BB v. King James (whose celebrity story was a Bible)


This essay is neither an excerpt from Three Stages my celebrity story book, Circumstances Beyond My Control my film production story book nor Waiting for Elizabeth my love story book. It’s a whole new (short) story.

As those of you who have read Three Stages know, I was raised as a Southern Baptist. This sort of upbringing involved lots of study and memorization of the archaic book – of fables, draconian laws, questionable history, some helpful philosophy and a bit of decent poetry – known as the King James Version of the Holy Bible.

Bible1

A page in my Bible from High School

Here’s one of Mark Twain’s many commentaries on that ancient opus: It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies. – “Letters from the Earth”

I concur in Mr. Clemens’ assessment.

Having memorized many selections from this volume of questionable origins I, upon occasion, make a stab at spouting a quotation therefrom. I used to amuse my (sadly now departed) friend Lenny Cohen with passages from the Old Testament. Lenny insisted that I was not a Gentile – he knew I was no christian –  but a closet Jewish scholar since I knew the Torah better than he did.

Anyhow much to the amusement of my lovely twice wife, Elizabeth, I made such an attempted exposition, First Corinthians 10:13, this very morning. She made a remark about being tempted by something or other and I, in my most Preacherly voice, said: There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not… let you get away with it? I couldn’t remember the rest of it which is… suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. Once I started writing this I did recall it but looked it up just to be sure.

We had a good chuckle then I followed that bungled bastardization with another that was un-bungled: All things work together for good to those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose. Although I got his one right I couldn’t cite chapter and verse. And I don’t like it because, like so many things in this book, it only applies to a chosen clique. What a crock!

I don’t really have a finish for this piece so staying with the biblical theme I’ll share an old Baptist joke about seeking wisdom in “the good book”.

A man was despondent so he asked for divine guidance, closed his eyes, flipped through his bible and jabbed his finger at a page, feeling that God would guide him to a message. Opening his eyes he read: “Judas went out and hanged himself.”

He figured that he’d made some sort of mistake in his manner of supplication, prayed again and repeated the process. The verse his finger was on said: “Go thou and do likewise.”

His despondency deepened but he was confident that the third time was indeed the charm and the Lord would guide him. This final attempt at biblical enlightenment from the tome he so revered commanded: “Whatsoever thou doest, do quickly.”

As Vonnegut often wrote: So it goes.

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