In honor of the terribly funny highlack in this thread , and the old humongous LOTR thread, which I shan’t resurrect,
What if the Bible had been written by another author?
I’ve had too much Chimay to contribute at this point, so I’ll leave it to you other brilliant people at this moment.
I’ll give it a shot since I missed the LOTR thread, but I welcome any other Lovecraft renderings, since I don’t want to waste a popular author.
Matt3:16 – 4:11, ‘The Temptation of Jesus’
By H.P.Lovecraft
“At the very moment in which the baptism was completed the ground shook in horrifying convulsions and all those gathered by the banks of the dark Jordan saw the sky torn open. Before anyone present in the crowd was able to comment on the indescribable rift in the heavens that had now emerged, a voice echoed forth from realms unknown to man, below the void and perpendicular to the infinitesimal point inhabited by the creatures of our planet. It spake directly to Jesus, in what can only be called speech by rough analogy, conscious of neither good or evil, yet somehow filling Jesus with a spirit of intangible holiness.
It was with this peculiar madness delivered from the uncompressible beyond invading his body that Jesus was driven into the desert. As the eldritch force perversely ate on the fabric of his conscience, Jesus was increasingly unable to satisfy the calls of his own appetite and sunk into a state of miserable hunger. Presently, another indescribable monstrosity emerged, from the same realm of that which already pervaded his existence. The inexpressible presence introduced itself with a plague of reverberations that can be best rendered by the unsightly glyphs of “Lhuczïfehr”.
This unspeakable beast taunted Jesus first by producing a rock of monolithic proportions, and challenging him to transform it into the bread that Jesus desired with such great fervour. Yet the insane holiness infecting his mind left him with no choice but to attempt to disregard the hideous monster. Though as Jesus endeavoured to escape into the deep succour of sleep, the archaic being interrupted his dreams. He would show Jesus repulsive kingdoms of cyclopean proportions, decorated with appalling statues surrounded by the stench of repugnant riches from a primeval age. Failing here, Lhuczïfehr would cause Jesus to hallucinate of the eldritch like mantle that formed the ghastly roof of the temple at Jerusalem. Here he would make Jesus mad to the point where he would feel temptation luring him into the emptiness afforded by demise.
For forty torturous days, Jesus existed in this cruel, aberrant manner until he finally detected the absence of the second primordial presence, leaving him with the futile conclusion that he had been the pawn in a game of chess played out by creatures from some other unutterable dimension.”
It may have been more appropriate to render the passage in the first person…
As a somewhat conservative C’tian, all I have to say is - Hallelujah! That was glorious!
It’s my bedtime now but I will be contributing to this later…
The Bible, by Robert Jordan
"In the beginning, God said, “Let there be light! But wait! Am I doing the right thing here? Maybe light isn’t what this creation needs. I’m so conflicted!”
13 books later…
“Whither thou goest, I will go, in my light blue robe with the tiny, delicate embroidery of leaves and birds, and my hood lined with gray homespun with eyelet lace…”
42 books later…
“Mary listened as Joseph haggled for a room, finally reaching up and tugging her braid as her frustration reached the breaking point…”
Oliver Stone’s JC
Investigatus Conspiratorius: “The shroud clearly shows that the victim was nailed through his wrists and his feet and that he was semitic, and yet in all of hte paintings he’s nailed through his hands and he looks like a western European. Clearly, there’s a magic nail out there somewhere, and we’ve got to find it.”
Jim Henson’s A Very Muppet Passion
Kermit the Christ: I say to thee Legion come forth from this man Beaker… and I’m going to cast thee into the swine!
Miss Piggy the Magdalene: “You are going to cast them where! It’s one thing to toss moi pearls, but if you think you’re going to toss demons into me then vous has another thi… WE ARE LEGION WE ARE LEGION! GET OUT! HAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY----YAAAAAAAAAAAH!”
(Miss Piggy repels the legion of demons with a karate chop without even muffing her hair).
“Kermie, this is one swine that you are going to be casting a whole lot of pearls in front of before you’re forgiven… NOW GO AND TURN THAT WATER INTO A PERRIER FOR MOI NOW!”
Oh Genesis Where Art Thou? by the Coen Brothers
Nicholas Cage as Abram: So that’s when the Lord tol’ me to git on outta Ur of the Chaldees and take Sarai my wife- that’s her- and he’d turn us into a great nation so I said okay. Only it turned out the Good Lord had tricked us as her womb was a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase, but I reckon he knows best, him being God and all.
Features Omar Epps as Pharaoh, Stephen Root as an Angel, Charles Durning as God and Bill Engvall as Lot (who twists a margarita glass onto his wife’s bosom before saying goodbye forever).
