MISRENDERINGS OF THE ORIGINAL TEXT. 167 abundant in goodness and truth" (Ex. xxxiv. 6), ought to read: "And Yahuh passed by before his face, and Yahuh proclaimed: The supreme god Yahuh is merciful and gracious, has a long nose [or nostrils], and much zeal and firmness." The plural of the Hebrew word meaning nasal openings may be rendered in the singular as the whole organ or nose, just as the singular form is rendered nostrils in Gen. ii. 7. And if this word means nose in Genesis, it means the same in Exodus. The explanation is that the long nose was a sign of great wisdom, and the Theban Yahuh was depicted with this characteristic. We are informed (Ex. xxxiv. 28-30, 35) that Moses was forty days and nights with Yahuh on Mount Sin-ai; that during that time he neither ate nor drank; that he carved out the Ten Commandments on stone from Yahuh's dictation; and that when he came down from the mountain at the end of that period he appeared with horns. Now the horns of Moses are deliberately suppressed in three instances, and the word shone substituted: "And Moses wist not [or did not know] that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him " (29). In the R. V. a marginal note, slightly more honest than the A. V., says: For sent forth beams (Heb.), horns." But why this wish to suppress the literal rendering, horns? The translators have the audacity to admit that in Hebrew the word means horns; but is it not Hebrew they were translating, and no other language? The fact is patent, that this is an attempt to square the two renderings, shone and horns, and to deceive the uninformed with the belief that either rendering may be given. The same deception is practised in verses 30 and 35. The true rendering is: "And Moses wist not that a horn or horns divided the skin of his forehead [or face]." The L. V. has the true rendering. The horns of Aries formed the symbol of the Egyptian god Ammon or Amen. The text shows that Moses and Bacchus were identical, being personifications of the sun in the sign "Aries"; both were known by the name Mises or Moses, which signified drawn from water, and both performed similar feats, possessed magic rods. changeable into serpents, by which they performed miracles -leading an army through the Red Sea, dividing the rivers Orontes and Hydaspes, drawing water from rocks, and causing lands through which they passed to flow with wine, milk, and honey. Bacchus (son of Jupiter and Semele) was born on Mount Nyssa (Sin-ai), and was the same with the Greek Dionysos, and the Hebrew Yahuh-nissi. Jupiter and Bacchus were also horned. In Judges (xviii. 31) the fact is suppressed that the descendants of Moses worshipped other gods than Yahuh; the name Manasseh is substituted for Moses. In Ex. (xxxiii. 9), where the cloud talks to Moses, the words, "the Lord," which are not in the original, have been interpolated. In Gen. (xxxvi. 24) the Hebrew word meaning "hot springs" is rendered mules. What object the translators could have had in misrendering this word it is difficult to conceive. This mistake is corrected in the R. V. We see frequent mention in Christian writings of a third person in their "Trinity," or tri-une god, sometimes spoken of as the "Holy Spirit," "Holy Ghost," "Spirit of God," etc. We have searched through the Bible, and fail to discover any such person mentioned. But we find frequent mention of a certain wind and holy wind in the N. T., which words in the original Greek have no capitals, nor were there any marks to designate proper names in the Hebrew of the O. T., for all the Hebrew letters were capitals, and without stops or breathing sounds. The word rendered ghost and spirit is the Greek word pneuma, which is the equivalent of roue or urove in the Hebrew of the O. T.: both mean air in motion, wind, or breath; and it is evident from the absence of capitals that they were not originally intended to represent a person, as was probably suggested later, when the ghost or holy wind was introduced as a person into the Christian "Trinity." The Greek word for holy is agion when in conjunction with pneuma, and this in the original has no capital. Now, the Hebrew word meaning wind is rendered in Gen. iii. 8, "in the cool of the day," with the greatest audacity; in viii. 1, as "wind"; and in i. 2, urove aleim is rendered "the spirit of god," but it ought to be "the wind [or breath] of the gods." In the D.V. pneuma is rendered "spiritus," from spiro, I breathe. And we shall see the connection between spirit and ghost when we know that, when the Bible was translated from the Latin into Anglo-Saxon, spiritus was rendered gäst, which word became goost and gost, approaching very near to, and probably derived from, the old German geist, which is the present