Annie Besant opens this pamphlet by turning the logic of her own prosecution inside out. In 1877, she and Charles Bradlaugh were convicted for publishing a birth-control work; the Lord Chief Justice ruled that obscenity depended not on motive but on a text's potential to corrupt, regardless of price. Besant seizes that ruling and applies it to the Bible, asking why expensive medical books escape prosecution while cheap ones do not. She writes with forensic precision, quoting biblical passages alongside courtroom exchanges, and her tone shifts from cool legal analysis to withering sarcasm. The pamphlet is structured as a sequential indictment of Old Testament books, each judged by the same standard used against her.

The Price of Obscenity

Besant's central argument is economic. She notes that Dr. Fleetwood Churchill's expensive medical text, which gives detailed abortion instructions, is left unmolested, while Dr. Knowlton's cheap birth-control pamphlet is prosecuted. The obscenity, she writes, 'lies, to a great extent, in the price of the book sold.' A sixpenny book is obscene; a half-sovereign one is respectable. This class-based critique recurs throughout: the law protects wealthy seekers of knowledge while leaving the poor to ignorance or secret quackery. Besant does not merely complain—she documents the disparity with specific titles and prices, grounding her argument in the very trial transcript she cites.

Prophetic Coarseness Under Scrutiny

Besant moves through the prophets with a cataloguer's eye for offensive detail. She finds Ezekiel especially egregious, calling chapter 16 'obscene from beginning to end' and listing verses that describe sexual acts and bodily functions. She contrasts this with the prosecution's concern for young readers, noting that Ezekiel is placed in their hands. Her method is cumulative: she cites verse numbers without quoting them fully, trusting the reader to consult a Bible. The effect is a relentless inventory—Jeremiah, Hosea, Isaiah—each judged by the same standard. She reserves particular scorn for Hosea, whose marriage to a prostitute is commanded by God, then condemned by the prophet himself. 'Whether girls' morals are improved by the contemplation of such divine commands,' she asks, 'is a question that might fairly be urged.'

Sarcasm as Rhetorical Weapon

Besant's voice is most distinctive when she drops the legal mask and lets irony take over. Of Ezekiel eating the scroll, she remarks: 'it seems a pity that he did not eat a large part of his own, and so prevent it from poisoning other people.' She imagines the Lord Chief Justice committing Isaiah to a lunatic asylum for walking naked. These jabs are not mere flourishes; they serve to expose the absurdity of applying one standard to the Bible and another to secular works. The pamphlet's tone oscillates between dry legal reasoning and biting mockery, a strategy that keeps the reader engaged while reinforcing the argument that the Bible cannot be exempt from the law it is used to justify.

Besant never claims to have read every biblical book—she stops after Hosea, noting that Daniel 'may be left unnoticed.' This selective survey is deliberate: she needs only enough evidence to make her legal point. Readers should approach this pamphlet as a courtroom brief, not a theological treatise. Its power lies in its narrow focus: one legal ruling, one set of excerpts, one relentless question. The Bible, she concludes, is the most obscene book she knows—and if the law is consistent, it should be the first to be prosecuted.