September 12, 2006
Stoned
Of the two Hollywood castings for Moses that I know anything about, I’ll take Mel Brooks hands down over Charleton Heston.
For one thing, when Brooks’s Moses went up on the mountain to get the commandments, he actually got three tablets of stone with five on each. Then he dropped and broke one, so could deliver only ten to his desert-wandering colleagues, thus sparing us no telling how much guilt and low self-esteem over the centuries.
I’m remembering, as well, that Alabama court house rotunda version of the Ten that weighed more than a pick-up truck at 5,280 pounds. They couldn’t get any locals even to touch it, let alone move it, and had to go all the way to Georgia to find somebody strong enough — and maybe brave enough.
Perhaps it’ll occur now to the judge who was so enamored about it all that he could never fairly see the splinter in anybody’s eye when he couldn’t even see the decalogue in his own.
Biblical archeology is fascinating, don’t you think? Our seminaries never teach enough of it.