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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
In 'The Bible Unveiled', M. M. Mangasarian delves into a detailed analysis of the religious and historical aspects of the Bible, challenging traditional interpretations and shedding light on lesser-known facts. Through a critical and scholarly approach, the book explores the literary style of the Bible and its context within ancient religious texts, providing readers with a fresh perspective on familiar stories and teachings. Mangasarian's insightful commentary unravels the layers of mythology, symbolism, and historical inaccuracies, inviting readers to reconsider their understanding of this influential religious text. M. M. Mangasarian, a prominent atheist and humanist, brings his unique perspective to 'The Bible Unveiled'. As a former clergyman turned skeptic, Mangasarian's personal journey likely influenced his desire to uncover the truths and myths within the Bible, making this book a product of both scholarship and personal conviction. I highly recommend 'The Bible Unveiled' to readers who are interested in exploring the Bible from a critical and historical perspective. Mangasarian's thorough examination challenges readers to think beyond conventional beliefs and engage with the text in a new light, making it a thought-provoking and enlightening read for those seeking a deeper understanding of religious texts. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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The Bible Unveiled (Religious & Historical Study)
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Table of Contents
Introduction
At the heart of The Bible Unveiled lies a contest between inherited reverence and the relentless demands of historical inquiry. Written by M. M. Mangasarian, this work belongs to the tradition of religious and historical study that questioned sacred authority in the early twentieth century, when critical approaches to scripture were entering public debate. The book addresses everyday readers as much as specialists, inviting them to examine familiar stories with unfamiliar methods. Without presuming conclusions, it proposes that belief should withstand the same tests applied to any historical claim. The result is a probing, disciplined entry point into the intersection of faith, scholarship, and civic life.
As a work of nonfiction, the book blends rationalist critique with accessible exposition. Mangasarian writes in a direct, persuasive voice that favors carefully layered argument over ornament, keeping the focus on evidence, reasoning, and the standards of historical method. The tone is firm yet composed, eschewing ridicule for clarity. Readers encounter a sequence of claims examined for coherence, plausibility, and documentary support, with steady attention to how conclusions are reached. Although the subject is ancient, the style is modern in its emphasis on transparency: assertions are stated plainly, questions are framed precisely, and the invitation to verify remains open throughout.
The premise is straightforward: treat the Bible as one would any collection of historical writings, then ask what follows. Mangasarian takes up questions of authorship, dating, transmission, and context, and he measures extraordinary assertions against ordinary standards of evidence. He considers how narratives arose, how they were preserved, and how they can be weighed alongside external knowledge. Rather than promising final answers, the book models a procedure—interrogate sources, compare claims, and note where proof is missing or mixed. This approach makes the reading experience both analytical and participatory, encouraging readers to test methods as much as conclusions.
Key themes emerge from this examination: the nature of authority, the boundary between myth and history, and the ethical stakes of ideas treated as unquestionable. The book explores how traditions gain credibility, how interpretive communities shape meaning, and how moral claims relate to their historical foundations. It asks what it means to call a text inspired while still subject to human processes of composition and revision. It also considers the civic implications of scriptural certainty, especially when certainty influences law, education, or public discourse. Across these threads, the governing question is how to align respect for tradition with intellectual honesty.
The book’s origins in the early twentieth century matter because that era sharpened debates about science, history, and religion that continue today. Contemporary readers will find in its pages tools for navigating polarized conversations—standards of evidence, distinctions between belief and knowledge, and the courage to say when data do not decide a question. For secular readers, it exemplifies careful critique without hostility. For religious readers, it presents a mirror in which convictions can be assessed, refined, or defended with greater rigor. For all readers, it champions practices of inquiry that support pluralism and responsible dialogue.
Mangasarian’s method is progressive rather than sensational: he advances from surface claims to structural ones, revisiting central questions from multiple angles. The prose favors concrete comparisons, logical sequencing, and steady recapitulation to keep the argument intelligible. While grounded in the scholarship available in its era, the book intentionally avoids technical thickets, steering instead toward public reasoning that any attentive reader can follow. This commitment to clarity reflects its broader purpose—to make critical tools widely usable, not privately specialized. It is a study designed to be read alongside the primary text, not as a substitute for it.
