NRA apocalypse

Last week I was grappling with an issue on how to explain the original nature of apocalyptic literature. For centuries it has been abused to frighten good little people into obedience of the church or more often of different cults. It was used to make people put up with oppression and abuses of power. Apocalypticism was uprooted from its original context and made to promise afterlife (or after-history) rewards for the faithful.
    How to undo centuries of these misinterpretations? How to return, or at least outline, its original radical meaning? And then, in the pile of old newspapers I found this folded parchment with another writing from The Manhattan Bible of Henry Rutgers:  
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An angel came to me, took me by hand and told me, “Come I will tell you what is going to transpire. Those with ears, listen, those with eyes, watch and see. 
    Be prepared and ready, the time will come when there will be shootings on almost a daily basis. Shootings in bars, in concerts, in churches and houses of worship, shootings in shopping malls and in workplaces and shootings in schools, even shootings of children in elementary schools. All of it will take place because the evil and death will have its reign. Little bodies torn by high power bullets, children bleeding to death and a grinning orange monster would suggest to arm teachers. Some of those shootings will have a direct inspiration from the highest office in the land.
    But take heart, that is not the last word over this world! The lamb will come and usher a new and safe world. In that new kingdom there will be no semiautomatic and automatic guns, no bump-stocks, no high capacity magazines. The NRA will be banished to the ever burning lake together with all its corrupt political henchmen, banknotes stuffed into their gaping power-hungry mouths. Even the 2nd amendment so blatantly misinterpreted and abused will be eventually blotted out and the angelic police will be armed just with smiles and shooting ranges will be detoxified from all that lead and turned into playgrounds.”
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This fragment clearly does not date to the first or second century CE but nicely conveys  some of the aspects of an apocalyptic genre into our current idiom.
How do you feel? Does it really frighten you into obedience? Does it sound like a promise of the pie in the sky? Does it make you dull and submissive with the promise of a happy afterlife?

Pedestrian Jesus

Just as we were hearing about the prosecutions of Scott Warren in Arizona (for giving water to migrants in Arizona deserts) and the arrest of captain Carola Rackete in Italy (for rescuing drowning migrants in the Mediterranean Sea), pastor discovered in the box of one of our church defibrillators yet another fragment of the Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers. It is just a fragment starting in the middle of sentence.
... they would not stop accusing him and attacking him.
So Jesus stood and told them. Imagine for a moment that you are not in New York City but somewhere deep in Mid-America on a busy street. And now there is a person who runs into the street at the stop light or even outside of a pedestrian crossing while running from a mugger or from a burning house. And that person gets hit by a truck and is badly injured. Now, what would you do? Would you call the police to give that person a ticket for breaking traffic rules? Or would you rush to give them first aid and call the ambulance?”
They darkly grinned and responded - just don’t try this on us you little clever Jesus! Aren’t helpers also stepping into the road and breaking the rules? They shall go to jail too. Under our government according to our taste, no acts of kindness will go unpunished... 
Here the fragments suddenly brakes again.

It is unlikely, that this fragment dates to the New Testament times. But we know that Jesus had similar arguments and we also know that any threats would not stop him from helping those in need. Come this Sunday to hear what Jesus did, when he met distressed and hungry multitudes far away in the wilderness.

Incendiary Fragment

In the boiler room of our church we have recently made an epochal discovery. In an old bucket of ancient ash, clearly from before the gas and even oil conversions, we found a partly-burned old document, completely charred all around the edges. After deciphering the old cursive we realized why some old pious faithful might be tempted to destroy this writing from the workshop of the Manhattan Bible of Henry Rutgers. Here is our attempt to reconstruct this single legible page:   

And then I saw a new heaven and a new earth:
for the old heaven and the old earth got reborn;
and all the garbage and pollution were gone.

And I Henry saw the Holy City, a new Manhattan,
coming down from heaven,
dressed up and adorned for a major festival.
And I heard a clear voice saying,
Behold, from now on God will dwell among people.

