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WorkThomas Paine

Examination of the Prophecies

Isaiah's promised child and the Gospels' other proof-texts, read back in context and found to be about ancient Judah, not Jesus.

by Thomas Paine82 passages held

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First published
(aged 70)
Original language
English

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Overview

Every passage in the Gospels that quotes the Old Testament as a prophecy of Jesus is taken here, one at a time, and set back in the chapter it came from. Thomas Paine's finding is that none of them foretells him: read in place, each concerns the situation of the Jewish nation when it was written. The best known is Isaiah's sign of a child to be born, which Matthew reads as a prophecy of the virgin birth. Isaiah offered it to Ahaz, king of Judah, as a pledge that the two kings then marching on Jerusalem would fail — and a sign has to come before the thing it signals, not seven hundred years after it. The conclusion Paine drew was blunt: the New Testament rests its authority on these prophecies, so if there are none, the faith built on them has no ground. In front of the examination he placed an essay on dreams, since Matthew's Joseph is guided by several; a dream, he argued, is only the imagination at work while judgment and memory sleep, and so proves nothing. The book ends on a few pages of private thoughts on a future state, in which Paine hopes for happiness after death and leaves the rest to his Creator. Paine published the pamphlet himself in New York in 1807, with a preface addressed to the ministers of every denomination. He had come back to America in 1802 and, according to his friend and editor John Fellows, found liberal opinions on religion in disrepute; rather than publish his full theological manuscripts, among them an answer to Bishop Richard Watson, he drew this selection from them. It was the last of his writings he edited himself, and he died in New York two years later. British publishers afterwards reissued it as the third part of The Age of Reason, the label it still often carries.

Key concepts

What does it mean to read a prophecy in its place?

To set a quoted passage back in the chapter it came from and ask what it meant there. The Gospels quote Old Testament verses as prophecies of Jesus, lifted out of their surroundings. Paine returns each one to its original context and finds that it concerns the situation of the Jewish nation when it was written. Read in place, the passage answers to its own history, not to a later one.

Why must a sign come before the thing it signals?

Because a sign is given as a pledge, and a pledge redeemed centuries later assures no one. Isaiah offered Ahaz, king of Judah, the sign of a child to be born as proof that the two kings then marching on Jerusalem would fail. For the sign to mean anything to Ahaz it had to arrive in his lifetime; a child born seven hundred years later could not have reassured him.

Why does a book about prophecy open with an essay on dreams?

Because Matthew's Joseph is guided by several dreams, and Paine wanted their authority settled first. A dream, he argues, is only the imagination at work while judgment and memory sleep, so it proves nothing about the world or about God's will. With dreams set aside as evidence, the Gospel story loses one of its channels of revelation before the prophecies are even examined.

Why does the whole faith hang on the prophecies, in Paine's argument?

Because the New Testament itself rests its authority on them. The Gospels present Jesus as the one the prophets foretold, and they cite the passages as proof. Paine takes that claim at its word: if the prophecies do not foretell him, the proof offered fails, and the faith built on it has no ground. The argument turns the New Testament's own standard of evidence against it.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Read in Place, the Prophecies Speak of Judah

Do the Old Testament passages the Gospels quote really foretell Jesus? Read back in their own chapters, Paine argues, each one concerns the Jewish nation of its own time.

Paine takes every Gospel passage that quotes the Old Testament as a prophecy of Jesus and sets it back in the chapter it came from. Isaiah's sign of a child to be born, which Matthew reads as the virgin birth, was offered to Ahaz, king of Judah, as a pledge that the two kings then marching on Jerusalem would fail, and a sign has to come before the thing it signals, not seven hundred years after it. The conclusion is blunt: the New Testament rests its authority on these prophecies, so if there are none, the faith built on them has no ground.

