THE LITERARY GUIDE TO THE Edited by ROBERT ALTER and FRANK KERMODE COLLINS 8 GRAFTON STREET LONDON WI 1987 Acknowledgments William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd A book of this sort is never completed without generous help from people London' Glasgow" Sydney' Auckland Toronto . Johannesburg whose names would not appear in it unless acknowledged here .. At various stages of the work, and in many different ways, we have had indispensable First published 1987 support from Patricia Williams, the European editor of Harvard Univer­ Reprinted 1988 sity Press, and from Maud Wilcox, editor-in-chief of the Press,. Ann Copyright © 1987 by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode Hawthorne, our manuscript editor, contended patiently and skillfully with All rights reserved a range of problems far beyond those of an ordinary book. Dorothy Printed in the United States of America Franklin in Cambridge, England, and Janet Livingstone in Berkeley, Cal­ British Library Cataloguillg ill PublilOfioll Data ifornia, assisted us in correspondence and in the preparation of typescripts,. Some of the secretarial costs for the project were covered by funds made The Literary guide to the Bible ~ r Bible as literature available by the chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley.. Alter, Robert II Kermode, Frank The hospitality of the Provost of King's College, Cambridge, and of Mrs, 809'93522 BS535 Williams enabled us to work together at a critical moment; and the gen­ ISBN 0-00-217439-1 erosity ofMishkenot Sha'ananim, Jerusalem, gave us the chance to consult directly with our contributors in Israel And finally, we are experienced enough in work of this kind to be conscious of our good fortune in having contributors notable for their enthusiasm, good humor, and punctuality" ~...... ~4. M ;;;; .• • H Contents GENERAL INTRODUCTION Robert Alter and Frank Kermode The Old Testament INTRODUCTION Robert Alter II GENESIS I P Fokkelman EXODUS ] P Fokkelman LEVITICUS David Damrosch NUMBERS .lames S Ackerman DEUTERONOMY Robert Polzin 92 JOSHUA AND JUDGES David M Gunn I02 1 AND 2 SAMUEL Joel Rosenberg 122 1 AND 2 KINGS George Savran ISAIAH Luis Alonso SchOkel JEREMIAH AND EZEKIEL Joel Rosenberg THE TWELVE PROPHETS Herbert Marks 207 JONAH .lames s.. Ackerman 2.34 PSALMS Robert Alter 244 PROVERBS AND ECCLESIASTES .lames G Williams 263 JOB Moshe Greenberg 283 THE SONG OF SONGS Francis Landy .305 RUTH .lack M. Sasson 320 LAMENTATIONS Franci.s Landy 329 ESTHER .lack M Sasson 3.35 DANIEL Shemaryahu Talmon 343 EZRA AND NEHEMIAH Shemaryahu Talmon 357 1 AND 2 CHRONICLES Shemaryahu Talmon 365 . au . s¢ ',' . & • The New Testament INTRODUCTION Frank Kermode MATTHEW Frank Kermode MARK John Drury 402 LUKE John Drury 418 JOHN Frank Kermode 440 ACTS James M Robinson 467 THE PAULINE EPISTLES Michael Goulder 479 THE LITERARY GUIDE THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS AND THE TO THE BIBLE CATHOLIC EPISTLES Gabriel Josipovici 50 3 REVELATION Bernard McGinn 52 3 General Essays THE HEBREW BIBLE AND CANAANITE LITERATURE Jonas C Greenfield 545 THE NEW TESTAMENT AND GRECO-ROMAN WRITING Helen El.som FISHING FOR MEN ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS Edmund Leach 579 THE CANON Frank Kermode 600 THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ANCIENT HEBREW POETRY Robert Alter 6II MIDRASH AND ALLEGORY Gerald L Bruns 625 ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE Gerald Hammond 647 GLOSSARY 668 INDEX 673 j Ii • ~ Q I , ...ocu;::m: . i? «waw A ~ General Introduction Robert Alter and Frank Kermode o most educated modern readers the Bible probably seems both T. familiar and strange, like the features of an ances~or.. They will know, if only in a general way, of its central importance in the history of the culture they have inherited; but they will also be aware that in its modern forms that culture has denied the Bible the kinds of importance it had in the past.. They will very likely see modern fundamentalism as dangerous and atavistic; yet to repudiate the biblical inheritance altogether must strike them as barbarous .. Here is a miscellany of documents containing ancient stories, poems, laws, prophecies, which most of us cannot even read in the original languages, and which we probably know best, if we are English speakers, in an English that was already archaic when the King James (or "Authorized") Version was published in 16II, and may now often seem distant and exotic: "that old tongue," as Edmund Wilson once vividly expressed it, "with its clang and its flavor .. " Yet, as Wilson went on to say, "we have been living with it all our lives." In short, the language as well as the messages it conveys symbolizes for us that past, strange and yet familiar, which we feel we somehow must understand if we are to understand ourselves .. It might of course be argued that the centrality of the Bible in the formation of our culture is the result of historical