Bible Tales for Ages 18 and Up (Yahweh excerpt)

Bible Tales for Ages 18 and Up, by G. Richard Bozarth, is  a collection of tales from the unjustly neglected Terminally Ill Sea Scrolls that reveals the appalling truth behind many Bible stories. This is the introductory portion of the “Exodus Scroll.”

 

 

YAHWEH SAID, “Listen up, troops.” When the gathered archangels and all the rest of the angels were paying full attention, he went on. “OK, some things are going to change on the earth. First, the Hebrews are now my special herd. When you take R&R in the flesh, you will not mess with the Hebrews unless I tell you to, and then you’ll do it the way I tell you to. There’re more than enough peoples on the earth for you to mess with, so I don’t want to hear any bitching and moaning.”

“Won’t be none of my troops doing that, sir,” Michael promised sternly, then gave a quick, hard-ass look at the vast formation of angels assembled before them to receive the Word.

“Fine. OK, some new duty assignments. Gabriel, you’re going be my messenger when I don’t feel like going down there myself.”

“Glad to serve, sir,” Gabriel replied gung-holy.

“You, smart ass, you’re my boy for the petty miracles I’m tired of working to keep the road apples believing in me. Also, I want you to start tempting them to sin.”

Satan laughed. “Yeah, like any of them need extra temptation! Sin is about the only thing they’ve got a natural talent for. Well, add being fruitful and multiplying. They definitely are into obeying that commandment!”

“We’ll see if we can’t get them to obey a few more of them,” Yahweh said. “You still have temptation duty.”

“No problem, big boss. I like messing with their heads.”

“Sir, speaking of being fruitful and multiplying,” Raphael said, “I’m about to run out of souls again. I’ll need a few million more and in a hurry; the ensoulment detail is running low.”

“That’s hard to believe with all the wars, famines, plagues, and other disasters culling the herd just about daily.”

“Yes sir, they’re dying all over the place, but they’re still increasing in population, and that means more souls.”

“What a pain in the buns! Yeah, OK, I’ll whip up another batch ASAP.”

“Sir,” Raphael continued nervously, “I hate to keep bringing this up, but morale in Limbo’s about as low as it can get. Those souls’re about bored senseless. We have to give them something to do.”

Yahweh growled, “They can sit around and be glad I don’t create a lake of fire and brimstone to cook their sorry buns for the rest of eternity. What do they want? Streets paved with gold and harps to play?”

“Well sir, I guess a lot of them would like that, but most of them want their bodies back. They don’t think it’s fair we angels have bodies and they don’t. Also they want bodies so they can be sexually active like they were on the earth. I guess that’d be the number one activity they’d like in Limbo.”

“Nope,” Yahweh said decisively. “There’s no nooky in Heaven and that policy won’t be changing. Nooky causes enough problems on the earth. I don’t want any of that in Heaven. Tell them they’re souls now and that means they don’t have bodies because they don’t need bodies to live in Heaven. Bodies! They didn’t have very high standards of personal hygiene on the earth, so I doubt they’d do better in Heaven.”

Satan added, “If you gave the souls bodies and let them have nooky, big boss, you would have a revolt of the angels on your hands if you didn’t let us have nooky in Heaven, too. That would mean making half of us male and the other half female. Or maybe you could make us both! Double the fun. Just thinking about it makes we want to try it out on my next R&R! Are you sure you won’t reconsider, boss?”

“Nobody I command will ever revolt for any reason!” Michael declared harshly before Yahweh could respond.

“Just kidding, Mike,” Satan replied, sounding more like he was teasing than apologizing.

“A revolt would be amusing,” Yahweh chuckled. “I could uncreate you all in less time than any of you could flap your wings once. It would take one seriously doofus angel to think a revolt against me would stand a chance. Do we have any angels that doofus, Mike?”

“Not in my command, sir!”

“I know that’s a fact. As for your idea, smart ass, the answer is still no. You all get enough nooky when you’re on R&R.”

Hoping to get back to the original issue, Raphael asked, “What about the ones that want to assemble before your throne and worship you for the rest of eternity? Would that be OK, sir?”

“No way!” Yahweh declared with awesome, booming finality. “Been there, done that. It sucked.”

The harassed archangel looked as unhappy as he felt. Riding herd on the souls was more like eternal damnation than anything he would call Heaven. “Well, sir, there’s also the ones who were really sincerely pious and worshipped you as faithfully as humanly possible. These souls’re real upset about Hebrew sinners and everybody who never worshipped you or even never heard of you getting the same reward in Heaven they do. They don’t feel that’s just. They want you to punish them in some way.”

Yahweh replied patiently, “All the souls that worshipped all the ding-a-ling gods and goddesses all of you have pretended to be, and the ones that were too rational to believe in any of them, including me, are being punished. They’ll be embarrassed about being wrong for all eternity and suffer just as long as the souls that worshipped me are gloating about being right. I think that’s punishment enough.
Raphael wasn’t happy. “What should I tell the souls that don’t think that punishment is harsh enough, sir?”

Yahweh gave Raphael an annoyed look. “Tell the maggots this: justice is what I say it is! When do humans stop being so frigging human? If they weren’t such pukes, they would realize they all got punished enough just by being human? Don’t they make each other miserable enough in Limbo by endlessly telling each other the same stupid stories about themselves that they bored people with when they were alive? Tell them if they don’t like being immortal my way, I can uncreate souls as easily as I create them. We’ll see how bored and unhappy they are after that!”