And I could not but notice some epochal changes,
There were no homeless people sleeping in the subway,
because God herself made their beds for them.
And there were no hungry begging for spare change
because God herself cooked meals for them.
Even overcrowded emergency rooms were no more,
because God herself dressed all their wounds without waiting.
Just note, and know, that many things we consider normal,
are not normal before God.

In that city all banks, hedge-funds
and wealth management firms went out of business,
and bankers and managers disappeared like cockroaches
after the light is turned on.
Because in that city the sidewalks were paved with diamonds
and streets were made of pure gold,
all the wealth was literally just dirt under their shoes.

And divine revolution continued,
I could not find in that city any churches,
temples, mosques, sanctuaries, synagogues,
tabernacles, chapels and shrines.
They were turned into homes for homeless,
into hospitals for the ill, into schools for the children,
into nursing homes for the elderly,
and those with high ceilings were turned into gyms
so that God can play badminton with her followers.
Only few examples of the most pompous sacred architecture
were preserved as museums of bigotry and religious wars.
God now dwelled in the world among people -
and all the religions went out of business,
no more need for all those endlessly feuding cabals.    
 
Now you know, why someone wanted to burn this divine message. As has been noted above, this fragment is, without any doubt, just another example of a very late post-biblical literature. But its close affinity to the last chapters of the Bible (Revelation 21) can hopefully illuminate the radical nature of this otherwise often misunderstood last book of the Bible.
I wrote a several years ago about the historical religious background of this passage here: Sun City Dream.

Watch out, shepherds!

Yesterday afternoon, as I was preparing worship for Christ The King Sunday, I received a surprising DM (Direct Message) from @ManhattanProphet forwarding to me 12 tweets.

The original tweets came from @RealLORD, here they are all:

@Ezekiel34, Prophesy against the shepherd-leaders in the #BrightHouse and on #TheHill. Damn to you, shepherds, I am watching you!...

...You only pretend to care for my sheep! Aren’t shepherds supposed to care for sheep? You don’t feed my sheep, you just feed my sheep...

...with your bigotry, prejudice and racism and then sell my sheep for cheap to your wealthy cronies. Not only you don’t care...

...for the wounded, you actively try to take away their affordable sheep-care, not once, not twice, for the third and fourth time...

...and I am not going to be silent, says the Lord! You pretend to care for sheep, but you threaten to divide them...

...by your ever taller walls as if my pasture was some kind of a prison! You aren’t building bridges upon which my sheep...

...could safely and peacefully walk. You are the ones who are actively misleading my sheep to dangerous swamps of your own making...

...And when you train sheepdogs, it is not to guard and protect my sheep, you train them to shoot-to-kill...

...And what have you done to the meadows of my pasture! Half of it you pricked and poked with your fracking rigs...

...so that the very ground is shaking like in fever. The other half you want to under-mine, pollute with bursting pipes...

...or turn to a waste-heap, taking away protection from soil, water and air. Therefore, listen to my message you pseudo-shepherds!...

...Watch out! I’m coming and will take my sheep back. I will rescue my sheep from your greed!

 

Of course this cannot be an authentic divine message. The Omniscient would certainly have known that the limit of characters had risen to 280! With all likelihood these prophetic tweets are another falsification from the workshop of the Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers. Nevertheless this modern paraphrase of Ezekiel 34 clearly illuminates why so many biblical scholars think that many, if not all, otherwise bucolic biblical psalms and parables about sheep and shepherds contain a soothing personal message but also an explosive political rebuke to the powers that be.

