Everybody Must Get Stoned

So...turns out that when Bob Dylan says that "everybody must get stoned" he's not talking about the reefer. He's talking about the Acts of the Apostles. He's talking about stoning.

Fascinating post at First Things on the old-fashioned and very Jesusy Bob Dylan. Worth a read.

The interview begins to go wrong for Gilmore (and right for the rest of us) when he asks about “Rainy Day Women.” Dylan says that those who view it as a drug song “aren’t familiar with the Book of Acts.” This comment goes so far over Gilmore’s head that he can’t even respond to it. 

Which shows he has no business interviewing Dylan, who has always been immersed in the Bible, for its language and its theology. “Rainy Day Women” is more about persecution than intoxication. It sounds like a Salvation Army band playing a funeral march, but its words are deadly serious. When Dylan says that “they’ll stone ya when you’re trying to be so good” and that “they’ll stone ya when you’re tryin’ to go home,” he is speaking straight from the Bible. His comment about the Book of Acts makes the reference more explicit: it’s not just any good man being stoned, but Stephen.