Treatise on the Gods

by H.L. Mencken

With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken’s death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection , newly packaged editions of nine Mencken Happy Days , Heathen Days , Newspaper Day s, Prejudices , Treatise on the Gods , On Politics , Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work , Minority Report , and A Second Mencken Chrestomathy . With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken’s death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection , newly packaged editions of nine Mencken Happy Days , Heathen Days , Newspaper Day s, Prejudices , Treatise on the Gods , On Politics , Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work , Minority Report , and A Second Mencken Chrestomathy . Controversial even before it was published in 1930, Treatise on the Gods collects Mencken’s scathing commentary on religion.

Genres: Religion, Philosophy, Atheism, Nonfiction, Essays, Spirituality, Classics

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1930

About the author

Henry Louis "H.L." Mencken became one of the most influential and prolific journalists in America in the 1920s and '30s, writing about all the shams and con artists in the world. He attacked chiropractors and the Ku Klux Klan, politicians and other journalists. Most of all, he attacked Puritan morality. He called Puritanism, "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

At the height of his career, he edited and wrote for The American Mercury magazine and the Baltimore Sun newspaper, wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column for the Chicago Tribune, and published two or three books every year. His masterpiece was one of the few books he wrote about something he loved, a book called The American Language (1919), a history and collection of American vernacular speech. It included a translation of the Declaration of Independence into American English that began, "When things get so balled up that the people of a country got to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are not trying to put nothing over on nobody."

When asked what he would like for an epitaph, Mencken wrote, "If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl."

(from American Public Media)

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Comprehensive review of religion and a complete demolition of it. Should be required reading in schools to decontaminate minds corrupted by religious idiocy.

[Matt McCormick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was always a great fan of Menken’s writing, his acerbic tone, skeptical views, his sense of irony and his ability to land a well-placed punch. Like many people in history, the more we get to know them the more disenchanted we can become. Recent understanding of the extent of Mencken’s racism and antisemitism made visible through his diaries blunts so much of what there was to like about this early twentieth century newspaper man, pundit, reviewer and newspaper editor.
This is the last of Mencken’s writings I will read. I’ll do my best to be objective in this review.
The book is way too long. It’s repetitive. Although Menken clearly spent the energy to consult the experts of his day, he himself was no expert in religious history or theology. I have no idea if his proclamations are accurate. Most I agree with from a rational and commonsense perspective. A few did make me utter a quiet hmmm. Take for example how he traced (again accurately?) the pre-civilized practice of offering the sacrifice of a first born son to the gods and connected that to the Christian story of Jesus. Or, his list of religious groups through history with a matriarchic figure using a derivation of the name Mary. Hmmm.
Sure Menken enjoyably jabs at the priestly class and uses his often clever language to call out hypocrisy and irrationality. Through Mencken one can see the early Hitchens. But this book is a disappointment much like the disappointment one feels after getting to know Mencken too well.

[Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Treatise on the Gods is a well organized trip through the beginnings and evolution of religion. He prefaces the book with his distaste for converts and conversion and states this book is not for believers. Also Mencken remarks that the Earth is large and there is enough room on its epidermis for all of us.

The first chapter is speculative, but is a very plausible explanation of the origin of the occupation of the priest. Leveraging humans hyper-sensitive agent detection and lack of understanding of causality and probability, priests managed to gain a position in the tribe through fighting natural forces, and sometimes winning.

The second chapter covers how the first priests learn to keep their jobs after their rituals fail to divert natural disasters and disease. The priest codifies a set of rules that he knows will be difficult to follow for most humans, and then invokes the breakage of said rules, anytime his rituals fail to provide favorable treatment by the gods. Herein lies the origin of Hell.

The third chapter is a lesson in comparative religion. This chapter serves to show the many similarities between religions new and ancient. Baptism is perhaps the best example, as such rituals even existed amongst the Aztecs prior to their conversion to Christianity. The chapter shows each religion as less of a unique idea, and more of a language, musical genre, or the genetic makeup of an complex organism in that it has many influences.

The fourth chapter is dedicated solely to Christianity and its origins. Mencken dedicates considerable resources to show how the Bible was put together, which parts were likely embellished, which parts were written far too long after the event to have been accurate, and how much of it given what we know about the historical Jesus is faithful to his character. One of the more interesting excerpts in this chapter is on the Song of Solomon. It is clearly an erotic poem and contains references to fellatio and women's breasts, though the clerical stance of both Catholics and Jews is it is a metaphor for clergy and God or the church and God or worshipers and God. Quite an example of rationalization.

