Book of Tobit's Influence on the Classics

The Wide World of Tobit

The Apocrypha’s Tobit & Literary Tradition


by Patrick Henry Reardon

Tobit is a short book. Indeed, Jerome tells us that translating it into Latin cost him only “the labor of one day.”1 It should be remarked, however, that this small book belongs in a big world, with a rich and very wide cultural setting.

I like to think of the Book of Tobit as a kind of universal essay, in the sense that its author makes considerable effort to place his brief, rather simple narrative within a literary, historical, and moral universe of surprising breadth and diversity, extending through the Fertile Crescent and out both sides. To find comparable dimensions of such large cultural exposure among biblical authors, one would have to go to Ezekiel, Luke, or the narrator of Job.

It is the intention of the present article to indicate and outline several aspects of the Book of Tobit that join the work to other streams of literary history. These aspects, which include a fairly wide range of themes, images, and historical references, will serve to link Tobit to three bodies of literature in particular: the Bible; the larger world of Near and Middle Eastern religious philosophy, history, and literature; and the tradition of Christian exegesis down through the Latin Middle Ages.

Tobit & the Bible

The world of Tobit is, first of all, the world of biblical literature and history. Not only does the book provide an elaborate description of the religious deterioration of the Northern Kingdom in the eighth century, and then the deportation and consequent social conditions2 of those tribes after 722, but it explicitly quotes a prophet of that century, Amos, and makes reference (14:4) to the preaching of Jonah at Nineveh.3 Tobit thus presupposes the history narrated in Kings, Chronicles, and the eighth-century prophets.

Tobit’s explicit reference to Jonah is of considerable interest in the light of certain affinities between the two books. First and second, both stories take place about the same time (the eighth century) and both in Mesopotamia. Third, both accounts involve a journey. Fourth, the distressed Tobit, like Jonah, prays to die. Fifth and most strikingly, his son Tobias encounters a fish that attempts—with less success than Jonah’s fish—to swallow him! Finally, in each book the fish serves as a special instrument of Divine Providence.

Besides Jonah, Tobit shows several remarkable affinities to the Book of Job, some of which were noted rather early in Christian exegesis. For example, the title characters of both works shared a zeal for purity of life, almsgiving, and other deeds of charity (Job 1 and 31; Tobit 1–2), patient endurance of trials sent by God,4 a deep weariness of life itself (Job 7:15; Tobit 3:6), a final vindication by the Lord at the end of each book, and perhaps even a common hope of the resurrection.5 As early as Cyprian in the third century, it was also noted that both men were similarly mocked by wives unable to appreciate their virtue and faith in God.6

Moreover, the book’s description of long-suffering Sarah, whose seven husbands all died on their wedding night, carries on another major theme of Holy Scripture: the barren woman, of which the elder Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Hannah, and Elizabeth are better known examples. Indeed, the mockery that the younger Sarah receives from her maids in this regard readily puts one in mind of Hagar’s attitude toward the older Sarah, as well as Peninnah’s unkind treatment of Hannah at the beginning of First Samuel.7

The moral teaching of Tobit is also of a piece with the covenantal ethics of the Bible generally. For example, its prohibition against marrying outsiders in 4:12f. reflects the strict view of Ezra and Nehemiah (and, down the road, 1 Corinthians 7).8 Then, in the very next verse is found the mandate about prompt payment of the laborer’s salary, which is clearly based on Leviticus 19:13 and Deuteronomy 24:14f. And so forth. The moral teaching of Tobit shows endless parallels with both the Torah and Israel’s Wisdom tradition, and its solicitude for social justice and service is at one with the teaching of the eighth-century prophets. No matter what is to be said relative to its canonical status, the setting, imagery, and moral doctrine of Tobit is of a piece with the rest of our biblical literature.

The Larger World

Even when the Book of Tobit most closely touches the other biblical literature, however, it sometimes does so along lines reminiscent of, and running parallel to, more extensive traditions outside the Bible.

An obvious and rather large example is the “Golden Rule” in Tobit 4:15, “Do not do to anyone what you yourself hate.” Not only does this prohibition substantially contain the biblical command to love one’s neighbor as oneself;9 not only, furthermore, does it stand in canonical continuity with the more positive formulation of the same Golden Rule preserved in the Gospels;10 it is also the equivalent to an ideal found in other ethical philosophies. These latter include Greek authors like Herodotus and Isocrates11 and even classical Confucianism.12 This use of the Golden Rule thus assured Tobit a featured place in the entire history of religion and moral philosophy.13

A similar assessment is true, I believe, concerning the way that Tobit develops the religious symbolism of the journey. Obviously that motif had long been part of the Bible, particularly in those sections associated with the Exodus wandering and the return from Babylon,14 but it was a topic not limited to the Bible. Back near the beginning of the second millennium B.C., the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh Epic had inchoatively explored the religious symbolism of the journey, and that exploration would continue down through some of our greatest literature: the Odyssey, of course, diverse accounts of Jason and the Argonauts, the Aeneid, etc., and eventually the Divine Comedy, itself inspired by all of them. In a more secular form the journey imagery continued with such works as the Endymion of Keats,15 even after it had been assumed within the ascetical literature of the Church as xeneteia, conceived as both exile and pilgrimage. A classical example of the latter use is found in Step 3 of The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John of Mount Sinai.

The resemblance of Tobit to the Odyssey in particular was not lost on that great student of literature, Jerome, as is evident in a single detail of his Latin translation of Tobit in the Vulgate. Intrigued by the literary merit of Tobit, but rejecting its canonicity, the jocose and sometimes prankish Jerome felt free to insert into his version an item straight out of the Odyssey—namely, the wagging of the dog’s tail on arriving home with Tobias in 11:9—Tunc praecucurrit canis, qui simul fuerat in via, et quasi nuntius adveniens blandimento suae caudae gaudebat—“Then the dog, which had been with them in the way, ran before, and coming as if it had brought the news, showed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail.”16 No other ancient version of Tobit mentions either the tail or the wagging, but Jerome, ever the classicist, was confident his readers would remember the faithful but feeble old hound Argus, as the final act of his life, greeting the return of Odysseus to the home of his father: “he endeavored to wag his tail” (Odyssey 17.302). And to think that we owe this delightful gem to Jerome’s rejection of Tobit’s canonicity!

