Genesis From Creation to the Flood by Jason Quinn

Title: Genesis From Creation to the Flood
Author/Editor: Jason Quinn
Publisher: Kalyani Navyug
Rating: WORTHY!

Ably illustrated by Naresh Kumar.
Colorist: Vijay Sharma
Co-Editor: Sourav Dutta
Design: Era Chawla
Lettering Bhavnath Chaudhary

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is reward aplenty!

This is a graphic novel which takes the fictional Bible story of creation and illustrates it. Together, the writer and illustrator take a very loose approach to the Biblical text, inserting their own interpretations liberally, so I was left completely in the dark about what their motives and beliefs truly were in creating this work. The result isn't bad. It's quite fine if you're entertained by this kind of simplistic and shallow mythology, but there was nothing new here, or engrossing. Aside from, as I said, some loose interpretation, it's pretty much the same story you can read in the first nine chapters of the Biblical book of Genesis.

Obviously Earth (indeed, the universe) isn't 6,000 years old, nor were all living things created in the space of six days. Anyone who believes that is at best ignorant or delusional and at worst, thoroughly dishonest. What the purpose of this creation story was, when it was first written down his highly debatable, but it's what happens when you let scientifically ignorant people take power, and make the rules.

A lot is missing from this story because it's already absent from the original Bible text. Since it's reporting only what the Bible already reported (although creatively enhanced in parts!), we have no idea why there was a creation. We're told only that there was. We don't get to learn how there was light, and day, and night before there were stars. Things like that.

I found it intriguing that the art, which isn't bad at all, depicts only modern organisms being created and later, boarding the ark. There are no dinosaurs in sight, no mammalian megafauna, no primitive reptiles, no amphibians. No insects! No ancient foliage.

The story doesn't try to explain anything, merely reporting it, so despite illustrations of Noah's ark, we don't get to learn how he fitted all those millions of pairs of organisms into the relatively tiny ark. We don't learn how he managed to build the ark so huge to begin with, and have it stay in one piece on a raging ocean! We don't find out how the animals all arrived there, or how the specialized food for them was collected and stored. Nor do we learn where he got that thirty foot elephant depicted on the cover (note the ark was only 45 feet high, so that elephant is truly huge!

We do learn that Adam and Eve where white! That rather surprised me. I'm not one of those people who believes they were black per se, but I don't honestly think they were quite as WASP as they're portrayed here, with pale skin, straight blonde or brown hair, and blue eyes! The weird part about that, is that the illustrator is from India, a nation known for gorgeously rich brown tones and not at all for whiteness of skin or blueness of eyes (not since the Brits got kicked out, anyway!). There's some really interesting psychology going on there!

That wasn't anywhere near as surprising as the fact that Satan is now revealed to be a lizard man reminsicent of Doctor Curt Connors in The Amazing Spider-Man, complete with arms and legs, and a long, serpentine tail. This is pure nonsense, because the Bible makes no mention whatsoever of the serpent being anything other than a serpent - a snake - and it offers support for this fact in the very verses in Genesis where this is discussed.

I found it amusing that the fruit is depicted as an apple, too. The Bible says no such thing. It speaks only of fruit. The apple is not native to the Middle east. No one knows what the fruit in the myth was intended to be - if indeed it was meant literally at all.

The writer seems not to know that cherub is the singular, the plural being 'cherubim', so 'cherubims' is nonsensical, but these are what keep Adam and Eve out of the garden. I guess their god wasn't much for forgiveness and turning the other cheek, huh? Obviously that comes later in God 2.0.

The weird thing about all of this is that when Cain kills Abel, he's 'thrown out'. I don't get what he's thrown out of since the whole family was already expelled from Eden. How can he be kicked out of 'out'?! And if he is the only person in the world other than his mom and dad, why does he need a mark to protect him from others?! None of this makes any sense, but it's all laid out here in colorful detail. The story of Cain and Abel is actually laid out over rather many pages because it's - how shall I put it? - dramatically augmented? Yeah, that's it.

Noah's flood story is sad, because he has this boat, and when people beg him for a ride, he refuses them all. Again, where is the forgiveness? Where's the turning o' the cheek? Not here, to be sure.

I'm going to recommend this graphic novel because it highlights in wonderful color how silly the whole creation/flood story truly is.

