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The Butcher of Nazareth
Goodreads #1 Horror Book to Read in 2026 *
Order link in Author Profile
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"The New Testament à la Cormac McCarthy." –Kirkus Reviews
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Haunting visions drive a grieving butcher to hunt down an obese, pre-ministry Jesus to prevent an age of fire and ash.
---
But when the Butcher ‘adopts’ a dead newborn, his hunt for the son of Nazareth takes a personal and horrific turn.
---
How does one choose between personal redemption and world-wide salvation?
---
From Bethlehem to Jerusalem to Nazareth, familiar events and figures are reimagined with a modern sensibility, building to a gut-wrenching conclusion.
A heart of darkness story that explores: fathers and sons, grief, zealotry, and choice.
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ADVANCE PRAISE:
“Unique and unforgettable. A visceral and immersive work of historical horror - masterfully done.” –A.C. Wise, Out of the Drowning Deep, & Wendy, Darling
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"David Scott Hay is a street preacher for the apocalypse and he's written his own Fresh Testament, filled with grisly visions no amount of bleach will ever rinse out from your eyes." –Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
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"Enthralling, gut-wrenching, and bloody, The Butcher of Nazareth is destined to become a literary classic.” –Pedro Iniguez, Bram Stoker Award nominee and author of Fever Dreams of a Parasite
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“The Butcher of Nazareth offers a rare and uncompromising vision—an apocalyptic gospel where faith is questioned, history bleeds, and humanity must answer for what it dares to believe.” –BookLife
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“David Scott Hay has not just written a dark gospel; he has penned a devastating and brilliant meditation on the costs of faith, the weights of choice, and the terrible, beautiful paradoxes at the core of human destiny.”
–Jim McLeod, Ginger Nuts of Horror
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“Strongly imagined and relentlessly told, David Scott Hay’s THE BUTCHER OF NAZARETH stabs a dagger of horror into the murky years which preceded Jesus’ ministry.” –IndieReader 4.5/5 stars
---
“DSH’s writing is witty, smart, and precise.” –Chicago Sun-Times
---
“DSH has a taut, bristling writing style stacked with compelling ideas.” –New City Journal
Order link in Author Profile
---
"The New Testament à la Cormac McCarthy." –Kirkus Reviews
---
Haunting visions drive a grieving butcher to hunt down an obese, pre-ministry Jesus to prevent an age of fire and ash.
---
But when the Butcher ‘adopts’ a dead newborn, his hunt for the son of Nazareth takes a personal and horrific turn.
---
How does one choose between personal redemption and world-wide salvation?
---
From Bethlehem to Jerusalem to Nazareth, familiar events and figures are reimagined with a modern sensibility, building to a gut-wrenching conclusion.
A heart of darkness story that explores: fathers and sons, grief, zealotry, and choice.
---
ADVANCE PRAISE:
“Unique and unforgettable. A visceral and immersive work of historical horror - masterfully done.” –A.C. Wise, Out of the Drowning Deep, & Wendy, Darling
---
"David Scott Hay is a street preacher for the apocalypse and he's written his own Fresh Testament, filled with grisly visions no amount of bleach will ever rinse out from your eyes." –Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
---
"Enthralling, gut-wrenching, and bloody, The Butcher of Nazareth is destined to become a literary classic.” –Pedro Iniguez, Bram Stoker Award nominee and author of Fever Dreams of a Parasite
---
“The Butcher of Nazareth offers a rare and uncompromising vision—an apocalyptic gospel where faith is questioned, history bleeds, and humanity must answer for what it dares to believe.” –BookLife
---
“David Scott Hay has not just written a dark gospel; he has penned a devastating and brilliant meditation on the costs of faith, the weights of choice, and the terrible, beautiful paradoxes at the core of human destiny.”
–Jim McLeod, Ginger Nuts of Horror
---
“Strongly imagined and relentlessly told, David Scott Hay’s THE BUTCHER OF NAZARETH stabs a dagger of horror into the murky years which preceded Jesus’ ministry.” –IndieReader 4.5/5 stars
---
“DSH’s writing is witty, smart, and precise.” –Chicago Sun-Times
---
“DSH has a taut, bristling writing style stacked with compelling ideas.” –New City Journal
330 pages, Paperback
First published February 26, 2026
About the author
David Scott Hay
10 books98 followersButcher link: https://www.davidscotthay.com/
DSH is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. As a novelist, he is a 2x Kirkus Prize Nominee.
He is Managing Editor of Whiskey Tit's new horror imprint HEADLESS.
He currently lives with his wife and son and dog and a dozen typewriters in a valley between the ocean, the mountains, and the desert.
DSH is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. As a novelist, he is a 2x Kirkus Prize Nominee.
He is Managing Editor of Whiskey Tit's new horror imprint HEADLESS.
He currently lives with his wife and son and dog and a dozen typewriters in a valley between the ocean, the mountains, and the desert.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 80 reviews
December 29, 2025
My strongest work to date. No frills. No tricks. Can’t wait for everyone to read it. Pre-orders will be signed and stamped.
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May 15, 2025
An incredible read. I couldn't stop devouring this book, because despite the pain, the horror, and the inevitability of the beast, I needed to finish the journey, just as the butcher did. David Scott Hay took the familiar stories surrounding Jesus of Nazareth and injected them with black-as-pitch streaks of human greed, malice, and obsession. This effectively takes the heightened, allegorical style of bible stories and turns them a deep and rusty shade of noir. Two-dimensional characters surrounding the classic manger tale become fully realized, flawed, and tortured under David's pen. The butcher himself is a complex and fundamentally human character, and it is easy to feel his pain as we watch him walk the line between the hope and dignity of man, and the cruel, heartbroken destruction of the beast he fears he may become. The best kind of villain is one that is made by circumstances, where we can see ourselves reflected back in the darkest of mirrors. In this case, Hay pulls the strings like a master puppeteer, and even when we see the calamity coming, all we can do is watch. There is no question that the butcher hears voices, but are they from the lord, or from the devil, or from somewhere else entirely? It was extremely entertaining to find out for myself. 5 stars.
