by the Church, the Martian considers in a
further chapter. Scientists incline to the view that the earth has
existed as a separate planet for something like two thousand million
years (2,000,000,000). The rocks give a history of 16,000,000,000. Just
as in the study of the origin of primitive beliefs, one finds that man
made his gods and invented all that they are reported to have said, so a
study of the Old Testament reveals that the ancient Hebrew invented his
God, and manufactured the vast mass of myth and fable that are recorded
as the words and deeds of God. Throughout the ages, the words of these
ancient Hebrews have been taken as the words of a god.

"Everything goes to show that the Hebrew literature was produced like
other literatures. Hebrews were not the first to tell tales. When they
did come to write 'for our learning' they borrowed from other people.
The only reason why anything more than a literary attention is paid to
these old Jewish writings is that Jesus was a Jew. When Christianity was
founded--a difficult date to fix--there was no such thing as a Bible.
The old Brahmans and Buddhists had Holy Scriptures; the Egyptians had a
Book of the Dead, and the Sayings of Khuenaten; the Persians had the
Zend-Avesta; the Chinese had sacred books. They were all as sacred as
the Jewish books. Priests made them sacred. Priests generally rewrote
and edited them, even if they had not originally imagined them. There is
nothing to guide the man of common sense save knowledge and reason.
Every priest swears his religion and his scriptures are true. But they
cannot all be true. If the first are true, then the Jews are past
further consideration, for they were not the first in the field with
sacred writings.... Holy scriptures are merely Jewish classics. We have
had to accept these old writings of the Hebrews as holy and inspired
because the priests said so, and for no other reason whatsoever. There
is no other reason." Assuming the existence of a deity, a man exercising
his common sense would be compelled to deny that the Old Testament is
inspired of God, because it abounds in stupidities and errors such as
no god could inspire. "But because the Jews accumulated these writings,
the subsequent adopters of Christianity, realizing that Jesus was a Jew,
and had been a professing Jew, promptly annexed these tales of fancy and
of fear, of muddled, sensual, silly things and said they must be
accepted with the teachings of Jesus.