Approached today, The Bible Unveiled rewards patience, note-taking, and conversation across viewpoints. Reading it in parallel with the biblical text and with current historical research illuminates both continuities and advances in method. The book ultimately matters because it models a posture—curious, fair-minded, unafraid of complexity—that communities need when convictions collide with evidence. It neither prescribes disbelief nor demands assent; it asks for standards and consistency. In doing so, it preserves the dignity of faith by inviting it to meet the tests of reason, and it preserves the dignity of reason by engaging a subject worthy of its best efforts.
Synopsis
The Bible Unveiled (Religious & Historical Study) by M. M. Mangasarian presents a sustained, lay-oriented inquiry into the origins, composition, and authority of the Bible. Mangasarian approaches the scriptures as historical literature rather than as a closed revelation, asking what can be known about their human authors and the societies that produced them. The work frames its central question plainly: what remains of biblical claims when they are measured by ordinary standards of evidence and reason? Without assuming piety or hostility, it outlines a program of examination that joins textual analysis, comparative perspectives, and attention to moral consequences attributed to scriptural teaching.
The study opens by addressing the idea of divine inspiration and the reliability of a text transmitted across centuries. Mangasarian surveys how attributions of authorship arose, why many books are anonymous or composite, and how editorial layers complicate appeals to uniform doctrine. He focuses on the processes of compilation and translation that mediate any encounter with the Bible, emphasizing that these processes introduce historical contingencies. Establishing this groundwork, he argues that claims of perfection or inerrancy must first face routine questions posed to any ancient document: who wrote it, when and where, for what audience, and with what sources or motives.
He then turns to the Hebrew Bible, drawing attention to narrative patterns and legal materials that reflect specific cultural settings. Creation, flood, and patriarchal stories are set beside older Near Eastern traditions to illustrate how myths circulate and acquire distinct national color. Law codes and prophetic oracles are read with an eye to internal tensions between justice, ritual, and power. In examining warfare, kingship, and sacrifice, the book probes the moral status of actions endorsed or recorded in the text. Rather than dismissing the corpus wholesale, it asks how far its historical claims and ethical prescriptions can be defended.
A pivotal section treats miracles and prophecy, where Mangasarian applies a consistent evidential threshold. Extraordinary events require strong and independent support; when testimony is late, interested, or conflicting, he recommends caution. Prophecies cited as fulfilled are reconsidered in their original contexts, distinguishing retrospective interpretation from prediction. He entertains naturalistic explanations and the possibility of later editorial alignment between event and oracle. The aim is not merely to negate marvels but to show how ordinary historical method accounts for reports that once functioned as proofs, and how reverence for the text can coexist with scrutiny of its claims.
Turning to the New Testament, the book reviews the Gospels’ interrelationships, the role of oral tradition, and the contrast between Jesus as portrayed by different authors. Apparent discrepancies in chronology, genealogy, and post-crucifixion reports are cataloged to test the limits of harmonization. The distinct vantage of Paul’s letters is weighed against later narrative theology, probing how early communities shaped belief. Ethical teachings are appreciated for their humane emphasis while separated from miraculous attestations. The cumulative effect is to relocate the emergence of Christian doctrine within human history, making room for admiration or critique without reliance on authoritative claims immune to examination.
Beyond textual issues, Mangasarian considers how religious authority crystallized through canon formation, ecclesiastical tradition, and translation choices, and how these shaped public morals and civil life. He engages common apologetic responses—allegory, selective literalism, and appeals to mystery—by asking whether such strategies would be accepted in nonreligious inquiry. As an alternative, he sketches a secular ethic grounded in human welfare and experience, proposing that compassion and justice do not depend upon supernatural sanction. The argument also acknowledges the Bible’s literary power and historical influence while questioning whether those merits require assent to contested historical or metaphysical propositions.
