Misquoting Jesus...

A young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to helping the other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the church by hand.

He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript. So, the new monk goes to the head abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up! In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

The head monk, says, "We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son."
He goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery
where the original manuscripts are held as archives in a locked
vault that hasn't been opened for hundreds of years. Hours go
by and nobody sees the old abbot.

So, the young monk gets worried and goes down to look for him. He sees him banging his head against the wall and wailing,
"We missed the "R" ! We missed the "R" !

His forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is crying
uncontrollably. The young monk asks the old abbot, "What's wrong, father?"

With A choking voice, the old abbot replies, "The word was...
CELEBRATE!!!"

Misquoting Jesus is actually the title of a book I've been reading. It talks about the very thing this joke is about. Who knows what the Bible actually said at the beginning? A perfect example that is happening right now is the christianists taking and quoting chapter and verse out of context. It's just another version of Misquoting Jesus. Click on the post title to find out more about the book.