bible first draft

Here's a piece a close personal friend and I wrote for the Wittenburg Door. Sadly, although the editor liked it, he declined the chance to publish it. Fair enough, I suppose; Bible "revisions" aren't the most original concept ever come up with. But that does mean I can post it here:

 

A recent inventory of the Vatican library has turned up what scholars believe may be the none other than Autographs, the original biblical manuscripts. Even a cursory review reveals that the Bible may have undergone extensive peer editing and revision on its way toward the familiar King James text.

Among the differences in the so-called "first draft" of the Bible:

1. Adam and Eve's lawyer gets a court order to delay their eviction from Eden, citing tenant's rights.
2. When Judas returns from meeting with Caiaphas, Jesus offers to double whatever they're paying him, to keep his loyalty.
3. After his affair with Bathsheeba breaks into the open, David releases a statement saying he feels "honored" to have been the object of God's wrath and is sure the people of Israel are also uplifted by recent events.
4. When Solomon orders that the baby be cut in half, both mothers shrug and say, 'Well, I guess we're both all right with that."
5. Elisha kills Elijah and burns the body, claiming the old prophet's mantle and "double portion" for his own. (And if anyone asks, he plans to stick with the old "a fiery chariot took my master to heaven" alibi.)
6. The whale spits Jonah out of his mouth because the old man hasn't taken a bath in weeks.
7. After destroying Sodom, God waits a few days to destroy Gomorrah, out of deference to local religious holidays.
8. Jacob, Rachel, and Leah end up on Jerry Springer: "In The Dark, They Both Looked The Same."
9. A group of ex-lepers sue Jesus for healing them because his actions have ruined their livelihood as beggars.
10. Pilate acquits Jesus for lack of evidence and finds the entire Sanhedrin in contempt of court.
11. After being raised from the dead, Lazarus berates Jesus for not coming sooner.
12. Following the death of Goliath, David gets heckled by the Coalition for Fighting Discrimination Against Really Tall People.
13. After a group of youths mock him as "baldhead," Elisha self-consciously begins combing his remaining hair over the top of his head
14. The angel's voice startles Abraham badly enough that he accidentally sacrifices Isaac anyway.
15. After Ezekiel sees the wheel of fire, he also describes how he was medically probed by aliens.
16. The walls of Jericho collapse onto Joshua and a hundred other Israelites who were standing too close.
17. Demoralized over Jesus' death, the disciples go back to being fishermen.
18. Faced with the risen Christ, Thomas believes he's having a post-traumatic nervous breakdown, and checks himself into the Betty Ford Clinic.
19. The old lady whom Jesus praised for giving away her last two pennies is kicked out of the Temple for making the Pharisees look bad and starves to death, alone and penniless, two days later.
20. Paul and Barnabas stop protesting their identification as pagan gods when the priests offer them their choice of the town virgins.
21. Noah takes a pair of unicorns on the Ark, but the cheetahs run them down and eat them.
22. Adam chews Cain out for wanting to marry his own sister.
23. At the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus hands out copies of "The Four Spiritual Laws."
24. Paul foregoes missions to the poor throughout the world; instead he goes on Imperial Television to spread the word to the wealthy, offering them prayer hankies and Shekaniah glory wallets in exchange for their faith offerings.
25. The Wise Men are detained at the border of Galilee when problems surface with their travel visas; eventually they are let through, but only after their gifts are seized by imperial agents.

And as a show of good taste, we decided not to include the following:

26. Faced with the prospect of raising a son by herself in a society that would scorn her, Mary decides to get an abortion.