The Bible

Bloom’s Modern Critical Views
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THE BIBLE
Updated Edition
Edited and with an introduction by

Harold Bloom
Sterling Professor of the Humanities
Yale University
Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: The Bible, Updated Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Infobase Publishing

Introduction © 2006 by Harold Bloom
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The Bible / Harold Bloom, editor. — Updated ed.
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1. Bible as literature. 2. Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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Contents
Editor’s Note vii
THE HEBREW BIBLE
Introduction 1
Harold Bloom
The First Three Chapters of Genesis 17

Kenneth Burke
The Representations of Reality

in Homer and The Old Testament 33
Erich Auerbach
The Poetics of Prophecy 49

Geoffrey Hartman
Wrestling Sigmund:
Three Paradigms for Poetic Originality 71
Harold Bloom
Job 91
Martin Buber
The Heart Determines: Psalm 73 101

Martin Buber
vi Contents
The Relationship of the Lovers 111

Francis Landy
Has the Narrator Come to

Praise Solomon or to Bury Him?:
Narrative Subtlety in 1 Kings 1–11 147
J. Daniel Hays
T H E N E W T E S TA M E N T
Apocalypse 171
D.H. Lawrence
The Man in the Macintosh, the Boy in the Shirt 177

Frank Kermode
Pauline Typology and Revisionary Criticism 199

Herbert Marks
John’s Use of Matthew: Beyond Tweaking 221

Benedict T. Viviano, O.P.
Myth and Symbolic Resistance in Revelation 13 247

Steven J. Friesen
Afterthought 277
Harold Bloom
Chronology 279
Contributors 283
Bibliography 287
Acknowledgments 293
Index 295
Editor’s Note
My Introduction concerns the uncanny sublimity of the Yahwist or J Writer,

the original author of the oldest layer in the palimpsest we now call Genesis,
Exodus, and Numbers.
The great critic Kenneth Burke gives an exuberant analysis of the first
three chapters of Genesis, after which Erich Auerbach contrasts the
representation of reality in the Hebrew Bible and in Homer.
Geoffrey Hartman expounds the prophetic poetics of Jeremiah, while I
give a reading, unconventionally Freudian, of Jacob’s all-night wrestling
match with the Angel of Death.
Martin Buber, theologian of visionary dialogue, memorably interprets
first the Book of Job, and then Psalm 73.
The Song of Songs receives an expert exegesis from Francis Landy,
after which J. Daniel Hays investigates narrative skill in I Kings 1-11, the
story of Solomon.
The great poet-novelist D.H. Lawrence contributes an apocalyptic
critique of the Revelation of St. John the Divine, while the major critic Frank
Kermode splendidly analyzes a crucial episode in the Gospel of Mark.
In a shrewd defense of Pauline typology, Herbert Marks presents St.
Paul himself as a revisionary critic, after which Benedict T. Viviano starkly
contrasts the Gospel of John to one of its sources, the Gospel of Matthew.
Revelation returns in Steven J. Friesen’s account of the symbolism of
Chapter 13, which employs myth in order to separate out his audience from
a hostile society.
My Afterword casts doubt as to the recoverable historicity of Jesus,
relying upon the very different arguments of two recent books, my own Jesus
and Yahweh: The Names Divine, and Christ is the Question by Wayne Meeks.
vii
HAROLD BLOOM
Introduction
To my best knowledge, it was the Harvard historian of religion George Foot

Moore who first called the religion of the rabbis of the second century of the
Common Era “normative Judaism.” Let me simplify by centering on one of
those rabbis, surely the grandest: normative Judaism is the religion of Akiba.
That vigorous scholar, patriot, and martyr may be regarded as the standard
by which any other Jewish religious figure must be judged. If your faith and
praxis share enough with Akiba’s, then you too are a representative of
normative Judaism. If not, then probably not. There is a charming legend in
which Moses attends Akiba’s seminar, and goes away baffled by the sage’s
interpretation—of Moses! But the deepest implication of the legend, as I
read it, is that Akiba’s strong misreading of Moses was in no way weakened
by the Mosaic bafflement.
The Great Original of the literary and oral traditions that merged into
normative Judaism was the writer scholarly convention rather wonderfully
chose to call “J.” Since Kafka is the most legitimate descendant of one aspect
of the antithetical J (Tolstoy and the early, pre-Coleridgean Wordsworth are
the most authentic descendants of J’s other side), I find it useful to adopt the
formula “from J to K,” in order to describe the uncanny or antithetical
elements in J’s narratives. The J who could have written Hadji Murad or The
Tale of Margaret was the inevitable fountainhead of what eventually became
normative Judaism. But this first, strongest, and still somehow most Jewish
of all our writers also could have written “The Hunter Gracchus” or even
“Josephine the Singer and the Mouse Folk.” Indeed she wrote uncannier
stories than Kafka lived to write. How those stories ever could have been
acceptable or even comprehensible to the P authors or the Deuteronomist,
to the Academy of Ezra or the Pharisees, let alone to Akiba and his
1
2 Harold Bloom
colleagues, is a mystery that I have been trying to clarify by developing a

critical concept of what I call “facticity,” a kind of brute contingency by
which an author’s strength blinds and incarcerates a tradition of belated
readership. But here I primarily want to describe the uncanniness of J’s work,
so as to break out of facticity, insofar as I am able to do so.
By “the uncanny” I mean Freud’s concept, since that appears to be the
authentic modern version of what once was called the Sublime. Freud defines
“the uncanny” as being “in reality nothing new or foreign, but something
familiar and old-established in the mind that has been estranged only by the
process of repression.” Since I myself, as a critic, am obsessed with the
Sublime or Freud’s “uncanny,” I realize that my reading of any Sublime work
or fragment is always dependent upon an estrangement, in which the
repressed returns upon me to end that estrangement, but only momentarily.
The uncanniness of the Yahwist exceeds that of all other writers, because in
him both the estrangement and the return achieve maximum force.
Of course J herself is considered to be a fiction, variously referred to by
scholars as a school, a tradition, a document, and a hypothesis. Well, Homer
is perhaps a fiction too, and these days the slaves of critical fashion do not
weary of proclaiming the death of the author, or at least the reduction of
every author to the status of a Nietzschean fiction. But J is pragmatically the
author-of-authors, in that her authority and originality constitute a
difference that has made a difference. The teller of the tales of Jacob and of
Joseph, of Moses and the Exodus, is a writer more inescapable than
Shakespeare and more pervasive in our consciousness than Freud. J’s only
cultural rival would be an unlikely compound of Homer and Plato. Plato’s
contest with Homer seems to me to mark one of the largest differences
between the ancient Greeks and the Hebrews. The agon for the mind of
Athens found no equivalent in Jerusalem, and so the Yahwist still remains the
mind of Jerusalem, everywhere that Jerusalem happens to be.
I do not believe that J was a fiction, and indeed J troubles me because
her uncanniness calls into question my own conviction that every writer is
belated, and so is always an inter-poet. J’s freedom from belatedness rivals
Shakespeare’s, which is to say that J’s originality is as intense as Shakespeare’s.
But J wrote twenty-five hundred years before Shakespeare, and that time-
span bewilders comparison. I am going to sketch J’s possible circumstances
and purposes, in order to hazard a description of J’s tone or of the
uncanniness of her stance as a writer. Not much in my sketch will flout
received scholarship, but necessarily I will have to go beyond the present
state of biblical scholarship, since it cannot even decide precisely which texts
are J’s, or even revised by others from J. My attempt at transcending
Introduction 3
scholarship is simply a literary critic’s final reliance upon her or his own sense
of a text, or what I have called the necessity of misreading. No critic,
whatever her or his moldiness or skepticism, can evade a Nietzschean will to
power over a text, because interpretation is at last nothing else. The text,
even if it was written that morning, and shown by its poet to the critic at high
noon, is already lost in time, as lost as the Yahwist. Time says, “It was,” and
authentic criticism, as Nietzsche implied, is necessarily pervaded by a will for
revenge against time’s “it was.” No interpreter can suspend the will to
relational knowledge for more than an isolated moment, and since all
narrative and all poetry are also interpretation, all writing manifests such a
will.
Solomon the King, nowhere of course overtly mentioned by J, is the
dominant contemporary force in the context of J’s writing. I would go
further, and as a pious Stevensian would say that Solomon is J’s motive for
metaphor. The reign of Solomon ended in the year 922 before the Common
Era, and J quite possibly wrote either in Solomon’s last years, or—more
likely, I think—shortly thereafter. One can venture that Solomon was to J
what Elizabeth was to Shakespeare, an idea of order, as crucial in J’s
Jerusalem as it was in Shakespeare’s London. The Imperial Theme is J’s
countersong, though J’s main burden is a heroic and agonistic past
represented by David the King, while her implied judgment upon the
imperial present is at best skeptical, since she implies also an agonistic future.
J’s vision of agon centers her uncanny stance, accounting for her nearly
unique mode of irony.
How much of J’s actual text we have lost to the replacement tactics of
redactors we cannot know, but biblical scholarship has not persuaded me that
either the so-called Elohistic or the Priestly redactors provide fully coherent
visions of their own, except perhaps for the Priestly first chapter of Genesis,
which is so startling a contrast to J’s account of how we all got started. But
let me sketch the main contours of J’s narrative, as we appear to have it.
Yahweh begins his Creation in the first harsh Judean spring, before the first
rain comes down. Water wells up from the earth, and Yahweh molds Adam
out of the red clay, breathing into the earthling’s nostrils a breath of the
divine life. Then come the stories we think we know: Eve, the serpent, Cain
and Abel, Seth, Noah and the Flood, the tower of Babel, and something
utterly new with Abraham. From Abraham on, the main sequence again
belongs to J: the Covenant, Ishmael, Yahweh at Mamre and on the road to
Sodom, Lot, Isaac and the Akedah, Rebecca, Esau and Jacob, the tales of
Jacob, Tamar, the story of Joseph and his brothers, and then the Mosaic
account. Moses, so far as I can tell, meant much less to J than he did to the
4 Harold Bloom
normative redactors, and so the J strand in Exodus and Numbers is even

more laconic than J tended to be earlier.
In J’s Exodus we find the oppression of the Jews, the birth of Moses, his
escape to Midian, the burning bush and the instruction, the weird murderous
attack by Yahweh upon Moses, the audiences with Pharaoh, the plagues, and
the departure, flight, and crossing. Matters become sparser with Israel in the
wilderness, at the Sinai covenant, and then with the dissensions and the
battles in Numbers. J flares up finally on a grand scale in the seriocomic
Balaam and Balak episode, but that is not the end of J’s work, even as we have
it. The Deuteronomist memorably incorporates J in his chapters 31 and 34
dealing with the death of Moses. I give here in sequence the opening and the
closing of what we hear J’s Yahweh speaking aloud, first to Adam and last to
Moses: “Of every tree in the garden you are free to eat; but as for the tree of
knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat of it; for as soon as you eat of
it, you shall die.” “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, ‘I will give it to your offspring.’ I have let you see it with your own
eyes, but you shall not cross there.” Rhetorically, the two speeches share the
same cruel pattern of power: “Here it is; it is yours and yet it is not yours.”
Akin to J’s counterpointing of Yahweh’s first and last speeches is her
counterparting of Yahweh’s first and last actions: “Yahweh formed man from
the dust of the earth,” and “Yahweh buried him, Moses, in the valley in the
land of Moab, near Beth-peor; and no one knows his burial place to this day.”
From Adam to Moses is from earth to earth; Yahweh molds us and he buries
us, and both actions are done with his own hands. As it was with Adam and
Moses, so it was with David and with Solomon, and with those who come
and will come after Solomon. J is the harshest and most monitory of writers,
and her Yahweh is an uncanny god, who takes away much of what he gives,
and who is beyond any standard of measurement. And yet what I have said
about J so far is not even part of the truth; isolated, all by itself, it is not true
at all, for J is a writer who exalts man, and who has most peculiar relations
with God. Gorky once said of Tolstoy that Tolstoy’s relation to God
reminded him of the Russian proverb “Two bears in one den.” J’s relation to
her uncanny Yahweh frequently reminds me of my favorite Yiddish
apothegm: “Sleep faster, we need the pillows.” J barely can keep up with
Yahweh, though J’s Jacob almost can, while J’s Moses cannot keep up at all.
Since what is most problematic about J’s writing is Yahweh, I suggest we take
a closer look at J’s Yahweh than the entire normative and modern scholarly
tradition has been willing or able to take. Homer and Dante, Shakespeare
and Milton, hardly lacked audacity in representing what may be beyond
representation, but J was both bolder and shrewder than any other writer at
Introduction 5
inventing speeches and actions for God Himself. Only J convinces us that
she knows precisely how and when Yahweh speaks; Isaiah compares poorly
to J in this, while the Milton of Paradise Lost, book 3, hardly rates even as an
involuntary parodist of J.
I am moved to ask a question which the normative tradition—Judaic,
Christian, and even secular—cannot ask: What is J’s stance toward Yahweh? I
can begin an answer by listing all that it is not: creating Yahweh, J’s primary
emotions do not include awe, fear, wonder, much surprise, or even love. J
sounds rather matter-of-fact, but that is part of J’s unique mode of irony. By
turns, J’s stance toward Yahweh is appreciative, wryly apprehensive, intensely
interested, and above all attentive and alert. Toward Yahweh, J is perhaps a
touch wary; J is always prepared to be surprised. What J knows is that Yahweh is
Sublime or “uncanny,” incommensurate yet rather agonistic, curious and
lively, humorous yet irascible, and all too capable of suddenly violent action.
But J’s Yahweh is rather heimlich also; he sensibly avoids walking about in the
Near Eastern heat, preferring the cool of the evening, and he likes to sit under
the terebinths at Mamre, devouring roast calf and curds. J would have laughed
at her normative descendants—Christian, Jewish, secular, scholarly—who go
on calling her representations of Yahweh “anthropomorphic,” when they
should be calling her representations of Jacob “theomorphic.”
“The anthropomorphic” always has been a misleading concept, and
probably was the largest single element affecting the long history of the
redaction of J that evolved into normative Judaism. Most modern scholars,
Jewish and Gentile alike, cannot seem to accept the fact that there was no
Jewish theology before Philo. “Jewish theology,” despite its long history
from Philo to Franz Rosenzweig, is therefore an oxymoron, particularly
when applied to Biblical texts, and most particularly when applied to J. J’s
Yahweh is an uncanny personality, and not at all a concept. Yahweh
sometimes seems to behave like us, but because Yahweh and his sculpted
creature, Adam, are incommensurate, this remains a mere seeming.
Sometimes, and always within limits, we behave like Yahweh, and not
necessarily because we will to do so. There is a true sense in which John
Calvin was as strong a reader of J as he more clearly was of Job, a sense
displayed in the paradox of the Protestant Yahweh who entraps his believers
by an impossible double injunction, which might be phrased: “Be like me,
but don’t you dare to be too like me!” In J, the paradox emerges only
gradually, and does not reach its climax until the theophany on Sinai. Until
Sinai, J’s Yahweh addresses himself only to a handful, to his elite: Adam,
Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and, by profound implication, David. But at
Sinai, we encounter the crisis of J’s writing, as we will see.
6 Harold Bloom
What is theomorphic about Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph? I

think the question should be rephrased: What is Davidic about them? About
Joseph, everything, and indeed J’s Joseph I read as a fictive representation of
David, rather in the way Virgil’s Divine Child represents Augustus, except
that J is working on a grand scale with Joseph, bringing to perfection what
may have been an old mode of romance.
I have called Solomon J’s motive for metaphor, but that calling
resounds with Nietzsche’s motive for all trope: the desire to be different, the
desire to be elsewhere. For J, the difference, the elsewhere, is David. J’s
agonistic elitism, the struggle for the blessing, is represented by Abraham,
above all by Jacob, and by Tamar also. But the bearer of the blessing is David,
and I have ventured the surmise that J’s Joseph is a portrait of David. Though
this surmise is, I think, original, the centering of J’s humanism upon the
implied figure of David is not, of course, original with me. It is a fundamental
postulate of the school of Gerhard von Rad, worked out in detail by
theologians like Hans Walter Wolff and Walter Brueggemann. Still, a phrase
like Wolff ’s “the Kerygma of the Yahwist” makes me rather uneasy, since J is
no more a theologian than she is a priest or prophet. Freud, like St. Paul, has
a message, but J, like Shakespeare, does not. J is literature and not
“confession,” which of course is not true of her redactors. They were on the
road to Akiba, but J, always in excess of the normative, was no quester.
I find no traces of cult in J, and I am puzzled that so many read as
kerygmatic Yahweh’s words to Abram in Gen. 12:3: “So, then, all the families
of the earth can gain a blessing in you.” The blessing, in J, simply does not
mean what it came to mean in his redactors and in the subsequent normative
tradition. To gain a blessing, particularly through the blessing that becomes
Abraham’s, is in J to join oneself to that elitest agon which culminated in the
figure of the agonistic hero, David. To be blessed means ultimately that one’s
name will not be scattered, and the remembered name will retain life into a
time without boundaries. The blessing then is temporal, and not spatial, as it
was in Homer and in the Greeks after him, who like his heroes struggled for
the foremost place. And a temporal blessing, like the kingdom in
Shakespeare, finds its problematic aspect in the vicissitudes of descendants.
Jacob is J’s central man, whose fruition, deferred in the beloved
Joseph, because given to Judah, has come just before J’s time in the triumph
of David. I think that Brueggemann is imaginatively accurate in his
hypothesis that David represented, for J, a new kind of man, almost a new
Adam, the man whom Yahweh (in 2 Sam. 7) had decided to trust. Doubtless
we cannot exclude from our considerations the Messianic tradition that the
normative, Jewish and Christian, were to draw out from those two great
Introduction 7
contemporary writers, J and the author of 2 Samuel. But J does not have
any such Messianic consciousness about David. Quite the reverse: for her,
we can surmise, David had been and was the elite image; not a harbinger of
a greater vision to come, but a fully human being who already had
exhausted the full range and vitality of man’s possibilities. If, as
Brueggemann speculates, J’s tropes of exile (Gen. 3:24, 4:12, 11:8)
represent the true images of the Solomonic present, then I would find J’s
prime Davidic trope in Jacob’s return to Canaan, marked by the all-night,
all-in wrestling match that concentrates Jacob’s name forever as Israel. The
Davidic glory then is felt most strongly in Jacob’s theomorphic triumph,
rendered so much the more poignant by his permanent crippling: “The sun
rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping on his hip.”
If Jacob is Israel as the father, then David, through the trope of Joseph,
is Jacob’s or Israel’s truest son. What then is Davidic about J’s Jacob? I like
the late E. A. Speiser’s surmise that J personally knew her great
contemporary, the writer who gave us, in 2 Samuel, the history of David and
his immediate successors. J’s Joseph reads to me like a lovingly ironic parody
of the David of the court historian. What matters most about David, as that
model narrative presents him, is not only his charismatic intensity, but the
marvelous gratuity of Yahweh’s hesed, his Election-love for this most heroic
of his favorites. To no one in J’s text does Yahweh speak so undialectically as
he does through Nathan to David in 2 Samuel 7:12–16:
When your days are done and you lie with your fathers, I will
raise up your offspring after you, one of your own issue, and I will
establish his kingship. He shall build a house for My name, and I
will establish his royal throne forever. I will be a father to him,
and he shall be a son to Me. When he does wrong, I will chastise
him with the rod of men and the affliction of mortals; but I will
never withdraw My favor from him as I withdrew it from Saul,
whom I removed to make room for you. Your house and your
kingship shall ever be secure before you; your throne shall be
established forever.
The blessing in J, as I have written elsewhere, is always agonistic, and

Jacob is J’s supreme agonist. But J makes a single exception for Joseph, and
clearly with the reader’s eye centered upon David. From the womb on to the
ford of the Jabbok, Jacob is an agonist, and until that night encounter at
Penuel by no means a heroic one. His agon, as I’ve said, is for the temporal
blessing that will prevail into a time without boundaries; and so it never
8 Harold Bloom
resembles the Homeric or the Athenian contest for the foremost place, a
kind of topological or spatial blessing. In J, the struggle is for the uncanny
gift of life, for the breath of Yahweh that transforms adamah into Adam.
True, David struggles, and suffers, but J’s Joseph serenely voyages through all
vicissitudes, as though J were intimating that David’s agon had been of a new
kind, one in which the obligation was wholly and voluntarily on Yahweh’s
side in the Covenant. Jacob the father wrestles lifelong, and is permanently
crippled by the climactic match with a nameless one among the Elohim
whom I interpret as the baffled angel of death, who learns that Israel lives,
and always will survive. Joseph the son charms reality, even as David seems
to have charmed Yahweh.
But Jacob, I surmise, was J’s signature, and while the portrait of the
Davidic Joseph manifests J’s wistfulness, the representation of Jacob may well
be J’s self-portrait as the great writer of Israel. My earlier question would
then become: What is Davidic about J herself, not as a person perhaps, but
certainly as an author? My first observation here would have to be this
apparent paradox: J is anything but a religious writer, unlike all her
revisionists and interpreters, and David is anything but a religious
personality, despite having become the paradigm for all Messianic
speculation, both Jewish and Christian. Again I am in the wake of von Rad
and his school, but with this crucial Bloomian swerve: J and David are not
religious, just as Freud, for all his avowedly antireligious polemic, is finally
nothing but religious. Freud’s overdetermination of meaning, his emphasis
upon primal repression or a flight from representation—before, indeed,
there was anything to represent—establishes Freud as normatively Jewish
despite himself. Turn it and turn it, for everything is in it, the sage ben Bag
Bag said of Torah, and Freud says the same of the psyche. If there is sense in
everything, then everything that is going to happen has happened already,
and so reality is already in the past and there never can be anything new.
Freud’s stance toward psychic history is the normative rabbinical stance
toward Jewish history, and if Akiba is the paradigm for what it is to be
religious, then the professedly scientistic Freud is as religious as Akiba, if we
are speaking of the Jewish religion. But J, like the court historian’s David of
2 Samuel, is quite Jewish without being at all religious, in the belated
normative sense. For the uncanny J, and for the path-breaking David,
everything that matters most is perpetually new.
But this is true of J’s Jacob also, as it is of Abraham, even Isaac, and
certainly Tamar—all live at the edge of life rushing onwards, never in a static
present but always in the dynamism of J’s Yahweh, whose incessant
temporality generates anxious expectations in nearly every fresh sentence of
Introduction 9
certain passages. This is again the Kafkan aspect of J, though it is offset by J’s
strong sense of human freedom, a sense surpassing its Homeric parallels.
What becomes theodicy in J’s revisionists down to Milton is for J not at all a
perplexity. Since J has no concept of Yahweh but rather a sense of Yahweh’s
peculiar personality, the interventions of Yahweh in primal family history do
not impinge upon his elite’s individual freedom. So we have the memorable
and grimly funny argument between Yahweh and Abraham as they walk
together down the road to Sodom. Abraham wears Yahweh down until
Yahweh quite properly begins to get exasperated. The shrewd courage and
humanity of Abraham convince me that in the Akedah the redactors simply
eliminated J’s text almost completely. As I read the Hebrew, there is an
extraordinary gap between the Elohistic language and the sublime invention
of the story. J’s Abraham would have argued far more tenaciously with
Yahweh for his son’s life than he did in defense of the inhabitants of the sinful
cities of the plain, and here the revisionists may have defrauded us of J’s
uncanny greatness at its height.
But how much they have left us which the normative tradition has been
incapable of assimilating! I think the best way of seeing this is to juxtapose
with J the Pharisaic Book of Jubilees, oddly called also “the Little Genesis,”
though it is prolix and redundant in every tiresome way. Written about one
hundred years before the Common Era, Jubilees is a normative travesty of
Genesis, far more severely, say, than Chronicles is a normative reduction of
2 Samuel. But though he writes so boringly, what is wonderfully illuminating
about the author of Jubilees is that he totally eradicates J’s text. Had he set
out deliberately to remove everything idiosyncratic about J’s share in Torah,
he could have done no more thorough a job. Gone altogether is J’s creation
story of Yahweh molding the red clay into Adam and then breathing life into
his own image. Gone as well is Yahweh at Mamre, where only angels now
appear to Abraham and Sarah, and there is no dispute on the road to Sodom.
And the Satanic prince of angels, Mastema, instigates Yahweh’s trial of
Abraham in the Akedah. Jacob and Esau do not wrestle in the womb, and
Abraham prefers Jacob, though even the author of Jubilees does not go so far
as to deny Isaac’s greater love for Esau. Gone, alas totally gone, is J’s sublime
invention of the night wrestling at Penuel. Joseph lacks all charm and
mischief, necessarily, and the agony of Jacob, and the subsequent grandeur of
the reunion, are vanished away. Most revealingly, the uncanniest moment in
J, Yahweh’s attempt to murder Moses en route to Egypt, becomes Mastema’s
act. And wholly absent is J’s most enigmatic vision, the Sinai theophany,
which is replaced by the safe removal of J’s too-lively Yahweh back to a sedate
dwelling in the high heavens.
10 Harold Bloom
J’s originality was too radical to be absorbed, and yet abides even now
as the originality of a Yahweh who will not dwindle down into the normative
Godhead of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Because J cared more for
personality than for morality, and cared not at all for cult, her legacy is a
disturbing sense that, as Blake phrased it, forms of worship have been chosen
from poetic tales. J was no theologian and yet not a maker of saga or epic,
and again not a historian, and not even a storyteller as such. We have no
description of J that will fit, just as we have no idea of God that will contain
his irrepressible Yahweh. I want to test these observations by a careful
account of J’s Sinai theophany, where her Yahweh is more problematic than
scholarship has been willing to perceive.
Despite the truncation, indeed the possible mutilation of J’s account of
the Sinai theophany, more than enough remains to mark it as the crisis or
crossing-point of her work. For the first time, her Yahweh is overwhelmingly
self-contradictory, rather than dialectical, ironic, or even crafty. The moment
of crisis turns upon Yahweh’s confrontation with the Israelite host. Is he to
allow himself to be seen by them? How direct is his self-representation to be?
Mamre and the road to Sodom suddenly seem estranged, or as though they
never were. It is not that here Yahweh is presented less anthropomorphically,
but that J’s Moses (let alone those he leads) is far less theomorphic or Davidic
than J’s Abraham and J’s Jacob, and certainly less theomorphic or Davidic
than J’s Joseph. Confronting his agonistic and theomorphic elite, from
Abraham to the implied presence of David, Yahweh is both canny and
uncanny. But Moses is neither theomorphic nor agonistic. J’s Sinai
theophany marks the moment of the blessings transition from the elite to the
entire Israelite host, and in that transition a true anxiety of representation
breaks forth in J’s work for the first time.
I follow Martin Noth’s lead, in the main, as to those passages in Exodus
19 and 24 that are clearly J’s, though my ear accepts as likely certain moments
he considers only probable or at least quite possible. Here are Exod. 19:9–15,
18, 20–25, literally rendered:
Yahweh said to Moses: “I will come to you in a thick cloud, that

the people may hear that I speak with you and that they may trust
you forever afterwards.” Moses then reported the people’s words
to Yahweh, and Yahweh said to Moses: “Go to the people and
warn them to be continent today and tomorrow. Let them wash
their clothes. Let them be prepared for the third day, for on the
third day Yahweh will descend upon Mount Sinai, in the sight of
all the people. You shall set limits for the people all around,
Introduction 11
saying: ‘Beware of climbing the mountain or touching the border

of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death; no
hand shall touch him, but either he shall be stoned or shot;
whether beast or man, he shall not live.’ When there is a loud
blast of the ram’s horn, then they may ascend the mountain.”
Moses came down from the mountain unto the people and
warned them to remain pure, and they washed their clothes. And
Moses said to the people: “Prepare for the third day; do not
approach a woman.”
Yahweh will come at first in a thick cloud, that the people may hear yet
presumably not see him; nevertheless, on the third day he will come down
upon Sinai “in the sight of all the people.” Sinai will be taboo, but is this only
a taboo of touch? What about seeing Yahweh? I suspect that an ellipsis,
wholly characteristic of J’s rhetorical strength, then intervened, again
characteristically filled in by the E redactors as verses 16 and 17, and again
as verse 19; but in verse 18 clearly we hear J’s grand tone:
Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke, for the Lord had come down
upon it in fire; the smoke rose like the smoke of a kiln, and all the
people trembled violently.
Whether people or mountain tremble hardly matters in this great trope

of immanent power. Yahweh, as we know, is neither the fire nor in the fire,
for the ultimate trope is the makom: Yahweh is the place of the world, but the
world is not his place, and so Yahweh is also the place of the fire, but the fire
is not his place. And so J touches the heights of her own Sublime, though
herself troubled by an anxiety of representation previously unknown to her,
an anxiety of touch and, for the first time, of sight:
Yahweh came down upon Mount Sinai, on the mountain top, and
Yahweh called Moses to the mountain top, and Moses went up.
Yahweh said to Moses: “Go down, warn the people not to break
through to gaze at Yahweh, lest many of them die. And the priests
who come near Yahweh must purify themselves, lest Yahweh
break forth against them.” But Moses said to Yahweh: “The
people cannot come up to Mount Sinai, for You warned us when
You said: ‘Set limits about the mountain and render it holy.’” So
Yahweh said to Moses: “Go down and come back with Aaron, but
do not allow the priests or the people to break through to come
12 Harold Bloom
up to Yahweh, lest Yahweh break out against them.” And Moses

descended to the people and spoke to them.
However much we have grown accustomed to J, she has not prepared

us for this. Never before has Yahweh, bent upon Covenant, been a potential
catastrophe as well as a potential blessing. But then, certainly the difference
is in the movement from an elite to a whole people. If, as I suspect, the
pragmatic covenant for J was the Davidic or humanistic or theomorphic
covenant, then the most salient poetic meaning here was contemporary,
whether Solomonic or just after. The true covenant, without anxiety or the
problematic of representation, was agonistic: with Abraham, with Jacob, with
Joseph, with David, but neither with Moses nor with Solomon, and so never
with the mass of the people, whether at Sinai or at J’s own moment of
writing. J is as elitist as Shakespeare, or as Freud; none of the three was
exactly a writer on the left. Yahweh himself, in J’s vision, becomes
dangerously confused in the anxious expectations of at once favoring and
threatening the host of the people, rather than the individuals, that he has
chosen. When Moses reminds Yahweh that Sinai is off limits anyway,
Yahweh evidently is too preoccupied and too little taken with Moses even to
listen, and merely repeats his warning that he may be uncontrollable, even by
himself.
As our text now stands, the revisionists take over, and the
Commandments are promulgated. I surmise that in J’s original text the
Commandments, however phrased, came after some fragments of J that we
still have in what is now Exodus 24:
Then Yahweh said to Moses: “Come up to Yahweh, with Aaron,

Nadab and Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel, and bow low but
from afar. And only Moses shall come near Yahweh. The others
shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him
at all.
Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy elders
of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel; under His feet
there was the likeness of a pavement of sapphire, like the very sky
for purity. Yet He did not raise His hand against the leaders of the
Israelites; they beheld God, and they ate and drank.
This is again J at his uncanniest, the true Western Sublime, and so the
truest challenge to a belated Longinian critic like myself. We are at Mamre
again, in a sense, except that here the seventy-four who constitute an elite (of
Introduction 13
sorts) eat and drink, as did the Elohim and Yahweh at Mamre, while now
Yahweh watches enigmatically, and (rather wonderfully) is watched. And
again, J is proudly self-contradictory, or perhaps even dialectical, her irony
being beyond my interpretive ken, whereas her Yahweh is so outrageously
self-contradictory that I do not know where precisely to begin in reading the
phases of this difference. But rather than entering that labyrinth—of who
may or may not see Yahweh, or how, or when—I choose instead to test the
one marvelous visual detail against the Second Commandment. Alas, we
evidently do not have J’s phrasing here, but there is a strength in the diction
that may reflect an origin in J:
You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any

likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or
in the waters under the earth.
Surely we are to remember J’s Yahweh, who formed the adam from the
dust of the adamah and blew into his sculptured image’s nostrils the breath of
life. The zelem is forbidden to us, as our creation. But had it been forbidden
to J, at least until now? And even now, does not J make for herself, and so
also for us, a likeness of what is in the heavens above? The seventy-four
eaters and drinkers saw with their own eyes the God of Israel, and they saw
another likeness also: “under His feet there was the likeness of a pavement of
sapphire, like the very sky for purity.” Why precisely this visual image, from
this greatest of writers who gives us so very few visual images, as compared
to images that are auditory, dynamic, motor urgencies? I take it that J, and
not the Hebrew language, inaugurated the extraordinary process of
describing any object primarily by telling us not how it looked, but how it
was made, wonderfully and fearfully made. But here J describes what is seen,
not indeed Yahweh in whole or in part, but what we may call Yahweh’s
chosen stance.
Stance in writing is also tone, and the tone of this passage is crucial but
perhaps beyond our determination. Martin Buber, as an eloquent
rhetorician, described it with great vividness but with rather too much
interpretive confidence in his book, Moses. The seventy-four representatives
of Israel are personalized by this theorist of dialogical personalism:
They have presumably wandered through clinging, hanging mist

before dawn; and at the very moment they reach their goal, the
swaying darkness tears asunder (as I myself happened to witness
once) and dissolves except for one cloud already transparent with
14 Harold Bloom
the hue of the still unrisen sun. The sapphire proximity of the
heavens overwhelms the aged shepherds of the Delta, who have
never before tasted, who have never been given the slightest idea,
of what is shown in the play of early light over the summits of the
mountains. And this precisely is perceived by the representatives
of the liberated tribes as that which lies under the feet of their
enthroned Melek.
Always ingenious and here refreshingly naturalistic, Buber

nevertheless neglects what he sometimes recognized: J’s uncanniness.
Buber’s motive, as he says, is to combat two opposed yet equally reductive
views of Biblical theophanies: that they are either supernatural miracles or
else impressive fantasies. But had J wanted us to believe that the seventy-
four elders of Israel saw only a natural radiance, she would have written
rather differently. The commentary of Brevard Childs is very precise: “The
text is remarkable for its bluntness: ‘They saw the God of Israel.’” Childs
adds that from the Septuagint on to Maimonides there is a consistent
toning down of the statement’s directness. Surely the directness is realized
yet more acutely if we recall that this is Yahweh’s only appearance in the
Hebrew Bible where he says absolutely nothing. J’s emphasis is clear: the
seventy-four are on Sinai to eat and drink in Yahweh’s presence, while they
stare at him, and he presumably stares right back. But that confronts us
with the one visual detail J provides: “under His feet there was the likeness
of a pavement of sapphire, like the very sky for purity.” J gives us a great
trope, which all commentary down to the scholarly present weakly
misreads by literalization. J, herself a strong misreader of tradition,
demands strong misreadings, and so I venture one here. Let us forget all
such notions as Yahweh standing so high up that he seems to stand on the
sky, or the old fellows never having seen early light in the mountains
before. J is elliptical always; that is crucial to her rhetorical stance. She is
too wily to say what you would see, if you sat there in awe, eating and
drinking while you saw Yahweh. Indeed, we must assume that Yahweh is
sitting, but nothing whatsoever is said about a throne, and J after all is not
Isaiah or Micaiah ben Imlah or Ezekiel or John Milton. As at Mamre,
Yahweh sits upon the ground, and yet it is as though the sky were beneath
his feet. May not this drastic reversal of perspective represent a vertigo of
vision on the part of the seventy-four? To see the God of Israel is to see as
though the world had been turned upside down. And that indeed Yahweh
is seen, contra Buber, we can know through J’s monitory comment: “Yet He
did not raise His hand against the leaders of the Israelites; they beheld
Introduction 15
God, and they ate and drank.” The sublimity is balanced not by a Covenant
meal, as all the scholars solemnly assert, but by a picnic on Sinai.
That this uncanny festivity contradicts Yahweh’s earlier warnings is not
J’s confusion, nor something produced by her redactors, but is a dramatic
confusion that J’s Yahweh had to manifest if his blessing was to be extended
from elite individuals to an entire people. Being incommensurate, Yahweh
cannot be said to have thus touched his limits, but in the little more that J
wrote Yahweh is rather less lively than he had been. His heart, as J hints, was
not with Moses but with David, who was to come. J’s heart, I venture as I
close, was also not with Moses, nor even with Joseph, as David’s surrogate,
and not really with Yahweh either. It was with Jacob at the Jabbok,
obdurately confronting death in the shape of a time-obsessed nameless one
from among the Elohim. Wrestling heroically to win the temporal blessing
of a new name, Israel—that is uniquely J’s own agon.
KENNETH BURKE
The First Three Chapters of Genesis
IV P R I N C I P L E S OF G O V E R N A N C E S TAT E D N A R R AT I V E LY
I magine that you wanted to say, “The world can be divided into six major
classifications.” That is, you wanted to deal with “the principles of Order,”
beginning with the natural order, and placing man’s socio-political order
with reference to it. But you wanted to treat of these matters in narrative
terms, which necessarily involve temporal sequence (in contrast with the cycle
of terms for “Order,” that merely cluster about one another, variously
implying one another, but in no one fixed sequence).
Stated narratively (in the style of Genesis, Bereshith, Beginning), such
an idea of principles, or “firsts” would not be stated simply in terms of
classification, as were we to say “The first of six primary classes would be
such-and-such, the second such-and-such” and so on. Rather, a completely
narrative style would properly translate the idea of six classes or categories
into terms of time, as were we to assign each of the classes to a separate “day.”
Thus, instead of saying “And that completes the first broad division, or
classification, of our subject-matter,” we’d say: “And the evening and the
morning were the first day” (or, more accurately, the “One” Day). And so on,
through the six broad classes, ending “last but not least,” on the category of
man and his dominion.1
From The Rhetoric of Religion. © 1961 by Kenneth Burke
17
18 Kenneth Burke
Further, a completely narrative style would personalize the principle of

classification. This role is performed by the references to God’s creative fiat,
which from the very start infuses the sheerly natural order with the verbal
principle (the makings of that “reason” which we take to be so essential an
aspect of human personality).
Logologically, the statement that God made man in his image would be
translated as: The principle of personality implicit in the idea of the first
creative fiats, whereby all things are approached in terms of the word, applies
also to the feeling for symbol-systems on the part of the human animal, who
would come to read nature as if it were a book. Insofar as God’s words
infused the natural order with their genius, and insofar as God is represented
as speaking words to the first man and woman, the principle of human
personality (which is at the very start identified with dominion) has its
analogue in the notion of God as a super-person, and of nature as the act of
such a super-agent. (That is, we take symbol-using to be a distinctive
ingredient of “personality.”)
Though technically there is a kind of “proto-fall” implicit in the
principle of divisiveness that characterizes the Bible’s view of the Creation,
and though the principle of subjection is already present (in the general
outlines of a government with God at its head, and mankind as subject to
His authority while in turn having dominion over all else in the natural
realm), the Covenant (as first announced in the first chapter) is necessarily
Edenic, in a state of “innocence,” since no negative command has yet been
pronounced. From the dialectical point of view (in line with the
Order–Disorder pair) we may note that there is a possibility of “evil”
implicit in the reference to all six primary classifications as “good.” But in
all three points (the divisiveness, the order of dominion, and the universal
goodness) the explicit negative is lacking. In fact, the nearest approach to
an outright negative (and that not of a moralistic, hortatory sort) is in the
reference to the “void” (bohu) which preceded God’s classificatory acts.
Rashi says that the word translated as “formless” (tohu) “has the meaning
of astonishment and amazement.” Incidentally, in connection with
Genesis 1:29, The Interpreter’s Bible suggests another implicit negative, in
that the explicit permitting of a vegetarian diet implies that Adam may not
eat flesh.
In the first chapter of Genesis, the stress is upon the creative fiat as a
means of classification. It says in effect, “What hath God wrought (by his
Word)?” The second chapter’s revised account of the Creation shifts the
emphasis to matters of dominion, saying in effect, “What hath God ordained
(by his words)?” The seventh “day” (or category), which is placed at the
beginning of the second chapter, has a special dialectical interest in its role as
a transition between the two emphases.
In one sense, the idea of the Sabbath is implicitly a negative, being
conceived as antithetical to all the six foregoing categories, which are
classifiable together under the single head of “work,” in contrast with this
seventh category, of “rest.” That is, work and rest are “polar” terms,
dialectical opposites. (In his Politics, Aristotle’s terms bring out this negative
relation explicitly, since his word for business activity is ascholein, that is, “not
to be at leisure,” though we should tend rather to use the negative the other
way round, defining “rest” as “not to be at work.”)
This seventh category (of rest after toil) obviously serves well as
transition between Order (of God as principle of origination) and Order (of
God as principle of sovereignty). Leisure arises as an “institution” only when
conditions of dominion have regularized the patterns of work. And fittingly,
just after this transitional passage, the very name of God undergoes a change
(the quality of which is well indicated in our translations by a shift from
“God” to “Lord God”).2 Here, whereas in 1:29, God tells the man and
woman that the fruit of “every tree” is permitted them, the Lord God (2:17)
notably revises thus: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou
shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely
die.” Here, with the stress upon governance, enters the negative of
command.
When, later, the serpent tempts “the woman” (3:4), saying that “Ye
shall not surely die,” his statement is proved partially correct, to the extent
that they did not die on the day on which they ate of the forbidden fruit. In
any case, 3:19 pronounces the formula that has been theologically
interpreted as deriving mankind’s physical death from our first parents’ first
disobedience: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return
unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto
dust shalt thou return.”
The Interpreter’s Bible (p. 512) denies there is any suggestion that man
would have lived forever had he not eaten of the forbidden fruit. Chapter 3,
verse 20 is taken to imply simply that man would have regarded death as his
natural end, rather than as “the last fearful frustration.” Thus, the fear of
death is said to be “the consequence of the disorder in man’s relationships,”
when they are characterized “by domination” (along with the fear that the
subject will break free of their subjection). This seems to be at odds with the
position taken by the Scofield Bible which, in the light of Paul’s statements
in Romans 5:12–21 (“by one man sin entered the world, and death by sin”—
and “by one man’s offence death reigned by one”) interprets the passage as
20 Kenneth Burke
meaning that “physical death” is due to a “universal sinful state, or nature”

which is “our heritance from Adam.”
It is within neither our present purpose nor our competency to
interpret this verse theologically. But here’s how it would look logologically:
First, we would note that in referring to “disorder” and “domination,”
The Interpreter’s Bible is but referring to “Order” and “Dominion,” as seen
from another angle. For a mode of domination is a mode of dominion; and
a socio-political order is by nature a ziggurat-like structure which, as the
story of the Tower makes obvious, can stand for the principle of Disorder.
If we are right in our notion that the idea of Mortification is integral to
the idea of Dominion (as the scrupulous subject must seek to “slay” within
himself whatever impulses run counter to the authoritative demands of
sovereignty), then all about a story of the “first” dominion and the “first”
disobedience there should hover the theme of the “first” mortification.
But “mortification” is a weak term, as compared with “death.” And
thus, in the essentializing ways proper to the narrative style, this stronger,
more dramatic term replaces the weaker, more “philosophic” one. “Death”
would be the proper narrative-dramatic way of saying “Mortification.” By
this arrangement, the natural order is once again seen through the eyes of the
socio-political order, as the idea of mortification in the toil and subjection of
Governance is replaced by the image of death in nature.
From the standpoint sheerly of imagery (once the idea of mortification
has been reduced to the idea of death, and the idea of death has been reduced
to the image of a dead body rotting back into the ground), we now note a
kind of “imagistic proto-fall,” in the pun of 2:7, where the Lord God is
shown creating man (adham) out of the ground (adhamah). Here would be an
imagistic way of saying that man in his physical nature is essentially but
earth, the sort of thing a body becomes when it decays; or that man is first of
all but earth, as regards his place in the sheerly natural order. You’d define in
narrative or temporal terms by showing what he came from. But insofar as
he is what he came from, then such a definition would be completed in
narrative terms by the image of his return to his origins. In this sense, the
account of man’s forming (in 2:7) ambiguously lays the conditions for his
“return” to such origins, as the Lord God makes explicit in 3:19, when again
the subject is the relation between adham and the adhamah: “For dust thou
art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Here would be a matter of sheer
imagistic consistency, for making the stages of a narrative be all of one piece.
But the death motif here is explicitly related to another aspect of Order
or Dominion: the sweat of toil. And looking back a bit further, we find that
this severe second Covenant (the “Adamic”) also subjected woman to the rule
of the husband—another aspect of Dominion. And there is to be an eternal

enmity between man and the serpent (the image, or narrative personification,
of the principle of Temptation, which we have also found to be intrinsic to
the motives clustering about the idea of Order).
Logologically, then, the narrative would seem to be saying something
like this: Even if you begin by thinking of death as a merely natural
phenomenon, once you come to approach it in terms of conscience-laden
mortification you get anew slant on it. For death then becomes seen, in terms
of the socio-political order, as a kind of capital punishment. But something of
so eschatological a nature is essentially a “first” (since “ends,” too, are
principles—and here is a place at which firsts and lasts meet, so far as
narrative terms for the defining of essences are concerned). Accordingly
death in the natural order becomes conceived as the fulfillment or
completion of mortification in the socio-political order, but with the
difference that, as with capital punishment in the sentencing of
transgressions against sovereignty, it is not in itself deemed wholly
“redemptive,” since it needs further modifications, along the lines of
placement in an undying Heavenly Kingdom after death. And this completes
the pattern of Order: the symmetry of the socio-political (cum verbal), the
natural, and the supernatural.
V R E S TAT E M E N T, ON D E AT H AND M O RT I F I C AT I O N
If the point about the relation between Death and Mortification is

already clear, the reader should skip this section. But in case the point is not
yet clear, we should make one more try, in the effort to show how the step
from conscience-laden guiltiness to a regimen of mortification can be
narratively translated into terms of the step from “sin” to “death.” It is
important because the principle of mortification is integral to the idea of
redemptive sacrifice which we have associated with the idea of Order. The
secular variants of mortification, we might say, lie on the “suicidal” slope of
human motivation, while the secular variants of redemption by sacrifice of a
chosen victim are on the slope of homicide.
Conscience-laden repression is the symbol-using animal’s response to
conditions in the socio-political order. The physical symptoms that go with it
seem like a kind of death. Thus, though the word for the attitude called
“mortification” is borrowed from the natural order, the feeling itself is a
response to various situations of dominion in the socio-political order. This
terministic bridge leading from the natural order to the socio-political order
thus can serve in reverse as a route from the socio-political order to the
22 Kenneth Burke
natural order. Then, instead of saying that “conscience-laden repression is

like death,” we turn the equation into a quasi-temporal sequence, saying that
death “comes from” sin. We shall revert to the matter later, when
considering formally how terms that are logically synonymous or that
tautologically imply one another can be treated narratively as proceeding
from one to the other, like cause to effect.
Logologically, one would identify the principle of personality with the
ability to master symbol-systems. Intrinsic to such a personality is the “moral
sense,” that is, the sense of “yes and no” that goes with the thou-shalt-not’s
of Order. Grounded in language (as the makings of “reason”) such
conscience gets its high development from the commands and ordinances of
governance. A corresponding logological analogue of personal immortality
could be derived from the nature of a personal name, that can be said to
survive the physical death of the particular person who bore it, as the idea of
Napoleon’s essence (the character summed up in his name) can be verbally
distinguished from the idea of his “existence.” So long as we can “recall” a
departed ancestor by name in recalling the quality of the personality
associated with his name, he can be said to “still be with us in spirit.” And
from the strictly logological point of view, the proposition that man
necessarily conceives of God in accordance with the personal principle of the
verbal would be statable in narrative style as the statement that God is an
order-giving super-person who created man in His image. This is how the
proposition should be put narratively, regardless of whether or not it is
believed theologically.
Similarly, like St. Paul, we may choose to interpret the Biblical account
of the Creation and Fall as saying literally that, whereas other animals die
naturally (even without being subject to the kind of covenant that, by
verbally defining sin, makes “sin” possible), all members of the human
species die not as the result of a natural process but because the first member
of the species “sinned.” That is, death in man’s case is primarily associated
with the principle of personality (or “conscience”), such as the Bible
explicitly relates to a verbal Covenant made by the first and foremost
exponent of the creative verbal principle, in its relation to the idea of Order.
Otherwise put: When death is viewed “personally,” in moralistic terms
colored by conditions of governance (the moral order), it is conceived not
just as a natural process, but as a kind of “capital punishment.”
But a strictly logological analysis of the mythic idiom (of the style
natural to narrative) suggests a possibility of this sort: Even if one did not
believe in Paul’s theological interpretation of the story, even if one did not
literally believe that all men’s physical death is the result of the first man’s
disobedience, the Biblical narrative’s way of associating “sin” with “death”

would be the correct way of telling this story.
Suppose you wanted to say merely: “Order gives rise to a sense of guilt,
and insofar as one conscientiously seeks to obey the law by policing his
impulses from within, he has the feel of killing these impulses.” Then, within
the resources proper to narrative, your proper course would be to look for
the strongest possible way of saying, “It is as though even physical death were
a kind of capital punishment laid upon the human conscience.” And that’s
what the story does, as starkly as can be. And that’s how it should be stated
narratively in either case, whether you give it the literal theological
interpretation that Paul did, or interpret it metaphorically.
Theology is under the sign of what Coleridge would call the “Greek
philosopheme.” The narrative style of Genesis is under the sign of what
Coleridge would call “Hebrew archaeology.” Each style is concerned with
“principles,” after its fashion, Genesis appropriately using the “mythic”
language of temporal firsts. (Coleridge’s special use of the word “archaeology”
is particularly apt here, inasmuch as archai are either philosophic first
principles or beginnings in time.)
I discussed this ambiguity in the section of “The Temporizing of
Motives” in my A Grammar of Motives. But now we are attempting to bring
out a slightly different aspect of the question. We are suggesting that, as
regards the logological approach to the relation between Order and Guilt,
the Biblical narrative as it now is would be “correctly” couched, whether you
agree with Paul’s theological interpretation of “original sin,” or whether you
view the narrative simply as a narrative, mythic way of describing a purely
secular experience: the sense of “mortification” that goes with any scrupulous
(“essential”) attempt at the voluntary suppression of unruly appetites.
Such a speculation would suggest that the “archaeological” mode of
expression allows naturally for a wider range of interpretation than does the
“philosopheme” and its equivalents in formal theology. The narrative is
naturally more “liberal.” Yet this very liberality may in the end goad to
theological controversy, insofar as theological attempts are made to force
upon the narrative utterance a stricter frame of interpretation than the style
is naturally adapted to. (A further step here is the possibility whereby the
theologian may be said to be inspired in his own way; and thus, whereas he
cites the original narrative as authority from God, his narrowing of the
possible interpretation may later be viewed as itself done on authority from
God.)
If you wanted to say, “It’s essentially as though this were killing us,”
your narrative way of stating such an essence or principle would be the same,
24 Kenneth Burke
whether you meant it literally or figuratively. In either case, you wouldn’t just
say “The sense of mortification is profoundly interwoven with the sense of
guilt.” Rather, you’d say: “The very meaning of death itself derives from such
guilt.” Or, more accurately still, you’d simply show man sinning, then you’d
show the outraged sovereign telling him that he’s going to die. And if he was
the “first” man, then the tie-up between the idea of guilt and the imagery of
death in his case would stand for such a “primal” tie-up in general.
However, note how this ambiguous quality of narrative firsts can tend
to get things turned around, when theologically translated into the abstract
principles of “philosophemes.” For whereas narratively you would use a
natural image (death—return to dust) to suggest a spiritual idea (guilt as
regards the temptations implicit in a Covenant), now in effect the idea
permeates the condition of nature, and in this reversal the idea of natural
death becomes infused with the idea of moral mortification, whereas you had
begun by borrowing the idea of physical death as a term for naming the
mental condition which seemed analogous to it.
VI T H E N A R R AT I V E P R I N C I P L E IN I M A G E RY
Besides discussing the way in which the narrative style translates

principles into terms of temporal priority and personality, we should
consider the peculiar role of imagery in such “archaeology.”
One problem here is in trying to decide just how the concept of
imagery should be limited. There is a sense in which all the things listed in
the account of the Creation could be considered as images (lists of positive
natural things deemed permeated by the principle or idea of divine
authorship and authority). Here would be waters, sun, land, moon, stars, the
various living things, etc., as defined by the “Spirit of God.”
The formula, “Let there be light,” could be said to introduce (in terms
of an act and an image) the “principle of elucidation” at the very start, and in
terms of a darkness–light pair that, though both are in their way “positive”
so far as their sheer physical character is concerned, are related dialectically
as the flat negation of each other. Incidentally, also, the relation between the
pre-Creative darkness and the Creative light also at the very start introduces,
in actual imagery, the idea of the Order–Disorder pair—and it sets the
conditions for expressing the imagistic treatment of the Counter-Order as a
“Kingdom of Darkness.”
The explicit statement that man is made in God’s image would be
logologically translated: “God and man are characterized by a common
motivational principle,” which we would take to be the principle of
personality that goes with skill at symbol-using. This kinship is reaffirmed in

the account of Adam’s naming the various animals, though also there is a
notable difference in the degree of authority and authorship, as befits this
hierarchal view of Order.
The reference to the mist in chapter 2, we are told in The Interpreter’s
Bible, once followed verse 8, on the Lord God’s planting of the garden, and
originally read: “... and a mist used to go up from the earth and water the
garden.” The same comment adds: “This is a statement to the effect that the
garden was irrigated supernaturally—the word rendered mist has probably a
mythological connotation3—not by human labor.” Whatever such a mist
may be mythologically or theologically (where it has sometimes been
interpreted as standing for “error”) there is a possible logological explanation
for it, in keeping with the fact that an account of “firsts” naturally favors
imagery associated with childhood. Such an image could well stand
narratively, or “mythically,” for the word-using animal’s vague memory of
that early period in his life when he was emerging into speech out of infancy.
For at that time, the very growth of his feeling for words would be felt as a
kind of confusion, or indistinctness, while a bit of linguistic cosmos (or verbal
light) was gradually being separated from a comparative chaos (or
inarticulate darkness) of one’s infantile beginnings. That is, whereas
speechlessness probably has not the slightest suggestion of confusion or
deprivation to an animal that is not born with the aptitude for speaking, the
speechless state should be quite different with the human being’s period of
emergency from infancy into articulacy. Yet, at the same time, it could be
endowed with “promissory” or “fertile” connotations, insofar as the mist-
wanderer was moving towards clarity.
At least, there is a notable example of such a mist in Flaubert’s
Temptation of Saint Anthony. For as the work proceeds, it develops after the
fashion of a swiftly accelerating regression, going back finally to the
imagining of an initial source in “pure” matter (as maternal principle).
Quite as we saw, in connection with Augustine, the final procession from a
“first” to its unfolding in plenitude, Flaubert’s book traces plenitude back
to its beginnings in a principle of heretic, unitary matter. In this reverse
development, the fog of a monster’s breath marks the line of division
between the realm of the verbal and the realm of infantile formlessness
(where all things are patchy combinations wholly alien to the realm of
Order as we know it). Similarly the fog-people of Wagner’s Niebelungen
cycle seem to have such a quality (particularly in the Nebelheim of Das
Rheingold, surely the most “infantile” of the plays, though all are somewhat
like fairy stories).
26 Kenneth Burke
The complicating element to do with images, when used as the

narrative embodying of principles, or ideas, is that the images bring up
possibilities of development in their own right. Thus, there is a kind of
“deathiness” implicit in the very term, “tree of life.” One might think of it as
being cut down, for instance. The Biblical story relates it contrastingly to the
forbidden fruit (which turns out to be a tree of death). But there is still the
business of denying access to the tree as a tree; hence the arrangement
whereby, after the expulsion, a flaming sword is set up, “which turned every
way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” The sword would seem most directly
related to the idea of keeping people away from a tree; yet it also would fit
with the idea of “protecting” life (though here, ironically, its kind of
“protection” involves a denial, and thus another aspect of the negatives of
dominion, with its principle of “capital punishment,” or in general
“mortification”).
We shall elsewhere discuss the implications of the imagery to do with
the unnatural obstetrics of Genesis, the possible logological interpretation of
nakedness, the imagery of eating and the role of the serpent as
simultaneously the image and personal representative of the principle of
temptation.
Perhaps the only other major imaginal deployment in the first three
chapters concerns the Lord God’s irate words to Adam (3:17): “Cursed is the
ground for thy sake.” On this point, our Scofield Bible says the earth is
cursed because “It is better for fallen man to battle with a reluctant earth
than to live without toil.” But from the strictly logological point of view,
Rashi’s commentary seems more in keeping with the principle of firstness
that infuses these chapters: “This is similar to one who goes forth to do evil;
and people curse the breasts from which he suckled.” Bashi here treats of a
symmetry involving scene, agent, and act. The Lord God, to curse this agent
thoroughly, curses the very ground he walks on. We might also remember, as
regards the adham–adhamah pun, that this is the deathy, dominion-spirited
ground from which he came.
To be sure, images also hover about ideas, as stated in the style of
philosophemes. Also, ideas contain an element of personality always, as
Plato’s dialogues make apparent. And the Hobbesian notion of a quasi-
original Covenant indicates how the pressure of narrative thinking affects
our ideas of laws, principles, summations. But though the “archaeological”
style cannot be distinguished categorically from the “philosopheme,” one
can at least distinguish their different slopes, or trends, and can in time spot
the kinds of development that are specific to each.
VII D O M I N I O N , G U I LT, S A C R I F I C E
In sum, when we turn from the consideration of a terministic cycle in

which the various terms mutually imply one another, to the consideration
of the narrative terminology in these opening chapters of Genesis, we note
that the narrative terms allow the idea of Order to be “processed.” Here
one can start with the creation of a natural order (though conceiving it as
infused with a verbal principle); one can next proceed to an idea of
innocence untroubled by thou-shalt-not’s; one can next introduce a thou-
shalt-not; one can next depict the thou-shalt-not as violated; one can next
depict a new Covenant propounded on the basis of this violation, and with
capital punishment; one can later introduce the principle of sacrifice, as
would become wholly clear when we came to the Noachian Covenant
where, after the great cleansing by water, God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
“And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast,
and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar” (8–20).
Then gradually thereafter, more and more clearly, comes the emergence of
the turn from mere sacrifice to the idea of outright redemption by
victimage.
The Scofield editor says of the Noachian Covenant: “It’s distinctive
feature is the institution, for the first time, of human government—the
government of man by man. The highest function of government is the
judicial taking of life. All other governmental powers are implied in that. It
follows that the third dispensation is distinctively that of human
government.”
Still, there is a notable difference between the idea of the kill in the
sacrifice of an animal and the idea of the kill as per 9:6: “Whoso sheddeth
man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” This is the lex talionis, the
principle of human justice, conceived after the nature of the scales, and
grounded in the idea of an ultimate authority. It is not the idea of vicarious
sacrifice. That is found implicitly in Noah’s sacrifice of the clean animals as
burnt-offerings.
But ultimately the idea of cleanliness attains its full modicum of
personality, in the idea of a fitting personal sacrifice. The principle of personal
victimage was introduced incipiently, so far as theology goes, in connection
with the next Covenant, involving Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his
beloved son, Isaac, on the Altar of God’s Governance—while the principle of
personal victimage was also clearly there, in the idea of Israel itself as victim.
It was completed in Paul’s view of Christ, and the New Kingdom.
28 Kenneth Burke
We should also note that, in proportion as the idea of a personal victim

developed, there arose the incentives to provide a judicial rationale for the
sacrifice more in line with the kind of thinking represented by the lex talionis.
Thus the idea of a personally fit victim could lead to many different notions,
such as: (1) the ideal of a perfect victim (Christ); (2) the Greeks’
“enlightened” use of criminals who had been condemned to death, but were
kept on reserve for state occasions when some ritual sacrifice was deemed
necessary; (3) Hitler’s “idealizing” of the Jew as “perfect” enemy.
Whereas, the terms of Order, considered tautologically, go round and
round like the wheel seen by Ezekiel, endlessly implicating one another,
when their functions are embodied in narrative style the cycle can be
translated into terms of an irreversible linear progression. But with the
principle of authority personalized as God, the principle of disobedience as
Adam (the “old Adam in all of us”), the principle of temptation as an
Aesopian serpent, Eve as mediator in the bad sense of the word, and the idea
of temptation reduced imagistically to terms of eating (the perfect image of
a “first” appetite, or essential temptation, beginning as it does with the
infantile, yet surviving in the adult), such reduction of the tautological cycle
to a narrative linear progression makes possible the notion of an outcome.
Thus when we read of one broken covenant after another, and see the
sacrificial principle forever reaffirmed anew, narratively this succession may
be interpreted as movement towards a fulfillment, though from the
standpoint of the tautological cycle they “go on endlessly” implicating one
another. Logologically many forms of victimage are seen as variants of the
sacrificial motive. Burnt offerings, Azazel, Isaac, Israel in exile and the
various “remnants” who undergo tribulations in behalf of righteousness can
all be listed, along with Christ, as “reindividuations of the sacrificial
principle.” But a theological view of the narrative can lead to a more
“promissory” kind of classification, whereby all sacrifices and sufferings
preceding the Crucifixion can be classed as “types of Christ.” When the
devout admonish that “Christ’s Crucifixion is repeated endlessly each time
we sin,” they are stating a theological equivalent of our logological point
about the relation between the linear-temporal and the cyclical-tautological.
Logologically, the “fall” and the “redemption” are but parts of the same
cycle, with each implying the other. The order can be reversed, for the terms
in which we conceive of redemption can help shape the terms in which we
conceive of the guilt that is to be redeemed. In this sense, it is “prior” to the
guilt which it is thought to follow (quite as the quality of a “cure” can qualify
our idea of the “disease” for which it is thought to be the cure—or as a mode
of “wish-fulfillment” can paradoxically serve to reinforce the intensity of the
wishes). But narratively, they stand at opposite ends of a long development,

that makes one “Book” of the two Testaments taken together.
Thus, whereas narratively the Lord God’s thou-shalt-not preceded the
serpent’s tempting of Eve, by appealing to the imagination, in mixing
imagery of food with imagery of rule (“and ye shall be as Elohim”), and
whereas the tempting preceded the fall, logologically the thou-shalt-not is
itself implicitly a condition of temptation, since the negative contains the
principle of its own annihilation. For insofar as a thou-shalt-not, which is
intrinsic to Order verbally guided, introduces the principle of negativity,
here technically is the inducement to round out the symmetry by carrying
the same principle of negativity one step farther, and negating the negation.
That is the only kind of “self-corrective” the negative as such has.
This principle of yes and no, so essential to the personal, verbal,
“doctrinal” “sense of right and wrong,” is potentially a problem from the
very start. And when you add to it the “No trespassing” signs of empire, that
both stimulate desires and demand their repression, you see why we hold
that guilt is intrinsic to the idea of a Covenant. The question then becomes:
Is victimage (redemption by vicarious atonement) equally intrinsic to the
idea of guilt? The Bible, viewed either logologically or theologically, seems
to be saying that it is.
One notable misfortune of the narrative is its ambiguities with regard
to the relations between the sexes, unless logologically discounted. If man, as
seen from the standpoint of a patriarchal society, is deemed “essentially
superior” to woman, of whom he is “lord and master,” it follows that, so far
as the narrative way of stating such social superiority is concerned, man must
be shown to “come first.” Accordingly, as regards the first parturition, in
contrast with ordinary childbirth, woman must be depicted as being born of
man. This is the only way to make him absolutely first in narrative terms.
Thus the punishment pronounced on Eve (3:16): “Thy desire shall be to thy
husband, and he shall rule over thee” was ambiguously foretold (2:21, 22)
where Eve is derived from Adam’s rib.
A similar narrative mode of proclaiming man’s essential social
superiority appears in Aeschylus’ Eumenides. Here, Athena, in her role as
Goddess of Justice, gives her deciding vote at the “first” trial in the “first” law
court—and appropriately she remarks that, though she is a woman, she was
born not of woman but from the head of Zeus. (Her decision, incidentally,
involves in another way the socio-political modifying of natural childbirth,
since she frees Orestes of the charge of matricide by holding that he could
not really have a mother, descent being through the male line, with the
woman acting but as a kind of incubator for the male seed.)
30 Kenneth Burke
The consciousness of nakedness as the result of the fall likewise seems

to have been interpreted too simply, without reference to the major stress
upon the matter of a Covenant. The approach from the standpoint of
“Order” would be somewhat roundabout, along these lines: Social order
leads to differentiations of status, which are indicated by differences in
clothing. Thus, the same socio-political conditions that go with a Covenant
would also go with clothing, thereby making one conscious of nakedness.
The Biblical” narrative itself makes clear that, under the conditions of
Governance, sexual differentiation was primarily a matter of relative status.
In a situation where man is to woman as master is to servant, and where the
differences between the sexes were attested by clothes, nakedness would be
too equalitarian.
But after sexual differentiation by clothing had been continued for a
sufficient length of time, people began to assume a far greater difference
between “social” and “sexual” motives than actually exists, and this is true
also of modern psychoanalysis—until now we’d need a kind of ironic
dissociation such as Marx proposed in connection with the “fetishism of
commodities,” before we could come even remotely near to realizing the
extent of the social motives hidden in our ideas of sheerly “physical”
sexuality. However, this marvelously accurate image of nakedness as
interpreted from the standpoint of the estrangements resulting from Order
in the sense of divergent rank, has been interpreted so greatly in purely
sexual terms that often people seem even to think of Adam’s original
transgression as essentially sexual. Insofar as clothes imply social
estrangement or differentiation by status, they are by the same token a kind
of “fall.” In themselves they are at odds with the natural order; yet nakedness
is at odds with the order of our “second nature.”
One final point, and our discussion of the specifically narrative
resources here is finished. The opening sentence of Aristotle’s Nichomachaean
Ethics can serve best as our text: “Every art and every inquiry, and likewise
every action and practical pursuit, is thought to aim at some good: hence it
has rightly been said that the Good is that at which all things aim.” Thus,
whenever the Biblical account says, “And God saw that it was good,” we
might take the formula as having, for its purely technical equivalent some
such statement as, “And it was endowed with the principle of purpose.” Since
words like “aim,” “end,” “purpose” are our most generalized terms for such
an idea, it follows that the equating of “to be” with “to be good” (as in the
first chapter of Genesis) is a way of stating ethicaIIy, dramatically, narratively
that a thing’s “purpose” is technically one with its esse. Natural things, by
their nature as creatures, are to be viewed as the actualities of God, hence as
embodying a “design” (and they fit perfectly with Aristotle’s stress, which is

concerned with the varieties of “action,” rather than with objects or things
or processes in the sheerly neutral sense in which wholly impersonal,
pragmatic science might view them).
All told, the idea of purpose, so essential to the narrative principle of
personality, is here ingrained in the idea of Order, by being identified with the
“good,” whereby all things, by their mere act of being, contained in
themselves the aim of their being.
No, that isn’t quite the case. For their nature as “actualities” depends
upon their nature as God’s acts. Accordingly, in the last analysis, their aim
involves their relation to the aims of their author (as the words in a well-
formed book derive their aim from the purpose of the book as a whole—the
Bible being a quite “bookish” view of the creative process).
Two further observations: (1) To recall, once more, that by the sheer
dialectics of the case, this pronouncing of things as “good” brought up the
possibilities of “evil.” (2) It is interesting to think how Spinoza’s Ethics in
effect restated the Biblical narrative (though translating it from terms of
“archaeology” into the circular terms of the “philosopheme,” treating of
Creation “in principle”). Think of his word for purpose, conatus, the
endeavor of each thing to go on being itself, unless or until prevented by the
determinations imposed upon it by other things likewise endeavoring to go
on being themselves. And he also had his technical equivalent of the
particular thing’s relation to an over-all principle at once outside itself and
permeating its very essence. The sacrificial principle in Spinoza would seem
to take the form of a benign mortification, a peaceful systematic distrust of
the goads of the gods of empire.
NOTES
1. The clearest evidence that this principle of “divisiveness” is itself a kind of “proto-
fall” is to be seen in the use made of it by the segregationists of the South’s Bible Belt.
Members of the Ku Klux Klan refer to the classificatory system of Genesis as justification
for their stress upon the separation of Negroes and whites. In an ironic sense, they are
“right.” For when nature is approached via the principle of differentiation embodied in the
notion of Social Order, then “Creation” itself is found to contain implicitly the guiltiness
of “discrimination.” Furthermore, the Word mediates between these two realms. And the
Word is social in the sense that language is a collective means of expression, while its
sociality is extended to the realm of wordless nature insofar as this non-verbal kind of
order is treated in terms of such verbal order as goes with the element of command
intrinsic to dominion.
2. Grammatically, the word for God in the first chapter, “Elohim,” is a plural.
Philologists may interpret this as indicating a usage that survives from an earlier
32 Kenneth Burke
polytheistic period in the development of Jewish Monotheism. Or Christian theologians

can interpret it as the first emergence of a Trinitarian position, thus early in the text, with
the Creator as first person of the Trinity, the Spirit that hovered over the waters as third
person, and the creative Word as second person. (Incidentally, the words translated as
“Lord God” in chapter II are Jehovah-Elohim. Later, in connection with the Abrahamic
Covenant, the words translated as “Lord God” are Adonai Jehovah. Adonai, which means
“master,” applies to both God and man—and when applied to man it also includes the idea
of husband as master.) The distinction between authority and authorship is approached
from another angle in Augustine’s Confessions I, where God is called the ordinator and
creator of all natural things; but of sin he is said to be only the ordinator.
3. “The Book of Genesis: Exegesis” by Cuthbert A. Simpson, in The Interpreter’s Bible
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1900), I, 493.
ERICH AUERBACH
The Representations of Reality in

Homer and The Old Testament
T he genius of the Homeric style becomes especially apparent when it is

compared with an equally ancient and equally epic style from a different
world of forms. I shall attempt this comparison with the account of the
sacrifice of Isaac, a homogeneous narrative produced by the so-called
Elohist. The King James version translates the opening as follows (Genesis
22:1): “And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham,
and said to him, Abraham! and he said, Behold, here I am.” Even this
opening startles us when we come to it from Homer. Where are the two
speakers? We are not told. The reader, however, knows that they are not
normally to be found together in one place on earth, that one of them, God,
in order to speak to Abraham, must come from somewhere, must enter the
earthly realm from some unknown heights or depths. Whence does he come,
whence does he call to Abraham? We are not told. He does not come, like
Zeus or Poseidon, from the Aethiopians, where he has been enjoying a
sacrificial feast. Nor are we told anything of his reasons for tempting
Abraham so terribly. He has not, like Zeus, discussed them in set speeches
with other gods gathered in council; nor have the deliberations in his own
heart been presented to us; unexpected and mysterious, he enters the scene
from some unknown height or depth and calls: Abraham! It will at once be
said that this is to be explained by the particular concept of God which the
From Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. © 1953 Princeton University
Press.
33
34 Erich Auerbach
Jews held and which was wholly different from that of the Greeks. True
enough—but this constitutes no objection. For how is the Jewish concept of
God to be explained? Even their earlier God of the desert was not fixed in
form and content, and was alone; his lack of form, his lack of local habitation,
his singleness, was in the end not only maintained but developed even further
in competition with the comparatively far more manifest gods of the
surrounding Near Eastern world. The concept of God held by the Jews is
less a cause than a symptom of their manner of comprehending and
representing things.
This becomes still clearer if we now turn to the other person in the
dialogue, to Abraham. Where is he? We do not know. He says, indeed: Here
I am—but the Hebrew word means only something like “behold me,” and in
any case is not meant to indicate the actual place where Abraham is, but a
moral position in respect to God, who has called to him-Here am I awaiting
thy command. Where he is actually, whether in Beersheba or elsewhere,
whether indoors or in the open air, is not stated; it does not interest the
narrator, the reader is not informed; and what Abraham was doing when God
called to him is left in the same obscurity. To realize the difference, consider
Hermes’ visit to Calypso, for example, where command, journey, arrival and
reception of the visitor, situation and occupation of the person visited, are set
forth in many verses; and even on occasions when gods appear suddenly and
briefly, whether to help one of their favorites or to deceive or destroy some
mortal whom they hate, their bodily forms, and usually the manner of their
coming and going, are given in detail. Here, however, God appears without
bodily form (yet he “appears”), coming from some unspecified place—we
only hear his voice, and that utters nothing but a name, a name without an
adjective, without a descriptive epithet for the person spoken to, such as is
the rule in every Homeric address; and of Abraham too nothing is made
perceptible except the words in which he answers God: Hinne-ni, Behold me
here—with which, to be sure, a most touching gesture expressive of
obedience and readiness is suggested, but it is left to the reader to visualize
it. Moreover the two speakers are not on the same level: if we conceive of
Abraham in the foreground, where it might be possible to picture him as
prostrate or kneeling or bowing with outspread arms or gazing upward, God
is not there too: Abraham’s words and gestures are directed toward the
depths of the picture or upward, but in any case the undetermined, dark place
from which the voice comes to him is not in the foreground.
After this opening, God gives his command, and the story itself begins:
everyone knows it; it unrolls with no episodes in a few independent sentences
whose syntactical connection is of the most rudimentary sort. In this
The Representations of Reality in Homer and The Old Testament 35
atmosphere it is unthinkable that an implement, a landscape through which

the travelers passed, the serving-men, or the ass, should be described, that
their origin or descent or material or appearance or usefulness should be set
forth in terms of praise; they do not even admit an adjective: they are
serving-men, ass, wood, and knife, and nothing else, without an epithet; they
are there to serve the end which God has commanded; what in other respects
they were, are, or will be, remains in darkness. A journey is made, because
God has designated the place where the sacrifice is to be performed; but we
are told nothing about the journey except that it took three days, and even
that we are told in a mysterious way: Abraham and his followers rose “early
in the morning” and “went unto” the place of which God had told him; on
the third day he lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. That gesture
is the only gesture, is indeed the only occurrence during the whole journey,
of which we are told; and though its motivation lies in the fact that the place
is elevated, its uniqueness still heightens the impression that the journey took
place through a vacuum; it is as if, while he traveled on, Abraham had looked
neither to the right nor to the left, had suppressed any sign of life in his
followers and himself save only their footfalls.
Thus the journey is like a silent progress through the indeterminate
and the contingent, a holding of the breath, a process which has no present,
which is inserted, like a blank duration, between what has passed and what
lies ahead, and which yet is measured: three days! Three such days positively
demand the symbolic interpretation which they later received. They began
“early in the morning.” But at what time on the third day did Abraham lift
up his eyes and see his goal? The text says nothing on the subject. Obviously
not “late in the evening,” for it seems that there was still time enough to
climb the mountain and make the sacrifice. So “early in the morning” is
given, not as an indication of time, but for the sake of its ethical significance;
it is intended to express the resolution, the promptness, the punctual
obedience of the sorely tried Abraham. Bitter to him is the early morning in
which he saddles his ass, calls his serving-men and his son Isaac, and sets out;
but he obeys, he walks on until the third day, then lifts up his eyes and sees
the place. Whence he comes, we do not know, but the goal is clearly stated:
Jeruel in the land of Moriah. What place this is meant to indicate is not
clear—“Moriah” especially may be a later correction of some other word.
But in any case the goal was given, and in any case it is a matter of some
sacred spot which was to receive a particular consecration by being
connected with Abraham’s sacrifice. Just as little as “early in the morning”
serves as a temporal indication does “Jeruel in the land of Moriah” serve as a
geographical indication; and in both cases alike, the complementary
36 Erich Auerbach
indication is not given, for we know as little of the hour at which Abraham
lifted up his eyes as we do of the place from which he set forth—Jeruel is
significant not so much as the goal of an earthly journey, in its geographical
relation to other places, as through its special election, through its relation
to God, who designated it as the scene of the act, and therefore it must be
named.
In the narrative itself, a third chief character appears: Isaac. While God
and Abraham, the serving-men, the ass, and the implements are simply
named, without mention of any qualities or any other sort of definition, Isaac
once receives an appositive; God says, “Take Isaac, thine only son, whom
thou lovest.” But this is not a characterization of Isaac as a person, apart from
his relation to his father and apart from the story; he may be handsome or
ugly, intelligent or stupid, tall or short, pleasant or unpleasant—we are not
told. Only what we need to know about him as a personage in the action,
here and now, is illuminated, so that it may become apparent how terrible
Abraham’s temptation is, and that God is fully aware of it. By this example of
the contrary, we see the significance of the descriptive adjectives and
digressions of the Homeric poems; with their indications of the earlier and
as it were absolute existence of the persons described, they prevent the reader
from concentrating exclusively on a present crisis; even when the most
terrible things are occurring, they prevent the establishment of an
overwhelming suspense. But here, in the story of Abraham’s sacrifice, the
overwhelming suspense is present; what Schiller makes the goal of the tragic
poet—to rob us of our emotional freedom, to turn our intellectual and
spiritual powers (Schiller says “our activity”) in one direction, to concentrate
them there—is effected in this Biblical narrative, which certainly deserves
the epithet epic.
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.”
I will discuss this term in some detail, lest it be misunderstood. I said
above that the Homeric style was “of the foreground” because, despite much
going back and forth, it yet causes what is momentarily being narrated to
give the impression that it is the only present, pure and without perspective.
A consideration of the Elohistic text teaches us that our term is capable of a
broader and deeper application. It shows that even the separate personages
can be represented as possessing “background”; God is always so represented
in the Bible, for he is not comprehensible in his presence, as is Zeus; it is
always only “something” of him that appears, he always extends into depths.
But even the human beings in the Biblical stories have greater depths of time,
fate, and consciousness than do the human beings in Homer; although they
are nearly always caught up in an event engaging all their faculties, they are
not so entirely immersed in its present that they do not remain continually
conscious of what has happened to them earlier and elsewhere; their
thoughts and feelings have more layers, are more entangled. Abraham’s
actions are explained not only by what is happening to him at the moment,
nor yet only by his character (as Achilles’ actions by his courage and his
pride, and Odysseus’ by his versatility and foresightedness), but by his
previous history; he remembers, he is constantly conscious of, what God has
promised him and what God has already accomplished for him—his soul is
torn between desperate rebellion and hopeful expectation; his silent
obedience is multilayered, has background. Such a problematic psychological
situation as this is impossible for any of the Homeric heroes, whose destiny
is clearly defined and who wake every morning as if it were the first day of
their lives: their emotions, though strong, are simple and find expression
instantly.
38 Erich Auerbach
How fraught with background, in comparison, are characters like Saul

and David! How entangled and stratified are such human relations as those
between David and Absalom, between David and Joab! Any such
“background” quality of the psychological situation as that which the story
of Absalom’s death and its sequel (11 Samuel 18 and 19, by the so-called
Jahvist) rather suggests than expresses, is unthinkable in Homer. Here we are
confronted not merely with the psychological processes of characters whose
depth of background is veritably abysmal, but with a purely geographical
background too. For David is absent from the battlefield; but the influence
of his will and his feelings continues to operate, they affect even Joab in his
rebellion and disregard for the consequences of his actions; in the
magnificent scene with the two messengers, both the physical and
psychological background is fully manifest, though the latter is never
expressed. With this, compare, for example, how Achilles, who sends
Patroclus first to scout and then into battle, loses almost all “presentness” so
long as he is not physically present. But the most important thing is the
“multilayeredness” of the individual character; this is hardly to be met with
in Homer, or at most in the form of a conscious hesitation between two
possible courses of action; otherwise, in Homer, the complexity of the
psychological life is shown only in the succession and alternation of
emotions; whereas the Jewish writers are able to express the simultaneous
existence of various layers of consciousness and the conflict between them.
The Homeric poems, then, though their intellectual, linguistic, and
above all syntactical culture appears to be so much more highly developed,
are yet comparatively simple in their picture of human beings; and no less so
in their relation to the real life which they describe in general. Delight in
physical existence is everything to them, and their highest aim is to make that
delight perceptible to us. Between battles and passions, adventures and
perils, they show us hunts, banquets, palaces and shepherds’ cots, athletic
contests and washing days—in order that we may see the heroes in their
ordinary life, and seeing them so, may take pleasure in their manner of
enjoying their savory present, a present which sends strong roots down into
social usages, landscape, and daily life. And thus they bewitch us and
ingratiate themselves to us until we live with them in the reality of their lives;
so long as we are reading or hearing the poems, it does not matter whether
we know that all this is only legend, “make-believe.” The oft-repeated
reproach that Homer is a liar takes nothing from his effectiveness, he does
not need to base his story on historical reality, his reality is powerful enough
in itself; it ensnares us, weaving its web around us, and that suffices him. And
this “real” world into which we are lured, exists for itself, contains nothing
but itself; the Homeric poems conceal nothing, they contain no teaching and
no secret second meaning. Homer can be analyzed, as we have essayed to do
here, but he cannot be interpreted. Later allegorizing trends have tried their
arts of interpretation upon him, but to no avail. He resists any such
treatment; the interpretations are forced and foreign, they do not crystallize
into a unified doctrine. The general considerations which occasionally occur
(in our episode, for example, v. 360: that in misfortune men age quickly)
reveal a calm acceptance of the basic facts of human existence, but with no
compulsion to brood over them, still less any passionate impulse either to
rebel against them or to embrace them in an ecstasy of submission.
It is all very different in the Biblical stories. Their aim is not to bewitch
the senses, and if nevertheless they produce lively sensory effects, it is only
because the moral, religious, and psychological phenomena which are their
sole concern are made concrete in the sensible matter of life. But their
religious intent involves an absolute claim to historical truth. The story of
Abraham and Isaac is not better established than the story of Odysseus,
Penelope, and Euryclea; both are legendary. But the Biblical narrator, the
Elohist, had to believe in the objective truth of the story of Abraham’s
sacrifice—the existence of the sacred ordinances of life rested upon the truth
of this and similar stories. He had to believe in it passionately; or else (as
many rationalistic interpreters believed and perhaps still believe) he had to
be a conscious liar—no harmless liar like Homer, who lied to give pleasure,
but a political liar with a definite end in view, lying in the interest of a claim
to absolute authority.
To me, the rationalistic interpretation seems psychologically absurd;
but even if we take it into consideration, the 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
40 Erich Auerbach
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.
Let no one object that this goes too far, that not the stories, but the
religious doctrine, raises the claim to absolute authority; because the stories
are not, like Homer’s, simply narrated “reality.” Doctrine and promise are
incarnate in them and inseparable from them; for that very reason they are
fraught with “background” and mysterious, containing a second, concealed
meaning. In the story of Isaac, it is not only God’s intervention at the
beginning and the end, but even the factual and psychological elements
which come between, that are mysterious, merely touched upon, fraught
with background; and therefore they require subtle investigation and
interpretation, they demand them. Since so much in the story is dark and
incomplete, and since the reader knows that God is a hidden God, his effort
to interpret it constantly finds something new to feed upon. Doctrine and the
search for enlightenment are inextricably connected with the physical side of
the narrative—the latter being more than simple “reality”; indeed they are in
constant danger of losing their own reality, as very soon happened when
interpretation reached such proportions that the real vanished.
If the text of the Biblical narrative, then, is so greatly in need of
interpretation on the basis of its own content, its claim to absolute authority
forces it still further in the same direction. Far from seeking, like Homer,
merely to make us forget our own reality for a few hours, it seeks to
overcome our reality: we are to fit our own life into its world, feel ourselves
to be elements in its structure of universal history. This becomes increasingly
difficult the further our historical environment is removed from that of the
Biblical books; and if these nevertheless maintain their claim to absolute
authority, it is inevitable that they themselves be adapted through
interpretative transformation. This was for a long time comparatively easy;
as late as the European Middle Ages it was possible to represent Biblical
events as ordinary phenomena of contemporary life, the methods of
interpretation themselves forming the basis for such a treatment. But when,
through too great a change in environment and through the awakening of a
critical consciousness, this becomes impossible, the Biblical claim to absolute
authority is jeopardized; the method of interpretation is scorned and

rejected, the Biblical stories become ancient legends, and the doctrine they
had contained, now dissevered from them, becomes a disembodied image.
As a result of this claim to absolute authority, the method of
interpretation spread to traditions other than the Jewish. The Homeric
poems present a definite complex of events whose boundaries in space and
time are clearly delimited; before it, beside it, and after it, other complexes
of events, which do not depend upon it, can be conceived without conflict
and without difficulty. The Old Testament, on the other hand, presents
universal history: it begins with the beginning of time, with the creation of
the world, and will end with the Last Days, the fulfilling of the Covenant,
with which the world will come to an end. Everything else that happens in
the world can only be conceived as an element in this sequence; into it
everything that is known about the world, or at least everything that touches
upon the history of the Jews, must be fitted as an ingredient of the divine
plan; and as this too became possible only by interpreting the new material
as it poured in, the need for interpretation reaches out beyond the original
Jewish-Israelitish realm of reality—for example to Assyrian, Babylonian,
Persian, and Roman history; interpretation in a determined direction
becomes a general method of comprehending reality; the new and strange
world which now comes into view and which, in the form in which it presents
itself, proves to be wholly unutilizable within the Jewish religious frame,
must be so interpreted that it can find a place there. But this process nearly
always also reacts upon the frame, which requires enlarging and modifying.
The most striking piece of interpretation of this sort occurred in the first
century of the Christian era, in consequence of Paul’s mission to the
Gentiles: Paul and the Church Fathers reinterpreted the entire Jewish
tradition as a succession of figures prognosticating the appearance of Christ,
and assigned the Roman Empire its proper place in the divine plan of
salvation. Thus while, on the one hand, the reality of the Old Testament
presents itself as complete truth with a claim to sole authority, on the other
hand that very claim forces it to a constant interpretative change in its own
content; for millennia it undergoes an incessant and active development with
the life of man in Europe.
The claim of the Old Testament stories to represent universal history,
their insistent relation—a relation constantly redefined by conflicts—to a
single and hidden God, who yet shows himself and who guides universal
history by promise and exaction, gives these stories an entirely different
perspective from any the Homeric poems can possess. As a composition, the
Old Testament is incomparably less unified than the Homeric poems, it is
42 Erich Auerbach
more obviously pieced together—but the various components all belong to

one concept of universal history and its interpretation. If certain elements
survived which did not immediately fit in, interpretation took care of them;
and so the reader is at every moment aware of the universal religio-historical
perspective which gives the individual stories their general meaning and
purpose. The greater the separateness and horizontal disconnection of the
stories and groups of stories in relation to one another, compared with the
Iliad and the Odyssey, the stronger is their general vertical connection, which
holds them all together and which is entirely lacking in Homer. Each of the
great figures of the Old Testament, from Adam to the prophets, embodies a
moment of this vertical connection. God chose and formed these men to the
end of embodying his essence and will—yet choice and formation do not
coincide, for the latter proceeds gradually, historically, during the earthly life
of him upon whom the choice has fallen. How the process is accomplished,
what terrible trials such a formation inflicts, can be seen from our story of
Abraham’s sacrifice. Herein lies the reason why the great figures of the Old
Testament are so much more fully developed, so much more fraught with
their own biographical past, so much more distinct as individuals, than are
the Homeric heroes. Achilles and Odysseus are splendidly described in many
well-ordered words, epithets cling to them, their emotions are constantly
displayed in their words and deeds—but they have no development, and their
life-histories are clearly set forth once and for all. So little are the Homeric
heroes presented as developing or having developed, that most of them—
Nestor, Agamemnon, Achilles—appear to be of an age fixed from the very
first. Even Odysseus, in whose case the long lapse of time and the many
events which occurred offer so much opportunity for biographical
development, shows almost nothing of it. Odysseus on his return is exactly
the same as he was when he left Ithaca two decades earlier. But what a road,
what a fate, lie between the Jacob who cheated his father out of his blessing
and the old man whose favorite son has been torn to pieces by a wild beast!—
between David the harp player, persecuted by his lord’s jealousy, and the old
king, surrounded by violent intrigues, whom Abishag the Shunnamite
warmed in his bed, and he knew her not. The old man, of whom we know
how he has become what he is, is more of an individual than the young man;
for it is only during the course of an eventful life that men are differentiated
into full individuality; and it is this history of a personality which the Old
Testament presents to us as the formation undergone by those whom God
has chosen to be examples. Fraught with their development, sometimes even
aged to the verge of dissolution, they show a distinct stamp of individuality
entirely foreign to the Homeric heroes. Time can touch the latter only
outwardly, and even that change is brought to our observation as little as

possible; whereas the stern hand of God is ever upon the Old Testament
figures; he has not only made them once and for all and chosen them, but he
continues to work upon them, bends them and kneads them, and, without
destroying them in essence, produces from them forms which their youth
gave no grounds for anticipating. The objection that the biographical
element of the Old Testament often springs from the combination of several
legendary personages does not apply; for this combination is a part of the
development of the text. And how much wider is the pendulum swing of
their lives than that of the Homeric heroes! For they are bearers of the divine
will, and yet they are fallible, subject to misfortune and humiliation—and in
the midst of misfortune and in their humiliation their acts and words reveal
the transcendent majesty of God. There is hardly one of them who does not,
like Adam, undergo the deepest humiliation—and hardly one who is not
deemed worthy of God’s personal intervention and personal inspiration.
Humiliation and elevation go far deeper and far higher than in Homer, and
they belong basically together. The poor beggar Odysseus is only
masquerading, but Adam is really cast down, Jacob really a refugee, Joseph
really in the pit and then a slave to be bought and sold. But their greatness,
rising out of humiliation, is almost superhuman and an image of God’s
greatness. The reader clearly feels how the extent of the pendulum’s swing is
connected with the intensity of the personal history—precisely the most
extreme circumstances, in which we are immeasurably forsaken and in
despair, or immeasurably joyous and exalted, give us, if we survive them, a
personal stamp which is recognized as the product of a rich existence, a rich
development. And very often, indeed generally, this element of development
gives the Old Testament stories a historical character, even when the subject
is purely legendary and traditional.
Homer remains within the legendary with all his material, whereas the
material of the Old Testament comes closer and closer to history as the
narrative proceeds; in the stories of David the historical report predominates.
Here too, much that is legendary still remains, as for example the story of
David and Goliath; but much—and the most essential—consists in things
which the narrators knew from their own experience or from firsthand
testimony. Now the difference between legend and history is in most cases
easily perceived by a reasonably experienced reader. It is a difficult matter,
requiring careful historical and philological training, to distinguish the true
from the synthetic or the biased in a historical presentation; but it is easy to
separate the historical from the legendary in general. Their structure is
different. Even where the legendary does not immediately betray itself by
44 Erich Auerbach
elements of the miraculous, by the repetition of well-known standard

motives, typical patterns and themes, through neglect of clear details of time
and place, and the like, it is generally quickly recognizable by its
composition. It runs far too smoothly. All cross-currents, all friction, all that
is casual, secondary to the main events and themes, everything unresolved,
truncated, and uncertain, which confuses the clear progress of the action and
the simple orientation of the actors, has disappeared. The historical event
which we witness, or learn from the testimony of those who witnessed it,
runs much more variously, contradictorily, and confusedly; not until it has
produced results in a definite domain are we able, with their help, to classify
it to a certain extent; and how often the order to which we think we have
attained becomes doubtful again, how often we ask ourselves if the data
before us have not led us to a far too simple classification of the original
events! Legend arranges its material in a simple and straightforward way; it
detaches it from its contemporary historical context, so that the latter will
not confuse it; it knows only clearly outlined men who act from few and
simple motives and the continuity of whose feelings and actions remains
uninterrupted. In the legends of martyrs, for example, a stiff-necked and
fanatical persecutor stands over against an equally stiff-necked and fanatical
victim; and a situation so complicated—that is to say, so real and historical—
as that in which the “persecutor” Pliny finds himself in his celebrated letter
to Trajan on the subject of the Christians, is unfit for legend. And that is still
a comparatively simple case. Let the reader think of the history which we are
ourselves witnessing; anyone who, for example, evaluates the behavior of
individual men and groups of men at the time of the rise of National
Socialism in Germany, or the behavior of individual peoples and states before
and during the last war, will feel how difficult it is to represent historical
themes in general, and how unfit they are for legend; the historical comprises
a great number of contradictory motives in each individual, a hesitation and
ambiguous groping on the part of groups; only seldom (as in the last war)
does a more or less plain situation, comparatively simple to describe, arise,
and even such a situation is subject to division below the surface, is indeed
almost constantly in danger of losing its simplicity; and the motives of all the
interested parties are so complex that the slogans of propaganda can be
composed only through the crudest simplification—with the result that
friend and foe alike can often employ the same ones. To write history is so
difficult that most historians are forced to make concessions to the technique
of legend.
It is clear that a large part of the life of David as given in the Bible
contains history and not legend. In Absalom’s rebellion, for example, or in
the scenes from David’s last days, the contradictions and crossing of motives
both in individuals and in the general action have become so concrete that it
is impossible to doubt the historicity of the information conveyed. Now the
men who composed the historical parts are often the same who edited the
older legends too; their peculiar religious concept of man in history, which
we have attempted to describe above, in no way led them to a legendary
simplification of events; and so it is only natural that, in the legendary
passages of the Old Testament, historical structure is frequently
discernible—of course, not in the sense that the traditions are examined as to
their credibility according to the methods of scientific criticism; but simply
to the extent that the tendency to a smoothing down and harmonizing of
events, to a simplification of motives, to a static definition of characters
which avoids conflict, vacillation, and development, such as are natural to
legendary structure, does not predominate in the Old Testament world of
legend. Abraham, Jacob, or even Moses produces a more concrete, direct,
and historical impression than the figures of the Homeric world—not
because they are better described in terms of sense (the contrary is the case)
but because the confused, contradictory multiplicity of events, the
psychological and factual cross-purposes, which true history reveals, have not
disappeared in the representation but still remain clearly perceptible. In the
stories of David, the legendary, which only later scientific criticism makes
recognizable as such, imperceptibly passes into the historical; and even in the
legendary, the problem of the classification and interpretation of human
history is already passionately apprehended—a problem which later shatters
the framework of historical composition and completely overruns it with
prophecy; thus the Old Testament, in so far as it is concerned with human
events, ranges through all three domains: legend, historical reporting, and
interpretative historical theology.
Connected with the matters just discussed is the fact that the Greek
text seems more limited and more static in respect to the circle of personages
involved in the action and to their political activity. In the recognition scene
with which we began, there appears, aside from Odysseus and Penelope, the
housekeeper Euryclea, a slave whom Odysseus’ father Laertes had bought
long before. She, like the swineherd Eumaeus, has spent her life in the
service of Laertes’ family; like Eumaeus, she is closely connected with their
fate, she loves them and shares their interests and feelings. But she has no life
of her own, no feelings of her own; she has only the life and feelings of her
master. Eumaeus too, though he still remembers that he was born a freeman
and indeed of a noble house (he was stolen as a boy), has, not only in fact but
also in his own feeling, no longer a life of his own, he is entirely involved in
46 Erich Auerbach
the life of his masters. Yet these two characters are the only ones whom
Homer brings to life who do not belong to the ruling class. Thus we become
conscious of the fact that in the Homeric poems life is enacted only among
the ruling class—others appear only in the role of servants to that class. The
ruling class is still so strongly patriarchal, and still itself so involved in the
daily activities of domestic life, that one is sometimes likely to forget their
rank. But they are unmistakably a sort of feudal aristocracy, whose men
divide their lives between war, hunting, marketplace councils, and feasting,
while the women supervise the maids in the house. As a social picture, this
world is completely stable; wars take place only between different groups of
the ruling class; nothing ever pushes up from below. In the early stories of
the Old Testament the patriarchal condition is dominant too, but since the
people involved are individual nomadic or half-nomadic tribal leaders, the
social picture gives a much less stable impression; class distinctions are not
felt. As soon as the people completely emerges—that is, after the exodus
from Egypt—its activity is always discernible, it is often in ferment, it
frequently intervenes in events not only as a whole but also in separate
groups and through the medium of separate individuals who come forward;
the origins of prophecy seem to lie in the irrepressible politico-religious
spontaneity of the people. We receive the impression that the movements
emerging from the depths of the people of Israel-Judah must have been of a
wholly different nature from those even of the later ancient democracies—of
a different nature and far more elemental.
With the more profound historicity and the more profound social
activity of the Old Testament text, there is connected yet another important
distinction from Homer: namely, that a different conception of the elevated
style and of the sublime is to be found here. Homer, of course, is not afraid
to let the realism of daily life enter into the sublime and tragic; our episode
of the scar is an example, we see how the quietly depicted, domestic scene
of the foot-washing is incorporated into the pathetic and sublime action of
Odysseus’ homecoming. From the rule of the separation of styles which was
later almost universally accepted and which specified that the realistic
depiction of daily life was incompatible with the sublime and had a place
only in comedy or, carefully stylized, in idyl—from any such rule Homer is
still far removed. And yet he is closer to it than is the Old Testament. For
the great and sublime events in the Homeric poems take place far more
exclusively and unmistakably among the members of a ruling class; and
these are far more untouched in their heroic elevation than are the Old
Testament figures, who can fall much lower in dignity (consider, for
example, Adam, Noah, David, Job); and finally, domestic realism, the
representation of daily life, remains in Homer in the peaceful realm of the

idyllic, whereas, from the very first, in the Old Testament stories, the
sublime, tragic, and problematic take shape precisely in the domestic and
commonplace: scenes such as those between Cain and Abel, between Noah
and his sons, between Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, between Rebekah, Jacob,
and Esau, and so on, are inconceivable in the Homeric style. The entirely
different ways of developing conflicts are enough to account for this. In the
Old Testament stories the peace of daily life in the house, in the fields, and
among the flocks, is undermined by jealousy over election and the promise
of a blessing, and complications arise which would be utterly
incomprehensible to the Homeric heroes. The latter must have palpable
and clearly expressible reasons for their conflicts and enmities, and these
work themselves out in free battles; whereas, with the former, the
perpetually smouldering jealousy and the connection between the domestic
and the spiritual, between the paternal blessing and the divine blessing, lead
to daily life being permeated with the stuff of conflict, often with poison.
The sublime influence of God here reaches so deeply into the everyday that
the two realms of the sublime and the everyday are not only actually
unseparated but basically inseparable.
We have compared these two texts, and, with them, the two kinds of
style they embody, in order to reach a starting point for an investigation into
the literary representation of reality in European culture. The two styles, in
their opposition, represent basic types: on the one hand fully externalized
description, uniform illumination, uninterrupted connection, free
expression, all events in the foreground, displaying unmistakable meanings,
few elements of historical development and of psychological perspective; on
the other hand, certain parts brought into high relief, others left obscure,
abruptness, suggestive influence of the unexpressed, “background” quality,
multiplicity of meanings and the need for interpretation, universal-historical
claims, development of the concept of the historically becoming, and
preoccupation with the problematic.
Homer’s realism is, of course, not to be equated with classical-antique
realism in general; for the separation of styles, which did not develop until
later, permitted no such leisurely and externalized description of everyday
happenings; in tragedy especially there was no room for it; furthermore,
Greek culture very soon encountered the phenomena of historical becoming
and of the “multilayeredness” of the human problem, and dealt with them in
its fashion; in Roman realism, finally, new and native concepts are added. We
shall go into these later changes in the antique representation of reality when
the occasion arises; on the whole, despite them, the basic tendencies of the
48 Erich Auerbach
Homeric style, which we have attempted to work out, remained effective and
determinant down into late antiquity.
Since we are using the two styles, the Homeric and the Old Testament,
as starting points, we have taken them as finished products, as they appear in
the texts; we have disregarded everything that pertains to their origins, and
thus have left untouched the question whether their peculiarities were theirs
from the beginning or are to be referred wholly or in part to foreign
influences. Within the limits of our purpose, a consideration of this question
is not necessary; for it is in their full development, which they reached in
early times, that the two styles exercised their determining influence upon
the representation of reality in European literature.
G E O F F R E Y H A RT M A N
The Poetics of Prophecy
I n our honorific or sophomoric moods, we like to think that poets are

prophets. At least that certain great poets have something of the audacity and
intensity—the strong speech—of Old Testament prophets who claimed that
the word of God came to them. “The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah
... To whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah ...” It is hard to
understand even this introductory passage, for the word for “words,” divre in
Hebrew, indicates something closer to “acts” or “word events,” while what
the King James version translates as “to whom the word of the Lord came,”
which hypostatizes the Word, as if it had a being of its own, or were
consubstantial with what we know of God, is in the original simply hajah
devar-adonai elav, “the God-word was to him.” We don’t know, in short, what
is going on; yet through a long tradition of translation and interpretation we
feel we know. Similarly, when Wordsworth tells us that around his twenty-
third year he “received” certain “convictions,” which included the thought
that despite his humbler subject matter he could stand beside the “men of
old,” we seek gropingly to make sense of that conviction. “Poets, even as
Prophets,” Wordsworth writes,
From High Romantic Argument: Essays for M.H. Abrams, Lawrence Lipking, ed. © 1981 Cornell
University Press.
49
50 Geoffrey Hartman
each with each

Connected in a mighty scheme of truth,
Have each his own peculiar faculty,
Heaven’s gift, a sense that fits him to perceive
Objects unseen before ... An insight that in some sort he possesses,
A privilege whereby a work of his,
Proceeding from a source of untaught things
Creative and enduring, may become
A power like one of Nature’s.
[1850 Prelude xiii.30 1–12]
In the earlier (1805) version of The Prelude “insight” is “influx,” which relates
more closely to a belief in inspiration, or a flow (of words) the poet
participates in yet does not control: “An influx, that in some sort I possess’d.”
I will somewhat neglect in what follows one difference, rather obvious,
between poet and prophet. A prophet is to us, and perhaps to himself, mainly
a voice—as God himself seems to him primarily a voice. Even when he does
God in many voices, they are not felt to stand in an equivocal relation to each
other: each voice is absolute, and vacillation produces vibrancy rather than
ambiguity. In this sense there is no “poetics of prophecy”; there is simply a
voice breaking forth, a quasivolcanic eruption, and sometimes its opposite,
the “still, small voice” heard after the thunder of Sinai. I will try to come to
grips with that difference between poet and prophet later on; here I should
only note that, being of the era of Wordsworth rather than of Jeremiah, I
must look back from the poet’s rather than from the prophet’s perspective,
while acknowledging that the very concept of poetry may be used by
Wordsworth to reflect on—and often to defer—the claim that he has a
prophetic gift.
There is another passage in The Prelude that explores the relation
between poet and prophet. Wordsworth had been to France during the
Revolution, had followed that cataclysmic movement in hope, had seen it
degenerate into internecine politics and aggressive war. Yet despite the
discrediting of revolutionary ideals, something of his faith survived, and not
only faith but, as he strangely put it, “daring sympathies with power.” In
brief, he saw those terrible events in France as necessary and even divinely
sanctioned. To explain his mood Wordsworth writes a confessional passage
that also gives his most exact understanding of prophecy:
But as the ancient Prophets, borne aloft

In vision, yet constrained by natural laws
With them to take a troubled human heart,

Wanted not consolations, nor a creed
Of reconcilement, then when they denounced,
On towns and cities, wallowing in the abyss
Of their offences, punishment to come;
Or saw, like other men, with bodily eyes,
Before them, in some desolated place,
The wrath consummate and the threat fulfilled;
So, with devout humility be it said,
So, did a portion of that spirit fall
On me uplifted from the vantage-ground
Of pity and sorrow to a state of being
That through the time’s exceeding fierceness saw
Glimpses of retribution, terrible,
And in the order of sublime behests:
But, even if that were not, amid the awe
Of unintelligible chastisement,
Not only acquiescences of faith
Survived, but daring sympathies with power,
Motions not treacherous or profane, else why
Within the folds of no ungentle breast
Their dread vibration to this hour prolonged?
Wild blasts of music thus could find their way
Into the midst of turbulent events;
So that worst tempests might be listened to.
[1850 Prelude x.437–63]
This eloquent statement has many complexities; but it is clear that

though Wordsworth felt himself “uplifted from the vantage-ground / Of pity
and sorrow,” he did not leave them behind in this moment of sublime vision
and terrible purification. It is certainly a remarkable feature of a prophet like
Jeremiah that “borne aloft / In vision” he yet takes with him “a troubled
human heart.” Like Jonah, he tries to evade the commission, though not, like
Jonah, by running away but rather by claiming he is not of age when it comes
to speech (“Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a
child”). Jeremiah even accuses God, in bitterness of heart, of the very thing
of which God accused Israel: of seducing the prophet, or of being unfaithful
(Jeremiah 20:7ff).
Wordsworth expresses most strongly a further, related aspect of
prophetical psychology: the ambivalent sympathy shown by the prophet for
52 Geoffrey Hartman
the powerful and terrible thing he envisions. This sympathy operates even
when he tries to avert what must be, or to find a “creed of reconcilement.”
The poet’s problem vis-à-vis the Revolution was not, principally, that he had
to come to terms with crimes committed in the name of the Revolution or of
liberty. For at the end of the passage from which I have quoted he indicates
that there had been a rebound of faith, a persuasion that grew in him that the
Revolution itself was not to blame, but rather “a terrific reservoir of guilt /
And ignorance filled up from age to age” had “burst and spread in deluge
through the land.” The real problem was his entanglement in a certain order
of sensations which endured to the very time of writing: he owns to “daring
sympathies with power,” “motions,” whose “dread vibration” is “to this hour
prolonged,” and whose harmonizing effect in the midst of the turbulence he
characterized by the oxymoron “Wild blasts of music.”
We understand perfectly well that what is involved in Wordsworth’s
sympathy with power is not, or not simply, a sublime kind of Schadenfreude.
And that no amount of talk about the pleasure given by tragedy, through
“cathartic” identification, would do more than uncover the same problem in
a related area. The seduction power exerts, when seen as an act of God or
Nature, lies within common experience. It does not of itself distinguish poets
or prophets. What is out of the ordinary here is the “dread vibration”: a term
close to music, as well as one that conveys the lasting resonance of earlier
feelings. How did Wordsworth’s experience of sympathy with power accrue
a metaphor made overt in “wild blasts of music”?
The tradition that depicts inspired poetry as a wild sort of natural
music (“Homer the great Thunderer, [and] the voice that roars along the bed
of Jewish Song”) circumscribes rather than explains these metaphors. When
we take them to be more than commonplaces of high poetry we notice that
they sometimes evoke the force of wind and water as blended sound (cf. “The
stationary blasts of waterfalls,” 1850 Prelude vi.626), a sound with power to
draw the psyche in, as if the psyche also were an instrument or element, and
had to mingle responsively with some overwhelming, massive unity. Despite
the poet’s imagery of violence, the ideal of harmony, at least on the level of
sound, is not given up. The soul as a gigantic if reluctant aeolian harp is
implicitly evoked.
How strangely this impulse to harmony is linked with violent feelings
can be shown by one of Wordsworth’s similes. Similes are, of course, a formal
way of bringing together, or harmonizing, different areas of experience.
From Coleridge to the New Critics the discussion of formal poetics has often
focused on the valorized distinction between fancy and imagination, or on
the way difference is reconciled. Shortly before his reflection on the ancient
prophets, and when he is still describing the indiscriminate carnage

unleashed by Robespierre, Wordsworth has recourse to a strange pseudo-
Homeric simile comparing the tempo of killings to a child activating a toy
windmill:
though the air

Do of itself blow fresh, and make the vanes
Spin in his eyesight, that contents him not,
But, with the plaything at arm’s length, he sets
His front against the blast, and runs amain,
That it may whirl the faster.
[1850 Prelude x.369–74]
An aeolian toy is used, explicitly now, to image a sublime and terrible

order of events. The instrument is given to the wind, so that it may go faster;
yet this childish sport is set in an ominous context. The innocent wish to
have something go fast reflects on the child whose mimicry (as in the
Intimations Ode) suggests his haste to enter the very world where that haste
has just shown itself in heinous form. Though there is something
incongruous in the simile, there is also something fitting: or at least a drive
toward fitting together incongruous passions of childhood and adulthood;
and may this drive not express the dark “workmanship that reconciles /
Discordant elements” by a mysterious, quasi-musical “harmony” (1850
Prelude i.340ff.)? Here the reconciling music, by which the mind is built up,
is already something of a “wild blast”; and when we think of the passage on
prophecy to follow, on Wordsworth’s “daring sympathies with power,” we
realize that what is involved in these various instances—lust for carnage,
vertigo-sport, the child’s impatience to grow up, the poet’s fit of words, and
the prophet’s sympathy with the foreseen event, however terrible—is an
anticipatory relation to time, a hastening of futurity.
The music metaphor, associated with wind and water sound, occurs in
yet another context close to apocalyptic feelings. (By “apocalyptic” I always
mean quite specifically an anticipatory, proleptic relation to time, intensified
to the point where there is at once desire for and dread of the end being
hastened. There is a potential inner turning against time, and against nature
insofar as it participates in the temporal order.) Wordsworth’s dream in
Prelude v of the Arab saving stone and shell from the encroaching flood, also
identified as the two principal branches of humane learning, mathematics
and literature, is given an explicitly apocalyptic frame. The poet is
meditating on books “that aspire to an unconquerable life,” human creations
54 Geoffrey Hartman
that must perish nevertheless. Quoting from a Shakespeare sonnet on the

theme of time, he reflects that we “weep to have” what we may lose: the
weeping represents both the vain effort and the prophetic regret, so that the
very joy of possessing lies close to tears, or thoughts deeper than tears. Only
one detail of the ensuing dream need concern us. It comes when the Arab
asks the dreamer to hold the shell (poetry) to his ear. “I did so,” says the
dreamer,
And heard that instant in an unknown tongue,

Which yet I understood, articulate sounds,
A loud prophetic blast of harmony;
An Ode, in passion uttered, which foretold
Destruction to the children of the earth
By deluge, now at hand.
[1850 Prelude v.93–98]
A “blast of harmony” is not only a more paradoxical, more acute

version of the metaphor in “blast of music,” but we recognize it as an
appropriate figure for the shouting poetry also called prophecy. In the lines
that follow, Wordsworth stresses the dual function of such poetry: it has
power to exhilarate and to soothe the human heart. But this is a gloss that
conventionalizes the paradox in “blast of harmony” and does not touch the
reality of the figure.
Our task is to understand the reality of figures, or more precisely, the
reality of “blast of harmony,” when applied to prophecy, or prophetic poetry.
I will suggest, on the basis of this figure, that there is a poetics of prophecy;
and I will study it by reading closely two episodes in The Prelude entirely
within the secular sphere: the “spot of time” alluding to the death of the
poet’s father, and the ascent of Snowdon. After that a transition to the
prophetic books, and to Jeremiah in particular, may lie open.
The death of Wordsworth’s father is not attended by unusual

circumstances. As Claudius says in a play we shall refer to again: a “common
theme / Is death of fathers.” Yet it is precisely the commonplace that releases
in this case the “dread vibration.” The thirteen-year-old schoolboy is
impatient to return home for the Christmas holidays, and climbs a crag
overlooking two highways to see whether he can spot the horses that should
be coming. From that bare, wind-blown crag he watches intensely, and
shortly after he returns home his father dies. That is all: a moment of intense,
impatient watching, and then, ten days later, the death. Two things without
connection except contiguity in time come together in the boy, who feels an
emotion that perpetuates “down to this very time” the sights and sounds he
experienced waiting for the horses. Here is Wordsworth’s account in full:
There rose a crag,

That, from the meeting-point of two highways
Ascending, overlooked them both, far stretched;
Thither, uncertain on which road to fix
My expectation, thither I repaired,
Scout-like, and gained the summit; ‘twas a day
Tempestuous, dark, and wild, and on the grass
I sate half-sheltered by a naked wall;
Upon my right hand couched a single sheep,
Upon my left a blasted hawthorn stood;
With those companions at my side, I watched,
Straining my eyes intensely, as the mist
Gave intermitting prospect of the copse
And plain beneath. Ere we to school returned,—
That dreary time,—ere we had been ten days
Sojourners in my father’s house, he died,
And I and my three brothers, orphans then,
Followed his body to the grave. The event,
With all the sorrow that it brought, appeared
A chastisement; and when I called to mind
That day so lately past, when from the crag
I looked in such anxiety of hope;
With trite reflections of morality,
Yet in the deepest passion, I bowed low
To God, Who thus corrected my desires;
And, afterwards, the wind and sleety rain,
And all the business of the elements,
The single sheep, and the one blasted tree,
And the bleak music from that old stone wall,
The noise of wood and water, and the mist
That on the line of each of those two roads
Advanced in such indisputable shapes;
All these were kindred spectacles and sounds
To which I oft repaired, and thence would drink,
56 Geoffrey Hartman
As at a fountain; and on winter nights,

Down to this very time, when storm and rain
Beat on my roof, or, haply, at noon-day,
While in a grove I walk, whose lofty trees,
Laden with summer’s thickest foliage, rock
In a strong wind, some working of the spirit,
Some inward agitations thence are brought,
Whate’er their office.
[1850 Prelude xii.292–333]
The secular and naturalistic frame of what is recorded remains intact.

Yet the experience is comparable in more than its aura to what motivates
prophecy. Though there is no intervention of vision or voice, there is
something like a special, burdened relation to time. Wordsworth called the
episode a “spot of time,” to indicate that it stood out, spotlike, in his
consciousness of time, that it merged sensation of place and sensation of time
(so that time was placed), even that it allowed him to physically perceive or
“spot” time.
The boy on the summit, overlooking the meeting point of two
highways, and stationed between something immobile on his right hand and
his left, is, as it were, at the center of a stark clock. Yet the question, How
long? if it rises within him, remains mute. It certainly does not surface with
the ghostly, prophetic dimension that invests it later. At this point there is
simply a boy’s impatient hope, “anxiety of hope,” as the poet calls it (l. 313),
a straining of eye and mind that corresponds to the “far-stretched”
perspective of the roads. But the father’s death, which supervenes as an
“event” (l. 309), converts that moment of hope into an ominous, even
murderous anticipation.
In retrospect, then, a perfectly ordinary mood is seen to involve a sin
against time. The boy’s “anxiety of hope,” his wish for time to pass (both the
“dreary time” of school and now of watching and waiting) seems to find
retributive fulfillment when the father’s life is cut short ten days later. The
aftermath points to something unconscious in the first instance but manifest
and punishing now. The child feels that his “desires” have been “corrected”
by God. What desires could they be except fits of extreme—apocalyptic—
impatience, brought on by the very patience or dreary sufferance of nature,
of sheep and blasted tree? That the boy bowed low to God, who corrected
his desires, evokes a human and orthodox version of nature’s own passion.
A similar correction may be the subject of “A slumber did my spirit
seal,” where a milder sin against time, the delusion that the loved one is a
“thing” exempt from the touch of years, is revealed when she dies and
becomes a “thing” in fact. The fulfillment of the hope corrects it, as in
certain fairy tales. In Wordsworth, hope or delusion always involves the
hypnotic elision of time by an imagination drawn toward the “bleak music”
of nature—of a powerfully inarticulate nature.
Yet in both representations, that of the death of the father and that of
the death of the beloved, there is no hint of anything that would compel the
mind to link the two terms, hope against time and its peculiar fulfillment.
The link remains inarticulate, like nature itself. A first memory is interpreted
by a second: the “event” clarifies an ordinary emotion by suggesting its
apocalyptic vigor. But the apocalyptic mode, as Martin Buber remarked, is
not the prophetic. Wordsworth’s spots of time are said to renew time rather
than to hasten its end. A wish for the end to come, for time to pass absolutely,
cannot explain what brought the two happenings together, causally,
superstitiously, or by a vaticinum ex eventu.
Perhaps the apocalyptic wish so compressed the element of time that
something like a “gravitation” effect was produced, whereby unrelated
incidents fell toward each other. It is, in any case, this process of conjuncture
or binding that is mysterious. Not only for the reader but for Wordsworth
himself. A more explicit revelation of the binding power had occurred after
the death of the poet’s mother. Wordsworth’s “For now a trouble came into
my mind/ From unknown causes” (1850 Prelude ii.276–77) refers to an
expectation that when his mother died the world would collapse. Instead it
remains intact and attractive.
I was left alone

Seeking the visible world, nor knowing why.
The props of my affection were removed,
And yet the building stood, as if sustained
By its own spirit!
[1850 Prelude ii.277–81]
What he had previously named, describing the relationship between

mother and infant, “the gravitation and the filial bond,” continues to operate
without the mother. This event contrary to expectation is the “trouble”; and
the “unknown causes” allude to the gravitation, or glue or binding, that
mysteriously sustains nature, and draws the child to it in the mother’s
absence. Even loss binds; and a paradox emerges which focuses on the
fixative rather than fixating power of catastrophe, on the nourishing and
reparative quality of the “trouble.” Wordsworth, too benevolent perhaps,
58 Geoffrey Hartman
suggests that time itself is being repaired: that the pressure of eternity on
thought (the parent’s death) creates an “eternity of thought” (1850 Prelude
1.402). The survivor knows that the burden of the mystery can be borne, that
there is time for thought.
Whether or not, then, we understand Wordsworth’s experience fully,
the “spots of time” describe a trauma, a lesion in the fabric of time, or more
precisely, the trouble this lesion produces and which shows itself as an
extreme consciousness of time. Not only is there an untimely death in the
case of the father, but it follows too fast on the boy’s return home. As in
Hamlet, “The time is out of joint. O cursed spite / That ever I was born to
set it right!” The righting of the injury somehow falls to the poet. “Future
restoration” (1850 Prelude xii.286), perhaps in the double sense of a
restoration of the future as well as of a restoration still to come, is the task he
sets himself.1
Prophecy, then, would seem to be anti-apocalyptic in seeking a “future
restoration,” or time for thought. But time, in Wordsworth, is also language,
or what the Intimations Ode calls “timely utterance.” That phrase contains
both threat and promise. It suggests the urgent pressure that gives rise to
speech; it also suggests that an animate response, and a harmonious one, is
possible, as in Milton’s “answerable style,” or the pastoral cliché of woods
and waters mourning, rejoicing or echoing in timely fashion the poet’s mode.
Ruskin referred to it as the pathetic fallacy but Abraham Heschel will make
pathos, in that large sense, the very characteristic of prophetic language.
More radically still “timely utterance” means an utterance, such as
prophecy, or prophetic poetry, which founds or repairs time. The prophet
utters time in its ambiguity: as the undesired mediation, which prevents
fusion, but also destruction. It prevents fusion by intruding the voice of the
poet, his troubled heart, his fear of or flight from “power”; it prevents
destruction by delaying God’s decree or personally mediating it.
Wordsworth speaks scrupulous words despite his sympathy with power and
his attraction to the muteness or closure foreseen. By intertextual bonding,
by words within words or words against words, he reminds us one more time
of time.
We cannot evade the fact that the anxious waiting and the father’s death
are joined by what can only be called a “blast of harmony.” The two
moments are harmonized, but the copula is poetic as well as prophetic. For
the conjunction of these contiguous yet disparate happenings into a
“kindred” form is due to a “working of the spirit” that must be equated with
poetry itself. While in the boy of thirteen the process of joining may have
been instinctual, the poet recollects the past event as still working itself out;
the incident demonstrated so forceful a visiting of imaginative power that

later thought is never free of it. What is remarkable in this type-incident—
and so remarkable that it keeps “working” on the mind “to this very time”—
is not only the “coadunation,” as Coleridge would have said, or
“In-Eins-Bildung” (his false etymology for the German Embildungskraft, or
imagination), but also that it is a “blast,” that the workmanship reconciling
the discordant elements anticipates a final, awesome unification. Hope is
always “anxious” in that it foresees not just unity but also the power needed
to achieve unity, to blast things into that state. The fear, then, that mingles
with apocalyptic hope also stills it, or brings it close to “that peace / Which
passeth understanding” (1850 Prelude xiv.126–27), because of the uncertain,
terrible nature of this final bonding, which evokes in the episode on the crag
a bleak and bleating music and images of stunned, warped, blasted,
inarticulate being.
I turn to the climatic episode of The Prelude, the ascent of Snowdon in

Book xiv. Disregarding all but its barest structure, we see that it again
presents a sequence of two moments curiously harmonized. The theme of
time enters as elided when the moon breaks through the mist and into the
absorbed mind of the climber. “Nor was time given to ask or learn the cause,
/ For instantly a light upon the turf / Fell like a flash ...” (xiv.37–39). This
moment of prevenient light is followed as suddenly by a wild blast of music:
the roar of waters through a rift in the mist. The second act or “event” is here
an actual sound, separated off from sight and almost hypostatized as a sound.
It is quite literally a “blast of harmony”: “The roar of waters ... roaring with
one voice.”
The appearance of the moon out of the mist is not, however, as
unmotivated as might appear. It realizes an unuttered wish, “Let there be
light,” as the poet climbs through the darkness to “see the sun rise.” Spotting
the moon fulfills his hope in an unexpected way, which also foreshortens
time. The mind of the poet is disoriented; but then time is lengthened as the
sight of the moonstruck scene takes over in a kind of silent harmonization. If
my hypothesis is correct, there is something truly magical here. The effect
(“And there was light”) utters the cause—that is, utters the scriptural text
(“Let there be light”) lodging as desire in the poet. Silence emits a “sound of
harmony” (xiv.98–99) analogous to the music of the spheres. Not the poet
but heaven itself declares the glory, the “And there was light” as “night unto
night showeth knowledge.” Wordsworth seems to behold visibly the “timely
60 Geoffrey Hartman
utterance” with which Genesis begins—the very harmony between cause and
effect, between fiat and actualizing response—and this spectacle seems to be
so ghostly a projection of nature itself (rather than of his own excited mind)
that he claims it was “given to spirits of the night” and only by chance to the
three human spectators (xiv.63–65).
Yet if the first act of the vision proper proves deceptive, because its
motivation, which is a scriptural text, or the authority of that text, or the
poet’s desire to recapture that fiat power, remains silent and inward, the
second act, which is the rising of the voice of the waters, also proves
deceptive, even as it falsifies the first. The sound of the waters (though
apparently unheard) must have been there all along, so that what is shown up
by the vision’s second act is a premature harmonizing of the landscape by the
majestic moon: by that time-subduing object all sublime. Time also becomes
a function of the desire for harmony as imagination now foreshortens and
now enthrones the passing moment, or, to quote one of many variants, “so
moulds, exalts, indues, combines, / Impregnates, separates, adds, takes away
/ And makes one object sway another so ...” In the poet’s commentary there
is a further attempt at harmonizing, when moon and roaring waters are
typified as correlative acts, the possessions of a mind
That feeds upon infinity, that broods

Over the dark abyss, intent to hear
Its voices issuing forth to silent light
In one continuous stream
[xiv.71–74]
An image of communion and continuity is projected which the syntax

partially subverts, for “its” remains ambiguous, and we cannot say for sure
whether the voices belong to the dark abyss or the heavenly mind. What
remains of this rich confusion are partial and contradictory structures of
unification, which meet us “at every turn” in the “narrow rent” of the text,
and add up less to a “chorus of infinity” than again to a “blast of harmony.”
For prophet as for poet the ideal is “timely utterance,” yet what we
actually receive is a “blast of harmony.” In Jeremiah a double pressure is
exerted, of time on the prophet and of the prophet on time. The urgency of
“timely utterance” cuts both ways. Moreover, while the prophet’s words must
harmonize with events, before or after the event, the word itself is viewed as
an event that must harmonize with itself, or with its imputed source in God
and the prophets. A passage such as Jeremiah 23:9–11 describes the impact
of the God-word in terms that not only are conventionally ecstatic but also
suggest the difficulty of reading the signs of authority properly, and
distinguishing true from false prophet. “Adultery” seems to have moved into
the word-event itself.
Concerning the prophets:

My heart is broken within me,
all my bones shake;
I am like a drunken man,
like man overcome by wine,
because of the Loin
and because of his holy words.
For the land is full of adulterers;
because of the curse the land mourns....
The time frame becomes very complex, then. On an obvious level the
God-word as threat or promise is interpreted and reinterpreted in the light
of history, so that Jeremiah’s pronouncements are immediately set in their
time. “The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah ... to whom the word of the
Lord came in the days of Josiah...” The ending jah, meaning “God,” reveals
from within these destined names the pressure for riming events with God.
Jeremiah’s prophecies are political suasions having to do with Israel’s
precarious position between Babylon on one border and Egypt on the other
in the years before the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. The
very survival of Israel is in question; and the prophet is perforce a political
analyst as well as a divine spokesman. He speaks at risk not only in the
hearing of God but also in that of Pashur, who beat him and put him in the
stocks (20:1–4), in that of so-called friends who whisper “Denounce him to
Pashur,” and in that of King Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, who
sends Pashur (the same or another) to Jeremiah, saying, “Inquire of the Lord
for us” about Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon (21:1–3).
On another level, however, since the book of Jeremiah knows that the
outcome is “the captivity of Jerusalem” (1:3), a question arises as to the later
force of such prophecy. Near the onset of Jeremiah’s career a manuscript of
what may have been a version of Deuteronomy was found, and a dedication
ceremony took place which pledged Judah once more to the covenant. The
issue of the covenant—whether it is broken, or can ever be broken—and the
part played in this issue by the survival of a book such as Jeremiah’s own is
62 Geoffrey Hartman
another aspect of the prophet’s utterance. Can one praise God yet curse
oneself as the bearer of his word (20:13–14)? Or can Judah follow God into
the wilderness once more, showing the same devotion as when it was a bride
(2:2)? “I utter what was only in view of what will be.... What is realized in my
history is not the past definite of what was, since it is no more, or even the
present perfect of what has been in what I am, but the future anterior of what
I shall have been for what I am in the process of becoming.” That is Jacques
Lacan on the function of language.
Indeed, the contradictions that beset “timely utterance” are so great
that a reversal occurs which discloses one of the founding metaphors of
literature. When Jacques Lacan writes that “symbols ... envelop the life of
man in a network so total that they join together, before he comes into the
world, those who are going to engender him ‘by flesh and blood’; so total
that they bring to his birth, along with the gifts of the stars, if not with the
gifts of the fairies, the shape of his destiny; so total that they give the words
that will make him faithful or renegade, the law of the acts that will follow
him right to the very place where he is not yet and even beyond his death;
and so total that through them his end finds its meaning in the last
judgement, where the Word absolves his being or condemns it,” he is still
elaborating Jeremiah 1:4. “Now the word of the LORD came to me saying,
‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I
consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.’ ” This
predestination by the word and unto the word—the “imperative of the
Word,” as Lacan also calls it, in a shorthand that alludes to the later tradition
of the Logos—is then reinforced by Jeremiah 1:11–12. “And the word of the
LORD came to me saying, ‘Jeremiah, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘I see a rod
of almond.’ Then the LORD said to me, ‘You have seen well, for I am
watching over my word to perform it.’”
Here the pun of “rod of almond” (makel shaqued) and “[I am]
watching” (shoqued) is more, surely, than a mnemonic or overdetermined
linguistic device: it is a rebus that suggests the actualizing or performative
relationship between words and things implied by the admonition: “I am
watching over my word to perform it.” The admonition is addressed to the
prophet, in whose care the word is, and through him to the nation; while the
very image of the rod of almond projects not only a reconciliation of
contraries, of punishment (rod) and pastoral peace (almond), but the entire
problem of timely utterance, since the almond tree blossoms unseasonably
early and is as exposed to blasting as is the prophet, who seeks to avoid
premature speech: “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for
I am only a child.”
The forcible harmonizing of shaqued and shoqued, the pressure of that

pun, or the emblematic abuse of a pastoral image, alerts us to the difficult
pathos of prophetic speech. What does “watching over the word” involve?
The prophets are politically and psychically in such a pressure-cooker
situation (“I see a boiling pot,” Jeremiah 1:13) that a powerful contamination
occurs. Their words cannot always be distinguished from those of God in
terms of who is speaking. The prophet identifies now with God and now
with his people; moreover, his only way of arguing with the Lord is through
words and figures given by the latter. Lacan would say that there is an
inevitable inmixing of the Discourse of the Other. Jeremiah argues with God
in God’s language; and such scripture formulas as “according to thy word”
recall this confused and indeterminate situation.
When, in famous lyric verses, Jeremiah admits that he cannot speak
without shouting, and what he shouts is “violence and destruction” (20:8), it
is as if the God-word itself had suffered a crisis of reference. For this typical
warning is now directed not against Israel but against God: it refers to the
condition of the prophet who feels betrayed as well as endangered.
Jeremiah’s hymn begins: “O Lord, you seduced me, and I was seduced,”
where “seduce,” pittiytani, can mean both sexual enticement and spiritual
deception—as by false prophets. No wonder that at the end of this hymn, the
most formal and personal in the entire book, there is a surprising and
unmotivated turn from blessing (“Sing to the LORD; praise the LORD”) to
cursing (“Cursed be the day on which I was born!” 20:13–18). However
conventional such a curse may be, and we find a famous instance in Job, it
cannot but be read in conjunction with “Before I formed you in the womb I
knew you.” Jeremiah’s “Cursed be the day” is a Caliban moment; God has
taught the prophet to speak, and so to curse; or it is a Hamlet moment, the
prophet being “cursed” by his election to set the time right. But more
important, the curse is the word itself, the violence done by it to the prophet.
He feels it in his heart and bones as a burning fire (20:9). The word that knew
him before he was conceived has displaced father and mother as begetter:
when he curses his birth his word really curses the word. Jeremiah is not
given time to develop; he is hurled untimely into the word. The words of the
prophet and the words of God can be one only through that “blast of
harmony” of which Wordsworth’s dream still gives an inkling.
When even an intelligent contemporary discussion of “The Prophets

as Poets” talks of a “symphony of the effective word” and “the gradual union
64 Geoffrey Hartman
of person and word,” and sees prophecy advancing historically from “word
as pointer to word as the thing itself,” it adopts metaphors as solutions. The
animating fiat spoken by God in the book of Genesis, which founds the
harmonious correspondence of creative principle (word) and created product
(thing), is literalized by a leap of faith on the part of the intelligent
contemporary reader.
Yet with some exceptions—Wolfgang Binder and Peter Szondi on the
language of Hölderlin, Erich Auerbach on Dante and figural typology,
Northrop Frye on Blake, M. H. Abrams and E. S. Shaffer on the Romantics,
Stanley Cavell on Thoreau—it is not the literary critics but the biblical
scholars who have raised the issue of secularization (or, what affinity is there
between secular and sacred word?) to a level where it is more than a problem
in commuting: how to get from there to here, or vice versa. Since Ambrose
and Augustine, and again since the Romantic era, biblical criticism has
developed together with literary criticism; and still we are only beginning to
appreciate their mutual concerns.
It is no accident that the career of Northrop Frye has promised to
culminate in an Anatomy of the Bible, or in a summa of structural principles
that could harmonize the two bodies of the logos: scripture and literature. By
labeling an essay “The Poetics of Prophecy,” I may seem to be going in the
same direction, and I certainly wish to; yet I think that the relationship
between poetics and prophetics cannot be so easily accommodated. The work
of detail, or close reading, ever remains, and quite possibly as a task without
an ending. Even when we seek to climb to a prospect where secular and
sacred hermeneutics meet on some windy crag, we continue to face a number
of unresolved questions that at once plague and animate the thinking critic.
One question is the status of figures. They seem to persist in language
as indefeasible sedimentations or as recurrent necessity, long after the
megaphone of prophetic style. Moreover, because of the priority and survival
of “primitive” or “oriental” figuration, such distinctions as Coleridge’s
between fancy and imagination tend to become the problem they were
meant to resolve. Strong figurative expression does not reconcile particular
and universal, or show the translucence of the universal in the concrete: there
is such stress and strain that even when theorists value one mode of
imaginative embodiment over another—as symbol over allegory or
metaphysical wit—they admit the persistence and sometimes explosive
concurrence of the archaic or depreciated form.
Another important question is the status of written texts in the life of
society or the life of the mind. Almost every tradition influenced by
Christianity has aspired to a spiritualization of the word, its transformation
and even disappearance as it passes from “word as pointer to word as thing

itself.” A logocentric or incarnationist thesis of this kind haunts the fringes
of most studies of literature, and explains the welcome accorded at present to
semiotic counterperspectives. Textual reality, obviously, is more complex,
undecidable, and lasting than any such dogma; and the dogma itself is merely
inferred from historically ramified texts.
A last question concerns intertextuality. From the perspective of
scripture intertextuality is related to canon formation, or the process of
authority by which the bibles (biblia) we call the Bible were unified. The
impact of scripture on literature includes the concept of (1) peremptory or
preemptive texts and (2) interpreters who find the unifying principle that
could join books into a canon of classics. From a secular perspective these
books, whether classified as literature or as scripture, have force but no
authority; and to bring them together into some sort of canon is the coup of
the critic, who harmonizes them by the force of his own text. His work
reveals not their canonicity but rather their intertextuality; and the most
suggestive theory along these lines has been that of Harold Bloom.
The impact, according to him, of a preemptive poem on a later one is
always “revisionary”: the one lives the other’s death, deviating its meaning,
diverting its strength, creating an inescapable orbit. “Revisionary” suggests,
therefore, a relationship of force: again, a blast of harmony rather than a
natural or authoritative unification.
For a reason not entirely clear to me, Bloom wishes to establish English
poetry after Milton as a Milton satellite. Milton becomes a scripture
substitute with the impressive and oppressive influence of scripture itself.
Later poets must harmonize with Milton, willingly or unwillingly: even their
deviations are explained by attempts to escape the Milton orbit. Yet I have
shown that Wordsworth may imitate a scripture text (“Let there be light”)
with a power of deviousness that is totally un-Miltonic. Milton and Nature,
Wordsworth saw, were not the same. His return to scripture is not to its
precise verbal content, though it is an implicit content (Genesis, light, voice)
that infuses the texture of the vision on Snowdon. The form of the fiat,
however, predominates over its content; and what we are given to see is not
scripture reenacted or imaginatively revised—new testamented—but the
unuttered fiat in its silent yet all-subduing aspect. What Wordsworth names
and represents as Nature is the fiat power working tacitly and harmoniously,
reconciling discordant elements, building up the mind and perhaps the
cosmos itself.
Snowdon’s Miltonic echoes, therefore, which recapitulate a portion of
the story of creation as retold in the seventh book of Paradise Lost, are
66 Geoffrey Hartman
allusions whose status is as hard to gauge as those to Hamlet in the “spot of

time” referring to the father’s death. The converging highways, moreover, in
that spot of time could lead the contemporary reader (perhaps via Freud) to
Oedipus, so that a question arises on the relation of revisionary to
hermeneutic perspectives, making the intertextual map more tricky still. Yet
Wordsworth’s vision, natural rather than textual in its apparent motivation,
can still be called revisionary because a prior and seminal text may be
hypothetically reconstituted.
The act of reconstitution, however, now includes the reader in a specific
and definable way. The poet as reader is shown to have discovered from within
himself, and so recreated, a scripture text. The interpreter as reader has shown
the capacity of a “secular” text to yield a “sacred” intuition by a literary act of
understanding that cannot be divided into those categories. On the level of
interpretation, therefore, we move toward what Schleiermacher called
Verstehen, on the basis of which a hermeneutic is projected that seeks to
transcend the dichotomizing of religious and nonreligious modes of
understanding and of earlier (prophetic) and later (poetic-visionary) texts.
Returning a last time to Wordsworth: much remains to be said

concerning the “gravitation and the filial bond” that links earlier visionary
texts to his own. The reader, in any case, also moves in a certain gravitational
field; and I have kept myself from being pulled toward a Freudian
explanation of the nexus between the boy’s “anxiety of hope” and the guilty,
affective inscription on his mind of a natural scene. My only finding is that
should a God-word precede in Wordsworth, it is rarely foregrounded, but
tends to be part of the poem’s ground as an inarticulate, homeless or ghostly,
sound. It becomes, to use one of his own expressions, an “inland murmur.”
In the second act of Snowdon this sound comes out of the deep and is
suddenly the very subject, the “Imagination of the whole” (1805 Prelude
xiii.65). Though the text behind that sound cannot be specified, it is most
probably the word within the word, the Word that was in the Beginning
(John 1:1), and which uttered as from chaos, “Let there be light.” In Milton
the first words of the “Omnific Word” are “Silence, ye troubl’d Waves, and
thou Deep, peace” (Paradise Lost vii.216), a proto-fiat Wordsworth may have
absorbed into his vision of silence followed by his more radical vision of the
power in sound.
When the poet writes, “The sounding cataract haunted me like a
passion” (“Tintern Abbey”), there is again no sense of a proof text of any
kind. We recognize a congruity of theme between this waterfall and the “roar
of waters” heard on Snowdon, and perhaps associate both with Psalm 42:
“Deep calls unto deep at the thunder of thy cataracts.” Such allusions may
exist, but they are “tidings” born on the wave of natural experience. Yet a
prophetic text does enter once more in the way we have learned to
understand. The word “passion,” by being deprived of specific reference,
turns back on itself, as if it contained a muted or mutilated meaning. By a
path more devious than I can trace, the reader recovers for “passion” its
etymological sense of “passio”—and the word begins to embrace the pathos
of prophetic speech, or a suffering idiom that is strongly inarticulate or
musical, like the “earnest expectation of the creature ... subjected ... in hope”
of which Paul writes in Romans (8:19–20), like sheep, blasted tree, and the
boy who waits with them, and the barely speaking figures that inhabit the
poet’s imagination. The event, in Wordsworth, is the word of connection
itself, a word event (the poem) that would repair the bond between human
hopes and a mutely remonstrant nature, “subjected in hope.”
“Do you know the language of the old belief?” asks Robert Duncan.
“The wild boar too / turns a human face.” Today the hope in such a turning
includes the very possibility of using such language. A mighty scheme not of
truth but of troth—of trusting the old language, its pathos, its animism, its
fallacious figures—is what connects poet and prophet. When Wordsworth
apostrophizes nature at the end of the Intimations Ode, he still writes in the
old language, yet how precariously, as he turns toward what is turning away:
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills and Groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The locus classicus of Coleridgean poetics is found in Chapters 13 and

14 of the Biographia Literaria (1818), “On the Imagination, or Esemplastic
Power,” etc. Aids to Reflection (1824) and a mass of miscellaneous lectures and
readings contain many subtle and varying attempts to distinguish between
symbolical and allegorical, analogous and metaphorical language, and so
forth. Coleridge’s reflections on the subject of style and unity are much more
intricate than my general comment suggests; see, for one example, “On
Style,” reprinted in Coleridge’s Miscellaneous Criticism, ed. T. M. Raysor
(Cambridge, Mass., 1936), pages 214–17. Yet even there German-type
speculation is mixed with practical and preacherly admonition. The major
German influence in regard to art, revelation, and the question of unity (or
68 Geoffrey Hartman
“identity philosophy”) was, of course, Schelling. Martin Buber’s distinction

between apocalyptic and prophetic is made in “Prophecy, Apocalyptic, and
the Historical Hour,” in On the Bible (New York, 1968). For Abraham
Heschel on pathos, see The Prophets (New York, 1962). The intelligent
contemporary discussion on prophets as poets is in David Robertson’s
chapter of that title in The Old Testament and the Literary Critic (Philadelphia,
1977). Robertson acknowledges his debt to Gerhard von Rad’s Old Testament
Theology, volume 2. To the literary scholars mentioned in my essay, I should
add Paul de Man’s and Angus Fletcher’s work on the theory of allegory;
Walter Benjamin’s seminal reconsideration of baroque allegory in The Origin
of German Tragic Drama (originally published in 1928); and articles by
Robert W. Funk on the parable in the New Testament and in Kafka. Frank
Kermode is also working on the parable and has begun publishing on the
idea of canon formation. Elinor Shaffer’s Kubla Khan and the Fall of Jerusalem
(Cambridge, England, 1976) links up more specifically than Basil Willey
movements in Bible criticism and considerations of literary form. Her
chapter entitled “The Visionary Character” is especially valuable in
summarizing the movement of thought whereby poets, critics, and
theologians came to consider Holy Writ as composed of different poetic and
narrative genres, and faced the question of how to value nonapostolic
(generally “apocalyptic” rather than “prophetic”) visionariness. My
quotations from Jacques Lacan can be found in Ecrits: A Selection (New York,
1977), pages 68 and 86. The issue of secularization in literary history is
central to M. H. Abrams’ Natural Supernaturalism (1971) and has elicited, in
the Anglo-American domain, many partial theories from Matthew Arnold to
Daniel Bell. Stanley Cavell’s The Senses of Walden (1971) reveals a
Wordsworthian type of underwriting in Thoreau, and one so consistent in its
allusions to earlier epics and scriptures that Walden begins to emerge as a
sacred book.
NOTE
1. Ordinary language, like ordinary incident, does indeed become very condensed
and tricky here. “Thither I repaired,” writes Wordsworth of the crag (l. 296), and again,
toward the end, “to which I oft repaired” (l. 325), referring to the voluntary, sometimes
involuntary, return of memory to the haunting scene. This “repaired” means simply “to
go,” the “re-” functioning as an intensifying particle. But in the second use of the word,
the “re-” inclines the word toward its original sense of “return,” or more specifically,
“return to one’s native country,” repatriare. So that the first “repaired” may already contain
proleptically the sense of returning to the father’s house: climbing the crag is the first step
in a conscious yet unconscious desire to overgo time and repatriate oneself, return home,
to the father. The relation of “repair” to its etymological source is as tacit as unconscious
process; so it may simply be a sport of language that when Wordsworth introduces the
notion of “spots of time” a hundred or so lines before this, he also uses the word, though
in its other root meaning of “restore,” from reparare:
There are in our existence spots of time,

That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue, whence, depressed
By false opinion and contentious thought,
Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,
In trivial occupations, and the round
Of ordinary intercourse, our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired;
[1850 Prelude xii.208–15]
Though the young Wordsworth repairs to that which should nourish and repair (his
father’s house), he finds on the crag houseless or homeless phenomena, which hint at a
stationary and endless patience. Whether “repair” may also have echoed in Wordsworth’s
mind as the repairing of man and nature (ll. 298–302, which call hawthorn and sheep his
“companions,” as well as “kindred” [l. 324], suggest his integration into a nonhuman
family at the very point that the human one seems to fall away) must be left as moot as the
foregoing speculations. The latter may suggest, however, not only the overdetermination
of Wordsworth’s deceptively translucent diction, but the consistency of his wish to join
together what has been parted.
HAROLD BLOOM
Wrestling Sigmund:
Three Paradigms for Poetic Originality
I begin with a parable, rather than a paradigm, but then I scarcely can
distinguish between the two. The parable is Bacon’s, and I have brooded on
it before, as pan of a meditation upon the perpetual (shall we say obsessive?)
belatedness of strong poetry:
The children of time do take after the nature and malice of the
father. For as he devoureth his children, so one of them seeketh
to devour and suppress the other, while antiquity envieth there
should be new additions, and novelty cannot be content to add
but it must deface.
I doubt that I have been able to add much to that dark observation of
Bacon’s, but I want again to swerve from it towards my own purposes. I don’t
read the ghastly image of malicious time devouring us as irony or allegory,
but rather as sublime hyperbole, because of the terrible strength of the verb,
“devouring.” Time is an unreluctant Ugolino, and poems, as I read them,
primarily are deliberate lies against that devouring. Strong poems reluctantly
know, not Freud’s parodistic Primal History Scene (Totem and Taboo) but
what I have called the Scene of Instruction. Such a scene, itself both parable
and paradigm, I have shied away from developing, until now, probably
From The Breaking of the Vessels. © 1982 by The University of Chicago.
71
72 Harold Bloom
because of my own sense of trespass, my own guilt at having become a Jewish

Gnostic after and in spite of an Orthodox upbringing. But without
developing such a notion, I cannot go further, and so I must begin with it
here.
We all choose our own theorists for the Scene of Instruction, or rather,
as Coleridge would have said, we do not find their texts, but are found by
them. More often than not, these days, the theorists that advanced
sensibilities are found by are the German language fourfold of Marx,
Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger, but the inevitable precursor for
formulating a Scene of Instruction has to be Kierkegaard, allied to Marx and
Heidegger, involuntarily, by his antithetical relationship to Hegel. It may be
that any Scene of Instruction has to be, rather like Derrida’s Scene of
Writing, more an unwilling parody of Hegel’s quest than of Freud’s. But I am
content with a misprision of Kierkegaard, while being uneasily aware that his
“repetition” is a trope that owes more than he could bear to the Hegelian
trope of “mediation.”
To talk about paradigms, however parabolically, in the context of
poetry and criticism, is to engage the discourse of “repetition,” in
Kierkegaard’s rather than Freud’s sense of that term. I haven’t ever
encountered a useful discursive summary of Kierkegaard’s notion, and I
myself won’t try to provide one, because Kierkegaard’s idea of repetition is
more trope than concept, and tends to defeat discursiveness. His little book
Repetition is subtitled “An Essay in Experimental Psychology,” but
“experimental” there is the crucial and tricky term, and modifies
“psychology” into an odd blend of psychopoetics and theology. Repetition,
we are told first, “is recollected forwards” and is “the daily bread which
satisfies with benediction.” Later, the book’s narrator assures us that
“repetition is always a transcendence,” and indeed is “too transcendent” for
the narrator to grasp. The same narrator, Constantine Constantius, wrote a
long open letter against a Hegelian misunderstanding of his work, which
insisted that true or anxious freedom willed repetition: “it is the task of
freedom to see constantly a new side of repetition.” Each new side is a
“breaking forth,” a “transition” or “becoming,” and therefore a concept of
happening, and not of being. If repetition, in this sense, is always a transition
or a crossing, then the power of repetition lies in what its great American
theorist, Emerson, called the shooting of a gap or the darting to an aim.
Kierkegaard, unlike Emerson, was a Christian, and so his repetition cannot
be only a series of transitions; eternity becomes true repetition.
But if we are more interested in poetry than in eternity, we can accept
a limited or transitional repetition. We can say, still following the aesthetic
Wrestling Sigmund: Three Paradigms for Poetic Originality 73
stage in Kierkegaard, that Wallace Stevens is the repetition of Walt

Whitman, or that John Ashbery is the repetition of Stevens. In this sense,
repetition means the re-creation or revision of a paradigm, but of what
paradigm? When a strong poet revises a precursor, he re-enacts a scene that
is at once a catastrophe, a romance, and a transference. All three paradigms
technically are tainted, though favorably from the perspective of poetry. The
catastrophe is also a creation; the romance is incestuous; the transference
violates taboo and its ambivalences. Are these three categories or one? What
kind of a relational or dialectical event is at once creatively catastrophic,
incestuously romantic, and ambivalently a metaphor for a trespass that
works?
For an instance, I go back to the example of Wallace Stevens, still the
poet of our moment. When I was a youngster, the academy view of Stevens
was that of a kind of hothouse exquisite, vaguely perfumed, Ronald Firbank
grown fat, and transmogrified into a Pennsylvania Dutchman practising
insurance in Hartford, Connecticut. Now, in 1981, this vision has its own
archaic charm, but thirty years ago it filled me with a young enthusiast’s fury.
I remember still the incredulous indulgence displayed by one of the masters
of Yale New Criticism, now heartbreakingly mourned by me, when I read an
essay in his graduate seminar suggesting that the seer of Hartford was the
true ephebe of Walt Whitman, one of the roughs, an American. Stevens
himself, a few miles up the road then, would have denied his own poetic
father, but that after all is the most ancient of stories. I cite here again a small
poem by the sane and sacred Walt that even Stevens confesses he had
pondered deeply. The poem is called “A Clear Midnight”:
This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou
lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.
The Whitmanian Soul, I take it, is the Coleridgean moon, the Arab of
Notes toward a Supreme Fiction. Perhaps the ocean would have been redundant
had it been lined up with night, sleep, and death, instead of “the stars,” since
moon and the tides are so intimately allied in the most pervasive of feminine
tropes. We don’t need the ocean anyway, since the moon as mother of the
months is always the mother proper, Whitman’s and our “fierce old mother,”
moaning for us to return whence we came. The mother’s face is the purpose
of the poem, as Keats told us implicitly, and Stevens in so many words. But
74 Harold Bloom
the purpose of the poem, for the poet qua person, is Kenneth Burke’s
purpose, and not my own. The poet qua poet is my obsessive concern, and
the Scene of Instruction creates the poet as or in a poet.
The Scene of Instruction in Stevens is a very belated phenomenon, and
even Whitman’s origins, despite all his mystifications, are shadowed by too
large an American foreground. A better test for my paradigms is provided by
the indubitable beginning of a canonical tradition. The major ancient
possibilities are the Yahwist, the strongest writer in the Bible, and Homer.
Beside them we can place Freud, whose agon with the whole of anteriority is
the largest and most intense of our century. Because Freud has far more in
common with the Yahwist than with Homer, I will confine myself here to the
two Jewish writers, ancient and modern.
I want to interpret two difficult and haunting texts, each remarkable
in several ways, but particularly as a startling manifestation of originality.
One goes back to perhaps the tenth century before the Common Era; the
other is nearly three thousand years later, and comes in our own time. The
first is the story of Wrestling Jacob, and tells how Jacob achieved the name
Israel, in Gen. 32:23–32, the author being that anonymous great writer,
fully the equal of Homer, whom scholars have agreed to call by the rather
Kafkan name of the letter J, or the Yahwist. The second I would call, with
loving respect, the story of Wrestling Sigmund, and tells how Freud
achieved a theory of the origins of the human sexual drive. As author we
necessarily have the only possible modern rival of the Yahwist, Freud
himself, the text being mostly the second of the Three Essays on the Theory
of Sexuality.
Here is the text of Jacob’s encounter with a daemonic being, as
rendered literally by E. A. Speiser in the Anchor Bible:
In the course of that night he got up and, taking his two wives,
the two maidservants, and his eleven children, he crossed the ford
of the Jabbok. After he had taken them across the stream, he sent
over all his possessions. Jacob was left alone. Then some man
wrestled with him until the break of dawn. When he saw that he
could not prevail over Jacob, he struck his hip at its socket, so that
the hip socket was wrenched as they wrestled. Then he said, “Let
me go, for it is daybreak.” Jacob replied, “I will not let you go
unless you bless me.” Said the other, “What is your name?” He
answered, “Jacob.” Said he, “You shall no longer be spoken of as
Jacob, but as Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and
human, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked, “Please tell me
your name.” He replied, “You must not ask my name.” With that,
he bade him good-by there and then.
Jacob named the site Peniel, meaning, “I have seen God face
to face, yet my life has been preserved.” The sun rose upon him
just as he passed Penuel, limping on his hip.
I shall enhance my reputation for lunatic juxtapositions by citing next

to this Sublime passage a cento of grotesque passages from Freud, the first
two being from the second Essay, “Infantile Sexuality,” and the third from
Essay III, but summarizing the argument of the second Essay:
It was the child’s first and most vital activity, his sucking at his
mother’s breast, or at substitutes for it, that must have
familiarized him with this pleasure. The child’s lips, in our view,
behave like an erotogenic zone, and no doubt stimulation by the
warm flow of milk is the cause of the pleasurable sensation. The
satisfaction of the erotogenic zone is associated, in the first
instance, with the satisfaction of the need for nourishment. To
begin with, sexual activity props itself upon functions serving the
purpose of self-preservation and does not become independent of
them until later. No one who has seen a baby sinking back
satiated from the breast and falling asleep with flushed cheeks and
a blissful smile can escape the reflection that this picture persists
as a prototype of the expression of sexual satisfaction in later life.
The need for repeating the sexual satisfaction now becomes
detached from the need for taking nourishment.
Our study of thumb-sucking or sensual sucking has already given

us the three essential characteristics of an infantile sexual
manifestation. At its origin it props itself upon one of the vital
somatic functions; it has as yet no sexual object, and is thus auto-
erotic; and its sexual aim is dominated by an erotogenic zone.
At a time at which the first beginnings of sexual satisfaction are

still linked with the taking of nourishment, the sexual instinct has
a sexual object outside the infant’s own body in the shape of his
mother’s breast. It is only later that he loses it, just at the time,
perhaps, when he is able to form a total idea of the person to
whom the organ that is giving him satisfaction belongs. As a rule
the sexual drive then becomes auto-erotic, and not until the
76 Harold Bloom
period of latency has been passed through is the original relation

restored. There are thus good reasons why a child sucking at his
mother’s breast has become the prototype of every relation of
love. The finding of an object is in fact a re-finding of it.
Wrestling with a divine being or angel is rather a contrast to sucking at

one’s mother’s breast, and achieving the name Israel is pretty well unrelated
to the inauguration of the sexual drive. All that the Yahwist’s and Freud’s
breakthroughs have in common is that they are breakthroughs, difficult to
assimilate because these curious stories are each so original. But before I
explore that common difficulty, I need to give a commentary upon each of
these passages. What is the nature of Jacob’s agon, and what does it mean to
see Freud’s own agon as being central to his theory of sexual origins?
To consider the Yahwist as being something other than a religious
writer would be as eccentric as to consider Freud a religious writer despite
himself. But who sets the circumferences? All the academies, from the
Academy of Ezra through the Academies of Alexandria on down to our own
institutions, have in common their necessity for consensus. The Yahwist may
have written to persuade, but he remains hugely idiosyncratic when
compared either to the Elohist, who probably came a century after him, or
to the much later Priestly Author, who may have belonged to the age of Ezra
and the Return from Babylon, some six centuries after the Yahwist. E and P
are far more normative than J, and far less original, in every meaning of
“original.” But I want to specify a particular aspect of J’s originality, and it is
one that I have never seen discussed as such. We are familiar, since the work
of Nietzsche and of Burckhardt, with the ancient Greek concept of the
agonistic, but we scarcely recognize an ancient Hebrew notion of agon,
which is crucial throughout J’s writing. J is an unheimlich writer, and perhaps
the greatest master of the literary Sublime in what has become Western
tradition. But J is also the most remarkable instance of what Blake meant,
when in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell he characterized the history of all
religions as choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. J’s poetic tales of
Yahweh and the Patriarchs are now so much the staple of Judaism and
Christianity, and have been such for so long, that we simply cannot read
them. Yet they were and are so original that there is quite another sense in
which they never have been read, and perhaps cannot be read. If we allowed
them their strangeness, then their uncanniness would reveal that tradition
never has been able to assimilate their originality.
Yahweh appears to Abraham by the terebinths of Mamre; Abraham sits
at the entrance of his tent as the day grows hot. He looks up, sees three men,
one of them Yahweh, whom he recognizes, and invites them for an

immediate meal. Yahweh and his angels devour rolls, curd, milk, and roast
calf, while Abraham stands nearby. Yahweh then prophesies that Sarah, well
past a woman’s periods, will have a son. Sarah, listening behind Yahweh’s
back, at the tent entrance, laughs to herself. Yahweh, offended, asks
rhetorically if anything is too much for him. Poor, frightened Sarah says she
didn’t laugh, but Yahweh answers: “Yes, you did.”
What can we do with a Yahweh who sits on the ground, devours calf,
is offended by an old woman’s sensible derision, and then walks on to Sodom
after being argued down by Abraham to a promise that he will spare that
wicked city if he finds just ten righteous among the inhabitants? The silliest
thing we can do is to say that J has an anthropomorphic concept of god. J
doesn’t have a concept of Yahweh; indeed we scarcely can say that J even has
a conceptual image of Yahweh. J is nothing of a theologian, and everything
of a storyteller, and his strong interest is personality, particularly the
personality of Jacob. J’s interest in Yahweh is intense, but rather less than J’s
concern for Jacob, because Jacob is cannier and more agonistic even than
Yahweh. Yahweh just about is the uncanny for J; what counts about Yahweh
is that he is the source of the Blessing, and the Blessing is the aim of the agon,
in total distinction from the Greek notion of agon.
The contest among the Greeks was for the foremost place, whether in
chariot racing, poetry, or civic eminence. The subtle and superb Jacob knows
only one foremost place, the inheritance of Abraham and of Isaac, so that
tradition will be compelled to speak of the God of Abraham, the God of
Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of Judah. The Blessing means that the
nation shall be known as Israel, the name that Jacob wins as agonist, and that
the people shall be known as Jews after Judah, rather than say as Reubens, if
that first-born had been chosen. Such a blessing achieves a pure temporality,
and so the agon for it is wholly temporal in nature, whereas the Greek agon
is essentially spatial, a struggle for the foremost place, and so for place, and
not a mastery over time. That, I take it, is why temporality is at the center of
the nightlong wrestling between Jacob and some nameless one among the
Elohim, and I am now ready to describe that most significant of J’s visions of
agon.
I quote again Speiser’s literal version of J’s text:
In the course of that night he got up and, taking his two wives,
the two maidservants, and his eleven children, he crossed the ford
of the Jabbok. After he had taken them across the stream, he sent
over all his possessions. Jacob was left alone. Then some man
78 Harold Bloom
wrestled with him until the break of dawn. When he saw that he
could not prevail over Jacob, he struck his hip at its socket, so that
the hip socket was wrenched as they wrestled. Then he said, “Let
me go, for it is daybreak.” Jacob replied, “I will not let you go
unless you bless me.” Said the other, “What is your name?” He
answered, “Jacob.” Said he, “You shall no longer be spoken of as
Jacob, but as Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and
human, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked, “Please tell me
your name.” He replied, “You must not ask my name.” With that,
he bade him good-by there and then.
Jacob named the site Peniel, meaning, “I have seen God face
to face, yet my life has been preserved.” The sun rose upon him
just as he passed Penuel, limping on his hip.
So great is the uncanniness of this that we ought to approach J with a

series of questions, rather than rely upon any traditional or even modern
scholarly commentary whatsoever. Jacob has left Laban, and is journeying
home, uneasily expecting a confrontation with his defrauded brother Esau.
On the night before this dreaded reunion, Jacob supervises the crossing, into
the land of the Blessing, of his household and goods. But then evidently he
crosses back over the Jabbok so as to remain alone at Penuel in Transjordan.
Why? J does not tell us, and instead suddenly confronts Jacob and the reader
with “some man” who wrestles with Jacob until the break of dawn. About this
encounter, there is nothing that is other than totally surprising. J’s Jacob has
been an agonist literally from his days in Rebecca’s womb, but his last
physical contest took place in that womb, when he struggled vainly with his
twin Esau as to which should emerge first, Esau winning, but dragging out
his tenacious brother, whose hand held on to his heel. Popular etymology
interpreted the name Jacob as meaning “heel.” Craft and wiliness have been
Jacob’s salient characteristics, rather than the physical strength evidently
displayed in this nocturnal encounter. Yet that strength is tropological, and
substitutes for the spiritual quality of persistence or endurance that marks
Jacob or Israel.
Who is that “man,” later called one of the Elohim, who wrestles with
Jacob until dawn? And why should they wrestle anyway? Nothing in any
tradition supports my surmise that this daemonic being is the Angel of
Death, yet such I take him to be. What Jacob rightly fears is that he will be
slain by the vengeful Esau on the very next day. Something after all is
curiously negative and even fearful about Jacob’s opponent. Rabbinical
tradition explains this strange being’s fear of the dawn as being an angel’s
pious fear lest he be late on Yahweh’s business, but here as so often the Rabbis
were weak misreaders of J. Everything about the text shows that the divine
beings dread of daybreak is comparable to Count Dracula’s, and only the
Angel of Death is a likely candidate among the Elohim for needing to move
on before sunrise. This wrestling match is not a ballet, but is deadly serious
for both contestants. The angel lames Jacob permanently, yet even this
cannot subdue the patriarch. Only the blessing, the new naming Israel, which
literally means “May God persevere,” causes Jacob to let go even as daylight
comes. Having prevailed against Esau, Laban and even perhaps against the
messenger of death, Jacob deserves the agonistic blessing. In his own
renaming of the site as Peniel, or the divine face, Jacob gives a particular
meaning to his triumphal declaration that: “I have seen one of the Elohim
face to face, and yet my life has been preserved.” Seeing Yahweh face to face
was no threat to Abraham’s life, in J’s view, but it is not Yahweh whom Jacob
has wrestled to at least a standstill. I think there is no better signature of J’s
sublimity than the great sentence that ends the episode, with its powerful
implicit contrast between Israel and the fled angel. Here is Jacob’s true
epiphany: “The sun rose upon him just as he passed Penuel, limping on his
hip.”
If there is an aesthetic originality in our Western tradition beyond
interpretive assimilation, then it inheres in J’s texts. We do not know
Homer’s precursors any more than we know J’s, yet somehow we can see
Homer as a revisionist, whereas J seems more unique. Is this only because
Homer has been misread even more strongly than J has? The prophet Hosea
is our first certain interpreter of wrestling Jacob, and Hosea was a strong
poet, by any standards, yet his text is not adequate to the encounter he
describes. But Hosea’s Yahweh was a rather more remote entity than J’s, and
Hosea did not invest himself as personally in Jacob as J seems to have done.
What interpretive paradigm can help us read Jacob’s contest strongly enough
to be worthy of the uncanniness of J, an author who might be said impossibly
to combine the antithetical strengths of a Tolstoy and a Kafka?
I recur to the distinction between the Hebrew temporal Sublime agon
and the Greek spatial striving for the foremost place. Nietzsche, in his notes
for the unwritten “untimely meditation” he would have called We Philologists,
caught better even than Burckhardt the darker aspects of the Greek agonistic
spirit:
The agonistic element is also the danger in every development; it

overstimulates the creative impulse....
The greatest fact remains always the precociously panhellenic
80 Harold Bloom
HOMER. All good things derive from him; yet at the same time
he remained the mightiest obstacle of all. He made everyone else
superficial, and that is why the really serious spirits struggled
against him. But to no avail. Homer always won.
The destructive element in great spiritual forces is also visible
here. But what a difference between Homer and the Bible as such
a force!
The delight in drunkenness, delight in cunning, in revenge, in
envy, in slander, in obscenity—in everything which was
recognized by the Greeks as human and therefore built into the
structure of society and custom. The wisdom of their institutions
lies in the lack of any gulf between good and evil, black and white.
Nature, as it reveals itself, is not denied but only ordered, limited
to specified days and religious cults. This is the root of all
spiritual freedom in the ancient world; the ancients sought a
moderate release of natural forces, not their destruction and
denial.
[translated by William Arrowsmith]
Whatever Nietzsche means by “the Bible” in that contrast to Homer,

he is not talking accurately about J, the Bible’s strongest writer. Not that J,
with his obsessive, more-than-Miltonic sense of temporality, essentially
agrees with Homer upon what constitutes spiritual freedom; no, perhaps J is
further from Homer in that regard than even Nietzsche states. J does not
discourse in good and evil, but in blessedness and unblessedness. J’s subject,
like Homer’s, is strife, including the strife of gods and men. And
drunkenness, delight in cunning, in revenge, in envy, in slander, in obscenity
are at least as much involved in the expression of J’s exuberance as they are
of Homer’s. But J’s temporal nature is not Homer’s spatial realm, and so the
agonistic spirit manifests itself very differently in the linguistic universes of
these two masters. In Homer, the gods transcend nature spatially, but
Yahweh’s transcendence is temporal. The overcoming of nature by means of
the Blessing must be temporal also. Jacob’s temporal victory over one of the
Elohim is a curious kind of creative act which is one and the same as Jacob’s
cunning victories over Esau and Laban. In Greek terms this makes no sense,
but in ancient Hebrew thinking this corresponds to that vision in which
Yahweh’s creation of the world, his rescue of the Israelites at the Red Sea, and
the return of his people from Babylon are all one creative act on his part.
Thorleif Boman defines the Hebrew word for eternity, olam, as meaning
neither otherworldliness nor chronological infinity but rather time without
boundaries. Something like that is the prize for which agonists strive in J.
When Jacob becomes Israel, the implication is that his descendants also will
prevail in a time without boundaries.
That Jacob is, throughout his life, an agonist, seems beyond dispute,
and certainly was the basis for Thomas Mann’s strong reading of J’s text in
the beautiful Tales of Jacob volume which is the glory of Mann’s Joseph
tetralogy. Yet distinguishing Hebrew from Greek agon is not much beyond
a starting point in the interpretation of the recalcitrant originality of J’s text.
Whoever it is among the Elohim, the angel fears a catastrophe, and vainly
inflicts a crippling wound upon Jacob, averting one catastrophe at the price
of another. And yet, as agonists, the angel and Jacob create a blessing, the
name of Israel, a name that celebrates the agonistic virtue of persistence, a
persistence into unbounded temporality. That creation by catastrophe is one
clear mark of this encounter. Another is the carrying across from Jacob’s
struggles in earlier life, veritably in the womb, his drive to have priority,
where the carrying across is as significant as the drive. If the drive for priority
is a version of what Freud has taught us to call family romance, then the
conveyance of early zeal and affect into a later context is what Freud has
taught us to call transference.
Catastrophe creation, family romance, and transference are a triad
equally central to J and to Freud, and in some sense Freud’s quest was to
replace J and the other biblical writers as the legitimate exemplar of these
paradigms. Ambivalence is the common element in the three paradigms, if
we define ambivalence strictly as a contradictory stance mixing love and hate
towards a particular object. Before returning to Wrestling Jacob, I want to
cite the most shocking instance of Jahweh’s ambivalence in the Hebrew
Bible, an ambivalence manifested towards his particular favorite, Moses. The
text is Exod. 4:24–26, translated literally:
Yahweh encountered Moses when Moses camped at night on his

way [to Egypt] and Yahweh sought to kill Moses. So Zipporah
[Moses’ wife] cut off her son’s foreskin with a flint and touched
Moses on his legs with it, saying: “Truly you are a bridegroom of
blood to me.” And when Yahweh let Moses alone, she added, “A
bridegroom of blood due to the circumcision.”
Confronted by this passage, normative interpretation has been very

unhappy indeed, since in it the uncanny of originality has gone beyond all
limits. Indeed only Gnostics, ancient and modern, could be happy with this
text, in which the agonistic seems truly to have crossed over into a really
82 Harold Bloom
shocking divine murderousness. Whoever it was among the Elohim, even if

the Angel of Death, Jacob undauntedly confronted an agonist. Yet Zipporah
is even more courageous in her rescue of Moses. Perhaps the Hebraic
concept of agon is more extensive even than I have indicated. Consider,
though only briefly, the opening of Psalm 19, which I cite in the
extraordinary King James version:
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament

showeth his handiwork.
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth
knowledge.
There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not
heard.
Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to
the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,
Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and
rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.
His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit
unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat
thereof.
That marvelous fifth verse reverberates in Spenser, Shakespeare,

