Customer Reviews

The Great Code: The Bible and Literature

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"The Great Code" reflects a lifetime's thinking about the patterns and meanings of the Bible, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a page that doesn't contain some nugget of insight--my copy's covered in Papermate blue! Frye's central point is that the Bible's best read as a complex ecology of types: the accounts of Jesus in the Gospels, for instance, have less to do with his actual deeds and words, however much our modern idea of history would like them to, than squaring his life with Old Testament 'anticipations.' In Frye's view, Jesus scarcely sneezes without invoking a line from the Old Testament, a fact that points to the essentally literary organization of the Bible. That's not to say the Bible's "merely" literature--on the contrary, Frye wants to show how it expands our sense of what literature and myth really mean. Meanwhile, he injects on the sly an attractive theology of his own. Literature like the Bible provides the types for us--the chain of typological anticipations doesn't culminate in Israel or Jesus or Revelation, but continues into our own lives, waking us up to our radical freedom.

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.

Intellectual "tour de force" by the greatest critic of our time:take the time to read, study, and enjoy.
This great text is an all-time classic that will appeal to the scholar and the layperson alike.
Frye is an amazing syncretist. I have never read any author other than Frye who can slip in and out of various disciplines so easily,and all the while weaving a "seamless web" of an argument that is logically structured and beautifully written. I realize that some statements in the text may offend conservative readers, but overall, the book is neutral regarding any matter of systemic doctrine or denominationally specific exegetical concerns. If anything, Frye's text offers the highest praise for the Bible
by showing how the language and imagery of the KJV penetrates all aspects of western literary and intellectual culture.

I can't let the only other reviewer of this book stand unchallenged. Frye's magnum opus asks the delicious question, "What if the Bible, given all its historicial oddities, nonetheless stood as a unity, God-given or otherwise?" To this, Frye gives overwhelming response. The story of Israel, rising and falling; the story of humanity, rising and falling; the story of Christ, rising and falling with us, and rising again--this is the story most worth telling. Frye knows (almost) everything (the parenthesis is not because I know something Frye doesn't but because, of course, God knows things Frye didn't). The most extraordinary book, for those with the patience to read it. Worthy of all seekers, with the mind to mind it.

This wonderful book really enhanced my ability to appreciate the Bible on deeper levels. Frye writes about how the Bible is a poetic, metaphoric, mythic, and universal work with truths that can be applied to many different situations, as opposed to concrete, historical writing that is true for a limited number of specific situations. His position is that whether or not the Bible corresponds to historical truths, it has metaphoric truth that can be valuable either way. He also describes the Bible as having a "typological structure," in which the Old Testament and New Testament parallel each other. The Old Testament foreshadows and predicts the New Testament, and the New Testament fulfills the Old Testament. The Old Testament also parallels and echoes itself. Frye writes that the Bible can be seen as the key to mythology, because just about everything that can be found in other sources of mythology can be found in the Bible. He lists seven phases in the Bible: creation, revolution, law, wisdom, prophecy, gospel, and apocolypse, each phase expanding on the perspectives of the previous phases. Frye lists varous images and metaphors used in the Bible, and describes how each idealized or apocolyptic metaphor has a demonic counter-part. He describes the body of Christ as the central metaphor in the Bible. He describes the mythic narrative structure of the Bible as U shaped, beginning with man in paradise in teh Garden of Eden, man losing that paradise, and eventually regaining it in Revelation, with a series of rises and declines in between. Within the Bible, Moses and Jesus each follow the same mythic structure, paralleling each other in their leading man to redemption. Resonance is a major feature of the Bible, with many phrases and images developing universal significance far beyond the original context. The Bible provides a vision of an innocent, ideal world, and this vision guides our way of living. With many references to myths, poems, and literature, this book can be fascinating regardless of one's religious views.

