The Secret Doctrine Volume 3.pdf

To this we must and shall demur, giving our reasons for it in a few words. The “Hebrew Bible”
exists no more, as has been shown in the foregoing pages, and the garbled accounts, the
falsified and pale copies we have of the real Mosaic Bible of the Initiates, warrant the making
of no such sweeping assertion and claim. All that the scholar can fairly claim is that the
Jewish Bible, as now extant - in its latest and final interpretation, and according to the newlydiscovered
key - may give (Page 188) a partial presentment of the truths it contained before it
was mangled. But how can he tell what the Pentateuch contained before it has been
recomposed by Esdras; then corrupted still more by the ambitious Rabbis in later times, and
otherwise remodelled and interfered with Leaving aside the opinion of the declared enemies
of the Jewish Scripture, one may quote simply what their most devoted followers say.
Two of these are Horne and Prideaux. The avowels of the former will be sufficient to show
how much now remains of the original Mosaic books, unless indeed we accept his sublimely
blind faith in the inspiration and editorship of the Holy Ghost. He writes that when a Hebrew
scribe found a writing of any author he was entitled, if he thought fit, being “conscious of the
aid of the Holy Spirit,” to do exactly as he pleased with it - to cut it up, or copy it, or use as
much of it as he deemed right, and so to incorporate it with his own manuscript. Dr. Kenealy
aptly remarks of Horne, that it is almost impossible to get any admission from him.
That makes against his church, so remarkably guarded is he [Horne] in his
phraseology and so wonderfully discreet in the use of words that his language,
like a diplomatic letter, perpetually suggests to the mind ideas other than
those which he really means; I defy any unlearned person to read his chapter
on “Hebrew characters” and to derive any knowledge from it whatever on the
subject on which he professes to treat. [ The Book of God. pp. 388, 389 ]
And yet this same Horne writes:
We are persuaded that the things to which reference is made proceeded from the original
writers or compilers of the books [Old Testament]. Sometimes they took other writings,
annals, genealogies, and such like, with which they incorporated additional matter, or which
they put together with greater or less condensation. The Old Testament authors used the
sources they employed (that is, the writing of other people) with freedom and independence.
Conscious of the aid of the Divine Spirit, they adapted their own productions, or the
productions of others, to the wants of the times. But in these respects they cannot be said to
have corrupted the text of Scriptures. They made the text.
But of what did they make it Why, of the writings of other persons, justly observes Kenealy:
And this is Horne’s notion of what the Old Testament is - a cento from the writings of
unknown persons collected and put together by those who, he says, were divinely inspired.
No infidel that I know of has ever made so damaging a charge as this against the authenticity
of the Old Testament. [ See Horne’s Introduction (10th edition), vol. ii. p.33. as quoted by Dr.
Kenealy. p.389. ]
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