Responsible Religion

Jacob Neusner, a Jew who describes himself as "speaking pretty good Catholic", argued that it was unproductive trying to translate between the doctrines of two faiths, but more promising to map the stories of one faith onto those of another. He said that if he were trying to explain to Jews how Catholics viewed Mary, he would appeal to an apocryphal story about Rachel.  When the Jews were in exile in Babylon, all the male prophets appealed to God to bring them home and, being jealous of their past attachments to other gods, he would not listen. Rachel reminds him of a still more apocryphal story about her having allowed Jacob to partner with Leah first, and says, "If I could get over my jealousy you can get over yours." God relents. Rachel is the woman God will listen to when he will listen to no-one else; so is Mary.

(This is about the story of Jesus' resurrection, among other things.) Humans tell stories all the time, it is possibly the fundamental mode of communication. We like them for learning, and also for drama. They don't have drama if all the small print is left in. They don't come with references and footnotes. We know very well that if two protagonists tell the story of the same encounter it is likely to sound pretty different.  Stories then get passed from mouth to mouth. The original narrators at least knew what some of the small print was. The subsequent narrators don't.  What they are left with is the "moral of the story". The moral of the story can be misleading or leading, so to speak. A moral to the effect that mothers-in-law are always bad news is misleading. Stories can be inspiring, if they demonstrate human virtues; and they can be inspiring even if they are pure invention. Even as fiction, they should probably come with some small print. ...