Deconstruction: Things I Can't Un-See - part 2

How hip-hop helped me understand the Bible a little better

“Everything’s a remix.”

That’s what I said sarcastically to myself while sitting in traffic the other day. It was one of those perfect spring afternoons — windows down, the warm breeze drifting in - the kind of day that makes sitting in gridlock almost bearable.

Like many others around me, my car was soaking in the air along with whatever music floated in from nearby cars.

And then I heard… crickets.

Literally, crickets — chirping over a heavy bass line, cracking snares, and hi-hats dancing through the mix. I immediately recognized the beat. It was Aaliyah’s One in a Million, a song I’ve probably heard a million times. So I started mentally tracking along, waiting for her voice to drop in.

But when the vocals finally came, it wasn’t Aaliyah. It was someone else — a voice drenched in autotune, but it blended surprisingly well. I didn’t know who the artist was, but they were creatively putting their own spin on the track. And even though I’ll always prefer Aaliyah’s smooth delivery on the original, I couldn’t be mad at it. It worked.

It was a remix.

And that’s the thing — this kind of thing happens all the time in music, and it happens in several different ways. Artists remixing old songs, producers sampling classics, new voices borrowing old lines and flipping them into something fresh. It’s all part of the cycle — adapting, blending, reimagining. It happens in other genres, but it’s why I love hip-hop so much. Other genres might borrow or utilize elements of songs for their own creative purposes or to maintain a level of familiarity with their audience, but hip-hop is defined by this blending of the elements. Because of all its borrowing, people used to criticize hip hop around the turn of the millennium for its unoriginality, but it’s probably the only genre where you can take something old, transform it, and simultaneously define or redefine yourself. I mean even Jesus said the kingdom’s like a scribe who brings out old treasures and new.

As a matter of fact it's what one of my favorite hip-hop groups did on their first album. On the first and second track of their debut album, Blackstar - the hip-hop group made up of Talib Kweli and Mos Def - start their songs “Definition” and “Redefinition” with a timeless chant,

“1,2,3/ Mos Def and Talib Kweli/

We came to rock it on to the tip top/

Best alliance in hip-hop/ Y-O/

If you’re familiar with hip-hop, and you’ve heard this song, then you know that the counting off in the opening lines mimics the opening lines of BDP’s (Boogie Down Productions) 1988 song, “Stop The Violence”

One two three, the crew is called BDP

and if you want to go to the tip top

stop the violence in hip-hop, Y-O

And then in 1995, Lauryn Hill of the Fugees opened their track, Vocab, with the same lyrics adapted for their crew. In both of these examples no credit is given; no footnotes are included, and there are no accusations of plagiarism. None of this matters in the universe of hip hop. Instead, homage is paid; a line or a musical sample is transformed and a newer artist defines themselves. The same practice takes place in hip-hop beefs as well, but borrowing or adapting isn’t always about rivalry or competition. Most times, it’s about familiarity.

If you’ve stuck with me this far, my point is this: Just like hip hop and most other genres of music engage the work of artists, past and present, through interpolation, adaptation, borrowing, and transforming, the Bible does that too. And as ancient literature, it does that with the existing literature of its day. And just like hip hop, it’s usually not for rivalry - although sometimes it is. It’s about self-definition - taking the familiar elements, stories, and myths of the day and adapting them, transforming them, and redefining them in order to say something about oneself, one’s people, or why the world is the way it is. Another word for this is intertextuality.

This is completely different from the view that people like myself heard from a young age, that the Bible was an original, unique, harmonious, and incomparable document (not documents) that came directly from God and somehow bypassed the imperfections of its human authors, while integrating their personalities. In my experience, whenever I learned about the Bible in comparison to the neighboring cultures in which the texts were written, the Bible was exalted as this perfectly accurate, progressive, scientific, historical, and moral beacon while the ancient writings of all other cultures were pagan, barbaric (both disparaging terms), ignorant, and immoral.

The reality is that the Bible didn’t just draw inspiration from God - and by inspiration I mean something based on or around Israel’s deity. The writings of the Hebrew Bible and the writings of the New Testament engaged and drew inspiration from the contributions, cultures, and writings of the settings around them. It’s how the ancient world worked. It’s how our world works. And once I saw things this way, it was impossible to unsee.