The last and final chapter is more opinion. Mencken details the mindset behind the true believer and how tribalism and lack of self-confidence play a large role. Strikingly similar to Eric Hoffers description in the book True Believers (it may even have influenced Hoffer). Mencken also postulates that some humans are biologically more susceptible to religion than others and subsequently religion will survive for quite some time. Mencken also dedicates some pages to what he feels is an irreconcilable conflict between science and religion. Definitely a proponent of the God of the Gaps idea, Mencken firmly believes that the area of knowledge for religion is becoming smaller and smaller as scientific knowledge progresses, and eventually the realm of knowledge for religion will disappear altogether. He argues that religious adherents know this and as evidence quotes Martin Luther as saying that Reason is Satan's whore. Lastly, as did Dawkins, Mencken is very complimentary of the poetic qualities of the Bible.

Overall an excellent and very well researched read, I enjoyed it far more than On Religion by H.L. Mencken. The middle chapters are driven almost exclusively by academic research into religion. For those more curious, there is an extensive bibliography in the back.

[Christopher Myrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blunt, forthright, funny and -- at times -- forgiving of those who suspend reason. Mencken strays toward the hypothetical in discussion of origins of religions, particularly in preliterate societies, but is joyously blunt on the contemporary variants of his time ((published 1930). Dismissive of attempts to reconcile religion and science, dismissing Gould's non-overlapping magisteria nonsense more than a half century before it was coined. Particularly scathing toward US protestant fundamentalism and the corrupting influence mass ignorance has on democracy ("no more nonsense has ever been put into words by presumably civilized men"). Refreshingly elitist and a joy to read.

[Jeffrey Falk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an entertaining and learned conspectus on the history of mysticism and religion that has perspicacious insights and a few dubious views. I'm not sure how accurate every fact is and how valid every observation is, but it is generally convincing and always written in Mencken's delightful, articulate prose style. It even has a lawyer joke, unusual for Mencken.

[John E · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful, speculative history of the origin and development of religion. It becomes more Christianity centered as the book progressed -- understandable considering he was an American. A must read for all interested in religion.

[Tyler Malone · Rating 5 out of 5]

An indispensable critique on the creation and rise of religions, to the then-state of the 'twenties Christian faith; as well as a book by a man who loved to think and read for himself. A fine testament to heresy.

[Christian Schwoerke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was disappointed. The book is both too long and too shallow, and the focus shifted from all religions to the practice of Christianity in the United States and then finally to some casual Jew bashing to better highlight the extraordinary beauty of the King James Bible (pace its origins millennia ago in the culture of uncouth, barbaric Bedouin).

The speculative account of the origins of religion in man’s prehistory was labored, but it’s hard to argue with the premise that religion grew out of fear and incomprehension, that from that grew a class of priests whose role it was to work with the ruling power to perpetuate their own exalted existence.

The elaboration of its evolution to encompass theological concepts of morality, metempsychosis, an eternal soul, heaven, hell, et al. was again speculative, as was the discussion about the codification of church practices through history.

The final chapters about the schism between Catholics and Protestants (and their profusion of contentious sects) were more invective than discussion or analysis.

There’s good reason to have it spelled out that religious feelings of awe and fear have inspired structures of belief and dogma, that these self-perpetuating structures (in Christianity)—in allying themselves with the ruling elite—have more often practiced hypocrisy than tended to their congregation’s best interests, but Mencken tries to dilate this message with bloviating speculation and opinion when he could have as easily reduced and made his sermon more palatable as a 25-page essay.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the period in the late '20s and early '30s when Mencken, who for years had been rehashing the same handful of topics in newspapers and magazines, must have figured it was time for something more substantial. The result was this book, along with Notes on Democracy and Treatise on Right and Wrong. "Treatise on the Gods" tackles the origin and development of religion, a weighty theme for a writer who was never a serious scholar (despite "The American Language") or a particularly deep thinker. He was, however, the funniest polemicist America has ever produced (in addition to being loudly atheistic decades before Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins began scandalizing the public), and thanks to that the book is worth reading even though he was mainly recycling what he'd read in the works of the era's academic experts.

