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Autobiographical Dictation, 20 June 1906 ❉ Textual Commentary

Source documents.

TS1      Typescript, leaves numbered 922–28 (altered in pencil to 947–53), made from Hobby’s notes and revised.
TS2      Typescript, leaves numbered 1079–85, made from the revised TS1.

Hobby incorporated Clemens’s TS1 revisions into TS2, which was not further revised. Clemens wrote on TS1, ‘Not to be exposed to any eye until the edition of A.D. 2406. SLC’. Hobby transcribed this remark in TS2, but there is no evidence that he expected notes of this nature to be included in the text.

Wednesday, June 20, 1906

The defects about Bibles—Remarks about the Immaculate Conception.

There are one or two curious defects about Bibles. An almost pathetic poverty of invention characterizes them all. That is one striking defect. Another is that each pretends to originality, without possessing any.textual note Each borrows from the others,textual note and gives no credit, which is a distinctly immoral act. Each, in turn, confiscates decayed old stage-propertiestextual note from the others,textual note and with naïvetextual note confidence puts them forth as fresh new inspirations from on high. We borrow the Golden Rule from Confuciusexplanatory note, after it has seen service for centuries, and copyright it without a blush. When we want a Delugetextual note we go away back to hoary Babylon and borrow it, and are as proud of it and as satisfied with it as if it had been worth the trouble. We still revere it and admire it, to-day, and claim that it came to us direct from the mouth of the Deity; whereas we know that Noah’s flood never happened, and couldn’t have happened. The flood is a favorite with Bible-makerstextual note explanatory note. If there is a Bible—or even a tribe of savages—that lacks a General Delugetextual note it is only because the religious scheme that lacks it hadn’t any handy source to borrow it from.

Another prime favorite with the authors of sacred literature and founders of religions is the Immaculate Conceptionexplanatory note. It had been worn threadbare before we adopted it as a fresh new idea—and we admire it as much now as did the original conceiver of it when his mind was delivered of it a million years ago. The Hindoostextual note prized it ages ago when they acquired Krishna by the Immaculate process. The Buddhists were happy when they acquired Gautama by the same processexplanatory note twenty-five hundred years ago. The Greeks of the same [begin page 131] period had great joy in it when their Supreme Beingtextual note and his cabinet used to come down and people Greece with mongrels half human and half divine. The Romans borrowed the idea from Greece, and found great happiness in Jupiter’s Immaculate Conception products. We got it direct from Heaven, by way of Rome. We are still charmed with it. And only a fortnight ago, when an Episcopal clergyman in Rochester was summoned before the governing body of his Church to answer the charge of intimating that he did not believe that the Savior was miraculously conceivedexplanatory note, the Rev. Dr. Briggs, who is perhaps the most daringly broad-minded religious person now occupying antextual note American pulpit, took up the cudgels in favor of the Immaculate Conception, in an article in the North American Review, and from the tone of that article it seemed apparent that he believed he had settled that vexed question,textual note once and for all. His idea was that there could be no doubt about it, for the reason that the Virgin Mary knew it was authentic because the Angel of the Annunciation told her so. Also, it must have been so,textual note for the additional reason that Jude—a later son of Mary, the Virgin, and born in wedlock—was still living and associating with the adherents of the early Churchtextual note many years after the event, and that he said quite decidedly that it was a case of Immaculate Conception; therefore it must be true, for Jude was right there in the family and in a position to knowexplanatory note.

If there is anything more amusing than the Immaculate Conception doctrine,textual note it is the quaint reasonings whereby ostensibly intelligent human beings persuade themselves that the impossible fact is proven.

If Dr. Briggs were asked to believe in the Immaculate Conception process as exercised in the cases of Krishna, Osiris, Buddha, and the rest of the tribe, he would decline, with thanks, and probably be offended. If pushed, he would probably say that it would be childish to believe in those cases, for the reason that they were supported by none but human testimony, and that it would be impossible to prove such a thing by human testimony, because if the entire human race were present at a case of Immaculate Conception they wouldn’t be able to tell when it happened, nortextual note whether it happened at all—and yet this bright man with the temporarily muddy mind is quite able to believe an impossibility whose authenticity rests entirely upon human testimony—the testimony of but one human being, the Virgin herself, a witness not disinterested, but powerfully interested; a witness incapable of knowing the fact as a fact, but getting all that she supposed she knew about it at second-handtextual note,—at second-handtextual note from an entire stranger,textual note an alleged angel, who could have been an angel, perhaps, but also could have been a tax collector. It is not likely that she had ever seen an angel before, or knew their trade-markstextual note. He was a stranger. He brought no credentials. His evidence was worth nothing at all to anybody else in the community. It is worth nothing, to-day, to any but minds which are like Dr. Briggs’s—which have lost their clarity through mulling over absurdities in the pious wish to dig something sane and rational out of them. The Immaculate Conception rests whollytextual note upon the testimony of a single witness—a witness whose testimony is without value—a witness whose very existence has nothing to rest upon but the assertion of the young peasant wife whose husband needed to be pacified. Mary’s testimony satisfied him, but that is because he lived in Nazareth, instead of New [begin page 132] York. There isn’t any carpenter in New York that would take that testimony at par. If the Immaculate Conception could be repeated in New York to-day, there isn’t a man, woman, or child, of those four millions,textual note who would believe in it—except perhaps some addled Christian Scientist. A person who can believe in Mother Eddyexplanatory note wouldn’t strain at an Immaculate Conception, or six of them in a bunch. The Immaculate Conception could not be repeated successfully in New York in our day. It would produce laughter, not reverence and adoration.

