Posts Tagged ‘bible’

Thank God these newly discovered books of the Bible weren’t included in the New Testament. Its hard enough reconciling the original ones.

In an unprecedented discovery, never-before-seen books of the Bible (scrolls actually) have been unearthed at an excavation site near Jerusalem. They were discovered by a team of archaeologists from UC Berkeley who were astonished by their outrageous fortune remarking, “Can you believe we finagled a grant to dig around the Middle East for 6 months? Unbelievable – oh yeah and stumbling upon these Bible books was pretty cool too.”

The scrolls, written in ancient Aramaic, were found in an amphora (large 2-handled clay vase) marked “Burn these when it gets cold – looks like King Solomon’s son is at it again with his heresies. What a waste of good papyrus.”

Fortunately for posterity, these written ruminations weren’t reduced to warming embers. UC Berkeley Press has collected and curated these strange and wonderful writings that give us a window onto the ancient world and has published them in a bracingly numinous compendium called “The New Testament for Dummies.”

It’s apparent from the tenor of these writings that this early version of the Bible was intended more as a Self-Help Guide Book to assist newly minted hominids in navigating the unhygienic world of ancient Babylonia without contracting typhoid. It was a time without organized religions. When spirituality was a personal experience practiced, not through intermediaries, but from direct personal interface with what today is called consciousness, but back then was called “that thing that makes me feel guilty when I covet my neighbor’s ta-tas”

But before acolytes realized what was happening, well-intentioned malefactors tricked worthy men into organizing the inexplicable cosmos into defined religions, and now religion has become this external thing you pay homage to rather than the deeply felt presence of immediate experience ~ UC Berkeley Press

Irrespective of man’s codification of the spiritual experience, the following is a list of the Bible scrolls recovered at the site, along with a brief summary of their contents. They are attributed to King Solomon’s son, Prince Kanye:

1. The One Commandment: This was simply the Golden Rule whereby you treat others as you would like to be treated. And it worked beautifully…until it was sent to committee, where they kept adding amendment after amendment.
2. Do Unto Deuteronomy as You Would Do Unto Mitt Romney: How someone from antiquity could foretell the existence of Mitt Romney is startlingly prescient.
3. 50 Shades of Truth: The less said about this book the better. Way too much focus on spanking.
4. Numbers: Not numbers but numbers. Let me explain. This long forgotten book was once a helpful list of 5-star dentists (middle eastern barbers really) in the greater Judea area who knew how to effectively use Novocain. Therefore, because of their anesthetic abilities, they were numbers (silent “b”) not numbers (audible “b”).
5. King Herod Deals with Hemorrhoids: The Great One tries to reconcile God’s Majesty with a prolapsed rectum.
6. Laminations: A precursor to Lamentations. This rather pedestrian scroll deals more with medieval flooring than the Human Condition. In Laminations, the prophet Linoleum speaks grandiloquently of scuff-resistant, non-permeable surfaces as a foundation for hygienic living. It is believed this is the first mention of cleanliness being next to Godliness.   
7. How to Avoid Getting Stoned: Not the “far out” kind of stoned. This book deals with avoiding the kind of stoning where suffocating rocks are pressed down upon one’s chest to encourage behavior modification. This method of negative reinforcement was really just a medieval reminder to not take the Lord’s name in vain, or to take narcotics in vein.  
8. Burning Taint: STDs to avoid while visiting Sodom
9. Up From Animals: We we’re barely more than livestock when this scroll was written. At that time humans were lucky to eat spelt or alfalfa sprouts. Most food was absolutely offal, or those awful falafels. Even more worrying was people’s fear that if they beheld heathens in the act of fornication, they would fall from grace and instead of being a pillar of the community, they’d become a pillar of salt.  
10. Flatulence of a Lesser God: To quote that prophet Bob Dylan “The answer my friend is-a blowin’ in the wind.” Yes, even in ancient Masada they had street food featuring taco carts. Most found it long-winded.
11. Goliath’s Kidney Stones: Why do you think he was always so ill-tempered? Spoiler Alert: It’s the stone David used to slay him.
12. Hummusphobia: Fear of Hummus afflicted many Anti-legumers who were uncomfortable with these same sex ground beans. Favored by the LGBTQ crowd – Legumes, Grapes, Beets, Turnips and Quince eaters.
13. The Book of Termination: An apposite companion piece to the book of Genesis, this apocalyptic End of Days quatrain presages the coming Social Security time bomb.
14. OMG, Guess What I Can Do?: Really a defense of God’s perfect justice. It explains how orgasm is God’s way of making up for Smallpox
15. Deuteronomy to Me One More Time: This tuneful verse somehow prefigures the Captain and Tennille’s “Do That to Me One More Time.”
16. Love Will Keep Us Together: Somehow, once again, the Captain and Tennille divined.
17. Muskrat Lust: Downright scary. This is where the Captain and Tennille divination should’ve stopped.
18. Book of Antiverbs: A response to the Book of Proverbs
19. Weights and Measures: Keeping things in Biblical Proportion. Scroll goes to great lengths in discussing cubits, stadions and reeds. I couldn’t fathom it.
20. Ob-la-di Obidiah: Jaunty little book proves that life goes on…brahhh. La la la la life goes on. So if you want some fun, sing Ob-la-di Obidiah.

