July 17, 2006
I prefer the short ending, at 16:8.I'm inclined to accept the tradition that attributes [The Gospel according to Mark][1] to Peter's secretary, who is said to have here recorded Peter's teachings, taking "especial care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements."It's nice to at last encounter Jesus, not Paul's "Christ Jesus" but Jesus the man. Paul devotes no time to, and apparently has no interest in, the flesh-and-blood Jesus who rattled the towers of Jerusalem. Peter, I suspect, had little time for, and no interest in, Paul's Hellenized Christ. I'm w/ Peter.Mark's is the only gospel account that strikes me, as a reader, as coming from an eyewitness to the events described. Mark's gospel is best described by a word that didn't exist when Mark wrote--it's hallucinatory, and surely Peter would've seized upon that word to describe the extraordinary events that turned his world topsy-turvy. One second he's an illiterate Jewish fisherman in Capernaum; the next he's been snatched up by an extraordinary teacher and miracle-worker who places himself and his followers in direct opposition to the powers that run Judea. I suspect none of this was in Peter's life-plan.Thus the absence of genealogy and infancy narrative, which would be of no interest to those who witnessed Jesus's miracles. I imagine Peter sitting on the ground outside the house of Lazarus, who has been dead for some time, who has, well, started to turn, and then Jesus appears and suddenly Lazarus bounces out of the house looking just fine, asking what he's missed while he was away, and of course the eyewitnesses to the event would be speechless, they would be thunderstruck. Were an historically minded onlooker to sit down next to Peter and say, "You know, Peter, Jesus can trace his lineage all the way back to--""Lineage? Lineage?! Did you see what he just did? Just now? DID YOU SEE THAT?!"Whether Jesus's public ministry lasted three years or 10 months (I prefer the latter), it must have been a rocket ride for those who followed him, a far more vivid, intense, disruptive, and yes, hallucinatory experience than the conversion experiences of all those who came later, and processing those events must have been the principal preoccupation of the first disciples for the rest of their lives. It is one thing to learn of the feeding of the multitudes second-hand, and quite another to actually see the bottomless baskets of fish and jars of wine. It is one thing to hear the arrest and crucifixion preached, and quite another to personally participate in those events. Luke's gospel is the sanitized, mannered version of the story, a version told by someone who admittedly wasn't there and who naturally attempts to present his account in the most comprehensible, coherent fashion possible. Mark's gospel is the opposite, a first-hand recollection of kaleidescopic, world-transformative upheaval that makes vy little conventional sense--just as the events of Jesus's public ministry must have made vy little sense to those who witnessed them.--Peter is my favorite character in the New Testament. The texts make him out to be a faithless dunce, which I don't believe for a minute. Peter's problem was that he thought about things too much--thus the incident on the storm-tossed waters. He is said to have been the first Christian leader in Antioch. It was probably while he was at Antioch that he learned to read. It was also probably at Antioch that he first encountered Paul.Peter was the man in the middle, equipoised between Paul and James, the one preaching an unrecognizable, antisemitic, assimilationist "Christ Jesus," the other far gone in eschatalogical Jewish nationalism, both of them manic latecomers to the ministry Peter served from the beginning. I imagine that the Jerusalem Council was like any other meeting of opposing factions, that both Paul and James walked out of the room sincerely convinced their personal position carried the day, and that only Peter was clear-eyed enough to realize that the Council was an utter failure, and that no agreement had been reached or even was possible. The man in the middle was the perfect man to send to cosmopolitan Rome, where Paul's theology would seem just another magical mystery tour and James' revolutionary nationalism would sound quaint and a little silly. I have no doubt Peter hated the whole business.Hellenistic Pauline theology eventually triumphed in Rome, but there's no evidence that Paul himself did, or even that he found much of a welcome in the city; his prison letters suggest he was largely ignored by Rome's Christian community. The tradition of Paul's martyrdom under Nero is thin; if he was indeed executed, it appears to have caused hardly a ripple in the local church. It seems just as likely that Paul was released, and that the Petrine community in Rome gave him a hearty slap on the back and a ticket to Spain. If Peter had a sense of humor--and I can't imagine him surviving as long as he did w/out one--he might have added, "Don't forget to write." The Petrine tradition in Rome is much stronger and includes a site revered as Peter's tomb since the second century. Even the