The Book of Genesis retold in the style of Kipling’s Just So Stories.
Bob Prophette in collaboration with Stuart Faulkner; magician, painter, performer and musician. He can be contacted via gooeystuey.weebly.com.
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.
Available from Bookshops
Publisher : Koan & Co Publishing
Publication date : December 1, 2025
Language : English
Print length : 110 pages
ISBN-10 : 1917622015
ISBN-13 : 978-1917622011
Item Weight : 9.8 ounces
Dimensions : 5 x 0.44 x 8 inches
Back cover text
What really happened “in the beginning”?
In Genesis. Just So! Bob Prophette takes the world’s oldest stories and retells them with a twinkle in the eye, a wicked sense of humour, and more than a dash of Kipling’s Just So magic. Here the Whale leaps from the formless deep, God misplaces his patience (and occasionally his holidays), Adam wonders what’s for breakfast, and Abraham tries very hard indeed to be fruitful—sometimes with surprising results.
These are the tales you half-remember from childhood, half-suspected from Sunday School, and never quite imagined like this. Each chapter re-spins a foundational story of Genesis: creation and catastrophe, serpents with appalling manners, brothers who can’t share breakfast, angels with questionable hobbies, and humans who just won’t stop building towers. Woven throughout is Prophette’s warm, sly commentary on belief, power, blame, and the peculiarities of the God of Genesis—whose infinite resource and sagacity may not always be quite what you expect.
Beautifully illustrated by Stuart Faulkner, Genesis. Just So! is at once a parody, a tribute, and a fresh invitation to read these ancient stories anew. It will make you laugh, wince, ponder, and—perhaps—look again at the first book of the Bible with renewed curiosity.
Because in the High and Far-Off Times, oh Best Beloved, things didn’t always happen quite the way you were told.