BEELZEBUB’S BIBLE
Stephen Zoltan
(Sparsile, £10.99)
According to Stephen Zoltan’s unnamed scribe, as he watches God inspecting the fruits of his labours, there’s something about writing that gets the Almighty particularly triggered. “He’d always had a thing about knowledge and had devised ingenious ways of controlling it, through illicit trees and such-like. And on top of everything else, writing seemed to be another threat to this ancient order.”
Zoltan’s first full-length work of fiction, while ostensibly a novel, assumes the form of a collection of clever and quirky short stories tightly bound to the theme of reinterpreting and rewriting the Bible. He likes the bits that the clergy tend to brush over: the passages that lend themselves to wide interpretation and the logical holes that make for interesting heresies.
His numerous characters, if not being seduced by pagan gods, dining with their divine parents-in-law or grumbling about the infrastructure of the afterlife, are to be found remaking the Bible in their own image. There may be important theological issues to be explored, but Zoltan is determined that he and his readers have fun thinking about them. Beelzebub’s Bible approaches heresy as an act of creative play and these 21 tales bristle with wit, mischief and energy.
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It opens with God unexpectedly appearing in one of the greatest cities of antiquity and minutely examining it, presumably to gauge the progress made by the human race since its creation. This is the first sighting of God on Earth since Biblical times, and the narrator is thrilled by the possibility of recording events as they happen and making his mark on the world by adding his account to the Bible as a new chapter.
A little later, we eavesdrop on Milton’s publisher returning the manuscript of Paradise Lost to its author out of fear of prosecution, and Milton rewriting it to get round the law.
Mainly, though, Zoltan’s tales are clustered around Edinburgh, wherein dwell eccentric characters like Victorian scholar McBridie, who believes that, since all scientific research “clearly proclaims the magnificence of Creation”, there should be no problem in updating, expanding and annotating the Bible to take account of scientific advances.
Another Edinburgh professor, Archibald Gilhoolie, has made a study of the Cherubim his life’s work and, after hearing a talk by Darwin, concocts a theory that angels may have been the product of evolution. There’s also William Comyns Beaumont, who remaps the Holy Land so Biblical events take place in Midlothian. Beaumont’s theory irrevocably changes the city, where Jesus now sits in a Canongate pub, scribbling notes he hopes will one day be added to the Bible.
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Zoltan doesn’t restrict himself to Christian theology. Inspired by Daedalus, an Athenian builds wings and flies to the heavens, where he sits at a long table hosting every god in existence and finds that even the divine moan about immigration over dinner.
The Goddess of Sex has moved with the times, establishing an online Temple of Love to teach spirituality through lovemaking. And we mustn’t forget the jet-setting Hermes, touching down on Calton Hill at Beltane for a spot of god-human seduction.
With so many stories based around one theme, there’s a danger of repetition or fatigue, but the strain rarely shows. Zoltan’s level of inspiration and inventiveness remains high throughout, witty and engaging even when speculating on an infinite deluge of AI-generated Bibles, customised to people’s individual beliefs, eroding religious faith entirely.
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