Vatican's own archeologists seemed a bit stunned at the discovery."Alienation" is thought to be the distinguishing postmodern sensibility, but surely Peter was completely alienated in Rome, and I imagine his alienation grew more severe the longer he was there. What had this sprawling, dirty, overpopulated hive to do w/ that momentous, long-ago year in Galilee and Jerusalem? What had this cynical, corrupt Empire to do w/ the good news preached by the Son of Man in Judea? I am sure that more than once Peter looked over the filthy, stinking, ever-busy city and longed for summer days in Capernaum, his boat and his nets and his family. --For about the past century, a large majority of biblical scholars have held that this is the first of the four canonical gospels to be written. Virtually the entire Gospel according to Mark is included in Matthew, often verbatim, and more than half is included in Luke. Mark's appears to be the ur-Gospel._Mark_ exhibits the highest incidence of textual variants in the New Testament manuscripts--I think it's something like 10 per page, about half again as high as the next highest book. This speaks to a vy early date, as texts are much more fluid before they are canonized than afterward. It's even possible to argue that Mark dates to the 40s; so argues [Dr. Wallace][2]. Conventional dating puts Mark right at 70 CE or a little later, the year X Legion took Jerusalem, but this dating is based almost entirely on the famous paranthetical attached to the Little Apocalypse in Chapter 13, where it seems that Mark himself peeks out from behind the authorial screen. Jesus is speaking:13:14 But when you see the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION standing where it should not be (let the reader understand), then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains.Convention holds that "abomination of desolation," a citation from the Book of Daniel, refers to the destruction of the Second Temple and the raising of the X Legion's standards in the Holy of Holies, and if that is the case, then "(let the reader understand)," if it was written by the author of the Gospel, is most naturally read as a reference to the fact that the prophecy has been fulfilled, as indeed it was in 70 CE. But no one is quite certain what "abomination of desolation" means, and the paranthetical may well have been a later interpolation.I think that the initial impetus behind Mark was the appearance of Paul's Letter to the Romans, which in Rome could easily have been read as a challenge to Peter's authority. Peter's associates, if not Peter himself, would've seen the need for a countertext, and so I think the original intention was to collect and publish Peter's memoir in the capital. That apparently did not happen, at least right away, because there is no evidence that Clement, writing from Rome in c.95 CE, had before him a copy of Mark, or even knowledge that the text existed. Thus it seems most likely to me that Mark began collecting his materials in the late 50s, when Paul's letter was circulating in the capital, but was prevented from completing his gospel by the tumultous events that overtook Rome and the Christians in the city in the early 60s, not least of which was the Great Fire of 64 CE and the Neronian persecution that followed it. All of this is nothing but my speculation.Thanks to Bill I am now familiar w/ the traditions that place Mark in Alexandria in the 60s. Alexandria was Rome's brain, a city filled w/ scribes, home of the largest library in antiquity. If Mark published his gospel in Alexandria, he would be required by law to deposit a copy of it w/ the library, which would have made the text available to the most educated audience in antiquity and done much to transmit the Christian message throughout the literate world.--Which was big, but not all that big. Prolly a million people tops.The bandwidth equation as previously presented understates the bandwidth inventories in the examples cited because the equation isn't complete. Thus "n," representing network size, is actually a sum: (kilometers of road + km of sealanes + km of railroad + km telegraph wire + km of fiber-optic cable....), which suggests that the numbers for the contemporary US and for Lawrence are too small by prolly an order of magnitude, given the density of the modern network.Further, "L," the multiplier to account for data storage capacity, is also a sum of multiple factors: The network contains data storage devices and repeaters, and repeaters, like storage devices, are network accelerators that increase network performance. Thus in antiquity L = (libraries + scribes). W/ the introduction of printing, L = (libraries + printing presses). In the Digital Age, L = (number-of-hard-drives).One additional modification is required to ensure that the formula provides a baseline for low-bandwidth illiterate societies, which are punished w/ an inventory of zero bandwidth in the above construction because they lack libraries or other high-capacity storage devices. Where L = 0, bandwidth = 0, and we know that illiterate societies possessed bandwidth. Therefore the expanded factor must be (L+1).Thus if we assume