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Title: The Great Code: The Bible and Literature by Northrop Frye ISBN: 0-15-602780-1 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: This book opens many doors - unless you prefer them closed
Comment: One of the review writers is going to be more than startled and probably very shocked to know that it is a matter of scholarly opinion that the Bible itself evolved, as do all literary works, from previous sacred scriptures, such as the Epic of Ba'al.
Anyway, I read this book years ago and just recommended it to a friend. I came to this site just wondering how reviewers saw it.
It's simply one literary critic's look at the Bible. That's all. For me, it was wonderful and opened up the Bible to me in a new way. Indeed, from this book, I went on to take an Old Testament course in a seminary and then wound up getting a Master of Divinity. If you don't want to be fascinated by the imagination of human beings (made in God's image) and are afraid to question the literary restraint of the limited English translations we are all saddled with, and if you don't believe in the broad and wonderful imagination of God, this book is definitely not for you. For those of you who know what God is thinking all the time, you can spend your money elsewhere.
This is a grand book. It opens many doors. Unless you prefer them closed.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Word to the Previous Numbskull.
Comment: The stridency with which the previous reviewer attacks Northrop Frye is impressive primarily for the blithe manner in which it ignores EVERYTHING Frye says in his introduction. Frye is writing as a literary critic, not as a theologian; the interest of his enterprise lies not in any claims about "truth"--i.e., the sort of metaphysical knowledge believers find in the Bible--but in an essentially unreligious study of Scripture as written artifact. Frye mentions early on the sort of opposition this approach generates among believers. One wonders why such persons' faith is so poor and frail as to arouse such a livid response. Frye never affirms or denies anything about God, the Trinity, or anything else any Judaeo-Christian-Islamic institution believes, teaches, or confesses. "The Great Code" is interested in the Trinity as a certain kind of "metaphorical thinking." This does not contradict or contravene the notion of Trinity; it simply analyzes the concept from a literary and rhetorical, NOT theological, point of view.
Frye does, however, mention the implications of archaeological evidence and textual research when these touch upon the Bible's status as text. Thus, he mentions that there is a verse in Genesis, strikingly similar to accounts in other, earlier Near Eastern texts, which seems to image God speaking to a plurality of other gods---perhaps the vestige of a polytheistic ur-text woven into the texture of Judaic monotheism.
Let's now turn to the idiotic review that precedes this one. There we find a slavering Bible thumper furiously attacking Frye for pointing this out. The plural in Genesis, she affirms, is a sort of royal plural, affirming the triune nature of the Christian God. Well, isn't that brilliant? There are countless Christian theologians who have affirmed the same. But the Pentateuch antedates the New Testament by hundreds of years; it is clear that the Trinitarian argument is a Christian interpretation of that curious plural. What might readers have made of it before Christ, I wonder?
Of course, this kind of question is useless to those who deal in "TRUTH," like the previous the reviewer. Obviously Christianity is the only truth---the True Faith!!!---and, therefore, the benighted Jews who lived before Christ could not have known the significance of that odd plural. The Hebrew Bible was written in God's own hand, and since God is the triune Christian God (nothing more or less), he MEANT to imbue it with types of the Trinity.
I do not wish to attack Christianity. I am a Christian, and my trust is in the living God. But I shudder at the closed-mindedness and intolerance many Christians exhibit toward alternative views of their sacred text. Why is Frye guilty of a crime against "truth" simply because he wishes to discuss the literary properties of the Bible, rather than its doctrinal implications? He never set out to write the De Civitate Dei or the Summa Theologiae. In "The Great Code," he was a literary critic. Does the previous reviewer know that he was also a minister? I doubt Frye was doing literary criticism when he performed weddings.
Literary critics specialize in close reading of texts, a skill that our previous exegete conspicuously lacks. Genesis, she says, provides no evidence whatsoever that the Fall has anything to do with sex. Frye's fatuous use of the adverb "obviously" can be explained only as bad faith, stupidity, or both. Really? Where, then, is the locus of the Fall in the human body? What first happens to Adam and Eve once they break God's mandate? They become aware of their nakedness, and in shame they cover their genitals (not their arms, not their faces, not their electric household appliances) with leaves. No, indeed, that doesn't establish an "obvious" link---of some kind, at least!---between the Fall and sexuality! What a bonehead this Frye was.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not so weak that it cannot sustain the inquiries of literary critics and textual scholars. Nothing that matters about Genesis or the Sermon on the Mount stands or falls with the discoveries of archaeologists or the arguments of literary critics. The rock of ages is not so easily moved. The narrow, pusillanimous mind that cannot tolerate any diversity of opinion serves neither "TRUTH" nor Christ; he or she serves, instead, Torquemada, and all his ilk throughout the long and tearful history of human cruelty. Such rigid fanaticism, even when it is confined to the public condemnation of a thoughtful book, is chilling. We live in a world in which fanatics fly planes into buildings. These men, too, are ardent believers in what they call the "TRUTH."
