Exodus as Epic?

[weinhold]

A few questions about Exodus:

- In what sense can we describe the biblical book of Exodus as a work of Epic literature?

- Does it have similar inherent qualities that make it comparable to the Iliad, the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy, or Moby-Dick?

- In what sense is Exodus a book about the founding of a civilization?

- If Exodus is a work of Epic literature, then who is its Epic hero?

I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on these questions, which I think represent important questions we should be asking about Exodus, and the Bible in general.

 

[JasonGoodwin]

Paul,

I think it would be an egregious mistake to call a book like Exodus an epic. Those other books you referenced are epics. Some of them may have been based on actual events (but I'm not sure about that). Exodus doesn't fall into that category -- regardless of what someone like Ian McKellen says. Exodus is not only a part of the inspired Word of God, it is 100% historical fact. The massive amount of archaeological evidence supports this.

I would expect someone who is antagonistic toward the Bible, or someone who is a CINO and knows nothing about the Bible, to dismiss Exodus as an epic. I would not expect that from a bonafide Christian.

 

[Contra_Mundum]

This is a post of general disagreement with the thesis. Please, do not take mere disagreement personally. I think the question is certainly fair, and worthy of discussion.


Does Biblical literature, in part or whole, "fit" neatly into human categories? If Epic as a category is a narrative poem then it fails right there the test of Epic. Saga (from the Icelandic) in modern parlance is narrative prose that tells an "epic" kind of tale, something that tells the story of heroes or founders, often with mythic (false or idealized) elements. Epic or saga is noteworthy for its drama, it is drama, not merely dramatic.

I think one of the risks run by putting Biblical history--the story of humankind's redemption--into human literary categories, and defining them thereby, is that everything predicated of the ordinary genre is supposed then of the Biblical; in fact, the Biblical account is "normed" by our human expectations. I'm not saying that we cannot learn something by comparing human efforts to the divinely inspired record, but we have always to keep in mind which is the archetype. Moses didn't simply "borrow" (for example) a Gilgamesh-epic (or Egyptian parallel) paradigm for his own use. Exodus (really the Pentateuch) is dramatic but it isn't drama.

Exodus in particular, as a "book", is in the middle of the Pentateuch. Therefore, its reading is conditioned by the corpus to which it first belongs. Exodus contains material that ties it stylistically to both Leviticus and then also Numbers, for it contains historical material, legal code, and architectural description. The action for an entire year takes place between Exodus 19 and Numbers 10, at the foot of Sinai. And though interspersed with "action", this central core is primarily "description"--of the Tabernacle, of the legal code, of the ceremonial code--of the nation. Not very "dramatic". It also doesn't have much in the way of speeches (wich ordinariliy form an important part of epic/saga). Only much later in Deuteronomy do we find Moses' speeches, and not epic-like speeches either.

If anything, Genesis would have to be seen as "epic-content", rather than Exodus. Why? Because, if we accept that Moses wrote Exodus, then he's writing history as it unfolds. This is hardly the context for ordinary "epic-subject-matter". Those tales involve a "preservation" aspect, "this is what happened to us long ago, or to our grandparents, or great-grandparents--we need to preserve this lest the future generations forget." People involved in the immediacy of epic-events usually aren't capable of seeing the flowering of the events down the road--which flowering is usually what calls forth the epic or saga.

In response, someone might say: "But since God is writing this tale, he can inspire Moses to write such a thing in the immediate context, and not wait until Joshua completes the conquest" (the flowering). Well then, why not let Joshua write it? He sees the whole thing from beginning to end, he lives through from slavery, the plagues, the exodus, Sinai, Moses, the conquest--the whole thing. Then it really is a saga/epic.

In the end, what I'm saying is: the story of the Exodus, the prehistory (Genesis), the whole Pentateuch isn't really epic/saga from the standpoint of the genre, although in retrospect it does embody certain characteristics of those genres. It is the birth of a nation, it is heroic, it includes mighty miracles, it solidifies the official interpretation of those events for succeeding generations. The primary difference (as I see it) is that Moses writes down these events as they take place, as an eyewitness to them. His prologue (Genesis) is the oracles of God as delivered to his own ancestors, and it reads most often (as does Exodus) as a history, and not as a drama.

 

[MW]

Well said.

 

[py3ak]

I wonder if the overlap does not come in, because both Biblical literature and sagas/epics, etc. are a kind of theological narrative. Of course, the Bible sets the right theology and is accurate history. But we see connections with other kinds of literature (think of Milton's dilemma whether to write in Grecian or Hebrew style) because of the fact that history is not written simpliciter; although in our culture we have largely lost narrative poetry and similar forms, yet it is still true that history is written with a theological agenda.

