Rewriting history is not a new practice. We’ve been doing it since before the rise of civilization. That’s how heroes are made. Slight changes in stories snowball into big changes, and, depending on the agenda of those in power, more snow is shoveled onto the old tales. Take the Song of Roland as an example.
By 800 Charlemagne had risen to such stature that the Pope crowned him Emperor. But his rise to legendary status—the magne in his name—wasn’t entirely smooth. He had trouble conquering Spain and suffered a disastrous defeat in a mountain pass at Roncesvalles in the eighth century. It was a defeat without revenge. Those who attacked the stretched-out army disappeared into the hills. But a couple of hundred years later someone wrote a long (4000-line) poem about the battle, making one of Charlemagne’s slain men a hero, and suggesting that Charlemagne had his revenge on the attackers.
But that’s the way we often look at things: Rewriting to put, as we now say, the spin on things gone awry. It took hundreds of years for the fiction about the battle at Roncesvalles to evolve into the heroic epic a Pope used as propaganda to inspire a crusade in the Middle East. Today, we rewrite history in a matter of a few decades or sometimes in a matter of just a few years.*
Are our memories really that short? Is it a matter of too many people writing too much about an individual event or set of circumstances? Whatever the cause of our rewriting history, we do it faster today than ever. Look at accounts of any administration, political or business, by those who support ensuing administrations. We’re inundated by so many diverse accounts that we aren’t much different from those people of the eleventh century reading a fictional retelling of a lost battle to make it fit into the narrative of legend.
We might look through history and pity those who had fictional accounts that misled them, but are we much different? Like Pilate facing Christ (John 18:38), we find ourselves asking almost daily, “What is truth?” though we might frame it more specifically as “What is the truth?” We find ourselves asking that question because the news-poets of our time keep retelling tales to favor their legends.
And that leads me to asking why we have legendary characters at all. Why, if we have equal value, do some of us—those news-poets—insist on revising to give someone legendary status? And why do so many wish to spread falsehoods?
There’s something telling in every retelling. We learn probably more about the re-teller than we learn about the original circumstance or person in the tale.
*Because of the 24/7 news cycle, maybe in just hours.
By 800 Charlemagne had risen to such stature that the Pope crowned him Emperor. But his rise to legendary status—the magne in his name—wasn’t entirely smooth. He had trouble conquering Spain and suffered a disastrous defeat in a mountain pass at Roncesvalles in the eighth century. It was a defeat without revenge. Those who attacked the stretched-out army disappeared into the hills. But a couple of hundred years later someone wrote a long (4000-line) poem about the battle, making one of Charlemagne’s slain men a hero, and suggesting that Charlemagne had his revenge on the attackers.
But that’s the way we often look at things: Rewriting to put, as we now say, the spin on things gone awry. It took hundreds of years for the fiction about the battle at Roncesvalles to evolve into the heroic epic a Pope used as propaganda to inspire a crusade in the Middle East. Today, we rewrite history in a matter of a few decades or sometimes in a matter of just a few years.*
Are our memories really that short? Is it a matter of too many people writing too much about an individual event or set of circumstances? Whatever the cause of our rewriting history, we do it faster today than ever. Look at accounts of any administration, political or business, by those who support ensuing administrations. We’re inundated by so many diverse accounts that we aren’t much different from those people of the eleventh century reading a fictional retelling of a lost battle to make it fit into the narrative of legend.
We might look through history and pity those who had fictional accounts that misled them, but are we much different? Like Pilate facing Christ (John 18:38), we find ourselves asking almost daily, “What is truth?” though we might frame it more specifically as “What is the truth?” We find ourselves asking that question because the news-poets of our time keep retelling tales to favor their legends.
And that leads me to asking why we have legendary characters at all. Why, if we have equal value, do some of us—those news-poets—insist on revising to give someone legendary status? And why do so many wish to spread falsehoods?
There’s something telling in every retelling. We learn probably more about the re-teller than we learn about the original circumstance or person in the tale.
*Because of the 24/7 news cycle, maybe in just hours.
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