The Bible and Literature: The Basics

Norman W. Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317539001
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The Bible and Literature: The Basics provides an interpretive framework for understanding the significance of biblical allusions in literature—even for readers who have little prior knowledge of the Bible. In doing so, it surveys the Bible's influence on a broad range of English, American, and other Anglophone literatures from a variety of historical periods. It also:

• offers a "greatest hits" tour of the Bible
• focuses as much on 20th- and 21st-century literatures as on earlier periods
• addresses the Bible's relevance to contemporary issues in literary criticism such as poststructuralist, postcolonial, feminist, queer, and narrative theories
• includes discussion questions for each chapter and annotated suggestions for further reading

This book explains why readers need a basic knowledge of the Bible in order to understand and appreciate key aspects of Anglophone literary traditions.

1

WRESTLING WITH GOD: THE BIBLE AS AN UNTELLABLE TALE

Who wrote the Bible? What were their aims?

This chapter explores three common answers to these questions. In doing so, it provides a multi-layered framework for understanding individual biblical texts within their larger contexts. It also explains how these three answers have influenced literary history.

While it is quite possible to subscribe to more than one of the following answers at the same time, they are worth distinguishing from one another because they each describe a different aspect of the Bible and its reception history. Yet as I detail in this chapter, each one offers a variation on a theme shared by all three: in different ways, they all imply that the Bible attempts to tell a story that cannot be told.

1 The history of a people. The Bible chronicles the history of the rise and fall of Israel, followed by a spiritual restoration of the Israelite kingdom through Jesus. A traditional view holds that the texts of the Bible were written by those who participated in various stages of this history—by contemporaries or near-contemporaries of the events described.

2 A story about God. The Bible chronicles God’s interactions with human beings such that God may be seen as the main “character,” if you will. There are many different theories about what “divine inspiration” might mean, but in general, Christians and Jews have traditionally believed that the various authors of the Bible were inspired by God such that their writings reveal aspects of God’s nature as well as God’s plan for humankind.

3 A collection of fragments. Since the 1700s, scholars have amassed substantial evidence suggesting that the Bible was written by many different people with different aims, and that many of these writers were born long after the events they describe. Various editors later refashioned these writings such that we no longer have direct access to the earlier compositions in their original forms. According to this view, the Bible as it now stands is a mosaic composed of textual fragments that reflect different theologies, cultures, and worldviews. Most of these fragments remain partially “buried” under rewritings and editing as well as later traditions of interpretation that render it difficult to uncover the contexts and meanings of the original source material.

Many people subscribe to more than one of these three views at the same time. For example, Christians and Jews have traditionally viewed the Bible as both the history of a people and a story about God. Even so, it can be useful to distinguish between the two because each one describes an aspect of the Bible that has, at times, received greater emphasis. To take another example, many people in recent centuries have viewed the Bible as a collection of fragments that nevertheless tells a divinely inspired story about God. They read the stories less as history than legend, but they read these legends as conveying mythic truths about God. For still others, the fragmented view undermines any belief in divine revelation as well as any strong sense of historical accuracy.

When I teach the Bible, students are often most interested in the question of its historical accuracy. The answer to that question depends on which biblical text we are discussing, but the answer also depends on what we mean by “historical accuracy.” Modern readers often assume a forensic sense of “history” by which truth is determined in the most scientific way possible, but we must remember that this reflects a modern understanding of history. We can certainly ask such modern questions of ancient texts, but we should keep in mind that, in doing so, we are imposing anachronistic distinctions that can obscure earlier understandings of these texts.

For instance, the Bible’s reception history attests to a high tolerance in the ancient world for different versions of history. The Bible offers two different accounts of creation (Genesis 1:1–2:3 and 2:4–3:24, although some read these as one account); two slightly different versions of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5); two different histories of the rise and fall of the Israelite kingdom (1 Samuel – 2 Kings and 1 & 2 Chronicles); and four different versions of the life of Jesus (the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). Early Christians recognized that the four Gospels contradict one another on various minor points—Tatian’s Diatessaron (c. CE 160–75) was one of the first attempts to synthesize them into one unified account—but all four Gospels have generally been embraced by Christian traditions despite how they differ from one another. Indeed, their differences have sometimes been seen as contributing to a greater truth.

While all this illustrates an older, less forensic sense of history, it does not mean that the question of historical accuracy is entirely anachronistic. While the ancient world showed greater tolerance for multiple versions of history, history was not considered fiction—merely legendary. On the contrary, every stage of the Bible’s reception history attests to the importance of a mix of both figurative and literal interpretations, as exemplified in the traditional four levels of interpretation described in the introduction to this book. Literal interpretations typically assume that the historical narratives in the Bible are accurate. Only in modern times have large numbers of English-speaking readers interpreted the Bible as merely legendary.

