Background

On April 1, 2002 Mohammed Kareem Jihad, a fourteen-year-old April Fool Palestinian revolutionary, was ascending a rocky ledge along rugged cliffs that bordered the western banks of the Dead Sea. Exhausted from his climbing enterprise, young Jihad stopped to rest his weary body. The vernal radical lit a Camel cigarette and surveyed the landscape below. Much to his frustration everything seemed calm and serene.

When Mohammed Kareem Jihad leaned backwards his gaunt frame slipped through a narrow crevice between two limestone crags. The disoriented youth rose to his knees, inspected his shadowy surroundings and soon realized that he had fallen into a cave (containing a remarkable ancient artifact). In the center of the small hollow was an urn, a well’ preserved remnant from Hebrew antiquity.

Instead of sticking his hand into the urn to feel for any contents Mohammed followed his dreadful terroristic instincts by pulling the pin of a hand grenade and tossing the explosive device into what was surely a great archeological discovery. When the bomb exploded prematurely Mohammed Kareem Jihad had not yet fully exited the cave. Besides shrapnel, two leather objects bound with straps (strapnel) blasted out of the ancient urn and collided with the back of the Palestinian lad’s skull, knocking him unconscious.

When Mohammed Kareem Jihad finally regained his faculties (his rich uncle owned two radical Arab universities), he perceptively noticed and then grabbed the leather pouches and fled the scene of destruction. After descending the perilous cliffs the young militant thought, ‘I’ll bet whatever is inside these two leather packages is worth at least a carton of cigarettes,’ so the youth mounted his stolen desert “quad” and motored to the city of Jericho, where his economically struggling father owned a popular café.

Inside the café Professor Phillip Collins of the Semitic Semantic Institute was seated at a table with Dr. Allen Qaeda from the Arab Aramaic Academy. Mohammed Kareem Jihad rushed into the dismal café and approached the cozy table where the two distinguished scholars were conversing.

“How much will you give me for these two leather pouches?” the boy anxiously asked Professor Al Qaeda. “I need to buy some weapons right away!”

“Let’s unravel them and see what ya’ got!” the suddenly curious researcher replied. The good academic doctor gently unwound the dusty cords that bound the leather wrappings. Inside both packages Dr. Allen Qaeda discovered dozens of remarkably well’ preserved papyrus sheets with ancient writings carelessly scribbled on the archaic scrolls.

“Why it’s the first two books of the Old Testament!” Professor Al Qaeda exclaimed in astonishment. “The Book of Genesis and the Book of Exodus!”

Professor Phil Collins, who knew plenty about Genesis, rendered his authoritative impressions. “This translation has much more detail than the presently read first two books of the Old Testament!” he enthusiastically observed and shared. “This type of papyrus dates back to at least 900 BC, which makes it a lot older than the Dead Sea Scrolls that had been re-written by the Essenes during an ancient creative writing class.”

“If this historical account is accurate,” interrupted Professor Al Qaeda, “then this great discovery will present a wholly new perspective to religious history, which is presently very controversial to begin with.”

Young Mohammed Kareem Jihad was growing very impatient with the scholarly adults’ intellectual evaluation and speculation concerning his fabulous find. “How much are they worth?” he insisted on knowing.

“Two cartons of American cigarettes, definitely!” Professor Phil Collins promised.

“And we’ll even throw in an AK-47 and two slightly used hand grenades,” Dr. Al Qaeda added.

“Sold!” an elated Mohammed Kareem Jihad gleefully shouted. “Now I can blow up my’ younger sister’s doll collection and her Jewish friends too!”

And so, Dr. Al Qaeda and my uncle Professor Phil Collins (on my mother’s side of the family) became the legitimate owners of the only authentic “First Two Books of the Wholly Bible.” The remainder of the “unabridged” Old Testament had been thoroughly obliterated inside the urn when Mohammed Kareem Jihad’s hand grenade had quite effectively exploded.

Fortunately Uncle Phil Collins had made a computer file in English of his meticulous translation of the great archeological treasure. Uncle Phil very thoughtfully and confidentially had electronically sent “Wholly Genesis” and “Wholly Exodus” to me as e-mail attachments. The careful deciphering represented my relative’s fantastic interpretation of the ancient Hebrew writing, which I had electronically received on April 10, 2002. Regrettably, on April11th, Uncle Phil and Dr. Al Qaeda were blown to smithereens by an errant Palestinian rocket while refining their study of the ancient scrolls in Professor Collins’ Jerusalem home. The papyrus sheets and the original computer file had also been destroyed in the malicious terrorist attack.

My treasured e-mail translations are the only remaining evidence of The Wholly Book of Genesis and The Wholly Book of Exodus. Uncle Phil sincerely believed that the versions presently in my possession are the original and most reliable documentation of the “Word of Moses,” who was believed to be the organizer of the popular Genesis and Exodus interpretations that appear in the standard Bible. Uncle Phil Collins and Professor Al Qaeda strongly believed that Moses had fabricated the Biblical Genesis and Exodus stories around 1400 BC. But since writing (and bona fide alphabets) did not appear until the time after Homer and King David, around 1,000 BC, the Biblical stories had been handed-down and distorted because of the practice of oral tradition with storytellers adding and subtracting important details.

Uncle Phil Collins and Dr. Al Qaeda professed that young Mohammed Kareem Jihad’s accidental discovery represented the true unabridged stories of Genesis and of Exodus. They maintained that the new versions are much more valid in scope and content since the accounts had been written hundreds of years earlier than the stories that now appear in the first two books of the Bible. Thus, Mohammed’s find is closer to Moses’ language and intent than later popularly read interpretations of Genesis and Exodus. “Careless Hebrew historians and ancient priests recklessly modified the Wholly Genesis and Wholly Exodus versions into more pious, moral and self-righteous texts,” Uncle Phil academically stated in his final e-mail letter. “They did it to satisfy their own selfish purposes and agendas.”

Uncle Phil’ also indicated in his e-mail, “Moses, who lived approximately 1450 BC around the time of Pharaoh Thutmose III of Egypt, didn’t know how to write, even though he had put the stories of Genesis and Exodus together much like Homer had done with the Iliad and the Odyssey. In fact nobody knew how to write with any rhetorical expression skills until half a millennium later.” According to Uncle Phil, “Moses barely knew the numerals one to ten signifying the Ten Commandments etched on the twin stone tablets,” my mother’s older brother attested.

For a full decade after 2002, I had believed that only The Wholly Book of Genesis and The Wholly Book of Exodus existed in the computer e-mail file, since a long blank void had appeared thereafter. But last month out of sheer boredom I ran the file to its end and remarkably discovered the fifth book of the Old Testament Pentateuch, The Wholly Book of Doo-Doo-Rot-on-Me. Apparently, book three The Wholly Book of Numbers and book four The Wholly Book of Leviticus had somehow been accidentally erased in the e-mailed computer file.

Now that the essential background of The Wholly Book of Genesis and The Wholly Book of Exodus along with the tampered-with computer file is fully known, only the astute readers can be the best judges of the merits of Mohammed Kareem Jihad’s discovery and of Uncle Phil Collins’ exceptional Biblical claims.

I have placed in italics the language that ancient scholars had shrewdly edited-out of the Wholly Book of Doo-Doo-Rot-on-Me, and I have plainly and clearly left the standard and generally accepted script in Times New Roman type.

Jay Dubya