Tragedy in the Bible

tragedy says aristotle is an imitation of an action that is serious complete and of a certain magnitude and through pity and fear affecting the proper purgation of those emotions and aristotle claims that um much as philosophy does uh literature and of the sort of the tragic sort deals with the same sort of subject matter because it deals with the moral nature of mankind and it does so in a way that makes us contemplate what the ideal would be when aristotle does make that statement he is responding to his own teacher plato who is famous in the republic book 10 of the republic for banishing the poets from the midst of his ideal city but those aren't the only views that plato expresses on the nature of drama in particular i think he has in mind here not just the the epic poets but also the dramatus and particularly the tragedians because this is the age when plato writes of of attic drama and when it's at its height and in a dialogue called the laws plato regards the state uh to be the noblest work of art of all because it is a representation or mimesis of the fairest and the best life and he expresses his anxieties that the purple prose of the tragedians could be used to the detriment of a worthier uh forms of life and there's a political backdrop there between the democrats and the aristocrats there of plato's day but he is fearful of the very power of tragedy and thus he writes against it and so he even even follows the path which has sadly been followed by all tyrants that tragedy and submit their work to rulers for approval before they can be performed aristotle is not of the same mind as plato and he sees that there is something in tragedy which is not only humane but uh worthy and and for aristotle it's the moral ambiguity of tragedy that makes it worthy um let me say a few things about aristotle's view of tragedy that i think we might find useful in looking at biblical tragedy because it has been claimed and it has been claimed by important christians for that matter that tragedy is not suitable or isn't something the bible particularly concerns itself with this was northrop frye's view to some degree it's also the view of j.r.r tolkien uh who believes that the trajectory of uh biblical faith is that of a uh the phrase that he uses is uh you catastrophe eu catastrophe as as in it's a u-shaped plot it tends towards tragedy and yet there is uh a glorious turn in the tail at the end of redemption uh and so some have maintained that tragedy as i say these two gentlemen fry and uh talking that tragedy is not really a biblical genre of literature and i am in agreement with uh ryken that they are in error about that um although i do take the point and we're going to talk about some of the reasons why that is uh in a moment so let me say first of all just a few things about what aristotle says about the quintessential tragic hero and then we will look at [Music] a few of the features of of tragedy in general because it goes beyond the greek conception of tragedy before finally looking at a few examples of of tragedy in the bible and then we'll do a little comparison and contrast between greek tragedy and the features of greek tragedy and those which we can see in scripture and i think we'll see there are some quite significant uh contrast there as well as some obvious grounds of similarity that allows me to say that there is tragedy in scripture so what does aristotle say about the tragedy well first of all it has a hero and the hero uh must not be a villain uh nor a outstandingly virtuous man but he is a character between those two extremes so he's not eminently good and unjust nonetheless the misfortune that misfolls him is not the result of some sort of vice or depravity but rather some sort of error that he makes now the word error that aristotle uses is hamartia and this word hamartia is one of the four words that the new testament uses to describe sin but when aristotle uses it and actually in the new testament for that matter i believe uh when the word is used it is used not in the sense of a moral failing so much as it it refers to missing the mark so a hamartio is used in archery when an archer misses the target completely that's a hamartia it's a missing of the mark and and because he's not particularly good and not particularly bad there's an ambiguity about how we are to respond to the fate of the uh individual who suffers now the perfect tragedy for aristotle is the work uh oedipus the king he thinks it excites uh pity and fear uh at the imitation of the action scene in the play uh and i've talked about that recently in one of my classes i talked about it every year in fact and i'll try and put a link up for you to have a look at if you want to refresh your memories about it but at the beginning of the play oedipus tellingly asks how the city that he is the king over thebes might cleanse itself and the word he uses there is the word catharsis now the word catharsis uh refers to uh purging to this day that it's used in in medical terminology as well a cathartic thing is something that purges us and uh this is the means by which not only will uh the city be cleansed um morally but also artistically and so tr aristotle says as i say uh it it's an imitation of an action that serious complete of a certain magnitude etc etc