To a person who doesn’t believe in it, it seems a most puerile invention. It could occur to nobody but a godtextual note that it was a large and ingenious arrangement,textual note and had dignity in it. It could occur to nobody but a godtextual note that a divine Son procured through promiscuous relations with a peasant family in a village could improve the purity of the product, yet that is the very idea. The product acquires purity—purity absolute—purity from all stain or blemish,—throughtextual note a gross violation of both human law and divinetextual note, as set forth in the constitution and by-laws of the Bible. Thus the Christian religion, which requires everybody to be moral and to obey the laws, has its verytextual note beginning in immorality and in disobedience to law. You couldn’t purify a tomcattextual note by the Immaculate Conception process.

Apparently, as a pious stage-propertytextual note, it is still useful, still workable, although it is so bent with age and so nearly exhausted by overwork. It is another case of begats. What’s-his-name begat Krishna, Krishna begat Buddha, Buddha begat Osiris, Osiris begat the Babylonian deities, they begat God,textual note He begat Jesus,textual note Jesus begat Mrs. Eddy. If she is going to continue the line and do her proper share of the begatting, she must get at it, for she is already an antiquity.

There is one notable thing about our Christianity:textual note bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing and predatory as it is—in our country, particularly, and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree—it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime—the invention of helltextual note. Measured by our Christianity of to-day, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the Deity nor Histextual note Son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt.

Textual Notes Wednesday, June 20, 1906
  any. ●  any. of large importance.  (TS1-SLC)  any. (TS2) 
  others, ●  others,  (TS1-SLC)  others, (TS2) 
  old stage-properties ●  and shop-worn old stage-properties (TS1-SLC)  old stage-properties (TS2) 
  others, ●  others,  (TS1-SLC)  others, (TS2) 
  naïve ●  nai ïve dieresis added  (TS1-Hobby)  nai ïve dieresis added  (TS2-SLC) 
  Deluge ●  d Deluge (TS1-SLC)  Deluge (TS2) 
  Bible-makers ●  Bible-makers (TS1-SLC)  Bible-makers (TS2) 
  General Deluge ●  g General d Deluge (TS1-SLC)  General Deluge (TS2) 
  Hindoos ●  Hindus (TS1, TS2) 
  Supreme Being ●  s Supreme b Being (TS1-SLC)  Supreme Being (TS2) 
  an ●  the an  (TS1-SLC)  an (TS2) 
  question, ●  question,  (TS1-SLC)  question, (TS2) 
  so, ●  so,  (TS1-SLC)  so, (TS2) 
  Church ●  church (TS1, TS2) 
  doctrine, ●  doctrine,  (TS1-SLC)  doctrine, (TS2) 
  nor ●  nor (TS1-SLC)  nor (TS2) 
  second-hand ●  second hand (TS1, TS2) 
  second-hand ●  second hand (TS1, TS2) 
  an entire stranger, ●  an entire stranger,  (TS1-SLC)  an entire stranger, (TS2) 
  trade-marks ●  trade-marks (TS1-Hobby)  trade-marks (TS2) 
  wholly ●  solely wholly  (TS1-SLC)  wholly (TS2) 
  millions, ●  millions,  (TS1-SLC)  millions, (TS2) 
  god ●  G god (TS1-SLC)  god (TS2) 
  arrangement, ●  arrangement,  (TS1-SLC)  arrangement, (TS2) 
  god ●  G god (TS1-SLC)  god (TS2) 
  —through ●  through (TS1-SLC)  —through (TS2) 
  human law and divine ●  divine human law and human law divine ‘1’ written above ‘human law’ and ‘2’ above ‘divine’; ‘tr’ written in the margin  (TS1-SLC)  human and divine law (TS2) 
  very ●  very  (TS1-SLC)  very (TS2) 
  tomcat ●  T tomcat ‘Tom cat’ marked to close up  (TS1-SLC)  tomcat (TS2) 
  stage-property ●  stage-property (TS1-SLC)  stage-property (TS2) 
  God, ●  God.; , originally ‘God.’; altered by Hobby to ‘God;’ and then by SLC to ‘God,’  (TS1-Hobby + SLC)  God, (TS2) 
  Jesus, ●  Jesus . ,  (TS1-SLC)  Jesus, (TS2) 
  Christianity: ●  Christianity; : semicolon mended to a colon  (TS1-SLC)  Christianity: (TS2) 
  hell ●  Hell (TS1, TS2) 
  His ●  his (TS, TS2) 
Explanatory Notes Wednesday, June 20, 1906
 

