The Most Dangerous of "What If" Questions

This is Saturday and it’s the Ides of March. Some times we have to draw a distinction between the real and the fictional. For instance, Julius Ceasar was real, even though some of his most famous lines come from a Shakesphere play. Last night I was reading Terry’s novel, “The Orion Mutiny” in Word. He used Word Art letters for the title. I was going to excerpt some of the writings in a blog but I’ll just describe the novel as extremely detailed with well constructed, descriptive sentences, apparently lacking in any spelling or grammatical errors since nothing was red or green-lined. It reminds me of one of Ron Hubbard’s Sci-Fi novels. The material is extremely fast moving, and as I say detailed. Of course there is no connection between Terry’s novel and any of my own writings, which I don’t imagine he knows anything about, since I haven’t told him, and it’s unlikely he found out from any one else. Of course sometimes dreams are like novels. Last night I had this dream where us three kids all got married and had kids and our grand children were on competition for colonizing various planets. In this dream I married Valerie M. whom [Pete Richards] had wanted to marry but I beat him out. In this dream Tiffany was my daughter and not Scott Styles’s. In the dream people dug and found out that Valerie was my 2^nd. Cousin and for this reason I shouldn’t have married but wince Pete isn’t blood related it would have been OK. Valerie in turn was first cousin to Howard Richards but not related to me. The whole dream has a rather Spanish flavor and all of us were Spanish. One of us founded the town of Midway, which is approximately around Lincoln and Walker (which used to be known as “Moody”) The whole thing about found civilizations on other planets is a little hazy right now.

Of course a novel needn’t be just descriptive prose or dialog. It can be in the form of an exchange of letters like “Dracula” is. It got me to thinking the most “dangerous” of asked questions. What if the entire first century of Christianity started off as someone’s novel. As you know the “Epistles of Paul” and the “Acts of the Apostles” are spoken as chief sources for first century history. I of course have come to the belief that Christianity did not exist in the first century as we know it. What we do know is that the Catholic Church has “Secrets” which, as roomered, if discovered and found out, would be the undoing of the Christian faith as we know it. You may be fermiliar with the “Solomon Spaulding” theory of the authorship of the Book of Mormon. This book perports to be a history of the Jewish people who separated at the time of Jeremiah and came to this country and did various things here. Walter Martin was a big proponet of the “Solomon Spaulding” theory of the authorship of the book of Mormon. But what if the saying is true that Justin Martyr was one day walking along a beach and an “Old Man” met him and “sold him a fable” as the Queen song alludes to? Justin was so impressed with this “Old Man” whom we know almost nothing else about, that he became a Christian. I would like to suggest that this “Old Man” is the author of the original ten letters of Paul plus the book of Acts. People make much of contradictions between the Book of Acts and portions in the letters of Paul. But what they both agree on are a “set of characters” such as Silus and Timothy and Luke. These “characters” who are entirely made up- - and investigating their history will as well prove fruitless- - but these characters are mixed with REAL people such as the apostle Peter, and James, as well as Mark and Barnabus. However if you investigate these REAL people in an objective manner, they will tell you nothing about St. Paul or St. Luke. In no document I’ve read have I found HOW the “letters of Paul” were found. Some say they were found in Ephesus. We don’t know. There is no HISTORY in any of the towns or churches Paul visited of anyone there having either known of Paul or having received or read his letters, and there is no history of the letters prior to them being discovered by “The Church”. Nobody ever seems to have questioned either how we got the letters or whether not they were authentic, or for that matter if St. Paul existed or where or if he died. (I say “IF” because we are talking about Christians) There is no record, even an imaginary one, of how Paul might have died. That part of the story never seems to have gotten written. All we know “officially” is that the letters were supposedly “lost to history” for several decades and then “found” about AD 110 or 120 or so. Even in these letters where St. Paul is the Johnny Appleseed of planting churches, not even they can tell us how the “The Church at Rome” was founded. Apparently it Already Existed when St. Paul wrote them his epistle. Of course we have already stated that Ron Hubbard was a novelist and that Solomon Spaulding was a novelist. This mysterious “Old Man” may be just another novelist. We know that prior to Marcion’s suggestion, nobody proposed the gathering of the epistles of Paul into a “Cannon of Scripture” to be reverenced. We do know that whoever the author or perhaps authors of the Book of Acts and Paul’s letters were, they certainly inspired the imagination of the head haunchos of the Church at Rome. About the earliest known Historic Event we know about in Church History was when Trajan was persecuting the Christians that Pliny the Younger suggested that no action should be taken unless the subject clearly would fail to renounce the Faith when pressured. What we also know is that Gnosticisum seem to come to Rome about AD 90 and a Jewish encyclopedia says there is lots of Gnostic influence in Paul’s letters. Also it was stated that Paul knew Greek translation well, but seemed ignorant of any Hebrew, and that there is a fundamental void of any genuine Jewish background in Paul’s teachings.

Of course when it comes to questions you dare not ask we could turn the cameras on ourselves and ask, “Where did all this Z A C mythology come from?” Someone could come up with the theory that Robin Llyle, Dick Llyle’s wife came up with all of the romance between Howard and Robin stuff. In “The Early Days”, Howard Richard had several aliases such as “Mama”, which Paul Mc Cartney referred to him as, because Howard was the mysterious Paul stand-in on the Pepper album. Other terms used are “The Old Man”, referencing both the Queen song and “Bitter Creek”. Also “Desperado” and “The New Kid in Town”. There also appear to be about threw Howards. There is “Roger Shepherd”. Then there is the Howard that Guy Owens interacted with, mainly from late 1973 to his death on December 30^th. 1975 on Chicago's north side not far from where he lived. And then there is the Howard that Robin knew. Guy Owens’ Howard never gave any allusion to romantic involvement with Robin. Howard Richards told Guy Owens on Dec. 18^th. 1975 that he has been shot at by someone. Guy Owens says he isn’t positive how Howard died. Only that Howard’s one time choffer-body guard-butler told him he’d been shot and killed in the first few days of January 1976, and that his then fiancée living in Madison, WI hired a mafia style hit man to shoot him down. - - - - But let’s suppose I don’t exist. I’m just some character in someone else’s story. What if the “Real Story” goes something like this? Howard Richards met Robin at a 4^th. of July party held at an associate of Pete Richard’s house and it was mutual love at first sight. During the evening Dick Llyle needed someone to light his sparkler and turned to Howard, who lit it. But Dick’s sparkler glowed with a purplish-lavender color and Dick says “How did that happen” and Howard says “I don’t know”. Howard was a seventeen year old Virgin at the time. (much younger than the Howard portrayed by Guy Owens) Howard was just headed into his senior year of high school. But sex with Robin seemed to age him a lot overnight. In 1975 Howard went off into the desert by himself where he was “the old man” existing on rattlesnake meat and drinking worm wood. (presumably wood alcohol) and getting mystic religious revelations. Howard and Robin were about to make some big announcement like Robin was getting a divorce from Dick and marrying Howard when Howard was mysteriously gunned down in the town of Chicago. Howard was always a nobody. He was a Midwestern boy all alone in LA and lost his virginity there. He was a mere 17. He was gunned down in some sting operation where Howard was mistaken for somebody else, some major criminal they were after, but he just ‘got in the way”. He died never living to his nineteenth birthday on February 20^th. 1957. (1976) Of course as the spiritual “Defender of the Faith” I’m supposed to steer you away from any such “alternate histories” as this one, but I offer it here for your perusal.