Sure, we'll all be famous for 15 minutes. But how many of us wait 2,000 years for the big break?

Consider Jabez. A minor figure from Scripture. How minor? Think of the Bible as Warner Brothers during the 1940s. Jabez was the Good Book equivalent of the Russian bartender in Casablanca. A bit player.

Jabez is buried in the "begatting" section of the Bible, a numbing genealogical ramble. Without any particular status -- he was evidently some sort of farmer, not a prophet, pharaoh or anyone with major celestial connections --Jabez only rates 73 words, mostly this prayer: "Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain."

Not exactly Bogart's "Here's lookin' at you, kid" speech, but enough to launch Jabez's new career. He's the focal point of a breakaway best-seller entitled The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life, by evangelist Bruce H. Wilkinson, who is -- why are we not surprised? -- based right here in godly Greater Atlanta.

The book has sold more than 4 million copies. As a failed author, I am horribly jealous.

Wilkinson's slim volume transforms Jabez's entreaty into a modern-day-applicable mantra that makes it OK to ask God for success. Critics wrangle whether it's an appeal to crass materialism or legitimate spiritual self-improvement. You be the judge.

I only know this: Jabez is going Hollywood.

Think about it. You've got this obscure herdsman, buried in First Chronicles -- never a real page-turner in terms of Holy Writ -- for a couple of millennia. In the true entrepreneurial spirit of his prayer, he's bound to turn up and claim his rightful portion. Deliver unto Jabez those things that are Jabez's, particularly the movie rights.

For starters, he'll hire a pony-tailed Atlanta shyster to sue the tabernacle off Dr. Wilkinson for theft of intellectual property. I don't know what the profits are on a best-seller, but you can be sure Jabez will get his cut.

From there he'll be positioned for classic media overkill. There's the pop paperback, Jabez!, followed by appearances on Leno and Letterman. People magazine proclaims him a "Biblical babe magnet" and makes Jabez the subject of a "Holy Hunk!" cover. "Entertainment Tonight" buttonholes him for a red-carpet interview during the annual Cherubim and Seraphim Awards.

And an eponymous cologne hits the market: "Haven't Got a Prayer? Try Jabez."

From there he's more than ready for the inevitable film version. It being Hollywood, Jabez will never be permitted to play himself on the big screen. But he has enough clout with studio moguls to rate a casting sit-down.

"I see Ben Affleck as me," Jabez declares, tapping a cerise-tinted pair of Ray-Bans on the conference table. "Although will someone please explain why that duck keeps quacking his name?"

"That's AFLAC," a producer explains. "An insurance company."

"See, that's something I don't get," Jabez ruminates. "In my day, you were either in solid with the Big Guy or you weren't. Lot's wife had $3 million in personal injury coverage and shazam -- she's a pillar of Morton's."

Jabez's casting demand is agreed to. Plus Matt Damon as the loyal herdsman sidekick with an I.Q. of 320. There's a special guest appearance by Gene Hackman as Jehovah and a comic cameo from Don Rickles as an Egyptian frog salesman.

Julia Roberts (who Jabez starts dating in real life) plays the love interest, a vulnerable yet beautiful herdschick with a yelping laugh that continually has people confusing her with one of the sheep. They are seen holding hands courtside during an L.A Lakers game.

But in true Hollywood fashion, it all goes wrong. The biopic, A Guy Called Jabez, flops in nationwide release, primarily because the 73-word script is stretched a bit thin across three-and-a-half hours of screen time. Plus everyone's sick of Ben Affleck from Pearl Harbor.

Name writ large all over a megaflop, Jabez can't get Hollywood's power elite to return his phone calls. It turns out his agent (a fast-talking Babylonian known as "Hammurabi the Closer") and Philistine accountant are ripping him off. If that isn't enough, three apostles file a plagiarism suit, followed by a defamation case when Jabez tells an AP reporter, "St. James the Less? Less than what, I'd like to know."

Old connections with the Divinity still enable him to turn water into wine, but it's a talent that lands Jabez in the Betty Ford Clinic. Life hits stone tablet-bottom when he turns up as a profile on E! Entertainment Network's "Hollywood Mysteries and Scandals," hosted by A.J. Benza.

Out of work and desperate, Jabez takes the last of his Tinseltown shekels and invests in a Burning Bush Biblical theme park outside Cleveland, where he also headlines as a lounge act. But in true, dramatic Old Testament fashion, the whole thing goes up in smoke.

Arson is suspected.

Glen Slattery is a minor figure in the Book of Alpharetta.