2006-04-11 - 3:34 a.m.
The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Seventh Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
| Level | Score |
|---|---|
| Purgatory (Repenting Believers) | Very Low |
| Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers) | Very Low |
| Level 2 (Lustful) | Very High |
| Level 3 (Gluttonous) | High |
| Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious) | Low |
| Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy) | Very High |
| Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics) | Very High |
| Level 7 (Violent) | Extreme |
| Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers) | High |
| Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous) | Moderate |
Take the Dante's Inferno Test
Did you see my link to the “Where Are You In Dante’s Inferno” test? This is my new favorite thing, I must tell you. I wish to know into which bowge all of you shall fit! When you take the multiple choice test, do be careful about admitting that you enjoy gay sex. You see, the worse the sin you commit, the deeper you go.
Thus, even if you are guilty of robbery and paganism and eating pork on Yom Kippur, the moment you click the “I am fond of gay sex” button, there you go: Straight to Level Seven This is where the sodomites are tortured for eternity, you see. That is, by the way, where I am. In the middle of the Sodomites’ Desert, dancing about on the sands that scorch my faggy feet. Owch!
And isn’t it ironic that this weekend just happens to be the White Party in Palm Springs? How suitable! Is it possible that all those boys shlepping out to the middle of the desert are just prepping for their days and nights of eternal damnation in the Great Desert of Hell? On the other hand, is it possible that Hell itself is going to be some kind of an enormous party? If all the fags got together in one place – even if it were the desert of the sodomites – there is no way you could not start a party.
It makes you realize: Hell as a concept just doesn’t work. It doesn’t take into account the fact that if you put folks into an unpleasant place, they just ain’t gonna stay there. Drop me into a lake of human excrement – which is another place that the Dante’s Inferno Test tells me that I belong – or into the center of a gigantic pit of ice, and I am just going to crawl out. I mean, who is going to stay there? Seriously: What’s the worst thing you’re gonna do – send me to Hell?
And if there is, in fact, some reason or force keeping one trapped in Hell, well, it is just human nature that folks will just make the best of it. I figure that the burning sands of the sodomites will be one heck of a party. It will be like the White Party. And I’d bet the same holds true for even the place where the adulterers are blown in fierce, eternal winds. That one will just be like Plato’s Retreat in the Catskills.
It occurs to me that someone should really make a lovely big budget version of Dante’s Inferno, vividly depicting all the various pits and torments, and populating the film with cameos from major stars. Who wouldn’t want to see a scene in which Angalina Jolie and Brad Pitt are not blown in an eternal wind? Or a scene in which Whoopi Goldberg is plunked head first into a barrel, with flames burning on the soles of her feet?
Or maybe one in which President Bush is glimpsed, buried deep within a lake of ice, moaning in eternal misery. Oh what fun! The possibilities are endless. I wish I could hip pocket option Dante myself. It’s just the fact that people who make movies are so totally illiterate these days that no one has thought of doing such a clever thing.
Meanwhile, just to ensure the fact that I deserve to be even deeper in Hell than Level Seven, I have been completely absorbed by this discovery of “The Gospel According to Judas.” Who could not be fascinated by this story? To me, it seems like the most amazing religious find of our time.
And for the life of me I don’t understand why the bona fide Catholics and Evangelical Christians are not shrieking and howling and cackling like scorched cats. They should be accusing the National Geographic, which has just translated the document and published it on the net, of being The Great and Unholy Satan. They should be sputtering that the document is an obiovus forgery, written last week by Hilary Clinton and John Kerry in an attempt to undermine Christianity and God.
Why are they not desperately trying to downplay this scandalous document, which is essentially a smoking gun that utterly undercuts most of the basic Christian tenets? Why aren’t they? I’ll tell you: Because they can’t. Because they have proven that this secret text, lost for thousands of years, is the genuine article.
It was found in an Egyptian cave in the 1970s, and has been authoritatively dated and translated as being written at about the same time as the other gospels. The text was culled from the original Bible by the early Christian leaders, who suppressed it, decreeing that its message of a thinking, non-conformist Judas, who was asked and ordered by Jesus to turn him in, is heresy, totally at odds with the Jesuit idea that Judas is just an evil beast who betrayed Jesus out of diabolical, sinning spite.
“The Gospel According to Judas” is full of startling and bizarre revelations that fascinatingly turn much of Christian doctrine on its head. Most interestingly to me is the presentation of Jesus as something of a babbling nutjob. No offense. But what else can you say, when Judas asks him a simple question about what good is it to be his disciple, and Jesus blithers and babbles.
