The Great Code: The Bible and Literature

Rating:
Summary: In Frye We Trust
Review: "The Great Code" reflects a lifetime's thinking about the patterns and meanings of the Bible, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a page that doesn't contain some nugget of insight--my copy's covered in Papermate blue! Frye's central point is that the Bible's best read as a complex ecology of types: the accounts of Jesus in the Gospels, for instance, have less to do with his actual deeds and words, however much our modern idea of history would like them to, than squaring his life with Old Testament 'anticipations.' In Frye's view, Jesus scarcely sneezes without invoking a line from the Old Testament, a fact that points to the essentally literary organization of the Bible. That's not to say the Bible's "merely" literature--on the contrary, Frye wants to show how it expands our sense of what literature and myth really mean. Meanwhile, he injects on the sly an attractive theology of his own. Literature like the Bible provides the types for us--the chain of typological anticipations doesn't culminate in Israel or Jesus or Revelation, but continues into our own lives, waking us up to our radical freedom.

My major disappointment with the book is that it grandly ignores Jacques Derrida and the deconstructionist critique of Frye's assumptions about the relationship between language and life, Word and presence. He mentions Derrida in the intro (the book appeared in 1981) and hints at a counterargument, but I would have liked to see him follow through, since their brand of criticism aims squarely at Frye's type of reading. Those with a more historical interest in the Bible will also balk at Frye's acceptance of the book as a unity, endorsing the misreading that turned the rich and varied texts of the Hebrew Torah into a vast typological waiting room for the Christian Messiah.

Still, this is a powerful interpretation that anyone with an interest in myth and religion should greatly enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: A UNIFIED BIBLE
Review: In order to live up to the late Mr. Frye's ideal of a reader, you need an encyclopedic erudition and the knack to read into any given text an archipelago of implicit meanings and mythological references to be gleaned from a substratum of cultural traditions and collective lore over the ages. Should any author have the audacity to think, that he or she actually has a word to say in this matter, then hard luck lads and lasses, no consultation hours today! (see my review on "Anatomy of Criticism")

Yet sometimes, even over Toronto's campus rises the Sun. Suppose on a given text there is very little matter of fact knowledge available. Suppose the very nature of such text is mythological. Suppose this text happened to set up the imaginative framework of an entire civilization, "a mythological universe" within which a large section of this planet's literature had operated all the way down to the 18th century. Suppose a confused anthology of badly established "little books" (= "ta biblia") had been for generations the fare at the foundation of the Western mind-set. Then, which perspective would be most suitable to investigate this phenomenon?

Mr. Frye always had a preference for authors who were exceptionally biblical, like Milton or Blake. Understanding the Bible obviously helps understanding them, and this here is not an enquiry into the Bible's actual meaning (see my review on "The Bible Unearthed") but its perception and interpretation by countless generations of readers. Which means that the confusion of largely anonymous and almost always apocryphal texts no longer matters, because what matters is: "that the Bible" has traditionally been read as a unity, and has influenced Western imagination as a unity." (Northrop Frye)

This is not a book on biblical scholarship, though it incorporates many tasty morsels of it, but this would be beside the point. Frye has his moments of delicious irony, but he is not irreverent to his subject and speaks with the voice of a humanitarian. As was to be expected from him, he approached his subject from 4 different angles: the language, myth, metaphor and typology. Nothing to worry, Professor Frye lectures on English literature - "language" refers exclusively to the King James Bible. (Remember? This is about the effect the Good Book had on its readers.) Still his observations of the evolution of verbal forms and discursive writing, is still valid. If something is written in heroic verse it most likely belongs to an old stratum, prose always points to a late provenance, exile or post exile, a highly argumentative and discursive prose is even later. This aside, it is truly amazing to see how many cross references and anchor-points to a wider mythological cosmos Mr. Frye manages to open. If applied on Marcel Proust or Tolstoy, this would be unadulterated bogus, but the Bible can take it and in a positive sense it gains perspective and point. Nothing here is foggy or presumptuous; for once we see Mr. Frye at his best.

The only thing I have in common with Northrop Frye is, that we both have read the Bible from cover to cover. What he got out of it, we can read in the "Great Code," what I got out of it, is a slightly different matter. For starters, I would seriously question Frye's premise, that the Bible - except for a few exceptional readers - has influenced anybody as a "unity." Just remember your last encounter with a Bible thumping evangelist or Jehovah's Witness: these people have their quotes off pat and pick them all over the place, regardless of historical context and intended meaning, but strangely selective and colour-blind for passages that fail to suit their mission. I would even say, that for many serious readers, the Old Testament, for all practical purposes, is non-existent. As for me, "Leviticus" and "Numbers" are an education in folklore and specimens of real life legal customs from a distant era, though not the era the text claims to represent Ð an aspect usually lost, not only on Mr. Frye. And from a perspective of pure literature, it is very telling for the validity of Frye's literary criticism that for me exactly those documents stand out which are of least use to Mr. Frye's commentary - such as "Ecclesiastes," "Solomon's Song," and the succession stories. (1 King 13 is a gem of a truly Kafkaesque humor.) On the other hand, there can be very little disagreement on Isaiah or Jeremiah.

