Barrie Wilson, PhD
Professor, Religious Studies, York University
SAL/Atkinson/6^th floor, 4700 Keele Street. Toronto, ON M3J 1P3

Abstract

Big Fish raises the hermeneutic question how narrative truth relates to factual truth—how “what is said happened” relates to “what really happened.” Will wants to know facts about his father’s life. His father, Edward, is dying but he never accedes to his son’s request for a factual autobiography, preferring to tell stories about the significant moments in his life and the people he encountered. Narrative truth is what Edward values, for it opens up the dimension of significance— “what an event means to the narrator.” The meaning of events narrated is dramatized in this film. Big Fish is a story about redemption and transformation. Everyone whom Edward encounters is redeemed or changed in a positive manner. Even his son, Will, is changed. Over time, he comes to see the value of story and vows to portray his father’s life the way he wanted it told.

Big Fish poses hermeneutic problems on two levels. On the individual level, the conflict between narrative and factual truth arises when individuals seek to authenticate stories told by aged relatives or when therapists attempt to interpret accounts told them by patients. On a cultural level, the narrative versus factual truth issue is experienced by scholars puzzling over the historicity of ancient religious narratives. The importance of this issue is illustrated in relation to narratives about Abraham, Moses and Jesus. Not only do these texts stand at a distance from the events they purport to describe, we, too, as interpreters, are situated at a distance from their time of writing. The question arises, can we now move from narrative truth to factual truth (historicity)? If so, how?

It is argued that with respect to ancient cultural historical narratives, we cannot now “get behind” the narratives to corroborate the historicity of actions and sayings. In contrast, Big Fish portrays Will ascertaining details about his father’s story by hearing the account of his birth firsthand, finding records and in speaking to people still alive in Specter, a town transformed by his father’s actions. In a sense the film “cheats,” that is, it portrays what is often not possible— historical corroboration—with respect to personal, therapeutic or scholarly hermeneutic situations.

It is therefore contended that the film should have ended just with Will’s hearing the stories. That would have placed him squarely in the hermeneutic quandary.

I – Hermeneutic Issues

[1] The opening scenes of Big Fish set up the main issues in the film. One issue has to do with the identity of the big fish —“the beast.” A voice-over provides speculation about this legendary fish and the viewer is immediately left wondering, what does it represent? The fish reappears many times throughout the film, not just at the beginning but eerily in the swimming pool and at the end when Edward dies. Somehow Edward and his destiny seem linked to the big fish. Is the big fish a clue that the story is a tall tale? Or is there a deeper message?

[2] Edward is then immediately introduced as a raconteur par excellence. He recounts the story of how he retrieved his gold wedding ring on the day his son, Will, was born. Again the viewer is left to wonder, how should the stories that make up the colourful narrative of his life be interpreted? Do these stories have a basis in fact, that is, are they historically true, a record of what really happened? Or are they perhaps an embellished concoction of truth and fiction? Perhaps they are just fictitious, tales told for their entertainment value. What is fact and what is fiction?

[3] The film raises complex hermeneutical questions. For one thing, how is the truthfulness of personal historical narrative to be judged? What can be reliably known of others through the personal narratives they choose to share? This interpretive problem surfaces in many contexts. Aged relatives sometimes narrate stories of their childhood to family members who will listen, but often it is difficult to assess what is truthful from what is fanciful or self-serving. Psychiatrists and other therapists also face this interpretive task as they listen to patients presenting narratives of what they select as significant moments in their past—incidents and events they think will aid the therapist in understanding them.

[4] In Big Fish, Will seeks earnestly to understand his father, Edward. He wants to know “the true version of things, events, stories, you.” That is what he demands of his father and, for him, this represents an urgent matter given the terminal nature of Edward’s illness. He would like to separate “fact from fiction, the man from the myth” and he is highly skeptical of the anecdotes he hears. In the end, however, he comes to recognize that determining what actually happened (factual truth) may not be possible and that there is value in how Edward has decided to tell the significant moments in his life that give it meaning and shape (narrative truth). Consequently, he vows to tell the story of his father the best way he can, which is to tell it the way his father told it to him.

