Warren, it was about 10 days after the San Diego show (17th Nov), where someone in the crowd threw a crucifix onto the stage and Bob put it in his pocket.
QUOTE:
"Towards the end of the show someone out in the crowd...knew I wasn't feeling too well," recalled Dylan in a 1979 interview. "I think they could see that. And they threw a silver cross on the stage. Now usually I don't pick things up in front of the stage. Once in a while I do. Sometimes I don't. But I looked down at that cross. I said, 'I gotta pick that up.' So I picked up the cross and I put it in my pocket...And I brought it backstage and I brought it with me to the next town, which was out in Arizona...I was feeling even worse than I'd felt when I was in San Diego. I said, 'Well, I need something tonight.' I didn't know what it was. I was used to all kinds of things. I said, 'I need something tonight that I didn't have before.' And I looked in my pocket and I had this cross."
Dylan believed he had experienced a vision of Christ in his Tucson hotel room. "Jesus did appear to me as King of Kings, and Lord of Lords," he'd later say. "There was a presence in the room that couldn't have been anybody but Jesus...Jesus put his hand on me. It was a physical thing. I felt it. I felt it all over me. I felt my whole body tremble. The glory of the Lord knocked me down and picked me up.
(The above is from Wikipedia.)
For the next few nights the verse in question continued to refer to a "book of poems" that was "either written by Charles Baudelaire, or some Italian poet from the 13th century". In Fort Worth, Texas (24th Nov) Bob makes this impossibly long line even longer by adding the aside "I can't remember which!" But on the 26th Nov, in Houston, the book of poems is replaced by the Bible for the rest of the tour. On the first occasion, Bob refers to a nonexistent verse ("The Gospel according to Matthew, Verse 3, Chapter 33"—Matthew has only 28 chapters!). This may suggest that the new lines were completely improvised. At the next show (Jackson, MS 28th Nov), Matthew has been replaced by Jeremiah, but the chapter and verse reference is garbled. It is not until Greensboro, NC on 7th December that Bob realizes that one generally quotes chapter and verse, not verse and chapter. Even so, the references, even when they exist, are generally not significant and seem more dictated by the need to rhyme than to direct the audience to a particular passage. For instance, at Charlotte (10th Dec) the woman quotes Jeremiah Chapter 15, verses 21 and 33. Verse 21 is "And I will deliver thee out of the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem thee out of the hand of the terrible"; but it is the last verse of the chapter, there is no verse 33! At the next show (Atlanta, 12th Dec) this has become "Jeremiah Chapters 37 and 38, verses 29 and 33 (does that mean 37:28 and 38:33 ?). At Lakeland, Florida (15th), only one chapter is referenced (Ch.36), but of the two verses mentioned, the second (33) does not exist, and the first (21) is this:
"So the king sent Jehudi to fetch the roll: and he took it out of Elishama the scribe's chamber. And Jehudi read it in the ears of the king, and in the ears of all the princes which stood beside the king."
Not the sort of words likely to trigger any epiphany on the lines of "every one of those words rang true"!
On the final night we are referred to Jeremiah 21:9 & 33. But that chapter has only 14 verses.
On no night, as far as I can make out, does Bob refer to the verse later quoted on the sleeve of Saved, viz. Jeremiah 31:31: "Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah"; although I have seen it claimed that he does.
The focus on the Biblical reference has overshadowed the other lyrical changes and added asides that make "Tangled Up in Blue" the central song of the 1978 tour. Nevertheless, it is interesting that Bob starts Bible study classes with the Vineyard Movement almost immediately after the end of the tour (though we know that he was immersed in the Bible at least as early as the John Wesley Harding period).
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