It’s like when I saw how the first creation story in Genesis 1 (because there are two) does exactly what Black Star and the Fugees did when it opens in a similar way as an ancient Babylonian creation myth that came centuries before it, the Enuma Elish. Grammatically, both books open with a similar structure, and share similar themes such as separation amidst chaos and disorder. Another notable feature is how, contrary to surrounding cultures, the Hebrew account of creation tries to demythologize its creation account in some ways, going so far as to avoid the words “sun” and “moon” on day 4 of creation because these words were also names for deities in neighboring cultures. And by the time you reach Genesis 6- 7, where it tells the story of Noah being instructed by God to put his family on the ark, several other Ancient Near Eastern accounts share a flood story with similar themes and structure, particularly The Epic of Atrahasis, The Epic of Gilgamesh, and Eridu Genesis. That’s just within the first few chapters of Genesis.

We can see the same pattern in the writings of the New Testament where the author of Luke goes out of his way to place Jesus in several similar positions as Elijah and Elisha in order to transform Jesus into a better version of the prophets. Most Christians interpreting the Bible wouldn’t really have a problem with that. But what if, in another example, the author of Mark was inspired by Homer’s Odyssey when he wrote about Jesus and the Gerasene demoniac? In Homer, Odysseus and his men cross the sea and encounter a Cyclops who lives in a cave. In both accounts names are exchanged, the Cyclops and the demoniac are subdued, and then they’re told to make known what’s happened to them before getting in a boat and leaving again. Odysseus and his men then visit the goddess Circe’s house where she turns his group of soldiers (kind of like a legion) into swine. If it sounds similar to Jesus casting demons named Legion out of a man into a herd of swine, should we overlook those similarities? Especially when Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey was just as - if not more - popular as a book like Charlotte's Web for students learning how to read and write.

This is just one example and the writings in the Old and New Testament are filled with these kinds of mimetic situations. It was common to the literature of the day. Again, in the contexts in which these stories are written, adapted, and transformed the authors and audiences weren’t concerned with historic or scientific accuracy, plagiarism or rivalry as much as they're focused on self-defining or figuratively putting their own verse on the already familiarized track.

Whenever it’s highlighted that certain ancient writings share similarities with others, one thing that’s immediately emphasized are the differences between the writings. Don’t the differences in Genesis or the gospels distinguish the writings in the Bible from all these other mythological accounts? Yes. They might prove whatever point the author is hoping to make which could be anything from, “our God creates in a more powerful way” or “Jesus is more compassionate than Odysseus”... but we can't ignore the similarities. They show us something about how the literature is meant to be interpreted and what our expectations of it should be. They show us that these writings in the Bible are, at their core, products of their literary environment. They do not stand alone in the genres of their day, and that means something for how we read and understand them. While people in modern times have looked to the writings in the Bible to be an accurate account of science and history, the authors weren’t journalists, scientists, biographers, or historians. Who they were or who they were attempting to be is up for debate, but based on these writings being held under the microscope of these fields of study, we know what they were not. If anything the writers are like storytellers, composers, DJ’s who hold within their record crates old and new, looking to blend the elements to create something similar but different.

Instead of expecting ancient literature to be factually true, scientifically accurate, or totally original, maybe we should start by expecting it to be treated the same way we treat similar writings. For example, we don’t read The Epic of Gilgamesh as a science textbook or a literal historical account, right? So why would we expect that from another piece of literature that borrows from or relates to it?

And I’m not just talking about the Bible here—other cultures interacted with earlier stories and created their own versions. Take the Akkadian myth Descent of Ishtar, which is based on the older Sumerian story Inanna’s Descent into the Underworld. Or look at the flood story in Gilgamesh, which pulls from the even older Atrahasis. Then, of course, Genesis draws from both of them.

So the real question is: if we don’t read Descent or Gilgamesh as literal history but instead see them as myths, why should Genesis be any different?

Back in Part 1 of this series, I mentioned that this doesn’t have to challenge someone’s faith. If you believe the Bible is God’s revelation, that’s a matter of faith—and that’s okay. But recognizing these ancient texts as myth or mythohistory isn’t about belief; it’s about looking at the evidence we have. That view might shift with new research, but right now, it’s the most honest and unbiased approach. And if someone’s faith is built on a foundation of truth, then understanding what these texts actually are is part of that process. And it’s from that understanding that meaning is drawn.

The other option—the one a lot of people throughout Christian history have taken—is to deflect, demonize, or distort. It’s less common today, but for a long time, there were folks in the Church who genuinely believed that similarities between the Bible and older, non-biblical texts were the work of demons trying to deceive people. I mean this with all due respect to the church fathers and theologians, past and present, who’ve made those claims… but be forreal, son. Y’all are not serious people. The post about demons and devils is for a different day, but for now, why not engage some of these older ancient sources and try to discern what they and the writings in the Bible might be trying to tell us. If there’s anything I know about remixes, it's that you truly can’t appreciate them without understanding the original.