[5] That clever script maneuver throws the issue back to the viewer. What is true about Edward’s personal history? Of all the strange encounters Edward narrates, what really happened and what did not? Moreover, how can we discern the difference? In philosophical terms, can we move from narrative truth (“what is said to have happened”) to factual truth (“what really happened”) or historicity? If so, how might this be accomplished?

[6] Assessing the truth of individual historical stories is related to a more general hermeneutic issue: how to interpret cultural historical narratives. How should the various historical and religious narratives we have received within our culture be interpreted, especially those that are found within influential biblical writings as well as ancient Greek and Near Eastern epics? Are these stories reliable guides to what actually happened or are they simply narratives? Can we, for instance, now reconstruct the historical Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Abraham, Moses or Jesus from the tales we have received of them?

[7] The issue is a matter of serious concern to faith communities which wish to build belief or behavioural structures on these narratives and the events they purport to relate. Judaism places tremendous importance on knowing the covenantal details between God, Abraham and Moses, for instance, and Christianity places utmost value upon the words and deeds of Jesus. As we shall see, however, substantial interpretive barriers stand in the way of our being able now to say of any historical figure that he/she actually said or did something related in extant documents. There are two temporal gaps, for instance. The texts themselves stand at a distance from the deeds they narrate. In addition, we stand at a distance from these ancient writings. Does our distance from these writings and their distance from the events they depict play a role in our ability now to discern the historical Abraham, Moses or Jesus for instance? Can we “go through” these ancient texts to ascertain the historicity of the happenings they relate?

[8] Do differing expectations also play a role as well in understanding historical narratives? The matter of father-son estrangement surfaces early on in Big Fish. Edward tells his story of catching the fish, retrieving his gold wedding ring on two occasions, first before Will and Josephine’s wedding and then at the wedding reception itself. We see Edward upstaging his son and daughter-in-law, leading to a three year estrangement. Will contends that on his wedding day, the speech should have been about him and his bride, not a self-serving tale about Edward’s clever ingenuity. Will works in Paris for United Press International, and, he, too, is a writer of stories. He only returns to Ashton upon hearing of his father’s terminal condition.

[9] This estrangement, however, complicates understanding the truth of personal historical narrative. There is resentment and antagonism on Will’s part and his expectations are that Edward will eventually talk about who he really is. His attitude is impatient, for he expects a factual narrative from his father. Edward, however, true to his life’s journey and the way he talks, is more interested in the fabric of the story and its colouring, the human dimension to what facts mean. He uses the tissue of narrative to convey what events meant to him and to the individuals whom he encountered. Thus the battle between factual and narrative truth becomes enjoined as the central problematic of the film.

II – The Film

[10] Big Fish was released in 2003.[1] Its director, Tim Burton, is noted for directing such films as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Planet of the Apes (2001), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Batman Returns (1992), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Batman (1989) , Beetlejuice (1988) and many others. Burton typically stamps his work with a unique style. He blends together unusual, often outlandish, characters; a strong narrative; wildly eccentric personalities; and tops it off with a lush, rich musical score. Big Fish is no exception to this enchanting blend of character, plot and music. We meet strange individuals in this film: a witch; a giant; two-headed twins; and, of course, Edward Bloom himself who is a pompous self-righteous masterful teller of tales on the verge of death.

[11] The screenwriter is John August, who based his script upon the book Big Fish written by Daniel Wallace in 1998. [2] The story is indebted to the character of Wallace’s own father. As he says,

My own father was a charmer and a kind of rover, similar to Edward Bloom in many respects. He was a businessman who gave up an enriching family life for success, prestige, and money. My relationship with him was erratic … The emotions William experiences in the book are ones I experienced in my own life, and so in this way at least Big Fish is a reflection of reality and thus somewhat autobiographical.[3]

[12] The book, however, is not composed of stories told by Daniel Wallace’s father. The episodes are fictitious, concocted by Wallace, but done so in a manner that is indebted to his own father’s enhancement of the truth. The book, therefore, is not biography. It is not the depository of narratives told by Wallace’s father. Yet the film is a biography. It is scripted by John August as Will’s biography of Edward Bloom. Or, to be more accurate, it is virtually Edward’s autobiography as told through his son: Will mostly narrates his father’s tale as he himself told it. It is the story of how Edward saw himself and as his son eventually came to portray him.