 

[JasonGoodwin]

Paul,

My apologies to you if I stepped on your toes. Bruce really put out some good points here, and some that I hadn't really considered. It's all food for thought.

 

[weinhold]

Bruce, I'm not near my books right now but I'll post a reply soon. I think you bring up some interesting points but I'd like to try and maintain the idea that Exodus is an Epic work. Anyway, thanks for your comments, and I hope to hear more from you.

Jason, no offense taken. Plus, your avatar would make up for just about anything you might post. BAM! Please feel free to contribute again.

 

[weinhold]

Bruce, I was going to post my own thoughts on this topic of Exodus as epic, but decided it would be better to ask you a few questions concerning your post. First of all, you bring up some excellent points. I am sure that much will be gained from our dialogue on this important subject. I'll go ahead and number these questions for concision, but don't think of these as disagreements necessarily. I'm just looking for clarification.

1. You make an interesting distinction between drama and the dramatic. I'm oversimplifying I'm sure, but it seems you are saying that epic is "drama," while Exodus is "dramatic." What I am unclear on is what you exactly mean by these terms. Do you mean to use "drama" in the technical sense of staged play? Also, I'm not clear on whether you are using "drama" as a pejorative term when compared to "dramatic." Could you please help me understand your thoughts on this?

2. I found it equally interesting that you seem to equate "myth" with falsity in your post. What if we defined "myth" instead as the shared story of a civilization that informs its way of life? In other words, what if "myth" means something along the lines of "worldview"? Does this idea resonate with you? Why or why not?

3. I'll make this my last question, though your post brings up many other interesting points for conversation. Maybe we'll come back to them later on.

You wrote in your post, "In the end, what I'm saying is: the story of the Exodus, the prehistory (Genesis), the whole Pentateuch isn't really epic/saga from the standpoint of the genre, although in retrospect it does embody certain characteristics of those genres. It is the birth of a nation, it is heroic, it includes mighty miracles, it solidifies the official interpretation of those events for succeeding generations. The primary difference (as I see it) is that Moses writes down these events as they take place, as an eyewitness to them. His prologue (Genesis) is the oracles of God as delivered to his own ancestors, and it reads most often (as does Exodus) as a history, and not as a drama."

Your point about reading Exodus in light of the entire Pentateuch is apt. In fact, I think you may have just convinced me that the whole Pentateuch should be read as an Epic work. Anyway, I'd just like your response to this quote by Louise Cowan from her introduction to The Epic Cosmos entitled, "Epic as Cosmopoesis." She writes, "As for epic, a work should be identifiable as belonging to that category, whatever its medium, length, or style when what can be observed from within it activates a full and complete cosmos. This is to say that epic displays on a panoramic scale an entire way of life -- caught, it is true, at a moment of radical change and yet viewed from an omni-directional standpoint, in that very act transfigured and preserved" (3).

It seems that from Dr. Cowan's perspective genre emerges from within the ontology of a work. Given your own observations about the epic characteristics of the Pentateuch, would you agree or disagree with her quote?

Bruce, thanks again for thinking through these things with me. I already feel like you've helped me think through the epic genre more clearly, and I hope we continue this fruitful dialogue.

 

[Contra_Mundum]

Hi Paul,
It's nice to know I've stimulated your thinking. You may not share my pessimism regarding the fruitfulness of this line of inquiry, but I am glad to see just about anyone who has a refreshed excitement about Bible study. As far as encouragement, I'll just say: in your hopefulness to gain additional insght from similarities you may find, give the differences their due weight as well.

Before I address 1-3, let me just say to start that if any one wishes to read the Bible or a portion of the Bible through a particular lens, I may offer them cautions or commendations, but in the end it is his hermeneutical decision. In offering my cautions with regard to "epic" I am merely pointing out that we have had both Moses, and Epic, around for a long time. And if Moses was properly Epic, I honestly believe that the connection would have been made some time ago. As I alluded to in my first post, Moses and Epic may share the occasional characteristic. But this does not mean that I think Epic thereby becomes a proper lens through which to look at Moses. Any more than I think Detective Novel is the proper lens, even though we may find evident overlap in characteristics. The only difference (as I see it) is that Epic may possibly, to the literary-trained eye, have more common characteristics. However, commonalities alone do not create a common genus.

1) In distinguishing drama and dramatic: In the latter case we have a modifer that can be used with things that are very much non-drama. Dramatic rescue, dramatic flair, dramatic tension, dramatic story or history. Each of these may be taking (as few as) one or more aspects of formal drama and recognizing it as descriptive of something entirely different. By characterizing epic as "drama" I don't mean that epics are plays for the stage, but are serious (non-comedy) narrative work, with strong characterization, dialog, and action, that has a high degree of representational quality. I'm not being dismissive of drama (in either the technical or the broader sense). Again, I think that a well-done epic is categorically drama in the broader sense conceived, whereas Moses' writing contains dramatic elements, but I would not want to classify it even broadly as drama.

