umor!

What a bag of tricks this Prophet had at his command! The Prophet waves
his arms and tugs at his gown, and lo and behold! The Lord has spoken!
The following is a specimen of the revelations which the Lord is
supposed to have dictated to Moses. (Leviticus XIV, 25.)

"The priest shall take some of the blood of the trespass offering and
put it upon the tip of the _right_ ear of him who is to be cleansed and
upon the thumb of his _right_ hand, and upon the great toe of his
_right_ foot, and the priest shall pour of the oil into the palm of his
own _left_ hand and shall sprinkle with his _right_ finger some of the
oil that is in his _left_ hand seven times before the Lord."

Surely, it must have been a God with a superior mentality who dictated
this, for it surpasses our feeble comprehension. And we can well imagine
Jehovah's wrath when the priest confuses his _right_ and _left_.

Twirling his arms again, Moses gives forth this oracle (Numbers XV,
37-41): "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 'Speak unto the Children
of Israel, and bid them that they make them a fringe upon the corner of
their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the
fringe of each corner a cord of blue, etc., etc."

Jehovah chooses Blue as the divine color. Royal Purple. Divine Blue.
Then there is the familiar myth of the Prophet's tapping of the rock to
bring forth water in the desert; the story of the manna; the tale of the
doves.

Thus can the fabled life of Moses be divided into two stages, the early
period of illusions, hallucinations, and delusions, and the later stage
of wizardry, charlatanry, and demagoguery. Neither must we think that we
moderns are the first to peer through this sham, for what the
Israelites thought of these laws appears from the bitter criticism of
Moses and Aaron, which the Haggadah put into the mouth of the rebel
Korah.

"When we were given the ten commandments, each of us learnt them
directly from Mount Sinai; there were only the ten commandments and we
heard no orders about 'offering cake' or 'gifts to priests' or
'tassels.' It was only in order to usurp the dominion for himself and to
impart honor to his brother Aaron, that Moses added all this."

Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed--these prophets whose adherents number
hundreds of millions, about whom there has been built up those vast
systems of theology,--what is there of the divine in their characters?
What supernatural in their deeds?