INTRODUCTION AND PREFACE

Jude Wed 22 May 2013, 00:57

In the name of God most Gracious, ever Merciful!

The Beloved
and I

Volume 7: Gospels

Thomas McElwain

New Jubilees Version of Sacred Scripture in Verse
With Verse Commentaries
Revised Edition

Adams & McElwain Publishers

Copyright © 2007 Adams & McElwain Publishers and Thomas McElwain
First published in two volumes, The Beloved and I 2005, and Led of the Beloved, 2006.
Second edition, 2010
Third and revised edition, 2012
All rights reserved.
No part of this verse commentary on the sacred
Scriptures may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system,
in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by

Adams & McElwain Publishers
Puijonrinne 7
70200 Kuopio, Finland

ThomasGMcElwain@gmail.com
www.lulu.com

Cover photo by Anna Maria McElwain

Contents

Preface
Infancy Gospel of James
Infancy Gospel of Thomas
Matthew
Mark
Luke
John
Coptic Gospel of Thomas

PREFACE

The ten commandments give my view
Of everything I taint in pew.
That’s just because they are the only
Thing in the sacred books postponely
That claim to be sermon concise
Spoken by God in terms not nice,
But public before all the crowd,
And directly, spoken aloud.
What recognizes divine plot
In that great message that we’ve got
Is useful to be read in church
Or in the synagoguely perch
Or in the mosque for plenitude.
The Qur’an joins in deathly feud
To recognize the big ten are
Criterion and guiding star.
See chapter two, verse fifty-three.
The Qur’an’s no difficulty.
It’s harder to make sensibly
What the New Testament might mean
With words conflicting with the scene
Found in the Torah and the Psalms,
The Tanach, in words without qualms.
The Qur’an strikes against the roost
Of Jewish rejection to boost
Without Jesus of Nazareth.
By the same token and same breath
It strikes at Christians who would take
The sent one of God for the sake
Of God Himself in Trinity:
It invokes that insanity.
But what of the New Testament?
Can it be reconciled, though bent,
With the best of God’s commandment?
I trow it can, though not without
Relinquishing the Christian shout.
Jesus was simply not a god,
But a man sent upon the sod
To criticize the Jewish way
Of soothing Roman fears the day
That Messianic expectation
Would threaten the imperial station.
So Pharisee and Sadducee
Found ways to read judiciously:
The one dispensed with need of leader
By piling scholarly impeder
Upon the law and in the sum
Of wisdom found verdicts to hum
Without the need of Jewish king
Or prophet, patriarch or wing
Of judge. The fact that many ways
Arose in the past to God’s praise
Seemed to suggest accommodation
To Roman rule was the best ration.
The Sadducees dispensed also
With any Messiahs in tow
By limiting the legal show
To what was literal to know.
Jesus appears beneath the text
As a grand sage for the perplexed,
Who simply rejected the path
Accommodating to the wrath
Of Caesar. But the text is full
Of expectations at the pull
Of Greek and Jewish hopes and views.
A Messianic layer accrues
Upon the sayings of the wise,
And after that the reader’s eyes
See sops thrown out to Gentile guys
Who cannot think in other terms
But that god-men come from the sperms
Of the Olympianite powers.
And so the book three-tiered in towers
Addresses expectations set
By the folk of its time when met.
The Gnostic force beyond the will
Of Philo to read Torah’s bill
In terms of Greek philosophy
Goes on apace in what we see
In the writings of Paul and Peter,
And John besides the pumpkin-eater.
The church councils would limit it
To those writings that they saw fit,
The ones of lesser allegory
In spirit or in legends’ story,
Although they did not attempt to
Relinquish the pagan to-do
Of gods in spring in human form
Who dying rise to make it warm.
Bultmann and Barth were two not torn
With any regrets to relieve
The story of mythic reprieve,
Before the two came out to warn,
And to reject kerygma’s sleeve
After their liberal deceive.
I set aside my own will and
My own thoughts for God’s own command
And take as truth only what’s set
To complement Decalogue met.
The human sacrifice, the way
That miracles appear to sway
To the same tempo of the day
Dionysos rose up to play,
I set aside as what it is,
A ploy to make the Grecian fizz
Take note of what they would not read
Unless it fed the heathen greed.
If I am wrong to concentrate
Obeying God’s will soon or late,
Then let the Father of lights come
Down on Sinai again to hum,
And if He tells me loud and clear
He is a Trinity to fear,
And that the Sabbath is no more
The gauge that rest is for the poor,
Then I will submit to His word,
But until then I’ll eat no turd
Nor drink no piss of human teaching,
No matter what the priests are preaching.

AUTHOR: THOMAS G. MCELWAIN[/size][/b]

Copyright © 2007 Adams & McElwain Publishers and Thomas McElwain First Published in two volumes, The Beloved and I 2005, and Led of the Beloved, 2006. Second Edition, 2010 Third and revised edition, 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this verse commentary on the sacred Scriptures may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from publisher.

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