Avesta of particular manuscripts. A pre-Sasanian history of the Avesta, if it had one, is in the realm of legend and myth. The oldest surviving versions of these tales are found in the ninth to 11th century texts of Zoroastrian tradition (i.e. in the so-called "Pahlavi books"). The legends run as follows: The twenty-one "nask"s ("books") of the Avesta were created by Ahura Mazda and brought by Zoroaster to his patron Vishtaspa ("Denkard" 4A, 3A). Supposedly, Vishtaspa ("Dk" 3A) or another Kayanian, Daray ("Dk" 4B), then had two copies made, one of which was stored in the treasury, and the other
The Book of Dave is discovered centuries later and used as the sacred text for a dogmatic, cruel, and misogynistic religion that takes hold in the remnants of southern England and London following catastrophic flooding. The future portions of the novel are set from 523 AD (After Dave). The book alternates between Dave's original experience and that of the future devotees of the religion inspired by his writings. Much of the dialogue in "The Book of Dave" is written in "Mokni", an invented dialect of English derived from Cockney, taxi-drivers' and Dave's own usage, text-messaging, and vocabulary peculiar to the late 20th and early