Could someone more knowledgeable than me talk about the spurious Second Part of Cervantes' Don Quixote written by Avellaneda? I'm not an expert on the subject so I'm hesitant mentioning it but it seems to be a good example of historical "fan-fiction" and narrowing the focus of the question opens the way for some better answers imo.

Eran Shalev, professor of history at Haifa University, has studied the pseudobiblical genre in some depth. The bible was used as a starting-off point for many works, including satires, political circulars, and even religious works like the Book of Mormon. While the word itself ("fanfiction") is modern, the idea of copying the biblical style for ones own amusement and for popularizing ideas through the genre is old--it goes as far back as 1742 with the publication of The First Chapter of the Book of Preferment. One of the best examples of fanfiction in this genre is The First Book of the American Chronicles by John Leacock. It's a pretty funny satire that makes fun of the English while promoting a favorable view of the American colonists. Shalev also includes the Book of Mormon in this genre: "The tradition of writing in biblical style paved the way for the Book of Mormon by conditioning Americans to reading American texts, and texts about America, in biblical language." [1]. For more digital texts in this genre available online see https://github.com/wordtreefoundation/books/tree/master/pseudo_biblical. See also American Zion, Shalev's compiled work in this area of study.

Hello everyone,

In this thread, there have been a large number of incorrect, speculative, or otherwise disallowed comments, including many asking about the deleted comments, which merely compounds the issue. As such, they were removed by the mod-team. Please, before you attempt answer the question, keep in mind our rules concerning in-depth and comprehensive responses. Answers that do not meet the standards we ask for will be removed.

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The question really hinges on the definition of 'fanfiction'. Early storytellers had no concept of intellectual property, and stories didn't really 'belong' to anyone after a few retellings. Many (probably most) ancient stories have borrowings from earlier works.

The Bible incorporates an earlier Flood story, one version of which we find in The Epic of Gilgamesh.

Euripides, in the 4th Century BC, wrote 'Cyclops' a comedic retelling of an episode from the Odyssey.

A stronger candidate for 'fanfiction' might be Virgil's epic poem 'Aeneid' (1st Century BC), in which Virgil linked up pre-existing stories of Aeneas, one of the Trojans in the Illiad, into a story of the founding of Rome.