Thus, when young Tobias made his trip to Ecbatana and then, like Odysseus, journeyed back to the home of his father, he traveled with a vast company of classical pilgrims. He was neither the first nor the last to decide: “I will arise and return to my father.” On that trip, moreover, Tobias enjoyed the fellowship of an angel and a dog, symbolically representing the two worlds of spirits and beasts, both associated with Paradise and both mysteriously joined together in the human being that they accompany.17

Furthermore, some readers have found in Tobit similarities to still other pagan themes, such as the legend of Admetus.18 More convincing, I believe, however, are points of contact with classical Greek theater. Martin Luther observed similarities between Tobit and Greek comedy,19 but one is even more impressed by resemblances that the Book of Tobit bears to a work of Greek tragedy—the Antigone of Sophocles. In both stories the moral stature of the heroes is chiefly exemplified in their bravely burying the dead in the face of official prohibition and at the risk of official punishment. In both cases a venerable moral tradition is maintained against a political tyranny destructive of piety. That same Greek drama, moreover, provides a further parallel to the blindness of Tobit in the character of blind Teiresias, himself also a man of an inner moral vision important to the theme of the play.

Bearing just as obvious a connection with non-biblical literature, I believe, is the demon Asmodeus (Tobit 3:8), who is doubtless to be identified, on purely morphological grounds, with Aeshma Daeva, a figure well known in ancient Iranian religion.20 Moreover, Tobit’s nephew Ahikar (1:22) is certainly identical with a literary character of the same name, time, place, and circumstances, found in the Elephantine papyri from the late fifth century B.C.21 In short, whatever may be the case relative to questions of historical dependency, Tobit’s cultural contacts with the ancient world of religion, philosophy, and literature are numerous and varied.

The History of Exegesis

And this consideration brings me to what I suggest is a major question of the Book of Tobit: How does a loyal servant of God live in this very big and complex world? How does one spiritually survive, and even thrive, in this world, without being of this world? The preoccupation of Tobit is, I submit, moral and ascetical. It is a book about how the loyal servant of God must live.

In this respect, it is instructive to observe that early Christian exegesis of the Book of Tobit was of a predominantly moral and ascetical interest. With very few exceptions, patristic interpretation of Tobit was straightforward and literal, with relatively little, and hardly any sustained, appeal to hidden symbolisms. The longest extant patristic work devoted to Tobit, that of Ambrose of Milan, exemplifies this approach convincingly. After drawing attention to the major moral features of Tobit’s character, Ambrose devotes the rest of his discourse to a robust condemnation of avarice and usury.22 That is to say, Ambrose went to Tobit almost exclusively for moral teaching.

To be sure, a modest measure of patristic exegesis of Tobit was allegorical, in the sense of finding hidden references to the mysteries of the Christian faith. For example, attention was sometimes drawn to Tobias’s fish, whose various body parts were used to remedy the problems of the family. Given the common and widespread Christological symbolism of the fish (ichthys) among believers, it was virtually inevitable that Tobias’s fish, too, who quite literally gave his life for the family, should be regarded as a foreshadowing of the Savior. This symbolism is found in the fourth century, first in the mural iconography of the Roman catacombs23 and then in a few literary references.24

Similarly, Isidore of Seville believed that young Tobias, inasmuch as he healed his parent’s blindness, “had an image of Christ.”25 Nonetheless, such recourse to allegorical symbolism to interpret the Book of Tobit was relatively rare among earlier Christian writers.

This assessment, however, does not hold true for the Latin writers of the Middle Ages. The highly detailed commentary of Venerable Bede26 is the example that comes first to mind. To leave Ambrose’s fairly sober, subdued, and straightforward remarks on Tobit and then turn to Bede’s elaborate interpretation of the same book is something on the order of moving to another planet. In Bede’s commentary, not even the most minute item in the Tobit narrative is without its hidden doctrinal significance, to be ferreted out by a rich imagination.

Bede’s approach was followed by other medieval exegetes who turned their very creative fancies loose on the book: Walafrid Strabo, Hugh of St. Victor, and Isaac of Stella.27 At their hands, the Book of Tobit became a rich mother-lode of hidden Christology, soteriology, ecclesiology, sacramentology, and so forth.

These medieval interpreters certainly present us with a whole new hermeneutic world. One may legitimately question, however, whether it is any longer the world of Tobit. Indeed, in these medieval works the overwhelmingly moral interest of Tobit’s universe is hardly touched at all, so that the major preoccupation of the book—how does the servant of God live in this world?—becomes almost entirely lost. This is my chief objection to the approach taken to the Book of Tobit among medieval Latin exegetes.

Since his Glossa Ordinaria became a link between Bede and later medieval writers, Walafrid Strabo may be particularly cited by way of illustration. Strabo begins his interpretation of Tobit by observing, correctly enough, that the book “abounds in the greatest examples and exhortations of the moral life,”28 but then he goes on to explain the book in great detail without a single scrap of moral or ascetical teaching. Tobit’s principal message and concern thus become hopelessly dispersed in considerations alien to the book.

It is my persuasion that the message of Tobit should begin with a proper analysis of its moral message exactly as it appears at the literary level, without recourse to hidden symbolisms that its author himself could scarcely have suspected and that float, in fact, without sufficient grounding in ancient patristic and liturgical texts.

This is not to say that Tobit should be interpreted apart from the biblical canon (whatever one holds about its canonical status) or from the context of Christian theology. Indeed, I maintain the very opposite thesis—namely, that Tobit (and, for that matter, all other biblical literature handed down in the Tradition of the Church) should be read and understood within that double interpretive context of Canon and Christology. I believe, nonetheless, that this approach is best made on the basis of Tobit’s literal meaning, the meaning it has as moral literature, not fanciful symbolisms unsustained in either biblical, patristic, or liturgical testimonies.

Having now placed Tobit within literary history, I propose, in a subsequent article to be published in these pages, to explore further the book’s great moral message and its importance in the Christian life.

Notes:

1. Jerome, Praefatio in Librum Tobiae (PL 29.26A). Among Latin writers Jerome stands very much alone, and even eccentric, in his denial of canonicity to the Book of Tobit. It was cited somewhat less often by the Greek Fathers than by the Latins, however, the question of its canonicity being more complex and protracted in the East. This questioned canonicity of Tobit also accounts for the unparalleled freedom that copyists took in the transmission of the text. We have received Tobit in two major manuscript traditions so disparate that Rahlfs’s standard edition of the Septuagint prints them separately. Because I will frequently refer to them, I take this occasion to identify the two earliest extant manuscripts, both of them from early fourth-century Egypt: the Codex Vaticanus (hereafter B) and the Codex Sinaiticus (hereafter S). Because of its importance to Latin writers, I will also refer often to Tobit’s Vulgate text, translated by Jerome from both Greek and Aramaic sources.

2. Origen early recognized Tobit’s value as a source of historical and sociological information on the period; cf. Epistola ad Africanum 12 (Bibliotheke Hellenon Pateron [hereafter BHP, followed by volume and page numbers] 16.359f.).

3. Thus in B and Vulgate; also see Jerome, In Jonam (PL 25.1119A). S here says Nahum.

4. Job and Tobit were thus compared by Augustine, De Divinis Scripturis 28 (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum [hereafter CSEL with volume and page numbers] 12.436); Ambrosiaster, Quaestiones Veteris et Novi Testamenti 99.2 (CSEL 50.191); in the Latin Middle Ages, Bernard of Clairvaux, Sententiae 2.25 (Opera, Vol. 6/2, Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1972, p. 31); and still later, John of the Cross, Llama de Amor Viva 2.28 (Obras Completas, Madrid: BAC, 1991, pp. 960f.).