Having said all this, I recommend this book to every Bible reader, but I know it will not reach the kind of reader who needs it most.


Rating:
Summary: This book opens many doors - unless you prefer them closed
Review: One of the review writers is going to be more than startled and probably very shocked to know that it is a matter of scholarly opinion that the Bible itself evolved, as do all literary works, from previous sacred scriptures, such as the Epic of Ba'al.

Anyway, I read this book years ago and just recommended it to a friend. I came to this site just wondering how reviewers saw it.

It's simply one literary critic's look at the Bible. That's all. For me, it was wonderful and opened up the Bible to me in a new way. Indeed, from this book, I went on to take an Old Testament course in a seminary and then wound up getting a Master of Divinity. If you don't want to be fascinated by the imagination of human beings (made in God's image) and are afraid to question the literary restraint of the limited English translations we are all saddled with, and if you don't believe in the broad and wonderful imagination of God, this book is definitely not for you. For those of you who know what God is thinking all the time, you can spend your money elsewhere.

This is a grand book. It opens many doors. Unless you prefer them closed.

Rating:
Summary: Ignorant
Review: Please, if you are in any way serious about knowledge of the Bible and about TRUTH do NOT read this book. There are scattered bits of truth throughout the book, but that is all they are...scattered bits. Many of the things Frye presents as "obvious" or "fact" are, in fact, incorrect.

I am going to give a couple of examples of Frye's "obvious" truths, which are often ignorant, misjudged, or otherwise untrue. My hope is that if you do decide to read this book you will look critically at it and not just suppose what he says to be true. Read the Bible for yourself and question his "obvious" truths--do some research! However, if you want to know the truth Frye isn't for you.

a couple examples:

1) Frye: "The Genesis account permits itself a verse (3:22) in which God seems to be telling other gods that man is now 'one of us', in a position to threaten their power unless they do something about it at once, with a break in the syntax that suggests genuine terror." (pg 109) --Number one, the Genesis account is phenomenal in its indication of the oneness and the trinity of God. The phrases translated plurally, "one of us", "let us make man in our image" are indicators of the trinity--God's plurality. Those verses were never intended to assume the existance of more than one God. (And interestingly enough, we may trace such beliefs that the Hebrews in their early stages of religion were not monotheistic to an outdated DISPROVEN theory by a man named Tylor who thought that the progression of religion began at polytheism and ended in monotheism--the logic was thrilling and wonderfully done and thought out with his theory, HOWEVER, it didn't quite line up with the facts that were brought to light: proof of belief in one God in hundreds of primitive people groups across the world. --see "Eternity in their Hearts" chapter 4 or research Edward B. Tylor)To get myself back on track: the plurality of the early Genesis verses has nothing to do with other gods, it has to do with the plurality of one God. The plural for GOd (Elohim) is the name used in the Hebrew text, BUT it is used with SINGULAR verbs--the author is trying to convey the oneness/singularity of God while showing that God is also plural in the sense of the trinity. (See 1st John 5:7 "For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one.")

Frye is ignorant of these things, or chooses to ignore them.

2. Frye: "What man aquires in the Fall is evidently sexual experience as we know it, and something called the knowledge of good and evil, obviously connected with sex but not otherwise explained...the reason for the creation of woman, we are told (2:@4), is that in the sexual relation man should be not alone and yet "one flesh" with his wife." (pg110)

There are a lot of problems within this small passage above, and I may not touch on them all, but here are a few:

1. Frye's use of the word "obviously". There is no indication, no allusion, no Biblical text that tells us that the fall had ANYTHING to do with sex. Nothing whatsoever. I don't think that something you have to make up and read into a passage is quite "obvious."

2. Frye says later in the passage that by having sex man became more on the level of God and angels. 1) angels and God are clearly on far separate levels according to the Bible--they are the creation, God is the creator. 2) Nowhere in the Bible does God have sex, so how would sex put us closer to His level if it is not an activity He engages in?

