In this place.....In this time....

The intellectual and religious foundations....

Of the modern Western outlook were laid.

-- The Norton Anthology, World Masterpieces

Unit 1, Lecture 1.

Foundations of a Culture:

Hebrew and Homeric Epic Briefly Compared

Bronze of Jacob and Esau, Source: www.benhammondfineart.com/. ../galleryesau.htm

• Different Sensibilities• Jacob and Esau (Genesis 25-35)

– Twins who fought from birth Ghibertii’s Story of Jacob and Esau

– But brothers who eventually made peace • Like Jacob and Esau, Hebrew and Greek are also

“fighting twins” – Born about the same historical time – both equal in “culture-forming” role they’ve played in later

civilization• But exhibit “sibling rivalry” in their contrasting mind sets.

– Fought on the Battlefield– Fought in the arena of ideas– Established a “ truce” in a new civilization

Hebrew and Greek as “Fighting

Twins”

Image Source:http://www.asmilan.org/teachers/kwheatley/worldhistoryii.html

“Case Studies” in Contrasting “Mind

Sets”:•Narrative style of ‘Abraham and Isaac” (Gen. 22) compared to “Priam and Achilles” (Iliad XXIV)

•“World view” of Genesis creation narrative compared to Greek myth

•The Genesis account of creation (Gen 1, Norton 51)

•One God

•Creates the heavens and the earth

•Creates by serene and almost quiet power of the word

•Humans created in Divine image

•Later in Genesis a direction and “plan” for history

•The Greek mythological version of origin

•The world is “self-existent”, i.e." just there”

•The world is ruled by fate to whom even the gods are subject

•Contending gods guarantee a disorderly world (Norton 5)

•“Sublime disregard for human beings” (Norton 5)

&

“Contrasting “Mind Sets” (Cont)

•The narrative style of “Abraham and Isaac” (Gen. 22; (Norton: 58-59)

Vs.•The narrative style of “Achilles and Priam” (Iliad XXIV Norton 201)

Comparable in content: 2 violently emotional situations:

One father asked to sacrifice his son by the God he worships

One father forced to beg for his son’s body from the man who killed him

Unexpectedly gracious outcomes!

In ”Abraham” everything hidden in compressed narrative

Polar opposites in narrative style

In “Priam” everything revealed in intense and passionate description

Eric Auerbach: Hebraic narratives “fraught with background.”

In Homeric epic, everything is in the “foreground.”

Friction and Fusion between Graeco/Roman and Hebraic/Christian as Continuing Theme:

Background and Nature of the Illiad

Source: Homer's Iliad, cod. F 205 inf. Late 5th-early 6th c. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana

Questions

• Why discuss “world view” in a course about literature?

• Differences between Hebrew and Greek view of origins?

• Contrasts between narratives of Abraham and Isaac and Priam and Achilles?