Milton, and Wordsworth, and is the most curiously Pindaric moment in the
Bible, with the Hebrew agonistic vision coinciding just this once with the
Greek. But against whom is this rejoicing bridegroom of a sun contending?
Not with God but with man, must be the answer. The Psalmist is far more
normative than the Yahwist. Who could conceive of a Psalm in the uncanny
mode of the Yahwist? One way of arriving at a reading of Wrestling Jacob’s
night encounter is to contrast it with the characteristic stances and attitudes
of the poets of Psalms confronting their Maker. Voices in the Psalms do not
demand blessings; they implore. The sun emerges from his chamber like a
bridegroom, and rejoicing at his own skill as an agonist, but the sun reflects
the glory of God. It is not God’s glory but Israel’s, meaning Jacob lust
transformed into Israel, which is celebrated so sublimely by the Yahwist:
The sun rose upon him just as he passed Penuel, limping on his hip.
What allies Freud to the Yahwist is this agonistic Sublime, as

manifested in the power of the uncanny, in what cannot be rendered
normative. We might think of the school of Ego Psychology, of Heinz
Hartmann, Lowenstein, Kris, and Erikson, as being Psalmists in relation to

Freud-as-Yahwist, an analogy that could be continued by describing Lacan
and his school as Gnostics. Scenes of Instruction like the agon of Jacob or
Yahweh’s night attack upon Moses are akin to Freud’s fantasies of
catastrophe, because the outrage to normative sensibilities is beyond
assimilation. Even our difficulties in recovering the uncanny originality of J
are matched by our difficulties in acknowledging how peculiar and extreme
a writer Freud sometimes compels himself to be, for reasons nearly as
unknowable as the Yahwist’s motives.
Wittgenstein, who resented Freud, and who dismissed Freud as a
mythologist, however powerful, probably was too annoyed with Freud to
read him closely. This may explain Wittgenstein’s curious mistake in
believing that Freud had not distinguished between the Primal Scene and the
somewhat later Primal Scene fantasy. Freud’s “Primal Scene” takes place in
the beginning, when an infant sees his parents in the act of love, without in
any way understanding that sight. Memory, according to Freud, holds on to
the image of copulation until the child, between the ages of three and five,
creates the Primal Scene fantasy, which is an Oedipal reverie. One of my
former students, Cathy Caruth, caught me in making this same error, so that
in my literary transformation of Freud into the Primal Scene of Instruction,
I referred to such a Primal Scene as being at once oral and written. I would
clarify this now by saying that the “oral” scene is the topos or Primal Scene
proper, the negative moment of being influenced, a perpetually lost origin,
while the “written” scene is the trope or Primal Scene fantasy. This means,
in my terms, that in a poem a topos or rhetorical commonplace is where
something can be known, but a trope or inventive turning is when something
is desired or willed. Poems, as I have written often, are verbal utterances that
cannot be regarded as being simply linguistic entities, because they manifest
their will to utter within traditions of uttering, and as soon as you will that
“within,” your mode is discursive and topological as well as linguistic and
tropological. As a Primal Scene, the Scene of Instruction is a Scene of
Voicing; only when fantasized. or troped does it become a Scene of Writing.
That Scene of Voicing founds itself upon the three models of family
romance, transference, and catastrophe creation, and here I assert no novelty
in my own formulation, since Dryden for one deals with the family romance
of poets in his Preface to Fables, Ancient and Modern, with poetic transference
in stating his preference for Juvenal over Horace in his Discourse Concerning
... Satire, and even with a kind of catastrophe creation in his Parallel Betwixt
Poetry and Painting. Dryden’s mastery of dialectical contrasts between related
poets seems to me now as good a guide for an antithetical practical criticism
84 Harold Bloom
as I can find. Dryden is dialectical both in the open sense that Martin Price
expounds, an empirical testing by trial and error, and also in the antithetical
sense in which his description of one poet always points back to the
contrasting poet from whom the critic is turning away.
What Dryden and the English tradition cannot provide is a third sense
of critical dialectic, which in Freudian or Hegelian terms is the problematic
notion of the overdetermination of language, and the consequent
underdetermination of meaning. Hegelian terms do not much interest me,
even in their Heideggerian and deconstructive revisions, since they seem to
me just too far away from the pragmatic workings of poetry. Catastrophe
creation, whether in its explicit Gnostic and Kabbalistic versions, or its
implicit saga in the later Freud; contributes a model for distinguishing
between the meaning of things in non-verbal acts, and the meaning of words
in the linguistic and discursive acts of poetry. By uttering truths of desire
within traditions of uttering, the poetic will also gives itself a series of
overdetermined names. Gnosis and Kabbalah are attempts to explain how
the overdetermination of Divine names has brought about an
underdetermination of Divine meanings, a bringing about that is at once
catastrophe and creation, a movement from fullness to emptiness.
Freud is not only the powerful mythologist Wittgenstein deplored, but
also the inescapable mythologist of our age. His claims to science should be
shrugged aside forever; that is merely his mask. Freudian literary, criticism I
remember comparing to the Holy Roman Empire: not holy, or Roman, or an
empire; not Freudian, or literary, or criticism. Any critic, theoretical or
practical, who tries to use Freud ends up being used by Freud. But Freud has
usurped the role of the mind of our age, so that more than forty years after
his death we have no common vocabulary for discussing the works of the
spirit except what he gave us. Philosophers, hard or soft, speak only to other
philosophers; theologians mutter only to theologians; our literary culture
speaks to us in the language of Freud, even when the writer, like Nabokov or
Borges, is violently anti-Freudian. Karl Kraus, being Freud’s contemporary,
said that psychoanalysis itself was the disease of which it purported to be the
cure. We come after, and we must say that psychoanalysis itself is the culture
of which it purports to be the description. If psychoanalysis and our literary
culture no longer can be distinguished, then criticism is Freudian whether it
wants to be or not. It relies upon Freudian models even while it pretends to
be in thrall to Plato, Aristotle, Coleridge, or Hegel, and all that I urge is that
it achieve a clearer sense of its bondage.
Freudian usurpation as a literary pattern, is uniquely valuable to critics
because it is the modem instance of poetic strength, of the agonistic clearing
away of cultural rivals, until the Freudian tropes have assumed the status of
priority, while nearly all precedent tropes seem quite belated in comparison.
When we think of earliness we now think in terms of primal repression, of
the unconscious, of primary process, and of the drives or instincts, and all
these are Freud’s figurative language in his literary project of representing
the civil wars of the psyche. The unconscious turns out alas not to be
structured like a language, but to be structured like Freud’s language, and the
ego and superego, in their conscious aspects, are structured like Freud’s own
texts, for the very good reason that they are Freud’s texts. We have become
Freud’s texts, and the Imitatio Freudi is the necessary pattern for the spiritual
life in our time.
Ferenczi, a great martyr of that Imitatio, urged us in his apocalyptic
Thalassa
to drop once and for all the question of the beginning and end of
life, and conceive the whole inorganic and organic world as a
perpetual oscillating between the will to live and the will to die in
which an absolute hegemony on the part of either life or death is
never attained ... it seems as though life had always to end
catastrophically, even as it began, in birth, with a catastrophe.
Ferenczi is following yet also going beyond Freud’s apocalyptic Beyond

the Pleasure Principle, where the Nirvana Principle or Death Drive is
described as an “urge inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things
which the living entity has been obliged to abandon under the pressure of
external disturbing forces.” Such an urge, Freud insists, takes priority over
the Pleasure Principle, and so “the aim of all life is death.” Three years later,
in The Ego and the Id, Freud speculated upon the two aboriginal catastrophes
dimly repeated in every human development under the ill-starred dominance
of the death-drive. Our curious pattern of sexual development, particularly
the supposed latency period between the ages of five and twelve, is related to
those great cataclysms when all the cosmos became ice and again when the
oceans went dry and life scrambled up upon the shore. These are Freud’s
scientistic versions of the Gnostic escapades of the Demiurge, or the great
trope of the Breaking of the Vessels in the Lurianic Kabbalah.
But why should Freud have been haunted by images of catastrophe,
however creative? It is not, I think, hyperbolic to observe that, for the later
Freud, human existence is quite as catastrophic a condition as it was for
Pascal and for Kierkegaard, for Dostoevsky and for Schopenhauer. There is
a crack in everything that God has made, is one of Emerson’s dangerously
86 Harold Bloom
cheerful apothegms. In Freud, the fissure in us between primary process and

secondary process insures that each of us is her or his own worst enemy,
exposed endlessly to the remorseless attacks of the superego, whose relation
to the hapless ego is shockingly like the Gnostic vision of the relation of
Yahweh to human beings.
The horror of the family romance, as Freud expounds it, is one version
of this human fissure, since the child attempts to trope one of the stances of
freedom, yet makes the parents into the numinous shadows that Nietzsche
called ancestor gods. As a revision of the Primal Scene, the family romance’s
falsification shows us that Oedipal fantasies are only ironies, or beginning
moments merely, for truly strong poets and poems. This limitation makes
the family romance a model neither catastrophic nor creative enough, and
gives us the necessity for advancing to another model, the psychoanalytic
transference, whose workings are closer to the dialectical crises of poetic
texts.
The Freudian transference, as I have attempted to demonstrate
elsewhere, depends for its pattern upon the sublimely crazy myth that Freud
sets forth in Totem and Taboo. Briefly and crudely, the totem is the
psychoanalyst and the taboo is the transference. All the ambivalences of the
Oedipal situation are transferred from the individual’s past to the analytical
encounter; and the agon thus threatens to act out again the erotic defeat and
tragedy of every psyche whatsoever. Against this threat, Freud sought to
muster the strength of what he called “working through” but his beautiful
late essay, “Analysis Terminable and Interminable,” confesses that the benign
powers of the totemic analyst tend to be confounded by the malign intensity
of each patient’s fantasy-making power. Working-through is replaced by
repetition, and so by the death drive, which deeply contaminates all
repressive defenses. This mutual contamination of drive and defense is the
dearest link between Freud’s visionary cosmos and the arena of Post-
Enlightenment poetry. Contamination is not a trope but the necessary
condition of all troping (or all defending); another word for contamination
here might be “blurring” or even “slipping.” There may be boundaries
between the ego and the id, but they blur always in the transference
situation, just as poet and precursor slip together in the Scene of Instruction
or influence relationship.
I am suggesting that neither my use of Freud’s images of Oedipal
ambivalence, nor those images themselves, are generally read strongly
enough. Identification in the Oedipal agon is not the introjection of the
paternal super ego but rather is a violent narcissistic metamorphosis. I rely
here upon a formulation by the psychoanalyst Joseph H. Smith:
The poet as poet is taken over by a power with which he has

chosen to wrestle. It is not essentially a matter of passivity. The
experience of a negative moment that coincides with the negative
moment of a precursor is to be understood as an achieved
catastrophe. It reaches beyond the ordinary understanding of
oedipal identification to those primal internalizations which are
and yet cannot be because no boundary is yet set across which
anything could be said to be internalized. They are, rather,
boundary-establishing phenomena which presuppose the
possibility of internalization proper. But who is to say that there
is not such a reestablishment of boundaries even in oedipal
identifications?
I would go further than Smith in suggesting that every ambivalent

identification with another self, writer or reader, parent or child, is an agon
that makes ghostlier the demarcations between self and other. That blurring
or slipping creates, in that it restores the abyss in the Gnostic sense, where
the abyss is the true, alien godhead that fell away into time when the
Demiurge sickened to a catastrophic false creation. The transference shakes
the foundations of the ego more authentically than the family romance does,
even though the transference is an artificial Eros and the family romance a
natural one. After all, the transference, like a poem, is a lie against time, a
resistance that must be overcome if we are to accept unhappy truth. Let us
call a transference a kind of parody of a Sublime poem, since the taboo
protects the totem analyst from the patient, yet no taboo can protect a
precursor poet from the fresh strength or daemonic counter-sublime of an
authentic new poet. To call a transference a parody of a poem is to suggest
that catastrophe creations and family romances are also parodies of poetic
texts. How can a parody be a model or paradigm for interpretation? We are
accustomed to thinking of poems as parodies of prior poems, or, even as
parodies of paradigms. Yet reversing the order gets us closer, I am convinced,
to the actualities of poetic interpretation.
Yeats wrote that “Plato thought nature but a spume that plays / Against
a ghostly paradigm of things.” Freud thought of nature very differently, yet
he had his own version of a transcendentalism, in what he called “reality
testing.” Yet his paradigms for object attachments play uncanny tricks upon
nature, or perhaps rely upon the uncanny tricks that nature seems to play
with human sexuality. I go back here to the passages I quoted from the Three
Essays on the Theory of Sexuality earlier in this chapter. The child sucking at
his mother’s breast becomes the paradigm for all sexual pleasure in later life,
88 Harold Bloom
and Freud asserts that to begin with, sexual activity props itself upon the vital
function of nourishment by the mother’s milk. Thumb-sucking and the
sensual smacking of the lips then give Freud the three characteristics of
infantile sexual manifestation. These are: (1) propping, at the origin, upon a
vital somatic function; (2) auto-eroticism, or the lack of a sexual object; (3)
domination of sexual aim by an erotogenic zone; here, the lips. It is at this
point in his discussion that Freud makes one of his uncanniest leaps, relying
upon his extraordinary trope of Anlebnung or propping (or anaclisis, as
Strachey oddly chose to translate it). While the propping of the sexual drive
upon the vital order still continues, the sexual drive finds its first object
outside the infant’s body in the mother’s breast, and in the milk ensuing from
it. Suddenly Freud surmises that just at the time the infant is capable of
forming a total idea of the mother, quite abruptly the infant loses the initial
object of the mother’s breast, and tragically is thrown back upon auto-
eroticism. Consequently, the sexual drive has no proper object again until
after the latency period has transpired, and adolescence begins. Hence that
dark and infinitely suggestive Freudian sentence: “The finding of an object
is in fact a re-finding of it.”
Thus human sexuality, alas, on this account has not had, from its very
origins, any real object. The only real object was milk, which belongs to the
vital order. Hence the sorrows and the authentic anguish of all human erotic
quest, hopelessly seeking to rediscover an object, which never was the true
object anyway. All human sexuality is thus tropological, whereas we all of us
desperately need and long for it to be literal. As for sexual excitation, it is
merely what Wrestling Sigmund terms a marginal effect (Nebenwirkung),
because it reflects always the propping process, which after all has a double
movement, of initial leaning, and then deviation or swerving. As Laplanche
says, expounding Freud: “Sexuality in its entirety is in the slight deviation,
the clinamen from the function.” Or as I would phrase it, our sexuality is in
its very origins a misprision, a strong misreading, on the infant’s part, of the
vital order. At the crossing (Laplanche calls it a “breaking or turning point’s
of the erotogenic zones, our sexuality is a continual crisis, which I would now
say is not so much mimicked or parodied by the High Romantic crisis poem,
but rather our sexuality itself is a mimicry or parody of the statelier action of
the will which is figured forth in the characteristic Post-Enlightenment
strong poem.
I call Freud, in, the context of these uncanny notions, “Wrestling
Sigmund,” because again he is a poet of Sublime agon, here an agon between
sexuality and the vital order. Our sexuality is like Jacob, and the vital order is
like that one among the Elohim with whom our wily and heroic ancestor
wrestled, until he had won the great name of Israel. Sexuality and Jacob
triumph, but at the terrible expense of a crippling. All our lives long we
search in vain, unknowingly, for the lost object, when even that object was a
clinamen away from the true aim. And yet we search incessantly, do
experience satisfactions, however marginal, and win our real if limited
triumph over the vital order. Like Jacob, we keep passing Penuel, limping on
our hips.
How can I conclude? Paradigms are not less necessary, but more so,
when the power and the originality of strong poets surpass all measure, as
Freud and the Yahwist go beyond all comparison. Sexuality, in Freud’s great
tropological vision, is at once a catastrophe creation, a transference, and a
family romance. The blessing, in the Yahwist’s even stronger vision, is yet
more a catastrophe creation, a transference, a family romance. Those
strategems of the spirit, those stances and attitudes, those positrons of
freedom; or ratios of revision and crossings, that I have invoked as aids to
reading strong poems of the Post-Enlightenment, are revealed as being not
wholly inadequate to the interpretation of the Yahwist and of Freud. So I
conclude with the assertion that strength demands strength. If we are to
break through normative or weak misreadings of the Yahwist and of Freud,
of Wordsworth and Whitman and Stevens, then we require strong
paradigms, and these I have called upon agonistic tradition to provide.
M A RT I N B U B E R
Job1
I n the actual reality of the catastrophe, “honest and wicked” (Job 9:22) are
destroyed together by God, and in the outer reality the wicked left alive
knew how to assert themselves successfully in spite of all the difficulties;
“they lived, became old, and even thrived mightily” (21:7), whereas for the
pious, endowed with weaker elbows and more sensitive hearts, their days
“were swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and were spent without hope” (7:6);
“the robbers’ tents are peaceful, and they that anger God have secure
abodes” (12:6), whereas the upright is “become a brother of jackals” (30:29).
This is the experience out of which the Book of Job was born, a book
opposed to the dogmatics of Ezekiel, a book of the question which then was
new and has persisted ever since.
I cannot ascribe this book—which clearly has only slowly grown to its
present form—in its basic kernel to a time later (or earlier) than the beginning
of the exile. Its formulations of the question bear the stamp of an intractable
directness—the stamp of a first expression. The world in which they were
spoken had certainly not yet heard the answers of Psalm 73 or Deutero-Isaiah.
The author finds before him dogmas in process of formation, he clothes them
in grand language, and sets over against them the force of the new question,
the question brought into being out of experience; in his time these growing
From On the Bible: Eighteen Studies. © 1968 Schocken Books.
91
92 Martin Buber
dogmas had not yet found their decisive opponents. The book, in spite of its
thorough rhetoric—the product of a long-drawn-out literary process—is one
of the special events in world literature, in which we witness the first clothing
of a human quest in form of speech.
It has rightly been said2 that behind the treatment of Job’s fate in this
discussion lie “very bitter experiences of a supra-individual kind.” When the
sufferer complains, “He breaks me around, and I am gone” (Job 19:10), this
seems no longer the complaint of a single person. When he cries, “God
delivers me to the wicked, and hurls me upon the hands of the evil-doers”
(16:11), we think less of the sufferings of an individual than of the exile of a
people. It is true it is a personal fate that is presented here, but the stimulus
to speaking out, the incentive to complaint and accusation, bursting the
bands of the presentation, are the fruit of supra-personal sufferings. Job’s
question comes into being as the question of a whole generation about the
sense of its historic fate. Behind this “I,” made so personal here, there still
stands the “I” of Israel.
The question of the generation, “Why do we suffer what we suffer?”
had from the beginning a religious character; “why?” here is not a
philosophical interrogative asking after the nature of things, but a religious
concern with the acting of God. With Job, however, it becomes still clearer;
he does not ask, “Why does God permit me to suffer these things?” but “Why
does God make me suffer these things?” That everything comes from God is
beyond doubt and question; the question is, How are these sufferings
compatible with His godhead?
In order to grasp the great inner dialectic of the poem, we must realize
that here not two, but four answers stand over against each other; in other
words, we find here four views of God’s relationship to man’s sufferings.
The first view is that of the Prologue to the book which, in the form in
which it has reached us, cannot have come from an ancient popular book
about Job, but bears the stamp of a poetic formation. The popular view of
God, however, stands here apparently unchanged.3 It is a God allowing a
creature, who wanders about the earth and is subject to Him in some
manner, the “Satan,” that is the “Hinderer” or “Adversary,” to “entice” Him
(2:3)—the verb is the same as is used in the story of David being enticed by
God or Satan to sin—to do all manner of evil to a God-fearing man, one who
is His “servant” (1:8; 2:3), of whose faithfulness God boasts. This creature
entices the deity to do all manner of evil to this man, only in order to find
out if he will break faith, as Satan argues, or keep it according to God’s word.
The poet shows us how he sees the matter, as he repeats in true biblical style
the phrase “gratuitously.” In order to make it clear whether Job serves him
Job 93
“gratuitously” (1:9), that is to say, not for the sake of receiving a reward, God
smites him and brings suffering upon him, as He Himself confesses (2:3),
“gratuitously,” that is to say, without sufficient cause. Here God’s acts are
questioned more critically than in any of Job’s accusations, because here we
are informed of the true motive, which is one not befitting to deity. On the
other hand man proves true as man. Again the point is driven home by the
frequent repetition of the verb barekh, which means both real blessing and
also blessing of dismissal, departure (1:5, 11; 2:5, 9)4: Job’s wife tells him,
reality itself tells him to “bless” God, to dismiss Him, but he bows down to
God and “blesses” Him, who has allowed Himself to be enticed against him
“gratuitously.” This is a peculiarly dramatic face-to-face meeting, this God
and this man. The dialogue poem that follows contradicts it totally: there the
man is another man, and God another God.
The second view of God is that of the friends. This is the dogmatic
view of the cause and effect in the divine system of requital: sufferings point
to sin. God’s punishment is manifest and clear to all. The primitive
conception of the zealous God is here robbed of its meaning: it was YHVH,
God of Israel, who was zealous for the covenant with His people. Ezekiel had
preserved the covenant faith, and only for the passage of time between
covenant and covenant did he announce the unconditional punishment for
those who refused to return in penitence; this has changed here, in an
atmosphere no longer basically historical,5 into the view of the friends, the
assertion of an all-embracing empirical connection between sin and
punishment. In addition to this, for Ezekiel, it is true, punishment followed
unrepented sin, but it never occurred to him to see in all men’s sufferings the
avenging hand of God; and it is just this that the friends now proceed to do:
Job’s sufferings testify to his guilt. The inner infinity of the suffering soul is
here changed into a formula, and a wrong formula. The first view was that
of a small mythological idol, the second is that of a great ideological idol. In
the first the faithful sufferer was true to an untrue God, who permitted his
guiltless children to be slain; whereas here man was not asked to be true to
an incalculable power, but to recognize and confess a calculation that his
knowledge of reality contradicts. There man’s faith is attacked by fate, here
by religion. The friends are silent seven days before the sufferer, after which
they expound to him the account book of sin and punishment. Instead of his
God, for whom he looks in vain, his God, who had not only put sufferings
upon him, but also had “hedged him in” until “His way was hid” from his
eyes (3:23), there now came and visited him on his ash heap religion, which
uses every art of speech to take away from him the God of his soul. Instead
of the “cruel” (30:21) and living God, to whom he clings, religion offers him
94 Martin Buber
a reasonable and rational God, a deity whom he, Job, does not perceive either
in his own existence or in the world, and who obviously is not to be found
anywhere save only in the very domain of religion. And his complaint
becomes a protest against a God who withdraws Himself, and at the same
time against His false representation.
The third view of God is that of Job in his complaint and protest. It is
the view of a God who contradicts His revelation by “hiding His face”
(13:24). He is at one and the same time fearfully noticeable and
unperceivable (9:11), and this hiddenness is particularly sensible in face of
the excessive presence of the “friends,” who are ostensibly God’s advocates.
All their attempts to cement the rent in Job’s world show him that this is the
rent in the heart of the world. Clearly the thought of both Job and the friends
proceeds from the question about justice. But unlike his friends, Job knows
of justice only as a human activity, willed by God, but opposed by His acts.
The truth of being just and the reality caused by the unjust acts of God are
irreconcilable. Job cannot forego either his own truth or God. God torments
him “gratuitously” (9:17; it is not without purpose that here the word recurs,
which in the Prologue Satan uses and God repeats); He “deals crookedly”
with him (19:6). All man’s supplications will avail nothing: “there is no
justice” (19:7). Job does not regard himself as free from sin (7:20; 14:16f.), in
contradistinction to God’s words about him in the Prologue (1:8; 2:3). But
his sin and his sufferings are incommensurable. And the men, who call
themselves his friends, suppose that on the basis of their dogma of requital
they are able to unmask his life and show it to be a lie. By allowing religion
to occupy the place of the living God, He strips off Job’s honor (19:9). Job
had believed God to be just and man’s duty to be to walk in His ways. But it
is no longer possible for one who has been smitten with such sufferings to
think God just. “It is one thing, therefore I spake: honest and wicked He
exterminates” (9:22). And if it is so, it is not proper to walk in His ways. In
spite of this, Job’s faith in justice is not broken down. But he is no longer able
to have a single faith in God and in justice. His faith in justice is no longer
covered by God’s righteousness. He believes now in justice in spite of
believing in God, and he believes in God in spite of believing in justice. But
he cannot forego his claim that they will again be united somewhere,
sometime, although he has no idea in his mind how this will be achieved.
This is in fact meant by his claim of his rights, the claim of the solution. This
solution must come, for from the time when he knew God Job knows that
God is not a Satan grown into omnipotence. Now, however, Job is handed
over to the pretended justice, the account justice of the friends, which affects
not only his honor, but also his faith in justice. For Job, justice is not a
Job 95
scheme of compensation. Its content is simply this, that one must not cause
suffering gratuitously. Job feels himself isolated by this feeling, far removed
from God and men. It is true, Job does not forget that God seeks just such
justice as this from man. But he cannot understand how God Himself
violates it, how He inspects His creature every morning (7:18), searching
after his iniquity (10:6), and instead of forgiving his sin (7:21) snatches at him
stormily (9:17)—how He, being infinitely superior to man, thinks it good to
reject the work of His hands (10:3). And in spite of this Job knows that the
friends, who side with God (13:8), do not contend for the true God. He has
recognized before this the true God as the near and intimate God. Now he
only experiences Him through suffering and contradiction, but even in this
way he does experience God. What Satan designed for him and his wife in
the Prologue, recommended to him more exactly, that he should “bless”
God, dismiss Him, and die in the comfort of his soul, was for him quite
impossible. When in his last long utterance he swears the purification oath,
he says: “As God lives, who has withdrawn my right” (27:2). God lives, and
He bends the right. From the burden of this double, yet single, matter Job is
able to take away nothing, he cannot lighten his death. He can only ask to be
confronted with God. “Oh that one would hear me!” (31:35)—men do not
hear his words, only God can be his hearer. As his motive he declares that he
wants to reason with the deity (13:3); he knows he will carry his point (13:18).
In the last instance, however, he merely means by this that God will again
become present to him. “Oh that I knew where I might find Him!” (23:3).
Job struggles against the remoteness of God, against the deity who rages and
is silent, rages and “hides His face,” that is to say, against the deity who has
changed for him from a nearby person into a sinister power. And even if He
draw near to him again only in death, he will again “see” God (19:26) as His
“witness” (16:19) against God Himself, he will see Him as the avenger of his
blood (19:25), which must not be covered by the earth until it is avenged
(16:18) by God on God. The absurd duality of a truth known to man and a
reality sent by God must be swallowed up somewhere, sometime, in a unity
of God’s presence. How will it take place? Job does not know this, nor does
he understand it; he only believes in it. We may certainly say that Job
“appeals from God to God,”6 but we cannot say7 that he rouses himself
against a God “who contradicts His own innermost nature,” and seeks a God
who will conduct Himself toward him “as the requital dogma demands.” By
such an interpretation the sense of the problem is upset. Job cannot renounce
justice, but he does not hope to find it, when God will find again “His inner
nature” and “His subjection to the norm,” but only when God will appear to
him again. Job believes now, as later Deutero-Isaiah (Isa. 45:15) did under
96 Martin Buber
the influence of Isaiah (8:17), in “a God that hides Himself.” This hiding, the
eclipse of the divine light, is the source of his abysmal despair. And the abyss
is bridged the moment man “sees,” is permitted to see again, and this
becomes a new foundation. It has been rightly said8 that Job is more deeply
rooted in the primitive Israelite view of life than his dogmatic friends. There
is no true life for him but that of a firmly established covenant between God
and man; formerly he lived in this covenant and received his righteousness
from it, but now God has disturbed it. It is the dread of the faithful
“remnant” in the hour of the people’s catastrophe that here finds its personal
expression. But this dread is suggestive of the terror that struck Isaiah as he
stood on the threshold of the cruel mission laid upon him—“the making fat
and heavy.” His words “How long?” are echoed in Job’s complaint. How long
will God hide His face? When shall we be allowed to see Him again?
Deutero-Isaiah expresses (40:27) the despairing complaint of the faithful
remnant which thinks that because God hides Himself, Israel’s “way” also “is
hid” from Him, and He pays no more attention to it, and the prophet
promises that not only Israel but all flesh shall see Him (40:5).
The fourth view of God is that expressed in the speech of God Himself.
The extant text is apparently a late revision, as is the case with many other
sections of this book, and we cannot restore the original text. But there is no
doubt that the speech is intended for more than the mere demonstration of
the mysterious character of God’s rule in nature to a greater and more
comprehensive extent than had already been done by the friends and Job
himself; for more than the mere explanation to Job: “Thou canst not
understand the secret of any thing or being in the world, how much less the
secret of man’s fate.” It is also intended to do more than teach by examples
taken from the world of nature about the “strange and wonderful” character
of the acts of God, which contradict the whole of teleological wisdom, and
point to the “playful riddle of the eternal creative power” as to an
“inexpressible positive value.”9 The poet does not let his God disregard the
fact that it is a matter of justice. The speech declares in the ears of man,
struggling for justice, another justice than his own, a divine justice. Not the
divine justice, which remains hidden, but a divine justice, namely that
manifest in creation. The creation of the world is justice, not a recompensing
and compensating justice, but a distributing, a giving justice. God the
Creator bestows upon each what belongs to him, upon each thing and being,
insofar as He allows it to become entirely itself. Not only for the sea (Job
38:10), but for every thing and being God “breaks” in the hour of creation
“His boundary,” that is to say, He cuts the dimension of this thing or being
out of “all,” giving it its fixed measure, the limit appropriate to this gift.
Job 97
Israel’s ancient belief in creation, which matured slowly only in its

formulations, has here reached its completion: it is not about a “making” that
we are told here, but about a “founding” (38:4), a “setting” (38:5, 9f.), a
“commanding” and “appointing” (38:12). The creation itself already means
communication between Creator and creature. The just Creator gives to all
His creatures His boundary, so that each may become fully itself. Designedly
man is lacking in this presentation of heaven and earth, in which man is
shown the justice that is greater than his, and is shown that he with his
justice, which intends to give to everyone what is due to him, is called only
to emulate the divine justice, which gives to everyone what he is. In face of
such divine teaching as this it would be indeed impossible for the sufferer to
do aught else than put “his hand upon his mouth” (40:4), and to confess
(42:3) that he had erred in speaking of things inconceivable for him. And
nothing else could have come of it except this recognition—if he had heard
only a voice “from the tempest” (38:1; 40:6). But the voice is the voice of Him
who answers, the voice of Him that “heard” (31:35), and appeared so as to be
“found” of him (23:3). In vain Job had tried to penetrate to God through the
divine remoteness; now God draws near to him. No more does God hide
Himself, only the storm cloud of His sublimity still shrouds Him, and Job’s
eye “sees” Him (42:5). The absolute power has for human personality’s sake
become personality. God offers Himself to the sufferer who, in the depth of
his despair, keeps to God with his refractory complaint; He offers Himself to
him as an answer. It is true, “the overcoming of the riddle of suffering can
only come from the domain of revelation,”10 but it is not the revelation in
general that is here decisive, but the particular revelation to the individual:
the revelation as an answer to the individual sufferer concerning the question
of his sufferings, the self-limitation of God to a person, answering a person.
The way of this poem leads from the first view to the fourth. The God
of the first view, the God of the legend borrowed by the poet, works on the
basis of “enticement”; the second, the God of the friends, works on the basis
of purposes apparent to us, purposes of punishment or, especially in the
speeches of Elihu which are certainly a later addition, of purification and
education; the third, the God of the protesting Job, works against every
reason and purpose; and the fourth, the God of revelation, works from His
godhead, in which every reason and purpose held by man are at once
abolished and fulfilled. It is clear that this God, who answers from the
tempest, is different from the God of the Prologue; the declaration about the
secret of divine action would be turned into a mockery if the fact of that
“wager” was put over against it. But even the speeches of the friends and of
Job cannot be harmonized with it. Presumably the poet, who frequently
98 Martin Buber
shows himself to be a master of irony, left the Prologue, which seems

completely opposed to his intention, unchanged in content in order to
establish the foundation for the multiplicity of views that follows. But in
truth the view of the Prologue is meant to be ironical and unreal; the view of
the friends is only logically “true” and demonstrates to us that man must not
subject God to the rules of logic; Job’s view is real, and therefore, so to speak,
the negative of truth; and the view of the voice speaking from the tempest is
the supralogical truth of reality. God justifies Job: he has spoken “rightly”
(42:7), unlike the friends. And as the poet often uses words of the Prologue
as motive words in different senses, so also here he makes God call Job as
there by the name of His “servant,” and repeat it by way of emphasis four
times. Here this epithet appears in its true light. Job, the faithful rebel, like
Abraham, Moses, David, and Isaiah, stands in the succession of men so
designated by God, a succession that leads to Deutero-Isaiah’s “servant of
YHVH,” whose sufferings especially link him with Job.
“And my servant Job shall pray for you”—with these words God sends
the friends home (42:8). It is the same phrase as that in which YHVH in the
story of Abraham (Gen. 20:7) certifies the patriarch, that he is His nabi. It
will be found that in all the pre-exilic passages, in which the verb is used in
the sense of intercession (and this apparently was its first meaning), it is only
used of men called prophets. The significance of Job’s intercession is
emphasized by the Epilogue (which, apart from the matter of the prayer, the
poet apparently left as it was) in that the turning point in Job’s history, the
“restoration” (Job 42:10) and first of all his healing, begins the moment he
prays “for his friends.” This saying is the last of the reminiscences of
prophetic life and language found in this book. As if to stress this connection,
Job’s first complaint begins (3:3ff.) with the cursing of his birth, reminding
us of Jeremiah’s words (Jer. 20:14ff.), and the first utterance of the friends is
poured out in figures of speech taken from the prophetic world (4, 12ff.), the
last of which (4:16) modifies the peculiar form of revelation of Elijah’s story
(I Kings 19:12). Job’s recollection of divine intimacy, of “the counsel of God
upon his tent” (Job 29:4), is expressed in language derived from Jeremiah
(Jer. 23:18, 22), and his quest, which reaches fulfillment, to “see” God,
touches the prophetic experience which only on Mount Sinai were non-
prophets allowed to share (Exod. 24:10, 17).
Jeremiah’s historical figure, that of the suffering prophet, apparently
inspired the poet to compose his song of the man of suffering, who by his
suffering attained the vision of God, and in all his revolt was God’s witness
on earth (cf. Isa. 43: 12; 44:8), as God was his witness in heaven.11
Job 99
NOTES
1. [Buber discusses the Book of Job against the background of the prophecy of
Ezekiel, who was sent to the “house of Israel” as “watchman” and warner of persons (Ezek.
3:17–21) and who spoke his message of personal responsibility. He established the concept
of a God in whose justice it is possible to believe, a God whose recompense of the
individual is objectively comprehensible. Those deserving salvation are saved. Over against
this dogmatic principle stood man’s experience.—Ed.]
2. Johannes Hempel, Die althebräische Literatur (1930), p. 179.
3. I cannot agree with H. Torczyner’s view, expressed in his later (Hebrew)
commentary on the book (I, 27), that “the story of the framework is later than the poem.”
4. The explanation that this expression is a euphemism (according to the view of
Abraham Geiger, Urschrift und Übersetzungen der Bibel [1857], pp. 267ff., the language of
later emendations, cf. Torczyner, I, 10) does not fit the facts.
5. The atmosphere of the poem is not basically historical, even if the chief characters
of the story were historical persons, according to Torczyner’s view.
6. A. S. Peake, The Problem of Suffering (1904), pp. 94f.; cf. also P. Volz, Weisheit (Die
Schriften des Alten Testaments, III [1911]), p. 62.
7. F. Baumgaertel, Der Hiobdialog (1933), p. 172.
8. Johannes Pedersen, Israel, I–II (English ed. 1926), 371.
9. Rudolf Otto, Das Heilige, 23–25 ed. (1936), pp. 99f.; cf. also W. Vischer, Hiob ein
Zeuge Jesu Christi (1934), pp. 29ff.; W. Eichrodt, Theologie des Alten Testaments, III (1939),
145f.
10. Eichrodt, p. 146.
11. [The analysis continues with the comparison between the Book of Job and Psalm
73.—Ed.]
M A RT I N B U B E R
The Heart Determines:

Psalm 73
W hat is remarkable about this poem—composed of descriptions, of a

story, and of confessions—is that a man tells how he reached the true
meaning of his experience of life, and that this meaning borders directly on
the eternal. For the most part we understand only gradually the decisive
experiences we have in our relation with the world. First we accept what they
seem to offer us, we express it, we weave it into a “view,” and then think we
are aware of our world. But we come to see that what we look on in this view
is only an appearance. Not that our experiences have deceived us. But we had
turned them to our use, without penetrating to their heart. What is it that
teaches us to penetrate to their heart? Deeper experience.
The man who speaks in this psalm tells us how he penetrated to the
heart of a weighty group of experiences—those experiences that show that
the wicked prosper.
Apparently, then, the question is not what was the real question for
Job—why the good do not prosper—but rather its obverse, as we find it most
precisely, and probably for the first time, expressed in Jeremiah (12:1): “Why
does the way of the wicked prosper?”
Nevertheless, the psalm begins with a prefatory sentence in which,
rightly considered, Job’s question may be found hidden.
From On the Bible: Eighteen Studies. © 1968 Schocken Books.
101
102 Martin Buber
This sentence, the foreword to the psalm, is
Surely, God is good to Israel:

To the pure in heart.
It is true that the Psalmist is here concerned not with the happiness or
unhappiness of the person, but with the happiness or unhappiness of Israel.
But the experience behind the speeches of Job, as is evident in many of them,
is itself not merely personal, but is the experience of Israel’s suffering both in
the catastrophe that led to the Babylonian exile and in the beginning of the
exile itself. Certainly only one who had plumbed the depths of personal
suffering could speak in this way. But the speaker is a man of Israel in Israel’s
bitter hour of need, and in his personal suffering the suffering of Israel has
been concentrated, so that what he now has to suffer he suffers as Israel. In
the destiny of an authentic person the destiny of his people is gathered up,
and only now becomes truly manifest.
Thus the Psalmist, whose theme is the fate of the person, also begins
with the fate of Israel. Behind his opening sentence lies the question “Why
do things go badly with Israel?” And first he answers, “Surely, God is good
to Israel,” and then he adds, by way of explanation, “to the pure in heart.”
On first glance this seems to mean that it is only to the impure in Israel
that God is not good. He is good to the pure in Israel; they are the “holy
remnant,” the true Israel, to whom He is good. But that would lead to the
assertion that things go well with this remnant, and the questioner had taken as
his starting point the experience that things went ill with Israel, not excepting
indeed this part of it. The answer, understood in this way, would be no answer.
We must go deeper in this sentence. The questioner had drawn from
the fact that things go ill with Israel the conclusion that therefore God is not
good to Israel. But only one who is not pure in heart draws such a conclusion.
One who is pure in heart, one who becomes pure in heart, cannot draw any
such conclusion. For he experiences that God is good to him. But this does
not mean that God rewards him with his goodness. It means, rather, that
God’s goodness is revealed to him who is pure in heart: he experiences this
goodness. Insofar as Israel is pure in heart, becomes pure in heart, it
experiences God’s goodness.
Thus the essential dividing line is not between men who sin and men
who do not sin, but between those who are pure in heart and those who are
impure in heart. Even the sinner whose heart becomes pure experiences
God’s goodness as it is revealed to him. As Israel purifies its heart, it
experiences that God is good to it.
It is from this standpoint that everything that is said in the psalm about
“the wicked” is to be understood. The “wicked” are those who deliberately
persist in impurity of heart.
The state of the heart determines whether a man lives in the truth, in
which God’s goodness is experienced, or in the semblance of truth, where the
fact that it “goes ill” with him is confused with the illusion that God is not
good to him.
The state of the heart determines. That is why “heart” is the dominant
key word in this psalm, and recurs six times.
And now, after this basic theme has been stated, the speaker begins to
tell of the false ways in his experience of life.
Seeing the prosperity of “the wicked” daily and hearing their
braggart speech has brought him very near to the abyss of despairing
unbelief, of the inability to believe any more in a living God active in life.
“But I, a little more and my feet had turned aside, a mere nothing and my
steps had stumbled.” He goes so far as to be jealous of “the wicked” for
their privileged position.
It is not envy that he feels, it is jealousy, that it is they who are
manifestly preferred by God. That it is indeed they is proved to him by their
being sheltered from destiny. For them there are not,1 as for all the others,
those constraining and confining “bands” of destiny; “they are never in the
trouble of man.” And so they deem themselves superior to all, and stalk
around with their “sound and fat bellies,” and when one looks in their eyes,
which protrude from the fatness of their faces, one sees “the paintings of the
heart,” the wish-images of their pride and their cruelty, flitting across. Their
relation to the world of their fellow men is arrogance and cunning, craftiness
and exploitation. “They speak oppression from above” and “set their mouth
to the heavens.” From what is uttered by this mouth set to the heavens, the
Psalmist quotes two characteristic sayings which were supposed to be
familiar. In the one (introduced by “therefore,” meaning “therefore they
say”) they make merry over God’s relation to “His people.” Those who speak
are apparently in Palestine as owners of great farms, and scoff at the
prospective return of the landless people from exile, in accordance with the
prophecies: the prophet of the Exile has promised them water (Isa. 41:17f.),
and “they may drink their fill of water,” they will certainly not find much
more here unless they become subject to the speakers. In the second saying
they are apparently replying to the reproaches leveled against them: they
were warned that God sees and knows the wrongs they have done, but the
God of heaven has other things to do than to concern Himself with such
earthly matters: “How does God know? Is there knowledge in the Most
104 Martin Buber
High?” And God’s attitude confirms them, those men living in comfortable
security: “they have reached power,” theirs is the power.
That was the first section of the psalm, in which the speaker depicted
his grievous experience, the prosperity of the wicked. But now he goes on to
explain how his understanding of this experience has undergone a
fundamental change.
Since he had again and again to endure, side by side, his own suffering
and their “grinning” well-being, he is overcome: “It is not fitting that I
should make such comparisons, as my own heart is not pure.” And he
proceeded to purify it. In vain. Even when he succeeded in being able “to
wash his hands in innocence” (which does not mean an action or feeling of
self-righteousness, but the genuine, second and higher purity that is won by
a great struggle of the soul), the torment continued, and now it was like a
leprosy to him; and as leprosy is understood in the Bible as a punishment for
the disturbed relation between heaven and earth, so each morning, after each
pain-torn night, it came over the Psalmist—“It is a chastisement—why am I
chastised?” And once again there arose the contrast between the horrible
enigma of the happiness of the wicked and his suffering.
At this point he was tempted to accuse God as Job did. He felt himself
urged to “tell how it is.” But he fought and conquered the temptation. The
story of this conquest follows in the most vigorous form that the speaker has
at his disposal, as an appeal to God. He interrupts his objectivized account
and addresses God. If I had followed my inner impulse, he says to Him, “I
should have betrayed the generation of Thy sons.” The generation of the
sons of God! Then he did not know that the pure in heart are the children
of God; now he does know. He would have betrayed them if he had arisen
and accused God. For they continue in suffering and do not complain. The
words sound to us as though the speaker contrasted these “children of God”
with Job, the complaining “servant of God.”
He, the Psalmist, was silent even in the hours when the conflict of the
human world burned into his purified heart. But now he summoned every
energy of thought in order to “know” the meaning of this conflict. He
strained the eyes of the spirit in order to penetrate the darkness that hid the
meaning from him. But he always perceived only the same conflict ever anew,
and this perception itself seemed to him now to be a part of that “trouble”
which lies on all save those “wicked” men—even on the pure in heart. He
had become one of these, yet he still did not recognize that “God is good to
Israel.”
“Until I came into the sanctuaries of God.” Here the real turning point
in this exemplary life is reached.
The man who is pure in heart, I said, experiences that God is good to
him. He does not experience it as a consequence of the purification of his
heart, but because only as one who is pure in heart is he able to come to the
sanctuaries. This does not mean the Temple precincts in Jerusalem, but the
sphere of God’s holiness, the holy mysteries of God. Only to him who draws
near to these is the true meaning of the conflict revealed.
But the true meaning of the conflict, which the Psalmist expresses here
only for the other side, the “wicked,” as he expressed it in the opening words
for the right side, for the “pure in heart,” is not—as the reader of the
following words is only too easily misled into thinking—that the present
state of affairs is replaced by a future state of affairs of a quite different kind,
in which “in the end” things go well with the good and badly with the bad;
in the language of modern thought the meaning is that the bad do not truly
exist, and their “end” brings about only this change, that they now
inescapably experience their nonexistence, the suspicion of which they had
again and again succeeded in dispelling. Their life was “set in slippery
places”; it was so arranged as to slide into the knowledge of their own
nothingness; and when this finally happens, “in a moment,” the great terror
falls upon them and they are consumed with terror. Their life has been a
shadow structure in a dream of God’s. God awakes, shakes off the dream, and
disdainfully watches the dissolving shadow image.
This insight of the Psalmist, which he obtained as he drew near to the
holy mysteries of God, where the conflict is resolved, is not expressed in the
context of his story, but in an address to “his Lord.” And in the same address
he confesses, with harsh self-criticism, that at the same time the state of error
in which he had lived until then and from which he had suffered so much was
revealed to him: “When my heart rose up in me, and I was pricked in my
reins, brutish was I and ignorant, I have been as a beast before Thee.”
With this “before Thee” the middle section of the psalm significantly
concludes, and at the end of the first line of the last section (after the
description and the story comes the confession) the words are significantly
taken up. The words “And I am” at the beginning of the verse are to be
understood emphatically: “Nevertheless I am,” “Nevertheless I am
continually with Thee.” God does not count it against the heart that has
become pure that it was earlier accustomed “to rise up.” Certainly even the
erring and struggling man was “with Him,” for the man who struggles for
God is near Him even when he imagines that he is driven far from God. That
is the reality we learn from the revelation to Job out of the storm, in the hour
of Job’s utter despair (30:20–22) and utter readiness (31:35–39). But what the
Psalmist wishes to teach us, in contrast to the Book of Job, is that the fact of
106 Martin Buber
his being with God is revealed to the struggling man in the hour when—not
led astray by doubt and despair into treason, and become pure in heart—“he
comes to the sanctuaries of God.” Here he receives the revelation of the
“continually.” He who draws near with a pure heart to the divine mystery
learns that he is continually with God.
It is a revelation. It would be a misunderstanding of the whole situation
to look on this as a pious feeling. From man’s side there is no continuity, only
from God’s side. The Psalmist has learned that God and he are continually
with one another. But he cannot express his experience as a word of God.
The teller of the primitive stories made God say to the fathers and to the first
leaders of the people: “I am with thee,” and the word “continually” was
unmistakably heard as well. Thereafter, this was no longer reported, and we
hear it again only in rare prophecies. A Psalmist (23:5) is still able to say to
God: “Thou art with me.” But when Job (29: 5) speaks of God’s having been
with him in his youth, the fundamental word, the “continually,” has
disappeared. The speaker in our psalm is the first and only one to insert it
expressly. He no longer says: “Thou art with me,” but “I am continually with
Thee.” It is not, however, from his own consciousness and feeling that he can
say this, for no man is able to be continually turned to the presence of God:
he can say it only in the strength of the revelation that God is continually
with him.
The Psalmist no longer dares to express the central experience as a
word of God; but he expresses it by a gesture of God. God has taken his right
hand—as a father, so we may add, in harmony with that expression “the
generation of Thy children,” takes his little son by the hand in order to lead
him. More precisely, as in the dark a father takes his little son by the hand,
certainly in order to lead him, but primarily in order to make present to him,
in the warm touch of coursing blood, the fact that he, the father, is
continually with him.
It is true that immediately after this the leading itself is expressed:
“Thou dost guide me with Thy counsel.” But ought this to be understood as
meaning that the speaker expects God to recommend to him in the changing
situations of his life what he should do and what he should refrain from
doing? That would mean that the Psalmist believes that he now possesses a
constant oracle, who would exonerate him from the duty of weighing up and
deciding what he must do. Just because I take this man so seriously I cannot
understand the matter in this way. The guiding counsel of God seems to me
to be simply the divine Presence communicating itself direct to the pure in
heart. He who is aware of this Presence acts in the changing situations of his
life differently from him who does not perceive this Presence. The Presence
acts as counsel: God counsels by making known that He is present. He has

led His son out of darkness into the light, and now he can walk in the light.
He is not relieved of taking and directing his own steps.
The revealing insight has changed life itself, as well as the meaning of
the experience of life. It also changes the perspective of death. For the
“oppressed” man death was only the mouth toward which the sluggish
stream of suffering and trouble flows. But now it has become the event in
which God—the continually Present One, the One who grasps the man’s
hand, the Good One—“takes” a man.
The tellers of the legends had described the translation of the living
Enoch and the living Elijah to heaven as “a being taken,” a being taken away
by God Himself. The Psalmists transferred the description from the realm
of miracle to that of personal piety and its most personal expression. In a
psalm that is related to our psalm not only in language and style but also in
content and feeling, the forty-ninth, there are these words: “But God will
redeem my soul from the power of Sheol, when He takes me.” There is
nothing left here of the mythical idea of a translation. But not only that—
there is nothing left of heaven either. There is nothing here about being able
to go after death into heaven. And, so far as I see, there is nowhere in the
“Old Testament” anything about this.
It is true that the sentence in our psalm that follows the words “Thou
shalt guide me with Thy counsel” seems to contradict this. It once seemed to
me to be indeed so, when I translated it as “And afterwards Thou dost take
me up to glory.” But I can no longer maintain this interpretation. In the
original text there are three words. The first, “afterwards,” is unambiguous—
“After Thou hast guided me with Thy counsel through the remainder of my
life,” that is, “at the end of my life.” The second word needs more careful
examination. For us who have grown up in the conceptual world of a later
doctrine of immortality, it is almost self-evident that we should understand
“Thou shalt take me” as “Thou shalt take me up.” The hearer or reader of
that time understood simply, “Thou shalt take me away.” But does the third
word, kabod, not contradict this interpretation? Does it not say whither I shall
be taken, namely, to “honor” or “glory”? No, it does not say this. We are led
astray into this reading by understanding “taking up” instead of “taking.”
This is not the only passage in the Scriptures where death and kabod
meet. In the song of Isaiah on the dead king of Babylon, who once wanted to
ascend into heaven like the day star, there are these words (14:18): “All the
kings of the nations, all of them, lie in kabod, in glory, every one in his own
house, but thou wert cast forth away from thy sepulcher.” He is refused an
honorable grave because he has destroyed his land and slain his people. Kabod
108 Martin Buber
in death is granted to the others, because they have uprightly fulfilled the
task of their life. Kabod, whose root meaning is the radiation of the inner
“weight” of a person, belongs to the earthly side of death. When I have lived
my life, says our Psalmist to God, I shall die in kabod, in the fulfillment of my
existence. In my death the coils of Sheol will not embrace me, but Thy hand
will grasp me. “For,” as is said in another psalm related in kind to this one,
the sixteenth, “Thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol.”
Sheol, the realm of nothingness, in which, as a later text explains
(Eccles. 9:10), there is neither activity nor consciousness, is not contrasted
with a kingdom of heavenly bliss. But over against the realm of nothing there
is God. The “wicked” have in the end a direct experience of their non-being;
the “pure in heart” have in the end a direct experience of the Being of God.
This sense of being taken is now expressed by the Psalmist in the
unsurpassably clear cry, “Whom have I in heaven!” He does not aspire to
enter heaven after death, for God’s home is not in heaven, so that heaven is
empty. But he knows that in death he will cherish no desire to remain on
earth, for now he will soon be wholly “with Thee”—here the word recurs for
the third time—with Him who “has taken” him. But he does not mean by this
what we are accustomed to call personal immortality, that is, continuation in
the dimension of time so familiar to us in this our mortal life. He knows that
after death “being with Him” will no longer mean, as it does in this life,
“being separated from Him.” The Psalmist now says with the strictest clarity
what must now be said: it is not merely his flesh that vanishes in death, but
also his heart, that inmost personal organ of the soul, which formerly “rose
up” in rebellion against the human fate and which he then “purified” till he
became pure in heart—this personal soul also vanishes. But He who was the
true part and true fate of this person, the “rock” of this heart, God, is eternal.
It is into His eternity that he who is pure in heart moves in death, and this
eternity is something absolutely different from any kind of time.
Once again the Psalmist looks back at the “wicked,” the thought of
whom had once so stirred him. Now he does not call them the wicked, but
“they that are far from Thee.”
In the simplest manner he expresses what he has learned: since they are
far from God, from Being, they are lost. And once more the positive follows
the negative, once more, for the third and last time, that “and I,” “and for
me,” which here means “nevertheless for me.” “Nevertheless for me the
good is to draw near to God.” Here, in this conception of the good, the circle
is closed. To him who may draw near to God, the good is given. To an Israel
that is pure in heart the good is given, because it may draw near to God.
Surely, God is good to Israel.
The speaker here ends his confession. But he does not yet break off. He
gathers everything together. He has made his refuge, his “safety,” “in his
Lord”—he is sheltered in Him. And now, still turned to God, he speaks his
last word about the task which is joined to all this, and which he has set
himself, which God has set him—“To tell of all Thy works.” Formerly he was
provoked to tell of the appearance, and he resisted. Now he knows, he has the
reality to tell of: the works of God. The first of his telling, the tale of the work
that God has performed with him, is this psalm.
In this psalm two kinds of men seem to be contrasted with each other,
the “pure in heart” and “the wicked.” But that is not so. The “wicked,” it is
true, are clearly one kind of men, but the others are not. A man is as a “beast”
and purifies his heart, and behold, God holds him by the hand. That is not a
kind of men. Purity of heart is a state of being. A man is not pure in kind, but
he is able to be or become pure—rather he is only essentially pure when he
has become pure, and even then he does not thereby belong to a kind of men.
The “wicked,” that is, the bad, are not contrasted with good men. The good,
says the Psalmist, is “to draw near to God.” He does not say that those near
to God are good. But he does call the bad “those who are far from God.” In
the language of modern thought that means that there are men who have no
share in existence, but there are no men who possess existence. Existence
cannot be possessed, but only shared in. One does not rest in the lap of
existence, but one draws near to it. “Nearness” is nothing but such a drawing
and coming near continually and as long as the human person lives.
The dynamic of farness and nearness is broken by death when it breaks
the life of the person. With death there vanishes the heart, that inwardness
of man, out of which arise the “pictures” of the imagination, and which rises
up in defiance, but which can also be purified.
Separate souls vanish, separation vanishes. Time that has been lived by
the soul vanishes with the soul; we know of no duration in time. Only the
“rock” in which the heart is concealed, only the rock of human hearts, does
not vanish. For it does not stand in time. The time of the world disappears
before eternity, but existing man dies into eternity as into the perfect
existence.
NOTE
1. In what follows I read, as is almost universally accepted, lamo tam instead of

lemotam.
FRANCIS LANDY
The Relationship of the Lovers
Voy por tu cuerpo como por el mundo
I go through your body as through the world

(Octavio Paz: Piedra del Sol)
dein goldenes Haar Margarete

dein aschenes Haar Sulamith
your golden hair Margarete

your ashen hair Shulamit
(Paul Celan: Todesfuge)
1. I N T R O D U C T I O N : C H A R A C T E R AND ARCHETYPE
A t the centre of the Song there is a relationship, of which critics have

almost nothing to say. It appears as if the relationship of the lovers is not
problematic; they are an idyllic couple, of whom nothing can be said, except
perhaps to lay a tribute. The lovers are left to their privacy, and to the page
they can never leave. Perhaps, though, there is a corresponding objective
difficulty: the lovers are not distinct personalities. Old-fashioned character
analysis is singularly unproductive. Hence the expenditure of energy on
From Paradoxes of Paradise: Identity and Difference in the Song of Songs. © 1983 The Almond Press.
Note: This text has been modified such that in some instances when the author has provided
English translations of foreign words, only the translations have been kept.
111
112 Francis Landy
constructing a coherent story, out of which the figures of the lovers will
emerge more clearly. However, anecdotal curiosity, the vicissitudes of a
particular couple, is but a displacement of the problem of love per se, that
threatens to become too personal. We identify with the lovers, who exhaust
the possibilities of love. This is the function of the multiple conflicting
stories, to make them types of lovers, rather than single persons, a cumulative
eidetic portrait. But herein also the Song is faithful to lovers. For lovers are
among the most archetypal of human beings. In love, man and woman
perform their parts in myth and romance, becoming most elementally
human and intensely symbolised; for this reason love easily lapses into cliché,
And yet—and here lies a difficulty—we should beware of treating them
simply as archetypes. At all points there is a discourse between the specific
and the collective, individuality is constantly on the verge of expression. The
question then is of the individuality of lovers as they emerge from the
background: the tension between the specific locality and incident and the
universal context.
Yet the lovers are only images of the poet, his fictions, his reflections of
experience. They have no existence outside the poem, and its impression on
the world. This banal truth would not be worth saying except as a
prophylactic gesture against the Pathetic Fallacy, mistaking literary
characters for real people, were it not that it points to their common identity
in the poet. Their affairs, vagaries, emotions, reflect a psychic process,
common to all of us, insofar as the poet is not a stranger to us. Yet the poem
is now free of the poet, who is, in Jabès’ words, on its threshold (1963: 15);
it constitutes the entire relationship of the lovers. They create the poem with
their love. Imperceptibly, though, they absent themselves from their
communication; they cannot touch or feel except outside the poem. Thus
they too are on its threshold. We see this in the solipsistic dialogue, two
monologues side by side. Even the brief exchanges are scrambled. Ironically,
the only people to speak sensibly and to the point are the daughters of
Jerusalem!
The poem, created by the love of the lovers, thus separates them and
grows between them. It incorporates the whole world between them through
metaphor and metonomy. The lovers have an instrumental, syntactic
function, communicating the poet’s love of the world and realigning the
gender of things. For example, 2.10–13 is really a poem about the spring.
The poet has a gift for gently and affectionately teasing his lovers through
the wiles and pitfalls of coded language, the manipulation of social register;
their discourse becomes indirect, allusive, hermetic. They communicate
through gesture, tone of voice, with nothing to say. The messages of love are
very simple. At this point their love coincides with the non-referential,
narcissistic component of language. There is no relationship, merely the play
of sounds, the pleasure in creating poetry for its own sake. The physical
sensation contrasts with the psychic quest: the signifying totality with
unthinking immediacy.
H.P. Müller, in his sophisticated explorations of the magic of the Song,
has approached it mostly in terms of homeopathy between man and the
earth, in other words of a regenerative relationship. I should like to take his
insight in a somewhat different direction. He notes that the most ancient
poetry is magical speech, like spells or charms, and herein are to be found the
religious roots of the lyric. But the lyric is associative, mellifluous speech, a
composition of sound and images, whose extreme form is nonsense; just as
magic tends to express itself in meaningless spells. In both cases there is an
omnipotent regression, linguistic anarchy or ultimate power; man is
unconstrained by rules of logic or nature. It is to this point, I hold, that the
relationship of the lovers tends, through the poet.
The only critic to have given serious attention to the lovers as internal
figures, part of a psychic process, is Leo Krinetzki, under the influence of
analytical psychology, in an admirably concentrated and bold—indeed nearly
faultless—essay “Die Erotische Psychologie des Hohenliedes”.1 Its great
contribution is to shift the discussion from the illusion of the single man and
woman to the internal dynamics of each, from the imaginary real world in
which the Song supposedly happens to the blend of fantasy and reality in
which we live. Each person, according to Jungian theory, is androgynous;2 an
unconscious female element (the anima) exists in the male psyche, and vice
versa. The heterosexual partner in the outside world corresponds to this
internal figure, through projection. Thus an investigation of the Song is an
exploration of the archetypes out of which the self is constituted, not as a
single entity, but as a constellation of personae. Furthermore, it explains the
dominance of the woman in the Song, since she also stands for the Great
Mother, the primary archetype (1970: 407–16).
Necessarily, since he is limited for space, Krinetzki’s application of this
material to the Song is sketchy, but nevertheless wonderfully illuminating.
He adapts Neumann’s archetypal feminine symbol of the vessel, and traces its
manifestations in the Song, in images of the vagina/belly, breasts and lips; in
the Woman as the containing world; in its complex, enveloping relationship
with the Lover. He perceives that alongside the fecund Great Mother there
is the Terrible Mother, in other words, her inextricable ambivalence (1970:
411). Likewise the man represents the woman’s animus,3 though this
corollary is not greatly developed in Krinetzki’s article. Through the
114 Francis Landy
concrete symbolic projection of the archetypes into the great world the
lovers enter into relationship, not only with each other, but with all
creatures. “Jeder erlebt den andern als etwas so Einmaliges, weil er in ihm
‘Die Welt’ schlechthin wiederfindet” (ibid.: 416). Thus they become for each
other a “helpmeet”.
Jungian psychology, especially when stripped of its mystifications, is a
valuable critical tool. In particular, it introduces the concept of the Self as a
psychosomatic unity, comprising ego and unconscious, personal biography
and collective cultural heritage (Fordham: 98ff.). Fundamental to Jung’s
thought is the conviction that the “ego”, the unique centre of consciousness,
is only a small part of the Self, and that far more unites human beings than
divides them. Hence we can understand each other. The collective
unconscious amounts to no more than this, what we possess by virtue of
being human beings or acquire from our environment (e.g. as Jews or
Christians) as part of an historical entity.4 In particular, we all have innate
drives and a propensity for fantasy—a propensity, in other words, to use our
imagination to make sense of the world—which tends to be organised round
particular “nodal points”, such as the breast mother, the child. These are the
archetypes which, according to Jung, can only be represented in
consciousness by images; in later life, their symbolic manifestations become
very diverse. Finally, there is the process of individuation, the tendency of the
Self to cohere, the wish to integrate all its fragmented components, whatever
the cost and the resistance. This culminates in the conjunction of opposites,
good and bad, animus and anima, ego and shadow. It is this process that I
believe we may adduce in the Song; as well as its opposite, since the Self is a
dynamic growing system, namely the rebirth of elements, animus and anima,
Lover and Beloved, from the matrix, in a continuous cycle of union and
differentiation.
There is however the danger, into which I think Krinetzki runs, of
mistaking the archetypal symbol for the archetype, the expression for the
idea. This is encouraged by the technique of amplification, the interpretation
of imagery with the aid of comparative mythology, that leads many analysts
a merry dance. For instance, Krinetzki’s identification of the Vessel with the
feminine archetype (1970: 408ff.), impressive as it is, does not in my view
quite fit all the images of vessels in the Song, nor do justice to the symbol’s
full potentiality. For the subject of the poem is really the self as a self-
contained entity that enters into relation with the world, “rounded like a
stone”, in Stokes’s phrase (1971: 406), a vessel full of thoughts, feelings,
activities. Hence the numerous images of vessels or containers in the poem,
such as the garden or the palanquin, refer only secondarily to the vagina or
the womb; literally they are images for the self, e.g. “A locked garden is my
sister, my bride” (4.12). Only insofar as the self or psyche in the Song is
feminine, as in the Hebrew language, is Krinetzki’s generalisation acceptable.
For in this self the Lover and the Beloved constitute between them
the mother. Maternal love, expressed practically in care and protection, is
reproduced between them: it is the archetype of love. Perhaps we should
replace the word “parent” for “mother”, for it is a long time before the
father is distinguished as a separate person, and an independent
relationship develops; until then the mother combines the attributes and
is the repository of feelings that will later be distributed between the two
parents. Nevertheless, if I retain the word mother—and it is with some
hesitation and inconsistency that I do so—it is partly because of the actual
identity of the mother and the original parent, partly because she is still
invested with her elemental qualities—empathy, warmth, cooking and
serving food, as opposed to the bread-winning, adventurous father. Thus
the lovers project onto each other not only mother and father,
reproducing the Oedipal entanglement, but their undivided precursor.
This emerges functionally, through mutual caresses, elaborate body-
language, whereby the lovers, fragmented into numerous part-objects that
coalesce, recognise themselves in the body of the other. Many of the
lovers’ intimacies have their infantile correlate: images of lips and eyes
pass freely to and fro; they feed each other, are incorporated into each
other. Thereby a flow of identity passes between the lovers; they become
one flesh, their personalities merge, and this synthesis has its own
character. Within it the lovers have male and female roles, attract to
themselves animus and anima qualities. They are submerged in their
relationship, that defines them as human beings, nurses them and, indeed,
frustrates them—the primary maternal tasks. Theirs is both a personal
collectivity, a sense of belonging together, through their unique empathy,
and a contiguity in the collective unconscious. I will try to show how all
these symbolic layers can actually be experienced in the Song:
i) through the exchange of imagery,

ii) the concurrence of voices and actions,
iii) the invention of a family, as in a novel,
iv) the fusion of all generations in a common matrix, and
v) mythological resonances.
In the last chapter I will explore the most extensive of these, that with the
garden of Eden.
116 Francis Landy
For paterfamilias, as has frequently been observed, the Song has only a
mother (e.g. Falk 1982: 90; Trible 1978: 158); for fathers we have to look for
phallic images or covert allusions. The appearances of this, mother coincide
with moments of greatest intimacy; the effect is not only of benediction, but
of a convergence of maternal and amorous affection, transmitting her
influence to the lover. For example, in 6.9 his joy recalls her joy at the
Beloved’s birth.
The mother, moreover, contributes to the generative process, not only
in life, but also in the Song, as part of a structural pattern; the references to
her comprise a sequence, with reversions and recapitulations, from traumatic
rejection to rebirth. In 1.6, her entry coincides with that of the Beloved, her
first self-exposure; expulsion from the nuclear family precipitates the erotic
encounter. But in 3.4–8.2 the approach to intercourse is a return to the
mother; she presides over its public consummation in the wedding in 3.11;
and in 6.9 and in 8.5 she is evoked at the moment of birth. Finally, in 8.8–10
the Beloved herself—according to my reading—takes over the maternal
function; expulsion from the family is replaced by responsibility within it.
Thus there is a movement from loss to restoration; the mother assists in the
reproductive process, from desire to birth and future care.
Love, the true maternal gift, infuses and gives birth to the poem, and is
celebrated by it. The personification suggests a slightly rhetorical distance,
as if the erotic drive could be awakened and abstracted, in turn indicative of
a tension between the personal and the collective, the immense instinctual
discharge and the fragile consciousness. This tension will be the nucleus of
the third chapter.
The poet with his speech produces this primary relationship, for
himself and for us, talking in the air to the imagined memory or
hallucination of the mother. It corresponds to his task of recreating the unity
of the world, of restoring all fragmented relationships through metaphor.
The poet has a conviction of a responsive universe, that his words are not
vain; which is not merely, I think, the expectation of a sensitive audience but
of an ideal invisible listener. It is an interior dialogue, both in the poet and in
his personae, which we overhear, whose interlocutor is an internalised
“other”, originally the parent, with whom the baby experiences a complete
rapport. But the Muse is herself a mother, who creates the poet, who feeds
him with thoughts and pleasures, whom he discovers within himself and as
himself. Thus the poet is both listener and communicator, a participant in a
dialogue with himself and with the world.
The lovers are symbolically also twins, whose sibling representations
will be subject to some attention; their duality couples—establishes kinship
between—opposed terms. Deintegration is essential for the dynamic process

to start, out of which relationship develops. The poem is separated from the
poet, polarising opposites of imagination and reality, the immateriality of art
and the quickness of the flesh. Poetry is thus a twin or complement of the
poet, associated with the feminine side; as a fiction, it makes everything
possible, and has a transcendent function. One aspect of poetry, as I shall
argue in the next chapter, is the ideal of language that achieves perfection,
becomes ethereal, pure form or music. Wallace Stevens, for example, in his
poem “To the One of Fictive Music” invokes this as “Sister and mother and
diviner love / And of the sisterhood of the living dead / Most near, most clear,
and of the clearest bloom.”
But there is another aspect. The mother also stands for the reality
principle (Fordham: 116), that which initiates the baby into the world, the
source of thirst as well as frustration. In the Song this is reflected in the
association of the Beloved with nature, and especially the land of Israel.
Alongside the transcendent function there is the attempt to find words for
things, to integrate the real and the imaginary. If the mother and baby form
one unit, to which she contributes security and constancy, it is that unity—
of man and nature, consciousness and matter—that is at the basis of the
Song.
There is also the narcissistic element, to which I have already alluded,
a condition without relation, except for the drama of the self as it fragments
and integrates, producing sounds for the sheer anarchic pleasure of it, and
letting them fall into silence.
Finally, there is the archetype of the child. Both lovers emerge from the
sexual encounter as newborn children, in 6.9 and 8.5, in a world regenerated
by love. “When two kiss, the world changes” (Octavio Paz).
I will begin with the general characteristics of the lovers, insofar as they
can be discerned. Obviously in a lyrical poem, one does not approach the
relationship as in a narrative, where characters are distinct, identifiable, in a
more or less realistic and continuous story. The lyric is broken up into many
snatches or glimpses, typical amorous moments, just as the characters appear
through multiple conflicting personae. Yet the fragments are luminous,
frequently naturalistic, allowing a reconstruction of personality behind them.
One speculates or recognises the situation from one’s own worldly wisdom.
The transition from incident to the total composition is more difficult
and obscure; nonetheless—to my surprise—a few limited generalisations do
emerge, from repeated readings, none of them certain or incapable of
qualification, that give us at least a silhouette of coherent figures. They are
118 Francis Landy
also structural guidelines, indicating where to put the weight of the poem,
enabling us to anticipate and respond to recurring patterns in the dance of
lovers. Some of these correspond to Near Eastern conventions; others are
more unexpected.
First of all, since it is most obtrusive, is the dominance of the woman
as a voice and presence. It is not simply a question of quantity, though the
woman has more to say; it is also that the combined speeches of both lovers,
with their different styles and concerns, focus on defining her image. Goitein
(1957: 301–3) has seen this as evidence for the poet’s gender, and posited a
poetess,5 since he or she seems to be far more at home in the feminine psyche
than in the male; on the other hand, this could perhaps be explained by
projection, the fascination of men with the mystery of women as the
unknown part of themselves or anima. No generalisation, however, is
absolute; a secondary figure of the Lover develops, in her shadow.
Of the two lovers, only the Beloved is preoccupied with self-definition,
from “I am black and/but comely” in 1.5 to “I am a wall” in 8.10. Only she
indeed uses the first person pronoun “I” as if to stress this introversion
(Goitein 1957: 302). For example, the redundant “I” in the marked
parallelism at the beginnings of 5.4 and 5.5—“I arose ... I opened”—slows
down the movement and makes us feel how she participates in it;6 it has a
reflexive quality (“I arose myself”). Likewise, she is much more forthcoming
about her adventures; we know about her brothers, her work, her midnight
perambulations, her daring. If there is a story in the Song of Songs, it is of
her self, shaped by suffering, pleasure and self-reflection, that is both proud
and self-assertive, and very vulnerable.
The Lover, in contrast, hardly talks about himself at all; there is no self-
examination, and hardly any narration. He shows us the Beloved from
outside. Formal portraits or wasfs take up much of his time. He typically
stands outside the consciousness of the Beloved and is fascinated by it. She is
of immense power, capturing his heart with “one of her eyes, one bead of her
necklace” (4.9), captivating a king in her tresses (7.6).
The woman is the more interesting because she is the more active
partner, nagging, restless, decisive. The man on the other hand is
predominantly passive and complacent, as befits a king; his most memorable
cry is the fourfold repetition of “Return” in 7.1, imperiously expecting her
to come at his bidding. Even when he is stirred into ineffective wooing, we
hear it only through her mouth (2.10–13, 5.2); her voice thus mingles with
his, and we cannot tell whether it may not be her wish-fulfilment.
This domination by the woman may seem strange in a Near Eastern
setting, though it is not hard to discern elsewhere; but there is a price she has
to pay, as the victim of humiliation, for breaking traditional restraints; and

also as the central figure. For if the Lover is fascinated by her, she is
committed to him. His is a possibly embarrassing infatuation, but as king and
fawn he is essentially free, like the archetypal lover all over the world. She
loves him, but he is only in love with Love. His only reference to it is “How
beautiful and fair you are, O Love, among delights” in 7.77—Love as a
wanton delight or pleasure. He is a fawn among the lilies, carelessly cropping
flowers. His stance is characteristically aesthetic: for him Love is something
beautiful, he spends much of his time looking at and anatomising the girl,
and when he recalls her in 7.1, it is in terms reminiscent of striptease:
“Return, return, O Shulammite, return, return, and let us gaze upon you;
why do you (pl.) gaze on the Shulammite ...?” followed by a long description
of her naked body. The Beloved, on the other hand, would never describe
Love as “beautiful”: for her it is an infection (2.5, 5.8), not to be rashly
contracted, that yet cures mortality; it is of absolute value and all-consuming.
The Lover’s meditation has two extreme modes, both of which distance
the Beloved, defensively romanticising her. The first is adoration, the cosmic
hyperbole, commensurate with sky and earth, provoking delicious trepidation.
Captivation is always the Lover’s excuse; but the metaphor of theophany—
idealisation into a quasi-divine figure—conceals a castration fantasy, that the
dazzled king, symbol of virility, is helpless in her gaze, caught in tresses.
Reverence bestows respectability on the dark side of erotic obsession, that
harbours also a hidden wish, to be without will, in the other’s power.
The other mode of contemplation is the reverse of this: it is an
affectionate condescension, expressed in particular through pet names. The
plaything is innocent and helpless; the innocuousness of the relationship is
stressed by the diminutive “my dove”, the attribute “my pure one”, the
implication of chastity in “my sister”. The Beloved is possessed by the Lover,
e.g. “To a/my mare in Pharaoh’s chariots I have compared you, my love” in
1.9 (cf. below, 176ff.), corresponding to the actual subordination of women
to men, concubines to the king, in ancient times. She is part of his extended
personality, subject to his control, exemplified by the idealisation that
manipulates her into a figure of disarming purity, immaculate availability, in
a relationship in which, for the moment, sexuality is banished. It is coy and
tender, with an ironic pretence of childhood that barely dissimulates
tremendous repression. The Beloved’s repertoire of endearments, on the
other hand, is very limited: there is only “my love” and “He whom my soul
loves”, a true confession rather than a sweet nothing.
The lover as king has a creative function: he makes the Beloved royal,
adorning her with jewelry, constructing her a palanquin,8 perfecting her
120 Francis Landy
image. He is thus man the artisan, the fabricator, owner of gardens.

