In Competition No. 2736 you were invited to submit bible stories as retold by modern authors.
There were plenty of eager contenders, and unsurprisingly so. Works of heavyweight literary scholarship have documented the all-pervasive influence of the King James Bible on British and American literature. The rhythms of its language are clearly discernible in the work of writers as diverse as Wodehouse, Hemingway and Kipling, who mined not only its style but its content too. Kipling’s phrase ‘dark places of the earth’ (from Psalm 74:20) is also borrowed by Conrad in Heart of Darkness.
You clearly had great fun with this assignment, letting the likes of Jilly Cooper, Irvine Welsh and J.K. Rowling loose on Sunday School favourites. I was especially entertained by E. Blake’s ‘Samson and Delilah’ as retold by Jackie Collins and by M.E. Ault/Lionel Shriver’s We Need To Talk About Cain.
The winners are printed below and are rewarded with £25 each. W.J. Webster takes the extra fiver.
Paul Griffin, a regular presence on these pages over the years, died last month. His vim, wit and skill will be much missed.
The ark he built of gopher. He had been on the earth for six hundred years. He knew wood, and he knew boats. A boat you could make of oak or cedar but to build an ark of three hundred cubits you needed the long, straight grain of gopher. He ran the ham of his fist along the smooth curve of a plank. This is like the old days, he thought, when the world was fresh and clean, when men lived with honour, and women stood proud in their beauty. Now, God knows, there is only corruption, and mankind is rotting like stalks in a midden. He turned away from the ark.
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