Sacred rewrites and speaking back
I never knew it was okay to rewrite a Bible story.
That line came up last week at our Harbor gathering.
We had just explored the work of Musa Dube, a theologian who “decolonizes” texts like John 4, the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. While this passage has often been praised for its inclusion (i.e. Jesus breaking past societal barriers), Dube calls out the ways imperialism shaped the narrative and how that imperialism continues to inform our understanding of Jesus, the subordination of the woman and Samaritans, and the justification of missionary superiority over so-called “lesser” nations. She highlights a rewrite of John 4 by Batswanan poet and novelist Mositi Torontle, who rewrote the story during apartheid-era Botswana.
In Torontle’s version, the Samaritan woman is centered, given a name (Mmapula), and the living water she drinks flows from her own land—rather than coming from Jesus or a foreign source. It’s a fascinating reframing.
One of my favorite parts of Thursday was listening to the conversation that followed. Every week we break into small groups to reflect on the teaching. Dube’s approach to the text, and Torontle’s imaginative retelling, stirred a range of responses. Some of us found it exciting. Others were surprised. A few were unsure. And some weren’t convinced. I loved the wide variety of reactions.
What I heard several times was, “I didn’t know we were allowed to rewrite the Bible.”
That stuck with me. Of course it’s okay to tell a Bible story in our own words and for our own context! Every translator has done this. Even the variations among the four Gospel writers show us how stories were told differently, depending on the audience and purpose. Children’s Bibles are rewrites. Oral storytelling is rewriting. Passing down sacred stories in new forms is a holy tradition. So why can’t we?
We can rewrite. Just like our ancestors passed down stories and allowed them to be shaped by time and place, we too have permission to do this work.
Okay, so we can rewrite—but are we just avoiding what’s actually in the text?
Oh man, this is the question! How do we face the realities of the Biblical text without side-stepping, justifying, ignoring, or explaining away the questionable stories?
As a Bible nerd and justice-seeking person, I think this question will remain alive for me for a very long time.
Years ago I was studying the role of Black women in the church, and I came across Lisa Thompson’s Ingenuity: Preaching as an Outsider. She talks about how Black women preaching are speaking back to the text, using their voices with equality—in other words, with just as much authority as the ancient writers of the Bible.
I love this idea. We bring ourselves to the text. Our whole selves. We wrestle. When we study texts that are unsettling or questionable, sometimes we retell and reshape them. Sometimes we speak back to the authors.
For me, at times this looks like saying something like:
“Gospel writer of John, I’m really frustrated by the way you wrote this story. It feels undercutting to the Samaritan woman and not reflective of the Jesus I know—who so deeply values mutuality and dignity.”
So as we approach the Bible—many of us with trepidation or exhaustion—I hope we find the freedom to come to the text with integrity and honesty. To learn from different perspectives. To bring our stories, our experiences, our questions, and our voices into the conversation.
All of this is part of the deep work of being in this tradition: wrestling with these ancient stories and how they’ve shaped us—and how they continue to influence us today.