But perhaps I go too far. After all, such men are heretics (aren't all Muslims?). Perhaps we can extirpate their lies with a nice Crusade.
Rating: 1
Summary: Ignorant
Comment: Please, if you are in any way serious about knowledge of the Bible and about TRUTH do NOT read this book. There are scattered bits of truth throughout the book, but that is all they are...scattered bits. Many of the things Frye presents as "obvious" or "fact" are, in fact, incorrect.
I am going to give a couple of examples of Frye's "obvious" truths, which are often ignorant, misjudged, or otherwise untrue. My hope is that if you do decide to read this book you will look critically at it and not just suppose what he says to be true. Read the Bible for yourself and question his "obvious" truths--do some research! However, if you want to know the truth Frye isn't for you.
a couple examples:
1) Frye: "The Genesis account permits itself a verse (3:22) in which God seems to be telling other gods that man is now 'one of us', in a position to threaten their power unless they do something about it at once, with a break in the syntax that suggests genuine terror." (pg 109) --Number one, the Genesis account is phenomenal in its indication of the oneness and the trinity of God. The phrases translated plurally, "one of us", "let us make man in our image" are indicators of the trinity--God's plurality. Those verses were never intended to assume the existance of more than one God. (And interestingly enough, we may trace such beliefs that the Hebrews in their early stages of religion were not monotheistic to an outdated DISPROVEN theory by a man named Tylor who thought that the progression of religion began at polytheism and ended in monotheism--the logic was thrilling and wonderfully done and thought out with his theory, HOWEVER, it didn't quite line up with the facts that were brought to light: proof of belief in one God in hundreds of primitive people groups across the world. --see "Eternity in their Hearts" chapter 4 or research Edward B. Tylor)To get myself back on track: the plurality of the early Genesis verses has nothing to do with other gods, it has to do with the plurality of one God. The plural for GOd (Elohim) is the name used in the Hebrew text, BUT it is used with SINGULAR verbs--the author is trying to convey the oneness/singularity of God while showing that God is also plural in the sense of the trinity. (See 1st John 5:7 "For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one.")
Frye is ignorant of these things, or chooses to ignore them.
2. Frye: "What man aquires in the Fall is evidently sexual experience as we know it, and something called the knowledge of good and evil, obviously connected with sex but not otherwise explained...the reason for the creation of woman, we are told (2:@4), is that in the sexual relation man should be not alone and yet "one flesh" with his wife." (pg110)
There are a lot of problems within this small passage above, and I may not touch on them all, but here are a few:
1. Frye's use of the word "obviously". There is no indication, no allusion, no Biblical text that tells us that the fall had ANYTHING to do with sex. Nothing whatsoever. I don't think that something you have to make up and read into a passage is quite "obvious."
2. Frye says later in the passage that by having sex man became more on the level of God and angels. 1) angels and God are clearly on far separate levels according to the Bible--they are the creation, God is the creator. 2) Nowhere in the Bible does God have sex, so how would sex put us closer to His level if it is not an activity He engages in?
3. Frye contradicts himself. He first says that sex is the real cause of the fall of man, but then, only a few sentances later, he tells us that Eve was created to become "one flesh" with Adam. (I won't even go into the understatement and incompleteness in that sentence.)If God created man and woman to have sex then why in the world would He punish them for it. Frye is creating his own god, whose character is not that of the God of the Bible--YHWH the righteous judge, loving Father, protector and prosperer of His people. A father does not tell his son to take out the trash and then punish his son for that very act--and God did not create man as a sexual being and then punish him for that.
I won't traverse any farther into frye, though this passage needs much more clarification. I can only tell you that Frye's book is not for seekers of the truth. Truth is not what Frye is presenting.
Don't take my word for it, do the research--look at Hebrew script, "Elohim", Tylor's outdated theory, the Bible itself, etc.
And seek the truth, not a distortion of it.
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Title: Words With Power: Being A Second Study "The Bible And Literature" by Northrop Frye ISBN: 0156983656 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 1992 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. by Northrop Frye ISBN: 0691069999 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 25 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Educated Imagination by Northrop Frye ISBN: 0253200881 Publisher: Indiana University Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1964 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Northrop Frye on Shakespeare by Northrop Frye ISBN: 0300042086 Publisher: Yale University Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1988 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Fearful Symmetry by Northrop Frye ISBN: 0691012911 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 1969 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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