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| Text written in Hebrew. Image source. |
The Christian bible is divided into 2 parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. The New Testament is the part about Jesus- but, you know Christians, we try to make everything about Jesus. We try to make the Old Testament about Jesus too.
In this post, I'm going to call it the Hebrew bible, instead of calling it the Old Testament, because I want to make the point that it belonged to Jewish people first. It was already a thing, even before Jesus was born. It already meant something and could stand on its own- it wasn't incomplete, waiting for Jesus to come along so it could finally make sense.
The way Christians tell the story, though, is that the Jewish people were waiting for so long, looking forward to when the messiah would come. There were prophecies, there were signs that pointed forward to Jesus. And finally Jesus came, and lived and died and rose again, and this ties the whole story together. Now it finally makes sense, and the whole bible is about Jesus.
This is a retcon. As originally written, the Hebrew bible is not about Jesus. Christians read it through the lens of Jesus' life- and yes, I'm a Christian and I do this- but that's putting our own spin on it, and we shouldn't forget that. Our Christian take on the Hebrew bible is not its "real meaning."
A retcon? What is a retcon? Okay, suppose you have a piece of media that has been published, and then later, additional pieces of media are published, taking place in the same universe as the first one. A continuation of the story that was told in the first piece of media. However, the later works in this universe are in some ways inconsistent with what was shown in earlier works. Maybe they even directly contradict on some points. Maybe they emphasize different things. Maybe they provide explanations for events that happened in the earlier works, which are completely different from how the fans had understood those events before.
In order to keep the universe of the story consistent, the creators or the fans develop an overarching explanation for how it all fits together, how the information revealed in later pieces of media actually does fit together with the earlier ones- how this later information reinterprets things that the earlier works said. How those earlier works actually mean something different from what they seemed to mean at the time they were published. This is what a retcon is- "retroactive continuity"- the claim that earlier published works were actually saying something different than what they seemed to be saying, what everyone understood them to be saying before this new piece of media was published. To keep the story consistent across all the different works in that universe, you have to say "oh actually, this meant something completely different."
Retconning is generally seen as a negative thing.
You see examples in big fictional universes, like Star Wars or Star Trek or Marvel. Fans were angry when Star Wars Episode I introduced the concept of midichlorians. Episodes IV, V, and VI had already existed since the 1980's, and had introduced a generation of fans to Jedi knights and the Force. A mysterious spiritual practice that was about controlling your mind, looking beyond the reality you could see, having faith in the will of the Force, connecting all life forms together. And then in 1999, Episode I comes along and tells us, oh, people who are strong in the Force have a higher midichlorian count in their blood. So, you can scientifically measure it, and you can test children and you know which of them are going to be good at being a Jedi. And fans were so mad. This retcon was saying that the Force and the skills needed to be a Jedi were completely different from how we had always understood them. People felt that it completely changed what the Force was.
A retcon is not the same thing as a plot twist that is revealed in later pieces of media and changes how the earlier ones are viewed. If it's a plot twist, if it's planned that way and the writers do a good job of setting it up so it makes sense, that's good. A retcon is more like, a new piece of media contradicts an older one because the writers failed at keeping the story consistent, so then you have to hastily come up with an explanation for why the older piece of media actually meant something totally different from what it always seemed to mean. You sacrifice the meaning and significance of the earlier works so you can continue to claim that the whole entire thing tells 1 consistent story.
So, let's talk about how Christians retcon the Hebrew bible.
One example is Christian claims about prophecies about Jesus in the Hebrew bible. The argument goes, in the Hebrew bible there are passages that talk about the messiah who will come, and these passages describe who the messiah is and what he will do. Then Jesus came along and did all of these things! Wow, amazing! This is PROOF that he really is the messiah!
Some examples of these prophecies: The messiah will be born of a virgin. He will be a descendant of David. He will be born in Bethlehem. He will be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. He will be pierced. And in the New Testament passages about Jesus' life, the writers point out that Jesus fulfills these prophecies.
But if you take your bible and flip back to where the prophecies come from, in the Hebrew bible, hundreds of years before Jesus, you'll notice something strange. These "prophecies" aren't written like "here, I'm gonna tell you something about the messiah who is going to come: he will be born of a virgin." Instead, it's like, they're about something else entirely. They're about something else that was going on at the time they were written. And then Christians came along later and declared that they were *actually* about Jesus. Retconning.
For example, the virgin birth. Go read Isaiah 7. It's about King Ahaz, who was worried because his kingdom was being attacked by 2 other kings. The prophet Isaiah came to him and said don't worry, God will protect him, and these enemy kingdoms will fall apart. And the sign this would happen is, "The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel." And "before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste."
What?
So, apparently what happened was, in the time of King Ahaz, Isaiah made this prophecy about a virgin birth. Except, there's a footnote here in the bible that says "virgin" can also be translated as "young woman" which seems like a really important distinction to me- I always heard Christians say this passage is about Jesus, and the WHOLE ENTIRE POINT is that it's a MIRACLE because it's a virgin birth. But if you actually go read Isaiah 7, it seems like the actual point was, a young woman would give birth to a child- which is normal and happens all the time- and in the first few years of the child's life, maybe less than 5 years, the 2 enemy kingdoms would fall. So does the child actually matter, or is the point just to use the idea of a child's development as a timeline to reassure King Ahaz that his enemies would be gone soon?
Most of the supposed "prophecies" about Jesus are like this. You go back and read what it actually says in the Hebrew bible, and it doesn't really seem to be about Jesus at all, it seems to be about whatever was going on back when it was written. And then centuries later, Christians came along and claimed that Jesus fulfilled these "prophecies" by doing things that were sort of similar to things that were written in the Hebrew bible.
(And I won't even get into the other prophecies about the messiah in the Hebrew bible, which say that the messiah will bring peace on earth forever. Kind of embarrassing for Christians that Jesus didn't fulfill those, huh?)
You have Christians making apologetics arguments, calculating probabilities that a single person could fulfill all the messianic prophecies in the Hebrew bible, writing their conclusion in bold all-caps font, the probability that any person could fulfill all of these prophecies is infinitesimal, but Jesus did it, JESUS DID IT! JESUS GOT THEM ALL!
And I'm just like, you guys, what are we doing.
Such arguments only make sense if the "messianic prophecies" in the Hebrew bible were clearly marked as messianic prophecies at the time they were written. If, even before Jesus was born, we could read the Hebrew bible and compile a list, which could be used to evaluate potential messiahs. The actual bible is not like that at all. These "prophecies" are not prophecies in the sense of "someone way back when KNEW what was going to happen, wow, amazing, this PROVES that Jesus is truly God"- no, it's nothing like that. What actually happened was, the early Christian writers of the New Testament noticed similarities between Jesus and some passages from the Hebrew bible, and they pointed out those similarities because that's pretty cool. Reinterpreting the Hebrew bible through the lens of Jesus' life.
Cards on the table, I'm a Christian and I also think that's pretty cool. I am like, so here for this. But we should remember this isn't what the Hebrew bible "really meant." This is a Christian interpretation of the scriptures that were already culturally significant to Jewish people, which Jewish people had read and debated and followed for hundreds of years before there were any Christians. Our Christian spin on it is not the "real" meaning.
So Christians retconned the prophecies. What else have Christians retconned?
Passover. So, Passover is the most important Jewish holiday. It's about remembering when Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. But, Christians will tell you, actually it's about Jesus.
At Passover, the people had to sacrifice a lamb. But, Christians will tell you, Jesus is the ultimate Passover lamb! It's all about Jesus! Jesus' blood saves us, just like the blood of the Passover lamb was painted over the doors to tell the angel of death to spare the Israelites when it killed the firstborn sons of the Egyptians. Moses instructed the people to not break any of the bones of the Passover lamb- and then when Jesus was crucified, the soldiers did not break any of his bones.
I'm like, so here for this, in the sense of drawing connections between different parts of the bible, interpreting all of it through the lens of Jesus, I'm so here for that because I'm a Christian. But that's not *what it really means.* This is just our reading of it. Let's not get carried away, guys. The "real meaning" of Passover is *not* Jesus. It's not like God and Moses set up this tradition, and generations and generations of Jewish people practiced it, and they were all just waiting for Jesus to come and make the tradition finally mean something. Come on. Passover is not *actually* about Jesus. It's its own thing, and it belongs to Jewish people. Christians can offer an interpretation that points out the similarities between Jesus and the Passover lamb, and like, full disclosure I'm a Christian and I'm so into that, but that's not what it "really" means. That's just our new interpretation of it.
Here's another example of retconning: When Christians read the stories in the Hebrew bible and look for characters who are "a type of Christ." This means they are similar to Jesus. For example, Adam is "a type of Christ" because he was the first human on earth- and Jesus came to bring a new spiritual kingdom, which Jesus was the first member of. And sin came into the world through Adam; similarly, forgiveness of sin comes through Jesus.
Looking for these "types of Christ" everywhere, it can get to the point where we believe every bible story is meant to teach us something about Jesus. And like... this idea that "the whole bible is about Jesus"- I really am into it, as a Christian. A while ago I wrote a review of the kids' book "Jesus and the Lions' Den" which is about drawing connections between Jesus and the story of Daniel and the lions' den- how Daniel is a type of Christ- and I'm really interested in that.
Of course Christians want to make everything about Jesus. Of course Christians want to read the bible in a way that makes the entire thing about Jesus. *I* want to make everything about Jesus. And that can be a good thing- but remember, we shouldn't actually believe that that's what every bible passage was "really" about, as originally intended.
And I have 1 more example of a retcon: In the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, when they refused to bow down to the statue, and the king had the 3 of them thrown into the fiery furnace. They were not killed by the fire; instead, this happened:
Then King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and asked his advisers, “Weren’t there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire?”
They replied, “Certainly, Your Majesty.”
He said, “Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.”
!!!!! FOUR OF THEM! And THE FOURTH LOOKS LIKE A SON OF THE GODS! !!!!! It was Jesus! The Christian fan theories just write themselves, omg. (Remember, this was written hundreds of years before Jesus lived.)
And like, full disclosure, I totally believe this fan theory. I am so into this. But. Slow down everyone. It's a fan theory. It's not *what the bible actually says*.
(I wonder what other interpretations there are, for who the 4th person in the furnace was. Maybe an angel? Surely Jewish people have opinions on this.)
This idea that the Hebrew bible is "actually" all about Jesus- sometimes Christians take it really far, to an extent that is anti-Semitic. Claiming that Jewish people are so ignorant and stubborn, because they have the Hebrew bible and it's SO OBVIOUSLY about Jesus, but they refuse to believe in him. Like it's right there in front of them, and it's so clearly saying that Jesus is the messiah, what the heck is wrong with them for not seeing it? And, how sad, that they spend so much time and effort studying the Hebrew bible and trying to follow it, but they're missing the entire point. ("The entire point" being Jesus, of course.)
It's *not* about Jesus, originally. The Hebrew bible is its own thing, and it can stand on its own. Christians re-interpret it through the lens of Jesus, and of course Christians do that, and that can be a good thing- but we have to realize this is just our interpretation. It's not what it "really" means.
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