THE SCAR OF ULYSS ES
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and crossing of motives both in individuals and in the general ac–
tion have become so concretc that it is impossible to doubt the his–
toricity of the information conveyed. Now the men who composed
the historical parts are often the same who edited the older legends
as well; their peculiar religious concept of man in history, which we
attempted to describe above, did not in the least lead them to a
legendary simplification of events; and so it is only natural that, in
the legendary passages of the Old Testament, historical structure is
frequently discernible-of course, not in the sense that the traditions
are examined as to their credibility according to the methods of
scientific criticism; but simply to the extent that the tendency to a
smoothing down and harmonizing of events, to a simplification of
motives, to a static definition of characters which avoids conflict,
vacillation, and development, such as are natural to legendary
structure, does not dominate in the Old Testament world of legend.
Abraham, J acob, or even Moses produce a more concrete, direct, and
historical impression than the figures of the Homeric world-not
because they are better described in terms of sense (the contrary is the
case ) but because that confused, contradictory, often-obstructed
multiplicity of inward and outward events which true history affords,
is not blurred in their representation but still remains clearly percept–
ible. In the stories of David, the legendary, which only later scientific
criticism makes recognizable as such, imperceptibly passes over into
the historical; and even in the legendary, the problem of the class–
ification and interpretation of human history is already passionately
apprehended- a problem which later shatters the framework of
historical composition and completely overruns it with prophecy; thus
the Old Testament, in so far as it is concerned with human events,
ranges through all three domains: legend, historical reporting, and
interpretative historical theology.
Connected with the matters just discussed is the fact that the
Greek text seems more limited and more static in respect to the
circle of personages involved in the action and their political ac–
tivity. In the recognition scene with which we began, there appears,
aside from Ulysses and Penelope, the housekeeper Eurycleia, a slave
whom Ulysses' father Laertes had bought long before. She, like the
swineherd Eumaios, has spent her life in the service of Laertes'