and it has a virtuous and purifying end now this is aristotle's response almost i think we can see it almost as a direct response to plato here when he is defending tragedy and defending the moral worth of a tragedy um but we don't need to but busy or concern ourselves too much with whether tragedy is a has a moral function or not um i think uh myself that it clearly is [Music] i think useful and has been considered such by subsequent writers who've discounted plato's views here and have not gone the root the totalitarian route of demanding that the scripts be turned over from the playwrights to the state to question whether they uh can conduce to the good that plato sees as the uh remit of the state to determine there are there's a long history of tragedies that stem all the way through from the uh greek era through the roman period and on through shakespearean times and all the way up into the contemporary so tragedy is a form that is used and it's used not only by pagan authors like the greeks and romans but also by christians so the most famous of which to my mind are those written by william shakespeare so four of his greatest plays are also tragedies hamlet macbeth king lear and othello at least so says ac bradley in his study of tragedy in the early 20th century and i think most people tend to agree with that but we could add other tragedies in their midst and they tend to be seen as shakespeare's most momentous and greatest works so the key element there in throughout whether we want to look at in the greek definition or in later understandings there is there is a downward plunge that the hero undergoes because of some terrible error that he's made it's not a moral transgression in the sense that he chooses to do an immoral act it is however uh an immoral act in spite of his knowledge thereof at least it is in the work oedipus the king for which reason i've suggested uh in my study of oedipus the king and again i refer you to my video on that that what happens in uh oedipus is quite astonishing that oedipus becomes something like a scapegoat of a figure and the reason why he does that is because he he murders his father and commits incest with his mother and these are basic human laws they're taboos that seem to exist in every society and what has happened thereby is that oedipus has acted like an animal and not like a human being because unlike animals which which kill indiscriminately and mate indiscriminately and even commit and have children within their with their with their sisters family members etc um human beings view natural blood relations as morally significant and they don't transgress those boundaries and when oedipus does so he becomes something like an animal and he's driven out of the city in order to purge the city of the stain that has been brought upon it and so he is cursed and so he becomes a scapegoat and i in that lecture on it gave some sense of how oedipus in that sense functions uh like an atoning figure and we can see something of a christian understanding of how uh of how tragedy will also to some degree be connected with the person and work of jesus christ uh on good friday where he becomes the atoning sacrifice for sen he sat outside the camp outside the city our sins are laid on his shoulders he bears those sins he bears the wrath of god for the the sins that he himself did not commit there are distinctive differences between oedipus and and christ but there are also some striking similarities there but those are not the subject matter that are are of primary interest to aristotle or at least he doesn't enunciate the scapegoat motif there but he certainly speaks about the hamartia this fatal error that leads oedipus to his tragic choice and the element of choice i think is essential to the tragic plot um and because of that there is not a sense of that the uh the the character is getting what he deserves so much as he's getting what he chose but we feel some ambiguity there as i say there's a strong sense of we know that this must be punished but we also think that in some sense he doesn't deserve it and in that sense it draws the reader or in the case of a play as it is the audience into some sort of compassion a sense that they also might deserve the suffering of sinful conduct or mistaken conduct to use the more accurate terminology here so tragedy focuses as reichen says on the destructive potential of evil in human experience in general and so then we can talk about a tragic mood that we can see in scripture and in this sense i think that scripture most decidedly has a tragic bent to it there's a great deal of of tragedy in terms of the general tendency of scripture because the scripture repeatedly catalogues human sin and human depravity and in each case it when it does so there is a sense that it could have been otherwise and hence the tragic sense of the uh uh the tax that i'm speaking of here and overall in reichen's uh important note here and i think i think it's uh correct he says that overall tragedy is the story of human failure and to read a tragedy or to see it acted on a play on a stage is to participate in some sense in a ritual of confession that there but for the grace of god go i that is the sin that has transpired there could also have been my sin because a choice was made that could have