Twains Satire in The Bible
The Bible according to twain collects a group of writing that published either years ago or not. It deals with Twain’s understanding of the Bible. The book starts with ideas of what Adams and Eve looked like in these days before and then after expulsion from the Eden Garden. He is not able to reason out why they could get such a punishment for doing something not good when they still had no idea of bad and good till they ate the middle fruit. It then deals with Noah and the floods and the significance of flies.
It was much significant to preserve the disease carriers. As he walks in Heaven one discovers halos, harps and wings for the show. This works finishes up with a scathing attack on mankind stupidity, pointing out that such statements such as, thou shall not kill, and committing genocide are not similar. Or how could a man conceive of a Heaven as Heaven and leave out sexual intercourse? Having this introduction of the Book in mind, it can be easily identified that Twain criticism were harsh, (Twain, 325)In criticizing, God’s inhumanity against man has been used as the main them. This theme has been depicted in various forms like punishment against Adam and Eve, who never new what were bad and good. It was just out of curiosity that they ended up sinning, and instead of God showing mercy to them as it is known that His mercy prevails to all, He punished them for the fast sin they committed.
According to Twain, the first couple have no idea of the human nature. God didn’t give them the idea on how to deal with each other, yet punished them as they try to deal with each other. According Twain most people on earth have felt such looses at least once in their life time, (Twain, 375).Some of those evils were being supported by social and religious institutions, and The Bible according to Mark Twain’s victory over them conformed Twain’s harsh criticism were intended to change the society. Generally, the book was aimed at pointing out falseness, foolishness, hypocrisy and dishonesty of the society.
In the fall story of Adam and Eve, Twain does not at all blame the human nature of Adam and Eve, but he goes a head criticizing God for the fall. According to Twain, He was unfair God. His judgment is considered unsound, hence he was a God of failure and miscalculations, and He was given odd ideas and devices that were fantastic. The relation between God and Adam is considered unfair. This is because “He commanded Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; To disobey could not be a sin, because Adam could not comprehend a sin until the eating the fruit should reveal to him the difference between right and wrong.
So he was unfair in punishing Adam for doing wrong when he could not know it was wrong”, (Twain, 315). Adam was just forbidden the fruits from a certain tree, and was informed that if he tries to disobey, the consequence is dead. In the real sense, how could this supposed to impress Adam? In real sense Adam was just a stature of man; this can be considered in the context of experience and knowledge, he can be linked to a two year old baby. This is because he didn’t have knowledge and idea of what was the meaning f the word death, (The Holy Bible, Genesis, 1-15). In the entire of his life, Adam had never seen death things, and had never of a thing that is death before.
To him, the word meant nothing. In imagining that God could have used another warning sign like for example, if the child Adam eats apples from the centre tree, they he would have been transformed into a meridian longitude, then all these threats would mean same thing, because neither of them could have a meaning to him.The thing that happens to be curious about Twain’s attitude towards Biblical literalism, is that when he was an adult, he used to associate with the minister Joseph Twichell who would at all cost never have viewed Biblical literature as the literal truth. They viewed it in the context of representing the beliefs of the writers. The imperfection of God in the book of Genesis should not be at all times being attributed to God but to these who wrote about him, (Twain, 345).
It can be asserted that with confidence that the role of brutal and rude parents that Mark created was inspired by his own experience on the Pennsylvania. When working here, they were ill-treated, abused and even beaten, so this book allowed him to harshly exhume and satirize those horrible scenes whose victims in most of the time were innocent children. Generally, Mark tries to criticize the kinds of brutalities that were frequent in these times and in the Bible. He created scenes similar to these he witnessed himself physically when he was still a child. According to him, a man who has got a child, he is morally bound to care tenderly for it, from all hurts, from disease, he should shelf it, should lay no hand upon it save in kindness, provide cloths and food, should bear with its waywardness and also never in any case inflict upon it a wonton cruelty and brutality, (Hare, pp 16).
This happens to be the opposite in the way God decides to His earthly children. Yet at all costs, the warmly best minds of Christians tend to justify these kinds of crimes. They condone them, excuse them, and indignantly refuse to refer to them as crimes at all when God commits them. Look at the way God treated his people during Noah’s time, He let the storm and floods kill his own children. He also sends fire to finish Sodom and Gomorrah just because his children were not following his way. As a good father, He should have not acted in such manner; instead, He could have provided guidance and counseling to give his children direction.
Religion has really entered the minds of man; he tends to be the only animal that is religious on earth. This can be credited as hypocrisy; Man tends to pretend that he loves the neighbor as he loves himself, but in real sense he cuts the neighbors throat if his theologies are not straight. This can be seen the laws that were given to Mosses during exodus. The teaching was an eye for an eye. If the neighbor wrongs someone, no matter the circumstance, he is impinged with the same magnitude of pain, (Seth, pp 14). If one looks at other animals, they do not have religion.
Yet it is told that they will be left out in the hereafter. Twain wonders why such cruel punishment to other animals, hence seeming tastes that are questionable.God had powers to make good children as quickly as making bad ones, yet he preferred making bad ones. If God was left them again unhappy, who else could have made them happy, yet He never made even one of them to be happy, instead He made them pay for their bitter life and then knowingly cut it to be short, basing on the reason that they sinned against Him, (The Holy Bible, Genesis ,1-15). On the other hand, openly showing his unfairness against his children on earth, He gave His angles eternal happiness that is unearned, yet needed his children on earth to earn it, (Hare, pp 5).
He gave the angels life that was painless, while his children on earth were cursed with biting miseries and maladies of body and mind. He mouth of justice yet he invented hell, He talks of mercy, Golden rules and forgiveness that is seventy times seven, yet He Himself invented hell. He continuously call for morals to others yet himself has no morals, He frowns against crimes, yet Himself commits them all. Twain continue blaming God at his own wish, yet He continuously shuffles the responsibility for the acts of man upon man, in place of honorably putting them where they belong or even upon Himself. Above all the injustices that He has done to man, God continues tormenting the poor abused and slave man, by inviting man to worship Him, (Hare, pp 2)Twain has harshly criticized the Christian Bible by terming it as a store of drugs. The contents over years have remained the same.
In contrast to this, he views as the way people regard to the Bible has really changed. Though the world has corrected the Bible, the church still doesn’t want to change it. The Bible commanded that witches should not be killed, showing that witches existed. Contrary to this, the church killed and tortured witches to ensure Christianity is clean. After which, it was discovered that witches has never been there. The truth of the matter is that, the texts of witches still remains while only the practice has changed (Seth, pp 6).
In conclusion, Mark Twain has harshly criticized the Bible, Christianity and God Himself. He has given the distinct impression that he was not enamored of Christian organization. This can strongly be figured out in his sentiment that if Christ comes again, the thing that He will never like to be is to become a Christian.
