Page:The Necessity of Atheism (Brooks).djvu/45

Rh 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 all the Babylonian names in Daniel are absurdly misspelt and quite strange to the writer.