The Old Testament (as Most of Us Know It)

The title for this summary is only partially facetious; a narrative quality exists to the "Hebrew Scriptures," a designation, by the way, that occurs fewer than fifty times in what we call the “Old Testament,” and it represents one that forms a story with a familiar, narrative quality seeming much like a continuous, uninterrupted retelling of a timeless tale.  Even though that is not the case, certainly an “end point” exists to which most people can retell or relate the story most of us best know.  If, for instance, we were to ask where Job figures into the story, or Samson and Delilah, or Daniel in the lion’s den, most of us would have a difficult time placing such events in the context of “The Story.”  The so-called “New Testament” does not pose as great a problem.

So a review of the narrative seems necessary, if only to find a way for readers to agree on the outlines of the stories, and thereby figuring where to place whatever extraneous narratives we recall.  What follows is a brief (if such is possible) rendering of the basic pattern of what most of us remember from Bible lessons or family studies.

The Bible opens with Creation, by relating a “First Day, Second Day,” etc., narrative of God’s creative act; shortly thereafter, we have a shift of sorts when, rather than man and woman created on the sixth day and God resting on the seventh, we have Adam created prior to all else, animals brought to him after the creation, but, because none of these creatures remove his loneliness, we have Eve created from his rib.  They live in Eden, but a Serpent appears, tricking her into doing the one thing God had prohibited: eating from the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”  Cursed, the couple becomes removed from Paradise and will die one day.  Terrible things happen immediately: of the two sons of Adam and Eve, Cain murders his brother Abel, and remains forever marked.  They have another Son, Seth, who sets right the line of God’s creation.  However, in time the people become wicked enough for God to reconsider His creation; one man proves righteous enough for saving, a man named Noah, who follows God’s commands, builds an ark, and thus, with his family and an assortment of God’s creatures, he survives a flood that erases life from the earth, and humanity begins again. 

Still presumptuous, the saved people attempt to erect a structure that will rise to God’s heaven, which God intercepts by confusing their language; thus, they scatter across the earth, speaking new tongues.  In time, God calls out one of them from the same Mesopotamian valley where life began, and directs him to a new land where God will initiate His chosen people, which marks the beginning of monotheism and that which differentiates these people from all others of the earth.  Abraham and his wife Sarah faithfully follow God, and, as a reward and indicative of His promise, they are promised a child in Abraham’s old age.  Although he has a child by a bondswoman (a slave), named Ishmael, it is a child of Sarah, his wife, through whom the promise becomes realized.  This child, Isaac, represents his hope, even when God tests Abraham by asking for something that only the neighboring people would do: offer human sacrifice.  Abraham pasts the test, his child is spared, and Isaac becomes the father of nations, as promised.

In time, Isaac comes to manhood and has twin boys of his own, Jacob and Esau.  From the time of their conception, we know they are destined for something mighty and terrible, for their mother Rebekah feels them fight within her womb.  And, as we know, they grow into vastly different men, with the father preferring one and the mother the other.  The mother-favored child, Jacob, prevails, stealing his brother’s birthright and becomes blessed by God.  In a series of seemingly disconnected events, we follow the adventures of Jacob as they relate to his struggle with his brother or the fight against even God Himself in the form of a wrestling match before dawn.  Jacob's story remains full of symbolic events and figurative episodes, such as crossing a river after making a bond with God, or entering into what anthropologists would call “liminal” or numinous (transitional) spaces filled with danger, being “neither here nor there,” but all the while in epic, decision-making situations.  God changes Jacob's name to "Israel" after one such event, and blesses him with twelve sons, all destined to be the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

The most important son is the youngest, Joseph, who, because of the jealousy of his brothers, is left for dead but manages to find himself in Egypt and in favor with the pharaoh because of his deft interpretations of dreams.  Because of his success and preferment by the pharaoh, a reconciliation occurs with his family when they travel to Egypt during a time of drought, and all his father's sons and their extended families move to and prosper in Egypt.  However, after about four hundred years a pharaoh comes to the throne who does not remember Joseph, recognizing only the danger of so many non-Egyptians in his land.  Thus he enslaves them out of fear of their great numbers.  Out of this bondage comes a savior, Moses, who is saved from Pharaoh's resolution of the problem, the infanticide of all male children, when his mother places him in a reed basket upon the river and Pharaoh's own daughter saves the child; ironically, Moses lives in the very court of the pharaoh, raised as a prince and nurtured by his own mother, whom the princess secures as his nurse.  But when he comes to manhood, in the heat of anger he kills a man and flees from the country, marries, has a family, and then (at age 80) finds himself called by God in the desert (as he shepherds his flock and sees a bush that does not burn), and, following the directions of God, he returns to the place of his exile.  At first he resists; but after an encounter with God in the desert, where some ambiguous form of blood rite is performed, he returns to Egypt, along with his brother, Aaron, and demands from the old pharaoh’s son that all the children of Israel, those of the former Jacob, now be set free.

Pharaoh resists, but after various magic contests between his magicians and those of Moses and his brother Aaron, the pharaoh relents, only to change his mind repeatedly--and we know he will, for God has "hardened his heart" so that he will not listen to the prophet of God.  After many such hesitations, he permits Moses and the people to leave, but once again relents, chases after them, and is drowned when the sea that God parts in order to allow His chosen people to cross, closes upon Pharaoh's advancing army.  Now free, the children of Israel struggle in the desert wilderness for forty years, awaiting God’s preparation and time for their nationhood.  While in the desert, Moses speaks with God on His holy mountain, Sinai (also called Horeb), receives a covenant or set of commands that demarcate His chosen people from all others, argues with the people's recalcitrance, holds them together, and finally leads them to the promised country, only to die before crossing over the river Jordan, and so never sees the actual land itself.  But the people have a champion in one of Moses’ lieutenants, Joshua, who conquers the Canaanite people and establishes the blessed land.

Thereafter the people live and prosper, electing to remain independent, free, and obeying no laws save those handed to them by their God and the priests, or the chosen, charismatic leaders who serve Him.  In time, the people come to understand that obedience to God merits good fortune, but wickedness results in the success of their enemies.  The stubborn Israelites, after a series of successes and failures, are eventually saved from annihilation, either by one of the wise judges, such as Deborah, or one of the charismatic heroes, such as Samson.  In turn, this era gives way to a monarchy, a political system which has strained relations with the priests and various political factions, especially those who wish to continue the old ways, without a monarchy--but the monarchy prevails.  During King Saul’s time, the tribe of Judah secedes from the Israelite confederation, forming the nation to the south, making David (another charismatic personality) its ruler.  One of Saul’s sons, named for the storm god Baal, succeeds his father; however, Israel of the North and Judah of the South continuously fight until the Southern Kingdom (with David as future king) defeats the South after Eshbaal's (his name is variously given; Chronicles gives us his true name) assassination, and the two nations are now united under David’s leadership, even though the political tension remains always close to the surface, threatening continuously to erupt.

