BUY BULL STORIES

by Cynthia MacGregor

The first man was Edam. He was a cheesy character. His wife’s name was Eve. Some people believe that Edam had an earlier wife, named Lilith, but she isn’t mentioned in the Bible. She was either the world’s first miss or its first myth.

Eve was so important that they named a time of day after her. Just as Edam had, in Lilith, another partner besides Eve, Eve had another partner too. You may have heard of the pair—Eve ‘n’ Steven?

Eve was the first woman to raise Cain, and I don’t mean sugar. Her two sons were famous. One must have been very skilled—he was even known as Abel. Her other son was often put down by his brother—you know how brothers tease each other. He would say, “You can’t do it—you’re not Abel.” And his brother would reply, “Yes—I Cain!”

Moses had a run-in with a bus driver. The bus driver kept challenging Moses, “Fare? Oh!” But Moses didn’t think he should have to pay to ride the bus. He thought it was very unfare! In fact, he thought that it was a lot of bul…rushes. Supposedly Pharoah’s daughter fished him out of a stream. This was before the stork story was invented. The bit about the stream seemed highly improbable even then, but plenty of inopportune conceptions have been explained away by far more unlikely stories than that.

History’s consensus is that the Bible’s first shipbuilder was nothing but a Noah-count. God sent an ark-angel to watch over him, but he still looked around in despair and said, “Water we going to do?” When the flood receded, Noah sent out a dove, who came back with an olive branch. Noah knew what this meant: that he’d soon be able to have his first martini in forty days and forty nights. Thrilled, he picked up the branch and crooned to it, “Olive you.”

Methuselah lived to be over nine hundred years old. This made it very hard to find a suitable SWF in the personals.

Jonah was an unhappy character—he did a lot of loud whaling. Some students confuse him with Captain Ahab. Or Gepetto. One of the more famous characters in the Bible was Ruth. Many others were ruthless. David killed the giant with a slingshot, after which he climbed the beanstalk and…no, wrong story.

Daniel went into the Cub Scout den and emerged with roast tenderlion. King Ahashuerus’s wife was very agitated—the Bible says she was a-stir. Like many modern parents, Abraham made great sacrifices. But God told him, “Only kidding!” Ezekiel invented the wheel. When asked to do some chore at work, he’d always say, “Wheel get it done later.”

Onan is a misunderstood character. The so-called sin named after him has often been assumed to be a matter of taking matters in hand, but a careful reading of the Bible shows otherwise. What he did do, however, was just as serious—he broke the conservation laws during a drought, watering the earth when it was forbidden.

The book of Psalms is famous for having a silent “P,” which many people today in public restrooms also try to achieve.

Although the Bible is not a funny book, it is full of references to paradise, the singular of which is “pairody,” so several people in the Bible apparently had a sense of humor. And paradise, of course, is what you shoot craps with. To judge from the frequent Biblical references, a lot of those characters must have been dice-players. Moses got so upset over all the gambling that he got a headache. God said, “Take these two tablets and call me in the morning.” Elijah rode to the games in a cherry yacht, which is a virgin vehicle. What it was vergin’ on was not disclosed in the Good Book.

You know too that many of the guys in the Bible were gamblers because they knew all the angles…spelled “angels” in those days.

People were always rewriting documents even in those days before Delete keys were invented. The first couple of books of the Bible had barely been written before the Ten Amendments were drafted. (What they were drafted for was the Major League Discus Team, but that’s another story.)

The book of Numbers was the Earth’s first phone directory.

We do know people in those days didn’t make a lot of money, from the references to “minor prophets.”

The New Testament has many famous characters, including the first person to fly an aircraft—Pontius Pilot.

One of the gospel writers asks us to Mark his words. But the gospels keep eagerly pointing out what went down in those days, telling us, “Luke!” There is also much preoccupation with matters of plumbing—witness the many references to “John.”

Though there is much dispute over who actually wrote the Bible—was it God or a bunch of his scribes, and if so, who were they?—the mystery is solved in the last of the five books of Moses. We know now that there were two writers, one of whom was named Ronald (not McDonald!), as they submitted the bill for writing, and labelled it Due to Ron and Me.