The chronology is this: as in the biblical account, Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden and have children, one of whom is Cain. Before we continue with this instructive and definitive history of cain, undertaken with unprecedented boldness, it might be advisable to introduce some clarity into the chronology of events." With Saramago, the tongue is always in the cheek, the eyebrows always arched, the nose raised, eyes forever rolling. " The long sentence, the lower-case proper nouns, the low-level humour: Saramago's prose always sounds like the beginnings of a stand-up routine or a shaggy dog story. "When the lord, also known as god, realised that adam and eve, although perfect in every outward aspect, could not utter a word or make even the most primitive of sounds, he must have felt annoyed with himself, for there was no one else in the garden of eden whom he could blame for this grave oversight. The novel begins in characteristic Saramago style. Like all good Nobel laureates, he was the kind of writer who wrote about the human condition, with a capital H and a capital C. Cain's is the story of mankind, and Saramago was one of those authors much concerned with the plight of mankind. Cain – his rewriting of the biblical story – was his final novel, and is in some ways a fitting conclusion. The result of these observations is a contrast between Bible story retellings in Genesis 1-11 with the biblical text.T he Nobel prize-winning Portuguese novelist José Saramago died last year. These factors serve the background of modern children’s Bibles, an understanding that is a guiding assumption in viewing retellings from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as well as twentieth-century and contemporary versions. Combined with an Enlightenment-created understanding of children’s Bibles is the related idea of modern religious pedagogy that formulates the Bible towards modern views on the Bible and the nature of childhood.
It follows that children’s Bibles are aligned to the same trend and are made with the same preunderstanding. Children’s literature, as is known today, was formed during the Enlightenment (or Age of Reason) and relies on several insights from this important time in history, including education and childhood.
Children’s Bibles are examined from their origins in the Enlightenment, which resulted in children’s literature and its sub-genre: children’s Bibles. It is the purpose of this thesis to uncover the values and presuppositions that authors rely on when they transform the Bible for children. Used as tools in families, religious education, and culture making, children’s Bibles are suspect, because as tools for Biblical Education, they make it a point to alter the biblical text. For the last three centuries, Children’s Bibles have often been the first encounter children have with the Bible, and text and pictures together have been instrumental in forming lasting impressions.
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