The complaint, submitted to Harvard’s Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (which accepted it reluctantly, noting that this was “not really what the office is for”), runs to 614 pages and opens with the sentence: “We invented one God. They made two franchises.”
“Look, we’re happy to share,” said a spokesman for the plaintiffs, adjusting his reading glasses and sighing in a way that itself may be intellectual property. “Sharing is fine. Sharing is a mitzvah. But there’s a difference between sharing and taking the whole thing, rebranding it, and then telling us we’re doing it wrong.”
The complaint alleges harms including but not limited to:
Monotheism. Developed over centuries of painstaking desert R&D, workshopped through plagues, exiles, and at least one incident involving a golden calf that the plaintiffs would prefer not to discuss. Adopted by both defendants without so much as a footnote. “Do you know how hard it is to get people to commit to one God?” the filing asks. “We lost focus groups constantly. Baal tested very well.”
The Bible. The plaintiffs note that their sacred scripture was incorporated wholesale into the defendants’ materials and then, adding insult to injury, labeled “Old.” “Imagine writing a book so successful that the sequel calls yours obsolete,” the complaint reads. “That’s not homage. That’s a hostile review embedded in the packaging.”
Jesus. The complaint devotes an entire section to what it calls “the single largest act of personnel appropriation in recorded history,” namely the recruitment of a Jewish rabbi from the Galilee, his mother (Jewish), his disciples (Jewish), and his entire teaching corpus (extremely Jewish), followed by two thousand years of the plaintiffs being blamed for the whole affair. “He was ours,” the filing states simply. “He kept kosher. He argued about the law at dinner. He had complicated feelings about his career that his mother discussed openly. We rest our case.”
Prophets, general. Abraham, Moses, Noah, and others were allegedly repurposed without attribution, with one defendant going so far as to relocate key plot points. “Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac. Suddenly it’s Ishmael. You can’t just change the casting and call it a new story. Netflix gets sued for less.”
Dietary law. The plaintiffs acknowledge that halal and kosher are “technically distinct” but describe the resemblance as “the culinary equivalent of a term paper run through a thesaurus.”
The Sabbath. Originally scheduled for Saturday, a day the plaintiffs describe as “correct.” One defendant moved it to Sunday; the other to Friday. “They couldn’t even keep the day,” the complaint notes. “The day was the easy part. It’s right there in the Ten Commandments, which, by the way, also ours.”
Circumcision. The filing declines to elaborate, stating only: “You know what you did.”
Reached for comment, representatives of the defendants expressed a mixture of confusion and hurt. A Vatican spokesman noted that Christianity considers itself “not appropriation but fulfillment,” a legal theory the plaintiffs’ counsel described as “the boldest defense since ‘the dog ate my homework,’ which, incidentally, is a genre of excuse we also pioneered. See: Aaron, calf, golden.”
A statement from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation observed that Islam honors Moses and Abraham as prophets and reveres the earlier revelations. “Reverence is lovely,” responded the plaintiffs’ spokesman. “So is a licensing agreement.”
The remedies sought are notably modest. The plaintiffs are not demanding that the defendants cease practicing their faiths, which they described as “frankly, at this point, keep it.” Instead they request: attribution in all liturgical materials (“Inspired by Actual Jewish Events”); a disclaimer preceding all readings of the Hebrew Bible in non-Jewish services (“The following program originally aired at Sinai”); and back royalties calculated at a nominal rate of one shekel per believer per year, compounded since approximately 33 CE, an amount economists estimate would allow the plaintiffs to finally buy Harvard and fix it.
Asked whether the plaintiffs would accept an apology in lieu of damages, the spokesman shook his head.
“An apology? No. We’d rather keep arguing about it.”
He paused.
“Arguing is also ours. It’s in the Talmud. Every page. Two guys, one goat, four hundred years of dispute. If anyone wants to license that, we’re open to offers.”
At press time, the Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging had referred the matter to a subcommittee, which is expected to issue findings sometime around the arrival of the Messiah, an event about which, the plaintiffs note wearily, the parties also disagree.
Monotheism is real. The 614 pages are a courtesy to the 613 commandments, plus one for the road. The subcommittee has not met. The Messiah has not arrived. The parties dispute which of these delays is more surprising.
No religions were harmed in the production of this article, though several were lightly deposed. The complaint is fictional. The borrowing is historical. The plaintiffs’ willingness to argue about it is eternal and has been independently verified on every page of the Talmud.