[13] Danny Elfman was the composer for this film and his lush, melodramatic music adds depth and richness to the imaginative and vivid plot.[4] Music is very important in Big Fish and Elfman uses contemporary pop songs to supplement and comment on his original score. Thus we find a Buddy Holly song, “Everyday things are getting closer” for Edward’s trip to Auburn University; “Five O’Clock World” by the Vogues for Edward becoming a traveling salesman; “Rambling Man” by the Allman Brothers for Edward on the road covering a sales territory that stretched from the coast to western Texas. This is an effective device. All these popular songs root Edward Bloom’s narrative in their historical setting, helping to lend plausibility to the narration and undercutting our skepticism. They are essential for encouraging belief that the events in Edward’s stories may actually have happened. The songs place the stories in time.

[14] The film takes us on a fast-paced, wild adventure as Edward recounts significant moments in his life’s history. As a hero, Edward takes on epic proportions, worthy of Homer’s Odyssey or the Epic of Gilgamesh. He possesses a secret power. By having seen into the witch’s false eye, he knows the manner of his death. This knowledge gives him tremendous courage in confronting obstacles. Everything is painted in exceptional terms. He grows up too quickly. He upstages Will who as a child has to stay in bed for a week, remembering that he had to stay in bed for three years. By reading the encyclopedia, he finds out that a goldfish can grow many times larger if it has more space. And this sets his life’s objective: to achieve a larger personal space.

[15] Edward excels in his home town of Ashton—as football hero, business entrepreneur, basketball hero and even as a dog rescuer. A monster arrives on the scene, and he volunteers to talk with him. And thus we meet Karl, the gentle giant. Together they decide to make their way together into the larger world—all heroes have to leave home. While Karl takes one road, Edward takes the unknown road through the forest, battling hornets and spiders, until he reaches the town of Specter, where he has arrived too early. This placid town represents everything Edward is not. People there are calm and content, enjoying the luxury of simply being rather than frantic doing. Specter is like the pleasant Garden of Eden. It’s a place to tarry. No one goes anywhere here. It is an enchanting place of contentment but Edward is not yet ready to arrive at any destination—hence he is “too early.” Edward encounters a nude woman in a pond in danger of being attacked by a snake. Edward catches the snake, or bent twig as it turns out, and the woman disappears. Is this incipient sexuality or just a reminder that danger lurks even in paradise?

[16] Edward tells Josephine how he met Sandra, his wife. Like the biblical tale of Jacob working for Laban for fourteen years in order to marry Rachel (Genesis 28, 29) as well as the labours of Hercules, Edward earns the right to get her name and location. It takes him three years at which time she is in university and engaged to another person. Edward wins her over by enduring a beating and strewing the lawn outside her dormitory with ten thousand yellow daffodils. We next have the story of the conjoined twins, Ping and Jing, and the marvelous escape from North Korea, all set to the music of Elvis Presley’s “All Shook Up.”

[17] Edward suffers a stroke and in the hospital Edward talks with Will about “how he’ll go” and as he envisages the scene—everyone in his life comes to see him off. It is not a sorrowful scene: they are all happy. Will carries Edward into the river, past Sandra, and off Edward swims, now the big fish in the large lake of eternity. That, Edward knows, is how he’ll go. He dies. The film ends with Will and Josephine in their home, with their kids, and, Will, too, is now a teller of takes. “A man,” Will says, “becomes the stories. They live on after him. And in that way, he becomes immortal.”

III – Factual and Narrative Truth

[18] While Will wants facts, Edward in his dying days seeks to change his son’s perception about what is valuable about living and how a person can discern opportunities and have a positive impact on another’s situation. He steadfastly refuses to give in to Will’s pleadings, using his storytelling to open up to Will a dimension he seems reluctant to admit, that events not only happen but that they have meaning and that the latter is perhaps the most important element.

[19] Big Fish is, therefore, a story about the power of narrative to convey fundamental truths. The importance of story—as well as its interpretive challenges—has been explored from literary, philosophical and psychological perspectives. Bruno Bettleheim was one of the first to recognize this dimension in his The Uses of Enchantment.[5] In that seminal writing he demonstrated the imaginative value of fairy tales. These, he contended, render in narrative form symbols of our struggles against dire threats. Bettleheim argued that these stories are not understood literally by children. They perceive the menacing forest, imprisonment in towers or being devoured by the wolf as symbols of threats to their existence. In narrative form children can encounter the symbols of their own existence and perceived perils and gain important insights into coping with them successfully—how to “live happily ever after.” Story therefore represents a symbolic language for understanding how to live and how to surmount obstacles. Subsequent narrative theory has explored the role of storytelling within psychology, and in literary and religious contexts.[6]

[20] Big Fish shows Edward battling obstacles throughout his life, and his personal narrative is shaped by a series of challenges. In each instance he is successful and people are better off for his having succeeded. Will does not at least initially appreciate this. He wants to be able to construct a historical narrative of his father’s life: the timeline of actions—this happened and then this happened, and so forth. But he never gets this, for Edward sticks to the story genre and to his focus on the meaning of occurrences, that is, their significance. He would not be true to himself if he were to do otherwise. For him, it is not important just that something happened but that its significance has been conveyed. Like fairy tales or religious stories, what concerns Edward is the meaning of that event. Truth in lived experience is not just fact.

[21] Narrative truth, therefore, embraces “what the event means to me,” its significance for the narrator. The significance of experience is what counts for Edward and that is what he tries to convey to Will. In particular, through story he shows to Will the meaning of entering into other people’s lives, just as he had done with the giant, the twins and the poet. These were all transformative tales, of them and of himself as the narrator. Edward, for instance, welcomes “the other” into his own existence—giants, conjoined twins, an ethereal poet—people who are different from run-of-the-mill humanity. He embraces them, helps them and successfully meets the challenges life has put in his path. Will comes to appreciate this dimension of his father’s legacy and the film ends with him, with his family, around a pool telling one of his father’s stories.

[22] Big Fish is a story of redemption. Everyone whom Edward meets, he saves. The giant, Karl, is no longer a menace and he finds a new life, no longer shunned but accepted by society. The twins escape North Korea and earn a living. The poet Norther Winslow abandons Specter and a life of crime becoming successful by making money on Wall Street. The town of Specter is saved as Edward calls upon his friends to buy property. He even fixes up Jennifer’s house personally with the help of Karl the giant. Will is saved from a lifetime of flat-line “factual fundamentalism,” just the facts devoid of imaginative colouring that highlight the human side of facts.

[23] Everyone is better off as a result of Edward’s involvement. The metaphor of the big fish may be interpreted as a symbol of redemption. The fish was the oldest symbol for Christianity before the cross or crucifix. The word fish in Greek is ichthus and this can be decoded as an acronym for Iesous Christos Theou Huios Sotēr,” that is, “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour.”

[24] Connected with the theme of salvation and the imagery of the fish is the metaphor of water. Water is everywhere in the film—the beginning, the end, the wedding reception which takes place on board a riverboat, the pool at Edward and Sandra’s house, the swamp at the witch’s house, the river near the giant’s cave, the pond in Specter, the glass of water by the bedside, the strange bathtub scene with Edward and Sarah ensconced in it with their clothes on and Will’s taking the scum off the pool. Water can symbolize the womb, birth, life and that is the way this symbol functions in religious epics, e.g. crossing the Sea of Reeds at the beginning of the Exodus; the eventual passing across the Jordan River into the Promised Land; John the Baptist’s immersion ritual as a sign of rededication to the Torah (Jewish law); undergoing baptism as the rite of entry into Christianity; plunging into the mikvah (Jewish ritual bath) as a symbol of purification; being transported across the River Styx in Greek mythology, as a way into eternal life.