MISRENDERINGS OF THE ORIGINAL TEXT. 169 The equivalent to pneuma, spiritus, and urove or roue. Icelandic equivalent was gusta, to blow in gusts, hence our "gust of wind," and the Scotch equivalent goustie, gusty or ghost-like. There is little doubt that the wind and the rustling of the leaves in the silence of the night gave rise to the idea among the early races of man of supernatural messengers, ghosts, spirits (good and bad), angels, and demons. This is confirmed by Hebrews i. 7: "Who maketh his angels gusts of wind," wrongly rendered "spirits." But we find the word pneuma in the N. T. sometimes rendered properly as wind, but very rarely; it is generally varied between spirit and ghost, just as it pleased the translators, and without the slightest authority, as, for instance, "Jesus gave up the ghost"; "The holy ghost shall come upon thee" (Luke i. 35); "receive the holy ghost"; "and Jesus being full of the holy ghost (pneuma), was led by the spirit (pneuma)" (Luke iv. 1); in John iii. 5 and 6 the same word is rendered spirit, and in verse 8 we find : "The wind (bneuma) bloweth where it listeth......and so is everyone that is born of the spirit (pneuma).” If the first pneuma means wind," the second one means the same. We find similar misrenderings of this word wind in the O. T.; in Job xi. 20 the word is rendered ghost, while in xv. 2 it is rendered in the same verse "vain knowledge" and "east wind"! 66 Though these ideas of inspiriting and being inflated with. wind, which was believed by our primitive ancestors to be invisible spirits or ghosts on the move, are both interesting and curious, we cannot condone the dishonesty of the translators, who thus have wilfully perverted the original texts in attempts to substantiate their doctrines, which they are unable to do by any other means. In "Matthew we are informed that an angel appeared to Mary, and told her that that which was begotten in her was of the Holy Ghost; yet in Luke iii. 21, 22, it is stated that the Holy Ghost descended upon him in the form of a dove, by which he was adopted as a son by Yahuh, his joint father with the Holy Ghost, or wind. If he were born of the holy wind, why did he require this second inflation or inspiriting? Again: Elizabeth was, at the salutation of Mary, filled with the Holy Ghost (Luke i.); and it is said by "John" that the Apostles received the same inflation on the day of the resurrection, by Jesus breathing upon them; which, however, is contradicted by "Luke" and "Acts." In Acts i. 4–5 we are told that the Apostles were waiting for the "promise of the Father," and that they would be "baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence "-i.e., after the ascension, forty days after the resurrection; and it was not till ten days after the former occurrence that the inflation did take place. Then it took place in quite a different manner-“a mighty wind [pnoes, from pneo, I blow or breathe], which filled the whole house where the disciples were sitting, and there appeared cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost [pneuma], and began to speak with other tongues, as the spirit [pneuma] gave them utterance." (Acts ii. 2-4). This gift of the holy wind, which was to be transmitted by the laying-on of hands, gave power (so we are to understand) to speak with tongues (different languages) and prophecy; but neither the Jessæans, nor the subsequent Christians, at any time claimed, or now claim, to possess these powers, though the form is still retained to mystify people. This holy wind was artificially produced, says Mitchell, by the priests of ancient Egypt, who used a fan for the purpose. They baptized also with air, as well as with water and fire. This was done by one "whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge [or sweep] his floor." The holy wind was metaphoric of the salubrious summer winds of May in the East, as the fire was of the scorching heat of the dog-days. We thus see how ecclesiastical ingenuity has built up theories of ghosts, ghost-gods, their movement as wind, a trinity, and a form of apostolic succession, but without the least atom of evidence of any supernatural power whatever; and we see also how the various translations of the Bible, instead of being executed in a spirit of scholarly candour, have only testified to the theological bias of the individual translators. This dishonesty in translation is a characteristic of the Christian Bible which is not found in the sacred writings of the other so-called revealed religions of the world. Such pious frauds are confined to the Christian religion. The headings of the different chapters of the O. T. (A. V.) are distinctly unscrupulous and intentionally misleading, with a pious object—i.e., of |