A Legacy to the Friends of Free Discussion: Principal Historical Facts and Personages of the Books Known as The Old and New Testament; With Remarks on the Morality of NatureOffen, Benjamin
Religion
A Legacy to the Friends of Free Discussion: Principal Historical Facts and Personages of the Books Known as The Old and New Testament; With Remarks on the Morality of Nature
Offen, Benjamin
Bible -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
If Moses had any interest in the mission of Jesus to the Jews, he could
have been serviceable to him, as he had been their former leader, and
therefore could give him useful hints concerning them. We may suppose he
would introduce the subject of Jesus’s mission in the following
manner:—“I am Moses, the former leader of the seed of Abram, and hearing
that Jehovah had sent his son Jesus to convert them to the true worship
of God, and the practice of justice and truth, I come to offer my
services, as I am well acquainted with that disobedient race; and, in
truth, I had a terrible time of it with them: only think of forty years
in the wilderness, always murmuring, and worshipping strange gods, for
which, at times, they were cruelly punished; Jehovah destroyed thousands
of them for resisting my authority; but they were incurable. He would
have, at one time, so great was his wrath, destroyed them all; but I
told him what the Egyptians and the heathen in general would say, and he
altered his mind, and killed off the worst of them: for, getting a
little out of temper with them at one time, in consequence of their
murmurings, Jehovah became angry with me, and I was prevented from
enjoying full possession of the promised land. It always surprised me
how it came about that Jehovah should select them from the rest of the
human race, for in my lifetime nothing was ever made of them; they even
disgraced the God who had made them his choice. I left them in thy hands
of Joshua, as the most proper person to rule over them; but how he got
along with them, I have not heard.” “Your offer, Moses, is duly
appreciated; but the Jews, as a nation, are now a different people from
what they were when you had to manage them. My course will be different
altogether from what you pursued. Farewell! Moses and Elijah.” We may
suppose that Jesus would say to Peter, “As for your purposing to erect
three tabernacles in this place, one for myself, one for Moses, and
another for Elijah, it is proof that you are entirely ignorant of my
future dealings with my own nation; for, in a few months, such things
will transpire, that even you, Peter, all zealous as you are, will swear
off and deny any knowledge of me.”
Now, reader, nothing can be more extravagant than to suppose that such
conversation took place between Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. But if those
two old prophets did really descend, and converse with Jesus, then what
I have supposed is no more extravagant than that two prophets, who had
not been on earth for a thousand years, should pay a visit to Jesus, and
hold converse with him. These miracles never occurred, and the world has
been imposed upon and plundered by men, who, by telling such tales, have
lived in idleness; and their quarrels about what Jesus said or somebody
said, or did, have in every age been the cause of evils of every kind,
and of rendering human beings ignorant and wretched.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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