that the pre-Columbian indigenous population of North America was 50 million, and that population possessed 50,000 km of trails but no libraries, we see thatb = (0+1)(50,000/50,000) = 1.0 bandsMoreover the equation permits us to arbitrarily define the population size subject to analysis. It may be that native Americans possessed a bandwidth inventory of only one band, but that is a continental figure. A group of villages w/ a total population of 2,000 that controls 50 kilometers of trails would possess a local bandwidth of (50/2) = 25 bands.What follows is a bit of a mess, as my computer doesn't support Equation Editor and lawrence.com doesn't support mathematical notation. Apologies all around. Anyway....Given the above modifications, the bandwidth equation is now:b = (L1+L2+L3...+1)[(n1+n2+n3...)/p]If we assume 1,000 scribes in the Empire and apply the modified equation to Rome, the result is:b = (50 libraries + 1,000 scribes)(90,000/50,000) = 1,890 bands = 1.9 kbands.This is a much more realistic number for the largest bandwidth inventory in antiquity.--Earlier I described culture as an ever-growing sea. If we run history backwards, we can watch that cultural expansion in reverse, and if we run it back far enough, we eventually reach a period in antiquity where our sea is nothing more than a few unconnected lakes. In each lake there are a few referents that persist throughout the historical expansion, and a great many more referents that (to stretch the metaphor) die off before the lakes join. I think Rome's culture is the product of the first significant joining of the lakes; the Empire is the origin of most of the cultural sea in which we swim today.In this respect I think the theory (at last) holds up pretty well. Popology posits that there exists some point in cultural history at which the mediaverse is sufficiently dense to allow important texts some chance of survival, and I think that point is probably the first century Empire. Nearly every text we possess dated from before the common era was conserved by Rome.Phaps the best examples of the dicey odds of survival facing manuscripts from before the common era is offered by Plato and Aristotle. In terms of their contribution to Western culture, the two great Greek philosophers are almost certainly the most significant writers in history, but that we possess any part of their work is almost accidental. Ancient Athens, home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum, failed to conserve the writings of Plato and nearly lost all of Aristotle's work, which spent a century locked away in a moldy cave before a BCE book collector found them and returned them to circulation. Sulla transported those scrolls to Rome after the conquest of Athens in the first century BCE. Plato was altogether lost to antiquity and returns to the historical record only after his work was redicovered in the East during the medieval period.Such losses continued under the Empire, but the imperial practice of building libraries and copying texts increased the liklihood that a book would survive. The destruction of Alexandria's Great Library, which apparently occurred in stages and was principally due to the fact that thousands of papyri scrolls were a fire waiting to happen, illustrates the continuing threat that faced all early documents, but beginning in the first century I think we begin to see an increase in conservation rate.Conservation rate can be approximated by dividing the number of surviving texts by the number of total cited texts (most of which are lost). One object of historical popology is to compare conservation rate w/ bandwidth inventory. I am convinced that even in antiquity conservation rate is directly related to bandwidth inventory, and I suspect that we'd see a marked increase in conservation rate at about two kilobands of bandwidth. [1]: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=48&chapter=1&version=49 [2]: http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=1093
Comments
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El_Borak (Bill Hoyt) says...
"I'm inclined to accept the tradition that attributes The Gospel according to Mark to Peter's secretary..."
I am as well, and that puts me in a quandary, because that would assume (nay demand) that Mark be original material, namely Peter's preaching. But the synoptic problem raises its head.
Luke I hard date about 62, pre-Acts. Mark can't be much earlier because if it is, there's no reason for it not to be circulated in Rome where both Mark and Peter are, for years. Why write it for a Roman audience (thus answering Paul and explaining "Rufus" in one fell swoop) but then take it to Alexandria unless you're in a hurry due to unforseen circumstances? And if it's not in Rome, how did Luke copy it? There's no evidence he was anywhere near Alexandria nor that Mark's writing was anywhere else early.
Then there's the Matthew problem. I have read that Matthew was believed by the ante-Nicenes to be the first Gospel (though I don't have a reference) and may even have an Aramaic original. Yet it's almost unanimously agreed today that Matthew used Mark (again, from where and when?)