David’s son, Solomon, succeeds to the throne and builds the temple in Jerusalem, the city that David makes the capital of the united kingdom (taking away the importance of northern cities such as Salem or Gideon for first Hebron in the south, then Jebus).  According to the Bible, the era of Solomon is one of the finest ever known in civilization, with untold wealth and power in the known world.  Here, in the temple that Solomon has constructed, the Holy of Holies resides--the inner space approachable to but a few, which holds the Ark of the Covenant, or resting place of the Ten Commandments, within a box surmounted by two golden cherubim, so that the finished construction serves as the throne of God.  The ark is said to have magical powers, which aids the Israelites when they go into battle against their enemies.  When the united monarchy fails, however, the ark is forever lost, never to be found again.

After Solomon’s death, Jeroboam of Ephraim leads a revolt against Solomon’s son and heir, Rehoboam.  Whereas the Southern Kingdom has maintained the ark, when the kingdoms divide once again, Jeroboam of the Northern Kingdom constructs golden calves, one placed in the south of Israel, at Beth-el, and the other in the north, at Dan, so that the entire Northern Kingdom is meant to suggest what the ark had when it rested in the temple: thus, God’s throne straddles the entire kingdom.  However, in 722 BCE, the Assyrians capture the Northern Kingdom of Israel, which now ceases to exist.  Judah to the south remains, but it too falls under a conquering foe in 587 BCE, falling to the Chaldaeans of Babylon, who then transport the elite of the Israelite people to their own capital.  A few decades later, when the Persians defeat the Chaldaeans, the Hebrew people are allowed by King Cyrus to return home.

What falls in-between the civil wars--between the Hebrew peoples of the North and South, from their kingship under Saul, the young David who defeats Goliath, David as king, his shortcomings and misdeeds--such as his duplicity with regard to Uriah, in order to take his wife, Bathsheeba--and his return to God in the wars that erupted within his own family, to the prophets of God of who warn of impending doom should the people not repent (using the familiar phrase, “Hear, O Israel!”) is the part of the Old Testament that most people often become confused about.  Rather than great heroes, those like Moses, Joshua, Samson, David, and Solomon, we have more difficulty placing significances or remembering the familiar history.  Where does Job fit into the mixture, or Daniel and the story of the lion’s den, or Jonah and his ordeal in the belly of a great sea monster, Isaiah’s prophetic declarations, or the so-called “minor prophets,” such as Amos or Hosea?  When the prophets derided the people and called upon them to repent, was it within the Southern or Northern Kingdom?  Or, do we know the Macabees and who they were?  Just how many years pass between what we use to signify dates, such as  "A.D.," and the end of the Hebrew Scriptures?

Creation and the Garden:

 When we read the first two narratives of Creation in Genesis, we become aware in the middle of Chapter Two, verse four (an indiscriminate breakdown of chapters and verses that occurred more than a thousand years after Christ) we usually read the events in terms of how we’ve been raised or the influences in which we’ve heard the narratives and events.  Usually, in repeating what happens, most people blend the two narratives without even realizing it.  Most biblical scholars are in agreement that the first narrative comes from the bondage of Israel at the hands of the Babylonians, who had taken the nobility and educated “civil servants” back to Babylon after conquering the northern kingdom of Israel.  The southern Judah remained untouched.

 The similarities between the accounts we first find in Genesis and the Babylonian Enuma Elish are nearly similar, with the chief distinctions that God—El and Elohim (“the great, high God, and Lord, respectively) creates out of nothing—Ti’amat creates out of a primordial chaos—and rests on the seventh day—the Babylonian deities rest.  Not only does this account look at the majesty of God, it signifies El’s ability to speak things into existence, an important ability given the emphasis that the early Hebrews placed on speech and the ability to know a thing by knowing its name.  That distinction continues even today with the mysticism of the Kabala (students of mysticism would find instructive the medieval rabbi [teacher] who supposedly discovered the missing letter to the Hebrew alphabet and discovered the secret to creating life: a golem.  This created servant lacked a soul, however, since only God can grant one.  His discovery has inspired others to attempt the quest throughout time.

 But the important thing to note is that this is but one aspect of God.  This is God in all magnificence, speaking power, the primal force.  As such, we find that throughout civilization humanity has expressed things in one of two primal images: the ladder or the tree.  This view of God, often called “P’ because the narrative was composed by Priestly writers in the 6^th Century, BCE, differs from the one that follows.  The second narrative actually was written first.  Scholars have termed the author “J” for the German pronunciation and spelling for Yahweh, a name used by the Hebrews in order to avoid the unpronounceable and holy name of God.  J’s quest was different in that this view of God was from the human perspective: Yahweh breathes life into the nostrils of the adama (“earth”; thus the pun for “man”).  Since he’s the focus of this view of God, man comes first in creation.  But he’s lonely; thus, we have another pun for Eve, because she’s taken from the rib of man (“womb man,” so to speak).

 John Milton was the first to remark that the first thing that the Lord found out of place was the loneliness of mankind.  Naming the animals, an important task, as mentioned above, did not suffice.  But when trouble comes to Paradise, we tend to ask many questions when we re-read the narrative closely: where did the Serpent come from?  Where or by whom was it attributed that “Serpent” equals “Satan”?  What did this creature look like before its condemnation and change by God?  How do we account for the pair not dying as Yahweh had said, once they had eaten the forbidden fruit?  How long did all these events take place?  And many more questions may be raised; but, importantly, they aren’t answered.  This is why Auerbach’s essay in his book Mimesis, “Odysseus’s Scar,” is important.  Auerbach, a Jew in exile during the second World War, noted that Hebraic writing purposely contains “gaps.”  The narrative reads horizontally; that is, material runs along a line and then drops away some details, picks up again, and then continues in this vein.  Greek writing is entirely different: there’s no mystery, everything and every detail is given, and the writing accumulates vertically; that is, it adds one item on top of another.  Everything is not only explained but equal in the narrative.  Not so the Hebraic.  This writing demands interpretation; it wants us to use our imaginations, to fill in the gaps, to take part in the reading by expectation.  That’s why J’s writing is so marvelous: when it focuses on humanity, it also demands that we, as readers, take part.  There’s no sitting on the sidelines with J.

 The distinctions between the two accounts are as different as looking for majesty or life by gazing into the evening sky and being overwhelmed by the awe and majesty of the stars, or plucking a blade of grass and feeling it in your hands, smelling it, and wondering at its details.  While P’s account gives us the view from heaven, J’s account gives us a different, earth-bound perspective.

