If you have not read Eaters of the dead, I will give a brief description, without hopefully spoiling it. It is a book by Michael Crichton, who essentially took fragments from the old Beowulf saga, combined them with fragments from the Arab traveler Ibn Fadid, and added a bunch of his own text in the style of Ibn Fadid, that retells the story of Beowulf, with the outsider Fadid as a witness.

So well did Crichton blend the writing, that he himself admits to having once spent hours trying to track down a statement made by Ibn Fadid, in order to source it, until he realized he himself had authored the lines. Basically, you can not tell where the actual historical lines end, and the fabricated Crichton lines begin, based on style alone.

Crichton, basically adapts on entire ancient writing style, in order to tell his tale, while giving a great deal of information about both the Viking and the Arab peoples, as well as the ancient Bulgarians, and a couple other tribes. It is much better done then the Book of Mormon, and yet it was done without the author making any claims of supernatural enlightenment. In fact, he admits that he wrote the whole book on a dare, as an attempt to write a version of the tale of Beowulf that modern audiences would find more palatable.

It's just an example of another great book that shows that a meager work like creating the BoM is not beyond the scope of a human hand.

Side note, "Eaters of the Dead" was made into a movie, called "The 13th Warrior," which I mention for anyone who noticed a similarity in plot.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/08/2012 01:20AM by forbiddencokedrinker.

The film "Kingdom of Heaven" borrowed a cue from "The 13th Warrior" (Valhalla). It's a testament to Jerry Goldsmith's fine composing.