>[T]he relation of the Elohist to the truth of his story still remains a far more passionate and definite one than is Homer’s relation. The Biblical narrator was obliged to write exactly what his belief in the truth of the tradition (or, from the rationalistic standpoint, his interest in the truth of it) demanded of him—in either case, his freedom in creative or representative imagination was severely limited; his activity was perforce reduced to composing an effective version of the pious tradition. What he produced, then, was not primarily oriented toward “realism” (if he succeeded in being realistic, it was merely a means, not an end); it was oriented toward truth. Woe to the man who did not believe it! One can perfectly well entertain historical doubts on the subject of the Trojan War or of Odysseus’ wanderings, and still, when reading Homer, feel precisely the effects he sought to produce; but without believing in Abraham’s sacrifice, it is impossible to put the narrative of it to the use for which it was written. Indeed, we must go even further. The Bible’s claim to truth is not only far more urgent than Homer’s, it is tyrannical—it excludes all other claims. The world of the Scripture stories is not satisfied with claiming to be a historically true reality—it insists that it is the only real world, is destined for autocracy. All other scenes, issues, and ordinances have no right to appear independently of it, and it is promised that all of them, the history of all mankind, will be given their due place within its frame, will be subordinated to it. The Scripture stories do not, like Homer’s, court our favor, they do not flatter us that they may please us and enchant us—they seek to subject us, and if we refuse to be subjected we are rebels.
>>24699312Not sure what you're looking for here short of some reaction or other. The essays detail the use and expansion of the figure of mimesis, and this cento is from one of the earliest essays iirc, if not *the* earliest. I read it ca. 15 yrs ago
>>24699312interesting passage, thanks. i hope this thread doesn't devolve into a 'debate' about whether the bible or homer is better literature and instead sees more interesting reflections on realism.>>24699833i imagine they were just aiming to share an interesting passage.
>>24699949His description of Homer reminds me of shonen anime>We find the same contrast if we compare the two uses of direct discourse. The personages speak in the Bible story too; but their speech does not serve, as does speech in Homer, to manifest, to externalize thoughts—on the contrary, it serves to indicate thoughts which remain unexpressed. God gives his command in direct discourse, but he leaves his motives and his purpose unexpressed; Abraham, receiving the command, says nothing and does what he has been told to do. The conversation between Abraham and Isaac on the way to the place of sacrifice is only an interruption of the heavy silence and makes it all the more burdensome. The two of them, Isaac carrying the wood and Abraham with fire and a knife, “went together.” Hesitantly, Isaac ventures to ask about the ram, and Abraham gives the well-known answer. Then the text repeats: “So they went both of them together.” Everything remains unexpressed. >It would be difficult, then, to imagine styles more contrasted than those of these two equally ancient and equally epic texts. On the one hand, externalized, uniformly illuminated phenomena, at a definite time and in a definite place, connected together without lacunae in a perpetual foreground; thoughts and feeling completely expressed; events taking place in leisurely fashion and with very little of suspense. On the other hand, the externalization of only so much of the phenomena as is necessary for the purpose of the narrative, all else left in obscurity; the decisive points of the narrative alone are emphasized, what lies between is nonexistent; time and place are undefined and call for interpretation; thoughts and feeling remain unexpressed, are only suggested by the silence and the fragmentary speeches; the whole, permeated with the most unrelieved suspense and directed toward a single goal (and to that extent far more of a unity), remains mysterious and “fraught with background.”On the other hand, more grown-up Japanese media are obsessed with unexpressed feelings
>The Biblical narrator was obliged to write exactly what his belief in the truth of the traditionAbsolutely no reason to believe this. At all. The Torah has an authorship ascribed to Moses but the scribes who collated it surely knew better. Homer also believed he was divinely inspired, and unlike the authors of the Gospels didn’t have to use someone else’s name for the sake of credibility The reason the Greeks could question their religion is because when dealing with clear contradictions they just applied Occam’s razor (not the same as saying all accounts are false) instead of presuming satan was whispering doubts in their brainsPutting this all aside, both Homer and the Bible are outstanding literature and a must for anyone who loves great books. However the nonsense in the OP is still nonsense
>>24700831Homer focuses almost exclusively with external struggle and conflict. The Bible focuses mostly on internal struggle, mainly conscience, moral dilemma and faith. This is consistent with the cultures that produced each. The Greeks were imperialist, sportsmen, colonialist, explorers. The Jews at the time of writing the Bible were slaves or at least highly subjugated and denied any autonomy. The Iliad is meant to be an origin story for the Greek ethnicity, so to speak: it is defined as the people who fought Troy, that’s the significance of the catalog of ships. The same with the Bible: for Jews, so were not seafaring pirates and colonists, their homeland is much greater importance to their ethnic identity, and their origin deals with the origin of their captivity. Hence while Greeks tend to reflect on victory, Jews more do on defeat, and their great historical victory remains God saving them from captivity to a foreign nation. Because they are helpless in an external sense, they are concerned about what they can do or become internally that would relieve their external helplessness As modern man we are in circumstances really much closer to the Jews than the Greeks which is why the Bible seems to us less fantastic and more human, despite having miracles and fantasy. Because they are humans in it remind us of us; Ajax and Diomedes do not remind us of us but they reminded the Greeks of themselves
>>24700857>Absolutely no reason to believe this.The following parenthesis addressees that.