accident.. That is a view to which two centuries of modern biblical scholarship have, willingly or not, given much support. The motives of the scholars, Christians, Jews, and secularists alike, were understandable: a small body of writings, first in Hebrew, then in Greek, produced in a narrow strip of the eastern Mediterranean littoral during a period of roughly a dozen centuries, con­ tinued to have the most far-reaching consequences because these writings were accepted as revealed truth; and in the interest of historical truth it became a duty to try to understand the processes by which this literature emerged from its original historical situation, Broadly speaking, literary criticism was of small importance in this undertaking, which treated the biblical texts as relics, probably distorted in transmission, of a past one needed to recover as exactly as possible. Over the past couple of decades, however, there has been a revival of interest in the literary qualities of these texts, in the virtues by which 2 GENERAL INTRODUCTION GENERAL INTRODUCTION 3 they continue to live as something other than archaeology, The power of literature, a gap of ignorance which must in SOme measure falsify the the Genesis narratives or of the story of David, the complexities and latter" Very few of us have the unconscious assurance of an educated refinements of the Passion narratives, could be studied by methods de­ Victorian reading Milton; Matthew Arnold, for example, would have veloped in the criticism of secular literature" The effectiveness of this new received as he read biblical allusions we have to look up, as well as the approach-or approaches, for the work has proceeded along many differ­ silent counterpoint of Greek and Latin syntax, Milton is especially biblical, ent paths-has now been amply demonstrated" Professional biblical criti­ but the point applies in varying measure to almost all the major writers cism has been profoundly affected by it; but, even more important, the in English The revived interest of secular writers in the Bible does stem general reader can now be offered a new view of the Bible as a work of in part from a sense that secular literature is in some degree impoverished great literary force and authority, a work of which it is entirely credible by this lack. But there is a more striking development: the Bible, once that it should have shap~d the minds and lives of intelligent men and thought of as a source of secular literature yet somehow apart from it, women for two millennia and more" It is this view of the Bible that the now bids fair to become part of the literary canon" The coming together present volume seeks to promote" of religious and secular criticism has taught practitioners of the former It will be clear, therefore, that we do not seek to duplicate the work that their studies may be greatly enhanced by attention to secular methods; of traditional historical scholarship-to consider the origins of a text or to the latter have benefited by discovering that the Bible, to which few of ask what may be inferred from it concerning the life and institutions of the most influential critics had of late paid much attention, is simply of ancient Israel or early Christianity; though our contributors certainly do such quality that they have neglected it to their immense cost., not neglect such considerations when they are relevant to their more Indeed, it seems we have reached a turning point in the history of literary purposes" It would be absurd to lay down the law about what is criticism, for the Bible, under a new aspect, has reoccupied the literary and is not relevant to these purposes, or to prohibit the use of insights culture" How have we reached this point? If we look back to the Enlight­ deriving from comparative religion, anthropology, philology, and so enment we notice that men of the caliber of Lessing and Herder did not forth" Nor should it be supposed that we are careless of the religious suppose that they must specialize in secular or in religious literature" We character of the material under discussion simply because our aims are not remember Lessing as a dramatist, an influential critic and theorist of drama, theological and not in the ordinary sense related to spiritual edification" an aesthetician; but we remember him also as a daring biblical critic. , Indeed we believe that readers who regard the Bible primarily in the light Herder's influence on the development of German literature is enormous, of religious faith may find instruction here along with those who wish to but his biblical studies are hardly less important., Yet it was in the time of understand its place in a secularized culture" these extraordinary intellects, and partly in consequence of their achieve­ If we were asked to state more positively why we have approached ments, that the historical-critical method characteristic of specialized mod-l the su~ject as we have done, we should reply as follows .