Dear diary,
I just awoke. It is 0530 on the 24-hour clock. The year is 2025. Yesterday was July 4. That was a special day because I finished writing the last of my seven scrolls, the first of which I began on Feb 24. So I have been working for five months on this idea.
I had the desire to rewrite the biblical books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, and Judges; plus the two double-volumes of Samuel and Kings. Seven titles for nine individual books that seem to form a history. The “Torah” (the “Teaching,” or some call it the “Law”) of Moses consists of five books, or scrolls; it is also called the “Pentateuch” which means exactly that: five scrolls. I left out the scroll of Leviticus, because it’s just a collection of statutes and ordinances and therefore unpleasant to read. (Imagine reclining at the beach with a copy of “The United States Code,” or “The Session Laws of Minnesota.”) I also left out Deuteronomy, which means “second law.” Deuteronomy is not a bad book; I love parts of it; but since it tells over again much of what was already told in the Exodus-Numbers portion of Torah, I omitted it: this allowed me to connect the end of Numbers to the start of Joshua, without a mountain of rehash intervening.
Why did I think it was worthwhile to undertake this idea? Because I was taught by my mother, before I was able to think for myself, that the Bible is the only perfect book, whose author is the same entity that created my soul. This claim beguiled me into spending decades reading its text. And now I’ve reached the point of my life where I think that it is worth preserving my reactions to these writings. If I’m wrong about this, and my stance proves truly worthless, then at least it was a pleasant way to fail: I have my reward.
§
Performing sex in the public park. Why is this frowned upon by the local police? What exactly would they rather see people doing: playing ping-pong? Well, set up a table; then maybe people will use it. But, as it is, you placed benches in the landscape: so, of course, people are going to fornicate.
§
Try this: Drive an automobile into the yard of your neighbors across the street. Just buy an old, rusty car wherever you can find one, as cheap as possible – don’t invest a lot of money in this. Park the vehicle on the lawn directly in front of your neighbor’s main window. Jack up the car, remove all the tires, then let it back down and leave. Bring the tires along with you. OK, now just watch. See how long it takes for your neighbors to realize that there’s a rusty old car in their front lawn. And then see what happens when they discover that, even if they manage to start the car’s engine without the keys (for you tossed the keys in a pond), they will not be able to drive the thing away, as it is wheelless.
My prediction is that your neighbors will leave the car sitting there on their lawn for years to come – maybe even forever.
Now you must ask yourself: Who is the worse off for this development, your neighbor or you? For you tried to annoy them by leaving this eyesore in front of their window, but, since your house faces theirs, you too must put up with the sight of the same hunk of junk.
Maybe you should have followed the teachings of Jesus, and parked additional immobile vehicles in their lawn. I’m thinking of that time when he said: “If a neighbor takes thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.”
A cloak is an outdoor overgarment that hangs loosely from the shoulders. You could also give your neighbor your cape, your mantle, and your robe. Plus a broke-down schoolbus filled with trash.
§
Don’t come over to my house naked if you are emaciated.
§
John was driving. Paul was in the front passenger seat, and James was in the back. They were headed for . . .
John is the gospel writer. Paul and James both wrote letters: the former wrote to various churches, the latter wrote “to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad.” Have you ever written a letter to a church? How about a gospel? Which church would you rather write to: the one that is in Galatea, or the one that is in Corinth? And what is your name? Ah, imagine a book titled The Gospel According to Blank, with the blank filled by the name that you just told me.
Best yet, you could write one general letter and make many copies of it; then write a gospel and copy it likewise; attach the gospel to the letter, and send the combination around to all the churches you know. Your letter would help each congregation warm up to you: at about the halfway point, as they your words aloud in the church, they would learn to accept your world-view and see all matters through your eyes; and once they are in agreement with your religious stance, because they have reached the end of your general epistle, they would then move on to read your Life of Christ.
This gospel that you authored would start out with the savior being born to a magdalene. A massacre of the innocents would cause him to flee from Bethlehem into Egypt. Then he would deliver a sermon on the mountaintop.
“Hear ye, hear ye,” the speech would begin: “I have so much to tell you!” And if you want to know what else your Jesus said, just go ahead and write it.
No comments:
Post a Comment