 We don’t know where the Serpent came from.  Christian writers would later attribute the Serpent to Satan.  We don’t know how long the couple shared their Paradise (because a literal reading would render fewer than twenty-four hours), but does that matter?  There’s humor in the narrative, not only from the puns but also from the scene where Yahweh questions first Adam, then Eve, then the Serpent—each trying to “pass the buck.”  And the symbolism this narrative employs is that of the tree, the second most common symbol for explaining development, growth, origins, design, etc.  Thus trees are an important aspect of the events.  So is human sexuality.  Apparently, once a knowledge of good and evil are acquired, people know what sexuality is.  Much like children coming of age, their innocence is gone once they notice those instincts we call “love” or, for others, puberty.  This is a remarkable story of human development, in many ways.

 Martin Luther, the 16^th century reformer who is most often associated with the religious movement called the “Reformation” claimed that the first prophecy of Christ occurs when Yahweh tells the Serpent that he will bruise the heel of woman (or humanity), but in turn will be smitten upon the head (and, by the way, when Yahweh speaks to the Serpent until He mentions that man will return to dust, this is all poetry in the Hebrew text, not prose; traditions of most civilizations have reserved poetry for their most serious material and prose for the less important—this may be why Luther saw it as prophecy).  Luther said that this referred to Christ’s crucifixion: Satan, believing he had triumphed, had merely “bruised” the Son, whereas the Son had triumphed over death and thus pronounced the eventual death of Satan.  Whether we agree with Luther’s interpretation or not, one thing is certain.  The J writer, responsible for so many narratives in Genesis, especially those that show up the shortcomings of humanity, loves this trope (which means “metaphor,” a useful image or suggestion that he returns to again and again).  We find it with Jacob and Esau and how the twins are born, we find it with the blessing, we find it with the wrestling with the angel (wrestlers are taught that the vulnerable spot on an opponent is the heel—control your opponents heel and you control him), and many other ways too numerous to list here.

 So what does this trope do for us?  Notice that from the Garden until God’s giving of the covenants to Moses that God and humanity have move farther and farther apart.  Yahweh shut the door of the Ark for Noah (in J’s account), fashioned the adama, breathed life into his creation, and clothed the children going out in the world, came down to look at what Babel was, appeared to Abram before his tent, and eventually resided upon Sinai, where only the chosen one among the many could approach.  The history J gives us is the story of how far we have gone from our Creator: from a fatherly touch to a selected servant who could only ascend the mountain height and receive a message for the many.

 This is J’s sad story, but one that also continues the connection.  The degrees of separation have changed, but the bond is still there.  And along the way, this storyteller magnificently tells us what that exchange has been like from the vantage of humanity, for none of us could understand it having seen P’s account.  The magnificence is too great and prohibitive.  So what we have our different perspectives of a common belief: the first gives comfort to those in exile; the second tells of mistakes, missteps, and forgiveness.

 While this summary has left out particulars, those you can pick up from numerous sources, those that will tell you about Jacob’s hold on the imagination of the Hebrew people, and those which will make the distinction about the two kingdoms: the northern one didn’t want a king but rather feudal lords and tribes, whereas the southern desired a king to hold its people together.  The difference also informs the narratives.  For example, does our king have faults?  Is our king human?  Does our king backslide?  But does God love and choose this person?  The answer to all is “Yes.”  Jacob was a sneak (as his name so indicates: “heel”) but he was the father of the tribes of Israel.  He had his imperfections but God chose him, just as he would the imperfect Moses, who, like Jonah, did all he could to refuse the responsibility.  But these people, like the flaws in all of us, are real; we can identify with them, understand them, get mad at them, and forgive them.

 What is "Truth"?

And finally, when we have two accounts that Hebrews wanted left in their narratives of who and what they were, where they came from, what their relationship to God involves, we wonder, perhaps, as to why these two narratives were not blended together as one.  For those interested, its noteworthy that many myths and oral traditions existed for the Hebrews that were not included in their text.  Robert Graves’ work on Hebrew myths is still one of the best places to begin.  But, when we look closely at literature, we should note some basics.  First, there are two ways to understand “truth”: as Correspondence or as Coherence.

 Correspondence asks us to look at something and then compare it what we know or observe, directly, asking ourselves “does this material I’m reading correspond to something I’ve experienced or know from first-hand knowledge?

 Coherence asks us to look at the “big picture,” so to speak: does the totality of the idea, its feel and essence, impart to me something true?

 Most literature concerns itself with the Theory of Coherence, thus we may read ideas and stories as allegory, as metaphors for something else, but these merely serve to impart the more important whole to us.  Parables are but one illustration; they serve to teach lessons.  Whether there ever was a “real” individual who was beaten and robbed on the highway is not relevant to what the so-called “Good Samaritan” parable teaches, because it’s the message, the idea, and not verification that matters.

 When reading any of the narratives to follow, remember that considerable skill and craft go into them: humor, drama, human personality and psychology, satire, and even tragedy.  And as you read, if you imagine yourself telling these stories to a child, what would the child ask as you went along?  “Wait a minute!  What did this snake look like before it crawled around on its belly?  “What about Eve?  Did she get her information from her husband?  No?  Why not?  Shouldn’t this Adam guy have told her how important that tree was and not to touch it?”  The kind of questions that could drive you to distraction with a child are the very ones we wonder about when we read these narratives “fresh,” as opposed with preconceived views influenced by the people who have taught us, first told us about them, etc.  And if your Hebrew is not particularly good, and your Greek only so-so, how do you know that the story you know, have read, or been influenced by is “correct”?  And there are disagreements on translation; fortunately for us, these narratives of Creation and the Garden are not really among them.  What we have before us represents all the wonders and mystery of the Hebraic literary tradition, which Auerbach so richly describes in “Odysseus’ Scar.”

A Summary of the Noah and the Ark Narrative

 Few narratives are more fondly recalled than that of Noah and the Ark, the Flood, and the covenant made between God and humanity that the Creator would never again destroy the world in this manner.  But as with any material, the more one studies the more there is to the material; such is the case with the Noah story.