Alongside the meditative gaze, then, and devolving from it, is creative
fantasy, equally aesthetic, that changes the world to suit our image. But it
always escapes us. The palanquin is founded on the love of the daughters of
Jerusalem; the cheeks show through the jewelry in 1.10–11; in 7.3—an image
we shall come to—the workmanship of the thighs surrounds the mystery
between them (cf. below, 258). Typically the Lover woos the Beloved,
eliminating all improper suggestion, appealing to her compassion (5.2),
flattery (2.14), or tempting her to pleasures (2.10–13); in other words, he is
still dependent on her will, despite his fantasy of control, reinforced by
showers of magnetic diminutives, and despite his status as king. For if he is
the perpetual outsider, inveigling her from her portals, he is also the insider,
in the midst of coteries of women, the centre of the kingdom. The absurdity
of monarchy, as well as its isolation, is sympathetically depicted. From the
multitudes of queens and concubines, he still says “One is she, my dove, my
pure one, one is she ...” (6.9); the diminutive is immediately linked to the
superlative, the comparison with the celestial bodies in 6.10. The recognition
of her uniqueness cuts through the pomp of sovereignty: it is by virtue of
being herself, as at the moment of birth, that she is uniquely prized by him,
as himself. This is confirmed by the epithets “my dove, my pure one” that
imply—through the word “tam” “complete, simple”—natural simplicity. At
the centre of the Song and of the sumptuous court two human beings meet;
beneath all the social pressures, conventional attitudes, sexual
differentiations that separate them there is a simple equality. For instance, at
the beginning of the Song the Beloved tells us “The king brought me into
his chambers” (1.4)—temporarily, it is true, and at his bidding, she has been
admitted to his sanctum, and what happened there is undisclosed. She is both
outside—one of the maidens—and inside, knowing his intimate secrets.
Again, in 5.1, he enters the garden that represents them both; at the end of
the poem she dismisses him from it. Finally there are the epithets “my love”
but also “my cousin”, and “my friend”, so familiar that they become almost
indistinguishable. They present the lovers as bound by ties of kinship and
affinity, but essentially equal, essentially companionable. And they remind us
of the commandment “And you shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Ley
19.18)—the primary duty of human fellowship that is at the basis of the
Song.
The Beloved’s behaviour is paradoxical: she pursues him, wheedles

him, yet chases him away. Her characteristic mode is active, not aesthetic; we
have hardly any description, certainly no unmotivated contemplation of the
Lover. Her only wasf is elicited by the daughters of Jerusalem; if insufficient

as an Identikit, it certainly persuades them of his merits. Otherwise, the only
sensual symbol for the Lover is the deer, whose beauty is a complex of a
moment, in contrast to the highly articulated, static pictures of the Beloved.
She does not adore him as a cosmic superlative; the apparent exception, the
wasf of 5.10–16, is stiff and tense, contrasting with his animated, beautifully
consistent portraits; there is a certain ambivalence, an over-conscientious
definition. Neither does she patronise him, taking him into her affectionate
orbit. Indeed it is difficult to say what she sees in him, except that she loves
him. If he is overwhelmed by her, she is imbued with love. For its luminous
touch on the nerves of love, its inner process, the Song is perhaps equalled
in the ancient world only by Sappho.
Perhaps, though, her attraction towards him is to be understood
through the situation. The Beloved, as Krinetzki says, is signified by images
of enclosure: the home, the garden, even the crannies in the rocks in 2.14.
Thence the Lover seeks to draw her. For her, then, as fawn, he stands for
everything that is free and open, the whole world from which she has been
secluded. There is an anarchic, licentious part of herself, I shall argue below,
that belongs to that world; union with the Lover is then an integration of
herself. His seduction of her using images of the wind, trees and flowers is
consequently not mere rhetoric, for it is with that world that he seduces her.
In two remarkable passages, we listen to her listening to him beyond her
threshold; the inner temptation alongside the outer persuasion. In one, the
sound of her lover knocking coincides with that of her heart beating; it
betrays her to humiliation (5.2–7). In the other, his voice is that of the spring
(2.10–13), that says “Arise, my friend, my fair one, and come away”; it is
echoed in that of the turtle dove, that only now, as a migratory bird, is heard
in the land (2.12).
And yet she does not come. Why? Because what she loves is this
essential freedom, which is also a sexual freedom as “he who feeds among the
lilies”. In the end she dismisses him: “Flee, my love, and be like a deer or a
young gazelle on the mountains of spices” (8.14), in the shape of the fawn,
the untrammelled animal. There is nevertheless an ambiguity here: in the
sister-verse in 2.17, that closes the rapprochement we have just discussed,
and again in 4.6, the Lover’s flight to the mountains is introduced by the
mysterious circumlocution “Until the day blows and the shadows flee”.
Interpretations differ, but I hold that the relevant hour is evening, since deer
are diurnal animals.9 Thus though the day will part them, at night they shall
be reunited. In the Song, as quasi-universally, day and night are metaphors
for consciousness and unconsciousness, differentiation and fusion (cf. below,
122 Francis Landy
146). In the Song the lovers are simultaneously indissoluble and inaccessible.
A similar set of ambiguities will be discovered in relation to the dialogue of
1.7–8. If for the Beloved the Lover is essentially a fawn, not to be tamed or
limited—if by captivating him she imprisons him—for the Lover she is
essentially untouched and immaculate, even at the moment of possession.
The two poles never meet, that in each angle greet. If the Song celebrates
sexuality, it also celebrates virginity.
2. A N D R O G Y N Y : F AW N S AND LILIES
The bodies of the lovers are disassembled and reconstructed in the

Song, each constituent metaphorically combining with heterogenous
elements to give the impression of a collage, a web of intricate associations
and superimposed landscapes that serves to blur the distinction between the
lovers, and between them and the external world. As Octavio Paz says in the
verse I use as an epigraph, “Voy por to cuerpo como por el mundo”. The
appearance of an affair between two independent individuals is complicated
by an awareness of the multitude of selves and part-objects that make up each
person. From the relationship of the lovers, which I have already discussed,
we become entangled in that between their parts; like the poem, we lose the
wood for the trees. If one is too frightened of losing the wood one will never
enter the forest. Parts of the two lovers’ bodies will be found to correspond;
an inter-personal unity will begin to develop, through linking metaphors.
There is admittedly an element of projection in this, of making the loved one
a reflection or image of oneself; this sympathetic imagining of oneself in the
other is part of the process of integration that takes place in the poem.
The loss of definition of the single body permits a process of regression
and recreation, a fluidity between adult and infantile levels of experience. In
particular, it passes the threshold of the relationship with a whole object, and
evokes the time—not only of Freud’s oceanic feeling—when neither mother
nor infant are realised as continuous beings; they are confused, split up into
good and bad, and innumerable part objects—breasts, lips, etc. The role of
infantile regression in love play and sweet-talk is universally familiar
(Jakobson 1968: 17). The restoration of infantile bliss is, however, only
secondary to its creative contribution to adult sexuality, to the concentration
of both lives, the eternity in a flower of love.
In this section, I shall begin to explore the interconnections and cross-
references, relying perhaps excessively on the wasfs or formal portraits,
marvellous inventories of images, but turning also to more dynamic
descriptions and incidents. I shall take an image and proceed to an
elaboration of its correlatives and complements, not so much for its own
sake, to attempt a total elucidation, but as a gradual introduction to the
descriptive techniques of the Song, the familial tensions it perceives between
the parts of the body, and its metaphorical landscape. The image is chosen at
random, or rather because one critic finds it curious (Murphy 1973: 420); it
might however be considered questionable to abstract an image from the
centre of the poem, rather than to follow its sequence. It could be argued that
the proper starting-point is 1.1 or 1.2, with “the kisses of his mouth”, for
instance. It will be conceded that a reading inattentive to sequence is
unbalanced; nevertheless, reading is gradual and cumulative, slowly
recognising correspondences from all parts of the poem. Natural reading
may well start from the centre, for example from the wasfs, with their crisp
and very puzzling imagery.
The image is that of 4.5: “Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of
a doe, who feed among the lilies”. Although any image would ultimately be
equally productive, clearly breasts are endowed with the utmost emotive and
aesthetic intensity; their essential ambiguity gives them a special status in the
Song. They combine adult and infantile sexuality, visual and oral satisfaction,
tactile and erectile qualities. They have active and passive characteristics;
active insofar as they give suck, passive in that they are subject to the baby’s
aggressive rage and hunger. On the adult level, they are conspicuous,
attracting attention. As we shall find in the next chapter, ambiguity
determines the aesthetic response, between desire and repression, perfect
form and explosive energy. The breasts are an ideal entity, reproduced in
many forms in art and architecture, in cusps, cupolas, etc.10 They combine
extension, the roundness of feminine beauty, with altitude; compactness and
fullness; centre and circumference. Though the Kleinian ambivalence of the
good nourishing breast and the sadistic/persecutory one has little role to play
in the Song, the breasts are both rich and maternal and thrusting and
aggressive, combining masculine and feminine imagery and functions. They
are opposed to the genitals as active, forward projections of the female body,
and linked to them through synecdoche.
Breasts are compared to towers in 8.10, as assertive and formidable,
expressing the Beloved’s impact on the world and especially on the Lover.
Besides their visual phallic similarity, towers are associated with the
masculine world of arms and politics. They protect the integrity of the
Beloved against assault, while advertising her attractions. Here then the
breasts are primarily containers, hard, redoubtable, elevated.
In 7.8–9, however, where breasts are clusters of dates or grapes, their
feminine aspect is evident, their roundness and richness. The harmonious,
124 Francis Landy
unified breast is fragmented into numerous taut part-objects, that multiply

the experience of bursting the skin and extracting the fruit indefinitely. Here,
then, it is primarily an organ of suckling, soft, full, and vulnerable.
Before turning to the central image of 4.5, I would like to discuss, albeit
cursorily, the poetic qualities and resources of the wasf, especially the one in
which it partakes, namely that of 4.1–5.
The Lover as observer, as poet, in this portrait, translates bodily
sensations into scenic snapshots, metonymy into metaphor. The parts of the
body are metonymous with the vagina, or with the woman herself; through
them, sexuality is diffused over the entire body and thence transmitted, via
the imagery, to the landscape.11 The woman becomes transparent; her figure
is superimposed on vivid pictures, of minimal descriptive value.
Concentration on her expressive face deflects the imagination from the
concealed body; propriety closes the portrait after the breasts. Synecdoche—
using the face to represent the person—verges on metaphor i.e. likeness.12
Parts of the face correspond to parts of the body, and carry with them an
unconscious symbolism. Dr. Eli Gutwirth has very kindly furnished me with
some medieval examples, in which the length of the nose is directly
correlated with character and potency.13 The metaphors thus have a double
function: they ally the face with the active, external world, the setting of the
Song, and they impart symbolic information. Through cubist disintegration,
the reality of the face dissolves; each part, with its exotic image, is
instrumental in a wider synthesis.
The wasf itself, in the continuum of the poem, is isolated; a formal
poetic exercise that sets the lovers at a distance from each other. Its intimacy
contrasts with the public celebration of 3.11; and the descent from Lebanon
in 4.8ff. may plausibly be held to introduce the comparison of the Beloved to
a garden in 4.12–5.1, so that ch. 4 as a whole is an extended portrait of the
Beloved, interrupted only by sighs and ejaculations. As such, however, the
wasf, with its meticulous artifice, is a set piece, that does not participate in
the movement of the Song. It has the effect of a still life with its complex
absence of main verbs; in it each image is paratactically juxtaposed. If the
passage is isolated, distinctively bounded from its neighbours, without logical
connectives, each sentence within it duplicates this isolation. There is no
syntactic frame, no plot, merely the association of tropes by contiguity. Yet
the images within the sentences are buzzing with energy. It is as if the vitality
has been displaced from the body to the correlate, with its sexual symbolism.
Moreover, the images themselves are intricately related to others in the
poem, and conform to its major preoccupations and settings. We have the
relaxed pastoral idiom and activity of 4.1–2, the military/political dimension
in 4.4, the gentle feral tableau in 4.5. This last is linked to the series through
parallelism and complementary contrast. We bring to it from the other
verses an expectation of extravagance, unreality, of poetic chimera. For the
relationship of the lovers it substitutes the conceit, a self-referential
congratulatory medium, which discloses an astonishing depth of meditative
fantasy. There is thus a parallel metonymy in the object and the subject;
libidinal energy is redirected both to the contiguous simile and to the optical
imagination. There is an analogy between the continuity of the eye and the
pastoral scene it witnesses and that of the infant (or Lover) and the breast;
the flow of milk and the fusion of selves is in accord with the unity of discrete
perceptual objects and the mind of the poet, in the field of consciousness.
Sensually “Your two breasts are like two fawns” is an extraordinarily
sensitive metaphor, combining colour, warmth, liveliness and delicate beauty.
The Beloved’s breasts are brown, in motion, in repose, sweet, gentle, etc.14
Fawns are food, and fawns are visually delectable. Feliks (77) suggests an
analogy between the dappled skin of the fawns and the nipples. In looking at
the breasts, the Lover is returning to an undisturbed pastoral idyll. Later we
will touch on its paradisal implications; here I am more concerned with it as
a recollection of infancy.
The breasts evoke suckling: two sucklings, “twins of a doe”, grazing
among lilies.15 It is a strange reversal: the breast that gives suck itself suckles
(cf. Cook: 122–3). On the one hand it is a clear case of projection; in the
breast the Lover sees an early version of himself, since elsewhere in the poem
there is a stock comparison of the Lover with a fawn. Visual satisfaction thus
corresponds to lactation. At the same time the fawns, grazing among the
lilies, are feeding off the earth, which in the Song, as in the Bible in general,
has a maternal function, and is associated with the Beloved. The fawns are
both “twins of a doe” and feed directly off the earth; there are thus two
mothers in view, alternative and complementary. The breasts, then,
produced by the woman’s body, fawns feeding off the earth and mother, are
nurtured by femininity; their relationship to the mother is one of divergence
as well as continuity.16 Hence their partial association with masculinity, the
symbol of fawns, for instance. Moreover, in the adjuration “by the does or
hinds of the field”, the doe, mother of fawns, represents the power that
guarantees feminine sexuality.
The meadow dotted with lilies, as in a pointillist painting, reproduces
the image. The lilies embellish the earth, break up its texture, create a
dynamic interplay; yet they are imparted by it. The preposition “ba” may
[translate to] “among” or “on” the lilies (Pope 1976: 406), i.e. the lilies are
either the diet of the fawns or the context in which they feed, the poetic
126 Francis Landy
equivalent of decor. The image then is either naturalistic—fawns grazing in

springtime—or symbolic. If the fawns feed on them, then they are the breasts
of the earth; in any case, they symbolically set the scene for the feast. If the
lilies are red, as suggested by the comparison with the Lover’s lips in 5.13,17
and fragrant, a metaphorical link with nipples becomes more positive.
Thus the breasts fill the informing eye; the fawns, ambiguous creatures
representing both the Lover (2.8, 2.17, 8.14) and part of the woman’s body,
combine also the infantile function of suckling with the adult pleasure in
observation, reflection and artistic creation. In the caress verbally
represented by the wasf, the breasts are at once a displacement of the vagina,
arousing adolescent attraction, an aid in foreplay, and metaphorically
construct an equivalence between past and present, the communion of lovers
and that of mother and infant. Here historic and synchronic dimensions
merge. Instead of the two lovers, and the objective relationship between
them, we have a continuum, between the eye, the breast and the earth, in
which the past envelops the present. The identity is shared between them.
The maternal images—breasts, earth, doe—bestow the vital fluid; they in
turn are reconstituted by the Lover. There is thus an inference of reciprocity,
of a life cycle in which they both participate; the Lover, who owes his life and
sustenance to his mother, in this luminous recollection of infancy is still
absorbed in that mutual rhythm. His energy, his poetic talent, is nourished
by her. Now in the form of the wasf, he returns that gift, just as, in the
underlying image of intercourse, he restores the vital fluid.
Lilies, as flowers, with their delicate beauty, are associated with
femininity. In the Song, they are an image for the Beloved, in 2.1–2,
corresponding to the apple tree as an emblem for the Lover in 2.3; the phrase
in 4.5 “who feed among the lilies” recurs in the refrain: “My beloved is mine,
and I am his, who feeds among the lilies” (2:16 // 6.3). Instead of the fawn
“who feeds among the lilies” we have the Lover. Similarly in 6.2 the Lover
goes down into his garden to pluck lilies; from the context the lilies off which
he feeds may be identified with women (cf. Falk 1982: 104). For the
relationship of suckling we have sexual fulfilment.
The Lover/infant projects himself into the breasts that feed him and on
which he is dependent; they are fawns, emblems of the Lover. We find the
same process in reverse, in the Beloved’s portrait of the Lover, in connection
with her symbol of the lily. “His lips are lilies, dropping flowing myrrh”
(5.13). If the Lover sees himself in her breasts, she sees herself in his lips.
Lips are commonplace metaphors for the vagina; we speak, for instance, of
the labia of the vagina. This is not only a matter of appearance, but evokes
their function as recipients of food and liquid, life-sustaining nourishment. If
the breasts/fawns are paradoxically imagined as feeding, the lilies/lips are

analogously imagined as giving, both in our verse (4.5), and in its sister verse,
(5.13) where they “drop flowing myrrh”. Clearly, too, there is a symmetry of
metonymy. If for the baby, especially in the early months, the breast is the
most important part of the mother, for the mother the lips are the point of
most intimate contact with the baby. The whole of the baby expresses itself
in the lips; the whole of the mother is available through the breasts, and
through them she gives life and love to the baby. In turn, he grasps and in
fantasy devours the breast. Thus each is incorporated in the other, in the
unity of mother and infant, the basis for that of the self and the world.
The mouth in the Song is associated with sweetness and succulence.
Corresponding to the Lover’s lips that “drop flowing myrrh” are those of the
Beloved, which evoke the same verb “drop” in the lovely paronomasia “Your
lips drop honey, O bride” (4.11).18 Parallel to this, in the next phrase we find
“Honey and milk under your tongue.”19 There are several similar images for
the palate—“And your palate like fine wine” (7.10), “His palate is all sweets”
(5.16), etc. In each case there is an inversion of function: the palate that tastes
food is tasted; the milk of childhood is found under the tongue, not in the
breast or udder; honey and sweetness are reminiscent both of childhood and
lactation, and correlative with bliss, as in the familiar expression “a land
flowing with milk and honey.”20
Underlying this is the metaphor of the kiss. “His lips are lilies,
dropping flowing myrrh”—apart from colour and fragrance—suggests an
association of nectar with saliva; in turn, it is supposed, the superabundant
myrrh is an index of his eagerness. As Marvin Pope (1976: 441) puts it,
“amative oral activities other than sweet talk” are suggested, as throughout
the Song. Moreover, the kiss is a wonderfully sensitive and versatile image
for intercourse, as needs no illustration. The Song exploits the pun
between to kiss and to drink, which we find also in Gen 29.10–11. For
example, in the first verse of the Song itself—“Let him kiss me with the
kisses of his mouth, for your caresses are better than wine” (1.2)—the
sensation of the kiss and the Lover’s mouth is assimilated to that of wine
(Lys: 63). In 8.1–2, the kiss of which the Beloved is deprived leads to a
euphemistic fantasy of hospitality “I would give you to drink of my spiced
wine, my pomegranate juice” (8.2).
The interpenetration of selves in the kiss, as in intercourse, is an
exchange of delectable fluids, a dissolution of boundaries; to pursue the motif
of suckling, the Lover finds under the tongue of the Beloved the milk i.e. life
and love received from her mother, and likewise in his mouth she partakes of
his. And what they taste is themselves.
128 Francis Landy
To turn back to 5.13, and the description of the Lover: “His lips are
lilies, dropping flowing myrrh”. She sees in him, from an imaginative and
temporal distance, an infant, his lips opening like flowers, his mouth
watering; just as he sees in her a primal bliss. In both cases there is an
inversion of gender and function, the superimposition of adult sexuality, e.g.
in the form of a kiss, on an infantile function. The inversion is confirmed by
the context of the image, “dropping flowing myrrh”, in the wasf of 5.10–16.
(5.12) His eyes are like doves by brooks of water, washed in milk,
sitting by the flood (or fitly set).
(13) His cheeks are like a bed of balsam, towers of spices; his lips
are lilies, dropping flowing myrrh.
They are all feminine images.21 In “His lips are lilies, dropping flowing
myrrh”, perfuming, if not gilding, the lily, to the natural flower or girl we add
the recollection of her haste and clumsiness only a few verses earlier, in
seeking to admit her lover: “And my hands dropped myrrh, and my fingers
flowing myrrh, onto the handles of the lock” (5.5). The phrase “to drop
flowing myrrh” is transferred from her hands to his lips. Similarly, at the end
of the sequence, the previous image, “His cheeks are like a bed of balsam”, is
recalled in apposition to lilies in 6.2 “My love has gone down to his garden,
to the beds of balsam to feed among the gardens, to pick lilies”. In turn it
corresponds to the Beloved, the “locked garden” (4.12), the nursery of spices
of 4.13–14. The elaboration of the image of cheeks “towers of [or growing]
spices”, confirms the association with fragrance and the interchange of
sexuality.22 Finally, the extended comparison of the eyes to doves in 5.12 uses
a symbol, a pet name, for the Beloved e.g. “my dove, my pure one” (5.2, 6.9),
“my dove in the clefts of the rock” (2.14).
Thus on his face, the expressive articulate part of his body, we find
animate images of the woman; whereas the rest of his body, though
appropriately formidable, is coldly metallic and disjointed. By a curious
paradox that which is alive in him and relates to her is feminine.
5.13 is, as it were, a very oblique comment on 4.5. The breasts (= fawns)
are sustained by the lips (= lilies) which are those of the lover as a poet who
trades kisses. In both verses the lilies have a maternal function, exuding
nectar, or as part of the pasture; in both they derive from the earth, that is
common to man and woman. Their activity as that which gives suck through
the fawns to the Lover is reversed in 5.13, where the Lover’s greed for kisses
is also generous. If the fawns communicate the sweetness of the lilies to the
Lover, there is a suppressed collision of the two images from the two wasfs.
Finally, the projection of each lover into the other—the Lover into the
breasts, the Beloved into the lips—contributes to their union that is the work
of the poem.
(2.1) I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys.

(2) Like a lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.
(3) Like an apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my love
among sons; in his shade I sat and took pleasure, and his fruit was
sweet to my taste.
In 2.1–3 the lily and the apple are paired together in a competition of
comparisons between the lovers. The Beloved among girls is like a lily
among thorns; the Lover among young men is like an apple tree among the
trees of the wood. The lily of the valleys in 2.1 is solitary and fragile;23 its
calyx and whorl of sepals round the central funnel reinforces the feminine
connotation. It is a quiet, naturalistic comment on her Sitz-im-Leben,
perhaps a little rueful, addressed half or wholly to herself. The Lover’s
gallant intrusion spoils the intimacy; the condition of the courtly
compliment is that it be artificial, with its disarming absurdity. And then her
reply is once more serious, with its sensible comparison of different trees.
Moreover, as continually happens in the Song, the formal structure breaks
down, and the image develops a life of its own.
Trees as opposed to flowers are manly, powerful and vigorous; and
indeed later in the Song we have a tree that conforms to phallic expectation
figuratively attached to the Lover. He is “choice as cedars” (5.15). But the
apple tree is an affectionate rather than an impressive tree, associated in the
Song with shelter (“in its/his shade I sat and took pleasure”) and food (“and
its fruit was sweet to my taste”).24 Clearly the primary reference is to sexual
pleasure and more distantly to protection and provision, familiar male (or
paternal) roles. Three verses later, his encircling arms substitute the shade of
the tree; towards the end of the book in 8.5 she leans upon him. But equally,
and originally, as we shall see, the tree has a maternal function: food and
comfort come from the mother.
The Beloved is also metaphorically linked with a tree—the date palm
in 7.8–9: “This your height is like a palm tree, and your breasts are like
clusters. I said: ‘I will climb the palm tree....’” It is a comparison of height
and slenderness combined with pendulous breasts, heavy with fruit. There is
perhaps a projective identification of the phallus and the woman.25 We catch
a glimpse of amorous convention: the Lover sees himself as bold and
triumphant, sex as an assertion of power. Slenderness is an index of litheness,
130 Francis Landy
common to both lovers, reminiscent of the deer or young gazelle.

Metonymy, such as the comparison of the neck to a tower in 4.4 and 7.5,
suggests it occasionally through analogy elsewhere in the poem. Slimness,
the adolescent and somewhat ethereal beauty, whose sexual polarisation is
not marked (and sometimes confused) is coupled with breasts, whose
sweetness and fullness makes them unambiguously organs of suckling.
Moreover, the comparison of height is not with other women, but with a
diminutive Lover, who climbs the tree; in relation to him she is the infantile
mother, the axis of his world, enormous and central, into whose arms he
climbs and to whose legs he clings (“I will catch hold of its fronds”).
There is an image of the Lover as a flower corresponding to that of the
Beloved as lily: “A spray of henna is my love to me, in the vineyards of Ein-
Gedi” (1.14). Bright yellow flowers; it is unclear whether the “kerāmîm” are
vineyards or spice-plantations.26 In 4.13 “henna” or “camphire” blossoms,
are planted in the garden of the Beloved. In contrast to the lily wherewith the
Beloved defines herself, in essence, as a flower both commonplace and
miraculous, here the Lover is defined in relation to her as something exotic,
brought to her from the uncanny landscape of the Dead Sea, with its
luxuriant crops, in the midst of desolation.27 This Dead Sea fruit has a
miraculous, unnatural quality, reflected in its price. Spice too is a paradoxical
commodity, with overtones of the supernatural; hence its use in magic and
medicine, its place in folklore. This is primarily because of its pervasive
subtlety (hence the most precious spice of all: saffron); not being food itself,
it enhances food. The Beloved brings the Lover from the alien landscape,
and uses him to dye her hair.28
In the previous verse there is an exact parallel in syntax and formal
structure: “Like a sachet of myrrh is my love to me; between my breasts he lies”
(1.13). The “bag of myrrh” is an ordinary female accessory,29 containing a spice
from far away. Once again there is an affiliation of the remote and the close;
myrrh likewise is associated with the Beloved. But the ending differs: “between
my breasts he lies.”30 An adult sexual conceit overlays an image of infancy; as in
4.5 and 7.8, the breasts mediate between past and present; the fully-grown
Lover is simultaneously perceived cradled between the breasts, tiny as a bag of
myrrh. Between “between my breasts he lies” and “in the vineyards of Ein-
Gedi”, the variant endings of the otherwise symmetrical verses, the distances
meet; the heterogenous vineyards—otherwise vineyards are metonymic with
the Beloved herself—add their allure to her hair, and thus lay a tribute.
Two flower images, two tree images. The lily in 2.1 is the simple and
sublime feminine principle, untouched and unguarded, the identity
ultimately desirable, and alone in the world; on it converge images of the
vagina, nipples and lips. The milk flows to the fawns and the lips, and is
reciprocated in the kiss, as we have seen; the same structure influences the
other botanical symbols. The pleasure-giving, sheltering apple-tree, whose
fruit drops into the mouth, combines a sexual conception (Tenor) with a
maternal function and parental care; the Beloved is both the diminutive
infant, sheltered and fed by the tree, cradled in her Lover’s arms, and a sexual
partner. The milk—the sweet food—is now received from the Lover, who
thus stands in for the mother; as in 5.13, there is a reversal of function. This
is confirmed also by the paternal aspects of the tree. The Lover is tender,
caressing, enfolding. There is nothing more maternal than a good father.
The date palm is also a composite metaphor, combining exaggerated
femininity and maternal eminence with a slender figure, into which the
Lover projects his own wish for dominance, his own virility. The two trees
initiate the process through which life is passed through the generations,
from mother to son and thence to the Beloved. But they do so in reverse:
whereas the apple tree is enveloping, as part of a community of trees, a wood,
the isolated date palm is robbed of its fruit. The Lover is apparently its
master, conforming to male assumptions, subverted, as we shall see, in the
working out of the image.
The image of henna is as fantastical as that of the lily is natural. The
Lover is brought from far away, from the exotic oasis, to become an attribute
of the Beloved, to increase her attractions. Once again, we have the
dependence of the Lover on the Beloved, lodged between her breasts. The
movement from Ein Gedi to the breasts is reminiscent of 4.5, where the
fawns, fugitive animals, representative of the Lover in 2.8–9 in his search for
the Beloved, are now identified with breasts, and at peace.
The net we are casting will now tighten a little.

In the fantasy that follows the extended simile of the date palm we find
familiar images tumbling on top of each other—breasts like bunches of grapes,
palate like wine, the fruit of all trees tasted together in a Surrealist banquet.
Among them is the following strange image: “And the fragrance of your nose
like apples” (7.9). What is so special about the smell of a nose? The image has
caused hasty reinterpretation among sober and less sober commentators
alike.31 It is not a question of love play, the “nose-kiss” of Ancient Egyptians
and Eskimos.32 To discern a particular nose-smell is rare, however.
This leads us to a second question. What is the connection, if any,
between the apple tree in this verse and the apple tree in 2.3? How has the
latter managed to insinuate itself in the elaboration of its corresponding
image, the date palm?
132 Francis Landy
In a kiss, the nose perforce smells the nose; the observation is simple
realism. But it conforms to a pattern. We have seen how the mouth tastes the
mouth, that which gives suck itself suckles. The olfactory organ is savoured.
Only elephant ears can be heard, but love looks are long. Moreover, the
inhalation diffuses her fragrance through the body, in rhythmical alternation
with the exhalation. She breathes him in also; the juxtaposed nostrils share
each others’ breath. In a sense, he breathes himself; such lovers would not
survive for long.33 For the breath is also the breath of life. They live through
each other, in each other’s atmosphere. The continuity of the breath,
merging inner and outer, as the underlying rhythm of our lives, is a metaphor
for that of lovers, and that of mother and infant, ideally realised in the womb.
Indeed, the interdependence of the self and the world, the air and
consciousness, substitutes that of foetus and mother. We have the sensation
of the breath, the smell, that revives infantile memories, and is one of the
most pervasive, unconscious and emotive of senses, in common with the
respiratory medium. In the Song, it is especially prominent, and we have
already touched on instances.
We now come to the second question: what is the relation with 2.3?
Simple equation is inappropriate; the masculine signification of the tree in
2.3 cannot be transferred directly to the Beloved’s nose; the Lover does not
smell himself. It is less an oblique comment than a subsidiary motif. The
apple tree in 2.3 is paired with that in 8.5, to be discussed in due course; its
fruit, the surfeit of apples, derives from it but is detached from it. In 2.5
apples are sought as the gift of the daughters of Jerusalem, representatives of
global femininity, as the remedy for love-sickness. They are the commodity
of love, passing in between the lovers; for the Beloved they originate in the
Lover, and vice versa. Thus as well as the symbolism of the tree, that defines
the dignity, identity, and common humanity of the lovers, we have the fruit,
their shared resources, their produce.34
The smell of the apple is in anticipation; there is a slight, subtle
contemplative shift. Only in the next verse is the fruit eaten.
Corresponding to this is another image for the nose: “Your nose is like
the tower of Lebanon, overlooking Damascus” (7.5). As in ch. 4, the
extended comparison with a date palm is preceded by a wasf, whose principal
characteristic is objective definition. Whereas in the Lover’s fantasy in
7.8–10 a medley of half-captured sense impressions overlap, each one of
which dissolves the object and trespasses on the neighbouring appearances—
so that the compact breast is atomised into grapes, the breaths merge, and
finally the dissolving wine flows between the palates—in the wasf of 7.2–7
each item is very clear, perfectly articulated. In 7.8–10 the conclusion is a
confusion of tongues, literal and metaphorical: “And your palate like fine
wine, flowing to my lover [m.] smoothly, stirring the lips of sleepers” (7.10).
Unobtrusively, in mid-sentence, the subject changes from Lover to Beloved,
the fantasy is transferred or becomes reality.35 It is as if she can read his
thought, and their identification is so complete that it passes automatically
from one to the other.
In the wasf, as in 4.7, the summary is a brief appraisal of value.36 In 7.10
the Beloved’s voice completes the dissolution of boundaries with an image of
utter ambiguity: “stirring the lips of sleepers.”37 Sleep is both monistic,
associated with death,38 and undifferentiated; it is both the ultimate fusion
with the mother and without relation to her. The reference here is unclear—
to the Lover / lovers / all lovers? / to the unawakened world, ignorant of
love?39—and blends the paradoxes of the Song, namely that true
consciousness is a loss of consciousness, self-fulfilment is through self-
surrender.
In the wasf, the features are in sharp relief, uncompounded, each one
the focus of exclusive concentration. The images are all more or less visual
(Gerleman: 195), in other words, belonging to the most rational of senses.
The optical faculty has the farthest range, the greatest definition, and
distinguishes most precisely between self and other. There is an air of
excessive conscientiousness in exact perception in the wasf, of scientific
impersonality, compounded by geographical distance and aesthetic
remoteness. The Beloved is far off. The head is part of the skyline, the clarity
of outline indicative of the light, the Mediterranean purity, that enables one
to see from Lebanon to Damascus, from the centre of the country to
Lebanon, and that is a primary symbol for consciousness.
“Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon, overlooking Damascus” is one
of the most notorious images in the Song.40 Marvin Pope (1976: 627) makes
the point well:
If our lady is superhuman in nature and size, then the dismay

about her towering or mountainous nose disappears as the
perspective and proportions fall into focus.
It is not a huge nose, but well-proportioned and slender as a tower, seen from
a distance, against the background of Lebanon and the prospect of
Damascus. Scale is provided by the context (from this point of view the nose
is rather tiny); it is also that of the wasf as a whole.
The appearance of the nose thus contrasts with its recondite smell,
four verses later. It is conspicuous,41 attracting to itself more than its share
134 Francis Landy
of fantasy and folklore. The nose, as the most prominent and central feature
of the face, helps determine its character. In the Beloved’s case, it is high,
elegant and distant. If in 7.9 apples and breath are shared between the
lovers, here it is admired from afar. Noses are intrusive (someone who is
“nosey”) and affectionate, associated with pertness and play e.g. nose-kisses.
If the lips are familiar erotic metaphors for the vagina, the nose may be
compared to the phallus.42 The emphasis on slenderness, on altitude, is, I
think, decisive. The nose matches the nose in a parody of combat, in which
the man’s aggression is reinforced by the woman’s resistance. The struggle
need not be enacted physically; the gestures of noses can be very
expressive.43
The tower associated with military strength as well as erection,
characterises the forward breasts in 8.10, as we have seen. Elsewhere in the
Song, notably two phrases earlier, it depicts the Beloved’s neck; there is thus
a direct link between neck and nose:
Your neck is like the ivory tower; your eyes are pools at Heshbon,
by the gate of Bat-Rabbim; your nose is like the tower of
Lebanon, overlooking Damascus. (7.5)
The image of the neck describes part of the woman, but its connotations
are masculine; this is clearest in the most elaborated of the references, in
4.4: “Like the tower of David is your neck, built in winding courses; a
thousand shields are hanging on it, all the weapons of the warriors”. David
is the father of Solomon, the putative Lover and author of the Song, and
he is also the prototypical hero.44 It is I think the only allusion to a father
in the Song. As a fortification the tower is both formidable and defensive:
in 8.10 it manifests the Beloved’s boldness and asserts her integrity; in 4.4
it is graced with the trophies of or garrisoned by a thousand soldiers;45 in
7.5 it protects the kingdom. As we have seen, breasts and noses alike are
sexually ambiguous, representing a masculine projection as well as a
feminine function. This is sustained by contiguity: 7.4, the verse previous
to ours, is a slightly curtailed repetition of 4.5, with its image of breasts =
fawns, that in turn follows that of the neck and tower in 4.4.46 The long,
slender neck is a somewhat erratic signifier, that essentially confers grace
and dignity on the bearer; in this it resembles the date palm in 7.8. Thus
we find, corresponding to the cluster of feminine images on the face of the
Lover, a set of masculine ones associated with the Beloved. Very
noticeably, the Beloved’s mouth or lips are not depicted; nor is the Lover’s
nose.
7.5 Your neck is like the ivory tower; your eyes are pools at
Heshbon, by the gate of Bat-Rabbim; your nose is like the tower
of Lebanon, overlooking Damascus.
(6) Your head upon you is like Carmel; and the fringe of your
head like purple; a king is caught in tresses.
Subtending these detailed observations, however, is an extended image,

that subtly and completely reverses the appearance of distance, in that it is
permeated with the Lover, and expresses their interpenetration. That which
is hardly and ambiguously accomplished through wild dissolution in 7.8–10
is here an undramatic fact.
The image is that of the kingdom, the Beloved as the land of Israel.47
The images are topographical, even where the referent, like the ivory tower,
is unknown. Together, they compose a collective portrait—the tower of
Lebanon sticks up like a nose, the head protrudes like Carmel,48 the eyes
glitter like pools, from a bird’s eye perspective. The localities are all northern
and peripheral; geographical inference would situate the Beloved’s pudenda
around the centre of the country, near Jerusalem.49 The images give an
impression of the life of the country—the watchful tower, the populous city,
the exploitation of the sea. The military outpost in the far north, the remote
city on the edge of the desert, the uncompromising headland, assert
boundaries, the limits of the land, and also the possibility of influence beyond
it, for example in the sea, or through trade, the busy traffic of Heshbon (it
might be helpful to keep the exact images in mind: “Your eyes like pools in
Heshbon [i.e. treasure, wealth] by the gate of Bat-Rabbim [lit. the daughter
of the multitude] ... Your head like Carmel, its fringe of hair like purple [i.e.
murex]”). The land is secure in its strength and prosperity; we have the
abundant harvest in 7.3 as an illustration.
The image of the Beloved as the land of Israel is a specialisation of that
of the Beloved as earth or earth-mother, our starting-point in 4.5. It is to be
found elsewhere, especially in 6.4, the comparison with Jerusalem and
Tirzah, and in the wasf of 4.1–5, with its pastoral activities and Tower of
David. In contrast, the Lover, in his wasf, is associated with remote sources
of metals—Tarshish and sapphires. The luminosity of the description of the
Beloved, and hence the apparent love for the land of Israel, is augmented by
the interdependence of the images. The tower is erected against the sky; the
whiteness of its ivory in 7.5, and its shimmering decoration in 4.4, make it
conspicuous from afar. The eye, on the other hand, is an image of profundity;
light is reflected in the water. We thus have an interplay of height and depth,
the duplication of images in the central pool, surrounded by likenesses of
136 Francis Landy
towers. In the following verse, the head is framed by hair just as Carmel is
bordered by the dark sea; Krinetzki (1964: 216) attractively suggested that
the hair glows in the sun. The radiance is seductive and irresistible. There
follows an unexpected subversion: “A king is caught in tresses.”50 And this
suddenly is the point. The king is bound to his kingdom, to the royal purple:
it expresses his power and wealth, is imbued with his personality; in turn, his
wealth, prestige etc. only derives from its resources. This fusion is that of the
lovers.
7.3 Your vulva is a round crater—let the mingled wine never be

lacking! your belly is a heap of wheat, hedged with lilies. (4) Your
two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a doe.
As in 4.5, the fawns in 7.4 are associated with the feminine emblem of
the lilies in 7.3,51 adjacent to the image of the vulva. The lilies that grace the
harvest are indicative of the dependence of man on the earth, the people on
the land, analogous to that of infant on mother, man on woman. If the
expressive features represent the external defences, the belly connotes the
internal economy. There is the same gratification of appetite as in 4.5 where
the fawns feed among the lilies, of which the earth is the unfailing provider;
it is reciprocated in adoration and adornment. If in 7.5–6 the woman is
formidable and captivating, here she is bountiful, submissive and joyous
(Soulen: 189–90); the previous image “Your vulva is a round crater—let the
mingled wine never be lacking”52 confirms, through the image of
intoxication and “mingled wine”, the dissolution of selves, the infantile
clinging of the Lover to the inexhaustible cup of the Beloved, and completes
the metaphorical fusion of sex and suckling, teat and vagina—the vagina is
now, as it were, the breast.
An underlying pattern is beginning to emerge, in which in the shadow
of the distinctive features—the face, the date palm, etc.—and masked by the
clarity of light, is the opposite configuration. The articulate face is a
displacement of the body. It asserts the pride and dignity of the woman, her
unassailable identity,53 but it contends with and is permeated by the union of
the lovers, whose separate symbols, expressive of their uniqueness, merge, as
do their bodily functions; apples are shared under the apple tree and date
palm; a few verses later (7.12) we also find henna-flowers, evoked by the
Beloved for a tryst. Contrariwise, the Lover’s face, with its lively feminine
imagery, conducts the repressed energy of the statuesque body. There is the
mechanism of projection or, conversely, mutual recognition. But there is also
another process involved: a split between appearance and reality, a fusion
despite appearances. Between them the lovers create a composite lover; each
of them engenders his own child.
Lebanon, on which the Beloved’s nose is situated, is an important
signifier in the Song. The appearance of Lebanon is associated with the
Lover—for example, we have “his appearance is like Lebanon” in 5.15—as is
the height and strength of its familiar timber—“choice as cedars” (ibid.). But
the fragrance of Lebanon is feminine: “And the fragrance of your skirts is like
the fragrance of Lebanon” (4.11). The Lover is enveloped by the scents
emanating from the herbs and cedar trees as he walks there. The clothes fit
the body as the forest clothes Lebanon, suggesting an analogy between the
Lebanon and the woman: the woman as the source of effluvia, the Lebanon
as the soil on which vegetation grows, from which the sap is transmuted into
perfume. The Lebanon is part of the earth that is personified in the Beloved.
In 7.5, too, Lebanon is the connection between the nose with its tower and
the earth; it represents the substance of the face and is part of the woman’s
body.
The palanquin of love, in 3.9, is made out of the wood of Lebanon:
“Solomon made himself a palanquin, from the trees of Lebanon”. In part this
is an ironic reflection, since the palanquin is truly fashioned with the love of
the daughters of Jerusalem; all the king’s power and wealth—his dominion
over cedars—provides only the outer framework. On the other hand, the
panelling, with its resin, is both a tribute to the value of love, and subtly
permeates the chamber with the scents and colours of Lebanon. In 1.17 too
the houses of the lovers are of cedars.54 And in 8.9 a cedar construction—
palisade or plank—reinforces or frames the door of the Beloved. There it is
both a masculine intrusion and a feminine assertion, whose ambiguities we
shall explore when we investigate that passage in Chapter Three. In each
case, then, cedar is bisexual—the house shared by lovers, the palanquin built
by Solomon and paved by the daughters of Jerusalem, the adolescent girl
whose changes are both physical and social. Likewise it is associated with
both lovers in the Song: its appearance is masculine, mighty and imposing,
its essence is feminine. Thus we come to the derivation of masculine from
feminine imagery, as part of the reconstitution of the mother.
Moreover, the context is familiar from our previous discussion: “Your
lips drop honey, O bride; honey and milk are under your tongue, and the
fragrance of your skirts is like the fragrance of Lebanon” (4.11). The kiss
accompanies the image of Lebanon in 5.15–16 also: “His appearance is like
Lebanon, choice as cedars. His palate is all sweets....” The cycle between
mother and infant, breasts and lips, the craving for satisfaction, for the
exploratory tongue, is cancelled out by this relaxed participation in the life of
138 Francis Landy
the mother, supported rhetorically by the slowing down of the line: “And the
fragrance of your skirts is like the fragrance of Lebanon”. The previous
verse, too, follows the same pattern: “How lovely are your caresses, my sister,
my bride; how much better are your caresses than wine, and the fragrance of
your oils than all spices” (4.10). Dionysiac intoxication, the flow of liquid
between the lovers, gives way to quiet breathing. It is paralleled by 1.1–4,
where it is the Lover whose caresses are better than wine, and whose
ointments are sweet. We have another instance of the reciprocity of lovers.
The scent of the clothes corresponds to the fragrance of the apples in 7.9;
there, likewise, the continuity of breathing, that flows uninterrupted between
and through their lives, sustains and validates the accompanying orgasm;
their momentary encounter is also a lasting concord. 7.8–10, with its
intensity and dissipation, matches 4.8–11 in relation to the previous wasf; in
both there is a sudden image of fragrance. Aggression is in search of
tranquillity; to return to our primal idyll, the quietness of fawns feeding off
lilies.
We have come to the turning of many ways. We have discerned various
inversions of imagery: the breasts as fawns, the man’s lips as lilies; each lover
discovers himself intricately constellated in the other. The sustenance of life
passes from the lilies to the fawns, from the female to the male, and thence
back to the Beloved; there is a cycle, an unfailing spring. The Beloved sits
under the apple tree; its delight is breathed by the Lover in 7.9. The
differentiating features in 7.5–6 conceal and permit the interaction of king
and kingdom, the discourse of fawns and lilies in 7.3–4. The rapprochement
of lovers, the confusion of selves, as more and more complexes of images are
built, leaves their essential identities untouched, and diffused. The milk
passes from the mother to the lover and back again; both lovers seek in the
other their first love, their mother. For the Beloved the sheltering apple is
predominantly maternal, combining sex and suckling, as do the Lover’s lips.
There is a general metamorphosis of imagery; the lilies feed the fawns,
feminine fragrance is concealed in masculine appearance, as we have seen in
the case of Lebanon. For both lovers derive from and reconstitute the
primordial bisexual mother, the ambivalent archetype to which we now turn.
NOTES
1. Krinetzki’s 1981 commentary had not yet appeared when I wrote this chapter;
in it the perceptions of his 1970 article are applied in depth to the exegesis of the
Song.
2. 1970: 406. This however is common ground between Freudians and Jungians (see,
for example, Freud (1933: 147–9) (“On the Psychology of Women”).
3. 415–16. He constructs it, however, out of an array of not always convincing phallic
images, often drawn from Jung’s more abstruse alchemical researches, e.g. the
identification of red lilies with masculinity and white lilies with femininity (1963, 265).
4. Rosemary Gordon (1978: 173) defines the collective unconscious as “the
communal and collective heritage of the species, man”, containing “impulses, dreams and
fantasies ... characteristic of man in general”. Fordham (145) contrasts the collective
unconscious, which is equivalent to the archetypal shadow of an individual, with the
conscious expressions of a society; it is often that which society denies in itself, and is
potentially subversive. It is essentially a cultural acquisition, not an innate inheritance; this
has been the source of much misunderstanding.
5. Falk (1982: 86) comments somewhat acerbically on the general attribution to a
male poet; Lys (10) considers composition by a woman a possibility, an opinion widespread
among biblical feminists. There is no decisive evidence, nor does it substantially affect the
interpretation. In this work, however, I have related to a male poet, fictively identified with
Solomon, who is beyond the threshold of the poetic world he contemplates; this is perhaps
only relevant to my conclusion, considering 8.13–14.
6. Levinger (64) notes the slowness the repeated “I” contributes to the verse;
Krinetzki (1981: 160) suggests that the stress marks her disappointment and grief, and
observes that it is followed by “my love”, the occasion of grief, repeated in successive
words: “I opened to love, but my love had vanished, gone ...” Pope (1976: 521), however,
finds no evidence of stress in the redundancy, merely late Hebrew usage, citing
Ecclesiastes. In Ecclesiastes, however, superfluous phraseology, and especially the repeated
stress on “I”, is rhetorically very powerful, communicating the solipsistic and loquacious
universe the speaker inhabits. Pope gives no reason for his dismissiveness.
7. Gerleman (201) and Rudolph (174) read “love” as “the loved one”, following the
Vulgate. One need not take it as an abstraction for the Beloved, with Pope (1976: 632). As
Gordis (1976: 96) says, it is “best taken as an apostrophe to the love-experience itself”.
The frequent emendation of “among delights” to “daughter of delights” (e.g. Pope 1976:
632; J. B. White 47) is plausible but hardly necessary. On the basis of this verse, Fox (1981)
suggests that the word “‘ahabâ” is ambiguous, as in English, and may be an endearment.
He draws a dubious parallel with Egyptian MRWT.
8. The palanquin, though made for himself, is clearly linked by the context to
Solomon’s wedding; with Winandy (1965) etc. I hold it to be parallel to Solomon’s bed in
3.7, associated through the ambiguous question “who is this?” with the Beloved.
9. Pope (1976: 408) and Gordis (1974: 83–84) assume that the phrase “until the day
blows and the shadows flee” refers to the morning twilight, since they consider the context
to betoken love-making. This, however, is unargued. Lys (130–32), after deliberating
lengthily whether the shadows are those that stretch in the evening or disperse in the
morning, contributes the original and elegant consideration that the scene (2.8–17) that
this verse concludes is an invitation to a country walk, and could hardly be at night.
Krinetzki (1964: 139–40) perceives, brilliantly, a metaphorical link between the flight of
the deer and the fleeing shadows.
10. The relationship of art and architecture to the mother has been most extensively
explored by Adrian Stokes (e.g. 1965, 1972), who illuminatingly alludes, for example, to
the importance of the unitary breast principle in early Renaissance art (1965: 21–22), or to
the varying significance of smoothness and roughness (e.g. “Smooth and Rough” 1972:
72). See especially his essay “Art and the Sense of Rebirth”, 1972: 67–78.
140 Francis Landy
11. Cf. Fox (“Love, Passion, and Perception”: 12–14) whose analysis of the
technique of the wasf is similar to mine. For Fox, the images communicate a
metaphysics of love, a universal eros. He pays little attention, however, to their
symbolic connotations, nor to the complex relationship between the parts of the body,
with their attendant comparisons, in other words to overall structure. Falk (1982:
80–84) rightly maintains that the images of the wasfs are no more absurd than those of,
for example, metaphysical and modern poetry, and biblical critics who have dismissed
them as bizarre merely betray their own insensitivity. For a survey of interpretative
follies, see Soulen (1967). Falk claims that only a little imaginative empathy is required
to see the point of the images, and that most are visual though a few (e.g. our simile in
4.5) are tactile. This, however, is to limit them sensorily—in that often the comparison
is exceedingly complex—and emotively, in that it denies the relative independence of
their ostensible subject that Fox well defines.
12. As Jakobson argues (1960: 370) this is perhaps characteristic of poetry in general.
13. Cf. E. Kane “The Personal Appearance of Juan Ruiz” (106–7): “Most interesting
of all these erotic folk beliefs is that which associates length of the nose with the
proportions of the male generative member”, and the further discussion by Dunn (81–82).
I owe both these references to Dr Gutwirth. Ehrenzweig (1965: 210–12) provides some
amusing examples.
14. Pope (1976: 470) astutely remarks on an implication of youthfulness in the image
(cf. Krinetzki 1981: 137); his suggestion that the breasts are small by analogy with the
fawns is not impossible if a little too literal.
15. Pope (1976: 470) deletes “who feeds among the lilies” to conform to the parallel
verse in 7.4; he holds that it has mistakenly been borrowed from 2.16–17. His objection to
the image is not clear; he says nothing more than that there is “something wrong” with it.
It is a good example of the technique whereby an image develops a life of its own, and is
“presentational” as well as “representational”, as Fox contends.
16. The comparison of the relationship of the fawns to the doe with that of the breasts
to the beauty is well-perceived by Chouraqui (57), for whom the image expresses ideas of
fecundity, maternity, beauty and innocence.
17. The “šôšannâ”, like the “h
. abas.s.elet” that is bracketed with it in 2.1, has not been
conclusively identified. As Falk (1976: 214) sagely avers, “The particular flowers she calls
herself are not important”. This sentence is missing from her 1982 volume, where she
claims that the identification of the flowers is crucial to the understanding of 2.1–2
(114–15), but fails to specify how, except that they are common wildflowers. Gerleman
(116) cites Dalman’s opinion that “šôšannâ” is a generic term for any flower with a calyx.
The most widespread view is that of Feliks (28), that it is the “lilium candidum” “as the
most beautiful, largest and most fragrant of the flowers of Israel”. The objection is raised
by Pope (1976: 368), that the “lilium candidum” is not red, and hence is inadequate as a
metaphor for the Lover’s lips; against this, Feliks considers that the analogy is of smell, not
colour. Moreover, he is constrained to distinguish between “šôšannâ” and the “šôšannâ”
and the “šôšannâ hā‘amāqîm”, since the “lilium candidum” does not grow in valleys. One
would have thought, however, that shape and colour are the most distinctive qualities of
lips.
Pope’s suggestion that the “šôšannâ” is to be identified with the Egyptian “šš ˇsn”, the
sacred lotus or water-lily, is attractive, and supported by much evidence of its symbolic
sexual import, both near (e.g. Canaanite Astarte plaques) and far. Nevertheless, the
naturalism does suggest the Israeli landscape (“lily of the valleys” etc.), where the lotus did
not grow, except perhaps in the Jordan Valley.
Another suggestion, that it is the “anemone” (Robert and Tournay 436 and Wittekindt:
94f.) has generally fallen into disfavour, since the anemone is of little fragrance (Lys: 100).
18. As Krinetzki observes, citing Budde, the long-drawn-out corresponding syllables
articulate the dropping of the honey (1981: 143; 1964: 168). The verbal metaphor is
enriched by alliteration and assonance: the repeated unvoiced labio-dental fricatives /f/
and /ś/ in “nōfet tit.t.ōfnâ śiftôtayik” “Your lips drop honey” trickle past the teeth and lips;
the hard dental plosive /t. / separates the syllables; the stressed compact /o/ rounds them,
supported by the narrow unstressed drift of the /i/s: “nōfet tit.t.ōfnâ śiftôtayik ...”
19. Rudolph (150) soberly comments “Die Zungenkuss spielt in der ‘ars amandi’
vielen Völker eine grosse Rolle”.
20. The best discussion is by Krinetzki (1981: 144). Falk (1982: 104) considers that
“milk and honey” is a fixed oral pair. Lys (186) citing Dussaud, adduces El’s dream of the
wadis flowing with honey as a portent of Baal’s resurrection in the Baal-Anat Cycle (UT
49.111. 6–7, 12–13), to suggest that “milk and honey” have paradisal connotations. Avishur
(516) sees wine and honey (npt) and oil and honey (npt) as conventional pairs, both in
Ugaritic and Hebrew, and links wine in 4.10b with oil in 4.10c and honey in 4.11; he
rightly points out that 4.10 and 4.11 are parallel tricola, and thus stylistically closer to
Ugaritic. The exampla are not entirely unconvincing, since they are very few (two from
Ugaritic, one from Proverbs), and unsurprising.
21. Krinetzki (1981: 169–170) compares 5.13 to the description of the Beloved as the
spice-garden in 4.12–5.1, and thence to the feminine archetypal image of the vessel; he
perceives also the infantile correlate, identifying the Lover with the “puer aeternus” who
arouses the Beloved’s maternal instincts. He notes too that the lips are closely linked to the
genitalia, and proposes that manly youth and beauty derive from the archetype of the
“Great Mother”, suggesting this as an element in paedophilia.
22. Most commentators follow the Versions in reading “mgdlt” as a participle
“growing” rather than as a noun “migdelôt” “towers”, with the MT (Pope 1976: 540;
Gordis 1974: 91; Lys: 225 etc.). NEB and others plausibly interpret “migdelôt” as
“chests”, following Mishnaic usage (Jastrow, Dictionary: 726). In either case, the essential
comparison of the lover’s cheeks with spices is unaffected. Gerleman (175), in line with
his theory that the images of the wasfs are specific references to Egyptian conventions,
explicates the towers as spice-cones worn at Egyptian feasts; it is of no consequence to
him that spice-cones were worn on the head whereas the simile describes the cheeks
(Pope 1976: 540; Krinetzki 1981: 279 n.397), since it is a literary “topos” to which
incidental details are irrelevant. Levinger (70) provides no firm evidence for his
contention that “migdal” may mean “balcony”, clearly designed to conform to the
extended metaphor he perceives between the Lover and a temple; the cheeks would
comprise a window-box.
There is a beautiful paronomasia between “dāgûl mērebābâ” (DGL MR) “choice
above ten thousand” in 5.10 and “migdelôt merqāhîm” (GDL MR) in our verse.
23. Falk (1976: 214) derives an insinuation of toughness from the image; she is a plant
that grows on all soils. Krinetzki (1981: 88) considers that the metaphor is an unassuming
comparison with common wildflowers; hers is not an outstanding beauty. In 2.2, the Lover
contradicts this. Falk’s present interpretation (1982: 115) is very similar (cf. Rudolph: 129).
Both of these interpretations lack the sensuous directness that is the primary quality of the
142 Francis Landy
image: the delicate loveliness of the flower, the familiar miracle of the spring, with its
transience, combining pathos and uniqueness.
24. The fruit in question is uncertain. Apples did not grow wild in Ancient Israel; on
the other hand, the same objection militates against the apricot (NEB), citron, and other
fruits variously suggested. The quince, proposed in a note by Marcia Falk (1982: 115), is
odourless (cf. 7.9) and sour. Feliks (32) suggests that it is a species of crab-apple with an
unusually pleasant smell. Gerleman (116) and Rudolph (130) raise the possibility that the
apple tree is precious because of its rarity.
25. The association is quite common in Romantic poetry, as illustrated in abundance
by Praz. A wonderful 20th-century parallel is from Lorca’s poem “Amnon y Thamar”, in
which Tamar is described as “agudo norte de palma” (“sharp pole-star of palm”—tr. Gili
and Spender).
26. For the latter interpretation (cf. “kerem zayit” “olive grove” in Jud. 15.5), see Pope
(1976: 354) and Feliks (49). Pope gives a short account of the archaeological excavations
of the perfume industry at Ein Gedi. According to Gordis (1974: 80), however, it was
famous for its vineyards (cf. Krinetzki 1981: 245 n.100).
27. Krinetzki (1981: 81–2) sees in the Dead Sea and the flourishing oasis a symbol of
the coexistence of life and death, that cannot exist the one without the other.
28. The preposition “be” in “bekarmê ‘ên gedî” “in the vineyards of Ein Gedi” is open
to the reading from as well as the more usual in (Lys: 92, Pope 1976: 354 etc.). I would
suggest that the ambiguity combines both localities in the movement: the henna is
simultaneously visualised in its natural habitat and in the Beloved’s possession.
29. Lys: 90 notes that a bag of myrrh (in fact a flask of spikenard or foliatum) is one of
the items that a woman is forbidden to carry on the public domain on the Sabbath
(Mishnah Shabbat 6.3). More or less all commentators mention the widespread use of this
article; Pope remarks that it may still be bought (1976: 351).
30. Lys (91) suggests that the bag of myrrh is inseparable from the Beloved, worn at
night when she is otherwise undressed.
31. Gordis (1974: 84) and Schoville (1970: 96–7), for example, interpret “yap” as
“face”. The less sober suggestion is that of Pope (1976: 636–7), who thinks it may refer to
the vulva or clitoris, on the grounds that in Ugaritic the metaphor of a nose (lap) may refer
to a city gate (2 Aqht V: 4–5). In Ugaritic, “‘ap” is attested as a term for the nipple, and
this is more possible (Dahood: 1976). Nevertheless, if there is an extended metaphor of a
kiss in this passage, as most commentators suppose, the most natural reference would still
be to the nose, as the part of the face adjacent to the mouth.
32. For the Egyptian category of nose-kiss cf. Gerleman: 203, J. B. White: 138. White
believes the nose-kiss consists of breathing or sniffing round the partner’s nose.
33. Krinetzki (1964: 222) conceives that they are forced to breathe through their noses
since their mouths are stopped with kisses. Against this view, which seems somewhat
contrived, Pope (1976: 636) objects that one breathes through one’s nostrils the odour of
the mouth. In his recent commentary, Krinetzki (1981: 201) has stressed the unification of
the breath.
34. Levinger (83) sees a further allusion to “between my breasts he shall lie” in 1.13 in
“And may your breasts be like clusters of grapes” in 7.9. Now he responds to her wish.
35. 7.10 is a problematic verse, because of the change of speaker in the middle.
Gerleman (203) objects that this is unexampled in the Song, though 4.16 is possibly
analogous. Gerleman accordingly redivides the sentences after “like fine wine”; considers
that another comparison with wine is missing; and joins 7.1Ob to 7.11. Others drop “dôdî”
“my love” (e.g. Pope 1976: 639), change it (e.g. to “lî” “to me”: Rudolph: 174), repoint it
(e.g. “dôday” “my caresses”: Krinetzki 1981: 198), or reinterpret it (e.g. Gordis 1974: 97,
who considers it to be a plural i.e. “flowing for lovers”, or Schoville (1970: 98), who reads
it as a Phoenician third-person suffix). There is no real objection to the change of speaker,
however; cf. Lys (269) and J. B. White (132). Fox (“Love, Passion and Perception”: 5) cites
this as “a prime example of how the lovers’ words balance each other”.
36. The clarity of visual description is accentuated by the chiastic keyword “beautiful”
that links the beginning of the wasf with the end. Nearly all critics, however, regard 7.7 as
the beginning of the following sequence, but without explication. In view of the exact
parallel with the wasf of chapter 4, that begins “Behold, you are beautiful, my friend” (4.1),
and ends “You are entirely beautiful, my friend” (4.7), this is quite unjustified. A similar
inclusion is to be found in the wasf of 5.10–16 (cf. Introduction p. 45).
37. The obscurity is increased by the hapax legomenon “dôbēb”. The common
interpretations are “flowing/stirring” (from ZWB) and the factitive “causing to murmur”
from Aram. DBB “murmur” (cf. Jastrow, Dictionary: 226 for Talmudic and Midrashic
usage, and Pope 1976: 643, for the alternative interpretations). Both are possible, though
the first is simpler, and fits both meanings of “yšnym”. Many critics follow the Sept.
reading of “teeth” for MT “yešēnîm” “sleepers”; some attempt to adapt it to the MT,
through enclitic Mems and the like. Pope (1976: 641) quotes a good suggestion by D.N.
Freedman that the Yod before “šnym” be changed to Waw. Both readings are possible,
though the MT “sleepers” is more interesting.
38. The Midrash and Rashi, following the allegorical interpretation, consider the
“sleepers” to be the “dead”. Pope (1976: 641) adopts this reading, and proposes that the
reference is to libations to ancestors, since it suits his theory that the Song originated in
funeral feasts.
39. Lys (269) and Gordis (1974: 97) hold that the predicate of “yešēnîm” is the lovers,
presumably after their love has been satisfied; Levinger (84) considers it to be a conceit—
extravagant in my view—for motionless lips. Goitein (1957: 289) remarks very beautifully
that her wine “awakens the Lover to dream for ever of his Beloved”. One may well
associate wine and sleep, not to mention sleeping together. The referent of “yešēnîm”
“sleepers” may be the lovers, in their mutual embrace; or it may be all lovers, as in 5.1,
indulging in the wine that here stimulates their dreams; or it may be all those who are
unawakened by love, as in 8.5. Delitzsch’s comment, cited by Pope (1976: 641), that
drinking in sleep is unknown takes the metaphor too literally: nor is the referent of palate,
namely kisses, inappropriate, as Pope surmises. Kisses may be dreamt, whether “dôbēb” be
taken to mean flowing over lips or causing them to murmur.
40. Rashi expresses his astonishment as follows: “I cannot interpret this as a nose,
neither literally nor metaphorically, for what sort of praise is this to say that she has a nose
as large and erect as a tower? Therefore, I say, “‘appek” is an expression for the face”. Falk
(1982: 127) interprets it similarly. However, Ibn Ezra, who had seen minarets, remarks that
it is “a straight nose, without defects”.
41. Krinetzki (1964: 216) linked the root meaning of Lebanon i.e. “white” with the
colour of the ivory tower. Her remote beauty is reinforced by the snow-covered peaks.
The suggestion is ingenious, if a little recherche. He has abandoned this interpretation in
his recent commentary (1981: 191), where he stresses the aggressiveness of the image.
Rudolph (173) considers that it may be a peak of Lebanon, and not a tower.
144 Francis Landy
42. Cf. the articles on mediaeval chiromancy cited in n.29; the extraordinary
attention with which antisemites scrutinise Jewish noses, connected with the fantasy of
Jewish potency; the supposed nobility of Roman noses; the dominance of noses in
cartoons. There is a splendid discussion and illustration of this in Ehrenzweig (1965:
213–14).
43. Also the nasal sounds /m/ and /n/, especially when they are non-phonemic i.e.
purely emotive in function. /n/ for example tends to be associated with anger. We say
“mmm” to convey appetite or wonder.
44. Krinetzki (1964: 160). The mention of David, in Krinetzki’s current view (1971:
183 etc.), is one of the elements that serves to root the Song in a specifically Israelite and
consequently religious setting. Though there may be a pun between “dāwîd” and “dôd”,
this does not justify Lys’ translation “Tour-le-Cheri” (167).
45. For this practice see Ezekiel 27.10–11 (Pope 1976: 468). Only Levinger (53) raises
the alternative provenance of the shields, whether they are captured from the enemy and
hence displayed as a sign of victory, or else are hung in readiness by the troops, and thus a
show of strength (53). Isserlin’s suggestion that the verse is an extended simile of a
necklace, comparable to a statue at Arsos, is very attractive and has been widely adopted.
46. Levinger (80) suggests an alliterative connection between “s.ebiyyâ” “doe” and
“s.awwā’rēk” “your neck” to explain the omission of “hārô’îm baššôšannîm”. Refrains in
the last two chapters are frequently condensed e.g. 7.11, 8.4 (cf. Introduction above).
Furthermore, whereas the comparisons in the wasfs of ch. 4 and ch. 5 vary greatly in
elaboration, those in ch. 7 are generally of two clauses each. 7.4 thus parallels 7.2b, 7.3a,
7.3b etc. Pope (1976: 624) suggests that the last phrase is omitted so as not to duplicate
“hedged with lilies” at the end of the previous verse (in 4.5, however, he excises “who feed
among the lilies” to correspond to 7.4:). However, “lilies” appear at the end of 6.2 and 6.3
without apparent awkwardness.
47. “The many geographic metaphors (Kedar, Heshbon, Tirzah, Engedi etc.), by their
repetition, persistently suggest identifying the contour of the country with the body of the
beloved” (Cook: 127) cf. Krinetzki (1964: 216). The geographical allegory is itemised in
considerable detail by Robert and Tournay; for example, the two breasts are identified with
Mt. Ebal and Gerizim. Clearly, there is no cartographical exactitude in the Song; it is no
criticism to say with Pope (1976: 626) that the eyes are misplaced. For what we have is a
set of peripheral geographical landmarks. Gerleman (195) sees them as indicative of the
predominant royal travesty.
48. Gordis (1974: 96), Ibn Ezra and others suggest that “karmel” should be “karmîl”
“crimson” (II Chron 2.6 etc.), corresponding with “‘argaman” “purple”. On the other
hand, “Carmel” creates a far better visual image, in accord with the geographical sequence,
contiguous with the sea and its produce. Levinger (80) believes there may be a deliberate
pun between “karmîl” and “karmel”, as does Lys (263–4).
49. According to the Talmud (T. B. Sukkah 49a–b), the vagina of the Shekhinah—
hence of the world and in particular the land of Israel—is the altar in Jerusalem. Robert
and Tournay identify Jerusalem in this sequence with the navel or vulva of 7.3, basing
themselves on such prophetic allusions as Eze 5.5, and the assumption that everything in
the passage must have its geographic correlate.
50. Pope (1976: 630) writes that the emendations proposed for this phrase, especially
the last word, are “scarcely worth reviewing”; “rehāt.îm”, denoting “watering troughs”
(Gen 30.38, 41, Ex 2.16) from Aram. RHT = run, is a straightforward metaphor for
flowing or wavy hair, as Lys amusingly illustrates (265). Feliks (109), following some of the
Versions, attaches the word “melek” “king” to the previous phrase i.e. “a king’s purple,
bound with threads”—cf. also Krinetzki 1981: 191. Not only does this make the last colon
too short, as Pope observes (1976: 630), but the previous one is lengthened impossibly,
quite apart from the abysmal anticlimax. Levinger (81) suggests, rather beautifully, that
“rehāt.îm” and “rāh.ît.ēnû” in 1.17 are variants of each other; that the runnels of “rehāt.îm”
merge with the light fretwork of 1.17, woven into the fringe of the hair of the previous
phrase, to which this is in apposition.
51. Jacob, cited by Levinger (80), draws attention to a Palestinian custom of
decorating sheaves with flowers; Feliks (107) states that harvested wheat is normally
protected by thorns, and the lilies are indicative of her beauty (cf. 2.2).
52. Opinions are divided whether the rare word “šorerēk” denotes “your navel” (cf.
Eze 16.4, Prov 3.8) or “your vulva” (Arab. “śirr”) cf. Pope (1976: 617). Krinetzki (1981:
192) suggests that the navel is a metonym for the entire genital region. The development
of the image of the crater in which “the mingled wine may never be lacking” leads me to
favour the second interpretation.
53. If the face symbolises the reality principle, the “face” we expose and submit to the
world, the body represents the explosive pleasure principle, which we conceal under
clothes (Paz 1975: 4).
54. For the suggestion that the wood is aromatic, see Feliks (33–34).
55. Pope (1976: 469) lists these; Gerleman (145) describes their elimination as
pedantry. Schoville (1970: 75) notes that in Ugaritic the number often precedes the dual
(e.g. for emphasis). As a zoologist, Feliks (14) observes that only one species of “sebî”
commonly bears twins, namely the “gazella subgutturosa”, now extinct in Israel.
56. Pope (1976: 470) avers that the youthful fawns convey the small size of the
“mammary orbs”, according to the ideals of Arabic pulchritude. Other references to
breasts in the Song contradict this supposed predilection, as we have seen.
57. In the Dogon religion, for example, as recorded by Marcel Griaule, the first
human beings were four sets of twins; only with the fall from perfection, the menstrual
cycle, and mortality, did single births begin to occur. Twins thus are a sign of original
perfection, and in consequence are loaded with propitiatory gifts. In the Nuer culture,
twins are quasi-divine, like birds, mediating between earth and heaven (Lévi-Strauss 1969:
151–54). The Dioscuri, according to Jung, represent a duality of mortality and
immortality (1959a: 121–2). Frazer, inevitably, produces a multitude of examples of
uncertain value.
J . D A N I E L H AY S
Has the Narrator Come to

Praise Solomon or to Bury Him?:
Narrative Subtlety in 1 Kings 1–11
T he Solomon narratives (1 Kgs 1–11) present a rather curious story. For

the first ten chapters Solomon and his kingdom are extolled and their glories
praised. Then, abruptly, in 1 Kings 11, the narrator condemns him,
underscoring his flagrant idolatry. The two portrayals appear to be quite
different; indeed, they seem to describe two very different individuals.
One proposed solution to this schizophrenic narrative relationship is to
view the differences as inherent to the sources that the final editor or
redactor used. Proponents of this view would argue that most of the material
the final (deuteronomistic) editor used in chs. 1–10 was pro-Solomonic,
praising his deeds and actions. This ‘final’ editor, however, writing in light of
the Babylonian captivity, then added his own assessment of Solomon,
focusing on the disastrous idolatry of Solomon, idolatry being one of the key
themes running throughout the final form of the book (1–2 Kings). The
editor apparently made little effort to revise the viewpoint of the various pro-
Solomonic sources that he incorporated into the first part of his work. Thus
the contrast is explained.
Another suggested solution is that the text, inconsistent as it seems,
does actually reflect Solomon’s life. That is, Solomon was faithful to Yahweh
until his old age, when his wives led him into idolatry. The abruptness of the
text thus reflects an equally drastic change in Solomon’s historical life, as he
From Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 28, no. 2 (December 2003). ©2003 The
Continuum Publishing Group, Ltd.
147
148 J. Daniel Hays
turned quickly from walking faithfully with Yahweh to serving a multitude of

foreign gods.
In recent years several Old Testament scholars have been re-examining
the literary structure of this unit, looking for structural clues to the problem.
These writers have observed that some literary units in 1 Kings 1–11 appear
to be parallel to other units. Several hypotheses relating to the structure of
this unit have been suggested. Parker, for example, argues that 1 Kings 1–2
and 11.14–43 frame the story, but that the main unit extends from 3.1 to
11.13. In a chiastic arrangement, chs. 3–8 are paralleled by 9.1–11.14. The
first unit is favorable to Solomon while the second unit is hostile.1 Brettler,
on the other hand, proposes that there are three basic units: ‘Solomon’s
accession to the throne’ (chs. 1–2), ‘Solomon serves Yahweh and is blessed’
(3.3–9.23), and ‘Solomon violates Deut. 17.14–17 and is punished’
(9.26–11.49).2 Both Parker and Brettler, however, structure their units
around negative sections and positive sections, with the earlier sections being
negative and the later sections being positive. Such analysis from a literary
point of view is helpful and does point us in the right direction, but does not
really answer all of the questions raised by this passage (as discussed below).
Jobling also sees the narrative as consisting of a positive section (1 Kgs
3–10) bracketed by two negative sections (the bloodbath in 2.12–46, and the
foreign women in ch. 11), but he disagrees with Parker, arguing instead that
ch. 10 is likewise positive to Solomon. Jobling understands 1 Kings 3–10 as
describing a ‘mythical’ ideal kingdom, a Golden Age narrative similar to this
genre in other cultures. He does note some tension in the Golden Age
section between the unconditional blessings of Yahweh (based on the Davidic
Covenant of 2 Sam. 7) and the conditional Deuteronomic blessings, but he
argues that the unconditional aspects subvert the conditional ones so that the
Golden Age comes across as truly glorious. Jobling then tries to connect the
positive picture in 1 Kings 3–10 with idealized economics while connecting
the ‘fall’ in 1 Kings 11 to foreign, externally related sexuality, which he notes
is symbolically absent from the Golden Age.3
Recent works from the fields of narrative criticism and feminist
criticism have likewise underscored the inadequacy of traditional approaches
to the Solomon narratives. They have highlighted numerous textual
ambiguities and surface contradictions. For example, Gunn and Fewell draw
upon the Solomon narratives to illustrate irony and ambiguity. They point
out numerous events in the Solomon narratives that raise questions and
doubts (and perhaps outrage the shadow of David’s affair with Bathsheba and
her role in the succession of Solomon, Solomon’s questionable piety and his
true attitude toward the temple, Solomon’s ‘walk’ in the statutes of David
except for his sacrifices at the high places, the treatment and fate of Abishag,
Solomon’s sin and punishment contrasted with that of Jezebel, and the
implications relating to Solomon’s failure to marry the Queen of Sheba.4
However, although Gunn and Fewell help to point out the tensions in the
Solomon narratives, as well as the problems with reading these narratives
along traditional lines, they do not really offer an overall approach to
interpreting these tensions.
Lasine, on the other hand, does offer an overall approach, although it
appears inadequate. First of all, he notes the wide and disparate range of
conclusions that scholars propose in regard to Solomon. He then suggests
that this phenomenon reflects the actual ‘indeterminacy’ of the text itself.
Lasine moves beyond the recognition of ambiguity and gaps that Sternberg,5
Fewell and Gunn point out, proposing that the text is intentionally
indeterminate. Lasine argues that the narratives intentionally ‘hide’ Solomon
from the reader, ‘encouraging a variety of subjective responses to the texts’.6
Yet Lasine appears to overlook the role of irony and ambiguity in the story
as a whole. For example, he discusses the different ways to view Solomon’s
marriage to the daughter of Pharaoh. He notes that from a deuteronomistic
view such a marriage can be condemned, but that in light of the practices in
other ancient Near Eastern monarchies such a marriage would be acceptable,
even laudable. Thus, Lasine argues, the portrayal is ambiguous and
indeterminate.7 However, as I argue below, it seems much more plausible to
understand this contrast in views as part of the very point that the narrator is
making. Israel is not to be like the other nations. What is ‘laudable’ in other
monarchies is ‘detestable’ to Yahweh when it violates the deuteronomistic
decrees. The narrator uses irony precisely to make this point, which is indeed
determinate, once the irony is noticed.
Another work that highlights the inadequacies of early treatments of
Solomon, pointing out ambiguities and tensions throughout the story, yet
then proposing an overall approach to the book that incorporates these
tensions, is Camp’s recent thought-provoking book Wise, Strange and Holy.
Instead of interpreting Solomon through the lenses of Deuteronomy, as I
suggest, she proposes to read Solomon through the lenses of Proverbs.
She places the narrative in the later post-exilic time within a ‘wisdom’
context, noting that the central themes ‘woman wisdom’ and ‘the
strange/foreign woman’ of Proverbs are likewise central themes in the
Solomon narratives. Her work analyzes the intricate interaction between
these two themes. In so doing, while working off of a different interpretive
framework than I do, she does observe many of the same textual ironies
that this study addresses.8
150 J. Daniel Hays
A few of the more recent commentaries on 1 Kings, especially those

influenced by narrative criticism, have also noted that the negative assessment
of Solomon is not restricted to ch. 11, but that there are numerous negative
statements about Solomon scattered throughout 1 Kings 1–10. However,
none of them actually develops the theme. Thus Fretheim, for example,
writes, ‘This break [between chs. 10 and 11] is not as stark as at first appears;
the narrator does prepare the reader in chs. 2–10 for the “fall” in chapter 11’.
Nelson alludes to a ‘dark undercurrent’ in these texts as a ‘counter-theme’.
Likewise, Brueggemann writes, ‘In the judgment of this narrative, Solomon is
quite a mixed bag of worldly success and Torah failure’.9
Indeed, narrative criticism has alerted us not only to structural features,
but also to the possibility of sub-surface features such as irony and subtlety.10
Out of this narrative reading context I propose an alternative approach to
interpreting the Solomonic narratives. I would like to suggest that the
narrator is not really praising Solomon at all in 1 Kings 1–10.11 On the
surface of the text, especially when read out of context, the narrator does
seem to heap praise after praise on Solomon and the realm that he built.
However, I will argue that there are numerous clues that suggest to us that
perhaps the narrator is playing literary games with his readers. He may be
openly and overtly praising Solomon on the surface, but he does not tell the
story with a straight face, and if we look closely, we see him winking at us.
On the surface the text glorifies the spectacular reign of Solomon. The point
of many details in the text is to impress the reader with the glory of Solomon
and his reign. However, below the surface another theme lurks, quietly and
ironically pointing out some serious inconsistencies and some serious
problems that the surface story glosses over.12
We as readers are given a tour of a fantastic, spectacular and opulent
mansion. Everywhere we look we see wealth and quality. However, without
changing the inflection of his voice the tour guide points out places where
the façade has cracked, revealing a very different structure. Continuing with
the standard speech which glorifies the building, the guide nonetheless
makes frequent side comments and uses nuances that let us know that his
glowing praise for the structure is not really his honest opinion of the facility,
and he wants us also to see the truth. Finally, at the end of the tour, he can
restrain himself no more, and he tells us plainly that the building is basically
a fraud, covered with a thin veneer of glitz and hoopla, and soon will collapse
under its own weight. This is the manner in which the narrator of 1 Kings
leads us on a tour of the House of Solomon.
Now let us examine the evidence and see if we can substantiate such a
position. First of all, in validating any interpretive position, context is a
critical factor. The books of 1 and 2 Kings are books describing the history
of Israel from a theological perspective. The central question driving the
story in these two books is whether or not the monarchy, and thus also the
people, will keep the law and follow Yahweh.13 The answer to this question
is, of course, ‘no’. The initial readers stand in the exile—the monarchy is
gone, the land is lost, and the temple has been destroyed. Thus 1 Kings 1–11
must be read within the context of 2 Kings 25, where the final destruction of
Jerusalem and the temple are described.
The broader context, but one no less important, is formed by the books
of Deuteronomy and 1–2 Samuel. Regardless of the variety of views
regarding the details of the composition of 1–2 Kings, there is a fairly strong
consensus that Deuteronomy (and 1–2 Samuel) forms a critical background
for understanding the books. Deuteronomy is the expression of the law and
covenant relationship that forms the criteria by which the kings and the
nation are evaluated. Likewise the words of Samuel and the life of David add
to the criteria by which the narrator judges the history of Yahweh’s people in
1–2 Kings.
The methodology which I am suggesting in this study is one in which
we reread 1 Kings 1–11 very carefully within the context of Deuteronomy
and 1–2 Samuel. The narrator, I suggest, does not make explicit references
back to these books, but he does make numerous implicit references. Thus,
while on the surface he may seem to be praising Solomon, to those who hold
Deuteronomy in their hands as they listen it becomes clear that he is often
critical of Solomon’s reign. This is narrative subtlety, or perhaps irony.14
The clearest illustration of this is in regard to Deut. 17.14–20. This
text is especially pertinent because it describes the requirements that the law
placed on the king. Besides exhorting the king to read the law carefully all the
days of his life (17.18–20), this text also states the following:
Be sure to appoint over you the king Yahweh your God chooses
... The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses
for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get them, for
Yahweh has told you, ‘You are not to go back that way again’. He
must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must
not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold. (Deut.
17.15–17)
So Deuteronomy stressed that Yahweh himself must select the king.