been avoided and yet it's something that it seems human beings are inclined to do and so there's a a general acknowledgement uh when we view tragedy and the tragic sense of what the bible depicts about human sin and depravity there's a general sense of lament in that depiction and the first appearance of course is in the famous passage that we've already dealt with when we were talking about uh the uh the artistry uh in genesis one to three namely in genesis three where we have the first tragedy really um and uh this becomes as reikan notes the model for all subsequent tragedies and uh in milton's paradise lost when he comes to book nine he speaks explicitly of turning uh the tones uh of uh the epic to tragic uh because he's about to tell of the fall of uh so milton seemingly echoing that sense that genesis 3 is a mini tragedy within the corpus of scripture and it contains all of the ingredients or virtually all the ingredients of later biblical tragedies so we have two tragic heroes adam and eve these are prominent figures they are representative figures they're federal heads of the human race in fact they live in a world that demands moral choice they've been placed in the garden of eden there is a tree of the knowledge of good and evil and they have been prohibited prohibited from eating of that tree so there's a moral injunction and note that as we said at the outset when we were talking about genesis 1 god commands adam and eve and speaks to them and expects them to obey them that's implicit in being spoken to as persons those that bear the image of god god himself already being portrayed in scripture as having a moral nature by virtue of the fact that he calls things good and he creates them good so he himself is ipso facto good and he saw that it was very good in fact there is no evil in god's creation but there is choice and the choice is implicit in the prohibition of the tree if they were not uh given the freedom to transgress then there would be no need for the prohibition so there's a moral choice whether to obey or to disobey god they are not at this point flawed characters there's nothing lacking in adam and eve as milton says they're sufficient to have stood though free to fall that's milton's famous description of the state of adam and eve before original sin and so the moment when they make their tragic choice of eating of the forbidden truth deceived by the serpent we see it as a fatal hamartia they've missed the mark they've done something they've chosen badly it also entails other aspects of sin that scripture talks about as i say the other three senses of sin in the new testament there's a moral transgression there's a corrupting influence uh aspect to it there's a defiance and a rebellion in the sin all of these are in this passage but there is a sense of missing a mark when they disobey god they've not not done what they ought to have done there so when they reach to get everything to become as gods knowing both good and evil they lose everything and this is tragic and so they are responsible for their punishment and we see that the punishment is also fitting so when god comes to judge them we note a couple of things one of the one of them that i mentioned already that he is committed to be gracious he clothes them he speaks to them he doesn't kill them immediately he doesn't destroy his creation he doesn't give the death sentence on the spot and execute it as perhaps they might have thought who knows the original prohibition would would entail because they've been told if they do eat of the fruit they will die but we see a decided sense of suffering and also of recognition in this scene there is a revelation that remember i mentioned it in at the end of genesis 2 that adam and eve are naked and then in genesis 3 i believe it's verse 7 it mentions that they're naked but now they're ashamed and therefore they clothe themselves there's a recognition of something that was already there but now it's accompanied by shame and this state of shame is an awareness that they have in fact missed the mark they have in fact sinned they have in fact done the one thing that will bring curses upon them rather than blessing and so we see that as the as i say the archetypal uh passage in which we see tragedy in scripture and that i submit to you is the signal event that marks the whole of what happens in scripture thereafter it's not the final word but it's marked by it the human race is marked by uh original sin and therefore a sense of tragedy accompanies human life and we see this by the very fact that for every person who is born death ensues and death is the consequence of sin no sin no death so tragedy is there and we're told uh that um we see this very quickly because adam and eve have children cain and abel and the firstborn slays the second born so it's not only that death is going to happen naturally but death will be brought about by at the hands of the people themselves we can see this then not only in kane we can see it in raiken mentions achen a-c-h-a-n who tries to hide this the gold and the silver in his tent and he dies for it in joshua seven we see it in the rebellions that take place in the wilderness korra's rebellion that of dathan and byram they rebel against the authority of moses and their whole households are swallowed up