The Resurrection of Elvis
APRIL 2010
Happy Easter! Time for those Easter bunnies and colored eggs and chocolate goodies…though what any of that has to do with the supposed death and resurrection of Jesus is truly puzzling. Actually bunnies and birds’ eggs and all things young and new were a signal to the ancients that the sun was “coming back” after its frightening near-disappearance during the long, bleak winter. Springtime celebrations were a natural response to this natural occurrence for our primitive ancestors. The sun had risen! But trying to connect all that to a theology about human sin and heaven and hell and a savior is quite impossible. So we’ll skip over that part for now since it defies explanation.
But the votes are all in, and it’s final. It is an unchallenged fact that there have been more sightings of Elvis, after his death, than were ever claimed for Jesus after his. According to the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Jesus was seen, after his death, by a handful of women, and/or ten or twelve disciples. That’s it. Elvis Presley, on the other hand, has been seen, after his death, by thousands of people. So right off the bat we have a huge problem here with eyewitness testimony. It would seem that Jesus Christ, the Savior of the World, would have received far more fanfare after his death than the King of Rock and Roll, but that’s obviously not true, so on this one the King of Rock beats the King of the Jews hands down.
Actually “King of the Jews” is a meaningless title since Jesus was never king of anything. He was never even elected mayor of anything. From the skimpy details offered about his life, all he ever did was argue with other Jews about technical minutiae in the law of Moses. So we’ll have to skip over that “king” part too since it defies explanation.
“If Jesus was a carpenter, I wonder what he charged for bookshelves.” Woody Allen was a genius with those one-liners, wasn’t he? Still, it’s a valid question. Was Jesus a carpenter? Did he earn money? Did he have to spend money for food? Did he have a home of his own? Where did he sleep when it rained? Where was he living when he was 27, for example?
Aside from being born, and even that year is in dispute (but once again we’ll have to skip over that part for now since it defies explanation), we know nothing at all about Jesus’ childhood and youth except for one visit to one temple around the age he would have been bar mitzvahed. Other than that, we know utterly nothing about his life until he was baptized at age 30. Isn’t that beyond bizarre? Here he is, the Savior of Humankind, sent from God the Father, but it’s none of our business how he spent his time during the twenty-odd most important formative years of his life. Did he have any siblings? Did he go through a rebellious period like all teenagers? Did he ever steal from anyone? Smoke weed? Have any girlfriends? Was he gay? Did he swear? Why have we been kept in the dark about this hugely important subject? For a hilarious explanation of this monumental silence, and there are many, here is just one, supposedly explaining this inexplicable gap in the story of Jesus:
From this incident to His baptism at age 30, all we know of Jesus’ youth was that He left Jerusalem and returned to Nazareth with His parents and “was obedient to them” Luke 2:51. He fulfilled His duty to His earthly parents in submission to the 5th commandment, an essential part of the perfect obedience to the law of Moses which He rendered on our behalf. Beyond that, all we know is that “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:52).
Evidently, this is all God determined that we needed to know. There are some extra-Biblical writings which contain stories of Jesus’ youth (the Gospel of Thomas, for example). But we have no way of knowing whether any of these stories are true and reliable. God chose not to tell us much about Jesus’ childhood—so we have to just trust Him that nothing occurred which we need to know about. -- http://www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-childhood.html
Nothing occurred which we need to know about? Hey, wait a minute! This is the supposed Savior of the World! Why is it none of our business what he did with his life? What?! We know all about the Buddha (who predated Jesus by five centuries) and Confucius (who predated Jesus by over a century) but the far more recent Jesus has a life shrouded in inexcusable mystery. Apparently it’s none of our damn business. What the hell kind of sense does that make?
However, when it comes to the King from Memphis, the man who changed music forever, now we’re talking. We know that Elvis Aaron Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1935, and that he had a twin who died at birth and that he went to Humes High School where he bravely wore Vaseline on his hair and competed in and won a musical talent competition and that his real break, after only one lukewarm reception at the Grand Ole Opry, was on the Louisiana Hayride, where his fame began to grow. And he was only twenty by then. Which brings us back to…………..
Say, Jesus, what were you doing when you were twenty? Anything? Nothing? Were you homeless? A beggar? Making bookshelves with your step-father? What the hell were you doing then? Well, we’ll never know, which makes the whole story of the life of Jesus highly suspect. No, not just suspect. Totally unbelievable. In a desperate attempt to unseat the centuries-long, very popular Mediterranean God, Mithra, some Jews cobbled together a story that stole unabashedly from Mithra’s life, and tried to relate some of it to Old Testament prophesies, quite unsuccessfully, I might add. If it hadn’t been for Constantine and his superstitious belief about seeing some cross in the stars before a battle, Christianity would have remained what it had been for its first 300 years—a silly cult, like so many others. How people can still believe this nonsense today is a mystery for the ages. Trying to figure that out is trickier than trying to remember the name of the Lone Ranger’s nephew’s horse. But why in the world do people still believe this “goofy shit” as George Carlin would have called it? Well, we’ll skip over this part too since it defies explanation. (Seems like we’re forced to skip over a lot of stuff, doesn’t it?)
Still, if you’re going to make up a Jewish Savior, why not at least make him a Rabbi? Or a cantor? Or a janitor in a temple? Something. But no, he came out of nowhere and did nothing. Leaving out most of Jesus’ life from the Bible can be compared to writing the life story of Elvis Presley while leaving out everything that happened to him between 1954 and 1974. If that makes no sense to you, congratulations! You’re thinking! Elvis, Jesus, Elvis, Jesus………….who should be more important?
If logic can still be applied to all this folderol, naturally it would be Jesus. And yet, according to the acknowledged biographers of both Elvis and Jesus, Elvis wins by a landslide! He is unquestionably the King of not just Rock and Roll, but the whole resurrection thing! Sorry, Jesus, but numbers don’t lie. The number of people who have seen Elvis since his death so outnumbers the pathetic handful that supposedly saw you is, well, an embarrassment, both to you and your followers.
So there you have it. When it comes to resurrections, it’s Elvis by a landslide, with Jesus running a dismal second, and Lazarus bringing up the rear. As resurrections go, it wasn’t even a contest, and even the line in Vegas wasn’t putting any faith in the Jesus thing. It was Elvis all the way. How this could happen in a country that supposedly still believes this Jesus story is yet another mystery that must be skipped over since it defies any explanation, rational or otherwise. All in all, there’s an awful lot we’re required to “skip over” and/or flat out ignore in order to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus, isn’t there?
Well, happy Easter egg hunting anyway. And please, be fair—do not steal your little brother’s marshmallow bunnies! Or his chocolate guitars!
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