Furthermore, this text prohibited three things for the king. First, the king
was not to accumulate large numbers of horses, especially from Egypt. These
152 J. Daniel Hays
are probably to be understood as chariot horses, for which Egypt was

famous. Second, he was not to accumulate many wives, and third, he was not
to accumulate large quantities of gold and silver.
Is the narrator of 1 Kings aware of these prohibitions? Note the
following text in 1 Kgs 10.26–29:
Solomon accumulated chariots and horses; he had fourteen

hundred chariots and twelve thousand horses, which he kept in
the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem. The king made
silver as common in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar as plentiful as
sycamore-fig trees in the foothills. Solomon’s horses were
imported from Egypt and from Kue ... (1 Kgs 10.26–29)
The narrator mentions that Solomon accumulated horses (12,000 of them),

that he made silver to be common, and that he imported the horses from
Egypt.15 Moreover, the next several verses (11.1–3) delineate his disregard of
the prohibition against accumulating many wives. So, at least four aspects of
Deuteronomy 17 are mentioned in close proximity. Clearly the narrator is
making allusions to the Deuteronomy 17 prohibitions.16 Furthermore, note
the literary style of the allusions. The narrator does not begin an overtly
negative description of Solomon until ch. 11. At the end of ch. 10 he is still
‘praising’ Solomon. Indeed, in 10.23 he proclaims, ‘King Solomon was
greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings of the earth’. Within
this context of proclaiming Solomon’s greatness the narrator boasts of
Solomon’s numerous chariot horses, casually mentioning that he paid for
these horses out of his vast silver hoards. Furthermore he seems to brag that
Solomon acquired the horses from Egypt. This, I suggest, is not a praise of
Solomon, but rather a subtle, yet serious, indictment. ‘Look how great
Solomon was’, the narrator says on the surface. ‘He was great in violating
Yahweh’s law’, the narrator is really saying, right below the surface.
This observed subtlety is important because it establishes in a clear text
that the narrator does indeed employ this type of subtle critique as a literary
style. Therefore, we can justify the approach of going back into the first ten
chapters of the Solomon narratives and looking for other subtle hints of
covenant violation or of impropriety on the part of Solomon and his
‘glorious’ kingdom.
From the very beginning of the Solomon narratives, things seem to be
rather suspicious, at least from a theological point of view. Indeed, the entire
Succession Narrative of Solomon is characterized by political intrigue and
royal court power struggles.17 The narrator gives us a substantial amount of
detail describing this intrigue. Numerous characters play significant roles:

David, Nathan, Zadok, Bathsheba, Benaiah, Adonijah, Joab, Abiathar and
the beautiful young Abishag. However, missing from this list is the central
character from 1–2 Samuel, Yahweh.18 Yahweh says nothing and does
nothing (at least not overtly) in Solomon’s rise to power.19 Nowhere in the
story of Solomon’s succession to the throne does the narrative include
anything at all resembling Yahweh’s direct selection of Solomon.20 Nathan
the prophet has a conversation with Bathsheba (1.11–14) and with David
(1.24–27) concerning the succession to the throne and he does not argue in
either case that Solomon should be the next king because Yahweh has
selected him. The argument that Nathan and Bathsheba use to persuade
David is to remind him of an oath that he supposedly made to Bathsheba that
her son Solomon would be the next king.21 Whether David actually made
the pledge or whether he is simply senile,22 this argument works and David
proclaims, ‘I will surely carry out today what I swore to you by Yahweh, the
God of Israel: Solomon your son shall be king after me, and he will sit on my
throne in my place’ (1.30). Neither David, Nathan the prophet, nor Zadok
the priest inquires of Yahweh in the matter. Indeed David seems to rely solely
on his own authority in the matter as he states in 1.35, ‘I have appointed (hw(
literally “to command”) him ruler over Israel and Judah’. In addition, David
repeatedly refers to the throne as ‘my throne’ (1.30, 35, also in the oath
attributed to David, cited in 1.13 and 1.17).23 Glaringly absent from David’s
proclamation is any reference to the fact that Yahweh chose Solomon to be
the next king.
Indeed, Yahweh’s voice in this part of the story emerges only as David
charges Solomon with keeping the decrees, commands, laws and
requirements of Yahweh. At this point David quotes Yahweh, ‘If your
descendants watch how they live, and if they walk faithfully before me with
all their heart and soul, you will never fail to have a man on the throne of
Israel’. The only speech by Yahweh in the Succession Narrative is that of an
ominous warning about being unfaithful to Yahweh, a condition that the new
king Solomon will ultimately fail to keep.
Thus we see that the opening events in 1 Kings 1–2 are somewhat
questionable in regard to presenting Solomon in a positive light.24 Fretheim
notes a similar phenomenon, and he cites three additional ‘subtle
reservations’ that the narrator introduces into this section: Benaiah’s
misgivings regarding the violation of the sanctuary to kill Joab (2.28–30),
Bathsheba’s support of Adonijah’s request and Solomon’s resultant anger and
immediate reneging on the promise he had made to her (2.19–24), and
‘Shimei’s seemingly innocent violation of the agreement with Solomon’
154 J. Daniel Hays
(2.39–43) which resulted in his death. ‘The narrator’, Fretheim continues,

‘seems to have introduced enough ambiguity into the account of Solomon’s
actions to stop the reader from simply adopting an unquestioning stance
toward what he has done... One wonders why the narrator found it necessary
to be critical in relatively subtle ways.’25
In 1 Kings 3 Yahweh actually appears to Solomon and endows him with
wisdom. This appearance would form the strongest support that Yahweh had
indeed chosen Solomon and that Solomon was truly and faithfully
worshipping Yahweh in his early years. However, as in 1 Kings 1–2 this
chapter likewise contains several negative references that serve to taint the
rosy picture of Solomon that might otherwise emerge.
Indeed, the statement in 3.1 should explode like a bombshell in the
reader’s mind, ‘Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt and
married his daughter’. Egypt almost always has negative connotations in the
Old Testament. Brueggemann underscores the negative connotation of this
passage, writing, ‘Egypt is a term in Israelite memory and tradition that
bespeaks brutality, exploitation, and bondage, the demeaning of the human
spirit, and the suppression of covenantal relations. Indeed, Israelite memory
concerning Yahweh is that the taproot of faith and life is emancipation from
Pharaoh.’26 Furthermore, note that the name of the pharaoh is not given.
Brueggemann suggests that this anonymity connects him emotionally to the
pharaoh of the exodus, who was also left unnamed. Solomon has ‘allied
himself with Pharaoh, the antithesis of everything Israelite ... and the
marriage signals Solomon’s deliberate departure from what traditional Israel
treasured most’?27 Furthermore, 3.1 also informs the reader that this
marriage took place early in Solomon’s reign—he brought Pharaoh’s
daughter to Jerusalem before the temple was completed.28 This marriage,
perhaps one of Solomon’s most serious mistakes, occurs at the beginning of
his reign and not at the end.
Note that the main contextual subject of this part of the story revolves
around the high places (twmk), mentioned in 3.2, 3 and 4. It is suggestive to
note the close proximity of Solomon’s foreign wife to the statement that
Solomon worshipped at the high places, particularly in light of this close
connection in the indictment against Solomon in ch. 11. Note the similarity
between 3.1–3 and 11.1–8.29 In 3.1–3, the narrator mentions that Solomon
marries the daughter of Pharaoh, that he loves Yahweh, and that he and the
people offer sacrifices and incense at the high places at this point these ‘high
places’ are vague and not at all specific. In 11.1–8, by contrast, the narrator
tells the readers that not only did Solomon marry the daughter of Pharaoh,
but also that he married a multitude of foreign women in direct violation of
Yahweh’s command. As mentioned above, now he loves his wives instead of

loving Yahweh. As a result he and his wives offer sacrifices and burn incense
at the twmb or high places, only now the high places are clearly described as
dedicated to Chemosh and Molech, and Solomon not only worshipped
here—he constructed these worship sites. Can this similarity be accidental?
Does it not seem likely that the narrator has so placed these references in ch.
3 so as to give an ominous foreshadowing of the terrible things to come?
Solomon does not wait until ch. 11 to start his downward slide. He starts off
already quite some way down the slide; ch. 11 merely describes the clear
impact at the bottom.
Keep in mind that Solomon lived in Jerusalem where the tabernacle
and the ark were located. This location represented the presence of Yahweh.
Why would Solomon travel away from the ark to offer sacrifice to Yahweh?
Ironically, the altar in the tabernacle of Yahweh has been mentioned in the
near vicinity of these verses, but not in regard to Solomon’s worship. Back in
2.28–34 Joab fled to this altar for protection. Solomon, remember, orders
Benaiah to slay him anyway.
The grammar of 3.3 is perhaps the strongest indicator that the high
places may be negative. The text states, ‘Solomon showed his love for
Yahweh by walking according to the statutes of his father David, except that
he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places’. The Hebrew
adverb qr introduces a restrictive clause, presenting an exception or a
clarification of the clause before it.30 It carries a nuance in this passage of
‘however’, or ‘on the other hand’. So, clearly the implication of this
‘however’ or ‘except’ is that, from the beginning, Solomon is following some
questionable worship practices. The fact the narrator mentions this rather
nonchalantly only underscores his use of irony.
So, it is possible that the narrator is being subtle and perhaps a bit
sarcastic in 3.1–3. Solomon shows his ‘love’ for Yahweh in the context of
marriage to Pharaoh’s daughter. He shows his love by following in the
footsteps of his father David, with all the accompanying ambiguities. And he
shows his love by sacrificing at the high places, which David never did.
Yet most would argue that the following episode (3.4–15) is a very
positive portrayal of Solomon. While at Gibeon Yahweh appeared to
Solomon in a dream, and was pleased to honor Solomon’s request for
wisdom. Yahweh likewise promised wealth and honor. Obviously Solomon
had responded to Yahweh in a way that was pleasing to Yahweh and this
passage does show Solomon in a positive light. However, this passage also
contains a few hints of the trouble to come. In 3.9 Solomon did not
specifically ask for wisdom, but he asked literally for a ‘hearing heart’
156 J. Daniel Hays
(kl(m#) so that he can discern between good and evil (kl+ and (d).
Yahweh promised him a wise ($$Mbh) and discerning (Nyb) heart (bl). The
focus of the term ‘heart’ (bl, bbl) was not only on the emotions, but also
more particularly on the function of decision-making. For Yahweh the
attitude of the heart was critical. When he selected David in 1 Sam. 16.7
Yahweh stated that mortals looks with the eyes but he looks at the heart.
After promising Solomon a wise and discerning heart, Yahweh then repeated
the Deuteronomic stipulations: ‘if you keep my statutes and commandments
then I will give you long life’. Brueggemann notes that it is ‘not enough that
Solomon make a good choice at the outset. He must make a good choice all
along the way, the choice of listening and obeying, for it is in choosing
obediently that Israel and its king choose life.’31 Fretheim notes that in this
passage Solomon himself, in effect, ‘sets the standard by which his own rule
will be judged, finally, in negative terms’.32 The description of the gift that
Yahweh gave to Solomon in ch. 3 is focused on his heart. In ch. 11 the reader
finds out that the heart of Solomon was precisely the main problem. Indeed,
in 11.4 the word heart occurs three times: Solomon’s wives turned his heart
toward other gods, and his heart was not wholly true (Ml#, a wordplay?)33 to
Yahweh as David’s heart had been. While in 3.9 Yahweh gave Solomon the
wisdom to discern between bw+ and (r (good and evil), in 11.6 the narrator
tells his readers that Solomon did (r (evil) in the eyes of Yahweh. In 11.9 the
unfaithful heart of Solomon is mentioned again, this time resulting in
Yahweh’s anger, specifically due to the fact that Yahweh had appeared directly
to Solomon twice. This combination in 11.9 of Solomon’s unfaithful heart
and the appearance of Yahweh to him is apparently a direct allusion back to
Yahweh’s appearance to Solomon in ch. 3, where Solomon’s heart is the main
subject of discussion. I would suggest that the main purpose within the broad
story of Solomon for including the narrative of Yahweh’s appearance and his
gift of wisdom to Solomon in 3.4–15 is to underscore Solomon’s great
culpability for his later apostasy. This text is not ultimately praising
Solomon; it is underscoring the absurdity of his turning away from Yahweh.
Yahweh appeared directly to him and gave him a wise heart so that he could
discern good and evil. Nonetheless, the heart of this so-called ‘glorious’ king
will choose evil and turn away from Yahweh. The lesson of squandered
potential is one that runs throughout 1–2 Kings. Those in exile could easily
look back at the blessings bestowed on them and ask what could have been,
if only ...
After Solomon is given ‘the hearing heart’ or the ‘wise heart’, in
3.4–15, the narrator then shares an episode where Solomon’s wisdom is
supposedly demonstrated. In 3.16–28 two prostitutes come before Solomon
with a dispute over ownership of an infant. As is well known, Solomon

threatens to cut the child in half, thus revealing the true mother by her
reaction to his threat. All Israel marveled at his wisdom and ability to carry
out justice (hnz). This story is almost universally taken as one that simply
demonstrates Solomon’s great wisdom and discernment. However, let us
back up a minute and ask, ‘What is wrong with this picture?’ Prostitution
(hnz) was strictly outlawed both in Deuteronomy and in Leviticus.34 In fact,
Deut. 23.19 refers to prostitution as an ‘abomination to Yahweh’.35
Solomon doesn’t even mention that their very occupation that produced this
child was a violation of the law of Yahweh that he as king was bound to
uphold and enforce. Can a true demonstration of justice (hnz, mentioned
twice in 3.28) be demonstrated in ignorance of the law? In addition, does
the presence of these two prostitutes say anything about the moral state of
the kingdom? And what of the child?36 Is the child symbolic? Are the
prostitutes symbolic? It maybe significant to note that the majority of usages
of the term prostitute (hnz) in the Hebrew Bible are figurative references to
apostasy, specifically the phenomenon of Israel chasing after foreign gods.37
In the context of the upcoming civil war between Judah and Israel, the
struggle for the throne, and the immediate lapse into foreign idolatry, this
story is rather suggestive.
In ch. 4 the organizational features of Solomon’s great kingdom are
extolled. Often this chapter is viewed as further evidence of Solomon’s great
wisdom we are encouraged to look at how well organized and spectacular the
government of Solomon was! However, as in the earlier chapters discussed
above, this one also contains some peculiar features, especially when the
chapter is read within the broader context of the whole story. First of all, the
bureaucracy described in 1 Kings 4 is exactly what Yahweh told Samuel to
warn Israel about back in 1 Samuel 8 when Israel asked for a king. Samuel
cites the words of Yahweh, warning in 8.11, ‘This is the +p#m that the king
who will reign over you will do’. Samuel then describes the exploitation of a
royal government the king will take your sons and daughters, your fields,
vineyards, and flocks. ‘You yourselves will become his slaves ... You will cry
out for relief from the king, but Yahweh will not hear’ (1 Sam. 8.16–17). The
imperial system described by Samuel was not fulfilled to any degree by either
Saul or David. It is Solomon that fulfills all of the details of Samuel’s
prediction. Indeed 1 Kings 4 details the fulfillment explicitly! Thus the irony
of the chapter. Solomon’s organizational glory is the very thing that Yahweh
warned the nation about in 1 Samuel.
Indeed, one of Solomon’s officials was Adoniram, the one in charge of
forced labor. This is an ominous reference, because the forced labor issue
158 J. Daniel Hays
will be the one that precipitates the civil war between Judah and Israel,
leading to the rift in the kingdom.
In addition, if the narrator is not being sarcastic or ironic in this
chapter then there are several quite curious features in these verses. Taxes,
warned of by Samuel in 1 Samuel 8, are described in 1 Kgs 4.7, 22–23 and
27–28. Sandwiched in between this discussion of taxes is the statement that
the people ‘ate, drank and were happy’ (4.20), and that each man lived in
safety under his own vine and fig tree (4.25). However, a few verses later in
ch. 5 the narrator will add that Solomon conscripted 30,000 men from Israel
to work for him. Likewise, 1 Kings 12 paints quite a different picture from
the peace and prosperity in 1 Kings 4. The ‘whole assembly of Israel’ came
to Solomon’s son and said, ‘Your father put a heavy yoke on us’ (12.4).
Rehoboam adds to the description in his refusal to listen to their demands,
stating in 12.14, ‘my father scourged you with whips’. Rehoboam’s refusal to
ease the burden his father had placed on the people led to the rejection of his
rule, the assassination of Adoniram, who was in charge of forced labor, and
open civil war.38
Chapter 5 begins the story of Solomon’s construction of the temple,
often viewed as the high point of Solomon’s reign, indeed sometimes viewed
as the high point in Israelite history. However, as in those above, this passage
contains some troubling elements if placed within the context of 2 Samuel.
Solomon writes to Hiram to negotiate for cedar to be used in the temple.
Solomon refers back to Yahweh’s covenant with David in 2 Samuel 7 as part
of his rationale for building the temple. However, Solomon seriously
misquotes the situation and the words of Yahweh as recorded in 2 Samuel 7.
David is prevented from building a house for Yahweh, not because of
external struggles as Solomon argues, but because Yahweh did not need a
house nor apparently did he want a house. Brueggemann notes that such a
house violates Yahweh’s freedom. He says: ‘Yahweh wants no temple because
Yahweh is on the move, completely unfettered. And certainly Yahweh wants
no cedar house, because cedar smacks of affluence and indulgence.’39 The
fact that Yahweh specifically mentions cedar in 2 Samuel 7 is very ironic,
because Solomon cites this passage as part of the justification for his contract
negotiations with Hiram to obtain cedar! Also note that Solomon has no
trouble finding himself in 2 Sam. 7.13, ‘he is the one who will build a house
for my Name’. It is interesting that Solomon does not mention the next
verse, ‘When he does wrong (hw(, from Nw() I will punish him ...’ Yahweh’s
message to David in 2 Samuel 7 speaks of Solomon’s temple in v. 13 and
Solomon’s ‘acts of iniquity’ in the very next verse, definitely clouding the
prophecy.
Also note that the temple is not at all central in Yahweh’s discussion
with David in 2 Samuel 7. There is indeed a wordplay on ‘house’ that runs
throughout the passage. David wanted to build Yahweh a house, but Yahweh
said, ‘No, I will build you a house’. It is Yahweh’s promise of building David’s
house that is central.
In 5.13–18 the narrator presents a detailed description of the forced
labor that Solomon used to build the temple.40 There is no mention of any
wages being paid to the workers, in spite of the frequent mention of
superfluous wealth floating around in the Solomonic empire. The absence of
payment to the workers is in strong contrast to the repair work in the temple
that Josiah undertakes later on in the story (2 Kgs 22.3–7). In Josiah’s case,
the narrator goes out of his way explicitly to mention that Josiah paid the
workers for their work.
Thus the opening paragraphs regarding the construction of the
glorious temple contain negative undercurrents. Underscoring this is the
reference in 6.1 to the exodus from Egypt. The proximity of forced building
labor to the mention of the exodus is suggestive and highly ironic. Indeed,
throughout these chapters there is the interesting interchange of references
to Pharaoh, the exodus from Egypt, Solomon’s large state building program,
forced labor and chariot horses from Egypt.
Chapter 6 begins the description of the glorious temple, intended on
the surface to overawe the reader. However, Yahweh intrudes into the catalog
of extravagance with a stern warning in 6.11–13. ‘As for this temple you are
building’, Yahweh warns, ‘only if you keep my decrees and commandments
... will I live among you’. The splendor of the temple is not the critical
element leading to Yahweh’s presence. He dwelt among them prior to the
temple construction. He warns them in 6.11–13 that obedience is the
requirement for his continued presence. The placement of this warning in
the middle of the temple description is significant and in keeping with the
narrator’s scheme of quiet qualification and criticism that runs right below
the surface ‘praise and glory’.
For two chapters the spectacular nature of the temple (and Solomon’s
other buildings) is described. However, as in the earlier chapters, the
narrator continues to undermine the surface intention of glorifying Solomon
and the temple. In 6.38–7.1, for instance, the narrator states that Solomon
took seven years to build the house of Yahweh, but he took thirteen years to
build his own house.41 What is the point of placing these two construction
schedules side by side? Is the point that Solomon works faster on the temple,
seven years being an incredibly short time for such a work? Or is there some
subtle implication that the house of Yahweh is perhaps not as central to the
160 J. Daniel Hays
construction scheme as it should be?42 Chapter 7 actually refers to five royal

buildings that Solomon constructed. The temple was part of a large royal
complex.
The splendor of the temple complex and its furnishings are described
throughout ch. 7. Nelson notes the irony in this chapter, for all of the
glorious labor of Solomon in furnishing the temple will be undone as the plot
of 1–2 Kings unfolds. He writes,
Shishak will rifle the treasury (14.26). Ahaz will strip the stands
and remove the bulls under the sea (2 Kings 16.17). Hezekiah will
remove the gold from the doors (2 Kings 18.16). 2 Kings 24.13
reports that Nebuchadnezzar cut up the gold vessels that
Solomon had made, and in the final disaster Nebuzaradan burns
the temple itself (2 Kings 25.9). The gold and silver are melted
down and the great items of bronze are broken up (2 Kings
25.13–17). This final list is a hollow echo of the confident
inventory of chapter 7.43
The narrator subtly points out to the readers that the temple is ‘part of the
royal complex, situated where it is to legitimize and propagandize for the
monarchy’.44 The location and centrality of the temple in Solomon’s new
camp is quite different than the role and centrality that the tabernacle played
in Moses’ camp.
In 1 Kings 8 Solomon brings the ark from the City of David to the new
temple. Yahweh’s presence then fills the temple. As part of the dedication
service, Solomon then prays a series of three prayers. Most of this section,
including the prayers of Solomon, appears to be grounded firmly in the
theology of Deuteronomy.
However, there are a few incongruities and curiosities in this text that
merit discussion. First of all, the timing is significant. 1 Kings 6.38 notes that
the temple was completed in the eighth month, while the dedication
ceremony of 1 Kings 8 takes place eleven months later, in the seventh month
(8.2). Actually, as Provan points out, the delay was a minimum of eleven
months, yet could have been longer. The specific year is not mentioned.45
No explanation for the delay is stated.46
More significantly, the episode describing the ceremonial procession
that transports the ark to the temple presents a stark contrast with that
described in 2 Samuel 6. In that event David throws all decorum aside and
dances with joy before the ark, wearing only a linen ephod. The focus of
David’s procession was on his joy and his humility before Yahweh. What a
contrast with Solomon! There is no mention of Solomon dancing before

Yahweh. Furthermore, in contrast to David’s humility, Solomon spends
much of the chapter boasting of the temple that he himself built for Yahweh.
He tells Yahweh rather arrogantly, ‘I have indeed [infinitive absolute plus
perfect] built a magnificent temple for you’ (8.13). In case anyone misses the
fact that Solomon is responsible for this temple, he reiterates this fact five
additional times, referring to ‘this house which I have built’ (8.20, 27, 43,
44,48). Likewise in 8.21 he states, ‘I have provided a place for the ark ...’
There is no hint of David’s humility in Solomon.
Yahweh returns to speak to Solomon a second time in ch. 9, after
Solomon has completed his magnificent building program. As might be
expected, Yahweh does not seem overly impressed. Has he not read the
earlier chapters? Does he not know the splendor of this fantastic house that
Solomon has built for him? Yahweh makes no comment whatsoever on the
appearance of the temple. He does, however, perhaps pick up on Solomon’s
boast, ‘I have built this house’. Yahweh states, ‘I have consecrated this house
which you have built’. Yahweh mentions this twice (9.3, 7), stressing the
point that the importance of this house is not in the grandeur of its
construction but in the significance of Yahweh’s consecrating presence.
Skipping over any accolades and speaking considerably more briefly than
Solomon did, Yahweh turns to the critical issue at hand—obedience to the
law. ‘I have consecrated this house’, Yahweh states in v. 3. ‘But as for you’, he
continues in v. 4 and in the next several verses, ‘you must keep the law and
walk obediently or else I will leave this temple and it will be destroyed’.
Provan notes, ‘A dark cloud now looms quite visibly over the Solomonic
empire, for all the glory of 1 Kings 3–8. The temple is no sooner built than
we hear of its inevitable end; the empire is no sooner built than we hear of
its inevitable destruction’.47 The presence of Yahweh is of profound
significance in the history of his relationship with Israel, but the magnificent
stones, cedar and gold of the temple are not. The narrator, writing after the
destruction of the temple, knows this. The narrator is not boasting about the
temple; he is critiquing the disastrously wrong theology behind such a
boast.48
The remainder of ch. 9 picks up several themes from chs. 4–5 but
continues to stack these themes up negatively against Solomon.49 Solomon
has a slight falling out with his ally and friend Hiram of Tyre. The narrator
discusses the dispute nonchalantly. Solomon gives Hiram 20 cities in Galilee
as payment for his services, but Hiram despises these cities as being
worthless. The shocking feature that is mentioned only in passing is that
Solomon gives away a large portion of Galilee, part of the Promised Land!
162 J. Daniel Hays
Solomon sells a significant chunk of the land to Hiram for ‘cedar, pine and
gold!’ What right does he have before Yahweh to sell off the Promised Land?
This subtle criticism explodes into a scathing critique when read within the
context of the rest of 1–2 Kings, particularly 1 Kings 16. In that chapter the
prototypical evil king, Ahab, seeks to buy a vineyard from a peasant farmer,
Naboth. With the help of Jezebel (is there an intertextual connection
between Jezebel’s home of Sidon and Hiram’s home of Tyre?) Naboth is
framed and executed, allowing Ahab to take possession of the property. This
property was in Jezreel (16.1), which was within the region that the term
‘Galilee’ defined at the time. While the Jezreel connection may be tentative,
the two incidents do appear to be related. Thus Naboth’s words to Ahab
likewise ring true to Solomon, ‘Yahweh forbid that I should give to you the
inheritance of my fathers’ (16.3). What does Solomon do about the
inheritance or property rights of the inhabitants of these cities? In a story
that is hurtling downward toward the complete exile of the people from the
land, Solomon’s casual release of 20 cities is ominous.
Other red flag items appear in ch. 9, drawing attention back to the
exodus and to deuteronomistic prohibitions. Pharaoh and his daughter are
mentioned again twice (9.16, 24). Also mentioned are forced labor, store
cities and chariots. Note also the nearby reference to the PwsMy (Red Sea or
Sea of Reeds) in 9.26. Israel no longer needs Yahweh in order to deal with
the PwsMy. Solomon’s ships sail freely across it to bring him more gold. Thus
in this section Solomon has given away part of the Promised Land,
accumulated chariots in violation of Deuteronomy 17, married the daughter
of the hated Pharaoh of Egypt, constructed store cities with forced labor, and
then sailed back across the PwsMy. Certainly the narrator is not naïve about
the exodus tradition and the numerous allusions to exodus terminology that
occur in this text. The end of 2 Kings definitely reflects a literary reversal of
the exodus—the people lose the land and even return to Egypt. Is the
narrator giving his readers a strong hint of that reversal already?
The visit from the Queen of Sheba in 1 Kings 10 reflects the same type
of literary subtlety that we have observed in the earlier chapters. On the
surface the Queen’s visit praises Solomon for his great wisdom and wealth.
However, both Brueggemann and Fretheim note the two subtle critiques
from the mouth of the visiting monarch. First, in praising Solomon’s wisdom
the Queen declares in 10.8, ‘Happy (or blessed) are your wives [following the
LXX: the Hebrew reads “men”]! Happy are these your servants who
continually attend you!’ She has limited the resultant blessing or happiness
of Solomon’s great wisdom and wealth to the palace entourage, rather than
to the people at large. Second, in 10.9 she inadvertently declares that Yahweh
has placed Solomon on the throne to execute ‘justice and righteousness’.

Fretheim suggests that this may have been the narrator’s subversive way of
noting that ‘justice and righteousness’ was absent from Solomon’s reign by
this time.50 Brueggemann feels that this reference is placed here
intentionally by the narrator as an ominous anticipation of the disastrous
events to come in chs. 11 and 12.51
As mentioned in the beginning of this study, the end of ch. 10 contains
obvious references to Deut. 17.14–17, particularly the accumulation of silver,
gold and horses. Solomon’s blatant disregard of these guidelines from
Yahweh is further revealed in his ridiculously excessive harem described in
ch. 11. By ch. 11, however, the narrator drops his subtlety and proclaims the
final verdict Solomon did evil in the eyes of Yahweh. His heart had turned
away from Yahweh, even though Yahweh had appeared to him twice (11.6,
9).
It is critical to keep in mind that throughout the Solomon narratives it
is the covenant with David that drives the positive or blessing side of the
story, not Solomon’s piety. The narrator is not subtle about this emphasis,
stressing David’s faithfulness and Yahweh’s promise to him. Yahweh will
speak to Solomon three times. In ch. 3 he provides Solomon with wisdom,
but warns him to walk as David walked (3.14). In ch. 6 the voice of Yahweh
intrudes into the description of the temple construction, primarily as a
warning to Solomon to follow Yahweh’s laws. In addition Yahweh explicitly
mentions his promise to David (6.11–13). In ch. 11 Yahweh’s anger burns
against Solomon because he has not kept the law or remained faithful.
However, Yahweh declares that ‘for the sake of David’ he will not tear the
kingdom away from Solomon during his lifetime. The glorious time of
blessing, prosperity and peace that Israel enjoyed during Solomon’s reign was
not due to Solomon’s faithful service to Yahweh but due to David’s and due
to Yahweh’s promise to David.
So, in conclusion, there is strong evidence to support the view that the
narrator is not schizophrenic, praising Solomon for ten chapters and then
suddenly condemning him. Rather the narrator develops a fascinating but
negative critique of Solomon throughout the Solomonic narratives. His
critique is subtle, employing irony, word associations and implicit rather than
explicit references to Deuteronomy, 1–2 Samuel and the rest of 1–2 Kings.
The clear, but implicit references to Deuteronomy 17 at the end of 1
Kings 10 provide the strongest single supporting argument for this view.
Many of the other arguments may appear weak if analyzed one at a time in
isolation. However, taken together, especially in light of the clear references
in ch. 10, and viewed within the overall theological context of 1–2 Kings, the
164 J. Daniel Hays
multitude of individual texts presented here provide an overwhelming

amount of evidence that the narrator is indicting and not glorifying. The
subtle narrator of 1–2 Kings has not come to praise Solomon but to bury
him.
NOTES
1. Kim Ian Parker, ‘Repetition as a Structuring Device in 1 Kings 1–11’, JSOT 42

(1988), pp. 19–27. Parker reiterates this structural analysis, organizing it around the
themes of Wisdom and Torah in tension in ‘Solomon as Philosophical King? The Nexus
of Law and Wisdom in 1 Kings 1–11’, JSOT 53 (1992), pp. 75–91.
2. Marc Brettler, ‘The Structure of 1 Kings 1–11’, JSOT 49 (1991), pp. 87–97. Amos
Frisch, ‘The Narrative of Solomon’s Reign: A Rejoinder’, JSOT 51 (1991), pp. 3–14,
suggests that the unit runs from 1.1 to 12.24. The units are arranged concentrically around
the central section describing the temple (6.1–9.9). The first half is positive about
Solomon, showing that loyalty to God brings blessings, while the later half is negative and
critical, showing that disloyalty brings misfortune. For earlier attempts to analyze the
structure of 1 Kgs 1–11, see Bezalel Porten, ‘The Structure and Theme of the Solomon
Narrative (1 Kings 3–11)’, HUCA 38 (1967), pp. 93–128; and Y.T. Radday, ‘Chiasm in
Kings’, Linguistica Biblica 31 (1974), pp. 52–67 (55–56).
3. David Jobling, ‘“Forced Labor”: Solomon’s Golden Age and the Question of
Literary Representation’, Semeia 54 (1992), pp. 57–76. Jobling does note many of the same
unusual ironies that I will underscore in this paper—the presence of Pharaoh’s daughter,
the treaty with Hiram and the frequent mention of Deuteronomic conditioned blessings.
However, he interprets this phenomenon in the opposite direction from what I suggest.
He argues that the mythical portrayal of the Golden Age subverts and marginalizes the
negative aspects of Solomon to extol the ideal. I suggest that we place this material within
a broader framework, first within the entire text of 1–2 Kings, and then within the entire
Deuteronomic History, which primarily tracks the downward spiral of Israel due to
Deuteronomic disobedience. Thus I suggest that the negative Deuteronomic critique
running through 1 Kgs 3–10 subverts (quietly and only through irony) the positive.
4. See the following works by David M. Gunn and Danna Nolan Fewell: ‘Narrative,
Hebrew’, in ABD, IV, pp. 1023–27; Narrative in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford Bible Series;
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), esp. pp. 152–55, 167–68; and Gender, Power, and
Promise: The Subject of the Bible’s First Story (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), esp. pp.
161–77.
5. Sternberg stresses the function of ambiguity and gaps. He also uses the Solomon
narrative as an example of the importance for the reader to move beyond the surface to the
depth. See Meir Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the
Drama of Reading (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), pp. 186–229, 342–47.
6. Stuart Lasine, Knowing Kings: Knowledge, Power, and Narcissism in the Hebrew Bible
(SBL Semeia Studies, 40; Atlanta: SBL, 2001), pp. 139–40.
7. Stuart Lasine, ‘The King of Desire: Indeterminacy, Audience, and the Solomon
Narrative’, Semeia 71 (1995), pp. 85–118 (89). Fox critiques Lasine in the same volume,
but follows a traditional understanding of Solomon. Thus Fox argues that the so-called
‘indeterminacy’ is due either simply to the complexity of Solomon or the residual of
redactional layers in the text. See Michael V. Fox, ‘The Uses of Indeterminacy’, Semeia 71
(1995), pp. 173–92 (182, 190).
8. Claudia V. Camp, Wise, Strange and Holy: The Strange Woman and the Making of the
Bible (JSOTSup, 320; Gender, Culture, Theory, 9; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,
2000). Camp’s argument for a Proverbs background instead of Deuteronomy loses much
of its strength as one moves beyond the Solomon narrative into the rest of 1–2 Kings (and
then into the rest of the Deuteronomic History). Yet, as Camp demonstrates, wisdom and
foreign (‘strange’) women are significant and interrelated themes in the Solomon
narratives, laced with deep irony and ambiguous suggestive allusions, factors that must be
taken into account.
9. Terrence Fretheim, First and Second Kings (Westminster Bible Companion;
Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1999), p. 20; Richard Nelson, First and
Second Kings (Interpretation; Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1987), p. 66; Walter
Brueggemann, 1 and 2 Kings (Smyth & Helwys Commentary; Macon, GA: Smyth &
Helwys, 2000), p. 11.
10. Younger notes that the fact of sophisticated structural unity in 1 Kings 1–11 is an
indicator of the text’s figurative nature. See K. Lawson Younger, Jr, ‘The Figurative Aspect
and the Contextual Method in the Evaluation of the Solomonic Empire (1 Kings 1–11)’,
in David J.A. Clines, Stephen E. Fowl and Stanley E. Porter (eds.), The Bible in Three
Dimensions: Essays in Celebration of Forty Years of Biblical Studies in the University of Sheffield
(JSOTSup, 87; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), pp. 157–75.
11. There is disagreement over whether 1 Kgs 1–2 should be included with the
narrative of Solomon (1 Kgs 3–11) or with the so-called ‘Succession Narrative’ (2 Sam.
9–20). I would suggest that 1 Kgs 1–2 is transitional and does connect to both the
preceding unit and the following unit. The tone and literary approach of both units is
similar, however. Gunn and Fewell take a similar view. They label this phenomenon as a
‘shifting boundary’, where one story’s end also functions as the next story’s beginning.
They use 1 Kgs 1–2 as a primary example. See Gunn and Fewell, Narrative in the Hebrew
Bible, pp. 111–12. Regarding the literary strategy of the Succession Narrative, Ackerman
writes, ‘Beneath the cool, dispassionate voice of the omniscient narrator is a lament that
Israel’s brief moment of greatness was lost by the perverse actions of passionate and
headstrong individuals’ (James S. Ackerman, ‘Knowing Good and Evil: A Literary Analysis
of the Court History in 2 Samuel 9–20 and 1 Kings 1–2’, JBL 109 [1990], pp. 41–60 [59]).
12. Dorsey provides a chiastic structural arrangement of 1 Kgs 3–11. He argues that
the narrator’s framing of the unit with negative material about Solomon’s wives indicates
that the overall thrust is going to be condemnatory. Dorsey’s conclusions based on this
framing are similar to those suggested in the present study. See David A. Dorsey, The
Literary Structure of the Old Testament: A Commentary on Genesis–Malachi (Grand Rapids:
Baker Book House, 1999), pp. 137–38.
13. Brueggemann, 1 and 2 Kings, p. 3.
14. The use of irony as a tool in Hebrew narrative is well documented. Fewell and
Gunn cite Solomon as an example (1 Kgs 3.3 in light of 1 Kgs 11.3, 7, 8) in their discussion
of irony in Hebrew narrative. See Fewell and Gunn, ‘Narrative’, p. 1026. Sternberg (The
Poetics of Biblical Narrative, pp. 342–47) discusses this phenomenon in connection with
character development in a story. Often the text will give an initial epithet concerning the
character. However, the narrator will then engage in ‘indirect characterization’, moving
from surface to depth. Sternberg notes that this type is the most important, but the ‘most
166 J. Daniel Hays
tricky’. Thus the initial epithet pronouncing Solomon’s wisdom, Sternberg argues, ‘serves
not so much to guide as to lure and frustrate normal expectation: to drive home in
retrospect the ironic distance between the character’s auspicious potential under God and
his miserable performance in opposition to God’. Fokkelman makes a related observation,
noting that discovering the true hero in a text can be less than straightforward because a
character can be a hero in a narratological sense, but a villain in a moral sense. See J.P.
Fokkelman, Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (Louisville, KY:
Westminster/John Knox Press, 1999), p. 82. Amit adds to the discussion by exploring
‘hidden polemics’ in biblical narrative. He concludes that while some polemics are explicit,
lying on the surface, others are implicit, developed subtly over the course of the story. The
implicit polemic, he argues, is often more powerful. Amit states that the narrator is often
subtle with his polemics, especially if the topic is a controversial one such as an assessment
of a king. Although the narrator’s polemic is not explicit, lying on the surface, he will,
nonetheless, place multiple ‘signs’ and ‘landmarks’ along the way, which, when taken in
toto, reveal to the reader the polemical point of the narrator. See Yairah Amit, Hidden
Polemics in Biblical Narrative (trans. Jonathan Chipman; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2000), pp.
56–58, 93–98.
15. For a discussion of the international trade in chariots and horses, and of Solomon’s
implied involvement in this trade, see Yutaka Ikeda, ‘Solomon’s Trade in Horses and
Chariots in Its International Setting’, in Tomoo Ishida (ed.), Studies in the Period of David
and Solomon and Other Essays: Papers Read at the International Symposium of Biblical Studies,
Tokyo, 5–7 December, 1979 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1982), pp. 213–38.
16. Nelson, First and Second Kings, p. 67, writes, ‘Yet no one with a Deuteronomistic
theological background could ever have missed the broad hint of the last verses about
horses from Egypt (10.28–29), which point directly to Deuteronomy 17.16. This provides
a transition to the breakdown of shalom in chapter 11 caused by Solomon’s violation of
Deuteronomy 17.17.’
17. Gunn and Fewell, Narrative in the Hebrew Bible, p. 155, conclude: ‘As we enter this
story of succession we might expect that the key phrases about being king and sitting on
the throne of the great King David would intimate exhilaration and celebration. Instead
we find by the end of the story that something quite other has happened. These words
carry ominous overtones of power struggle, duplicity, and paranoia. David’s throne is no
different from the thrones of a myriad other monarchs.’
18. Both Ackerman (‘Knowing Good and Evil’, p. 53) and Fokkelman maintain that it
is significant that Nathan no longer speaks in the name of God. In fact the only one who
uses God’s name is Benaiah, the ‘bloody hatchet man’ (J.P. Fokkelman, King David (II Sam.
9–20 & I Kings 1–2]. I. Narrative Art and Poetry in the Books of Samuel [Studia Semitica
Neerlandica; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1981], p. 370).
19. Nelson, First and Second Kings, p. 22, posits that Yahweh is actually working behind
the scenes, even through the devious political plots of the court, to bring his chosen king
Solomon to power. However, this is far from obvious and there is no clear mention at all
in this narrative that Solomon is even truly Yahweh’s choice. Recall that in Deut. 17.15
Yahweh warns that the king must be one that he has chosen rhb). In accordance with this,
note that both of the two previous kings Saul and David are clearly chosen by Yahweh and
anointed by Samuel as directed by Yahweh. The selection and anointing of David in 1
Sam. 16 forms a gigantic contrast with the ‘selection’ and anointing of Solomon. Yahweh
speaks directly to Samuel, telling him to pass over David’s older brothers because he has
not chosen (rhb) them, but then to rise up and anoint David for he is the one. After David
is anointed the spirit of Yahweh comes upon him in power (1 Sam. 16.8–13).
20. There is perhaps evidence of Yahweh’s selection of Solomon back in 2 Sam.
12.24–25. This text states that, after Solomon was born, Yahweh loved him and therefore
named him Jedidiah, or ‘loved of Yahweh’. A.A. Anderson suggests that this naming may
be an affirmation of Solomon’s status as heir to the throne. Anderson (2 Samuel [WBC;
Waco, TX: Word Books, 19891, p. 165) cites N. Wyatt, ‘“Jedidiah” and Cognate Forms
as a Title of Royal Legitimation’, Bib 66 (1985), pp. 112–25 (112). However, the point of
stating that Yahweh loved this son may simply be in contrast to the firstborn son of David
and Bathsheba, which dies under an apparent curse from God, an event which occurs only
a few verses earlier (2 Sam. 12.14–19).
21. Several writers note that nowhere in the narrative does it say that David made this
vow. Nathan puts this vow into the mouth of Bathsheba. Furthermore, the questions of
Nathan and Bathsheba to David in 1.20 and 1.27 imply that the choice of the heir to the
throne had not been announced, even to them. See Nelson, First and Second Kings, p. 20;
David M. Gunn, The Story of King David (JSOTSup, 6; Sheffield: JSOT, 1978), p. 105;
Tomoo Ishida, ‘Solomon’s Succession to the Throne of David—A Political Analysis’, in
idem (ed.), Studies in the Period of David and Solomon, pp. 175–87 (179).
22. For a discussion on the possible deception occurring here, see Harry Hagan,
‘Deception as Motif and Theme in 2 Sam 9–20; 1 Kgs 1–2’, Bib 60 (1979), pp. 301–26, and
David Marcus, ‘David the Deceiver and David the Dupe’, Prooftexts 6 (1986), pp. 163–71.
23. Gunn, The Story of King David, p. 105; Nelson, First and Second Kings, p. 21.
24. David’s vengeful vendetta against Joab and Shimei is also puzzling (1.5–9),
especially his command to Solomon to kill Joab. David’s former colleague and military
commander fled to the tabernacle and took hold of the horns of the altar. Such an action
is prescribed in Exod. 21.12–14 for protecting a man who has unintentionally killed
someone and is seeking protection from revengeful relatives. Solomon ordered that Joab
be executed anyway and indeed Benaiah, the new commander of the army, entered the tent
and slew Joab, the old commander of the army. The irony is rich and tragic. David had
stated to Solomon that Joab’s alleged crimes were the slaying of Abner and Amasa (1.5–6).
Abner was the commander of Saul’s army and he had fought against David and Joab. After
David won the civil war Joab killed Abner to avenge his brother (whom Abner had killed)
and to consolidate his hold as commander of the army. Amasa had been the commander
of Absalom’s army, the one that had driven David out of Jerusalem during Absalom’s
rebellion. So Joab’s great sin was to execute two former commanders after the war had
actually been won and power consolidated. In both cases Joab replaced the man he killed
as commander. Benaiah’s execution of Joab forms an extremely close parallel. Solomon had
become king; all significant military opposition had ended. Yet Benaiah kills the former
commander anyway. The difference, of course, was that Joab’s murder of Abner and Amasa
had been against the will of David the king, while Benaiah’s execution of Joab (also
murder?) is specifically ordered by King Solomon.
25. Fretheim, First and Second Kings, p. 27. Labeling the items of reservation as
‘interwoven aspects of indeterminacy’, Camp (Wise, Strange and Holy, pp. 156–57) provides
a similar list: (1) the moral evaluation of Solomon’s violence in establishing the kingdom;
(2) the moral evaluation of the ‘wisdom’ to which the violence is attributed; (3) questions
regarding God and his choice of Solomon; and (4) ambiguities surrounding Abishag and
Bathsheba.
168 J. Daniel Hays

27. Brueggemann, 1 and 2 Kings, p. 43, also points out that Solomon appears to
construct much of his government structure and his building program on the Egyptian
model. Thus while Pharaoh is mentioned in 3.1, the implications of the relationship with
the Egyptians run throughout the account of Solomon’s reign.
28. Does the narrator imply anything by mentioning Solomon’s house first and
Yahweh’s house second?
29. Fretheim, First and Second Kings, p. 62.
30. Bruce K. Waltke and M. O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax
(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), §39.3.5c.
33. Most writers recognize the wordplay between Solomon and Mwl# (‘peace’), for
Solomon brings a time of peace to the nation (except for the forced labor?). There also
appears to be a wordplay here in 11.4, but this one is quite ironic, between Solomon and
Ml# (‘full, complete, at peace’), for his heart is not Ml# toward Yahweh.
34. Elaine Adler Goodfriend, ‘Prostitution (Old Testament)’, in ABD, V, pp. 505–10
(505); Victor H. Matthews and Don C. Benjamin, Social World of Ancient Israel 1250–587
BCE (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993), p. 133.
35. Peter C. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy (NICOT; London: Hodder &
Stoughton; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), p. 302.
36. Goodfriend, ‘Prostitution (Old Testament)’, p. 506, writes, ‘A society which valued
the patrilineal bloodline so highly would logically have a real abhorrence of children with
no known paternity and of the mother who bred them’.
37. Gary Hall, ‘hnz’, in Willem A. VanGemeren (ed.), New International Dictionary of
Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (5 vols.; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), I, pp.
1122–25 (1123); S. Erlandsson, ‘hnz’, TDOT, IV, pp. 101–104; Raymond C. Ortlund,
Whoredom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996).
38. Furthermore, in the midst of the description relating to Solomon’s glorious
kingdom of peace and prosperity, the narrator (4.26) casually mentions Solomon’s chariot
horses—12,000 of them, if we follow the LXX. The MT implies 40,000 stalls and 12,000
horsemen (NRSV). This statement comes right after the declaration of safety throughout
the land (4.25) and the implication is that the condition of safety in the land is a direct
result of Solomon’s great standing army. However, as mentioned above, Deut. 17.16
strictly forbids the accumulation of horses by the king. Has the narrator introduced
Solomon’s great chariot army in order to impress the reader, or is he trying quietly to
illustrate the departure of Solomon from walking in the way of Yahweh and trusting him
for national security to following the way of typical powerful monarchs in the ancient Near
East? Throughout much of the rest of the Hebrew Bible, placing faith in chariots becomes
an idiom for not trusting in Yahweh (Ps. 20.7; Isa. 2.7–8; 22.18; 31.1; Mic. 5.10). Not only
does Deuteronomy strictly prohibit the king from accumulating chariots and horses, but
also Samuel, in his warning to the nation about the dangers of the monarchy, mentions
chariots three times (1 Sam. 8.11–12). In addition, 2 Sam. 8.3–5 records that in one battle
David captured a thousand chariots with horses and charioteers. What did David do with
this new accumulation of military might? He hamstrung all of the chariot horses except
100 of them. If Deuteronomy and 1–2 Samuel form the contextual background through
which the narrator’s words are to be understood, then this text is seething with irony.

40. This issue has been discussed briefly above, but a few additional comments should
be added here. In this passage Solomon conscripted 30,000 Israelites who worked in shifts,
one month on and two months off. These workers are explicitly identified as Israelites. In
addition Solomon also had 150,000 stonecutters and haulers, whose ethnicity is not
identified in this passage. In 1 Kgs 9.22 (ET), however, the narrator states that Solomon
did not conscript any Israelites as part of his slave labor, but used Israelites only as soldiers
and officials, while conscripting other nationalities to be the actual slave laborers. The
terms used in the two passages are slightly different (sm in 5.13 [ET] and rk( sm in 9.22
[ET]) and several scholars have suggested that there was a difference in status—the
Israelites were only required to work one third of the time, thus they were forced laborers,
but not permanent slaves. The Canaanites and other inhabitants of the land, however,
were forced to be permanent slaves. See, e.g., I. Mendolsohn, ‘On Corvée Labor in
Ancient Canaan and Israel’, BASOR 167 (1962), pp. 31–35, and Fretheim, First and Second
Kings, pp. 38–39. Soggin, however, argues against this distinction, maintaining that the
terms are synonymous. See J. Alberto Soggin, ‘Compulsory Labor Under David and
Solomon’, in Ishida (ed.), Studies in the Period of David and Solomon, pp. 259–67. However
the tension between the texts is to be resolved, it is clear from 5.13 that a significant
number of Israelites were forced to work on the temple. Furthermore, in light of the
explosive reaction to the forced labor situation in ch. 12 after Solomon’s death, this forced
labor appears to refer to something that was neither voluntary nor pleasant.
41. Gunn and Fewell, Narrative in the Hebrew Bible, p. 168, make the same observation,
writing: ‘The glory of Yahweh’s house, moreover, soon gives way (1 Kgs 7.1–12 and chs.
9–11) to the expanding glory of Solomon’s own house ... A reader might well decide that
this whole elaborate narrative edifice harbors no little ironic comment on the king.’
43. Nelson, First and Second Kings, p. 47.
44. Brueggemann, 1 and 2 Kings, pp. 103–104.
45. Iain W. Provan, 1 and 2 Kings (New International Biblical Commentary; Peabody,
MA: Hendrickson, 1995), p. 75.
46. Some have suggested that the delay was to coordinate the dedication with the
Feast of Booths (or Tabernacles), which also took place at this time. Thus the reference to
‘festival’ in 8.2 would refer to the Feast of Booths (or Tabernacles). Fretheim (First and
Second Kings, pp. 48–49) points out that Deut. 31.9–13 stipulated that the written law
(Deuteronomy) be read at this festival. Yet there is no mention of such a reading occurring
in 1 Kgs 8. In fact, there is no mention of Solomon ever reading the law, either to himself
or to the people. This omission is underscored by the contrast seen in the narrative of King
Josiah, who reads all the words of the Book of the Covenant in the hearing of all the people
(2 Kgs 23.2). No doubt this is related to the positive summary of Josiah, ‘he did what was
right in the eyes of Yahweh’ (2 Kgs 22.2), in contrast to the negative summary of Solomon,
‘he did evil in the eyes of Yahweh’ (1 Kgs 11.6).
47. Provan, 1 and 2 Kings, p. 83.
48. Camp (Wise, Strange and Holy, p. 171) notes the rhetorical interweaving ‘of
Solomon’s temple-building with his wisdom, his foreign women, other foreigners, and
other buildings’. She suggests that this points to a ‘flaw’ or ‘faultline in the lovingly
described temple construction’. Camp also notes the extreme irony in Yahweh’s statement
to Solomon in 9.7: ‘the house I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight;
170 J. Daniel Hays
and Israel will become a proverb (l#m) and a taunt among all peoples’. Earlier, in 1 Kgs
4.29–34, the text boasted of Solomon’s proverbs (l#m), noting that men of all nations
would come to hear his proverbs.
49. Provan, 1 and 2 Kings, p. 84. Nelson (First and Second Kings, p. 66), however, states
that the dark undercurrent is only hinted at in these verses.
51. Brueggemann, 1 and 2 Kings, p. 134. Fewell and Gunn (Gender, Power, and Promise,
pp. 174–77) highlight the ambiguity of the Queen of Sheba episode, and note that there
are two very different possible readings: one which praises King Solomon, and one which
praises the Queen of Sheba at Solomon’s expense. The fact that Solomon does not marry
this woman is both interesting and suggestive. Camp (Wise, Strange and Holy, pp. 176–77)
points out that the Queen of Sheba combines together the two themes of ‘wise’ and
‘strange’ (that is, foreign), the two themes that are central to Camp’s study. Camp suggests
that the Queen of Sheba is the ideal that slipped through Solomon’s fingers. Camp’s
insightful observation is helpful to the present study, even though my approach is
different. If we read from a deuteronomistic viewpoint, we note that the Queen of Sheba
is wise and is foreign, but that she also has a profound awareness of Yahweh. One of the
reasons cited that prompted her visit was Solomon’s relation to Yahweh (1 Kgs 10.1). Then
after she sees Solomon’s wealth and wisdom, she proclaims, ‘Blessed be Yahweh your God,
who has delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel! Because Yahweh loved Israel
forever, he has made you king to execute justice and righteousness.’ The Queen of Sheba
thus stands in stark contrast to the multitude of Solomon’s wives who worshipped foreign
idols. Solomon marries the foreign women who worship pagan idols, but the one who
seems to acknowledge Yahweh (and is wise, too) he is unable—or unwilling—to marry.
D . H . L AW R E N C E
Apocalypse
B ecause, as a matter of fact, when you start to teach individual self-

realisation to the great masses of people, who when all is said and done are
only fragmentary beings, incapable of whole individuality, you end by making
them all envious, grudging, spiteful creatures. Anyone who is kind to man
knows the fragmentariness of most men, and wants to arrange a society of
power in which men fall naturally into a collective wholeness, since they
cannot have an individual wholeness. In this collective wholeness they will be
fulfilled. But if they make efforts at individual fulfilment, they must fail for
they are by nature fragmentary. Then, failures, having no wholeness
anywhere, they fall into envy and spite. Jesus knew all about it when he said:
To them that have shall be given, etc. But he had forgotten to reckon with
the mass of the mediocre, whose motto is: We have nothing and therefore
nobody shall have anything.
But Jesus gave the ideal for the Christian individual, and deliberately
avoided giving an ideal for the State or the nation. When he said, “Render
unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s,” he left to Caesar the rule of men’s
bodies, willy-nilly: and this threatened terrible danger to a man’s mind and
soul. Already by the year 60 A.D. the Christians were an accursed sect; and
they were compelled, like all men, to sacrifice, that is to give worship to the
living Caesar. In giving Caesar the power over men’s bodies, Jesus gave him
From Apocalypse. © 1931 by the estate of David Herbert Lawrence.
171
172 D.H. Lawrence
the power to compel men to make the act of worship to Caesar. Now I doubt
if Jesus himself could have performed this act of worship, to a Nero or a
Domitian. No doubt he would have preferred death. As did so many early
Christian martyrs. So there, at the very beginning was a monstrous dilemma.
To be a Christian meant death at the hands of the Roman State; for refusal
to submit to the cult of the Emperor and worship the divine man, Caesar, was
impossible to a Christian. No wonder, then, that John of Patmos saw the day
not far off when every Christian would be martyred. The day would have
come, if the imperial cult had been absolutely enforced on the people. And
then when every Christian was martyred, what could a Christian expect but a
Second Advent, resurrection, and an absolute revenge! There was a
condition for the Christian community to be in, sixty years after the death of
the Saviour.
Jesus made it inevitable, when he said that the money belonged to
Caesar. It was a mistake. Money means bread, and the bread of men belongs
to no men. Money means also power, and it is monstrous to give power to
the virtual enemy. Caesar was bound, sooner or later, to violate the soul of the
Christians. But Jesus saw the individual only, and considered only the
individual. He left it to John of Patmos, who was up against the Roman State,
to formulate the Christian vision of the Christian State. John did it in the
Apocalypse. It entails the destruction of the whole world, and the reign of
saints in ultimate bodiless glory. Or it entails the destruction of all earthly
power, and the rule of an oligarchy of martyrs (the Millennium).
This destruction of all earthly power we are now moving towards. The
oligarchy of martyrs began with Lenin, and apparently others also are
martyrs. Strange, strange people they are, the martyrs, with weird, cold
morality. When every country has its martyr-ruler, either like Lenin or like
those, what a strange, unthinkable world it will be! But it is coming: the
Apocalypse is still a book to conjure with.
A few vastly important points have been missed by Christian doctrine
and Christian thought. Christian fantasy alone has grasped them.
1. No man is or can be a pure individual. The mass of men have only
the tiniest touch of individuality: if any. The mass of men live and move,
think and feel collectively, and have practically no individual emotions,
feelings or thoughts at all. They are fragments of the collective or social
consciousness. It has always been so. And will always be so.
2. The State, or what we call Society as a collective whole cannot have
the psychology of an individual. Also it is a mistake to say that the State is
made up of individuals. It is not. It is made up of a collection of fragmentary
beings. And no collective act, even so private an act as voting, is made from
Apocalypse 173
the individual self. It is made from the collective self, and has another
psychological background, non-individual.
3. The State cannot be Christian. Every State is a Power. It cannot be
otherwise. Every State must guard its own boundaries and guard its own
prosperity. If it fails to do so, it betrays all its individual citizens.
4. Every citizen is a unit of worldly power. A man may wish to be a pure
Christian and a pure individual. But since he must be a member of some
political State, or nation, he is forced to be a unit of worldly power.
5. As a citizen, as a collective being, man has his fulfilment in the
gratification of his power-sense. If he belongs to one of the so-called “ruling
nations,” his soul is fulfilled in the sense of his country’s power or strength.
If his country mounts up aristocratically to a zenith of splendour and power,
in a hierarchy, he will be all the more fulfilled, having his place in the
hierarchy. But if his country is powerful and democratic, then he will be
obsessed with a perpetual will to assert his power in interfering and
preventing other people from doing as they wish, since no man must do more
than another man. This is the condition of modern democracies, a condition
of perpetual bullying.
In democracy, bullying inevitably takes the place of power. Bullying is
the negative form of power. The modern Christian State is a soul-destroying
force, for it is made up of fragments which have no organic whole, only a
collective whole. In a hierarchy each part is organic and vital, as my finger is
an organic and vital part of me. But a democracy is bound in the end to be,
obscene, for it is composed of myriad disunited fragments, each fragment
assuming to itself a false wholeness, a false individuality. Modern democracy
is made up of millions of frictional parts all asserting their own wholeness.
6. To have an ideal for the individual which regards only his individual
self and ignores his collective self is in the long run fatal. To have a creed of
individuality which denies the reality of the hierarchy makes at last for more
anarchy. Democratic man lives by cohesion and resistance, the cohesive force
of “love” and the resistant force of the individual “freedom.” To yield entirely
to love would be to be absorbed, which is the death of the individual: for the
individual must hold his own, or he ceases to be “free” and individual. So that
we see, hat our age has proved to its astonishment and dismay, that the
individual cannot love. The individual cannot love: let that be an axiom. And
the modern man or woman cannot conceive of himself, herself, save as an
individual. And the individual in man or woman is bound to kill, at last, the
lover in himself or herself. It is not that each man kills the thing he loves, but
that each man, by insisting on his own individuality, kills the lover in himself,
as the woman kills the lover in herself. The Christian dare not love: for love
174 D.H. Lawrence
kills that which is Christian, democratic, and modern, the individual. The
individual cannot love. When the individual loves, he ceases to be purely
individual. And so he must recover himself, and cease to love. It is one of the
most amazing lessons of our day: that the individual, the Christian, the
democrat cannot love. Or, when he loves, when she loves, he must take it back,
she must take it back.
So much for private or personal love. Then what about that other love,
“caritas,” loving your neighbour as yourself?
It works out the same. You love your neighbour. Immediately you run
the risk of being absorbed by him: you must draw back, you must hold your
own. The love becomes resistance. In the end, it is all resistance and no love:
which is the history of democracy.
If you are taking the path of individual self-realisation, you had better,
like Buddha, go off and be by yourself, and give a thought to nobody. Then
you may achieve your Nirvana. Christ’s way of loving your neighbour leads
to the hideous anomaly of having to live by sheer resistance to your
neighbour, in the end.
The Apocalypse, strange book, makes this clear. It shows us the
Christian in his relation to the State; which the gospels and epistles avoid
doing. It shows us the Christian in relation to the State, to the world, and to
the cosmos. It shows him in mad hostility to all of them, having, in the end,
to will the destruction of them all.
It is the dark side of Christianity, of individualism, and of democracy,
the side the world at large now shows us. And it is, simply, suicide. Suicide
individual and en masse. If man could will it, it would be cosmic suicide. But
the cosmos is not at man’s mercy, and the sun will not perish to please us.
We do not want to perish, either. We have to give up a false position.
Let us give up our false position as Christians, as individuals, as democrats.
Let us find some conception of ourselves that will allow us to be peaceful and
happy, instead of tormented and unhappy.
The Apocalypse shows us what we are resisting, unnaturally. We are
unnaturally resisting our connection with the cosmos, with the world, with
mankind, with the nation, with the family. All these connections are, in the
Apocalypse, anathema, and they are anathema to us. We cannot bear
connection. That is our malady. We must break away, and be isolate. We call
that being free, being individual. Beyond a certain point, which we have
reached, it is suicide. Perhaps we have chosen suicide. Well and good. The
Apocalypse too chose suicide, with subsequent self-glorification.
But the Apocalypse shows, by its very resistance, the things that the
human heart secretly yearns after. By the very frenzy with which the
Apocalypse 175
Apocalypse destroys the sun and the stars, the world, and all kings and all
rulers, all scarlet and purple and cinnamon, all harlots, finally all men
altogether who are not “sealed,” we can see how deeply the apocalyptists are
yearning for the sun and the stars and the earth and the waters of the earth,
for nobility and lordship and might, and scarlet and gold splendour, for
passionate love, and a proper unison with men, apart from this sealing
business. What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his
living unison, not his own isolate salvation of his “soul.” Man wants his
physical fulfilment first and foremost, since now, once and once only, he is in
the flesh and potent. For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for
flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most
perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot
know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look
after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is
ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with
rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living,
incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part
of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul
knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the
great human soul, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am
part of my family. There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except
my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only
the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters.
So that my individualism is really an illusion. I am a part of the great
whole, and I can never escape. But I can deny my connections, break them,
and become a fragment. Then I am wretched.
What we want is to destroy our false, inorganic connections, especially
those related to money, and re-establish the living organic connections, with
the cosmos, the sun and earth, with mankind and nation and family. Start
with the sun, and the rest will slowly, slowly happen.
FRANK KERMODE
The Man in the Macintosh, the Boy in the Shirt
Where the deuce did he pop out of?

Ulysses
S o far I have been unable to represent the lot of the interpreter as an

altogether happy one. Yet the world is full of interpreters; it is impossible to
live in it without repeated, if minimal, acts of interpretation; and a great
many people obviously do much more than the minimum. Interpretation is
the principal concern of their waking lives. So the question arises, why would
we rather interpret than not? Or, why do we prefer enigmas to muddles?
We may begin to consider the problem by thinking about James Joyce’s
Ulysses. The institution controlling literary interpretation thinks well of the
book; and I, as a reasonably docile member of it, endorse its valuation. I have
taken no part in the exegetical labors that are the inescapable consequence;
but one doesn’t need to have done that to be aware that the work offers
certain opportunities to interpreters—opportunities which, fortunately for
one’s younger colleagues, have every appearance of being inexhaustible. One
such is the riddle of the Man in the Macintosh. It is, if you like, an aporia of
the kind that declares itself when a text is scrutinized with an intensity
normally thought appropriate only after institutional endorsement. Such
scrutiny may originate in an enthusiastic cult, as it did in the present
instance; and in the early stages the establishment may be hostile to the cult.
From The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative. © 1979 by Frank Kermode
177
178 Frank Kermode
But if it decides to take over the enterprise—as it took over Joyce studies—
it absorbs and routinizes that primitive enthusiasm. There occurs a familiar
transition from the charismatic to the institutional.
Let me remind you about the Man in the Macintosh. He first turns up
at Paddy Dignam’s funeral, in the Hades chapter. Bloom wonders who he is.
“Now who is that lanky looking galoot over there in the macintosh? Now
who is he I’d like to know?” And Bloom reflects that the presence of this
stranger increases the number of mourners to thirteen, “Death’s number.”
“Where the deuce did he pop out of? He wasn’t in the chapel, that I’ll swear.”
The newspaper reporter Hynes doesn’t know the man either, and following
a conversational mix-up records his name as M’Intosh. The stranger is thus
given a spurious identity, a factitious proper name, by the same hand that
distorts Bloom’s by calling him Mr. Boom—a diminution of identity.
Later, in “The Wandering Rocks,” a number of people are recorded as
having taken note of or ignored the procession of the Lord Lieutenant. For
example, Mr. Simon Dedalus removed his hat; Blazes Boylan offered no
salute, but eyed the ladies in the coach; and “a pedestrian in a brown
macintosh, eating dry bread, passed swiftly and unscathed across the viceroy’s
path.” Why “unscathed”? Did he pass very close to the wheels? Is the Lord
Lieutenant peculiarly dangerous to such persons? In “Nausicaa” Bloom,
wondering who the “nobleman” may be who passes him on an evening stroll,
again remembers the man, and now seems to know more about him, for he
obscurely reminds himself that the man has “corns on his kismet,” which
may mean “is famous for being unlucky.” Appearing yet again at the end of
“The Oxen of the Sun,” Mackintosh is described—though once more the
sense is dubious—as poor and hungry. He is drinking Bovril, a viscous meat
extract from which one makes a hot bouillon that is held to be fortifying,
though preferred, in the ordinary way, by people of low income, and perhaps
a plausible supplement to dry bread. Perhaps the stranger’s eating habits are
telling us something about him; perhaps we are to read them as indices of
social standing and character. Yet it appears that Mackintosh Has a grander
cause for sorrow than simple poverty and habitual bad luck; for we are told
that he “loves a lady who is dead.” This might explain his presence at the
funeral as well as his dietary carelessness and his reckless transit across the
path of the viceroy.
He next turns up in a more positive, though phantasmagoric role; at
the foundation of Bloomusalem in “Circe” he springs up through a trapdoor
and accuses Bloom of being in truth Leopold M’Intosh, or Higgins, a
notorious fire-raiser. Bloom counters this further threat to his already
shrunken and distorted identity by shooting M’Intosh; but later the man is
observed going downstairs and taking his macintosh and hat from the rack,
which understandably makes Bloom nervous. And sure enough he returns;
but only at the end of the novel, in the “Ithaca” section, when Bloom,
meditating the pattern of the day’s events, or their lack of it, hears the timber
of the table emit a loud, lone crack, and returns in his musings to the enigma
of M’Intosh. Not for long, however; as he puts out his candle he is reminded
of another and far more ancient enigma: “Where was Moses when the candle
went out?”
It can be argued1 that MacIntosh is susceptible of explanation in terms
of the known relations between Joyce’s book and the Odyssey of Homer. He
represents Homer’s Theoclymenos, a character who turns up in the fifteenth
book as an outlaw getting free passage with Telemachus, and then again,
rather mysteriously, in the twentieth book, when the suitors, having mocked
Telemachus for saying he won’t coerce his mother into marrying one of
them, suddenly grow sad. At this point “the godlike Theoclymenos” offers a
comment on their behavior, and a dire prophecy. He tells the suitors that
their faces and knees are veiled in night, that there is a sound of mourning in
the air, that the walls are splashed with blood and the porch filled with ghosts
on their way to Hades. The effect of these observations is to restore the good
humor of the suitors, and no more is heard of the godlike outlaw.
One possible, though severe, opinion of the Homeric Theoclymenos is
that his prophecy is banal and his presence in the story quite without point—
in fact, that he is simply an intrusion, and does not belong to the poem at all.
Can this be said to justify the presence of Macintosh in Ulysses? One would
then have to explain how the relevance of Macintosh is established by the
irrelevance of Theoclymenos. Certainly, however, they have something in
common. Macintosh’s making the extra man and bringing the total of
mourners to thirteen, and the occurrence of the funeral in the Hades chapter,
chime with the funereal tone of the prophecy in Homer.
But there is still a lot left to explain. Perhaps Joyce, now imitating
another famous precursor, was at his exercise of putting particular persons
into his book, as Dante put certain people, in his case people of importance,
into hell. So it has been proposed that Macintosh is really a man called
Wetherup, who is actually mentioned twice in Ulysses (with his name
misspelled and represented as given to the utterance of platitudes, though
not as wearing a macintosh. Note also that Macintosh is identified, by some
scholars, with Mr. James Duffy, a character in Joyce’s story “A Painful Case,”
which is to be found in Dubliners. Mr. Duffy is a shadowy wanderer and the
lover of a dead woman. He illustrates what Joyce called “the hated brown
Irish paralysis”; if he really is the man in the macintosh it is appropriate that
180 Frank Kermode
Bloom should forget all about him as soon as he climbs into Molly’s bed.
What is more, Duffy is partly based on Joyce’s brother Stanislaus, who was
puritanical about sex, and argued that its absence made friendship between
man and man, and its presence friendship between man and woman, equally
impossible. Stanislaus was aware that James had him in mind when he
invented Mr. Duffy, for he declared that Duffy was “a portrait of what my
brother imagined I should become in middle age.”2
Joyce vouched for none of this, but we know he liked jokes and riddles,
and that he sometimes teased his admirers by asking them “Who was the
man in the macintosh?” Another view of the whole matter is that Macintosh
is absolutely gratuitous and fortuitous, a mere disturbance of the surface of
the narrative. So Robert M. Adams, who says that Joyce is just playing with
our “unfulfilled curiosity,” and that if the identification of Macintosh with
Wetherup, or presumably one of the other tedious possibilities I have
outlined and some that I have not (for instance, that MacIntosh is Joyce
himself ), is correct, then “we may be excused for feeling that the fewer
answers we have for the novel’s riddles, the better off we are.” Adams is
persuaded that in the texture of this novel “the meaningless is deeply
interwoven with the meaningful” so that “the book loses as much as it gains
by being read closely.”3
I daresay there is a larger literature on this drab enigma than I have
suggested—certainly there could be: why, for instance, the epidemic of
misspelled names?4—but this is enough to be going on with. The real
question is, why do we want to solve it anyway? Why does the view of Adams
commend itself to us not at once, not as intuitively right, but as somehow
more surprising and recondite than the attempts to make sense of
MacIntosh? Why, in fact, does it require a more strenuous effort to believe
that a narrative lacks coherence than to believe that somehow, if we could
only find out, it doesn’t?
Here is a cryptic and far from wholly satisfactory answer: within a text
no part is less privileged than the other parts. All may receive the same
quality and manner of attention; to prevent this one would need to use
metatextual indicators (typographical variation, for instance) and there are
no such indicators in the present instance. Why is this so? There must be
supra-literary forces, cultural pressures, which tend to make us seek narrative
coherence, just as we expect a conundrum to have an answer, and a joke a
point. Our whole practice of reading is founded on such expectations, and of
course the existence of genres such as the pointless joke and the deviant
conundrum depends upon the prior existence of the normal sort. Just so do
detective stories depend upon the coherence of elements in an occult plot
that declares itself only as the book ends. There are detective novels, of
which Robbe-Grillet’s Les Gommes is the supreme example, which disobey
this convention; but far from disregarding it, they depend upon it for their
effect. In short: just as language games are determined by historical
community use, so are plot games; and the subversion of the values of either
depends on the prior existence of rules.
It is a prior expectation of consonance, the assumption that as readers
we have to complete something capable of completion, that causes us to deal
as we do with the man in the macintosh. We look for an occult relation (since
there is no manifest relation) between all the references to him. It may be
hidden in Homer, or in the larger body of Joyce’s writing, or in his life, or in
some myth; for we may well decide that MacIntosh is Death, or even that he
is Hermes. Only when we are exhausted by our unprofitable struggle with
the dry bread, the Bovril, the corns, the charge that Bloom himself is
M’Intosh, do we relapse into a skepticism which is willing to entertain the
notion of Robert Adams’ nude emperor. We come to rest somewhere in the
end, for the incoherence of the evidence can induce real anxiety. Perhaps,
then, the appearances of MacIntosh lack coherence because they mime the
fortuities of real life; that relates to another of our conventional expectations
of narrative. Perhaps its satisfaction may sometimes entail the use of
incoherences, devices by means of which, as Adams expresses it, the work of
art may “fracture its own surface.”5
There are current at present much bolder opinions than this one,
which presupposes, rather conventionally, that some or much of a text can
and should be processed into coherence, though some, if after careful
interpretative effort it resists this treatment, may be left alone, or dealt with
in a different way. One bolder view would be that an ideal text would be
perfectly fortuitous, that only the fractures are of interest; that in establishing
coherence we reduce the text to codes implanted in our minds by the
arbitrary fiat of a culture or an institution, and are therefore the unconscious
victims of ideological oppression. Freedom, the freedom to produce
meaning, rests in fortuity, in the removal of constraints on sense. Insofar as
Ulysses is not a congeries of MacIntoshes it falls short of the ideal, though a
determined reader may do much to correct it by resisting the codes. Newly
liberated from conventional expectations first formulated by Plato, solidified
by Aristotle, and powerfully reinforced over the past two centuries, we are no
longer to seek unity or coherence, but, by using the text wantonly, by
inattention, by skipping even (every time you read A la Recherche du temps
perdu it can be a new novel, says Roland Barthes, because you skip different
parts each time6), by encouraging in ourselves perversities of every sort, we
182 Frank Kermode
produce our own senses. The reason why Adams could give the
establishment a bit of a shock without going anywhere near these Utopian
extremes is simply that Joyce studies, and kindred literary researches, were
already institutionalized—a paradigm was established, “normal” research was
in progress, to adapt Thomas Kuhn’s terms7—so that even to propose that
normal exegesis should be withheld from certain passages in Ulysses was
unorthodox enough, close enough to the revolutionary, to cause a stir.
Let us now turn to the Boy in the Shirt (sindōn, a garment made of fine linen;
not precisely a shirt, rather something you might put on for a summer
evening, or wrap a dead body in, if you were rich enough). The Boy (actually
a young man, neaniskos) is found only in Mark (14:51–52). At the moment of
Jesus’ arrest, says Mark—and Matthew agrees—all the disciples forsook him
and fled. And both agree further that his captors then led him to the high
priest. But between these two events Mark alone inserts another: “And a
young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body; and
they seized him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.” And that is
all Mark has to say about this young man.
The difficulty is to explain where the deuce he popped up from. One
way of solving it is to eliminate him, to argue that he has no business in the
text at all. Perhaps Mark was blindly following some source that gave an
inconsistent account of these events, simply copying it without thought.
Perhaps somebody, for reasons irrecoverably lost, and quite extraneous to the
original account, inserted the young man later. Perhaps Matthew and Luke
omitted him (if they had him in their copies of Mark) because the incident
followed so awkwardly upon the statement that all had fled. (It is also
conjectured that the Greek verb translated as “followed,” sunēkolouthei,
might have the force of “continued to follow,” though all the rest had fled.8)
Anyway, why is the youth naked? Some ancient texts omit the phrase epi
gumnou, which is not the usual way of saying “about his body” and is
sometimes called a scribal corruption; but that he ran away naked (gumnos)
when his cloak was removed is not in doubt. So we have to deal with a young
man who was out on a chilly spring night (fires were lit in the high priest’s
courtyard) wearing nothing but an expensive, though not a warm, shirt.
“Why,” asks one commentator, “should Mark insert such a trivial detail in so
solemn a narrative?”9 And, if the episode of the youth had some significance,
why did Matthew and Luke omit it? We can without difficulty find meanings
for other episodes in the tale (for instance, the kiss of Judas, or the forbidding
of violent resistance, which makes the point that Jesus was not a militant
revolutionist) but there is nothing clearly indicated by this one.
If the episode is not rejected altogether, it is usually explained in one of

three ways. First, it refers to Mark’s own presence at the arrest he is
describing. Thus it is a sort of reticent signature, like Alfred Hitchcock’s
appearances in his own films, or Joyce’s as MacIntosh. This is not widely
believed, nor is it really credible. Secondly, it is meant to lend the whole story
verisimilitude, an odd incident that looks as if it belongs to history-like
fortuity rather than to a story coherently invented—the sort of confirmatory
detail that only an eyewitness could have provided—a contribution to what
is now sometimes called l’effet du réel. We may note in passing that such
registrations of reality are a commonplace of fiction; in their most highly
developed forms we call them realism. Thirdly, it is a piece of narrative
developed (in a manner not unusual, of which I shall have something to say
later) from Old Testament texts, notably Genesis 39:12 and Amos 2:16.
Taylor, with Cranfield concurring, calls this proposition “desperate in the
extreme.”10 I suppose one should add a fourth option, which is, as with
MacIntosh, to give up the whole thing as a pseudo-problem, or anyway
insoluble; but although commentators sometimes mention this as a way out
they are usually prevented by self-respect and professional commitment from
taking it.
Now we have already noticed that Mark, for all the boldness of its
opening proclamation (“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ”) is,
to say the least, a reticent text, whether its reserve is genuinely enigmatic or
merely the consequence of muddle. Moreover, as I have suggested, where
enigmas are credibly thought to exist in a text, it is virtually impossible to
maintain that some parts of it are certainly not enigmatic. This is a principle
important to the history of interpretation, and it was by carefully violating it
with his fractured-surface theory that Robert Adams upset people. Let us
then look at two attempts that have been made to treat the boy in the shirt
as enigmatic and functional.
The first of these very well illustrates one alarming aspect of the
business of interpretation, which is that by introducing new senses into a part
of the text you affect the interpretation of the whole. And this “whole” may
be not simply Mark, but the history of early Christianity, It has lately been
shown that there was more than one version of Mark. Morton Smith found,
in a Judean monastery, an eighteenth-century Greek manuscript in which
was copied a letter written by Clement of Alexandria at the end of the second
century. After demonstrating that this letter was indeed written by Clement,
Smith studies a passage in it that purports to be a quotation from Mark,
though it is nowhere to be found in the gospel as we have it. The context is
as follows: Clement is commending his correspondent Theodore for taking
184 Frank Kermode
a firm line with the Carpocratian Gnostics, a contemporary libertine sect

which believed it right to sin that grace might abound; indeed they were
“unafraid to stray into ... actions whose very names are unmentionable,” as
Irenaeus, speaking of Carpocatians and Cainites alike, reports.11 Now
Clement wishes to distinguish his authentic secret Mark from the
inauthentic and conceivably licentious secret Mark of the Carpocratians. He
explains that Mark first wrote his gospel in Rome, drawing on the
reminiscences of Peter (we know from other evidence that Clement, like
most other people, accepted this account of the origin of the gospel). But on
that occasion Mark left out certain secrets. After Peter’s martyrdom, says
Clement, Mark went to Alexandria, where he “composed a more spiritual
gospel” for the exclusive use of those who were “being initiated into the great
mysteries.” Carpocrates had presumably taken over this secret gospel and
adulterated it with his own interpretations. In the circumstances, says
Clement, it will be best for the faithful to deny the very existence of a secret
version.
He then quotes a passage from the authentic Alexandrian version. It
must have come somewhere in the present tenth chapter of the gospel, and
it tells of a visit to Bethany. In response to the plea of a woman, Jesus rolled
back the door of a tomb and raised a rich young man from the dead. The
young man, looking upon him, loved him, and begged to be with him. After
six days he was commanded to go to Jesus at night. This he did, wearing a
linen garment (sindōn) over his naked body (epi gumnou). During the night
Jesus instructed the young man in “the mystery of the kingdom of God.”
Then the text continues at 10:35 as we now have it.
Clement goes out of his way to deny that the true, as distinct from the
spurious, secret text contains the words gumnos gumnou, which might suggest
that the master as well as the catechumen was naked. Whether this
suggestion bore on baptismal practice, or had other magical and sexual
import, is a matter for conjecture in the light of what is known of
Carpocratian habits; for of course if Clement is telling the truth the words
have no place in his genuine text, only in the spurious version of Carpocrates.
In Morton Smith’s opinion the initiation in question was baptism. The
story of the young man raised from the dead is obviously related to that of
Lazarus, which occurs only in John, and Smith believes they have a common
original older than the Mark we now have. He also thinks that our young
man in the linen shirt is this same young man in Clement’s gospel who had
looked and loved and worn a sindōn over his naked body. In the extant gospels
Jesus never baptizes, but in Clement’s version of Mark baptism must have
been a central rite; and Clement would want to preserve this initiation
ceremony from contamination by the libertine Gnostics. Anyway, the young

man in Mark’s account of the arrest is on his way to be baptized; that is why
he is naked under his sindōn, a garment appropriate to symbolic as well as to
real burial, and appropriate also to symbolic resurrection, both to be enacted
in the ceremony. His baptism would take place in a lonely garden, under
cover of night. We know that Jesus set guards (on this theory, to prevent
interruption) and we know that the guards fell asleep. He was then surprised
with the naked youth.
Thus the entire narrative is altered to make sense of a part of it. But the
account I have so far given is a very inadequate account of Smith’s
hypothesis. He also proposes the view that the secretiveness of Mark’s Jesus
almost throughout the gospel is related to this use of baptism as initiation
into the mysteries of the kingdom. Jesus is here regarded as a magician or
shaman, the Transfiguration is explained as a shamanistic ascent. Now the
Gnostic libertine interpretation of the secret gospel can be seen as an
attempt to preserve or recover an original mystery concealed by the
expurgated “Roman” version of Mark in general circulation. Like Clement,
only more so, the Gnostics could think of the popular text as corrupt and
imperfect in consequence of its attempt to keep the secrets. And whatever
may be said about the provenance of these Alexandrian secret texts, they do
provide a reason why the text as we have it appears both to reveal and
proclaim, and at the same time to obscure and conceal.12
We see, then, that an interpretation of our two Marcan verses along the
lines proposed by Morton Smith entails a drastic revision of the received idea
of a much larger text. We might want to ask some low-level questions about
plausibility: for example, why did the hand that so expertly curtailed the
tenth chapter fail to deal with the anomalous verses about the young man in
the shirt? And perhaps there could be other explanations for the repetition
of epi gumnou. This, as I said, has been thought unacceptable; it is absent
from some good manuscripts at 14:51, and Taylor drops it from his text; but
its recurrence in Clement’s letter must mean either that it was right, and that
Mark used it twice, or that whoever wrote the secret version of Chapter 10
did so with the story of the young man in mind. At any rate it seems not
unlikely that in the two verses we have been considering the secret gospel is
showing through, a radiance of some kind, merely glimpsed by the outsider.
And we should not be unduly surprised that the gospel, like its own parables,
both reveals and conceals.
It is obvious by now that the story of the young man in the shirt cannot
be simply interpreted; and complex interpretations, whether or not they have
the seismic historical effects of Morton Smith’s, will always have
186 Frank Kermode
consequences that go far beyond the local problem. The most elegant
interpretation known to me is that of Austin Farrer.13 It uses as evidence
Mark’s linguistic habits, but it also finds in the gospel an occult plot, this time
typological in style. Farrer was writing before the discovery of Clement’s
letter. It would probably have changed his argument in some ways, though
he would doubtless have found useful to his purposes the occurrence, in the
secret Mark, of the words neaniskos (not the most usual word for a young
man) and sindōn. Mark uses neaniskos, in the public gospel, only for the young
man who fled, and for the one who, at the end of the gospel, greets the
women at Jesus’ empty tomb.
Behind Farrer’s interpretation is the knowledge that many of the
crucial events in the gospel, especially in the Passion narrative, are closely
related to Old Testament texts. They fulfill these texts, and the narrative as
we have it records, and is in a considerable measure founded upon, such
fulfillments. More of this later; for the moment it is sufficient that an event
in the gospel stories may originate, and derive some of its value from, a
relationship with an event in an earlier narrative. The force of the
connection may be evident only if we are aware of the conditions governing
such relationships, for example that the relation of Jesus to the Law, and of
Christian to Jewish history, is always controlled by the myth of fulfillment in
the time of the end, which is the time of the gospel narratives. If this is
granted, there is always a possibility that the sort of relationship Taylor called
“desperate in the extreme”—between the story of the young man and the
texts in Genesis and Amos—exists. Moreover, if the gospel contains allusions
so delicate and recondite to earlier and uncited texts, why should there not
be internal allusions and dependencies of equal subtlety? By seeking out such
occult structural organizations one might confer upon Mark, after centuries
of complaint at his disorderly construction, the kind of depth and closure one
would hope to find in what has come to be accepted as the earliest and, in
many ways, the most authoritative of the gospels.
Farrer’s theories about Mark—numerological, typological,
theological—are far too complicated to describe here, though to a secular
critic they are exceptionally interesting. He himself altered them and then
more or less gave them up, partly persuaded, no doubt, by criticisms of them
as farfetched, partly disturbed by the imputation that a narrative of the kind
he professed to be discussing would be more a work of fiction than an
account of a crucial historical event. Neither of these judgments seems to me
well founded. But let me say briefly what he made of the young man in the
cloak. He sets him in a literary pattern of events preceding and following the
Passion: for example, the unknown woman anoints Jesus at Bethany, and he
says this anointing is an early anointing for burial; afterwards the women
make a futile attempt to anoint his corpse. The youth who flees in his sindōn
forms a parallel with the youth (also neaniskos) the women find in the tomb.
The first youth deserted Jesus; the second has evidently been with him since
he rose. Furthermore, the linen in which Joseph of Arimathea wraps the
body is called a sindōn, so there seems to be an intricate relationship between
the neaniskos in his sindōn and the body in the tomb, now risen. As I say, the
relation might have been made still more elaborate had Farrer known of the
passage in Clement, which also involves a neaniskos in a tomb. He tells us that
the punishment of a temple watcher who fell asleep on duty was to be beaten
and stripped of his linen garment; which may have a bearing on the boy’s
losing his. He also accepts the affiliation which Taylor rejected, believing
that the young man is related to (he does not say “invented to accord with”)
two Old Testament types, one in Amos (2:16)—“on that day the bravest of
warriors shall be stripped of his arms and run away”—and the other in
Genesis (39:12), where Joseph escapes from the seduction attempt of
Potiphar’s wife by running away and leaving his cloak in her hands.
In such patterns as these, Farrer detected delicate senses, many of them
ironical. And since he was not an adherent of the latest school of
hermeneutics, he believed that Mark must have intended these senses, and
that he must have had an audience capable of perceiving them. So far from
being a bungler, awkwardly cobbling together the material of the tradition,
Mark developed these occult schemes “to supplement logical connection,”
by which I take it Farrer meant something like “narrative coherence.” He let
his imagination play over the apparently flawed surface of Mark’s narrative
until what Adams calls fractures of the surface became parts of an elaborate
design.
I do not doubt that Farrer’s juggling with numbers gets out of hand.
But even that has a basis in fact. He was confronting a problem that earlier
exegetes had experienced. Since there is certainly a measure of
arithmological and typological writing in the New Testament (twelve
apostles and twelve tribes, Old Testament types sometimes openly cited,
sometimes not) is there not reason to think that intensive application may
disclose more of it than immediately meets the eye? Yet the more complex
the purely literary structure is shown to be, the harder it is for most people
to accept the narratives as naively transparent upon historical reality.
At one point Farrer even suggests that the young man deserting is a
figure representing the falling off of all the others. This seems to me a fine
interpretation. We have, at this moment in the narrative, three principal
themes: Betrayal, Flight, and Denial. Judas is the agent of the first and Peter
188 Frank Kermode
of the third. I shall have more to say of Judas as Betrayal in Chapter Four.
Peter, halfway through the gospel, was the first to acknowledge the Messiah,
though the acknowledgment was at once followed by a gesture of dismissal
by Jesus: “Get behind me, Satan—you care not for the things of God but the
things of man.” Now he apostasizes and perhaps even curses Jesus,14 exactly
at the moment when his master is for the first time asserting his true identity
and purpose before the Sanhedrin. The implication, first made at the
moment of recognition, and followed by the first prophecy of the Passion, is
that the chief apostle will, when the Passion begins, deny the master. On
both occasions he stands for the wholesale denial of Jesus, almost for Denial
in the abstract. So too this young man, who is Desertion. The secret passage
enhances this reading; the typical deserter is one who by baptism or some
other rite of initiation has been reborn and received into the Kingdom.
Nevertheless he flees. Thus we may find in this sequence of betrayal,
desertion, and denial, a literary construction of considerable sophistication,
one that has benefited from the grace that often attends the work of
narration—a grace not always taken into account by scholars who seek to
dissolve the text into its elements rather than to observe the fertility of their
interrelations. It must, however, be said again that these narrative graces
entail some disadvantages if one is looking more for an historical record than
for a narrative of such elaborateness that it is hard not to think of it as fiction.
How do the interpretations of Smith and Farrer differ? The first
assumes that Mark built up an esoteric plot, using material that was somehow
also available to John, who developed it differently in the story of Lazarus
and his sisters. The second argues that Mark worked an existing Passion
narrative, presumably quite simple, into a complex narrative structure so
recherché that between the first privileged audience and the modern
interpreter himself no one ever understood it in its fullness. The frame of
reference of the first is provided by the techniques of historiography, that of
the second by literary criticism. Each is in its own way imaginative, though
the quality of imagination differs greatly from one to the other. A Schweitzer
might place Smith’s work in the tradition of lives of Jesus, beginning two
centuries ago with Bahrdt and Venturini,15 which assumed that what made
sense of the gospel narratives was something none of them ever mentioned:
for example, that Jesus was the instrument of some secret society. As to
Farrer, his work was rejected by the establishment, and eventually by himself,
largely because it was so literary. The institution knew intuitively that such
literary elaboration, such emphasis on elements that must be called fictive,
was unacceptable because damaging to what remained of the idea that the
gospel narratives were still, in some measure, transparent upon history.16
The constructions of Smith are historical; those of Farrer are literary.