What if Stan Lee wrote the Bible?
Jesus gives up his own life to save his friends’ eternal souls. Some time later, we find out the crucified Jesus was a clone and the real Jesus was in a pod at the bottom of the ocean the whole time.
This needs a bump. I am still awaiting an inspiration.
H.G. Wells:
The other night I hosted a party in my hovel. After supper my friends and I gathered in the upper room, where I began to relate a strange happening that had occured in my home of Jerusalem. It all began…
[Dozens of contrived “plot” points later]
…and so he came to life again! There is a scientific reason for this, but I will not tell you what it is.
My friends did not believe me, and I cannot blame them. I’ve since begun to wonder if what happened to me was real or a delusion. I no longer can distinguish between the two.
Moses stands by the edge of the Red Sea, the teeming millions of recently escaped Jews behind him, the waves breaking before him. As Pharaoh’s army marches inexorably closer, Moses raises his staff –
Moses: Hello. My name is Moses bin Levi. The Lord is my Shepherd. Prepare to part!
The waves churn, but do not part. Billowing dust clouds behind him grow larger, as Pharaoh continues his approach.
Moses: Hello! My name is Moses bin Levi. The Lord is my Shepherd. Prepare to part!
A narrow channel appears on the water, but only barely breaking the surface. The waves begin to crash in again. The Jews mutter with apprehension and terror.
Moses: HELLO! MY NAME IS MOSES BIN LEVI. THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD. PREPARE TO PART!!!
All at once, the great sea parts. The Jews hurry to scramble across before the waters cover up the dry land again.
Aaron: Hallelujah!
Jew #1: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Moses: Follow me now, children of Israel! We have but forty years of wandering in the desert before we reach the promised land!
Aaron: Forty years in the desert! We’ll never survive!
Moses: Nonsense. You’re just saying that because no one ever has.
The Revelation of St Ayn the Objectivist XIII-IV
And I looked upon the irrational masses and saw a boss rise up from them. They gave him their second-hand lives to compose a collective soul. And he took their
lives and buttressed up his own failed existence and called himself Attila and the masses hailed him as he made war upon the successful and creative and able and rational… and another boss rose up and told them the ghost in the sky wanted them to deny life on earth and reason and themselves to give power to the first boss, and he was called the Witch Doctor, and he called them to take a mark of Faith and Sacrifice and Altruism and that those who would not take the mark but relied on their reason and ability were to be enslaved. And I saw one stand against them who stopped the motor of the world, he was called destroyer and liberator and creator and egoist, and he gathered the able into a gulch where they took refuge and on their brow was the sign of the dollar…
I’m not happy with that but it’s the best I can do at the moment…
“I do not like unleavened bread,
I do not like it, God of Dread.”
“Would you like it with some plagues?
Would you like it with some eggs?
Would you like it with some frogs?
Would you like it with some dogs?*
Would you like it with some boils?
Would you like it with some oil?
Would you like it with some hail?
Would you like it in the jail?
Would you like it with dead cows?
Have you had enough by now?”
“I would not like it with those things,
I would not like it in the spring.
I do not like unleavened toast,
I’ll now put blood on my door post.”
*- Refers to plague of wild animals.
Dennis Miller, anyone?
"It seems like you can’t bend down to tie your damn sandal these days without some jag-off samaritan lifting the burden off your back and waltzing down the street with it. Now, I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but isn’t it just possible that we’re taking this love thy neighbour thing a bit too far?
I mean, take this guy, what’s his name… Jesus… he’s all about the sacrifice of your self for your fellow man, and blessed are the meek, but where does that get you? Try this: next week, when you show up at the pro consul’s pad for your regular gig of swabbing the mosaic floor with your tongue, tell Caius the doorman that you love him. My guess is you’ll get one of two responses. Either you’ll get up close and personal with his gladius, or you get up close and personal in an entirely less pleasant way. Thanks, Jesus. Brilliant f@&*ing advice. I hope you’ve got a line about ‘blessed are the walking bow-legged’ because I could use a little positive re-inforcement right now.
Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong."
A brief scene from The Bible, by Quentin Tarantino:
Seporah: Whose cart is this?
Moses: It’s a chariot, baby.
Seporah: Whose chariot is this?
Moses: It’s Pharaoh’s.
Seporah: Who’s Pharaoh?
Moses: Pharaoh’s dead, baby. Pharaoh’s dead.
Tarentino could have a lot of fun with the Bible, particulary the old Testament.
David Lynch doing the bible would be very interesting, but probably incomprehensible.
Wow - you folks are good - hope I can at least come close.
Peter Fonda’s - "J C Rider"
Capt America: Jesus wanna get your chopper? We’re riding down the Appian Way for the Saturnalia Festival.