in the earth in number 16 these are all tragic instances of disobedience and again these are the first those are the famous words of milton's great tragedy of man's disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree which brought death into our world and all our woe with loss of eden until one greater man restore it we see the same thing in the catalogs of the kings we could look at david's life we could look at solomon's life decisive moments david's um uh adulterous affair with bathsheba his uh intentional murder of her husband to try and cover up his misdeed uh solomon's beginning as a wise man and then his fall from prosperity and wisdom into apostasy and a life of sensuality and luxury and corruption these are all seen as tragic reichen also mentions the parables of jesus in which the uh element of tragedy is preeminent in the choices that are made by various souls whether they're the the foolish servant or the lazy servant who hides his master monies monsters money rather than investing it uh the five foolish virgins tragic choices uh the wedding guests who are invited to the wedding festival and they refuse the invitation the the elder brother and the parable of the prodigal son who refuses to forgive his brother and to embrace his brother as his father has the rich man and lazarus divas and lazarus who ignores the beggar these are tragic instance instances the self-righteous pharisees all tragedies and presented in as such we have a sense that they have done something which we find regrettable and we suffer along with those who have made those choices because we can imagine ourselves making those same choices and yet we recognize in the judgment that there is justice so the spirit of tragedy is there in the entire spirit of the bible and it right results um in uh not only the tragic move but there are a couple instances where we can probably describe them as outright tragedies and i'm going to talk about one and possibly two depending on the time here but the one i want to draw to your attention in particular is the one that mr milton himself used as the subject of his very last literary work namely the story of samson and in milton's work the name of the play was sampson agonisties and it was a tragedy the the story of samson takes place in the context of a time when everyone did as the final line of the book of judges says everyone did what was right in his eyes it was before there were kings they god brought forth rulers of sorts or judges those who made decisions that were crucial for the nation of israel and they usually did them in a good way in the story of solomon we get something of a judge who was decidedly frail in his choices and in fact tragic and i will submit to you in the story of samson we see something of a a foreshadow or a type of the anti-type of jesus christ because samson himself will die for the city and in order to save the city there's something about the story of samson which is a an anticipation of the life of christ they're obviously a great number of things that in which it differs but milton certainly sees uh features of that in the story of samson so let's look at the story of the tragedy of samson um it is a tragedy and it is also israeli notes a uh heroic folk narrative um the people love samson what's not to like he's he's strong um he is uh brave he's a man of the people in some ways uh and he defeats armies all by the strength of his mighty arm and he falls for the bad girls as well he is as ryken says uh the sort of figure that often we meet in life and uh to some degree admire and to some degree find highly distasteful and he we have a ambiguity about our perception of him as well because he does things that we think are magnificent and funny on the other hand he does things that we regard as astonishingly astonishingly foolish and lamentable and this is precisely what makes him tragic uh what makes him popular is his superhuman strength and the superhero human strength is really interestingly connected with something that seems to have nothing to do with strength namely the length of his hair that he's never cut his hair this the strength of samson resides in the fact that he's made a vow and the vow is to god and god is the one who gives him his strength so when he breaks his vow and his hair is shorn he loses his strength now i think the writer knows just as well as we know that naturally speaking there is no strength that resides in growing your hair long they knew this just as well as we did and yet what's being emphasized here by the fact that samson's strength resides in his hair is the fact that his strength is on something as frail as as as hair in other words it's something that has nothing to do with his physical strength it has to do with the power of god and the power of god is what will also deliver samson in the end and make samson a deliverer of his people it will be god the agency of god working through samson to destroy the philistines one final time uh on a personal level samson uh violates this vow of the nazarites uh to um not cut his hair he's also supposed to take no strong drink those are the specific vows of the nazarites in addition to the regular vows which would accompany anyone who's a child of the nation of israel that he should not be marrying foreign women etc this