But they both assume that there is an enigmatic narrative concealed in the
manifest one. Each suggests that an apparent lack of connection, the
existence of narrative elements that cannot readily be seen to form part of a
larger organization, must be explained in terms of that hidden plot, and not
regarded as evidence of a fractured surface, or mere fortuities indicating that
reality may be fortuitous. Joyce once said of Ulysses: “I’ve put in so many
enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries over
what I meant, and that’s the only way of ensuring one’s immortality.”17 This
is a shrewd joke, but the suggestion that enigmas and puzzles have
necessarily to be “put in” is false. Joyce was only imitating the action of time.
It would be more accurate to say that whatever remains within the purview
of interpretation—whether by the fiat of the professors or of some other
institutional force—will have its share of enigmas and puzzles. Whatever is
preserved grows enigmatic; time, and the pressures of interpretation, which
are the agents of preservation, will see to that. Who was the man in the
macintosh? Mr. Duffy, Stanislaus Joyce, Mr. Wetherup, Bloom’s
doppelgänger, Theoclymenos, Hermes, Death, a mere series of surface
fractures? Each guess requires the construction of an enigmatic plot, or,
failing that, a declaration that the text is enigmatically fortuitous. Who was
the boy in the linen shirt, and where did he pop out of? The answers are very
similar: a candidate for baptism, an image of desertion, a fortuity that makes
the surface of narrative more like the surface of life.
So I return to the question I have already put: why do we labor to
reduce fortuity first, before we decide that there is a way of looking which
provides a place for it? I have still no satisfying answer; but it does appear
that we are programmed to prefer fulfillment to disappointment, the closed
to the open. It may be that this preference arises from our experience of
language-learning; a language that lacked syntax and lacked redundancy
would be practically unlearnable. We depend upon well-formedness—less
so, it must be confessed, in oral than in written language: in the written story
there is no visible gesture or immediate social context to help out the
unarticulated sentence, the aposiopesis. There are modern critics who think
our desire for the well-formed—or our wish to induce well-formedness
where it is not apparent—is in bad faith. They hold that it is more honest to
experience deception, disappointment, in our encounters with narrative.
They have not yet prevailed; we are in love with the idea of fulfillment, and
our interpretations show it. In this we resemble the writers of the New
Testament and their immediate successors, who were, though much more
strenuously, more exaltedly, in love with fulfillment; the verb meaning to
190 Frank Kermode
fulfill, and the noun pleroma, full measure, plenitude, fulfillment, are
endlessly repeated, and their senses extend from the fulfillment of prophecy
and type to the complete attainment of faith.
Such expectations of fullness survive, though in attenuated form, in our
habitual attitudes to endings. That we should have certain expectations of
endings, just as we have certain expectations of the remainder of a sentence
we have begun to read, has seemed so natural, so much a part of things as
they are in language and literature, that (to the best of my knowledge) the
modern study of them begins only fifty years ago, with the Russian Formalist
Viktor Shklovsky. It was he who showed that we can derive the sense of
fulfilled expectation, of satisfactory closure, from texts that actually do not
provide what we ask, but give us instead something that, out of pure desire
for completion, we are prepared to regard as a metaphor or a synecdoche for
the ending that is not there: a description of the weather or the scenery, he
says, will do,18 say the rain at the end of Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms, or
the river at the end of Matthew Arnold’s Sohrab and Rustum. These are
matters that still require investigation; the fact that they do so testifies to the
truth of the statement that we find it hardest to think about what we have
most completely taken for granted.
Now it happens that Mark is never more enigmatic, or never more
clumsy, than at the end of his gospel; and I can best bring together the
arguments of this chapter by briefly considering that ending. Too briefly, no
doubt; for whole books have been written about it, and it has been called “the
greatest of all literary mysteries.”19 It is worth saying, to begin with, that
nobody thought to call it that until after Mark had come to be accepted as
the earliest gospel and Matthew’s primary source; we do not recognize even
the greatest literary mysteries until the text has gained full institutional
approval. When Mark was thought to derive from Matthew it was easy to call
his gospel a rather inept digest, as Augustine did; and then the abruptness of
the ending was merely an effect of insensitive abridgment, and not a problem
at all, much less a great mystery. Even now there are many who are impatient
of mystery, and wish to dispose of it by asserting that the text did not
originally end, or was not originally intended to end, at 16:8. But very few
scholars dare to claim that the last twelve verses, 9–20, as we still have them
in our Bibles, are authentic, for there is powerful and ancient testimony that
they are not.
The gospel we are talking about ends at 16:8. In the previous verse the
young man in the tomb gives the women a message for Peter and the disciples
concerning their meeting with the risen Jesus. But they flee the tomb in terror
and say nothing to anybody. This ending must soon have come to seem
strange, which is why somebody added the extra twelve verses. We are not
entitled to do anything of that kind; we can argue that the gospel was, for
some reason, left unfinished; or we can interpret the ending as it stands.
The last words of the gospel are: “for they were afraid,” ephobounto gar.
It used to be believed that you could not end even a sentence with such a
construction; and to this day, when it is accepted that you could do so in
popular Greek, nobody has been able to find an instance, apart from Mark,
of its occurrence at the end of a whole book. It is an abnormality more
striking even than ending an English book with the word “Yes,” as Joyce did.
Joyce’s explanations of why he did so are interestingly contradictory. Ulysses,
he told his French translator, “must end with the most positive word in the
human language.”20 Years later he told Louis Gillet something different: “In
Ulysses,” he said, “to represent the babbling of a woman as she falls asleep, I
tried to end with the least forceful word I could possibly find. I found the
word yes, which is barely pronounced, which signifies acquiescence, self-
abandonment, total relaxation, the end of all resistance.”21 Here again Joyce
gives the professors a license to interpret which they would have had to take
anyway. The only positive inference to be made from these two remarks is
that Joyce knew, as Shklovsky did, that we all want to make a large
interpretative investment in the end, and are inclined to think the last word
may have a quite disproportionate influence over the entire text. Later he
ended Finnegans Wake with the word the; in one sense it is as weak as Mark’s
enclitic gar, though in another it is definite though barely pronounced, and
deriving strength from the great ricorso, which makes it the first word in the
book as well as the last. These ambiguities are not unlike those of Mark’s
problematical ending.
Let us pass by the theories which say the book was never finished, that
Mark died suddenly after writing 16:8, or that the last page of his manuscript
fell off, or that there is only one missing verse which ties everything up (such
a verse in fact survives, but it is not authentic and will probably not be in your
Bible), or that Mark had intended to write a sequel, as Luke did, but was
prevented. Let us also skirt round the more congenial theory of Jeremias,
that Mark went no further because he thought that what happened next
should be kept from pagan readers.22 We can’t deny that this fits in with a
pattern of revelation and deception observable elsewhere in Mark; nor that
there is evidence of secrets reserved to the initiate, or expressed very
cryptically, as in Revelation. Still, it’s hard to see why the gospel, which is a
proclamation of the good news, should stop before it had fairly reached the
part that seemed most important to Paul; by Mark’s time it had been
preached for an entire generation.
192 Frank Kermode
So let us assume that the text really does end, “they were scared, you
see,” and with gar as the last word, “the least forceful word” Mark “could
possibly find.” The scandal is, of course, much more than merely
philological. Omitting any post-Easter appearance of Jesus, Mark has only
this empty tomb and the terrified women. The final mention of Peter
(omitted by Matthew) can only remind us that our last view of him was not
as a champion of the faith but as the image of denial. Mark’s book began with
a trumpet call: “This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son
of God.” It ends with this faint whisper of timid women. There are, as I say,
ways of ending narratives that are not manifest and simple devices of closure,
not the distribution of rewards, punishments, hands in marriage, or whatever
satisfies our simpler intuitions of completeness. But this one seems at first
sight wholly counter-intuitive, as it must have done to the man who added
the twelve verses we now have at the end.
A main obstacle to our accepting “for they were scared” as the true
ending, and going about our business of finding internal validation for it,
is simply that Mark is, or was, not supposed to be capable of the kinds of
refinement we should have to postulate. The conclusion is either
intolerably clumsy; or it is incredibly subtle. One distinguished scholar,
dismissing this latter option, says it presupposes “a degree of originality
which would invalidate the whole method of form-criticism.”23 This is an
interesting objection. Form-criticism takes as little stock as possible in the
notion of the evangelists as authors; they are held to be compiling,
according to their lights, a compact written version of what has come to
them in oral units. The idea that they shaped the material with some
freedom and exercised on the tradition strong individual talents was
therefore foreign to the mode of criticism which dominated the institution
throughout the first half of the present century. And that alone is sufficient
to dispose of the idea as false. Now all interpretation proceeds from
prejudice, and without prejudice there can be no interpretation; but this is
to use an institutional prejudice in order to disarm exegesis founded on
more interesting personal prejudices. If it comes to a choice between saying
Mark is original and upholding “the whole method of form-criticism” the
judgment is unhesitating: Mark is not original. To be original at all he
would have had to be original to a wholly incredible extent, doing things
we know he had not the means to do, organizing, alluding, suggesting like
a sort of ancient Henry James, rather than making a rather clumsy
compilation in very undistinguished Greek.
Yet if we look back once more to the beginning of Mark, we might well
have the impression that this brief text, so much shorter than any of the other
gospels, at once gave promise of both economy and power. First, an exultant
announcement of the subject, then the splendidly wrought narrative of John
the Baptist, which, though heavy with typology, has memorable brevity and
force. It is a world away from the overtures of the other gospels. Matthew
and Luke were not content with it, perhaps it did not seem a true beginning,
this irruption of a hero full grown and ready for action; so they prefixed their
birth stories and genealogies. We are so used to mixing the gospels up in our
memory into a smooth narrative paste that laymen rarely consider the
differences between them, or reflect that if we had only Mark’s account there
would be no Christmas, no loving virgin mother, no preaching in the
temple—nothing but a clamorous prologue, the Baptist crying in the
wilderness, with his camel-skin coat and his wild honey. Matthew and Luke
started earlier, with Jesus’ ancestry, conception, and birth; John exceeded
them both, and went back to the ultimate possible beginning, when, in the
pre-existence of Jesus, only the Word was.
Mark, it appears, could not maintain this decisiveness, this directness.
He grows awkward and reticent. There are some matters, it seems, that are
not to be so unambiguously proclaimed. The story moves erratically, and not
always forward; one thing follows another for no very evident reason. And a
good deal of the story seems concerned with failure to understand the story.
Then, after the relative sharpness and lucidity of the Passion narrative, the
whole thing ends with what might be thought the greatest awkwardness of
all, or the greatest instance of reticence: the empty tomb and the terrified
women going away. The climactic miracle is greeted not with rejoicing, but
with a silence unlike the silence enjoined, for the most part vainly, on the
beneficiaries of earlier miracles—a stupid silence. The women have come to
anoint a body already anointed and two days dead. Why are they so
astonished? Jesus has three times predicted his resurrection. Perhaps they
have not been told? Perhaps their being dismayed and silent is no stranger
than that Peter should have been so disconcerted by the arrest and trial? He
knew about that in advance. And we might go on in this way, without really
touching the question.
Farrer, extending the argument I’ve already mentioned, finds the
answer in the double pattern of events before and after the Crucifixion.
Before it, Jesus said he would go to Galilee; spoke of the anointing; gave to
the disciples at the Last Supper a sacramental body which should have made
it clear to them that the walling up of a physical body was unimportant. The
disciples fled before the Crucifixion, the women after it. And all in all, says
Farrer, the last six verses of the gospel (3–8) form “a strong complex refrain,
answering to all the ends of previous sections in the Gospel to which we
194 Frank Kermode
might expect it to answer.”24 So for him the ending, like everything else in
this strange tacit text, is part of an articulate and suggestive system of senses
which lies latent under the seemingly disjointed chronicle, the brusquely
described sequence of journeyings and miracles. Farrer may persuade us that
even if he is wrong in detail there is an ending here at the empty tomb, and
it is for us to make sense of it.
Earlier, in my first chapter, I used the term “fore-understanding.” It is
a translation of the German word Vorverständnis, and its value in
hermeneutics is obvious. Even at the level of the sentence we have some
ability to understand a statement before we have heard it all, or at any rate to
follow it with a decent provisional sense of its outcome; and we can do this
only because we bring to our interpretation of the sentence a pre-
understanding of its totality. We may be wrong on detail, but not, as a rule,
wholly wrong; there may be some unforeseen peripeteia or irony, but the
effect even of that would depend upon our having had this prior provisional
understanding. We must sense the genre of the utterance.
Fore-understanding is made possible by a measure of redundancy in
the message which restricts, in whatever degree, the possible range of its
sense. Some theorists, mostly French, hold that a fictive mark or reference
inevitably pre-exists the determination of a structure; this idea is not so
remote from Vorverständnis as it may sound, but it is so stated as to entitle the
theorist to complain that such a center must inevitably have an ideological
bearing. “Closure ... testifies to the presence of an ideology.”25 To restrict or
halt the free movement of senses within a text is therefore thought to be a
kind of wickedness. It may be so; but it is our only means of reading until
revolutionary new concepts of writing prevail; and meanwhile, remaining as
aware as we can be of ideological and institutional constraints, we go about
our business of freezing those senses into different patterns. Of course the
inevitability of such constraints, which increase with every increase of
ideological or institutional security, is a reason why outsiders may produce
the most radiant interpretations.
The conviction that Mark cannot have meant this or that is a
conviction of a kind likely to have been formed by an institution, and useful
in normal research; the judgments of institutional competence remove the
necessity of considering everything with the same degree of minute
attention, though at some risk that a potential revolution may be mistaken
for a mere freak of scholarly behavior. But there are occasions when rigor
turns to violence. The French scholar Etienne Trocmé, steeped in Marcan
scholarship and the methods of modern biblical criticism, can argue that an
understanding of the structure of Mark depends upon our seeing that in its
original form it ended, not at 16:20, and not at 16:8 either, but at the end of
the thirteenth chapter, which forms the so-called Marcan apocalypse, and
immediately precedes the Passion narrative. Given the religious and political
situation at the moment of writing, this is where the gospel ought to end,
with an allusion to the genre of apocalypse current at that time, and a solemn
injunction to watch, which refers to a particular first-century community of
Christians and not to the historical narrative as such. If one accepts this
position it becomes possible to show that the preceding part of the text is
consonant with this ending; and what is not consonant can be explained as
the work of the editor who later revised the gospel and added the Passion
narrative for a “second edition, revised and supplemented by a long
appendix.”26 By such means one may, without violating the institutional
consensus, prepare a text that conforms with one’s own rigid fore-
understanding of its sense. On the other hand, Farrer’s reading is condemned
as it were by institutional intuition; we may therefore call it an outsider’s
interpretation. I find it preferable to interpretations that arise from the
borrowed authority of the institutionalized corrector, and presuppose that
the prime source of our knowledge of the founder of Christianity will
necessarily be compliant with whatever, for the moment, are the institution’s
ideas of order.
Farrer’s notions of order were literary, and although his tone is always
reverent, and occasionally even pious, he makes bold to write about Mark as
another man might write about Spenser, except that he has some difficulty
with the problem of historicity, for he could certainly not accept Kant’s word
for it that the historical veracity of these accounts was a matter of complete
indifference. Of course his motive for desiring fulfillment was related to his
faith and his vocation. But his satisfaction of that desire was to be achieved
by means familiar to all interpreters, and like the rest he sensed that despite,
or even because of, the puzzles, the discontinuities, the amazements of Mark
(and the gospel is full of verbs meaning “astonish,” “terrify,” “amaze,” and
the like), his text can be read as somehow hanging together.
If there is one belief (however the facts resist it) that unites us all, from
the evangelists to those who argue away inconvenient portions of their texts,
and those who spin large plots to accommodate the discrepancies and
dissonances into some larger scheme, it is this conviction that somehow, in
some occult fashion, if we could only detect it, everything will be found to
hang together. When Robert Adams challenged this conviction he was
thought bold. The French utopians challenge it in a different way,
condemning the desire for order, for closure, a relic of bourgeois bad faith.
But this is an announcement of revolutionary aims: they intend to change
196 Frank Kermode
what is the case. Perhaps the case needs changing; but it is the case. We are
all fulfillment men, pleromatists; we all seek the center that will allow the
senses to rest, at any rate for one interpreter, at any rate for one moment. If
the text has a great many details that puzzle us, we ask where they popped up
from. Our answers will be very diverse: Theoclymenos or Stanislaus, Mr.
Duffy or Death, a hooded phallus haunting tombs, a mimesis of fortuity and
therefore not in itself fortuitous. Or perhaps: a candidate for baptism; a lover;
a mimesis of actuality; a signature. We halt the movement of the senses, or
try to. Sometimes the effort is great. Bloom failed with the man in the
macintosh; the hour was late, too late for him to sort out carnal and spiritual,
manifest and latent, revealed and concealed. He had had a long hard day and
went, quite carnally, to bed. Perhaps he returned to the question later, as we
must.
NOTES
1. Stuart Gilbert, James Joyce’s Ulysses, New York, 1931, pp. 152f. Gilbert got the idea
from Victor Bérard’s Les Phéniciens et l’Odyssée, in which all the mysterious movements of
Theoclymenos are set forth, with the speculation that he may have been a hero in a part
of the epic cycle following the Odyssey—the Telegony.
2. Stanislaus Joyce, My Brother’s Keeper, New York, 1958, p. 165; and articles by John
O. Lyons (in James Joyce Miscellany, 2nd series, London, 1959, pp. 133f ) and by Thomas
E. Connolly (in James Joyce’s Dubliners, ed. Clive Hart, London, 1969, pp. 107f ).
3. Robert M. Adams, Surface and Symbol, New York, 1962, pp. 218, 245–246. Hélène
Cixous, The Exile of James Joyce, translated by Sally A. J. Purcell, New York, 1972, expressly
disagrees with Adams, saying that by the time the table emits its loud lone crack Bloom
“knows ... who M’Intosh was ... The garment has become transparent to Bloom’s
‘unconscious substance,’ and he has now to struggle against the truth that is self-imposed”
(712f ). How we know this is not explained.
4. Note the persistent suppression of Bloom’s name in the concluding pages of
“Cyclops.” Indeed, as Gilbert points out, “the idea of anonymity or misnomer is suggested
under many aspects”—perhaps by way of allusion to Odysseus’ change of name to No-man
in the relevant episode of Homer (James Joyce’s Ulysses, p. 252).
5. Adams, Surface and Symbol, p. 186.
6. The Pleasure of the Text, translated by Richard Miller, New York, 1975, p. 11.
7. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed., Chicago, 1970.
8. Taylor, St. Mark, pp. 561–562.
9. Cranfield, St. Mark, p. 438.
10. Taylor, St. Mark, p. 551, Cranfield, St. Mark, p. 438.
11. Quoted by H. Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 2nd ed. rev., Boston, 1963, p. 274. Jonas,
describing the Gnostic “Hymn of the Pearl” or “Song of the Apostle Judas Thomas,”
mentions that the symbolism of a garment includes a use of it as the heavenly or ideal
double of a person on earth, sometimes the Saviour. That an allegory of Gnostic origin has
been intruded at this point in the Passion narrative has not, so far as I know, been proposed
by the exegetes, who may well find it wholly counter-intuitive.
12. Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, Cambridge,
Mass., 1973; The Secret Gospel, London, 1974.
13. Austin Farrer, A Study in St. Mark, London, 1951; St. Matthew and St. Mark, 1954
(2nd ed., 1966).
14. For the view that Peter’s third denial is a formal curse directed against Jesus, see
Helmut Merkel, “Peter’s Curse,” The Trial of Jesus, ed. Ernst Bammel (Studies in Biblical
Theology, second series, 13), London, 1970, pp. 66–71.
15. Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, p. 4.
16. For the difficulties that arise when “history-likeness” is confused with historical
reference, see Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, New Haven, 1974.
17. Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, New York, 1959, p. 535. He also told Samuel
Beckett “I may have oversystematized Ulysses” (Ellmann, p. 715).
18. “La Construction de la nouvelle et du roman,” in T. Todorov ed. Théorie de la
littérature: Textes des Formalistes russes, Paris, 1965, pp. 170–196.
19. D. E. Nineham, Saint Mark (Pelican Gospel Commentaries), Harmondsworth,
1963, p. 439.
20. Ellmann, James Joyce, p. 536.
21. Ellmann, p. 725. (Translation slightly altered.)
22. J. jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, translated by Norman Perrin, London,
1966, p. 132.
23. W. L. Knox, quoted in Taylor, St. Mark, p. 609.
24. Farrer, Study, p. 174.
25. Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics, London, 1975, p. 244.
26. Etienne Trocmé, The Formation of the Gospel According to Mark, translated by
Pamela Gaughan, London, 1975, p. 240.
H E R B E RT M A R K S
Pauline Typology and Revisionary Criticism
C oncern over the problem of intertestamental continuity goes back to the

paradoxical attitude of the earliest Christian writers, who in the New
Testament presented their teachings on the one hand as a confirmation of the
scriptural word, on the other as a decisively new revelation. Unlike the more
overtly theological paradoxes professed in the creeds, this literary paradox,
for which the term “typology” may serve as a convenient flag, has never been
dogmatically defined. The most influential proposals from the second
century on share a common dependence on Paul’s letter-spirit antithesis; yet
differing theological presuppositions have led, in circular fashion, to quite
different theories of interpretation. Unfortunately, the rich legacy of
hermeneutic debate tends to color our reading of Paul himself, whose letters
contain examples of and directives for a way of reading scripture (and by
extension other literature) that cannot be comfortably reconciled with any
normative mode of interpretation.1
To argue a contrast between Paul and the Church is itself a venerable
tradition, and Harnack’s remark that the history of dogma is “a history of
Pauline reactions in the Church” is justly celebrated (1905:136). However,
the opposition I have in mind is not offered as a critique of a theological
institution, but rather as a demonstration of the motives governing a kind of
creative interpretation whose source is the impulse toward imaginative
From Journal of the American Academy of Religion 52, no. 1 (March 1984). © 1984 American
Academy of Religion.
199
200 Herbert Marks
autonomy, or, to use the language of the New Testament, toward exousia
(power or freedom). Such an impulse produces a deep though often disguised
ambivalence toward the primary text; for it is only at the text’s prior
instigation and within its matrix of given forms that the interpreter, whether
poet or theologian, can conceive his own vision. In his studies of modern
poetry, Harold Bloom has described such ambivalence as an “anxiety of
influence,” relating it to the generic principle, first formulated by Vico, that
priority in the natural order is equivalent to authority in the spiritual order
(1973:13). While interpreters unaffected by it tend to promote “the
idealizing process that is canonization” (1976:71), the “strong” or creative
reader, by willfully distorting the antecedent text succeeds in arrogating to
himself some measure of its authority. It will be my contention here that
Paul’s subordination of the Jewish scriptures to their “spiritual”
understanding is a paradigmatic instance of revisionary power realized in the
process of overcoming a tyranny of predecession.
In historical terms, this approach leads to conclusions that might be
characterized vaguely as Marcionite. More precisely, it would salvage a
central insight from the position of Marcion’s foremost expositor, Adolf von
Harnack, who (with the exception of Nietzsche2) was the modern writer
most sensitive to the antithetical aspect of the Pauline writings. In Harnack’s
view, Paul never intended the Hebrew Bible to become the Erbauungsbuch of
Christianity; the faith he envisioned would have been entirely “spiritual” and
not a book-religion at all, although his actual use of scripture, particularly his
typological exegesis, contributed to the opposite effect (1928). Admittedly,
the reasoning on which this conclusion is based is often dubious (the
significance of the scarcity of Old Testament quotations in the shorter letters
is debatable as is the uncritical identification of “letter” with scripture), but
the estimation of Paul’s fundamentally agnostic stance toward scriptural
tradition seems to me accurate. I would suggest however, in disagreement
with Harnack, that it is precisely in his typological exegesis that Paul’s stance
is most apparent. Literal and spiritual represent opposing terms, but the
literary is one of the realms in which both may be defined. Indeed, “in the
Judaeo-Christian development,” as James Barr has written, the very
“possibility of being radical or revolutionary is connected with being a book
religion” (136).
THE CANONICAL PERSPECTIVE
For the most part, modern students of Paul have neglected this idea—
a neglect I would like to examine briefly, as it will help to bring out the
deeper tendency of Paul’s own thinking. One may begin by distinguishing

three types of interpretation. A reading that is not revisionary, in the sense
defined above, is apt to be either expository or apologetic. Since modern
New Testament scholarship, for all its avowed objectivity, has allowed these
latter to intermingle, it is hardly surprising that the distinctively antithetical
character of Paul’s hermeneutics has not been properly appreciated.
Precritical discussion of the relationship between the two testaments
was by derivation an apologetic enterprise. It began as a response to Jewish
critics, on the one hand, and to those radicals, on the other, whose aggressive
emphasis on discontinuity was perceived to be a corollary of gnostic dualism.
With the rise of historical criticism and the attendant redefinition of the
sensus litteralis, Old and New ceased to be a prominent focus of attention.
Questions of signification gave way to questions of verification, and the drive
to uncover the historical facts (wie es eigentlich gewesen) fostered scholarly
indifference to textual correspondences. At the same time, the emergence of
Old Testament and New Testament criticism as separate academic disciplines
created a special obstacle to intertestamental study.
Modern efforts to bridge this gap are based on the essentially empirical
premise that scriptural exegesis played an important part in the life of the
early Christian communities. It is generally assumed that members of the
incipient churches were searching the scriptures, first, for ways to interpret
events in the life of Jesus which impressed them as extraordinary, and,
second, for ways to make the proclamation of their interpretation acceptable
to their contemporaries. C. H. Dodd, whose book According to the Scriptures
has been the starting point for a succession of impressive studies on the
historical use of the Old Testament in the New, announces this hypothesis in
his opening chapter. In Dodd’s words, “the Church was committed, by the
very terms of its kerygma, to a formidable task of biblical research, primarily
for the purpose of clarifying its own understanding of the momentous events
out of which it had emerged, and also for the purpose of making its Gospel
intelligible to the outside public” (14).3 In short, the Church’s primary
interpretive task is assumed to have been one of assimilation, of harmonizing
its primitive kerygma with the existing body of Jewish tradition, and such
familiar New Testament features as introductory formulae, typological
correspondences, and prophecy fulfillments are credibly explained as
responses to this descriptive or apologetic challenge.
It should be noted, however, that this critical approach, which leads
naturally to an emphasis on continuities between Old and New, is not
without apologetic overtones of its own. Most obvious is the explicit bias
toward what C. F. D. Moule calls “the pressure of events”: “The Christians
202 Herbert Marks
thus found themselves pushed by the pressure of events into a new way of
selecting, relating, grouping, and interpreting what we call ‘Old Testament’
passages; and while the scriptures of the Jews undoubtedly exercised a great
influence upon the form in which they presented their material, and
ultimately upon the very writing and collecting of the Christian scriptures,
this influence was evidently subordinate both to the influence of the apostolic
witness to Jesus and to the living inspiration of the Christian prophets in the
Church” (85). Here, the insistence on the priority of the Church’s witness,
the sharp distinction between form and content, and the reluctance to allow
that scriptural interpretation might have played an initiatory or constitutive
rather than a merely expository role in the New Testament’s evolution all
testify to the desire of historical criticism to save the phenomena at any cost.
Although, as Hans Frei has demonstrated, this interest may be traced to the
failure of post-Enlightenment Protestant theology to differentiate history-
likeness from history, or meaning from historical truth, the hypothesis
advanced has more in common with precritical efforts to define the
relationship between the two testaments than is commonly supposed.4 For
orthodox Christian commentators, Old and New Testament, whatever their
relative merits, were the two parts of a determined canon whose unique
authority, aside from Eastern debates over the Apocrypha, was virtually
established from the time of Irenaeus. Canonicity was the starting point of
biblical hermeneutics. The task of the theologian was to link the two parts of
the canon together in a static bond, and to this end correspondences were
observed or invented. Modern scholars construct a parallel to this situation
when, from the flexible body of oral traditions, liturgical practices, and social
alliances embedded in the New Testament, they hypostasize an original
“kerygma,” which functions hermeneutically much like a canonical text. In
this way, the predicament of the New Testament authors comes to resemble
the more familiar predicament of the established Church. Viewed through
the correspondent lenses of the canonical spectacles, the earliest Christian
exegetes seem also to be engaged in a labor of assimilation, selecting and
interpreting likely Old Testament texts in accordance with an external
principle.
This bias has been most evident in studies of the synoptic gospels. But
it has colored the discussion of Paul’s hermeneutics as well, where it has had
the acknowledged effect of assimilating Pauline exegesis to early Christian
(and Qumran) exegesis as a whole. Thus, D. Moody Smith, reviewing recent
research on the use of the Old Testament in the New, can write of Paul’s
“conviction that the Old Testament finds its fulfillment in a new event or
series of events which have occurred or are about to occur,” and, further, that
of the several heads under which Paul’s relation to the Old Testament may be
summarized the “first, and most important ... is his general prophetic and
kerygmatic understanding of the Old Testament as the precursor,
prefiguration, and promise of the Gospel” (36–37). Such a summary is only
justified on the premise that in Paul the messianic proof-texts characteristic
of the gospels are, as E. E. Ellis says, “presupposed,” thus freeing the apostle
to focus his attention on “the next step—the significance of the Scriptures for
the Messianic Age and Messianic Community” (115).5 In this way, the
difference between Paul and the synoptic tradition is limited to a difference
in topical emphasis, while the basic presupposition of Dodd, that the
significance of the Jewish scriptures for Christianity was primarily
descriptive or apologetic, remains intact. One recognizes its influence in the
pragmatic views of Paul’s hermeneutics set forth by critics as different as
Willi Marxsen, who stresses that Paul never starts out from a scriptural text
but rather uses scriptural references to clarify particular Christian
messages—a method he characterizes as “implicitly apologetic” (28)—and
Barnabas Lindars, who goes so far as to assert that “the curse of the Law was
an aspect of the Passion apologetic” (235).
In sum, the majority of modern scholars have taken a nicely
domesticated view of Paul’s position. One might call this the Lukan view; for
in the Book of Acts Paul too appears to resort to the allegedly fundamental
practice of using biblical prophecy to explain the identity and significance of
Jesus. We see him preaching the gospel according to scripture to the Jewish
congregations in Antioch (13:16-41), Thessalonica (17:2f.), and Rome
(28:23), as well as in his self-defense before Agrippa (26:22f.), developing
correspondences between the messianic prophecies and the life of Jesus.
However, appeals to scripture markedly similar in form are also ascribed to
Peter (2:22–36), to Philip (8:30-35), and to the risen Christ (Lk 24:27,
44–47), suggesting that such testimonies are part of a literary pattern rather
than a record of actual words or styles.6 (The fact that all the passages, except
for Peter’s, call special attention to the exegetical process itself may indicate
that Luke was anxious to endow that method of reading on which his own
gospel tradition depended with a legitimizing pedigree.) Moreover, when
one examines Paul’s own letters, one finds that despite the density of
scriptural quotations—approximately one third of the New Testament total,
mostly concentrated in the four Hauptbriefe—not one is ever used as
testimony to establish the identity of Jesus. This holds even if one includes,
in addition to overt citations, general allusions to Old Testament episodes or
themes and the many formulaic appeals to scriptural authority. The two
apparent exceptions, 1 Corinthians 15:3–5 and Romans 1:3f., both occur in
204 Herbert Marks
the context of creedal summaries adopted from common liturgical tradition.7

The use of fulfillment words, such as the verb plēroun so prevalent in Acts
and elsewhere, to connect biblical prophecy with a more recent event is
likewise uncharacteristic.
The fact is, Paul’s writing gives little indication that he concerned
himself at all with the events of Jesus’ life. What we today might call the
question of facticity had for him a subtler consequence, hinted, for example,
in Galatians 2:19f., where the conviction that Jesus was actually crucified
according to the law is the implicit premise behind the claim that his own
death to the law is a revitalization. For Paul, the given belief in a crucified
messiah was the punctum stans from which to project that otherwise
groundless series of dialectical revisions (power in weakness, wisdom in folly,
life in death, fulfillment in abrogation) of which his hermeneutics are an
integral part. One thus searches in vain through the extant letters for a literal
or historical apologetics. It is from his soteriology that his Christology has
largely to be inferred, and evidence for the specific influence of biblical
prophecy is purely conjectural.
THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE
Paul most often appeals to the authority of scripture to reinforce

ethical precepts or to adjudicate specific questions of personal conduct and
church policy (Rom 13:9f., 14:11; 1 Cor 5:13, 9:9; 2 Cor 8:15, 9:9; and
elsewhere). Such parenetic uses, while suggesting that Paul continued to
recognize the law’s directive or regulatory function, have a limited bearing
on the question of the deeper relationship between the two testaments.
However, a few of them demonstrate a peculiar reversal, by which the text,
though cited as authoritative, seems to owe its significance not to its own
intrinsic merit but to something in the situation of the interpreter. These
passages, though not unprecedented in first-century Jewish exegesis, reveal
features of the more original orientation that governs Paul’s attitude toward
scripture as a whole. The best example is Paul’s parenetic use of aspects of
the exodus tradition in 1 Corinthians 10:1–11 to admonish his readers
against backsliding and moral laxity: “I want you to know, brethren, that our
fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were
baptized into Moses in the cloud and the sea, and all ate the same
supernatural food and all drank the same supernatural drink. For they drank
from the supernatural Rock which followed them, and the Rock was Christ.
Nevertheless with most of them God was not pleased; for they were
overthrown in the wilderness.” Paul’s identification of the rock with Christ
subordinates the scriptural text to a group of midrashic traditions, including

perhaps the “rejected stone” tradition of the early Church. More centrally,
the Israelites, “baptized into Moses” but still liable to destruction, are
important only insofar as readers of scripture are capable of seeing in their
predicament a prefiguration of their own situation: “Now these things are
warnings to us, not to desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of
them were; as it is written, ‘The people sat down to eat and drink and rose
up to dance.’ We must not indulge in immorality as some of them did, and
twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put the Lord to the
test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents; nor grumble, as
some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things
happened to them as a warning, but they were written down for our
instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come.”
Here then it is the special understanding of the interpreter that
determines the significance of the text, which only assumes its exemplary or
prescriptive role by virtue of that understanding (cf. Rom 15:4; 4:23f.). As
with the Qumran sectarians, the eschatology highlighted in the final phrase
emphasizes the communal or ecclesiastical dimension in opposition to the
realized eschatology of the “spirituals.” But it is hard to see how such
reasoned convictions affect the interpretive act itself. Paul does not simply
interpret the exodus events as instructive examples to Christians. He
suggests, more boldly than the pesharim or their New Testament
counterparts, that the biblical events were recorded in written form for the
specific purpose of eliciting the interpretation he gives them: that insofar as
they are scripture, they originated “as a warning,” the principal meaning and
interest of which lay in its anticipatory quality.
The word translated “warning” in the RSV is tupos in Greek, and it is
this passage together with Romans 5:14 that has given Paul his reputation as
the originator of typological interpretation. (The same word, which derives
ultimately from the verb tuptein meaning “to strike,” also occurs with its
ordinary meaning of “example” or “standard” elsewhere in the letters.)8 In
the classic definition of Erich Auerbach, a typological or figural
interpretation “establishes a connection between two events or persons, the
first of which signifies not only itself but also the second, while the second
encompasses or fulfills the first” (53). This connection is a dialectical one,
involving a strong negative contrast between type and antitype, which
Gerhard von Rad has aptly designated the “element of supersession” (329; cf.
Eichrodt in Westermann [226]). Since the precursor is asserted to be less
substantial than the successor, the “fulfillment” of the Old Testament text
may be said to entail its simultaneous annulment. Auerbach exaggerates the
206 Herbert Marks
case when he writes that Paul’s use of typology “intended to strip the Old
Testament of its normative character and show that it is merely a shadow of
things to come” (50). The rebuke to the “spirituals” in 1 Corinthians 4:6 (mē
huper ha gegraptai), for example, preserves the premise of scriptural authority
without which vital response would have slipped into solipsism. But the
patent effect of the antitype was to narrow the social and spiritual order
within which the normative character of scripture continued to obtain.
It is common to present Pauline typology in contrast with its Philonic
counterpart. When Justin Martyr writes that the brazen serpent raised on a
pole (Num 21:9) is a type of Christ, for example, he is held to be interpreting
in the Pauline or Palestinian tradition (Trypho 112). When his contemporary
Theophilus of Antioch writes that the three days of creation preceding the
appearance of the sun and stars are “types of the trinity, god, his word, and
his wisdom,” he is said to be using a Philonic or Alexandrian kind of
typology, otherwise known as allegory (Autol. 2.15). Definitions of the two
are legion. To continue with Auerbach: “The two poles of the figure are
separate in time, but both, being real events or figures are within time, within
the stream of historical life.... Since one thing represents and signifies the
other [typological] interpretation is ‘allegorical’ in the widest sense. But it
differs from most of the allegorical forms known to us by the historicity both
of the sign and what it signifies” (53–54).9 One may appreciate this difference
by comparing Paul’s identification of the rock of Massah with Christ, and
Philo’s interpretation of the rock as a symbol of divine wisdom (Leg. alleg.
2.86; cf. Wis. 11.4). In Paul’s reading, there is a radical actualization, a drastic
evacuation of the past into the present, which “strikes” indirectly at the
priority, and hence the authority, of the scriptural text. In Philo, on the other
hand, the temporal dimension is irrelevant, and, as a result, the antithetical
impulse is of a less aggressive order. Whereas the Platonic dialectic which lies
behind allegorical reading is cognitive (to use the vocabulary of William
Hamilton), the Pauline dialectic is conative. Thus, for Philo, the discovery of
the hidden meaning of the rock is an end in itself, while Paul, having
appropriated the scriptural figure, incorporates it as part of a dramatic
sequence in which he and his contemporaries are the ultimate term.
Revisionary correspondences of this order do not originate with the
New Testament. Repeated breaks characterize the whole history of Yahwism,
and one can trace the revolution of patterns and motifs that recapitulate
earlier traditions without dissolving their historical status at almost every
stage in the development of the biblical text. This is especially true of the
prophets, who were consciously looking for a new David, a new exodus, a
new covenant, and a new city of God. To Hosea, for example, the intimacy
of the early wilderness period foreshadowed Israel’s final union with Yahweh
(2:14–23), while to Second Isaiah, the exodus from Egypt, the covenant with
Noah, and the foundation of Zion all appeared as types of Israel’s ultimate
redemption. For the Hebrew writers, no less than for Paul, the second term
of these analogies was meant to supersede the first. A prophecy of the new
exodus in Second Isaiah provides the most dramatic illustration, with its
injunction to “remember not the former things nor consider the things of
old” directly preceding its announcement of the “new thing” (43:18f.—a
passage that in its entirety may have inspired the Pauline doctrine of a “new
creation” [2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15]).
Even here, however, one must recognize that the prophetic oracle
refers to a future act of Yahweh, a work he is on the point of inaugurating,
rather than to an actual consummation. This future orientation is generally
characteristic of the Hebrew Bible, where fulfillments are constantly being
postponed or sublated into ever more figurative promises.10 Accordingly, a
contrast may be drawn between Old Testament typology, which continues to
direct the reader’s expectations toward a continually receding future—“into
the void” as Karl Barth has put it (89)—and Christian typology, in which the
act of fulfillment will already have been accomplished.
From one point of view, such “actualized” typology is more ambiguous
than its Old Testament prototype; for while its antithetical potential remains
appreciable, it may also serve (in fact, most often serves) to establish
continuities, as in the apologetic writings of the church fathers. The New
Testament writers themselves all maintain the tension between these two
possibilities (continuity and discontinuity). But just as Matthew, embellishing
his picture of Jesus as a second Moses, leans to one side of the balance, so
Paul, with his concern for the situation of the interpreter, leans sharply to the
other. Since both make use of temporally grounded correspondences, the
difference is less a matter of practice than of intention. Matthew’s principal
concern is the identity of Jesus; hence, he remains attached to the content of
scripture. In Paul’s letters on the other hand, not the kerygma but the
interpreter is the primary focus, and the attitude toward scripture is
therefore more aggressive.
Otherwise stated, for Paul interpretation is first and foremost an
occasion for the exercise of “Christian freedom” or exousia—that ambiguous
catchword whose root means “being” and whose English equivalents include
“license” and “autonomy” as well as “authority” and “power.” Paul’s concern
with autonomy operates at various levels. It shows itself most obviously in his
polemical and ecclesiastical activity, leading him to disclaim emphatically any
connection with the hierarchy of the Jerusalem church, and perhaps
208 Herbert Marks
determining his denial in Galatians 1:22 that he was known by sight to the
churches of Judaea.11 At a more personal level, it stimulated his impatience
with the attitude, if not the practices, of contemporary Jewish exegesis, which
had made the cessation of direct revelation the implicit foundation for its
“hedge about the torah” (Aboth 1.1). In contrast to the rabbis, Paul saw
himself as carrying on the prophetic line, proclaiming to a generation
engrossed in religious conventions and intimidated by its own past that
divine intervention was a current reality. Accordingly, he speaks of being “set
apart” before birth (Gal 1:15; cf. Isa 49:1; Jer 1:5), and compares himself to
Moses, the archetypal prophet (2 Cor 3:7ff.; Rom 9:3, 10:1), and to David,
the author of the Psalms (2 Cor 4:13). But at the level that concerns us here,
Paul’s impulse toward spiritual autonomy prompted a deep ambivalence
toward the Bible itself, making him not an apologist—dependent on
scripture for legitimating testimony—but a dogmatist—affirming the
priority of his own conceptions by imposing them on the earlier tradition.
Like Jesus, according to the testimony of Mark, he wished to teach hōs
exousian echōn, “as one who had authority, and not as the scribes” (1:22).
EXOUSIA AND INTERPRETATION
Paul employs the word exousia repeatedly in elaborating his theory of

Christian conduct, and, though he never uses it in a hermeneutic context, his
most explicit discussion of scriptural interpretation insists on the importance
of freedom (eleutheria) as a concomitant of spiritual understanding (2 Cor
3:17).12 Significantly, this discussion begins with Paul’s attempt to
authenticate his own authority: “For we are not, like so many, peddlers of
God’s word; but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of
God we speak in Christ.... Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim
anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us
competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code but in the
Spirit; for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 2:17; 3:5f.).
Despite the subtle disclaimer in 3:5a (cf. Phil 3:9), this position is tantamount
to a proclamation of autonomy; for the direct commission from God frees
the apostle from acknowledging any lesser power, including, as it turns out,
the power of sacred scripture (cf. Gal 1:11f.). This becomes clearer in the
sequel, where the declaration of competence provides the ground for Paul’s
elaboration of a distinctive theory of interpretation, geared to the recipients
of the “new covenant.”
The idea of a new covenant is a prominent motif in the Hebrew Bible
itself. It appears most notably in Jeremiah, where its antithetical implications
are already developed: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I
will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah,
not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by
the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they
broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant
which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I
will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will
be their God, and they shall be my people” (31:31–33). The point here is not
that the content of the Sinai covenant is to be nullified, but rather that the
manner in which it is apprehended is to change (cf. 24:7; 32:39f.). The same
position is taken by Ezekiel when he opposes the “heart of flesh” to the
“heart of stone” and makes inspired understanding the sign of divine
acceptance (36:26f.; cf. 11:19f.). Thus, in the major prophets, the dynamics
of supersession are already asserted within a hermeneutic context.
Paul puts this tradition to an extremely personal (and, it may seem,
whimsical or reductive) use when he writes to the Corinthians that, although
he has presented no apostolic credentials, they themselves are his “letter of
recommendation” (perhaps because Paul has converted them to Christianity,
perhaps because he has continued to care for them affectionately), “written
not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but
on tablets of human hearts” (3:3). In introducing the scriptural allusion, Paul
writes, as a rhetorician might, to embellish his claim of competence. But the
prophetic text, once invoked, continues to haunt him, and within three lines
he returns to confront it via the “new covenant” of which he has been
qualified by God to be a minister. “Not in the written code but in the spirit,”
he adds, rounding out the “letter of recommendation” figure; for
authenticity can never be bound to a determined tenor. On the contrary, it is
a self-accrediting power that only subsists by constant revision, and its
manifestations are ever evolving “from one degree of glory to another”
(3:18).
The Hebrew Bible contains a variety of covenant traditions, but
theologically they can be divided into two principal types. On the one hand,
there is the Davidic-Abrahamic tradition, in which Yahweh promises to bless
his people but no reciprocal obligation is imposed. On the other hand, there
are the covenants at Sinai and Shechem, in which Israel commits itself to
adhere strictly to the conditions set forth by Yahweh. George E. Mendenhall
has spoken of the new covenant in Jeremiah, with its emphasis on divine
forgiveness, as a product of the amalgamation of these two traditions (51).
Israel had broken its covenant obligations according to the Mosaic tradition,
and so forfeited its right to protection; according to the Abrahamic tradition,
210 Herbert Marks
however, Yahweh’s protection was inalienable. The renewal of the covenant

in such a manner as to eliminate the danger of disobedience satisfied both
allegations. Where Jeremiah harmonizes the two traditions, Paul’s
procedure, however, is to set them at odds. One observes this most readily in
Galatians 3 and 4, where the more remote covenant of grace—likened to
Sarah, bearing children for freedom—is adduced in subversion of the more
immediate Mosaic law—likened to Hagar, “bearing children for slavery.” In
2 Corinthians, the same subversive procedure is working, but here no
positive model from scripture is proposed. Rather, the “emphasis upon direct
responsibility to God, upon freedom and self-determination,” which
Mendenhall finds characteristic of the Abrahamic covenant tradition (52), is
appropriated to a new “dispensation of righteousness” which prevails in
despite of all written authority. Paul’s revisionary strategy is thus twofold: he
factors the scriptural tradition and uses one part of it to discredit the other;13
and he presents the remaining benefits as exclusive prerogatives of his new
life in Christ. In addition, of course, he revises the covenant’s temporal
status: what was prophecy in Jeremiah is actuality in Paul.
The fact that in the Galatians passage Paul’s concern is clearly with the
law as commandment or demand, and that the authority of scripture as such
is hardly questioned, raises the possibility that his polemic against the
“written code” in 2 Corinthians is of more limited application than I have
been arguing. A correlation between gramma and a more strictly theological
sense of nomos appears for example in Romans 7:6: “But now we are
discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve
not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.” The
meanings of “the law” in Paul’s writings is too large a question to treat
adequately here.14 As the Greek translation of torah, however, nomos was at
least potentially synonymous with the Bible as a whole, and this is obviously
the sense it is intended to have in Romans 3:19, where the passages from the
prophets and psalms quoted in the preceding verses are regarded jointly as
nomos. Presumably the “old covenant” of which Paul speaks in 2
Corinthians 3:14 also has this meaning (cf. Mekilta Pisha 5, “By covenant is
meant nothing else but the Torah”). Moreover, just as Paul implicitly
acknowledges the authority of scripture in passages where the motivation of
the interpreter is not in question, so he can refer to the law as “holy” and
“spiritual” (Rom 7:12, 14) apart from its oppressive effect on those who serve
it. As E.E. Ellis writes, “Graphē and nomos both signify for Paul the revealed
will of God. But the law understood as a legal system apart from Christ could
only bring death; so also the whole Old Testament understood and applied
without the illumination of the pneuma often resulted not in graphē but only
in gramma.... The issue of the Law versus Christ here passed into Paul’s
understanding of the nature of Scripture itself” (27). Freedom from the law
as command and freedom from the law as text are finally interchangeable for
Paul, because both are metonymic on a kind of freedom that has no
identifiable locus in rational or sensual experience. Its locus is the gospel—
something unknown and inconceivable—whose content is either the
dramatic paradox of the messiah crucified or the subtler enigma of its own
proclamation. Whether the negative term in Paul’s antitheses appears to have
a legal or a hermeneutic referent is thus a matter of relative indifference. An
emphasis on the law as command would, Paul felt, inevitably be accompanied
by a transformation of writings (graphē) into a written code (gramma)—i.e.,
into a canonized, and therefore “petrified,” order of compulsion. In this
connection, Paul’s attitude might be compared to that of Moses in the
imaginative view of some early writers (e.g., Barn., ch. 4), when, observing
the idolatry of the Israelites, and recognizing that it would extend to the
torah as well, he chose to shatter the tablets, thus initiating the process that
culminated in the “tablets of the heart.”
Paul’s own “shattering,” however, as appears from his elaboration of
the letter–spirit antithesis in the chapter we have been discussing, involves an
active depreciation of Moses foreign to the apologetic reading of his
successors: “Now if the dispensation of death, carved in letters on stone,
came with such splendor that the Israelites could not look at Moses’ face
because of its brightness, fading as this was, will not the dispensation of the
Spirit be attended with greater splendor?” (2 Cor 3:7f.). At first appearance,
this is a fairly straightforward contrast between the Mosaic law and the new
covenant. “Carved in letters on stone” emphasizes the written, formulaic
quality of the former and helps explain why it is a “dispensation of death” in
opposition to the dynamic “dispensation of the Spirit.” But the idea that the
light shining in Moses’ face, that is, the power and glory of the Mosaic
writings, was a fading splendor is not found in the passage from Exodus to
which Paul alludes (34:29–35). In fact, the prevailing Jewish interpretation
insisted that Moses’ face shone undiminished until his death.15
Here then is an example of the kind of exegetical freedom Paul
advocates; for his “competence” has allowed him willfully to revise the
scriptural text, conforming it to his own antithetical purposes. This revision
becomes the very core of Paul’s argument in the following lines. It is, he
admits, his own “hope” of a splendor that will outshine Moses’ that makes
him “very bold”: “not like Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the
Israelites might not see the end of the fading splendor. But their minds were
hardened; for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil
212 Herbert Marks
remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away” (3:13f.). In

the Priestly account of the descent from Sinai which underlies this passage,
Moses assumes the veil not because his glory is fading but because it is too
awesome for the Israelites to face. The veil is analogous in this respect to the
veil set up in the tabernacle, as in Solomon’s temple, to screen off the holy of
holies (Exod 26:31–33; 40:21), or to the wings of the guardian cherubim
which overshadow the mercy seat on top of the ark itself (25:18–22). It is the
condition of Yahweh’s self-revelation to an impure or stiff-necked people, too
mistrustful to embrace its covenanted role or realize the full meaning of its
liberation. By its agency, the divine glory, of which Moses’ glory is a
reflection, is at the same time objectively present yet imperfectly accessible
to generations that must still endure a wilderness wandering and, with one
exception (Joshua; the high priest), perish in exile.
Paul allows a part of this idea to come through when he asserts a
connection between the veil and the hardness of the Israelites. But the full
meaning only resurfaces at the beginning of the next chapter, when it is no
longer a question of the Mosaic code but of Paul’s own gospel! These lines
ostensibly mark the resumption of his self-defense against the rival apostles;
but beneath this topical struggle for recognition, the engagement with
Moses reaches its crisis: “Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of
God, we do not lose heart. We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded
ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the
open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man’s
conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled
only to those who are perishing” (4:1–3). Again, the disclaimer is a warning;
for what Paul has done is underhanded indeed. By claiming for his own
gospel an attribute of the Mosaic code, he has appropriated to himself the
glory of the scriptural tradition. He began, as we have seen, by introducing
a distorted reading of that tradition so as to discredit Moses, but he
concludes here by assuming its legitimate meaning, thus displacing the veiled
splendor of the old covenant with the veiled “light of the gospel of the glory
of Christ” (4:4).
Paul effects a similar reversal in Romans 10:5ff., when he interprets the
words of Moses’ farewell address, “It is not in heaven.... But the word is very
near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart” (Deut 30:12–14), as a
reference to Christ, “the word of faith which we preach.” It is easy to confuse
Paul’s meaning here with the common early Christian view that Jesus was
himself the “new torah” personified (Davies, 1952:93). But Paul knows
Christ less conventionally, as an operant virtue rather than a hypostasized
essence: as an imperative to actualizing exegesis (“Christ the evolver” in
Coleridge’s phrase) who also integrates the ego-centric into the

representative “I”—the I “in Christ.” As a result, the antitype of the old
covenant for Paul is always the gospel, and the antitype of Moses, Paul
himself.
When Christ appears as an antitype, it is in conjunction with Adam,
“who was a type of the one who was to come” (Rom 5:14). Though the
typological relation remains temporal, the context here is more properly
mythical than historical (cf. 1 Cor 15:22, 45ff.). Paul’s purpose is to convince
us that grace will prevail over sin. “As [Adam’s] trespass led to condemnation
for all men, so [Christ’s] act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all
men” (Rom 5:18). The supersessive element is made explicit in the three
verses contrasting the free gift of righteousness with the “original” gratuitous
trespass. Since it must overcome a resistance, the counteraction or revision
is the stronger act (pollō mallon). Resistance, in this case, may be identified
with the law, which functions as an agent of repression. Like the interpreter’s
text, law provides for the dialectical antithesis, without which supersession
would be mere repetition. Its power is potentially stifling, but since Christ,
as the antitype, is “prior” to Adam, its final effect is an intensification: “Law
came in, to increase the trespass; but where sin increased, grace abounded all
the more” (5:20).
THE PROSPECTIVE STANCE
Typology, as Harold Bloom has recognized in Poetry and Repression, is a

revisionary mode, which works by making the later perpetually earlier than
its predecessors. (One might say that in typology the later text becomes the
cause [aitia] of the earlier text’s subsistence.) If one is willing to use the
terminology adapted after Quintilian, it can be defined more narrowly as a
form of transumption or metalepsis, from the “trope-reversing trope,” in
which “a word is substituted metonymically for a word in a previous trope....
Metalepsis leaps over the heads of other tropes and becomes a representation
set against time, sacrificing the present to an idealized past or hoped-for-
future” (1975:102–3). “Properly accomplished, this stance figuratively
produces the illusion of having fathered one’s own fathers, which is the
greatest illusion, the one that Vico called ‘divination,’ or that we could call
poetic immortality” (1976:20). Bloom goes on to insist that the New
Testament lacks such a stance in regard to the Old. But as our whole
discussion has suggested, the contrary is patently the case, at least so far as
Paul is concerned.16 According to Bloom’s own definition in the same essay,
“the scheme of transumption ... demands a juxtaposition of three times; a
214 Herbert Marks
true one that was and will be ...; a less true one that never was ...; and the
present moment, which is emptied out of everything but the experiential
darkness against which the poet-prophet struggles” (1976:90). In Milton’s
description of the Chariot of Paternal Deitie in Book vi of Paradise Lost,
which Bloom cites as an example, these times are respectively occupied (1) by
the ultimately primary texts in Ezekiel and Revelation, which Paradise Lost
contrives to rival as a result of the transumption; (2) by the antecedent texts
of Virgil, Dante, and Petrarch, which Milton overleaps; and (3) by the
allusion to Milton’s own self-portrait as “the invincible warriour Zeale”
riding “over the heads of Scarlet Prelats” in his An Apology Against a
Pamphlet. Since Paul is a theoretician rather than a poet, the correlative
instances from his writings are overt rather than allusive.17 In the case of the
Romans passage just discussed, they could be enumerated as follows: (1)
Adam unfallen, which is the moment of creation with which fallen mankind
is reconciled as a result of the transumptive stance (the “true” time “that was
and will be”); (2) Adam fallen, or the Old Testament history, ending in Christ
crucified (the “less true one that never was”); and (3) the “all men”
represented by Paul himself as he is “buried” and “crucified” with Christ
(Rom 6:4, 6) (the “present moment” of strife and “experiential darkness”). To
reiterate, Paul is not concerned here with who Christ is, but with what Christ
does. He is “the one who was to come,” and what he does (overleaping his
own death) makes what he is a continual possibility.
It is an axiom of revisionary criticism that “a creative interpretation is
... necessarily a misinterpretation.” Such deliberate misreadings arise,
according to Bloom, “out of the illusion of freedom, out of a sense of priority
being possible” (1973:43, 96). The torah, as the dominant literary influence
on Paul’s thinking, had to be challenged if Paul was to realize the autonomy
he desired; for it was at least partly the experience of its mediating power that
had awakened his own yearning for an unmediated covenant. Of course, such
a situation was finally an impossible one, as Paul well understood. No matter
how boldly he proclaimed his “new creation,” its presence had always to
remain a lie since it could never relieve him from the burden of indebtedness
to its own scriptural sources. Yet in contempt of all logic, Paul continued to
brave the verdict of reprobation, announcing his ministry to be greater than
that of his precursors, as if the spiritual freedom of which he boasted could
be gained by sheer strength of desire. It was a defiant and precarious stance,
whether one calls it hermeneutic heroism, or more poetically holy folly.
Paul never ceases to revere the Jewish scriptures, but he maintains that
to read them in a vitalizing rather than a stupefying fashion one has need of
a special dispensation. This dispensation is inseparable from the prospective
stance toward revelation which Paul affirms in his letter to the Philippians,
“forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead” (3:13).
His subordination of scripture to its “spiritual” understanding thus implies a
profound conviction that what matters most is not the conclusion or content
of the interpretation, but the occurrence of the interpretive act itself.
“Although the history of the nation and the world has lost interest for Paul,”
writes Bultmann, “he brings to light another phenomenon, the historicity of
man” (1957:43). “Historicity” here carries the existential conviction that man
creates his own essence through his personal acts—acts which are necessarily
incursions against his own past. The act of interpretation does not exhaust or
define this self-creation, but it epitomizes it more perspicuously than most
kinds of activity; since in interpretation the “past” takes the form of a
recognizable text and need not be retrieved from a chaos of unannealed
events and impressions.
Before this monumental past, those who would study interpretation
with Paul are faced with two options: they can apprehend and vindicate his
readings, or they can emulate his method. Most common expositors take the
former path. They accept Christ, the content of Paul’s revision, as a given and
follow his directive to read the Old Testament by the light of the New. There
are some, however, who would prefer to take Paul’s act or attitude as
authoritative. They would know the “dispensation of the spirit” as a straining
toward freedom, knowing that this always involves a struggle against one’s
own patrimony in the deepest sense—“the inevitable struggle,” to use Barth’s
words, “of revelation against the religion of revelation” (239). Within the
temporal framework that the Bible insists on, they would recognize that the
content of the gospel is never fixed. Something like this stance has been
implicit in the biblical interpretation of such sects as the Montanists and the
Spiritual Franciscans, but for the most part their insights have been
intermixed with a tendency toward historical literalism. For the true disciples
of Paul on this second path, one should rather turn to the poets, in whose
hands an interpretation, as one poet reminds us, is always “a horde of
destructions.”
NOTES
1. Even a superficial survey of the role of the letter-spirit antithesis in the history of
biblical hermeneutics would require a sizeable monograph. The most notable landmarks
would include Origen’s Platonizing justification of threefold exegesis in the fourth book of
De principiis; Augustine’s revision of Tyconius’s third rule in De doctrina christiana
(III.33.46; 37.56); Thomas’s definition of the sensus litteralis in the Summa theologiae
(Iq.1a.10); and Luther’s displacement of the literal–spiritual distinction in the course of the
216 Herbert Marks
Dictata on the Psalms, leading to the rejection of allegory. Readers interested in pursuing
the subject might best begin with the references under 2 Cor 3:6 in the Biblia Patristica.
For a critical overview and initial bibliography, see Ebeling (1942, 1958, 1959), Grant
(1957, 1963), and Preus. I wish to thank Professor Wayne Meeks of Yale University for
helping me to a better understanding both of Paul’s letters and of my own response to
them.
2. Nietzsche, characteristically, was both repelled and fascinated by what he
recognized as Paul’s “Wille zur Macht.” See especially The Anti-Christ, section 42.
3. Among subsequent studies that accept this fundamental premise, Barnabas
Lindars’s deserves special mention. There are also a number of important books on
individual New Testament writings. For a critical survey of recent research, see the articles
by Smith and Miller.
4. Since Paul’s writings are not narratives, critics are less inclined to read them as
reflective of events than as witness to an underlying theology, itself predicated on historical
testimony; however, the reductive emphasis on the subject matter, the hermeneutic
transition from how to what, remains evident. In this connection, Frank Kermode’s recent
observation concerning critical writing on the gospels is relevant to New Testament
scholarship as a whole: “The claim that the gospels are truth-centered continues for many
to entail the proposition that they are in some sense factual, even though the claim takes
the form of saying that the fact they refer to is a theology” (121).
5. A similar argument is developed with more care by Nils Dahl who, though
admitting the absence of scriptural proofs in the extant epistles, affirms that Jesus’
messiahship is the “latent presupposition” for Paul’s theology (1974:37–47). Dahl
contends, however, that the messiahship of Jesus was not originally an exegetical notion
even for the gospel writers (1974:10–36).
6. The reliability of Acts as a historical document was first discredited by F. C. Baur.
The theological differences between the Paulinism of Acts and that of the letters were
elaborated most carefully by Vielhauer.
7. Paul’s purpose in Gal 3:13 in referring the “curse” of Deut 21:23 to Christ’s
crucifixion is clearly not to establish the identity of Jesus, but to define the role and status
of the law in such a way as to accommodate both of the testimonies from scripture cited
as conflicting in the previous verses. A classic illustration of the underlying rabbinic middah
(šěně kětûbîm hammakh.îšîm) occurs in Mek. Pisha 4 (Lauterbach: 1.32); cf. Dahl
(1977:159–78) and, for background, the study by Schwarz.
8. Rom 6:17; Phil 3:17; 1 Thes 1:7; and 2 Thess 3:9. Cf. 1 Tim 4:12; and Titus 2:7.
For a full lexical discussion, see the study by K. J. Woollcombe in Lampe and Woollcombe
(60–65).
9. Comparable definitions may also be found in Lampe and Woollcombe (40),
Hanson (7), and most of the authors reprinted in Westermann. These modern conceptions
of typology tend to be more abstract than their precritical antecedents. The German
critics in particular hesitate to speak of static persons, objects, or institutions as types, but
rather focus on events interpreted as standing under a conceptual arch of promise and
fulfillment (von Rad). James Barr has criticized this tendency as inappropriate to the New
Testament, where precisely the more specific usage predominates. (See Barr [103–48] for
a trenchant criticism of the whole typology–allegory distinction.)
10. Achtemeier (77–81) gives a convenient compend of instances interpreted from the
viewpoint of von Rad; see too the theoretical discussion by Nohrnberg (18–19).
11. Compare the contradictory evidence in Acts 8:3, though Wilhelm Heitmüller’s
defense of the Galatians account (translated in part in Meeks [308–19]) remains persuasive.
12. Exousia and eleutheria appear to be almost interchangeable for Paul, as in the
following passages where the identical issue is in question: “For you were called to
freedom [eleutheria], brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the
flesh, but through love be servants of one another” (Gal 5:13); “Only take care lest this
liberty (exousia) of yours somehow become a stumbling block to the weak” (1 Cor 8:9).
Note too how the word eleutheros introduces the discussion of exousia in 1 Cor 9:1ff.
13. Paul thus reverses at a more abstract level the rabbinic practice of reconciling
antinomies; cf. n. 7.
14. For an introduction to the larger issues, see Bultmann (1951:259–69) and Davies
(1962).
15. And even beyond, though the tradition is hard to date; see Ginzberg (6:37 n. 204)
for sources. There is an attempt to construct a possible midrashic antecedent for Paul’s
interpretation in Childs (621–23).
16. In Bloom’s most recent writing, the dismissive attitude toward the New Testament
has been substantially modified; see his forthcoming lecture on the Gospel of John to
appear in a collection of symposium papers edited by Alvin Rosenfeld for Indiana
University Press. For the traditional meaning of metalepsis, see Quintilian, Institutes
3.6.37–39; the citations in Lausberg (1.295); and especially the definitive survey by
Hollander (133–49).
17. It need hardly be emphasized that I have been dealing here with Paul as an exegete
and theoretician, not as a literary stylist. An analysis of Paul’s artistic achievement would
not be irrelevant, but the passages in his writing that strike me as the most powerful tend
to confront the traditions of contemporary popular literature rather than the Bible. I
think, for example, of the celebrated peristasis catalogue in 2 Cor 11, which takes off on
the traditions of the Cynic-Stoic diatribe and the imperial res gestae (Meeks: 57 n. 2, 63 n.
6); the praise of love in 1 Cor 13, patterned on the Greek encomium on a virtue; and the
prophecy of the resurrection in 1 Cor 15, which would seem to be the undoing of a gnostic
myth.
REFERENCES
Achtemeier, Elizabeth. 1973. The Old Testament and the Proclamation of the Gospel.
Philadelphia: Westminster Press.
Auerbach, Erich. 1959. “Figura.” In Scenes from the Drama of European Literature. Trans.
from the German (1944) by Ralph Manheim. New York: Meridian Books.
Barr, James. 1966. Old and New in Interpretation. New York: Harper & Row.
Barth, Karl. 1956. Church Dogmatics 1,2. Trans. from the German (1938) by G. T.
Thomson and Harold Knight. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
Baur, F.Chr. 1876. Paul, The Apostle of Jesus Christ. Trans. from the 2d German ed. (1866)
by Edward Zeller. London: Williams & Norgate. Vol. 1.
Biblia Patristica. 1975. Biblia Patristica: Index des citations et allusions bibliques dans la
littérature patristique. Paris: Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique.
Bloom, Harold. 1973. The Anxiety of Influence. New York: Oxford University Press.
———. 1975. A Map of Misreading. New York: Oxford University Press.
———. 1976. Poetry and Repression. New Haven: Yale University Press.
218 Herbert Marks
Bultmann, Rudolf. 1951. Theology of the New Testament. Vol. 1. Trans. from the German
(1941) by Kendrick Grobel. New York: Scribners.
———. 1957. The Presence of Eternity. New York: Harper & Row.
———. 1962. “Adam and Christ According to Romans 5.” Trans. from the German (1959)
in Current Issues in New Testament Interpretation. Ed. by William Klassen and
Graydon F. Snyder. New York: Harper & Row.
Childs, Brevard. 1974. The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary. Philadelphia:
Westminster Press.
Dahl, Nils Alstrup. 1974. The Crucified Messiah and Other Essays. Minneapolis: Augsburg
Press.
———. 1977. Studies in Paul: Theology for the Early Christian Mission. Minneapolis:
Augsburg Press.
Davies, W. D. 1952. Torah in the Messianic Age. Philadelphia: Society of Biblical Literature.
———. 1962. “Law in the NT.” The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. G. A. Buttrick, gen.
ed. Nashville: Abingdon Press.
Dodd, C. H. 1953. According to the Scriptures: The Sub-structure of New Testament Theology.
London: Nisbet.
Ebeling, Gerhard. 1942. Evangelische Evangelienauslegung. Munich: Forschungen zur
Geschichte und Lehre des Protestantismus. N.p.
———. 1958. “Geist and Buchstabe.” Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. 3d ed. Vol.
2. Tübingen: Mohr.
———. 1959. “Hermeneutik.” Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. 3d ed. Vol. 3.
Tübingen: Mohr.
Ellis, E. Earle. 1957. Paul’s Use of the Old Testament. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd.
Frei, Hans W. 1974. The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Ginzberg, Louis. 1925. The Legends of the Jews. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication
Society.
Grant, Robert M. 1957. The Letter and the Spirit. London: S.P.C.K.
———. 1963 A Short History of the Interpretation of the Bible. Rev. ed. New York: Macmillan.
Hanson, R. P. C. 1959. Allegory and Event. Richmond: John Knox.
Harnack, Adolf von. 1905. History of Dogma. Vol. 1. Trans. from the 3d German edition
(1894) by Neil Buchanan. London: Williams and Norgate.
———. 1928 “Das Alte Testament in den Paulinischen Briefen und in den Paulinischen
Gemeinden.” Sitxungsberichte der Preussichen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin),
pp. 124–41.
Heitmiiller, Wilhelm. 1912. “Zum Problem Paulus und Jesus.” Zeitschrift für die
neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 13:320–27.
Hollander, John. 1981. The Figure of Echo: A Mode of Allusion in Milton and After. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Kermode, Frank. 1979. The Genesis of Secrecy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Lampe, G. W. H., and Woollcombe, K. J. 1957. Essays on Typology. Naperville, Ill.: A. R.
Allenson.
Lausberg, Heinrich. 1960. Handbuch der Literarischen Rhetorik. Munich: Max Hueber.
Lauterbach, Jacob Z., ed. 1933. Mekilta de Rabbi Ishmael. Philadelphia: The Jewish
Publication Society.
Lindars, Barnabas. 1961. New Testament Apologetic. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.
Marxsen, Willi. 1968. Introduction to the New Testament. Trans. from the 3d German edition
(1963) by G. Buswell. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
Meeks, Wayne A. 1972. The Writings of St. Paul. New York: Norton.
Mendenhall, George D. 1970. “Covenant Forms in Israelite Traditions.” In The Biblical
Archaeologist Reader. Vol. 3. Ed. by David Noel Freedman and G. Ernest Wright.
Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor-Doubleday.
Miller, Merril P. 1971. “Targum, Midrash, and the Use of the Old Testament in the New
Testament.” Journal for the Study of Judaism 2:29–82.
Moule, C. F. D. 1962. The Birth of the New Testament. New York: Harper & Row.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1888. The Anti-Christ. In Twilight of the Idols; and The Anti-Christ,
trans. by R. J. Hollingdale. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.
Nohrnberg, James. 1974. “On Literature and the Bible.” Centrum 2:2.
Preus, James Samuel. 1969. From Shadow to Promise: Old Testament Interpretation from
Augustine to the Young Luther. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Schwarz, Adolf. 1913. Die hermeneutische Antinomie in der Talmudischen Litteratur. Vienna:
Alfred Hölder.
Smith, D. Moody, Jr. 1972. “The Use of the Old Testament in the New.” In The Use of the
Old Testament in the New and Other Essays: Studies in Honor of William Franklin
Stinespring. Ed. by James M. Efird. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Vielhauer, Philipp. 1950. “On the ‘Paulinism’ of Acts.” Trans. from the German by
William C. Robinson, Jr., and Victor P. Furnish. In Perkins School of Theology Journal
17 (1963). Rept. in Studies in Luke–Acts. Ed. by Leander E. Keck and J. Louis
Martyn. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1966.
von Rad, Gerhard. 1965. Old Testament Theology. Vol. 2. Trans. from the German (1960)
by D. M. G. Stalker. New York: Harper & Row.
Westermann, Claus, ed. 1963. Essays on Old Testament Hermeneutics. Trans. from the
German (1960), ed. by James Luther Mays. Richmond: John Knox.
B E N E D I C T T. V I V I A N O , O . P.
John’s Use of Matthew:

Beyond Tweaking
S U M M A RY
The question of the gospel of John’s relation to the synoptic gospels is a

classic one. This article presupposes direct Johannine knowledge of the
synoptics and some inner-canonical polemic. It explores twelve instances
of John’s knowledge of Matthew’s gospel and his reaction to Matthew:
from flat contradiction, to restrained criticism, to refinement, acceptance
and deepening. The cases concern Emmanuel, the light of the world,
Elijah and the Baptist, the transfiguration, the messianic secret, the
sabbath, the role of Peter, turning the other cheek, the use of the Old
Testament, christology, judgment, and discipleship.
M any a reader of the gospels has been struck by the different

perspectives represented by Matthew’s “You are the light of the world” (Matt
5:14) and John’s “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). A pre-critical
reader would understand the difference thus: one day Jesus said one thing,
another day he said something else—to make a different point. Why not? A
redaction-critically oriented reader would think: the Matthean saying
reflects Matthew’s ethical, anthropological interest, while the Johannine
saying expresses John’s Christological concentration. Those who hold to the
From Revue Biblique (January 2004). © 2004 L’Ecole Biblique et Archéologique Française.
221
222 Benedict T. Viviano, O.P.
Gardner-Smith view that John knew synoptic-like traditions but did not
know the three synoptic gospels directly might hear a distant echo of
Matthew in John 8:12.1 Those readers however who hold that (1) the main
author of the Fourth Gospel knew all three of the synoptics directly, just as
we do, and who further hold to the old Tübingen school (F.C. Baur) view
that (2) there is polemic inside the New Testament canon of one book against
another, one sacred author against another, such readers, I say, would take a
different stance. Such readers would be tempted to see in John 8:12 a direct
criticism of Matt 5:14, a deliberate and explicit correction of Matt 5:14. In
that case the question could be asked, to what extent does John’s gospel
undertake, throughout its length and breadth, a running critique of
Matthew?
That is the question this article attempts to address. (This article cannot
be exhaustive because the implications of the question are too many for them
all to be tracked down in 30 pages.) If the question has not been asked before
and a systematic answer provided, that is because many Johannine scholars do
not or have not shared its two presuppositions: (1) direct Johannine knowledge
of the synoptics and/or (2) inner-canonical polemic.
Of these two presuppositions, the first, direct Johannine knowledge of
the three synoptic gospels, would have met less resistance until the twentieth
century. For before 1900 most commentators shared Clement of Alexandria’s
view that the fourth evangelist, after the other three had had their say,
decided to write a “spiritual” gospel, i.e., implicitly, he knew and took into
account the earlier gospels.2 The second presupposition, inner-canonical
polemic, meets resistance at all times because it seems, at first glance, to
contradict the belief in the divine inspiration of Scripture: would the Holy
Spirit allow such unseemly infighting among the sacred authors? The
resistance can only be overcome by those who recognise that its argument is
an apriori deduction from a dogmatic premise. This premise, when applied
with a heavy hand, blinds its holders to some plain facts in the texts
themselves: e.g., the conflicts between Galatians and the letter of James,
which the early church tried to resolve, with the aid of the Holy Spirit, as
described in Acts 15. Once the premise of divine inspiration is understood to
include, to allow for, inner-canonical polemic, the way is open for the kind
of inquiry we would like to undertake. This presupposition is the
contribution of the Tübingen school of F.C. Baur in the early 19th century,
which pioneered, by trial and error, a more historical understanding of the
New Testament.3
As for the first presupposition, John’s full knowledge of the Synoptics,
what convinced me of the old “classical” view (but with the Tübingen
polemical “update” or “edge”) was D. Moody Smith’s careful, intentionally

neutral, presentation of the problem,4 plus the weakness of two major works
which attempt to prove the opposite view, that John did not know the
Synoptics directly but only synoptic-like traditions.5 Their failure to
convince me led me to be open to the seductive powers of Hans Windisch’s
Überlegenheitstheorie. That is, John not only knew the earlier three, but
intended to replace or even eliminate them by producing a vastly superior
gospel.6 This tempting hypothesis of John’s feeling of superiority to the
other evangelists ought however to be accepted with reservations, for the
following reasons. (1) John nowhere rejects by name a Synoptic gospel. (2)
John could not have rejected all the contents of the other gospels since he
draws upon them; at most he rejected parts. (3) By A.D. 100 it was too late
for John to overturn and to displace the other gospels totally. (To be sure,
John almost succeeded in some places and periods, as did Matthew in other
places and periods. Both Matthew and Luke for long succeeded in having
Mark rather forgotten and neglected. Mark was copied, but not much used
in the lectionaries or commented on.) Perhaps we should distinguish
between John’s achievement (he failed to displace the others totally) and his
intention to replace them. “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” (4)
Although John may have wished to claim more, as a matter of historical fact
his gospel was taken into the church’s canon of the New Testament alongside
the other gospels and had to compete with them. In the course of time John
prevailed over the others in his influence on high theology (Trinity,
Christology, pneumatology), and on the theology of the sacraments of
baptism and eucharist, but not in the areas of detailed Christian ethics or in
the quest for the historical Jesus,7 or in the construction of an ordered
ecclesiology (at least for some groups).
Although John can be seen as a deepening reflection on some elements
received from Mark and Q,8 and as having a real affinity with many Lucan
traditions, it seems at first that his relation to Matthew is more tense, more
critical.9 It was in fact my initial working assumption that John undertook a
consistent critique of Matthean redactional theological positions. This
assumption also happens to underlie not a little controversial theology today,
which cherishes John’s diminishment of Peter, so that the matter of John’s
use of Matthew, whether positive or negative, remains very much a live
issue.10 Although my initial assumption is born out to some extent, the final
impression is rather less uniform and one-sided. Sometimes John simply
takes a Matthean tradition and improves it in a sympathetic way, so that even
Matthew himself would, in all probability, have approved of it. It is then not
a question of criticism or of polemic so much as of progress, of growth. But
this can only be shown by an examination of specific cases. In the course of

this article we will examine twelve cases.
1. Let us begin with Matthew’s first two chapters, his gospel of Jesus’
origins: He begins with a genealogy of Jesus’ roots in the Hebrew Bible and
in the intertestamental period, and then he tells the story of Jesus’ virginal
conception. He goes on to narrate the intertwined story of the hostility of
king Herod the Great and the adoration by the magi with their three gifts.
For John, the question of Jesus’ origins is of burning significance
throughout his gospel (notice the frequency of the adverb pothen, whence,
which recurs thirteen times in his gospel), but for John what counts is not
Jesus’ human origins (he makes light of these in 1:45–46; 7:41), but his
heavenly origins, his coming from (or being sent by) the Father in heaven.
John also prefers not to use the theolougomenon of the virginal conception
of Jesus which, on our hypothesis, he knew from Matthew and Luke.
Instead, in his Prologue (1:1–18), he presents Jesus’ origins as the divine
Logos who becomes flesh in the person of Jesus.11 Further, John is aware of
the hostility of the world and its powers to Jesus and takes them seriously,
not to mention demonic opposition (hostile powers: 1:5,10–11; 5:16–18;
7:1,19,25,30; 8:37,40; 11:53; demonic: 12:31; 16:11; 14:30; 8:44) but he is
not interested in Herodian vassal kings. The hostility to Jesus in John comes
from unbelieving Judeans and their religious leaders, and from sceptical
Pilate, representative of the Roman emperor, but also from unbelieving
disciples (6:70–71). On a deeper level, Matthew cites Isa 7:14, a prophecy of
Emmanuel, and carefully explains that name, with the help of Isa 8:8,10, as
meaning ‘God is with us.’ This phrase represents a variant of the covenant
formulary, whose full form runs: “I will be your God and you will be my
people” or, abbreviated, “I will be with you and you will be with me.”12 This
is the basic contract of loyalty and “marital” fidelity between God and his
people, that runs throughout the Bible, even though it may be a relatively
late theme and though it is derived from Ancient Near Eastern suzerainty
treaties. It is a fundamental expression of God’s commitment, protection
and presence. Matthew’s point is that this divine commitment and will to
save his people is present in the person of Jesus (see also Matt 18:20; 28:20).
In John one finds an echo of this Christology of divine presence in Jesus in
3:2, where Nicodemus says, among other things, “For no one can do the
signs which you do, unless God is with him.” Here at the outset, we see that
Matthew and John are not at odds on the matter of a high Christology,
though they may take different roads to get there, and although John may
go further than Matthew. Here they are at one on the point of applying the
covenant formula in relation to Jesus as God’s emissary (Jn 3:2a) and

presence on earth. Finally, as the magi bow down to the ground and adore
the enfant Jesus (Matt 2:11), so too does the man born blind in John (9:38).
The rule holds here as elsewhere: what is found together as a unit in the
synoptics, is sometimes found scattered in John.13
Our first case has shown some not inconsiderable differences, but no
clear case of polemic, unless one construes the option for the Prologue as a
hostile rejection of the virginal conception. But there is no hint of this in the
Prologue. The variant reading in John 1:13, which reads a singular instead of
a plural, and is found only in non-Greek versions, is an attempt at
harmonisation of the two viewpoints but this attempt need not have been
motivated by the desire to overcome the scandal of an implied criticism.14
Above all, on the matter of Jesus as God’s presence on earth as the expression
of God’s covenant fidelity, there is complete agreement.
2. In Matt 5:14–16, we read: “You are the light of the world ... Let your
light shine before men, so that they may see your good works and give glory
to your Father in heaven.” These words begin with a bold declaration and
conclude with an exhortation (an imperative in the third person plural) and
a two-part result clause. The words, coming as they do from the Sermon on
the Mount, are peculiar to Matthew’s gospel. They are addressed to the
crowds. (Usually it is said that they are addressed to the disciples. But
although Matt 5:1 could be read to mean that Jesus spoke only to the
disciples, in 7:28 the crowds are astounded at his teaching, which implies (a)
that they heard it, (b) that it was addressed to them.) The declaration, in the
indicative, functions as an encouragement and also as a basis on which to
found the exhortation. The imagery comes from Deutero-Isaiah: 42:6; 49:6;
51:4. In a healthy society everyone needs a chance to “shine” in one way or
another, ideally in a governing assembly.15 Here in Matthew the purpose of
our shining is two-fold. First the shining itself consists of our good works,
i.e., ethical works as a missionary strategy, as a witness and a “draw”. The
result should not be praise rendered to us or our own self-satisfaction but
that the observers give glory to God. The text then, while strongly ethical,
does not see ethics as an end in itself. Rather, it sees ethical conduct as related
to doxology, as having a religious, theo-logical finality, viz., praise of God. So
Matthew’s text cannot be dismissed as purely anthropological or Pelagian.
When we turn to John 8:12, we notice a different accent: “I am the
light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will
have the light of life.” The obvious point is that this formulation manifests
John’s concentration on Christology. Ethics separated from faith in Christ
will not do for John. That this is intended as at least in part a corrective of
Matthew is suggested by John 15:8, which shows a further awareness of Matt
5:14–16. (We will return to it.) That is, the echo of Matthew is not purely an
accident, a coincidence. John is making a point in regard to Matthew. For
him only through Jesus are men saved. Matthew may occasionally say the
same (11:27), but he is so interested in presenting a detailed ethic that he
often fails to insist upon it. Once however this point is made, John can rejoin
Matthew to a remarkable degree. First, he borrows a synoptic word for
discipleship, “following,” instead of his usual “believe in” or “come to” Jesus.
This believing disciple, the verse goes on to say, will not walk, that is, live,
conduct himself, in darkness, that is, in the realm of death, but he will possess
(eschatologically?, the two verbs, are future, but for John are probably
realized already now, in this life) the light of life. That is, he will possess the
source of full life, in this world and in the next (cf. Ps 56:13; Job 33:30), “the
way out of human existential need”.16 The accent is no longer on good
deeds, but on the one good deed of following, that is, believing. But the
ethical note is recovered and the glorification of God of which Matthew
speaks is also found in a neglected verse which could be said to complete
John 8:12 and increase his rapprochement with Matthew. John 15:8 reads:
“My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my
disciples.” Here Matt 5:14 is taken over, with John’s Christological
correction discreetly but really present in the “my” disciples. Fruit-bearing
would especially refer to love of the members of the community as a form of
witness (John 13:35). Karpos, fruit, is a favorite word for Matthew (19x; Mark
5x; Luke 12x; John 10x), in the sense of good deeds.
So, in 8:12, John shows his sense of superiority to Matthew, his
Christological correction, and yet, in 15:8, is able to take over, in his own
way, Matthew’s deep ethical concern.
3. In Matt 11:14, speaking of John the Baptist, Jesus says: “If you are
willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come,” an allusion to Mal 3:23 (cf.
Sir 48:10), which promises a return of Elijah in the end times.17 Later, in
17:10–13 the same identification between Elijah and the Baptist is made in
fuller fashion: “Elijah has already come, and they did not recognise him, but
they did to him whatever they pleased ... Then the disciples understood that
he was speaking to them about John the Baptist.” (In this added verse,
Matthew is making explicit what is already implicit in Mark 9:11–13.) On the
other hand, in John 1:21,25, the Baptist denies that he is Elijah, and this is
repeated by the emissaries of the Pharisees. A strange business indeed. That
is the problem. What to make of it? First, we need to notice that Luke,
before John, does not follow Mark and Matthew on this point. He does not
take over Mark 9:10–13, and, in 1:17, the angel says to Zechariah that his son
will act “with the spirit and power of Elijah,” but, implicitly, will not be
identical to him. Here, as in many other cases, John stands closer to Luke
than to the other two evangelists.18 Next, we need to realize that in Malachi
and Sirach, Elijah is not the precursor of the Messiah; he is the precursor of
God as God comes in judgment. This biblical promise was probably still
lively in the Baptist community at the time that the fourth evangelist was
writing. On this view Elijah redivivus either functions as a quasi-Messiah (in
Sir 48:10d his duty is “to restore the tribes of Jacob,” a messianic function if
ever there was one), or else there is simply no place for a Messianic figure at
all. The evangelist John, who probably knew Baptist circles well, reacts to
their strong belief in Elijah’s role by ruling out any connection between the
Baptist and Elijah.19 When thirdly we return to Matthew and Mark, we see
that they have taken a different approach. They have inherited or invented
the idea that Elijah is the precursor of the Messiah (not of God) and they go
on to downgrade the Baptist as Elijah to be the precursor of Jesus. John then
decides not to follow them in this line because (a) such a view of Elijah is not
clearly scriptural, (b) this line would not have been of any use to him in his
ongoing polemic with the disciples of the Baptist (in Asia Minor?, cf. Acts
19:1–7), since they did not hold this view of Elijah’s role. Although John’s
manner of treating Matthew and Mark here may seem to us a little abrupt
and rough (a flat contradiction), he did have serious grounds for taking a
different line.
As a note of clarification we may add that the comparison we are
making is only on the level of the Matthean and Johannine redaction. On the
level of the historical John the Baptist and the historical Jesus, strictly
speaking there need be no contradiction, because the Baptist could really
have thought that he was not Elijah (should the question have arisen during
his lifetime), and Jesus could really have said that the Baptist was Elijah,
perhaps evoking a higher point of view unknown to the Baptist, or having
concluded this after the Baptist’s martyrdom. All that is not our concern. We
are presupposing that both Gospel statements represent the redactional
viewpoints of Matthew and John respectively, and that John the evangelist
rejects and contradicts Matthew’s view.
While on John’s treatment of the Baptist, we may note C.H. Dodd’s
treatment of another, related problem.20 According to Matt 11:11 par Luke
7:28 (Q), “John the Baptist, though a prophet and more than a prophet,
though as great a man as any born of women, is yet not ‘in the Kingdom of
God’.” This means that “Either he had never confessed Christ, or having
once confessed he fell away from his faith”. (Dodd speculates that he fell into
a depression during his imprisonment!) This is hinted at by Matt 11:6 par
Luke 7:23. Dodd then reads John 1:20 with the bracketed word included:
“He confessed [Christ] and did not deny him.” Dodd then concludes, “In
other words, the evangelist is claiming the Baptist as the first Christian
‘confessor’, in contrast to the view represented in the Synoptic Gospels that
he was not ‘in the Kingdom of God’. It is the Johannine view that has
prevailed, and affected the liturgy and the calendar of the church.” Not a
small claim for the evangelist. (In the article referred to in note 17, I have
tried to explain Matt 11:11, not by positing an apostasy or a depression on
the Baptist’s part, but rather by seeing the verse as a creation of the earliest
post-pascal Christian community. The anonymous author tried to
understand the places of both the Baptist and Jesus in the apocalyptic
periodization of salvation history with the help of Dan 4:14 (17): “The Most
High is sovereign over the kingdom of mortals; he gives it to whom he will
and sets over it the lowliest of human beings.” The Q author applies this to
Jesus: “the least in the kingdom of heaven [this is Jesus described in Danielic
terms] is greater than he.” Thus the point of Matt 11:11 par is not to say that
the Baptist is an apostate, but rather to understand the higher place of Jesus
in the divine plan. The verse is Christological, not polemical, in intent.)
Although Dodd’s reconstruction rests on two hypotheses, it does help to
explain the positive reception of the Baptist in church history. On the other
hand, these hypotheses are not strictly necessary to explain the Baptist’s
reception as a saint. First, he could be received as a saint of the Old
Testament, like Abraham or David. Second, his great role as the patron of
monks, so evident in the iconography of the Eastern churches, is based more
on his ascetic diet and dress (Matt 3:4) than on his exact position in salvation
history.21
4. Before proceeding to our next unit, it might be useful to note two

possible broader links of John with the Synoptic tradition. The first concerns
the Transfiguration of Jesus (Matt 17:1–9; Mark 9:2–9; Luke 9:28–36). There
is no separate, distinct account of the Transfiguration in John’s gospel. It has
been cleverly suggested that this is so because in John Jesus is transfigured
from beginning to end; that is, his divinity is transparent from the Prologue
to the Resurrection (see 20:28). There is much to be said for this view, no
doubt, even if one does not push it to the docetic extremes proposed by
Käsemann.22 The point to be made here is a different one. It is in analogy
with the agony in the garden. Though this episode is not reproduced as such
in John, John has nevertheless taken over piecemeal enough of its elements
for us to be reasonably sure that he knew the tradition. He simply decided to

use it in his own way. This has long been recognised.23 Now it can be
suggested that his chapters seven and eight contain elements of contact with
the synoptic account of the Transfiguration. First, there is the link with the
feast of Sukkot, implicit in the synoptic mention of the three tents, explicit
in John 7:2. Next, there is the ascent of the [Temple] mount, 7:14. Then,
there is the mention of glory, 7:18. The great invitation in 7:37–39 could be
understood to encourage a participation in the grace of the Transfiguration
in the line of Rom 12:2 and 2 Cor 3:18. The great declaration in John 8:12,
“I am the light of the world,” is, in itself, a statement of the Transfiguration.
This would have been clearer if the evangelist had written flatly, Christ is the
light of the world. But he was writing a gospel, not a textbook. Yet in this
famous verse he has stated his interpretation of the meaning of the
Transfiguration, and, as we have already seen, of its consequences for those
who follow Jesus. This is the main connection, if connection there be,
between John 7 and 8, and Matt 17:1–9 and parallels, the synoptic narration
of the Transfiguration. The mention of Moses in John 7:19–23, and the
absence of any mention of Elijah do not matter in comparison. Perhaps one
can see a hint of Elijah in the discussion of whether or not a prophet can arise
from Galilee in 7:40–52. The view that no prophet is to arrive in Galilee (v.
52) seems to imply a forgetting, an amnesia, of Elijah and Elisha on the part
of Jesus’ opponents, since they were Galilean prophets. (Elijah was from
Tishbe in Gilead [modern Jordan] but worked in Galilee.)
5. Another general synoptic phenomenon that seems at first to find no

echo in John is the extremely puzzling “messianic secret.” (I have never read
an explanation of it that makes much sense.) It is well known that this theme
is heavily accented by Mark, less so by Matthew and Luke. But C.K. Barrett,
in an important essay on subordinationist Christology, thinks he has found
the Johannine equivalent.24 Barrett begins with the view that the theme of
the messianic secret in Mark is a theological one. He then asserts that this
theme has a historical basis in the fact that although both Jesus and his
followers thought that he was more than a mere man, nevertheless he
allowed himself to be “addressed as Rabbi, either in transliteration (Mark
9:5; [10:51]; 11:21; 14:45) or in translation (4:38; [5:35]; 9:17,38; 10:17,20,35;
12:14,19,32; 13:1; [14:14]).” So Jesus allowed himself to be addressed by a
term, “teacher”, that concealed rather than disclosed the true meaning and
character of his mission. It was not false, for he did teach. But the fact
included an element of secrecy, of concealment about his work. We see then
a “Messiahship veiled behind a cover of artificial Non-Messiahship, or at
least of speciously denied Messiahship.” “We see ... an undefined authority

veiled behind an aversion to the use of all titles.” Barrett finds an equivalent
of this paradoxical combination of revelation and concealment, of majesty
and humility, also present in John. He discerns two series of texts in John.
One is highly Christological: The word became flesh, I am the bread of life,
I am the light of the world, before Abraham was, I am, or simply “I am,” the
Father and I are one, and other similar texts. The other series emphasises
Jesus’ role as secondary, as mediating the Father. Thus Jesus appears as one
who is sent (by the Father).25 Then he is dependent; he does not speak or act
of himself.26 This series culminates in 14:28 where Jesus says “The Father is
greater than I.” Barrett understands these two series as not mutually
contradictory but as harmoniously affirming a Christology, a teaching that
Jesus Christ is a divine being, as well as a theology, a teaching of the absolute
fatherhood of God, with the former at the service of the second.27 The point
here is that the second, subordinationist series functions somewhat in the
same way as the messianic secret does in the synoptics. It helps to protect the
mystery while at the same time helping to prevent its distortion through
exaggeration.
6. Our next case makes a small point in a larger whole. It has to do with
Jesus’ healings on the sabbath. This subject, well worked over but not, we
think, yet exhausted, is important for a number of reasons. Juridically, Jesus’
healings on the sabbath are important in seeing Jesus’ role in the gradual
process of the Hellenization or humanization of Jewish law, particularly in
the reduction of the frequency of the imposition of the death penalty.28
Historically, it may have contributed to Jesus’ execution as a false teacher
(Mark 3:6). Christologically, the key verses (Mark 2:27–28) may tell us
something about how Jesus understood himself, his mission, his authority.
But our concern now is more modest. It is simply to note one or two aspects
of John’s contribution to the development of the gospel tradition on Jesus’
sabbath healings. The tradition begins with two pericopes in Mark 2:23–28;
3:1–6. There Jesus furnishes three arguments for his healing on the sabbath:
the precedent of David and his men (1 Sam 21:1–7); a reference to 2 Macc
5:19;29 and a general argument that it is lawful to do good on the sabbath
(Mark 3:4). Matthew repeats these two pericopes (Matt 12:1–8, 9–14) and,
within them, adds more halachic arguments to support Jesus’ position
(12:5–7); the precedent of the priests who offer sacrifice on the sabbath
(Num 28:9–10); a reference to the prophetic principle that mercy takes
precedence even over sacrifice (Hos 6:6), even though sacrifice was at the
heart of the Israelite system of worship; and a reference to the debated issue
of whether one could lift out a sheep which had fallen into a pit (Matt 12:11).
Luke increases the number of those pericopes to four: Luke 6:1–5,6–11
(from Mark 13:10–17; 14:1–6. Now John enormously increases the
theological, i.e., christological, significance of the material in his sabbath
healing pericopes: 5:1–47; 9:1–41. But he also contributes to the juridical-
theological development (law and theology are not tightly separated in
classical Jewish sources) of the arguments specifically justifying healing on
the sabbath. In John 7:22–23, he adds the case of allowing circumcision on
the sabbath as an analogue to the arguments listed by Matthew. In 5:17 he
goes deeper: “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” To the
modern reader this may say little. But to someone soaked in Jewish thinking
about the sabbath it says a great deal. On the one hand, Gen 1:1–2:3 closely
connects sabbath observance with the creation of the world. God himself
“rested from all the work that he had done in creation” (Gen 2:3). This
connection explains the extreme gravity of sabbath observance. Wittingly to
violate the sabbath was thus thought tantamount to denying the existence
and creative power of God.30 On the other hand, it had not escaped
thoughtful Jewish minds, especially minds effected by Greek natural
philosophy, that God needs to sustain his creation in being at every instant,
or else it would cease to be. God cannot rest from that work of sustaining his
world in being. By invoking the fact that the Father is still working (non-
stop!). Jesus not only justifies his Sabbath healing activity, but also turns the
tables on the argument that to violate the sabbath is to deny the Creator. In
this way, John not only strengthens the synoptic case, but digs down to the
roots of the problem. John is not called ‘the theologian’ for nothing.31
7. We come now to the Petrine and anti-Petrine material in Matthew

and John. This material is abundant and provides material for a monograph,
not part of an article. We can summarize the matter in this way. Matthew
inherits from Mark (8:27–30) Peter’s important confession of faith and
develops it in a famous ecclesiological set of promises (Matt 16:13–20),32
which makes Peter into a kind of new Aaron, a spokesman for Moses (Exod
4:10–17), and into a judge of final instance when disputes arise in the church.
Matthew also retains some anti-Petrine material from Mark (Matt 16:22–23;
26:69–75), as well as material peculiar to his gospel which shows Peter’s
impulsive weaknesses, but also shows him in a favorable light (14:28–33).
Now for many centuries those in east and west unsympathetic to a Petrine
office or ministry in the church have looked to John’s gospel for material
which diminishes and disperses Peter’s synoptic role as spokesman for the
apostles. (I must pass over Gal 2:11–14, and Luke 22:31–32.) In the synoptics
Simon Peter and his brother Andrew are the first disciples called by Jesus. In
John it is Andrew and an anonymous other who are called first, and then
Andrew brings Peter to Jesus (John 1:35–42). This Johannine arrangement
has inspired the Greek liturgy to attribute to Andrew the epitheton constans of
the first-called. This then led to the legend that Andrew founded the see at
Constantinople.33
When we look at the rest of John’s gospel for information on Peter, we
can say that on the surface there is much that is favourable to Peter in John
and nothing more unfavourable than is found in the synoptics. (John too
retains Peter’s threefold denial, but briefly. In general, Luke and John agree
to minimise the defects of the disciples.) And in the epilogue in chapter
21:15–17 Peter is both given a chance to exonerate himself after his denial,
and is given an important pastoral charge.34
If however we look beneath the surface, we can detect some possible
further criticism of Peter. The question is: how far should we go? Should we
conclude that the “real” evangelist demonized Peter, regarded him as the real
Judas, the real traitor? Or should we be content with something less drastic,
more sober, closer to the texts as we actually have them? Let us take a look.
In John 6:60–71 Simon Peter is the spokesman of the twelve after many
disciples leave Jesus. He makes the beautiful statement of fidelity: “Lord, to
whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. We have come to believe
and know that you are the Holy One of God.” This does not sound anti-
Petrine. On the contrary, it seems the Johannine equivalent of Peter’s
confession in Mark 8:29 and parallels, a bit developed but not hostile.
Moreover, later on, John allows Martha to make an equally fine confession
of faith: “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming
into the world” (11:27). This confession may show John’s sensitivity to
women disciples. It may relativize the uniqueness of Peter’s confession. It
may even be a gentle tease of Luke’s praise of Mary in Luke 10:38–42. It still
does not strike the reader as anti-Petrine. But in his book The Christology of
the Fourth Gospel, P.N. Anderson argues that Peter’s confession in John
“reaffirms Jesus’ sole authority.... Peter is portrayed as figuratively returning
‘the keys of the kingdom’ to the Johannine Jesus.”35 Peter thereby, in v. 68, on
this view, himself rejects all claim to a leadership role or authority, and thus
rejects Matt 16:17–19. Anderson goes on to oppose what he calls a
“Christocracy” to an “institutional model”. He does not actually speak here
of church or church government, nor of Petrocracy, nor of a hierarchy but
these are implied. (He does speak of church and hierarchy later.) He also
speaks of a “pneumatically-mediated, christocratic model” (p. 227).
Moreover, Anderson distinguishes in Peter’s confession between v. 68, which
is praiseworthy, and v. 69, which is reprehensible, because the title there

attributed, “Holy One of God”, is Davidic, and implies the expectation that
Jesus will set up a kingdom of power, with victory and without suffering,
inspired by “Holy War” aspirations (p. 230). It also implies a place for human
initiative. All this means that Peter “fails the tests” (p. 230). It is therefore not
surprising that Anderson prefers to translate v. 70 thus: “I have not chosen
you, the twelve; and one of you is a devil.” (This is a possible translation of
the Greek.) The result is that Jesus rejects all twelve and treats Peter as a
devil! This is radically anti-Petrine, to say the least. For Anderson, v. 71 is
added as a gloss by the compiler or final editor to transform the harshly anti-
Petrine, anti-Twelve v. 70 into a remark about Judas Iscariot only: “He was
speaking of Judas son of Simon Iscariot, for he, though one of the twelve, was
going to betray him.” Anderson concludes as follows:
The primary concern for the evangelist in the writing of the

