Why Let Facts Spoil a Good Story?    

By Harry T. Cook 

2/8/13

Harry T. Cook

Why let facts spoil a good story? That's what my father-in-law says. He should know. Both he and I occasionally lapse into fiction when telling family stories, making our wives crazy in the process. Truth is sometimes inadvertently orphaned in the course of our casual narratives.

I thought about that on Monday when I celebrated my birthday along with Rosa Parks, who would have been 100 as I turned 74. Just incidentally, Mrs. Parks and I share the day with Charles Lindbergh (1902), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906), Dan Quayle (1947) and Alice Cooper (1948). I once mentioned Cooper in a conversation and was asked, "Who's she?" One could ask the same about Joyce Kilmer. But never mind. Back to fuzzing up the truth of a matter.

I was almost 17 years old when Mrs. Parks sat down in that famous bus, and I was well into adulthood before I was able to separate that event's truth from fiction, e.g. that hers was no random act of resistance. She was not, as the story went, a mousy little seamstress who was so tired that she just couldn't make it to the rear rows of seats where she belonged.

Upon boarding, she found a seat behind several rows reserved for white people. When the bus was full and a white man boarded, she was required to make way for him. An active member of the local NAACP and no shrinking violet, she simply refused to give up her seat -- something she had thought of doing for some time. December 1, 1955 was the day, but it could just as well have been November 30 or January 23.

The truth is that she had long since girded her loins for battle. She was not the humble, passive little lady the white media were wont to depict. She was an angry black woman -- justifiably so.

What has been told and written about Rosa Parks over the past half-century says something about how legends are so quickly created and just as quickly accepted as fact.

I offer this background to make a point about how legend can overtake fact. We whose life's work involves the research and analysis of religious texts try to strip away the legends that have been laid over them and thereby become "the truth."

It's not as if we set out to offend the devout. It's that we have spent decades in the study of biblical texts and their apparent origins and authors, as well as the historical contexts out of which they emerged. Having done so, we have ended up in quite different places than many clergy who have led their flocks down the path of ignorance, either purposely to avoid trouble or because they themselves have not given sufficient attention to the scholarship in what should rightly be one of their own fields of inquiry.

It would be quite lovely if our work were to have enabled us to say, for example, that this Jesus person really was born of a virgin, that he did perform miracles, that he did seek martyrdom, that he did die on a cross, that he was buried, that his dead body was reanimated, that he did ascend into heaven and that in due course he will descend therefrom and turn the world upside down.

Our work comes nowhere near permitting us to say that, at least with intellectual honesty. What we know -- and I wish it were more -- is that maybe some number of persons named "Jesus," itself a mangling of the common Aramaic Yeshuah, were Palestine's early first century CE counterparts of today's pundits and commentators.

Mass communication was unknown in those times. What the person with a message to share had to do was walk from village to village, attract an audience and speak in an epigrammatic style (we'd call them sound bites) so as to render his sayings memorable.

One encounters a bizarre kind of Jesus in the sayings attributed to him in the Gospel of Thomas, a document that may have been compiled as early as 50 CE -- though some who work with its text insist its origins are much later. Elaine Pagels of Princeton apparently thinks it is earlier than the Gospel according to John,* the approximate dates of which are 100-110 CE. In Thomas there is no birth, death or resurrection narrative, no stories of alleged miracles. The Jesus of Thomas is oft-times baffling, occasionally bordering on the absurd.

Not much of anything is directly known about the author or editors of the gospels. It is common "wisdom" that Matthew was a reformed tax collector, Mark was a young associate of Peter, Luke was a physician, and Thomas the archetypal doubter. Yet no dependable evidence has yet been found to demonstrate the validity of those assertions.

