Deserted
Retelling Bible Stories Without an Angry God
Nathan Roberts
Illustrations by alxndr jones
Deserted
Retelling Bible Stories Without an Angry God
Copyright © 2019 Nathan Roberts. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Resource Publications
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-8228-5
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-8229-2
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-8230-8
Manufactured in the U.S.A. October 15, 2019
“Roberts’ reimagining of these well-known Biblical stories is nothing short of masterful. The stories are as bright and fantastical as they are dark and powerful. There is a profound humanness in these stories that invite you to reconsider your own place in a world fraught by groans of anguish and songs of hope.”
—Michael Vazquez
founder of Brave Commons, an LGBTQ+ Christian advocacy organization
“Nathan Roberts is a gifted-storyteller, a writer of great imagination, and a brilliant Biblical interpreter! They will provoke you to think deeply and consider the connections to twenty-first century life that he weaves through them.”
—Karen Gonzalez
author of The God Who Sees: Immigrants, the Bible, and the Journey to Belong
“Deserted’s reimagining of classic Bible stories without God as the centerpiece offers us a glimpse of the truest essence of the human condition when we only have to be accountable to ourselves and each other and not an almighty, judgmental God.”
—Ulysses Burley III
founder of UBtheCURE, a faith, health, and human rights organization
“Ingeniously reworking some of the most familiar Biblical tales. These men and women face recognizable moral dilemmas both large and small, striving to do what’s right, and in the process, the Bible once more emerges as a living text that offers guidance in moments of doubt.”
—Keith Harris
City Pages magazine
“If you have never met the characters in the Bible or if you have read about them a thousand times, I promise you will be drawn into Roberts’ vivid, engaging, and artfully troubling retellings. With deft insight and good humor. Read this book to ignite your imagination.”
—Debbie Blue
author of Consider the Women: a Provocative Guide to Three Matriarchs of the Bible
“Reading these short stories sent me back to my Bible (and my farm roots) with fresh eyes on ancient stories of faith. While God is not an “out loud” actor in these stories, they expand my imagination of God at work in the world.”
—Rev. Bonnie Wilcox
Senior Pastor, First Lutheran Church, Columbia Heights, MN
Acknowledgments
I want to begin by thanking my wife, Emilie. Her continued love, support, inspiration, conversations, and hospitality make my writing, and my life, possible.
Thank you to Ben Barnhart for combing out the snarls in my sentences. To alxndr jones for making the illustrations so beautiful and profound. To the team at Wipf and Stock for believing in this book. To everyone who listened to me tell and retell these stories at the School House and over cups of coffee. To everyone who read and reread drafts of this book, especially Jeremiah, Rev. Lawrence, Rev. Bonnie, Luke, Gina, Andrew, Sarah, Jimmy, Michael, Rozella, Dr. Ulysses, Suzanne, Karen, and Keith. To Walter for giving me a chance to be on the radio. To Rev. Debbie, Rev. Russell, and the House of Mercy for introducing me to the Midrash and reteaching me to read the Bible. To my First Lutheran family, my Minneapolis UCC family, the Salt Collective writers, the Kimpurs, and my Kenyan family for so many wonderful years of reading the Bible in community together.
And finally to you. I sincerely appreciate you sharing your time with us, and I hope you continue to retell and rearrange these beautiful stories.
Introduction
I remember being a little kid and lying on the carpet as I stared at the pictures in the illustrated children’s Bible while adults read me the stories about Moses and Pharoah, Noah, and Eve. The characters were all drawn as doe-eyed white people with washed hair and long, clean robes. They didn’t look like the people who lived under a hot sun in the middle of the desert. They looked more like adults from my church playing dress-up. My Sunday School teacher had sang to us, Father Abraham, had many sons. And I am one of them and so are you, so I assumed pale skin was a family trait that went all the way back.
When I was in 3rd grade I was given my own copy of the full Bible, the adult Bible. I eagerly reread all my favorite stories and I found, much to my delight, that there were many salacious details that my picture Bible had conveniently omitted. There was sex and violence on practically every page. I was in possession of a book I would have never been allowed to read if it didn’t have the word “Holy” on the cover. By the time I graduated high school, I had read the full Bible cover to cover four times.
It wasn’t until my mid 20s that I began to read theses stories in the original Hebrew language. The stories felt very different. The verses in English had felt smooth and reliable. The tone and vocabulary was even and polished. But when I read these same verses in Hebrew, they felt stilted. The story of Noah and the ark bore the scars of being edited. The sentences had been broken and mended. The tone and phrasing shifted sometimes in the middle of a story. As I reread Genesis it happened in story after story. The whole book of Genesis felt collaged together from different writers. All this had been polished over by the English translators.
I began to research. That’s when I discovered the Source Theory. I learned that the stories I had grown up reading in the Bible, were actually retellings of stories. Hebrew fathers told their sons about Isaac and the goat as they wandered the hills in search of fresh grazing land. Mothers told their daughters about Eve and a talking snake around the cooking fire. These were family stories told and retold across the desert for hundreds of years. And like so many family stories, they changed and grew with each retelling.
Then around 1000 B.C. Hebrew priests in Jerusalem began collecting these stories, and for 500 years they filled scroll after scroll.
