The Great Code: The Bible and Literature

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The Great Code: The Bible and Literature

4.14 of 5 stars 4.14 · rating details · 149 ratings · 24 reviews

An examination of the influence of the Bible on Western art and literature and on the Western creative imagination in general. Frye persuasively presents the Bible as a unique text distinct from all other epics and sacred writings. “No one has set forth so clearly, so subtly, or with such cogent energy as Frye the literary aspect of our biblical heritage” (New York Times B...more

Paperback, 288 pages

Published November 11th 2002 by Mariner Books (first published January 1st 1981)

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Mar 19, 2011 John David rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: from-the-library, literary-or-critical-theory, favorites

“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, repl...more “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.
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Dec 11, 2010 B. Hawk rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biblical-studies

This review may reveal how traditional I am in my literary theoretical approaches, but I love Frye's book. It is often cited as one of the most provocative literary discussions of the Bible, and with good reason: in his estimation, the Bible rests at the heart of the "rhetoric of religion" and is the fundamental "imaginative influence" that pervades Western literature and thought (xxi). The structure of the book itself also lends a helpful approach, as Frye offers discussion of the Bible in term...more This review may reveal how traditional I am in my literary theoretical approaches, but I love Frye's book. It is often cited as one of the most provocative literary discussions of the Bible, and with good reason: in his estimation, the Bible rests at the heart of the "rhetoric of religion" and is the fundamental "imaginative influence" that pervades Western literature and thought (xxi). The structure of the book itself also lends a helpful approach, as Frye offers discussion of the Bible in terms of "Language," "Myth," "Metaphor," and "Typology" in two parts. In this organization we see the blending of both traditional forms of biblical interpretation and the incorporation of modern scholarship on language and literature--a fusion at the core of Frye's analyses, and one that gives the book so much of its impact. This blending, in fact, is what makes this book so relevant for studying the Bible in culture, as it forms much of the Western tradition, even predicating reactions against it. The relevance of this type of discussion is apparent for a medievalist, who must negotiate tradition with modern critical approaches to it. In all of this, Frye provides a secular approach to the Bible as literature, but he does so with an admiration for it as a work of art, rather than a purely skeptical perspective.

The essential starting point for Frye's discussion is that "the Bible is more like a small library than a real book" (xii), but it contains "a unified structure of narrative and imagery" (xiii). It thus creates a coherent "mythological universe" (xviii) that has shaped Western culture and its "human imaginative response" through literature (231). Within this overall unity, Frye sees the metaphor of typology (a deeply medieval concept--and thus relevant for medievalists approaching the Bible as/in literature), which he describes as follows: "The two testaments form a double mirror, each reflecting the other but neither the world outside" (78)--"The New Testament, in short, claims to be, among other things, the key to the Old Testament, the explanation of what the Old Testament really means" (79). Furthermore, he describes the overall scheme of the Bible as "a sequence of seven main phases: creation, revolution or exodus (Israel in Egypt), law, wisdom, prophecy, gospel, and apocalypse" which "is another aspect of Biblical typology, each phase being a type of the one following it and an antitype of the one preceding it" (106). Setting these general structures within a larger umbrella of unity, Frye also describes the imagery of the Bible as consisting of "apocalyptic," or the ideal, and "demonic," or the corruption of the ideal, along with the "analogical" that stands between these as the "types" of the Old Testament awaiting fulfillment in the New (139-40). The details of the analysis constructed are too many to rehearse, but they are worthy of a full reading.

Underlying much of Frye's discussion, of course, is an implicit polemical (and political) argument against the problems of literalism and legalism that has held hostage various Christian interpretations of the Bible for centuries. This is especially apparent in the conclusion to the last chapter of this book, when Frye calls for a new means of thinking about "the body of human imaginative response" to the Bible: "[P]erhaps it is only through the study of works of human imagination that we can make any real contact with the level of vision beyond faith" (232). Not much needs to be said about this argument, but it is yet another admirable trait, as he seeks to explain that the Bible may be understood for its literary metaphorical value, not just as a religious justification. Part of this implicit argument is also tied up with what seem the oddity of references to Marx--whom Frye sees as another of the deep roots of modern Western culture (and becoming part of the global culture, as seen in references to Marxism in China, xix-xx), and "the direct heir of the revolutionary and socially organized forms of religion derived from the Bible" (xx; cf. 16, 80, 114). This very acknowledgement and the parallels drawn are evidence of such roots, and of the strong presence of Marxism in the academy generally and literary studies in particular.

