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Apologies, ladies and gentlemen, for my truancy. It is just twenty years since I was here before. My first present duty is to thank Dr. Dedlin for her generosity in foregoing the pleasure of addressing you this morning and handing that pleasure over to me. I thank her too for sending me such a stimulating and thought-provoking study, that is, Exodus as epic. And I confess to you that I had not ever too thought very much in that line of, uh, interpretation of the story of the Exodus.
And it's always a very refreshing and rewarding thing to be made to look at a topic hitherto well known, but from a different angle completely. The topic of Exodus as an epic is stimulating. It will be a little bit difficult, because while I shall s- try to stick to my brief as treating Exodus as literature, and therefore talk about Exodus as epic, other voices will constantly be clamoring to be heard. Voices of history and archaeology.
Voices of sociology, and of politics, and of religion. And I shall do my best, if you see me wandering, if not from the truth, yet from the subject, uh, to draw me back to talk of Exodus as a epic. Uh, then there will be another little difficulty, and that is, it will not be enough for me to recite the details of the story of, of Exodus as an epic. You will, I presume, expect me to give some guidance as to what the epic means, what makes it an epic, and not just, so to speak, uh, an ordinary historical, uh, or thriller novel.
The Cambridge Encyclopedia on English Literature tells us that the first mark of an epic, the first qualification to be an epic, must be that it is a substantial body of work. On that ground, at least, Exodus certainly qualifies. For, in fact, while the story of the Exodus is given in the book of Exodus, the roots of the epic lie in the previous book, that is the book of Genesis. And the story is not finished when Israel get out of Egypt. For like many an epic, it is not merely the escape story to begin with, it is the long journey that follows until the nation reaches its glorious destiny, its promised land.
And that being so, the epic of the Exodus goes through the book of Exodus. It is in the book of Numbers in great detail. It goes on to Deuteronomy and Joshua, and some people will say it doesn't end even there, but goes on into Judges and eventually becomes an epic repeated all through the centuries. You'll say, well, why would anybody think it were an epic? Well, of course, I suppose the obvious answer, uh, the proportion, the importance, proportional bigness of the events that happened.
Just beginning with the slavery of Egypt under the powerful Pharaohs, and not only the, uh, cruel slavery to which they were subjected, but the incipient genocide. And anybody that is interested in that kind of situation down the centuries, the question of genocide, will of course find this early example of an attempt to, to, uh, uh, emasculate a whole nation. Will immediately ca- uh, respond to the vibration. And then, of course, the nation of Israel at the present time, with its memory of the gas chambers and their escape therefrom, will find the story of Exodus vibrating in their hearts.
This lies at the center of their consciousness as a nation. And then, of course, along that line, we may note the way that people of all sorts of attitudes, beliefs, and convictions have responded down the centuries to the story of the Exodus, the let my people go, you see? At the other extreme, Marxism, with its straight struggle to begin with, in smashing the power of the capitalists, as they put it, and then with their vision of a glorious promised land to be, that is in their social utopia, for which people were encouraged to, uh, sacrifice, struggle, and if need be, die in the conviction that ahead lay a promised land of an economic utopia.
Marx himself, of course, was a Jew. Or we may think, when we think of the Exodus and the long march towards the Promised Land, we may think of the Chinese communists and their long march. It originally, I believe, was a way of escape and protecting themselves from the forces of the establishment, but is now honored as a vivid memory of the long march that began, uh, their conquest of China to Marxism. Then, of course, as I said, already said, uh, uh, the story of the Exodus, uh, seems to our, uh, Jewish friends not just an interesting story from the ancient world, but a story that encapsulates the great struggles, and therefore we read it, and they read it as a thing still going on.
And then, of course, there comes the Christian interpretation. Now here we, uh, we enter the whole question of interpreting an epic. How would you interpret it, and more of that and more. But as we all know, there is a Christian interpretation of the epic, because when Jesus Christ celebrated the Last Supper with his apostles, he indicated to them that he saw his death, his coming death, as in some sense a fulfillment of Israel's crossover. So yes, I set the match for it to, uh, justify looking at the story of the Exodus as an epic of literature.
For my preparation to bring my old age up to date as possible, I consulted two, among other books. Uh, first of all, the one by Professor K. A. Klitscham, which he entitled The Reliability of the Old Testament. And I consulted that to discover what is the present state of affairs among the archaeologists and historians. Because in coming to an epic story, we at naturally ask how much of it is actual history, and how much thereafter is the accumulation of many ages of retelling and retelling and retelling the story.
So, for instance, with the Homer's Iliad, there were long periods when people thought that the Iliad was simply a made-up story, so to speak, but no real history behind it. And then Schliemann went and dug up Troy, do you see, which, uh, surprised everybody. So there was a real Troy. That didn't mean, of course, that everything in Homer's Iliad was actual factual reporting of the battles that went on around Troy, of course not. But there was a certain basis in history.
