Dental Code not Da Vinci Code has all the answers ... Theologian

Dr A. Theopullous, Dental Scientist, Veterinarian and Theologian, has been examining whether there is a hidden Dental Code in the Bible, as he demonstrates in this lecture at a recent symposium.

Thank you for coming to our symposium, 'Dental Health, Jesus and the Apostles'.

I know most of you have read the paper by Dr Grahame Wally, titled Judas: a man who needed root canal therapy.

Dr Wally's veritable tour de force has broken through what we in Academia and Public Health thought was an impenetrable barrier between us and the Last Supper and les dents which masticated the provender. His orthodontotheological paper is a real milestone.

We are grateful indeed for his research into ancient dental hygiene, his description of how desert sand often wore teeth down to the gum and even the Procurator Pontius Pilate was not spared the agonies of this abrasive factor.

I know I might be 'drawing a long bow' here, but I am sure Dr Wally will forgive me for wondering if a post molar extractus Pilate had been presented with Jesus he may have been more conciliatory.

Certainly there is evidentiary material, and I do not want to sound like a Dan Brown here, that Caiaphas the High Priest may have spent his adult life in absolute dental misery on account of his high diet of dates, olives, honey and sweetmeats allied with Cyprian wine, oinos kyprianos.

We need the Dental, not the Da Vinci, Code as we approach ancient mysteries.

We are examining a past age lacking in novocaine, crowns, bridges and Blue Cross Insurance.

It is here that the masters whose masterpieces adorn our galleries seriously let us down.

I mean when did you last see a picture of a saint or an apostle gummy or missing a left incisor?

St Luke, a Greek speaker, may have lost uppers and lowers in the pancration and Peter the Fisherman might have had a few gaps from a few friendly biffs. You know what sailors are!

All of them would have had their 'gnashers', to slip into the vernacular, worn seriously down by a diet mixed with abrasive, the Judaean sand.

I haven't seen Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ to see whether Mel had a dental advisor on set.

I am told that Jude is no oil painting, and looks like the sort of evil figure that once adorned Berlin walls in the Thirties, but I do not know what his teeth were like.

In regard to Dr Wally's paper, I think he raises a good point.

Judas may well have been prowling around all night in absolute agony with an impacted or carious tooth.

He may have been a dead setter for an offer of thirty pieces of cloves! It would be many centuries before Magellan would set sail around the world and discover the treasure trove of cloves in the East Indies, worth more than the price of gold.

The Romans may have offered him some panacea or a hefty centurion to perform an extraction with the butt of his sword.

I ask you to contemplate the resentment growing in the Judas mind.

He would not have been aware of Dental Caries and the Fall of Man.

He had seen crippled people walk, blind people see, many miracles.

But nothing about his tooth!

Nothing, zilch, zero, diddly squat.

Ah, if only one of us had been there to ease his agony.

We might have had a different result.

I do not have to tell you about the Difficult Patient in Pain Without Health Insurance.

Judas faced many months of being unable to smile without mockery!

This gives us, I believe, real insight into the Judas Personality.

If as we accept, as Mel Gibson would have us believe, Judas had an encounter with the Devil himself he would have noticed the shining white, perfect upper and lower sets of Satan. I have never seen any depiction of His Satanic Majesty that did not make him look anything but dazzling in that department.

Judas's agony and demented state would have increased.

The Last Supper could have been the last straw!

So I commend Dr Wally on his paper and I ask you to join me in applauding his research.

I know Dr Speculatio will find the document a splendid companion to his own paper published on www.catholica.com.au titled St Paul: A Bunion on the Road to Damascus.

We welcome your feedback on all of the characters in Cliff's menagerie.

©2006 Clifford Baxter

[Cliff's Menagerie Archive]