Quoth Jesus, the holy one, “Adamas was in the first luminous cloud that no angel has seen among all those called God. He made the incorruptible generation of Seth appear! The seventy two luminaries themselves made three hundred sixty luminaries appear, in accordance with the will of the Spirit, and their number would be five for each! And then Saklas said to his angels, ‘let us create a human being after the likeness and after the image.’ They fashioned Adam and his wife Eve, who is called, in the cloud, Zoe!”
It’s also kind of funky, I think, that the “Gospel According to Judas” posits a Jesus who has a decidedly quirky sense of humor. I don’t know if you are aware, but in the Middle Ages, debate raged over the concept of whether Christ liked a good joke, as such a blasphemous idea suggested that God himself didn’t take the world so seriously. This would imply that a life of penitence, austerity, and ascetism really wasn’t necessary – the inference being that you could serve God just as well by having a nice appletini and enjoying the show at Yuk Yuk’s Stand Up Cabaret as you could be wearing a hair shirt, stapling your penis to your inner thigh, and taking vows of chastity.
Now, don’t get me wrong. The “Gospel According to Judas” suggests that Jesus’s sense of humor is kind of lousy. He’s sort of mean spirited, laughs at the wrong places in his jokes, and what strikes him as being funny just isn’t. I mean, seriously. It’s all whoopee cushions at the Last Supper and throwing a rubber chicken at the Mary Magdalene.
At one point, Jesus is snickering at his bewildered disciples, who are so perturbed, they ask, “Master, why are you laughing at our prayer of Thanksgiving? We have done what is right!”
And Jesus, still giggling, responds, “I am not laughing at you. You are doing this because of your own will!” You see? It’s a joke! Jesus thinks it’s funny! He’s making a ‘Ha Ha!’ Not a good one, but really, you mustn’t expect much from him. After all, the devil is the guy who invented comedy.
Elsewhere, the disciples asks Jesus, “What is the great generation that is superior to us and holier than us, that is not now in thewse realms?”
To quote the “Gospel According to Judas”: “When Jesus heard this, he laughed and said to them, “Why are you thinking about the strong and holy generation? Truly I say to you, no one born of this aeon will see that generation, and no host of angels of the stars will rule over that generation, and no mortal birth can associate with it!” So you see: Jesus is using irony, a highly sophisticated humorous form.
And then, here’s a more extended passage, culled from a scene in which Jesus is on one of his surreal jags:
“’When Saklas completes the span of time assigned to him, the first star will appear with the generations and they will finish what they said they would do! Then they will fornicate in my name and slay their children and they will...’ After that Jesus laughed.
Judas said, ‘Master, why are you laughing at us?’”
Jesus answered, and said, ‘I am not laughing at you, but at the error of the stars, because these six stars wander about with these five compatants, and they all will be destroyed with their creatures!’”
You see? God knows, it’s not a good joke – but Jesus sure THINKS it’s a joke, for what it’s worth. He’s like your drunken boss at an office Christmas party, who makes jokes that don’t make sense, but you have to laugh at them because, well, he’s in charge.
Mind you, the passage is also clearly deranged, and suggests less the Son of God than a paranoid schizophrenic who could use some meds, but I didn’t write the Gospel – the Great and Good Christian Leaders did.
It’s rather amusing how Jesus thinks his followers are a bunch of idiots and dunderheads. The other Gospels suggest that Jesus has a “father-son” relationship with his followers, but here his contempt for the Pillars of the Church is really made far more manifest.
Also interesting in the Gospel is how Jesus clearly views Judas as his favorite disciple, calling him “the 13th Spirit,” and teaching him things that none of the other followers are allowed to learn. “Step away from the others,” Jesus is always telling Judas. “And I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom!”
And let us not forget the huge kufluffle over the fact that, in this new Gospel, Jesus actually tells Judas to betray him. It’s not Judas’s fault! When Judas asks him what folks baptized in his name will do, Jesus reveals, “You will exceed all of them! For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me! Already your horn has been raised, your wrath has been kindled, and your star has shone brightly!”
And then, there is a vision, which is missing, due to the fact that the document itself is basically just a scrap of shredded paper. And then Mr. Christ tells Judas, “Look, you have been told everything. Lift up your eyes and look at the cloud and the light within it and the stars surrounding it. The star that leads the way is your star!” And then, “Judas lifted up his eyes and saw the luminous cloud and he entered it. Those standing on the ground heard a voice coming from the cloud sayng…” Well, that bit is missing. But it sure seems likely that it’s a vision from above, telling Judas that his job is to betray Jesus.
Anyway, I love this stuff. And I love it even more than my obvious heretical attitude towards the Gospels now allows me to move on down to Level 8 in Dante’s Hell. How exciting!
