And All the Animals
And All the Animals is a walk through the whole Bible — start to finish, in order, one story at a time.
There are two voices. A narrator tells the story. A raven supplies the facts: what a cubit works out to, how big Nineveh actually was, which museum the tablet is sitting in. The raven was, by its own account, present for some of this, and has not entirely gotten over how that turned out.
The stories are told straight, which means the people in them come off exactly as badly as the text says they do. Jacob is a con man. Noah gets off the boat and plants a vineyard. The prophet in episode one would rather die than watch his enemies be forgiven. The Bible's own narrator is unsparing about all of it — we just say it out loud.
Where a passage has been read two ways for a thousand years, we say so, lay both out as well as we can, and leave it with you. Where the archaeology is contested, you get the dates, the findspots, and an honest shrug. Episodes end on a question rather than a moral.
Written for about ten and up, and for whoever else is in the car. Every episode opens with a plain note about what's in it, and when something is hard, we say so before we get there.
Episodes
14 episodes
Jonah Books a Cruise (Pilot)
God appoints a fish, a plant, a worm and a wind. All four obey instantly. The only one who doesn't is the prophet.
What it Won't Say - Creation
Creation. A poem with joinery: days one to three build containers, days four to six fill them. Three places the text declines to name what it obviously could — and it reads as an answer to an older Mesopotamian story, which sets up episodes 4 a...
Nobody Says I Did It - Eden
Eden. The serpent misquotes the rule, the woman misquotes it back, the man blames two people in seven words — and the only prediction in the chapter that comes true belongs to the snake.
Seven and Seventy-Seven - Cain
Cain. A murderer is warned first, protected after, and founds the first city. Five generations later his descendant boasts about killing for an injury. The chapter is measuring a rate of change.
The Bird Nobody Thanks - The Flood Part 1
The flood as Genesis tells it. Noah doesn't speak for three chapters, and the promise at the end isn't made to him.
The Bird Nobody Thanks - The Flood Part 2
The other flood stories, George Smith, and where the four accounts stop agreeing.
Babel
Verse 4: "lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth." Verse 8: "so the LORD dispersed them." Their stated fear returned in their own sentence — and God has to come down to see it.
Abraham Leaves
Told to go, without being told where. Then lies about his wife to a king — and does it again four chapters later.
Haggling Over Sodom
Abraham talks God down from fifty righteous people to ten, out loud, and wins every round.
The Binding
The hardest passage in Genesis. Heavy content hint; the readings diverge enormously and the episode says so.
Jacob Gets Away With It
The protagonist is a con man. The text declines to condemn him and lets you sit with that.
The Man at the River
Jacob wrestles someone all night. The text refuses to say clearly who. He leaves with a limp and a new name.