Right, so... This is going to be one of those projects. You know, the kind that I update only occasionally, and that I'll probably never finish.
A while back, I got into an argument with someone who claimed that almost no atheists had read the Bible. I responded that, in my experience, most atheists had read the Bible, and were frequently better-acquainted with it than many Christians. She responded that no, most atheists had only read verses from the Bible; they hadn't read the whole thing. That struck me as deeply misguided on several levels, but it's true that I haven't actually sat down and read the Bible from cover to cover that way. So, partly, this is going to be a reading project.
I honestly wouldn't have bothered, but I've also found myself thinking about The Black Book of Children's Bible Stories, and what it might be like to rewrite the entire Bible from the perspective of, say, Cain. So this will also, and primarily, be a writing project.
I'm going to have to make some fairly big decisions fairly early on, and some of those of decisions are going to affect the shape of the entire retelling. The biggest one, of course, is How am I going to deal with the supernatural elements? Do I take them as they are? Do I dismiss them as mythical, and/or explain them away? If there's nothing supernatural going on, then Cain can't be my only narrator; he'll only have a mortal lifespan, after all. And I'd end up essentially skipping over a lot of the most interesting stuff in the Old Testament. So I think the supernatural elements stay, and remain supernatural -- no Ancient Aliens, just the Bible stories taken at face value. However, that might mean addressing some other questions, like How can we put satellites into orbit if the sky is actually a vault that separates the waters above from the waters below?
I suppose I should also note that Karl Edward Wagner's Kane stories and Vampire: The Masquerade are almost certainly going to play into this, though there aren't going to be any vampires in this story... At least, not unless the Bible turns out to be a whole lot stranger than I realized.
If anybody is actually reading this, and wants to add some thoughts before we get going, feel free to comment.
