes break every law contained in it; a book dealing extensively with rape, castration, childbirth, divorce, circumcision; which teems with the words of "harlot" and "whore"; which is crammed with filthy ideas, and disgusting language, and references to menstruation, begetting, conception and parturition, punctuated with such words as "foreskin," "belly," and "womb"; a book which teaches, that motherhood is sinful (Psalms li., 5), that God will cause wives to be ravished (Isaiah xiii., 16; Deuteronomy xxviii., 30, etc.), that captured women may be violated (Deuteronomy xxi., 10-14), that marriage is evil (I Corinthians viii., I, 7-9, 32-35, 37-40). that a prophet may walk about stark naked (Isaiah xx., 204), eat dung (Ezekiel iv., 12-15), and marry a prostitute (Hosea i., 2; iii., 1). that God is a loving father, and yet once drowned all the world, innocent and guilty alike (Genesis vi., 5-17), that he commanded and approved human sacrifice (Leviticus xxvii., 28, 29; Genesis xxii., 2, 9,10; Judges xi., 34, 39), and that he ultimately tortured to death his only begotten son (Colossians i., 19, 20, etc.)?
Here are a few moral lessons in "Simple Bible Teaching":—
Here are eight loving-kindnesses of OUR Father, which I have no doubt the church will be only too pleased to accept without comment. And now how about OUR Lord, he was a worthy chip off the old Block (head). The finite atrocities of the Old Testament were far too lenient, so he sends his enemies right and left to an eternal hell (Matthew xxv., 41-46, etc.), damns the rich (Matthew xix., 24), speaks unintelligible parables, so that people may not be saved (Mark iv., 11-12), idealises cannibalism (John vi., 53-56), recommends castration (Matthew xix., 12, etc.), celibacy (Matthew xix., 10-12), wife desertion (Luke xiv., 33), insults women generally and his mother in particular.
Is this the book to teach a higher morality, a nobler system of ethics? A book whose heroes were:—Adam, a sneaking coward; Moses, a juggling murderer; Abraham, a grabbing pimp; Isaac, ditto; Jacob, a slippery cad; Joshua, a blood-thirsty cut-throat; Lot, an unnatural bawd; Samson, a puddle-trotting harlot-quester; David, a homo-sexual-adulterous-psalm-singing, stone-slinging slit-throat (one of the very worst, and ancestor of the Lamb whose ghostly "pa" was a pigeon, and whose mundane one was the pigeon); Solomon, a notorious lecher; Isaiah and Jeremiah, both ranting revivalists; Ezekiel, an evil-smelling dung-devourer; Peter, a fearsome coward; John, an effeminate idiot; Paul, a slanderous misogynist. Now, a lady or two: Rahab, a treacherous harlot; Deborah, a villainous murderess; and Sarah, a senile adulteress. Enough! though there are many more.
Is this the book on which we are to educate our children? The book which contains a thousand absurdities:—The creation story; the Eve-and-apple story; the flood story; the Babel story; the Lot's wife story; the plagues story, the sun-standing-still story; the Balaam's-ass story; the Jonah-and-the-whale story; the virgin-mother story; the resurrection story; the crucifixion story; the ascension story; and a hundred others; this book begins with a fairy-tale and ends with a nightmare? This book makes of its God a murderer, of its Ghost an adulterer, of its Virgin a harlot, and of its Redeemer an illegitimate, who lived on earth like a twopenny cracker, and flew up to heaven like a halfpenny squib.
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