The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine (icecream ebook reader TXT) 📕
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The Age of Reason is an important work in the American Deist movement. Paine worked on it continually for more than a decade, publishing it in three parts from 1794 through 1807. It quickly became a best-seller in post-Revolution America, spurring a revival in Deism as an alternative to the prevailing Christian influence.
In clear, simple, and often funny language, Paine attempts to dissect the Bible’s supposed inaccuracies and hypocrisies. He portrays the Bible as a human construct, full of illogic, errors, and internal inconsistencies, as opposed to it being a text born of divine inspiration. On those arguments he pivots to decrying not just Christianity, but organized religion as a whole, as a human invention created to terrorize and enslave. Instead of accepting organized religion, he states that “his mind is his own church” and that man must embrace reason.
While these arguments weren’t new to the wealthy and educated class of the era, they were new to the poor masses. The book was at first distributed as cheap unbound pamphlets, making it easily accessible to the poor; and Paine’s simple language was written in way the poor could understand and sympathize with. This made the powerful very nervous, and, fearing that the book could cause a potential revolution, Paine and his publishers were suppressed.
Paine wrote The Age of Reason while living in Paris. In France, its thesis wasn’t revolutionary enough for the bloodthirsty Jacobins; he was imprisoned there for ten months and only escaped execution through a stroke of luck. Meanwhile in Britain, the government considered the pamphlets seditious. British booksellers and publishers involved in printing and distributing the pamphlets were repeatedly tried for seditious and blasphemous libel, with some even receiving sentences of hard labor.
Paine began writing Part III after escaping France for America, but even the American elite thought the book too scandalous, with Thomas Jefferson—himself a Deist—advising Paine not to publish. Paine listened to Jefferson’s advice and held off publishing Part III for five years before publishing extracts as separate pamphlets. For that reason, Part III is not a concrete publication, but rather an arrangement of several loosely-related pamphlets organized at the discretion of an edition’s editor.
Once it was in the hands of Americans, it sparked a revival in Deism in the United States before being viciously attacked from all sides. Paine earned a reputation as an agitator and blasphemer that stuck to him for the rest of his life.
Despite The Age of Reason’s harsh reception—or perhaps, because of it, and the controversy and discussion it caused—it achieved a popularity in England, France, and America that gave it incredible influence in those nation’s perspectives on organized religion.
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- Author: Thomas Paine
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I forbear making any remark on this abominable imposition of Matthew. The thing glaringly speaks for itself. It is priests and commentators that I rather ought to censure, for having preached falsehood so long, and kept people in darkness with respect to those impositions. I am not contending with these men upon points of doctrine, for I know that sophistry has always a city of refuge. I am speaking of facts; for wherever a thing called a fact is a falsehood, the faith founded upon it is delusion, and the Doctrine raised upon it not true. Ah, reader, put thy trust ia thy Creator, find thou wilt be safe; but if thou trustest to the book called the Scriptures, thou trustest to the rotten staff of fable and falsehood. But I return to my subject.
There is, among the whims and reveries of Zechariah, mention made of thirty pieces of silver given to a potter. They can hardly have been so stupid as to mistake a potter for a field; and if they had, the passage in Zechariah has no more to do with Jesus, Judas, and the field to bury strangers in, than that already quoted. I will recite the passage.
Zechariah 11:7: “And I will feed the flock of slaughter, even you, O poor of the flock. And I took unto me two staves; the one I called ‘Beauty,’ and the other I called ‘Bands,’ and I fed the flock. Three shepherds also I cut off in one month; and my soul loathed them, and their souls also abhorred me. Then said I, I will not feed you; that that dieth, let it die; and that that is to be cut off, let it be cut off; and let the rest eat everyone the flesh of another. And I took my staff, even ‘Beauty,’ and cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which I had made with all the people. And it was broken in that day; and so the poor of the flock that waited upon me knew that it was the word of the Lord.
“And I said unto them, if ye think good give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said unto me, cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them unto the potter in the house of the Lord.
“Then I cast asunder mine other staff even ‘Bands,’ that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.”89
There is no making either head or tail of this incoherent gibberish. His two staves, one called “Beauty” and the other “Bands,” is so much like a fairy tale, that I doubt if it had any other origin. There is, however, no part that has the least relation to the case stated in Matthew; on the contrary, it is the reverse of it. Here the thirty pieces of silver, whatever it was for, is called a goodly price; it was as much as the thing was worth, and according to the language of the day, was approved of by the Lord, and the money given to the potter in the house of the Lord. In the case of Jesus and Judas as stated in Matthew, the thirty pieces of silver were the price of blood; the transaction was condemned by the Lord, and the money, when refunded, was refused admittance into the treasury. Everything in the two cases is the reverse of each other.
Besides this, a very different and direct contrary account to that of Matthew is given of the affair of Judas, in the book called the Acts of the Apostles. According to that book the case is, that so far from Judas repenting and returning the money, and the high priest buying a field with it to bury strangers in, Judas kept the money and bought a field with it for himself; and instead of hanging himself as Matthew says, that he fell headlong and burst asunder.
Some commentators endeavor to get over one part of the contradiction by ridiculously supposing that Judas hanged himself first and the rope broke.
Acts 1:16: “Men and brethren, this Scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerning Judas, which was a guide to them that took Jesus. (David says not a word about Judas); verse 17, for he (Judas) was numbered with us, and had obtained part of this ministry.”
Verse 18: “Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity, and falling headlong he burst asunder in the midst, and his bowels gushed out.” Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities.
I pass on to the twelfth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew, 27:35: “And they crucified him and parted his garments, casting lots; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet. They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.” This expression is in the 22nd Psalm, verse 18. The writer of that Psalm (whoever he was, for the Psalms are a collection, and not the work of one man) is speaking of himself and of his own case, and not that of another. He begins this Psalm with the words which the New Testament writers ascribed to Jesus Christ—“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”—words which might be uttered by a complaining man without any great impropriety, but very improperly from the mouth of a reputed God.
The picture which the writer draws of his own situation, in this Psalm is gloomy enough. He is not prophesying
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