The Book of Genesis retold in the style of Kipling’s Just So Stories.
Work in Progress – In collaboration with Stuart Falukner (Illustrations)
The book of Genesis is a fun read. If you haven’t read it or read it recently, I’d recommend R. Crumb’s comic strip version. After Crumb had published it, he was asked why he’d been so literal, using the King James text word for word. He said it’s already crazy enough. No additional humour required.
From a literary, historical and theological perspective it’s unique. It’s full of crazy stories and often reads like a soap opera script. It’s clearly two books, one a creation story the other a family saga. After explaining how God created and then destroyed the world (Chapters 1-9) the rest (10-50) is the story of four generations, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, though there’s a cast of other intriguing characters too. There’s plenty of incest, murder, trickery, magic and the odd apocalypse. It’s like Dallas from the 1980’s.
I’m not getting into the intent of the author(s), or how it was understood when it was written, I’m not going into how it’s understood by believers now or through the ages. This book is about how it’s understood now by one person who doesn’t believe a word of it. Me.
There are boring bits for sure. Not least the endless genealogies of unpronounceable ancestors. To the author(s) of Genesis it’s those genealogies that are important. The madcap stories just break the monotony. The genealogies establish a divine right to be King, linking present day elites to a mythical and heroic past. Justifying a hierarchy that just doesn’t make sense. King Solomon, David and Jesus can all say they’re the direct descendants of Adam and Eve, but then so too is everyone else.
It’s a curious book to be the foundation of a monotheistic religion. It’s clear that the characters are not monotheistic (believing there is only one God). They are monadolotrous – they worship one god while others worship many. There isn’t just one God in the book of Genesis. There are multiple. Some of these gods descend to earth and mate with humans. It’s there in Gensis if you look.
It’s also peppered with rationalisations of why things are the way they are. Why the Earth looks how it does, what rainbow’s mean, why people are circumcised, why women have lower status, why some people are poor, and ends with the chilling realization that, to those who want to believe it, God uses evil to do us good…
I think these rationalisations are fun and hence in retelling Genesis I’ve used Kipling’s Just So stories. Kipling’s writing in the Just So stories is sublime and as well as using the structure of the stories to retell Genesis, I’ve used lots of the original language as well, now out of copyright.
As with my other books I hope this retelling of Genesis gets you to engage with these first stories. Described by some as the most brilliant literary composition of the ancient world. Especially the stories about what happened after creation, the expulsion from Eden and after the flood. That’s about all I knew of Genesis before reading it, and that’s a shame.
To someone who has never read Genesis it’s full of surprises, not least that there was evil before God started his work. That lets him off the hook I guess. And for anyone who has encountered the holographic principle, thinks they are living in a simulation, there’s plenty for you too.
Excerpt – HOW THE WHALE BECAME
[Genesis Chapter 1]
I’ve told you once before, Oh Best Beloved, of how the Whale got his throat. Do you remember? I hope you remembered the suspenders, especially the suspenders. The one’s the nubbly Mariner used, that man of Infinite Resource and Sagacity, to stop up the whale’s throat so that he could eat only really, really, really, really, small fish and would no longer go about swallowing boys and girls.
Well I didn’t tell you how that Whale came to be a whale in the first place. That noble and generous Cetacean. This takes us back right to the very beginning, when the world was ever so young indeed. Before there ever was a sea for Whales to swim in, before there was land for the sea to slosh about on. Before the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the dab, and the plaice and the dace, and the skate and his mate, and the mackereel and the pickereel, and the really truly twirly-whirly eel. Before even the ‘Stute fish who swam so cleverly behind the Whale’s right ear.
Well, attend now and I’ll tell you how it all began in the beginning. In fact, we have a special name for the beginning of beginnings, where beginnings start, before they have begun. Do you know what it is? Genesis! and it happened just so – do you see?
Imagine a time before there was anything. You can’t can you! There can’t be not anything, even a nothing is something. It’s a void. It’s not a nice thing at all you see and that’s why we say a-void, because if you see one, Best Beloved, you should not climb in. Well let’s call this particular nothing ‘The Earth Without Form’. It was all watery and very much a place to be avoided.
