Superstition in all agesHolbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'
Religion
Superstition in all ages
Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'
Atheism
In regard to the detail of the sacrifices of animals, it consists but in
colored clothing, blood, plucks, livers, birds' crops, kidneys, claws,
skins, in the dung, smoke, cakes, certain measures of oil and wine, the
whole being offered and infected by dirty ceremonies as filthy and
contemptible as the most extravagant performances of magic. What is most
horrible of all this is, that the law of this detestable Jewish people
commanded that even men should be offered up as sacrifices. The
barbarians, whoever they were, who introduced this horrible law,
commanded to put to death any man who had been consecrated to the God of
the Jews, whom they called Adonai: and it is according to this execrable
precept that Jephthah sacrificed his daughter, and that Saul wanted to
sacrifice his son.
But here is yet another proof of the falsity of these revelations of
which we have spoken. It is the lack of the fulfillment of the great and
magnificent promises by which they were accompanied, for it is evident
that these promises never have been fulfilled.
The proof of this consists in three principal points:
Firstly. Their posterity was to be more numerous than all the other
nations of the world.
Secondly. The people who should spring from their race were to be the
happiest, the holiest, and the most victorious of all the people of the
earth.
Thirdly. His covenant was to be everlasting, and they should possess
forever the country He should give them. Now it is plain that these
promises-never were fulfilled.
Firstly. It is certain that the Jewish people, or the people of
Israel--which is the only one that can be regarded as having descended
from the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the only ones to whom
these promises should have been fulfilled--have never been so numerous
that it could be compared with the other nations of the earth, much less
with the sands of the sea, etc., for we see that in the very time when
it was the most numerous and the most flourishing, it never occupied
more than the little sterile provinces of Palestine and its environs,
which are almost nothing in comparison with the vast extent of a
multitude of flourishing kingdoms which are on all sides of the earth.
Secondly. They have never been fulfilled concerning the great blessings
with which they were to be favored; for, although they won a few small
victories over some poor nations whom they plundered, this did not
prevent them from being conquered and reduced to servitude; their
kingdom destroyed as well as their nation, by the Roman army; and even
now the remainder of this unfortunate nation is looked upon as the
vilest and most contemptible of all the earth, having no country, no
dominion, no superiority.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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