Since Your Humble Blogger has been floundering around Genesis, one of the congregation lent me Does God Have a Big Toe? Stories about Stories in the Bible, by Marc Gellman. It’s an entertaining book, sweet and just a trifle cloying. Some of the stories are better than others (there are twenty, so you would expect a few clunkers), but overall, it’s pretty good. The best part, though, in my arrogant opinion, is the Author’s note, from which I’ll quote below:
One way to understand a story is to have someone explain it to you. They will probably say, “Listen to me, this is what that story means ...” and then they will tell you something. That is one way to understand the Bible, but I don’t think it’s a very good way. The person who explains the story might be wrong, and in any event, explaining stories from the Bible only makes sense if there is just one right way to understand that story. But the stories in the Bible are so rich and deep and packed with a thousand different meanings that they cannot be explained just one right way. The best way to understand a story in the Bible is to make up another story about it.
This is a lot of what I’m trying to get at in discussions with my what-ifs. I try to tell a different story, not the one we know, and I try to ask what’s wrong with it. That’s just one type of story about the story. His story about why Noah sent the raven and the dove and not the canary or the parakeet is sweet, and it tells us a lot about the Noah story without changing anything. His story about Noah’s friends in a zebra suit is funny, but the light it puts on the Noah story isn’t very funny at all. The stories add to the Scripture, and add another layer on the millions of layers the Scripture holds.
You may discuss how this applies to fanfic, if you like. I have no bull in that ring. You can talk about how the stories about Shakespeare, or Oxford, or Bacon, or Marlowe help us get to those stories. I’m inclined to believe that the technique is useful nearly everywhere, but I’m only really sure it’s necessary with Scripture.
Thank you,
-Vardibidian.