§ I.

It is evident from the text of the Book of Judges that Jephthah promised to sacrifice the first person that should come out of his house to congratulate him on his victory over the Ammonites. His only daughter presented herself before him for that purpose; he tore his garments and immolated her, after having promised her to go and deplore in the recesses of the mountains the calamity of her dying a virgin. The daughters of Israel long continued to celebrate this painful event, and devoted four days in the year to lamentation for the daughter of Jephthah.

In whatever period this history was written, whether it was imitated from the Greek history of Agamemnon and Idomeneus, or was the model from which that history was taken; whether it might be anterior or posterior to similar narratives in Assyrian history is not the point I am now examining. I keep strictly to the text. Jephthah vowed to make his daughter a burnt offering, and fulfilled his vow.

It was expressly commanded by the Jewish law to sacrifice men devoted to the Lord: “Every man that shall be devoted shall not be redeemed, but shall be put to death without remission.” The Vulgate translates it: “He shall not be redeemed, but shall die the death.”

It was in virtue of this law that Samuel hewed in pieces King Agag, whom, as we have already seen, Saul had pardoned. In fact, it was for sparing Agag that Saul was rebuked by the Lord, and lost his kingdom.

Thus, then, we perceive sacrifices of human blood clearly established; there is no point of history more incontestable: we can only judge of a nation by its own archives, and by what it relates concerning itself.
§ II.

There are, then, it seems, persons to be found who hesitate at nothing, who falsify a passage of Scripture as intrepidly as if they were quoting its very words, and who hope to deceive mankind by their falsehoods, knowing them perfectly to be such. If such daring impostors are to be found now, we cannot help supposing, that before the invention of printing, which affords such facility, and almost certainty of detection, there existed a hundred times as many.

One of the most impudent falsifiers who have lately appeared, is the author of an infamous libel entitled “The Anti-Philosophic Dictionary,” which truly deserves its title. But my readers will say, “Do not be so irritated; what is it to you that a contemptible book has been published?” Gentlemen, it is to the subject of Jephthah, to the subject of human victims, of the blood of men sacrificed to God, that I am now desirous of drawing your attention!

The author, whoever he may be, translates the thirty-ninth verse of the first chapter of the history of Jephthah as follows: “She returned to the house of her father, who fulfilled the consecration which he had promised by his vow, and his daughter remain............