Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet; as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.
Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all.
“Chapter II – Of Missions and Revelations.” The Age of Reason, page 7.
On the one hand, I can state with no reservations, that I agree with these two paragraphs. On the other hand, I believe Mr. Paine was incorrect to include Moses and the Torah.
Before you dismiss me as schizophrenic, let me explain further.
YHVH did not call upon Moses to be some sort of “conduit” between God and the people. Moses was chosen to rescue an enslaved people from their oppressors. In fact, it’s only a point of fact that the Torah was “given by God to Moses face to face,” because the original plan was for the entire congregation of Israel to receive the Torah directly from YHVH. The people were too afraid, and begged Moses to stand in their stead.
Regardless of the channel of communications used to transmit the Torah, the real fundamental difference between the Torah and the so-called “Word of God” that Christians and Muslims claim through their “certain individuals,” is that the Torah was nothing more than a civil Constitution for establishing a God-fearing society on earth and in time. It does not require world domination, it does not speak about a paradise beyond death, and it is perfectly happy to coexist with the rest of the world.
That does not mean, unfortunately, that Judaism is free from the corruption that every religious institution eventually embraces. To the extent that a Jew mystifies the Torah and transforms it from the example of natural law that it is, into a magical religious creed, they are perverting the beauty and simplicity of the Torah.
As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into the subject, offer some observations on the word ‘revelation.’ Revelation when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man.
No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and, consequently, they are not obliged to believe it.
“Chapter II – Of Missions and Revelations.” The Age of Reason, page 7.
The purest form of Judaism, Karaite Judaism, understands this idea, and has passed it down through the generations with their well-known adage: “Search well in the Scriptures and do not rely on anyone’s opinion.” (See “What is Karaism?”)
When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the commandments from the hand of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so; and I have no other authority for it than some historian telling me so, the commandments carrying no internal evidence of divinity with them. They contain some good moral precepts such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver or a legislator could produce himself, without having recourse to supernatural intervention.
“Chapter II – Of Missions and Revelations.” The Age of Reason, page 7.
The Torah isn’t a religious text, so it really doesn’t matter who authored it. It is a set of laws and examples of those laws being applied, that YHVH gave to Israel so they would enjoy liberty and prosperity. As a matter of religion, I choose to believe the stories contained within the Torah at face value. Which means, I choose to believe that an almighty deity named YHVH gave the Torah to a real group of people, the children of Israel. But, accepting the historical factualness of these stories is not a requirement for the laws to be effective.
When also I am told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: but we have not even this; for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves. It is only reported by others that they said so. It is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not choose to rest my belief upon such evidence.
“Chapter II – Of Missions and Revelations.” The Age of Reason, page 8.
If Christianity did not require blind faith in the veracity of this amazing story of birth from virginity, then perhaps I would still be a “Christian.” There is no such requirement for religious faith in Karaite Judaism. Obviously, if you do not believe the stories of the Torah, then you are not actually a Karaite (because the definition of “Karaite Judaism” is that you believe these stories to have occurred), but YHVH does not require that you become a Karaite for the Torah to protect your individual liberty.
Exodus 12:49 One Instruction shall there be for the native and for the sojourner that sojourns in your midst.
The Torah, page 74.
“Instruction,” here, is the word torah. Simply put, the Torah promises freedom to everyone who abides by it, whether or not you accept the historical context for its delivery, or the cultural traditions for commemorating it.
It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given to the story of Jesus Christ being the Son of God. He was born when the heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the world, and that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of such a story. Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods. It was not a new thing at that time to believe a man to have been celestially begotten; the intercourse of gods with women was then a matter of familiar opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their accounts, had cohabited with hundreds; the story therefore had nothing in it either new, wonderful, or obscene; it was conformable to the opinions that then prevailed among the people called Gentiles, or mythologists, and it was those people only that believed it. The Jews, who had kept strictly to the belief of one God, and no more, and who had always rejected the heathen mythology, never credited the story.
It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian Church, sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A direct incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the reputed founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that then followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality, which was about twenty or thirty thousand. The statue of Mary succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus. The deification of heroes changed into the canonization of saints. The Mythologists had gods for everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything. The church became as crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other; and Rome was the place of both. The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.
“Chapter II – Of Missions and Revelations.” The Age of Reason, page 8.