is already in the torah he is not to be marrying the philistines as he ends up doing so there are a number of levels on which um samson is clearly substandard as a moral figure and there's no attempt to uh to hide that fact from the reader um but he has this great potential let's begin with the story at the beginning um he has as great a potential as it can possibly be imagined for any figure so what happens to him like jesus his birth is foretold by an angel i i really cannot i'm struggling to think of other passages in scripture where a figure other than jesus has their identity foretold by an angel aside from john the baptist he belongs to this spiritual elite called the nazarites and he has followed their teachings from birth judges 13 5. the prohibition set him apart from ordinary humanity he's an especially holy man as a consequence and in keeping with this uh he as we read as the boy grew the lord blessed him chapter 13 verse 24 and even further in the next very next verse it says that the the spirit of the lord began to stir him so god has deigned to set his spirit in samson this is an extraordinary thing and it's not common in the old testament for figures to be spoken of in this way so he has a an extraordinarily promising beginning both for the announcement of his birth for the holiness of his vows and for the accompaniment of god's spirit in his life and so with that elevation of the figure of samson before our eyes uh the tragedy unfolds and it follows um not a typical structure for a tragedy it it's very atypical in fact it doesn't have just the cause and effect he does he misses the mark here and and therefore he falls it doesn't quite go that way it's rather a complex structure there are three falls in fact of samson each one of them relating to women philistine women there's a woman of tymna first one there is a prostitute at gaza second one and then finally there's the undoing of sampson the final undoing in the case of delilah she's the one that we typically remember because she's the one who brings him down but actually all three were violation of his vows now unifying this tripartite cycle of events is samson's violation of his nazarite vows and these tragic events are um nonetheless paradoxical because in each of the instances samson also evades the his uh his uh foes the not the um philistines the you would have thought when he violates of his vows and and and marries this woman of timna that that's the end for him but it isn't he seems to vanquish his enemies in spite of that fact likewise with the prostitute and even with delilah at first he's getting his ways uh manages to seemingly be unpunished for his transgressions but in the end um he is brought down so there's a cycle of three plus one here that i'm going to speak of um three things where there's a repetition without consequences and then the fourth where he is finally brought down and this comes together in the account of samson's marriage to this woman of tim now that i just mentioned and it's in judges 14 and 15 if you want to read along and the tragic element is when uh in when samson commands his parents to get the woman as his wife because he says she pleases me well and and his desire for this woman overcomes any obligation he feels to obey god's command to be holy and set apart as he had been sworn to be from his very birth likewise we find a few other instances he he's in contact with the dead lion uh which is a also betrayal of a nazarite vow of uh in number six uh six and seven they're not supposed to touch any unclean animals um leviticus 11 24 25 it's 28. um and he also uh is is foolish and gets involved in uh posing this uh riddle at a wedding feast and then finally he gives in to his wife's pleadings and tells her the source of his strength but these things which i've described as foolish and transgressive are not the things that bring him down this is why it's a complex narrative it's not a a cause a single cause and effect sort of narrative in the way that we see with uh oedipus the king for example or even adam and eve they eat of them eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and that's it they they're they're done that doesn't happen to samson he gets away with all these things and in fact um god uses the marriage uh with the philistine woman to deliver the people of israel from the philistines and the narrator counters the objections of samson's parents to the marriage and these are the words that are used and this is what's so interesting about the story of samson these words chapter 14 verse 4 the narrator says that his father and mother did not know that it was from the lord for he was seeking an occasion against the philistines now isn't that interesting so god is using even samson's transgressions as a way of punishing the philistines as of judging the philistines it doesn't mean that samson is going to escape scot-free but it does mean to say that there's a third actor in this play which and gets involved and that's namely god himself and this is characteristic of scripture as i've already said and furthermore we read that the spirit of the lord came mightily upon samson when he killed 30 men in the town in 14 19. so the holy spirit has not left samson even though he has violated his vows in ways that the reader would obviously