ies,--deliberate falsifications or fabrications of documents or of
the signature to them. "Now the far greater part of the more learned
clerical authorities on the Bible say that many books of the Old
Testament pretend to be written by men who did not write them; that many
books were deliberately written as history when the writers knew that
they were not history; and that the Old Testament as a whole, as we have
it, is a deliberate attempt to convey an historical belief which the
writers knew to be false. But these learned authorities do not like the
word forgery. It is crude." (_Joseph McCabe, "The Forgery of The Old
Testament."_) They veil the meaning of this word in the elegance, the
subtlety, the resources, of diplomatic language. They talk of certain
books in terms of "their legendary character," "their conformity to a
scheme," and "their didactic purpose." To the Martian these are but an
extremely polite description of what he would call a forgery.

A theologian in speaking of David states that "Keen criticism is
necessary to arrive at the kernel of fact," and, "the imaginative
element in the story of David is but the vesture which half conceals,
half discloses certain facts treasured in popular tradition." The
Martian thinks this is polite language, but the word forgery is much
more concise and to the point, and he finds an excellent example of this
described by Joseph McCabe in "The Forgery of the Old Testament." He
states, "Some time ago we recovered tablets of the great Persian king,
Cyrus, and Professor Sayre gives us a translation of them, and he
compares them, as you may, with the words of Daniel, 'In that night was
Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain, and Darius the Median took
the kingdom.' The tablets of Cyrus describe the taking of Babylon, and
are beyond the slightest suspicion. The Persians had adopted the
Babylonian custom of writing on clay, then baking the brick or tablet,
and such documents last forever. And these and other authentic and
contemporary documents of the age which 'Daniel' describes show:

1. That Belshazzar was not the king of Babylon.

2. That the name of the last king was Nabonidos.

3. That the city was taken peacefully, by guile, not by bloodshed.

4. That is was Cyrus, not Darius the Median, who took it.

5. That Darius, who is said (XI, 1) by Daniel to have been the son
of "Ahasuerus" (Xerxes), was really his father.

6. That a