By the way, if you are reading up on epic, may I suggest a must-have--C.S. Lewis' Introduction to Paradise Lost. Incredible writer, who can make a subject I am not particularly interested in something of a page-turner I can't put down. (it's been a while since I read it)

2) I am defintely uncomfortable with (what seems to me) a reformulating of the idea of "myth" in order to make it sufficiently broad (or vague) that it can encompass things as widely divergent as Israelite (and world) history as told and preserved by Moses, ]and Mayan cosmogony/cosmology (or Chinese, or Greek, etc.). I can appreciate that once in a while the "comparitive religions" approach may yield an appreciable insight, but what is being sacrificed in the umbrella enterprise? Where is the preservation of antithesis? Where is the acknowledgement that in the end, the Bible stands alone as truth, over against the "myths"? After all, in this stance, they all just fit into the same category of "traditional explanatory legend".

Any approach that doesn't acknowledge from the first the Bible's uniqueness, and the awkwardness and artificiality of creating new categories (or definitions) merely for the purpose of grouping Scripture with other things, is in my view at odds with the facts it is trying to portray. But perhaps such an admission is sufficient to rescue the enterprise. But if we really believe the Bible is truth, then honestly the "Bible's stories" have much more in common with Churchill's A History of the English Speaking Peoples than it does with Odin and Thor. Correct?

3) The quote is interesting. If I'm obliged to grant someone the courtesy of offering their own defintions for the terms they intend to use, then I'll somewhat reluctantly allow that in a sense Moses' work can possibly be identified in that matrix. But not without asserting once again his exclusivistic claims. Other internally-coherent and self-referential "epics" are first and foremost a subjective depiction of a world, event, or identity that is the product of a human mind.

Moses' inspired account, however, has the unique quality of being subjective only with reference to the divine, not the human author, nor to the human readers. Instead, for man the Biblical record is the one "epic" that is objective. This is the scandal of particularity that I rather suspect Ms. Cowan and others are not prepared to accept, inasmuch as it demands their individual submission to the Biblical data as normative.

 

[weinhold]

Bruce, sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you. I hope you (and others?) are still interested in this discussion, as it seems quite fascinating to me. I'll go ahead and respond again to some of your statements, which were again quite thought provoking. Thanks, and please know that these are intended to further our dialogue, not entrench my own position. Oh, and also, thanks for the tip on C.S. Lewis' intro to Paradise Lost!

I suppose I should begin by clarifying what I'm trying to mean by the word "myth." Myth is not really the same thing as mythology, or fable, or legend. Neither is it fiction or falsity per se. Rather, I am attempting to use myth as the Greeks did. Their word was muthos, or "story." Of course, in our fact-driven culture, even "story" can be used pejoratively. For example, "Was that the truth, or was it just a story?" As I understand it, however, myth should be understood as a mode of knowledge, or a pathway to truth. There are some truths that cannot be learned from bare facts or propositions, and so we need stories to guide us to the truth about ultimate questions. My hope in talking about the "myth" of the biblical narrative, then, is to glorify it as a medium that can express the deepest truths.

You are right to notice the broad scope of "myth" and its expression in cultures outside the Judeo-Christian tradition. I think that's part of the beauty of it. As a Christian, and particularly as one in the Reformed tradition, I have been given a profound theological inheritance that helps me realize the limitations of my ability to understand, both because of my creatureliness and because of the fall. For me, this informs the way I approach the classics, because great literature and great art engages us in a conversation with the spiritual insights of others. This, to me, does not seem threatening or dangerous, but is a marvelous opportunity for mutual consideration of ultimate questions. Thus, I think it is perfectly appropriate to engage Scripture in dialogue with other classic texts. We have nothing to fear, it seems to me, from such a conversation. We should allow ourselves the freedom to take other texts seriously, without qualifying them as somehow inferior.

Here's a question from your last post:

"But if we really believe the Bible is truth, then honestly the "Bible's stories" have much more in common with Churchill's A History of the English Speaking Peoples than it does with Odin and Thor. Correct?"

This is correct in a comparative sense, but let me make what I think is an important distinction. We need not understand "truth" as only being synonymous with "factually accurate." I am not denying the need for fact, and I think Exodus represents an faithful account of events in Israel's history. I do not, however, think that these are the deepest truths to be found in it. If we are to really understand Exodus, then, it seems to me that we must understand it as a made thing, a work of divinely-inspired poesis. In that vein, it seems to me that the epic genre is a helpful way to understand Exodus, and even the entire Pentateuch, as we discussed earlier. It is not, of course, the only way to read Exodus, but it seems to bring out genuine meaning from the text that takes its muthos seriously.