Gospel is not to set forth an orthodox dogma, nor is it to record
in literary form the ‘historical’ account of what Jesus said and did.
Rather, it is an ecclesial manifesto which describes the effectual
means by which the risen Lord continues to be the shepherd of
his flock and the leader of his people, across the boundaries of
time and space. It is a matter of christocracy, and this is what the
compiler failed to see here ..., as evidenced by his ‘clarification’ of
v. 70 in vs. 71.36
Thus for Anderson the accent falls on ecclesiology. John 6 is an

“ecclesial manifesto” (later, “a manifesto of radical christocracy,” p. 251).
What should we make of this construction? We must sort out its many
claims. (a) The manner of reading v. 68b seems unfounded: “You [alone]
have words of eternal life.” John’s frequent use of the OT and the later
promise of the guidance of the Paraclete (esp. John 16:12–13) implies that
the evangelist accepted that there are words of eternal life elsewhere, but of
course, as for all early Christian authors, related to Jesus. The idea that in
this verse Peter in effect returns the keys of post-pascal church authority to
Jesus seems to us an arbitrary fantasy read into or imposed on the text. (b)
That v. 69 contains a political-military title which Jesus rejects is also hard
to accept, since elsewhere in the gospel innocent people call Jesus “Christ”
and he does not reject this much more explicitly royal, Davidic, title
(1:70,20,25,40; 3:28; 4:25,29; 7:26,27,31,41; 9:22, 11:27; 17:3; 20:31). The
harsh split Anderson makes between vv. 68 and 69 is abrupt. There is no
literary hint that one verse is good, the other bad. (c) When we come to v.
70, however, we must proceed more carefully. The idea that Peter is the
devil of v. 70b cannot be rejected out of hand, because it could be based on
Mark 8:33 par Matt 16:23, where Jesus refers to Peter as Satan.37 (This
argument based on the Synoptics cannot be directly employed by Anderson
himself because he holds to the thesis that John did not know the synoptic
gospels directly. This makes his discussion more tangled than would
otherwise be necessary. We will return to this point.) On the other hand,
this synoptic reference does not in itself guarantee that here in John the
devil is Peter. Anderson’s argument is rendered less credible by his trying to
prove too much. For he also holds that Jesus did not choose the twelve, any
of them, not even the beloved disciple. This contradicts John 15:16,19, “You
did not choose me but I chose you ... I have chosen you out of the world”
(cf. 13:18. “I know whom I have chosen”). These texts help us to understand
why translators, while perfectly aware that the Greek of v. 70 could be
translated in the indicative, have usually (always?) preferred the
interrogative. (d) This brings us to v. 71 which explains the devil of v. 70 as
referring to Judas. That this verse could be a late gloss which misunderstood
v. 70 or understood it perfectly well and deliberately changed its reference,
again cannot be excluded a priori. Glosses happen. The question should
rather be: is that the most probable explanation? On the basis of the
strongly anti-Judas Iscariot material throughout the gospel, notably
13:21–30 where Satan enters Judas (v. 27), we are inclined to answer in the
negative. So v. 71 stems from the evangelist who correctly interpreted his
own v. 70. Anderson confuses Peter’s denials (real and shameful enough)
with Judas’ betrayal or “handing over” of Jesus. The denials are a result of
weakness and cowardice, the betrayal is an active, grave evil which in this
case does serious harm to another.
Anderson goes on to contrast Matthew’s institutional model of church
government, based on power, with John’s family model, based on love, a
model which is pneumatic and egalitarian. His sympathies are clear. As Peter
is given the keys, the beloved disciple is given the mother of Jesus as his trust
(p. 238), part of the family mode. Anderson does grant that his family model
was unstable and had already been abandoned by the author of the Johannine
epistles. He also grants that the evangelist is not engaged in direct polemic
but rather in an intramural, dialectical, subtle effort at correction of the
Matthean Petrine material.
When he comes to John 21:15–17, Anderson grudgingly concedes that
it portrays Peter “as the disciple of primacy” (p. 238). But he prefers to
emphasise that these verses also chide Peter “for a lack of ... sacrificial love,”
a view not false in itself. But he refuses to take the passage as a late
submission to Petrine authority by the surviving remainder of the Johannine

community, after it had been rent by one or several schisms.38 Rather he
takes chap. 21 as part of the total normative gospel, not an appendix which
abandons the anti-Petrinism of chapters 1–20. This compels him to forced
exegesis which underinterprets chap. 21. But this is as nothing in comparison
with his presentation of a detailed critique by John of Matt 16:17–19, in his
chap. 10. Such a detailed critique could only have been undertaken on the
basis of a direct knowledge of Matthew. His chapter 10 completely
undermines Anderson’s view that John did not directly know or use the
Synoptic gospels.
Having sifted through Anderson’s arguments for extreme anti-
Petrinism in John and having found them thought-provoking but
unconvincing, we may now return to our own study of anti-Petrine material
in John.
In John 10:11–13, part of the Good Shepherd discourse, Jesus speaks
of the hired hand who flees the wolf and leaves the sheep. No name of the
hireling is supplied and so the verses could be and are applied to all unfaithful
pastors. Should we see a particular allusion to Peter’s denials (18:15–18,
25–27; 13:38) here? A number of suggestions for the concrete identification
of the hireling have been made in the history of interpretation: the Jewish
opponents of Jesus (John 5:44; 12:43), the Pharisees (7:49; 9:22,34; 12:42);
political leaders (11:48); even Caiphas; Judas (12:6); the church fathers often
made a postoral application to bad and faithless pastors. None, so far as I can
see, made a specific reference to Peter. The tendency of modern
commentators is not to allegorise the details (e.g., the wolf as the devil), but
to see the hireling as a foil for the good shepherd, Jesus.39
The last potentially anti-Petrine passage that we will examine is John
20:1–10. Alerted by Mary Magdalene, Peter and the beloved disciple (BD)
run to the [empty] tomb together. The BD outruns Peter and looks in first,
but does not go in (out of courtesy, he waits for the older man, who arrives
huffing and puffing?). Peter enters and observes. Then the BD enters, “and
he saw and believed” (v. 8). This is not said of Peter. Should we infer that for
the evangelist Peter did not believe in the risen Christ?
After this, Peter is not mentioned by name in the chapter. Narratively,
the reader assumes that he figures among the disciples who receive a visit
from the risen Jesus and who are commissioned, given the Holy Spirit, and
empowered to forgive and to retain sins, and who later tell Thomas about all
of this. There is nothing hostile to Peter in this, unless it be that he is not
singled out as he is in Matthew (cp. Matt 18:18 with Matt 16:17–19). But that
is not the same as saying he does not believe in the risen Christ.
Although some commentators see no anti-Petrine implications in v. 8,

others see an allusion to a certain rivalry between Peter and the BD, that is,
between the later communities that trace their origins to them.40 To be sure,
Peter too is a true Easter witness (20:19–25). But the BD is superior to Peter
not only in arriving first at the tomb but also in believing first, since Peter
remains at that moment at the level of v. 9: “As yet they did not understand
the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” (To be sure, the plural in this
verse presents an obstacle to this reading.) The Johannine community feels
sure that, in the BD, it possesses its own guarantor who stands especially
close to Jesus. There is no blame levelled at Peter, but the BD is set in a more
favourable light, and Peter’s traditional authority or precedence is a bit
diminished. This is so, even though v. 8 plays no further role in the Easter
story.41 Bulgakov’s view that here Peter is shown to be gravely and
permanently defective in faith is however not adequately supported by the
text of chap. 20 as a whole.42
Having now surveyed several chapters of the gospel (1, 6, 10 and 20) for
anti-Petrine, and thus potentially anti-Matthean, material, it is time to draw the
threads together. We have found a real diminishment of Peter’s primary role in
chapters 1 and 20, a diminishment but not a total denial of it. There is no
demonization of Peter. It is not probable that 6:60–71 or 10:11–13 contain anti-
Petrine polemic. We accept Brown’s hypothesis that 21:15–17 represents a
gentle submission by the faithful remnant of the Johannine community to
apostolic authority, at a late stage of the tradition (early second century).
8. In his going beyond the law of talion, the Matthean Jesus teaches:
“If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also” (Matt 5:39b;
Luke 6:29 Q). In John 18:22–23, in the passion narrative, we read: ... one
of the police standing nearby struck Jesus on the face, saying, “Is that how
you answer the high priest?” Jesus answered, “If I have spoken wrongly,
testify to the wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?”
This firm answer can hardly be described as turning the other cheek. If
John does not know the gospel according to Matthew at all or at least not
the teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, no tension arises. But, on the
hypothesis that he did know this, a tension can be noticed. The tension has
been noticed at least since Augustine.43 (A bit later John does pick up the
silence motif briefly (19:9), but then Jesus enters into dialogue with Pilate
(19:10–11).) For John Jesus remains here the revealer who bears witness to
himself, and sets his opponents in the wrong. Jesus speaks out of the
awareness that he is sent into the world to bear witness to the truth (18:37).
Thus John’s theological intentions here are primary.44 Yet a subsidiary
intention to correct Matthew’s teaching as impractical or undignified

cannot be excluded.
9. It has been noticed that both Matthew and John have ten formal Old
Testament quotations.45 Whether this is a pure coincidence or an intentional
effort by John to match and best his junior colleague and rival is not certain.
For G.N. Stanton,
... the differences are more striking than the similarities. The
introductory formulae in John are much more varied. Whereas
only one of Matthew’s formula quotations is found in his passion
narratives (27.9, the burial of Judas), the first does not occur in
John until 12.38. Only half the Johannine quotations are
comments of the evangelist. Rothfuchs (1969, p. 176) has
correctly noted that whereas the Johannine citations set the
‘world’s’ hostile reaction to Jesus and his work in the light of
prophecy, the Matthean quotations portray the person Jesus and
the nature of his sending.
On this view, the fact that each evangelist has ten fulfillment quotations
is a simple coincidence. Yet Matthew and John have one of these ten in
common. Both of them share Zech 9:9 at the triumphal entry of Jesus into
Jerusalem (Matt 21:4–5 and John 12:14–15). In his redaction John makes
several improvements over Matthew: Jesus himself finds the donkey, and
rides on it, not on both the foal and the colt, as Matthew could lead one to
think. The suspicion that John knew Matthew here remains. But the use of
the Old Testament by Matthew and John is a larger issue than we can treat
in an article.
10. For many decades one spoke of Matt 11:27 par Luke 10:22 as a bolt
from the Johannine blue or as a Johannine meteorite that had fallen into the
synoptic pond. This view reversed the chronological order. Matt 11:25–30 is
a crossroads of biblical traditions. The marginal references in Nestle-Aland’s
27th edition of the Greek New Testament to the Old Testament at this point
by no means exhaust the matter. Since at least the beginning of the 20th
century, these verses, and esp. v. 27, have played an ever more important role
in the study of the development of New Testament Christology.46 Harnack
saw in them the start of the road to Nicea.47 All this is more than well known,
though the authenticity of v. 27 is still regularly challenged.48 Less
commonly realized is the background of part of this verse in Dan 7:13–14,
perhaps the most important two verses of the Old Testament for
understanding the mind of both the historical Jesus and the synoptic gospel
tradition. (Nestle-Aland 27 gives no reference to Dan 7:14 here, but it does
give one to Matt 28:18, an important internal parallel, and there one finds
the reference to Daniel.) And behind Dan 7:13–14 there lies, one has
gradually come to realize since the discovery of the royal library at Ugarit
(Ras Shamra, Syria) in the late twenties and their decipherment since the
early thirties of the last century, a basic Canaanite myth. The scene takes
place in heaven, not on earth, both in Daniel and in Ugarit. The vigorous
storm god Baal, the model for Daniel’s “one like a son of man,” has just
triumphed over the evil God Mot (death) or Yamm (sea). He is presented to
the aged and ineffectual (deus otiosus) high god El (in Daniel, the Ancient of
Days). Royal power and authority is then transferred to him. It is a heavenly
scene of royal succession to the throne. (For a Christian version see 1 Cor
15:24–28, where the mythology is cleaned up and the crown rights of God
the Father are maintained intact.) In Matt 11:27 and in 28:18 Jesus claims to
have had the divine kingdom transferred to him. This is the Christological
significance of these verses, and the sense of Jesus’ unique filial
consciousness. Awareness of the Danielic and Canaanite background helps to
understand the strong theological implications of all of this.
If now we return to the start of the preceding paragraph, we see that so
far from being a bolt from the Johannine sky, Matt 11:27 is a/the germ from
which all later Christology, including and especially the Johannine, develops.
The editions list John 10:14–15 and 17:25 as especially close parallels to Matt
11:27. But that only scratches the surface. W.R.G. Loader sees the “central
structure” of Johannine Christology in 3:31–36.49 He summarises this
structure in five points: (1) the reference to Jesus and God as Son and Father;
(2) the Son comes from and returns to the Father; (3) the Father has sent the
Son; (4) the Father has given all things into the Son’s hands; (5) the Son says
and does what the Father has told him; he makes the Father known. Loader
then finds these five elements in eighteen other chapters of the fourth gospel.
(Loader’s effort to relate the central structure to what he calls a Son of Man
cluster is less persuasive, but that is not to our purpose.) The five points
clarify and unfold what is present in Matt 11:27. Thus we may conclude that
the core of Johannine Christology grows out of this verse present in Q,
Matthew and Luke. There is obviously no criticism by John of Matthew
here. If there were one, it might be stated thus: why did you not develop the
implications of your filial Christology yourself? Matthew’s answer might run:
a Christology cut off from its apocalyptic roots, which include a lively hope
for the future full establishment of God’s kingdom on earth, a kingdom
whose ethical content includes (social) justice, peace and joy in the Holy
Spirit (Matt 6:33; Rom 14:17)—such a Christology runs the risk of becoming
an end in itself, something esoteric or at least private and individual (John
14:23), ethically and sociopolitically impoverished. Within the New
Testament canon and the liturgical lectionary the dialectical debate can
continue across the centuries. In this case, it is clear that John takes from
Matthew (Q) and develops the tradition.
11. One of Matthew’s greatest and most influential passages is the great
scene of the last judgement, 25:31–46. A striking element of this scene is that
it is the Son of Man who does the judging (v. 31), and not God the Father,
as is the case in many parallel texts. Here Jesus is portrayed not only as meek
and mild, the friend of sinners (he is that too as identified with the needy),
but as perfectly just, in a system of binary oppositions. One could read Matt
7:21–23 as giving Jesus the subsidiary role of counsel for the defence in the
court of his heavenly father.50 If so, Jesus no longer enjoys that role in
25:31–46. He has become the judge himself. (This severe role of Christ is
expressed in the apsidal mosaics at Daphne near Athens and at Cefalu. It
caused frightened consciences to turn from Christ to Mary as advocate.)
John was probably not happy about this bold Matthean development. And so
he writes: “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world,
but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe
in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned
already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God”
(John 3:17–18). Thus the judgement occurs without anyone being
responsible except the one condemned. But another shuffle occurs in 5:22
which brings us back to Matthew: “The Father judges no one but has given
all judgement to the Son.” What should we make of this? These are not the
only Johannine statements on judgement. To discuss them all would take us
too far afield. Let us content ourselves with two remarks. (1) As can be seen
in John 3:16, the predominant accent in John is on salvation, on God’s will
to save as many as possible. Yet the tragic note, that some prefer the darkness
to the light, is not excluded (e.g., 1:10–11; 14:17). (2) John, with his interest
in high Christology based on the Danielic Son of Man, could not let himself
be outdone by Matthew in this matter. So the Son has power to judge (5:17).
But he uses it mainly to give life (5:16). The two verses (5:16 and 17) should
not be separated or played off against one another.
12. Our last case has been reserved for this position because it
illustrates so well the positive side of the Matthew–John relationship. It is a
sort of happy ending that goes beyond Johannine Matthew-tweaking. We

begin with a short Q-saying: “A disciple is not above the teacher, but
everyone who is fully qualified will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40). This
verse, fine as it is, was quickly felt to be inadequately formulated, since it
implies an eventual equality between disciple and teacher. This might do for
the rabbis, and also for the Gnostics, but it would plainly not do for
Christians who accepted the permanent lordship of Jesus Christ. As for the
Gnostics, in the Gospel of Thomas 13, Jesus says to Thomas, “I am not your
master, because you drank and became drunken from the bubbling spring
which I have measured out.” The sense of this is that, in the Gnostic
soteriology, once the Revealer has ignited the divine spark in the believer’s
heart, the believer becomes himself divine and has no further need of the
Revealer. This renders superfluous the permanent lordship of Jesus Christ.
Matthew therefore quickly corrected the dangerous formulation: “A disciple
is not above the teacher, nor a slave above his master (kyrios, lord). It is enough
for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the slave like his master (kyrios, lord)”
(Matt 10:24–25a). By his two additions and the rewriting of Luke 6:40b,
Matthew has made the teaching fit with the Christian conviction of the
permanent lordship of Christ.51 (Matthew later reinforces this teaching with
his peculiar view that Christians have only one teacher, the Christ (Matt
23:8–10).52 This does not however prevent the presence in the Matthean
community of prophets, sages, and scribes who serve as its educated leaders
(Matt 23:34; 13:52; 10:40–41).) Now we come to John. He takes up this
matter twice. In 13:13 and 16 he first picks up the Matthean addition: “You
call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right for that is what I am ... a servant
is not greater than his master (kyriou), nor is a messenger (apostolos) greater
than the one who sent him.” He has dropped any mention of the disciple—
the start of the chain of this tradition in Luke (Q?), retained the
Christological accent, as one would expect him to do, and, surprisingly,
introduced the word apostle, its only appearance in his gospel. (Translators
and commentators try to minimise its significance in John. I am not so sure
that this is right, but that is not our present concern.) Later John goes further
than his predecessors. “You are my friends if you do what I command you. I
do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what
his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known
to you everything (!?) that I have heard from my Father” (John 15:14–15).
First, we note with regret that these verses could be twisted back into a
Gnostic sense if one were so minded, and if one ignored the context. The
following verses make clear that Jesus is still lord. But, next, and far more
important, by dropping the slave language, inherited from Matthew, and
replacing it with friend language, John has made an important contribution

to Christian ecclesiology. Too much slave language could have negative side
effects: it could keep believers in a state of immaturity, and it lends itself to
abuse by leaders of cults and sects. By moving to the language of friendship,
John has helped to develop a more adult form of Christianity, without in any
way abandoning the lordship of Christ. This is even more important for
Christians who live in democratic, semi-egalitarian societies than it was for
the evangelist and his readers. With regard to our theme, we can see that
here John neither polemicizes against Matthew nor teases him. He rather
thoughtfully takes up the Matthean tradition and develops and improves it
further, in such a way that, so I would like to think, Matthew would have
heartily approved. This is the most positive way that John used Matthew.
CONCLUSION
The intention of these wide-ranging observations has been to explore

(they are no more than explorations, probes) John’s hypothetical but
probable use of Matthew. We have seen the full gamut, from flat
contradiction (Elijah and John the Baptist), to restrained criticism and
diminishment (the primacy of Peter), to subtle nuance and refinement (the
light of the world), up to and including acceptance and development
(disciples as slaves and friends). There is conflict and polemic within the
canon of the New Testament, as F.C. Baur taught. But it is mostly like the
conflicts in a good marriage. The partners know how far to go and when to
stop.53 And a marriage (and the canon) are not only conflict. There is also
some harmony and mutual support.
This is a study in what is nowadays, thanks to Julia Kristeva, called
intertextuality.54 That is, one looks for John’s relation to his predecessors,
the synoptics, and the Hebrew Scriptures. One can also read this study as an
illustration of the early reception history of Matthew: how did a community
with its own independent traditions, reflections, ecclesiology, eschatology, its
own preferences, react to Matthew, from their viewpoint a dangerously
popular gospel?55 We have seen that their reaction was one of critical
discrimination and sifting, but not of total rejection. For this, by the time of
chapter 21, it was too late.
This study can also be seen as a contribution to early Christian
canonical criticism. Though this point has not yet been explicitly developed,
hints have been provided that Matthew is the gospel for hearty extroverts,
not above stepping on a few toes, whereas John is the gospel for sensitive
introverts, in that sense too a contemplative gospel. The ultimate choice in
church structure, it has been suggested,56 in the quest for post-apostolic

authority and decision making, was and remains between pneumatical,
unstructured John and legally organized Matthew, whose firm structure is
tempered by appeals to the leaders to be humble (Matt 18 and 23), a form of
self-policing, the best kind of policing when it works. John 21:15–17
represents an admission that the Johannine way does not provide enough
safeguards and definition to prevent major schisms, and an ultimate
submission to the Matthean model. This submission, or capitulation, with
due precautions (the stress on love in 21:15–17), means that the gospel of
John is usually read in the churches in a Matthean ecclesial frame and in a
Lucan liturgical frame (the main liturgical calendar is heavily determined by
Luke).57 John continues to provide powerful guidance for theology,
christology, pneumatology, for sacraments and spirituality (14:23), but is
normally felt to be ethically poorer than Matthew. At first the gospels may
seem impractical and unreal, but with time one sees that, when sanely
understood and read canonically, so that they mutually qualify one another,
their wisdom and respective truth shine forth. As a corrective to romantic
idealist interpretations of the gospels, which are impossible to live in the long
run, it is also important to read the gospels in the context of Old Testament
and rabbinic Judaism, with their Mediterranean earthiness, ethical sobriety,
their interest in the rule of law, their love of life, the whole infused by a kind
of biblical Stoicism, minus the pantheism. However that may be, we hope to
have given the reader a sample of the many-sided dynamics of John’s use of
Matthew.
NOTES
1. Percival GARDNER-SMITH, Saint John and the Synoptic Gospels (Cambridge:

University Press, 1938); this view is then defended by C.H. DODD, Historical Tradition in
the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: University Press, 1963); this view, that John does not know
the three synoptic gospels directly, but only synoptic-like traditions, whether oral or
written, is held also by R. Bultmann, R.E. Brown, and F.J. Moloney. One could speak of a
consensus in the 1950s and 60s, with notable exceptions like C.K. Barrett. On Gardner-
Smith, see the essay by J. VERHEYDEN, “P. Gardner-Smith and ‘The Turn of the Tide’”,
in Adelbert Denaux, ed., John and the Synoptics, (BETL 101; Leuven: Leuven
University/Peeters 1992), pp. 423–452.
2. Clement of Alexandria, Hypotyposeis (a lost work), cited in Eusebius, The
Ecclesiastical History 3.24.7–13, eds. K. Lake, J.E.L. Oulton, and H.J. Lawlor, Loeb
Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926–1932), pp. 46–49. On the
patristic views and the whole issue, see D. Moody SMITH, John among the Gospels
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992); also Helmut MERKEL, Die Widersprüche zwischen den
Evangelien (WUNT 13); Tübingen: Mohr, 1971.
3. On the Tübingen school, see Stephen NEILL, The Interpretation of the New
Testament 1861–1961 (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 1–103; W.G. KÜMMEL, The
New Testament: The History of the Investigation of Its Problems (Nashville: Abingdon, 1972),
pp. 120–205; I discuss the theological problem in “Social World and Community
Leadership: the Case of Matthew 23.1–12,34,” JSNT 39 (1990) 3–21.
4. See note 2 above.
5. See note 1 above.
6. Hans WINDISCH, Johannes und die Synoptiker: Wollte der vierte Evangelist die älteren
Evangelien ergänzen oder ersetzen? (Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 12; Leipzig:
J.C. Hinrichs, 1926).
7. This paragraph represents my reflection on the material presented by D.M.
SMITH, John among the Gospels, pp. 29–30.
8. R.H. LIGHTFOOT, The Gospel Message of St. Mark (Oxford: University Press, 1950),
pp. 18–19, 33; also, E.K. Lee, “St Mark and the Fourth Gospel,” NTS 3 (1956/57) 50–55,
is good on the relation between John and Mark; on how John’s Christology is an
outgrowth or radical development of Q, see W.R.G. LOADER, “The Central Structure of
Johannine Christology,” NTS 30 (1984) 188–216, esp. pp. 204–208; on the theological
issues involved, see J.D.G. DUNN, “John and the Synoptics as a Theological Question”, in
Exploring the Gospel of John (D.M. Smith FS), eds. R.A. Culpepper and C.C. Black
(Louisville KY: WJK, 1996), pp. 301–313.
9. On John’s relation to Luke, see, among other works, Emile OSTY, “Les points de
contact entre le récit de la passion dans Saint Luc et dans Saint Jean,” in Mélanges J.
Lebreton, RSR 39 (1951) 146–151; M.-E. BOISMARD, “Saint Luc et la rédaction du
quatrieme evangile (Jn, iv, 46–54),” RB 69 (1962) 185–211; Hans KLEIN, “Die lukanisch-
johanneische Passionstradition,” ZNW 67 (1976) 155–186; J.A. BAILEY, The Traditions
Common to the Gospels of Luke and John. NovTSup 7; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1963; F.L. CRIBBS,
“St. Luke and the Johannine Tradition,” JBL 90 (1971) 422–450; CRIBBS, “A Study of the
Contacts That Exist Between St. Luke and St. John,” Society of Biblical Literature: 1973
Seminar Papers (Cambridge MA: Society of Biblical Literature, 1973), 2.1–93; CRIBBS,
“The Agreements That Exist Between Luke and John,” Society of Biblical Literature: 1979
Seminar Papers (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1979), 1. 215–261; Anton DAUER, Johannes
und Lukas: Untersuchungen zu den johannisch-lukanischen Parallelperikopen Joh 4,46–54/Luk
7;1–10 — Joh 12,1–81/Lk 7,36–50; 10,38–42 — Joh 20,19–29/Lk 24,36–49 (FB 50;
Würzburg: Echter, 1984); M.-E. BOISMARD, Comment Luc a remanié l’Evangile de Jean (Cah
RB 51; Paris: Gabalda, 2001); Manfred LANG, Johannes und die Synoptiker: Eine
redaktionsgeschichtliche Analyse von Joh 18–20 vor dem markinischen und lukanischen
Hintergrund (FRLANT 182; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998).
10. See for example P.N. ANDERSON, The Christology of the Fourth Gospel: Its Unity and
Disunity in the Light of John 6 (WUNT.II; Tübingen: Mohr, 1996), esp. pp. 221–251; James
Pain and Nicholas Zernov, eds., A Bulgakov Anthology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976).
On the other hand, for W.O. Walker, “The Lord’s Prayer in Matthew and John”, NTS 28
(1982) 237–256, John 17 is a respectful midrash on the Matthean form of the Our Father.
This fits to a large extent with my view of the John–Matthew relationship. Cp. Eric
FRANKLIN, Luke: Interpreter of Paul, Critic of Matthew (JSNTSS 92; Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1994). T.L. BRODIE, The Quest for the Origin of John’s Gospel: A Source-
Oriented Approach (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993), undertakes a thorough study of
John’s use of Matthew. My article is independent of his study.
11. B.T. VIVIANO, “The Structure of the Prologue of John (1:1–18): A Note,” RB 105
(1998) 176–184.
12. Rudolf SMEND, Die Bundesformel (ThStud 68; Zurich: TVZ, 1963); Klaus
BALTZER, The Covenant Formulary in Old Testament, Jewish, and Early Christian Writings
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971); D.J. McCARTHY, Old Testament Covenant (Richmond VA:
John Knox, 1972); Rolf RENDTORFF, Die “Bundesformel” (SBS 160; Stuttgart: Katholisches
Bibelwerk, 1995), English translation: The Covenant Formula (Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark/New York: Continuum, 2001).
13. R.E. BROWN, “Incidents That Are Units in the Synoptic Gospels but Dispersed in
St. John,” CBQ 23 (1961) 143–160; reprinted in Brown, New Testament Essays (Milwaukee:
Bruce, 1965), chap. II, pp. 192–213.
14. Jean GALOT, “Etre né de Dieu”: Jean 1,13 (An Bib 37; Rome: Biblical Institute,
1969).
15. Hannah ARENDT, On Revolution (New York: Viking, 1963); ARENDT, The Human
Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1958), esp. pp. 175–181.
16. Rudolf SCHNACKENRURG, The Gospel according to St John (New York: Seabury,
1980). 2:191–192.
17. On Elijah’s role in eschatological hopes, see B.T. VIVIANO, “The Least in the
Kingdom: Matthew 11:11, Its Parallel in Luke 7:28 (Q), and Daniel 4:14,” CBQ 62 (2000)
41–54.
18. Rudolf SCHNACKENBURG, The Gospel according to John (New York: Seabury, 1968),
1:288–290; Georg RICHTER, “Bist Du Elias; Joh 1:21,” BZ 6 (1962) 79–92, 238–256; 7
(1963) 63–80; J.A.T. ROBINSON, “Elijah, John and Jesus: An Essay in Detection,” NTS 4
(1957–58) 263–281, repr. in ROBINSON, Twelve NT Studies (SBT 34; London: SCM, 1962),
pp. 28–52.
19. Jürgen BECKER, Das Evangelism nach Johannes (3rd ed.; Gütersloh:
Mohn/Würzburg: Echter, 1991; 1st ed. 1979), 1.113–114.
20. DODD, Historical Tradition, pp. 295–299.
21. Jean DANIÉLOU, Holy Pagans in the Old Testament (London: Longmans/Baltimore:
Helicon, 1956); idem, Jean-Baptiste témoin de l’Angeau (Paris: Seuil, 1964); Sebastian
BROCK, “The Baptist’s Diet in Syriac Sources,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 54 (1970)
113–124.
22. Ernst KÄSEMANN, The Testament of Jesus: A Study of the Gospel of John in the Light of
Chapter 17 (London: SCM, 1968).
23. See the essay by R.E. BROWN referred to in note 13 herein; also C.H. DODD,
Historical Tradition, pp. 65–81.
24. C.K. BARRETT, Essays on John (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1982), pp. 19–36 =
“‘The Father is greater than I’ John 14:28: Subordinationist Christology in the New
Testament,” in Neues Testament und Kirche, Festschrift für Rudolf Schnackenburg (Freiburg:
Herder, 1974).
25. John 4:34; 5:23,24,30,37; 6:38,39,44; 7:16,18,28,33; 8:16,18,26,29; 9:4;
12:44,45,49; 13:20; 14:24; 15:21; 16:5.
26. 5:30; 7:17,28; 8:28,42; 12:49; 14:10.
27. C.K. BARRETT, Essays on John, pp. 1–18, first appeared in La Notion Biblique de
Dieu, ed. J. Coppens (Gembloux: Duculot, 1976).
28. B.T. VIVIANO, “The Historical Jesus and the Biblical and Pharisaic Sabbath (Mark
2:23–28; 3:1–6 parr; Luke 13:10–17; 14:1–6),” paper presented to the task force on the
historical Jesus of the Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1999, forthcoming in a

book on pronouncement stories edited by G.E. Sterling; Sven-Olav BACK, Jesus of
Nazareth and the Sabbath Commandment (Åbo/Turku, Finland: Åbo Akademi Press, 1995).
29. Frans NEIRYNCK, “Jesus and the Sabbath: Some Observations on Mk II,27,” in
Jésus aux origines de la christologie, ed. Jacques Dupont (Gembloux: Duculot, 1975), pp.
227–270.
30. Mathatias TSEVAT, “The Basic Meaning of the Biblical Sabbath,” ZAW 84 (1972)
447–459.
31. SCHNACKENBURG, John, 2–101, and n. 27, stresses not so much God’s sustaining
in being of his creation as his continual moral activity of judging, i.e., rewarding and
punishing. In the Letter of Aristeas, no. 210, both ideas are present (Charlesworth, OTP
2.26): “God is continually at work in everything and is omniscient, ... man cannot hide
from him an unjust deed or an evil action.” Cf. also Philo, Leg. All. 1.5. For J. Becker, Ev
Jn, in loco, the sense is exclusively Christological: because God judges, Jesus judges.
Concern for the sabbath has been left in the dust, on this view. Becker’s view seems one-
sided to the present writer, who still holds that John had an ontological view of God as lord
of his creation, shepherd of created being.
32. B.T. VIVIANO, “Peter as Jesus’ Mouth: Matthew 16.13–20 in the Light of Exodus
4.10–17 and Other Models,” in The Interpretation of Scripture in Early Judaism and
Christianity: Studies in Language and Tradition, ed. C.A. Evans (JSP 33; Sheffield: Academic
Press, 2000), pp. 312–341. An earlier form is available in the SBL Seminar Papers 1998,
pp. 226–252.
33. Franz DVORNIK, The Idea of Apostolicity and the Legend of the Apostle Andrew
(Cambridge. MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1958), pp. 138–299.
34. On how this material came to be in the epilogue, see R.E. BROWN, The Community
of the Beloved Disciple (New York: Paulist, 1979). For a harsh alternative view, see A.J.
DROGE, “The Status of Peter in the Fourth Gospel: John 18:10–11,” JBL 109 (1990)
307–311; A.H. MAYNARD, “The Role of Peter in the Fourth Gospel,” NTS 30 (1984)
531–549.
35. P.N. ANDERSON, The Christology of the Fourth Gospel (cf. n. 10), p. 226. Emphasis in
the original.
36. ANDERSON, Christology, p. 232.
37. Pietr Oktaba is soon to defend a dissertation on this pericope at the university of
Fribourg under my direction.
38. R.E. BROWN, Community.
39. SCHNACKENBURG and BECKER, in loco.
40. For Schnackenburg there is no rivalry here. For BECKER, pp. 722–723, there is
some.
41. BECKER, pp. 722–723.
42. PAIN and ZERNOV, Bulgakov Anthology (see note 10 herein).
43. AUGUSTINE, In Joannem, tract. 113.4 (CC 639).
44. SCHNACKENRURG, John (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 3, in loco, on John 18:23.
45. G.N. Stanton, A Gospel for a New People: Studies in Matthew (Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark, 1992), p. 363; Wolfgang ROTHFUCHS, Die Erfüllungszitate des Matthäus-Evangeliums
(BWANT 88; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1969), p. 176. One could add Dodd’s treatment in
his Historical Tradition, pp. 41n, 47, 58n, 155; M.J.J. MENKEN, Old Testament Quotations in
the Fourth Gospel: Studies in Textual Form (Kampen, NL: Kok-Pharos, 1996).
46. See the works by O. CULLMANN, The Christology of the New Testament (London:
SCM, 1959); R.H. FULLER, The Foundations of New Testament Christology (London:
Lutterworth, 1965); J.D.G. DUNN, Christology in the Making (Philadelphia: Westminster,
1980); R.H. Fuller and Pheme PERKINS, Who Is This Christ? (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983);
Walter KASPER, Jesus the Christ (New York: Paulist, 1976), esp. pp. 104–111.
47. Adolf HARNACK, The Sayings of Jesus (London: Williams and Norgate, 1908), pp.
272–310, esp. 300; I have attempted analyses in Study as Worship (SJLA 26; Leiden: Brill,
1978), pp. 182–192 and in my commentary on Matthew, NJBC, in loco; cf. also B.T.
VIVIANO, “The Historical Jesus in the Doubly Attested Sayings,” RB 103 (1996) 367–410,
esp. pp. 402–405.
48. Paul HOFFMANN, Studien zur Theologie der Logienquelle (NTAbh 111 8; Münster:
Aschendorff, 1972), pp. 102–142, esp. p. 118. He is followed by others, while others
disagree. For further references, see RB 103 (1996) 403, n. 58.
49. W.R.G. LOADER, “The Central Structure of Johannine Christology,” NTS 30
(1984) 188–216, esp. pp. 191–192 and 196.
50. H.D. BETZ, Essays on the Sermon on the Mount (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), chap.
7, pp. 125–157; J.J. COLLINS, Daniel (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), pp.
274–324, esp. pp. 286–294, on the Canaanite-Ugaritic background, and the excursus, pp.
304–310. On Matt 25:31–46, a recent essay is by Ulrich Luz, “The Final Judgment (Matt
25:31–46): An Exercise in ‘History of Influence’ Exegesis”, in Treasures New and Old, ed.
D.R. Bauer and M.A. Powell (Atlanta: Scholars, 1996), pp. 271–310.
51. VIVIANO, Study as Worship, pp. 167–171.
52. VIVIANO, “Social World and Community Leadership” (see note 3 herein).
53. Ernst KÄSEMANN, “The Canon of the New Testament and the Unity of the
Church,” in his Essays on New Testament Themes (SBT 41; London: SCM, 1964), pp.
95–107; Hans Kung, The Council in Action (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1963), pp. 159–195.
54. See C.M. TUCKETT, ed. The Scriptures in the Gospels (Leuven: University
Press/Peeters, 1997), p. 4, where Tuckett traces the term to Julia KRISTEVA, Semiotiké
(Paris, 1969); La révolution du langage poétique (Paris, 1974); Roland BARTHES, S/Z, Essais
(Paris, 1970).
55. Étienne MASSAUX, L’influence de l’Évangile de saint Matthieu sur la littérature
chrétienne avant saint Irénée (Louvain: University Press, 1950); English translation: The
Influence of the Gospel of Matthew on Christian Literature before Saint Irenaeus, ed. A.J.
Bellinzoni (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1993).
56. R.E. BROWN, The Churches the Apostles Left Behind (New York: Paulist, 1984).
57. Klaus SCHOLTISSEK, “Kinder Gottes und Freunde Jesu: Beobachtungen zur
johanneischen Ekklesiologie”, in Ekklesiologie des Neuen Testaments (FS Karl Kertelge), eds.
Rainer Kampling u. Thomas Söding (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder 1996), pp. 184–211, corrects
Brown a bit. He argues that John ch. 21 is not simply a capitulation of the Johannine
Christians to the overwhelming hierarchy of offices of the Great Church (the Johannine
“we” betrays an “official” self-understanding), but a reminder that official preaching must
be bound to personal familiarity and love of the unique exegete of God (1:18; 13:23), Jesus
Christ (p. 211).
STEVEN J. FRIESEN
Myth and Symbolic Resistance in Revelation 13
T he goal of this article is to examine the use of myth in Revelation 13. I

contend that John drew on a range of mythic traditions from Jewish and
Gentile sources. Comparisons with the use of myth in other apocalyptic texts
and in imperial cult settings lead to the conclusion that John deployed myths
in creative and disorienting ways for the purpose of alienating his audiences
from mainstream society. In other words, he engaged in symbolic resistance,
by which I do not mean hopeless support for a lost cause but rather the
dangerous deployment of myths in defense of a minority viewpoint in a
particular social context. In order to get to that conclusion, however, I must
explain what I mean by myth, lay out comparative material from the
mythology of imperial cults in Asia, and then examine the use of myth in
Revelation 13.
I. R E M Y T H O L O G I Z I N G S T U D I E S OF THE BOOK OF R E V E L AT I O N
The starting point for the argument is a simple observation: myth has
almost disappeared as an interpretive category in studies of the book of
Revelation. The last sightings were recorded in the 1970s by Adela Yarbro
Collins and John Court.1 One reason the category has gone into hiding is
fairly obvious: in colloquial speech, “myth” normally has a pejorative
From Journal of Biblical Literature 123 (2004). © 2004 The Society of Biblical Literature.
Note: For printing purposes, the figures as well as the greek text in this essay have been
removed.
247
248 Steven J. Friesen
meaning, referring to “an unfounded or false notion;” “a person or thing

having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence.”2
There are also more serious and more subtle reasons for our lack of
attention to myth in Revelation. One is that myth has often been portrayed
as a primitive attempt at scientific thought. This view of myth grew out of
Europe’s colonial encounter with other parts of the world. Myth was not
thought to be inherent in the Christian tradition, or at least not a crucial part
of the tradition; it belonged instead to the religious life of conquered,
“primitive” peoples.3 This imperial, evolutionary view of the world
permeated the Western academy and can be seen in such landmarks of
twentieth-century biblical studies as Rudolf Bultmann’s project of
demythologizing. Demythologization was based on the assumption that
myth was a primitive worldview that had been superseded by Western
science.
According to mythological thinking, God has his domicile in

heaven. What is the meaning of this statement? The meaning is
quite clear. In a crude manner it expresses the idea that God is
beyond the world, that He is transcendent. The thinking that is not
yet capable of forming the abstract idea of transcendence expresses its
intention in the category of space....4
The waning of interest in myth in studies of Revelation precisely in the

late 1970s, however, was due to another, related reason: the growing
international dominance of the United States after World War II and the
resulting dominance of American academic concerns. Prior to World War II,
European scholarship controlled the disciplines of biblical studies and
comparative religion. Ivan Strenski argued that fundamental theories of
myth from that period—especially those of Ernst Cassirer, Bronislaw
Malinowski, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Mircea Eliade—were constructed on
the basis of specific European concerns.5 He showed that their theories of
myth all grappled in different ways with primitivist sentiments in Europe
during the first half of the twentieth century. The theories of myth that they
developed responded to contemporary political and nationalistic claims
about national identity and the attachment of a particular Volk to their
homeland.6
After World War II, dominance in the international economy, politics,
and culture shifted from Europe to the United States, and the intellectual
center of gravity in NT studies slowly shifted as well.7 Dominant culture in
the United States, however, is predicated on the dislocation and/or
decimation of native populations. So theories of myth that wrestled with

European nationalisms and ancestral connections to land were clearly out of
place in this country, where discontinuity with native populations and the
seizure of their land are crucial aspects of national identity.8 American
society and economy have been predicated on the eradication of native
populations and their “primitive myths,” and so American scholarship has
not generally focused on mythology.
In the decades of American dominance in the discipline, studies on
Revelation (and NT studies generally) turned instead toward functional
descriptions of churches in their social settings, or toward literary analyses of
the texts them selves. Neither approach paid much attention to mythology,9
and this seems to involve a fourth factor. Myth has often been portrayed as a
static phenomenon that is inherently conservative and discourages people
from trying to change unjust conditions in this world. Apocalyptic
mythology in particular has been described as having an “otherworldly
orientation” that results in the renunciation of responsible historical action,
all of which runs contrary to popular notions in the United States about
participation in a democratic society.10 Since the abandonment of myth as an
analytical category, “ideology” has sometimes been chosen as a framework
for such discussions, but I am more suspicious of this category than I am of
myth.11 The main problem with ideology as an analytical tool is that it was
fashioned in the late nineteenth century for the analysis of modern Western
industrial societies in which the organization of religion and society is very
different from that of the ancient Mediterranean world.12 A good deal of
work has advanced the conceptualization of ideology in the meantime,13 but
on the whole ideology has been more helpful in analyzing recent historical
periods.
A second problem with ideology as a category for our investigation is
that it is rarely used with any precision in NT studies,14 even though the
meaning of the term is a matter of wide-ranging debate.15 This is
disconcerting, because particular theories of religion—mostly pejorative—
are implicit in the term, depending on how it is defined. Most popular and
classical usages of the term presuppose that ideology, and hence religion, is a
set of false beliefs that mystify “real” social relations in such a way as to
perpetuate oppression.16 I am quite willing to admit that such theories might
provide appropriate starting points for the analysis of Revelation. They
should not, however, be a presumed and covert starting point. An overt
explanation and defense are necessary.
Thus, the value of the concept ideology for analysis of ancient societies
such as those that made up the Roman empire is questionable. My
alternative—focusing on myth rather than on ideology—does not solve all

these problems, but it does have certain advantages. One is that the modern
term “myth” developed as a way of discussing narratives in societies with
nonindustrial economies, which should make it more applicable to the
Roman empire and its agrarian society. Another advantage is that the study
of myth originated in disciplined cross-cultural and historical studies. Thus,
myth should have more potential as a theoretical tool for describing first-
century topics.
This leaves one last preliminary matter: What do I mean by myth? Five
descriptive comments about myth are important for my argument. First,
myths are “the stories that everyone knows and the stories that everyone has
heard before.”17 This axiom includes several points that do not require
elaboration: myths are narratives; they are shared by an identifiable group
(the “everyone” in the quotation); and the story lines are not new.
Second, myths can be distinguished from other stories because they
have a special priority for a group of people. Wendy Doniger put it this way:
My own rather cumbersome definition of a myth is: a narrative in

which a group finds, over an extended period of time, a shared
meaning in certain questions about human life, to which the
various proposed answers are usually unsatisfactory in one way or
another. These would be questions such as, Why are we here?
What happens to us when we die? Is there a God?18
Thus, the reason that myths are familiar is that they express a particular value
or insight that a group finds relevant across time, and so the stories are told
repeatedly. In the case of Revelation, the myths tend to address questions
such as, Why do the righteous suffer? What is the ultimate fate of people and
institutions?
Third, myths often appear to be variants either of other myths from the
same social group or of myths told by other groups. This has led some
scholars to use myth to refer to an abstract story line that explains the variants
(or the cross-cultural comparisons). I prefer to call this abstract story line a
“mythic pattern” rather than a myth in order to promote clarity in the
discussion and to emphasize the point that the abstracted pattern is a heuristic
device created by analysts but seldom (perhaps never) occurring in the wild.19
Fourth, the function of myth in which I am most interested is the way
that myths are deployed in particular historical and social settings. A mythic
pattern is flexible and is never narrated the same way twice. Sometimes the
narrations of the same story line can even contradict each other.20 This
implies that myths are not static and timeless, nor do they always support
dominant social interests. While myths are often deployed to support the
status quo, they can also be used to resist dominant discourse or to develop
alternative strategies.21 In fact, they are sometimes a crucial component of
symbolic resistance.
Fifth and finally, myths are part of an interdependent system with three
important components: myths, rituals, and social structures. Myths and
rituals are “supple, versatile, and potent instruments that people produce,
reproduce, and modify, and instruments they use—with considerable but
imperfect skill and strategic acumen—to produce, reproduce, and modify
themselves and the groups in which they participate.”22 So changes in a
myth, a ritual, or a social hierarchy will have repercussions, eliciting
modifications in the other two components. In other words, we are dealing
with aspects of a discursive system involving “triadic co-definition ... in
which a social group, a set of ritual performances, and a set of mythic
narratives produce one another.”23
Together, these five points provide a framework for comparing the use
of myth in Rev 13 with mythic methods in other apocalyptic texts and in
imperial cult settings. Since there is very little discussion in the secondary
literature about imperial cult mythology, an overview of myth, ritual, and
society in imperial cults of Asia is a necessary first step.
II. T H E D E P L O Y M E N T OF MYTH IN I M P E R I A L C U LT S
Imperial cult mythology was an important resource for the use of myth
in Rev 13. This section provides a survey of the use of myth in imperial cult
settings in Asia as comparative material for an examination of Rev 13. The
crucial questions here are how myth was used and who used it in these ways.
I answer these questions with selected imperial cult from examples Miletos,
Aphrodisias, and Ephesos.24
The Miletos example shows how local mythologies were incorporated
into imperial cult ritual settings in order to support the social structure of
Roman hegemony. This reconfiguration of myth and ritual suggested that
divine punishment of evildoers was meted out by Roman imperial
authorities. The example comes from the courtyard of the Miletos
bouleuterion.25 A bouleuterion was a crucial building in a Greco-Roman city
and a quintessential expression of ancient “democracy,” which primarily
involved a small number of wealthy elite men.26
Of interest to us are the ruins found about a century ago in the courtyard
of the bouleuterion. These ruins came from a structure built later than the rest
of the complex. Klaus Tuchelt compared these ruins with other structures and
showed that the building in the courtyard was a platform for an altar. The
platform had decorated walls on all four sides, with access via a wide staircase
on the side facing the bouleuterion. The design and ornamentation of the
platform altar are of a type widely associated with imperial cult shrines, a type
influenced heavily by the Augustan Ara Pacis in Rome.27 Fragmentary
inscriptions from the propylon of the bouleuterion allowed Tuchelt to identify
the structure in the courtyard as an imperial cult altar.28
The sculptures from the walls of this altar platform provide rare
surviving examples of the use of myth in an imperial cult setting. The
external walls of the altar platform contained twelve sculptures.29 Only a few
pieces of the twelve sculptures were found, so we cannot say what the overall
sculptural program might have been. The extant fragments of four
identifiable scenes show that local mythology regarding justice and
vengeance predominated. Leto and her twins Apollo and Artemis appear in
three of the four scenes as examples of local versions of Panhellenic myths.30
One scene is so severely damaged that it is clear only from analogous
sculptures that it portrays Apollo with a bow. A second scene appears in two
examples: Leto sits on her throne with water nymphs from the Mykale
mountain range at her feet (left); Apollo and Artemis (right) stand in her
presence.31 A third scene, again quite damaged, portrays Artemis shooting
the giant Tityos in order to stop him from raping her mother Leto at Delphi.
The rest of the story is not pictured (as far as we know): as punishment,
Tityos was pegged to the ground in Tartarus, where vultures feasted on his
liver. The fourth scene changes characters but not themes: the twin founders
of Miletos, Pelias and Neleus, avenge their mother, Tyro, by killing her evil
stepmother, Sidero, even though Sidero had fled to the temple of Hera for
protection.
Given our incomplete knowledge of the Miletos altar and its
sculptures, it is important not to make too much of this evidence. But it is
equally important not to make too little of it. If the interpretations of the
remains are accurate (and I think they are), we have a good example of local
mythology appropriated to support Roman imperialism in a specific setting.
New imperial cult rituals were grafted onto the municipal rituals already
established for city governance of Miletos, and local myths were used to
provide the narrative. By visually “retelling” the mythic stories of Miletos in
this ritual setting, their meaning was altered to reflect and to promote a
particular social hierarchy. The local stories of vengeance and divine
judgment upon evildoers were deployed to support Roman rule and the
collaboration of the local elites (the boule¯ ) with Rome.
An implication of this conclusion is that we should not expect to find a

homogeneous, unified mythology of imperial cults. The ways these myths
were articulated in Miletos would have been inappropriate or irrelevant in
Alexandria, Damascus, or Trier. There might be a consistent mythic pattern
that we can discern, but many inconsistent stories were deployed to support
Roman imperialism in various places.
The south portico of the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias is our second
example. It illustrates the reworking of local myth in imperial cult settings,
the mythologization of the emperor and imperial violence, and imperial
propaganda about the pacification of land and sea. The Sebasteion complex
consists of a long narrow courtyard (ca. 14 x 90 m) surrounded by four
buildings: a propylon on the small west side; a temple on the east side (raised
on a platform and approached by a monumental stairway); and three-story
porticoes on the north and south sides. The identification of the Sebasteion
as an imperial cult site is secure, for inscriptions on the buildings have
dedications, “To Aphrodite, to the Gods Sebastoi, and to the demos of the
Aphrodisians.”32 Pieces of another inscription indicate that the temple itself
was dedicated at least to Tiberius and to Livia.33
Most of the evidence for the use of myth at the Sebasteion comes from
the porticoes, for these were lined with sculptural reliefs on their second and
third stories.34 The south portico is more important for the purposes of this
study, for the portico’s third floor held a series of forty-five panels that dealt
with the emperors in mythic terms, and the second floor displayed a series of
forty-five scenes from standard mythic narratives. Together, these provide an
impressive example of the use of myth in an imperial cult precinct.
From the third floor of the south portico, more than one-third of the
panels with imperial figures have been found and their approximate original
locations can be determined.35 Four of the eleven extant panels merit
discussion in this context. Two of these four panels depict emperors
defeating regions on the margins of the empire. In one scene, the victory of
Claudius over Britannia (43 C.E.) is portrayed in the following way. The
emperor is nude in the style of a hero or god, while Britannia is rendered as
an amazon. Claudius has pinned her to the ground. His left hand grasps her
hair and pulls back her head, and his right hand holds a spear (now missing)
poised for the fatal blow.36 The second panel retells Nero’s victories over
Armenia (54 C.E.). On this panel the emperor is also a heroic nude figure and
the opponent an amazon. The composition, however, alludes to the specific
iconography of Achilles killing Penthesilea, the queen of the amazons.37
A model developed by Bruce Lincoln helps us describe the deployment
of myth in these two scenes. His model contained four kinds of stories—
fable, legend, history, and myth—and compared them in terms of truth

claims, credibility, and authority.38
Truth claims Credibility Authority

Fable No No No
Legend Yes No No
History Yes Yes No
Myth Yes Yes Yes
Using these categories we can describe at least three ways in which

people use myths and related narratives.39
1. Downgrading a myth to the status of history or legend by

questioning the myth’s authority or credibility.
2. Mythologizing history, legend, or fable by attributing
authority and/or credibility to them so that they gain the status of
myth.
3. Reinterpreting established myths in new ways.
Returning to the two imperial panels from the Sebasteion, we have

clear examples of the mythologization of specific historical events. This is
accomplished through stylistic decisions (such as the divine nudity) and
through allusion to mythic narratives such as battles with amazons or to the
Trojan War.40 The process does not create an allegory, however: in the
myths, the amazons die; in history, the neighboring regions lived on, either
forcibly absorbed into the empire or subdued and granted limited autonomy
at the border. The process of mythologization worked by analogy rather than
by allegory, proposing similarities between stories of the emperors and myths
and thereby investing one with the authority of the other. Note also that the
mythologization of imperial military strength was accomplished in a ritual
setting. This combination of new myth and ritual at the Sebasteion enforced
the Roman social order. It incorporated the emperors into the myths of
western Asia Minor, with particular emphasis on their military victories.
Several other panels celebrated the victories of the emperors in mythic
terms,41 although it is no longer clear which emperors were displayed. A
third panel for consideration interprets the ambivalent results of those
victories. The panel depicts an unidentified emperor standing next to a
trophy (the armor of his fallen foe displayed on a pole). On the right stands
a Roman figure, personifying either the senate or the people of Rome, who
crowns the conqueror. In the lower left corner, a kneeling female prisoner
with hands bound behind the back looks out in anguish at the viewer.42 Here
a standard trophy scene is employed in such a way as to highlight the military
basis of imperial rule, and to make clear the dire consequences of resistance.
A fourth scene from the sculptures of the Sebasteion’s third floor
describes the benefits of imperialism—a fruitful earth and secure sea lanes—
in mythic terms. The panel is dominated by a standing, nude Claudius with
drapery billowing up above his head.43 In the lower left corner an earth
figure hands him a cornucopia; in the lower right a figure representing the
sea hands him a ship’s rudder. The two great elements traversed by
humans—earth and sea—offer their gifts to the divine emperor. In these two
scenes history again is elevated to myth, but in a more generalized sense. The
scenes appear to refer not to specific historical events but rather to a general
process of imperial domination.
When we move to the second floor of the Sebasteion’s south portico,
we find the reworking of local mythology to support Roman rule.44 The
subject matter on the second floor is no longer imperial exploits but rather a
selection of Panhellenic myths. Some of the figures and stories are
recognizable, such as the three Graces, Apollo and a tripod at Delphi,
Achilles and Penthesilea, Meleager and the Calydonian Boar, Herakles
freeing the bound Prometheus, and the young Dionysos among the nymphs.
Other scenes contain enough detail to indicate specific stories that are no
longer recognizable, for example, a seated hero and a dog flanked by an
amazon and a male figure with a crown in his hand, and three heroes with a
dog.45
The overall arrangement of scenes on the second floor does not appear
to be governed by a single strong theme. The reliefs depict instead a range
of myths that are perhaps gathered in clusters. One exception where there is
clear development, however, is at the east end of the portico near the temple
for Tiberius and Livia. Here the three panels from the first room contain
overt references to Panhellenic mythology that has special significance for
Aphrodisias. The first panel (closest to the temple) has a seated Aphrodite,
the principal municipal deity, with an infant Eros on her lap; the male
standing next to her is probably Anchises. The central panel from room 1
portrays the flight of Aeneas—the child of Aphrodite and Anchises—from
Troy in standard terms except that Aphrodite accompanies him as a figure
inscribed into the background of the scene. The meaning of the third panel
is uncertain: Poseidon and the other figures might allude to the sea voyage
of Aeneas.46
In spite of the uncertainties, the gist of this deployment is

unmistakable. The panels rework established Aphrodite mythology
(Lincoln’s third use of myth) to emphasize a special relationship between
Romans and Aphrodisians: the local city’s eponymous goddess is portrayed as
the ancestor of the Romans through Aeneas. Furthermore, there is a direct
connection to the reliefs above these (in room 1 of the third story; this is one
of the few places where the panels of the second story intersect with those
directly above them). Directly above the flight of Aeneas on the second floor
is a third-floor panel with Augustus as military victor, which was flanked by
panels of the Dioskouroi. Taken together, then, the reliefs of the first rooms
of the second and third stories craft a narrative in which the historical
military victories of Augustus and the Romans are incorporated into
panhellenic myth, and into local myth (Lincoln’s second use of myth, but not
analogical this time).47 It is particularly important that this confluence of
myths occurs at the east end of the portico next to the altar area and temple,
which was the ritual center of the complex. As the viewer moves closer to the
altar and temple—the focal point for rituals in the precincts—imperial
mythology and local mythology converge in support of Roman conquest.
The inscriptions from the Sebasteion complex allow us to turn our
attention from how myth was used to the question of who used myth in these
ways. Since the style of this complex was local and not imported,48 the
benefactors who built the complex would have been influential in the design.
Inscriptions indicate that two local families built and maintained the
Sebasteion. The south portico was undertaken by two brothers, Diogenes
and Attalos, but Attalos died before construction was finished and so his wife
Attalis Apphion financed his share of the project “on his behalf.”49 Attalis
was also mentioned as a benefactor of the temples.50 The inscription is
heavily damaged, so we assume, but do not know for sure, that Diogenes also
financed the temple along with Attalis.51 Sometime later, Tiberius Claudius
Diogenes (son of Diogenes and nephew of Attalus and Attalis) paid for
repairs of the south portico, probably after earthquake damage.52
The other two buildings of the Sebasteion—the propylon and the
north portico—were built by another family. The primary benefactors
named in the inscription are Eusebes, his wife Apphias, and his brother
Menander. These buildings also required restoration after an earthquake,
and other inscriptions inform us that the remodeling was financed by
Apphias, her daughter Tata, and Tata’s sons Eusebes and Menander.53
These families would not have designed the reliefs that adorned the
Sebasteion, but they would have approved the design, and so we can say at
least that the deployment of myth in the precincts represented their interests
and their general perspective on Roman rule. Four observations help fill out
our picture of this class of people who promoted the worship of the emperors
in Asia in the first century. First, we note that they were wealthy municipal
benefactors over the course of at least three generations. This means that we
are dealing with the small percentage of people at the top of the city’s social
hierarchy. Second, the two families appear to have been related to each other,
so we see the importance of extended family ties among the elite.54 Third,
the official titles of Attalis Apphion remind us that many of the same people
who financed imperial cult projects also served in religious offices. Fourth, it
is significant that the second-generation Diogenes obtained Roman
citizenship. We do not know specifically how this came about, but it is
indicative of the rising status of the municipal elite and their growing
collaboration with Rome.
A group of inscriptions from Ephesos provides a larger sample of data
regarding those in Asia who promoted imperial cults. The group of thirteen
inscriptions commemorated the dedication of a provincial temple in
Ephesos for the worship of the Flavian emperors in 89/90 C.E. during the
reign of Domitian. The texts come from bases of statues that were once
displayed in the precincts of the temple of the Sebastoi.55 Among other
things, the inscriptions mention seventeen elite men from throughout the
province who provided the statues from their respective cities. Most of the
men’s names are preserved (four names are fragmentary or missing),
demonstrating that five were Roman citizens and eight were not (the other
four are uncertain). These men held important civic offices in their cities,
for the inscriptions indicate that their offices included a grammateus of the
demos, four to six archons, a strategos, a city treasurer, and a superintendent of
public works. These same men also held religious offices: two have offices
related to temples, one was a priest of Pluto and Kore (at Aphrodisias), and
one was a priest of Domitian, Domitia, the imperial family, and the Roman
Senate.56
The careers of these seventeen men demonstrate that those who
promulgated imperial cults in Asia also had extensive governmental
responsibilities in the cities of the province. The list of seventeen differs
from the Aphrodisian material in that all the individuals are male. Since we
know of many women involved in imperial cult activities, this gender
differential is probably due to the fact that the seventeen are drawn from
materials about the initiation of an extremely prestigious provincial temple.
In such instances, men tended to hold all the offices. The data are also
different because there is no longitudinal data across generations in this
source; all thirteen inscriptions were executed between 88 and 91 C.E. Given
these two differences, the overall picture is quite similar: wealthy men and
some wealthy women controlled local government and religion through
their collaboration with Roman authorities.
The inscriptions from Ephesos also mention another category of
individuals whose status was even higher than the people surveyed so far; I
refer to this group as the “provincial elite.” These individuals were the high
priests of Asia who were active in their cities but who also served in the
imperial cults of Asia, representing the region in its provincial and imperial
affairs. The temple of the Sebastoi was the third provincial cult in Asia,
which was the only province to have more than one such cult at this time, so
these high priests and high priestesses were in the highest-level status in the
province.57 The inscriptions from Ephesos mention three of these high
priests of Asia. One of them, Tiberius Claudius Aristio, is well attested and
provides an individual case study of someone who influenced the deployment
of myths in imperial cults. Aristio is mentioned in more than twenty
inscriptions from Ephesos, which portray him as a major player in Ephesian
and Asian affairs for a quarter century. He was, among other things, high
priest of Asia (perhaps more than once),58 Asiarch three times, prytanis,
grammateus of the demos, gymnasiarach, neokoros of the city, and benefactor of
several buildings, including two fountains and a library. Comparison with
other high priests of Asia shows that his Roman citizenship was normal for
this category of people in Asia: twenty-five of twenty-seven (92.6 percent)
high priests of Asia known to us by name from the period 100 to 212 C.E.
were Roman citizens.59
The archaeological record thus supplies us with a good deal of
information about the deployment of myth in the imperial cult ritual settings
in Asia. Narratives of the exploits of the emperors were elevated to the status
of mythology, and established myths were retold in ways that supported
Roman authority. The examples surveyed here showed particular interest in
the deployment of local myths that were related to the identities of the cities
where these cults were located, which explains the variety of imperial cults
encountered in Asia and throughout the empire. Several themes appear in
the imperial mythologies. In the courtyard of the bouleuterion at Miletos,
there is an emphasis on divine judgment against evildoers, which is
appropriate for an institution that is responsible for the ordering of city life.
At the Sebasteion, the military victories of the emperors are portrayed in
mythic terms, and then local myths are retold in order to suggest an intimate
connection between the conquerors and their Aphrodisian subjects. The
Aphrodisian materials also describe the benefits of Roman rule as a fertile
earth and safety at sea.
Gender plays a complex role in these settings. In both locations the

mythic materials depict violence against female figures, whether in the
stories of rape and abuse from Miletos or the imperial victories from
Aphrodisias. The imagery, however, does not encode a simple gendered
definition of power with masculine figures dominating female figures.
There are powerful positive female figures like Artemis seeking
vengeance, or Aphrodite protecting Aeneas in his travels, and also a
wicked figure like Sidero. The masculine imagery is clearly dominant,
though, reflecting the kyriocentric cultural and political setting of these
cults.60 Male hegemony is nuanced through the complications of status,
wealth, and family.
The archaeological materials also provide information about specific
men and women who deployed myth in these ways. They were members of
families from the wealthiest stratum of Asian society. These men and
women gave significant benefactions and held a variety of religious offices.
The male benefactors are more numerous, and the elite men tended to hold
the most prestigious priesthoods. The men could also hold governmental
offices.
This emphasis in the archaeological record on elite families does not
tell us much about opinions of the majority of the population. There are few
surviving signs of resistance to imperial cults in Asia, and there is a great deal
of evidence for popular participation in the festivals and competitions that
accompanied the imperial cult sacrifices. It would be irresponsible, however,
to imagine that there were no attempts to counter this use of myth in support
of imperialism, for no imperial system can control all areas of social
experience, nor can it incorporate all the discrepant experiences of those it
dominates. There will always be resistance in some form or another.61 The
Revelation of John is our best example of such symbolic resistance from first-
century Asia, and this is the topic of the next section.
III. T H E U S E OF MYTH IN R E V E L AT I O N 13
Commentators are nearly unanimous that Rev 13 deals with Roman

imperial power and with the worship of the Roman emperors.62 This allows
us to examine how the author of Rev 13 deployed myth when dealing with
these subjects. Analysis suggests that the author drew primarily on three
types of mythic material: traditions about Leviathan and Behemoth; the book
of Daniel; and imperial cult mythology.63 He deployed these myths in
eclectic and creative ways, combining and inverting them in a fashion that
distanced his audience from mainstream society.
1. The primary structure for the narrative in Rev 13 comes from the
mythic pattern of Leviathan and Behemoth.64 Leviathan and Behemoth are
two primordial monsters known from several Jewish texts. The oldest of
these is Job 40–41, where they are cited as two of God’s most powerful
creations. The exact function of the pair in Job is disputed and not germane
to this study except as a contrast to later texts that exhibit a more developed
stage in the history of the deployment of these mythic creatures.65
Four texts from the early Roman period draw on the story of Leviathan
and Behemoth, and the variations among them allow us to describe the
mythic pattern at this stage of its development: two enormous beasts from
the beginning of history will live, one in sea and one on land, until the end
of history, at which time they will become food for the righteous. The
earliest of the four variations of this pattern was probably 1 En. 60:7–9, 24,
which employs the basic pattern in the context of cosmological revelations.66
This section is found in the third parable of the Similitudes, which was
written most likely during the century and a half before Revelation. The
preceding second parable (1 En. 45–57) deals with the fate of the wicked and
the righteous, the son of man, resurrection, judgment, flood, and Israel’s
enemies. Then, in one of the visions of the third parable, Enoch is
completely overcome by the sight of God enthroned and surrounded by
millions of angels. Michael raises Enoch up and explains about the eschaton.
In this section we learn that the two primordial monsters were separated at
creation. Leviathan dwells in the abyss of the ocean at the sources of the
deep, while Behemoth dwells in a mythic desert east of Eden (1 En.
60:7–9).67 Enoch inquires about them and is taken by another angel on a
journey to the margins of creation. Along the way to the edge of existence he
learns many valuable mysteries, such as where the winds are kept, how the
moon shines the right amount of light, the timing between thunders, and so
on. When the meteorology lesson is over and he arrives at the garden of the
righteous, Enoch is told that Leviathan and Behemoth are being kept until
the Day of the Lord, at which time they will provide food for the
eschatological feast (60:24).68 Thus, the deployment of the myth focuses on
God’s cosmic, hidden wisdom.
Two other references to Leviathan and Behemoth are brief and were
written down around the same time as Revelation. The two confirm the
general outline found in 1 En. 60, but they focus on different aspects of the
mythic pat tern. In 4 Ezra’s third vision, the author chose to emphasize the
cosmogonic origins of Leviathan and Behemoth and to downplay the
eschatological theme by having Ezra recite to God the days of creation.
According to this retelling, the two monsters were created on the fifth day
with the other living creatures, but Leviathan and Behemoth were kept alive.
Since the sea was not large enough to hold both of them, God separated
them, leaving Leviathan in the depths and assigning Behemoth to land. The
section ends with a mere allusion to the eschaton: the pair are kept “to be
eaten by whom you wish, and when you wish” (4 Ezra 6:52).69 Thus, the
deployment of the myth in 4 Ezra demonstrates God’s power in creation.
In 2 Bar. 29 the same mythic pattern occurs as in 4 Ezra, but the
creation theme is muted while the eschatological function of the creatures is
highlighted.70 A voice from on high describes the messianic era that follows
twelve periods of distress (chs. 26–28). Regarding the two monsters it is said,
“And it will happen that when all that which should come to pass in these
parts has been accomplished, the Anointed One will begin to be revealed.
And Behemoth will reveal itself from its place, and Leviathan will come from
the sea, the two great monsters which I created on the fifth day of creation
and which I shall have kept until that time. And they will be nourishment for
all who are left” (2 Bar. 29:3–4). A period of unprecedented plenty arrives,
after which the Anointed One returns to glory and the righteous and wicked
are raised to receive their respective rewards (chs. 29–30). The deployment
here focuses on the consummation of history rather than its beginning.
Thus, these three texts from the late Hellenistic/early Roman period
that refer to Leviathan and Behemoth exhibit the same mythic pattern: two
unimaginably large creatures exist from primordial times until the end of
time; one is confined to the sea, the other to land; when God brings history
to its dramatic climax, the monsters will become food for the righteous. Each
of the texts deploys the pattern differently. 1 Enoch 60 takes the pattern as an
occasion to reveal secret wisdom about the hidden places of the world. 4
Ezra, by contrast, uses the pattern in the context of theodicy, reciting God’s
mighty works of creation in order to dramatize the question of why this same
God does not seem to be able to establish his people Israel in the land he
created for them (4 Ezra 6:55–59). 2 Baruch, however, retells the myth as
eschatologically informed exhortation for those who are faithful to Torah.
“And we should not look upon the delights of the present nations, but let us
think about that which has been promised to us regarding the end” (2 Bar.
83:5).
In comparison with these three, Revelation is the only text that
introduces a serious deviation from the mythic pattern itself. Either the
author was drawing on an otherwise unattested interpretation of
Leviathan and Behemoth,71 or he was refashioning an established mythic
pattern for new purposes (Lincoln’s third use of myth). In John’s rendering
of the mythic pattern, Leviathan and Behemoth have become
eschatological opponents. The power of the beasts no longer provokes the

revelation of wisdom (1 Enoch) or the defense of God’s justice (4 Ezra) or
the promise of eschatological reward (2 Baruch). The two monsters are
loose in the world, threatening the world and destroying all opponents.
The reasons for this deployment will be clearer after examination of John’s
other uses of myth.72
The figure of Leviathan (apart from Behemoth) is important for
Revelation in another way. While the Leviathan–Behemoth pair organizes
the two scenes in Rev 13, a different strand of the Leviathan tradition
connects these two scenes to the narrative of ch. 12.73 One of the great
mythic patterns shared by Yahwism and the surrounding religious traditions
was the story of a deity defeating the sea.74 In Canaan this was a battle
between Bawl and Yamm; in Babylon a battle between Marduk and Tiamat,
and so on.75 In the texts of Israel it appears as Yahweh’s victory over sea
dragons. Over time, this mythic pattern came to be associated in Canaanite
and Israelite traditions with several names for sea monsters, including Rahab,
Dragon, and Leviathan.76 The author of Revelation could thus draw on two
Leviathan patterns to link chs. 12 and 13: Leviathan the mythic opponent
shapes the dragon image of ch. 12, and the Leviathan–Behemoth pattern
shapes ch. 13.77
To sum up this section, Rev 12–13 is an unusual example of two strands
of Leviathan mythology standing side by side, and both strands are employed
in a novel fashion. Leviathan as God’s serpentine opponent provides a link
between the two chapters. Then the Leviathan–Behemoth pair move beyond
their traditional role of food for the eschatological feast to become heaven’s
eschatological antagonists.78 John may have come up with this variation
himself, since the other known uses of this pattern are quite different. In any
event, it is a much more eclectic and eccentric deployment than we have seen
either in imperial cult settings or in other apocalyptic texts.
2. The second important mythic resource for Rev 13 is the book of

