Saturday, July 19, 2008
Mosaic Rationales
Why it has been called the Mosaic account of the creation, I am at a loss to conceive. Moses, I believe was too good a judge of such subjects to put his name to that account. He had been educated among the Egyptians, who were a people as well skilled in science, and particularly in astronomy, as any people of their day; and the silence and caution that Moses observes, in not authenticating the account, is a good negative evidence that he neither told it nor believed it. -- The case is, that every nation of people has been world makers, and the Israelites had as much right to set up the trade of world-making as any of the rest; and as Moses was not an Israelite, he might not choose to contradict the tradition. The account, however, is harmless; and this is more than can be said for many other parts of the Bible.
- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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