 

[weinhold]

 

[WrittenFromUtopia]

Originally posted by Contra_Mundum
This is a post of general disagreement with the thesis. Please, do not take mere disagreement personally. I think the question is certainly fair, and worthy of discussion.


Does Biblical literature, in part or whole, "fit" neatly into human categories? If Epic as a category is a narrative poem then it fails right there the test of Epic. Saga (from the Icelandic) in modern parlance is narrative prose that tells an "epic" kind of tale, something that tells the story of heroes or founders, often with mythic (false or idealized) elements. Epic or saga is noteworthy for its drama, it is drama, not merely dramatic.

I think one of the risks run by putting Biblical history--the story of humankind's redemption--into human literary categories, and defining them thereby, is that everything predicated of the ordinary genre is supposed then of the Biblical; in fact, the Biblical account is "normed" by our human expectations. I'm not saying that we cannot learn something by comparing human efforts to the divinely inspired record, but we have always to keep in mind which is the archetype. Moses didn't simply "borrow" (for example) a Gilgamesh-epic (or Egyptian parallel) paradigm for his own use. Exodus (really the Pentateuch) is dramatic but it isn't drama.

Exodus in particular, as a "book", is in the middle of the Pentateuch. Therefore, its reading is conditioned by the corpus to which it first belongs. Exodus contains material that ties it stylistically to both Leviticus and then also Numbers, for it contains historical material, legal code, and architectural description. The action for an entire year takes place between Exodus 19 and Numbers 10, at the foot of Sinai. And though interspersed with "action", this central core is primarily "description"--of the Tabernacle, of the legal code, of the ceremonial code--of the nation. Not very "dramatic". It also doesn't have much in the way of speeches (wich ordinariliy form an important part of epic/saga). Only much later in Deuteronomy do we find Moses' speeches, and not epic-like speeches either.

If anything, Genesis would have to be seen as "epic-content", rather than Exodus. Why? Because, if we accept that Moses wrote Exodus, then he's writing history as it unfolds. This is hardly the context for ordinary "epic-subject-matter". Those tales involve a "preservation" aspect, "this is what happened to us long ago, or to our grandparents, or great-grandparents--we need to preserve this lest the future generations forget." People involved in the immediacy of epic-events usually aren't capable of seeing the flowering of the events down the road--which flowering is usually what calls forth the epic or saga.

In response, someone might say: "But since God is writing this tale, he can inspire Moses to write such a thing in the immediate context, and not wait until Joshua completes the conquest" (the flowering). Well then, why not let Joshua write it? He sees the whole thing from beginning to end, he lives through from slavery, the plagues, the exodus, Sinai, Moses, the conquest--the whole thing. Then it really is a saga/epic.

In the end, what I'm saying is: the story of the Exodus, the prehistory (Genesis), the whole Pentateuch isn't really epic/saga from the standpoint of the genre, although in retrospect it does embody certain characteristics of those genres. It is the birth of a nation, it is heroic, it includes mighty miracles, it solidifies the official interpretation of those events for succeeding generations. The primary difference (as I see it) is that Moses writes down these events as they take place, as an eyewitness to them. His prologue (Genesis) is the oracles of God as delivered to his own ancestors, and it reads most often (as does Exodus) as a history, and not as a drama.

Well said, Rev. Buchanan.

Is it just me, or do all the sub-moronic FV heretics like to force the Bible into "poetry" and other man-made conventional literary categories? I don't think it is just me.

 

[weinhold]

Originally posted by WrittenFromUtopia

Well said, Rev. Buchanan.

Is it just me, or do all the sub-moronic FV heretics like to force the Bible into "poetry" and other man-made conventional literary categories? I don't think it is just me.

Gabriel,

Thanks for your comments. I'm not sure if they were directed at me, but I'd like to offer what I hope will be a constructive response, and I think the best place to start is with a few brief questions. Perhaps this will begin a dialogue that will be helpful to me in understanding your position.

First, why do you associate Federal Vision Theology with an appreciation for poetry?

Second, why do you think poetry is a man-made conventional literary category?

Third, do you think that poetry should not be considered as a criteria for interpretation of Scripture?

Gabriel, I really thought your comment was interesting in that it creates an opportunity for us to dialogue about what exactly it is that we think about how to interpret Scripture, particularly the Pentateuch. I hope that you are able to find time to respond so that we can continue fleshing out these important issues.

 

[weinhold]