Hundreds of Dr. Matrix's notes give anagrams on biblical names and phrases. "Naomi" (Ruth 1), widowed and bereft of her sons, becomes "I moan." For "ten commandments" the anagram is "Can't mend most men." For "silver and gold" (Deut. 17:17) it is "grand old evils." For "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23) it is "High fees owed Satanist."
There are even notes on puns. "And he spake to his sons, saying, Saddle me the ass. And they saddled him" (1 Kings 13:27). Dr. Matrix professes to find a defense of cigarette smoking in "Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she lighted off the camel" (Gen. 24:64).
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Thursday, September 23, 2004
Dr. Matrix on the Bible
Martin Gardner, The Magic Numbers of Dr. Matrix (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1985), p. 187: