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Is the Bible fan fiction? A thread. 📜 ​​

Let's start simple: what is the Bible? It's a library: a set of conversations preserved in dozens of texts that respond to each other and build upon each other. (And it's just one fragment of the broader conversations that took place in the ancient world.)

Sometimes, the texts that made it into the Bible seem firmly rooted in the mode of fan fiction! Examples include the books of Esther (which seems to reimagine the goddess Ishtar as a nice Jewish girl) and Ruth (which tells the untold story of King David's immigrant ancestress).

Reading these texts through the lens of fanfic helps us understand how emotional attachment, entertainment, and the desire to "fix" canon all motivated ancient authors and readers of scripture, just like they motivate modern fanfic authors and readers.

Tl;dr: Not all scripture uses the mode of fanfic, but some of it does—and recognizing those parallels helps us to understand the goals of the biblical authors better.