And in the course of time, people
had to believe these old Jewish writings were the Word of God." (_W. H.
Williamson, "Thinker or Believer_.")

The Hebrews had as one of their gods, Yahveh, whom they endowed with
their qualities; qualities inherent in a primitive people: jealousy and
might, trickery and fickleness. They evolved a worship that contained in
a modified form many of the ceremonials that they witnessed when they
came into contact with the Babylonians and Phoenicians. Their Bible
they maintained to be a collection of books which appeared at intervals,
with divine inspiration, during a thousand years of Jewish history.
Similarly, they insisted that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, that Judges,
Kings, and Chronicles go back to the times they describe, that the
prophecies were added from the ninth century onward, and so on.

The Martian found that not a single book of the Old Testament is older
than the ninth century B.C. and that in the fifth century B.C. all the
older books and fragments were combined together into the Old Testament
as we have it, and were drastically altered so as to yield a version of
early Jewish history which is not true. The manipulation of the Hebrew
writings by the Jewish priests had for its object to represent the
Jewish priesthood, and its rights and customs, as having been
established in the days of Moses. Deuteronomy and Leviticus have been
classed as priestly forgeries. Nearly every occurrence, from the
creation of the world to the death of Moses, is related twice and, in
some cases, three times; and as the Pentateuch is supposed to have been
written by Moses one must assume that Moses had double and triple
vision.

Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah are impudent forgeries of the fourth
century, giving a totally false version of the events. The Martian finds
that the terms used for these fabrications are "redaction" or
"recension," but, in his understanding, he finds the word most
descriptive of the process to be forgery. "The main point is that
practically all the experts assure you that in scores of material points
the Old Testament history has been discredited, and has only been
confirmed in a few unimportant incidental statements; and that the books
are a tissue of inventions, expansions, conflations, or recensions
dating centuries after the event."

The Martian in his analysis becomes aware of instances related in the
Old Testament that on his planet would have to be termed
forger