On a dreary morning just before my Catholic grade school freed us students for Easter break, my teacher slipped a tape that had been wonkily recorded from cable TV into the classroom VCR. Before I knew it, there was Richard Burton in a Roman soldier’s uniform, expounding on the nature of the gods to bombastic, regal trumpet music, and suddenly a boring half-day dangling before time off became a lot more interesting.
The film, 1953’s The Robe, based on a 1942 novel of the same name by Lloyd C. Douglas, centers around a Roman centurion, played by Burton, who is sent by the future emperor Caligula to a post in Judea as punishment, where he is promptly ordered to carry out a crucifixion. Thinking little of this common order at first, he soon is beset by a terrible madness at the touch of a robe he won gambling that belonged to the man he crucified (guess who).
Having been raised on a healthy diet of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals, retold biblical stories weren’t in and of themselves a novel idea to me, but that an entire Empire-spanning epic could be written out of a nameless figure the Gospels place at the foot of the cross? I was never the same. Soon every bookstore I entered endured my hunt for original imaginings and fresh perspectives on characters hardly mentioned, or strange tales typically brushed under the rug of neat religious interpretation. I had parameters: I did not want to be preached at (I now know that to be its own subgenre); I wanted a story that was difficult and challenging and devoted to facing the Bible’s questions and contradictions head-on, something that feels more important than ever. Every time I found one, I felt like I had unearthed a treasure left behind specifically for me by likeminded literary explorers.
As my collection of these kinds of narratives grew, shelved beside similar works that took on Greek myths and other trails of ancient history, I began to write my own stories in this same vein. Looking back now, I realize that I had been drawn to this since before I even knew what the Bible was: as a very young child plopped down in a church pew, I would entertain myself in that strange but beautiful room by making up backstories for the pretty people depicted in the stained glass windows around me. My fascination with religious art of all stripes never waned, eventually leading to a graduate degree on the subject as well my debut novel, Marble.
The protagonist of Marble certainly isn’t an obscure or unnamed biblical character, but she is one whose image has taken on a massive life of its own in the intervening 2,000 years since the New Testament was composed, fully escaping the containment of the relatively scant lines devoted to her in the source material. In my novel, the figure often referred to the Virgin Mary is called Maryam, and she begins her story years before her controversial pregnancy, leaving me with fresh terrain to create a whole new world around one of the world’s most famous mothers not as a mother, but as a young girl with her own dreams and desires.
Below are eight beloved books from my shelves that have likewise completely reimagined and reexamined figures from the Bible, proving just how fertile the ground is beneath stories we’ve heard before and think we know.
Dinah is plucked from near-complete obscurity, brought out of a few lines in the Book of Genesis and made the narrator of a multi-generational tale about the women in her family–that is, the women who gave birth to her and her many brothers, all fathered by famed patriarch Jacob. This story envelopes the reader in the sisterhood that flourishes in the red tent, where these nomadic women find routine reprieves from their harsh, complicated lives at the hands of their shared father, husband, and sons. Diamant’s novel was truly the blueprint for a new and deeply enthralling kind of reimagining of the Bible, one that resurrects these overlooked figures, places them back in their historical context, and explores their rich interpersonal dynamics and inner lives, brimming with pain and joy.
The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks
From the viewpoint of the religions that enshrine him, King David is a great hero, but according to scholar Michael D. Coogan, he is also the most fully developed character in the Hebrew Bible. Brooks takes on this incredibly complex figure through a fascinating viewpoint: that of the prophet Natan, who bears witness to every victory achieved and atrocity committed throughout David’s life. By employing this perspective, the novel simultaneously imagines what it would be like to receive unbidden, debilitating prophecies from a higher power, as well as navigate the dangers of being the appointed truth teller–and dear, lifelong companion–to such a powerful man (and yes, the title is a reference to the magnificent Leonard Cohen song).
Wisdom’s Daughter by India Edghill
Moving on to David’s son Solomon, this novel–one of four inventive Hebrew Bible retellings by Edghill–explores politics, gender roles, and the very nature of wisdom through the enigmatic figure of the Queen of Sheba. The story’s strength lies in its division of diverse perspectives: from the queen herself, Bilqis, traveling to a foreign kingdom to seek a way to continue her matrilineal royal line; to the prophet Ahijah, enraged by King Solomon’s laxity toward the many gods brought to court through his marriages; to Solomon’s wives and daughter, a welcome turn from source material so typically concerned with only the exploits of husbands and sons.
John the Baptizer by Brooks Hansen
Most often relegated to a secondary position to his cousin Jesus, John the Baptist shines at the center of this ambitious dual narrative: some chapters trace the highly mystical, surreal journey of John from the womb to adulthood, while others delve into the earthbound soap opera of the family of King Herod the Great, several of members of which act as adversaries and counterpoints to a prophet focused on the spiritual but bound by the physical and political. The traditional heroes and villains all get a fresh perspective, and some infamous biblical scenes are unforgettably reconfigured in this high-impact revisitation.
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
At once laugh-out-loud funny and heartbreakingly poignant, the bulk of Lamb brings to life what are traditionally known as Jesus’s “Lost Years,” those between his last childhood appearance in the Gospels and his emergence as an adult, ready to begin his mission. His mischievous but supportive best friend, Biff, is brought back from the dead to fill in the gaps in the story, which has the two buddies crossing continents and religious traditions to seek wisdom and training from the three magi who visited Jesus (here called Josh) when he was born. As powerful as it is unique, the story explores the full humanity of a child tasked with somehow saving the world.
The Liars’ Gospel by Naomi Alderman
Echoing the four accounts of the canonical Gospel authors, Alderman’s take on the tumultuous decades before the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 B.C.E.—of which Jesus’s preaching and death are presented as only one small part–is split between four perspectives. Readers are treated not just to the viewpoints of somewhat expected characters, like his mother, Mary (Miryam), and Judas (Iehuda), his disciple-turned-betrayer, but of Caiaphas, the High Priest navigating the high tension between his people and their Roman overlords, and of Barrabas, the rebel with a cause who was spared execution on the day of Jesus (Yehoshua)’s. This novel tenderly but unflinchingly revisits this period by recentering the Jewish perspective on these events and their devastating, long-lasting consequences.
The Madonna Secret by Sophie Strand
Mary Magdalene has (fairly) long been a favorite subject of artists of all kinds, but in this lush, expansive narrative, she stands at the center of a first-century world humming with female desire, rage, and power, one where women have equal share in the touch of divinity but are denied their due by men. The novel vividly traverses Mary Magdalene (Miriam)’s life and Jesus (Yeshua)’s time on earth through a boldly animistic lens, culminating in revisions that will have readers who long to take back this story from the patriarchal Church gasping and cheering.
What if the Son of God didn’t come to earth, initially, as a son? Ryman blasts through standard historical fiction with startling but effective moments of sci-fi in this completely original imagining of the Virgin Mary ’s pregnancy and Jesus’s life. His rethinking of Jesus’s gender identity results in not just an audacious take on the New Testament, but a complex and reflective examination of a parent’s love for their child. Ryman’s Jesus (Yehushua) is one you’ve never experienced before, and his Mary (Maryam) is one to relate to and remember.
Taylor Catalana is a writer and museum professional who studied art history and theology at Fordham University and King’s College London. Born and raised in New Jersey, she currently lives in Brooklyn with her dog. Marble is her first novel.