“Yes, sir,” Raphael said without enthusiasm.

“I’ve got an idea, boss,” Satan said.

“You’ve always got an idea, smart ass,” Yahweh replied irritably.

Satan chuckled, then said, “Look, their problem is simple. They’re still all too human even if they’re only souls now. They need something to take their minds off the dreariness of being human. So what I’ve come up with is team sports. You give them bodies again, but no genitals; they won’t even care about not having them. After they get bodies, take the most athletic of them and divide them up into teams that play against each other. Everybody else can be spectators. Each team will represent groups of spectators, so they’ll all get fired up like they do about war down on earth. I tell you, they’ll spend all eternity wrapped up in the games and won’t even care about not getting nooky in Heaven. You won’t be hearing any bitching and moaning in Limbo. It’ll be all prayers for you to help their team to win. Trust me on this one, big boss.”

“Not a bad idea, smart ass,” Yahweh agreed. “What game will they play?”

“I’ve thought up several. You see, each different sport will have a season so they rotate. That way the groups with a lousy team in one sport can always hope they’ll have a champion team in one of the other sports. Each team will have players, coaches, other kinds of supporting personnel, and cheerleaders. There’ll be playoffs after the regular seasons and championship games. Think about it. They’re just as human, all too human, as they were on the earth and they’ll have bodies again that’ll let them get physical with each other, so there’ll probably be fan riots at almost every game. Boss, if I’m right, Limbo could become as entertaining as the earth!”

“Sounds perfect. You and Raphael work out the details after this meeting.”

“Sir, what’s with the major change in policy?” Uriel asked to get the conversation off the souls in Limbo. He didn’t like the souls being in Heaven even though they were confined to Limbo. When he looked at Limbo, all he saw was a slum that tarnished the glory and purity of Heaven.

“I’m through being Mr. Nice Guy. If the Hebrews want be my chosen people, they’re going have to earn the privilege from now on. I’m going to toughen the discipline. I’ve got laws for them that’ll make the laws they’ve got now look like weak-kneed humanism. If it amuses me more than it amuses them, then they should remember this proverb: ‘A wise chosen people love their God’s heavy hand, because the human who loves the heavy hand loves the lessons it teaches, therefore only stupid humans who don’t want to be my chosen people hate my heavy hand.’”
“Outstanding, sir!” Michael exclaimed. “They’ve been a bunch of pukes for too long. It’s about time they got their heads and buns wired together.”

“Yes, I’m going to make them lean and mean, and, if I have to kick buns and take names until they get that way, it’ll hurt them more than it hurts me, and that’s a promise! And, if that doesn’t work, I’ll pick another herd to be my chosen people, then woe to the Hebrews.”

“Way to go, sir!” Michael cheered.

“I’ve got a great idea about how to do that if you want to go that way, boss” Satan said immediately.

“OK, let’s see if you can give me two good ideas in a row.”

Satan grinned wickedly. “This will really mess with their heads, boss. You go down there in the flesh yourself, only you tell them you’re actually your son, but you’re also your father. It’ll blow their minds when they figure out you’re telling them you’re a two-person deity. Then you say you’re not changing the laws you’re going to give to the Hebrews, but you do it anyway. You give them new commandments and emphasize certain of the old ones in a way that gives them new importance and new meaning so it’s obvious you are changing the laws after all. You also tell them the world is going to end soon, but it won’t. You say a few mystic things so they can make themselves believe ‘soon’ doesn’t really mean soon. It’ll be the funniest damn eschatological show you’ve ever seen. And, oh yeah, don’t exactly say you’ve dropped the Hebrews as the chosen people, but leave the door open to all races and ethnic groups so anybody who believes the new preaching can become one of the chosen people without being orthodox Hebrew or even Hebrew, which will make the orthodox Hebrews go bonkers. You know how much fun humans are when they’re trying to eliminate heresy.”

Yahweh grinned. “Not bad, smart ass, not bad.”

Gabriel said, “If you want to get them really into this, sir, you’ll have to come on like you’re three persons, not two. They’re really into number mysticism. Three is what you’ll need to pretend to be if you want to really sell the multiple-personality product.”

“Hmmm, good point. Who should the third person be?”

“Something really freaky like a holy ghost,” Satan said immediately. “Most of them already believe their breath is their soul and souls can be ghosts, so it won’t be hard to sell them on the third person being a holy ghost. But don’t do it in their faces. It’ll be more fun if you put it out there in a way that doesn’t make it easy to believe, so there’ll be a big theological fight about it, which means there’s going to be lots of physical fights about it. This thing could entertain us for centuries!”

“I like it!” Yahweh said enthusiastically. “We’ll work out all the details if the Hebrews blow it. Hmmm, I’ll give them some hints about what could happen if they don’t start marching to the beat of my drum. I wouldn’t want them bitching and moaning about not getting any fair warnings if we kick off Operation Son of God.”

“How about briefing us on the new laws, sir,” Michael suggested.

“It’s the next subject, Mike.”

Yahweh told his angels the new laws would be revealed to Moses after the Exodus was under way. At this time Moses was still living happily as though he really was an authentic Egyptian prince. The pharaoh’s sister loved him like a son, and he was a favorite of the pharaoh even though he was a Hebrew. He was beginning to be troubled by the plight of the Hebrews in Egypt, but had not yet reached the point where his conscience would force him to give up his exalted lifestyle among those who exploited his people.

Yahweh said to the assembled angels, “These are the divine laws of the Uniform Code of Hebrew Justice” ……