Book review by Donald Rooum

The God Pestilence

by Johann Most

with a biographical introduction by Terry Liddle

Freethought History Research Group 2006 20pp £2.50

Johann Most (1846-1906) was the editor of Freiheit, a newspaper published in London by German-speaking social revolutionaries. Sometimes mistakenly described as an anarchist, Most advocated that, in order to prevent the restoration of bourgeois society after the revolution, a revolutionary elite “will have to build a firmly constructed organisation … to seize political power entirely and simply to proclaim a reign of terror”.

The God Pestilence, however, appeals to a wider audience. First published as an article in Freiheit, it has since been republished by uncompromising atheists of many different social persuasions. It is a carefully ordered argument presented in the language of a furious rant, a lovely piece of god-bashing, “a far cry”, as Terry Liddle writes in the introduction, “from the deodorised Humanists who think religion can be combatted without offending anybody”.

The fury is against supernatural beliefs in general, but especially against Christianity, the religion with which Most and his intended audience were familiar. The most frequent method of argument is to set out the doctrines, sneeringly but accurately, for readers to judge for themselves. For instance, the doctrine of atonement: “[God the son] (being his own father) shouldered all the guilt of humanity, and allowed himself, in order to appease the fury of his father (being his own son) to be cruelly put to death … subsequently ascending hale and hearty into heaven. This sacrifice of the son (who is one with the father) tickled the father (who is one with the son) to such an extent that he immediately proclaimed a general amnesty (with conditions)”.

A collection of familiar bible stories is summarised as “The god of the Christians … is the god who makes promises only to break them, who sends men pestilence and disease in order to heal them … who saw that all his works were good, and soon after discovered that all of them were bad … who is merciful, and yet has permitted the slaughter of millions”.

As a social revolutionary, Most of course has something to say about the relationship of religion and government. “The rich and mighty foster and nourish divine idiocy” because “the more man clings to religion, the more he believes, the more he believes the less he knows, the more stupid he is the easier he is to govern”. Nineteenth century god-bashers often contended that all tyrannies depend on supernatural superstitions, a contention which cannot be sustained these days, after the tyrannies of Stalin and Pol Pot have managed quite well with only atheistic superstitions.

But the effect of religion on society is not the main subject of this essay. The anger is directed at religious belief as such, and the fools who believe in religion, for whom there is no sympathy. “Absurdity and nonsense … put on so thick that those … idiotic enough to digest such stuff are susceptible to the most crazy hallucinations”.

An outpouring of bile and hatred, against ideas and institutions too often shown undeserved respect, this little pamphlet is a joy to read.

Pagan Christs

Book review by Donald Rooum

Joseph McCabe

Pagan Christs

published by Black Cat Press

available by mail order only from Freethought History Research Group    (to whom cheques should be payable)

83, Sowerby Close, Eltham, London, SE9 6EZ 0208 850 4187 tliddle@freeuk.com (regret its not possible to email directly from this site)

£2.00 plus 50p UK p&p

www.fhrg.bravehost.com

www.blackcatpress.co.uk

Joseph McCabe (1867-1956), born in Macclesfield, England, became a Franciscan friar at the age of 19, an ordained priest at the age of 23, and profoundly anti-religious at the age of 28. As a scholarly young friar he learned to read Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac and Aramaic, as well as English and German, so that he could research and lecture on the early history of the Church, activities which he kept up for the rest of his life. He may have been the most erudite atheist writer who ever wrote, and was certainly one of the most prolific.

Pagan Christs is about the influences on Christian belief of the many pagan faiths which flourished in the eastern Mediterranean at about the time of Jesus, beginning with the myth of virgin birth. As an example of McCabe’s examples, an Old Testament prophecy (Isaiah vii, 14) says in the original Hebrew “A young woman is with child and she will bear a son”, but Hebrew was known only to Rabbis. The Greek and Latin translations of OT, which were known to literate lay Jews at the time, substitute “virgin” for “young woman”, no doubt under the influence of stories widely current at the time, about the virgin births of Cyrus, Perseus, Augustus Caesar, Egyptian Pharoes and the god Saturn. In the New Testament gospels, Mark says nothing of the virgin birth. In Matthew “the first two chapters are an afterthought”. And in the earliest known Latin manuscripts of Luke, when Mary learns she is pregnant she is not surprised; “How can this be; I know no man” is a later, “stupid interpolation”.

The book goes various births of heroes in stables, massacres of children to eliminate rival kings, religious celebrations on December 25^th, divine deaths and resurrections. The readers McCabe seems to have in mind are enthusiastic Roman Catholics like himself when young, who think Christianity made the world a miraculously better place. “Then Christ appeared”, he writes, “and the world just flowed on”.