Moses Fixes the Pentateuch
The first five books of the Bible are absolutely perfect, so the Divine Plan calls for some changes...
“Moses?”
The angel was standing right behind him. Moses hated that. Not so much as a polite knock or a mystical chime and they’re right behind you, quick as lightning.
“Moses, a word, if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind,” said Moses, turning around.
The angel looked startled. It is a common misconception that angels have pouty, cherubic faces. In fact, they usually appear in a perpetual state of surprise. It is a long drop from the Firmaments Above, and six wings are hardly enough to slow you down.
“Well, anyway,” said the angel, trying to regain the initiative. “I’ve got some notes. They’d like a few changes.”
“Changes?”
“It would seem so. To your… to your…” The angel glanced down. There was a vague shuffling sound, like granite slabs rubbing together. “To your Pentateuch.”
“The Pentateuch? It’s perfect.”
The angel made a ‘this-is-awkward’ sort of face. “Well,” he said, “nothing is ever really perfect, is it? And the purpose of the Editorial Board is to make sure that even small mistakes—”
“Mistakes?” said Moses. “There are no mistakes. I don’t make mistakes.”
“I’m sure you feel that way. But they wouldn’t ask for changes unless…” The angel’s voice trailed away. “Hang on a second… No, you’re right, I’ve got it backwards.” There was some more mumbling as the angel read quickly. “Ah, yes, I see. Yes, they want mistakes. More mistakes, actually. Right now it’s a bit too… perfect.”
Moses stared. Outside, a camel made an unmistakably camelish sound. The wind flapped at the tent flaps. The angel shifted uncomfortably.
“Shouldn’t be too hard. Just jumble it up a bit, make it more human, more lived-in. You know what I mean.”
“I don’t think I do.”
“Well, the memo from Upstairs comes with quite a few suggestions. Let’s see…” The angel looked down. “Oh yes, mixing up names and dates is an obvious choice. Have old Methuselah live well past the flood even though he misses the boat. Play around with Abraham’s father’s chronology. Forget your own father-in-law’s name… several times. Wow. That’s cold. Anyway, just sprinkle in things like that.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“We’re just getting started,” said the angel, delicately. “They’d also like major rewrites on a number of stories. The creation account, for instance, the Flood, the Ten Commandments, etcetera. Only they want you to leave in the original drafts, and just edit in the new stuff right alongside it. Multiple different versions of the same events.
“But why—why?”
“How should I know? Gives it all a bit more depth, maybe? That’s just how it is.”
“How what is?”
“The Print Edition, of course.”
“The one you looked down the corridor of time and saw?”
“Well, I didn’t. I’m just the messenger.”
Moses frowned. He felt a headache coming on.
“Oh yes,” the angel continued. “And they’d like it—we’d like it—if you’d use different names of God for each of the major rewrites. See if you can get most of the Yahwehs in one version, and most of the Elohims in another. It says here that that will make them much easier to name later on.”
“What do you mean, ‘easier to name later on’?”
“The final Print Edition. It’s all about the Print Edition. Plus, we think it might be an interesting practical joke on historians and scholars. Most people won’t even notice, and the ones who do won’t catch on for at least several thousand more years.”
“The Pentateuch is not a joke,” said Moses, pulling the tablets from the angel’s hands. And I will not be writing this… this…” There was a moment of silence. “But the Canaanites are still in the land!”
“Yes, exactly. And if you could just change it to say that they were still in the land, that would confuse things tremendously.”
More uncomprehending staring. More shuffling of stone on stone. The angel began looking for the exits. He hated work trips.
“Look,” he said, trying his best to sound conciliatory, “Here it says you get to write that you are the humblest man on earth. That’s pretty good, hey?”
“What?”
“Right here. They want you to add in a line about how you’re the humblest man on the face of the earth.” The angel pointed to a particular item, tucked away amidst the tablets and tablets of rewrites. He hoped Moses wouldn’t notice the write-in about his own death, just below.
Moses thought about it, and it all sounded crazy. Still, you had to be really crazy or really humble to say you were the humblest man on the face of the earth. Perhaps you had to be a bit of both. And who was he, after all, to question the divine plan?
“All right, fine,” said Moses, shaking his head. “I’ll make the changes. Next week Thursday sound okay?”