Early in life, when we were “getting schooled,” we were taught the comforting myth that history is settled, recorded, and patiently waiting for us to look it up.

The longer I live, and the more closely I observe, the less true that becomes.

Recently, I ran head-first into this reality while doing something that should have been simple: comparing album track-lists. Not ancient history. Not lost manuscripts. Just popular music from the early 1970s…albums that millions of people bought, played, and memorized. And yet, the past wouldn’t sit still.

Different versions. Different songs. Different sequencing. Streaming services and reference sites agreeing with each other, but not matching the physical records. It was as if history itself were in motion.

The Illusion of a Fixed Past

Streaming platforms like Pandora don’t operate as museums. They operate as licensing hubs and engagement engines. Their goal isn’t to preserve an artifact exactly as it existed, but to deliver a usable, monetizable experience in the present. If that means reshuffling tracks, substituting recordings, or standardizing a later reissue as “the album,” so be it.

Reference sites like Wikipedia aren’t immune either. Wikipedia doesn’t freeze time; it reflects consensus as it currently exists. When labels reissue material, when digital editions become dominant, when one configuration circulates more widely than another, then that version starts to look “official,” even if it wasn’t the original.

In the digital age, albums aren’t static objects anymore. They’re stories that get retold. Eventually, the version most people encounter becomes the version, even if it never existed that way to begin with.

What survives isn’t necessarily what was truest to the moment — it’s what:

• was easiest to distribute
• remained profitable
• fit the current system
• or simply didn’t fall through the cracks

This also applies to politics, culture, media narratives… and yes, even religious texts you thought you knew by heart. When repetition becomes widespread, repetition becomes authority.

Admittedly, music is a low-stakes place to notice this phenomenon, but that may be exactly what make it the perfect teacher. No one’s identity collapses if a track-list changes, but the mechanism is the same one that shapes far more consequential outcomes. If the past can be revised here, it can be revised anywhere.

The Bible fits this same structural pattern. Over centuries it has been translated, copied, edited, compiled, and standardized, with each act framed as preservation but necessarily involving selection. Words shift, meanings narrow or expand, and the versions most widely circulated become the ones treated as definitive. As with any historical record, what survives isn’t always what was original—it’s what was repeated, sanctioned, and useful to the present moment. If history is a moving target, then even sacred texts are not immune; they are continually re-presented in forms that best support the needs and assumptions of the time in which they are read.

Does this now mean that the past is unknowable? Most likely, it’s just more layered, and understanding it requires more effort. Once you realize history is provisional, you stop expecting certainty and start developing discernment. You listen closer. You notice red flags. You recognize when something feels off…not because you’re rigid, but because you’re attentive.

That’s not paranoia. That’s mindfulness.

And maybe that’s the real takeaway: the past isn’t a fixed destination waiting to be discovered. It’s a landscape that erodes and re-builds itself as we move forward, endlessly reshaped to give the present its best chance of surviving the future.