From Fiction to "True Story"

[DeistPaladin]

I thought I'd create a thread to explain the process of how a work of fiction, sometimes when it is even labeled as such, can work its way into folklore, urban legend and eventually into "no, really, this is a true story."

Often in debates over whether or not works like the Gospels can be regarded as "historical documents", we hear such arguments as "would they have died for a lie" (using their folklore of early church persecution to prove their mythology about Jesus) or "why did the critics of early Christianity not cry 'false' if it were not so?" In what seems typical of Christian binary thinking, either the scriptures are true or else there was a cabal of dastardly rabbis who concocted a myth out of whole cloth to foist upon an unsuspecting public.

In reality, urban legends, when they can be traced to a source, almost never come about in deliberate fashion. There is rather a complex process, starting with established beliefs, adding to the developing story and winding up with something written into history.

"But this would take a long time and... (exaggerated claims of early authorship of Mark follow)"

Mainstream apologetics places Mark at 70 CE, some four decades after the alleged events (some skeptics make the case for the date of authorship around the Bar Kochbar revolt around 130 CE) but let that go for now. The process of urban legend sometimes happens rapidly.

For example, on ChristianForums I had posted (in the brief 48 hour period before I was banned and all my posts deleted) about my questions as to why missionaries were needed to spread the Word of God. If the Bible, I reasoned, is the word of humans, we'd expect to see what we do, a book published in one culture and spread to the world only through human hands. If the Bible, on the other hand, were divinely authored, we should expect to see it in all cultures long before they had any contact with one another.

I then concluded with, "Imagine feudal Japan when it first opened its doors to the outside world already had copies of the Bible. Such a discover would confound any worldly explanation and effectively prove its divine nature."

Anyone reading my post with more than a cursory glance should have realized I was outlining a hypothetical to illustrate what we should see if the Bible were, in fact, the Word of God.

A Christian actually responded to this post with a "That's amazing! They discovered Bibles in Japan when this country first opened its doors to the outside world? Glory!"

This is the stuff of how urban legends are born. Someone says or writes something that is misheard or misread and later passed on with certain alterations according to individual perceptions and so on.

Another example to illustrate the process is a former friend of mine who was a devout Christian. He once spoke of his plan to write a story about the three days when Jesus went into Hell after his death on the cross. He was intending to write a work of fiction but if he'd lived 2000 years ago, his book might have been included in the NT. He might have written it as a "parable". The "parable" later is retold as a "they say that..." kind of legend which then becomes a "true story".

We see that all the time in glurge stories. Works of fiction are later recycled into urban legends. Sometimes the details may vary but the nature of the story remains the same. These tales are believed as being true in spite of how we live in a modern age where information is readily available.

The process that the Jesus story underwent is apparent when you read the Gospels in order: Mark, Matt, Luke and John.

Mark's Gospel says nothing of Jesus' childhood. Contradictory details were later added in Matt and Luke and these two were later synthesized and harmonized in our Nativity yarns retold every December.

Mark's Gospel originally said nothing of the sighting of the raised Jesus. This part was later added to his story. Then contradictory accounts were fabricated later and all was synthesized and harmonized in our Easter pageants.

John the Baptist became increasingly submissive with each Gospel publication. He started in Mark by putting himself down, denying he was the messiah and baptizing Jesus. Matt expands upon that by having JtB object, saying he's unworthy to baptize Jesus and Jesus tells him to do it anyway. John's version never has JtB baptize Jesus at all.

The trial of Jesus shifts the blame increasingly away from the Romans and onto "The Jews" with each version. By the time John's Gospel was written, "The Jews" (not the priests, not the scribes, not the Pharisees, but THE JEWS) became a hostile and separate religious group.

Jesus himself shifts from being a modest holy man in Mark's Gospel who can't perform miracles in his home town for the lack of faith of the people there to being God-incarnate in John's Gospel. In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus is clearly separate from and subordinate to Yahweh. In John's Gospel, he is one with his father.

Nobody "just made up Jesus one day".

That's not how urban legends grow.