One solution is Matthean Priority, and I think Farmer makes as good an argument as anyone: http://www.maplenet.net/~trowbridge/f...
In fact, I'm inclined to accept it in toto, except that it bites in the bum the very tradition I already accepted above...it makes Mark a rather clumsy summarizer rather than a trailblazer.
And yes, I realize that ambivalence is a psychopathological disorder, but the doctor says the shock treatments ought to start working real soon now.
July 17, 2006 at 12:41 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
quinno (Patrick Quinn) says...
hey Bill--
An excellent summation of the synoptic problem.
I think the first proponent of Matthean Priority is Augustine, but I don't have a citation. I've encountered several attributions of the traditional Gospel order to Augustine in secondary sources, but I haven't yet looked it up.
The sticky business we're dealing w/ is (to me) the question of when these texts reached or were published in Rome, and lately I'm inclined to think that Roman Christianity suffered a text catastrophe sometime between 60 and 90 CE. This might (but needn't be) a product of Neronian persecution; it might also be a consequence of the Great Fire. At any rate it's difficult to find Roman footprints for texts that we all but know were in Rome, and this seems to be true for several long decades.
If not the Great Fire, then maybe another fire....
July 17, 2006 at 1:02 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
greyhawk (anonymous) says...
The first ten paragraphs of this blog are excellent. The rest of the material's not too shabby either but the opening stimulates imagination while carefully dealing with limited information. Bravo!
July 17, 2006 at 1:16 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
lazz (anonymous) says...
I just read about the Roman fire brigades -- vigiles -- created by Augustus 6 AD, because the closely-packed city was always at great risk.
This author goes on to state that this was perhaps in response to Marcus Lincinius Crassus, who kept at hand a force of slaves trained as firefighters, not for the good of Rome, but for personal profit: fires would start (suspiciously or not), and Crassus would send out his trained fire-fighting slaves. The property owner then had to make an instant decision: sell the burning property to Crassus at a ridiculously low price and get SOMETHING out of the situation, in which case Crassus' slaves would extinguish the blaze, Crassus would make repairs, and then sell at immense profits ... or, if the property owner refused, the slaves would leave and the building would simply burn to the ground.
The intimation being, beyond the cap-letters Great Fire, there were probably numerable, countless smaller events, staged or otherwise.
Crassus predated the time of JC and his apostles, but p'haps the trick outlasted him -- a la mafiosi -- and fires continued to appear as blackmail. Might be especially effective if the fire would also harrass and annoying little sect of pesky Christians...
July 17, 2006 at 1:17 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
El_Borak (Bill Hoyt) says...
Papias (cited by Eusebius) said "Matthew put together the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could." I don't know that Papias made an argument of priority specifically, but "each one interpreted them as best he could" offers plenty of possibilities for translation for dispersion.
Interesting thought about the fire, I never thought that. When you find a black hole like that, there's no evidence to tell you why because there's just nothing to work with. A fire is an excellent possibility.
I never got the feeling that the Neronian persecution lasted long enough to do that kind of job, but since the emperor worship of Domitian (whose father was Titus of X Legion) ran straight into Christianity's ban on idolatry, you could have a persecution, centered in Rome, that did the job. Irenaeus said that Revelation was written toward the end of Domitian's persecution, and pondering the warnings in the seven letters you could imagine a situation where document classess could disappear... but it's still all speculation in the black hole.
Of course, the fact that John sent Revelation to seven churches rather than one shows that they are learning something, no?
July 17, 2006 at 1:37 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
El_Borak (Bill Hoyt) says...
Should say, "I never thought OF that"... sheesh, I can't type or proofread worth a darn today. Vacation will do that to ye...
July 17, 2006 at 1:42 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
lazz (anonymous) says...
Fascinating ruminations on Mark, Peter & Paul, Quinno ... so utterly refreshing to hear these guys considered as actual human beings, with human emotions and yearnings ...