5. Job 19:23–27; Tobit 2:18 in the Vulgate. Paulinus of Nola commented that Tobit’s burial of the dead manifested “a holy and sanctified hope”; Epistolae 13.4 (PL 61.209–210).

6. Cyprian, De Mortalitate 10 (PL 4.588); among the Greeks, Asterios Sophistes, In Psalmos 4.4 (BHP 37.170); among medieval Latins, Peter Comestor, Historia Libri Tobiae 1 (PL 198.1433C); and Peter Damien, Sermones 4.5 (Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Medievalis [hereafter CCM with volume and page numbers] 57.20).

7. This resemblance was likewise remarked by Cyprian, Testimoniorum Libri 1.20 (PL 4.688–689).

8. Again, cf. Cyprian, Testimoniorum Libri 3.62 (PL 4.767–768).

9. Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 5:43; 19:19; 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 6:27; Romans 12:17–19; Galatians 5:14; James 2:8.

10. Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31.

11. Herodotus, Histories 3.142; Isocrates, Niklokles 61.

12. Cf. Ku Hung Ming, The Conduct of Life: A Translation of the Doctrine of the Mean, London: John Murray, 1906, p. 26.

13. Tobit’s form of the Golden Rule was maintained, not only in the apocryphal (e.g., Ps.-Aristeas, Epistle to Philocrates 207) and rabbinical traditions (e.g., Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a; Targum Yerushalmi I of Leviticus 19:18), but also in Christian sources as diverse as the Didache 1.2 (BHP 2.215); the Coptic Gospel of Thomas 6; the Apostolic Constitutions 1 (BHP 2.6); Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 2.22 (BHP 7.359); Didymus the Blind, De Spiritu Sancto 39 (PG 39.1068); John Chrysostom, Homiliae de Statuis 13.3 (PG 49.140); Augustine, Sermones in Vetus Testamentum 9.14f. (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina [hereafter CCL with volume and page numbers] 41.135f.); Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job 6.35.54 (CCL 143.323); 10.6.6 (539); and, from the Latin Middle Ages, Peter Damien, Sermones 14.9 (CCM 57.69); Stephen of Grandmont, Regula 28 (CCM 8.83); and Isaac of Stella, Sermones 3.3 (PL 194.1698A); 31.6 (1791B). Among later ascetical writers in the East, there is Paisy Velichkovsky, Field Flowers 23 (Little Russian Philokalia, Vol. 4, The Brotherhood of St. Herman of Alaska, 1994, p. 87.). Sometimes Christians have spontaneously juxtaposed Tobit’s negative form with the positive form from the Gospels; e.g., Barsanuphius and John of Gaza, Letters 687 (Correspondance, Solesmes, 1971, p. 442); and the anonymous eleventh-century Mont-Saint-Michel manuscript, Expositio ad Galatas 5.14 (CCM 151.202).

14. In the New Testament, the journey motif will play a structural role, not only in Luke-Acts, but also in Mark 8–10.

15. Cf. Andrès Rodríguez, The Book of the Heart: The Poetics, Letters, and Life of John Keats, Hudson, N.Y.: Lindisfarne Press, 1993, pp. 44ff.

16. Douay-Challoner translation of the Vulgate.

17. Angels and beasts are also the companions of Jesus in the desert; see Mark 1:13 along with the comment of Euthymius Zigabenus, In Marcum (PG 129.776C). Particularly in our hagiography, this motif of angelic and animal companionship is ubiquitous. Cf. Joanne Stephanatos, Animals and Man: A State of Blessedness, Minneapolis: Light and Life, 1992.

18. I confess that this one is lost on me, having gone over my Apollodorus (3.9.15) repeatedly without discerning any really convincing similarity to Tobit.

19. Indeed, he even speculated that the Greeks borrowed from the Jews in this respect; cf. Luther’s Works, Volume 35 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), p. 345.

20. Cf. Jeffrey Burton Russell, The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977, pp. 215, 217.

21. A translation of “The Words of Ahiqar” is found in J. B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, Princeton, 1969, pp. 427–430. The story itself appears to go back to Mesopotamia at least a century earlier. I hazard passing remarks here on two curious features: (1) this text is narrated, like the opening chapters of Tobit, in the first person; (2) the plan to kill a eunuch slave in place of Ahikar, so that the latter could later be restored to favor (p. 428, left column), most certainly does bear comparison to the Admetus legend.

22. Ambrose, De Tobia (PL 14.759–794). Not one paragraph in ten of this work is allegorical. See also Ambrose’s simple remarks on Tobit in Epistolae 19.5 (PL 16.984A), later echoed by Salvian of Marseilles, Adversus Avaritiam 2.4 (PL 53.193B).

23. Cf. Henri Leclercq, “Tobie,” Dictionnaire d’Archéologie Chrétienne et de Liturgie, Vol. 15, Paris: Letouzey, 1953, cols. 2418–2420.

24. Optatus of Mileve in Numedia, De Schismate Donatistarum 3.2 (PL 11.991); and the anonymous De Promissionibus et Praedictionibus Dei 2.39 (PL 51.816).

25. “Christi imaginem habuit”—Allegoriae Quaedam Scripturae Sacrae 123 (PL 83.116A).

26. Venerable Bede, Interpretatio in Librum Tobiae (PL 91.923–938). Cf. the analysis of Bede’s exegesis of Tobit by Johann Gamberoni, Die Auslegung des Buches Tobias, Munich: Kösel, 1969, pp. 107–123.

27. Walafrid Strabo, Glossa Ordinaria (PL 113.725–732); Hugh of St. Victor, Allegoriae in Vetus Testamentum 9.2 (PL 175.737–744); Isaac of Stella, Sermones 7.11–14 (PL 194.1715). I cite only those writers that I know first-hand. For other examples, see Gamberoni, op. cit., pp. 124–146.

28. Strabo, op. cit. (PL 113.725B).

The substance of this article appeared in Epiphany in 1996.

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Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of Christ in the Psalms, Christ in His Saints, and The Trial of Job (all from Conciliar Press). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.

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Jewish Roots of Christian Worship: Pope Benedict XVI



Louis Bouyer and Church Architecture

Resourcing Benedict XVI's The Spirit of the Liturgy

by Uwe Michael Lang, appearing in Volume 19


The Institute for Sacred Architecture

The present Holy Father’s thought on liturgy and church architecture was considerably influenced by Louis Bouyer (1913-2004), a convert from Lutheranism, priest of the French Oratory (a religious congregation founded by Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle in the seventeenth century and distinct from the Oratory of St. Philip Neri) and protagonist of the liturgical movement in France.1 Bouyer has left an enormous oeuvre extending not only to the study of the sacred liturgy but to other fields of theology and spirituality. Although he taught for several years in American universities and many of his books were published in English, Bouyer’s passing away on October 22, 2004 at the age of ninety-one seemed to have gone largely unnoticed in the Anglophone world.2

....