[25] Edward is a catalyst for new life. The town is given new life. Karl and the twins receive a new life as does Norther Winslow. Edward himself bounces from adventure to adventure on his life’s journey. Will, on his own life’s journey, gradually achieves insight into the person his father really is. Much of what Edward wants to convey to his son is for a purpose: how to act as a catalyst for redemption in life. Whatever the factual truth of what he recounted, the end result was that people and situations were changed. That is one important life lesson that Edward wants Will to understand.

[26] That aspect of narrative truth, however, does not answer Will’s fundamental concern: his quest for historicity. It is here that Big Fish takes on an interesting direction. The film could have left Will—and us the viewer—to wrestle with the problem of what really happened and what did not. It could have left open the relationship of narrative to factual truth. Instead, Big Fish allows Will “to get behind” events. He is shown gradually corroborating details. The doctor tells him the real story of his birth—far less dramatic than his father had told. That event had not happened as his father had related.

[27] Some events, however, actually did occur. In sorting through his father’s office in the garage, he comes across a deed. He goes to Specter and finds out that it is a real town. He meets Jennifer who fills him in on specific details, how his father had rejuvenated the town, including her own house. He comes across a letter from the war mentioning how his father had gone missing. He shares an important moment with his father, his death scene. There Karl the giant is present, as are the twins, Norther Winslow, the circus master and all those who lives had been touched by Edward. Suddenly everything seems to fall into place for Will, that what his father had said was not as improbable as he had first made out.

[28] In doing this, however, the film “cheats,” that is, that it portrays what is often not possible—historical corroboration—with respect to personal, therapeutic or scholarly hermeneutic situations. Witnesses and documents help Will verify or falsify significant portions of what his father has recounted, although a substantial amount of mystery remains. The death scene in which all the important people in Edward’s life show up to witness his passing is one important unresolved matter. Is this to be construed literally or is this part of what Edward sees in his own mind as he contemplates “how he’ll go?”

[29] Being able to get behind narrative to underlying events—as Will does—is a rare phenomenon. Often narratives of events in the lives of aged or deceased relatives cannot now be verified. In my own family the meager details I know of my maternal grandfather’s youth in the late 1890’s in southern England cannot be authenticated. His often-told tale of leaving school at the age of 8 in grade three (1894) by jumping out of the window cannot be now be corroborated. Nor, for that matter, can the veracity of his story how he managed to come to Canada be confirmed. He claimed that some five years later (1899) he found himself on the docks of London, lying about his age, and boarding what he thought was a ship bound for South Africa to fight in the Boer War. He was surprised some weeks later to find himself arriving in Quebec City where the inhabitants spoke a different tongue. And so a whole new series of adventures began with his life in Canada, and like Edward, that was how he cast his life’s story—how he successfully surmounted every challenge life threw at him. I can determine he would have been only 13 in 1899 at the time of the Boer War. In my mind, that casts somewhat of a cloud over this romantic tale of my family origins, although part of his narrative was that he did lie about his age at the time. Moreover, in that historical era, leaving home at 13 was not unknown: my own father left home at 12; I did so later on at age 15.

[30] Therapists as well cannot usually delve beneath the narrations they are told by their patients. They cannot examine documents or probe associates and have no check on alternate versions of incidents unless they are treating couples or families. Using the test of narrative coherence, they may question inconsistencies and use that to ascertain what probably happened. Or they may recognize that personal agendas play a role in shaping the narrator’s version of the event and so discount some of the details. More likely they may forfeit assessing the veracity of their patient’s accounts altogether. For them, the emphasis lies in what the patient takes to be significant in his/her life—regardless of whether the happenings actually transpired as narrative. These therapists would contend that diagnosis and treatment lies in the realm of meaning and emotions—what the incident means to the patient at that point in time and the emotions it engenders—not whether or not these events really happened.”

