Tuesday 7 September 2021

Fictionalizing Biblical Material

This post covers old territory but maybe from a new angle.

Pantheons coexist in:

Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword;
 
Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys and "A Feast for the Gods";

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman and American Gods;

Mike Carey's Lucifer, a sequel to The Sandman;

Alan Moore's Top Ten.
 
(As usual, such a list becomes longer and more complicated as it is written.)

In all these works, the "pantheons," if that is the right word in this context, include the Biblical one(s). Thus:

in The Broken Sword and The King Of Ys, old gods withdraw before the White Christ;

in The Sandman, Lucifer retires so God appoints two angels to rule Hell instead;

in American Gods, Odin takes center stage but Jesus is around somewhere as well;

in Lucifer, God retires and is succeeded by his granddaughter;

in Top Ten, the Aesir, Krishna, the Old Testament deity and many others frequent the Godz Bar;

we will take a closer look at "A Feast for the Gods."

4 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

We see JRR Tolkien doing something similar in earlier versions his Middle Earth mythos: he thought at first of the Valar as being gods. But as time passed his thought deepened and Eru Iluvatar, the One, and Father of all, God, too center stage, with the Valar being reconcieved as the angels, His servants. Probably because his Catholic monotheism made it difficult for him to think of the Valar as being "real" gods.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

There is a beautiful Upanishad in which Indra, Agni and Agni first encounter Brahman, the Spirit Supreme. They ask, "Who is that being that fills us with wonder?"

Paul.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Indra, Agni and Vayu.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Good literature can be found in many cultures, of course.

Ad astra! Sean