3. Frye contradicts himself. He first says that sex is the real cause of the fall of man, but then, only a few sentances later, he tells us that Eve was created to become "one flesh" with Adam. (I won't even go into the understatement and incompleteness in that sentence.)If God created man and woman to have sex then why in the world would He punish them for it. Frye is creating his own god, whose character is not that of the God of the Bible--YHWH the righteous judge, loving Father, protector and prosperer of His people. A father does not tell his son to take out the trash and then punish his son for that very act--and God did not create man as a sexual being and then punish him for that.

I won't traverse any farther into frye, though this passage needs much more clarification. I can only tell you that Frye's book is not for seekers of the truth. Truth is not what Frye is presenting.

Don't take my word for it, do the research--look at Hebrew script, "Elohim", Tylor's outdated theory, the Bible itself, etc.
And seek the truth, not a distortion of it.

Rating:
Summary: A Word to the Previous Numbskull.
Review: The stridency with which the previous reviewer attacks Northrop Frye is impressive primarily for the blithe manner in which it ignores EVERYTHING Frye says in his introduction. Frye is writing as a literary critic, not as a theologian; the interest of his enterprise lies not in any claims about "truth"--i.e., the sort of metaphysical knowledge believers find in the Bible--but in an essentially unreligious study of Scripture as written artifact. Frye mentions early on the sort of opposition this approach generates among believers. One wonders why such persons' faith is so poor and frail as to arouse such a livid response. Frye never affirms or denies anything about God, the Trinity, or anything else any Judaeo-Christian-Islamic institution believes, teaches, or confesses. "The Great Code" is interested in the Trinity as a certain kind of "metaphorical thinking." This does not contradict or contravene the notion of Trinity; it simply analyzes the concept from a literary and rhetorical, NOT theological, point of view.

Frye does, however, mention the implications of archaeological evidence and textual research when these touch upon the Bible's status as text. Thus, he mentions that there is a verse in Genesis, strikingly similar to accounts in other, earlier Near Eastern texts, which seems to image God speaking to a plurality of other gods---perhaps the vestige of a polytheistic ur-text woven into the texture of Judaic monotheism.

Let's now turn to the idiotic review that precedes this one. There we find a slavering Bible thumper furiously attacking Frye for pointing this out. The plural in Genesis, she affirms, is a sort of royal plural, affirming the triune nature of the Christian God. Well, isn't that brilliant? There are countless Christian theologians who have affirmed the same. But the Pentateuch antedates the New Testament by hundreds of years; it is clear that the Trinitarian argument is a Christian interpretation of that curious plural. What might readers have made of it before Christ, I wonder?

Of course, this kind of question is useless to those who deal in "TRUTH," like the previous the reviewer. Obviously Christianity is the only truth---the True Faith!!!---and, therefore, the benighted Jews who lived before Christ could not have known the significance of that odd plural. The Hebrew Bible was written in God's own hand, and since God is the triune Christian God (nothing more or less), he MEANT to imbue it with types of the Trinity.

I do not wish to attack Christianity. I am a Christian, and my trust is in the living God. But I shudder at the closed-mindedness and intolerance many Christians exhibit toward alternative views of their sacred text. Why is Frye guilty of a crime against "truth" simply because he wishes to discuss the literary properties of the Bible, rather than its doctrinal implications? He never set out to write the De Civitate Dei or the Summa Theologiae. In "The Great Code," he was a literary critic. Does the previous reviewer know that he was also a minister? I doubt Frye was doing literary criticism when he performed weddings.

Literary critics specialize in close reading of texts, a skill that our previous exegete conspicuously lacks. Genesis, she says, provides no evidence whatsoever that the Fall has anything to do with sex. Frye's fatuous use of the adverb "obviously" can be explained only as bad faith, stupidity, or both. Really? Where, then, is the locus of the Fall in the human body? What first happens to Adam and Eve once they break God's mandate? They become aware of their nakedness, and in shame they cover their genitals (not their arms, not their faces, not their electric household appliances) with leaves. No, indeed, that doesn't establish an "obvious" link---of some kind, at least!---between the Fall and sexuality! What a bonehead this Frye was.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not so weak that it cannot sustain the inquiries of literary critics and textual scholars. Nothing that matters about Genesis or the Sermon on the Mount stands or falls with the discoveries of archaeologists or the arguments of literary critics. The rock of ages is not so easily moved. The narrow, pusillanimous mind that cannot tolerate any diversity of opinion serves neither "TRUTH" nor Christ; he or she serves, instead, Torquemada, and all his ilk throughout the long and tearful history of human cruelty. Such rigid fanaticism, even when it is confined to the public condemnation of a thoughtful book, is chilling. We live in a world in which fanatics fly planes into buildings. These men, too, are ardent believers in what they call the "TRUTH."
But perhaps I go too far. After all, such men are heretics (aren't all Muslims?). Perhaps we can extirpate their lies with a nice Crusade.