Recasting a Sacred Document

On Bill Maher's show, Resa Aslan (crypto-Narnian propagandist?) made the sensible point that religious prophets "take the social, cultural, economic and political milieu they live in and and reshape it, they recast it. They don't talk about the future, they talk about the present." It's the followers that come after that create the religion.

I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to the Abrahamic religions, so I only recently learned via a great PBS documentary that it was actually the apostle Paul who invented most of the doctrine and practices that distinguished Christianity from the other Jewish sects of its era (using the teachings of Jesus very selectively, incorporating local traditions from the various regions he traveled through, abandoning circumcision, etc.).

Which all brings me to the famous L. Ron Hubbard dictum: “If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.”

So who's up for it? Which prophet's underrecognized text could we popularize to our own ends?

My nomination after the jump.



I hereby nominate Indecision. It's a novel long overdue for a little creative misinterpretation. From our lord and savior Kunkel's roadtrip satire of the present we can derive a roadmap to the future.


I mean, Ben even already looks like blonde Jesus. It's foolproof.

Tags:culture, kunkel, jesus, religion