 It is especially difficult for people to come to the narrative that takes place in the 6^th Chapter of Genesis without reading about the divine beings who mate with the daughters of men, or that Yahweh now limits the age of humanity to 120 years instead of the centuries that people had lived previously.  The Nephilim who appear on earth, rendered as “Giants” in some texts, which were the heroes of old, startles us.  E. A. Speiser notes that few narratives have caused the consternation as has this one, a fragment, that he calls “puzzling and controversial in the extreme.”  The explanations vary from the older traditional one, that these “giants” were the sons of Adam and Eve’s last son, Seth, and that the daughters of men were the descendants of Cain.  Thus, we have an evil pairing.  Others, with Speiser and Alter no different from most, point to the mythologies of this part of the world, from Hesiod to the Memphian dynasty in Egypt, in pointing out that the gods fought the Titans, and the gods were those such as Zeus, who defeated and destroyed his father Cronus, much like in Egypt the solar god Horus New York, this became confused with the Pharaoh, who was thought to be descended from the gods, and yet he married a woman from a family not royal or noble, which caused such a stir as to become mythologized into great evil.  He maintains that the Phoenicians, who in turn passed it along to the Babylonians, picked up the Egyptian myth.

 Speiser is more inclined to believe that the J writer knew of the story and used it as a way to illustrate the extreme evil and depravity of the people whom Yahweh destroyed, whether he believed it or not.  The metaphor illustration may have served better than any other “literal” explanation.  But in moving on from this brief story before Noah, we have been given a brief, if memorable, illustration as to how bad the people had become.  And, by the way, in Numbers 13:33 we are told that the Israelites saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak: so, does that means they survived the flood after all?

 As for the Flood story itself, Speiser and virtually all scholars agree that the narrative is an interspersed work of two writers, skillfully edited as fully as possible in order to render a greater “cause and effect” incident.  To separate the two is tedious, but interesting as well.  J begins, but P picks up at verse 8, continuing until verse 22.  With Chapter 7, J continues until verse 6; at verse 7 we have P again, but the 11^th verse begins again with J—there just long enough for the poetry: “All the fountains of the great deep bust forth / And the sluices in the sky broke open.”  J concludes with the heavy rain falling upon the earth for forty days and nights.  The P narrative begins with verse 13, and so it goes, back and forth.  (And here I wish to remind the reader that poetry and myth were far more important than history for the ancient world, an idea that we have difficulty with today, but it remains essential in understanding any work of the ancient world, not just religious texts or texts recounting the “history” of a people.)

 In order to appreciate how scholarship has arrived at the distinctions and clear indications of different hands at work is far too large a subject to tackle here.  But the obviousness of the changes have to do with the openings that always mark the P writer, the toledot (Hebrew for This is the account…) and the obvious contradictions of time and animals involved, not to mention the standard differences in naming God.  What is easiest for the purposes here is for me to reproduce what Bandstra does in his excellent text, Reading the Old Testament (a standard work in its second edition, and one that has gone through readings from such seminaries and theological programs as Baylor, Union, Vanderbilt, and a host of others):

 Yahwist version: 

 And YHWH saw that the evil of humanity of the earth was great; every willful plan of its mind was only evil every day.  YHWH regretted that he had made humanity on the earth, and he was pained to his heart.  YHWH said, ‘I will wipe out humanity which I had created from the face for the ground, from humanity to beast to reptile to bird of the sky.  For I regret that I had made them.’  And Noah found favor in the eyes of YHWH.  (6:5-8) 

 Priestly version:

 This is the account of Noah: Noah was righteous man, upright was he in his generation.  Noah walked with the gods.  Noah sired three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.  And the earth was corrupt before Elohim, and the earth was full of violence.  And Elohim saw the earth: it was corrupt.  For all flesh corrupted his way on the earth.  And Elohim said to Noah, ‘The end of all flesh before me is coming.  For the earth is full of their violence.  I am destroying them with the earth.’  (6:9-13)

 Bandstra goes on to say that the versions are not contradictory; they just use different vocabulary to get the point across.  For the Yahwist writer, humanity is at fault and is, along with all living things, the focus of Yahweh’s wrath.  In the Priestly version, the earth and how flesh was corrupted becomes the focus. 

In his analysis, he says:  “The difference in outlook of the two sources is consistent with what we saw in the creation accounts.  The Priestly account in Genesis 1 is world-focused compared to the Yahwist account in Genesis 2 which is humanity-focused.  Also note that the Priestly version here is introduced by this version’s characteristic toledot notice, “these are the generations of ….” 

We may now appreciate the disparities of how many animals were on the Ark: Genesis 7:2-3 says that of the clean beasts, Noah is to take "by sevens," and the unclean beasts by "twos"; so too, the fowls of the air are to be taken by sevens.  The later verse 9 has it as "two of each" (which Speiser believes is a redactor, and not P--certainly, it can't be J, who gives us the first figures; remember: there's to be a sacrifice, and Noah could hardly spare one of his sets for reproduction; and of course there's disparity as to the length of the rain: J says 40 days, but  P says 150.

Covenants:

 God made the first covenant with all creation through Noah, after the flood, which stood as a general agreement with mankind.  There exist numerous ways to understand the Torah (the first part of the Hebrew Scriptures, Tanak—sometimes tanakh—for Torah, Nevi’im, and Ketuvim; the Law, Prophets, and Wrtiings), the first five books of “Moses,” by means of various outlines and examples.  However, here I refer the reader to Banstra’s useful outline in Reading the Old Testament.

 Era                  Party                          Mediator                   Sign                           Passage

 1. Primeval       Creation                    Noah                         Rainbow                   Gen. 9:12

2. Ancestral       Israel                          Abraham                  Circumcision            Gen. 17:11

3. Sinai              Israel                          Moses                       Sabbath                    Exodus 31:13, 17

Banstra makes the observation that the J writer supplied the “backbone” to the narratives, with the E writer (the “Elohist” supplementing the story line), and the P writer(s) (Priestly) added continuity by stressing genealogies.  In addition, the Priestly writers added covenants to the text, a theological structure to demonstrate Israel’s relationship to God. 

[Banstra does a fairly good job of explaining why the documentary hypothesis is valid, as well as to establish its relevance with regard to the best-known biblical scholars who look at the material from a literary perspective, a linguistic perspective, a perspective derived from the comparative literatures of an ancient Middle Eastern peoples, an archaeological perspective, and a historical perspective (if anything, he’s too polite, and you won’t get such kind treatment from others); however, he never pushes it but offers the reader the possibility that it is in error—good scholarship explains, as opposed to being judgmental. 

 I would go a bit further and suggest that Americans especially have a misunderstanding of the words “theory” (or “hypothesis”) and “myth,” which too often are taken to mean “not proved.”  That is not what they mean; rather, both theory and myth suggest a working schema for undeniable behavior or occurrences; that is, the “theory of gravity” will not save you from falling to the ground, no matter how much you suggest that “theory” means unproved.  People argue about the manner in which the observable occurs, not that it happens (whom do you prefer: Newton or Einstein?).  Did the Greeks believe in their myths of creation and love, war, and other notable human actions or pleasures?  No, not in all instances.  But they offered more in the suggestion of their myths that explained such happenings than any literal understanding possibly could.  If you see the leaves falling in the autumn as tears of a mother who must part with her daughter for half the year, as Demeter did for Persephone, it expresses far more as to what fall signals, seasonal change, endings, a bit of depression, etc., than if we say, “the earth “shifts on its axis.”

