On Jesus Fanfic
"It's like Shakespeare, with rayguns and shit....Uh, can I say that on here?" --David Petrie, DVD commentary on Buffy S4, "The Initiative"
The great thing about the Bible is that it's been in the public domain since, like, there's been dirt. So not only can one write fanfiction based on the Hebrew and Greek Testaments, one can also get it published. This puts paid to the usual objection to derivative fiction, namely that it is a waste of a writer's time because it can't be shown forth with the writer's name on it and earn her some bread.
Bible fanfic (in publication and out) has had a long and distinguished history, as has its sister discipline, hagiography, the chronicle of saints. Like most derivative work it ranges the spectrum from orthodox to heterodox, from skilled to shoddy, and this is no less true of today's bumper crop of Bible fanfiction.
So what? you say. Well, what with the advent of some new Jesus movies, like The Gospel of John and The Passion of Christ, as well as my picking up a translation of The Golden Legend, I've just sort of begun to blink and look around. And lo! the vista of Bible fanfiction is vast and glittering with many colors. (I've been dipping into Return of the King the past 24 hours, excuse all odd syntax.)
It's very odd that Bible fanfiction should thrive so much given how easily an author can slip into heterodoxy. This isn't just a question of potential readers being put off by a text's not being quite true to canon; when you're off canon here, you're off The Canon, and I don't understand why more people aren't freaking out about it. But then maybe they are and I don't run in their circles. I was too young to read Kazantzakis's The Last Temptation of Christ when the movie came out -- you know, that movie that caused a storm of picketing and shouting about heresy. Apparently the inflammation came primarily from the scene in which Jesus on the cross is thinking, "I could be having sex with Mary Magdalene right now, instead of dying here." And then, of course, the objection spread from that portrayal of Jesus to any portrayal of Jesus that wasn't lifted straight from the Gospels.
But consider the number of stories that found success, or at least a modicum of approval, without adhering strictly to Canon -- Jesus Christ Superstar, for example. Or the Joshua books by Joseph Girzone. Consider one of my favorite books, of which I've never heard anyone speak but myself -- Elizabeth George Speare's The Bronze Bow. They run the whole gamut in terms of modernization, characterization, and basic tenor. They even take doctrinal risks in places. What are we to do with them?
What are we to do with the preponderance of fiction that has been written in the last ten years, dramatizing Bible stories we all knew well -- fiction like that of Francine Rivers or Anita Diamant, or Charles Swindoll? Such authors themselves tend to claim for their work an additional purpose to that of delighting its audience; they wish to provide a springboard for further Bible study, for training in orthodoxy, for inspiration, for guidance. In other words, they wish to do what Sherry L. Reames said of hagiographers, that is provide a story that will gather the community and unite them in imagination -- bare fact being a secondary consideration.
These are deep waters, requiring careful navigation on the part of both writers and readers. On the other hand, humans live on stories, and it would be impossible to stop them casting and recasting truths in colorful detail, intricate filigree, outlandish transplantation. Dorothy Sayers, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien; Kazantzakis, Tim Rice, Mary Doria Russell.
We are the richer, if the more head-spun, for such writing.
"It's like Shakespeare, with rayguns and shit....Uh, can I say that on here?" --David Petrie, DVD commentary on Buffy S4, "The Initiative"
The great thing about the Bible is that it's been in the public domain since, like, there's been dirt. So not only can one write fanfiction based on the Hebrew and Greek Testaments, one can also get it published. This puts paid to the usual objection to derivative fiction, namely that it is a waste of a writer's time because it can't be shown forth with the writer's name on it and earn her some bread.
Bible fanfic (in publication and out) has had a long and distinguished history, as has its sister discipline, hagiography, the chronicle of saints. Like most derivative work it ranges the spectrum from orthodox to heterodox, from skilled to shoddy, and this is no less true of today's bumper crop of Bible fanfiction.
So what? you say. Well, what with the advent of some new Jesus movies, like The Gospel of John and The Passion of Christ, as well as my picking up a translation of The Golden Legend, I've just sort of begun to blink and look around. And lo! the vista of Bible fanfiction is vast and glittering with many colors. (I've been dipping into Return of the King the past 24 hours, excuse all odd syntax.)
It's very odd that Bible fanfiction should thrive so much given how easily an author can slip into heterodoxy. This isn't just a question of potential readers being put off by a text's not being quite true to canon; when you're off canon here, you're off The Canon, and I don't understand why more people aren't freaking out about it. But then maybe they are and I don't run in their circles. I was too young to read Kazantzakis's The Last Temptation of Christ when the movie came out -- you know, that movie that caused a storm of picketing and shouting about heresy. Apparently the inflammation came primarily from the scene in which Jesus on the cross is thinking, "I could be having sex with Mary Magdalene right now, instead of dying here." And then, of course, the objection spread from that portrayal of Jesus to any portrayal of Jesus that wasn't lifted straight from the Gospels.
But consider the number of stories that found success, or at least a modicum of approval, without adhering strictly to Canon -- Jesus Christ Superstar, for example. Or the Joshua books by Joseph Girzone. Consider one of my favorite books, of which I've never heard anyone speak but myself -- Elizabeth George Speare's The Bronze Bow. They run the whole gamut in terms of modernization, characterization, and basic tenor. They even take doctrinal risks in places. What are we to do with them?
What are we to do with the preponderance of fiction that has been written in the last ten years, dramatizing Bible stories we all knew well -- fiction like that of Francine Rivers or Anita Diamant, or Charles Swindoll? Such authors themselves tend to claim for their work an additional purpose to that of delighting its audience; they wish to provide a springboard for further Bible study, for training in orthodoxy, for inspiration, for guidance. In other words, they wish to do what Sherry L. Reames said of hagiographers, that is provide a story that will gather the community and unite them in imagination -- bare fact being a secondary consideration.
These are deep waters, requiring careful navigation on the part of both writers and readers. On the other hand, humans live on stories, and it would be impossible to stop them casting and recasting truths in colorful detail, intricate filigree, outlandish transplantation. Dorothy Sayers, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien; Kazantzakis, Tim Rice, Mary Doria Russell.
We are the richer, if the more head-spun, for such writing.
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