My lapsed work ethic is slowly returning, mainly because I have a lot of looming deadlines and also need money for food and so on. But I slowly seem to be gravitating from the lazy on-line poker playing fool I have been for the last few months to a more productive poker playing fool. Oh I am still playing on-line poker, but now usually as a reward for getting something done. Today I was trying to get on top of episode 1 of the new series of
That Was Then, This Is Now and got quite a bit done (not quite as much as I'd hoped, but it's encouraging that the ideas are starting to flow. I think the first series of this show was a bit rushed and it took me a while to work out what I wanted from it and though there are some good bits in it I don't think I was really on top of things. This time I feel we can have a lot of fun with the premise (what happened this week in history) and hopefully create a fun and silly and funny show. Two years ago I had not started doing stand up again (and it was partly doing a little tiny warm up bit at the start of each show that made me think that maybe I should get back to the circuit) and I think I was quite nervous about fronting a show, but now I am quite relishing the prospect. It's not on til September, though we're doing the recording of the first two shows in July (conveniently in Shepherd's Bush). I will let you know how to get hold of tickets as soon as I know.
One of the events of the first week we're looking at was the death of John the Baptist (though as with many of these things, how they know the date of this event I don't know). I remembered having written something about him for
Christ on a Bike that had been cut because I had too much stuff. Essentially if you look into the history of it John the Baptist was probably a rival Holy man at the time, who was much more popular than Jesus (Josephus the Roman historian only briefly mentions Jesus in his accounts of the time - weird if he was turning water into wine and coming back to life, you'd think that might have made the papers - but give a much bigger write up to John), and the theory is that the gospel writers incorporated John as Christ's fore-runner in order to pick up some of his supporters and to take away any of his claim to Messiah-hood.
Anyway, I remember finding out about a funny inconsistency in the gospel of Luke. In Luke 3:21-22
he writes, Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, as a dove, and a voice came from heaven, "Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased."" Now that's quite a memorable event you would think, but just four chapters later in the same gospel we read this,"And John, calling to him two of his disciples, sent them to the Lord, saying, "Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?""
It seems weird that in the space of just six months John the Baptist has entirely forgotten the day when the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit descended and then a voice came out of the sky saying that Jesus was the son of God. You'd think an event like that would stay in the mind. If it had happened to me I'd probably remember it even a year later. Probably two.
So I wrote a funny sketch about a quietly furious Jesus going to visit John in prison and asking him how come the Baptist has sent his disciples to ask Christ if he is the one, when he witnessed the dove thing so recently. A nonchalent John explains that he does a lot of baptisms and that it's hard to remember an individual one. And he can't remember the dove, but does recall a day when a parrot had landed in a tree nearby and was swearing and stuff and how difficult it was for him to keep a straight face. It's a funny sketch. I hope I am allowed to do it at lunchtime on Radio 2. If I am not I will of course put it up in the downloads section. There is no reason why I shouldn't be able to do it, it is quite scholarly in a way. In the end on Christ on a Bike the whole geneology joke made the point about the inconsistency in the Bible more effectively, but it's amazing how people can claim that an old book is the infallible word of God when it contains such blatant and obvious errors. The only real explanation for this is that John the Baptist probably did send some disciples to ask Jesus (a bloke he had baptised earlier) if he was the one and this bit got into the story first, then later as the story was begin elaborated upon the someone decided that surely when the son of God was baptised then something amazing would have happened, so came up with the dove and the Heavens opening and so forth, but was so proud of it all that he forgot to change the bit that came later in the story. If you read the Testaments with a scholarly perspective you can often spot bits that are most likely true, because they don't go any way to fulfilling ancient prophecies and can often be slightly negative, so they are clearly fragments of the original story that have survived the handing down over the years. The bit about Jesus being a wine-bibber and a glutton for example (see the script or the Bible), I believe. It's one of the rare occasions you see Jesus the man before the spin doctors have got their hands on him. I don't think it belittles him, it makes him look more human. And to me it is the fact that Jesus is human that makes him remarkable: the fact that he and people who know him can doubt him. If John the Baptist and Doubting Thomas aren't sure that Jesus is the Messiah and they've seen him do all this crazy shit, then how can we be expected to, some 2000 years later, relying only on testimony that is full of stupid holes like the above that reveal it to be altered or doctored by some unseen hand years after the event. It would be nice to know the truth, but until I have that time machine that won't be possible (and first stop is 1976 for Jenny Agutter, I think you have to have your priorities right - and once I'm in with the Ag, I think I might be too distracted to go back to meet Jesus). As I think I said, "Jesus is cool, it's just all the people who follow him who are such idiots. He's like the Fonz in that respect." A joke so good it has been in two of my Edinburgh shows and now Warming Up, but at least unlike the Bible it doesn't change on every re-telling.