The Bible Unveiled closes by urging sustained, informed reading over deference, situating the scriptures within the broader study of ancient literature and the evolving standards of critical scholarship. Without demanding a final verdict from the reader, it contends that intellectual honesty and moral seriousness are better served by evidence than by inherited authority. As a contribution to the freethought tradition, the work’s enduring resonance lies in modeling how inquiry can be both rigorous and publicly accessible. Its broader significance is to invite generations to reassess foundations—religious, cultural, and ethical—while preserving the possibility of respectful dialogue across convictions.
Historical Context
The Bible Unveiled emerged in the early twentieth-century United States, with Chicago as a principal stage for public controversy over scripture and authority. The Progressive Era’s urban lectures, debating societies, and newspapers created an audience for historical critiques of religion. In that setting, the book presents a rational examination of biblical origins, transmission, and social effects, synthesized from public talks. It reflects a period when ordinary readers encountered new questions about who wrote biblical books, how texts were edited, and how translations shaped doctrine. The work’s setting is thus the American metropolis, civic lecture halls, and a vibrant print culture.
Mangasar Magurditch Mangasarian (1859–1943) was born in the Ottoman Empire to an Armenian family and later emigrated to the United States, where he first served as a Presbyterian minister before renouncing the clergy. In Chicago he became a prominent freethought lecturer, associated with Ethical Culture and, from 1906, leader of the Independent Religious Society of Chicago. He delivered Sunday addresses in Orchestra Hall, drawing large mixed audiences. Many addresses were published as pamphlets and books, including The Bible Unveiled, which approaches scripture as a historical document. His institutional path—from pulpit to independent platform—shaped a tone of lay instruction rather than ecclesiastical debate.
The book’s arguments draw on the late nineteenth‑century spread of Higher Criticism, which examined the Bible’s sources, authorship, and redaction. German scholarship—exemplified by Julius Wellhausen’s Documentary Hypothesis—questioned Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch and influenced American seminaries and universities. The Presbyterian heresy trial of Charles A. Briggs in 1893 signaled the controversy’s intensity. New textual evidence, such as Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, informed Westcott and Hort’s Greek New Testament (1881) and revisions like the English Revised Version (1881–85) and the American Standard Version (1901). These developments encouraged lay readers to weigh manuscript authority against traditional claims of inerrancy.
Parallel scientific advances unsettled literal readings and encouraged historical inquiry. After Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), thinkers such as Thomas Huxley popularized evolutionary explanations, prompting churches and scholars to revisit creation narratives and miracle claims. American universities expanded professional historical methods, stressing corroborated sources and context. Periodicals and series invited general audiences into debates on science and faith. This climate fostered comparative approaches to religion, including attention to Near Eastern cultures and law codes. The Bible Unveiled reflects these currents by foregrounding evidence, provenance, and human authorship rather than harmonization, responding to readers newly attuned to scientific standards of proof.
Chicago’s civic culture strengthened the book’s reception. The city’s rapid growth, immigration, and reform politics made it a center of public discussion after the Haymarket affair (1886) and the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893). New museums, universities, and newspapers broadened access to scholarship, while lyceum and Chautauqua traditions kept popular lectures thriving. National disputes over Sabbath laws and Bible reading in public schools kept church–state boundaries in the news. In that environment, Mangasarian’s method—inviting citizens to judge biblical claims by historical criteria—fit the city’s appetite for forums that mediated between scholarly research, civic morality, and democratic decision‑making.
American freethought supplied both audience and vocabulary. The lectures of Robert G. Ingersoll in the late nineteenth century legitimized frank criticism of scripture before mass audiences. Ethical Culture, founded by Felix Adler in 1876, promoted a non‑theistic ethics and sponsored public education, including in Chicago. Mangasarian participated in this milieu before founding the Independent Religious Society of Chicago in 1906, which emphasized rational religion and free inquiry. His addresses were recorded and sold inexpensively, allowing arguments to circulate beyond the lecture hall. The Bible Unveiled inherits this tradition of accessible, courtroom‑style examination directed at lay jurors rather than academic specialists.
