BOOKS
633
THE OLDEST STORIES
THE GREAT CODE: THE BIBLE AND LITERATURE. By Northrop Frye.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. $14.95.
THE STORY OF THE STORIES: THE CHOSEN PEOPLE AND ITS GOD.
By Dan Jacobson. Harper
&
Row. $11.95.
THE ART OF BIBLICAL NARRATIVE. By Robert Alter. Basic Books.
$13.95.
After a long period of neglect by humanistic scholars–
except for a few who advanced unsophisticated points of view-it
looks as if the Bible as literature is receiving the serious attention
it deserves. Literary scholars in particular are examining the
Scriptures from a secular vantage point.
It
should be recognized at the outset that some religious
scholars, not to speak of strongly committed religious people,
object to a literary reading of the Bible; but in a nonreligious
world, I think there is every justification for studying the Bible
as literature and, as Alter argues, a literary approach can help to
explain quite a number of difficulties earlier scholars, using his–
torical approaches of various sorts, have inadequately explained.
What we have here are three works of major importance:
Northrop Frye's ahistorical study based largely on myth, in the
archetypical sense of the word; Jacobson's attempt to show that
one basic myth provides the central theme for the whole biblical
story; and Alter's literary analysis of Old Testament narrative.
Not only are all three important in a general sense; they are also
original and incisive pieces of literary criticism. Except for
Alter's book, which makes some use of others' work, they are
sui
generis.
All should be read by those interested in the Bible as well
as by those who believe in it, by those who do not believe, and by
those who do and do not believe in it at the same time.
In
The Great Code,
Frye realizes an old desire, a desire pre–
dating his famous
Anatomy of Criticism:
to study the Bible as
literature. Nor has this one volume satisfied that desire; a second
volume is already under way. Frye underlines his literary ap–
proach: "The present book is not a work of Biblical scholarship,
expresses only my own personal encounter with the Bible."
Though recognizing that the Bible was constructed over at least a