April 22, 2026
An honest-to-god (if you’ll excuse the expression) masterpiece.
I think the easiest way to get started is the cover. We've all been told not to judge a book by its cover: advice that we gleefully ignore every chance we get. I took one look at the Butcher of Nazareth's cover and thought "Oh, this is going to be metal as fuck." Reading the summary only amplified that impression.
To be clear, BoN is, indeed, metal as fuck.
It is also slow-burn, modern apocrypha about grief and our desperation to correct mistakes that are impossible to take back. Our protagonist is a heartbreaking figure. He's also (at various points) warm, tender, and funny. He's a dad, and at times he's the dad that a lot of us would like to be. And at other times, he's a nightmare: a broken patriarch with so much blood on his hands it could make you sick.
Hay's handle on characters is what gives this book its real wings. Everyone here feels like meat and bone: real and tangible. This extends from our protagonist to his quarry, who, in the end, is just another man filled with fear, self-doubt, and the everyday flaws and quirks that we all have.
At various points through my reading of this book, I cried, I laughed, I gagged, and I image searched the word "sakin".
And every now and then, I did indeed mutter "Yeah -- that's metal as *fuck*."
I think the easiest way to get started is the cover. We've all been told not to judge a book by its cover: advice that we gleefully ignore every chance we get. I took one look at the Butcher of Nazareth's cover and thought "Oh, this is going to be metal as fuck." Reading the summary only amplified that impression.
To be clear, BoN is, indeed, metal as fuck.
It is also slow-burn, modern apocrypha about grief and our desperation to correct mistakes that are impossible to take back. Our protagonist is a heartbreaking figure. He's also (at various points) warm, tender, and funny. He's a dad, and at times he's the dad that a lot of us would like to be. And at other times, he's a nightmare: a broken patriarch with so much blood on his hands it could make you sick.
Hay's handle on characters is what gives this book its real wings. Everyone here feels like meat and bone: real and tangible. This extends from our protagonist to his quarry, who, in the end, is just another man filled with fear, self-doubt, and the everyday flaws and quirks that we all have.
At various points through my reading of this book, I cried, I laughed, I gagged, and I image searched the word "sakin".
And every now and then, I did indeed mutter "Yeah -- that's metal as *fuck*."
March 26, 2026
Page turner, unique perspective, horrifying
April 26, 2026
A brick through the stained glass window.
BWAF SINISTER SELECTION
BWAF Score: 7/10
TL;DR: David Scott Hay’s The Butcher of Nazareth is a blasphemous fever-vision: biblical horror as contamination event, prophecy as infection, and faith as a weaponized plague. It’s nasty-poetic, hallucinatory, and proudly indie in its refusal to behave. Darkly funny, brutally committed, and impossible to mistake for safe “elevated” horror.
The Butcher of Nazareth by David Scott Hay is an anti-hagiographic biblical nightmare that treats the Christ story like an apocalyptic contamination event. It is ugly, deliberate, and weird with intent.
This book escalates like a curse tightening its grip, and it does not give a shit if you’re comfortable. It opens with a mission statement like a cracked commandment: Titus the Butcher believes his task is “simple though arduous,” to kill one more child, except the “child” is a grown man now. From the jump, the prose is nasty-poetic and tactile, full of steaming filth, glistening innards, splintering wood, and the casual brutality of a man whose hands know how to make bodies stop. It’s also darkly funny in that scorched-earth way where humor is just the nervous system trying to stay upright while the world rots around you. Titus is not a noble assassin. He’s a grieving father, a former participant in Herod’s slaughter, a tradesman whose “calling” has turned him into an instrument. He walks through Judea with an unnaturally large one-horned goat like it’s his demonic emotional support animal, and every step drags a future behind it.
Titus, once conscripted into “the Culling” of Bethlehem’s infants, is plagued by visions of what Christianity will become, and he decides Jesus must die before the religion’s future atrocities can happen. The novel follows Titus across Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Nazareth as he hunts the pre-ministry Nazarene, accumulating bodies, confessions, and ritualized wrongness, while the line between divine instruction and delusion keeps getting thinner. The dread isn’t “is God real.” The dread is “what if faith is the vector and history is the disease.”
Visions function like infection. Titus gets these spikes of revelation, flashes of future crusades and inquisitions and flame-deluge apocalypse, and they drive him like a nail through the skull. The book doesn’t treat prophecy as mystical comfort, but as horror surveillance. Titus sees the “end” as a world burned to ash and glass, and those images are not pretty wallpaper. They’re operational justification. That constant pressure, that sense of being commanded by something that might be holy or might be madness with good branding, is what keeps the book humming. You don’t get to relax. You don’t get to step outside the fever. You are in it.
That escalation is structural, too. Book I (Bethlehem) builds the engine and immediately starts poisoning it. Titus arrives hauling a wounded youth, bargains his way into a midwife’s home, and gets pulled into a grotesque remix of nativity myth as commerce and performance. The midwife, Cassia, is one of the novel’s best inventions because she isn’t a saint or a strawman. She’s sharp, exhausted, practical, and spiritually furious. She teaches Titus sutures. She makes him butcher lamb. She talks about grief like it’s a tool. Then the book drops one of its first true “oh fuck” turns: Cassia reveals she keeps her embalmed dead infant preserved in a chest, hoping the divine king will resurrect him someday. That’s the moment the book stops being “revisionist Bible thriller” and becomes something closer to blasphemous folk-Gothic ritual object. Titus is forced to hold that tiny corpse. He is forced to ask whether he killed it. He is forced to watch maternal faith curdle into a demand. It’s intimate and obscene and absolutely not playing for tasteful prestige vibes.
This is close third that stays glued to Titus’s interior logic, with feverish interludes that read like scripture having a panic attack. Reliability is the whole game. Titus is convinced he is chosen. He is also clearly capable of monstrous rationalization. The narration has a hypnotic chant quality, returning to refrains like “The Lord will guide my hand,” until the phrase becomes both prayer and indictment. The tonal consistency is impressive. Even when the book gets grotesquely funny or theatrically biblical, it keeps the same scorched devotional pitch. It’s a sustained incantation, and that’s why it works.
The book refuses to make Titus purely symbolic. He’s ashamed, proud, tender in flashes, and then immediately capable of making someone a carcass. He forms relationships that feel like pressure systems: Cassia as mirror, the Roman legionary as unwanted intimacy and looming consequence, the Pharisee as the most terrifying kind of kinship. Later, when Titus brushes up against the Nazarene’s family, the domestic textures matter. Bread, honey, small talk, quiet resentments. That mundane friction makes the dread sharper, because it turns myth into something you can smell. It also underscores the book’s meanest idea: history isn’t made by marble statues. It’s made by people having arguments in kitchens while monsters in power take notes.
The imagery is concrete and memorable: splintering wood, mangers as props and as evidence, bodies opened and stitched, honeycomb and wax and stings, goat horn regrowth like an obscene miracle. The goat is an inspired choice because it keeps the book hovering between allegory and creature-feature menace. Sometimes it’s comic. Sometimes it’s a witness. Sometimes it feels like the book’s true demon, the thing that keeps pushing Titus into the next station of suffering. When the apiary and bees become part of the choreography, the prose tips into hallucinatory physicality, the kind that makes you itch while you’re reading.
Hay knows what to show. The violence is not coy, and it’s rarely “cool.” It’s messy, humiliating, and often framed through labor: carving, cutting, stitching, dragging, cleaning. There’s a sequence of communal punishment that plays like social infection, not justice theater, and it’s one of the moments where the book’s thesis stops being abstract and starts being bodily. Bodies do not disappear cleanly. Grief becomes an object you carry. Shame becomes a tool people use on each other. And when the book turns ritualistic, it does it with viciousness.
David Scott Hay comes out of a background that includes playwriting and screenwriting, and you can feel that stagecraft in how scenes escalate and how dialogue can turn from banter to threat without a warm-up. He’s also written satire and genre hybrids, which explains why The Butcher of Nazareth has both contempt for institutions and a willingness to go full sacrilege without blinking. This isn’t a writer discovering religion as an aesthetic. This is a writer using religious narrative as a weaponized container for horror, and doing it in a way that feels proudly indie: too bodily, too specific, too willing to offend to be sanded down into “elevated but safe.”
The book is formally and conceptually unhinged in a deliberate, indie-only way. It’s not “what if Jesus, but edgy.” It’s “what if the Christ story is the origin of a future plague, and the plague is faith plus power plus permission.” The book’s big swing is that it treats salvation as a dangerous idea, a Get Out of Hell Free abstraction that can be used to launder atrocities. It makes Titus a kind of anti-Judas, a man trying to murder the mechanism of grace before it metastasizes. That’s a daring thesis, and the book actually commits to it instead of winking.
The power comes from monolithic intensity. Sometimes the thesis-forward drive flattens certain character beats into sermon-ish momentum, and the relentless pitch can feel less like a perfectly calibrated narrative machine and more like a sustained jeremiad. I didn’t mind that. It’s part of the posture. This book wants to prophesize. It wants to accuse. It wants to crawl into your moral imagination and piss on the rug. But if you’re a reader who needs modulation and breathable pacing, you might find the incantation exhausting.
If you want a clean, filmable thriller with tasteful theological ambiguity, this will feel like a brick through a stained-glass window. But if you want indie horror that’s actually willing to be blasphemous, bodily, and prophetic, and you can tolerate (or enjoy) a book that reads like an extended, feverish denunciation, this is where it’s at. Read this motherfucker, now!
Read if you want biblical horror that treats the gospel like a biohazard and doesn’t apologize.
Skip if you want a neat, filmable thriller rather than a monolithic, hallucinatory sermon from hell.
BWAF SINISTER SELECTION
BWAF Score: 7/10
TL;DR: David Scott Hay’s The Butcher of Nazareth is a blasphemous fever-vision: biblical horror as contamination event, prophecy as infection, and faith as a weaponized plague. It’s nasty-poetic, hallucinatory, and proudly indie in its refusal to behave. Darkly funny, brutally committed, and impossible to mistake for safe “elevated” horror.
The Butcher of Nazareth by David Scott Hay is an anti-hagiographic biblical nightmare that treats the Christ story like an apocalyptic contamination event. It is ugly, deliberate, and weird with intent.
This book escalates like a curse tightening its grip, and it does not give a shit if you’re comfortable. It opens with a mission statement like a cracked commandment: Titus the Butcher believes his task is “simple though arduous,” to kill one more child, except the “child” is a grown man now. From the jump, the prose is nasty-poetic and tactile, full of steaming filth, glistening innards, splintering wood, and the casual brutality of a man whose hands know how to make bodies stop. It’s also darkly funny in that scorched-earth way where humor is just the nervous system trying to stay upright while the world rots around you. Titus is not a noble assassin. He’s a grieving father, a former participant in Herod’s slaughter, a tradesman whose “calling” has turned him into an instrument. He walks through Judea with an unnaturally large one-horned goat like it’s his demonic emotional support animal, and every step drags a future behind it.
Titus, once conscripted into “the Culling” of Bethlehem’s infants, is plagued by visions of what Christianity will become, and he decides Jesus must die before the religion’s future atrocities can happen. The novel follows Titus across Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Nazareth as he hunts the pre-ministry Nazarene, accumulating bodies, confessions, and ritualized wrongness, while the line between divine instruction and delusion keeps getting thinner. The dread isn’t “is God real.” The dread is “what if faith is the vector and history is the disease.”
Visions function like infection. Titus gets these spikes of revelation, flashes of future crusades and inquisitions and flame-deluge apocalypse, and they drive him like a nail through the skull. The book doesn’t treat prophecy as mystical comfort, but as horror surveillance. Titus sees the “end” as a world burned to ash and glass, and those images are not pretty wallpaper. They’re operational justification. That constant pressure, that sense of being commanded by something that might be holy or might be madness with good branding, is what keeps the book humming. You don’t get to relax. You don’t get to step outside the fever. You are in it.
That escalation is structural, too. Book I (Bethlehem) builds the engine and immediately starts poisoning it. Titus arrives hauling a wounded youth, bargains his way into a midwife’s home, and gets pulled into a grotesque remix of nativity myth as commerce and performance. The midwife, Cassia, is one of the novel’s best inventions because she isn’t a saint or a strawman. She’s sharp, exhausted, practical, and spiritually furious. She teaches Titus sutures. She makes him butcher lamb. She talks about grief like it’s a tool. Then the book drops one of its first true “oh fuck” turns: Cassia reveals she keeps her embalmed dead infant preserved in a chest, hoping the divine king will resurrect him someday. That’s the moment the book stops being “revisionist Bible thriller” and becomes something closer to blasphemous folk-Gothic ritual object. Titus is forced to hold that tiny corpse. He is forced to ask whether he killed it. He is forced to watch maternal faith curdle into a demand. It’s intimate and obscene and absolutely not playing for tasteful prestige vibes.
This is close third that stays glued to Titus’s interior logic, with feverish interludes that read like scripture having a panic attack. Reliability is the whole game. Titus is convinced he is chosen. He is also clearly capable of monstrous rationalization. The narration has a hypnotic chant quality, returning to refrains like “The Lord will guide my hand,” until the phrase becomes both prayer and indictment. The tonal consistency is impressive. Even when the book gets grotesquely funny or theatrically biblical, it keeps the same scorched devotional pitch. It’s a sustained incantation, and that’s why it works.
The book refuses to make Titus purely symbolic. He’s ashamed, proud, tender in flashes, and then immediately capable of making someone a carcass. He forms relationships that feel like pressure systems: Cassia as mirror, the Roman legionary as unwanted intimacy and looming consequence, the Pharisee as the most terrifying kind of kinship. Later, when Titus brushes up against the Nazarene’s family, the domestic textures matter. Bread, honey, small talk, quiet resentments. That mundane friction makes the dread sharper, because it turns myth into something you can smell. It also underscores the book’s meanest idea: history isn’t made by marble statues. It’s made by people having arguments in kitchens while monsters in power take notes.
The imagery is concrete and memorable: splintering wood, mangers as props and as evidence, bodies opened and stitched, honeycomb and wax and stings, goat horn regrowth like an obscene miracle. The goat is an inspired choice because it keeps the book hovering between allegory and creature-feature menace. Sometimes it’s comic. Sometimes it’s a witness. Sometimes it feels like the book’s true demon, the thing that keeps pushing Titus into the next station of suffering. When the apiary and bees become part of the choreography, the prose tips into hallucinatory physicality, the kind that makes you itch while you’re reading.
Hay knows what to show. The violence is not coy, and it’s rarely “cool.” It’s messy, humiliating, and often framed through labor: carving, cutting, stitching, dragging, cleaning. There’s a sequence of communal punishment that plays like social infection, not justice theater, and it’s one of the moments where the book’s thesis stops being abstract and starts being bodily. Bodies do not disappear cleanly. Grief becomes an object you carry. Shame becomes a tool people use on each other. And when the book turns ritualistic, it does it with viciousness.
David Scott Hay comes out of a background that includes playwriting and screenwriting, and you can feel that stagecraft in how scenes escalate and how dialogue can turn from banter to threat without a warm-up. He’s also written satire and genre hybrids, which explains why The Butcher of Nazareth has both contempt for institutions and a willingness to go full sacrilege without blinking. This isn’t a writer discovering religion as an aesthetic. This is a writer using religious narrative as a weaponized container for horror, and doing it in a way that feels proudly indie: too bodily, too specific, too willing to offend to be sanded down into “elevated but safe.”
The book is formally and conceptually unhinged in a deliberate, indie-only way. It’s not “what if Jesus, but edgy.” It’s “what if the Christ story is the origin of a future plague, and the plague is faith plus power plus permission.” The book’s big swing is that it treats salvation as a dangerous idea, a Get Out of Hell Free abstraction that can be used to launder atrocities. It makes Titus a kind of anti-Judas, a man trying to murder the mechanism of grace before it metastasizes. That’s a daring thesis, and the book actually commits to it instead of winking.
The power comes from monolithic intensity. Sometimes the thesis-forward drive flattens certain character beats into sermon-ish momentum, and the relentless pitch can feel less like a perfectly calibrated narrative machine and more like a sustained jeremiad. I didn’t mind that. It’s part of the posture. This book wants to prophesize. It wants to accuse. It wants to crawl into your moral imagination and piss on the rug. But if you’re a reader who needs modulation and breathable pacing, you might find the incantation exhausting.
If you want a clean, filmable thriller with tasteful theological ambiguity, this will feel like a brick through a stained-glass window. But if you want indie horror that’s actually willing to be blasphemous, bodily, and prophetic, and you can tolerate (or enjoy) a book that reads like an extended, feverish denunciation, this is where it’s at. Read this motherfucker, now!
Read if you want biblical horror that treats the gospel like a biohazard and doesn’t apologize.
Skip if you want a neat, filmable thriller rather than a monolithic, hallucinatory sermon from hell.
August 12, 2026
5/5 Stars
Format: Paperback
Spoilers: No
The Butcher of Nazareth is one of the more captivating and unique books I've read in some time. Years after King Herod ordered a culling of male children under 2 in response to the possibility of a competing king being born, one of the men involved is called by god to track down the one child who escaped the culling - Jesus of Nazareth.
I was so impressed with the writing and the storytelling here. We follow The Butcher as he travels across Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Nazareth searching for his target, all the while dealing with the ghosts of his past life. The structure is really interesting, the whole book being three large chapters with a prologue and an epilogue., and written in a very biblical way. Even though we don't have short chapters, something about the writing had me wanting to keep going. We get great emotional depth to our characters with an incredibly unique story, and stunning imagery. As the intro suggests, Hay dares to tell a story and ask questions about a time when we get little information, filling in a unique alternate history to the world of Jesus before his adulthood.
This book also deals with some really heavy topics - child loss, grief, faith, losing faith and finding it again, and the cost of rage and isolation. It is visceral and violent, and filled with iconic imagery (we get a goat, bees, ritualistic rites and so much more), as well as a Jesus who is not at all what we are familiar with. And in all that there is also beauty, and the idea that we need people to help us through life, and that carrying rage and hate bears a significant cost.
Full disclosure, I think folks who are very strictly religious will struggle with this one, and there are some trigger warnings you should check before reading, especially surrounding children and violence. However, if you like religious horror, if you are open to exploring a well known person and time of history in a very unique way, and if you love a book that tells a good horror story while also dealing with heavy themes in an incredibly unique and artistic way, you should really give this one a try!
Format: Paperback
Spoilers: No
The Butcher of Nazareth is one of the more captivating and unique books I've read in some time. Years after King Herod ordered a culling of male children under 2 in response to the possibility of a competing king being born, one of the men involved is called by god to track down the one child who escaped the culling - Jesus of Nazareth.
I was so impressed with the writing and the storytelling here. We follow The Butcher as he travels across Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Nazareth searching for his target, all the while dealing with the ghosts of his past life. The structure is really interesting, the whole book being three large chapters with a prologue and an epilogue., and written in a very biblical way. Even though we don't have short chapters, something about the writing had me wanting to keep going. We get great emotional depth to our characters with an incredibly unique story, and stunning imagery. As the intro suggests, Hay dares to tell a story and ask questions about a time when we get little information, filling in a unique alternate history to the world of Jesus before his adulthood.
This book also deals with some really heavy topics - child loss, grief, faith, losing faith and finding it again, and the cost of rage and isolation. It is visceral and violent, and filled with iconic imagery (we get a goat, bees, ritualistic rites and so much more), as well as a Jesus who is not at all what we are familiar with. And in all that there is also beauty, and the idea that we need people to help us through life, and that carrying rage and hate bears a significant cost.
Full disclosure, I think folks who are very strictly religious will struggle with this one, and there are some trigger warnings you should check before reading, especially surrounding children and violence. However, if you like religious horror, if you are open to exploring a well known person and time of history in a very unique way, and if you love a book that tells a good horror story while also dealing with heavy themes in an incredibly unique and artistic way, you should really give this one a try!
July 18, 2026
“Fuck you, Jesus! You’re the cause of all the world’s woes! We’d be better off if you were never born!” severely lowers voice “I was just playing, Jesus, you know I love you. You would never send me to hell, would you?”
May 10, 2025
As soon as I heard the premise for this book (“A participant in the Biblical baby massacre when Jesus was born receives apocalyptic visions of the future and believes he’s on a mission to slay the Son of God”), I felt a powerful need to get my hands on it. I was worried I’d have to wait a while until the release, but I lucked into an ARC copy courtesy of the publisher!
Our main “hero” is [REDACTED], known only as the Butcher for a significant chunk of the novel. Being inside his mind is a frightening and somber experience. This dude has done some horrendous shit in his past, the kind of unfathomable acts no one could forgive. In his present, he’s trying to make up for his atrocities and find redemption. All he has to do is kill Jesus and prevent the birth of Christianity! Doesn’t sound too hard, right? Wrong! The journey our intrepid butcher departs on is brutal and strange. Everyone he meets on the way he views as either a temporary ally or obstacle to achieving his sinister goals. If you can believe it, he’s not the most sociable fella. He’s kinda like a Biblical Anton Chigurh! Even though the Butcher isn’t a “good guy”, I still found myself rooting for him to succeed in his history-altering quest.
The blasphemy aspects of this book are surprisingly nuanced and don’t feel edgy for the sake of shock value like other blasphemous stories. The best kinds of satire have a strong understanding of their subjects and don’t just mock them. If this is a satire, it certainly isn’t the conventional kind. The historical aspects are written in a way that feels respectful of Christian mythology. Once believers get past the disturbing idea of reading a book from the perspective of their Holy Saviour’s potential assassin, I think they would find a story that is profoundly moving under all the horror and bloodshed.
This is the second book I’ve read from David Scott Hay (NSFW was another certified banger) and he continues to impress me with his kickass prose and far out stories that defy easy genre categorization. Seems like I’ll have to try and check out whatever he cooks up next since he’s my kinda writer!
Our main “hero” is [REDACTED], known only as the Butcher for a significant chunk of the novel. Being inside his mind is a frightening and somber experience. This dude has done some horrendous shit in his past, the kind of unfathomable acts no one could forgive. In his present, he’s trying to make up for his atrocities and find redemption. All he has to do is kill Jesus and prevent the birth of Christianity! Doesn’t sound too hard, right? Wrong! The journey our intrepid butcher departs on is brutal and strange. Everyone he meets on the way he views as either a temporary ally or obstacle to achieving his sinister goals. If you can believe it, he’s not the most sociable fella. He’s kinda like a Biblical Anton Chigurh! Even though the Butcher isn’t a “good guy”, I still found myself rooting for him to succeed in his history-altering quest.
The blasphemy aspects of this book are surprisingly nuanced and don’t feel edgy for the sake of shock value like other blasphemous stories. The best kinds of satire have a strong understanding of their subjects and don’t just mock them. If this is a satire, it certainly isn’t the conventional kind. The historical aspects are written in a way that feels respectful of Christian mythology. Once believers get past the disturbing idea of reading a book from the perspective of their Holy Saviour’s potential assassin, I think they would find a story that is profoundly moving under all the horror and bloodshed.
This is the second book I’ve read from David Scott Hay (NSFW was another certified banger) and he continues to impress me with his kickass prose and far out stories that defy easy genre categorization. Seems like I’ll have to try and check out whatever he cooks up next since he’s my kinda writer!
April 5, 2026
First of all, I appreciated the personalized signed copy David Scott Hay sent out along with all the swag (the button that came with this is now adorning my horror movie shelf). A horror story in the style of Blood Meridan--an epic historical (or semi-historical in this case) journey set in a brutal and violent world. Hay really threaded the needle on human made horror vs the possibility of the supernatural in a way few do. In that way it really felt like Midsommar as well. The premise of taking the baby Hitler thought experiment and applying it to the story of Jesus was honestly, inspired. While my religious studies training occasionally went off, I can appreciate Hay's worldbuilding in the context of ancient Judea and the world the Greek gospels paint. While the formatting wasn't exactly for me, it's easy enough to look past it.
July 8, 2026
A brutal, bloody reimagining of Herod's decree that takes its impact on Palestine - and a maturing Jesus - seriously.
I'll be thinking about this one for a while.
I'll be thinking about this one for a while.
February 11, 2026
I have been avoiding reviewing my advanced copy of The Butcher of Nazareth for... over a year now? Because I know there are simply no words to convey my awe of this novel and the man who penned it.
The Butcher of Nazareth is a powerful, painful novel that takes familiar characters and fills the gaps in their stories with bloodshed. Hay has a way of writing so concisely that a single sentence feels like a punch to the gut and manages to blaspheme without coming across as edgy. Vivid and visceral, The Butcher of Nazareth is a truly unforgettable read.
The Butcher of Nazareth is a powerful, painful novel that takes familiar characters and fills the gaps in their stories with bloodshed. Hay has a way of writing so concisely that a single sentence feels like a punch to the gut and manages to blaspheme without coming across as edgy. Vivid and visceral, The Butcher of Nazareth is a truly unforgettable read.
December 3, 2025
Full Review
The Butcher of Nazareth is a phenomenal novel. It’s a thought-provoking, profound story told with succinct but vivid prose. Hay’s retelling of the Gospel is dark, violent, and brings a fascinating new prospective. This is easily one of the best novels that I’ve read recently and I highly recommend it.
The Butcher of Nazareth is a phenomenal novel. It’s a thought-provoking, profound story told with succinct but vivid prose. Hay’s retelling of the Gospel is dark, violent, and brings a fascinating new prospective. This is easily one of the best novels that I’ve read recently and I highly recommend it.
June 19, 2026
fantastic. shorter than i expected but i'm not sure if i want it to be longer.
will be reading other stuff from dave
will be reading other stuff from dave
June 6, 2026
Teresa Brock
The Butcher of Nazareth
David Scott Hay
03/04/226
Whiskey Tit
David Scott Hay’s The Butcher of Nazareth is one of those rare novels that is nearly impossible to summarize without giving too much away, yet impossible not to talk about once you’ve finished it. Using the Bible as a historical jumping-off point, Hay imagines the story of a man forever changed by one of the darkest moments in scripture—the Massacre of the Innocents ordered by King Herod. When soldiers arrive at his home demanding the death of every male child, a butcher from Bethlehem is forced into an unthinkable choice that costs him everything, including his own son. Consumed by grief, guilt, and haunting visions of the future, he sets out on a brutal journey searching for meaning, redemption, and peace. Along the way he becomes fixated on a rumor of a boy who survived the slaughter; the one who is destined to change the world.
After speaking with the author, what struck me most is that this book is not trying to challenge anyone’s faith or rewrite what readers believe. Instead, it asks us to look at the human side of a familiar story. The grief of the parents who lost children, the burden carried by those forced to carry out Herod’s decree, and even the uncertainty of a young Jesus who has yet to step into his calling. This is a challenging read in all the best ways. It is a fearless, emotionally charged, and deeply contemplative novel that should be talked about and unpacked. It blends historical imagination with theological “what if” questions. As a Christian, it pushed me to consider perspectives I had never thought about before. I truly believe this is a book that readers will be discussing for years to come—and one that deserves to be read, debated, and remembered
The Butcher of Nazareth
David Scott Hay
03/04/226
Whiskey Tit
David Scott Hay’s The Butcher of Nazareth is one of those rare novels that is nearly impossible to summarize without giving too much away, yet impossible not to talk about once you’ve finished it. Using the Bible as a historical jumping-off point, Hay imagines the story of a man forever changed by one of the darkest moments in scripture—the Massacre of the Innocents ordered by King Herod. When soldiers arrive at his home demanding the death of every male child, a butcher from Bethlehem is forced into an unthinkable choice that costs him everything, including his own son. Consumed by grief, guilt, and haunting visions of the future, he sets out on a brutal journey searching for meaning, redemption, and peace. Along the way he becomes fixated on a rumor of a boy who survived the slaughter; the one who is destined to change the world.
After speaking with the author, what struck me most is that this book is not trying to challenge anyone’s faith or rewrite what readers believe. Instead, it asks us to look at the human side of a familiar story. The grief of the parents who lost children, the burden carried by those forced to carry out Herod’s decree, and even the uncertainty of a young Jesus who has yet to step into his calling. This is a challenging read in all the best ways. It is a fearless, emotionally charged, and deeply contemplative novel that should be talked about and unpacked. It blends historical imagination with theological “what if” questions. As a Christian, it pushed me to consider perspectives I had never thought about before. I truly believe this is a book that readers will be discussing for years to come—and one that deserves to be read, debated, and remembered
April 9, 2026
Super Good
May 23, 2025
The Butcher by David Scott Hay is a wild, original ride. From the first page, the voice pulls you in—smart, sharp, and totally unexpected. It’s the kind of book that feels like it was written with total creative freedom, and that energy is contagious as a reader.
The structure is clever, the pacing keeps you hooked, and the writing has this rhythm that makes even the darkest moments feel poetic. What really stood out to me was how layered it is, there’s grit and humor, but also real depth and heart underneath it all.
I love when a book surprises me, and The Butcher definitely did. If you’re looking for something bold and different, this one’s worth the read.
The structure is clever, the pacing keeps you hooked, and the writing has this rhythm that makes even the darkest moments feel poetic. What really stood out to me was how layered it is, there’s grit and humor, but also real depth and heart underneath it all.
I love when a book surprises me, and The Butcher definitely did. If you’re looking for something bold and different, this one’s worth the read.
July 28, 2026
Thank you to the author for my gifted copy - all opinions are my own.
The Butcher of Nazareth is a non-canonical apocalyptic novel exploring themes of salvation and destiny. This work of art is soaked in gore and suffering with a healthy dose of violence.
The Butcher, a man who has committed unfathomable acts, is plagued by visions of end times. As he sets out to hunt the man that could put an end to it all, he takes on an orphaned baby… of sorts. The child complicates The Butcher’s motives and eventually he must choose between retribution and absolution.
This bleak story, told in biblical prose, feels both familiar and diabolically inspired. Tangential to the customary New Testament stories, we meet several recognizable figures with freshened tales suited to this hellish landscape. David Scott Hays flips the origin story of Jesus of Nazareth on its head and shakes it up in a hellish concoction of grief and gore. I simply could not look away from the suffering and dread.
For someone far removed from religious text, I wasn’t hindered in the slightest by my relative ignorance on the matter. The figures and parables were recognizable enough to identify and anyway, this story stands fully on its own.
The story-telling was wildly captivating and really quite beautiful, despite the heinous acts within. There’s something to be said about an author who can turn such darkness into elegance and grace. Even the slayings felt like choreography, a careful dance with mortality.
The symbolism and atmosphere cannot be overstated. While the settings were familiar enough; Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth, the imagery gave them this eerie and portentous feeling. Historically, these are holy lands but here they feel anything but.
I think that the New Testament x Cormac McCarthy comparison is succinct and complimentary. Overall, this is a fantastic experience and I am fully locked in to anything this author puts out.
The Butcher of Nazareth is a non-canonical apocalyptic novel exploring themes of salvation and destiny. This work of art is soaked in gore and suffering with a healthy dose of violence.
The Butcher, a man who has committed unfathomable acts, is plagued by visions of end times. As he sets out to hunt the man that could put an end to it all, he takes on an orphaned baby… of sorts. The child complicates The Butcher’s motives and eventually he must choose between retribution and absolution.
This bleak story, told in biblical prose, feels both familiar and diabolically inspired. Tangential to the customary New Testament stories, we meet several recognizable figures with freshened tales suited to this hellish landscape. David Scott Hays flips the origin story of Jesus of Nazareth on its head and shakes it up in a hellish concoction of grief and gore. I simply could not look away from the suffering and dread.
For someone far removed from religious text, I wasn’t hindered in the slightest by my relative ignorance on the matter. The figures and parables were recognizable enough to identify and anyway, this story stands fully on its own.
The story-telling was wildly captivating and really quite beautiful, despite the heinous acts within. There’s something to be said about an author who can turn such darkness into elegance and grace. Even the slayings felt like choreography, a careful dance with mortality.
The symbolism and atmosphere cannot be overstated. While the settings were familiar enough; Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth, the imagery gave them this eerie and portentous feeling. Historically, these are holy lands but here they feel anything but.
I think that the New Testament x Cormac McCarthy comparison is succinct and complimentary. Overall, this is a fantastic experience and I am fully locked in to anything this author puts out.
May 5, 2026
4.25 stars: This book didn’t have a lot of reviews when I read it, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Overall, I liked The Butcher of Nazareth quite a bit. It was a unique concept and it was executed well.
Having been raised on a biblical background, I can confirm that Hay researched this topic very thoroughly. It was fascinating to see uniquely fictionalized versions of characters I recognized from the Bible. The writing style was also beautiful and it asked readers to contemplate the topic beyond the pages in front of them.
The ending was surprisingly disappointing. I had hoped for something different. I’d love to have a conversation with Hay about why he ended the story the was he did. I fear I missed something or am blinded by personal bias.
I’d read this again and I think it would make an excellent choice for a book club values deeper conversation. I look forward to reading future works from Hay.
Having been raised on a biblical background, I can confirm that Hay researched this topic very thoroughly. It was fascinating to see uniquely fictionalized versions of characters I recognized from the Bible. The writing style was also beautiful and it asked readers to contemplate the topic beyond the pages in front of them.
The ending was surprisingly disappointing. I had hoped for something different. I’d love to have a conversation with Hay about why he ended the story the was he did. I fear I missed something or am blinded by personal bias.
I’d read this again and I think it would make an excellent choice for a book club values deeper conversation. I look forward to reading future works from Hay.
April 2, 2026
This is one wild book. It was tough to put down and generally lives up to the expectations that such a bold title and AMAZING cover art create.
The internal monologue is generally executed very well. I generally felt bad for The Butcher, someone driven to extreme actions by his fear and regret. His relationship with his visions are probably pretty true to life—“did I really see that? Is that really from God?”—but I would have liked for those to be filled in a bit more. Hay paints characters and settings well, and things get more than a little wild.
The pacing is kind of strange—the section divisions often don’t signal any sort of temporal or narrator change, so I don’t get why there are so many included. Things speed up at the end, and I would have maybe liked things to be dragged out a bit more. Still, though, this was a very satisfying read and a commentary on violence, religion, and their tragic entwinement across time.
Fourth book from AWP!
The internal monologue is generally executed very well. I generally felt bad for The Butcher, someone driven to extreme actions by his fear and regret. His relationship with his visions are probably pretty true to life—“did I really see that? Is that really from God?”—but I would have liked for those to be filled in a bit more. Hay paints characters and settings well, and things get more than a little wild.
The pacing is kind of strange—the section divisions often don’t signal any sort of temporal or narrator change, so I don’t get why there are so many included. Things speed up at the end, and I would have maybe liked things to be dragged out a bit more. Still, though, this was a very satisfying read and a commentary on violence, religion, and their tragic entwinement across time.
Fourth book from AWP!
April 22, 2026
A dark, violent journey into the bleeding heart of the New Testament. Written with muscular ferocity but also lit with a thread of humanity that seems to (thankfully) always wind its way into the author’s works. Not easy, but powerful and rewarding.
April 22, 2026
I absolutely loved this book. Just amazing. All the stars ***** and an instant favourite! Wow.
August 7, 2026
This is going to stick with me for a long, long time.
June 13, 2026
I picked this up on a whim and very glad I did. To be perfectly honest I was equally intrigued and turned off by the McCarthy cover blurb (no shade on either author), but I had a feeling this was going to be great or entirely miss the mark for me.
I have to commend David Scott Hay’s skill and TACT with language. Where many authors would overshoot this style to the point of parody, you remain tightly bound to the narrative and really in the headspace of the whole. Even at its most cerebral it’s decisively executed with a very intense feel. Never heavy handed.
There’s a lot to chew on with this. His vision of Jesus is fascinating. The questions that arise even more so - whose vision is true?
I find this novel most comparable to Barabbas in terms of tone. It only got better as it went along.
More to say, but just dropping an initial review.
I have to commend David Scott Hay’s skill and TACT with language. Where many authors would overshoot this style to the point of parody, you remain tightly bound to the narrative and really in the headspace of the whole. Even at its most cerebral it’s decisively executed with a very intense feel. Never heavy handed.
There’s a lot to chew on with this. His vision of Jesus is fascinating. The questions that arise even more so - whose vision is true?
I find this novel most comparable to Barabbas in terms of tone. It only got better as it went along.
More to say, but just dropping an initial review.
April 6, 2026
Wow, wow, loved this book. Loved. So dark. So good. I went into this story blind and now I see. Wow. I normally read Grim-Dark. Grabbed this book at a Brooklyn Book fair. Sat in my TBR pile for a few months. The story is heavy. I grew up religious, (not at all anymore). So I was a little familiar The back ground for this book, The massacre of the innocent. ( look it up) a story most Christians are very familiar with. And yet I never thought about it other than as a bit of dark trivia. But wow this book uses that as the background and foreground of the story. One of the honestly darkest moments in Jewish and Christian histories. A look at trauma and grand delusions. Violent. Scary. Humorous, Honest. Heart felt. I was constantly stopping and just contemplating what I had just read. I can’t recommend this more. Buy it. Read it. Buy more copies, give to your friends, give it to your enemies or even give it to your family.
June 25, 2026
Absolutely gorgeous
July 26, 2026
review coming soon
Review of advance copy
David Scott Hay is one of my favorite writers for a reason...and this book... is... stunning. I finished my undergrad at a Christian college and took classes with titles like The Social World of Luke and Acts. I loved imagining that time period in an academic and spiritual sense, and it was a disturbing yet enjoyable kick to encounter the magi, the Butcher (who I had never even given one thought to before now), and Jesus in this fictional context. The magi are ominous.... the Butcher is violent, but as I tend to do, I forgive men too easily... In this case, I was horrifyingly rooting for The Butcher, for he has visions of how much destruction will come as a result of Jesus and because Titus has lost so much personally as a result of this pursuit... and he's just trying to save the world, man. I also forgave this pre-ministry Jesus for being... oblivious to his role in the world, for indulging in too much honey, and for daring to be a sexual being (we like the human arm of our trinity saviors utterly divine). The women in this novel need no forgiveness... they're strong, and they're badass, and they're righteous. The two Mary's come across like... well... Madonnas. Vividly rendered setting, complex characters, and a dramatic plot make this my favorite book I read in 2025.
June 16, 2026
Would have paid more attention in Sunday school as a kid if all their stories were as gritty and viscerally honest as Hay's novel.
May 23, 2026
What. A. Book.
Bold. Imaginative. Bothersome in all the right ways.
This one will stay with me. Some images have stained my psyche that I don’t think I’ll ever shake, nor do I want to.
Read this. If you dare. If you’re in need…of a companion.
Incredible work!
Bold. Imaginative. Bothersome in all the right ways.
This one will stay with me. Some images have stained my psyche that I don’t think I’ll ever shake, nor do I want to.
Read this. If you dare. If you’re in need…of a companion.
Incredible work!
July 11, 2026
Exquisitely executed. With a minimal narrative it manages to place you in that sandy, superstitious place that was Nazareth during biblical times. It really captures the tone of the New Testament with its bloody violence. For this type of story and setting see also The Last Temptation of Christ, The Goddamned and And the Angel Saw the Ass.
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