Lyin’ Eyes: Urban Legends and Scripture

Written by

My skepticism about some of the tales told in Scripture arises in part from the phenomenon we call “urban legends.” Here’s an example of an urban legend, from yesterday’s Los Angeles Times, “Legal Urban Legends Hold Sway,” by Myron Levin (paragraphing edited):

Merv Grazinski set his Winnebago on cruise control, slid away from the wheel and went back to fix a cup of coffee. You can guess what happened next: The rudderless, driverless Winnebago crashed. Grazinski blamed the manufacturer for not warning against such a maneuver in the owner’s manual. He sued and won $1.75 million. His jackpot would seem to erase any doubt that the legal system has lost its mind. Indeed, the Grazinski case has been cited often as evidence of the need to limit lawsuits and jury awards.

There’s just one problem: The story is a complete fabrication. It is one of the more comical tales in an anthology of legal urban legends that have circulated widely on the Internet, regaling millions with examples of cluelessness and greed being richly rewarded by the courts. These fables have also been widely disseminated by columnists and pundits who, in their haste to expose the gullibility of juries, did not verify the stories and were taken in themselves.

I first heard the Winnebago cruise-control story from my dad, an Air Force officer, in the mid-1970s. As he told it, the story had nothing to do with the legal system. In his version, the hapless driver was a wealthy young pilot trainee from the Saudi royal family, who turned on the cruise control and went back to make himself a drink at the bar, and who died in the ensuing crash.

It’s not hard to find other examples of widely-circulating stories that simply aren’t true, or at the very least have mutated significantly in the retelling. Such examples are not limited to modern times by any means.

What do these urban-legend stories have to do with Christianity? It’s that some traditionalist Christians base their faith almost entirely on the allegedly-factual details of various New Testament stories that circulated by oral tradition for years before being written down — by non-eyewitnesses, in a different language — in the form we have now. Many traditionalists insist vehemently that no one who doesn’t totally believe in the
accuracy of those stories can properly call himself a Christian. It’s as though in their minds the
urban-legend phenomenon didn’t even exist.

The attitude of these traditionalists reminds me of a story told by comedian Richard Pryor on an HBO special many years ago. A woman catches her husband in flagrante delicto. She storms out of the room. The husband leaps out of bed and runs after her. He grabs his wife’s arm and insists angrily that nothing was going on, nothing at all. Standing there stark naked, in an anatomical state that (to bowlderize Pryor) unmistakably indicates what he’s been up to, he challenges her: “Who you gonna believe, baby — me, or your lyin’ eyes?”

Indeed.

Comments

28 responses to “Lyin’ Eyes: Urban Legends and Scripture”

2005-08-15

trevize

Interesting, though I think cultural context is important in examining whether urban legends of the modern kind you describe are applicable to Ancient Near East culture in Roman-occupied Judea, Asia and Achaea, and particularly to the backgrounds of the writers of the New Testament. Would modern-style urban legends even arise in a pre-modern culture?

Reply
2005-08-16

Skeptikal Sammy

“Would modern-style urban legends even arise in a pre-modern culture?”
You bet they would!

Reply
2005-08-16

trevize

Glenn Miller (of Christian Thinktank), has the following to say:
“Similarly, the Roman historian A. N. Sherwin-White demonstrated from analysis of Herodotus and Thucydides that “Herodotus enables us to test the tempo of myth-making, and the tests suggest that even two generations are too short a span to allow the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historic core of the oral tradition” (RLRS:190-192).
Indeed, it can be shown that INSTEAD of embellishing the actually historical with ADDITIONAL ‘supernatural’ data, the tendency was to do the opposite–to abbreviate, to summarize, to condense (other than the gap-filling in the NT apocrypha). One can see this OUTSIDE the NT (e.g. summarized parables in the “Gospel of Thomas”) and INSIDE the NT (e.g. parallel narratives in Mr/Mt and Mr/Lk).”
I’d say that rather than making blanket accusations of urban legend, or, conversely, making blanket statements of newspaper-style eyewitness reporting, each case must be looked at and assessed individually. It is argued that the rapid expansion of the church and the independent paths of scripture development (the “Synoptic problem”, for example) points to a paucity of counter-witness or counter-part oral tradition at the same time and place for certain events.
This is not a field of expertise for me. I’m just saying we should avoid throwing our hands in the air, attributing all sorts of things to urban legends of the ice-in-the-bathtub variety, without thoroughly assessing each case.

Reply
2005-08-16

D. C.

1. Trevize quotes a source as saying: “even two generations are too short a span to allow the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historic [sic] core of the oral tradition.”
Trevize, oral tradition is indeed difficult to change, once it becomes “set in concrete.” As an example, consider Cassie Bernall’s alleged declaration of her belief in God, just before she was murdered at Columbine. It seems pretty clear that those tragic events didn’t happen the way it’s now widely believed. Yet the urban legend will probably persist for years to come.
As another example, John Kerry is generally regarded as a brainy intellectual, while George W. Bush is often portrayed as something of a dolt. Ironically, it was recently revealed that it was actually Bush who had the better grades at Yale. Moreover, the president earned a Harvard MBA, which isn’t handed out to just anyone who asks. Yet if you were to take a poll of voters today, I bet many would still say (unfortunately) that the president is not ths sharpest tool in the shed.
Before an oral tradition has become set in concrete, I don’t think it can be reasonably doubted that story mutation plays an extremely important role in the tradition’s formation in the first instance. We don’t really understand very well how that happens. The Cassie Bernall example is a case in point: It seems that evangelical Christians were predisposed to believe that Ms. Bernall proclaimed her faith in God before being gunned down, and that’s just how the story spread. The “telephone game” provides another illustration. I could go on and on, but it hardly seems necessary (see this posting for more examples).
2. Trevize also asks: “Would modern-style urban legends even arise in a pre-modern culture?”
I think it’s safe to presume story mutation could indeed have occurred 2,000 years ago. Story mutation seems to arise from, among other things, our natural human tendencies (i) to unconsciously refine our memories — see this series of Doonesbury comic strips for a humorous illustration — and (ii) to unconsciously re-tell stories as our own, in a way that fits our own mental models — see this posting for more details (scroll down to the story about Peter Fonda). There’s a reason, after all, that the legal system insists on the hearsay rule and on the right to cross-examine witnesses to determine just exactly what they know, as opposed to what they think they know.
I don’t think we have any reason to assume human nature was materially different back then. Indeed, we see clear evidence of possible story mutation in the New Testament itself; see my earlier posting, “Troubling Inconsistencies in the New Testament,” for a more extended discussion of this topic.
In my view, anyone who affirmatively claims that the NT stories did not mutate — in being retold over some 20 to 50 years, across the not-insignificant cultural divide between Jews and Gentiles — should be required to support that claim by clear and convincing evidence.
3. These are fascinating, and in my view crucial, issues; I’m so glad they’re being discussed.

Reply
2005-08-16

Skeptikal Sammy

The fact that people didn’t begin writing about Jesus until 70 or 75 years after his death has always troubled me, especially considering the fact that they had nothing to go by except the “oral records” passed down from over two or three generations.

Reply
2005-08-16

Barry Fernelius

I suspect that the early Church strongly believed that Jesus’s second coming was imminent. This may have delayed the need to put the Gospel in written form.
Of course, there are Pauline letters that were written before the Gospels.

Reply
2005-08-16

D. C.

Barry, that’s true, but Paul apparently was not an eyewitness. So far as we know, Paul never even met Jesus during the latter’s “earthly ministry,” as the orthodox like to put it.
Moreover, even if we assume a very early date for 1 Thess., the earliest known Christian writing, that’s still some 15 years after the crucifixion. Stories can mutate a lot in 15 years.
Of course, Paul went out of his way to deny that his teachings were derived from stories told by anyone who actually knew Jesus. Instead, Paul claimed to have received “his” gospel in a revelation directly from the risen Jesus himself.
Paul certainly isn’t the only person in history to have claimed he was following a divine revelation. So you’ll have to forgive me for being skeptical of his claim.

Reply
2005-08-16

bls

You know, to be honest, none of this matters in the slightest to me. And I can’t honestly understand why it does to anyone else.
It’s extremely interesting to know, I think, what the intent of the writers was, and what parts of the stories may be literary, or metaphorical, or midrash. I love learning about the period, too, and the history of the region. The backstory is fascinating, and I think this is one of the real benefits of being involved in religion: you can learn a lot about history and antiquity.
But what difference would it make if the stories were erroneous in parts, or embellished in parts, or even made up out of whole cloth? Isn’t the moral of the story the thing? Isn’t the point that if God had come to earth to take on human flesh, it’s significant that He did it in this particular way? Isn’t the really interesting thing how the world reacted to this story?
I mean, isn’t it interesting that God comes to earth and is born in a stable, instead of in the palace? Isn’t it telling that God in human flesh preaches nonviolence and goes around healing the sick and inviting the outcasts to dinner and lecturing the rich about their duties to the poor – rather than leading armies into battle, say, or forming an elect group of followers? Isn’t it amazing that people loved Jesus so much that they were willing to die terrible deaths for him?
I just don’t get why it matters that everything be literal or not.