understand and we can see this in other ambiguous stories this is the strange passage where samson uses 300 foxes to burn the fields of the philistines he attaches torches to their tails and they run through the fields and of course it looks like there's a huge army burning it apart it's really a strange use of his strength and it seems to be just simply vindictive on his part i don't think we're supposed to admire it or think it as particularly um the work of a deliverer this is this is petty and personal um but it is a deliverance of of of some sort but the climax of the whole episode is this uh liaison with delilah and this is when the notes of uh samson's story do become tragic and they repeat the motif of the earlier marriage to the woman of timnah it's a pagan woman it's also a devious wife likewise one a wife who is um more allied to his uh to the philistines than she is to him even though she's married to him and her pleading is the very thing that that brings him to divulge the the great secret that he has namely the source of his power and in that there is a temptation scene and and delilah becomes a figure of temptation in a way that becomes then repeated in christian plays and in christian literary works thereafter sometimes eve is also likened to a temptress in ways that i think are rather unfortunate we uh it's reading a great deal into the genesis text who put as much blame on the unf as yet unfallen eve that we do on the fallen delilah nonetheless the comparison is certainly made in english literature and on the continent for that matter and that women are temptresses and so forth no such sense is there in the genesis text but the overall design of this temptation scene is this pattern of what i already mentioned the three plus one so there are three events that are more or less the same and the fourth introduces a similar instance but a crucial change so what are these four episodes well each of the four contains five elements first of all and they they seem really quite formulaic in fact and there's something of a pageant here and there's something i guess almost theatrical about it in that sense uh for which reason maybe milton decided he would put this on as a tragedy but what are those uh five elements well first delilah pleads with samson you can see this in verse six chapter uh of 16 verse six also in verse 10 also in verse 13 and finally in verse 15. those four times she pleads with him the first three times he responds to her pleas with tricks and and then with the truth and in the third phase of each episode when delilah betrays samson and acts upon it um she is uh the figure of mockery herself on samson's parties laughing at her and then for some reason in the fourth he decides to tell her the truth but when she is betrayed um when when he when she betrays him rather the fourth episode the fourth thing comes in play which is that she says the philistines are upon you samson thinking that that samson is now weakened and of course the first three times he just throws them off and then finally uh there is the exertion of samson's power and the first three times he manages to do so the fourth time because he has revealed the source of his strength namely his hair uh he is subdued and not only subdued but also blinded and not only blinded but captured and put in to punish and treated like a beast now in this sense he has strong similarities with oedipus who likewise blinds himself you know similarities and also contrast there because again edipus blinds himself whereas samson is blinded by his captors but note that there are uh the those points of symmetry there and there are other sort of numeric types of symmetry there are strange there are four episodes uh there are there are seven bow strings there are seven locks of hair um and and again seven locks of hair so this number seven the number four the number three these things to be uh be almost uh as i say there's a sort of a pageantry about these episodes there but at the heart of the tragedy is something that seems rather innocuous but is absolutely crucial and not simply the betrayal of his vow that no razor will touch his head and at the point at which samson in his foolish choice tells delilah that he is strong because of his hair and she shears his hair we're told that god leaves samson 16 20 the dereliction of samson by god and the suffering takes the form that i've just described as i always get eyes get gouged out and he's made into a slave on the male a slave and for anyone with with a biblical um understanding or they immediately think of a return of the jewish people to a form of slavery as they were in the time of egypt so samson the deliverer is now cast into slavery because of his own disobedience and in keeping with this common strategy there of of biblical tragedy there is a mitigation of the tragic circumstances here because uh in the end he uh appeals to god cries out to god and is um and god delivers him but of course he crushes samson in the process and again as i said to you for for me there's something of the dereliction of samson and the crushing of samson and the deliverance of the israelites which is quite frankly uh rather typological uh and anticipates the antitype of christ's dereliction of the cross where god forsakes him and our sins are placed upon