Reimaginings

Any given story in the bible seems to have been presented in as little detail as possible. There has to be a reason for this. Maybe it's because there simply wasn't much detail to go on. Maybe it's because these stories were being told by so many people that they were overloaded with conflicting details. In that case they'd have to be reduced to their most basic substance and nothing more. I sometimes wonder if it's because they actually wanted you to use your own imagination to fill in the missing blanks yourself.

Take the Easter story for example. We'll look at this one first only because it's one that most people are familiar with. No other reason.

During the last supper, Jesus told His disciples to drink of His blood and eat of His flesh. Just bread and wine at the time but what He meant by this might be fun to think about for a short while.

Go back a bit earlier and Jesus was able to share five loaves of bread and two fish with something like 5000 people. I don't remember it saying how much everybody got though. Was He able to feed everyone to the point of them all having a full belly after their meal? Or was it simply a matter of everyone simply getting a portion, be it a mouthful or a crumb? Did everyone get the same amount? This event is in all four of the gospels so you'd think somebody would know these things. But maybe those details just aren't as important as the simple fact that Jesus knew how to share, and that sharing is important. I guess whoever really wants a piece will be happy with what they get.

Jesus also told His disciples to go and make disciples of their own. Pass along His teachings to any of those who are willing to drop out of society, stop following the rules and worrying about money, hang out with the absolute dregs and encourage them to find "the kingdom" within themselves, etc. Sharing was important enough to Jesus that He wanted His disciples (and their disciples and whatever disciples after that) to be capable of sharing as well. He couldn't very well expect miracles from them, as they were just normal humans, but it could have been the effort itself that really mattered.

Now we get to the fun part. After the crucifixion He comes back in a few days. Some of His disciples find this extremely difficult to believe and understandably so, they want to see and touch the holes in His hands and feet, and in His side.

These guys all claimed not to know Him while He was on the cross. They didn't want to get in trouble and be subjected to a similar treatment so I can understand that as well. But they were all put to death afterward swearing that they'd seen Him alive again. Crucified upside down if I remember correctly. Crucifixion being the most painful method of execution ever devised, I can only imagine upside down being just a little bit worse. What changed? Were they simply just so fucking cool all of a sudden that they couldn't lie about their experiences with Christ? Why not? They lied about it before.

Maybe it was cannibalism that made all the difference. Something pretty extreme had to have happened during these visits. And I can't be the first person to think about this because it's a pretty obvious interpretation but one that will get dismissed by most Christians. Probably because they need to tell themselves that Heaven is an infinite place where everyone is welcome so long as they believe in Jesus. I'm going to take it a step further anyway because I'm an asshole, I'm bored, and I don't necessarily give a shit what most Christians believe. Your imagination is a gift. Use it or lose it.

I'm not talking about the stupid Zombie Jesus jokes that Atheists propagate every Easter on Facebook. That's way too easy. And besides, Jesus was never a zombie. He went and visited each of the disciples but He didn't try to eat any of them. They might have eaten Him though. His body was already mangled from His torture and execution days earlier. It would have been easy enough to rip off a chunk of it for one of His buddies to eat. This is the man who was able to split two fish and five loaves of bread between 5000 people, remember, so He should have had no trouble at all feeding Himself a bit at a time to 12 ass kissers.

So lets say He visits each disciple, gives away a bit of His body and His blood to eat and to drink, plus some leftovers for the disciples to share with anyone else they can convince to accept Christ as their savior. And Maybe Jesus' body never really dies, because He Himself is eternal, it just gets broken down into smaller and smaller portions (but somehow never runs out, much like the bread and the fish) and shared over and over for thousands of years. By now it'll be pretty hard for anybody to really get their fill, but maybe a bite is all they need.