"The result, then, of what is now called the historical-critical method was an understanding of the Bible as a collection of historically conditioned documents, reflecting the biases, backgrounds and idiosyncrasies of its authors." Michael Coogan



Coogan's Archaeological Inquiry:
Professor Coogan explains, "The first challenges to this traditional understanding of the Bible as unequivocally the word of God, consistent and free from error, came in the 17th century, when philosophers challenged traditional views about the Bible's authorship and authority, by appealing to common sense, logic and historical method. By the 19th century this approach had gained considerable momentum. During the same period thousands of ancient texts-in languages such as Assyrian, Babylonian, Aramaic and later Sumerian and Ugaritic-were excavated, deciphered and translated. Many of these texts had close or even verbatim correspondences with biblical passages, so that the view of the Bible as a unique document without parallel came under irrevocable challenge. Finally, there was an exponential growth of scientific knowledge: The Bible was simply not true or not simply true, in the sense in which it had for so long been considered. Its cosmology, anthropology and chronology were often just wrong. For the most part, scholars engaged in this new criticism were not only believers but ordained clergy, generally teachers in seminaries." Between the Scholars and the Pew

A feel for the context
Bible students are warned to be aware of the figurative devices in the Bible and the need to carefully read and study the Bible to become familiar with the ways that language is utilized. The evidence is clear that parts of the Bible are meant figuratively, and we are rejecting the Word of God if we refuse to consider the possibility of figures of speech. Origen went so far as to suggest that there were some passages of Scripture that had no literal meaning. We should not refuse to understand a method the Bible itself uses, but need to get a feel for the context, to see the types of literature contained in the Bible, the way it uses poetic language, the way it gives commands, relates history and predicts the future.

Frye on the Bible:
An ordained United Church minister as well as a critic and teacher, N. Frye wrote two major books on the Bible, The Great Code in 1982 and Words with Power in 1990. All his life he turned to the Bible for inspiration, refreshment and an understanding of the ideas behind Western civilization. As he said, his critical work, beginning with his famous study of William Blake in 1947, all revolved around the Bible.
At one point Robert Fulford, a Toronto author and journalist finds him reflecting that the Bible leaves us with "a very human feeling that if we were God, we would work harder to earn our keep; that if we were in charge of what happened, we wouldn't make such appalling bungles as God appears to be making." In 'Northrop Frye Unbuttoned,' we read a closely related notion in the book; "The worst thing we can say of God is that he knows all."

The Great Code:
In 1982 Frye published The Great Code, which has since been translated into 22 languages. In it, he treats the Bible as a totally unified book, disregarding the scholarly agreement that it actually was written by dozens of writers in three different languages over a period of a thousand years. Frye declares that the coherence of the Bible's narrative as a whole is created by what he calls a 'U-Shaped plot,' that begins with the Genesis creation of Adam and Eve, family and garden state is followed by a fall into a long alternation of historical disasters and triumphs. He concludes with a final ascent back to harmony in the eternal city of Jerusalem at the end of the book of Revelation. This U-shaped pattern is repeated in dozens of minor plots of fall and rise in the stories of Joseph, Moses, David, or Job, and of Peter and Paul, each of which functions as a 'type' or pre-figuration of what follows and of the encompassing whole. Frye discovers the same kind of unifying repetition or typology in the recurrence of specific images throughout the Old and New Testaments--e.g. the image of the tree, the ocean, the tower, the garden, the sheep and shepherd. Such repetitions of plot and image tie the many books of the Bible together, and also create a sense of deja vu and premonition, hinting that discreet events have some greater symbolic significance, that they are both themselves and not themselves, that time may be an illusion.

Myth, Metaphor in the Bible:
In 'Words With Power,' 1990, Frye re-examines the role of myth and metaphor in the Bible, reasserting that many of its central themes and images reverberate throughout Western literature. His conclusion is that "the organizing structures of the Bible and the corresponding structures of 'secular' literature reflect each other," that a finite number of species of myths, including those of creation, fall, exodus, destruction and redemption, provide the narrative sources of literature. Such ideas, have been suggested by Frye earlier, in his study of the Bible and literature, as 'The Great Code,' a summing up of his overall critical views. Some parts of the book, which deals with different idioms of linguistic expression and the social function of literature feels as if Frye was just rewriting earlier assertions, trying to answer questions and restatement raised by his critics.

