Yes, it was just this sort of "anecdote" I had in mind, Robin! Not so much
from any great familiarity with the Apocrypha (Catholics are famously
ignorant of the Bible, which may answer to some of Mark's confusion over
which books and versions I was talking about), but rather with the memorable
play based on it that my friend at the University of Iowa in the early
1970s, Merle Kessler (whom some may know as Ian Shoals of "All Things
Considered" or from the late great San Francisco comedy troupe Duck's Breath
Mystery Theatre), wrote. Many of the scenes made wonderful comedy of what
life must have been like for Mary and Joseph bringing up a kid like Jesus,
and Merle milked every sit-com cliché of the time (the complaints from other
parents, the money M and J had to shell out for repairs to the neighbors'
property or their kids' medical bills when Jesus got a little rough, the
age-appropriate punishments beginning with the toddler's "time out" and
progressing to the teenager's grounding ("no, you may not have the donkey
tonight--you're still grounded!"), the long talks each would have with Jesus
about his "special responsibilities" which were so like the ones I
remembered Clark Kent's parents having with Superboy in the comicbooks, and
most hilarious of all the fights between Mary and Joseph over Jesus' future
("being a carpenter's not good enough, huh? Noooo, not for YOUR son--you'd
think he was the Messi--oh sorry, Mary, I forgot").
When The Bill Cosby Show previewed on American TV soon thereafter, I was
sure Merle had been robbed!
Candice
> Well, not +just+ on the grounds of taste. I mean, would +you+ play
> basketball with someone who, if he got pissed off, would zap you with a
> stone from the sky?
>
> Or try to teach a kindergarden kid who, if you corrected his spelling, had a
> slate fall from the roof and brain you?
>
> I'm reminded of Elisha (or was it Elija?) and those bears.
>
> "Ha, ha, look at the silly old man!"
>
> 'Go get 'em, pards!'
>
> CRUNCH CRUNCH CHOMP CHOMP.
>
> Exit the 600.
>
> Actually, that would have been one way of locking the The Childhood Gospels
> into the Messiahanic Prophecy element -- The Young Jesus as Elisha
> Revividus.
>
> Robin
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