Og, We All Know Him

Not Og of Bashan. He came along much later. But the prototypical cave man. You know, the "pre-hystoric" brute whose relatives had just attained the erect position.

Og wore a rough garment held up by one shoulder strap. He carried a tapered, bumpy, club at right shoulder arms. He is usually dragging a woman by her hair. Presumably they just got engaged. Though he often is shown with a unibrow, Og has no beard. Such amazing detail for someone who no one living has ever seen.

But he once lived, maybe hundreds of millions of years ago. So, besides his name, very little is known about him. It took perhaps billions of years for Og to emerge from the "primordial soup".

I have searched in vain for the recipe of "primordial soup". It must have been good though. After all, it produced all living creatures, including man. This was a slow process, taking perhaps 6,000,000,000 years.

The origin of this life giving soup is a mystery, just as is the origin of the atoms from which it was made. We could use up a lot of tea bags, some rainy day, while we figured this one out.

For Og never lived, though we all know him. He is a member of a mythical world created by artists.

I happen to like artists. One of my friends was an editorial artist for the Cincinnati Enquirer, although he was not a typical copy catter. He was much too original.

Maybe these copiers had to meet deadlines, and this explains why they copy one another. No Pilgrim ever saw a blunderbuss, though they are so pictured every "turkey day". Vikings never wore horned helmets. On and on.

These graphic lies sink into our children's minds. How blessed to open the Bible and read of the six days of creation, and the 6,000 years of history.

We live in a world marinated with lies. There was no Og, or his vanquished woman. There was no prehistoric man at all. There was no primordial soup. There was a perfect man, made from dust. This satisfies the "naive literalist", such as I am.