from a Serious Book
March 22, 2011 (Tuesday)
Through the years I’ve heard a number of stories or jokes based on quotations from the Bible.
Q – “Who was the smallest man in the Bible?”
A – “Peter. He slept on his watch.”
Q – Hear about the folks who named their children, “Matthew, Mark, Luke and Verilly?”
A – Is “Verilly” a Bible name?
Q- Never heard, “Verily, Verily I say unto you?” (pronounced “Va-rill-e”)
The trouble with such jokes is that we remember them the next time we hear the verses used in a serious way. But we just can’t help ourselves when we are tempted to tell them to someone else.
I suppose the most mixed-up conglomeration of Bible quotes is a reading I’ve heard for many years. It goes like this:
“Once upon a time a man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves; and the thorns grew up and choked the man. And he went on and met the Queen of Sheba, and she gave that man a thousand talents of silver, and a hundred changes of raiment. And he got in his chariot and drove furiously, and as he was driving along under a big tree, his hair got caught in a limb and left him hanging here! And he hung there many days and many nights. The ravens brought him food to eat and water to drink. And one night while he was hanging there asleep, his wife Delilah came along and cut off his hair, and he fell on stony ground. And it begin to rain, and rained forty days and forty nights. And he hid himself in a cave. Later he went on and met a man who said, “Come in and take supper with me.” But he said, “I can’t come in, for I have married a wife.” And the man went out into the highways and hedges and compelled him to come in! He then came to Jerusalem, and saw Queen Jezebel sitting high and lifted up in a window of the wall. When she saw him she laughed, and he said, “Throw her down out of there,” and they threw her down. And he said “Throw her down again,” and they threw her down seventy-times-seven. And the fragments which they picked up filled twelve baskets full! NOW, whose wife will she be in the day of the Judgment?”