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PARTISAN REVIEW
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--{)n the contrary, it serves to indicate thoughts
which remain unexpressed. God gives his command in direct dis–
course, but he leaves his motives and his purpose unexpressed; Abra–
ham, 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,
mysterious, and "of the background."
I will discuss this term in some detail, lest it be misunderstood.
I said above that the Homeric style was "of the foreground" be–
cause, despite much going back and forth, it yet causes what is mo–
mentarily being narrated to give the impression that it is the only pre–
sent, pure and without perspective. A consideration of the Elohistic
text teaches us that the term is capable of a broader and deeper
application. It shows that even the separate personages can be repre–
sented as "of the background"; God is always so 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 those of 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 are more "many-layered,"
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 Ulysses' 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