his shoulders and the people of god are delivered in the process and so we read at the end of this so the dead whom he slew at his death were more than those whom he had slain during his life so a greater triumph comes to the end and yet it comes at the loss of the life of the hero so he's a it's a really paradoxical story but it's also most decidedly a tragedy and as a tragedy nonetheless it is a story of faith because as reikan notes and we can see for ourselves when you go to hebrews 11 verse 32 we see that samson is being listed as one of the uh one on the honor roll of those who've lived by faith extraordinary if you think that by faith means being honor honorable in your life and so forth you cannot possibly come to that conclusion by looking at the life of samson who most decidedly does not seem like a moral morally admirable character but in the end triumphs because even in his blindness even in the sense that he has no power left he trusted in god and god delivered him so he is a hero of the faith so that is the verdict of the author of the letter to the hebrews i think this is fascinating a man who's a brawler a man who had an eye for bad girls was also nonetheless a man of faith so a lot of human experience there and obviously a lot of tragedy i could talk about the tragedy of saul there but i'm not going to go over that i think there's sufficient there in the text that you can look at this yourself uh what i want to do is i want to reflect on a biblical tragedy and think and talk about some of the features of biblical tragedy that counter distinguish it to uh greek tragedy or our sense of tragedy in uh general and i believe that i at least touched on it at the outset when i when i said that um that oedipus uh and his tragedy um had a sense of uh also ambiguity that aristotle recognizes and and therefore with the ambiguity a sense of moral possibility in it nonetheless i would say there is also something fatalistic about greek tragedy which is not there in the biblical account and the reason for that is because oedipus's tragic outcome was fated it was prophesied from the beginning there is no sense in the story of samson that samson was doomed to do what he did he had he had a free choice to do otherwise and hence the sense of tragedy it could have been averted in the sense of oedipus there is a sense there is some sense of moral ambiguity because oedipus makes choices but nonetheless we know uh that his outcome was faded from the beginning so much so and so heinous was it that his parents sought to avert the outcome so his apparent oedipus's parents are are um oh gosh what's the father's name i've forgotten the name jocasta's mother's name they when they were when they had the boy they heard the prophecy that he would murder his father and marry his mother and to avert that tragedy they gave the child to a shepherd and told the shepherd to get rid of the baby to have it killed you know go expose it in the elements have it killed and the shepherd unbeknownst to them gave the little boy and took pity on the boy and gave them to another shepherd who took then the boy to another city where he grew up thinking that the people who had who were who were accounted as mother and father were in fact his mother and father and and when he left that city because somebody said you're not who you think you are you're a bastard etc you're not you know you're not legitimate and he got angry and went on the road he met then met his father on the road and he his father insulted him and he struck him down killed him then of course went on and married his mother all of these things brought about the fate that had been predicted at the outcome so there's a strong fatalism about the greek tragedy and what's ironic there is that oedipus for his part thinks that he is a wise man a man with great insight a man who is to some degree the measure of all things and in this sense he represents the view of the greek sophist protagoras who said that precise thing man is the measure of all things the story the tragedy of oedipus is to demonstrate the exact opposite actually the gods are the measure of all things and the gods fulfill what is fated because the gods themselves have no control over fate fate is something that is blind and deterministic now that is very different than the account that we get from biblical tragedy it's very different because throughout the biblical tragedies there is always the sense and we can go back to the prototypical tragedy in the garden of eden there was a sense of a real choice that lay before adam and eve they could have done something other than eat of the knowledge eat of the tree they could have they had the free will to do so we don't get that same sense in oedipus the king and that's because the greek view of the gods and of the world was fatalistic and deterministic and to some degree in fact a considerable degree there was a passivity in the face of this fatalism that led the greeks not to regard their lot as being something that could be improved to some degree it let them it led to a very tragic view of life a fatalistic view of life we do not get that that same sense of fatalism coming out of scripture precisely because we have a strong sense that there is such a thing as choice and choice is real on the other hand we also know