No point dwelling on the details of his argument, which are often as out of date as the specialists he cribbed them from, but it's tremendously entertaining. We start with primitive humans deciding that the forces of nature were beings who could be both angered and placated, and proceed to the rise of specialists in managing the gods; the religions of the ancient Near East, Greece and Rome; and especially the rise of Judaism and Christianity. When it comes to the Hebrew Bible, you can see he put in the work -- there's a solid description of the Documentary Hypothesis, and a decent account of the era's OT scholarship in general. He complains at one point, discussing the various sources of the book of Isaiah, that "the literature upon the subject is almost endless, and makes very hard reading," a reasonable reaction from anyone who's had to plow through it.

There's one other thing Mencken wasn't: a moral paragon. My copy is the 1946 edition, for which he revised the chapter on contemporary religion, and his bigotry and blind spots are there in neon. Watch how this paragraph develops:

The Bible is unquestionably the most beautiful book in the world. Allow everything you please for the barbaric history in the Old Testament and the silly Little Bethel theology in the New, and there remains a series of poems so overwhelmingly voluptuous and disarming that no other literature, old or new, can offer a match for it. Nearly all of it comes from the Jews, and their making of it constitutes one of the most astounding phenomena in human history. Save for a small minority of superior individuals, nearly unanimously agnostic, there is not much in their character, as the modern world knows them, to suggest a genius for exalted thinking. Even Ernest Renan, who was very friendly to them, once sneered at the esprit sémetique as sans éntendu, sans diversité, and sans philosophie. As commonly encountered, they strike other peoples as predominantly unpleasant, and everywhere on earth they seem to be disliked. This dislike, despite their own belief to the contrary, has nothing to do with their religion: it is founded, rather, on their bad manners, their curious lack of tact. They have an extraordinary capacity for offending and alarming the Goyim, and not infrequently, from the earliest days down to our own time, it has engendered brutal wars upon them. Yet these same rude, unpopular, and often unintelligent folk, from time almost immemorial, have been the chief dreamers of the Western world, and beyond all comparison its greatest poets.

To write that (or leave it untouched from the first edition) in 1946! The mind boggles. I decided long ago that if brilliant writers were assholes I'd enjoy them anyway, without forgetting the assholery. Your tolerance may vary.

[Roger Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Treatise on the Gods was the first book that really got me thinking about organized religion, and it came to me by way of one of those serendipitous moments, that often go unnoticed. It was 1967 or 68.
I was a young teacher at a high school in Baden, Ontario and I did not have a lot of spare cash, so I was browsing through the bargain bin at the bookstore at Waterloo Lutheran University from which I had recently graduated. I found a copy of Mencken's little book and took it home. It blew my mind. I had never read about religion from his atheistic point of view having been raised in a Baptist community. Mencken's arguments were cutting but also seemed valid to me, and they changed how I thought about my childhood and about what organized religion really was. I am forever grateful. This book is still available, and it is in truth, just a little book as in short.

[Joe · Rating 1 out of 5]

A book hardly worth reading.
It's little more than a long form rant against religion. In the introduction, Mencken tells readers who are faithful, go ahead and skip the book. And they would be well served to do so.

Mencken warns the readers of priests' and pastors' struggles to lead their flocks' minds because of religion's use of conjecture, and filling in blanks for explanation -- and Mencken spends the entirety of the book committing the same errors. He often ignorantly misstates Catholic orthodoxy to make his points. And he uses issues and settled heresies to lead the reader where he'd like their minds to be.

I'm not one to destroy books - but this is one I'm leaving in the rubbish bin.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Except for dipping into chapter 3, I read only chapters 4 and 5, Mencken’s investigation of Christianity. There are comments which are out of date—he wrote before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi texts—but his overall critique is solid, and many of his conclusions will surprise those who consider him simply an anti-Christian.

[Jon Walgren · Rating 4 out of 5]

One discovers the wonder of philology ever time Mencken is read. In this tome he really tears into the history of Christianity and Judaism, their biblical writings, religious ceremonies, histories and disparate stories throughout their oral and written words and beliefs.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite the detailed critique of religion, nearly as fresh now as it was when it was written over 50 years ago. One good example, from the final chapter:

One of its basic postulates that the whole process of nature is a sort of continuing miracle, and that it thus establishes the existence of an omnipotent and irresponsible God, -- in brief, of the chartered libertine who is the hero of the Old Testament.The error here, of course, consists in confusing what to simply marvelous with what is actually miraculous. A miracle is not a mere marvel; it is something quite different, for it flatly violates some known law of nature. A marvel doesn't. It may be, at the moment, inexplicable, but this is only saying that the laws which govern that are yet unknown. The fact that they are unknown, and its self, is of no evidential value; it simply tells us what every enlightened person already knows, to wit, that man's knowledge of the universe is still incomplete. But it is certainly more nearly complete that was 50 years ago, or a century ago, or a millennium ago, and there is every reason to believe that it will become still more completely hereafter -- that all her nearly all of the natural processes, and the course of time, we brought into harmony with invariable laws.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is divided into five large chapters, each one being different in subject and tone. Mencken's "Treatise" begins with an exploration of the origins and evolution of religion, and while he draws on some of the anthropological and archaeological evidence then available, much of his writing on the subject are his own personal speculations and conjectures as to how religion, the concept of gods, and theology arose and developed. These two first chapters lacked much of the renown Mencken wit, reading more scholarly and thus a bit dryer.

He then moves on to look at all manner of religions in the world, old and new, small and large, which was both interesting, informative, and amusing from his tone of writing. He rounds the book out with a history of Christianity and his evaluation of religion in his own day. The last chapter is by far the most entertaining and enjoyable to read, because that's where he really lets loose, and reading his scathing rants and barbed diatribes is simply delicious. As stated, this book starts out slow but gets progressively more enjoyable as you proceed. Some of the info and references are dated, keep in mind this was written in 1930 and updated in 1946. Overall I loved it, and I look forward to reading more Mencken.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

!!! Buyer beware. My copy of this used book (through Amazon) is missing about 30 pages, and another 30 are duplicated. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997 Second Edition.
I suspect every copy of that issue is the same, as I later saw a disclaimer on AbeBooks of "possible missing pages" from this book.
Sepia cover with Mencken open-mouth, cigar in hand, book on his lap.
This is a rock-solid 5-star book, even with the missing pages.
Though a layman to Theology, I have read a good bit, yet Treatise on the Gods is thoroughly interesting and enlightening and well- and simply written.
And you can read it entire and free at archiv.org .

[Adrian Fanaca · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book starts by explaining the nature and origin of religion, then its evolution, its varieties, its Christian form, and ends with its state today. It is a book on the dangers of organised religion, on the lack of arguments of Catholicism in the face of the argument of evil. Mencken is a good writer, you do not feel at any moment that the topic is not on point. I remember some arguments from the book, that is why I give it a 4 stars. However, I do not feel what I remember is very relevant for me or something that I did not know beforehand, that is why I do not give it a 5 stars. Great reading.

[Bea Krauss · Rating 5 out of 5]

While we often think of Mencken as a reporter and a humorist, this book shows he was also a religious scholar, widely read in the history of religion and comparative religion. Yes, he is a bit of a skeptic, but his analyses and examples shed important light on today's religious conflicts.....and, importantly, on the common aspects of various religions. He has a humanistic view of the probable rise of religion, conception of afterlives and visions of heaven and hell. The book was a complete surprise, deep and engaging.

[Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing treatise on the evolution of religion and brief history of the Christian Church. Written over 80years ago, this single book covers a lot of ground of authors like Gibbon, Hitchens, Dawkins and Ehrman. One disagreement with the book, I don't think the bible as literature, is as quite as good as H.L Mencken suggests.

[William Mann]

HLM is a great essayist, too bad, since Christopher Hitchens died, there are not many like him left. Menchken spins his word webs around the pure and the pompous with unerring wit and an eye to ironic detail. Read on friends. It is always nice to know there is someone out there watching our backs, against all the fools who think they have all the answers in one little book.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Treatise on the Gods is a mix of Frazer, William James and Bart Ehrman, but without convention or inhabitation. I noticed some fact discrepancies, but he makes his points with style. I furiously scribbled all kinds of great quotes out of this book and I will add a few here eventually.

[Noah Stacy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mencken's prejudices and some of his facts are umistakably dated, and inevitably peek through here and there. For all that, he remains engaging, intelligent, and enjoyable. Highly recommended for the more serious atheists and agnostics.

[Clifford Hirst · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, published in 1930, is a vicious attack on organized religion, and contains an ugly anti-semitism. Despite that, it is a very entertaining romp, full of pithy skewerings of pastors and priests. Love it and/or hate it.

[Varmint · Rating 4 out of 5]

written as a series of obituaries for various world religions.

[conor · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I am king this will be required reading by all of the youth.

[Craig Bolton]

Treatise on the Gods (Maryland Paperback Bookshelf) by H. L. Mencken (2006)

[Bob Costello · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book the put me over the edge and commit as a believer in God.