m
as literal histories, by resolving them into nature-myths, or into social
traditions, symbolical stories of casuistry, "token-tales," whose original
meaning had been lost by the time they were committed to writing.

Every school-boy knows how the worst stories of the Greek gods and
goddesses lose their immorality as seen to be parables of nature's
processes, myths, whose poetry had exhaled in the course of time.
Goldziher's "Mythology Among the Hebrews," shows the mythic character of
many of these revolting Jewish stories, though his theory carries him off
his feet. Fenton's "Early Hebrew Life," brings out the social and
casuistical origin of many of these traditions as decisions, "Judgments,"
of the village elders and priests upon cases of conduct, thrown into the
form of imaginary stories to make them realistic and ensure their
preservation. "In this way, various dubious points of primitive morality
and politics were governed; and the stories which enshrine them stand to
primitive life in much the same relation as do collections of precedents
to modern lawyers, and dictionaries of cases of conscience to father
confessors." (p. 81)

But, as these aspects of such traditions as Lot and his daughters, Judah
and Tamar, &c., cannot be divined without interpretation, they should be
omitted from our children's Bibles.

My suggestion of an expurgated Bible, on which so many hard criticisms
have been passed, seemed to me innocent enough, since most sensible people
have been in the habit of expurgating the Bible for themselves in home
readings and in the readings in the churches. This is what Plato thought
of such stories in the sacred book of the Grecians:

"Whatever beautiful fable they may invent, we should select, and what is
not so, we should reject: and we are to prevail on nurses and mothers to
repeat to the children such fables as are selected, and fashion their
minds by fables * * * For though these things were true, yet I think they
should not be so readily told to the unwise and the young, but rather
concealed from them. As little ought we to describe in fables, the battles
of the giants and other many and various feuds, both of gods and heroes,
with their own kindred and relatives; but if we would persuade them that
never at all should one citizen hate another, and that it is not holy,
such things as these are rather to be told them in early childhood; and
the poets should be obliged to compose consistently with