Stephen T-B

The following post actually belongs to a thread entitled �Are these failed prophecies?� in the Biblical Criticism and Archaeology forum, but I didn�t have the nerve to put it there. My apologies, then, to Elsewhere readers who look at it and don�t know what on earth it�s all about.


�Once upon a time...�
ie at an unspecified but precise moment in history
�an indolent boy called Jack lived with his mother...�
ie he had an absent father
�and they were very poor.�
The word �poor� as it appears here almost certainly signifies material as opposed to spiritual poverty, a conclusion supported by subsequent statements in the text ie
�Their most valued possession was one cow.�
�One day...�
ie at an unspecified but precise moment in history
�Jack�s mother told him that she had not one penny left with which to buy bread.�
Further support for the contention that their poverty was of a material kind
�and that he must take the cow to market and get as good a price for it as he was able.�
The market, we can assume, was within walking distance and that it was a place at which livestock might be bought and sold but not, as far as we can deduce from the text, slaughtered.
�So Jack set off with the cow, and on the way he was met by a stranger.�
A �stranger� in this context does not merely mean an individual not know to him, but one who was of an unfamiliar race and appearance, otherwise the sentence would have read: �and on the way he was met by someone he had not previously seen in those parts.�
This �stranger,� was, in fact, a divine emissary of the Lord, as may be determined by later developments.
�who offered Jack a bag of beans in exchange for the cow.�
In the period these events took place, the term �bean� was uniquely applied to what we now refer to as butter beans. The �bag� which contained them would have been a fabric container, possibly decorated with mystical motifs, but we may only assume this to be the case as no further references are made to it.
�He assured Jack they were Holy beans which would, if he planted them and had faith in the Lord, bring him and his mother great wealth and make him a man of high regard throughout the land, and that he and his children and his children�s children would prosper in the land for as long as they remembered that they owed it all to the Lord.�
The prophet who played so central a part in these events may well have been Ezekiah, a renowned plantsman.
�Jack handed over the cow and hurried back home, and when he had explained to his mother why he had returned so soon, she seized the bag of beans, hurled them out of the window and boxed his ears for being a gullible little fool.�
Further reading shows that the beans landed on soil in the garden, so we may assume the window was open, or alternatively that there was no glass in it.
�That night the holy beans took root, and they grew and they grew and they grew until they reached the heavens.�
We know that the term �heaven,� when used by authors of this period with a lower case �h,� always referred to the clouds.
�Next morning Jack saw what had happened, and despite the pleadings of his mother, began to climb the beanstalks, and he didn�t stop until he reached the heavens.�
We can take it from this that although indolent, he was very fit.
�He there found himself in the abode of a demon who awoke from a deep slumber and cried aloud: �Fee Fie Fo Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman!�
This translation from the original Greek is without doubt correct, proving that Jack was not French, as some commentators - especially French ones - have quite spuriously claimed.
(NB Inclusion in the account of a goose which laid golden eggs and which Jack stole are later additions, attributable to the �Golden Goose Heresy,� rife in 4th century BC Babylon.)
�Jack quickly descended the beanstalk, pursued by the demon, and upon reaching the ground, he called for an axe with which he chopped through the beanstalks so that the demon fell and perished.
When the news was broadcast in the country around...�
This would have been done by word of mouth rather than CNN,
�people came from far and near to view the corpse of the demon and to give thanks to the Lord for their deliverance, and it came to pass that the King knighted Jack and gave him a castle and much land and the hand of his daughter in marriage, and he and the princess and their children and Jack�s mother lived happily ever after.�
This last statement is evidence that they all became immortal.

Tomorrow: �Are contradictions identified by some commentators in the account of Cinderalla substantiated by a textual analysis, or may we assume that they are made from a rejectionist standpoint?�

Quetzal

Well done. I have rarely seen a better piece of Goosean exegesis. I'm looking forward to the Cinderella concordance.