A Proverbial Snub

Deep in dark shelves of the Rutgers Church library we discovered an ancient folio with relatively well preserved uncial writing. Upon closer paleographic and exegetical examination of its archaic Manhattonite English we became convinced we happened to find another fragment from the author of the Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers offering us important insights into some biblical mysteries:

ONCE THERE WAS A POTENTATE WHO WAS ABOUT TO BE INSTALLED INTO HIS POTENTATY OFFICE.  HE WAS KNOW AS EXCEEDINGLY VAIN AND NASTY. THUS EVEN THOUGH HE INVITED MANY FAMOUS ACTORS AND SINGERS AND ARTISTS TO HIS CELEBRATION, ONE AFTER ANOTHER THEY STARTED TO EXCUSE THEMSELVES. ONE PROMISED A CHARITY CONCERT ON THE SAME DATE, THE OTHER HAD PLANS TO TAKE KIDS TO DISNEYLAND, AND YET ANOTHER NEEDED TO CLEAN HER FISH TANK. AFTER A LOT OF EFFORT SOME CELEBRITIES AND DIGNITARIES DEIGNED TO COME. THEN THE DATE ARRIVED BUT EVEN AS THE POTENTATE TOOK OFFICE ONE OF THE IMPORTANT GUESTS (BY THE WAY FROM THE SAME POLITICAL TRIBE) COMMENTED ON HIS ACCEPTANCE SPEECH “WHAT WEIRD S**T!” THE WEATHER WAS NASTY AND IT DID NOT STOP DRIZZLING. THE CELEBRATION WAS SPARSELY ATTENDED AND ALONG THE PARADE PROCESSION ROUTE THERE WERE MORE GUARDS THAN GUESTS. ROWS AND ROWS OF STANDS WERE EMPTINESS EMPTY. THE POTENTATE WAS ANGRY. HE LIED AND DENIED WHAT EVERYONE COULD SEE AND THREATENED THOSE WHO MENTIONED THE TRUTH. TO ADD INSULT TO INJURY THE NEXT DAY AFTER THIS CATASTROPHIC CELEBRATION PEOPLE GATHERED ON THEIR OWN ACCORD AND FLOODED THOSE VERY STREETS WITH THEIR OWN FESTIVAL OF COLOUR AND RESISTANCE AND CREATIVITY AND FREEDOM. 
AND NOW, DEAR READER, YOU KNOW WHY THE EVANGELIST LUKE REJECTED MATTHEW’S VERSION OF THE PARABLE OF THE BANQUET AND WROTE HIS OWN VERSION WHILE PROUDLY WEARING HIS PUSSYHAT.       


It is very likely there will be again misgivings about the authenticity of this document from the treasure chest of the Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers. It, nevertheless, makes some insightful points. The "PUSSYHAT" worn by the evangelist Luke is a clear anachronism, but even among serious biblical scholars there is no denying that Luke was, what we would call, a feminist among evangelists. It is also a well known fact that Luke lifted this parable from  Matthew’s context of the dark Middle-Eastern despotism (most likely the First Jewish-Roman War) and transplanted it into his gentler Hellenist city culture. Thus both Matthew and Luke give us permission to read the parable in our own times and context.

Be it as it may, come this Sunday to remember and celebrate.

Rat Party

We are pleased to report a new and exciting discovery of another fragment of the Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers. The discovery was made yesterday by a small yet brave group of archeologists from Rutgers Church who undertook an expedition to Columbus Circle. Right behind the southwestern gate of Central Park they unearthed another lost story from this forgotten Gospel. Here is our attempt at a translation to modern English:

After crossing the sea they arrived to the country of NewYorkeenes. And as Jesus stepped from the boat, right beneath those tall buildings, they were met by a man who suffered greatly, tormented by unclean spirits.
    That man often slept half-collapsed on subway benches, was seen pushing a shopping cart full of smelly stuff, and was heard screaming and screeching in the parks. Many times they tried to help him in hospital emergency rooms around the city. Nurses bathed him, civilized him and he started to receive a proper medical care. But just as he was on the mend, the demons would return with vengeance, depriving him of proper medical care and driving him out of hospitals against any medical advice. It seemed no one had control over this situation.
    And this man, when he saw Jesus from a distance, ran to him, bowed to him, and said, “Why do you even bother with me, Most Holy One?”  Jesus immediately knew that the man was tormented by a serious demon and asked for identity, “What is your name, you demon, who torments this man?” And the demon answered: “Our name is Grand Old Party, for we are many.” And they begged Jesus not to send them out and away from their high-rise towers, seaside manors, golf courses and other possessions.  
    Enlightened by divine wisdom, Jesus immediately saw one fitting solution how they could stay close to their petty earthly possessions - he sent them to the ubiquitous rats. And although normal rats are quite clever to avoid plain traps and baits, now, as soon as this party of greedy demons entered into the rats, in their greed they started to stuff themselves with piles of poison. That was the end of them and the man was finally happy and free.
    But you probably know how it goes... Many people in that country also loved their possessions more than they loved their neighbors. They were uneasy about this outcome; some were offended, some were even frightened. They asked Jesus to leave them alone and shortly afterwards they had an even grander, even older demon party going. But the healed man stood behind and kept reminding everyone that greed kills while divine compassion heals.  

     Of course the authenticity of the discovered fragment is seriously disputed, there are many indications of this text being a late forgery. Nevertheless, some progressive scholars are convinced that this newly discovered fragment can help illuminate certain, often misunderstood, aspects of an authentic Gospel story (Mark 5:1-19 and Synoptic parallels).
     Some of the insights can include, for instance: that the afflicted person could be a personification of a broader population; that the demonism and the name of demon(s) could have a biting political implication; and that different manifestations of demonism could correspond to reality and hardships of daily lives of common people. Be it as it may, we found this story worth sharing. 

Re. Laura Jervis talking at the Health Care Vigil

Election in Forestan

A full week after elections we still had these voting booths stored in the corner of our community hall (Rutgers Church is a polling place). They looked lonely and abandoned, waiting to be picked up by board of elections truck. Today I looked closer and in-between two boards I discovered a folded half sheet of paper yellowed by age. I instantly recognized the handwriting I knew from other fragments of “Manhattan Bible of Henry Rutgers”. The old missive read:

Long ago, there was a far away land called Forestan inhabited only by trees. And it came to pass that trees decided to select their king.
First they considered a Sugar Maple of New England, yet dismissed this idea because it was too sweetly optimistic for their bitter souls.
Then they thought about an Apple Tree from NY, but they abandoned this idea because the apples’ symbolism did not fit their ideology; although they were in great need of education and health they were completely oblivious of this fact. 
The fruits of Georgia’s Peach Tree were dark skinned so the peach tree was left out. And here you must remember that bluntness is not racism, oh no! 
For a moment they looked even at the prairie grass; its ability to bend to every wind looked promising, but then they realized it protected the soil and waters of prairies and so even the grass was dismissed as an unfit candidate.
Florida’s Orange Tree was nice, but definitely not native, arriving from somewhere south and without documents. The mighty Sequoia from California, on the other hand, was patently native but was clearly overqualified to stand above all the trees and thus also left from consideration. And the Banana Tree from Hawaii was one of a hundred different species therefore such perplexing broad diversity was quickly distrusted.
In Forestan they were running out of options. Then a scrubby, twisted, thorny bush arose and proposed himself as their future king. “I will make our Forest into a Garden Again - a great wall all around is what is needed.” Mr. Brumble volunteered and started to make plans, “We will weed out all who do not fit in with our vision of a bristly monoculture forest.” He promised “I will cover you and protect you with my thorns and brambles and no one will touch you anymore.” Many were bewitched by this vision and thus it happened that Forestan selected its future king.

And if you think that Henry Rutgers wrote this fable all by himself, just read Jotham’s Fable in the Bible, Judges 9:7-21.  It is a gloomy reading but thankfully the Bible tells us also about other kings and other leaders with better credentials and real aptitudes to serve. On this Sunday, the last one in this Church Year, join us as we rejoice and receive strength from Christ the King!

A Handwritten Prayer

The study of the Bible and its ancient manuscripts saves me from fundamentalism and religious intolerance. The more we know, the better we are protected against bigotry. Allow me to take you along and show you how I spent Monday afternoon (my day off) this week.