Billy: Yeah man - far out - lotsa wine, chicks - oh man it’s gonna be fun !!
Jesus Christ: Alas I cannot. Pontius Pilate has condemned me to death by crucifixion. Besdes, my chopper has a blown head gasket and even the Son of God needs a torque wrench to fix that.
Capt America: Hey that really sucks.
Jesus Christ: No shit.
The 10 Plagues would have included midgets, raisins and “the Plague of the pointless close-ups”.
The Gospel of Kurt Vonnegut
*Jesus was born in a stable. I was born in Indianapolis. His father was a carpenter and mine was an architect. They could have used each other.
Some people say Jesus’s father was God (penis size: infinity) but then some say my father was a travelling salesman. My mother used to claim my father was a black man just to piss off my father. John Barrymore claimed on his deathbed that he was the bastard son of Buffalo Bill. So it goes.
Let me go ahead tell you now what’s going to happen: Jesus is going to be crucified, quite painfully, when he’s thirty-three. He’ll be betrayed by his apostle Judas. Actually Judas is probably more important to this story than Jesus. Jesus is hard to get a grip on because he’s very nice but rarely talks about himself. I’ll be honest: I like Judas. He basically says “this is nice, the preaching and all, but if your’e going to save the Jews why don’t you go ahead and do it? I’ll get you started- Hey Romans! Jeez is the one with the sandals! Look, just grab the guy I’m kissing!” Judas’s penis size is 5.33 inches, incidentally. He likes strawberries.
When Jesus was a baby three wise men came to see him from the East. Later George Bush the First would bomb their country and George Bush the Second would bomb it again. There aren’t that many wise men there anymore because they either died or left. I was at the bombing of Dresden. More firepower was unleashed on that city in one night than in both of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan combined. It was a non-strategic target. So it goes.
The wise men brought frankincense, gold and myrrh. The myrrh was a balm to annoint dead bodies. I’m guessing the store must have been out of raddles. I have seven children. I’m glad nobody ever brought us embalming fluid when they were babies. But I’d have appreciated the thought.
Four of my children are adopted. The youngest is named Lily. Jesus is sometimes called the Lily of the Valley. Lily is Asian and so was Jesus. I’d like to think that Jesus and Lily would have liked each other. They might as well. Jesus liked a woman a lot of people believe was a whore. I met a whore once in Amsterdam. Very nice woman, she was an expert on Rembrandt. She stole my wallet though. So it goes.*
Presenting Johnny and the Bible, by Terry Pratchett:
“So what’s this whole deal with Jesus, anyway?” Bigmac asked.
“He’s the son of God,” Johnny explained. “And he came to teach us the Gospel. That’s, like, how God wants us to live, I think.”
“Seems a bit daft,” said Kasandra. “Didn’t we already have the Bible for that?”
“Jesus sounds a bit think in the head,” Bigmac added. “If I was the son of God, I’d be living it right up!”
“How?” Yo-Less asked.
“I dunno, doing God stuff, I guess. Maybe I’d create a world of my own, and make everyone there like me.”
“So much for free will,” Kasandra retorted.
“Free will’s overrated. I say, ‘if you’ve got it, flaunt it!’”
“So what else did Jesus do?” Yo-less asked.
“Well, uhm…” Johnny pondered for a moment. “He walked on some water, turned water into wine, and, uh, died.”
Bigmac snorted. “Now there’s a godly power, dying.”
“It was a sacrifice,” explained Johnny. “He died for our sins.”
“Not me,” Yo-less replied. “I never nicked a thing, not even a quid from my Mum to buy some candies.”
“It can’t be that big of a deal,” Kasandra pointed out. “His dad’s God, remember? So he can bring him back to life a minute later, with just a snap of is fingers.”
“Not me,” said Bigmac. “If I had a kid stupid enough to get himself killed, I say he should stay dead.”
George Lucas’s THE TEN COMMANDMENTS original version:
Moses liberates the Israelites by summoning 10 plagues including rivers of blood, frogs, lice, and finally the death of the Egyptian firstborn.
George Lucas’s THE TEN COMMANDMENTS restored version:
The 10 plagues now include rivers of fires, CGI winged lizards and Jawas. The Egyptian firstborn now fire the first shots. It is revealed that one day the Messiah will appear to the Israelites and be recognized by his incredible midichlorian level.
Mark Twain.
My name is Jesus. You haven’t heard about me without you’ve read a book called the Holy Bible, which is mostly true except for a few stretchers.
(Sorry – it’s been awhile since I read Huckleberry Finn.)
Is there any way someone could actually send this to Vonnegut? I like to think he’d love it!