The work also arose amid competing religious movements. Chicago housed the Moody Bible Institute, a center of evangelical revivalism, while the nationwide Niagara Bible Conferences and the publication of The Fundamentals (1910–1915) consolidated Protestant Fundamentalism and biblical inerrancy. At the same time, Social Gospel leaders urged ethically focused reform, and mainline seminaries experimented with historical‑critical methods. Mangasarian’s study positions itself outside confessional boundaries, rejecting ecclesiastical authority while adopting the tools of historical analysis. Its challenges to literalism and miracle claims mirror Modernist debates, yet its independent platform sought to persuade citizens, not church bodies, about the Bible’s human origins and social impact.
Thus, The Bible Unveiled belongs to a Progressive‑Era convergence of urban lecturing, critical scholarship, and mass print. Its Chicago provenance, freethought networks, and reliance on Higher Criticism produced a study oriented toward public judgment of sacred texts. Rather than proposing a new creed, it reflects a civic impulse: that religious claims be evaluated with documentary evidence and historical context, as other public questions were. The book’s critiques register both the opportunities and tensions of its era—expanding academic knowledge, assertive evangelical countercurrents, and democratic pluralism—and they exemplify how early twentieth‑century Americans negotiated the authority of scripture in a modern city.
The Bible Unveiled (Religious & Historical Study)
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.
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[1q]?
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 clientèle. 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 many priests and rabbis to do its bidding, and why should so many costly and untaxed temples and cathedrals be built for a book which is no more than any other literature? Why should missionaries be maintained to push the sale of this one book if it is nothing but literature? Why is the world broken up into sects and creeds without number in the name of this literature? Peculiar literature, this!
The veil lifted! I am not going to give new names to the bible, or find new hidden meanings in it. That is not my profession. Occultism, which enables a reader to find in any book whatever he is seeking, has never commanded my respect. By lifting the veil, I mean a very simple thing—showing up the bible.
All idols are veiled. The veil is the idol. Uncovered, they scare nobody. I shall try to do to the great idol of Christendom what the sun does to the earth—coax it into the light.
A Word with the Reader—Protestant and Catholic
Let me assure the prospective Catholic and Protestant readers of this volume that I do not harbor a single feeling toward them which is not of the kindest and the most respectful. I have no quarrel whatever with individuals, or with parties. It is altogether foreign to my nature to take pleasure in giving pain to others. If the truth gives pain, it is not the fault of the teacher, nor of the reader who hears it for the first time, but of error, which stabs and stings before it will surrender its victims.
Having been a Christian believer myself, I have the warmest sympathy for all who still wear the yoke of superaturalism. But I have no pity for error. I will not consult its pleasure. I will not spare it. Before any of my readers condemn me for speaking openly, and without reservation, I trust they will think of something else I could have said about the bible which would have been better than the truth. And as I am going to make the bible speak for itself, I am sure no one will charge me with misrepresenting the facts.
But I have no business to be concerned about either pleasing or displeasing anybody. I am going to tell the truth, even if it hurts. If telling the truth hurts me, it is I, and not the truth, that has to get out of the way; if it hurts you, it is you, and not the truth, that has to be sacrificed.
Not "truth for truth's sake," but "truth for humanity's sake," is the better motto, argue certain teachers; but is there a better way of serving humanity than through truth? Even as "Art for art's sake" will give humanity the highest art, "Truth for truth's sake" will give to the world the only bread it can live by.
A Word with the Jews
As the bible is the work of Jewish authors, and as I say quite a little about Jews and Judaism in this book, I wish to take the pains to explain my position in advance. Rationalism is much indebted to the educated Jew. Even more is the Jew indebted to Rationalism. The only miracle in the history of Israel was performed by Rationalism. All the bible miracles are nothing in comparison. Rationalism has saved the Jew from his greatest enemy—the bible. It is to the great credit of the Jew that he has survived his "holy" book. No people have suffered more from it than the chosen people. The bible has made the Jew a wanderer and an alien in every country. When thinking of the martyrdom of this race through the centuries, the poet Heine[1] exclaimed: "Judaism is not a religion; Judaism is a misfortune." The same poet congratulates himself upon the hastening departure of Jehovah: "It is the old Jehovah himself that is preparing for death. Hear ye not the bells resounding? Kneel down, they are bringing the sacraments to a dying God."
