The Bible And The Shah-Nama

Characters in fictional narratives carry older and longer narratives with them into their futures. Thus:

"...Thornton read his Bible by the dim red flicker of light..."

-Question And Answer, CHAPTER X, p. 78)

We already know Thornton for a Bible-reading man so we think no more of it. It tells us something about this man that he reads that book in the evening. We categorize him as such. But reflect on what he is reading: a continuous narrative from the creation of light and the separation of the waters at the beginning of Genesis to the creation of a new heaven and a new earth where the sea (representing chaos) is no more at the end of the New Testament. That is quite something. How it squares with the universe as disclosed by their physics, astronomy and other sciences is a question for Thornton and his fellow Noachian Dissenters in their Martian colony to ponder but meanwhile, and whatever the rest of us think about it, the Bible remains a complete cosmic narrative contained within a single volume.

"'...It is written in the Shah-Nama that water was the first of all things created.'"

-Dune, p. 296.

Here is another group of human beings going out into space and taking with them an ancient, lengthy, written narrative regarded as somehow authoritative. Water is merely separated in Genesis but created in the Shah-Nama. It is two thirds hydrogen, the lightest and commonest element.

("Noachian" turns out to be a term with not only Biblical but also Martian significance.)