The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (Paperback)

My major disappointment with the book is that it grandly ignores Jacques Derrida and the deconstructionist critique of Frye's assumptions about the relationship between language and life, Word and presence. He mentions Derrida in the intro (the book appeared in 1981) and hints at a counterargument, but I would have liked to see him follow through, since their brand of criticism aims squarely at Frye's type of reading. Those with a more historical interest in the Bible will also balk at Frye's acceptance of the book as a unity, endorsing the misreading that turned the rich and varied texts of the Hebrew Torah into a vast typological waiting room for the Christian Messiah.

Still, this is a powerful interpretation that anyone with an interest in myth and religion should greatly enjoy.

Yet sometimes, even over Toronto's campus rises the Sun. Suppose on a given text there is very little matter of fact knowledge available. Suppose the very nature of such text is mythological. Suppose this text happened to set up the imaginative framework of an entire civilization, "a mythological universe" within which a large section of this planet's literature had operated all the way down to the 18th century. Suppose a confused anthology of badly established "little books" (= "ta biblia") had been for generations the fare at the foundation of the Western mind-set. Then, which perspective would be most suitable to investigate this phenomenon?

Mr. Frye always had a preference for authors who were exceptionally biblical, like Milton or Blake. Understanding the Bible obviously helps understanding them, and this here is not an enquiry into the Bible's actual meaning (see my review on "The Bible Unearthed") but its perception and interpretation by countless generations of readers. Which means that the confusion of largely anonymous and almost always apocryphal texts no longer matters, because what matters is: "that the Bible" has traditionally been read as a unity, and has influenced Western imagination as a unity." (Northrop Frye)

This is not a book on biblical scholarship, though it incorporates many tasty morsels of it, but this would be beside the point. Frye has his moments of delicious irony, but he is not irreverent to his subject and speaks with the voice of a humanitarian. As was to be expected from him, he approached his subject from 4 different angles: the language, myth, metaphor and typology. Nothing to worry, Professor Frye lectures on English literature - "language" refers exclusively to the King James Bible. (Remember? This is about the effect the Good Book had on its readers.) Still his observations of the evolution of verbal forms and discursive writing, is still valid. If something is written in heroic verse it most likely belongs to an old stratum, prose always points to a late provenance, exile or post exile, a highly argumentative and discursive prose is even later. This aside, it is truly amazing to see how many cross references and anchor-points to a wider mythological cosmos Mr. Frye manages to open. If applied on Marcel Proust or Tolstoy, this would be unadulterated bogus, but the Bible can take it and in a positive sense it gains perspective and point. Nothing here is foggy or presumptuous; for once we see Mr. Frye at his best.

The only thing I have in common with Northrop Frye is, that we both have read the Bible from cover to cover. What he got out of it, we can read in the "Great Code," what I got out of it, is a slightly different matter. For starters, I would seriously question Frye's premise, that the Bible - except for a few exceptional readers - has influenced anybody as a "unity." Just remember your last encounter with a Bible thumping evangelist or Jehovah's Witness: these people have their quotes off pat and pick them all over the place, regardless of historical context and intended meaning, but strangely selective and colour-blind for passages that fail to suit their mission. I would even say, that for many serious readers, the Old Testament, for all practical purposes, is non-existent. As for me, "Leviticus" and "Numbers" are an education in folklore and specimens of real life legal customs from a distant era, though not the era the text claims to represent Ð an aspect usually lost, not only on Mr. Frye. And from a perspective of pure literature, it is very telling for the validity of Frye's literary criticism that for me exactly those documents stand out which are of least use to Mr. Frye's commentary - such as "Ecclesiastes," "Solomon's Song," and the succession stories. (1 King 13 is a gem of a truly Kafkaesque humor.) On the other hand, there can be very little disagreement on Isaiah or Jeremiah.

Having said all this, I recommend this book to every Bible reader, but I know it will not reach the kind of reader who needs it most.