Of the 20 extant gospels, only four made it into the canon of the Christian appendices to the Hebrew Bible. Thomas didn't make it, probably because his Jesus didn't come close to any one of the more appealing portrayals developed by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  

Meanwhile, a cursory reading of the first three canonical gospels may suggest that they tell pretty much the same story and are depicting the same Jesus. However, upon closer reading and patient analysis, it becomes clear that their stories differ in many respects, and their characterizations of the Jesus figure are sometimes at odds. As one of my students once asked with attention-getting bluntness: "Was Jesus the nice guy of Luke, the hard ass of Mark or the weirdo of Thomas?" My answer was, "Yes. They probably were."

So Rosa Parks was no more gentle, meek and mild than the Jesus of the Sunday school song. But why let facts, such as they may be, spoil a good story?

* Pagels, E. Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. Random House. 2003. pp. 50-73

re essay of 2/1/13 Is a Dent Worth Suing Over?         

Robin Mitchell, Evanston, IL:

A remarkable thing you have related about your accident and your and the other fellow's reactions. Like you, I grew up in a small town and know what you were saying. You made me go out and buy Jared Diamond's book.

Georgia Wildfong, Plano, TX:

You and Diamond are onto something with the customs and practices of communal life. I spent some time in the novitiate of a religious order. I left not because I didn't like the communal life, which I absolutely did. I left for other reasons, but I very much miss the peace and tranquility of that life.

Phyllis Tracey, Tucson, AZ:

Thanks for the heads-up on the Diamond book. I read "Guns, Germs and Steel," and with your recommendation look forward to the one you wrote about. The man who hit your car should pay for the damages, but I wouldn't advise you to hold your breath. He, not you, is the loser.

Tom Hall, Foster, RI:

To be sure, small towns are nicer places to live in than cities. Unfortunately, they tend to be parochial and conducive to limited horizons. I guess change always comes with a price tag, even when progress is involved. I recall reading that European settlers taken captive by Native Americans sometimes decided against repatriation. That also entailed a cost, I imagine. "You pays your money and you takes your chances." You gave us an interesting and thought-provoking anecdote.

Corbett Brattin, Desert Hot Springs, CA:

Perhaps the reason your adversary was so defensive is that, unlike the scenario you suggest in your village from many years past, the $25 you imagine your friend might have charged you to make the repair of a "nasty scar on an otherwise clean and undented fender" would today likely run him some $600 to $700 (even if the repairman was your friend). And, of course, there is always the inevitable bump in the unfortunate perpetrator's insurance. I suspect those were the things going through his mind, and why he became so irate.

Tracey Morgan, Southfield, MI:

Fine piece. But isn't the problem one of insularity? You were expected to be civil to Jim. You were both from the same tribe. Otherwise, you have a feud breaking out. You were not required to be civil to the intruder from a different tribe. You might risk a war, but that's what courts are for. Hard to recognize in your self-description the Harry Cook we've come to know and admire.

Rev. Barbara Ranson Fry, Los Cruces, NM:

What a great essay. Being from the clergy set and occasionally known to "flair," as my mother would have called it, I've tried my best to behave. I remember a "friend" once said to me when I confessed that I drove a bit too fast and a bit impatiently: "Carry with you something to remind yourself that you need to treat all people with care and dignity." Of course he did not mean while driving! I put the emblem of the church on the bumper of my car because try as I might to behave I could hide behind the steering wheel unnoticed. Having moved to a city that has school zones where you are allowed to drive at 15 m.p.h. (ridiculous for an impatient person such as myself) it is hard to fall under the "law." I wish to thank you for a self-exam that brought me back to the reality of that friend that gave advice so long ago. You do know the friend I talk about is you. Your advise probably got me out of trouble many a time in the past and will probably in the future.

Mark Bendure, Grosse Pointe Park, MI:

Despite the annoyance of having your car out of commission for a while, you probably would not have been so miffed if you knew that the insurance company would promptly and fairly take care of it, just like, in the olden days, the other driver would have cheerfully paid the garage to fix your car. Alas, dealing with folks who won't step up to the plate when they should puts an edge on all of us, and makes it necessary to talk to lawyers like me to get what, in an ideal world, would not take a lawsuit to accomplish.