precepts. The Old Testament contains the first revelations of God; the
New Testament, the last revelations. Our Christian Brother "forgets" to
remind the visitor that the difference of opinion regarding these two
Testaments of God has caused more sorrow, bloodshed, harm, devilment,
misery, and devastation than any other single item in the life and
history of the human race.

The Martian is hard pressed to reconcile the fact that Mohammedanism six
hundred years after the appearance of Christianity triumphed over
Christianity in a great portion of the earth's surface; yet he is
informed that Christianity is _the_ religion of God, that Allah made the
Mohammedans, Jehovah the Jews, the Trinity the Christians, and the rest
of the believers were illegitimate children of the above gods, was the
only conclusion he could reach. In a few moments the myth of Christ
begins to unfold itself before his eyes in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Apocalypse. He finds,
"The so-called Messianic texts which are supposed to prefigure Jesus in
the Old Testament have all been either misunderstood or deliberately
misinterpreted. The most celebrated is that in Isaiah VII, 14, which
predicts that a virgin shall bear a son, Emmanuel, but the word, Al-mah,
which the Septuagint rendered "virgin" means in Hebrew a young woman,
and this passage merely deals with the approaching birth of a son to the
king or the prophet himself. This error of the Septuagint is one of the
sources of the legend relating to the virginal birth of Jesus. As early
as the second century A.D. the Jews perceived it and pointed it out to
the Greeks, but the Church knowingly persisted in the false reading, and
for over fifteen centuries she has clung to her error."

His attentive reading convinces him that not one of the Gospels is the
work of an eyewitness to the scenes recorded; a little side
investigation reveals that there were a great many writings called
Gospels, from which the Church finally adopted four, guaranteeing their
inspiration and absolute veracity, no doubt because they were in favor
in four very influential churches, Matthew at Jerusalem, Mark at Rome or
at Alexandria, Luke at Antioch, and John at Ephesus. Moreover, what the
Gospels tell him, he perceives is what different Christian communities
believed concerning Jesus between the years 70 and 100 A.D. In Matthew
XXVI, 39, Mark XIV, 35, and Luke XXII, 42, there ar