that after adam and eve's original sin that everyone is born in sin and as a consequence original sin blights the human rights nonetheless we also think that they are genuine choices that could theoretically be averted and sometimes might be averted but there's always an element of sin that dogs us that in the end will bring us down and we see that that sense of sin and the fact that everyone throughout history and that there is no one who sin not even one as it says in scripture that describes the tragedy of the human race but nonetheless there is a sense that there are real choices and as a consequence of the real choices there is a proportionality and a justice in the judgment whereas in the greek notion of tragedy when the justice comes we have a strong sense that the justice is crushing and to some degree unfair but that's the way it is because it's fate and so it is um where and and um because of the greek sense of tragedy and the sense of the um incommensurate suffering that comes upon oedipus immoderate we actually in the end feel some pity for oedipus we wish that it had been otherwise because he doesn't seem quite as bad as what happened to him although in another sense it obviously is so because he's murdered his father and committed incest but he didn't know what he was doing so it seems like that terrible thing and and we actually feel pity for him and aristotle talks about this is morally upstanding and to some degree it gives a moral dimension to the tragedy but we don't we so it's it's the exact lack of proportionality which leads us to admire the hero the hero in the end is something morally admirable whereas in the tragedy of the bible these are degeneration stories in which the heroes don't gain stature during their decline look at adam and eve we don't feel pity for them in the end they got what they deserved it is tragic but they got what they deserved we look at samson he got what he deserved this is characteristic of biblical tragedy in the end we're not admiring the figure or feeling pity or sympathy or admiring him thinking that um he's better in some ways than what he got as a punishment so there is that sense of difference between the two um and and also in biblical tragedy the the the uh enemy is not outside of the figure but rather within the figure whereas in the tragedy it seems like the gods have decided that they're going to punish um elias and jocasta's uh son and the parents furthermore for what reason we don't know it's but it's faded and therefore it's going to happen uh so it's an external enemy whereas in biblical tragedy the uh the the problem lies within they don't live in a tragic world where they are are doomed per necessity by the nature of the fatalistic universe to commit sinful acts they live in a blessed universe in which it could possibly be otherwise that they wouldn't sin it's just that they make the moral choice to sin and so uh the the choice that they make is the crux of the matter and it is what decidedly distinguishes a biblical tragedy from the greek tragedy that i talked about so there's a moral choice rather than any external constraint or ignorance that becomes the crux of the matter and so just and there's a just punishment that comes along with that now in one final comment here but in support of what was just said here the great english writer w.h auden notes that greek tragedy is the tragedy of necessity and and the the feeling among the facts aroused in the spectator that what a pity it had to be this way you know it had to be this way what a pity whereas christian tragedies he says is the tragedy of possibility what a pity it was this way when it might have been otherwise we can imagine it could have been otherwise whereas in the greek there is no sense that it was possible to do it for anything to have happened other than what happened and the result of this is a sense of passivity and um dehumanizing effect of the greek moral framework the polytheism of the greek order in the face of which biblical tragedy encourages something rather more noble namely an act of obedience to what god has said rather than being resigned to the fact that we are going to be crushed by fate no matter what we do biblical obedience the very possibility of obeying encourages us to be obedient in the knowledge that if there is disobedience and there will be that it will be as a consequence of the sin of humanity which once again throws us upon the grace and mercy of god and the propitiation the atoning sacrifice that he offered to us once for all on calvary on that great good friday for which we are grateful and uh with that i'm going to conclude our study in our studies in biblical narrative when we come back after the break we will look at biblical poetry before looking at the new testament and some of the forms that seem uniquely represented there but that's it for now thank you

Channel: Dr Scott Masson

Views: 92

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: cain and abel, holy spirit, samson bible story, samson and delilah, king saul, the book of genesis, bible stories for children, cain and abel bible story, king saul and david, samson and delilah bible story, samson bible story explained

Id: 6he76RIFDDs

Length: 55min 30sec (3330 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 07 2020