Description

Until the publication of this annotated edition, Thomas Paine’s third part of “The Age Of Reason” was extremely rare and almost unknown. Titled “Examination of the Prophecies,” the book examines all the supposed prophecies of Jesus in the Old Testament alleged by the evangelists of the New Testament. With great wit and penetrating logic, Paine showed that not one of the Old Testament passages cited had anything to do with the Christian’s would-be Messiah. Paine appears to have been the first writer in English to suggest that Jesus was not a historical figure.

Frank R. Zindler’s marginal notes and commentary examine the Greek and Hebrew texts of the verses being discussed. They show that Paine, who knew no ancient languages and knew of none of the important biblical manuscripts that would be discovered after his death, was astonishingly correct in his critique.

About the Author

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was born to a Norfolkshire Quaker family, where he learned his father?s trade of stay-making, but wandered into a wider world. He went to America in 1774 where, two years later, he wrote Common Sense. After returning to London in defense of the French Revolution, he fled to Paris where he completed the Age of Reason while imprisoned after protesting the violence of the Terror. He was no scholar, but his vigorous intelligence and forcible style gave his criticism of the Bible and Christianity an immense value that is not yet exhausted.

Joseph McCabe, A Rationalist Encyclopaedia

Frank R. Zindler has been an atheist activist since 1959 when he began publicly to defend the teaching of evolution and to criticize religious encroachments upon the public sphere. A professor of biology and geology at SUNY for almost twenty years, he was forced to give up teaching when he joined Madalyn Murray O’Hair in a lawsuit that attempted to remove ?In God We Trust?; from American currency.

Details

ISBN-13:?9780910309707
Publisher:?American Atheist Press
Page Count:?95