AHARON MEGGED
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unfold a great drama and embrace a complete world of passions and
feelings - the relationship between two brothers who are contrasting,
polar types and their relationship with their father who is at once a
judge and the recipient of providence. Its plot is closed: there is a be–
ginning, a middle with a climactic point, and an end . However, the
circle remains interminably open : the inimitably maximal condensa–
tion , tight to the point of not allowing one extraneous detail, is a
vessel for ramifying deeper layers steeped in dusk.
The obscure, the alluded , and the unsaid is greater than the re–
vealed but also leaves the door open to empathy, supposition, and
wonder. The relationship between the characters, two of them human
and the third in the background, are ambivalent throughout every
turning of the plot, and the story refuses to judge them unequivocally.
Contrasts are juxtaposed throughout-jealousy and faithfulness, sin
and repentance, punishment and pardon, anger and compassion .
Consequently, the narration arouses both imagination and emotion,
and a sentence like , "And Cain spoke to his brother Abel while they
were in the field and arose up against his brother and slew him,"
which omits what Cain actually said to Abel at a dramatic climax, as
if skipping over a heartbeat, leaves the reader momentarily stunned
and excited by feelings and questions. The story enables many planes
of possible interpretation - psychological, anthropological, theologi–
cal , social , and ethical. Like S. N . Kramer, who claims that "history
begins in Sumer," we can say that modern literature begins with the
Hebrew story of Cain and Abel.
Much has been written about these qualities of biblical narra–
tive . But I would like to emphasize still another striking phenomenon,
which accounts for them and for the complexity and psychological
depth of the Hebrew story:
the complete absence of heroes or heroic charac–
ters
who populated most narrative, myth, and epic in the literature of
all peoples from ancient times to the late Middle Ages.
Throughout the entire body of biblical narrative (and later in
talmudic fable and the Cabbal), there is not even one story in which
the protagonist is endowed with attributes of perfection of mind and
body like Gilgamesh and the Pharaohs, Achilles and Aeneas, and
the heroes of the sagas and the chivalric romances.
In an Egyptian narrative from the second millennium
B .C .
about
the adventure of Sanhat - a high official in Amanmachat 1's court
who escaped from his country at the death of his king- the new king,
son of Sachtap, whose ascension to the throne is announced to Sanhat
by an envoy, is described as "Lord of Wisdom," "Wonder-working
Counsellor," "Great Benefactor," "Hero of the Almighty Arm," "In-
