The King James Bible, the most widely read piece of fiction in the English Language, has long been upheld even by secular scholars as a work of such quality as to have been born from a collective brush with divinity, such is the poetic majesty of its prose. This is now being challenged by academics at Cambridge University who claim to have discovered the first draft, a work which finally allows them to peer through the stagecraft and take a look at the inner-workings of the text, with startling results.

The findings have unveiled an original story arc very different from the finished article, particularly in reference to the last earthly days of Jesus Christ.

Professor Robert Mograve of the Cambridge Centre for Religious Questioning and Actual Thought commented, “Obviously, it was a huge shock to discover that Moses was originally a sassy, talking Iguana, but otherwise a lot of the initial story development is the same, if not slightly embellished on what made it into the final draft, but then, as we approach the crucifixion, it’s an entirely different beast.”

Mograve and his colleagues agree that the most startling difference is that it is the Jesus Christ character who crucifies Pontius Pilate, who in the original was an actual pilot. Supposedly, Jesus wins a coin toss with Barabbus, who in this first draft was written as a local celebrity, well known for his billboard advertising campaigns promoting his rug business.

Mograve continued: “There’s a part where Jesus wants to show that He’s a benevolent force and shoots down Pilate from the cross with His laser eyes

just before he asphyxiates. Next to this there is a comment: ‘no-one will believe this, total rethink needed’.”

The text is littered with red ink underlining, circling, and, in the most damning criticism, double question-marking certain elements, with lengthy critical review at the end making it clear that even with an extensive re-write the manuscript would be lucky to be published at all. One editor even alluded to the fact that it is only due to the relative lack of other texts to publish that they are even willing to reconsider this work.

Documents found alongside the manuscript hint at the increasingly fraught relationship between the writing team and the editors. After serious back-and-forth, both side made concessions, with the writers restructuring a lot of the earlier passages, but being given carte blanche in the final chapter to write as they please, on the one condition that the name be changed from ‘Sexy end of day orgy scene’ to ‘Revelations’.

One has to wonder how different modern society would be had the original been published, and had it been, whether we could live in a world free of stigma for individuals with laser eyes and horses in multiples of 4?