Oops! I blotted my manuscript illumination!
Created | Updated Jul 15, 2009
Father Smithers?
Yes, Abbot?
Why does St. Peter have three eyes?
(sorry, I had a flashback to an old Monty Python bit with Michelangelo having an artistic license discussion with the pope about the repainting of the Cistern Chapel)
The phrase "Holy Book" is a bit of an oxymoron. If the book could dance and flip it's own pages and cure bad breath, we might have something. Most of them just lie there and wait for something to happen. You have to carry them from place to place. They let flies land on them and little bug thingies eat their pages.
That the Doggess would let or make someone wake up from a good dream and grab a pen and papyrus and take down her dictation, tell them to tell the faithful and unfaithful what she said, and then take an extended vacation while letting some version of her words take the place of daily intervention and interdiction doesn't say much for her ability to take responsibility... unless she had realized that no matter what she said through the runes or the oracles or the vestal wirgins, somebody was going to be taking issue with the format, the diphthongs, the grammar and wandering off to create their own religion using the nearest lightning struck tree as an idol.
The truly sickening thing about "Holy Books" is that they require interpretation. There are allegories and cultural anamolies and jokes and poems and recipes for sauteed dung beetles and conies in aspic. Why can't anyone with a divine bee in their benighted bonnet just poop out a simple text that is easy to understand? They did. Nobody bought it. No priests lined up to recite it on "Holy Days" (more about those never). No scholars could find enough controversy to get their false teeth into. No followers clutched the book to their bosoms and sighed with relief that all had been explained and no one would have to get nailed to anything anymore. It just disappeared. Nobody wanted the truth without a veil to penetrate, a glass to peer into darkly, a series of trials to pass through before reaching Radiohead.
There is no religion without intricacy. There have to be rules. Rules come from books or addendums to books or commentaries on the addendums to books.
Certain people who believe that they know what they think they are talking about would like us to believe that they know they think that the Druids memorized their wisdom and knowledge and that's why there are no druid books. That's not true. They had an interest in books and they really wanted to write some and had a couple publishers interested, but they were holding out until they found out if their reality series was going to be renewed...
Bah-dum-chuck!