And for instance, to take an example of the implications of the history side of things, if you read in Homer about the heroes coming by ship, and somebody had been able to show that at the time of Troy there weren't such things as ships, then this would be evidence that the stories were full of anachronisms. Nonetheless, so that, of course, as a story. We, uh, ask, of course, the same thing about the Exodus story. How much is history? And it is here when the last fifty or so years, the, uh, discoveries at Ebla and at Mari, together with an accumulating additions of e- evidence of inscriptions, place the Exodus story straight in the history of that part of the world, recognizably so.
Of course, if, uh, you are of the agnostic and atheistic persuasion, you will not, uh, accept the story when it says that God delivered the Israelites out of Egypt. Of course not, you will not accept that. The issue, however, is here a question of history and geography and so forth. Were the Israelites actually in the literal Egypt under particular pharaohs, or is that also a bit of, uh, mythology? And there, uh, the massive amount of, uh, uh, archaeological finds and discoveries and reinterpretations are well encapsulated in that, uh, volume by Hitchin.
He is the emeritus professor of Egyptology in the University of Liverpool. And then again, in an effort to bring myself up to date, which is the job to do when you are my age, uh, you see, I went and got myself this big book at great price by Christopher Booker, you'll see, called The Seven Basic Plots. And whether in this class this would be regarded as literary heresy or not, I wouldn't know, of course. But you see, I as an innocent little kid can read it to see what he has to say about, uh, this particular epic story.
And he discovers and points out that it is, in his terminology, a quest story. And has much in common with many other such quest stories, both in ancient literature and in modern literature indeed. The quest stories beginning generally with some horrific situation, maybe, like Israel in bondage and under rigorous slavery. When the promise is made, or the idea got hold of, that there is a great future, something or other, in the a- a- ahead, and if only they can escape from their particular situation, they will eventually reach this desired goal.
Meanwhile, of course, there are many hindrances on the road and many things to discourage the quest, and eventually they reach nearly to the quest, and then they find there are again unexpected obstacles in the way, and only when they have passed severe tests do they come at whatever it is, the treasure or whatever it is that they are seeking. And if that is true, well, of course, the Exodus story immediately qualifies, uh, as, uh, uh, as an epic, as a quest story. It goes back, of course, earlier than Exodus, to the time when their ancestor was a nomad, a pastoralist.
And he was promised that one day, this land in which he constantly was on the move because he didn't own it and it wasn't his, he was just a pastoralist, a, a, a transhumant, as they call them. One day that land would be his, and his, uh, descendants would form a great nation, and that nation would be a great benefit, uh, same benefit to all the other nations. That's where the story begins. He then went very far, according to the, uh, story, when his, uh, uh, one of his descendants, uh, a man called Joseph, young man at the time, had dreams of the wonderful future of a king.
But his brothers envied him, were jealous of him, and sold him into Egypt. And now the question of the writers is, if ever the goal of a united nation coming out of this ancestor is inevitably achieved, it surely, surely must overcome this serious difficulty, the jealousies that would lead to internal disintegration of the tribe. And the wonderful story of Joseph, with all its psychological depth and insight of, uh, relationships, it comes to its climax when Joseph is able to unite his brothers and therefore keep together the extended family that one day will develop into a nation.
Herbal number one. the whole idea nearly scotched at its beginning. And then followed the years in Egypt that deteriorated till Israel were in slavery. And here comes Moses to deliver. And it is a contest of epic proportions, isn't it, as the story gives it. A contest between Pharaoh as the sovereign of the leading world power at the time, and not Moses, that is to say he risen to Moses, but a contest between the Pharaoh and the God of Moses and of Israel.
Of course, if you read the classical epics, you'll find other such things, only there the term God is normally in the plural to fit their theology, the gods of the nation. Um, and of course, eventually Moses, uh, Pharaoh is defeated, and Israel, uh, are free. And you watch them escaping. Here they're going in tremendous, uh, uh, joy and fulfillment that they're free. Uh, got their staff in their hands and their loins girded and their shoes on their feet, and they're about lunching the Passover land, and they get out a few miles into the desert. Ah. That's typical of escape stories.
Just when you think they've escaped, they haven't. And they meet what it appears to be an insurmountable obse- obstacle, not only an obstacle, but a trap. There's Pharaoh coming up behind with his horses, and there's the Red Sea in front of them. That all adds to the temperature and the excitement, doesn't it, if you read it? How on earth will they get through this one? But the story is that there came a great wind, and the tide separated and left a narrow tongue of land for them to go through. And the question would be, would they dare to take it?
Or would they succumb to the army behind them. A, a common thing when you come, as I say, to quest stories and escape stories. They get out into the desert, of course, and all sorts of things happen. We shall see that next week, maybe. But just to, uh, to point to my final summary, they come to Sinai and make their covenant with the unseen. But losing, uh, uh, insisting on the visual rather than the auditory. That is, they saw no form of God, they heard his words, says the story.
But losing sight of Moses and losing faith in Moses, they lost their vision completely and talked about this all being nonsense, this whole business of going to a promised land, and proceeded to to suggest that they all went back to Egypt. Here comes the epic struggle of belief, of course, in the future. Then you go on, they they come from that, and they went on, and then came out the girls from Moabite, uh, Moab country, and they were colorful, to say the least, you see.
Not quite so Puritan as Moses and company. Uh, they came out, um, you know, very predict with colors and things. And here are the uh uh Israelite young men, tired and weary and in a desert and all this etnialah. And it almost proved too much to give in to the soft options, so to speak. Uh, don't get offended, ladies. To give in to the soft options instead of carrying on the rigorous discipline of marching through this wilderness.
And then they arrived right on the borders of the land. They were nearly there and would have got in. Ah, but except there were giants in the land, says the text. Oh, they didn't deny it was a good book land and their spies who reconnoited the country for them came back with wonderful stories and bunches of grapes and kings. A good land, but they said it's impossible, it's unreasonable, the opposition is too deep, there are giants in the way. And the majority rebelled against Moses, talked about making themselves a captain and abandoning the whole scheme because the difficulties were too great to be conquered.
And, uh, so the nation was condemned to just going back to be nomads once more, and to go around the wilderness in circles, getting nowhere very fast. Then came the final test of getting in. That was the River Jordan in flood and the fortified city of Jericho. Oh, I don't need to tell you all about the battles that there ensued, except to warn you that whereas many interpreters will say that that's where the, uh, epic ends, and they all lived ever happy ever off- ever after.
The actual text of the epic is more realistic. Their conquest of Canaan was only partial at best. There followed years of fighting. In the book of Judges, they come. That is the period of the heroes. That corresponds, this proves, in literature to the Irish epic The Tawn. I don't know if Irishmen can pronounce it rightly, you'll have to. Yes, correct. Tawn. Marvelous. And its great hero Cthulhu. Or is that what he thought himself? If you want a counterpart to that in the Old Testament, then it's the book of Judges, not the Exodus story, that gives you that marvelous edit.
And while we're on Cthulhu and the Taun, it's a very interesting thing to me to observe that, uh, in those long ago days, the method of fighting known as single combat was still practiced here in Ireland. Single combat means that when two armies were fighting, they would agree to stop fighting, and each side would put forth a hero, and the two single heroes would fight each other. You find that in, uh, Homer's Iliad, of course, three times over in Homer's Iliad, when the Greeks are fighting the Trojans, and one side puts forth a hero to fight for him.
So all the armies, both armies have to sit down then under a truce. And the second army, uh, uh, looks around to try and find a hero that dare go out and face the first hero, you see. And it's a very, very, uh, carefully ordered, uh, truce. It was a sacred truce. If you shot the hero from the other side, um, uh, while the truce was on, that was a very serious offense to have. And we know the pattern of it, how the heroes would eventually come out a little bit each from his camp and then stop and hurl abuses at each other, one at a time, of course, uh, second one trying to outdo the first as though they were politicians.
And uh, uh, then when they're done with the abusing, they would go forth again and uh, tie the sword to each other. And in that context, the choice of weapon was an exceedingly important thing. Now, we noticed that particular feature in the story of Cebulon in the torn, because when Phirdia comes at length to fight with him, they gentlemanly ask each other, uh, uh, you know, what weapon shall we use today? And they decide it like honorable gentlemen, and they fight the top round, uh, till even, and and then they comfort each other and hope each other has a good hotel to stay in, and they come back the next day, and, uh, they again inquire, what weapon shall we choose?
It was only when Cahulan was in danger of being slain by Firdiar that he cheated a little bit, as far as I can understand, and got his secret weapon and hurled A it bit at Firdiar. failure. The similar story in the Old Testament, uh, is the story of David and Goliath. That is an instance when two armies were fighting and the one side put forth a hero, uh, and so both armies had to sit down, and the Philistine hero was Goliath, and then the Israelites were panic struck and couldn't think of who they could send out to be their hero when David volunteered, and so forth.
And they do in the manner of heroes. Uh, they go out a little bit from the camp, and then they stand still within shouting distance, and Goliath abuses David, and David in turn abuses Goliath in the strongest, most colorful language. And after that, of course, they meet. But also in that story, this question of what weapons did they use becomes a central feature of the story. But now I wander too far, I must come back to my topic. We have been talking about the Exodus as an epic, and I've already hinted, while I shall develop next week, that the epic begins before the story of the book of Exodus and Egypt.
It, uh, then centers there, leads on to the journey, but as an epic, it goes on and on to the end of the journey, on through history. My approach then in this particular talk this morning is to take the, uh, uh, uh, story of the, uh, Exodus and to compare it and then contrast it with other ancient epics that we know, and to see what they have in common, and then to notice wherein that their differences lie. So I put some of those observations for you on your sheet.
Number two is an obvious thing. Epic very often was a recital of past formative events in a nation's history. So if we take Homer's Iliad, uh, it used to be the majority view at any rate, that these were songs sung by the bards when the present heroes were having their feasts, and the songs were there, the bards were there for their entertainment, and they sang of the heroic, uh, feats of their ancestors.
And then subsequently, of course, some genius, his name Homer or something else, a collaboration of people, took those ancient songs and wove them into a masterpiece of literature to stage, so to speak, development. But taken by the Greeks for centuries as the memory of the formative events of the great struggles, heroic struggles, that lay at the foundation of their remote history. The Iliad, in that s- uh, uh, uh, sense, is the same thing, of course, but this time written by Virgil for the propaganda purposes of the Emperor Augustus, and is therefore what we call secondary epic, as distinct from primary epic.
Primary epic, like Homer's, uh, stories of the heroes, originally arising out of that context of a heroic community who love to sing at their feats in times past, and then they're preserved in the sophisticated poetry of Homer. Whereas Virgil's Aeneid is an epic, but of a different kind. It doesn't really arise out of past history. This is a literary, uh, device. It looks back to the past, and from its legends weaves together a mythical tale of the origin of the Roman nation, coming right up to the present, to the time when, uh, uh, in figured Benue, the foundations of Rome had been laid, that is the foundation of that society, and from the realms of prophecy, it is already foreseen who the great people in the Roman history will be, coming down to Augustus himself.
So, yes, both epics to do with the past of an a a a with a nation's past. And so, of course, the Jewish Passover is the memory and the recital of what was felt as a formative thing, formative event in the nation's history, and has been recited ever since. It is an epic, though it's a living epic, because every year at the Passover ceremony, which is a family thing, the father in the family will ask, uh, what does this all mean?
And, uh, a boy in the, uh, family, uh, is instructed he must at one stage in the proceedings ask his father, what does this all mean? And the father will proceed to retell the story of the Exodus. Then, as I say, many of these epics, the ancient ones, talk about the fighting of the ancient he- uh, heroes. I have already, uh, talked about it in the Iliad. You'll find it the same in the Aeneid, and then, of course, in the Irish, uh, poem.
The interesting thing is that in the story of the Exodus itself, strictly so called, the, the escape from terror and the early days of, of on the journey, there is scarcely any fighting whatsoever. That is a very striking difference in the story as told at the time of the Exodus. The fighting came later, at the end of the journey, the time of Joshua, and as I said, heroic battles of that sort as a- as uh, uh, reported as told in literature, epic literature, in the book of Judges, and thereafter in First Samuel.
Then to come to the motif of the journey. Christopher Booker stresses this in his analysis, he will have it that the story is a quest story. And of course, the, uh, uh, story of the, uh, of the Exodus is precisely that, because Moses at the burning bush is told that God has come down to deliver his people out of Egypt and to bring them to a land flowing with milk and honey, as was promised to their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So the journey motif is part of the story.
Now, of course, that is true of other ancient epics. The Gilgamesh epic, it has two journeys. There is the first great journey of the hero Gilgamesh himself. He was king of Uruk. And so we gather his capital city was provided with fortifications and walls made of wood and were the admiration of everybody.
Because in that area, wood is very scarce. To get the wood, you had to go from Uruk, uh, up to the northern countries where the forests abounded. But if you did that, of course, you were in those days going to the bounds of the known world. Beyond that point of the known world, anything could happen. We'll go into forests, there might be hobgoblins and giants with one eye and what have you, that one is not accustomed to meet on the normal omnibus.
And, uh, therefore it was fantastic. You wouldn't know if you came across the sea, the Mediterranean, and went too far that way, you might fall off the edge. And of course, the what happened to the sun when the sun went down in the west and came up at the east, what on earth was it then doing? Did it get into a boat and sail underneath the earth and come up the other side, or what exactly was happening. So literal geographical journeys, because they were in distant parts, uh, fed the mind with all sorts of fantasies and fantastic geography.
Understandable enough. There were days, ladies and gentlemen, when the British Isles were thought to be perilously near the edge of the world. Ultima Thule in the west. If you read Buka's interpretation of that journey in the Gilgamesh epic, Buka bases his interpretation of these things on what one might call Jungian psychology. And when the hero reports, or the whoever wrote the story of Gilgamesh reports of the fantastic reactions and wonders and fears and marvels that he saw in this forest, really what the literature is doing us is helping us to see the psychological reactions of ancient people and what made up the different sides of their personalities, whether the the m- the manly side or the female side of the character, or the ego as distinct from the basic self.
So, on this first journey, uh, uh, people like Booker will interpret it, even the fantastic, uh, geography, uh, and the fantastic experiences as evidencing a kind of Jungian psychology on the part of the ancients, though they were unaware of it, and a spirituality very much in common with the Hindu and Buddhist, uh, uh, forms of spirituality. There is no fantastic geography in the story of the Exodus.
You may say, but doesn't it claim there was a miracle at the Dead Sea, at the Red Sea? Yes, a kind of miracle, yes. But the Red Sea is the Red Sea. It isn't some fantastic ocean. You'll see. Egypt was a real place. The journey was through a real desert in the Middle East with the sundry tribes known in history and archaeology who lived there. And the promised land that they were going to was not some far away paradise. Wasn't even heaven. It was a literal land full of giants and things and other cities, and some of them advanced in their technology and chariots of iron.
Gilgamesh story has a second journey in it, uh, and that is highly interesting because of his awareness as king, particularly through the death of his Muslim friend Enkidu, but one day he must die. And when that reality, so to speak, faced him, the inevitability of death, that he too, the great king of Uruk, must die. He went in search of the secret of immortality.
And we have described the great journey that he went through, because he had heard that there was one of the ancestors, Utma-Bushdin, that had managed to survive death and come to the world of immortality, and he went to see him. And after many hideous, uh, uh, experiences, eventually he found him, and he relented and gave him the secret of immortality. He had to gather a certain plant from the deep. He did so and got it, and when he way- went back with it. And on his journey, being tired, he s- sat down by a well and slept.
And as he slept, a serpent came out of the well and stole the old, uh, marvelous herb. And that was the end of, uh, uh, Gilgamesh's hopes of immortality, and he went home and just got on, uh, with running the city. But of course, that story is not just a story, is it? Because of its universal appeal. When there come times in life where it dawns on us as a personal thing, the inevitability of death, and the whole question of whether there is a to be as immortality, and therefore the search for it.
So does Gilgamesh epic, uh, resonate even with us because it's, uh, one of life's major and fundamental interests and struggles. In the Odyssey, there is also a long journey. After the battle at Troy, Odysseus sets out home. It takes him a long while to get home. You'll see. But the journey that he takes also has fantastic geography and oceanography in its own not.
Lands of godlesses like Circe and Calypso, you'll see, and uh, one-eyed monsters and suchlike things. But eventually he he he leaves that world somehow, and uh, in the ship provided by Thiacha, he comes back home to his dear and darling wife. Fantastic geography. In the course of coming home, however, he's shown the secret of going down into the underworld to get directions to how to find his way home. Similarly, in the Aeneid, Aeneas, the after the sack of Troy, is now by, uh, divine command going to seek a new world to establish a new order.
But on the way, he's given the secret of the underworld and manages to go down the underworld, and where he sees a vision of the future rulers of Rome that will yet be born. So Virgil is taking the old journey motive, so he has Aeneas going back to down to the underworld, but now he interprets it in the sense of the, uh, reincarnation, uh, perhaps he had learned from Pythagoras the Greek, or else from the Hindus. And because he thinks in re- terms of reincarnation down in the underworld, he can see the souls of the future rulers of Rome, the great heroes of Rome, lining up to be born once more, thus to form the great Roman Empire.
If we take that an element in epic, and then we look at Israel's epic of the Exodus, there is no fantastic geography. There is no visit to the underworld. It's plain straightforward geography. Perhaps to some that will limit the excitement of the epic because it lacks that element of the marvelous, maybe. But that's where our, uh, uh, comparisons bring us. But then let's look at this other thing that so many of these stories have in common.
What is the goal of the journey? According to those epics, the ancient epics of David, and then according to Israel as they escaped from Egypt to make their journey to their great goal. What goal? What is it? Well, with the Odyssey, it is the quest of getting home. It's a deeply moving story, isn't it? So I thought it is. I shall say. On his way home, the rascally odd misuse of the quick wit. He had angered and with a Circe, and she was a lady of some kind of charm that had a way of turning gentlemen into geeks.
And I told my authorities in this matter that she represents, uh, well, how should we put it in polite language, you'll say, the lower end of physical attractions may be. And though he dallied with her for a while, no, the thoughts of his dear true wife at home, uh, served to break the attraction down. Ah, but he came across a visitor. Now she was a very different lady, or half a goddess, living in the never-never fairy land of wonders, you see. And she offered him her hand, his soul, and with it, so to speak, divination, if you please.
Married to a goddess is something, isn't it? Well, he he he stayed there quite a long while, and you know his wife doesn't mind how long. But it did stay, but in the end, ah, the thoughts of his dear wife of hers. Had he known all the story of the suitors and the pressure she were under for years, uh, and how faithful she had been to him, all the more readily would he have come home, so to say. Go to get home.
And the value of a faithful spouse in marriage and all that. Guildliness we have already talked about. The quest in his second journeys was the quest for immortality. And the cup of immortality, when he was about to drink it, was dashed from his lips. And he had to die like the rest of us. The goal in the indeed is not the any either of these personal things, but, uh, the founding of a new race and empire.
Significant for Aeneas because he had been a Trojan and one of their heroes, and had fought mentally and bravely to maintain Troy and all that Troy stood for in its position and its values and its history. But the Greeks had won, and Troy was in play. And rather than stay behind and try and do anything more, his dear wife Leusa appeared to him, she was already dead anyway, appeared to him and gave him leaves to pass. And his gods encouraged him that there was no point in trying to defend Troy anymore or rebuild it.
He must strike out fur- further to further a field and start a new race with a new beginning, but with a glorious future ahead. It is, of course, political in its, in its goal. If you ask what the goal of Israel was, then to appreciate it fully, you will, we will have to start, as we hope to next week, at the real beginning of the story. Abram, the ancestor of the race, was a pastoralist. That is, he kept sheep, but he was a nomad, or they, as they call it, a transhumant.
In those days, against his background, there were the very big cities of Babylon, Babel, Erech, and so forth, so the record tells us in the book of Genesis. There were already those early famous cities, and Abram came from Ur of Chaldees, he and his father Terah. Now, in those final days, of course, you had two major forms of life. City dwellers. But around those cities, there could also be nomads who kept fairly near to the city, but moved around, lived in tents, but were free to wander and did wander over the whole countryside, so that from the south of Babylonia, where, uh, uh, uh, Ur was, you find Terah, uh, Abram's father, and Abram himself living up in Mesopotamia, northern Mesopotamia, and eventually coming down into Canaan.
And they were no- nomads, always shifting, not possessing the land that they graze with their flocks. The two forms of life then, city dwellers and nomads, two sociologically very distinct ways of living. And to Abram there came the promise that this very land in which he was a nomad, there were some Philistine cities at the time with city dwellers, but he a nomad. That land with all its changes, that style of life with all its constant change and impermanency, that very land one day would become the permanent possession of his and his descendants.
Secondly, that he should have descendants so numerous that they would form a great nation. Kings would come of him, and that his nation would be of great benefit to other nations. That then was the promise, the goal. Needless for me to say, isn't it? Not only is this a literal geography, but the implications are with us still, aren't they? A matter of inevitable great debate and complex politics.
Nonetheless, it is an epic story. And like all epic stories, when you think of the journey, there are endless obstacles in the way. And so we shall find, next week in our next talk, we shall consider all the obstacles that arose that threatened to stultify the whole journey, stultify the hope, and bring it to disaster. That will be the tensions in the story.
And just to give one example of it, to illustrate what I mean. When Aeneas, uh, left Troy and took to his ship. He got, uh, shipwrecked and blown up on the coast of Carthage. So the story goes. Now, Carthage was a well-founded city. It was ruled by a queen by the name of Dido. She had been recently widowed and was now far enough distant from that to see her opportunity, but that's another story. Uh, uh, and of course, uh, Aeneas was comforted and fed and, uh, in a palace, if you please, and in a gorgeous city.
And the Romans who read Virgil's Aeneid those centuries later when he wrote, will of course, uh, know what Carthage stood for. It had been a thorn in the side of the Romans for centuries. So much so that the famous old senator, when he Cato, when he would arise to speak in the Senate, whatever he spoke about, whatever bill was before the parliament, so to speak, would end his speech with De bella est Cartago. Artis must be destroyed. Came to be, at one stage, the great power that threatened to overcome Rome.
Hannibal during that life nearly put an end to Rome anyway. They were a very different nation from the Romans. The Roman aristocracy was farmers and generals in the army. They didn't care much for commerce. They thought it below their dignity, like my lords and my ladies in the Englands of sixteen and seventeen and eighteen hundred, and some of them still. But, uh, uh, we'll see. Carthage, on the other hand, having its origins in Tyre and Sidon, was an empire built on trade.
But they were making that according to Neid's story, you'll see. Uh, Carthage that they had built in Africa was a real city. And you can understand how Aeneas felt like sitting down. This was a beautiful civilized city. Here's it we. And he had a son by her. And might have settled down forever. When his patron deity whispered in his ear that it was not for Aeneas to do this kind of thing and settle down in country, and he must take to the sea again and hang himself off to the distant land, for his destiny was to found a new race and a new order in Italy.
So he left the beautiful city, overcame its attraction, and got on with his destiny. You will find two such stories in the Exodus epic. The story of Joseph, who was the mediator that got Israel into Egypt in the first place, and there fed and sheltered them while they became from a clan to a great, a, a nation. Joseph, who according to the story rose to supreme power, second in command under Pharaoh, minister of agriculture and fisheries in the land of Egypt, and by his skillful administration of the exchequer, uh, you'll see was very near to the prime minister, uh, namely Pharaoh.
Anyway, uh, having, uh, risen to that great eminence in Egypt, married an Egyptian wife, who thought that Joseph would have been content to have his tomb in the equivalent of Westminster Abbey in Egypt. I know, because before he died, he straightly charged the Israelites that when they left Egypt, he said, for you're going to leave Egypt. This is our God-given destiny.
We shall leave Egypt and go to the land that has been promised. When you go, please take my bones with you. It's the same kind of situation, isn't it? On the journey, marvelous attractions to settle down and forget the appointed destiny, and be prepared to leave the comfort and the advance of the, uh, civilized city to strike out across the desert in the hope and expectation of a new order and a new destiny.
And the second story is that of Moses, of course. While his people were being persecuted and the male children thrown into the Nile, so the story goes. Moses' parents put him in a basket and hid him among the reeds near the banks of the Nile. Pharaoh's daughter discovered him and took him into the palace where he grew up, educated in all the wisdom and philosophy and government arts of Egypt, and might have lived there in tremendous comfort and affluence and position of great authority as a prince in the palace, even though his brother nationals were groaning in the brick kilns.
What should he do? Doubtless inculcated with the story of the nation's promised destiny by his mother in the days when she nurtured him, as she did for some four or five years, Moses eventually decided, as he would need to do, and throw in his lot with this gathering of slaves that were his national brothers, and endure the rigors of the journey to their promised land.
I- I- I'm not telling the story to to retell any, uh, Sunday school lessons that you have learned, but simply to point out the comparison of the Exodus story as an epic with these elements in common with some of the other ancient epics that we know. The features that are in common then are, of course, then the contrasts between them. I mentioned at seven the sense of destiny. And there, of course, the Iliad among the ancient epics is perhaps the, uh, clearest.
The sense of destiny, and we have talked about it, I needn't repeat it. In the ass, therefore, a God-given destiny to found a new order. Israel, against the background of the great cities and cultures of the ancient Middle East, senses a God-given destiny to found a new nation and a new order. Then let's notice what I had listed under number six: The fighting, not during the journey, but the end of the journey.
Booker makes a great point of this in his analysis. It is common to many, uh, quest stories, that just when you think you're going to arrive at the goal and take the prize in your hand, there comes upon you a bitter, sharp battles and fighting. So it was with Aeneas. So it was with Odyssey, of course. The story as given by Homer in the Odyssey is only halfway through when Adria Stews gets hurt.
So the next half must be important in the poet's eyes because of the proportion he gives to it. And that is the story of the state of affairs that he found when he arrived home. The suitors harassing his wife now for years, and she almost now on the point of giving up. She has said when she completes the cot on her loom, then she will consent to be the wife of one of the suitors. She works sex all day, then at night, crafty soul, and that's it, you'll see, and uh, and uh, they must have been stupid, the suitors, but anyway, that's the story.
Uh, they didn't see how it came to be like that, and uh, so they spent the time to weed this, weed this bit of cloth. But it was nearly, here's the drama of it, nearly the time that she would have to give in. Meanwhile, the suitors were gobbling up the estate and growing insolent and so forth and so on. And our bishops arrived. And does he not know? And will his wife even know him when he comes? That is a little realistic touch.
At one stage in my career, I worked in the Department of Paleography and Diplomatic in Durham, and it was a side department of the Department of History, and we had charge of all the cathedrals, monuments, and records going down to the time of William the Conqueror. And so we had many kinds of documents, and then I was taught the purpose of what are called indentures, you'll see. You made an agreement with somebody, you wrote it out this side to that side on the same bit of paper, and then you cut the paper in two with a zigzag pen, and one party took the one and the other took the other, and when they came to enforce the agreement, you see, you could check if the other side was an imposter by whether it, um...
So that was a story. And I'm told, and I, of course, being innocent, believed it, that when the knights went on their great wars and perhaps didn't come back till they had ten years, they would have changed, of course. And how would, uh, the wives know whether it was the dear husband come back or some imposter or other. You've got that same kind of suspense with odd, uh, uh, this is coming home, haven't you? Yes. And he shows his prowess by various schemes, shooting the arrow through the axes and stringing a bow.
And he is known to his old nurse by the scar on his leg, when he has to fight the suitors in a desperate, bloody battle. The fighting's there for, just when we thought he was home. And you see, uh, uh, so it is with the Aeneas. When Aeneas reaches Italy, his journeys are over, but it's there that the real fighting begins in the second part of the Aeneid, and scholars with better taste than mine say that the second part of the Aeneid goes rather flat.
It's a too much of a copy of Homer or some ridiculous wars that are not very convincing. But there you are, he had to fight the tribes in the Athenian. And then he aspired to marry a certain Lavinia. And at last there was a big prince called Turnus around the place, and he had hopes for this Lavinia as well apparently. And that led to a great battle between Aeneas and Turnus. Who should be the hero, so to speak, to dominate the land from now on. The fighting at the end of the journey. And of course, the Exodus as an epic is no different.
There is little fighting, uh, at the Exodus itself. In fact, the text will tell you that when they were at the Red Sea, they were told by God, now you won't need to fight. Stand still, and God will fight for you. There were some battles across the wilderness later on, but the real battle came, according to the text, at the end of the journey. And the question, of course, is what is the point of it? In the Odyssey, the battle, the slaying of the sto- suitors, the question was who is the true husband, lord and king?
His homecoming, and then the fight to establish his identity. In the Iliad, it's the fight with the local tribes and with the local uh, tenants to decide who is to be the dominant and governing race. What is the point of the fighting with the Israelites at the end of the journey? Well, not just possession of the land. For under, under Joshua, only a part of the land was, uh, conquered. Then there were many battles thereafter.
It was more like to determine what kind of a society would it be, built on what basic values and according to what morality is. So now, just to sum up what I've been trying to do as I wandered through this lecture, forgive me my wanderings, but that is the fruit of old age. Um, I've been comparing the Exodus as an epic with other epics, ancient epics, to be fair to them, in the ancient world.
