The Age of Reason (Thomas Paine): Part Three: Examination of the Prophecies. Paine was a hero to our Founding Fathers. His COMMON SENSE has been described as the spark which ignited our revolutionary fires.
Yet Thomas Paine was also dubbed a "filthy little Atheist" by Theodore Roosevelt.
Why? Because Thomas Paine dared to examine the Bible in an age in which independent thought on religious matters was a crime punishable under the blasphemy statutes. Paine was no Atheist--he was a deist who believed in a god--but he could not accept that every word of the bible was true.
He made his case for that position in THE AGE OF REASON. What is often overlooked, however is that he also rejected the divinity of Jesus; indeed, he even rejected the existence of the hero of the New Testament. It is in the seldom-published Part Three of THE AGE OF REASON that Paine attempted to prove that Jesus was not a man, but a fable. He did so by looking at the prophecies which the New Testament claims that Jesus fulfilled.
This edition of Part Three of THE AGE OF REASON is extensively annotated by Frank R. Zindler, a science writer and New Testament scholar. Zinder brings Paine's original text up-to-date with the latest biblical scholarship.
Index. 95pp. Paperback. ISBN: 0-910309-70-1