Poisoned Honey by Beatrice Gormley

Title: Poisoned Honey
Author: Beatrice Gormley
Publisher: Alfred A Knopf
Rating: worthy

This is a novel based on the Biblical New Testament fiction of Mary Magdalene. Unfortunately, it Anglicizes the names way too much so we don't really get a full taste of Middle East flavor even as we're delivered a lot of Hebrew culture and introduced to Hebrew habits and traditions. That struck me as rather odd. Fortunately, the author doesn't buy into every cliché surrounding Mary Magdalene: that she was for example, a prostitute, but we do get an interesting perspective on her supposed seven devils. That itself is another NT fiction. It's mentioned only in Luke, a rip-off gospel, and in the forged portion of Mark. This campaign of vilification against Mary M. is precisely why she's so interesting a person.

Mary Magdalene is a conflation of several different people portrayed in Biblical fiction. There's a good article about her in wikipedia. She often rated as the second most important woman in the NT after Mary, the mother of Jesus, but this is dishonest because Jesus's purported mother contributed nothing. Indeed, Jesus himself rebuked her thereby breaking the sixth commandment ("Woman, what have I to do with thee?" John 2:4). This would indicate that he was openly stating that he was not actually her son. We hear nothing of this Mary except in a couple of places, whereas Mary Magdalene is mentioned more than any other woman, so no, she wasn't second to Mary, but took precedence over her by far.

Now what do I mean by Biblical fiction? Well as far as I am concerned, the Biblical Old Testament is at best a poor record of Hebrew ancient history, but it's been larded-up with fantasy and fiction about the doings of gods, for which there is neither evidence nor support. The New Testament is even worse, since as far as I am concerned, it’s not even Jewish history - it’s all fiction. Yes, Jesus (or rather the actual Hebrew name, Yeshua, or some variant thereof) was a common name in that era, as was Mary (or Miri or whatever), and there may well have been a rabbi named Yeshua, but that doesn’t mean that rabbi was a god, or a manifestation of a god, or a son of a god. I don’t buy that at all because there is no reason to.

There may even have been a Yeshua who was crucified, but that doesn’t prove that he got up out of the grave three days later. I'm not one of these idiots who tediously parrots that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". I mean, I find it extraordinary that the sun is a massive ball of nuclear fusion some 93 million miles away, but that doesn’t mean I require extraordinary evidence to accept that as the truth. No, I merely require sufficient evidence, for this or any other claim that’s not self-evident. Science provides sufficient evidence (and then some). Scientific evidence fits. It makes sense. Religion cannot offer any such evidence for its claims, which is why I don’t buy them. People back then were scientifically ignorant and blinded by religious superstition, and as far as I'm concerned, this accounts adequately for everything that's told in the Bible where it impinges upon, references, or calls for the supernatural.

So why did I choose to read this? To me this is just one more Biblical-style fiction, every bit as valid or invalid as the original. These messianic stories are neither unique nor original to the Bible. There have been scores of "saviors" or "messiahs" throughout history, and across cultures: people who were supposedly born of a virgin, who left home, who rallied people around them, who brought a "new" message, who won followers, who were killed and who supposedly were resurrected and taken up into "heaven". Lord Raglan (4th Baron Raglan) did a study of this archetype, which is worth a look. I don’t believe in any of them and there is no reason to make an exception just because there's yet another such story in the Bible. However, sometimes these stories can be told well, made intriguing, even made to make sense, so I was merely curious as to what Gormley did with this.

Mary is a character who has intrigued me ever since I first learned of her. Indeed, I find her far more fascinating than the main character of the NT! This is why I have an idea on the back burner for a novel about her which will explore why so many people, even in Biblical times, sought to trash her character. When I had the opportunity to buy this one in the Library store (wherein they sell-off discontinued library books at an amazing discount!) I snapped it up.

The author consistently refers to her main character as Mari. This young teen is given a vision of her place in life and is convinced that she should submit to an arranged marriage. Unfortunately, the charming guy she thinks she's getting dies prematurely, and instead she's given to an old curmudgeon who doesn't love her. He already has a dominant woman in his life who spares no mercy for Mari, making her life a misery. When the old guy finally kicks the bucket, Mari is glad and is able to leave the house and not return.

The problem is that during her time in this miserable marriage, Mari becomes slowly seduced by demons without even realizing it's happening to her. Of course, the man who frees her from this possession becomes the man she devotes her life to supporting, and to following and learning from him.

Not the best or most original story in the world, and nothing like the idea I have for a novel, but still this novel is worth a read if you're into tales told well or Biblical fiction.