Reply
2005-08-16

bls

And I have to add, too, that given what we know – or actually, what we don’t know – today about the quantum and interstellar worlds, why does anybody consider anything to be impossible?
Sure, it’s extremely unlikely that a man killed on a cross could rise from the dead – but are you really willing to say it’s impossible? I mean, there are white dwarf stars, and black holes, and dark matter, and “spooky action at a distance”! So why, when these things are accepted, would anything be considered impossible?
Isn’t one branch of quantum theory concerned with possible outcomes of an action, and doesn’t it hypothesize that in fact all outcomes occur? String theory posits that there are eleven dimenions, the extra 6 of which are extremely tiny and curled up so that we can’t see or perceive them. Why is this acceptable, but a miraculous occurrence preposterous?
So why is it so hard to believe that a woman could become pregnant asexually, just one time in all of history? That’s the very definition of a “miracle”!

Reply
2005-08-16

bls

(That should be 10 dimensions, of course.
Here’s an “origin of the universe” hypothesis: the gigantic vibrating “branes.”
“A parallel universe moving along a hidden dimension smacked into ours. The collision heated our universe, creating a sea of quarks, electrons, protons, photons, and other subatomic particles. It also imparted microscopic ripples, like ocean waves crashing on a shore.
These ripples generated tiny fluctuations in temperature and density, the seeds from which all cosmic architecture—from stars to gargantuan clusters of galaxies to galactic super clusters—ultimately arose.
This model for the evolution of the cosmos, first presented at a cosmology meeting at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore last April, has been widely discussed and debated ever since. Although the hypothesis sounds like science fiction, some scientists say it’s the first serious challenge to the reigning model of the birth of the universe.
According to the standard theory, the universe was born some 15 billion years ago in a hot, expanding fireball, an event scientists call the Big Bang. The universe then underwent a brief spurt of faster-than-light expansion, called inflation, before settling down to the much slower, steady expansion observed today.
“After many years in which we had a single model—[the Big Bang combined with] inflation—for the universe’s beginning, we now have an alternative,” comments theorist Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute, one of the organizers of the April meeting on this topic.
“The reason that this is important is that in spite of its attractive features, inflation theory has not been tested observationally in any detail,” he notes. Livio adds that the new model “provides us with a potential true test that can distinguish between it and inflation.”
“I don’t think it’s by any means yet a real rival to inflation, but I think it is a model well worth pursuing,” says Alan H. Guth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the developers of the inflation model. ”
This is the one that posits 11 dimensions.
So why do people accept this stuff without batting an eye, and yet it’s impossible to imagine something infinitely less unlikely? Just curious!

Reply
2005-08-16

Skeptikal Sammy

bls doth wrote:
“But what difference would it make if the stories were erroneous in parts, or embellished in parts, or even made up out of whole cloth? Isn’t the moral of the story the thing?”
Okay, but then don’t try to claim that there is some divine being who dictated the bible to a series of human scribes who we must bow down to and worship. Biblical inerrancy and all that. Instead just say that’s it’s a book of fables with some moral lessons.
Albeit, many of the so-called lessons are pretty repugnant. If a crowd ever shows up at my home demanding that I surrender a guest to them, I won’t offer my daughters to them to be gangraped in lieu of the guest.

Reply
2005-08-16

bls

Again: I have never made such a claim, nor would I. I truly don’t know where you got the impression I did or would.

Reply
2005-08-16

bls

In fact, I argue against such claims pretty regularly, and point out that the “rape-of-the-two-daughters” lesson Genesis is routinely ignored so that the sicko homophobes can blather on about sodomy.

Reply
2005-08-16

D. C.

BLS writes: “why does anybody consider anything to be impossible?”
Well, I wouldn’t consider it impossible that there’s a planet Zebulax, orbiting the star Alpha Centauri, that is ruled by intelligent kitty-cats [if that’s not an oxymoron, I don’t know what is]. On the other hand, neither would I believe that it’s true, let alone assert it. Before I’d even seriously consider such an assertion, I’d want to see credible supporting evidence that is at least modestly coherent with everything else we know about the universe.
Sure, it seems entirely possible that Jesus of Nazareth does indeed “live” somewhere, somehow. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, there’s anecdotal evidence of dead people appearing to their loved ones. Both my mother and grandmother reportly saw (and in my grandmother’s case, heard) dead relatives. We can speculate that Jesus, and other dead people, are in some other dimension.
But the available evidence about Jesus isn’t enough to persuade me that he was raised from the dead in the sense used in the creeds. As to the empty tomb, a more likely (speculative) explanation might be that the highly-placed Joseph of Arimathea parked the body in a family tomb so as not to profane the sabbath, then later moved it to an undisclosed location – without bothering to inform the hoi polloi Eleven – so as not to provide a focal point for civil unrest among the populace. And the stories about Jesus’s post-mortem appearances have the distinct aroma of story mutation to them.
Finally, even if Jesus were alive somewhere, that wouldn’t make him the Creator of the universe or the second person of a trinity.

Reply
2005-08-16

Skeptikal Sammy

If you heard a voive claiming to be god and demanding that you “sacrifice your first-born (i.e., murder it) to demonstrate your allegiance to the divinity, would you?

Reply
2005-08-16

bls

Well, I hate to mention it, but the New Testament claims aren’t really anywhere near as outlandish as the ones you guys keep coming up with. Straw man, anyone?
Doesn’t it ever occur to you that it’s sort of odd that Jesus, the Savior of the World, is simply an ordinary guy doing healings of the sick, rather than a superhero with big muscles saving damsels in distress, or a soldier out to convert the world at the point of a sword? There are no really wild claims at all, in fact – simply a few of modest ones that involve the most basic of human experiences: meals and healing and birth and death.
Now that we’re talking about it, in fact, I’ve heard stories of people being sent to the morgue who are later discovered to be alive. How come nobody freaks out about that? Here’s a question: do you think science might eventually find a way to bring people who have died back to life?
And I notice nobody answered my questions above. Why do you accept bizarre scientific facts and theories without even a shrug? Black holes? Infinite density? That seems ordinary to you?

Reply
2005-08-16

bls

Anyway, you seem to be avoiding my main point, also.
What difference does it make whether the stories are literally true or not? Does it change anything about the moral one draws from them? Why does it matter whether all the things in the Gospels are true to the letter, or came about as a result of the charisma of Jesus, plus the crucifixion, plus “story mutation,” plus the hiding of corpses, plus some sort of impression the followers of Jesus had that he had been raised from the dead?
Isn’t it odd that all those things happened, and then that Paul had his mystical vision on the road to Dasmascus and was instantly converted (as were many others), and then that many thousands of unrelated individuals were willing to sacrifice themselves for 4 centuries to carry on the story? Isn’t that the real story here? That all these things somehow converged, and that it drove the creation of an amazing story of the humble, gentle man who was crucified and became the King of Glory?
Doesn’t it all sort of come to the same thing, in the end? Isn’t it God’s will in action in the world, in either case?

Reply
2005-08-16

Skeptikal Sammy

” Why do you accept bizarre scientific facts and theories without even a shrug? Black holes? Infinite density? That seems ordinary to you?”
These are easier to accept for 2 reasons:
1. Many of us have more faith in science and its rigorous approach to the truth than to that of the bible-thumpers who offer no evidence for their claims but who demand that we accept everything they say.
2. Whether or not black holes, infinite density, etc are true or not makes little difference to most of us. Why? Because they don’t require us to change our lifestyles.

Reply
2005-08-16

bls

Why, in other words, didn’t this story die instantly? Peripatetic prophets were a dime-a-dozen in the region at that time. Why did people continue to dedicate themselves to the Jesus Sect for many, many years after all of this happened, particularly when it was to their own great peril?
What’s the attraction of the religion? Why do people continue to be attracted to it to this day?

Reply
2005-08-16

bls

My question wasn’t about on what basis you accept them.
My question is why do they seem ordinary to you? Why is the possibility of a woman becoming pregnant asexually, or a man being brought back to life after death, somehow so bizarre, but a hypothesis about “dark matter” or black holes perfectly respectable? I think even many scientists of past eras would be totally boggled by some of these ideas.
Interesting that you used the word “faith” when referring to science! Because that’s really what it is; you trust that the people doing this science haven’t gone off on some really wild goose chase – which often does happen.
Granted, science is self-correcting in a way religion isn’t, and that’s definitely its strength. But again, my point is that this story does something to people. It has a measurable effect. What I’m asking you to do is to consider this effect. That’s science, not faith.

