Genesis flood account carried by the WSJ. Random, but cool. A warning, perhaps? Or an editorial book review:
A few of the survivors belong to a persecuted proto-Christian group called God's Gardeners, who interpret the Bible as an environmentalist text. The Gardeners, whose leader foretold the coming of the Flood, subsist in part on stockpiles of food they call "Ararats," after the mountain on which Noah's ark landed. Before the Flood, they had lived in a rooftop garden named "Eden" and were strict vegetarians. (They ate honey, too, but only after asking permission of the bees.) After the Flood, they are permitted to consume meat, just as, after the biblical flood, God told man that "every moving thing that lives shall be food for you."
That's not a bad starting point for a sci-fi novel, and in defter hands such a story might be entertaining. But Ms. Atwood is not known for her light touch.
More on the book at Amazon here. And Moses' text from Genesis below, well, just in case...
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Genesis 7:17-23, in the King James Version:
And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A21
