Fresh Prince of Beliar

Show Notes

Here's a question for you, Theophiloi: How do you get rid of a prophet who won't stop sitting on your bed in the nude with 50 of his closest friends? The answer, at least according to this week's selection, is that you wait for him to turn into a tree that also won't stop prophesying, and then saw him in half. Join us as we read the apocryphal Ascension of Isaiah, which gets into some shockingly specific detail about what we can expect in the Gospels... mostly.

Topics of discussion: The feast of Mary, Mother of the Church, Pentecost, Shavuot, a missed installment of SatanWatch, Isaiah's constant nudity, Samael, the Venom of God, the Carnage of God, the Demiurge, Belial, demons in the air, AntichristWatch, Negaduck Jesus, Nero's popularity, Jesus's wrath against White Castles, the benefits of wooden saws, the Seven Heavens, God's password, Thrones and thrones, the Junior Woodchuck Guide for Heaven, Haguel.

Opening Verse

"And Isaiah answered and said 'So far as I have utterance, damned and accused be thou and all thy powers and all thy house, for thou canst not take from me aught save the skin of my body.' And they siezed and sawed in sunder Isaiah the son of Amoz with a wooden saw." — The Ascension of Isaiah, 5:9-11.

Music

God's Gonna Cut You Down by Johnny Cash

Favorite Verses

Benito:

"Then the voice of the Beloved will, in wrath, rebuke the things of heaven and the things of earth and the mountains and the hills and the cities and the desert and the forests and the angel of the sun and that of the moon, and all things wherein Beliar manifested himself and acted openly in this world, and there will be a resurrection and a judgement in their midst in those days, and the Beloved will cause fire to go forth from Him, and it will consume all the godless, and they will be as though they had not been created." — The Ascension of Isaiah 4:18

Chris:

"And witchcraft and magic increased and divination and auguration, and fornication, and adultery, and the persecution of the righteous by Manasseh and Belachira, and Tobia the Canaanite, and John of Anathoth, and by Zadok the chief of the works." — The Ascension of Isaiah 2:5

Listener Notes

• The Ascension of Isaiah is available on Early Christian Writings or a cleaned up version on On the Way to Ithaca, and the Prayer of Manasseh is on Bible Gateway.

Choice Quotes

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