 Most notable in the narrative is that we have the first covenant between God and Humanity.  A covenant is a basic structure, a legal metaphor, whereby two parties pledge their abiding commitment; however, we should note that in this relationship, God establishes the bond, but there is no reciprocity on the part of mankind, no pledge to follow through.  In reading the text closely, we may note that what Auerbach suggests as “gaps” in the text of Hebrew writing (“Odysseus’ Scar” from Mimesis) proves no less true in the narration regarding Noah.  Deft hands weave the older and newer texts intricately together in order to show the consistency of thought and to demonstrate that the two versions agree.  We can hardly imagine that the inconsistencies of the numbers of animals or other infelicities of “facts” with regard to the narrative are so left out of carelessness.

 Who’s the author?

 This may be difficult for us to understand today, but it is a constant of ancient texts and ancient writers; that is, there are numerous ways to ascribe authorship, but for the Hebrews two occur most often: 1) either the text is not attributed, it remains “authorless,” or, 2) it is attributed to a famous individual who may stand for the idea, the action, the belief the narrative demonstrates.  By leaving the text un-authored, we never question where it comes from; it has authority, much like the unquestioned narrator of a novel when it is written in the third person.  This narrator may be able to tell us what one thinks, shift locals in the blink of an eye, and all the while we succumb to the narration and believe it as it watches over the action with a “God’s eye view” of the scene.  On the other hand, we have first person narratives in which someone purposely intrudes between the action and the narrative in order to render an “I was there” type reaction from the reader.  And why the difference?  Skillful writers can cause us to doubt the objectivity of the first-person narrator, or, paradoxically, they may cause us to have more confidence in the storyline because the person telling the story is to be trusted.  As an example, American folktales or “woppers” must always be first-person, much like when we tell ghost stories around the campfire we feel obligated to insist that “this really happened….”  But by the tradition, we permit or give license to certain qualities: one is permitted extreme exaggeration in folk tales, but an observer on the scene must render them.

 When we read good first-person narratives, we have a tendency to trust—at least we want to, and this is due to how well known or what the credentials are of the narrator.  It was understood by writers in antiquity that even when impossible for an author to have written the material, it was still ascribed to that person, because the inference was more important than the “facts.”  Admittedly, this is difficult for many to understand today, especially in an age that prides itself on its realism.  But that is, of course, a false premise.  We are no more realistic than the ancients who purposely ascribed works to others—we just like to think we are.  How realistic are movies?  They have as much depth as the movie screen upon which they’re shown, or roughly about an eighth of an inch.  They may seem realistic, but we don’t watch everything a character does—skillful editing takes care of that.  Our concept of reality is merely different, not better.  And so if authors attributed a work to the wisdom of Solomon or the passion of David, it signaled the intent behind the work and how we should understand it.  Moses delivered his people from bondage, and it was he whom God chose at a time that only that special, selected one could approach Him.

 But consider that Moses did not know with whom it was he spoke, when he asked Yahweh to identify Himself.  The Hebrew colloquialism, poetically translated by the King James committee and several earlier translations in Exodus 3:14 as “I am that I am,” is more like “I’ll be whatever I will be,” or even “never you mind; it isn’t your business”  (we’ll tackle a bit more of this in that forthcoming narrative; however, it isn’t easy to translate ‘ehyeh ‘ăšer ‘ehyeh, and the puns and word play make it mind-boggling: was this a shibboleth—a secret password that Moses wants confirmed?  Did the Egyptian Moses not know of the God of Abraham?)  The colloquial phrase renders a better idea of the God who takes Job to task for asking questions far too difficult for his small mind.  Why ask that which you couldn’t understand?  This, then, is where literature and faith may separate—for some, that is.  Many believers of the Bible and its tenets have no problems taking the Bible and its narratives as metaphors, figures, and suggestions rather than the literal history of a people and their God.  Others cannot do so.  But if we read the texts as literature in a literature class, we must acknowledge, as did the Apostle Paul, that things should be read allegorically (as Paul said with regard to Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar: Galatians 4:24 ff.); consider too, the parables of Jesus—or, in other words, as metaphors.

 Why, you might ask, can we not have it both ways?  Northrop Frye explained this best: to generalize Frye’s much better response, let me simplify it by saying that you cannot mix the two because you could never be certain which way you were reading, or meant to understand the material—is this fact or metaphor?  And how am I to know which?  Once you use figurative language, you cannot mix metaphors and fact without confusing everyone who reads the material.  This, as has been pointed out in a previous summary, is the idea of truth as Coherence, not Correspondence.  And that, of course, is another problem we have today: it’s hard for us to understand that something can be true by making a metaphoric statement.  But metaphors, I would argue, are far more profound than literal readings.

 Try to say anything substantially more than “I love you” without resorting to metaphor, and without resorting to intensives such as “very,” “a lot,” “really,” etc., which do nothing to clarify your statement.  You can’t do it without resorting to figurative language: “How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways / I love thee to the depth and breadth and height / My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight / For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.” (Elizabeth Barret Browing, Sonnets From the Portuguese, number 43).

 So, to return to my premise, the authorship of the narratives is either authorless, giving it a feel of everlasting truth, or it is attributed to an ideal representative of the narrative qualities.  No one in antiquity saw the disparity in such thinking, though we go to extraordinary lengths today to render such ideas as “nonsense.”  But our own American history is full of such nonsense, and we don’t bat an eye, much less study Hebrew, ancient Greek, or Aramaic to understand the words, the colloqualisms, or the common figures.

 Disparities abound in the Noah narratives, but that doesn’t render the ideas meaningless, merely richer for the differences.  Were all the insects of the world aboard that Ark?  If so, it must have been a miracle—but to suggest as much is to impose interpretation on the text, which is no different than to appreciate what literature does, because they both deal in what isn’t there and what is suggested, what we want to believe, or how it touches us.  All interpreters of Scripture are poets, whether they want to be or not (“to be, that is the question…”).

 The Primeval story of the Hebrew people begins with Genesis, Chapter 1:1 and continues to Chapter 11.  Much awaits us in forthcoming narratives, but here in Noah’s adventure through the rain, dark, and destruction, we have God’s first covenant with humanity.  It will be followed shortly by a more specific, people-explicit covenant with Abraham, the father of nations.  Noah, upon leaving the ark, offers sacrifice to God, which God accepts, indicating reconciliation.  Yahweh may have regretted making man, but Noah, as the exception to the rule, saved humanity and reconciled all those differences in a fresh start, a new beginning.

