The Fob Bible

By Eric W Jepson, Danny Nelson, A. Arwen Taylor

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 The FOB Bible

When it comes to Bibles, I like to keep a good number of translations on my shelf. Those old, ancient stories, primarily from the Old Testament, seem to get stranger and stranger with time, and the more translations that can tease out insights only add to the power that those mythic stories hold. Also, I am interested in how the stories and literary forms of the Bible get re-formed and re-imagined in contemporary literature, seen in such works as by James Joyce and William Faulkner (among countless others).

But what if instead of taking old forms and re-imagining them in contemporary life, writers would take contemporary literary forms with a post-modern sensibility, and went back to re-tell some of those stories from the Old Testament? We would get something like The Fob Bible. The Fob Bible is a creative re-imagining of the Old Testament through short stories, poems, sketches, emails, even a play, interspersed with Gustave Dore engravings and other various illustrations. Composed and edited by a group of writers, who call themselves Friends of Ben, this version of the Bible is an entertaining, humorous, and challenging experiment in contrasting familiar characters with contemporary forms, filling in back-stories and side-stories which are only hinted at in the scriptures.

The Friends of Ben refers to Ben Christensen, who organized a writing group in 2002 among friends who originally met through classes and conferences, to discuss their writing ambitions and projects. They include: Arwen Taylor, B.G. Christensen (i.e. Ben), Danny Nelson, Eric W. Jepson, Ryan McIlvain, Samantha Larsen Hastings, Sarah E. Jenkins, Theric Jepson, and William C. Bishop.

From the introduction: “It is not puzzling, given the Mormon heritage of the group, that they would have an urge to reexamine fundamental assertions of their culture – some from positions of orthodoxy and others from points far removed. Fob from the beginning was a meeting of misfits, a place for those who felt somehow outside the day-to-day realities of modern pragmatics.... This book is the result of these examinations....”

The FOB Bible has a mash-up aesthetic, combining the style of a family bible from the 19th century, possibly a found book in some dusty attic, but filled with re-interpreted ancient stories with a sensibility coming from this unique writing group Friends of Ben. There are too many stories to cover in this review, and each one could be discussed in depth, but let me give you a taste of what to expect. One I thoroughly enjoyed was “Blood-Red Fruit” by Eric W. Jepson, featuring “the snake” and Satan, answering the question: what was the “the snake” doing before meeting Eve in the Garden? Well “the snake” was involved in a conversation with Satan, of course. (And you thought they were the same...)

Here's an excerpt:

“You are very beautiful,” he said.

The snake stirred, blinking. “How can you know what beauty is?” she asked. Her voice was low, and modulated. “Only the gods know that.”

Satan shrugged. “I don't know how I know, snake. I only know that I know – and you are very beautiful.”

“Are you a god, then?” Her voice was cool and musical, like a brook, and she regarded Satan with cool eyes.

He laughed, leaning back into his wings and grabbing his knees. “Do I look like a god to you?”

“You look like half a bat,” said the snake as she eased down from the tree. “The other half might be monkey, might be man. You have more hair that the other two-legs in this part of the tree-place.”

“Not a god though. That's a relief,” said Satan. He leaned forward slightly and studied her as she moved from under the shadows of the trees. “You are beautiful – look at you in the sunlight. You're like a living bruise.”

“What part of creation is a bruise?” asked the snake.

“A very beautiful part.” Satan's mouth twitched into a smile.

The idea of a beautiful bruise just sucked me into this story, of which the rest only gets better. Along with Satan and the snake, we get stories and poems that cover all kinds of characters, from the majors, such as Abraham, Isaac, Esau, Moses, Ezekiel, Solomon, Daniel, even Jeremiah a la Ogden Nash. But we get a spectrum of minor stories, such as Job's wife, Baal's secretary, Gomer, Heber's wife, even Maher-shalal-hash-baz, among much, much more.

For those who will object to the story's deviation from a doctrinally LDS correlated view of scripture, then The FOB Bible will probably confuse, if not frustrate readers. But for those who appreciate scripture beyond such circumscriptions, readers will find much in the way of literary challenges and enjoyment, which are neither plain nor precious.