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Separation of Church and State – yes. But nowhere does it say anything about separation of Church and Mouse. Witness Disney’s all new Promised Land theme park.

These days most kids view Vacation Bible Schools as a sentence to endure rather than a vacation to enjoy. They hope to avoid the drudgery of Deuteronomy by kidsplainin’ to their parents, “C’mon mom, there’s an app for it now.” For many people, Vacation + Bible + School just doesn’t add up. While to some it’s a celebration of scripture, to others it’s a well-intentioned holiday in hell. Separately each word of Vacation Bible School has great merit.  

Vacation: Good. Who doesn’t like a nice long vacation?

Bible: Also Good. Even though today’s modern reader must factor-in the ancient mindset of the benighted authors of the day who had no idea Tater Tots would forever change the way we think about potatoes.  

School: Mostly good. It’s an educational place where you can learn important things like how to ask out girls without having your voice crack.  

So separately the words are all good. But put them all together and what have you got – a recipe for “Is my sentence up yet?”

I doesn’t matter what you call it: Bible Boot Camp, a Vacation with God or a Holiday in Heaven, the words Vacation, Bible and School just don’t fit together – kind of like Reasonable Attorney Fees or Non-Stop Flight. So what is to be done about Vacation Bible Schools’ sagging attendance by an increasingly secular audience? As you might expect, the Walt Disney Company has an answer.   Read the rest of this entry »

… IT Technicians

Genesis: The Book of DOS

Inspiration is where you find it. Interpretation is quite another thing.

In the Beginning there were vacuum tubes. And from that darkness emerged transistors. And God swept over the face of these primitive semiconductors and lo, the silicon chip did appear. The Almighty, whilst toiling in his garage in the constellation of Palo Alto Minor, did build his Earthly platform from whatever he had laying around: chicken wire, roofing shingles and old Playboy magazines. Yea verily. He built it he did. And he saw that it was good. And on that first day of Build 1.0 he proclaimeth the Earth as an ethically-sourced, sustainably-produced, fair-wage platform suitable for populating with his children. And so it was. And he programmed them so that they were fruitful and multiplied. Some fruitier than others – especially in the area known as San Francisco.

But all was not kosher in Denmark. His vast design was soon deconstructed and copied by angels who had fallen from the vault of heaven and became known as “hackers.” They pirated his Will and twisted it into a gross caricature of his original intent. Thus was born Original Malware. And so the world grew, strewn with good and bad which was expressed as long strings of 1’s and 0’s. The once pristine World Wide Web, a platform of limitless potential, had become a saturated thicket of cat videos and ads for penis-hardeners. And mankind began to lose his identity and fall back into the illusion of his separateness from his source. So much so that when purchasing things online, he was required to tell Big Brother, “I am not a robot.” Man reminding his father he is not a robot – how poignant. Read the rest of this entry »