With these oddities withstanding, The Great Code is a substantial contribution to examinations of the Bible, and this is evident in its influence on subsequent literary approaches. Frye's work, then, provides a key study for students of the Bible, literature, and even Western culture generally.(less)

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Mar 18, 2009 Joseph rated it 5 of 5 stars

Excellent book on the Bible and its literary force. This book should be read carefully, then re-read by anyone who takes seriously the Bible. Reading this book illuminated three important things for me: first, creationists and Biblical literalists seem to have no clue what they're reading when they pick up the Bible; Christian evolutionists seem to have no clue what they're reading when they pick up the Bible; and the rest of us seem to have no clue what they're reading when they pick up the Bib...more

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Jan 04, 2009 Tom rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: commentary

This was a very important book to me. I began to look upon language differently after reading this book. Metaphors became very important. I began to collect similes and metaphors used in everyday speech that my patients used to describe their symptoms.
Favorite quotes: "The causal thinker is confronted with a mass of phenomena that he can understand only by thinking of them as effects, after which he searches for their precursors. These causes are antitypes of their effects, that is, revelations...more

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Aug 19, 2012 رائد الجشي rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

من الكتب الرائعة جدا
جهد المؤلف واضح جدا
في ثراء المعلومات والإستشهادات بكتب الديانات الاخرى وغيرها
ومن المقارنة العلمية والأدبية
ومن استنطاق الصور الجمالية في الإنجيل ولغته الشعرية الأدبية
يجعلك تعشق سفر التثنية كخامة ثرية
ويحاول أن يتعامل بحيادية مع النص
وإن كانت تجنح إلى العلمانية قليلا
من الكتب التي استمتعت بالصداع الذي صاحبني
وأن أمرر الخطوط الصفراء وأستلهم الصور

وجهد المترجم كان واضحا أيضا
ومثريا للكتاب الأساس
مترجم يجعلك تشعر أن النص كتب باللغة العربية كلغة أولى
ويضيف إليه ما يجعل النص المترجم أكثر...more

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Oct 30, 2011 Kirk Lowery rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-criticism, bible

This book is Frye's take on the Bible and its meaning. As a literary critic, he's clearly out of his element tackling the Bible: he makes egregious mistakes, is dependent upon biblical scholars for essential ideas, and presents his own without a context. And this lack of context shows. His views on typology are arbitrary and uncontrolled by any hermeneutical principle that I could detect. And since linguistic meaning is created by juxtaposition, his association of type and anti-type produced lud...more

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Apr 25, 2008 Johnny rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bible, literature

Northrup Frye's work on T.S. Eliot was well-received and, as a literary critic, he is one of the few that quote Wallace Stevens regularly. When I was struggling to write my "Rhetorical Critical Analysis of the Balaam Oracles," I read some early Frye but was much more enamored with his contemporary, Wayne Booth. However, I wish I had been aware of this book (published one year after my book on Balaam) and Robert Polzin's Moses and the Deuteronomist when I had been pursuing my effort to examine th...more Northrup Frye's work on T.S. Eliot was well-received and, as a literary critic, he is one of the few that quote Wallace Stevens regularly. When I was struggling to write my "Rhetorical Critical Analysis of the Balaam Oracles," I read some early Frye but was much more enamored with his contemporary, Wayne Booth. However, I wish I had been aware of this book (published one year after my book on Balaam) and Robert Polzin's Moses and the Deuteronomist when I had been pursuing my effort to examine the Bible using literary techniques.