Joseph Ratzinger and Louis Bouyer were friends who held each other’s work in high esteem. Both were called to the International Theological Commission when it was instituted by Pope Paul VI in 1969. Bouyer recalls the working sessions of the Commission in his unpublished memoirs, and comments especially on Ratzinger’s clarity of vision, vast knowledge, intellectual courage, incisive judgment, and gentle sense of humour. In his remarkable book-length interview of 1979, entitled Le Métier de Théologien (The Craft of the Theologian), which has unfortunately not yet been published in English, Bouyer praises the appointment of the outstanding theologian Joseph Ratzinger as Archbishop of Munich.3 Cardinal Ratzinger, in his turn, in a contribution published originally in 2002, recalls the founding of the international theological review Communio Initiated by a group of friends, Communio including the noted theologians Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Louis Bouyer, and Jorge Medina Estévez, who later became the Cardinal-Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.4

In The Spirit of the Liturgy, the present Pope’s debt to Bouyer is especially evident in the chapters “Sacred Places – The Significance of the Church Building” and “The Altar and the Direction of Liturgical Prayer”, where the French theologian is cited throughout.5 In the short bibliography, Bouyer’s book Liturgy and Architecture features prominently. This work was published originally in English in 1967 by the University of Notre Dame Press; its German translation, used by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, appeared as late as 1993. The theme of orientation in liturgical prayer occupied the theologian Joseph Ratzinger as early as 1966, at the height of the post-conciliar liturgical reform;6 his first significant contribution to the debate dates from the late 1978 and was included in the important volume The Feast of Faith, published in German in 1981.7 However, it appears to have been the work of his friend Bouyer that led Ratzinger to a more profound approach to the subject as is reflected in The Spirit of the Liturgy.

Jewish origins of Christian worship

One of the characteristics of Pope Benedict’s theology of the liturgy is his emphasis on the Jewish roots of Christian worship, which he considers a manifestation of the essential unity of Old and New Testament, a subject to which he repeatedly calls attention.8 Bouyer pursues this methodology in his monograph Eucharist, where he argues that the form of the Church’s liturgy must be understood as emerging from a Jewish ritual context.9

In Liturgy and Architecture, Bouyer explores the Jewish background to early church architecture, especially with regard to the “sacred direction” taken in divine worship. He notes that Jews in the Diaspora prayed towards Jerusalem or, more precisely, towards the presence of the transcendent God (shekinah) in the Holy of Holies of the Temple. Even after the destruction of the Temple the prevailing custom of turning towards Jerusalem for prayer was kept in the liturgy of the synagogue. Thus Jews have expressed their eschatological hope for the coming of the Messiah, the rebuilding of the Temple, and the gathering of God’s people from the Diaspora. The direction of prayer was thus inseparably bound up with the messianic expectation of Israel.10

Bouyer observes that this direction of prayer towards the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Jerusalem gave Jewish synagogue worship a quasi-sacramental quality that went beyond the mere proclamation of the word. This sacred direction was highlighted by the later development of the Torah shrine, where the scrolls of the Holy Scripture are solemnly kept. The Torah shrine thus becomes a sign of God’s presence among his people, keeping alive the memory of his ineffable presence in the Holy of Holies of the Temple. Ratzinger notes in his Spirit of the Liturgy that in Christian sacred architecture, which both continues and transforms synagogue architecture, the Torah shrine has its equivalent in the altar at the east wall or in the apse, thus being the place where the sacrifice of Christ, the Word incarnate, becomes present in the liturgy of the Mass.11

Syrian Churches

[15]

Bouyer’s Liturgy and Architecture made available to a wider public in the 1960’s current research on early Christian sacred architecture in the Near East.12 The oldest surviving Syrian churches, dating from the fourth century onwards, mostly follow the model of the basilica, similar to contemporary synagogues, with the difference, however, that they were in general built with their apse facing towards the east. In churches where some clue remains as to the position of the altar, it appears to have been placed only a little forward from the east wall or directly before it. The orientation of church and altar thus corresponds to the universally accepted principle of facing east in prayer and expresses the eschatological hope of the early Christians for the second coming of Christ as the Sun of righteousness. The bema, a raised platform in the middle of the building, was taken over from the synagogue, where it served as the place for the reading of Holy Scripture and the recitation of prayers. The bishop would sit with his clergy on the west side of the bema in the nave facing towards the apse. The psalmody and readings that form part of the liturgy of the Word are conducted from the bema. The clergy then proceed eastward to the altar for the liturgy of the Eucharist.13 Bouyer’s theory that the “Syrian arrangement” with the bema in the nave was also the original layout of Byzantine churches has met with a very mixed reception among scholars.– What is widely agreed, however, is that the celebrant would have stood in front of the altar, facing east with the congregation for the Eucharistic liturgy.

A Louis Bouyer Church plan (Photo: wikimediacommons.org)

Roman Basilicas

Early Roman churches, especially those with an oriented entrance, such as the Lateran Basilica or Saint Peter’s in the Vatican (which is unique in many ways), present questions regarding their liturgical use that are still being debated by scholars. According to Bouyer the whole assembly, the bishop or priest celebrant who stood behind the altar as well as the people in the nave would turn towards the east and hence towards the doors during the Eucharistic prayer.15 The doors may have been left open so that the light of the rising sun, the symbol of the risen Christ and his second coming in glory, flooded into the nave. The assembly would have formed a semicircle that opened to the east, with the celebrating priest as its apex. In the context of religious practice in the ancient world, this liturgical gesture does not appear as extraordinary as it might seem today. It was the general custom in antiquity to pray towards the open sky, which meant that in a closed room one would turn to an open door or an open window for prayer, a custom that is well attested by Jewish and Christian sources.16 Against this background it would seem quite possible that for the Eucharistic prayer the faithful, along with the celebrant, turned towards the eastern entrance. The practice of priest and people facing each other arose when the profound symbolism of facing east was no longer understood and the faithful no longer turned eastward for the Eucharistic prayer. This happened especially in those basilicas where the altar was moved from the middle of the nave to the apse.

The Byzantine development of the richly decorated east wall as “liturgical east” as illustrated by the Basilica of Sant’ Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna (Photo: wikimediacommons.org)

Another line of argument can be pursued if we start from the observation that facing east was accompanied by looking upwards, namely towards the eastern sky which was considered the place of Paradise and the scene of Christ’s second coming. The lifting up of hearts for the canon, in response to the admonition “Sursum corda,” included the bodily gestures of standing upright, raising one’s arms and looking heavenward. It is no mere accident that in many basilicas (only) the apse and triumphal arch were decorated with magnificent mosaics; their iconographic programmes are often related to the Eucharist that is celebrated underneath. These mosaics may well have served to direct the attention of the assembly whose eyes were raised up during the Eucharistic prayer. Even the priest at the altar prayed with outstretched, raised arms and no further ritual gestures. Where the altar was placed at the entrance of the apse or in the central nave, the celebrant standing in front of it could easily have looked up towards the apse. With splendid mosaics representing the celestial world, the apse may have indicated the “liturgical east” and hence the focus of prayer.17 This theory has the distinct advantage that it accounts better for the correlation between liturgy, art, and architecture than that of Bouyer, which must accommodate a discrepancy between the sacred rites and the space created for them. Pope Benedict alludes to this theory in the beautiful comments he made on orientation in liturgical prayer in his homily during the Easter Vigil 2008.18

Even if we assume that priest and people were facing one another in early Christian basilicas with an eastward entrance, we can exclude any visual contact at least for the canon, since all prayed with arms raised, looking upwards. At any rate, there was not much to see at the altar, since ritual gestures, such as signs of the cross, altar kisses, genuflections, and the elevation of the Eucharistic species, were only added later.19 Bouyer is certainly correct in saying that the Mass “facing the people,” in the modern sense, was unknown to Christian antiquity, and that it would be anachronistic to see the Eucharistic liturgy in the early Roman basilicas as its prototype.

Bouyer acclaims Byzantine church architecture as a genuine development of the early Christian basilica: those elements that were not appropriate for the celebration of the liturgy were either changed or removed, so that a new type of building came into being. A major achievement was the formation of a particular iconography that stood in close connection with the sacred mysteries celebrated in the liturgy and gave them a visible artistic form. Church architecture in the West, on the other hand, was more strongly indebted to the basilican structure. Significantly, the rich decoration of the east wall and dome in Byzantine churches has its counterpart in the Ottonian and Romanesque wall-paintings and, even further developed, in the sumptuous altar compositions of the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Baroque, which display themes intimately related to the Eucharist and so give a foretaste of the eternal glory given to the faithful in the sacrifice of the Mass.20

The Liturgical Movement and Mass “facing the people”

Drawing on his own experience, Bouyer relates that the pioneers of the Liturgical Movement in the twentieth century had two chief motives for promoting the celebration of Mass versus populum. First, they wanted the Word of God to be proclaimed towards the people. According to the rubrics for Low Mass, the priest had to read the Epistle and the Gospel from the book resting on the altar. Thus the only option was to celebrate the whole Mass “facing the people,” as was provided for by the Missal of St Pius V21 to cover the particular arrangement of the major Roman basilicas. The instruction of the Sacred Congregation of Rites Inter Oecumenici of September 26, 1964 allowed the reading of the Epistle and Gospel from a pulpit or ambo, so that the first incentive for Mass facing the people was met. There was, however, another reason motivating many exponents of the Liturgical Movement to press for this change, namely, the intention to reclaim the perception of the Holy Eucharist as a sacred banquet, which was deemed to be eclipsed by the strong emphasis on its sacrificial character. The celebration of Mass facing the people was seen as an adequate way of recovering this loss.

Pope Benedict XVI celebrating Mass ad orientem (Photo: Vatican Photo Service)

Bouyer notes in retrospect a tendency to conceive of the Eucharist as a meal in contrast to a sacrifice, which he calls a fabricated dualism that has no warrant in the liturgical tradition.22 As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, “The Mass is at the same time, and inseparably, the sacrificial memorial in which the sacrifice of the cross is perpetuated and the sacred banquet of communion with the Lord’s body and blood,”23, and these two aspects cannot be isolated from each other. According to Bouyer, our situation today is very different from that of the first half of the twentieth century, since the meal aspect of the Eucharist has become common property, and it is its sacrificial character that needs to be recovered.24

Pastoral experience confirms this analysis, because the understanding of the Mass as both the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Church has diminished considerably, if not faded away among the faithful.25 Therefore it is a legitimate question to ask whether the stress on the meal aspect of the Eucharist that complemented the celebrant priest’s turning towards the people has been overdone and has failed to proclaim the Eucharist as “a visible sacrifice (as the nature of man demands).”26 The sacrificial character of the Eucharist must find an adequate expression in the actual rite. Since the third century, the Eucharist has been named “prosphora,” “anaphora,” and “oblation,” terms that articulate the idea of “bringing to,” “presenting,” and thus of a movement towards God.

Conclusion

Bouyer painted with a broad brush and his interpretation of historical data is sometimes questionable or even untenable. Moreover, he was inclined to express his theological positions sharply, and his taste for polemics made him at times overstate the good case he had. Like other important theologians of the years before the Second Vatican Council, he had an ambiguous relationship to post-Tridentine Catholicism and was not entirely free of an iconoclastic attitude.27 Later, he deplored some post-conciliar developments especially in the liturgy and in religious life, and again expressed this in the strongest possible terms.28

Needless to say, Benedict XVI does not share Bouyer’s attitude, as is evident from his appreciation of sound and legitimate developments in post-Tridentine liturgy, sacred architecture, art, and music. It should also be noted that Joseph Ratzinger does not take up the later, more experimental chapters of Liturgy and Architecture, where new schematic models of church buildings are presented. Despite its limitations, however, Bouyer’s book remains an important work, and it is perhaps its greatest merit that it introduced a wider audience to the significance of early Syrian church architecture. Louis Bouyer was one of the first to raise questions that seemed deeply outmoded then, but have now become matters of intense liturgical and theological debate.29

Rev. Uwe Michael Lang, a native of Germany and priest of the Congregation of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri in London, is the Coordinator of the Master’s program in “Architecture, Sacred Art and Liturgy” at the Università Europea di Roma/Ateneo Pontificio Regina Apostolorum and a Consultor to the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff. He has published in the fields of Patristics and liturgical studies, including Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2nd edition 2009.

1 Cf. the more recent contributions of J.-F. Thomas, “Notes sur le sacré et la liturgie chez Louis Bouyer et Joseph Ratzinger,”Communio 31 (2006): 45-62; and K. Lemna, “Louis Bouyer’s Defense of Religion and the Sacred: Sacrifice and the Primacy of Divine Gift in Christian Liturgy,” Antiphon 12 (2008): 2-24.

2 Unlike in France, where an obituary by J.-R. Armogathe was published in Le Figaro, October 27, 2004 and one by H. Tinq in Le Monde, October 27, 2004.

3 L. Bouyer, Le Métier du Théologien. Entretiens avec Georges Daix (Paris: Editions France-Empire, 1979; republished Geneva: Ad Solem, 2005), 166.

4 J. Ratzinger, “Eucharist–Communion–Solidarity: Christ Present and Active in the Blessed Sacrament,” in On the Way to Jesus Christ, trans. M. J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 112.

5 J. Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. J. Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 62-84.

6 In a lecture at the Katholikentag in Bamberg, also published in English translation: J. Ratzinger, “Catholicism after the Council,” trans. P. Russell, The Furrow 18 (1967): 3-23.

7 J. Ratzinger, The Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy, trans. G. Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986. 2nd Ed. 2006), 139-145.

8 See, for instance, Spirit of the Liturgy, 66.

9 L. Bouyer, Eucharist: Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer, trans. C. U. Quinn (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968).

10 Cf. Bouyer, Liturgy and Architecture, 17-20.

11 Cf. Ratzinger, Spirit of the Liturgy, 70-71.

12 For example, J. Lassus, Sanctuaires chrétiens de Syrie (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1947); and G. Tchalenko, Villages antiques de la Syrie du Nord: Le Massif du Bélus à l’époque romaine, 3 vol. (Paris: P. Geutner, 1953-1958).

13 See Bouyer, Liturgy and Architecture, 24-39.

14 Cf. the criticism of R. F. Taft, “Some Notes on the Bema in the East and West Syrian Traditions,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 34 (1968): 326-359 (reprint with supplementary notes in R. F. Taft, Liturgy in Byzantium and Beyond, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1995), 327, 359.

15 Bouyer, Liturgy and Architecture, 55-56.

16 Daniel 6:10, Tobit 3:11, and Acts 10:9; Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 5,1 (31a); 5,5 (34b); Origen, De oratione 32. There is archaeological evidence of Galilean synagogues from the late first century A.D. with the entrance facing towards Jerusalem. It would seem that the assembly turned towards the open doors for prayer and thus looked towards the direction of the sacred city.

17 See especially S. Heid, “Gebetshaltung und Ostung in frühchristlicher Zeit,” Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana 82 (2006): 347-404.

18 Benedict XVI, Homily for the Easter Vigil, March 22, 2008.

19 See Bouyer, Liturgy and Architecture, 56-59.

20 Ibid., 60-70.

21Missale Romanum (1570/1962), Ritus servandus in celebratione Missae, V,3.

22 Cf. Bouyer’s postscript to the French edition of K. Gamber, Tournés vers le Seigneur! (Zum Herrn hin!), trans. S. Wallon (Le Barroux: Sainte-Madeleine 1993), 67: “il n’y a jamais eu, dans aucune religion, un sacrifice qui ne soit pas un repas, mais un repas sacré : reconnu comme enveloppant le mystère d’une spéciale présence et communication divine.”

23 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1382.

24 Cf. Bouyer, Liturgy and Architecture, 106-111.

25 Cf. the telling comments of R. J. Schreiter, Constructing Local Theologies. Foreword by E. Schillebeeckx (London: SCM Press, 1985), 67.

26 Council of Trent (1562), Session XXII, Doctrine on the Sacrifice of the Mass, ch. 1: Denzinger-Schönmetzer 1740, quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1366.

27 In fact, his position on Mass “facing the people” developed: see his letter to Father Pie Duployé, O.P., of 1943, a text that proved to be very influential for liturgical renewal in France. Bouyer writes that, in order to promote the participation of the faithful in the liturgy, certain changes need to be made: “Cela doit, dans beaucoup de cas, signifier l’autel face au people, comme dans les basiliques romaines; et c’est, dans tous les cas, la disparition irrémédiable des retables, des pots de fleur, des gradins, … des tabernacles inutiles ou inutilement volumineux.” The letter is conveniently added to the Ad Solem edition of Le Métier du théologien, 281.

28 L. Bouyer, in The Decomposition of Catholicism: “We must speak plainly: there is practically no liturgy worthy of the name today in the Catholic Church … Perhaps in no other area is there a greater distance (and even formal opposition) between what the Council worked out and what we actually have” (trans. C. U. Quinn [London: Sands & Co., 1970], 99). See also Religieux et clercs contre Dieu (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1975), 12.

29 Cf. the preface written by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008 for the first volume of his collected works: “Zum Eröffnungsband meiner Schriften,” in Theologie der Liturgie: Die sakramentale Begründung christlicher Existenz (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2008), 5-8. An English translation by M. Sherry is available on http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/208933?eng=y (accessed on August 11, 2010). The English-language edition of this important work is being prepared by Ignatius Press.

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Taken from: http://www.sacredarchitecture.org/articles/louis_bouyer_and_church_architecture/

Acrisius and Proteus as Jacob and Esau



[The AMAIC may not necessarily agree with this interesting article in its entirety]




Acrisius and Proetus as Jacob and Esau

Having made the assertion that the Argives of Greece had originated from the land of Israel, it becomes plain that the Greek, specifically Argolian (the Perseid Danaans of Argolis), myth of Acrisius and Proetus owes much to the Scriptural story of Jacob and Esau. However, at this point, I feel that it may be helpful to explain, in a little more detail, the chronological arrangement of the Danaan genealogy. As outlined in the previous chapter, Danites from Israel had established themselves with the Inachids (Anakim sojourners flushed by Caleb and Joshua from Hebron) at the Greek Argolis. Another group, (whom the Greeks associated with Perseus,) who came a few generations later from Joppa knew that they were related to the earlier established Danaans by race, but as to their story of Io and Hermes they must have had their doubts. Several generations had intervened, between the days of Deborah and Barak, when the apostate Danites had fled in their ships from the sons of Jacob, and the days when the Perseid Danites had gone to Greece from the Seaport of Joppa. Meanwhile the later group of Danites had developed their own version of the Exodus that featured their hero Perseus (Significantly, as it applies to the development of their theology, their hero was a mortal "son of god" and not a god himself, as was Hermes in the more ancient story). It is apparent that they had neither the ability nor the desire to abolish the earlier mythology, so they simply added their own version of history onto it, as if their stories were subsequent events.

The Perseid Danites gave a son to Hypermnestra and Lynceus, from the Danaan story, whom they called "Abas," (plausibly meant to represent Abraham,) which is the usual Hebrew word for "father," ("Ab"-raham is said to mean "father" of multitudes) and they made this Abas to be the father of their own mythological history, which they began at Abas and continued on to tell the story of a Acrisius and Proetus. Of any story attributable to the Greek mythological character who was known as Abas there is little to report. It was said by some that he was a great warrior, (The same was said of Abraham at Gen.14) but there is no report of his participation in any war, some say that he invented the shield, or that he had a magic shield which one had only to display, (a bit like the Ark of the Covenant, but more like the "shield" of Abraham to be found at Gen 15:1, where Abraham is indeed associated with a divine "shield.") and the enemy would be miraculously disbursed. Of Abas it is said, "The fame of his warlike spirit was so great, that even after his death, when people revolted, whom he had subdued, they were put to flight by the simple act of showing them his shield." (Virg. Aen. III. 286 ; Serv. ad loc.from Smith, "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology"). Not to discount the story of his shield, but there was a much more important role to be played by Abas, which was that of a genealogical connector, a "place holder" as it were, between the earlier Danite/Inachid dynasty and the subsequent Danite/Perseid one. Ovid himself, while seeming to admit that Danaus was an Egyptian, the son of the Egyptian king Belus, describes the so-called Danaan descendants of Danaus from Abas forward in this way; "Acrisius the son of Abas, of the Cadmean race" (Ovid, Metamorphoses 4. 607 ff). Now, "the Cadmean race" is well known to be the Phoenicians from the land of Canaan (Israel). A plausible reason for Ovid's remark could be his understanding that Perseus had brought the story of Abas, Acrisius, and Danae, from the Danite capitol of Joppa, which he perhaps considered to be a Phoenician seaport.

The discerning reader must at this point be asking himself, why these characters, who were supposed to be representing such ancient Hebrew figures as Jacob and Esau, would wind up in the much more recent generation of Greek heroes from Argolis. However, this should not be the source of too much amazement when one considers the fact that there were many similar examples of this phenomenon, such as, Cadmus the Phoenician, who came with his followers and founded a colony at Thebes in Boeotia, and who no doubt had brought a great deal of mythology with him from his native land. But the date of Cadmus, as is attested to by the fact that he brought with him an alphabetic form that was in use about 850 BC., was not so old as the stories that he brought with him. These older Phoenician stories, were later placed chronologically, into his more recent genealogy as his daughters, Ino and the story of Athamas, Semele and the story of Dionysus, etc. And there was Heracles, who was supposed by the Greeks to be the son of the Greek Amphitryon, but was known in ancient Tyre many generations before the Greek Heracles had lived, and he had been attested to amongst the Egyptians at an even earlier date. Later Greek historians were surprised to find that many of the Greek gods and heroes had foreign duplicates, who were much more ancient than were their Greek counterparts. For this chronological problem, Herodotus had a perfectly good explanation. He assumed that the writers of Greek mythologies were in the habit of inserting the stories of foreign characters, gods, goddesses, heroes and such, into the ancestral families of the Greeks amongst whom these stories were first told, and placed them chronologically at the approximate time when those Greeks who first told them had lived. However, the Greeks were not so ancient as those foreign nations from whom they got the knowledge of these characters, these then were the circumstances that gave rise to the troubling chronological difficulties to which Herodotus addressed himself. The quote from Herodotus' "Histories," (2.146) runs thusly, "To me, therefore, it is quite manifest that the names of these gods (he was speaking of Pan and Dionysus) became known to the Greeks after those of their other deities, and that they count their birth from the time when they first acquired a knowledge of them."

It is apparent that the mythographers simply inserted the story, about the ancestors of those Danaans, who told the story of Perseus from Joppa, into the generation that preceded their arrival. They knew that these more recent Danaans were but later generations of the previous Danaans who had told the story of Hermes Argiophontes and, who had joined the Inachids in the founding of Argolis, therefore the mythographers placed the Perseid stories of their ancestry subsequently into the same dynastic family tree. This would tend not only to explain the placement of Abas and his son Acrisius, but also goes some way toward explaining why there would be two distinct analogies to the story of the Hebrew exodus appearing in the same mythological strain.

Before going on to contrast the stories, let us first examine the respective names of the comparative twins in each case. In the Scriptural story the names of both Jacob and Esau undergo a change. Jacob becomes "Israel," and Esau becomes "Edom," and eventually their respective lands become named after, each their own, changed name. In associating the Greek myth with the Hebrew history, we shall also use the changed names of the Hebrew characters, for it is the names, "Israel and Edom," that are most comparable with the names of the Argolian characters, "Acrisius and Proetus." We shall begin by comparing the name Proetus with the name Edom. We are informed by the learned mythologist Robert Graves in the index of his book, "The Greek Myths," that the name "Proetus," means, in Greek, "first man." Although the name "Edom" does not mean the first man, it's Hebrew meaning is like the name of the well known Scriptural first man, "Adam," in that they both derive from the same root word, meaning, "red." therefore the names Edom and Proetus are alike, in that they both have an association with, "the first man."

Let us next examine the names Acrisius and Israel. Although we are told right within the Scriptural text itself that the name, "Israel" means a "contender with God," we have also been told, by many learned philologists who have studied the matter, that the root meaning is "ruled by God." We need not look far for the Greek word meaning "ruled by god" for we have inherited it, as many modern languages have, directly from the Greeks, it is "theocracy," "theo" meaning "god," and "cracy," pronounced "kri'-see" is the part that means "ruled by." Now, by taking the name Acrisius and eliminating the perfunctory Greek suffix -us, we are left with, "Acrisi," the pronunciation of which is, "ah-kri'-see," thus we can plainly find the phrase "ruled by" within the Greek name and are left only with the prefix, pronounced "ah." As in other related Greek words such as, democracy, plutocracy, and aristocracy, the part designating "who" customarily precedes the part that means "ruled by," therefore one wonders indeed if the prefix "ah" in the name of Acrisius is not simply a worn down variant of the well known clipped version of God's name, just like it can be found as a prefix to many Hebrew names, in the form "Yah." In the light of the foregoing it does seem reasonable to conclude that the Greek names Acrisius and Proetus, do have a likeness to the Hebrew names Israel and Edom respectively.

Now, to continue comparing the two stories Jacob and Esau, with Acrisius and Proetus, the first thing that most people will notice in any comparison between the two pairs, is that in each case we have the birth of twins who struggle, even in the womb before birth, over who should receive the kingdom as a birthright (Genesis 25:22-24). "Lynceus reigned over Argos after Danaus and begat a son Abas by Hypermnestra; and Abas had twin sons Acrisius and Proetus by Aglaia, daughter of Mantineus. These two quarreled with each other while they were still in the womb, and when they were grown up they waged war for the kingdom." (Apollodorus, Library 2.2.1). The motif of twins struggling with each other in the womb before birth is a fairly rare one, I know of only three stories where this was said to have occurred, the one aforementioned Greek myth of Acrisius and Proetus, and two more Hebrew examples, the stories of Jacob and Esau, and that of Zerah and Perez (Zerah and Perez struggle in the birth canal at the very moment of birth, Perez pulling Zerah back inside, and then leaping forth himself in order to be the first born.). Although the story of Perez and Zerah is compelling, we shall confine ourselves here to the more obvious parallels between the stories of the two twin pairs, Jacob and Esau among the Hebrews, and the Greek myth of Acrisius and Proetus.

