20. Its inferior literary character. If the Bible were the word of God, as a literary composition it would be above criticism. It would be as far superior to all other books as God is superior to man. Its rhetoric would transcend in beauty the glorious coloring of a Titian. Its logic would be faultless. The Bible is not such a book. It contains some admirable pieces and these owe much of their literary merit to the translators, appearing as our version did in the golden age of English literature. As a whole it is far inferior to the literature of ancient Greece and Rome; inferior to the literature of modern Italy, of France, of Germany, and of England. If the Bible be the word of God it is a long way from God up to Shakespeare. 21. Its writers do not claim to be inspired. Had the writers of the Bible been inspired they would have known it and would have proclaimed it. Had they claimed to be inspired it would not prove the Bible to be divine, for like Mohammed, they might have been deluded, or, like a more recent finder of a holy book, impostors. But they do not even claim that their books are divine revelations. Some of these books contain what purport to be divine revelations, but the books themselves do not pretend to be divine. The only exception is the book called Revelation, admittedly the most doubtful book of the Bible. "All scripture is given by inspiration." Waiving the questions of authenticity and correct translation, who wrote this? Paul. What was the scripture when he wrote? The Old Testament, the Old Testament alone. The writers of the Old Testament do not claim to be divinely inspired. This is a claim made by the later Jews and by the early Christians. Paul and the other writers of the New Testament do not claim that their writings are divine. This, too, is a claim made by others long after they were written. The fact that the writers of the Bible do not believe and do not assert that their books are of divine origin, that this claim was first made many years after they were composed, by those who knew nothing of their origin, is of itself, in the absence of all other evidence, sufficient to demonstrate their human origin. 22. God has never declared it to be his word. The Bible does not, as we have seen, purport to be the word of God. Nowhere, neither in the book nor outside of it, has he declared it to be his revealed will. It contains various messages, chiefly of local concern, which he is said to have delivered to man; but the book, as such, is not ascribed to him nor claimed by him.