And noticing features in which the Exodus epic is very similar to, as the basic framework of several of those other ancient epics. Which we may rightly call it, from a different point of view, an epic. On the other hand, we have noticed the differences between them. Next week, we shall start then to look at the story itself. Story of the promise, the original goal set, and all the different obstacles and struggles and fightings that occurred on the journey and at the end of the journey, and what the goal has turned out to be.
Thank you very much, David. I just, I'm sure you've got the questions you normally have to raise yourself. Can I ask you just one or two? You are very fine. They're very big.
First of all, fifth century BC, great period of the Greeks. What did the Hebrews and the Greeks know of each other at that period? Secondly, this idea that is so deep in all our psyches from our reading and our tasks, that we're going on a journey, and that if we have our orientation correct, we will arrive at a better place. Ideologies of all kinds have been like that. As you mentioned, Marxism was the, uh, the most recent dream of justice for all people, and that shows that it can't, it can't realize itself due to the nature of mankind.
Well, did the Greeks, like the Hebrews, of which we are, I think, more the inheritors than of the Greeks, uh, did they believe that history was an ongoing process which would take us somewhere? Because that's all deep in our consciousness, that we're all going somewhere if we get the right ideology. And the other question is... I'm fair when she starts out with two. She says we only have to think of it till next week. The other question. Is it possible now for there to be a modern epic?
Is the idea of heroes, journeys, and wonderful goals possible for capitalism, which seems to be the thing that everybody is after from this globe? I think they are highly pertinent and valuable questions, of course. Eh, what did the Greeks and Hebrews know of each other? In the century. In the 5th century, that is in the four hundreds BC. Well, earlier than that, of course, in the Hebrew side, times of the life of Isaiah, you'll read of the islands and Yaban, J-A-B-A-N, is translated, and people think that that is really a Hebrew way of talking about Ionia.
So, yes, the Hebrews were aware, even if they were distant islands, so to speak, of the, uh, Greeks, uh, and so forth. And that is, uh, in Isaiah's time, which is before, of course, it's about sixth, uh, 7th or eighth century BC. Then, of course, there is the, uh, knowledge of Greeks of, of the East anyway, whether of Israel or not is another thing, because the Greeks got their alphabet via the Phoenicians. And the Phoenicians, being the traders, brought across the, uh, early form of alphabet from, uh, southern Jordan, I suppose around there, and elsewhere in the east, uh, where they had developed an alphabet as distinct from pictograms.
That is to say, if a pictogram like modern modern Chinese still, you draw things. So if it's a house, you draw a little house. That's how you represent it in writing. Somebody had the bright idea among the Semitic peoples of turning pictograms into an alphabet, and they did it this way. When you saw the sign for a house, you see, the graphic sign for a house, instead of pronouncing that what in Hebrew would be faith, you took it to represent the initial consonant b. An ox, alef in Hebrew, it had a pictogram that originally was the face of an ox with two horns, and in pictograms, when you saw that, you said, ah, left to yourself.
But when that was turned into an alphabet, now that letter became what is called technically a stopped vowel. It is our letter A in English, and our letter A. That in modern art is an ox. And the Hebrew for ox is alef. So originally, when you saw that, you said alef yourself. Somebody had the bright idea of when you saw that, let that stat stand not for alef, but for a.
And so you had the beginnings of an alphabet. Well, in the course of time, as people would do, some people stand sideways, something like that. And then people standing the other way around. And the ancient, uh, Semitic alphabet that goes alef, be, dimel, dalet came across to the Greeks. They called it alpha, beta, gamma, delta. So the Greeks became aware of what they called Phoenician letters, you see, because of the trade.
And from the Greeks it went to the Romans and then throughout, uh, the, uh, English, uh, and European languages. Secondly, it is, if you come a bit beyond, uh, say the fifth century, fourth century, you're coming down to people like Pythagoras and Plato, then they knew something not only of the Middle East, but obviously had some contact with further with Hinduism in particular. The doctrines of Pythagoras philosophy, taken over by Plato, are strongly influenced by Hinduism and reincarnation and even transmigration of souls, you see.
So yes, there was some knowledge. And the, the link between that are the Ionian philosophers, who were the first, not the mainland Greeks, but the philosophers in Ionia, who lived under the Persians, and hence your ongoing connection Oh yeah. with Euripides. So... Highly complicated. It's a highly complicated thing. Anybody that does the, the ancient Near East must be extraordinary. All those happen must be. I'm sure you're welcome. I think we better bring this to an end, but the big question, all of a say, we could think of Oh, please.
is, is whether there could be or is a modern ethic. Yes. And whether the Greeks believed in the journey. Now, I think you're all agreeing with me that David's delivery was epic. Thank you very much. I've lost so much knowledge, and all it makes you know is that it's so bad it's a normal topic. It is always a wonderful thing to see a connection between bits of knowledge that you have here and there, to bring them together.
Now, let my people go.