A lineage of Mythographers:
Frye remains the eighth most frequently cited author in the arts and humanities, among a company that includes Aristotle, Shakespeare and Freud. Much of his thinking about structure came from his study of Sir James Frazer's anthropology and Oswald Spengler's gloomy critique of the West. Frye traced his ancestry to a lineage of mythographers who all share the thesis that literature evolves from mythology and that both embody a community's core values and beliefs, about the devine and about secular matters from birth to death. In Northrop Frye Unbuttoned, he tells us, in a typically rueful way, that Alfred North Whitehead's Science and the Modern World influenced him just as profoundly.

Frye in his own mind:
Northrop Frye started his career as a divinity student and a preacher in the United Church of Canada, but then took an M.A. in English literature at Oxford and wrote his Master's thesis on the romantic poet and painter William Blake, whose sources of vision Frye demonstrated could be found in a literary tradition that stemmed from the Bible. Frye never seemed to have been a Christian in any conventional sense, he was a far from unquestioning Christianity. He not only didn't believe in Christian dogma, he didn't believe in Pistis Sophia, faithful belief; "I don't trust anything that remains in the dark as an object of belief." He had the consolation of knowing he wasn't alone; he was always turning back on his themes and ideas to restate earlier positions and modify them.

Professor Harold Bloom (Western Canon, Book of J, numerous anthologies) developed an interesting theory of poetry (Anxiety of Influence, A Map of Misreading) that claims creative writers must misprison their precursors in a way that clears imaginative space for their own effort. Bloom details these various misreadings, drawing strongly upon Freudian theory, then applies them to several poets and poems.

It is useful to use this line of thinking when reading the "Great Code" by Northrup Frye. As one often observes of secular writers observing sacred writings, they seem to swerve from theology in misreadings that open up creative vistas which they can decorate. I suspect that these misprisons will attract or repel a reader depending upon that reader's stance toward the secular and the sacred.

While I feel comfortable with both worlds, this book is somewhat off-putting for me in that I cannot accept many of Frye's swerves in his reading of scripture. For example, he notes a U-shaped curve that underlies the narrative action in the Bible (failure, punishment, redemption) and identifies this as a form of comedy. Also, he thinks that Shakespeare closely read the Bible account of King Saul and David and that this examination was a basis for Macbeth. And so on.

Thus, for me, Frye reads the same words that I have, yet comprehends different meanings that all serve to support the classic definition of humanism - man is the measure of all things, including God. Stated another way, Frye does not seem to be able to accept God on His terms and think about it in a literary way as if one has to choose between being either and only a critic or a believer.

Creative writers like John Milton in Paradise Lost or more recently, Cormac McCarthy in The Road have been able to take God seriously and on His terms and think creatively, humanistically, and literarily. Veering slightly, Aquinas could see God and Aristotle and do justice to both without offending either, I think.

It seems to be an important test of imagination: How do you think about God and man? Strong writers can move creatively with both and show no uneasiness. Weak writers lean too heavily on one and too heavily against the other.

And, yet, the final chapter in the Great Code, Language II, is a magnificent summarizing and synthesis of the preceding swerves. I would recommend you begin at the end with Language II then return to the start.

One of the review writers is going to be more than startled and probably very shocked to know that it is a matter of scholarly opinion that the Bible itself evolved, as do all literary works, from previous sacred scriptures, such as the Epic of Ba'al.

Anyway, I read this book years ago and just recommended it to a friend. I came to this site just wondering how reviewers saw it.

It's simply one literary critic's look at the Bible. That's all. For me, it was wonderful and opened up the Bible to me in a new way. Indeed, from this book, I went on to take an Old Testament course in a seminary and then wound up getting a Master of Divinity. If you don't want to be fascinated by the imagination of human beings (made in God's image) and are afraid to question the literary restraint of the limited English translations we are all saddled with, and if you don't believe in the broad and wonderful imagination of God, this book is definitely not for you. For those of you who know what God is thinking all the time, you can spend your money elsewhere.

This is a grand book. It opens many doors. Unless you prefer them closed.

This is an illuminating book which reveals the architecture of Western literature and its seminal relationship with the Bible. The study develops ideas already suggested in Anatomy of Criticism or The Secular Scripture, but in this occasion The Great Code provides plenty of examples that account for that relationship. Frye conceives of the Bible as a literary text: a text that codifies the archetypes, metaphors, images and myths that later on have been rewritten in every literary work belonging to Western Culture.