The great strides which the modern Jew has made in culture as well as in commerce, he owes to his emancipation from the influence of the bible. The more he disobeys the bible the more universal he becomes in his sympathies and tastes. With the crushing load of the bible taken off his shoulders, the Jew is swift in responding to the most beneficent influences of environment. Away from Judaism lies the salvation of the Jew. It was in Europe and America, among the Gentiles, and not in Palestine, that the Jew discovered himself. Not until he turned his back upon Jehovah and his book did the Jew leap forth to conquer in art, in literature, in science, and in all the graces that help to make genius and virtue attractive. I do not say that all persecution and prejudice will end when Jew and Christian cease to follow the teachings of the bible, but surely the most formidable obstacles to the fraternization of the races shall be removed. It is a service to humanity to try to free the Jew from the rabbinical yoke, and the Christian from that of the priest. The rabbi is as much a schismatic as the priest. The parent of both is the bible.
Once for all, I beg the readers of this book to know that I do not believe for a moment that the Jews ever taught the absurdities, or practiced the atrocities, with which the bible credits them. I do not believe they ever started on an expedition to murder babes and sucklings, or to capture girls for their harems, for which acts the bible praises them. Like the Catholics and the Protestants, the Jews, inspired by these same scriptures, have committed many follies through the centuries, but I am positive in my own mind that the terrible Old Testament picture of the Jew is a libel against humanity, as well as against the Jews.
Not until the Jew has completely parted with bible and Talmud; not until he has completely surrendered to Rationalism in mind and body—for as long as he practices the Abrahamic rite upon his children as a religious duty he will continue to be an alien in every land—will the Jew end his wanderings in the wilderness and enter the land of promise.
The Messiah of the Jew, as well as of the Christian, is come. It is Rationalism. And what is Rationalism? The authority of Reason.
PART I.
I. The Neglected Book
The bible is a sort of national pet in this country[2q]. We are taught from the cradle to revere, and almost worship it. In time, the bible comes to be as near and dear to us as our own mothers. When anybody praises it, we applaud him; when anybody criticizes it, we feel toward him as we would toward one who has betrayed his country, or insulted the national flag.
When, recently, President Taft[2] praised the bible by saying that "Our laws, our literature and our social life owe whatever excellence they possess largely to the influence of this, our chief classic," he was, I am sure, quite sincere. But, evidently, all he knows about the bible is what was taught him in the nursery, the Sunday-school, or the church. The majority of people who exalt the bible above all other books have not studied the book—not even read it, except a chapter here and a passage there. If the bible had been a smaller book, people would have been more familiar with its contents, but being a book of ponderous size, the generality of people have only a dilettante acquaintance with its contents. Really, the size of the book has been its best protection. There is scarcely any other book which is more reverenced, and less known, than the bible.
The bible societies, however, claim that for long centuries the bible has been the best seller. About twenty million copies a year have been disposed of during the past three hundred years. But selling a book, and getting it read, are not the same thing. There are reasons which explain the enormous traffic in bibles. A great deal of money is expended every year to push its sale. Great legacies are devoted to the translation and dissemination of the bible in every country. Powerful corporations exist all over Christendom to introduce the bible into new territories. Besides, the book is sold at a nominal price, often below cost, which is made possible by large endowments and legacies.
Another reason which explains the vogue of the bible is the fact that it is protected against all competition. The king is behind the book; the press is behind it; and a halo of divinity is thrown about it to scare people from examining their own holy book with the same freedom that they examine the holy books of other countries. What other book has ever received the patronage which the bible commands, even to-day? And what would have been the fate of the bible had no more been done for it than has been done for Shakespeare, for example? Not until all artificial helps and props have been removed, will we be in a position to say whether the bible sells on its own merits, or whether it is indebted for its popularity to special privilege.