July 17, 2006 at 2:12 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
quinno (Patrick Quinn) says...
greyhawk--
Thanks for reading! I know it gets a bit tedious in the second half, the eqns suck the air right out of the room...
lazz--
Yr spot-on re the iffy nature of Roman fire protection, and I imagine the same was true all across the Empire. And it's still going on today. My pal Doug, who runs a philanthropy for Cambodian firefighters, was forced to remonstrate w/ senior Cambodian fire officials when he learned that some engine crews show up at a fire and demand bribes from business owners before they put it out.
Bill--
Admittedly we're all just spitballing here, but as I read about the Great Library, and envisioned all those _papyri scrolls_, it's hard not to imagine that the great threats to all first-century documents were water and fire. If we imagine any _other_ collection of first-century texts that has seemingly been diminished or obliterated, surely water/fire would rank high on the list of probable explanations. I agree that Nero's persecution doesn't seem to have been so thoroughgoing as to seek out Christian libraries, but Domitian might vy well be the explanation.
We'll get to it in _Matthew_, but I think Papias was correct, and that there was an ur-Matthew in Hebrew or Aramaic, and _that_ Gospel might well have been the first. (I am now far down the black hole.) And you betcha--John's addressing Revelation to seven churches shows that early Christians were quicker on the uptake about this stuff than any of their contemporaries, including the Attic schools.
July 17, 2006 at 2:32 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
El_Borak (Bill Hoyt) says...
"it's hard not to imagine that the great threats to all first-century documents were water and fire."
There's a reason docs were buried in clay jars in the desert, and it didn't always have to do with the opposition...
"The Petrine tradition in Rome is much stronger and includes a site revered as Peter's tomb since the second century."
Excellent, excellent book if you can get your hands on a copy (they're rarer than hens' teeth) is "The Bones of Saint Peter" by John Evangelist Walsh, which details the historic excavations under Vatican Hill. You might have to get it thru inter-library loan (Amazon doesn't have any available) but it's well worth the trouble. I've been looking for a personal copy for years with no luck...
July 17, 2006 at 2:58 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
quinno (Patrick Quinn) says...
I will read the Walsh at first opp'ty.
"There's a reason docs were buried in clay jars in the desert, and it didn't always have to do with the opposition..."
Yup. Anyone responsible for the conservation and protection of scrolls and codices who witnessed the effects of a fire or a flood would immediately start thinking about better protection, and jars are the best bet. I think there are more of them out there.
July 17, 2006 at 3:13 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
El_Borak (Bill Hoyt) says...
"...especial care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements."
I finally found that quote...you snuck Papias in there and didn't tell us...
[speculation]
Papias says explicitly that Mark "neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him" and being a disciple of John would probably be in a position to know. But there's one statement in Mark that when examined closely looks - at least to me - like a nudge and a wink. Jesus is captured in Gethsemane and all his disciples "forsook him and fled," but Mark drops the following sentence on us, without context:
"And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him: and he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked."
Of course, the big question is, "so what?" Who is this guy and why is he mentioned? He doesn't really advance the plot at all.
Is this the same young man who turns up in the grave in 16:6? Is it John, whom Mark fails to mention as following with Peter? Is it Mark himself? Hell, it could be Melchizidek for all we know.
I've always kind of had the idea it was Mark, too young for discipleship, but always following along behind - which seems to be his place in life, following Paul, following Barnabas, following Peter. If it's not him, it makes no sense that he would add it (whether as original material from Pete's preaching or to Matthew/Luke's accounts) without his audience knowing of whom he spoke.
Mark seems, as you say, like an eyewitness account. Are we as sure as Papias that it is not exactly that?
[/speculation]
July 17, 2006 at 4:29 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
quinno (Patrick Quinn) says...
"Mark seems, as you say, like an eyewitness account. Are we as sure as Papias that it is not exactly that?"
This is vy interesting. I, too, can imagine the young man in the garden is Mark--a young man whose personal interaction w/ Jesus was episodic and abbreviated, just enough to spur him into trailing after the first disciples. I think it's possible that's the case even if Papias is correct, because Mark's awareness of the limitations of his own experience could prompt him to defer ito Peter's account.
There's a terrific novel in that.
July 17, 2006 at 5:14 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Marion (Marion Lynn) says...
Not on the subject Patrick so please forgive me just this once
Mickey Spillane gone.