This snippet is from the Sinai Bible, the oldest surviving, almost complete Bible. It was produced, hand written, in early IV century C.E. most likely in Alexandria. In this picture is the text of the Lord’s Prayer from the Gospel of Luke (11:2b-4). And here is my working translation of the original text as written by the hand of the first scribe:

    Father,
    Your name be holy!
    Your kingdom come!
    Your will be done as in heaven, thus on earth!
    Our daily bread give us by day!
    And forgive us our sins,
    as even we forgive our debtors!
    And do not turn us in for trial.

    The Gospel of Luke contains a shorter version of Lord’s Prayer while Matthew (6:9-13) has a longer version, and the original Luke version was probably even shorter than what we have in our text. The green field with the text Your will be done as in heaven, thus on earth! is absent from the oldest preserved fragment in the Bodner Papyrus No.75, which predated the Sinai Bible by another century. Most likely this petition was inserted from the Gospel of Matthew or from church liturgy.
    What makes this picture interesting is the great number of manuscript corrections. Blue circles in our picture represent grammatical corrections and textual additions. Red circles and pink fields represent deletions. On the margins of our textual column are also two larger textual inserts. One on the lower right side was later erased (yet, thankfully, still remains readable), and the one on the upper left margin was questioned by a later scribe (by a dot beneath the tilde mark in the text). Both these larger insertions attempted to include a petition deliver us from evil into different places of the prayer and again came as a borrowing from the gospel of Matthew.
    In total, there were at least two, possibly three or more correcting hands (scribes) who made at least twelve changes or corrections of changes in the space of three verses. Think about it: twelve textual variants in this short prayer, twelve! And this is one of the oldest biblical manuscripts and an important source for our biblical translations. Now you know why an honest study of the Bible is the best vaccination against Christian fundamentalism, biblical literalism, claims of the biblical inerrancy and all sorts of religious bigotry.
    Don’t get me wrong, I do not dismiss biblical text or Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. I actually find them greatly fascinating and inspiring. For this reason I invite you to come to worship this Sunday and pray together this deeply meaningful and transformative prayer of our Lord as we seek its true meaning for us today.

 

Here is a YouTube video clone of this blog.

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And here is the Lord's Prayer as was preserved for us in the Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers:
     Loving God:
     May what you stand for
         be considered Holy.
     May the world be shaped
         as your love will have it:

     Preserve for us and future generations
         enough food for everyone
         with fresh air to breath,
         clean water to drink
         blue planet to inhabit.
     May governments around the world
         institute the Unconditional Basic Income.
     Let police and courts treat people fairly
         regardless of their class, nationality or race. 

#hashtags @rutgers

Every summer we undertake an electronic cleanup of our office computers. Once in a while we discover some interesting or important files. This year we found a dust gathering disconnected hard drive in the church library and on it was what appears to be a fragment of an ancient e-mail from the collection of Manhattan Bible of Henry Rutgers. Here is all we were able to decipher and partly reconstruct:

Paul@ApostolicEnterprise.org
to beloved Henry@ManhattanBreweries.com
Grace to you and Peace from God our Parent and the Lord Jesus Christ!
Before all things, I pray that you are well and that you prosper on your farm in New Amsterdam.
I thank God at all times for your faithfulness and your hospitality to me and all our sisters and brothers. Your dedication to our faith and education of all is exemplary.
Dear brother, know that I plan to sail to your shores and hope to visit you soon, please prepare for me a small room. Before we meet face to face we can always use book of faces or as some call it face-book. I found it to be a useful tool in our ministry. Don’t allow it to be used only by evangelical fools for their self-serving deceptions. They steal all churches and engage in church identity theft, hiding behind reputable names but their self-righteousness is unRedeemable. In tears I admit that the message of the cross has many adversaries in our world and especially among those who call themselves “brothers” but know that hashtags of divine #socialjustice, #progressivefaith or #allarewelcome cannot be easily hushed!
I Cc Luke and Erastos who are also sending their greetings.
The Grace of the Lord be with your spirit.

Everyone can easily see that this is a pious forgery, since at the time of Henry Rutgers the name “New Amsterdam” had not been used for more than a century. But this false email letter, nevertheless, brings forward an interesting question of apostolic social networks and latest communication tools. Join us this Sunday when we worship with “#hashtags @rutgers”

Manhattan Prophecy of Henry Rutgers

This Palm Sunday, Rutgers Church made a new and epochal discovery of another ancient-new manuscript. It was discovered on the other side of a paper in which the palm fronds were wrapped. The handwriting shared undeniable characteristics of the author of several earlier writings which we started to call “Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers”. This time the text seemed to be an early translation of a Hebrew prophecy, we believe the one made by prophet Zachariah (possibly 9:9-10), and language was our well known Newyorkish. The writing was damaged by water and smudged by chlorophyl, but here is our best attempt for decipherment and transliteration:

Be thrilled to bits Rutgers parishioners!
    Be in stitches, citizens of New York!

Behold your president comes to you,
         The one who really understands justice,
    because s/he experienced injustice;
    only yesterday was released from Angola prison
    after 40 years in solitary confinement,
    finally s/he is fully exonerated!

Your leader is not a billionaire, s/he is just like me and you,
         and thus drives a beaten-up Honda Civic,
         sometimes rides a scooter to the office,
    yes, on free time s/he enjoys inline skates.

On your leaders’ behalf God
      will eliminate all the intercontinental missiles from Wyoming,
       and the nuclear submarines from Groton base.
all those buzzing drones sowing death in distant lands
    - they all will be completely cut off.
Remember, this is not any momentary political program or plot,
    this is the true divine desire and lasting divine will.

Your new leader will finally and truly commit to the UN,
    accept the International Criminal Court,
and will sign all the international treaties and conventions:
those against torture, and against landmines,
    and against cluster bombs among others...
      Not by might but by inspiration,
    your leader will rule from the North Pole to the South,
      Not because of the military power but because of the power of ideas and love,
    from Greenwich Meridian to Greenwich Meridian,
    people around the world will listen to what s/he will say.

Henry's Revelation

We are happy to announce another great discovery of The Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers. Our purchasing agent managed to obtain, and yes, to rescue this surprising manuscript from the well known UWS antiquity dealer who traffics his stuff just outside of our building. Soaking wet, almost disintegrating under piles of old books and magazines was this pearl of Manhattanite apocalyptic prophecy:
A revelation, which I, Henry Rutgers, saw on the eve of the new century. Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared to me in the likeness of my recently departed General George in a white uniform and his head touching the clouds, and he took me by the hand up and up very high and showed me the things which will transpire in and around my Manhattan home in due time.
    I saw my farm, but it did not look like my farm. It was made up of streets with high buildings some seemed to be as high as two and even three floors and there were many Chinese storefronts all around. On the streets I saw horseless coaches with noxious tails. Yea, in my vision people traveled underground in rumbling tubes and in the sky in loud-sounding tubes with metal wings. In those days, I was told, firewood will be in short supply and Pennsylvania anthracite will all but run out. People will be forced to dig for sand and bake it into oil to get warm, they will even overthrow the foundation of the earth and crack the shale to get foul-smelling wind out off the ground as a miserable substitute for firewood. They will poison their water and shake the earth where it never shook before. Age-old ice in the far far north will melt. Animals will get upset, many will depart, some of them for good. Even some trees and plants will walk away to the north.
    Be very concerned in those days, but do not give up, all these trials and tribulations must take place. At times it will look like all the world will end in the cataclysmic poisonous abyss of utter corruption, but don’t lose heart. For those who will persevere and preserve their souls from pollution, and their hands clean of foul smelling oil, they will live to see a new world. The Lord will come and will harness wind-horses in offshore farms and tether sun by its beams to almost every roof. And there will be no more chimneys and smoke stacks and tailpipes belching noisome fumes, all of them will disappear, and before too long birds and butterflies will return.

A note from the editor: 

No doubt, this is just another part of “The Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers”, our spoof religious writing. This time it indirectly illustrates the background, composition and original purpose of biblical apocalyptic literature.
     It fills me with sadness that apocalypses, which were originally intended and written as encouragement and sparks of hope in desperate times, became abused by some religious manipulators to imprison people through religious dread and fear.
     This Sunday we will try to liberate the Revelation of John from their hands and to bring to us its original glorious message of social and environmental healing.

Radical beatitudes

If we want to understand the radical nature of some biblical passages, it is often quite informative to flip them upside-down. Inspired by Erasmus of Rotterdam and his “Praise of Folly” we did it this Sunday with Jesus’ beatitudes (Matthew 5).

• "Blessed are the powerful and rich, because they can congregate in Davos and plot how to rig the world and get ever richer and more powerful.
• "Blessed are the wannabe celebrities and all other egomaniacs, for they aspire to live their lives like a never ending party.
• "Blessed are the proud and arrogant, for they can ravish our planet, exploit its resources, pollute the earth, water and air, and insist there are no consequences.
• "Blessed are the bigoted and narrowminded, for they spread prejudice and xenophobia against anything they do not know or do not understand and what they lack in self doubt they make up in self righteousness.
• "Blessed are the ruthless and selfish, for they keep social expenses, the infrastructure investments and especially their own taxes very low.
• "Blessed are those of the crooked hearts, for they love to deny that love is love and denigrate anyone with different orientation or lifestyle.
• "Blessed are those who wage wars or launch killing drones, for they always claim that justice is on their side and all is done to protect the innocent lives.
• "Blessed are those who approve and condone torture, for they can experience that sweet power over other people which is so cherished by daemons of night.
• "Blessed are you when people celebrate you and envy you and fear you for all your success, wealth, prosperity and abuse of power. Rejoice and be glad, for in the same way they looked up to, envied and feared the Pharaoh of Egypt, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, Herod the Great, Augustus of Rome and all the dictators and tyrants of history up until now!

It is not surprising that Erasmus of Rotterdam (as diligent editor of ancient texts as he was) gave us not only the first early modern edition of the Greek New Testament but also this new fragment from the Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers.

The Praise of Folly with Hans Holbein's marginal illustrations 

Matthew interrogated

In the darkest corner of the Rutgers Exegetical Archive Library (REAL), residing in the pulpit pedestal, we recently made another interesting discovery which seems to be a yet unknown fragment of the first American Biblical Detective Story. Although the exact original meaning and context of this fragment remains uncertain, and although its genre does not fit any known ancient forms, we would tentatively include it, at least for now, with other documents of Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers.
(Some earlier discoveries of  Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers were reported here, here, here, here and here)

“Matthew, did you really need to kill all those innocent babies in Bethlehem?”

 “But I did not do it! Herod did.” 

“Just don’t try this on me, Matthew! We both know very well that you had made up that whole story about the visiting Magi and about the escape to Egypt. It starts as sublime, inspiring fiction, but then it turns ugly - so much blood and weeping! Was it really necessary to have all those babies murdered?” 

“What else should I do? I could use only few lines of text to set a stage and to show my readers how violent was the world into which Jesus was born. Herod was a natural choice. He was a nasty character, as you certainly know, a paranoid power-possessed tyrant able to kill his own sons. Would you know any better contemporary villain?” 

“I am with you on Herod, but my issue is with your treatment of those babies. As an author of that story, you could save them in just few words, with a stroke of pen! You wrote in an angel to warn and save Jesus. Would it be that difficult to write in few more angels to stop the soldiers or at least to warn other parents in Bethlehem?” 

“Just think about it! If I had introduced even a few more angels to stop those cutthroats, it would immediately made my story into a feeble-minded fable. Would you, yourself, believe it? Have you ever seen a host of angels flying in to intercept crooks?” 

