If you’ve ever tried to tell someone a story about a memorable personal experience, you know how difficult it can be to communicate the event in such a way that the listener experiences a similar impact. Thus the phrase, “I guess you had to be there.” In order to overcome this obstacle, a good storyteller will embellish a few details to heighten the listeners second-hand experience of the event. Whatever was funny, scary, or embarrassing to you when it happened has to be made a bit funnier, scarier, or more embarrassing when you’re telling someone else about it. That’s just the way storytelling works. I’m betting that just about every true story worth worth listening to is actually “based on a true story.” It happened, but details have been embellished for effect.
Of course, it’s possible to embellish enough details that the story being told has almost no connection to what actually happened. There is an ongoing debate in Hollywood about how many details can be changed in a movie that is “based on a true story” before a line is crossed and fact becomes fiction. How do you know when the line has been crossed? Most of the time, the audience will have a sense that somewhere in the telling the story was no longer grounded in reality. Even if the audience doesn’t know when the line has been crossed, the teller will know. At least for awhile. If he tells the story enough times, he’ll eventually forget which parts were true and which ones he made up.
Nevertheless, storytelling without some embellishment isn’t much fun, for either the teller or the listener. So the next time someone tells you a story worth listening to, rather than wondering whether the details were embellished, just assume that they were. Instead of holding that against the storyteller, be glad that he did it.
Otherwise, you probably wouldn’t have paid attention long enough to care.
By the way, I had a hard time deciding whether to use the word “embellish” or “exaggerate” for this post. Did I choose the right one? Is there a difference between the two words?
Telling Stories, Asking Questions, Learning Lessons
You said: “I’m betting that just about every true story worth listening to is actually ‘based on a true story.’ It happened, but details have been embellished for effect.”
So what about the stories in scripture, specifically the Gospels? Did they embellish to make the story better?
Ben,
That’s funny. I wonder whether that was the intended implication or not but I thought about the same thing.
Whether Wade intended it or not, it certainly makes sense of why the Gospels are told the way they are (for people like me who have a hard time believing some of it).
I don’t that it means they HAVE to be embellished. But it’d be silly to make them illegitimate for being less in touch with what ‘really’ happened.
I’m with the post, I’m glad that they were embellished. Good luck trying to write well enough to capture the impact of being with Jesus.
Ben–I think the the writers of the gospels made intentional choices to shape and structure the stories they told in such a way as to heighten the force of their overall point. They omitted certain details and events that weren’t germane to the larger story they were telling. They also emphasized certain aspects of different events to emphasize their point. They summarized dialogue and chose their words carefully for rhetorical purposes.
Is this the same thing as embellishing? Or is merely editing?
It probably depends on whether you see “embellish” in either a positive or negative light.
Even if some details were embellished for effect, the church put their stamp of approval on the overall story that was told. In other words, the earliest Christians didn’t call foul on the gospel writers for not grounding their stories in reality.
I was being facetious in posing that question. I’m with both you and the other Ben on this one. Though I don’t buy all that Borg says, I do like how he frames this issue.
In talking about the significant differences between the gospel of John and the synoptics, he talks about John being a great example of a combination of pre-resurrection and post-resurrection testimony. John’s community not only testified to who Jesus was historically (pre-resurrection), they also testified to who Jesus was among them (post-resurrection). Both realities were true and they had no problem creatively intermingling those two realities.
I think it makes for a healthy homiletical paradigm as well. Instead of having the text and our world stand at arms length from one another, let’s allow the two to intermingle a little bit. Not being sure where scripture’s story ends and ours begins is a pretty dynamic and transforming way of understanding our life in the midst of God’s story.
I will let you guy fight out the implications of the potential embellishment of the Gospels. When I first read the post I first thought of how many preachers I have heard went way beyond embellishment and just told lies. I this of one retired professor of preaching who one more that one occasion has his facts so wrong that embellishment was not the first word that came to my mind.
I promise I was not drunk when I posted. Sorry I did not proofread. Here is what I meant to say.
I will let you guys fight out the implications of the potential embellishments in the Gospels. When I first read the post I thought of how many preachers I have heard who went way beyond embellishment and just lied. There is a well known retired professor of preaching who has on more than one occasion had his facts so wrong that embellishment was not the first word that came to my mind.