The modified Book of the Lamb

Bill has been talking a lot in the comments about the Book of Mormon prophecy that the Gentiles will receive a version of the Book of the Lamb of God which has been corrupted by the Great and Abominable Church. Many “plain and precious” parts of the book have been removed, distorting its overall message.

I recently borrowed a children’s book from my wife to use with my students. Today when I was putting it back, one of the other titles on her bookshelf caught my eye:

Lamb, Tales from Shakespeare. It’s a “cover,” or modified retelling, of another author’s work, simplified and somewhat bowdlerized so as to be suitable for the young children of a more educated generation than our own. Many important plays have been omitted entirely, including all of the histories and Julius Caesar (whence that “beware the ides” line we’ve gotten so much mileage out of). Note also the use of the word tale, subject of many tale/tail puns in the sync stream. The plural form made me think of the expression “Heads I win, tails you lose.” The tales you lose when all you’ve got is a modified Book of the Lamb.

I’m writing this in a cafe, and just after I’d written the above paragraph, with its “beware the ides” reference, a man walked in wearing a T-shirt so synchy that I just had to snap a surreptitious photo:

It says “Just stopped by to take some food” and has a picture of a bear raiding a refrigerator. Bill has associated the image of someone stealing from a refrigerator with “beware the Ides of March.” There are many folktales about how the bear used to have a long tail but lost it.

This bear’s tale is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

A lamb’s tail is also a stub, interestingly enough.

Note added: The book I was returning when I saw Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare was, as it happens, a tale about a bear and a turtle.

The turtle is yet another animal notable for not having much of a tail. In fact, in Chinese, 龜笑鱉無尾 -- loosely, "The tortoise laughs at the turtle for having no tail" -- is a saying equivalent to the pot calling the kettle black.

Second note added: I found a better image of that T-shirt online. It just looks blue in the photo I took, but as you can see it's actually blue-green.

The fridge appears to be stocked mainly with watermelon, which is a pumpkin-adjacent fruit. See, for example, "Cucurbits from an alien land," which also mentions bears. In Chinese, pumpkin is 南瓜 ("southern cucurbit"), and watermelon is 西瓜 ("western cucurbit"). If, as we've been assuming, the pumpkins represent something stolen from the west, changing them to watermelons makes sense.

Yet another note added: When I went to Amazon to get an image of the cover of Bear and Turtle and the Great Lake Race, it suggested this as a related product:

How completely random is that? Apparently its the last in a six-book series where it doesn't exactly fit in:

1. Yoga at the Zoo

2. Mindfulness at the Park

3. Yoga at the Museum

4. Halloween Yoga

5. Yoga at the Aquarium

6. In Search of the Holy Grail

Here's the table of contents:

The eighth chapter, "Visit from Hermes the Owl," caught my eye.

Don't tell me I'm going to have to read this ridiculous book about a yoga-loving mouse helping farm animals find the Holy Grail.