But it was the special plaything for someone very special and we can call him God.
Now don’t ask me, Oh Best Beloved where God came from, because not even this story goes back that far. And don’t ask me if he was alone, because this story doesn’t tell you that either. But he was, and some say he is, and some say he always will be.
And the first thing he did was to turn on a light so that he could see his watery nothing. In fact, he was so special he didn’t even have to flick the switch, oh no! All he had to do was to say out loud the word and it would be, do you see?
‘Oh,’ said the God, ‘What is this like? ‘It is good,’ he thought. ‘There is light and there is dark.’
But he decided that all the light should be over here. Just beyond Forty West and all the dark should be over there. Up to Forty West (that is magic).
Now this God, being of infinite resource and sagacity himself, decided it was far too watery, so he separated the waters to make a sky in between. The water above the sky was the clouds and the water below the sky was the sea. Do you see what I mean by sagacity? Look it up Best Beloved if it’s not yet clear. It’s the quality of being sagacious, and that’s that.
So, the water below the sky got gathered up to make dry land. And the dry land was for the water to slosh against.
‘Ah, what’s this like?’ said the God. ‘It is good.
‘But I think we’ll have some plants on the land. But all that planting will make me tired, so I’ll make plants that make other plants because they will have their seed inside.’
And that was really very good.
But have you forgotten about the Whale? You mustn’t because that’s what this story is for. How the Whale became and we’re getting there soon. But don’t worry because it’s not been very long since the beginning started. About three days in fact, and that’s not much time at all.
Soon we’ll have a Whale you’ll see, with a tail and a mouth and a spout and those enormous inside cupboards you’ve heard me tell about, all warm and dark.
But first some more sagacity from our truly, infinitely resourceful God.
Next, he made some lights. One big one which we call the sun, and far too many really small ones which we call the stars. And one of the small ones he made 400 times smaller than the big one, but made it 400 times closer, so they look about the same size from down below.
And he made them all move about so that the patterns they made in the sky kept on repeating.
‘That can be for signs,’ he thought.
‘But these lights are too pretty just for me. ‘Let us have some creatures.
‘They can stump and jump and thump and bump and prance and dance and bang and clang and leap and creep and prowl and howl and hop and drop and cry and sigh and crawl and bawl. And hiccough besides, if they want.’
And so, he asked the Sky and the Sea to bring forth many creatures, but the sea and sky didn’t quite know what he meant by ‘creatures’ that did all those things. So, they made lots of different ones, all sizes and shapes. The ones that were small and light roamed about in the sky. The one’s that were big and heavy roamed the sea. And the ones that were too big to be small, and too small to be big, and those that were too heavy to be light, but too light to be heavy, would jump and leap between the two. Do you see Best Beloved?
And the biggest of all was the Whale. He was far too big to fly and far too heavy to leap much either, but he did…just about.
The Whale swam and swam and swam, with both flippers and his tail, as hard as he could. With flapping of his big tail and making the sea so frothy. But just as he leapt out of the sea he would fall right back in again. But he did ever so like trying.
And the ‘Stute fish would make encouraging noises right behind his ear, and would, on occasion tickle him, ‘stutely.
Can you see the Whale plunge back into the sea, so young and fresh? He’s giving us a wave with the end of his tail.
And that’s also the end of this tale.
Would you, could you make a world?
Make the sky and all the birds.
Would you, could you make the sea?
Make it clear so you could see.
I’d make two
And give one to you
So you always
Always
Always
Had things to do.
Would you, should you make man twice?
Do it once is my advice.
And did you notice?
Did it pass you by?
Matter was there at the beginning
Before there was any sinning
The Creationists are bluffing
The world was not made from nothing.
And did you notice?
Did it pass you by?
The first person plural tense
That’s ‘we’ instead of ‘I’
God’s got mates it seems to me
At least back then, but now? Maybe.