‘And The Lord  spake unto Moses face-to-face as a man speaketh unto his friend’ Exodus XXXIII: 11 JKV
 

It wasn’t the cool wind on top of Mount Sinai that caused Moses to shiver, it was panic. As the smoke that engulfed the summit briefly cleared, Moses had anxiously looked at the stone tablets.  They were blank, just as he’d left them.

He’d had to make all sorts of promises to the stiff-necked multitude, who were pitched below in the wilderness, pining for the fleshpots of Egypt. They’d started getting more and more attracted by  Aaron’s Open-source Golden Calf project, and so he He’d countered by committing  to the publication of a definitive  prestige guide to the true religion, Mosaic Law  in a Nutshell.  With great rapidity, Aaron was able to outmanoeuvre him with the announcement of the imminent release of the rival GravenImagesTM Visual Quickstart.

When Moses, in some desperation, had first mooted the idea for a Dummies Guide to Monotheism, God had been so enthusiastic. “Yes!” he said, “I’ve always fancied myself as an author. I’ve had several ideas floating around for a while. I’m sure I could bash out a book in no time.” But then there was delay after delay, with several different plausible excuses. When reality kicks in, the art of instructional writing doesn’t look quite so easy.

“So” shouted Moses, clapping his hands nervously, “What hast thou  got for me?”;

“Aaaaah, well, sorry, but the new chapters aren’t going to be ready in time, they’re going to slip. I’ve got all sorts of pressing commitments right now; fallen angels causing me hassle;  also, for some reason, the creation just didn’t happen in Utah. Helluva mess. We’ve had to sort of evolve a solution there as we went along. Still, we all felt better once we’d established that it was the developers’ fault.”

“But….though hast made some progress, right? Listen, God, if thou canst at least give us the Mosaic code, then we can ghostwrite the commentary. If we don’t respond quickly, we’ll have lost the initiative”.

“Tell you what…I’m giving a couple of presentations over the next few weeks to the Hosts of Midian, so I’ve got to work on the material anyway. Based on the feedback I get, I can pull it all together into a couple of really top notch chapters, say next week?”

Moses sighed. “I knowest not, God. I promised the multitudes a book that wouldst cover all of the big issues. They’ll feel short-changed. Baal hath already got a publication list as long as thine arm.”

They lapsed into a ruminating silence.

“Mo! Let’s turn it into a Crib-sheet! You know, one of those hyper-condensed ‘Top ten Tips for this, that and the other. We could turn that out in no time.’?”

As Moses started shaking his head, largely out of habit, God’s suggestion began to sink in. “Sort of ‘Top Ten Reasons to smite Jericho?” he mused out loud, “or ‘Ten False Idols and How to Destroy them’ verily?” His voice was rising in pitch now.

“Yeah, or perhaps we could put it a bit stronger than that even. What about ‘Ten Best Practices for the Children of Israel?’ Nice, short, easy to do.”

“Great idea, that. I liketh the ‘Best Practices’ phrase. It soundeth keen and efficient.”

“Maybe it’s not quite prescriptive enough. You know how the Children of Israel are, you have to put it straight or they’ll be looking for loopholes. Could we make it  ‘Ten things you’re not allowed to do’ ?“

“Hmm. Great, but it isn’t snappy enough.  It has certainly  got to be ‘The Ten Something’. What about….”  There was a thoughtful pause. “Oh hang it, let’s have a quick omer of manna and maybe inspiration will strike.”