Flowers of Freethought (Second Series)Foote, G. W. (George William)
Religion
Flowers of Freethought (Second Series)
Foote, G. W. (George William)
Free thought
"There were giants in the earth in those days" says Scripture. Of
course there were. Every barbarous people has similar legends of
primitive ages. The translators of our Revised Version are ashamed
of these mythical personages as being too suggestive of Jack and the
Beanstalk, so they have substituted Anakim for giants. In other words,
they have shirked the duty of translators, and left the nonsense veiled
under the original word.
The Mohammedans say that not only giants, but also Jins, were born of
the sons of God, who married the daughters of men. The Jins soon had the
world in their power. They ruled everywhere, and built colossal works,
including the pyramids.
Of the giants, the most remarkable was Og. He was taller than the last
Yankee story, for at the Deluge he stopped the windows of heaven with
his hands, or the water would have risen over his head. The Talmud says
that he saved himself by swimming close to the ark in company with the
rhinoceros. The water there happened to be cold, while all the rest was
boiling hot; and thus Og was saved while all the other giants perished.
According to another story, Og climbed on the roof of the ark, and
when Noah tried to dislodge him, he swore that he would become the
patriarch's slave. Noah at once clinched the bargain, and food was
passed through a hole for the giant every day.
When we look into them we find the myths of the Bible wonderfully like
the myths of other systems. The Giants are similar to the Titans, and
the union of divine males with human females is similar to the amors of
Jupiter, Apollo, Neptune, and Mars with the women of old. In this
matter there is nothing new under the sun. Every fresh myth is only the
recasting of an ancient fable, born of ignorance and imagination.
Let it finally be noted that this old Genesaic story of the angelic
husbands of earthly women gives us a poor idea of the felicity of
heaven. In that unknown region, as Jesus Christ informed his disciples,
there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage; that is, no males, no
females, no courting, no loving, no children, and no homes. Men cease to
be men and women cease to be women. Everybody is of the neuter gender.
Or else all the angels are gentlemen, without a lady amongst them.
Perhaps the latter view is preferable, as it harmonises with the Bible,
in which the angels are always _he's_. In that case heaven would be, to
say the least, rather a dull place. No whispering in the moonlight,
no clasped hands under the throbbing stars. Not even a kiss under the
misletoe. Oh, what must it be to be there! No wonder the sons of God
wandered from their cheerless Paradise, visited this lower world, and
saw the daughters of men that they were fair.
MELCHIZEDEK.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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