Daniel. While the Leviathan–Behemoth pattern organized the material,
Danielic imagery was woven into the story line. Two thematic elements are
important here. The first is the way in which the beast from the sea is
described by John. The seven heads of the beast from the sea (13:1) could
simply be a reference to Leviathan, who was sometimes portrayed with seven
heads. John, however, quickly signals other elements in his symbolism. By
giving the beast ten horns and the characteristics of a leopard, a bear, and a
lion, the author creates a connection to the vision of Dan 7. The seven heads
are also the total of the heads of the four beasts of Dan 7,79 and the
blasphemous names on them (Rev 13:1) may also draw on the arrogant
speech of Daniel’s fourth beast (Dan 7:8, 11, 20).
This use of Danielic imagery provides us with another strategy for
manipulating myth not suggested by Lincoln’s list—the compression of
several unconnected texts or images into one new text or image.
Compression was apparently one of John’s favorite tactics. One of the most
blatant examples is the image of the risen Christ in Rev 1:13–16, which
contains more than a half dozen allusions to spectacular figures from
different biblical texts. These are forced into one epiphanic figure in Rev 1,
who simultaneously encompasses and surpasses all his predecessors. Another
example of compression is Rev 7:17–18, which is a paradoxical pastiche of
salvation oracles designed to encourage John’s audience. Likewise, John
compressed the four beasts of Dan 7 and the Leviathan imagery to produce
his own synthesis, a new mythic image as far as we know. By drawing on
these particular resources, the new image becomes both an identifiable
historical empire and the epitome of opposition to God.80 Thus, John
engages in the same strategy as that employed in imperial cults—
mythologizing Rome—but he does so with different mythic sources, with a
different mythic method (compression of myths), and with different goals.
The second thematic element drawn from Daniel is the period of forty-
two months allotted to the reign of the beast from the sea (Rev 13:5; similarly
11:2; 12:6). This time period is related to the various designations in Daniel
to the three and one-half weeks of Gentile domination (Dan 7:25; 8:14; 9:27;
12:7, 11, 12).81 By invoking these numbers, John cast the time of Roman rule
in mythic terms—but not positive ones. Rather than accepting the dominant
mythology of eternal Roman rule accompanied by prosperity,82 Revelation
portrays Roman hegemony as a limited time of oppression and opposition to
God that will bring judgment.
Thus, Rev 13 incorporates some specific features of Daniel into its own
narrative.83 John took liberties with the details but gained the Danielic
perspective for his text. Roman rule is not eternal; the God of Israel allows a
limited period of exaggerated opposition to persist until God brings the
hostilities to an end. John’s mythic methods were again more eclectic than
known examples in imperial cults or in other apocalyptic literature.
3. A third mythic resource for Rev 13 is the mythology of imperial

cults. Three comments are in order on this point. First, John accepted and
adopted one aspect of imperial cult mythology, namely, that Roman rule is
based on military victory (Rev 13:4). He attempted, however, to persuade his
audience to take a different point of view on those conquests. The victory
was ascribed to satanic authority rather than divine authority. This inversion
of imperial cult mythology is accomplished by his creative combination of
the Leviathan traditions with details from Daniel. The difference in
perspective is dramatic. If we use the Aphrodisian sculptures of imperial
coronation as reference points, we could say that imperial cult mythology
and ritual attempted to persuade its audience to identify with the figures
crowning the emperor, thereby supporting the perpetuation of the imperial
social system. Revelation, on the other hand, was an effort to persuade its
audiences to perceive themselves—like the bound captives in the
sculptures—as victims of Roman hegemony.84
Second, John disagreed with the imperial mythology of peaceful sea
and productive earth. In this case he did not try for a change of perspective
but rather contested the facts. His argument in Rev 13 is twofold. One way
of denying the earth and sea mythology was his hostile deployment of the
Leviathan/Behemoth pattern. In John’s narrative, the sea and land became
sources of danger and oppression, not peace and plenty. The other part of his
argument is the theme of the mark of the beast, which is required in order to
participate in economic activity (13:16–17). With this theme John cut
through the naïve romanticism of the imperial cornucopia, which suggested
that the produce of the earth can simply be gathered and enjoyed under
Roman rule. John introduced instead the idea that economic, political, and
religious systems regulated who was able to purchase and to profit from the
earth’s bounty. In this way Rev 13 exposed a feature of the audience’s
experience that was suppressed in the utopian imperial cult mythology.
Third, John presented an alternative interpretation about the elite
sector of society and their involvement in imperial cults. In dominant urban
culture, those who promoted the worship of the emperors were honored
with inscriptions, statues, and religious offices. Revelation 13:11–18, on the
other hand, denounced these same families by mythologizing them, a
strategy that was used only for the imperial family in imperial cult settings
and was never used for elite families. According to Revelation, however, the
elites of Asia and of Asia’s cities were Behemoth to Rome’s Leviathan. John
portrayed respected families like those of Attalis of Aphrodisias and
prominent provincial statesmen like Tiberius Claudius Aristio of Ephesos as
mythic antagonists of God. According to John, the network of elite families
was leading the world to eschatological catastrophe.
Along with this mythologization of the social experience of oppression,
John also drew in material that would be considered “legend” in Lincoln’s
terms. The phenomenon of talking statues was well known in Greco-Roman
societies.85 It is doubtful, however, that such practices were widespread.86
Much of the knowledge of talking statues was generated by the denunciation

of religious figures as charlatans (e.g., Lucian’s portrait of Alexander of
Abonouteichos) or by magical speculation. John employed this legendary
motif, elevated it to mythic proportions, and turned it against the well-to-do
of Asia’s cities. Through his use of these two types of materials, John changed
the image of imperial cult ritual from piety to chicanery and portrayed Asia’s
elite families as charlatans whose authority was satanic in origin.87
John’s use of myth in Rev 13 was extraordinarily creative. He placed
distinct Leviathan traditions side by side; he reused the Leviathan/Behemoth
pattern in a manner that is unprecedented in our existing sources; he wove
Danielic themes into the mix and took liberties with the details; he
compressed originally distinct symbols (Leviathan and the beasts of Dan 7)
into one monster; and he mythologized social institutions and legendary
material. His method was voracious, drawing on a variety of sources. It was
also recombinant, producing startling new images and plot twists.
IV C O M PA R I S O N , C O N C L U S I O N
The deployments of mythology in imperial cult settings and

apocalyptic literature dealt with many of the same themes that are found in
John’s Apocalypse. The most significant include the administration of justice
in particular communities and in the world; the subjugation of nations and
peoples; the role of the Roman emperor in these processes; and worship. If
there is a common question operative in these themes, it is the question of
authority in this world: Who is the king over kings? Imperial cult institutions
and apocalyptic texts answered this question differently. Imperial cults in the
Roman province of Asia created and deployed myths to show that the
(current) emperor was the king of kings. Revelation—written to
congregations in this same province—created and deployed myths to show
that ultimate authority was not located in this world. In these two sets of
materials, then, justice, vengeance, and community come from different
thrones.88
Imperial cults and Revelation also trafficked in similar methods in their
deployments of myth. One important method was mythologization: both
settings elevated known characters and stories to a higher level of authority.
Another common method was the modification of established myths. This is
not an unusual practice; myths are constantly retold and reshaped. Imperial
cults and Revelation, however, dealt in an exaggerated form of the practice,
introducing new characters for their respective projects. A third method
common to imperial cults and to Revelation was the deployment of myth in
ritual settings.89 Imperial mythology was appropriate in the obvious settings

of imperial temples such as the Aphrodisian Sebasteion and also in other
civic institutions such as the bouleuterion at Miletos. Revelation, too, was
written for a ritual setting,90 although the group and the affiliated
institutions were much different. Revelation was written to be read in the
rituals leading up to the Lord’s Supper. At one level, Revelation’s deployment
of myth was an attempt to redefine that ritual in the subculture of the saints.
The juxtaposition of Revelation and the Lord’s Supper would have given the
church’s ritual a distinctly anti-Roman twist.
The comparative material from imperial cult mythology also allows us
to make observations about distinctive features in John’s use of myth. First,
John displayed a preference for eastern Mediterranean stories. John could
draw on ancient Near Eastern or Greco-Roman patterns or myths when it
suited his purposes,91 and it is the nature of really good myths to defy
national and ethnic boundaries.92 The primary resources for John’s text,
however, came from the eastern edge of the empire—Israel and its regional
neighbors. This marked the text and its audience as marginal to the imperial
enterprise rather than central. While imperial cults defined normal society in
standard terms from Hellenistic mythology,93 John claimed to reveal truth in
themes and characters from a troublesome area at the edge of imperial
control.94 To accept John’s mythology required the audience to acknowledge
its distance from the imperial center. The focus on eastern Mediterranean
mythology was common to other Jewish apocalyptic texts of the early Roman
period. John’s confrontational deployment, however, created more
dissonance with the values of dominant society.
A second distinctive feature in John’s deployment of myth is that he
tended to make more dramatic changes in the retelling of established mythic
patterns. Imperial cults were concerned with the imposition and
maintenance of order in society,95 and so it is not surprising that the
associated mythology did not deviate far from the norm. Panhellenic and
local myths suited these purposes best because they were already well
established. Revelation, on the other hand, pursued disruptive ends, and for
these purposes the story lines suffered more serious revisions; the versions of
the myths that could be accommodated to normal life were not appropriate
to John’s message. The compression of diverse themes, characters, and
allusions in Revelation served these ends as well. New versions of myths were
supplemented by new relations between myths. In this sense, Revelation can
be considered a form of religious resistance literature. Its dreams of
destruction were told with a mythic method that disoriented the audience:
familiar tales took strange turns, colliding with other stories at unexpected
intersections. The method dislodged familiar axioms and appealed to
experiences that did not fit mainstream norms.96
All of this points to the conclusion that John’s Revelation is a classic
text of symbolic resistance to dominant society. John deployed myths in an
eclectic, disjunctive fashion, and did so for a ritual setting. The production
of new, disruptive mythology for a ritual setting is not conducive to the
maintenance of social hierarchies. It was a dangerous deployment in defense
of a minority perspective.
NOTES
An earlier draft of this article was discussed in the Wisdom and Apocalypticism in Early
Judaism and Early Christianity Group at the AAR/S13L annual meeting in Nashville
(2000). My thanks go to the official discussants—Adela Yarbro Collins and Simon Price—
for their helpful critiques and to the anonymous reviewers of this article for their
suggestions.
1. Adela Yarbro Collins, The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation (HDR 9; Missoula,
MT: Scholars Press, 1976); John Court, Myth and History in the Book of Revelation (London:
SPCK, 1979). There have also been some recent exceptions. It is significant that they were
published in Europe (see below, pp. 282–83): “Symbole und mythische Aussagen in der
Johannesapokalypse und ihre theologische Bedeutung,” in Metaphorik und Mythos im
Neuen Testament (ed. Karl Kertelge; QD 126; Freiburg: Herder, 1990), 255–77; Peter
Antonysamy Abir, The Cosmic Conflict of the Church: An Exegetico-Theological Study of
Revelation 12, 7–12 (European University Studies, Series 23, Theology 547; Frankfurt am
Main: Peter Lang, 1995); Peter Busch, Der gefallene Drache: Mythenexegese am Beishiel von
Apokalypse 12 (Texte und Arbeiten zum Neutestamentlichen Zeitalter 19; Tübingen:
Francke, 1996). I thank Georg Adamsen for these references.
2. Miriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, s.v. “myth,” meanings 2b, 3,
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary (accessed July 9, 2003).
3. Lawrence E. Sullivan, Icanchu’s Drum: An Orientation to Meaning in South American
Religions (New York: Macmillan, 1988), 7–8.
4. Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1958), 20 (emphasis added).
5. Ivan Strenski, Four Theories of Myth in Twentieth-Century History: Cassirer, Eliade,
Lévi-Strauss and Malinowski (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1987). The strength of
this study is the contextualized approach to intellectual biographies, which gives us insight
into the development of theories and methods in religious studies.
6. See also Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 74–75.
7. Marcus Borg, “Reflections on a Discipline: A North American Perspective,” in
Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research (ed. Bruce Chilton
and Craig A. Evans; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 29. Borg notes this shift in the 1970s without
discussing possible causes or the relation to World War II. Borg’s article focused on Jesus
studies, but with an eye to larger trends in the study of early Christianity. Note also that
Borg wrote about “North American” scholarship, while my analysis suggests that trends in
the United States and in Canada should not necessarily be grouped together.
8. Eliade is an interesting exception in this regard. Although his formative years were
spent in India and Europe, his theories of myth and religion found quite a following after
his move to the United States (more in comparative religion than in biblical studies). I
suspect that the interest in his theories in this country was due to the fact that those
theories were formed in part as opposition to Marxism in Eastern Europe. Thus, even
though the formative influences on him were European, his rejection of Marxism
resonated with American anticommunist propaganda.
9. David L. Barr came close to reopening this question, by dealing with mythic
patterns and themes under the narratological rubric of “story” (Tales of the End: A Narrative
Commentary on the Book of Revelation [Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge, 1998]).
10. See, e.g., Paul D. Hanson, The Dawn of Apocalyptic: The Historical and Sociological
Roots of Jewish Apocalyptic Eschatology (rev. ed.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979) 408–11; the
quoted phrase is from 408. Notice also the characterization of apocalyptic myth in the
following quotation: “The response on the part of the latter [i.e., the hierocratic leaders of
the community] was further oppression [of the apocalyptic visionaries], leading the
visionaries to even deeper pessimism vis-à-vis the historical order and further flight into
the timeless repose of a mythic realm of salvation” (p. 409).
11. The conceptual pair politics/religion has been employed also in discussions of
imperial cults or of Revelation, but the results are seldom satisfying. “Politics/religion”
tends to polarize society into distinct sectors, one religious and one political. This might
be an appropriate approach to examining modern industrial societies, but it simply
confuses the issue when imposed on the ancient world. We need to pose only two
questions to see the limited value of these categories: Was Revelation a political or a
religious text? Were imperial cults political or religious institutions? Politics/religion does
not help us explain anything in these cases.
12. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term “ideology” first appeared in
the philosophical sense of “a science of ideas” in France during the late eighteenth
century. Ideology was then redefined for social analysis in the first half of the nineteenth
century by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to describe a system of false ideas generated
by the dominant class in order to support and to conceal its exploitation of the rest of
society (Mike Cormack, Ideology [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992],
9–10).
13. See Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (New York: Verso, 1991), 98–192.
14. Even a fine study like Robert M. Royalty, Jr., The Streets of Heaven: The Ideology of
Wealth in the Apocalypse of John (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1998) assumes that
we know precisely what is meant by this crucial term.
15. Cormack begins his study with four recent definitions of ideology that defy
homogenization (Ideology, 9). Eagleton (Ideology, 1–2) begins with sixteen different definitions.
16. In the late twentieth century the pejorative meaning of ideology receded
somewhat; see Teun A. van Dijk, Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach (Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage, 1998), 2–1.
17. Bruce Lincoln, “Mythic Narrative and Cultural Diversity in American Society,” in
Myth and Method (ed. Laurie L. Patton and Wendy Doniger; Studies in Religion and
Culture; Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996), 165.
18. Wendy Doniger, “Maximyths and Maximyths and Political Points of View,” in
Myth and Method, ed. Patton and Doniger, 112. See also Doniger, The Implied Spider:
Politics & Theology in Myth (Lectures on the History of Religions n.s. 16; New York:
Columbia University Press, 1998), 2.
19. An example of a mythic pattern is what Adela Yarbro Collins called the “combat
myth,” which is a set of similar characters and themes that occur in stories from several
cultures (Combat Myth, 59–61). It is similar to Doniger’s “micromyth” (Implied Spider,
88–92).
20. Doniger, Implied Spider, 80–83.
21. Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth,
Ritual, and Classification (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 27–37. It is difficult
to determine exactly why mythic patterns can be used in so many different ways. It may be
because myths are authored by communities in performance, and so they must incorporate
a range of viewpoints if they are to be accepted by a range of individuals (Lincoln,
Theorizing Myth, 149–50). Or perhaps the subject matter of myths contributes to the
flexibility of mythic patterns; since myths deal with insoluble problems of human
experience, new versions of the myth are constantly generated in order to attempt yet
another (partially adequate) solution (Doniger, Implied Spider, 95–97).
22. Lincoln, “Mythic Narrative,” 175.
23. Ibid., 166.
24. For a broader examination of the evidence for imperial cults in the Roman
province of Asia, see my Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John: Reading Revelation in the
Ruins (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), esp. 25–131.
25. The bouleoterion complex at Miletos is located in the city center on the northeast
side of the South Agora. The bouleuterion complex was enclosed by a rectangular wall,
34.84 m wide and 55.9 m deep (exterior measurements). The complex is composed of two
parts: a rectangular courtyard in front and the bouleuterion building itself. Inside the
building was theater-style seating with eighteen rows of semicircular stone benches. In
front of the building the rectangular courtyard had colonnaded halls on three sides. A
monumental propylon (Corinthian order) provided entry into the complex from the
southeast side, opposite the courtyard from the bouleuterion. For further information, see
Klaus Tuchelt, “Buleuterion und Ara Augusti,” IstMitt 25 (1975): esp. 91–96; a city plan is
found on p. 100, Abb. 2.
26. Hans Volkmann, “Bole,” KP 1.967–69. Every city had a boulē , a council composed
of wealthy male citizens. Although the precise duties of the boulē could vary from city to
city, during the Roman imperial period a boulē normally supervised affairs related to the
city’s limited autonomy. The members of the boulē oversaw the various officials of the city
and made recommendations to the ekklēsia (which included all male citizens of the city and
met less frequently).
27. Tuchelt, “Buleuterion,” 102–40; Homer Thompson, “The Altar of Pity in the
Athenian Agora,” Hesperia 21 (1952): 79–82.
28. Excavators discovered the foundations (9.5 m wide by 7.25 m deep) and some
fragments of the superstructure beginning in 1899. These could not have been for the altar
of the boulē since a bouleuterion normally had its altar inside the meetinghouse for rituals
that were a part of the council’s governmental activities (Tuchelt, “Buleuterion,” 129).
Early excavators thought that this might have been a monumental tomb for a wealthy
benefactor of the Roman imperial period (Hubert Knackfuss et al., Das Rathaus von Milet
[Milet 1.2; Berlin: G. Reimer, 1908], 78–79). Tuchelt, however, showed that this was
unlikely. Inscriptions from the Miletos bouleuterion propylon support the imperial cult
altar identification, mentioning benefactors of a local imperial cult (Milet 1.2:84–87, #7).
Peter Hermann (“Milet unter Augustus: C. Iulius Epikrates und die Anfänge des
Kaiserkults,” IstMitt 44 [1994]: 229–34) considered the tomb theory still tenable, but he
discussed only the inscriptions and did not deal with the architectural and sculptural
evidence. Even though the evidence is fragmentary, Tuchelt’s argument is stronger.
29. There were four scenes on the back wall (visible from the propylon); three scenes
on each side wall; and a scene on either side of the staircase (visible from the
bouleuterion).
30. On the overlap of local and Panhellenic myths, see Simon Price, Religions of the
Ancient Greeks (Key Themes in Ancient History; New York: Cambridge University Press,
1999), 19. Although Delos was named as the birthplace of the twins in the Homeric Hymn
to Apollo, local tradition in western Asia Minor asserted that the true birthplace was
Ortygia, near Ephesos (Strabo, Geography 14.1.20). The intimate connection between
Artemis and Ephesos is well known. There were also important oracular shrines of Apollo
in the region, with the most prominent centers at Didyma (under the control of Miletos)
and at Klaros.
31. Tuchelt, “Buleuterion,” pls. 28–29.
32. From the propylon; see Joyce Reynolds, “Further Information on Imperial Cult at
Aphrodisias,” Studii clasice 24 (1986): 111. The north portico inscriptions are described in
R. R. R. Smith, “The Imperial Reliefs from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias,” JRS 77 (1987):
90; an inscription that dates to the later rebuilding also calls the emperors Olympians
(Reynolds, “Further Information,” 114). A fragmentary inscription from the south portico
probably refers to the goddess Livia and to Tiberius; see Joyce Reynolds, “New Evidence
for the Imperial cult in Julio-Claudian Aphrodisias,” ZPE 43 (1981): 317–18 #1.
33. Joyce Reynolds, “The Origins and Beginning of Imperial Cult at Aphrodisias,”
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 206 (1980): 79 #10; eadem, “Further
Information,” 110 and n. 12. The four buildings were not completed at one time.
Construction probably began during the reign of Tiberius, and there are signs of
earthquake damage after that. A second phase of construction began during the reign of
Claudius and stretched into the reign of Nero (Smith, “Imperial Reliefs,” 88–98). For a
short summary of the building history, see R. R. R. Smith, “Myth and Allegory in the
Sebasteion,” in Aphrodisias Papers: Recent Work on Architecture and Sculpture (ed. Charlotte
Roueché and Kenan T. Erim; Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement Series 1; Ann
Arbor: Department of Classical Studies, University of Michigan, 1990), 89.
34. The south portico originally held ninety panels: each floor had fifteen rooms, and
each room provided for the display of three sculptural panels, yielding ninety panels on the
façade (forty-five per floor) (Smith, “Imperial Reliefs,” 95). The north portico was longer,
with fifty panels per decorated floor (R. R. R. Smith, “Simulacra Gentium: The Ethne from
the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias,” JRS 78 [1988]: 51).
35. Smith, “Imperial Reliefs,” 100, 132.
36. Ibid., 115–17, pls. 14–15.
37. Ibid., 117–20, pls. 16–17.
38. Lincoln, Discourse, 20–26. By “authority,” Lincoln means that the narrative is not
simply considered true, but is considered to have paradigmatic status as both a model of
and a model for reality.
39. Lincoln provides specific modern examples of these deployments (Discourse, 15–23
and 27–37).
40. There is also in the Nero panel a hint of an allusion to the story of Menelaus
retrieving the body of Patroklos (Smith, “Imperial Reliefs,” 118–19).
41. There are four extant panels from the third story that portray winged Nikes.
42. Smith, “Imperial Reliefs,” 112–15, pls. 12–13.
43. Ibid., 104–6, pls. 6–7. The publication identifies the emperor as Augustus, but
Smith is now convinced that the figure’s head reflects a standard model of Claudius
(personal communication).
44. From the original forty-five panels of the second story, more than thirty have been
found largely intact, and fragments of most of the other panels are known.
45. Smith, “Myth and Allegory,” 95–97.
46. Ibid., 97.
47. Ibid., 100. The scope of this article does not allow discussion of the north portico,
where the entire second story appears to be devoted to the conquests of Augustus; see
Smith, “Simulacra Gentium.”
48. Smith, “Imperial Reliefs,” 134–37; idem, “Simulacra Gentium,” 77; idem, “Myth
and Allegory,” 100.
49. Reynolds, “New Evidence,” 317–18, #1. The fragmentary #2 also mentions her.
50. Reynolds, “Origins,” 79, #10.
51. A third inscription tells us that Attalis was a high priestess and a priestess. The text
does not give details, but since the stone was a statue base in her honor and was found in
the Sebasteion precincts, at least one of these priesthoods, and quite possibly both of them,
served the gods Sebastoi. An Aphrodisian from this same time period whose name suggests
that he was related to Attalis’s family—a certain Menander son of Diogenes son of Zeno—
was a high priest of Claudius and Dionysos (MAMA 8.447, cited in Reynolds, “New
Evidence,” 320).
52. Reynolds, “New Evidence,” 317–18, #1.
53. The inscriptions are described in Smith, “Imperial Reliefs,” 90.
54. Reynolds, “New Evidence,” 319–22.
55. Steven J. Friesen, Twice Neokoros: Ephesos, Asia, and the Cult of the Flavian Imperial
Family (Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 116; Leiden: Brill, 1993), 29–40.
56. Steven J. Friesen, Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John: Reading Revelation in the
Ruins (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 57–59.
57. For a complete listing of the known high priests and high priestesses, see my
database at http://web.missouri.edi/-rehgsf/officials.html.
58. Regarding Aristio’s high priesthoods, see Friesen, Twice Neokoros, 102.
59. Steven J. Friesen, “Asiarchs,” ZPE 126 (1999): 279–80.
60. Kyriarchy is a term developed by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza to describe social
systems of inequality. The term “seeks to redefine the analytic category of patriarchy in
terms of multiplicative intersecting structures of domination [such as race, gender, class,
wealth, etc.]” (see Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical
Interpretation [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2001], 211; see also pp. 118–24). This allows a more
complex analysis of male domination in specific settings, relating gender to other factors
relevant to oppression.
61. Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1993), 240.
62. For example: Wilhelm Bousset, H. B. Sweete, R. H. Charles, G. B. Caird,
Robert A. Kraft, G. R. Beasley-Murray, J. P. M. Sweet, Pierre Prigent, Adela Yarbro

Collins (Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse [Philadelphia: Westminster,
1984]; and “‘What the Spirit Says to the Churches’: Preaching the Apocalypse,” QR 4
[1984]: 82), Jürgen Roloff, Gerhard Krodel, Leonard Thompson (with reservations), J.
Ramsey Michaels, Davie E. Anne, David L. Barr. Exceptions tend to be those who
identify the beast from the earth as imperial cults as well as something else or something
larger (J. Weiss, William M. Ramsay, Eugene Boring, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, G.
K. Beale); those who identify the beast from the earth with the papacy or Roman
Catholic Church (Carl Zorn, Gerhard Lenski); and those who see Rev 13 pointing to a
future revived Roman empire and world religion (Ernst Lohmeyer, John F. Walvoord,
Robert L. Thomas). Even those with a futuristic interpretation sometimes cite Roman
imperial cults as a formative influence on the text (Leon Morris, G. E. Ladd, Robert H.
Mounce).
63. Wilhelm Bousset’s argument that the author of Revelation drew on a stable Jewish
tradition concerning the Antichrist has been abandoned. The myth of the Antichrist
coalesced in second-century Christian thought on the basis of a variety of traditions about
eschatological opponents. See Stefan Heid, Chiliasmus and Antichrist-Mythos: Eine
frühchristliche Kontroverse um das Hedige Land (Bonn: Borengässe, 1993); and L. J. Lietaert
Peerbolte, The Antecedents of Antichrist: A Traditio-Historical Study of the Earliest Christian
Views on Eschatological Opponents (JSJSup 49; New York/Leiden: Brill, 1996).
64. Davie E. Aune, Revelation (WBC 52A, B, C; Dallas: Word, 1997–98), 2:728; Barr,
Tales of the End, 108; and others.
65. For contrasting views, see Marvin H. Pope, Job: Introduction, Translation, and Notes
(3rd ed.; AB 15; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973), 268–79, 282–87; and David Wolfers,
“The Lord’s Second Speech in the Book of Job,” VT 40 (1990): 474–99.
66. E. Isaac, “1 (Ethiopic Apocalypse of ) Enoch,” in OTP 1:7. David Suter dated the
parables to the period between the last quarter of the first century B.C.E. and the fall of
Jerusalem, with the mid-first century C.E. as slightly more likely (Tradition and Composition
in the Parables of Enoch [SBLDS 47; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1979], 32). Matthew
Black thought that at least a Hebrew Urschrift of the parables existed before 70 C.E. (The
Book of Enoch or I Enoch: A new English edition with commentary and textual notes by
Matthew Black, in consultation with James C. VanderKam, with an appendix on the
“astronomical” chapters [72–82] by Otto Neugebauer [SVTP 7; Leiden: Brill, 1985],
187–88).
67. The gender of the monsters is not stable in the traditions. This text is unique in
referring to Leviathan as female and Behemoth as male (Kenneth William Whitney, Jr.,
“Two Strange Beasts: A Study of Traditions concerning Leviathan and Behemoth in
Second Temple and Early Rabbinic Judaism” [Th.D. diss., Harvard University, 1992], 76).
68. There are numerous technical problems in the details and integrity of 1 En. 60 that
are not strictly relevant here; see Michael A. Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch: A New
Edition in the Light of the Aramaic Dead Sea Fragments (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978),
2:142–48; Black, Book of Enoch, 225–31.
69. Michael Stone says that this type of allusion is a stylistic feature of eschatological
passages in 4 Ezra (Fourth Ezra: A Commentary on the Book of Fourth Ezra [ed. Frank Moore
Cross; Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990], 188).
70. Whitney notes that this text and 4 Ezra 6:52 are not dependent on each other but
are drawing on the same general tradition (“Two Strange Beasts,” 59).
71. Revelation avoids the names Leviathan and Behemoth, which perhaps allows more
flexibility in the deployment of the pattern. There are rabbinic stories of Leviathan and
Behemoth that develop other themes, some of which use the destructive potential of the
beasts. These texts are centuries later than Revelation, however, and take us into a different
period in the history of the deployment of the story. See Whitney, “Two Strange Beasts,”
129–33.
72. The hostility of the two beasts is perhaps suggested in 1 En. 60:9, where, according
to Black, the two beasts have been separated to consume the victims of the Noachian flood
(Book of Enoch, 227). It is also possible that the stories of Yahweh’s battle with the Sea were
the source for this element of John’s deployment.
73. This article must not venture too far into Rev 12, since space does not permit a
proper treatment of the issue of myth in that chapter. I do not accept the argument that
Rev 11–13 is drawing on the Oracle of Hystaspes (John Flusser, “Hystaspes and John of
Patmos,” in Judaism and the Origins of Christianity [Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew
University, 1988], 390–453). Flusser’s argument about hypothetical sources is extremely
speculative. A much more convincing approach to the mythic background of Rev 12 is
found in Richard Clifford, “The Roots of Apocalypticism in Near Eastern Myth,” in The
Origins of Apocalypticism in Judaism and Christianity (ed. John J. Collins; vol. 1 of The
Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, ed. Bernard McGinn, John J. Collins, and Stephen J. Stein;
New York: Continuum, 1998), 3–38.
74. There are various ways of referring to this mythic pattern, or to the larger pattern
in which it plays a role: combat myth, Chaoskampf, the Divine Warrior myth, and so on.
75. Clifford, “Roots,” 7–29; Neil Forsyth, The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 44–67.
76. Wayne T. Pitard, “The Binding of Yamm: A New Edition of the Ugaritic Text
KTU 1.83,” JNES 57 (1998): 279–80; John Day, God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea:
Echoes of a Canaanite Myth in the Old Testament (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1985), 71–72; Mary K. Wakeman, God’s Battle with the Monster: A Study in Biblical Imagery
(Leiden: Brill, 1973), 56–82. Note, however, that Wakeman’s theories about Behemoth
(pp. 106–17) have not been well received (Day, God’s Conflict, 84–86; Whitney, “Strange
Beasts,” 39–40).
77. Two aspects of the text make the connection clear. One is the description of the
dragon and the beast from the sea as having seven heads, which is an attribute of Leviathan
in some texts (Ps 74:13–14; Day, God’s Conflict, 72). The other aspect is the description of
the dragon in Rev 12:9 as the ancient serpent, which is a direct allusion to Isa 27:1, “On
that day the Lord with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the
fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will kill the dragon that is in the
sea.” Ntywl (“Leviathan”) and Nynt (“dragon”) are both rendered as dra◊kwn (“dragon”) in
the LXX.
78. The theme of feasting appears in Rev 19:17–18, where it is combined with
judgment oracles to turn the eschatological banquet into a call to dine on carrion.
79. G.K. Beale’s effort to locate the source of this imagery mostly in Daniel with
little or no influence from Near Eastern mythology is unnecessary (The Book of
Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text [NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999],
682–83). Each of the relevant texts deployed this international mythic pattern in its own
ways. Moreover, the author of Revelation often conflated various sources for his
purposes.
80. Rick Van de Water’s recent attempt to deny a connection of the beast with Roman
power is unconvincing because it focuses primarily on the rebuttal of persecution theories;
“Reconsidering the Beast from the Sea (Rev 13.1),” NTS 48 (2000): 245–61.
81. The exact numbers differ, but they are all closely related (John J. Collins, Daniel:
A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, with an essay “The Influence of Daniel on the New
Testament,” by Adela Yarbro Collins (ed. Frank Moore Cross; Hermeneia; Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1993), 400.
82. See, e.g., Die Inschriften von Ephesos 2.412 and 7,2.3801 lines 2–1.
83. Another Danielic theme probably lurks in the background. In Dan 3 is the story
of an emperor who requires all peoples and nations to worship a gold statue. However,
direct allusions to that story in Rev 13 are difficult to isolate. Another motif—the scroll in
which are written the names of the faithful (Dan 12:1)—appears in Rev 13:8, but this
theme appears throughout Revelation and is not an integral part of ch. 13. For other
details suggesting Danielic influences, see Peerbolte, Antecedents of Antichrist, 142–56.
84. I do not claim, nor would I want to claim, that John ever saw this sculpture. His
personal contact with particular artifacts is irrelevant to the argument. The carved stone is
simply an example of the public mythology of imperial cults. It is a representative piece
that brings us closer to the public culture that was familiar to anyone living in an urban
setting in this part of the Roman empire.
85. For a summary of texts, see Anne, Revelation, 2:762–66.
86. The only statue I am aware of from western Asia Minor that might have been used
in this way is the temple statue from the second-century “Red Hall” at Pergamon, which
was dedicated to the Egyptian deities (Wolfgang Radt, Pergamon: Geschichte und Bauten
einer antiken Metropole [Darmstadt: Primus, 1999], 200–209). Moreover, Steven J.
Scherrer’s argument that Rev 13:13–15 should be taken literally as evidence for imperial
cult practice is hardly convincing (“Signs and Wonders in the Imperial Cult: A New Look
at a Roman Religious Institution in the Light of Rev 13:13–15,” JBL 103 [1984]: 599–610).
87. John possibly raised legends about Nero’s return to mythic status as well. Most
commentators conclude that the wounded head of the beast from the sea (Rev 13:3) and
the 666 gematria (13:18) are references to the story that Nero would return and take
revenge on Rome. It is also possible that the story of Nero’s return had already taken on
mythic proportions before John wrote, since the idea is present in Sib. Or. 5:28–34,
93–100, 137–49; and 4:135–48.
88. Revelation 13 does not provide enough gendered imagery for a comparison with
the kyriarchal character of imperial cult mythology. The imperial cult materials have
similarities with other parts of Revelation where gendered imagery is more evident (e.g.,
Rev 12 and 17–18), but the scope of this article does not allow for an exploration of those
themes. For some comments on these issues, see Friesen, Imperial Cults, 185–89.
89. Revelation is more clearly written for a ritual setting than are the other apocalyptic
texts examined in this article.
90. Barr, Tales, 171–75, 170–80.
91. Yarbro Collins, Combat Myth.
92. Doniger, Implied Spider, 53–61.
93. This is especially evident in the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias (Smith, “Simulacra
Gentium,” esp. 77).
94. Most specialists accept that Revelation was written, or at least edited, late in the
Flavian dynasty. This was the same dynasty that distinguished itself and bolstered its claims
to authority by defeating the Jewish revolt against Roman rule. John’s use of the religious
traditions of Israel was thus a significant political choice.
95. Friesen, Imperial Cults, 122–31.
96. Said, Culture and Imperialism, 31–32, 240.
HAROLD BLOOM
Afterthought
Q uests for the historical Jesus always fail, and will go on failing. Wayne
Meeks, in his Christ Is the Question (2006), demonstrates that the only
historical Jesus who can be recovered is the figure as interpreted by his
followers, from ancient times until now. My Jesus and Yahweh: The Names
Divine (2005) argues that neither the New Testament nor the Hebrew Bible
accurately can be read as factual history.
Were I to rewrite my recent book, I would go further in emphasizing
that Jesus Christ necessarily is a fictive creation, as much so as Yahweh, Allah,
Krishna, or any other deity. William Blake, the great English Romantic poet
and visionary, told us that all religion is a choosing of forms of worship from
poetic tales.
Now, in 2006, the globe edges steadily towards the catastrophe of
terrorism and war between militant Islam and Christians, Jews, Hindus and
other organized religions. History seems no help in holding off global
disasters that doubtless must come. Once we had warfare between
Protestants and Roman Catholics, but the age of struggle between Christians
seems forever past. President George W. Bush regards his Iraqi venture as a
drive for democracy, but the Islamic peoples see it as a return to the
Crusades. Even as I write these paragraphs, cartoons of Muhammad as a
suicide bomber are provoking Muslim riots in very diverse locales.
277
278 Harold Bloom
Wayne Meeks shrewdly remarks “that the identity of Jesus is still open,
that the transactive process by which identity is made is still going on.” I
would add to Meeks that the identity of Jesus always will remain open,
because he is, at best, a more-or-less historical figure. I have just read the new
(2006) Second Edition of Fundamentalism and American Culture by George
M. Marsden, and I am not sanguine that a single Fundamentalist would be
persuaded by Meeks, were they to read him. Since most of them do not
bother to read the Bible, they scarcely can be expected to read anything else.
Muslims do read the Qur’an, but that ongoing enterprise does not
much encourage me either. John Wansbrough’s marvelous Quranic Studies
(1977) was republished in a new edition in 2004. I have just reread it, and am
at once impressed by the aesthetic splendors that Wansbrough uncovers, and
disquieted by the ferocity of Quranic insistence that all truth is sealed forever
in its pages. Dante and his contemporaries regarded Islam as a Christian
heresy. The Qur’an sees Christianity as a deliberate betrayal of Issa (Jesus)
who proclaims himself as another forerunner, with Abraham and Moses, of
Muhammad, seal of the prophets, and Allah’s most authentic interpreter.
The Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur’an never will be
wholly secularized, and pragmatically that will be the tragedy of our rapidly
developing era when regimes as fanatical as Iran each will have its own
arsenal of nuclear missiles. I am no prophet nor was meant to be, but I
sensibly dread the time that already is upon us. Choosing forms of worship
from poetic tales might yet see the end-time of our Earth.
Chronology
Note: Up until the printing of the Gutenberg Bible, all dates are approximate.
B.C.E.
? The Creation and the Flood.
1800–1250 The Patriarchs and the Sojourn in Egypt
1250–1200 The Exodus and the Conquest
1200–1150 Joshua
1150–1025 The Judges
1025–930 The Monarchy
950–900 The J Source
930–590 The Two Kingdoms
850–800 The E Source
750 Amos, Proverbs 10-22:16
725 Hosea
720 The Fall of Samaria
700 Micah, Proverbs 25-29, Isaiah 1-31, JE redaction
650 Deuteronomy, Zephaniah
625 Nahum, Proverbs 22:17-24
700–600 The Reformation of Josiah
600–500 Deuteronomy–Kings
279
280 Chronology
600 Jeremiah, Habakkuk

575 Job 3-31, 38-42:6
550 Isaiah 40-55, Job 32-37
587–538 The Fall of Jerusalem and the Exile to Babylonia
538 The Return
525 Isaiah 56-66, Jeremiah 46-52, Ezekiel 1-37, 40-48,
Lamentations
500 Job redaction, the P Source, Haggai, Zechariah 1-8,
Jeremiah 30-31
475–400 Additions to Ezekiel 1-37, 40-48
475–350 Nehemiah and Ezra
450 Joel, Malachi, Proverbs 30-31, Lists
425 JEP redaction [Genesis-Numbers], Isaiah 32-35, Proverbs
1-9, Ruth, Obad
400 JEPD redaction, Jonah, Psalms, Proverbs redaction, Song
of Songs, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah
350 Ecclesiastes
363–330 The Hellenistic Period
325 Zechariah 9-14
300 Isaiah 24-27; Ezekiel 38-39
250–100 The Septuagint, a translation of the Hebrew Bible into
Greek
175 Daniel
165 The Maccabean Revolt
100 Esther
63 Pompey takes Jerusalem
6 Birth of Christ
C.E.
26 Baptism of Christ and the beginning of John’s Ministry
30 Crucifixion and resurrection of Christ and Pentecost
32 Conversion of Paul
44 Martyrdom of James
46 Paul and Barnabas visit Jerusalem during famine
47–48 Paul’s First Missionary Journey
Chronology 281
49–52 Paul’s Second Missionary Journey

49 Galatians
50 Thessalonian Letters
52–56 Paul’s Third Missionary Journey
53–55 Corinthian Letters
56 Romans
56–58 Paul is arrested in Jerusalem and is imprisoned by Caesar
58 Paul’s voyage to Rome and shipwreck
59–60 First Roman imprisonment of Paul
60 Philippians
61–62 Colossians, Philemon
61–63 Paul’s release and last travels
64–65 Paul’s second Roman imprisonment, martyrdom, and
death; death of Peter
65–67 Mark
70 Fall of Jerusalem
75–80 Matthew
90 Canonization of the Hebrew Bible at Synod of Jamnia
93–96 Persecutions under Emperor Domitian discussed in
Revelation
95 Ephesians, Hebrews, Revelation, Luke, Acts
95–100 1 Peter
95–115 Fourth Gospel
110–115 Johannine Epistles
125–150 James, Jude
150 2 Peter
160–175 Timothy, Titus
350–400 Stabilization of the New Testament canon of twenty-seven
books
400 Jerome completes the Latin Vulgate, a translation of the
Bible based on the Septuagint and translated from the
Hebrew
1382 The first translation of the Bible into English, by John
Wycliffe
1456 The Gutenberg Bible is printed from movable type,
ushering in the new era of printing
282 Chronology
1516 Erasmus finishes a translation of the Bible into Greek

1532 Martin Luther translates the Bible into German
1535 William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale’s English translation
of the Bible
1537 Matthew’s Bible is produced, based on the Tyndale and
Coverdale versions
1539 The Great Bible is produced by Coverdale
1560 The Geneva Bible, the first to separate chapters into verses
1582–1610 The Douay–Rheims Bible, a Catholic translation from
Latin into English
1611 The King James Version is completed
1885 The English Revised Version is co-issued by English and
American scholars
1901 The American Standard Version
1924 The Moffatt Bible
1931 The Smith–Goodspeed Bible
1941 The Confraternity Version, an Episcopal revision of the
Douay-Rheims Bible
1945–1949 Knox’s Version, based on the Latin Vulgate and authorized
by the Catholic Church
1952 The Revised Standard Version
1961 The New English Bible, Protestant
1966 The Jerusalem Bible, Catholic
1969 The Modern Language Bible
1970 The New American Bible, Catholic
1976 Today’s English Version
1978 The New International Version
1982 The New Jewish Version
2002 The English Standard Version
Contributors
HAROLD BLOOM is Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale

University. He is the author of 30 books, including Shelley’s Mythmaking
(1959), The Visionary Company (1961), Blake’s Apocalypse (1963), Yeats (1970),
A Map of Misreading (1975), Kabbalah and Criticism (1975), Agon: Toward a
Theory of Revisionism (1982), The American Religion (1992), The Western Canon
(1994), and Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and
Resurrection (1996). The Anxiety of Influence (1973) sets forth Professor
Bloom’s provocative theory of the literary relationships between the great
writers and their predecessors. His most recent books include Shakespeare:
The Invention of the Human (1998), a 1998 National Book Award finalist, How
to Read and Why (2000), Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative
Minds (2002), Hamlet: Poem Unlimited (2003), Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?
(2004), and Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine (2005). In 1999, Professor
Bloom received the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold
Medal for Criticism. He has also received the International Prize of
Catalonia, the Alfonso Reyes Prize of Mexico, and the Hans Christian
Andersen Bicentennial Prize of Denmark.
KENNETH BURKE (1897–1993) was a lecturer at many American

universities including Harvard, Princeton and the University of Chicago. He
is the author of Permanence and Change; An Anatomy of Purpose (1935); The
Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action (1941); A Grammar of
Motives (1945); and A Rhetoric of Motives (1969).
283
284 Contributors
ERICH AUERBACH (1892–1957) was Sterling Professor of Romance

Languages at Yale University. He is the author of Literary Language and its
Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages (1968); Scenes from the
Drama of European Literature (1984); and Introduction to Romance Languages
and Literature: Latin, French, Spanish, Provençal, Italian (1961).
GEOFFREY HARTMAN is Karl Jung Professor of English and

Comparative Literature at Yale University. He is the author of The
Unmediated Vision: An interpretation of Wordsworth (1966); Criticism in the
Wilderness: The Study of Literature Today (1980); and The Fateful Question of
Culture (1997).
MARTIN BUBER (1878–1965) was one of the most influential and prolific
modern scholars of Judaism and the Hebrew Bible. He is the author of A
Believing Humanism: My Testament, 1902–1965, translated, and with an
introduction by Maurice Friedman (1967); Israel and Palestine: The History of
an Idea (1952); and Moses (1946).
FRANCIS LANDY is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of

Alberta. He is the author of Beauty and the Enigma: And Other Essays on the
Hebrew Bible (2001); Hosea (1995); “Narrative Techniques and Symbolic
Transactions in the Akedah” (1989); and “Tracing the Voice of the Other:
Isaiah 28 and the Covenant with Death.” (1993).
J. DANIEL HAYS is Chair of the Department of Biblical Studies and

Elma Cobb Professor of Biblical Studies at Ouachita Baptist University. His
works include From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race and
Grasping God’s Word: A Hands-On Approach to Reading, Interpreting, and
Applying the Bible, co-authored with J. Scott Duvall.
D.H. LAWRENCE (1885–1930) is a renowned nineteenth-century English

novelist and critic. Among his best known works are: Sons and Lovers (1913);
and The Rainbow (1915); and Women in Love (1920).
FRANK KERMODE has been King Edward VII Professor of English

Literature at Cambridge University and Professor of English at Columbia
University. He is the author of Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne: Renaissance Essays
(1971); The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (1979); and an
editor of The Literary Guide to the Bible (1987).
Contributors 285
HERBERT MARKS has been an Associate Professor in the Comparative

Literature, English, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures Departments at
the University of Indiana, Bloomington and Director of their Institute for
Biblical and Literary Studies. He is the author of an essay on Robert Frost in
the Chelsea House Modern Critical Views; co-editor of Samuel and the
Deuteronomist: A Literary Study of the Deuteronomic History (1994) and the
Norton Critical Edition of the English Bible, vol. 2 (2000) and an editor of
Romantic Revolutions: Criticism and Theory (1990).
BENEDICT T. VIVIANO, O.P. is Professor of the New Testament at

University of Fribourg. He is the author numerous articles and five books
including Kingdom of God in History.
STEVEN J. FRIESEN is the Louise F. Boyer Professor of Religious Studies

at the Univeristy of Texas at Austin. He is author of Imperial Cults and the
Apocalypse of John: Reading Revelation in the Ruins and editor of Ancestors in
Post-Contact Religion : Roots, Ruptures, and Modernity’s Memory.
Bibliography
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and Literature. New York: Herder & Herder, 1965.
Alter, Robert. Canon and Creativity: Modern Writing and the Authority of
Scripture. New Haven: Yale Unversity Press, 2000.
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1994.
Barton, John. Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study.
Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984.
Bauer, David R. The Structure of Matthew’s Gospel: A Study in Literary Design.
Sheffield, England: The Almond Press, 1988.
Bevan, David, ed. Literature and the Bible. Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA:
Rodopi, 1993.
Bloom, Harold. The Book of J. Translated from the Hebrew by David
Rosenberg. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990.
———. Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989.
———, ed. The Book of Job. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.
Brams, Steven J. Biblical Games. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1980.
Bream, Howard N., Ralph D. Heim and Carey A. Moore, eds. A Light Unto
My Path: Old Testament Studies in Honor of Jacob M. Myers. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1974.
Brown, Norman O. Love’s Body. New York: Vintage Press, 1968.
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288 Bibliography
Caird, G.B. The Language and Imagery of the Bible. Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 1980.
Camp, Claudia V. Wisdom and the Feminine in the Book of Proverbs. Decatur,
GA: The Almond Press, 1985.
Carmichael, Calum M. “A Ceremonial Crux: Removing a Man’s Sandal as a
Female Gesture of Contempt.” Journal of Biblical Literature 96 (1977):
321–36.
Carmichael, Joel. The Death of Jesus. New York: The Macmillan Company,
1962.
Charity, A.C. Events and Their Afterlife: The Dialectics of Christian Typology in
the Bible and Dante. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966.
Chase, Mary Ellen. Life and Language in the Old Testament. New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 1955.
Coogan, Michael D. The Oxford History of the Biblical World. New York:
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Corn, Alfred, ed. Incarnation: Contemporary Writers on The New Testament.
New York: Viking, 1990.
Culbertson, Diana. The Poetics of Revelation: Recognition and The Narrative
Tradition. Macon, GA: Mercer, 1989.
Douglas, Mary. Leviticus as Literature. Oxford and New York: Oxford
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Eissfeldt, Otto. The Old Testament: An Introduction. New York: Harper &
Row, 1972.
Epp, Eldon Jay and George W. MacRae, eds. The New Testament and its
Modern Interpreters. Philadelphia: Fortress Press; Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1989.
Eslinger, Lyle M. Kingship of God in Crisis: A Close Reading of 1 Samuel 1-12.
Decatur, GA: The Almond Press, 1985.
Falk, Marcia. Love Lyrics from the Bible: A Translation and Literary Study of the
Song of Songs. Sheffield, England: Almond Press, 1982.
Farrer, Austin. A Rebirth of Images: The Making of St. John’s Apocalypse.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1949.
Frei, Hans. The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1974.
Frye, Northrop. Double Vision: Language and Meaning in Religion. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1001.
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———. Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature.”
San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990.
Gardner, Helen. Religion and Literature. London: Faber & Faber, 1971.
Gitay, Yehoshua. Prophecy and Persuasion. Bonn: Linguistica Biblica, 1981.
Good, E.M. Irony in the Old Testament. Philadelphia: Westminster Press,
1965.
Gordis, Robert. The Book of God and Man: A Study of Job. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1965.
Gottcent, John H. The Bible: A Literary Study. Boston: Twayne, 1986.
Gros-Louis, Kenneth R.R., ed. Literary Interpretation of Biblical Narratives.
Nashville: Abingdon, 1982.
Gunkel, Hermann. The Legends of Genesis. New York: Schocken Books, 1964.
Harrisville, Roy A. and Walter Sundberg. The Bible in Modern Culture:
Theology and Historical-Critical Method from Spinoza to Käsemann. Grand
Rapids, Michigan: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995.
Higgins, David H. Dante and the Bible: An Introduction. Bristol, England:
University of Bristol Press, 1992.
Howlett, David R. British Books on Biblical Style. Dublin; Portland, OR: Four
Courts Press, 1997.
Jasper, David. The New Testament and the Literary Imagination. Basingstoke,
Hampshire: Macmillan, 1987.
———and Stephen Prickett, eds. The Bible and Literature: A Reader. Oxford,
UK; Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1999.
King, Jeannette. Women and the Word: Contemporary Novelists and the Bible.
Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 2000.
Knight, Douglas A. and Gene M. Tucker, eds. The Hebrew Bible and its
Modern Interpreters. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985.
Kraft, Robert A. and George W.E. Nickelsburg, eds. Early Judaism and its
Modern Interpreters. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1986.
Kugel, James L. Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible As It Was at the
Start of the Common Era. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1998.
———. The God of Old: Inside the Lost World of the Bible. New York: Free
Press, 2003.
——— and Rowan A. Greer, eds. Early Biblical Interpretation. Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1986
290 Bibliography
Landy, Francis. Paradoxes of Paradise: Identity and Difference in the “Song of

Songs”. Sheffield, England: The Almond Press, 1983.
Lawton, David A. Faith, Text and History: The Bible in English. Charlottesville,
Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1990.
McConnell, Frank. The Bible and the Narrative Tradition. New York: Oxford
Ostriker, Alicia. The Nakedness of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions.
New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994.
Patrick, Dale and Allen Scult. Rhetoric and Biblical Interpretation. Sheffield,
England: The Almond Press, 1990.
Pearlman, Moshe. Digging up the Bible: The Stories Behind the Great
Archaeological Discoveries in the Holy Land. London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1980.
Powell, Mark Allan. The Bible and Modern Literary Criticism: A Critical
Assessment and Annotated Bibliography. New York: Greenwood Press,
1992.
Prickett, Stephen. Origins of Narrative: The Romantic Appropriation of the Bible.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
———. Words and the Word: Language, Poetics, and Biblical Interpretation.
Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Prickett, Stephen and Robert Barnes. The Bible. New York: Cambridge
Prickett, Stephen, ed. Reading the Text: Biblical Criticism and Literary Theory.
Oxford, UK and Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1991.
Preminger, Alex and Edward L. Greenstein, eds. The Hebrew Bible in Literary
Criticism. New York: Unger, 1986.
Propp, William Henry, Baruch Halpern, and David Noel Freedman eds. The
Hebrew Bible and Its Interpreters. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns,
1990.
Rosenblatt, Jason P. and Joseph C. Sitterson, Jr., eds. “Not in heaven”:
Coherence and Complexity in Biblical Narrative. Bloomington: Indiana
Shanks, Hershel and Dan P. Cole, eds. Early Israel. Washington, D.C.:
Biblical Archaeology Society, 1990.
Whedbee, J. William. The Bible and the Comic Vision. Cambridge, UK and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Bibliography 291
Wilder, Amos N. The Bible and the Literary Critic. Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1991.
———. Early Christian Rhetoric: The Language of the Gospel. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1971.
Acknowledgments
“The First Three Chapters of Genesis” by Kenneth Burke. From The

Rhetoric of Religion. pp. 201-222. © 1961 by Kenneth Burke. Reprinted by
permission.
“Odysseus’ Scar” by Erich Auerbach. From Mimesis: The Representation of

Reality in Western Literature, translated by Willard R. Trask: pp. 7-23. ©1953
by Princeton University Press, 1981 renewed Princeton University Press,
2003 paperback edition. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University
Press. Reprinted by permission.
“The Poetics of Prophecy” by Geoffrey Hartman. From High Romantic

Argument: Essays for M.H. Abrams. Lawrence Lipking, ed. pp. 15-40. © 1981
Cornell University Press. Used by permission of the publisher, Cornell
University Press. Reprinted by permission.
“Wrestling Sigmund: Three Paradigms for Poetic Originality” by Harold

Bloom. From The Breaking of the Vessels. © 1982 by the University of Chicago
Press. Reprinted by permission.
“Job” by Martin Buber. From On the Bible: Eighteen Studies by Martin Buber,
Nahum N. Glatzer, ed. pp. 188-198, 226-227. © 1968 by Schocken Books
Inc. Reprinted by permission.
293
294 Acknowledgments
“The Heart Determines” by Martin Buber. From On the Bible: Eighteen

Studies by Martin Buber, Nahum N. Glatzer, ed. pp. 199–210, 227. © 1968 by
Schocken Books Inc. Reprinted by permission.
“The Relationship of Lovers” by Francis Landy. From Paradoxes of Paradise:

Identity and Difference in the ‘Song of Songs’, pp. 61–92. © 1983 by The
Almond Press. Reprinted by permission.
“Has the Narrator Come to Praise Solomon or to Bury Him? Narrative

Subtlety in 1 Kings 1–11” by J. Daniel Hays. From Journal for the Study of
the Old Testament 28, 2 (December 2003) pp. 149–174. © 2003 The
Continuum Publishing Group. Reprinted by permission.
“Apocalypse” by D.H. Lawrence. From Apocalypse, pp. 190–200. ©1932 by

The Viking Press Reprinted by permission.
“The Man in the Macintosh, the Boy in the Shirt” by Frank Kermode. From
The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative. pp. 49–73. © 1979 by
Frank Kermode. Reprinted by permission.
“Pauline Typology and Revisionary Criticism” by Herbert Marks. From the

Journal of the American Academy of Religion, V. 52. No. 1. © 1984 American
Academy of Religion. Reprinted by permission.
“John’s Use of Matthew: Beyond Tweaking” by Benedict T. Viviano, O.P.,

pp. 209–237. © 2004 L’Ecole Biblique et Archéologique Française.
Reprinted by permission.
“Myth and Symbolic Resistance in Revelation 13” by Steven J. Friesen.

Journal of Biblical Literature 123, 2 (Spring 2004) pp. 281–313. © 2004
Society of Biblical Literature. Reprinted by permission.
Every effort has been made to contact the owners of copyrighted material
and secure copyright permission. Articles appearing in this volume generally
appear much as they did in their original publication with few or no editorial
changes. Those interested in locating the original source will find
bibliographic information in the bibliography and acknowledgments sections
of this volume.
Index
Aaron, 12, 231 interpretation of the Gospel of

Abel, 3, 47 Mark, 180–83, 187, 195
Abiathar, 153 Adonijah, 153
Abihu, 12 Adoniram
Abishag, 153 assassination of, 158
Abraham Aeschylus
agonism, 12 Eumenides, 29
journey, 35 Agrippa, 203
sacrifice of, 27, 33–37, 39, 42 Akiba
struggles of, 6, 8–9, 76–77, 79, religion of, 1, 6, 8
98 Alighieri, Dante, 4, 64, 214, 278
tales of, 3–6, 10, 45, 47, 209–10, Allah, 277
228, 230 Ambrose, 64
temptation, 36 Amos
Abrams, M.H., 64 narrative, 183, 186
Absalom Anchor Bible (Speiser)
death, 38 translations in, 74–75, 77–78
rebellion, 44 Anderson, P.N.
According to the Scriptures (Dodd), The Christology of the Fourth
201 Gospel, 232–35
Acts, Book of Andrew
narratives, 222 disciple to Jesus, 232
Paul in, 203–4 Angel of Death
Adam, 46, 213 and Jacob’s Freudian wrestling
creation of, 3, 5, 8, 13, 18, 20 match, 8, 15, 71–89
disobedience of, 28, 30, 214 Antioch, 203
humiliation, 43 Aphrodisias
naming of the animals, 25 use of myth in, 251, 253–59,
and Yahweh, 4, 6 264, 266
Adams, Robert M. Apocalypse, 171–75
295
296 Index
genre, 195 historical structure, 45, 47, 241,

Apology Against a Pamphlet, An 277–78
(Milton), 214 influence on literature, 48, 65,
Aristotle, 84 74, 80–82, 89, 148, 200, 203,
Nichomachaean Ethics, 30–31 213
Politics, 19 new covenant in, 208–9
Arnold, Matthew prophets in, 49–52, 54, 60–63,
Sohrab and Rustum, 190 202, 205–6, 208, 224
Ashbery, John, 73 reality in, 33–48
Auerbach, Erich, 64, 205, 284 use of, 221, 233
on the contrasts of reality in the writers, 207
Hebrew Bible and in Homer, Binder, Wolfgang, 64
33–48 Blake, William, 10, 64, 277
Augustan Ara Pacis, 252 The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,
Augustine, 25, 64, 190 76
Azazel Bloom, Harold, 65, 283
burnt offerings, 28 afterthought, 277–78
introduction, 1–15
Babel, tower of, 3 on Jacob’s Freudian wrestling
Bacon, Francis match with the Angel of
parables, 71 Death, 8, 15, 71–89
Balaam, 4 Jesus and Yahweh: The Names
Balak, 4 Divine, 277–78
Barrett, C.K., 229–30 modern poetry studies, 200
Barr, James, 200 Poetry and Repression, 213–14
Barth, Karl, 207, 215 on the recoverable historicity of
Bathsheba, 148, 153 Jesus, 277–78
Barthes, Roland, 181 on the sublimity of the Yahwist
Baruch or J Writer, 1–15
and myth, 261–62 Boman, Thorleif, 80
Baur, F.C. Borges, Jorge Luis, 84
Tubingen school of, 222–23, Brettler, Marc, 148
241 Brueggemann, Walter, 6
Behemoth on 1 King, 150, 154, 158,
tradition, 259–61, 264 162–63
Benaiah, 153 Buber, Martin, 284
Beyond the Pleasure Principle and the apocalyptic mode, 57
(Freud), 85 on Job, 91–99
Bible, Hebrew (Old Testament), 14 Moses, 13–14
characteristics, 207 on Psalm 73, 101–9
chronology, 279–82 Bultmann, Rudolf, 215, 248
criticism, 201, 203 Burckhardt, Jacob, 79
Index 297
Burke, Kenneth, 74, 283 exodus tradition in, 204

on the first three chapters of narrative, 213, 238
Genesis, 17–32 spirituals in, 206, 209
A Grammar of Motives, 23 Corinthians (2)
narratives, 208, 210, 229
Cain, 3, 47 Court, John, 247
Calvin, John, 5
Camp, Claudia V. Daniel
Wise, Strange and Holy, 149 myth in, 159, 262–65
Caruth, Cathy, 83 narratives, 237–38
Cassirer, Ernst, 248 Dante See Alighieri, Dante
Cavell, Stanley, 64 David the King, 206, 209
Childs, Brevard, 14 affair with Bathsheba, 148, 153
Christ is the Question (Meeks), and Goliath, 43
277–78 humility, 160–61
Christianity last days, 45
ethics, 223 reign, 156–57, 163
history, 41, 44, 183, 186, 195, struggles of, 8, 38, 42, 44, 98
200–5, 207–9, 277–78 tales of, 3–6, 10, 12, 15, 46, 148,
influence on literature, 64 155, 158–59, 209, 228, 230,
and love, 173–74 233
martyrs, 172 triumph of, 6–7
modern state, 172–74 Derrida, Jacques
mythic traditions in, 247–48 theories, 72
normative tradition, 5–6, 8, 10, Deuteronomy, 61
114, 223, 240–41 death of Moses in, 4
sacrifice, 171 narratives, 151, 163, 212
writers, 199, 202, 233, 238 prohibitions in, 152, 162
Christology of the Fourth Gospel, The prostitution in, 157
(Anderson), 232–35 writer of, 1
Chronicles (1), 9 Discourse Concerning... Satire
narrative, 203–4 (Dryden), 83
“Clear Midnight, A” (Whitman), Dodd, C.H., 203, 227–28
73 According to the Scriptures, 201
Clement of Alexandria, 222 Doniger, Wendy, 150
interpretation of the Gospel of Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 85
Mark, 183–87 Dryden, John, 84
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1, 73 Discourse Concerning... Satire, 83
theology, 23, 52, 59, 64, 84, 213 Parallel Betwixt Poetry and
Collins, Adela Yarbro, 247 Painting, 83
Common Era, 3, 9, 74 Preface to Fables, Ancient and
Corinthians (1) Modern, 83
298 Index
Dubliners (Joyce) academy of, 76

James Duffy in, 179–80, 189, myth in, 260–62
196
Duncan, Robert, 67 Farewell to Arms, A (Hemingway),
190
Ego and the Id, The (Freud), 85 Farrer, Austin
Eliade, Mircea, 248 interpretation of the Gospel of
Elijah, 107 Mark, 186–89, 193–95
John’s view of, 221, 226–27, Fewell, Danna Nolan, 148
229, 241 Firbank, Ronald, 73
Matthew’s view of, 221, 226–27, Flaubert, Gustave
229, 241 Temptation of Saint Anthony, 25
Elisha, 229 Frei, Hans, 202
Ellis, E.E., 203, 210 Fretheim, Terrence, 154, 162–63
Elohist, 33, 39, 76, 88 Freud, Sigmund, 66, 122
Emerson, Ralph Waldo Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 85
theories, 72, 85 The Ego and the Id, 85
Emmanuel ego psychology, 82
John’s view of, 221 family romance, 81, 86
Matthew’s view of, 221, 224 Jacob’s wrestling match with the
Enoch, 107 Angel of Death, 71–89
and myth, 260–62 scene of Instruction, 71, 83
Ephesos Three Essays on the Theory of
use of myth in, 251, 257–59, Sexuality, 74–76, 87–88
264 Totem and Taboo, 86
Erikson, Erik, 83 uncanny concept, 2, 6, 8, 12
Esau, 3 Friesen, Steven J., 285
trials of, 9, 47, 78–80 on the symbolism in Chapter 13
Ethics (Spinoza), 31 of Revelation, 247–75
Eumenides (Aeschylus), 29 Frye, Northrop, 64
Eve Fundamentalism and American
and the serpent, 3, 29 Culture (Marsden), 278
Exodus
burning bush in, 4 Galatians, 204, 222, 231
literal translation, 81 Paul’s denial in, 208, 210
Moses in, 4, 211–12, 231 Gardner-Smith, P., 222
oppression of the Jews in, 4 Genesis, 9, 127
tales in, 2, 4, 10, 98 Abraham in, 6
Ezekiel, 14 Covenant in, 24, 26–27, 29–30,
dogmatics of, 91, 93, 209, 214 41
wheel, 28 Creation in, 3, 18, 22, 24, 31,
Ezra, 1 60, 231
Index 299
death and mortification, 20–24, and the suffering of Job, 92–95,

26, 31 97–98, 102, 104–6
Eden in, 18 will of, 210
Fall in, 22, 28, 30 word of, 49–51, 58, 61–63,
first three chapters of, 17–32 66–67, 75, 96
imagery in, 24–26, 29 Golden Age, 148
narrative style of, 17–31, 33–34, Goliath
36, 39–40, 65, 74, 98, 183, and David, 43
186–87 Gommes, Les (Robbe-Grillet), 181
Order in, 19–20, 24–25, 28–31, Grammar of Motives, A (Burke), 23
64 Greeks
redemption, 28 concept of God, 34, 45, 47,
Sabbath, 19 76–77, 79–80, 82, 231
sacrifice in, 27–31 manuscripts, 183–84, 191–92,
serpent in, 26, 28–29 205, 225
temptation in, 21, 26, 28–30, 33, translation of torah, 210, 232,
36 234
tree of knowledge, 19, 26 Gunn, David M., 148
tropes of exile in, 7 Gutwirth, Eli, 124
Gillett, Louis, 191
God Hagar, 47, 210
actualities of, 30–31, 52, 93–94, Hamilton, William, 206
96 Hamlet (Shakespeare), 58, 66
altars to, 27 Harnack, Adolf von, 199–200, 237
angels, 260 Hartman, Geoffrey, 284
authority, 23, 26, 28–29, 33–36, on the poetics of prophecy of
40, 42–43, 56, 62, 91–92, 98 Jeremiah, 49–69
covenant fidelity, 225 Hartmann, Heinz, 82–83
and creation, 231, 260–61 Hays, J. Daniel, 284
domicile, 248 on the narrative skill of 1 Kings,
false representation, 94 147–70
goodness, 102–3, 105, 107–9 Hebrew
judgment, 227 “archaeology,” 23–24
justice, 262 history, 41
man in his image, 18–19, 22, 24, language, 13, 80, 115
43, 224, 226 writers, 38
new city of, 206 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm
Order of, 19 theories, 72, 84
origins, 224, 238–39 Heidegger, Martin
representation, 17, 41 theories, 72
Spirit of, 208–9 Hemingway
sublime influence of, 47 Farewell to Arms, A, 190
300 Index
Herod the Great, 2224 agonism, 7, 12, 78–79, 81

Heschel, Abraham, 58 Freudian wrestling match with
Hilkiah, 49, 61 the Angel of Death, 8, 15,
Hinduism, 277 71–89
Hiram, 158, 161–62 representations of, 5
Hitchcock, Alfred, 183 return of Canaan, 7
Hitler, Adolf, 28 struggles of, 6, 9, 43
Hölderlin, Friedrich, 64 tales of, 2–6, 10, 45, 47
Holy Spirit transformation to Israel, 81–82
inspiration of Scripture, 222 James
joy in, 239 letter of, 222
and life, 208–9, 235 James, Henry, 192
Homer Jeremiah
digressions of, 36 covenant in, 208–10
heroes, 37–38, 42–43, 45–47 prophecies of, 49–69, 98
Iliad, 42 prosperity of the wicked, 101
influence, 2, 4, 6, 8–9 Jesus Christ
Odyssey, 33–48, 52–53, 179, 181, appearance of, 41, 192
189, 196 arrest of, 182–83, 185, 193
political liar, 39 at Bethany, 184, 186–87
Hosea conception and birth, 193, 225
prophecies of, 79, 206–7 Crucifixion, 28, 172, 193, 203,
211, 214
Iliad (Homer), 42 desertions of, 187–88
Interpreter’s Bible, The disciples, 232–36
disorder and domination in, 20, in Galilee, 193
25 healings on the Sabbath, 230–31
negative in, 18–19 ideals, 171–72
Ishmael, 3 identity of, 277–78
Isaac, 4 John’s view of, 221, 224–30,
and the Akedah, 3 236–37, 239–41
burnt offerings, 28 and the Last Supper, 193,
love for Esau, 9 266
sacrifice of, 27, 33, 36, 39–40 and the Law, 186, 211, 213
struggles of, 8–9, 77 life of, 201–4, 206, 210–11, 225,
Isaiah, 5, 14 238
answers in, 91, 95–96, 98 Luke’s view of, 226, 228–29,
prophecies in, 103, 207 231, 236
songs of, 107 Mark’s view of, 182–88, 208,
Islam, 277–78 226–31
Matthew’s view of, 207, 221,
Jacob 224–29, 231, 236–37, 239–41
Index 301
Paul’s view of, 27, 201–4, evasions of, 51

210–13 Joseph
recoverable historicity of, agonism, 12
277–78 brothers, 3
resurrection, 172, 186, 190, tales of, 2–3, 5–8, 10, 15, 43, 81,
192–3, 203, 228, 235–36, 263 187
sermon on the mount, 225, 229, Joseph of Arimathea, 187
236 Joshua, 212
as teacher, 229, 236, 240 Josiah, 61, 159
transfiguration of, 228–29 Joyce, James
Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine Dubliners, 179–80, 189, 196
(Bloom), 277–78 Finnegans Wake, 191
Joab, 153 Ulysses, 177–83, 189, 191, 196
Job, 5 Jubilees, Book of, 9
catastrophe in, 91, 96 Judah, 61–62, 153
faith in, 94–96, 98 civil war, 158
myth in, 260 Judaism
Satan in, 92, 94–95 concept of God, 34, 52
speeches of, 102 critics, 201
sufferings, 38, 46, 92–95, 97–98, Gnostic, 72, 82
101, 104–6 history, 186, 200–3, 277
John mythic traditions in, 247
the Baptist in, 221, 226–28, 241 normative tradition, 1, 5–6, 8,
criticism of, 221–23, 228, 241 10, 41, 114, 242
and Elijah, 221, 226–27, 229, oppression of, 4
241 Orthodox, 72
and Emmanuel, 221 writers, 74, 200, 260
Lazarus in, 184, 188 Judas
compared to Matthew, 221–46 betrayal of, 187–88, 232–35
and the role of Peter, 221, 223, kiss of, 182
231–36, 241 Jung, Carl
use of the myth, 259, 261–67 psychology, 113–14
use of the Old Testament, 221, J Writer
233, 237–39, 241 crisis of, 5
view of Jesus, 221, 224–31, humanism, 6
236–37, 239–41 irony of, 3
John the Baptist, 193 sublimity of, 1–15, 76
John’s view of, 221, 226–28, 241 tales of, 1–5, 74, 77, 79–81
Matthew’s view of, 221, 226–27,
241 Kabbalah
John of Patmos, 172 versions, 84–85
Jonah Kafka, Franz
302 Index
and religion, 1, 9, 74, 79 deployment of the myth,

Kant, Immanuel, 195 253–56, 261, 263
Käsemann, Ernst, 228 Lot, 3
Keats, John, 73 Luke, 182
Kermode, Frank, 284 on Elijah, 226–27
on the crucial episode in Mark, narrative, 193, 203, 223–24,
177–97 231–32, 238, 240
Kierkegaard, Søren, 85 view of Jesus, 228–29, 231, 236
Repetition, 72
theories, 72–73 Malachi, 227
King James version Malinowski, Bronislaw, 248
translations, 33, 49, 82 Mann, Thomas
Kings (1) Tales of Jacob, 81
history in, 151 Mark
ironies in, 149, 155, 157, 160 baptism, 184–85, 189
narrative style in, 147–70 crucial episodes in, 177–97
prostitution in, 157 on Elijah, 227
story of Solomon in, 147–70 ending, 191–94
Kings (2) Jesus’ arrest in, 182–83, 185,
narrative, 156, 159, 163–64 193
Kraus, Karl, 84 narrative, 182–83, 185–89, 193,
Krinetzki, Leo 223, 230–31
on Song, 113–15, 121, 136 Passion episode, 186, 188, 190,
Krishna, 277 192–93, 195, 208
Kristeva, Julia, 241 structure of, 194
Kuhn, Thomas, 182 the young man in, 182, 184–87,
190
Laban, 79–80 Marks, Herbert, 285
Lacan, Jacques, 83 on St. Paul as a revisionary
on language, 62–63 critic, 199–219
Landy, Francis, 284 Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The
on the Song of Songs, 111–45 (Blake), 76
Lawrence, D.H., 284 Marsden, George M.
on the Revelation of St. John Fundamentalism and American
the Divine, 171–75 Culture, 278
Leviathan Martha, 232
tradition, 259–64 Martyr, Justin, 206
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 248 Marx, Karl, 30
Leviticus theories, 72
prostitution in, 157 Marxsen, Willi, 203
Lindars, Barnabas, 203 Mary Magdalene, 235
Lincoln, Bruce Mastema, 9
Index 303
Matthew, 182 Yahweh’s attack on, 4, 81–83

and the Baptist, 221, 226–27, Moses (Buber), 13–14
241 Moule, C.F.D., 201
criticism, 221–23, 228, 241 Müller, H.P., 113
and Elijah, 221, 226–27, 229, Muslim
241 tradition, 10, 277–78
and Emmanuel, 221 Mythic traditions
John compared to, 221–46 in Christianity, 247–48
and the last judgment, 239 in imperial cults, 251–59,
narrative, 192–93, 237 263–66
and the role of Peter, 221, in Judaism, 247
231–36, 241 remythology studies of, 247–51
use of the Old Testament, 221, and the Roman empire, 249–61,
237–39, 242 263–66
view of Jesus, 207, 221, 224–29,
231, 236–37, 239–41 Nabokov, Vladimir, 84
Meeks, Wayne Nadab, 12
Christ is the Question, 277–78 Nathan, 7, 153
Mendenhall, George E., 209–10 Nebuchadnezzar, 61, 160
Micaiah Ben Imlah, 14 Nelson, Richard, 150, 160
Miletos Nestle-Aland, 237
use of myth in, 251–53, 259, New Testament
266 criticism, 201–2
Milton, John, 4, 9, 14 gospel narratives in, 186–88,
An Apology Against a Pamphlet, 213, 215, 223, 237, 239, 241,
214 277–78
Biblical influences on, 82 language of, 200
Paradise Lost, 5, 65, 214 polemicism, 222–23
style of, 58, 65–66, 80 prophecies, 201–2, 204, 206,
Moore, George Foot, 1 209
Moses structure of, 187
and Akiba, 1 studies of, 249
baptism, 204–5 teachings of, 201, 205
birth of, 4 writers of, 189, 199, 202–3, 207
camp, 160 Nibelungen (Wagner), 25
and the Commandments, 12–13 Nichomachaean Ethics (Aristotle),
death of, 4, 211 30–31
enroute to Egypt, 9 Nicodemus, 224
at Mount Sinai, 10–15, 212 Nietzsche, Friedrich
second, 207 fiction of, 2–3, 200
tales of, 2–3, 10, 45, 98, 208–13, motive for all trope, 6
229, 231 theories, 72, 76, 79–80, 86
304 Index
Noah, 5–6 exousia, 208

covenant with, 207 interpretations of, 22–23,
and the Flood, 3 199–205, 207–13
and the rainbow sign, 27 letters, 203, 215
sacrifice of, 27 mission to the Gentiles, 41
tales, 46–47 prospective stance in, 213–15
Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction as a revisionary critic, 199–219
(Stevens), 73 in Romams, 19, 67, 214
Noth, Martin, 10 use of scripture, 200, 204–11,
Numbers 214
battles in, 4 view of Christ, 27
narratives, 206, 230 Paz, Octavio, 117, 122
writer of, 4 Peter, 187–88
and the beloved disciple, 235–36
Odyssey (Homer), 179, 181 confession, 232
Achilles in, 37–38, 42 criticism, 232–33
Eumaeus in, 45 denial of, 192–93, 232–36
Euryclea in, 39, 45 John’s view of, 221, 223,
Laertes in, 45 231–36, 241
narrative style of, 37–39, 41–42, martyrdom, 184
48 Matthew’s view of, 221, 231–36,
Odysseus in, 37, 39, 42–43, 45 241
Patroclus in, 38 messages, 190, 203
Penelope in, 39, 45 as Satan, 234
reality in, 33–48, 80 Petrarch, Francesco, 214
similes in, 52–53 Pharisees, 1, 235
speech in, 36 Philip, 203
Telemachus in, 179 Pilate, 224, 236
Theoclymenos in, 179 Plato, 2, 26, 84, 87
Trojan War in, 39 Poetry and Repression (Bloom),
Zeus in, 37 213–14
Old Testament. See Bible, Hebrew Politics (Aristotle), 19
Pope, Marvin, 127, 133
Paradise Lost (Milton), 5, 65, 214 Preface to Fables, Ancient and
Parallel Betwixt Poetry and Painting Modern (Dryden), 83
(Dryden), 83 Prelude, The (Wordsworth)
Parker, Kim Ian, 148 apocalyptic hope in, 59
Pascal, Blaise, 85 death of father in, 54–56
P authors, 1, 76 dream in, 53, 63
Paul, 6 language in, 58
canonical perspective, 200–4 poets as prophets in, 49–54, 56,
and the Church fathers, 41 58, 60
Index 305
similes, 52 Roman power in, 259–61,

Snowdon’s ascent in, 59–60, 263–66
65–67 of St. John the Divine, 171–75
Price, Martin, 84 structure, 260, 264
Protestant, 5 symbolism in Chapter 13 of,
theology, 202, 277 247–75
Proust, Marcel Robbe-Grillet, Alain
A la Recherche du temps perdu, Les Gommes, 181
181 Roman Catholics, 277
Psalm (19), 82 Roman Empire
Psalm (42), 67 and Caesar, 171–72
Psalm (73), 101–9 history of, 41, 84, 184, 203, 264
answers in, 91 mythology, 249–61, 263–66
fate of Israel in, 102, 108 Romans
meaning of life in, 101 narrative, 203–5, 208, 212–13,
prosperity of the wicked in, 101, 229
103–4, 108–9 Paul’s statements in, 19, 67, 210,
suffering in, 103–7 214
Psalmist realism, 47
stories of, 82–83, 102, 104–9, Rosenzweig, Franz, 5
208 Ruskin, John
and religion, 58
Quranic Studies (Wansbrough), 278
Q writer Samuel (1)
narrative, 223, 228, 238–340 David in, 156, 230
narratives, 151, 153, 156–58,
Rad, Gerhard von, 205 163
Rebecca, 3, 78 Samuel (2), 38
Rebekah, 47 author of, 7–9
Recherche du temps perdu, A la David in, 159–60
(Proust), 181 narratives, 151, 153, 158–60,
Repetition (Kierkegaard), 72 163
Revelation, 214 Sarah, 47
author of, 259, 262 struggles of, 77, 210
Behemoth tradition in, 259–61, Saul, 38, 157
264 Schiller, Friedrich, 36
of John, 259, 261–67 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 85
Leviathan tradition in, 259–64 Scofield Bible
myth use in, 247, 250–51, editor, 27
259–65 interpretations in, 26
remythologizing studies of, Paul’s statements, 19
247–51 Seth, 3
306 Index
Shaffer, E.S., 64 psyche in, 115, 117

Shakespeare, William, 2–4, 6, 12 Song of, 118, 120
Biblical influences on, 82 spring in, 112
Hamlet, 58, 66 structure of, 118
sonnets, 54 symbolism in, 124, 126–27, 132
Shklovsky, Viktor, 190 voices and action in, 115
Simon Peter Sohrab and Rustum (Arnold), 190
disciple to Jesus, 232 Speiser, E.A., 7
Sirach, 227 Anchor Bible, 74–75, 77–78
Smith, D. Moody, 202, 223 Spenser, Edmund, 82, 195
Smith, Joseph H., 86–87 Spinoza, Baruch
Smith, Morton Ethics, 31
interpretation of the Gospel of Stanton, G.N., 237
Mark, 183–85, 188–89 Stevens, Wallace, 3, 89
Sodom Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,
road to, 3, 9–10, 77 73
Solomon, 4, 6, 12 “To the One of Fictive Music,”
death, 154 117
faith, 147–48, 153–55 Strenski, Ivan, 248
images of, 7 Szondi, Peter, 64
and Jezebel, 149, 162
possessions, 152, 162 Tales of Jacob (Mann), 81
and the Queen of Sheba, 149, Tamar
162 struggles of, 6, 8
reign of, 3, 147, 153, 157, 159, tales of, 3
161, 163 Temptation of Saint Anthony
story of, 3, 147–70 (Flaubert), 25
Song of Solomon Theophilus of Antioch, 206
androgyny in, 122–38 Thessalonica, 203
Beloved in, 114–38 Thomas
character and archetype in, gospel of, 235, 241
111–22 Thoreau, Henry David, 64
dominance of woman in, 113, Three Essays on the Theory of
116, 123, 125, 130, 138 Sexuality (Freud), 74–76, 87–88
Eden in, 115 “Tintern Abbey” (Wordsworth), 66
family invention in, 115–16 Tolstoy, Leo
fusion of generations in, 115 and religion, 1, 4, 79
imagery in, 115, 122–24, 126, Torah, 9, 210, 214
128–31, 133–36, 138 faithful to, 261
Lebanon in, 137 “To the One of Fictive Music”
lovers in, 111–38 (Stevens), 117
mythological resonances in, 115 Totem and Taboo (Freud), 86
Index 307
Tree of knowledge Wolff, Hans Walter, 6

and Adam, 4 Wordsworth, William, 1
Trocmé, Etienne, 194 Biblical influences on, 82, 89
Tuchelt, Klaus, 252 The Prelude, 49–60, 63, 65–67
“Tintern Abbey,” 66
Ulysses (Joyce)
Bloom in, 178–81, 189, 196 Yahweh, see also God
Man in the Macintosh in, attack on Moses, 4, 81–83
177–81, 183 history, 206–7, 277
narrative in, 180 law, 151–52, 155, 210–11
at Mamre, 3, 10, 12–14,
Virgil, 214 76–77
Divine Child, 6 mind of Jerusalem, 2
Viviano, Benedict T, 285 promises of, 209–10
on the Gospel of John self-revelation, 212
compared to the Gospel of and Solomon, 147–70
Matthew, 221–46 sublimity of, 1–15, 75–76, 82,
86, 89
Wagner, Richard writings of, 74, 79, 262
Nibelungen, 25 Yeats, William Butler, 87
Wansbrough, John
Quranic Studies, 278 Zadok, 153
Whitman, Walt, 89 Zechariah, 227
“A Clear Midnight,” 73 Zedekiah, 61
Windisch, Hans Zion
Überlegenheitstheorie, 223 foundation of, 207
Wise, Strange and Holy (Camp), 149 Zipporah
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 83 rescue of Moses, 81–82

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Bloom’s Modern Critical Views

African American G.K. Chesterton John Irving

Edited and with an introduction by

Copyright © 2006 by Infobase Publishing

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Contributing Editor: Janyce Marson

Printed in the United States of America

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Editor’s Note vii

THE HEBREW BIBLE

The First Three Chapters of Genesis 17

The Representations of Reality

The Poetics of Prophecy 49

The Heart Determines: Psalm 73 101

The Relationship of the Lovers 111

Has the Narrator Come to

The Man in the Macintosh, the Boy in the Shirt 177

Pauline Typology and Revisionary Criticism 199

John’s Use of Matthew: Beyond Tweaking 221

Myth and Symbolic Resistance in Revelation 13 247

My Introduction concerns the uncanny sublimity of the Yahwist or J Writer,

To my best knowledge, it was the Harvard historian of religion George Foot

colleagues, is a mystery that I have been trying to clarify by developing a

normative redactors, and so the J strand in Exodus and Numbers is even

What is theomorphic about Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph? I

The blessing in J, as I have written elsewhere, is always agonistic, and

Yahweh said to Moses: “I will come to you in a thick cloud, that

saying: ‘Beware of climbing the mountain or touching the border

Whether people or mountain tremble hardly matters in this great trope

up to Yahweh, lest Yahweh break out against them.” And Moses

However much we have grown accustomed to J, she has not prepared

Then Yahweh said to Moses: “Come up to Yahweh, with Aaron,

You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any

They have presumably wandered through clinging, hanging mist

Always ingenious and here refreshingly naturalistic, Buber

The First Three Chapters of Genesis

From The Rhetoric of Religion. © 1961 by Kenneth Burke

Further, a completely narrative style would personalize the principle of

meaning that “physical death” is due to a “universal sinful state, or nature”

of the husband—another aspect of Dominion. And there is to be an eternal

If the point about the relation between Death and Mortiﬁcation is

natural order. Then, instead of saying that “conscience-laden repression is

disobedience, the Biblical narrative’s way of associating “sin” with “death”

Besides discussing the way in which the narrative style translates

personality that goes with skill at symbol-using. This kinship is reaffirmed in

The complicating element to do with images, when used as the

In sum, when we turn from the consideration of a terministic cycle in

We should also note that, in proportion as the idea of a personal victim

wishes). But narratively, they stand at opposite ends of a long development,

The consciousness of nakedness as the result of the fall likewise seems

embodying a “design” (and they ﬁt perfectly with Aristotle’s stress, which is

polytheistic period in the development of Jewish Monotheism. Or Christian theologians

The Representations of Reality in

T he genius of the Homeric style becomes especially apparent when it is

atmosphere it is unthinkable that an implement, a landscape through which

It would be difficult, then, to imagine styles more contrasted than those

How fraught with background, in comparison, are characters like Saul

authority is jeopardized; the method of interpretation is scorned and

more obviously pieced together—but the various components all belong to

outwardly, and even that change is brought to our observation as little as

elements of the miraculous, by the repetition of well-known standard

representation of daily life, remains in Homer in the peaceful realm of the

The Poetics of Prophecy