Is the Bible fan fiction?
Photograph by John-Mark Smith via Pexels
Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf
One of the things that I loved when I was a kid were comic books. And if there’s ever been a comic book that I wanted to have it is Action Comics Number 1, the debut of Superman. In this way, I have a very basic desire, since that is basically the dream of anyone who is into comic books. When they come up for sale, they sell for millions of dollars. And what is interesting to me is the fact that in this comic book Superman comes fully formed. He just bursts onto the scene doing Superman things.
No one wondered about the origins of Superman until he was important. No one said, “where did this guy come from?” until the story about his impact on people had landed and there were people invested enough to ask that question. This makes perfect sense if you’re talking about comic books. No one bats an eye at that – that the stuff about the adult Superman would come before a backstory was developed for the baby Superman, but if you suggest the same thing about the Bible, plenty of people will get mad at you.
But it makes perfect sense. Only after encountering this man that changed lives, challenged authorities, healed the sick, preached forgiveness, and offered a new way of being, would you ask, “and where did this guy come from?”
The original Gospel story – Mark - does not have a birth narrative for Jesus at all. Christmas is an idea that emerged later on. The nativity narratives differ in key points, scholars think, because it was largely all invented after the fact. Don’t let that get your hackles up – that was common for the Greek tradition of biography.
In a way we might call them fan fiction, and I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way. I mean it in the best sense. The stories about Jesus inspired people, drove them to write new stories about him, and gave us some of the most meaningful narratives about his life. Fan fiction remains enormously popular on the internet, as fans of books, movies, and television series create their own works to continue the stories of beloved characters. We have all had a book universe we are sad to leave because the characters moved us, and I think the first people to encounter the Jesus story were no different.
We have all had a book universe we are sad to leave because the characters moved us, and I think the first people to encounter the Jesus story were no different.
In a way, I find that truly beautiful. I’ve heard this phrase a few times and it sums up how I approach the Bible – “all of it is true, and some of it really happened.” The Gospels are written to get you to a place to encounter a person and a way of being – they are not history or biography in the way that we think of them today.
They are cooler than that. Some of the stuff that doesn’t make the cut in your Bible had Jesus using a magic wand, another featured a 100-foot-tall walking, talking cross, and some gnostic Christians even imagined Jesus as able to change shape: that’s why Judas has to kiss him to identify him to the guards.
The Jesus Seminar was a group of scholars that tried to gain some sense of what Jesus actually said and what was added, and that’s useful in its own way, but it’s far more moving for me to encounter a person in the text who changes lives, and who inspires some truly mind-bending stories to boot.
So, if the Bible is fan fiction, that shouldn’t diminish its capacity to move us. Indeed, it shows that right from the very beginning people were relishing this story, expanding on it, and wanted to see it come alive in new and fresh expressions. That means it has enduring power, a power that we can still claim today, as we imagine Jesus not in the Roman Empire but in America, the Empire of today’s world.
That imaginative work isn’t just fan fiction; it is the stuff of faith, calling to us to again put ancient stories to use in new creative ways. And the stories we tell – I think they’re true, even if they didn’t really happen.
Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf is senior minister, Lake Street Church of Evanston, Illinois. He currently serves as the co-associate regional minister with the American Baptist Churches Metro Chicago. His book, published in 2023 by T&T Clark, is titled “Sanctuary and Subjectivity: Thinking Theologically about Whiteness and Sanctuary Movements.” He is also the co-founder of Challenging Islamophobia Together Chicagoland, an initiative that brings together people of all faiths to counter Islamophobia from a religious perspective.
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
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