What is an anachronism? The term is a combination of two Greek words meaning, “against,” and “time.” An anachronism is a historical, chronological inconsistency which places an object, custom, or event out of the time in which it belongs. A character in a movie set in 1980 using a Blackberry cell-phone would be an anachronism. 

Prevalent in modern literature and cinema are thematic anachronisms. The desire to reinterpret classic stories, characters, and events for the “modern audience” has led many authors, directors, and storytellers to misunderstand the original work and so present its thematic message against its time. Christopher Nolan’s new movie, The Odyssey, is a prime example. While the movie has become a hot-bed for discussions around anachronistic casting choices, the greater thematic misunderstanding of the Homeric epic instructs preachers and Bible teachers in a lesson of authorial intent. We ought to heed the lessons of anachronistic story-retelling presented by Christopher Nolan as we approach the Bible on its own terms.

Nolan’s Anachronisms

It is worth mentioning the anachronistic casting choices. No Greek actors were cast to play any role in Nolan’s The Odyssey. Of course, the real controversy has been the casting of races far and away different from the race of Greek people in the ancient world. There is a place to critique this kind of misunderstanding and anachronistic presentation of ancient Greece. Ultimately, this is the tip of what reveals itself to be an iceberg of against time representations of Homer’s The Odyssey. 

The casting anachronisms reveal themselves to be a symptom of a much larger problem. Nolan fundamentally misunderstands, or deliberately misrepresents, Homer’s original story. The Odyssey is the quintessential hero’s journey. You may even say it is the original hero’s journey. It is a story of a man who must cross land and sea, fight giant and cyclops, do everything to try and preserve the lives of those serving under him, and learn his own lesson of humility in order to return to his wife and son. Instead, Nolan’s The Odyssey is presented as an un-hero’s journey, where the character is beaten, battered, bruised, and admits he doesn’t want to return to his wife. While this may be a compelling story, it isn’t Homer’s. 

Rather than a hero doing everything he can to return to his wife and son, The Odyssey, in Nolan’s interpretation, is about a man overcoming PTSD from the Trojan War. Odysseus is plagued, throughout the film, by his regret for the Trojan Horse trick. The conquest of Troy haunts Nolan’s Odysseus in a way many war and combat veterans, I am sure, can relate to. This, while relatable to many, is nowhere found in Homer’s The Odyssey. As Michael Thomas Jones noted in his review for the American Reformer, and one cultural commentator noted in his video review, this feels more like a parabolic story of an Iraq or Vietnam war veteran than it does Homer’s Odysseus. Indeed, there is nothing wrong with using Ancient Greece as a setting for a character study on PTSD, just don’t call it The Odyssey. 

Homer has no intention of writing a story about overcoming PTSD and Odysseus’ regret. Instead, the author wrote a hero’s story about a cocky, clever king returning home and learning about humility along the way. Nolan’s intent trumped the author’s intent. 

Bible Anachronisms

Preachers, teachers, and Bible readers are tempted to anachronize the Bible’s stories and themes at times. Two came to my mind quickly: the story of David and Bathsheba and the lukewarm water of the Laodicean church. 

David’s tremendous sin happens in 2 Samuel 11. To this point in David’s story, the king is downright messianic. All he and the people of Israel have known, under his kingship, is victory and blessing. But, one night, he was not at war (where he should have been) and his wandering eye caught a glimpse at a bathing Bathsheba (where he shouldn’t have been looking). The king had abdicated his wartime responsibilities and decided to sleep with another man’s wife (also, his own adultery). This story has enough scandal as is. Still, in a modern, me-too era, this is commonly understood as a scene of power imbalance and sexual abuse. Modern ideas of power dynamics and manipulation may be worth considering, but, ultimately, if the author wanted to tell us a story of sexual manipulation, coercion, and abuse, he would have told us that story. Two chapters later, 2 Samuel 13, there is a story of sexual abuse among David’s children. Clearly, the author of 2 Samuel has no issue with telling a story of rape, he just didn’t intend for that to be read into the story of David and Bathsheba. It is blatantly anachronistic to interpret the story of David and Bathsheba as one of rape – placing modern ideals onto the author’s intent. 

A smaller, less controversial anachronism occurs often in Revelation 3:15. Jesus diagnosed the church at Laodicea as being “neither hot nor cold,” rather, they are “lukewarm,” and so He will “spit them out.” This is a statement of condemnation, clearly. But this warning has often been interpreted anachronistically. In the first century, especially in their part of the world, hot and cold water were preferable. Hot water was good for bathing, cold water was good for drinking, but room temperature water had a poor taste, funky smell, and was generally undesirable. With that in mind, it seems the point Jesus was making is that they were no good to Him. Hot they been hot or cold they would have been of use. Rather, this warning has been anachronistically misinterpreted with common conceptions of being spiritually hot or cold and lukewarm. In my neck of the woods, we might colloquially refer to nominal christians as being lukewarm. They aren’t “red hot for Jesus” nor are they “as cold as an atheist.” As such, they are lukewarm. While this may be a warning worthy of consideration, it surely isn’t what Jesus intended in the anaologies of Revelation chapter three. 

David and Bathsheba might be more akin to Nolan’s thematic anachronism, while the lukewarm Laodiceans are similar to that of an out-of-place piece of technology – regardless, both reveal the nature of approaching the Bible without authorial intent as a driving interpretative lens. 

The Solution: Authorial Intent and Text-Driven-Preaching

In preaching, teaching, and Bible reading, we ought to approach the Bible with a text driven approach. Kyle Walker defines such an approach as, “[treating] a text on its own terms.”¹ To anachronistically interpret Homer or 2 Samuel is not to treat that text on its own terms. So Walker adds three such guidelines: substance, structure, and spirit. These three provide a good rule of thumb in Bible interpretation that will help us not to commit any anachronisms. If we approach the text as both the road map and the tour guide we will stick most closely to what the author originally intended us to understand as its themes, message, and Christology. With a proper authorial intent, we won’t commit any anachronisms of morality or typology, but will remain closer to what the Holy Spirit originally penned. 

Conclusion

The Odyssey was not as bad as I expected. There is my one sentence review! Much of the discourse, in my feed, was overwhelmingly negative about the movie. I went in with low expectations and came out more pleased than I anticipated. I went in expecting the casting choices to be glaring and hard to look past, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that wasn’t the case for me. What was, however, a glaring issue was that I felt I wasn’t watching The Odyssey at all. We preachers, especially, ought to approach the Bible on its own terms so that our people never leave our sermons feeling they heard an anachronistic speech as opposed to an exposition of the text. Let us deal with the text as its author intended.

1. Kyle Walker, Let the Text Talk, 31. ↩︎