For those of you who've looked over my _Cradle Skeptic_ or are interested in the influence of Tom Paine on Our Author, I offer the following new pages added to Chap. IV of my book. Again, I hope for response, criticism, suggestions, etc. After giving background about Twain's reading of Paine, critical agreement on his general influence, and noting where Twain referred to Paine in his writings, I added: There should be no doubt that Twain felt a strong affinity for Paine, and one reason for this is that young Sam Clemens saw a reflection of his own early religious doubts in Paine's rememberances. In the Age of Reason, Paine recalled "From the time I was capable of concieving an idea, and acting upon it by reflection, I either douted the truth of the christian system or thought it to be a strange affair" (Reason 64). After recalling a childhood event that sparked his questioning of the church, Paine wrote an observation closely paralleling Twain's own thoughts on religion and children (quoted earlier). After debunking the power of prayer (Reason 45), Paine said "I moreover believe that any system of religion that has any thing in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system," and that Christian parents are ashamed to tell their children of the true nature of their religion (65). Pointing to the Christian Bible, Mark Twain not only made much the same claim in his own adult years, but often virtually made Paine's words his own, particularlly in his anti-Biblical criticism. To demonstrate this, it is worth comparing a number of passages from The Age of Reason with similar quotations by Mark Twain that clearly reflect Twain's own post-Hannibal views in Letters From the Earth, The Mysterious Stranger, and elsewhere. For example, in Chapters IV-VI of Age of Reason, Paine attacks Christian mythology, satirizes the characterization of Satan, and says believers in such myths are "credulous" (28-31). Succeeding chapters are detailed if jaundiced critiques of Biblical stories laced with literary analyses of Old Testament and New Testament structure and organization preceding Twain's techniques in such pieces as "James Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses." In his concluding pages, Paine wrote: Of all the systems of religion that were ever invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to concieve, and too inconsistant for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanaticts (Reason 189-190) Later, Paine writes: . . . The Bible represents God to be a changeable, passionate, vindictive Being, making a world and then drowning it, afterwards repenting of what he had done, and promising not to do so again. Setting one nation to cut the throats of another, and stopping the course of the sun, till the butchery should be done (197). The "cutting of throats" image was developed in Twain's "The Lowest Animal" essay (1897) saying of man: "He has made a grave- yard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven" (DeVoto, Letters 176). Paine's characterization of God is repeated when Twain writes: The best minds will tell you that when a man has begotten a child he is morally bound to tenderly care for it, protect it from hurt, shield it from disease, clothe it, feed it, bear with its way- wardness, lay no hand upon it save in kindness and for its own good, and never in any case inflict upon it a wanton cruelty. God's treatment of his earthly children, every day and every night, is the exact opposite of all that, yet those best minds warmly justify these crimes, condone them, excuse them, and indignantly refuse to regard them as crimes at all, when he commits them. (What is Man? 418) The similarities between the Paine passage and Young Satan's final words in The Mysterious Stranger are even more obvious: . . . a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell--mouths mercy and invented hell--mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him! (Great Short Works 365). In Letters from the Earth, Twain says of the Bible: It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies. (What is Man? 412) This paragraph summarizes Chapter VII of Age of Reason in which Paine describes the Bible as a chronicle of "cruel and tortourous" history," "a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize man kind" mixed with "poetry, anecdote, and devotion together" as well as morals akin to other philosophies and "paltry tales, all of which Paine repeatadly calls frauds (34-35). In Paine's questioning of Jesus's intentions to establish a new religion, Paine exclaims, "The New Testament! That is, the new Will, as if there could be two wills of the Creator" (38-9). This idea can be compared to Twain's observation: The two Testaments are interesting, each in its own way. The Old one gives us a picture of these people's Deity as he was before he got religion, the other one gives us a picture of him as he appeared afterward. (What is Man? 442) It would clearly be a tremendous oversimplification to say the writings now collected in The Bible According to Mark Twain are merely Twain's reworkings of Paine's Age of Reason. Still, the content, rhetorical style, and the angry denunciations of scripture are all remarkably similar in example after example in the religious essays of both writers with one notable difference in emphasis: Paine's targets are primarily scripture and the church he feels fabricated both the Bible and the subsequent mythology based on it; Twain goes further by denouncing the character of God along with human hypocrisy and credulity. It is also worth noting that Paine continually refers to the Deity in the same manner as Sam Clemens--a subject of derision, not faith or belief. For both writers, the Judeo-Christian God is a figure of dubious mythology, and without belief in these scriptures, belief in the God central to this mythos becomes unprovable and doubtful. And, while Thomas Paine has never enjoyed a reputation as a humorist, there is much evidence in the Age of Reason to suggest Paine's rhetorical twists and turns of phrase influenced Mark Twain's comic sense and use of humorous comparisons to make philosophic points. For example, lampooning the story of Jonah and the whale, Paine claims "it would have approached nearer to the idea of a miracle, if Jonah had swallowed the whale" (80). Again with a Twainian voice, Paine finds it odd that Satan flies Jesus off to a mountain, "a whale of a miracle" itself, and offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world without discovering America (80). Elaborating on this incident, Paine observed The book called the book of Matthew, says, (3.16) that the Holy Ghost descended in the shape of a dove. It might as well have said a goose; the creatures are equally harmless, and the one is as much a nonsensical lie as the other. (Paine, "Author's Note," 190). Later, Paine returns to this image, claiming the Holy Ghost is represented "by a flying pigeon," which makes it "impossible that belief can attach itself to such wild conceits," an image and perspective preceeding Twain's similar mix of satire and polemic in his anti-Biblical pieces (Reason 190). Paine's version of the story of Samson reads like a passage from Letters from the Earth in style, tone, and point-of-view if not in the particulars: When Samson ran off with the gateposts of Gaza, if he ever did, (and whether he did or not is nothing to us) or when he visited his Delilah, or caught his foxes, or did anything else, what has revalation to do with these things? If they were facts, he could tell them himself; or his secratary, if he kept one, could write them, if they were worth either telling or writing . . . we are neither the better or the wiser for knowing them (Paine 33). And the influence of Tom Paine upon Samuel Clemens went beyond their common religious sensibilities . . . And here I go into Paine's influence on Twain's political essays, already part of _CS_. So let me know where I should do more, less . . . wes britton [log in to unmask]