h against the
Philistine (Goliah) he said to Abner, the captain of the host, Abner,
whose son is this youth? And Abner said, As thy soul liveth, 0 king, I
cannot tell. And the king said, Enquire thou whose son the stripling is.
And as David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took
him and brought him before Saul, with the head of the Philistine in his
hand; and Saul said unto him, Whose son art thou, thou young man? And
David answered, I am the son of thy servant, Jesse, the Betblehemite,"
These two accounts belie each other, because each of them supposes Saul
and David not to have known each other before. This book, the Bible, is
too ridiculous for criticism.--Author.]

In the next chapter (Jer. xxxix.) we have another instance of the
disordered state of this book; for notwithstanding the siege of the
city by Nebuchadnezzar has been the subject of several of the preceding
chapters, particularly xxxvii. and xxxviii., chapter xxxix. begins as
if not a word had been said upon the subject, and as if the reader was
still to be informed of every particular respecting it; for it begins
with saying, ver. 1, "In the ninth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in
the tenth month, came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and all his army,
against Jerusalem, and besieged it," etc.

But the instance in the last chapter (lii.) is still more glaring; for
though the story has been told over and over again, this chapter still
supposes the reader not to know anything of it, for it begins by saying,
ver. i, "Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign,
and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem, and his mother's name was
Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah." (Ver. 4,) "And it came
to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, that
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his army, against
Jerusalem, and pitched against it, and built forts against it," etc.

It is not possible that any one man, and more particularly Jeremiah,
could have been the writer of this book. The errors are such as could
not have been committed by any person sitting down to compose a work.
Were I, or any other man, to write in such a disordered manner, no
body would read what was written, and every body would suppose that the
writer was in a state of insanity. The only way, therefore, to
account for the disorder is, that the book is a medley of detached
unauthenticated anecdotes, put together by some stupid book-