>>24700904There is no reason to believe that whatsoever. If the truth was any concern to him, as it was to, say, Livy, he would have added his own commentary that, “I cannot verify this, but it’s all we have so I include it without comment,” etc. That the scholars added no commentary on way or the other shows they were cleanly disinterested in truth, it was not a value that was relevant to them. They were concerned mainly with Jewishness and collating writings about Jewishness. They might have asked themselves “is this true, you reckon?” Or they might have thought, “so…this is the truth” or “this can’t be true”, but probably they didn’t think that much. They thought “is this Jewish, do you reckon?” “so…this is the Jewish” “this can’t be Jewish”They put mutually contrary accounts side-by-side with comment and were probably more concerned with keeping the right chronological order than truth
>>24700857You're conflating the tradition, which attributes mosaic authorship to the Torah, with the redactor of the Torah itself, which does not (at least, not for Genesis). But your perspective is what he terms "rationalistic" in that passage, i.e., that the authors of the biblical stories were serving their own interests rather than transmitting their own beliefs. But his point is basically that, whatever you think of the author, the effectiveness of the story upon the reader is entirely dependent on whether the reader accepts the story as true. This bears out in the story's foundational relationship with religious and legal precepts, its time scale (from creation to the eschaton), its intolerance, its omission of details that the reader must use his imagination to infer, its relative lack of harmonization of its sources.
>>24700966If Moses didn’t write it then he must have known he didn’t and that the writers who did were certainly not witnessesPassages in the Bible are often at odds and the general explanation has to do with whether a passage was written by the priests, or the nobilityThere is no unified author for the Bible. Homer at the very least unified the material of others and made it stylistically consistent and unified, and wove it into his own story. But the Bible is a collection of different authors with clearly different styles and concerns Most of the Bible’s effectiveness lies in the characters themselves since it is very character-driven. The laws are mostly interesting for historical or legal studies since even Christians and most non Orthodox Jews do not give two shits about actually practicing themThe Qur’an is closer to a book that depends heavily upon it saying something true to be of value, at least in translation, since it doesn’t really have any character studies and its literary power depends heavily on how it makes use of Arabic in meter and rhyme
>>24700932Truth in context of the book is how we relate to a representation of reality, not reality itself, hence the sub title. He is exploring how we engage with literature and how literature influences our perception of reality.
>>24700932>If the truth was any concern to him, as it was to, say, Livy, he would have added his own commentary that, “I cannot verify this, but it’s all we have so I include it without comment,” etc.You realize there have always been commentaries on biblical writings since antiquity, right?>They put mutually contrary accounts side-by-side with commentMaybe you just think they are. I would note that no examples of this supposed contradiction have been given. These suppositions been spoken about and alluded to much, but in all the attempts to bring a single example, in my experience, nothing concrete has ever materialized. In my experience, it can all be shown to have not been a true contradiction in the first place. Perhaps you do not like the fact that I am unwilling to assume what you seem to assume without evidence.A lot of times people will mistakenly call something a contradiction due to lack of reading comprehension, not paying attention to details, or even simply an unstated, and often assumed predisposition to reject the account as a whole, before having even really considered it in the first place. In my investigations, that's what I find to be the best explanation of attempts to actually substantiate claims that there is a contradiction somewhere in the Bible. Trying to substantiate it would seem to be a misguided endeavor.
