Second, it denied every religious truth ever held by anyone.
The stories it told distorted every event that had taken place over three millennia in the Eastern Mediterranean, in the Holy Land and more particularly in Jerusalem, legendary home of Melchizedek, King of Salem which also meant King of Peace, the fabled priest of antiquity who had blessed the future patriarch of all three faiths when first the shepherd Abraham journeyed forth from the dawn of the east with his flock.
Melchizedek's very existence was in doubt and so was that of Jerusalem, which since Melchizedek's reign had always been the ultimate destination of all sons and prophets of God toiling up from the desert, stern with their messages of salvation for the eternally queasy souls of that city.
Possibly, the pages implied, Melchizedek had lived elsewhere or been someone else. And just possibly, there had never been a Jerusalem.
To Brother Anthony the words before him were terrifying. What would happen if the world suddenly suspected that Mohammed might well have lived six centuries before Christ rather than six centuries after him?
Or again, that Christ had been a minor prophet in the age of Elijah or a secret messiah in the age of Isaiah, who alone knew his true identity and rigorously followed his instructions?
Or that Mohammed and Isaiah were contemporaries, brethren in a common cause who comforted one another in moments of trial?
Or that idols were indeed God when made in the shape of Hector or David, Alexander or Caesar, if the worshipper was living in the same era as one of these worthies?
Or more or less in the same era.
Or at least thought he was.
Or that the virtues of Mary and Fatima and Ruth had been confused in the minds of later chroniclers and freely interchanged among them? That the virtues ascribed to Fatima more properly were those of Ruth?
That the song of Ruth had been sung by Mary? That the virgin birth called Mary's belonged to Fatima?
Or that it was true from time to time that innumerable Gods held court in all the high and low places? That these legions of Gods were variously sleek and fat or gnarled and lean, as vicious as crazed brigands or as gentle as doting grandfathers?
That they passed whole epochs vaguely preoccupied with the slit necks of bulls, ambrosia, broken pottery, war, peace, gold rings and purple robes and incense, or even gurgling vacantly while sniffing and sucking their forefingers?
Although at other times there were no Gods anywhere? Not even one? The rivers wending their ways and the lambs bleating with mindless inconsistency?
Or that the carpenter who had gone down to the Jordan to be cleansed by his cousin was either the son of Fatima or the father of Ruth? That Joshua had gained his wisdom from the fifth Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad, who might himself have been Judas or Christ if only he had foreseen a painful future as clearly as he recalled a blissful past?
That David and Julius Caesar had been secret card-playing cronies? That Alexander the Great had challenged them both to a primitive sort of backgammon for nominal stakes, winning easily, yet had gone on to lose his earnings to a chattering barber whose only other distinction in history was that he had cut Mohammed's hair?
That Abraham had passed on his legacy to the Jews through his first son, Ishmael the wanderer, and his legacy to the Arabs through his sedentary second son, Isaac? And since he had no more sons, that he rejected outright the paternity claims of the Gentiles and refused to take any responsibility whatsoever for them?
Or that the trumpet beneath the walls of Jericho had been blown by Harun al-Rashid, not stridently but sensuously as was his manner, as he seductively circled the oasis seven times and brought his people into a happy land?
In order that Joshua might take a promised bath in the Jordan and Christ might retire to a sumptuous court on the banks of the Tigris to spin forth a cycle of tales encompassing the dreams of a thousand and one nights?
And so on in the windblown footsteps that fled across the pages of this desert manuscript where an entire fabric of history was woven in magical confusion, threaded in unexpected knots and colored in reverse patterns, the sacred shadows of belief now lengthened or shortened by a constantly revolving sun and shifting moon.
For in this oldest of Bibles paradise lay everywhere on the wrong side of the river, sought by the wrong people, preached by a prophet different from the one who had been heard, an impossible history where all events occurred before or after they were said to have occurred, or instead, occurred simultaneously.
Numbing in its disorder and perplexing to the edge of madness. Circular and unchronicled and calmly contradictory, suggesting infinity.
But the worst shock of all came on the final pages, where the compiler of the Bible had added an autobiographical footnote.
He was blind, he said, and had been blind since birth. His early life had been spent sitting beside dusty waysides in Canaan with a bowl in his lap crying out for alms, always close to starvation.
In time he learned a few more coins always came his way if he chanted imaginary histories and the like, for there was nothing poor toilers on the road loved more than a description of wondrous events, their own lives being both dreary and hard. And perhaps not surprisingly after so many years spent gathering gossip, he had no difficulty making up tales.
Before long an old couple had come to him with their son, an imbecile. The boy couldn't tell night from day or summer from winter, but while he was still young his parents had discovered he drew shapes in the sand very well. An idea had come to them. Why not see if the boy could memorize the alphabet?
Very few people could write. If the boy learned to do so he could become a scribe and copy down the documents others dictated to him. The advantage, of course, was that he wouldn't have to understand what he was writing.
It took many years and all their money but the task was accomplished. Their son could write beautifully, his teachers said so. When a reed was placed in his hand he wrote down exactly what was said, no more and no less.
The problem was that the other difficulties still remained. Now the parents were both ill and wanted to make some provision for their son's future. They thought of the blind storyteller. What if the boy accompanied the blind man on his travels and wrote down his words, in exchange for which the blind man could show their son when to sleep and eat and wear more or fewer clothes? Wouldn't it be a fair and useful partnership"?
Well it had seemed a good arrangement, said the blind man, and from that day forward they had proceeded from dusty wayside to dusty wayside making a meager living. Affection had grown into love and they had become like father and son. All had worked out for the best in the dusty waysides of Canaan.
But here the blind man had to make a confession. The histories his adopted son had faithfully copied down weren't histories at all, for several reasons.
For one, because the blind man only knew what he heard, having no eyes to verify anything.
For another, because his position in life was lowly and he knew little about great events, having never heard more than bits and pieces of rumors.
Thirdly, because the din beside a dusty wayside was often deafening, and how could one old man be expected to extract a coherent theme from so much noise?
And lastly, perhaps because he felt the truth could be rendered more accurately anyway when dealing with the open spaces of the future rather than the murky depths of the past. In the future anything might happen, so he could be flawlessly correct in reporting it. Whereas in the past, although some events were known and others suspected, many more were neither known nor suspected.
Furthermore, why belabor his poor listeners with the past? These wretches longed for new worlds, not old. Between them they had only a few coppers to hear hopefully where they might be going, knowing full well where they had already miserably been.