This One Cracked Me Up

Textual criticism is a hot topic these days.  This little bit of humor illustrates the tremendous importance of a good manuscript tradition (h.t. Tommie Sloan).

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A young monk (brother Joseph) arrives at the monastery.  Excited about his new call, he is soon assigned a painstaking but important task--helping a group of monks copy volumes of canon law.

However, brother Joseph soon notices that the monks are copying from copies of canon law, they are not consulting the original manuscript. 

So, brother Joseph sheepishly summons up the courage to go to the head abbot to question this method.  If someone made even the smallest error in an earlier copy, it would never be caught and corrected by those making copies of a copy!  In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

The abbot replied to Joseph's query, "We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son." 

So the abbot hurried off down into the dark archives underneath the monastery where the original manuscripts of canon law were held in a locked vault that hadn't been opened for hundreds of years.

Hours go by and nobody sees the abbot . . .  So, brother Joseph gets quite worried about the old man and goes down to look for him.

In the dim light, Joseph sees the abbot banging his head against the wall and wailing in a broken and cracking voice, "We missed the R! We missed the R! We missed the R!”  The abbot's forehead was bloody and bruised and he was crying uncontrollably. 

Brother Joseph rushes to his side and asks him, "What's wrong, father?"

Barely able to speak, the old abbot replied, "The word was . . . "CELEBRATE!!!”

Comments

[matt holst]

I receieved a card from one of my students that had the same joke, though in a much smaller form.

I laughed till it hurt!

[Rick B.]

That is great.

[Zrim]

Now *that* is just plain funny.

Zrim

[Steve Dumas]

Talk about needing some R & R. Too funny.

[plw]

Hilarious........good way to start my day.

[T]

Man, I wonder what words they had to mess-up in order to get "Papal Infallability."

[Ivan]

Thanks Kim, that is good.

Still recall the first time I ever heard it.
It was about 15 years ago and Rev. Steve Brown [PCA] told that joke. The place cracked up in laughter!

Steve Brown also told another great one back then I have never forgotten.
Steve said,
"Calvinists get all of this grief people saying the Tulip is the Calvinist's flower etc."
Then Steve said,
"But hey man, what is the Arminian's flower anyway?
A daisy?
'He loves me, He loves me not'
'He loves me, He loves me not' "

Again, the place cracked up