Bible Tales for Ages 18 and Up, by G. Richard Bozarth, is back from the printer. Here’s the back cover copy followed by an excerpt from the Ham Scroll found in the Terminally Ill Sea Scrolls.
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In 1947, Dr. Sebaceous Piafraus discovered the Terminally Ill Sea Scrolls in the same month the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. The Dead Sea Scrolls became internationally famous, but the Terminally Ill Sea Scrolls were consigned to obscurity, along with their discoverer. Dr. Piafraus, who endured decades of ego-bruising neglect, provides translations of well known Old Testament stories, which he insists are the most authentic versions of the stories because the Jewish eschatological cult that created the Scrolls claimed that they were. These stories are more fully developed than in the Old Testament and are humorous, though some parts are appalling, because Bible stories often are appalling.
The following excerpt is from Dr. Piafraus’ Terminally Ill Sea Scrolls.
MY NEXT SELECTION is the “Ham Scroll.” Even though it is seriously fragmented, it sheds new light on the great Voyage made in the Ark and the events directly after the Disembarkment. Though these are treated with a bit more detail in Genesis (chapters 7, 8, and 9), nevertheless the whole amazing tale is glossed over all too briefly. The gloss remains, thanks to the ridiculous obsession with the Dead Sea Scraps, which are not fit to be in the same jug as my magnificent Terminally Ill Sea Scrolls. The whole world, especially my foolish peers, will be astounded by the revelations of the “Ham Scroll.” It is the personal diary of Ham! It is a stupendous eyewitness account of the Voyage and Disembarkment.
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DAY 5 DF [During Flood–SP]: You wouldn’t believe the rain! It’s coming down like it’s the end of the world! Ho! Ho! It is the end of the world! Pops says it’s going to dump like this for 40 days and 40 nights. Well, I guess he’s right, being as he’s tight with the Lord. But Japheth says there’s this mountain over something like 18,000 cubits high. If he’s right (and he never was into joking before and damn sure ain’t now), then it has to come down at nearly 19 cubits an hour to cover everything in 40 days. It doesn’t seem to be raining nearly so heavy as that ……
— Missing Text —
GOT TO ADMIT I’m glad I’m on the winning team! You should’ve seen all the repentant people come begging to get on board after the rain started and the water was about buns high. Ain’t one of them laughing now. Pops and Shem stood on the deck hurling insults down at them. Hey, I can dig they wanted a little payback for all the clamjamfry we took when we were building the Ark and loading the animals. It got so bad towards the end I couldn’t get nooky in the town with shekels spilling out of my pockets. Not that I had money for nooky in my pockets too very damn often! This Ark sucked us all dry. We were flat broke when the rain started. We couldn’t have afforded one more day. What I’m saying is that I had a grudge too, but I still wanted them to cool it, because the mob was really getting mean, and I thought they could still do damage to the Ark. As it turned out, they tried but couldn’t ……
— Missing Text —
DAY 7 DF: Cripes, this voyage already is dragging my buns! You’d think if the Lord really loved us like Pops is always saying, he’d stop the biological functions of the animals aboard. Damn, there must be ten tons of dung to shovel overboard a day! And there’s so damn many frigging birds on this tub ain’t no way to shovel dung without getting covered with guano from on high! Then we have to shower in the rain, which is coming down so hard it’s just about like being stoned to death! We all work the dung detail. Except Pops, who just lays back like some patriarch and drinks the wine we brought along. Man, the old guy just has to have his wine! We could’ve saved another dozen or two species in the cabin where he keeps it.
And Japheth didn’t even need another excuse to get spookier, but Pops gave him one with that. You ask me, Japheth could use a good drunk, but Pops ain’t into sharing. Like I said, the old guy loves wine as much as he loves nooky. The job ain’t easy, considering we’re all about dead anyway with the various diseases that could only be preserved in a human host. I don’t know half the names of what I’m carrying and don’t want to know! Man, I can’t even sigh without liquid yuck squirting out of my buns! It’s got to be one of the Lord’s miracles that we’re still alive and functioning just well enough to get the daily jobs done. I mean, I didn’t even know what misery was before the Flood! Most of the time I think the ones that got drowned were the lucky ones. And the overcrowding! It’s buns to bellies even in the family quarters. We each got about one square foot of living space between us. The animals are worse off, which makes shoveling dung even harder ……
— Missing Text —
DAY 15 DF: Japheth is really getting flaky over the animals we left behind. Pops sent him out to survey how many species of animals there were and where they were located and to pick a breeding pair. He came back really spooky, saying the earth’s thousands of times bigger than anybody ever thought it was and there’s millions of species. I think he spent too much time by himself. (Yipes! I hope his wife never lets on who kept her satisfied while he was gone! The guy looks unstable.) I can’t buy the millions line. I doubt if I can name a hundred different animals. I doubt if I’ve seen even a thousand different animals in all my 82 years. Well, I mean before we loaded up the Ark. I couldn’t believe how many different kinds of animals we found in the area we could cover in the last six days before the Flood. Maybe Japheth is right. Nah, can’t be millions! I might buy a couple hundred thousand, though. Well, whatever, we loaded up the boat to the max with one breeding pair of unclean animals (which ain’t done nothing but get more unclean on this tub!) and several pairs of the clean ones (which don’t seem so damn clean anymore!), and left whatever we couldn’t round up in six days to extinction. Hard lumps, I say, but it drove Japheth half-mad, and by the time he got back half-mad had become a short drive to full-mad. I ain’t sure I want to be around when he completes the trip like he seems certain to do. We’ve got lots of sharp tools and weapons and there ain’t no place on this tub to hide! Pops keeps telling him not to worry about it because the Lord hasn’t complained, so he obviously never meant literally to save all animal species or he would have had us build a bigger boat and given us more time to round them all up. I think Japheth wants to reply with something blasphemous, but so far he ain’t that far gone ……
Sharp and Pointed 
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