The Great Code: The Bible and Literature

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.