[31] Most religious truths are conveyed through story, and here we are centrally challenged with the hermeneutical problem of factual truth versus narrative truth. Olympian religion, for instance, was founded on stories of heroes and gods and goddesses found in the poems of Hesiod and Homer. The latter’s writings in particular outlined the nature of human existence in the challenges that heroes such as Odysseus experienced trying to reach home. Hesiod’s and Homer’s sagas, however, were composed likely at least four centuries after the time of the siege of Troy and the return of the ancient Greek heroes. Do the Iliad and the Odyssey represent real historical events—the siege and capture of Troy, the return of the Greek heroes—or are they tales about the meaning of war, the fickleness of deity and what it means to enjoy a stable home base?

[32] In Judaism, too, story plays a central role within the Torah or Pentateuch portion of the Hebrew Bible. The extreme example would be the sagas connected with Abraham who, if he lived at all, would have flourished around 1800 BCE. Yet the earliest narrative we have of him comes from the J-tradition of the 11^th or 10^th centuries—a gap of some eight hundred years. Do we have any basis upon which to say that Abraham actually did or said any of the things narrated in Genesis 12 through 25?

[33] The experiences of liberation from slavery to freedom and the formation of a new nation are told through the dramatic Passover epic in the Bible with its annual enactment in the Jewish home. The Exodus under Moses is dated by most scholars to the 1200s BCE, although earlier dates (1300s, 1400s, 1500s) have been advanced. The earliest written records of Moses, however, date to the J-tradition in the time of David and Solomon or slightly later, in the 900s BCE. This tradition was edited and fused with other traditions after the Babylonian Exile even later, in the 500’s BCE. So while some portion of the story may have existed within oral tradition —a now unverifiable hypothesis—the written saga has been recast to suit the needs of later generations, while purporting to relate faithfully the story of Moses, the escape from Egypt, the receiving of the Law and the wanderings in the desert. So can we now confidently say that any of these events happened as narrated in the tenth century and subsequently edited in the sixth?

[34] The contrast between factual and narrative truth is acute with New Testament materials, especially in regard to the complex hermeneutical issue referred to as “the problem of the historical Jesus.”[7] This represents the attempt to determine if we can now say what the Jesus of history actually said and did (factual truth) or whether we are confined to saying that “Matthew says Jesus said …” or “Luke portrays Jesus as saying …” (narrative truth). From the point of scholarly research, narrative truth may suffice. Most faith communities, however, would want to be able to move from narrative to fact, as Will wants to accomplish with his father, and that creates the tension. The complexities in trying to resolve the problem of the historical Jesus is essentially fourfold.

[35] First of all, the historical Jesus who lived from approximately 6-5 BCE to approximately 30 CE wrote nothing. The four canonical gospels come from forty to seventy years later. Most scholars date Mark to around 70; Matthew to the 80s; Luke to the 90s to 120s; and John to around 90-100 CE.[8] Thus these documents are from the second through the fourth generation after Jesus and can be shown to reflect the concerns of later times.[9]

[36] Secondly, the gospels were not written by eye-witnesses, that is, they were not penned either by his immediate inner core of twelve disciples or by his family members. Authorship of the canonical gospels is anonymous. They are only later attributed to a “Mark” or a “Matthew” to help bolster their credibility just as other ancient Christian writings were attributed to “the Saviour,” “Mary Magdalene” or to “Philip.”

[37] Thirdly, there are significant discrepancies in the source narratives. The subject matter of Jesus’ message differs. The Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke), for instance, present Jesus talking about the Kingdom of God in parable form. The fourth gospel (John), however, portrays Jesus talking about himself, chiefly in monologues. What, then, did the historical Jesus talk about —the Kingdom of God which he thought was imminent or himself? What, moreover, was his typical mode of speaking—short pithy parables or long self-serving personal descriptions?

[38] There are also differences with respect to Torah observance. Mark portrays Jesus as setting aside the Jewish dietary laws; Matthew, however, using Mark as one of his several sources, reinstates observance of these laws including all of Torah. It is in that gospel that we find Jesus saying that nothing will pass from the Law until the eschaton or end-of-time cosmic transformation” arrives. So what should be concluded about Jesus’ stance on keeping the Law? Even at the moment of Jesus’ death, there are discrepancies. Mark 15:33 (//Matt 27:46) has Jesus uttering his final words as a cry of desperation and betrayal: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Luke, on the other hand, portrays Jesus dying calmly, a noble death: “Lord, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:26). What did he say at the moment of his death? Were any of these writers there?