  • prophecy
  • biblical interpretation
  • scriptural criticism
  • biblical criticism
  • hermeneutics
  • historical context
  • scriptural context
  • scriptural interpretation
  • religious authority
  • revelation
  • divine revelation
  • evidence
  • miracles

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A Dream Is Imagination While Judgment Sleeps

Can a dream carry a message from God? Paine answers that a dream is the imagination at work while judgment and memory sleep, and so proves nothing.

Matthew's Joseph is guided by several dreams, and Paine placed an essay on dreaming in front of his examination to deal with them first. In sleep, he argued, judgment and memory rest while the imagination keeps working, stringing images together with nothing to check them. A dream is therefore the state in which a person is least able to tell truth from invention, and to rest a revelation on one is to rest it on the mind at its least reliable.

  • dreams
  • mind
  • memory
  • imagination
  • epistemology
  • religious epistemology
  • superstition
  • reason

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Hope for a Future State Without Revelation

What may a person who rejects revelation still hope for after death? Paine closes the book with his private thoughts: happiness hoped for, and the rest left to his Creator.

The examination is severe, and its last pages are not. In a few pages of private thoughts on a future state, Paine hopes for happiness after death and leaves the rest to his Creator. The hope asks nothing of prophecy or of dreams, the two supports the book has just taken away, and it claims no more than a hope can. It closes the last of his writings he edited himself; he died in New York two years after publishing it.

  • natural religion
  • divine attributes
  • divine justice
  • salvation
  • morality
  • religious belief
  • religion

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Within this work

passages held
82
distinct concepts
116
by passages held, corpus-wide
#552

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “biblical interpretation” and “prophecy”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 18 pairings. 74 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
biblical interpretationprophecy29
biblical interpretationhistorical context8
hermeneuticsprophecy8
historical contextprophecy8
evidenceprophecy7
prophecyscriptural criticism7
biblical criticismprophecy6
biblical interpretationscriptural criticism5
biblical criticismhermeneutics4
biblical interpretationevidence4
biblical interpretationhermeneutics4
biblical criticismevidence2
evidencehistorical context2
hermeneuticshistorical context2
biblical criticismhistorical context1
biblical interpretationdreams1
dreamsevidence1
dreamsprophecy1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1776 Common Sense

    The book that made Paine's name, so much so that he signed the Crisis papers of the following years with its title.

     EN
  2. 1776 The American Crisis

    A serial rather than a book: papers issued one at a time between December 1776 and December 1783, whenever the war's news called for one, each under the title The Crisis.

     EN
  3. 1782 Letter Addressed to the Abbé Raynal on the Affairs of North-America (Letter to the Abbe Raynal)

    Ten months after the victory at Yorktown, with the war winding down, Paine set out to put the record of the Revolution straight for European readers.

     EN
  4. 1791 Rights of Man

    Paine's contribution to the pamphlet war that Burke's Reflections set off in Britain; the writer Mary Wollstonecraft had answered Burke first, in November 1790.

     EN
  5. 1793 Reasons for Wishing to Preserve the Life of Louis Capet (Reasons for Preserving the Life of Louis Capet)

    Second of the three speeches Paine gave in the Convention on the king's fate: the first, in November 1792, argued that Louis should be tried; the last pleaded for a reprieve.

     EN
  6. 1794 The Age of Reason

    Between the two stretches in which it was written, Paine spent ten months in a Paris prison; it is his one sustained book on religion, and the one that cost him most.

     EN
  7. 1795 Dissertation on First Principles of Government

    Here Paine's political principles are condensed into a few dozen pages, in his last attempt to shape a French constitution from inside the Convention.

     EN
  8. 1797 Agrarian Justice

    Published in answer to a bishop's sermon on rich and poor, it carries the welfare proposals of Rights of Man to a principle: that the landless are owed a share of the earth.

     EN
  9. 1797 The Existence of God

    Addressed to the Theophilanthropists, the Paris society whose creed matched Paine's own, it gives the positive side of the case that The Age of Reason made against revealed religion.

     EN
  10. 1807 Examination of the Prophecies you are here EN
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