Miracles constitute another complicating factor for modern readers when trying to answer the historical accuracy question. When students ask me whether a given biblical story is true, they are sometimes simply asking whether non-biblical sources (such as other ancient texts or archaeological evidence) corroborate the biblical account. Often, however, they really want to know whether I believe the many biblical depictions of miracles.

For the purposes of this book, what matters is the wide variety of beliefs about the Bible that have influenced literary history. Which of these various beliefs matter most at any given moment depends on which literary text we are considering at that moment—namely, the beliefs the text explicitly or implicitly represents as well as which beliefs helped inform the context of that text’s composition or reception history. Happily, therefore, my task is not to tell you which parts of the Bible should be interpreted literally and which parts figuratively, let alone whether miracles exist (for more about miracles, see Chapter 4). Instead, my aim is descriptive rather than prescriptive—to survey various common answers to such questions and explain how they have shaped the literary reception history of the Bible.

This is no cheap dodge or evasion of controversial questions. On the contrary, one of the central arguments of this book is that the Bible’s extraordinary influence—its literary power—derives in part from the wide variety of ways it has been interpreted. Not to explore and appreciate the tensions and commonalities among different ways of understanding the Bible, I contend, is to misunderstand its literary reception history. Indeed, the same principle applies to its larger (not just literary) reception history. The Bible regularly challenges its readers to respond to it (as discussed in the last chapter), so ignoring the most common ways in which people have actually responded to it means ignoring how the Bible “works,” so to speak.

The three views of the Bible outlined above help illuminate various answers to the complex question of the Bible’s historical accuracy. The rest of this chapter elaborates on these three views, emphasizing each one’s literary legacy. In doing so, this chapter reveals a common thread shared by all three: each view suggests that the Bible attempts to tell an untellable tale—a story that by necessity remains both unclear and incomplete.

THE HISTORY OF A PEOPLE

Conceptualizing the Bible as one overarching storyline can distort this complex collection of texts by imputing greater harmony to it than might actually exist, in effect oversimplifying it. Yet such a “grand narrative” of the Bible can also help us organize and therefore more easily remember the component texts even if we later complicate or even undermine the sense of harmony. In addition, the unifying “grand narrative” merits attention because it has played a prominent role in the reception history of the Bible.

One traditional way to describe the overarching story told in the Bible focuses on the rise, fall, and spiritual restoration of Israel. That history begins with Abraham. What comes before Abraham—the first ten and a half chapters of Genesis—can be seen as the prologue or backstory, which includes the creation of the world, the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Cain’s murder of Abel, Noah and the flood, and the Tower of Babel. These stories set the stage for God choosing to create “a great nation” from Abraham’s descendants (Genesis 12:2), a nation that will be enslaved in Egypt for four hundred years (Genesis 15:13) but will then be given the fertile “land of Canaan for a perpetual holding” (Genesis 17:8). God makes a covenant or binding agreement with Abraham according to which, in return for Abraham’s loyalty, God will create this special nation—later called Israel—from his descendants. As a sign of the covenant, Abraham and his wife, Sarah, receive new names (they had been Abram and Sarai), and Abraham and his male descendants must be circumcised.

The first six books of the Bible recount this covenant and its fulfillment. Abraham’s descendants become Israel, God’s chosen people, who eventually settle in Canaan, the promised land. Abraham and his son and grandson, Isaac and Jacob, are commonly referred to as the Patriarchs, the forefathers of Israel. God gives Jacob this new name, Israel, after Jacob wrestles with God (or an angelic representative of God) to secure a blessing: Israel means “one who strives with God” (Genesis 32). Jacob’s twelve sons become the forefathers of the twelve tribes of the nation, Israel (the names of the tribes are listed slightly differently in different places, e.g., Numbers 1 versus Revelation 7).

The story of Joseph tells how a famine prompts Jacob’s sons to travel to Egypt (Genesis 37–50). They settle there and prosper; many generations later, however, they become enslaved to the Egyptians. Moses leads the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt into the desert, at which point God renews the original covenant and adds a far more elaborate set of requirements that include the Ten Commandments. Eventually, Joshua leads Israel across the River Jordan into the promised land, thus fulfilling God’s original covenant with Abraham.

