adventures in disaster

A thought

After hearing about the gospel of judas I got to thinking about everything else the editors of the bible(s) decided didn't fit the message. I then wondered about who the editors were.
If we go by the premise that God spoke the words of the Bible what made the editors decide that God had maybe over talked and needed to be cut?.
I cannot image what a weird moment that would be in that business meeting.
"So..we have like fifty gospels here guys "
"yeah, we know "
"so, it's going to be a pretty big book and we all know the attention span of our customer is about three minutes"
"Well, lets start with the good stuff and then cut the repetitive . "
"You think? "
"Sure why not? "
"wont we get hit by lightening? "
"cause it says right here my god is an angry God"
"Well he says it fifteen times right? Lets just go for the once..they'll get it "
"Oh okay "
"Lets get rid of all this womanly crap, not like a woman is ever going to read this anyway".
"Right "
"What about this about Judas?"

"Listen we can't include that, we've got this cool he gives himself over to the bad guys storyline going..he is a martyr...a damn hero
We can't say he is a martyr if he gets his friend to get him killed..too much like suicide by Roman and no one likes that right?
It ruins the story if the guy completely orchestrates his death just so he can say I told you so to his friends..ruins all that mystic three times stuff he says to Paul or was that Peter? damn I always get them mixed up."
"Shouldn't we get rid of that gospel? I mean that guy can't be any good if he betrayed his leader three times and made him look like a moron".
"Well, we can't use that woman's stuff and this William is just too hard to understand, we dumped Judas..we are going to have to include some of it. Just write in that he was really sorry about what he did, it'll be fine..everyone loves repentance right?"

Who actually wrote these gospels anyway? We know the people named were dead for hundreds of years when the gospels were written..so did they leave a few manuscripts around and one of the grandkids had a keen interest in writing found them? Maybe tweaked a few bits here and there? Then what?
Did they take their newly polished "memoir" of grampa to a friend at church?..did they get together and search basements and attics cobbling together bits and pieces of old letters from mom,dad,gramma,grampa finally knitting together what they think they may have said about this guy they knew?
The memoirs of Jesus may be as fraudulent as a million little pieces, not his fault though. He may be a victim of well meaning friends of friends of friends. A funny game of telephone gone horribly awry.
Because if Jesus had a friend who was gay would anyone believe that would make the editors cut? If Jesus got married, like everyone else did, wouldn't that ruin the story of a selfless, lonely persecuted man?
If he had a wife and two kids and he arranged his own death so he could be remembered as a martyr to his beliefs that would change how we feel about him wouldn't it?
It would a little selfish, a little manipulative and that isn't how anyone wants to feel when they are searching for meaning in their life.

Ultimately I think faith is faith. Either you believe in the message or you don't. I don't think you need to believe the bible, in fact I think the bible is the readers digest of the history of Christianity and should be treated with a fair amount of contempt.
I never trust anything that is written by a committee of people with everything invested in the outcome.

I think we should start looking for all those gospels that got cut, maybe do a little tweaking of our own and publish the all new New Testament...the one where everyone is incuded...even that gay friend Jesus used to work with at the chair factory.

posted by adventures in disaster @ 10:45 PM