Malachi151

Check it out, I just got it today:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/sp...geofreason.htm

Toto

Easier to read: The Age of Reason

other works by Thomas Paine.

Truthseekser Publishers

Yes, Paine was a Bible critic. What did you want to discuss?

CX

That's awfully generous. The Age of Reason is the sophmoric attempt of someone who knows precious little about biblical criticism to dissect a text with which he disagrees. Paine wrote some great political tracts but AOR is barely worth reading.

secular buddhist

Indeed? I thought that the 19th century was when Biblical criticism was just beginning. Was the subject advanced enough by The Age of Reason that Paine should have known better?

butswana

I wasn't too impressed with it either. He seemed to be pretty pissed off.

RUmike

CX, why such a negative feeling toward Paine on AOR? What other serious attempts at biblical criticism were published at the time that you compare it to? The fact that he was so willing to write a piece that he knew would be loathed by virtually everyone in his country deserves quite a lot of respect in my opinion. Plus, I don't see anything wrong with the second part of it. I doubt any of the objections he brought up were being circulated at the time in any published means.

mike_decock

I read it a few months ago and really enjoyed it. As a piece of "Biblical Criticism", Paine's AOR certainly isn't the best work in the world, but it does make some good points, especially considering that BC isn't his main objective. Viewed in it's historical context and target audience, I think it was a good effort.

-Mike...

Celsus

Paine's work is as useful as anything out of the 18th century--by our current standards primitive, but back then important. He has absolutely no historical context on which to base his judgements--archaeology was not yet born at this time (although Egyptian loot was making its way back to Europe for the first time). For example:

• When Samson ran off with the gate-posts of Gaza, if he ever did so, (and whether he did or not is nothing to us,) or when he visited his Delilah, or caught his foxes, or did anything else, what has revelation to do with these things? If they were facts, he could tell them himself; or his secretary, if he kept one, could write them, if they were worth either telling or writing; and if they were fictions, revelation could not make them true; and whether true or not, we are neither the better nor the wiser for knowing them. When we contemplate the immensity of that Being, who directs and governs the incomprehensible WHOLE, of which the utmost ken of human sight can discover but a part, we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry stories the word of God.
  
  As to the account of the creation, with which the book of Genesis opens, it has all the appearance of being a tradition which the Israelites had among them before they came into Egypt; and after their departure from that country, they put it at the head of their history, without telling, as it is most probable that they did not know, how they came by it. The manner in which the account opens, shows it to be traditionary. It begins abruptly. It is nobody that speaks. It is nobody that hears. "It is addressed to nobody. It has neither first, second, nor third person. It has every criterion of being a tradition. It has no voucher. Moses does not take it upon himself by introducing it with the formality that he uses on other occasions, such as that of saying, "The Lords spake unto Moses, saying."

There is not an ounce of evidence here one way or another to support what he is critiquing or speculating about. He is only analysing based on "well it sounds like..." and "it should be so..." In other words, useless.

Note the similarity between this and Bede's thread on the inquisition--neither CX, nor myself, nor anyone else familiar with scholarship is going to take him seriously, and in fact, will be just as dismissive as Bede.

Joel

Toto

Paine was not doing disinterested scholarship. He was opposed to the Bible and Christianity because they were used to prop up a repressive political system.

gregor

Put me down as someone who thought Paine was pretty courageous to semi-analytically review the Bible at a time when such an action would presumably guaranty that your future prospects would be severly damaged.

Does someone have reference to other popular works criticizing the Bible from the 18th century?