The Last Testament: A Memoir (70 page)

David cheated.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

Jesus’s pre-Beatitudes checklist for the Sermon on the Mount. He later told me he calmed his nerves by picturing everybody naked, and baptized.

Whenever my son seeth one of these, he blesseth the car with an additional 3 mpg.

The Holy Grail. Photograph courtesy of the Mel Gibson Collection.

Theological debate among the twelve apostles often grew heated. Here, Bartholomew (Henry Fonda) argues a finer point of the doctrine of transubstantiation with Simon the Zealot (Lee J. Cobb).

They never show my son reading, or playing catch, or fishing. No. Always with the Crucifixion.

This is as close to an image of Muhammad as Simon & Schuster would let me include. I said, “What’s the big deal?” They said, “God, trust us on this one.
”

The Crusades were wholesome high jinks for all involved!

Martin Luther King Jr. and Martin Luther. I always forget which one gave his life in the name of love and which one wanted all Jews put to work as agricultural slave labor.

James Madison. He begged me to add the Ten Commandments to the Constitution. I said, “No, make it ten amendments, and call it the Bill of Rights.” He said, “OK, but that’s a stupid fucking idea.
”

Charles Darwin. He himself “evolved” . . . into being dead. Zing!