The Last Testament: A Memoir

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Authors: God, David Javerbaum
Tags: Humor, Religión, General, Literary Criticism, American, Topic
beautiful akhet day, lo, he beheld a taskmaster whipping a Hebrew slave; and, inflamed by the violence against his kinsman, he smote the taskmaster.
16 Thereupon he fled Pharaoh’s wrath and hid himself in the neighboring land of Midian, which he knew to be a welcoming place for fugitives from Egypt; Midian being Egypt’s Canada.
17 And it was here, exiled in the dry wasteland, tending his flocks, that I first came to him; in the famous form of a burning bush, which though ablaze remained unconsumed.
18 I chose this form knowing Moses would be drawn to it; for its appearance and scent identified it as a species of flora with which he had grown well acquainted in the Egyptian court, particularly on weekends;
19 And he would thus be sure to realize, that its bush-sized manifestation in the middle of an arid desert, had to be a sign from God.
20 And the combustion of this bush—and more than that the inhalation of its pungent smoke—produced in him feelings of joy and wonder, alternating with paranoia; which was the intention.
21 For the mission I would soon be sending him on would be perilous and life-threatening; and I reckoned he would be more amenable after having partaken of three or four hits.
22 So I was encouraged when, after introducing myself and asking him if he was willing to become the instrument whereby I would defeat Pharaoh, afflict Egypt, liberate the Jews, give them my law, and bring them to the land promised to their forefathers,
23 His first response was, “Nice bush!”; whereupon he giggled for ten minutes.
24 Yea, I know thou imaginest Moses as like unto Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments; grave, and sober, and blessed with a rolling baritone deep enough to make the very Sphinx whimper in submission.
25 And to be sure, Charlton Heston is all those things; he is practically godlike; only last week the two of us were strolling around heaven together, and all the angels passing by gawked, and rubbed their eyes, and started wondering if we had gone duotheistic all of a sudden.
26 But there is another kind of charisma: wild, visceral, all-consuming; the kind that charges its bearer with an almost physical magnetism, and that acts upon his followers like unto a powerful intoxicant; the kind— perhaps the only kind—that can persuade them to unite in pursuit of a single vision, even one that runs counter to all reason and possibility.
27 This was Moses’s charisma.
28 He was not Charlton Heston; he was Charles Manson.

CHAPTER 3
1 A nd that is why he took so quickly to heart my violent plan to incite social upheaval; a plan he nicknamed “Isis Crisis,” after a popular hieroglyph of the time.
2 Moses was the perfect vehicle to implement my plan, save in one respect: as he says in Exodus, he was “slow of speech” and “not eloquent.”
3 Yet even in this he misspoke, for it was not true that he was slow of speech; if anything, he spoke at a rapid pace; it was more, that he was slow— extremely slow—of getting to the point, and also that he cursed like a sailor.
4 That is why I decided to involve his younger brother, Aaron; for he worshipped Moses, and did whatever he asked; but he spoke succinctly, in a dulcet tone.
5 Moreover, Aaron groomed his hair, and washed his cloak, and bathed twice a week, and did not generally come across like a filthy drifter living off scarabs.
6 Indeed, some have wondered why I did not recruit Aaron to lead the project himself, and leave his wild-tongued, half-crazed brother out of it.
7 The answer is simple; Moses had something that Aaron did not:
8 “It.”
9 And “it” is indefinable.
10 “It” is indescribable.
11 “It” is a force so mysterious, and so powerful, that if I am not extremely mindful of who I am, a person with “it” can leave even me feeling captivated and helpless.
12 I have little control over “it,” but I know “it” when I see “it”; and Moses had “it,” and Aaron did not have “it”;
13 And there thou hast “it.”
14

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