The Greatest Story Ever Sold

[Hypoxia]

Something I've been thinking about for some years but never got beyond the barest outline, and now I don't know if I'll ever write it, so here's the idea: The lost years of Yeshua bir Miriam aka Jesus. What happened between ages 12-30? Some apocrypha (like THE INFANCY OF JESUS) chronicle other periods -- I especially like the tale of young Jesus, laughed at by other kids, magically turning a tormentor into a withered tree -- but my outline covers his travels and adventures between ages 16-30. Hmm, for LIT, better make that 18-30.

The story could be told as a series of letters home, to mom and friends. He tells mom about working as a taxi-burro driver in Cairo, a coffee-taster in Yemen, and a money-changer in Crete. He tells his friends about working in a male brothel in Alexandria, pimping in Athens, establishing a harem in Bagdad, and studying Tantric (sexual) yoga in Nepal, where he picks up (and later modifies) some tenets of Buddhism. Or it could be a blog-type narrative of these activities. Whatever.

Category could be interesting. I'm thinking Group Sex. Could fit into GM if it extends into intimate encounters with his 'apostles'. Or maybe Mary of Magdala just gets passed around there. Something like that.

OK, lynch me now.

 

[FantasyXY]

I am thinking that Jesus was illiterate. I'm worried that the letter writing aspect is going to really piss people off.

 

[Hypoxia]

I am thinking that Jesus was illiterate. I'm worried that the letter writing aspect is going to really piss people off.

Oh, Yeshua bir Miriam (Jesus, son of Mary) was strictly middle-class and would have been sent to school to learn letters and numbers. His stepfather Yusef (Joseph) wasn't a 'carpenter'; his work is better translated as 'builder' or 'contractor' -- and running such a business requires literacy and numeracy. In that social stratum, Yeshua would likely be fluent in Hebrew (language of Torah), Aramaic (the street language), Greek and Latin (the imperial languages), and maybe a bit of Arabic (to manage immigrant laborers who did the heavy construction work). All that is within historical reality, and supports the story idea of Yeshua's wanderjahren (wandering years). He could travel from Roman Britain to Mesopotamia on those childhood languages. Going further east would require picking up some Farsi (Persian), Hindi, and whatever dialect was common wherever he was.

Most modern Anglophones don't appreciate how polyglot much of the world is. In some regions, it's common for even lower-class folk to be fluent in a dozen languages and literate in two or three -- necessary due to ethnic complexity.

But I digress. As usual.

 

[FantasyXY]

Of course it's not the letter writing people will object to. I was making a pun. Albeit a bad one.

 

[Hypoxia]

Of course it's not the letter writing people will object to. I was making a pun. Albeit a bad one.

Sorry, I didn't catch the pun. I'm dumb sometimes. Need more coffee.

Anyway, it's fleshing out a bit in my fleshy mind. Three sets of letters exist, one each to his Mom, his girlfriend Maryam from Magdala, and his boyhood pal Jude, all of whom are in Galilee. He tells different bits of his story to each. Mom gets the censored version; Maryam gets the declarations of love, and hints; Jude gets the real dirt.

When Yeshua become a local celeb, Jude, who knows of the correspondences (because Yeshua told him), persuades Mom and Maryam to give their letters to him, and he seals all the texts into an amphora. Two millennia later, that very amphora is discovered ironically and delivered to an editor who pieces the story together chronologically -- and blogs it.

So, THE GREATEST STORY EVER SOLD is about the discovery and blogging, and reactions thereto.

OK, what's the pun? Feeble minds want to know...

 

[Carnevil9]

I am thinking that Jesus was illiterate. I'm worried that the letter writing aspect is going to really piss people off.

Well we know St. Paul was not illiterate. The scriptures are chock full of his letters to the Corinthians, the Thessalonians, and the Romans.

No word on whether any of them ever wrote back.

 

[sr71plt]

A story of the Dan Brown-type discovery in a sex priest-cult monastery on the flanks of Mount Nebo of the secret letters of the Apostle John, the favored apostle, and his long-term sexual liaison with Jesus. How Jesus' brother, James, who inherited the religious sect, sold his brother out to save the movement--and how John's later lover, Paul (the one with the unspecified affliction), grasped the reins of the movement from James (bringing about James' martyrdom) to deify Jesus as a love gift to John.

 

[lovecraft68]

OK, lynch me now.

Well if you're looking to be lynched....

Jesus starts a sexual relationship with his mother, Mary.

But wait there's more.

Joseph finds out and forbids Jesus from having sex with his mother again, at which point, Mary makes him sit his ass in the corner and watch Jesus fuck her, turning Joseph into the first known cuck. For extra shock value-because I know you want that!- When Jesus is done he leaves a nice cream pie in Mary's asshole for Joseph to eat out.

Of course this goes in Loving wives.

 

[Carnevil9]

......Of course this goes in Loving wives.

Not celebrities?

 

[lovecraft68]

Not celebrities?

Jesus was a humble man.

Besides we're talking pre sermon on the mount, miracle working Jesus here, this was before he was discovered.

 

[Carnevil9]

Heh heh heh...... You said "mount".....

 

[lovecraft68]

Heh heh heh...... You said "mount".....

I did.....we can tell where Jesus held court over a large orgy and declared it "semen on the mount"

 

[Hypoxia]

Jesus was a humble man.

Humble people don't preach, lead revolts, that sort of thing. There's nothing in the written backstory to indicate Yeshuan humility.

The fill-in story will tell why. Sexual conquests; amassing worldly riches; traveling to Nepal to be trained by spiritual masters and mages; exercising mental control over beasts, demons, and some gullible humans. But... Yeshua could walk on water but he couldn't walk out of jail. Why not? Was his character flawed by hubris over his magical powers? Maybe the letters will reveal this...