The Bible: What It Is!

In Short

Charles Bradlaugh's The Bible: What It Is! presents a painstaking, verse-by-verse rationalist critique of the Old Testament. Spanning early books from Genesis through First Samuel, the work dissects canonical claims through scientific findings, historical inconsistencies, and textual contradictions. Bradlaugh compares biblical accounts with older ancient mythologies and scrutinizes moral difficulties embedded in the narrative. While surviving historical copies remain incomplete—ending prematurely after the ninth book—it endures as a defining artifact of Victorian freethought, illustrating how early secularist movements mobilized science and historical scholarship to challenge established religious authority.

The Story

The intellectual arc of The Bible: What It Is! unfolds as a systematic, book-by-book deconstruction of the Old Testament, moving sequentially from creation myths through the early establishment of the Israelite monarchy.

The work opens with Genesis, where Bradlaugh targets the foundational cosmology of the Pentateuch. He juxtaposes the Mosaic creation narrative against contemporary mid-nineteenth-century geological and paleontological evidence. Pointing out the impossibility of global plant life existing prior to solar illumination or outside distinct climatic zones, he argues that the natural world evolved across vast epochs rather than emerging in six literal days. He further compares the Genesis creation account to Hindu texts such as the Manava Dharma Shastra, suggesting that Hebrew scripture possesses no superior claim to antiquity or divine inspiration over older Eastern traditions. Moving through the patriarchs, Bradlaugh highlights ethical troubling points, including the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abimelech’s innocent suffering on account of Abraham's falsehoods, and the improbable transformation of Lot’s wife.

In Exodus and Leviticus, the progression shifts toward civil law, miraculous events, and divine characterizations. Bradlaugh scrutinizes the plagues, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the wilderness wandering, contrasting the divine portrayal of God as a "man of war" with claims of infinite mercy. He highlights contradictions regarding whether Moses saw God "face to face" or only His "back parts," arguing that such anthropomorphic descriptions degrade the divine ideal into primitive folklore.

As the narrative moves into Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua, Bradlaugh turns his focus toward historical geography and moral accountability. He notes internal chronological impossibilities, such as references to places named only long after Moses's death—including the city of Hormah and King Og's iron bedstead in Rabbah—to demonstrate that the Pentateuch was assembled by later scribes rather than authored directly by Moses. He forcefully attacks severe Sabbath punishments, human sacrifice implications in the story of Jephthah's daughter, and the brutal military conquests of Canaan, raising moral objections to claims of divine sanction for total destruction.

The final surviving sections examine Judges, Ruth, and First Samuel, tracing the rise of Israel’s kingdom. Bradlaugh questions the divine inspiration behind political assassinations like Ehud’s killing of Eglon and explores the glaring structural discrepancies between the monarchical laws of Deuteronomy and Samuel’s warnings against royal tyranny. The extant text concludes amidst the early life of David, picking apart the narrative timeline of the Goliath encounter and showing how David appears introduced twice under mutually exclusive circumstances.

How It Unfolds

The creation under scientific scrutiny The commentary opens by placing the Genesis account of creation beside 19th-century geology and comparative mythology. Bradlaugh shows how fossil records and plant distributions conflict directly with a literal six-day timeline, while drawing parallels to earlier Hindu sacred texts.

Moral and physical anomalies of the Patriarchs Moving through Noah’s flood and the age of Abraham, the argument targets physical impossibilities like Mount Ararat's frozen summit and moral dilemmas such as God punishing King Abimelech for believing Abraham's lie.

Anachronisms in the Mosaic law Analyzing the wilderness journey in Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the text highlights geographical names and events that occurred centuries after Moses, proving the narrative was edited by later writers rather than penned on Mount Sinai.

Conquest, violence, and textual gaps Examining Joshua and Judges, the focus turns to the brutal destruction of Canaanite cities and internal omissions, such as the missing explanation for God’s anger at Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.

The contradictions of the early Monarchy The surviving text concludes in First Samuel, contrasting Samuel’s warning of royal tyranny against Deuteronomic law, while exposing narrative fractures in David’s rise, including duplicate introductions and impossible military gear measurements for Goliath.

The People

Charles Bradlaugh The central intellectual force of the commentary. He approaches the biblical text as a rigorous legal investigator and secular reformer, seeking to liberate public discourse from unquestioned clerical authority through detailed textual analysis.

Moses Presented in the commentary not as an infallible divine scribe, but as a legendary figure whose attributed writings contain clear post-Mosaic interpolations, geographical errors, and conflicting moral directives regarding law and war.

God (as depicted in the Old Testament narrative) Analyzed as a character within the text whose attributes shift dramatically—appearing anthropomorphic, vengeful, and changeable, ordering total destruction in one chapter while withholding judgment or displaying regional limitations in another.

Samuel Positioned as a key political figure whose stern warnings against establishing a monarchy directly conflict with the lenient, structured royal guidelines found in Deuteronomy, pointing to separate historical authors with competing political agendas.

David Examined in the closing chapters as a figure shaped by contradictory storylines, appearing simultaneously as a recognized royal armor-bearer and an obscure, unarmored shepherd boy unknown to King Saul's court.

In Its Voice

"It is, therefore, a preliminary question--was this a multitudinous creation, assorted to their several localities, or a creation of one or two plants of a class from whence all the rest proceeded?"

Context: Bradlaugh applies botanical geography to challenge the Genesis creation narrative regarding the simultaneous origin of all plant life.

"Had there been actually such a treaty as this, it could have been entered into only with the devil."

Context: Quoting Voltaire, the author highlights the moral absurdity of a divine covenant where beasts and humans are ordained to slaughter and devour one another.

"The question is two-fold--1st. Is it lawful to destroy tyrants? 2nd. If a man is almost unanimously accursed... is it lawful for one man to constitute himself judge, jury, and executioner?"

Context: Commenting on Ehud’s assassination of King Eglon in Judges, Bradlaugh questions the moral precedent set by divine approval of political murder.

What It's Really About

The Bible: What It Is! is fundamentally an argument for intellectual freedom and textual accountability. Beneath its verse-by-verse commentary lies a challenge to religious dogma, arguing that sacred texts must be held to the same standards of historical, scientific, and ethical evaluation as any other ancient literature. Bradlaugh confronts the societal double standards of Victorian England, where elite institutions protected problematic texts while suppressing secular critiques. At its core, the book asks whether moral truth can truly rest upon claims of divine command when those commands involve violence, scientific errors, and historical contradictions.

Why Read It Today

This work speaks directly to readers interested in the history of Victorian secularism, free thought, and the nineteenth-century clash between science and literalist theology. Bradlaugh’s tone is sharp, uncompromising, and deeply academic, combining Hebrew and Greek references with early geological theory.

Reading it today offers a vivid window into how early freethinkers fought for the democratization of knowledge. The writing can be demanding; it relies heavily on long block quotations, complex mid-century scholarship, and dense verse citations that require patient reading. Because the surviving printed copies cut off abruptly during First Samuel, the work remains an incomplete torso of a vast project. Yet what remains carries undeniable force. It leaves the reader with a clear sense of the intellectual courage required to challenge the entrenched religious orthodoxies of the 1800s.