THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE

If my past experiences in the church are any guide, I would be willing to bet that this is a subject that few people other than myself are really interested in. It seems as if those who enjoy reading and studying the classics of world literature or admiring cutting-edge art have little interest in the Bible. On the other hand, those who are very serious about studying the Bible sometimes are rather dismissive of any art other than the productions of Thomas Kinkade (aka “the Painter of Light”) and any literature beyond the “Left Behind” series of novels. I will admit that to be my rather cynical and elitist opinion.

Let's start with the undisputed fact that the Bible has had a huge influence on novelists and playwrights over the years, from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress to modern writers, some of whom read like a who's who of Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners. While it is impossible to list all the biblical allusions in these works, just look at those whose titles come straight out of the Bible (with biblical sources given in parentheses).

Starting with the three who are usually considered among the greatest 20^th century American novelists, we have:

    Faulkner:     Go Down Moses (Exodus 3-4, by way of an old spiritual)

                        Absalom, Absalom (II Samuel 19:4)

    Steinbeck:  The Grapes of Wrath (Revelation 14:17-20, by way of a patriotic hymn)

                       To a God Unknown (Acts 17:23)

                       East of Eden (Genesis 3:24)

Hemingway:  The Sun Also Rises (Ecclesiastes 1:5)

Then there are:

    William Golding:         The Lord of the Flies (“Baalzebub” II Kings 1:2-6)

    Graham Greene:          The Power and the Glory (Matthew 6:13)

    Henry James:               The Golden Bowl (Ecclesiastes 12:6)

    Aldous Huxley:           Eyeless in Gaza (Judges 12:21)

    Arthur Koestler:          Darkness at Noon (Matthew 27:45)

    Eugene O'Neill:           Lazarus Laughed (John 11)

    Lillian Hellman:         The Little Foxes (Song of Song 2:15)

    Flannery O'Connor:    The Violent Bear It Away (Matthew 11:12)

The title of the recently discovered To Kill a Mockingbird sequel, Go Set a Watchman, is a quotation from Isaiah 21. Other masterpieces of literature are permeated with allusions to the Bible:

Moby Dick-- characters with improbable but symbolic names such as Ishmael and Ahab, a whole chapter devoted to a sermon on the Book of Jonah, and an ending with a resurrection scene and a quotation from Job.

Light in August by William Faulkner has 21 chapters patterned on the 21 chapters of John's Gospel. One major character, Joe Christmas parallels Jesus Christ, and there is an unmarried pregnant woman traveling with a man who is not the father of the child. Many other correspondences with the Gospel story have been pointed out by critics.

Some works are even retellings of Scripture stories such as Archibald MacLeish's Pulitzer Prize-winning play J.B. about Job, John Steinbeck's East of Eden, and Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers. The last one is a series of four novels written over 16 years and it is very true to the biblical account. That is not true, on the other hand, with the other two works, which pervert the original stories to make entirely different points than the Bible does. At the end of J.B., Job rejects God and his gifts, and goes off to build a new life with his wife rather than worship God. Similarly, East of Eden casts Cain as the most sympathetic character, the son who only tries to please his father but is continually being rejected in favor of his more pious brother.

Another illuminating example comes from consideration of the man who has been called the greatest novelist of the 20^th century – the Irish writer James Joyce. His final novel, the flawed masterpiece entitled Finnegans Wake, is perhaps the least readable of any book ever written. It is composed in a conglomeration of different languages, mostly English, with the individual words being a hodgepodge of several different words, and every page contains diverse references to world history and culture. So it is no surprise that I was able to easily find 1,600 references to the Bible in the book, an average of almost three per page. And I know that I overlooked many others that are probably present.

The title comes from an Irish drinking song which tells the story of Tim Finnegan, a drunken hod carrier who falls from a ladder and breaks his skull. However, at the wake, the festivities get a little out of hand and some whiskey spills on Tim. That brings him back to life, and he proceeds to bawl out the guests. This image is obviously a rather perverted one of Christ's death and resurrection. And whereas Christ died once only, Finnegan seems to die over and over again in the novel. This fact could easily reflect Joyce's Catholic background with the death of Christ repeated in each celebration of the mass.

It is also interesting to look at the start and conclusion to Joyce's novel. It begins: “riverrun, past Eve and Adam's” as an obvious allusion to the beginning chapters of Genesis (although it also refers to the name of a Dublin church) and then ends with the words “The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the” as an oblique reference to the keys to the gates of heaven being given to believers at the end of Revelation. This would seem to indicate the biblical view of a discrete beginning and end to history as we know it, if it were not for one thing. Note that there is no capital R to the beginning of Joyce's book and no period after the incomplete sentence at the end. That is because the concluding partial sentence is actually continued in the opening words of the book so that the story begins over and over again in endless cycles.

Few of the authors listed above are known to be practicing Christians, but they all appreciate the literary qualities of the Bible probably more than we as believers do. We are sometimes so busy trying to figure out what the Bible says that we have often completely ignored how it is being said – and the two are related.

As Leland Ryken says, “The one thing that the Bible is not is what Christians too often picture it as being – a theological outline with proof texts.” (Windows to the World, p. 33) Our psychological make-up includes more than just will and intellect, and that is where the wide variety of literary genres found in the Bible comes in. Yes, there are straight-forward historical accounts and lists of rules in the Bible, but in addition, God gave us: acrostics, acted-out prophecies, allegories, court proceedings, diatribes, dreams, encomiums, exalted prose, fables, genealogies, laments, last will and testaments, letters, love songs, memoirs, metaphors, monologues, parables, pastoral stories, plays, poetry, prayers, proverbs, puns, riddles, sagas, sermons, short stories, similes, taunt songs, travel diaries and visions.