We borrow the Golden Rule from Confucius] In the nineteenth century Western commentators began to note that Confucius had given the equivalent of the “Golden Rule” (Matthew 7:12) five hundred years before Christ. Analects 15:23 reads, in part: “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.”

 

When we want a Deluge we go away back to hoary Babylon and borrow it . . . The flood is a favorite with Bible-makers] The story of a universal flood is present in a great number of the world’s mythologies. A Babylonian myth of the flood was discovered in 1872, when George Smith, an assistant at the British Museum, deciphered a cuneiform tablet, later identified as part of the epic of Gilgamesh. On account of its parallels to Genesis, the Babylonian version caused a sensation, and its relevance for the dating and reliability of the biblical account became a subject of widespread debate. The Babylonian text is discussed from an atheist standpoint in Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions by T. W. Doane, a book that Clemens is likely to have read by the time of this dictation (Budge 1925, 267–68; Doane 1882, 19–32; Gribben 1980, 1:195).

 

Immaculate Conception] The Roman Catholic doctrine that Mary herself was conceived and born free of original sin. Clemens, however, refers to the doctrine that she conceived Jesus by divine intervention and not by natural procreation.

 

Hindoos prized it . . . Buddhists were happy when they acquired Gautama by the same process] In Hindu tradition, Krishna, the most important avatar of the god Vishnu, was miraculously conceived and saved from murder at birth through divine intervention. In one Buddhist tradition, a virgin conceived Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) after dreaming that a white elephant entered into her side. Both these miraculous conceptions are discussed by Doane (see the note at 130.25–29); Clemens’s copy is heavily marked in the chapter on “The Miraculous Birth of Christ Jesus” (Doane 1882, 114–17, 280; Gribben 1980, 1:195).

 

Episcopal clergyman in Rochester . . . did not believe that the Savior was miraculously conceived] On 9 May 1906, Algernon Sidney Crapsey (1847–1927), minister of St. Andrew’s church in Rochester since 1879, was convicted of heresy by an ecclesiastical court for views he had expressed in his sermons and published in Religion and Politics (1905). He denied “doctrines that Jesus Christ is God, the Saviour of the world; that He was conceived by the Holy Ghost; of His virgin birth, of His resurrection, and of the Blessed Trinity” (New York Times: “Dr. Crapsey a Heretic,” 16 May 1906, 9; “Crapsey Verdict Reached,” 10 May 1906, 1; “Crapsey Files an Appeal,” 7 June 1906, 6). Having appealed the verdict without success, Crapsey renounced his ministry in November 1906. In his autobiography, The Last of the Heretics, he described himself as a “Pantheistic Humanist” (Crapsey 1924, 232, 272, 276, 292).

 

Rev. Dr. Briggs, who is perhaps the most daringly broad-minded . . . in a position to know] Charles Augustus Briggs (1841–1913) was a prominent clergyman, biblical and Hebrew scholar, and professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York from 1874 until his death. He was suspended from the Presbyterian ministry in 1893 after being convicted of heresy by an ecclesiastical court. Despite his continued espousal of radical views he was later ordained an Episcopal minister. A prolific author, he published at least two hundred books and articles and remained one of the most influential theologians of his day. The article on the virgin birth that Clemens cites, “Criticism and Dogma,” appeared in the North American Review for June 1906 (Briggs 1906). Part of Briggs’s argument is that the angels who announced the coming birth must have been “reliable witnesses,” and that Joseph and Mary could not have given false testimony because it would be “inconsistent with their character.” Furthermore, the story “had the sanction of James and Jude of the family of Jesus” and was therefore “too near the birth of Jesus, in temporal, geographical and personal relations, to go astray in so important a matter” (865–66).

 

some addled Christian Scientist . . . Mother Eddy] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 22 June 1906, note at 136.10–12.