Sam Clemens had a lot of fun with the Bible, and he certainly made many unique contributions to “biblical commentary,” an example being the case of Elijah and the false prophets. Sam, giving “credit” elsewhere as in many such stories, has Elijah surreptitiously dousing the wood at the altar with an accelerant while the prophets of Baal are distracted crying out to their god. Having failed to prevail on their false deity to bring down fire from the heavens and kindle the wood at the altar, with slight of hand Elijah strikes a match and touches it off.

The very exaggeration of such an impossibility makes Sam’s account all the more hilarious, while remembering he didn’t much hold with the miracles of the Bible; and his story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal is an exercise of exaggeration in order to call into question, to put it mildly, the miracles of the Bible. So Sam left it to readers to judge which was the more implausible; the Biblical account or his own outrageously impossible “explanation” of the affair, which explanation made indelibly clear his own opinion of such miracles by poking outrageous fun at them. The reader is left wondering how Elijah could possibly have pulled off this stunt of legerdemain as Sam describes it, but he also wanted the reader to consider how implausible the Bible version as well.

Over the years I became familiar with “pulpit stories” by a few preachers like some TV evangelists and others as outrageously implausible as Sam’s account of Elijah. The difference between these and Sam is their expecting listeners to believe their stories. Sam never expected people to actually believe the coldest winter he ever experienced was a summer in San Francisco, but someone like Jimmy Swaggart or Pat Robertson would expect you to believe such a statement from them even if it made no sense whatsoever. After all, those like Jimmy and Pat are not humorists, despite some of their stories being laughable. But humor aside Sam’s version of Elijah and the false prophets makes as much sense as Jimmy anointing his old car with oil, praying over it and “healing” it when it needed a valve job he couldn’t afford in his salad days.

Despite his often humorous criticism of the Bible, Sam did take it very seriously in many ways. And much of his humor directed at the Bible and Christians had a very serious motive often involving serious questions and issues of life and morality, as the best of such humor invariably does. However, when it comes to trying to make sense of some things it is often wise to consider the implausible, even the outrageously implausible when trying to understand some of the mysteries confronting humankind.

Just how plausible is it the ancient Egyptians used kites to erect their monoliths, their obelisks and the great pyramids? Dr. Maureen Clemmons has demonstrated the possibility, and no matter how implausible serious scholars have given this attention. But some have suggested electric power had been utilized by the ancient Egyptians. The reason for giving implausible suggestions consideration is the fact that upon close scrutiny the plausible explanations fail to account for these and other great achievements of antiquity. Artifacts, structures and images from ancient times suggest many things, and one must often use their imagination in an attempt to interpret and explain some of these.

For my part, the Bible has always been a great resource book and one that contains the substance of an explanation of many mysteries. However, many of the stories of the Bible as with all ancient tales suffers the limitations of those telling the stories, most especially when it comes to stories of the supernatural and paranormal. It is only reasonable to expect some of the things described in the Bible being nearly if not completely incomprehensible to later readers, even as some of the prophetic parts of the Bible were virtually incomprehensible to the writers themselves.

As with all stories told by ancient poets, some things are provided by means of “theater” in order to make them memorable in their essence though eventually being at odds with advanced learning and knowledge. Many of you are familiar with the “dance” performed by Kevin Costner in “Dances with Wolves.” In just this manner many of the acts of ancient people were performed in a theatrical way, and the Greeks certainly refined this. But the “theater” of all ancient peoples has long been a means of passing the knowledge of one generation to those following. Once writing was available, tremendous advances in knowledge became possible, but people have never forsaken their ancient roots in the theater of their poets, the first historians.

My own speculations concerning “teachers” runs to the imaginative, since I consider it implausible the knowledge possessed by our earliest ancestors could have been of native origin. Our studies of native cultures have not accounted for things like the change from hunter/gatherers to sustained and methodical agriculture, and the many difficulties of metal-working, most especially of iron precludes such a thing coming about by the known human means and abilities of ancient peoples without unknown teachers with advanced knowledge of such things. But then, it is still being debated just how the great pyramids of Giza were actually constructed or why they were constructed.

I’ve said it many times, the loss of the great library at Alexandria was incalculable and a crime against humankind! We can’t even guess at what ancient knowledge was lost to us by this immense tragedy. But I have little doubt that what was lost would have pointed to ancient teachers, beings that would invariably take on the aura of the gods worshipped by the many ancient peoples of the past.

I give great credit to Henry Thoreau for building his little cottage and planting and cultivating his beans. His “experiment’ in living simply has been of great value and encouragement to me and untold numbers of others who have profited by his writing of his experiences. In one instance, he mentions the old farmer poking a hole in the soil with the handle of his hoe, depositing seed and covering it, and Henry supposed this old man had been doing the same thing in the same manner for decades, following the instructions he had been given by his father and his father before him back in time to who knew when? In the case of Yankee farmers, I have no doubt the trail would lead to Native Americans, who would explain their knowledge of such things was a gift of the gods to their wise men who in turn taught those of their various tribes.

But Henry failed to question who had been the first teacher of true agrarianism, though he mentioned some of the deities to whom such credit was given. I’ve often wished it were possible for me to press Henry on this question; I have no doubt it would have piqued his interest and we would have had a rousing discussion concerning the possibilities, especially given his fondness of entertaining notions about the various gods and goddesses of the different mythologies. I don’t think Henry would be quick to reject the ideas born of my imagination concerning the many mysteries surrounding us, both past and present.

While Sam Clemens poked fun, even he understood the miracles of the Bible were more easily entertained, more easily explained than the insanity of the world about him, an insanity that made less sense than crediting the various myths of the Bible. He also understood miracles have their dark side as well as their good. And who knows, maybe the ancient Egyptians did use kites or electricity to construct and erect their monoliths? Whatever your thoughts on the subject imagination, whether used for good or ill remains in my opinion “a gift of the gods,” though I continue to credit the possibility God in some fashion puts it into the hearts of some to know many things otherwise unknowable, and continue to make allowance for the possibility of both angels and demons in my imagination believing as I do that miracles by whatever definition or however explained do sometimes have a dark side as well as good.