David Amezcua, Spain.

"The Great Code" really re-configured the way that I conceive of the Bible as a literary document. After two centuries of historical criticism (or narrative criticism as it's called when applied to the Bible), it is refreshing to see a whole new interpretive methodology which looks inward at the Bible, instead of trying to test its significance by how well it correlates to something outside of itself. And that is the central thesis to Frye's argument - that the Bible is a unified mythology, replete with its own literary devices, that hardly needs confirmation from history or archaeology to successfully tell the story (mythos) that it tells. Because of this, the book has been the target of a number of appropriate historicist critiques, all claiming that one can't cut wholly separate the work of literature from its social and cultural context. Although these criticisms aren't all fair themselves, as Frye even considers the structure of certain metaphors (like the ubiquitous flood myth) modulate themselves repeatedly via literary transmission into new texts.

The first part of the book consists of a highly condensed theory of language which Frye employs in the second half. I found this part just as useful, yet often elided in critical reviews. According to Frye, his own ideas are highly influenced by Vico's "Scienza Nuova" which posits the idea of a cyclical theory of language wherein each human epoch uses language in a unique, irreducible way. In his tripartite interpretation, there is the hieroglyphic stage in which words have the pure energy of potential magic, the hieratic stage in which words begin to reflect an objective reality of a transcendent order, and the demotic stage, where prose continues its subordination to "the inductive and fact-gathering process," and seems to be the stage we remain in today. If this evolution has taken us full circle from feel the pure immediacy of metaphor, how are we supposed to read the Bible (whose language is, of course, one of pure metaphorical immediacy)? Nietzsche said that God had lost his function, but Vico (and Frye in turn) might have replied that the Bible is simply entombed in a lost part of the cycle, inaccessible and unable to be interpreted by the demotic. His neo-Viconian theory of language goes some way in offering a theory for the vulgarism that so often takes the name of Biblical interpretation: "With the general acceptance of demotic and descriptive criteria in language, such literalism becomes a feature of anti-intellectual Christian populism" (45).

The second part begins the literary criticism as one would more formally recognize it. According to Frye, the Bible can operate independently precisely because it functions and maintains its own body of rhetorical devices, including metaphor, and type, antitype, and archetype. "We clearly have to consider the possibility that metaphor is not an incidental ornament, but one of its controlling modes of thought" (54). Metaphor and trope become the sole measure of the Bible's inner verbal consistency. The "type" and "antitype" are essentially import; he construes the entire Bible as a series of musical call-and-response gestures between the Old and New Testaments: the Resurrection is the response to the Old Testament Promised Land, the baptism in the River Jordan is the New Testament's answer to the Old Testament's Red Sea. He also integrates a number of other complex typologies, including the Creation-Incarnation-Death-Descent to Hell-Harrowing of Hell-Resurrection-Ascension-Heaven motif and a nomenclature of types, including the "demonic," "analogical," and "apocalyptic." This universe - multiverse, even - of complex metaphor, meaning, and type are the ones that we continue to recognize, read, and struggle with today, which accounts for the fact that myth goes a long way in exploring who we are and what we do as a community. Notice how Frye deftly bypasses any theological or strictly philosophical concerns. As Frank Kermode would comment almost a decade after the book was published, "Just as he exiled questions of value from the Anatomy [of Criticism], he exiles from his Biblical criticism questions of belief."

I was considering giving this book four stars, because of my occasional disagreements with it (including the arguments from historicism mentioned above). But I can't in good conscience do that. Just for the interpretive vistas that it opens up, I feel that anything less than five would convey an impression that I was less than impressed, which certainly is not the case.

In order to live up to the late Mr. Frye's ideal of a reader, you need an encyclopedic erudition and the knack to read into any given text an archipelago of implicit meanings and mythological references to be gleaned from a substratum of cultural traditions and collective lore over the ages. Should any author have the audacity to think, that he or she actually has a word to say in this matter, then hard luck lads and lasses, no consultation hours today! (see my review on "Anatomy of Criticism")

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 Đ 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.