 One thing we should note about the Noah story is that it reverses Creation.  If you re-read it carefully, you’ll find that it turns the first Chapter and a bit of Chapter Two upside down.  And while we may ask questions, such as “if Noah sacrificed one of the pair of animals he saved, how did they multiply?”  Or, we may wonder, “if Yahweh could create heaven and earth, why was this necessary?  What does saving men do for God’s intentions or changes of mind, and did He not know in all omniscience that such things would occur?  The text, of course, does not say, and if we attribute it to no one in particular, it has the feel of always being there, of being divine, and of course, unquestioned.  Or, to coin a phrase from Shakespeare, to question why God didn’t know that Adam and Eve would fall, wondering where the Serpent came from, why God didn’t re-create heaven and earth and all that lived after the flood, well, “that way madness lies.”  One doesn’t question; rather, we try to understand the intention or feel or suggestion of the event—that is where importance lies.

 The term “covenant,” as many have noted, is so important to the narrative that it occurs seven times in the story—itself a relevant number in a time that placed extraordinary importance on numbers and the many and varied ideas associated with numerology.  Humans after the flood are meat-eaters, and now, supposedly, water comes from the sky and not as evaporation out of mists from the earth, and another creation directive is set forth: “be fruitful and multiply” (or, more to the fidelity of the Hebrew: “Be fruitful and increase and fill the earth”).  Surely, the world in its present state can ask for a new covenantial directive from God, for we have been fruitful to the point of exhausting the world that supports us.  But not so in antiquity—especially when Yahweh had plans for a particular people who had multiplied to the point of frightening their hosts within their adopted home of Egypt.  Once they threatened the old order, it became necessary to find their own home and their own identity.

What do we wonder about in the narrative?  What “gaps,” to borrow from Auerbach once again, do we wish to fill?  Questions many seek answers to may include “Why did the Lord God create individuals in His image if such a thing is so perverse?” or “Why not replenish the earth the way the world began, especially if the narrative so closely parallels Creation?” or “Why are humans now meat-eaters?  Or, perhaps, “Is the idea of giants walking the earth and mating with the Sons of God somehow important to this final destruction and abhorrence?”  “Is this an acknowledgement from Yahweh that humanity is and always will be beast-like?” or “Why the perversity (and, by all means, please tell me what it means!) with Noah’s drunkenness and Ham’s indiscretion!?”  That, is for another time and place.  But I’ll say only that the incident is couched in suggestive, figurative language that can only be understood by its colloquial expressiveness.  That is, if you like to reach for the clean, literal explanation for things that the Hebrews never employed and would never have understood, you may be happy with the way it has been translated; however, if you want to understand the relevance here, you need to check on the language, the colloquialisms, the suggestions at work.

 How do we read the texts?

 Let me conclude with one last important thought.  The reading of literature has been separated into two traditions: trobar clus and trobar clar, which translate to the closed or dark style and the clear or open style.  If a work is written in such a way that anyone from any time can understand its meanings and suggestions, we refer to it as “open.”  But if a work is filled with material that makes reference to specific, local events or employs information that a society at that time readily identifies with but may be lost on future generations, we refer to it as close.  While Greek tragedies represent the former, Shakespeare may represent the latter.  One is not better than the other; you just need to know if something of importance exists here that never had you in mind, or your generation, when it was written.  One way we often judge the two is to quickly look at the bottom of the page to see if there are notes or glosses on words or text.  Literature reads the Bible as trobar clus; the more we understand about the time, conditions, and accounts of the people responsible for the narratives, the more we understand what takes place.  While I can understand why some people of faith would object to that, for the purposes of literature we cannot.  The truth here resides in Coherence, and the narratives have “closed” meanings to a later generation that takes a bit of appreciation—and perhaps patience—in order to better understand them.

Abraham and The Binding of Isaac:

I have always had problems with the narrative about Abraham’s devotion to God with regard to sacrificing his own son.  Obviously, I’m not alone.  This narrative from Genesis, which is where we leave Primeval history and begin with the Story of the Patriarchs, has inspired writers and artists from countless eras to express their pleasure or pain at reading the story.  The incident is called, in Hebrew, the akedah, which means “binding”; readers who are more modern add the sense of “ordeal” or “sacrifice. “

Eric Auerbach’s important essay, “Odysseus’ Scar” from the collection called Mimesis, brilliantly uses the Abraham narrative to demonstrate the distinctions between Hebraic and Greek writing.  We in the West are products of both imaginations and both peoples.  To summarize, Auerbach illustrates that Odysseus’ return home in the Odyssey has all the marks of Greek literary style.  Every action and event is evenly highlighted and fore-grounded.  No such thing as mystery is allowed to creep into the text.  The scar that Odysseus suffered as a child when attacked by a boar will give him away as the old nurse, whom he hasn’t seen in nearly two decades, prepares tow wash his feet, as custom and honor demanded for strangers.  But Odysseus has come home, only to find his home besieged by drunken louts who have made his property, wife, and all else their own.  From the moment that Euryclea, the old nurse, recognizes Odysseus by the scar on his leg until she drops his foot in the bowl of water due to her surprise, some four pages will pass: when did he get the scar, what was he doing, who was there, what did the scene look like, and on it goes.

Auerbach maintains that the Greeks wrote vertically; that is, all events accrued, built up, and one—no more important than another—were taken in their sum.  Hebraic writing, on the other hand, is everything that Greek narrative is not, which Auerbach uses the so-called “trial” of Abraham or the “ordeal.”  Where was he when God spoke to him?  What else is happening in this picture?  When Abraham finished speaking with God, what happened?  We don’t know, because the narration then shifts to “early next morning.”  What did he think about?  Did Abraham not make a single sound of protest as to what God wanted, given the promise of “nations” that would come from his son?  There’s drama in the scene; we have words, but more importantly silences.  Consider, for instance, that at verse 7 when the child Isaac notes that wood and a means to light it are at hand, but then asks about the absence of the sacrificial animal, Abraham says “God will see to the sheep for his burnt offering, my son.”  We don’t find greater irony, or a more chilling response, especially from a father who intends to kill his child.  Moreover, the final line of verse 8 is, as Speiser notes, perhaps the most poignant and eloquent silence in all literature”: for immediately after the ironic response of Abraham above, the narration then says, “And the two of them walked on together.”  No sounds.  No discussion.  Just us as an audience, knowing what we know, what Abraham knows, and what Isaac does not.  If this were a drama, we would call this dramatic irony: whenever an audience knows more than its audience.  We imagine and see the visual action, pick up the irony or action in the background as well, and perhaps wait for God, Isaac, or Abraham to break the tension.