When we are faced with this hodgepodge of literary types, most of us can sympathize with the apostles who were constantly being confused by Jesus' teachings. It was only right before his death that they were able to say:

At last you are speaking plainly and not in riddles. (Living Bible)

Ah, now you are speaking plainly, not in any figure of speech! (NRSV)

Now you are speaking plainly, cried the disciples, and are not using parables (Phillips)

Why, this is plain speaking; this is no figure of speech. (NEB)

                                                                                                John 16:29

You can almost hear their surprise and relief.

WHY ALL THESE VARIOUS FORMS OF LITERATURE?

What need are they filling? To explain, let's look at a classic of early American literature, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. A married woman Hester believes her husband Roger is lost at sea and has an affair with her pastor Arthur Dimmesdale. They have a child and she is branded as an adulteress. Her husband turns up still alive and vows to seek revenge by discovering the identity of the child's father. At the end, the pastor is driven by guilt to admit his sin to the whole congregation.

My American Novel professor at UCLA explained that each one of the three main characters is missing a key component of personality: intellect, will or emotion.

For you lowbrows in the audience, an easier way to remember these three components is to consider The Wizard of Oz. The scarecrow wants a brain, the tin man wants a heart and the lion wants courage. This is actually a convenient tool for analyzing the characters in the Bible to see how well integrated their personalities are. A few years ago I was constructing some of my biblical collages, this time concerning the David and Bathsheba story, and realized that The Scarlet Letter is practically a retelling of that love triangle including its underlying themes (see my post entitled “David and Bathsheba”):

    David is a very intellectual and spiritual person, but he also has a very passionate side to him. His problem is that he is missing the willpower to keep his passions in check. 

    Uriah is intelligent and has highly developed willpower, but he comes across as being without any emotions. His job defines him.

    Bathsheba is the hardest of the three characters to read since we are not told much about her in this story. We really need to go to an incident later in her life after David has died. Adonijah asks her to petition Solomon to give him David's concubine. She agrees, but is bawled out by Solomon who has to explain to her that she is practically asking him to proclaim Adonijah as the rightful king instead of himself. Thus, her problem appears to be a lack of intellectual capacity.

For another way of looking at the three components of a balanced personality, consider 1 John and three marks of a Christian: proper doctrine (intellect), obeying the commandments (will) and loving others. The first two are addressed through rather straightforward teachings in the Bible. But what about Love? It is best illustrated in Song of Songs – poetry (romantic love), Hosea – acted out parable (God's long-suffering love of Israel), Ruth – play (familial love), Jonah – satire (God's love for all nations), parables of the prodigal son (God/parent's unconditional love) and good Samaritan (love of your enemy), and Paul's love chapter – exalted prose. Where emotions are involved, more indirect forms of literature appear to be the best way to communicate them.

There is another good reason to use indirect methods of teaching in the Bible.  Consider Jesus' comment that parables both reveal and conceal. In Hebrew thought the word for parable (mashal) was a broad term applying to all types of figurative (non-literal) language.

“Then the disciples came and asked him, 'Why do you speak to them in parables?' He answered, 'To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given...The reason I speak to them in parables is that seeing, they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand...But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.'” (Matthew 13:10-16)

The key may be that for those who are not quite ready to believe, parables delay understanding just enough so that people are forced to ponder the message, think about it longer and make the ideas their own. Parables stir the imagination, are more open-ended than literal language. They also get around your defenses. Often premature revelation of the truth will be rejected out of hand and never be considered again.

    “When the front door of reason is locked and double-bolted against the gospel, as it is for so many of our neighbors, the back door of the imagination often stands wide open.” (Sarah Arthur, Christianity Today, Dec. 2014)

    “The constructs of the imagination tell us things about human life that we don't get in any other way.” (Northrup Frye, The Educated Imagination)

    “The Bible's most customary way of expressing God's truth is not the sermon or theological outline, but the story, the poem and the vision, all of them literary forms and products of the imagination.” (Leland Ryken, Windows to the World)

Getting back to the story of David and Bathsheba, recall that the prophet Nathan didn't confront David directly concerning his sin, but told a parable instead, which was effective in waking up David's conscience. A similar device was used thousands of years later in the most famous play ever written, Shakespeare's Hamlet, a great work of literature with a plot that is actually another variation on the David and Bathsheba story. Instead of the prophet Nathan we have the hero Hamlet trying to get the king to admit his guilt. He says, “The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of a king.” (Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2) C. S. Lewis said that he was converted to Christianity not so much through intellectual arguments as through the study of pagan mythology as well as the fairy tales and fantasy stories of George MacDonald.

All this has led to a movement called cultural apologetics, as opposed to propositional apologetics, which “looks at faith and reasons for faith through an interdisciplinary kaleidoscope of art, literature, film, history, theology, and philosophy.” (Holly Ordway, Christianity Today, April 2015)

This has also set the stage for a new generation of Biblical scholars in the field of what has been called “New Literary Criticism” in which they look at the books of the Bible in terms of their literary qualities just as professors of literature would study great works of fiction. Of course, that is not by any means the most meaningful way to study the Bible, but it does help us to appreciate why the great masters of world literature got much of their inspiration from it. Below are some books I would recommend for those who are interested in learning more on the subject:

Literary Interpretations of Biblical Narratives, Vol. 1&2, Kenneth Gros Louis, ed.

The Literary Guide to the Bible, Robert Alter and Frank Kermode, ed.

The New Testament in Literary Criticism, Leland Ryken, ed.

A Complete Literary Guide to the Bible, Leland Ryken and Tremper Longman III, ed.

The Literature of the Bible, Leland Ryken

He Gave Us Stories, Richard L. Pratt, Jr.

The Literature and Meaning of Scripture, Morris A. Inch and C. Hassell Bullock, ed.

Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman III, ed.