hands or tails

Call it: hands or tails

Designing the human body, most of us would have done better than this. I guess it was God’s first time, although it’s an awfully big universe with, what was that number, our Milky Way galaxy has 100 billion star systems that might support life. Scientists’ guesses on how many have life range from 10,000 to 1 million.* That’s just here in our own galaxy and there are what another hundred billion or so galaxies in this universe alone? Anyway, for one thing, typical this morning was carrying a computer in one hand and a cup of hot, black coffee in the other, and needing a third hand to open the doors. Two isn’t enough, I would have given us three arms.

Or maybe keep the prehensile tail that Linda’s maternal ancestors had, it would have been fine for holding the laptop just now. I think I like the idea of the tail better than three arms, though a third arm could have all thumbs. It’s just a thought.

For a Florida native, it’s not too bad out here on the front porch waiting for the PCNH carrier to drive by. 76F and 94%. Weather 32401 shows wind 2 mph, which would be nice, but it’s not getting up here, pretty still. I’m thinking of our Bible Seminar yesterday, we read two of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas, 64 and 65, and discussed them. Each one is very like a pericope in the synoptics, one from Mark that also shows up in Matthew and Luke, the other only in Luke and Matthew, so at least hypothetically from Q. In both cases Thomas is simpler. The scholars we were considering, who served on the Jesus Seminar, were thinking that these two sayings in Thomas may be closer to what Jesus actually said, especially considering that in the synoptics the stories have been allegorized, Matthew more than the others. An interesting and fun session. And Thomas, basically, redeemed the two like stories in the synoptics from the school that said they were later additions of the budding Church. We closed Thomas and next time will look at the extra-canonical Gospel of Peter.

I didn’t think of it, but Peter is so short that the group might also like to check out the Gospel or Mary or the Gospel of Judas. And of course there’s that snippet that got so much attention a year or so ago, alluding to the wife of Jesus, we could glance at that.

Eventually we’ll get to the canonical Gospel of Mark, and when we do the group may be interested in so-called Secret Mark, which if legitimate answers a couple of questions about canonical Mark. We’ll see.

You know, there is the faintest stirring of air out here this morning, still too dark to see whether leaves are moving, but I can feel it. Nice.

Or maybe four arms, why didn’t the Creator think of that? The octopus has eight limbs and insects six, there’s no reason we couldn’t have had. I’d have to buy all new shirts though.

* Thanks for the statistics, Norm. I wondered who got my share too.