Also by now, bits of His body and blood have been spread all over the world. Eaten and drunk by whatever lucky few can actually find some. But how much is left? And who is holding onto it? Do political religious institutions like the Vatican or others of its kind (the kind of institutions Jesus was very much against) have teams of commandos and spies scouring the planet for whatever they can retrieve and hoard somewhere for themselves?

Is the literal eating of His flesh and drinking of His blood the only way to join His father in Heaven? That would make all the figurative acceptance so common here on Earth right now absolutely worthless. And maybe Heaven isn't an infinite place but actually one with strictly limited space and you have to earn your way in through some rather extreme measure. There are modern faiths that believe similar things (work vs grace) so I'm not the first one here either. Converting people door to door is quite a bit less extreme than eating 2000+ year old human flesh but whatever. If the kingdom needs to be within you, get it in you.

So Jesus is alive, but split into thousands upon thousands of pieces and spread all over the Earth. Making Him significantly more difficult to find and you would be up against some dangerous resistance if you were searching. Imagine the stories that could be made from this perspective alone. Imagine being visited by a mangled, living human body and being suggested to devour a piece. How long would He still have been in one piece enough to still communicate with His physical voice? Did His cuts heal over? Did He look like an amputee covered in scar tissue or a constantly bleeding open wound with bones and organs protruding through what was left of His skin? How much convincing would it take to eat and drink of this? What did they do with His bones after they'd been picked clean? Boil them for stock? Needless to say, this would be a pretty extreme experience, that's for sure.

I don't ask or demand that anyone believe or agree with any part of this. It's just something I made up for fun.

My favourite story from the bible was actually the story of Samson from Judges. A very short story. It's only three or four chapters long. Judges 13 through 16 I think but it's been a while so I could easily be wrong. It doesn't matter anyway. Again, the details are kept to the absolute minimum with no emotional content whatsoever, just straightforward basic details. So you have to flesh out the rest of the story yourself.

One thing I always liked about this story was that the character of Samson is far from perfect. He's an asshole, a bully and a womanizer. He also doesn't seem very smart. My kind of a hero, what can I say? Most of the characters in the bible were full of imperfections.

On three or four occasions during this story, Samson goes apeshit as the spirit of the Lord comes over him and he either commits a pretty serious act of vandalism or a mass murder of ridiculous proportions. I'll focus on the murders. Burning down crops and stealing gates is funny and all, but they don't make for as much of an interesting story to me. I like murders and so does everybody else.

The most famous of these is when he picks up the jawbone of an ass and slays 1000 men. That's a pretty good score. It never says how long it took him though. Any movies I've seen about this, whether animated or live action, always have Samson fighting the Philistines head-on. Like Bruce Lee, he moves slowly about the center of the battlefield taking out anybody within reach. There's nothing wrong with that but the fact is it's been done.

What if Samson was portrayed rather as a stalker type of villain rather than a Bruce Lee type of antihero? What if he picked up the jawbone much like Micheal Myers picked up the kitchen knife in Halloween and then slowly hunted down 1000 Philistines one or two at a time? Maybe fucking with them constantly to the point that they're so scared shitless and exhausted by the time he gets face to face with any of them they can't do much but piss their pants before being brutally slain. And maybe this goes on for months. With stories circulating among the Philistine children about Samson as some kind of boogeyman.

There's never any mention of how big Samson is either. He's obviously very strong since he can rip the gate right off of Gaza's wall and carry it away.

But what if when he's not throwing one of his divinely induced tantrums he's just a regular sized guy, albeit with ridiculously long hair. Maybe even smaller than average. It might be interesting for a character like this to sneak around in the dark all night silently splitting wigs and ripping open throats instead of the usual battle scene where he spins though a shitload of soldiers all at once.

Again, just another possible interpretation for the sake of keeping a story very lacking in details a little bit more interesting. I don't expect anyone to believe it. It should be enough just to have fun with it.

None of these stories are going anywhere anytime soon. But the details will always be argued about and fought over. Details that, for the most part, aren't even there to begin with. Fuck it then. Make up your own.