The Great Code: The Bible and Literature is a book of literary criticism. As such, it uses literary approaches. This means that some devout people may take offense when reading it. Frye does not begin where I personally begin (that the Bible is the wholly-inspired Word of God). So, he will speak of "myth" where I would use the term, "myth-like." I use the term "myth-like" because many of the narratives in the Bible seem analogous to the myths of neighboring (and even, later) cultures. It is not my job to make a historical judgment (usually made against the historicity of a biblical passage by modern critics), but rather to work with the narrative to determine what spiritual fruit it will bear in my life. I believe Jonah was really swallowed by a great fish and came out alive to teach him and subsequent generations some important lessons about spiritual smugness. If someone brought me a signed memo from God saying, "Didn't happen! Just kidding!" it wouldn't stop me from studying the book as the Word of God. For some, it would.

Those people should avoid this book. Frye bandies about terms like "myth," "metaphor," and "typology" with great vigor and enthusiasm. He makes an important distinction between "Weltgeschichte" (world history focused on evidentiary chains in this world) and "Heilsgeschichte" (salvation history focused on the spiritual truth in all narratives). If you don't think you can learn something from that perspective, avoid this book like the plague.

On the other hand, he offers a brilliant analysis of Ecclesiastes 3 by placing this inspired wisdom of the Bible against the secular wisdom of the rest of the world. The rest of the world had wisdom based on finding the cycles of nature and fitting in. When Qoheleth (author of Ecclesiastes) writes that God put "eternity" into the hearts of humanity, he was saying that there is something that is above and beyond the natural cycle. Therefore, part of wisdom is finding out what that "eternity" is that God has placed in the heart.

Perhaps, however, the most significant insight in the book was what he was saying about the Hebrew and Christian emphasis on "hearing." He points out that the FALL is about the "eye" and the reason for forbidding graven images is that humanity is often satisfied with what it "sees," so polytheism uses "images," but authentic religion cannot be satisfied with the vision--it must hear. "The word listened to and acted upon is the starting point of a course of action: the visible object brings one to a halt in front of it." (p. 117). This brings new meaning to the sacred SHEMA of the Israelites (Deuteronomy 6:4): "Listen up, Israel, God, our Lord--ONE GOD." Don't try to see HIM. Don't try to add anything to HIM. Just experience HIM as ONE. And, of course, this underscores Jesus' 15 different times of saying "The one who [actually] has an ear, let that one hear [with the sense of obeying]. (less)

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Jul 28, 2012 Jared rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: good-nonfiction, good-philosophical-theological

Our final two weeks in Dr. Watson's "Reading the Bible as Literature" course were devoted to The Great Code by Northrop Frye, the famous literary critic. His book is devoted to an examination of the biblical material from a literary perspective. The title comes from William Blake: "The Bible is the great code of art and literature."

I absolutely loved the book, but almost no one else did. Gallagher was my only fellow Frye fan. The response of others in the class ranged from "I haven't read it" to...more

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Jan 04, 2013 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Bible Scholars and Literary Critics

Recommended to Chris by: Alice Mills

This book changed my life. I'm not just saying that. It really did. I learned how to read, watch, and consume literature in a whole new way. It's like, before I read this book I was gulping down literature as if it were water, somewhat bland at times but necessary for life, and now after I've read the book I've realized that it's more like a fine wine that deserves to be savored and that there's different, subtle notes to it to that deserve to be discovered. The Great Code brings to life not onl...more

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Jan 14, 2012 Kevin Christensen rated it 5 of 5 stars

After reading Eugene England's "The Book of Mormon and Literary Criticism" I put Frye on my "must read" list. English classes at SJSU started me on The Anatomy of Criticism. From there I went to Fearful Symmetry due to my interest in William Blake, and then from this one to Words with Power. I come back and read these every few years.

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Sep 26, 2012 Ward rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The book of books; nothing to touch it. Fyre approaches the least- (or should I say, worst-) read bestseller of all time and shows how it takes us to Literature and back again. Oh, yes, God shows up, too. The centre of his opus and the centre of my understanding of what it means to read.