Reply
2005-08-16

D. C.

BLS, I think Skeptikal [sic] Sammy and I did address your question. Scientists don’t claim that ordinary people should reshape their lives based on the latest theories about dark matter. They don’t even ask other scientists to accept the theories without offering supporting evidence and subjecting the theories to pretty rigorous peer review. Scientists who don’t conform to this ethic are ridiculed and scorned (just ask Profs. Pons and Fleischmann, the proponents of “cold fusion”).
Submission of our thinking to the test of external evidence, it seems to me, is tantamount to submission to God. External evidence is God’s gift of information about his creation.
And if one doesn’t accept the existence of God, as SS doesn’t, then one can still think of such submission as a form of accountability to each other.

Reply
2005-08-17

bls

D.C., I agree that science is a wonderful thing, as I think you know. But it’s not everything, and it won’t be able to explain everything. Some things – the origins of the universe, what’s happening on the other side of death, to name two – are going to remain forever mysteries to us. And this thing we’re talking about, too, isn’t explainable. The fact is, we don’t know and never will what actually happened 2,000 years ago in Judea and environs. I’m just trying to say that I don’t think that’s the important issue.
You know, to be honest, I find your position to be one of the strangest of all. I really wonder how a person can have a strong faith in a personal, caring God – and yet be so skeptical about Biblical claims. I really do! I’m not criticizing, understand; belief – or nonbelief – in God is and has to be a personal matter.
But for me these days, it’s almost the other way around. I often don’t believe in a personal God anymore; I understand God most of the time these days as the generator of the life force, the creative power in the universe. God, it seems to me, can’t really be anything like me.
But I do definitely believe in the beauty, love, grace, and glory of Our Lord. If God exists, I see Him – and I want to see Him – in the face of Jesus Christ. This is a beautiful person and I sincerely hope that God – the creative force in the universe – looks like this on earth: gathering the outcasts, worrying about the poor and the little sparrows, healing people who touch the hem of his cloak, and – gosh! – rising from the dead!
If it’s not true, it ought to be true. If Jesus Christ didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him. Of course, maybe we did – but so what? Again: do we need something to be literally true to have meaning and effect? Scientists use their imaginations all the time, to create something that didn’t exist before.
For me, the story [i]is[/i] the story, and like I said, it grabs people because of what it is. It’s [i]wonderful[/i]. I don’t think you can discount what effect it actually has, and has had, on human beings throughout the last 2,000 years. I think of people like Stephen in the Bible, and Blandina the martyr – people who fell in love with this personage of Christ and died for that love. That’s pretty powerful. These people were outcasts, too, in their societies – she was a slave girl! – and they died for their champion. I’m with them.
I should add that this position of mine is almost the direct opposite of what it used to be. I used to wonder what the big deal was about the Savior bit. If you had God, why did you need Jesus? Somehow, this changed. I love the guy now, and if all that stuff didn’t happen in reality, for me it says something very, very powerful and very true.

Reply
2005-08-21

Skeptikal Sammy

Is this the next new worship?
The baby boomers made worship relevant. Gen-Xers made it authentic. The next big shift could make worship non-linear, multisensory and art-driven. It’s called “alt.worship” and it’s emerging from an unlikely source – the global alternative Christian subculture.
http://www.faithworks.com/archives/next_new_worship.htm

Reply
2005-08-21

bls

Actually, that sounds like the last, old worship – the really, really old worship.
Dark cathedrals, gorgeous music, processions, chanting, icons and statuary, incense, and candles. All the senses fully engaged.
Yep. We’ve got that!

Reply
2005-08-21

Skeptikal Sammy

Looks like my post with the lyrics from JC Supersta was censored.
:o(

Reply
2005-08-21

Skeptikal Sammy

bls,
Please note the complete absence of a bible-thumping preacher and their reluctance to call themselves “christians”. But other than that there is much similarity.

Reply
2005-08-21

D. C.

Sammy, I don’t believe I deleted the JC Superstar lyrics post; recognizing it was a pleasant surprise, because that song (aria?) has always been a favorite. Are you sure it’s in this thread?

Reply
2005-08-22

bls

“Please note the complete absence of a bible-thumping preacher and their reluctance to call themselves “christians”. But other than that there is much similarity.”
Well, I’ve never heard a “bible-thumping preacher” in an Episcopal Church, either; in general, ‘Piskies don’t go there. Although I admit I’ve heard a few fire-and-brimstone talks about social justice.
But it’s true that many of us do call ourselves “Christians” – which means, pretty much literally, “followers of Christ.” Anyway, I don’t think the wackos should get to determine the meaning of a perfectly fine word, do you?

Reply