“I see your point. It would be quite unrealistic!” 

“I am telling you, my story, as legendary as it is, is unfortunately like the weekly news. The story is not the problem, our world is! There are clearly too few angels!” 

“But why? Shall we go and search for some?” 

The Flight into Egypt by Giotto di Bondone (1266 - 1337)

Parable of the Thistle Seed

A new fragment of the Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers discovered!
Although in this case it is almost certainly an example of Ancient Upper West Side Forgery - someone took a piece of old papyrus and wrote on it a well-known parable in contemporary dialect. Its historic value is therefor doubtful, but the cultural approximation is nevertheless interesting.

  

     The anonymous author of this forgery clearly understood that the mustard plant in the original Galilean setting was equivalent to thistles and nettles of our more northerly latitudes and as such they were indication of fields allowed to go bad. Fields overgrown with weeds were most likely repossessed farmland kept by distant landlords for speculation. Thus we should be thankful to this Ancient Upper West Side forger, because he attempted to preserve the original meaning of the parable. You (Galilean audience of family farmers) might be forced and expelled from your land and it is left to weeds by distant landlords and speculators, but take heart! You are just like those weeds, tenacious, with enormous vitality, future belongs to you!

Infancy Gospel of Henry Rutgers

As many of you know the buildings of Rutgers Church are undergoing long-deferred and desperately needed repair work. This summer, most of the work was done on and around the roof. Quite often we are faced with unpleasant discoveries of rusted beams, collapsing ceilings and crumbling walls, but occasionally we come across some spectacular surprises. For instance in this last week of astronomic summer we made an epochal discovery. Coiled up in an unused pipe behind the water tower was another fragment of the long-lost Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers. Here is my first tentative transcription:
- - -
Now this Jesus, when he was a little boy, like two or three he was, his grandfather Jack kept a vegetable garden just behind their home. And he toddled all the time behind his beloved grandpa. One day Jack went to his garden to pick up snails from his lettuce and strawberries and he just kept crushing them under his feet. And Jesus is behind him and snapping his fingers, and making them whole again right behind his sandals. And Jack is like, “Are you kidding me? I could not believe this!” and “Don’t do it!” But snap, snap, snap, he restored every single one of them together with their shells and tentacles and even slimy paths. “We are not going to have anything from my garden this year, this little rascal loves pests better than my strawberries!” Announced Jack at home. But overnight Joseph had a dream, the angel of the Lord gave him some clear instructions and in the morning he made a nice wooden box with a mash over it. Snap, snap, snap Jesus brought out all the snails from grandpa’s garden into his box and kept them there in a snail-zoo, feeding them with some odd lettuce, cabbage and turnip leaves, and releasing them right before the autumn hibernation. That is how Jesus saved snails and at the same time everyone could enjoy strawberry ice cream and green salads that summer, and next year Mary learned to make delicious escargot to keep the infestation under control, while Jesus grew ever taller and more mature in spirit.

    This story clearly does not contain any genuine historical gospel text as anyone can see - strawberries were not cultivated in the biblical times and escargot was never kosher!* What we have in front of us is a fragment of an infancy gospel which only attempts to look like authentic Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers** while it is ignorant of contemporary Jewish customs. But this verdict does not mean it is completely devoid of any meaning. Just like other stories about infant Jesus our fragment is not genuine material, but it still highlights some authentic and very important biblical themes: God has a week spot for all the creatures who are being labeled pests; God strives and struggles for all creatures who are being crushed, God has a deep interest in preserving the broadest diversity of life. 

     Join us for Sunday Worship to celebrate this Mystery of Divine Compassion.


*And beside these facts the language is not in a nice and clear KingJamish (proper NewYorkish biblical dialect) like the rest of the Bible but it is just a mere Old Vernacular Highschoolish (Native Medieval SchoolEnglish).

** Some older reports on fragments of the authentic Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers can be found here, here and here.