Retcons and Fan Fiction

Reflections on the Lectionary for October 23rd

Increasingly, I have been thinking about the bible with the categories of “fan fiction.” Fan fiction is literature written about another body of literature by its fans, not by its authors. For example, someone might write a short story about Gandalf’s love life, or about Hermione Granger’s early childhood. These stories aren’t authorized by Tolkien or Rowling, but they riff on the universe and canon created by them, and take them off in new, non-canonical directions. There are many parts of the bible that do this—that take older parts of the bible and do new things with them, or that undertake imaginative journeys using characters from another part of the text. Christian texts do this with prophetic texts all the time, repurposing them to mean different things than they did in their earlier contexts. (This could be viewed as a form of “retcon,” or “retroactive continuity,” another category that pops up a lot in fandom circles). So, the gospels might take the Servant Songs of Isaiah, and make them say something about Jesus, even though the author(s) of Isaiah did not intend for them to be used that way. Or, an author might write words to put in the mouth of someone else—a speech, a teaching, a letter, etc.—as if it were written or said by the person themselves. This happens all the time in the bible, and in my opinion, it shouldn’t scandalize us. It’s just the way many ancient texts were written.

I once wrote a set of reflections for the Visual Commentary on Scripture that compared 1 Timothy to a work by the artist Banksy: both are layered with revisions and commentary, reflecting several different artists/authors, and containing multiple meanings. 1 Timothy is one of the Pastoral Epistles, which most scholars agree were written after Paul’s death as a way to use Paul’s authority and voice to continue writing in the tradition of his teachings. Likewise, 2 Timothy is one of the Pastoral Epistles, and this week’s readings from the Revised Common Lectionary include a passage from 2 Timothy in which the pseudonymous author speaks in Paul’s voice about Paul’s experiences. It’s common for people to dismiss passages like 2 Timothy 4:6-8 and 16-18 as illegitimate, non-Pauline, and therefore useless. But there is another way to look at them: as a way to think about Paul’s legacy and to imagine what kinds of wisdom he might have had for future generations. Likely, 2 Timothy was written a generation or two (or maybe even three) after Paul died, but it’s nevertheless valuable as a way to understand how Paul was understood after his death.

The verses in the lectionary this week dwell on Paul’s impending death, and the way he describes himself as a kind of offering. The author understood that Paul had been undergoing trials—perhaps literal trials, in a court-like setting—and the author views these trials as sacred work on Paul’s behalf. The author has Paul put these trials in perspective: they are serious and challenging, leading even to death, but they are his alone, and no one else should bear responsibility for their role in them. The author is asking what kind of mindset Paul might have had as he was approaching the end of his life, and the answer turns out to be that Paul is a kind of avatar of perseverance and grace. It almost doesn’t matter, the pseudo-Paul is saying. Suffering now is nothing in comparison to the works God is prepared to do for me and for God’s people.

This is a meditation on time, in a way. It’s a reflection on how someone like Paul might have felt, knowing that his own time was short. Most of us have known people who have received a difficult diagnosis, or have felt the end of their life coming, and have engaged in reflection about what is truly important. (This book, by a friend of mine, stands out to me especially). The author of 2 Timothy is asking how Paul might have gone about this kind of reflection, knowing how Paul’s story had ended. It’s poignant, to imagine an imprisoned Paul imagining himself being poured out like a ritual libation (an allusion to Paul’s own words in Philippians 2:17). It might not have any basis in the actual events of Paul’s life, or perhaps it does, but it’s moving nonetheless.

Another text in the lectionary this week also plays with time, but in a roundabout way. And it’s a kind of a retcon too. Joel 2:23-32 is probably most famous to Christians as the source of a large part of the Pentecost passage in Acts 2. Beginning in 2:28, Joel’s words get repurposed—and changed—by the author of Acts, sort of the same way that the author of 2 Timothy riffed on Paul’s words. If you look up Acts 2:17-21, you’ll see a lot of similarities to Joel 2:23-32, but some differences too. The author of Acts has subtly changed the text of Joel to fit a new agenda. Joel 2:28 begins with “then afterward I will pour out my spirit,” but Acts reads “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit.” The capitalization of Spirit is a translation choice driven by later theological (trinitarian) agendas, but more important is the shift from “afterward” to “the last days.” Acts is trying to emphasize an eschatological dimension to the prophetic text. There are other changes too—shifts in sentence structure, mostly—but that first change is enough to make the point. Acts is doing something with Joel that’s different from what Joel had in mind, even if only in subtle ways.

The effect is to make the passage a lot more about time. “Afterward” is a temporal marker, for certain: it describes a thing happening after another thing. But “in the last days” is far more powerful, because it describes something happening not only “afterward,” but at the end—at the end of days. This sets up a kind of energy for the Acts passage, because it makes the events of Pentecost feel very heavy with meaning. If they signal “the last days,” after all, that’s a pretty big deal. Of course, we know that we are 2,000 years further down the line now, so we have to take “last days” in some other kind of way than literal. Acts changes Joel in order to play with time, and likewise we have to play with Acts a bit, given what we know about the ongoing nature of the world.

I lifted out these passages from Joel and 2 Timothy because they both talk about time, and because they both do some fanfiction/retcon kinds of things. But I would be remiss if I didn’t briefly mention the gospel text for this week, which is Luke 18:9-14. This is a passage where Jesus is comparing a Pharisee and a tax collector, and suggesting that the tax collector is more praise-worthy than the Pharisee. Another time, I will go into more depth about Pharisees and how we should think about them (I’m currently in the middle of reviewing a 500-page book on the Pharisees for a journal, so there is a lot to say). For now, though, I simply caution us against falling into the trap of thinking about “Pharisee” as a synonym for “hypocrite” or as a shorthand for a religious fraud. That’s a simplistic and wrong reading of the biblical text, and it does a lot of harm. Instead, notice that Jesus is assuming that the audience will know that a Pharisee is the consummate religious person—Jesus is assuming that we will all know how pious Pharisees are. I am one of those who thinks it likely that Jesus was aligned closely with the Pharisee, possibly even identifying with them, and that that’s why he is always criticizing them—from an insider perspective, not an outsider perspective. When we uncritically throw around derogatory ways of talking about Pharisees today, we are doing our own kind of retcon or harmful fan fiction, twisting the text for purposes it never intended.