THE SCAR OF ULYSSES
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words reveal the transcendent majesty of God. Almost all of them
undergo, like Adam, the deepest humiliation-and hardly one that
is not deemed worthy of God's personal intervention and personal
inspiration! Humiliation and elevation go far deeper and far higher
than in Homer, and they belong basically together. The poor beggar
Ulysses is only masquerading, but Adam is really cast down, Jacob
really a refugee, Joseph really in the pit and then a slave to be
bought and sold. But their greatness, rising out of humiliation, is al–
most superhuman and a likeness of God's greatness. The reader clearly
feels how the extent of the pendulum's swing is connected with the
intensity of the personal history-precisely the most extreme circum–
stances, in which we are immeasurably forsaken and desperate, or
immeasurably joyous and exalted, give us, if we survive them, a per–
sonal stamp recognized as the product of a rich background, a rich
development. And very often, indeed generally, this element of
development gives the Old Testament stories an historical character,
even when the subject is purely legendary and traditional.
Homer, with all his subject matter, remains within the legendary,
whereas the subject matter of the Old Testament comes closer
and closer to history as the narrative proceeds; in the stories of
David the historical report predominates. Here too, much that is
legendary still remains, as for example the story of David and
Goliath; but much-and the most essential-consists in things which
the narrators knew from their own experience or from first-hand
testimony. Now the difference between legendary matter and his–
torical matter is in most cases easily perceived by a reasonably ex–
perienced reader. It is difficult to distinguish the true from the
synthetic or the one-sided in a historical presentation that requires
great historical and philological training; but it is easy to separate the
historical from the legendary in general. Their structure is different.
Even where the legendary does not immediately betray itself by ele–
ments of the miraculous, by the repetition of well-known standard
motives, typical patterns and themes, through neglect of clear details
of time and place, and the like, it is generally quickly recognizable by
its composition. It runs far too smoothly. All cross-currents, all fric–
tion, all that is casual, secondary to the main events and themes,
everything unresolved, truncated, and uncertain, which confuses the
clear progress of the action and the simple orientation of the acting