But to amplify Auerbach here, the tension or mystery is not broken; rather, note how this is skillfully written: when they get to the spot, the narration says,

He laid out the wood.  He tied up his son Isaac.  He laid him on the altar on top of the wood.  He put out his hand and picked up the cleaver to slay his son.

Everything is short and matter of fact.  And then, another voice from heaven (or did God speak from heaven earlier?  We don’t know, but this time the voice comes from above and we recognize what the action is—but an angel of the Lord, not God, stays the hand of Abraham.  And we have, as Auerbach says, “gaps.”  There are enormous gaps in the narrative that moves horizontally, not vertically as with the Odyssey; interpretation is demanded.  And certainly interpretation it has gotten.  The idea of the allegorical mode of literature where all Old Testament events prefigure New Testament has been used on this story for more than a thousand years.  This is what we call the anagogical mode.  For most Christians, the story demonstrates the great abiding faith of Abraham, who, even though he loved his son and had waited until old age for what Isaac promised for him, was prepared to obey God rather than his heart.  Isaac is, of course, Jesus carrying his own wood to sacrifice.  The only difference between the Abraham and Christ accounts is that God will not stay the hand of death.

Banstra notes the excellent structure of the narrative: the account is segmented into three units on the basis of repeated phrases.  Each of the three units is introduced with a summons addressed to Abraham.  In each unit Abraham responds the same way:

1. God summon Abraham (1-2)

God: “Abraham!”

Abraham: “I am right here.”

Command: “Take your son”

2. Isaac summons Abraham (7-8)

Isaac: “Father!”

Abraham: “I am right here.”

Question: “Where is the lamb?”

Abraham: “God will provide.”

3. Angel summons Abraham (11-12)

Angel: “Abraham, Abraham!”

Abraham: “I am right here.”

Command: “Do not harm the boy.”

But the narrative troubles many even as it comforts the faith of others.  If nothing else, some are bothered by the idea of the “trick” or trial with which the episode begins, as if this were a game to God but Abraham still had to suffer.  When the 22^nd Chapter begins, it says “Some time afterwards, God put Abraham to the test.”  Does this mean that God never intended to have Abraham harm Isaac, no matter what the outcome of the trial?  Or would God have taken the child’s life if Abraham faltered?  And, if the latter, wouldn’t that break the covenant that God made specifically with Abraham?  If so, that would imply that the covenant made to humanity—the promise to never again destroy the world by water—would be suspect.  Why was the test necessary?  Has there been any evidence that Abraham is not willing to do all that God requires, or has done all demanded of him?  At least in the Job trial, we know a reason why God does to him what he does, but not here.  One possibility exists here: that the narrator is removing fear from his readers by allowing us to know that this is only a test, no real harm will come to Isaac.  Perhaps.  But the danger, as Speiser notes, that so much is left unsaid that the danger is to read too much into the narrative.

Few also consider that God has demanded human sacrifice from Abraham, who has proved his devotion to God by following His commands and leaving home to come to this new locale.  But could there be a meaning here that the road to the Promised Land will be long, resolute, and difficult, and that it will demand people who will give total confidence to God?  In fact, some have tried to suggest that the asked for sacrifice of Isaac is by way of demonstrating what the Hebrews do not do, in contrast to their other Mesopotamian brothers.  However, that seems strained since we focus upon Isaac and the promise that God made with regard to this son of Abraham.  There would be, one would hope, better ways to make a statement on human sacrifice without sullying the heartless father who would kill his child, only to turn around and pronounce him as the patriarch to his people.  And the idea that Abraham so readily took action to kill his own child does not seem to fit with the Abraham we meet in Chapter 18, where he barters with God as to how many righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah may stay the hand of God’s wrath: Abraham begins at fifty, but manages a promise from God that should as few as ten exist, He will not destroy the cities—and for what?  His child?  No, for his nephew, a man who staked out, do to his uncle’s kindness, the best plain and land for himself, even if it resided in some abominable company.  To how many of the “faithful” remained in the cities?  Only four: Lot, his wife, and two daughters.  Thus disaster, because even with Abraham’s bartering skills, not enough righteous existed at those places.  From the distant heights of Hebron, Abraham sees the smoke of the disaster and remains silent, for he has his answer and it becomes a sad moment.  But why would Abraham go that far for a nephew or strangers, but not raise a word about his child?

But there are other problems for modern readers that many have tried to explain.  I’m not sure they work, but, for example, Rabbi Telushkin believes that when God told Abraham about Sodom and Gomorrah, it wasn’t a commandment and God gave a rationale for the reason—when He spoke to Abraham, it was in the form of a heavenly command.  He also believes that God tests Abraham in such a manner so as to signal the distinctions between monotheism and polytheism, which surrounds Abraham, and most especially their human sacrifices, which God will demonstrate is not demanded.

I’m not sure this suffices, however, because the narrative is filled with other problems (and later narratives will mention many gods, which the Hebrews also believed in—Saul did: he named a child Baal after the storm god, as did his son Jonathan—but that’s a story for later chapters in other books).  But to counter this explanation of God intending something more “humane,” some point out that God repeats the idea of who Isaac is twice—“your son, your only son.”  Moreover, why would the journey take three days?  What does this do for a reader but tell us that the poor man’s agony is stretched out as far as it will go.  Traditionally, and we get this from the Chronicles, Mt. Moriah, where the binding occurred, is where the temple will be built by Solomon; that isn’t a three day journey from where Abraham lives in Hebron.

And you have probably noted in the commentary to the text, The Bible as Literature, that there exists a question of God’s words; specifically, when alah is used, which literally means “bring up,” did Abraham think in terms of offer up, which, admittedly the Lord was not clear on, thus seeing how far Abraham would go.  This is where the Midrash story comes from in which God explains to Abraham that He never instructed him to do as he was about to do when the angle prevented him.  But one thing remains clear: the Abraham and Isaac narrative is dear to the hearts of Christian tradition as an indication of true faith.  The West holds such a view, in some part, due to the Miracle plays that began in the 14^th century and were not stamped out in England until late in the Reformation, well-into the 16^th century in some places.

The Miracle Plays:

The Miracle plays are known as well as Pageants, or Pageant Plays, Passion Plays, as well as Mysteries, because of the mystery of Christ, and studied today most particularly in theatre courses or in reference to the early English drama, either pre-Shakespeare or in adjunct to Shakespeare survey courses.  What follows may be a bit brief, and may entail a bit of generalization, but the study of these plays occupies more than a few semesters in merely learning the basics.

