The King James Bible was written in 1605, which means that there had previously been centuries of Bible writing and rewriting. King James' version is one of the more famous, but it certainly wasn't the first, and it certainly wasn't the last. There have been many others who have tried their hands at rewriting the Bible since then—telling the same story, only with different words. Since the copyright has almost certainly lapsed by now, I figure I might as well take a crack at it. Here's Genesis I.
In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth. Before that,
God created God, because the creation of God was such a good yet complicated
idea that only a Perfect Being could think of how to do it, which is why God
created Himself. It was pretty dark, so
God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light; and God liked it so much
He renamed it day, and let day go on all day, and when day was over the
darkness came back, and He renamed the darkness night. “Naming, renaming… I’ve created the first
rut,” God said, and vowed to sort this out tomorrow.
The next day God said, “Put
some of the water in the sky and leave the rest down there.” God renamed the water in the sky the heavens,
even though He’d already created something yesterday that was already called
the heavens. “I’ll rename it later,” God
said, but didn’t get around to it, and the second day ended.
Next morning God said, “Let
the water that I’m not calling the heavens show up in one place so we can have
dry land which I will call… oh, earth, I guess,” and so it was. God renamed the dry land earth but still
called the water in the sky the heavens along with the other thing He created
the first day that was also called the heavens.
The water below he renamed the sea, and that was good, too. Then God said, “Let’s have plants and trees
with seeds and fruits,” which were things He named before they existed, but
that worked out, because things always do with Him, so He knocked off for the night.
On day four God said, “Let’s
put some lights in the heavens so we can tell it from the night. We can use those lights to identify when
holidays start. Once I create holidays,
of course. Whatever those are.” The light for the day was a sun called the
Sun and the light for the night was a moon called the Moon. He also made stars and meant to name them but
never got around to it. He knocked off
for the night, again with unfinished business.
On the fifth day, God said,
“Let’s have living creatures in the water and let’s have birds fly in the
heavens. Wait—the water heavens? Or the other heavens that I created on day
one? I really should have called them
different things…” God then made all
kinds of fish and all kinds of birds and told them to be fruitful and to breed
like crazy. They didn’t understand Him,
being dumb animals, but luckily they found the world boring enough that there
was little else to interest them but eating and breeding.
Then God put things on the
land that walked around or crawled around and that made it a point to kill and
eat the other things He had created.
This was a lot of work and by the end of the day God was running out of
ideas. “Okay, now let’s make something
that looks like Me. I’ll put those
things in charge of everything else I made so I can take a day off now and
again.” And so God created delegation,
and it was good. “You, copies of Me: you
better do a good job running this place.
Eat anything you want. And get
ready: I’m taking tomorrow off.”
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