[39] Finally, other portraits of Jesus exist from early Christian times. With the discovery in 1946 of the Nag Hammadi cache of Gnostic Christian writings, a variety of depictions of Jesus now exists from this radically different perspective. Gnostic Christians attributed no significance to Jesus’ death and viewed him primarily as an inspired guide who could help humans with the three questions they deemed fundamental: where have we come from, who are we and where are we going? Gnostic writings include the Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Judas, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Truth.[10] Materials also survive from the Ebionite community, a form of early Christianity which revered Jesus as a Jewish teacher who required faithful observance of Torah until the kingdom of God would be established. They also, like the Gnostics but unlike Paul, attributed no significance to Jesus’ death. Ebionite writings include the Gospel of the Hebrews, Gospel of the Nazoreans, and Gospel of the Ebionites as well as later writings.[11] We can also reconstruct an early list of Jesus’ sayings which existed alongside Mark or perhaps even earlier. This document is referred to as Q and represents the material common to Matthew and Luke not derived from Mark.[12]

[40] Thus the problem of differing canonical texts creates enormous hermeneutical problems for identifying the message and image of Jesus. The problem is compounded by two other considerations, however. For one thing, the canonical texts were themselves chosen in the fourth century CE by one—but only one faction—of early Christianity. This was the group favoured by the Roman emperors, Constantine and Theodosius, who used this faction to create a universal religion for the Empire to the exclusion of all others. Thus all other forms of Christianity were banned, along with the Schools of Greek Philosophy and the Mystery Religions dedicated to Mithras, Isis and Dionysius. Only Judaism escaped this ban. So rather than representing a neutral library of early Christianity, the selection of texts found in the New Testament was determined by political bishops in pursuit of imperial policy.[13] Secondly, in addition to the New Testament gospels we have three alternative presentations of Jesus: Gnostic, Ebionite and Q. This raises serious questions about which portrait of Jesus should be privileged and in accordance with what criteria.

[41] Various attempts have been made to solve the problem of the historical Jesus over the past century and range from privileging specific writings (e.g. Mark, being the earliest, or Q), focusing on the parables which most people think contain a nucleus of materials likely derived from the historical Jesus or my own attempt that uses what we know of Jesus’ brother, James, as a way into discerning what Jesus might have represented.[14] Others have been content with narrative truth, to confess that all we can say about Jesus is what the received narratives say about him. This latter solution has failed to generate widespread appeal, however, except for scholarly research into the gospels.

IV - Conclusion

[42] The problem is that it is difficult to “get behind” the religious historical narratives as Will got behind Edward’s stories. No archeological data, texts, video or audio records, transcripts or autobiographical writings exist that could help us corroborate the details in the narratives we have about significant events narrated within the bible, whether the covenants with Abraham and Moses or the life and mission of Jesus. In the case of the Jesus of history, all we have are four differing canonical impressions along with many others from the Gnostic and Ebionite Christian communities.[15]

[43] Allowing Will to get behind his father’s story short-circuits the real problem of truth in narrative. It represents an atypical situation. In examining personal or cultural historical narratives, we usually cannot corroborate the events about which the texts speak. Typically only the story in the text is accessible. This allows us to understand narrative truth, for instance, the significance of events for the narrator. The importance of Abraham, the feeling of liberation from Egypt in the Exodus and the impressiveness of social organization, the gift of Torah as a comprehensive lifestyle, and the challenge of Jesus with respect to the Kingdom of God—all these are accessible because they address the meaning of events for the received narrative. That represents an important dimension to narrative truth. This does not, however, take us to the dimension of factual truth.

[44] Perhaps it might have been better for Big Fish to have left the viewer just with Edward’s stories and with Will’s perplexity about what to do with those accounts. That would have placed Will centrally within the hermeneutic quandary.