This week it came out that Michael Gove, the education secretary, has a plan to send a copy of the King James Bible to every school in the country - although this has run into a spot of bother as Cameron told Gove that this project must not be funded by taxpayer's money (and rightly so!). Now Gove has hit a slump in a search for an independent sponsor, which suggests that the original plan was to use taxpayer's money, if this is true.
It was also speculated through Whitehall sources that because Gove wouldn't be able to distribute the books until he found a private sponsor; this meant leaving thousands of copies of the Bible printed especially for this in a warehouse somewhere abroad, or maybe he's keeping them on the Queen's yacht (evenly spread I hope, wouldn't want that thing to capsize!)
I don't understand why this is even a necessary venture in what is supposed to be a secular society - particularly when only last week Sir David Attenborough and Professor Richard Dawkins were celebrating their victory that creationist teaching should stay out of the science class in state-funded schools. It seems that Gove's project runs contrary to this, as there was no talk of every school receiving a signed copy of The Origin of Species as well. I agree that the basics of the religion that has dominated western civilisation should be taught in schools, but in R.E, and maybe with printed out passages provided by the teacher, like in every other lesson at school. Intricate studies of the Bible should be a personal endeavor, conducted at home or in the Church (where I'm told they have Bibles in abundance).
Whether anything will come of this only time will tell, but the thing that struck me with this biblical debacle was that Gove plans to write his own personal inscription in each copy of the Bible! Not only did this shock me due to the sheer scale of that task (his wrist will be as numb as a 14 year-old boys after), but what stunned me most is the pretentiousness of signing the holy book... the Bible isn't even signed by God himself!
But thinking of it, none of the book's protagonists popped their autographs in (maybe they thought it wouldn't take off). This got me thinking of how the main characters would sign their names; here are my interpretations:
Satan'AKA The Devil AKA Lucifer: Very much the bad guy in this tale. If you thought that Professor Moriarty was bad, you wait till you read about this guy! I imagine his signature very well revised, symbolic and bad to the bone.
God: Of course, like all our favourite stories, when there's evil there is an impeccable force of good to match it. God is a hero like no other and makes Superman look like Milhouse. I imagine his signature to be similar to Satan's symbolic type but with none of the sinister nuances.
Jesus Christ: The son of our hero who proves to be a worthy protégé, the difference is that this character is half human, thus making his heroic deeds more relatable to us, the reader. His signature seems a bit untamed, but one can only assume this was signed with the pen in his mouth whilst up on the cross.
Noah: An ally of our hero, this guy rescued two of every animal and secured them on a gargantuan boat he made alone; with his bare hands; in a matter of days, when God killed off everyone and everything else with a flood in an act of mass genocide. It was then up to Noah, his family, and all the animal couples to repopulate the Earth. I imagine Noah's signature to be slightly less egotistic than the others and wet from the flood.
UPDATE: It is well known that God has kept a low profile since the Bible(s), however I have just learnt that he is due to give evidence at the Leveson Inquiry next week to testify against News International for making a false icon of Rupert Murdoch.