To the Editor of the Norra-Cuina Dany News."
Sin,—Apropos of the recent discussion in your esteemed journal regarding the authorship of the Jewish Bible, may I be permitted to draw the attention of your readers to the fact that lately the Old Testament,—so-called, has been revarnished a bit, the Jewish names exchanged for one hundred per cent. Teutonic ones so that the Jewish iptures can now be read by even a Bavarian _anti-Semite—without danger of Jewish infection. AN of this has been accomplished by the German national author, Heinrich lhotzky, who has just published a book in which the Old Testament is re-written in Old Germanic terms. The books of the Bible are renamed according old Germanic mythology "Wihinei" "Urd," "Werdandi," "Skult."
According to Ihotzky, Urd is Abraham. Under Werdandi, the history of Rebecca and the combat between Esau and Jacob is told. Under Skult, the story of Joseph is related. In a similar way, the whole of the Old Testament has been retold.
Max Manrenbrecher,—_ chief editor of the German national organ "Deutsche Zeitung' welcomes the book as an attempt to de-Judaize and in its place Germinize the Old Testament.
"Many German Nationals,' he writes, "will regard the book as a solution of their present difficulty, inasmuch as we must reject the Holy Scriptures in so far as they are the Scriptures of the Jewish people. The difficulty is solved when we realize that the Old Testament is greater than Judaism, that it is the revelation of a vast power which was not really understood by the Jews and which Judaism has brought—to degeneration. Many clergymen, after reading this book, will again have the courage to preach from Old Testament texts. All Nationjl teachers to whom the Bib! tories have hitherto been a difficulty will find in this book how to tell the Old Testament stories to Germans and make them live."
Max Maurenbrecher, the writer of the above literary effusion is not content to leave the New Testament alone. He protests in his paper against a recognised religious fact, that Jesus could be considered a Jew. Jesus, he asserts, was as much a Jew as a Japanese living in Germany and speaking German could be looked upon as being a German. Hundreds of thousands of National Germans at the present moment, he asserts, have no wish to know anything further of this Jesus, once they learn he is a Jew.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.