Who will hunt the girls, who will have quick gun, who will kiss me in that deadly way, who will close the ring of fear,will they make me wait for the jury?; perhaps, with my experinece in the ring of fear with Fallen Angels, I should just wait for Mike Hammer to arrive.
Damn.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/book....
July 17, 2006 at 7:44 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
El_Borak (Bill Hoyt) says...
"There's a terrific novel in that."
Indeed, and there's another connection. Acts 12 finds Peter in (and escaping from) Herod's prison, and before he "departed and went to another place," he goes to a house to let everyone know he's ok. That house belonged to the mother of John, surnamed Mark, so we have a very early connection between Mark and Peter.
The fact that the owner of the house is referred to as Mark's mother means that Mark is our referent, even though he plays a small part in the Acts. We can assume he's known to the audience of Acts, otherwise why not call Mary by her husband's name as is customary?
Later Mark is mentioned thrice by Luke in reference to Barnabas, who is not only his uncle, but the man who first brought Paul to Peter and vouched for him. Mark goes with Paul and Barnabas on the first missionary journey, leaving them early - the cause of Paul and Barnabas going their separate ways later. There seem to be some hard feelings brewing beneath the surface, but we'll save that for Acts.
Mark is mentioned by Paul in Colossians and Philemon, and also by Peter in 1Peter, the only individual mentioned other than Silvanus the scribe. The kid got around.
I don't know what it means, other than that it shows that the Apostles had a lot of interaction even though they worked opposite sides of the aisle, so to speak. Mark starts close to Peter, perhaps is instrumental in the early entry of Barnabas into the church (after all, Barney was from Cyprus and the disciples had not spread beyond Jerusalem very much before Ananias and Sapphira got their tickets punched).
He ends up with Paul for a few years and perhaps on separate occasions, as the Pauline mentions are much later than the row with Barnabas. Then he finally ends up in Rome as Peter's interpreter before heading off to Alexandria. There's no way he made those rounds without picking up plenty of Paul's mind as well as Peter's. And there's no way he didn't have a pretty good grasp of the story even before he recorded Peter.
I can't prove of course but would bet that Mark is a major source for Luke, especially when it comes to Peter's actions before Paul's conversion. Whether Mark's Gospel is a source for Luke's Gospel I doubt, but there's no doubt that Mark was around early and often, and quite possibly had the widest perspective of any of the early leadership, even though he was destined, at least until late, to be a follower.
July 17, 2006 at 7:45 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
ladylaw (Terry Bush) says...
Just a comment from a kibitzer. The Gospel of Mark has long been a favorite of mine for a couple of reasons: One, my father's name is Marc (Marcellus Benjamin David Schwartz to be exact) and I and all my sisters are deeply attached to my father - so his name being mentioned in church caught our attention when they read from that Gospel. 2nd, being a thespian with a leaning towards the ministry, the play Godspell is a favorite and it is based upon Mark's stories. The sower of the seeds, the sheep and goats being separated, the good Samaritan, and all those great stories that get the messages across. Good reading, no matter who wrote it, when, or even why.
July 17, 2006 at 8:55 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
OhioJayhawk (anonymous) says...
This discussion prompted me to go back to the original source material:
Brian: I'm not the Messiah! Will you please listen? I am not the Messiah, do you understand? Honestly!
Girl: Only the true Messiah denies His divinity.
Brian: What? Well, what sort of chance does that give me? All right! I am the Messiah!
Followers: He is! He is the Messiah!
Brian: Now, fuck off!
[silence]
Arthur: How shall we fuck off, O Lord?
For more wisdom from the Book of Brian, visit:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079470/q...
PJ
July 18, 2006 at 9:35 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
quinno (Patrick Quinn) says...
Mrs. Big Nose (trying to hear Jesus' Sermon on the Mount): Oh, it's blessed are the MEEK! Oh, I'm glad they're getting something, they have a hell of a time.
Reg: What Jesus fails to appreciate is that it's the meek who are the problem.
July 18, 2006 at 10 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
davidryan (David Ryan) says...
Blessed are the *cheese*makers?
July 18, 2006 at 3:29 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
El_Borak (Bill Hoyt) says...
As long as you don't say the Cheeseheads.
July 18, 2006 at 3:46 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )