Submitted to Hull Calendar

The roughly bimonthly calendar wants some historical content and I was given the task to tell of its origins.

Although the Elizabethan Church intended to retain and contain its Puritans, the yo-yo of liberty under Cromwell and then the Restoration in 1660 meant that many Puritans could not accept reintegration via assent to the Book of Common Prayer in 1662.

What is Puritan religion? It is a belief in God already knowing your salvation or damnation. They were trinitarians. Many a Puritan looked for and demonstrated signs of personal salvation, and this was through godly living. You might be favoured with a large income, but you didn't consume. Many were merchants, and made good early capitalists by preferring to invest than consume, and they also built charities. But they also rejected earthly displays of being religious in favour of a severe simplicty in worship.

The Presbyterian Puritans believed in the broad parish Church, not in the supremacy of the local congregation like the Independents, and they would have preferred to stay in the Church of England.

Then the Declaration of Indulgence of 1672 (for only a year) allowed licensed congregations to meet legally. Hull's libertarian governor (the Duke of Monmouth) made the city a haven for outcasts.

The Puritan Samuel Charles, ordained in 1655 and ejected at Mickleover in 1662, came to Hull and began his ministry when two meeting houses (Blackfriargate, a chapel, and Richard Barnes' house where Joseph Wilson preached) merged. They formed one congregation at Bowl Alley Lane in Christopher Fanthrope's house in 1680.

The repressive Lord Plymouth replaced the the Duke of Monmouth in 1682. This soon led to much fear. When in 1685 the Duke of Monmouth was discovered and executed, many non-conformists, including Leonard Chamberlain, were put under house arrest and feared for their lives.

However, another Declaration of Indulgence was issued in 1687 to Roman Catholics and non-conformists. Bowl Alley Lane was reopened and the Reverend Charles returned. Then William of Orange replaced James II and Protestant liberties were granted in the 1689 Act of Toleration.

The congregation left Christopher Fanthrope's house for a new chapel built by 1693. The Trust Deed of 1689 under his name gives no doctrines to be preached: only the worship of God and the administration of the Sacrament. They relied on their Bibles. Chapels built in this period copied their style from the Halls of the London Merchants' Companies. They had pan-tile roofs, strong benches and alleys between them. Self-government by trustees reflected the Gilds own governing system too. Samuel Charles died and the next minister, Reverend John Billingsley, appointed 1694, was the son of an ejected minister.

The Octagonal chapel in Bowlalley Lane Chapel was not built until 1803, and three years later the first declared Unitarian minister, William Severn, friend of John Wesley and ex-Wesleyan, took office. Unitarianism was still, as such, illegal until 1813.

Puritan faith changed because it was difficult for wealthy trust leaders to retain a severe and disciplined faith, and secondly they allowed their ministers to be their own preachers of religion. Ministers had to train in the dissenters' academies that were seedbeds for different ideas of biblical interpretation, and English Presbyterian chapels did not demand assent to credal declarations of membership. You rented your pew and the minister preached. Thus they evolved and later there was a new distinct movement that argued that the doctrine of the Trinity was not in the Bible; thus an identified Unitarianism inhabited Presbyterian chapels.

YUU at Hull

It was a day session at the Yorkshire Unitarian Union quarterly meeting at Hull. I was there from 10:30 as people gathered until 17:30 as most were leaving, many Hull folks clearing up.

The morning session was about Unitarian Approaches to Easter, especially for preachers, and I thought that would be interesting. Then the national General Assembly President would lead a session and then would come the business meeting.

I was sat alongside at least one enthusiastic chap from outside the YUU meeting for the morning session, so the interest in the potential of the session attracted in others. However, I was a little disappointed. I suppose I thought it would be a critical investigation of Easter, so that we would look at Easter say in a service and tackle it differently from those under an obligation to uphold orthodoxy (at least in public). But the session started with who comes to Unitarian churches, and the list included sceptics, rational Christians, Mystical or Gnostic Christians, Christian atheists/ agnostics, Spiritual humanists, Buddhsits, Pagans, Radical Catholics, various seekers. So it was a question of relating to them, or some of them, the preacher retaining the sense of self-integrity while reaching out to the congregation as is in each case.

My contribution was you can describe Easter, like in phenomenological RE, or critically examine it, and some of us wanted to get into details, while others said you can say focus on all sorts who take on the system. The Pagan Easter takes place at Christmas, someone well said, in terms of death and new beginnings. It sort of moved from rotating around these issues, and I'm not convinced by an apparent new flexibility of science on matters of death and life, to a video of fluffy nice type images associated with coming back to life and births, which may or may not be appropriate. Easter ought to relate to the depressed in a congregation as well as those who can see hope ahead, it was said.

I just think that whilst a worship service is there to bring people together and give a wide content, the subject of Easter offers Unitarians an opportunity to tackle what doesn't add up in the claimed Easter story; nor was there a sense (for me) of people going from this meeting to say, "Humm, I can do this in Easter services soon." I won't be doing an Easter service this year. My service is one day after the birth of the prophet Muhammad. Now that could be interesting. Already, then, cue the music of Yusuf Islam and The Beloved, but perhaps not what Yusuf would say.

Then after some snack came a well appreciated meditative devotion presented by a Hull member (with a faith stance of an Eastern direction, but he knows how to speak and lead as he does so a yoga group).

A 'Cairns and Candles' session was led by the GA President. The session used a book from 1904 about a Yorkshire Unitarian Union County Bazaar to support churches and it giving information about them at that time. In 2014 the YUU marks its bicentenary, but many Yorkshire congregations (like Hull) have origins in the 1662 Great Ejection of about 1700 Calvinist ministers from the Church of England. They met under persecution in houses and the Declaration of Indulgence allowed some chapels to appear, and then trinitarians were free to organise (with social penalties) from the 1689 Act of Toleration. Trust Deeds laid down few formal limitations but they all assumed trinitarian worship. The first Hull minister fasted on the day of his ejection each year. Some churches did begin later and as a result of disgruntled Methodists in one case and the Unitarian Domestic Mission in another (and assisting others). Scarborough started as a temperance hall in 1871.

So people from each congregation or for another congregation relayed a memory they had to build a cairn from one stone each. The cairn isn't just historical but a means to guide the way ahead. The point was made at the end of this part that not only do people come to the Unitarians from Christianity but also from an older and different Unitarianism, so that now it develops more towards a Many Beliefs One Faith position, not just accommodating but valuing persons. Also many people well up on Internet religion haven't the skills to give and take within a real congregation, whereas many in a congregation perhaps need to get Internet skills and on to its religion too.

The candles part was then hopes for the future per congregation. For example York was down to 6 or 7 people and now has 39, and there are practical and idealistic hopes for the future. Hull could improve its building inside and be more attractive outside. There was also a general hope for more tolerance in religion, a reference by one to Don Cupitt's apparent view that fundamentalism in Islam and Christianity is a passing phase.

In a general discussion but as much presenting I mentioned my participation in electronic communication and to a wider group of people. I said I notice quite positive statements about the Unitarians and this at a time of quite some flux, especially some pessimism about the behaviour in the bureaucracy of the Church of England and also the transience and questioning the sensibility of fringe Catholics, and that there is a lot of shaking out to take place in time to come.

Nevertheless, there was and going into the business meeting something of the reality of things. Pudsey is closing and that's it. Pudsey had asked for responses from the General Assembly again and again and seemed to get nothing. The process had been traumatic, and the people would remain friends but would not seek new accommodation and all the business of setting up. The General Assembly only seemed to take an interest when the remaining trust money was likely, but the trustees will distribute that. But there is good too - new people in the movement preaching and the YUU can give concrete support towards training. There is also the 50th year of Send a Child to Hucklow that gives children holidays that would otherwise miss out. This wants to raise £50,000 this year.

There was concern too for the non-participation of Leeds in YUU affairs, and then what was perhaps the (small?) elephant in the room. What looked like being passed by to me but was raised late on produced the most lively exchanges. Without going into details here, suffice it to say that Unitarian churches organise their own oversight, as oversight has different and specific meanings in church life. As congregations arrange their ministerial and other oversight, alone or associating as independent gatherings, no one person simply announces oversight of collections of congregations and such claims are bogus. Also, Unitarians have Lay Persons in Charge and Lay Pastors, and Ministers are recognised on the GA Roll. The GA cannot interfere in what congregations decide to do, but it does have a Roll of Ministers and that is the connection in the recognition of ministers. Various factual correspondences, hopefully persuasive, will be written.

And then followed the all important provided tea and chat: I mainly seemed to be talking about Florence Nightingale, with two who knew better than me, an Anglican of a lower sort according to a supporter of a higher sort, surely a lesbian, a statistician and somone who laid in her bed for later life. Also of course early members of our congregations were very anti-Socininian, and yet Socinians were tolerated better than Unitarians for opinions, but in 1813 toleration for Unitarians was followed by chapels suddenly declaring the name (although it took until 1844 to secure the trust funds via the Open Trust myth as used in Parliament).

Hot Air and Cold Bodies

Update

No one can read Martin Reynolds' three continuous comments without thinking that in Wales this chap once used to be a friendly neighbour of the here accused Rowan Williams; what Martin Reynolds says is direct and devastating (and surely of 'in the know'), whereas folks like me are writing only on the lines of general principles after so many dubious press reports (in the usual 'not in the know' fashion).

Original

Original reports regarding Jeffrey John and potential legal action were worth ignoring in their interpretation at least, being caught up in notions of ambition up a hierarchy. Is it not the substance of the matter about the fact that a set of rules is created (that are allowed under an exemption from the Equality Act) and yet even these are applied with additional and distasteful discrimination? Why is there no equivalent inquiry of a heterosexual unmarried but partnered as to their current sexual conduct and repentance of previous sexual activity?

And in a credal faith, a mistake is made that the more you believe of the list the more religious you are, and the more you add to the list the more religious you are. So the attitude of discrimination assumes that its existence is evidence of religiosity whereas those who seek equality display secular acceptability. The inclusivity of the widest human fellowship is itself a religious attitude.

Jesus Talking

So what language/s did Jesus speak? The first and most obvious answer is Aramaic, related to Hebrew but not Hebrew, though Hebrew is one language of scriptures. His dialect would have been Galilean Aramaic, a bit rough at the edges, and also regarding Peter. The question is, though, did he speak any other language?

Jews in dispersal used Koine as a common language between them, whatever else they spoke. Many came together each year as Passover. There are a number of doubful meetings between Jesus and others that, with no translator, would have meant a necessity of him speaking Koine, the common Greek of the time. Despite his whole mission being of Jewish culture and end-time, and his focus upon them, there were suggested meetings between him and some Gentiles. No Roman centurion would have spoken Aramaic, though Matthew 8:5-13 is unlikely to be historical. One rather doubts much of the sequences leading to the execution, as if Pilate could be bothered. But again direct speech needs Koine. If they did, soldiers mocking Jesus at the cross would have spoken in Koine. But before all this, any meetings with Gentiles - like the woman who caused him a rethink - meant speaking the general language of the whole region and beyond.

The Septuagint is the Greek language Bible, as not everyone could understand Hebrew. It is possible that some sayings originated in Greek.

So we know Jesus used Aramaic; he might have understood Hebrew, but he probably did also understand Koine. Jesus was a builder, but in family terms he was the one who got religion more than most, and would have studied scriptures the most, and for that needed communication and languages. In joining John the Baptist's (possibly related) group and then leading it after his demise, he needed to communicate with other Jews and possibly even some Gentiles and to do that Koine was necessary.

See Campbell, Steuart (1996), The Rise and Fall of Jesus: the Ultimate Explanation for the Origin of Christianity, Edinburgh: Explicit Books, 58-59.

Jesus at the Jobcentre

Was Jesus a carpenter that got religion? I suggest carpenter is too narrow and that he also did a stint as a steward. Yes, today you'd think of stone and brick as well as wood and perhaps the steward doing tea and coffee on Network Rail or even on the HS2 to come in 14 years (wnhen others will be building maglevs). So the question is about whether Jesus was a builder and can he fix it yes he can.

For a time I liked the idea that Jesus as a carpenter was 'Tekton', a Greek mistranslation of the Aramaic 'Naggar' which can be both carpenter or scholar, and thus Jesus was actually a scholar. But no. Such is against the evidence of given metaphors in the gospels and that in the Septuagint it comes from the Hebrew charash meaning craftsman. Tekton is an artificer but archi-tekton is a master-builder and the use of tekton in the Septuagint is in the context of the building trade.

He'll have been self-employed like many of those who became his disciples. Good one for the new and coming right wing New Testament.

In Palestine at the time, houses were built of sun dried mud or clay on a stone foundation. The stones were rough, except for the corner stone that was made squared off. Timbers in walls may have been inserted to keep the walls supported as they dried off unwarped; timbers were used on flat rooves with coverings of lathing and plaster. Thus a builder handled stone, wood, plaster and bricks, being a mason and carpenter.

The reason Jesus gets called a carpenter is likely because the Authorised Version of the Bible translates more narrowly according to timber framed houses of its own day with a greater division of labour.

Really? Well, look at the metaphors. Onlookers will mock the person who lays down the foundations but can't finish the job in building a tower, says Jesus. There is a tower in a vineyard. There is a house built on sand compared with a house built on rock. Jesus's assebly will be built on stone, and the stone the builders rejected will be made into the corner stone (those Kingdom reversals again).

The best one though is the mote and the beam. Builders went about carrying beams of wood on their shoulders. Look out, they might say, and people certainly did. But someone might be rubbing their eye with a splinter in it, and thus not see the beam about to clobber them in the face. A nice almost binary opposite for Jesus to play with.

The metaphors are not from carpentry: they are from building, and so Jesus becomes the archetypal and indeed reversal by theology Bob the Builder.

But a steward, even a bar steward (careful!)? This is based around the apparent first miracle, and only in John's Gospel, of water becoming wine and the wine getting better later in the event. It fulfils no scriptural (Hebrew Bible) purpose in messianic times, and (as important, given mistakes) that John does not say it does. So it is presumably based on something happening, an event recalled that adds in to the early Church theology of Jesus.

One speculation has been that it was Jesus's own wedding, but there is no need for a rabbi to be married and nor a reason that must follow to suppress or make secret his marriage as such. Not in John's Gospel anyway. Jesus's mother is present, unusually, as the family was abandoned during his ministry; Cana is close to Capernaum (speculating as Jesus's birth place and home), and given that the steward of the wine would be bt custom a friend or relative of the family getting married then Jesus could well have been doing that job as organised by his mum (or mum and dad). Mum turns to Jesus about the wine running out, and this is the basis of his job.

But the builder might well be a bit of a newbie doing the stewarding job. Stewarding means oganising the servants doing the heavy lifting. The wine that most common people drank at that time was a pretty horrible vinegary stuff, as in John's gospel elsewhere, where water was added as of need and made it worse. The story starts with water going into the big pots, but of course it all will have started with undiluted wine sitting in them so high for some time and forgotten about regarding the start of the celebrations. Water gets tipped in at the beginning, and wine comes out in the usual kind. In that it gets better simply means tipping in some mixture to appear to reverse the usual diluting as time went on.

Theologically it has come to be another of those ethical reversals, so things get better as the Kingdom of God nears and will come.

See Campbell, Steuart (1996), The Rise and Fall of Jesus: the Ultimate Explanation for the Origin of Christianity, Edinburgh: Explicit Books, 57-58 and 115-117.

Geoff Sedman

Geoff Sedman, who I always called Mr Sedman, has died. He had a business in Chanterlands Avenue, Hull, dealing with Disc Jockey and Public Address systems.

In 2010 the church gave me the task of putting in a sound system. Up to that point CDs as available were being put into CD players and then subsequently they were prepared by me but into a domestic machine with me, the equipment and its speakers hidden behind a curtain. I wanted the church to install a stereo high quality music system.

Now one could either go and buy something and make every mistake, as I'm afraid had been done with yet another domestic player, or go to a shop where they look after you. There was an obvious shop to visit, but there you also pay through the nose.

It was by chance that near to my just moved building society branch there was a Disc Jockey and Public Address equipment repair shop, and so I went in and met Mr Geoff Sedman. Very soon I realised he was the man for the job because he knew his equipment and would sell and install. I went in a number of times and I talked and he listened and advised. I told him how we did what we did, what was wanted, and in high quality stereo. He arranged to come down to the church and look it over, and indeed arranged to install it with assistance. The powerful four speaker, mixer, dual CD system was his recommendation and taken. As we started with it, and the microphone was feeding back, he paid attention to that to come down again as part of replacing it. The point was that he engineered the microphone to be radio connected and free of feedback even when the slider is fully up: the result is people are often away from the microphone and being amplified, and yet nearby speakers are not feeding back. In fact I was only just now talking about a second microphone to be used for the notices or by me for 'how to sing this'; With Mr Sedman's death I shall have to remember what he said and whjen agreed try to purchase elsewhere - the business is simply to fold - and I must get it right.

Friday 6th I'd just dropped off a church member and made my way to Chanterlands Avenue, parked and saw the notice that due to bereavement the business was closing down and to ring a number. So I went to the building society and also asked to borrow a pen, which they said I could keep, and then went to write down the number. I thought I might be ringing Mr Sedman himself and a sudden decision to stop, though I suspected it might be his death. As I wrote the number, the next door newsagent came out and said it was he who had died, on Tuesday, and we agreed that he was very good at what he did.

At home I rang the number and said that I visited something like once a fortnight for chats. I'd given him a Freeview box which he used for a large TV in a workshop, and he was looking at a DAB radio either to tell me how to work it or to dump it. She was looking at her father's stock and wondering what was whose. So I was given the time of the funeral, just down the road, in the small chapel at 3:20 Thursday.

What I liked about Mr Sedman in our both electronics and wide ranging chats was that he investigated what was true. In his fast moving area of business, he would open up equipment and find out what was wrong and put it right if possible. So customers would come in and say what they thought was wrong but frequently it was something quite different causing the fault. And of course often items were almost built to go wrong after say fifteen months (as he once put it) and there was no purpose in repair. But he dealt with big systems like hefty speakers and mixers, and heavy lights. With him I even talked about installing video and computer input. For myself there has been the issue of a tape player not playing at quite the right speed, and he did say if I bought a simple player from him (with all the right inputs and outputs) it would be exactly right - except cassette tapes are themselves unreliable. He knew about computer use to edit and transfer. We joked about people who buy fancy packs to make these transfers whereas it's all available via a few wires and free software.

He continued to ask how the speaker system was doing, and there was always the reassurance that if there was a problem he would be on to it, and he could supervise any extension.

But all that depends on life, and once life is gone that knowledge is gone too. So is another kind of hub. He would shake his head at some of the eccentrics who turned up at his shop, never to buy anything. The DJ world and people fiddling with equipment draws in the long haired and bald male and some I met with the strangest of opinions. He constantly wondered where they came from. He seemed to treat me differently, but I bet I was just one more eccentric. He liked rational thought and not taking the obvious common view. For example, we discussed the level of freedom in Russia with some fidelity, as in it being much freer now but cut off points in the arena where Putin's power matters. These chats really were wide ranging. Religion as commonly given was about how people thought long ago, he stated, and he realised that I agreed with him. So I talked about the sociology of knowledge. I never made any attempt to ask him to try out the Unitarians; the simple fact is if he'd wanted to come along he'd have done so. The last time we met and the phone went I said I'd go, but he said, "Are you going?" So I said OK I'd stay and ended up being there an hour. I don't know who needed to stand and lean on his PA speakers more, him or me, but he often cleared a seat so I could sit down, and from there the conversation went on.

It'll be interesting to see whether any other odd-bods turn up at his funeral. There must be a DJ community that rotated around his shop, even if they are all individuals.

So there we are: Geoff Sedman, one of the little people in this world who kept up with change (he kept learning), has made a practical difference by changing things for the better in a concrete manner.

The Right Wing Bible: Economic Miracle Passages

What an excellent idea, the best since someone produced The Golden Treasury of the Bible. It is an intended, conservative-political (as understood in the United States) rewrite of the Bible.

Translation should avoid a liberal bias
Assert free market principles (e.g. in parables)
Translate into current conservative terms (as language changes)
Remove apparently later social and liberal content
Use political terms understood today
Affirm hell and the devil Use terms of addiction
Assert open minded witness approach, especially Mark and John (as writers)
Remove gender inclusive language
Raise the reading level
Economy of words and consistent words

Peculiarly, what Americans call Conservative, we call Manchester or Economic Liberal, so that what they are against is the Social Liberal, the Progressive and Social Democracy. Conservatism in our country has been the preservation of traditions, and not to remove what works: the Thatcher government was not Conservative and certainly not One Nation Conservative, but Economic Liberal.

One of the problems now is that we have Conservative Party David Cameron in coalition with Orange Liberal (towards the Economic Liberal) Nick Clegg, though Clegg leads a mainly Social Liberal party. At the last Liberal Democrat conference he kept referring to liberals and liberalism as if the Social Democrats had never merged with the Liberal Party, and they were not exactly left wing and liberals have a successive progressive tradition.

The stupidity of the project applied to the Bible is that such thought in it is precisely NOT the thought forms of our present day. (Was it not Thomas Jefferson who produced a Deist Bible with miracles removed? What a plonker!)

According to Economic Liberals, the True Economic Bible [I shall call it] includes these messages:

By choosing a manger for his birth, Jesus's parents showed how poor people can afford cut-price accommodation. Let's face it, there is Travelodge. Animals can keep the poor warm. Also claiming that only the mother was a parent reduced the liabilities of the working father but he still took responsibility and provided maintenance. He's not like today's absent fathers and they do the deed! Non-dad Joseph of course made the crib himself and produced some repairs to the stable in barter for their stay.

The birth was in Bethlehem so that Joseph and Mary could register as right wing voters, and they ran from the Stalinist Herod - but had Jesus been a bit older they'd have faced him down.

The boy got himself a private education amongst the best RE teachers; so he showed initiative.

When Jesus was a youth, Uncle Joseph of Arimathea gave him a thorough training in self-reliance on a boat travelling to Britain, and thus Jesus established the first Christian church here; his non-dad also gave him a trade as a builder, so that all ministers of religion should be self-reliant.

Jesus was hopeless in his home town and it is quite right that the young should travel away to seek their life's fame and fortune. Yes, he did heal the paralytic in Capernaum who went on to compete in the regular Olympic Games. Jesus also healed a paralytic at Bethesda, which is proof that he visited North Wales along with other more southern parts of Britain. Bethesda of course has a non-conformist chapel free of left wing ritualism.

Jesus collected disciples from among the self-employed and hard working population. No one on benefit joined Jesus's crew.

By turning water into wine Jesus saved the sponsors of the wedding party an unnecessary expense. He saved the best until last so that those who remembered the drink when more sober went out next time to buy cheaper plonk. If Jesus was bodily alive today he would supply 'Tesco Value' wine that, when drunk in quantity, would be become better than the best French wine - and that would teach the European Union a thing or two for pursuing socialised capitalism.

Mary Magdalene paid her own way, and the boys showed how important it was to have a domestic female servant so that they could concentrate on doing the external work. She lit the fires, did the cooking and provided other favours. She thus made sure that when Jesus said he loved John, he meant only that John was just his best mate and that they could play the divine game of golf together (where Jesus resisted temptation and did not get a hole in one every time).

The story of the five loaves and two fishes demonstrates about cutting back on welfare for the poor: let them eat the barest minimum; indeed, the best welfare is that which fills the baskets back up again. Marie Antoinette was an avid reader of the True Economic Bible but the French forgot all about it when it came to setting up the European Union.

When Jesus walked on water it saved him having to hire a boat and it was quicker: Jesus shifted across that lake faster than Roadrunner. It demonstrates not having to rely on others for oil.

Jesus showed through his healing that there was no need for a National Health Service, or at least it could be privatised to volunteers like him (who did it for free or small donations). Jesus even opened his own Ear, Nose, Eye, Throat, Foot and Demons consultancy, showing the importance of the unpaid sector. He saved others and himself much on National Insurance and private insurance and then there was the miracle of the crowned teeth.

Jesus showed the strength of voluntary education when the Gentile woman seeking some medicine for her daughter and not a kennel for a dog changed his mind and he learnt something new. Educators have used this incident as a definition of learning ever since.

Jesus advocated modern agricultural methods by having the swine jump off the cliff all at once. Cursing the fig tree speeded up recycling agricultural waste for next season's manure.

Jesus produced the miracle of the spring so that Zebedee so equipped could bounce into The Magic Roundabout.

Jesus produced the miracle of camels walking through the eyes of needles and told business men to go and do thou likewise (he particularly liked talking in King James English).

Jesus said, "My Kingdom, My Kingdom, a horse for my Kingdom," and so he got a good deal with Mr Shanks and thus walked throughout his mission except for the donkey bit.

Jesus showed how to save on heating bills by eating some Ready Brek and climbing a mountain, where he glowed and kept everyone warm.

Jesus picked up a small piece of stone and, making it square, pushed it into a wall after which lots of coins with Caesar's head appeared and he said Caesar should do what Caesar does but actually do a lot less and then there could be more one armed bandits.

Jesus knowingly arranged with Judas the collection of thirty pieces of silver so that it fulfilled a biblical prophecy, and then this helped towards court costs and thus shows no need for Legal Aid.

Jesus was an inventor, like he produced the first superglue as when a disciple chopped a soldier's ear off and Jesus stuck it back on. This is an example of producing added value, as from then on the all important military had better treatment for wounds.

Resurrection was a way to avoid the effects of injuries (and insurance claims against the Romans, lots of adverts at the time) and save on health costs, extending his own life. Not being selfish, Jesus had raised a few others too, although they may have gone on to die again.

Being resurrected saved the tomb space for someone else, and so the wealthy Uncle Joseph of Arimathea could collect some death rent from another occupant's family. This is an efficient use of space.

When the boat caught a lot of fish on one side this was a principle of making a clear economic choice for which there was a major increase in efficiency. Earlier, in a remarkable miracle called 'paying your way', a fish actually paid Jesus for being caught when it produced a coin in its mouth.

The Ascension was a cost free way to dispose of the transformed body and an example again of self-reliance. It is also an example for a privatised space programme to replace NASA.

But then, of course, parables are meant to be flexible and mean what you take them to mean.