Ret-conning the Nativity
Once upon a time, there was a children's novel entitled The Hobbit. It was a whimsical fantasy adventure about a small person, a hobbit, recruited by other small people, dwarves, and one tall person, a wizard, to go on a quest for a lost treasure. Along the way, there were battles with trolls, orcs, goblins, giant spiders and, eventually, a dragon. At the conclusion of this fantasy adventure was an all too realistic war for the treasure. And then the hobbit returned home. The novel works perfectly well as a self-contained work of fiction. The author, JRR Tolkien, drew on a much larger work, the history of Middle Earth, a realm he spent his entire life creating. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are all that he ever published from this work, but since his death in 1973 his family has issued volume upon volume of "unfinished tales," gleaned from the mountains of backstory material he had written but never submitted. I've read some of this stuff, and frankly...