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Mar 29, 2012 Al rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is in many ways a brilliant book but more difficult than I am accustomed to reading at this point in my life. Academic in nature, by a respected literary scholar, an analytical look at the Bible as literature amongst the world's literature. Literary criticism often leaves me feeling like the dissection of the frog was well done but I really liked the frog better before it was cut up. I think though, that my approach to the Bible is forever altered by the questions he raises and answers and...more

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Jul 26, 2011 H Wesselius added it

The subtitle should have set the Bible and literary theory. Lots of theory not enough literature and, thus, disappointing. I prefer more historical approach to the Bible and literature. Karen Armstrong is better for that.

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Apr 21, 2009 Andrew added it

THE GREAT CODE THE BIBLE AND LITERATURE by Northrop Frye (1983)

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Apr 24, 2013 Anne Macklin rated it 5 of 5 stars

A brilliant analysis from a great mind. Lots to think about.

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Sep 29, 2012 Dan Scott added it

very good introduction of literary views of scripture

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Nov 18, 2010 Carol rated it 5 of 5 stars

Outstanding!

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Sep 03, 2010 Welwyn Katz rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: comparative-mythology, essays, history, read-spirituality-serious, reference, literary-analysis

I wouldn't recommend it to anyone with a decided mind on the revealed nature of the Bible. But it's as fabulous as Graves' on a book that has been read by more Westerner's than any other. I love it that a fellow Canadian has opened so many eyes to the concept that the Bible can be read less than literally, yet never losing its value. Again, I read it here and there, now and then. Someday I'll read all these books front to back.

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Jun 12, 2012 Kevin is currently reading it

Shelves: set-aside

The scope of Northrop Frye's vision and learning is scary. The guy seems to have read everything the in the British and American canon plus more, and than more from different literary traditions on top of that. His explanation of the relationship between the Bible and Anglo-American literature is a helpful resource for literature students or for anyone trying to figure out the full scope of the Bible's legacy in English.

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Jun 26, 2008 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars

A view of the Bible from the standpoint of a literary critic, with surprising findings. He assesses the Bible from the standpoints of myth, metaphor and language -- with an unusual analysis of what the Bible "literally" means. Not an easy read, but well worth the effort.

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May 13, 2011 Joan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

This is important scholarship of Northrup Fry. A hard read, dense and long describing the evolution of thought through simile and metaphor. An argument against literality in interpretation of spiritual material.

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Apr 11, 2011 Jon Shaw rated it 3 of 5 stars

I much preferred "The Educated Imagination" for its brevity. This to me felt like one of those books that was grueling to read, but you are glad you read afterward.

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Apr 04, 2013 Diana Sierra rated it 3 of 5 stars

Las primeras 150 páginas son un somnífero concentrado, de ahí en adelante la cosa mejora.

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Apr 29, 2012 Adam Ross rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-study, theology

Equal parts brilliant and important, and hopelessly confused. Review to follow.

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May 19, 2013 Dom marked it as to-read

Shelves: next-acquire

May 19, 2013 LS rated it 4 of 5 stars

May 18, 2013 Dr. Rieux rated it 4 of 5 stars

May 17, 2013 Jesse Prevoo marked it as to-read

May 15, 2013 J. Guapster marked it as to-read

May 10, 2013 Greg Hillis marked it as to-read · review of another edition

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About Northrop Frye

Born in Quebec but raised in New Brunswick, Frye studied at the University of Toronto and Victoria University. He was ordained to the ministry of the United Church of Canada and studied at Oxford before returning to UofT.

His first book, Fearful Symmetry, was published in 1947 to international acclaim. Until then, the prophetic poetry of William Blake had long been poorly understood, considered by...more

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Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake

The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance

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“The only thing that words can do with any real precision or accuracy is hang together. Accuracy of description in language is not possible beyond a certain point: the most faithfully descriptive account of anything will always turn away from what it describes into its own self-contained grammatical fictions of subject and predicate and object.” — 1 person liked it

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