Probably in the 10th century, the first true "dramatic" action took place after a four-century dramatic hiatus: the Church had banned dramas in the 6th century.  The "Visitatio" (visit to the sepulcher) reenacted the visit of the two Marys and Martha to the tomb of Jesus on Easter morning.  Priests took the parts of the women, as the angel inquires of them, "Whom do you seek?"  Their answer is met with "He is risen."  The action is simple though moving, and the dialogue was chanted (obviously in Latin).

The Church presented other similar actions within its structures; however, there's a continuing argument as to whether such dramatic action led to what can be described as "theatre" outside the church, that is, in the market place or village greens.  However, that the drama grew until the church could no longer contain it, that it became ever more secular, is a simplistic and misguided notion as to the origin of the English drama.  The development may have been simultaneous rather than evolutionary.  Certainly in the secular world, the court jester and troubadour continued the tradition of the player, by singing, juggling, doing acrobatic feats and such.

A change in how the church viewed Christ also takes place about the 10th century, with the humanity—and especially the death—of Jesus being reasserted.  Depictions of the crucifixion and his suffering became paramount.  In 1311, Clement V implemented the feast of Corpus Christi, confirming a papal bull from nearly 100 years earlier that asserted the real presence of Christ in the mass: the dogma of transubstantiation.  The celebration was to fall, depending on Easter Sunday, between May 23 and June 24 (June 4 to July 6 on the modern calendar).

What were to become the plays of Corpus Christi probably began with the host being carried through the streets by a priest and procession.  This procession was expanded to include tableaux vivant, living pictures, in which people recreated a biblical scene, such as the sacrifice of Isaac, on the back of pageant wagons pulled by oxen.  These living pictures eventually were enlarged in numbers until many scenes from the Bible were paraded past a largely illiterate populace; thus the Mystery Plays (as we have come to call them, since they depicted the mysteries of salvation and God's plan for humanity) were meant to be instructional and edifying.  

Soon action and dialogue were given to the scenes; they recreated biblical stories from the creation of the world to Judgment Day, events which the people regarded as literal history, not something separate from a secular past, and all actions were meant to celebrate the coming of Christ, record his deeds, his death, and conclude with his sitting at the right hand of God.  All dramatic episodes demonstrated fore-tellings of Christ; Abraham's intended sacrifice of Isaac, for instance, points to God's sacrifice of His only son.  Literature defined the event in terms of a typological (or anagogical) mode of allegory: Abraham forces his son to carry the wood for his sacrifice, to journey three days, and be sacrificed as a means to satisfy the Lord.  People who watched the pageant wagon pass before them depicting Abraham’s unquestioning obedience to God were well-aware of the allegorical lessons that such a sacrifice conveyed—they viewed the plays much as listeners would pay heed to Christ’s parables and learn from the stories.  They believed, without hesitation, that these things existed, and anyone who maintained otherwise failed to pay attention to “history.”  The plays, however, were sophisticated, often employing machinery for angels or trap doors for Satan, and at times quite graphic and violent.

One hundred years after the implementing of the feast of Corpus Christi the pageants had grown as civic as well as religious celebrations, with so many biblical scenes enacted that the celebration began at 4:30 a.m. and continued well past dark.  Each wagon probably stopped at pre-arranged stations as they wended through the streets of towns such as York, Wakefield, Coventry, or Beverly, so that one play was performed many times in the course of a day.  Some scholars of the medieval drama have suggested that they also lined up for one performance that moved from wagon to wagon in a fixed location at day's end.  Whatever the actual logistics of their performances, the mysteries became sophisticated theatre, with "professional" involvement, where the necessity of merging commerce and religious pageantry intertwined. 

The trade guilds were given the responsibilities of funding and casting particular pageants.  This association was made relevant to their craft: the carpenters' union, for example, depicted the crucifixion of Christ, the boat makers enacted the story of Noah and the ark, the butchers enacted Abraham and Isaac, etc.

The mysteries, also called pageants or miracle plays (more specifically referring to the miracles of Christ or the saints), or Corpus Christi plays, were suppressed by the Crown in the 1560s—Elizabeth I and England were Protestant, and the mysteries were seen as holdovers from the nation's Catholic past.  

Mystery plays are not to be confused with Morality Plays, which date to the early 15th century and were contemporaneous with the mysteries, though largely known for their popularity in the 16th century, especially as substitutes for the Corpus Christi pageants.  These plays were fixed in location and represented personifications and examples of piety: "Mr. Good Deeds," "Honest Recreation," "Mr. Bad Man," or "Tediousness" are examples.  These stilted, and, for those who will admit it, boring plays were in no way equal to the beauty and grandeur of the pageants but were far more specific and quotidian in their moral statements (there are exceptions; the moralities in fact are good theatre when performed—reading them is deadly; but that holds true for the exaggeration above as to the tediousness of the Moralities: when played well, they’re delightful; we should always remember that drama is not meant to be read).  

The morality plays were, for the most part, the precursors to the Elizabethan stage with the vice character in particular enlarged into the role of clown or tragedian.  Whereas biblical figures such as God, Satan, or Christ are largely fixed in definition because of their stature, their mythological proportions--and thus not the stuff of good dramatization—the vice figure, the companion to Satan, was pliable and could be developed.  Shakespeare's Iago represents an excellent example.  Some material became standard: for instance, Noah and the Ark was always a humorous episode, depicting Noah as a well-intentioned if bungling man with a shrewish wife.  The Noah episode was always presented as one of great fun, showing the tensions between husband and wife--the ark and animals were almost an after-thought.

It is admittedly difficult to say more concerning one of the most memorable narratives of the Hebrew Scriptures.  That the Abraham and Isaac story has been co-opted by Christianity is well known, but we cannot say that such a circumstance is bad.  The narrative holds a wealth of emotion, for those who view it as typological or anagogical in its fore-shadowing of the agony and sacrifice of Christ to the other extreme: those who view it as a barbaric illustration of God’s unnecessary test of a man previously promised and then given a child in his later years.  What it has yielded in terms of literary fodder is more than evident today. 

However we read it, obviously it has much to offer, from Auerbach’s essay that identifies it as exemplifying the differences in Hebraic and Greek writing, to the allegorical mode of thought, to the reminder of the most specific covenant the Lord God made with a specific people, not humanity in general.  For those who know the story, looking back at Abraham’s “trial” by God establishes the reason for Isaac’s son, Jacob, establishing the basis for and representation of God’s chosen people through the nations who will one day compose Israel.  That is far off and in the future; however, the time at which these narratives were written not only celebrates that time but finds itself within that glorious period of Solomon, the Temple, and the might of the two kingdoms combined as one, both Northern and Southern, into the land of promise.  This was the beginning: what follows is, literally, already written.