You Nimrod, You

I'm well on my way towards my steady descent into Hell.

For some years now, I've wanted to write what I've jokingly called the Great American Blasphemy. My goal isn't to insult The Church but to foster discussion, to cause controversy and force people to look beyond the obvious within their own Christian religion and LEARN. Within chaos, my intent was to teach. And make oodles of money.

Dan Brown, unfortunately, may have beaten me to the punch. C'est le vie.

It's my misfortune that until recently, I haven't felt my writing was of a standard that I was ready to tackle the GAB. Or maybe misfortune is the wrong word; I've been honest with myself, in that regards, although I suspect that a little bit of fear factored into it all. I think I'm ready, now, and I've started writing in a style I've never tried before (first person), with a type of character I haven't attempted before, at a length (full novel) that I've never managed before. It's fun, it's challenging, and I think it's going well.

I remember deciding on a name for the main character, and to this day I'm not 100% sure why I chose the name "Nimrod" for him. It almost seems counter-productive; in today's world, "nimrod" is associated with a fool, a moron. In my tale, Nimrod is anything but.

I wanted a biblical association with the ancient kings of the Hebrew world, and what caught my eye was his brief description in Genesis 10:8-9;

"And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD."

That's it. Nimrod's entire entry in the Old Testament consisted of two lines in the lineage of Noah. But that "mighty hunter" commentary stuck with me, and I started searching.

Nimrod is an interesting figure, and has a lot of mythology associated with him in spite of his miniscule notation in the Bible. He was a great grandson of Noah, a great king of a land that included Assyria and Babel, and a noted hunter. And according to legend, he may have been something...more. But I needed more on him, so I kept searching.

What sealed the deal for me was coming across a website (or blog, I forget) where a man with the unfortunate name of Nimrod complained about the troubles he's had with his own name. He knew of the name origins, of course, but all it did was cause problems for him growing up. He wished he could come up with a way to erase the negative imagery associated with the name, so he hold his head up a little higher.

That's when I knew. My character was definitely going to be a Nimrod.

I have this image of John Wayne as Big Jake, getting angry when people would see him and say "I thought you were dead!" I can easily picture my Nimrod getting equally angry, when someone starts cracking jokes over his name. It just fits, perfectly. And once I had that vision of Big Jake in my head, I suddenly knew Nimrod like he was my own father. A character was born.

Jacob 'Big Jake' McCandles: And now you understand. Anything goes wrong, anything at all... your fault, my fault, nobody's fault... it won't matter - I'm gonna blow your head off. No matter what else happens, no matter who gets killed I'm gonna blow your head off.

Yeah. It's that good.