THE BIBLE UNVEILED I

Following are excerpts from M. M. Mangasarian’s book, The Bible Unveiled. Although I will not use quotation marks, all of the following remarks are from this book:

To make it possible for a for 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 hypocrisy out of every man and woman who speaks the English language.

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 subject to extraordinary tests.

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.

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 dabbler 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 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. 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; today, 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 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.