THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THOMAS

AN EXPOSÉ

It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story

-- Native American Proverb

Disclaimer: This is a parody. A PARODY.

Doubting Thomas.

Great, just great.

You dedicate your life to some crack-potted carpenter's son from Nazareth, of all places, follow him around, listen to his increasingly crazy ramblings and even give up a nice footbath for him…And what do you get out of it?

The dumbest and most well known nickname in history.

Great, just great.

I admit, at the start he was pretty amazing. Curing the blind, raising the dead, that thing with the water into wine at the big bash at Canaan but days upon days of turning a whole pile of shysters away from the poor old eejit… "No, sorry sir, Jesus can't raise your cat from the dead…I don't care how good a mouser he was, we only do humans."…Well that got old pretty quickly, I can tell you. And some of them had a very wide vocabulary. Seriously! I learnt at least twenty new words a day when I was on tour with your man…

And it's not as if I was the first to go jetting off either. There was that thing about some old taxman called Lazarus. Beats me what is it was about him but the boss-man…God, he just loved the old guy. Me? Taxmen have always meant one thing…Big Hollywood style smiles and a frantic scramble to hide Mammy's best silver down the well.

Anyway…Jesus was really into this guy Lazarus. Seems the guy climbed a tree just to see him. His first stalker, if you will. So, of course when the news came that the old guy had popped his socks, he slipped off for a few hours. Came back in time for tea though, all reddened eyes and brave little sniffs. I thought it was hay fever or allergies or something and told him to get a tissue. Then he broke it to us. There was going to a big funeral up in Bethany and… "Guess what guys! We're invited!"

Oh.

Anyone who doesn't know Israeli geography should know one thing: Bethany is close to Jerusalem. Very close. As in ten miles away. And guess what's in Jerusalem?

That's right. The High Priests.

As in the people who are trying to obliterate us from the face of the Earth.

Those High Priests.

Great, just great.

You could see that the rest of them didn't want to come. Matt had that squirmy expression on his face again and Peter…Let's just say Peter had discovered this totally Roman bar where they made the best cocktails this side of the Jordan River. And Judas…well, he was always a bit of an old kill-joy, anyway, always muttering about Zealots and ridiculous "Free us from the yoke of the Roman Tyrant" slogans that were just…so Dead Sea, you know what I'm saying? You need to take them with a HUGE grain of salt.

Then the rest of the lads started muttering about Mammy's Birthday and how they had promised to bring her something from their travels and how they would by absolutely skinned alive if they didn't turn up this year…yadda, yadda, yadda and so on.

So I was watching Jesus at the time (the halvah was nothing like my Aunt Rivka's. Totally bland) and all I could see was his little chin crumpling up and his lip jutting out and those big brown eyes screwing up with a little tear peeping out the corner… All I could think was Aaaaaaww!

No, wait. If I'm to be brutally honest all I could think was: If only his devoted fans could see him now!

Then I thought: Aaaaaawww!

But in the end Muggins here was the one who piped up: "Ah, come on guys! It'll be fun!"

Yeah, right. I derive such fun from dodging rabid, bloodthirsty High Priests.

That's what everyone else was thinking too.

We left for Bethany the very next day. Glaring looks and unseen punches were my lot for the rest of the journey.

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