The next stage of this history describes the rise of the monarchy. Its greatest king is David, but even he is flawed (as discussed in the previous chapter): at the height of his powers, David sows the seeds of his kingdom’s decline. Thus it comes as no surprise that David’s son, Solomon, builds a glorious temple to God but later turns away to worship other gods. Like his father, Solomon’s weakness derives from his intemperate sexual desires. Even in his weakness, however, David’s heart remains true to God whereas Solomon’s does not (1 Kings 11:4).

CHRONOLOGY OF MAJOR STAGES OF BIBLICAL HISTORY

(The dates with question marks are highly disputed.)

The Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob	c. 1800 BCE?
Exodus from Egypt (Moses)	c. 1250 BCE?
Israel emerges in Canaan	c. 1200–1025 BCE
United Monarchy: Saul, David, and Solomon	c. 1025–928 BCE
Divided Monarchy (Israel and Judah)	c. 928 BCE
Israel falls	c. 722 BCE
Judah (Jerusalem) falls	c. 586 BCE
Exile in Babylon ends	c. 538 BCE
Second Temple period begins	c. 520 BCE
Jesus of Nazareth	c. 4 BCE–CE 30
Second Temple destroyed	c. CE 70

With a few exceptions, Solomon’s heirs lead the Israelites even further astray. The twelve tribes become divided: ten tribes form a separate Kingdom of Israel in the north, while the tribes of Judah and Benjamin form the Kingdom of Judah in the south. As the kings and their subjects in both territories become increasingly corrupt, God allows them to be vanquished by neighboring foes. The Kingdom of Israel falls first, conquered by the Assyrians. Eventually Jerusalem and its magnificent temple get destroyed by the Babylonians, and the leaders of the Kingdom of Judah are forced into exile in Babylon.

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell how the sixth-century BCE Persian King Cyrus releases the Judeans or Jews (so-called because they hail from the former Kingdom of Judah) from their Babylonian captivity and allows them to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. Thus begins what historians call the “Second Temple Period.” The Judeans continue to be controlled by foreign powers except for brief periods during the second and first centuries BCE, after which they are ruled by the Romans. The Judeans, the remnant of Israel, hope that a great king from the line of David will arise to restore Israel to its former glory. They call this hoped-for king the Messiah, meaning the “anointed one,” because one becomes king not by being crowned but by being anointed with oil. The Greek translation of Messiah is Christos—in English, Christ.

The final section of the Bible is called the New Testament or Covenant (the original Greek term may be translated either way) because it develops from and renews the covenants God made with Abraham and Moses (Luke 22:20). The New Testament focuses on telling the story of the Messiah, the long-hoped-for king, Jesus of Nazareth. The Gospel of Matthew, the first book of the New Testament, drives this home by tracing Jesus’ lineage from David and summarizing that lineage with prophetic symbolism: it counts fourteen generations from Abraham to King David (the high point of the Kingdom of Israel), then another fourteen from David to the Babylonian captivity (the low point), and then a final fourteen generations to Jesus the Christ (Matthew 1:17). Yet in an ironic twist, the return of the king does not restore the Davidic throne. Rather than lead the Judeans to victory over the Romans as expected, the Christ ends up crucified—killed by Roman authorities. After his miraculous resurrection, however, his followers come to see Jesus as heralding the “kingdom of God,” a spiritual kingdom that will be fully realized only at the end of history.

Put simply, the Bible tells a story that remains incomplete. By definition, its conclusion must be deferred until the end of history. The final book of the Bible, the Revelation to John, offers a symbolic vision of the coming kingdom of God (Revelation 21). The gates and foundations of this kingdom bear the names of the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve disciples of Jesus, which implies that the promise to Abraham will be finally and completely fulfilled in the future when Christ returns. The book of Revelation focuses primarily on the frightening cataclysms that will precede the advent of this kingdom; as for the kingdom itself, Revelation offers not much more than the assurance that there will be no more pain or death and that this new kingdom will be like a restored Garden of Eden (Revelation 21–2).

In keeping with this vague depiction in Revelation, the four Gospels suggest that the kingdom of God is difficult if not impossible to comprehend. Jesus uses figurative language (most often parables) to describe the kingdom, and his disciples frequently misunderstand these teachings. Indeed, his explanatio...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• The Bible and Literature: The Basics
• The Basics
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The Bible as Witness to the Power of Stories
• 1 Wrestling with God: The Bible as an Untellable Tale
• 2 Friends, Family, and Lovers: A Familiar God
• 3 Crime and Punishment
• 4 Unexpected Heroes and Miraculous Recreations
• 5 The Words and their Afterlives
• Conclusion: A Secular Age?
• A Note on English Bible Translations
• Online Resources
• Additional Secondary Sources
• Index