The Fragmentary Writings of the Pseudo-Liam

The Pseudo-Liam in question has been shown to have no relation to the twelfth-century St. Liam buried in the collegiate Church of St. Lasislaw in Krsckrtsysstrkrwa, Poland; the fifth-century Lyam of Antioch; or the twenty-first-century Liam of Columbia. The writings only have a single witness, a badly-damaged papyrus reused to line the suitcase of the traveling salesman and small-time con artist Ernest "Shorty" Wilkins, arrested in Porridge, Alabama in June, 1927. Written in Greek, philological examination of the text has led scholars to suspect it of being a translation from either Syriac or Coptic, with a dash of Aramaic and simmered in a light sauce of Urdu.      Most scholars date the writings to the late fourth or early fifth century, although certain words* lead some to expect  a much  more modern origin.

*

Most of the writings are extremely fragmentary in nature, but we present them as preserved in the papyrus, for only through a comparison of all the fragments can we truly approach the thought of the Pseudo-Liam. More fragments will be added to this site as they are edited by the Pseudo-Liam Project, a multi-disciplinary group of historians, philologists, paleographers, and bartenders sponsored by the State University of West Southeastern North South Dakota. [2-34] ... the one ... the many ... emmanation ... Idea ... the many ... the one ... emmanates ... steps ... the many ... the one ... the Mind ... popcorn .... [231-67] ...the mens in this state can perhaps best be described by an extended metaphor. Imagine a ship carrying young elephants (big, but not enormous). A dolphin passes by to the right of the ship, and all the young elephants crowd around a porthole to look. The ship leans so far to one side that the mast is at a forty-five degree angle to the sea. At that moment, a boy in the crow's nest falls out, saved from drowning by one rope attached to the top of the rigging. The mast, the sea, and the boy hanging from the rope now make a perfect right triangle. The boy kicks his legs, creating a small amount of froth on the surface of the sea. Now this froth is not of one color, but rather mixed, white and somewhat gray-green. Imagine this froth as expressing the state of the mens when... no, that doesn't work. Scratch that metaphor. Let's try again. A man enters a room and sees a sardine on the table. The sun comes out of the clouds and a ray of sunlight enters through the window, striking the sardine and reflecting off its mirror-like scales into the man's eyes. He is temporarily blinded. A large fly enters the room and tries to bite the man. He grabs the sardine and tries to whack the fly, stumbling around in his blindness. The mens is like... No, not really. Scratch that one too. Rather, imagine a chariot driven by a monkey... [302-05] ... and the hippo is attempting to sing a bawdy song about an amorous leper. At that time, the waiter's barber... no, that doesn't work either... [546-547] ... put the damn eggplant down. Put it down. You always try to juggle those things and the veggies get bruised... [782-802] ... a story is told of the Abba Bartholomew that one day a follower came to ask him whether grace is more like water from a spring or rain from heaven. He replied that love is like an amphora of oil, hope like a loaf of fresh bread, desire like a pickled eggplant, faith like a basket of figs, and prayer like a whitefish lightly basted with herb butter and served with a garlic almond sauce. When the follower asked him what the hell that all meant, he replied that he had no idea and was never bothered with stupid questions again. [988-92] ...but all that is written in this treatise is truly superfluous. All meaning can be expressed in one short sentence, all truth in a phrase, all that man needs to know in a few words. Those simple words are... [The last page of the manuscript is missing from the only existing codex.]

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