The Bloody History of the Fertile Crescent

Biblical stories offer possibilities not found in typical prose; even magic realism cannot supplant the evocative nature of the true fantasy. They are the only fantastic stories hanging on the rusty hook of metaphor that people insist really happened. Thus, they have a grave and exhilarating rhetorical power.

Here, I write the story hovering just behind the dominant interpretation, the story never told, perhaps because the characters were seen as uninteresting or unpopular and therefore no place was reserved for them in the dominant record. I also evoke the hidden story secreted within the main figures, their more obscure motivations and hidden wishes.

Read here to see how Ismael and Isaac are one person, to see how Jesus came to be the son of God, how Satan and God's relationship deteriorated, how Jonah fared in the whale, why Adam and Eve left the garden. Read to find out why Job was punished, where Joseph got his coat, the origins of Mary's fantastic explanation, to find out what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah. Learn about the second set of commandments, and what Moses did with the first, why Cain slew Abel, why the Tower of Babel faltered, what Jesus has to say about investment.

Read this alternative bible so this ancient text can fulfil its original project: a bloody history of the Fertile Crescent.