But, as already intimated, notwithstanding these enormous sales, the bible is read so little by the present generation that it may well be called The Neglected Book. To prove this, we are not going to quote Rationalists, but clergymen. The complaint from every pulpit is that the bible is being ignored by the people more and more every day. The Rev. Lyman Abbott[3] read, at one of his lectures, a chapter from the bible, without, however, mentioning the name of the book to his hearers. He was addressing an élite audience; on the platform were judges, bankers and the "first citizens" of the town. At the conclusion of his lecture two of the gentlemen on the platform, one of them a judge, asked him for the name of the book he had read from. Lyman Abbott himself tells this and other similar stories to show how ignorant the American public is of the contents of the book they venerate so piously and gush over so spectacularly.
The very people, however, who are so ignorant of the bible, would be the first to throw up their hands in horror should the least criticism be directed against its contents. The same complaint, namely, that people are neglecting the study of the bible, is made by other clergymen. In schools and colleges, even, great ignorance has been discovered among the pupils about the bible. Professor Hamilton reports that, in visiting certain schools in New York, he found among pupils preparing for college, and nearly of an age for entrance, whole classes that could not answer the easiest questions about the contents of the bible.
It is my opinion that the complaining clergymen themselves are not so well acquainted with the bible as they should be. Of course, no harm is done either to science or ethics by this general ignorance of the stories in the bible; personally, I am pleased at the indifference of the public to a collection of writings which has to be labeled "holy" to command respect.
The above facts are quoted only to prove that, despite its enormous sales, the bible is a stranger in the home, the school, the study, the shop, and in all the assemblies of the people. But the less some people are acquainted with the bible, the more they seem to believe in it. Indeed, ignorance of the bible is indispensable to faith in its inspiration. Moreover, it is this ignorant veneration which makes it dangerous for any one to read and tell the truth about it. Formerly, when the church had the power, such a man was either hacked to pieces, or burned to cinders; to-day, even, he is persecuted as much as public opinion will permit. It is a matter of history that in the name of this Jewish-Christian volume, which people do not read and are but superficially acquainted with, nearly a hundred millions of lives have been destroyed in Europe alone. Could anything be more appalling? In modern times, the church can no longer do to the unbelievers in the bible what it did to them for over seventeen hundred years, but it does to them as much as public sentiment will allow.
The reader will be interested in examining with me the book in the defense of which, I regret to say, nearly every imaginable crime has been committed. It gives me pain to say this, but who can hide the truth? Moreover, my sole purpose in telling the plain truth is not to offend, or give pain, but to encourage everybody to approach the book without fear. I am not going to praise the bible; but I am not going to denounce it either; I am going to explain it.
It is my desire not so much to talk about the bible—when, and where, and by whom, it was compiled; how it was lost and discovered; burned in the destruction of the temple, and later restored by the scribe Ezra; how it has been edited and revised again and again —but to lift the veil and show the book to the world.
What Makes a Book Inspired?
Before proceeding to read the book, may I explain that an inspired book must be different from uninspired books. If it has excellences and defects like other books, then it is in no sense different from any of the works of man. An inspired book must be a perfect book, else what advantage is there in being inspired? Again, an inspired book must contain original matter, to justify its inspiration. If the bible needed the help of inspiration to say what other books have said without inspiration, then, instead of being a greater, it must needs be a more ordinary book. Is there anything in the bible which can not be found elsewhere? While there is not a single idea in the bible which was not known before, there are many glorious truths of science and philosophy in other books which can not be found in the bible. Wherein, then, is the bible inspired?
Let me also explain that an argument, or the presentation of important facts, produces an impression only upon the unprejudiced. The soundest reasoning will no more convince a partisan than the most copious shower will give nourishment to the sand. But an argument is never addressed to a biased mind. The appeal of reason is to the fairminded and the free.
