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} Ah, Saul, better known as Paul, or possibly Pauline. Strange chap.
}
} I knew him when he was lying on the M5 out of Damascus, blinking after
} being run over by a horse-and-cart. He kept shouting about the light,
} but I'm fairly sure it was the after-effect of one of the horses
} shitting in his eye.
}
} It really affected his writing style, that did. Up until then he'd
} done some really funny columns for the Nazarene Herald. Gags like
} "this guy Jesus says he had to strain out a gnat instead of swallowing
} a camel? You should try drinking anything that's been through the
} Roman water-pipes. I've had three wasps, two snakes, and a bloke who
} claimed he'd slipped on the aqueduct in Jerusalem. And that was just
} last Sabbath. Am I right, guys? (Please don't murder me Mr Centurion;
} satire never really works anyway, does it?)"
}
} Anyway, his letters got really weird. He'd always been a bit of a
} misogynist and more-Pharaseical-than-thou but he went a bit far by
} most people's standards. Logically coherent, but given that his
} starting point was about as realistic as suggesting that Bill Gates
} planned a pandemic in 1995 just to get his own back at people who hid
} a flight simulator in Excel, that's not a good look.
}
} Anyway, no-one ever replied to his letters; they just pretended they
} must have been delivered to the neighbours, or the Pontifical Post
} dropped them in the Lake of Tiberias, or the jackals must have eaten
} it. Anything to avoid having to read the rabid writings of a man who
} believed he was caught up to the seventh heaven when everyone knew
} that what happened was he passed out drunk in Mrs Jebediah
} Swampgrove's Sickly Drinks Parlour and Molly took him upstairs to
} sleep it off.
}
} Shame really; if just one person had told him that the people of
} Corinth didn't want to be told about sexual purity, they were having
} enough trouble with Derek from Number 5 and his Turkish pine
} overshaddowing the tavern's beer garden, then perhaps Paul wouldn't
} have had to write them two more letters (we only have the third one,
} the second genuinely did get eaten by foxes), and we'd have been saved
} one of his more embarrassing rants.
}
} You owe the Oracle a Biblical concordance that includes Paul's
} correspondence with the insurers of the horse-driver that knocked him
} over. 50 denarii for washing horse hoof-prints out of his tunic? I
} mean, really!
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