The early life of both sets of twins are remarkably similar. The Greek myth has Acrisius and Proetus initially alternating their possession of the kingdom inheritance for a time. In the Hebrew Scriptures Esau has the initial inheritance for a time until Jacob tricks him out of it, but then Esau travels to Seir, marries into a local Canaanite clan, and begins to raise an army among them with the idea of destroying Jacob. Therefore Jacob flees to Syria where he increases his forces and returns, at this point, there is a meeting between the two groups, however, instead of fighting to the death, there is a stand off between the two brothers who decide to split the kingdom up, Esau taking a part which he names after himself "Edom," while Jacob retained the land which he named after himself, "Israel." Now, the Greek myth, has a very similar series of events occur between their equivalent set of twins Acrisius and Proetus. Just as Jacob did in Israel, Acrisius gained the upper hand and refused to let Proetus have his rightful share in the kingdom inheritance (Paus. 2.25.6). Therefore, Proetus goes off and marries into a local non-Greek clan (Hom. Il vi. 160; Eustath. ad Hom. p. 630, &c.; comp. Serv. ad Virg. Eclog. vi. 48), the Lycians, (An apparent association of the Lycians with the pagan Canaanites, specifically the Hittites, here presents itself. We shall return to this comparison, in greater detail, in a subsequent chapter concerning the character Bellerophon, where I will show that Lycia was indeed a very popular place of refuge for immigration from Israel, especially, but not exclusively, by Hittites.) among whom he raises an army with the intent of destroying his brother Acrisius and regaining the Argolian throne. However, again just as in the Scriptural account, when there is a meeting of their two armies, it leads to a stand off between them. The two brothers, instead of fighting to the death, decide to split up the kingdom, Proetus taking Tiryns, while Acrisius retained the kingdom of Argolis. Quoting Apollodorus; "Acrisius gained the mastery and drove Proetus from Argos; and Proetus went to Lycia to the court of Iobates or, as some say, of Amphianax, and married his daughter, whom Homer calls Antia, but the tragic poets call her Stheneboea. His in-law restored him to his own land with an army of Lycians, … They divided the whole of the Argive territory between them and settled in it, Acrisius reigning over Argos and Proetus over Tiryns." (Apollodorus, Library 2.2.1; Paus. 2.16.2)

Take note in the preceding quote by Apollodorus of the apparent confusion concerning the names of the in-laws of Proetus. Apollodorus says that the Lycian father-in-law of Proetus was known as either Iobates, or Amphianax, whose daughter was know by two different names as well, Stheneboea and Antia. Even this confusion has it's Hebrew equivalent. At Genesis 26:34 Esau marries Basemath a daughter of the Hittite Elon. In Genesis 36:2 Esau marries Adah who is also Elon's daughter. Therefore Adah could be a sister of Basemath, or these could be two names for the same woman. In Genesis 28:9, Esau marries a daughter of Ishmael called Mahalath, who has a sister named Nebaioth. Then at Genesis 36:3 Esau marries (another?) Basemath, who is also said to be the daughter of Ishmael and a sister of Nebaioth. You can see that the chances for some confusion among these names is great. Were there two Basemaths, with Esau having two fathers-in-law and four wives between them? Or were there only two wives, each named Basemath and each known by two different names? Then again there could have been three wives, one of whom (either Basemath number one, or Basemath number two) was known by two different names. It is even possible that this confusion amounts to only one father-in-law who was known by the two different names, Elon and Ishmael, who had a daughter that was known by three names, Basemath, Adah, and Mahalah. It is therefore no wonder that the Greeks had given two different names for the father-in-law of Proetus, and two names for his wife. In fact this name confusion is something that both the Greek and Hebrew accounts have in common, and helps us to associate the two stories.

That the Greeks referred to the Hittites as Lycians is natural and not a matter of inconsistency. The Greeks did not use the term Hittite even though we know that most of Asia Minor was within the Hittites realm and the Greeks were certainly familiar with Asia Minor. Lycia was within the Hittite sphere and spoke a Hittite Language called "Luwian." In fact, many modern linguists consider the Lycian language to be the purest representation of the ancient Hittite language to have survived the Iron Age. The Lycians were allies of the Hittites against the Egyptians who called them "Lukka." To the Hittites they were a member-state of the Assuwa (Asia?) league. The Assuwa league was defeated and absorbed into the Hittite Empire. After the collapse of the Hittite Empire, the Lycians were considered to be one of the Neo-Hittite kingdoms. Modern historians consider the Scriptural Hittites also to be Neo-Hittites, therefore the relationship between Esau's Hittites, and the Lycians of Proetus, is no obstacle to the theory here presented.

Acrisius, the Greek version of Israel, had a daughter named Danae, who had gotten ravaged during the course of these dynastic struggles. While Israel himself had a daughter named Dinah, who also was ravaged. The two stories, the Greek one known as "the rape of Danae" and the Hebrew one known as "the rape of Dinah," are quite comparable, and not only in the similarities of their names. Robert Graves, in book 1 of his two volume work, "the Greek myths," (60.1,3) says that the Greek Danae was called, by the Hebrews, Dinah. Perhaps by way of explanation he intimates earlier in his book, that the Danaans who told her story, were part of a group of "early arriving Helladic colonists from Palestine." Parallels between the stories of the two maiden daughters abound. In each case the analogous virgin was thought to have been raped by the enemy of her father and, also in each case, revenge had been taken against this enemy. We also learn, whether in the Hebrew story or in the Greek rendition of it, that the respective despoilers had actually fallen in love with, each their own version of, the victimized maiden.

I am personally of the opinion that the character of Dinah was, at one time, more than simply a human woman. Perhaps her story was an allegorical one, told to teach about the story of the nation of Israel itself, which was also often referred to as the "Virgin of Israel." The nation of Israel was often referred to as a "woman," and the "maiden," and the "virgin," she was known as Zion (or Jerusalem) and called the "bride," or "wife," of God. ("Therefore thus saith the LORD; Ask ye now among the heathen, who hath heard such things: the virgin of Israel hath done a very horrible thing." Jeremiah 18:13, "Again I will build thee, and thou shall be built, O virgin of Israel: thou shall again be adorned with thy tabrets, and shall go forth in the dances of them that make merry." Jeremiah 31:4, "...O virgin of Israel, turn again to these thy cities. How long wilt thou go about, O thou backsliding daughter?..." Jeremiah 31:21,22, "The virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise: she is forsaken upon her land; there is none to raise her up." Amos 5:2.) The case of Dinah may have been a kind of "reverse euhemerization," where an emblematic figure was transferred into an historic personage, she was after all, "the virgin daughter of Israel." The well known female personification, the totem, of the nation of Israel had committed her "whoring" with the inhabitants of the land of Canaan. The story of the "rape" of Dinah, in the form that it survives down to us in the Scriptures seems to me, like a way to mitigate the guilt of the "virgin." I am convinced that there was, at one time, more to the story of Dinah that would have displayed it as a more obvious "foreshadowing" of what was to become of the nation of Israel, but it has been expunged from the Scriptural record.

The Scriptural account in Genesis offers no mention of any offspring as the result of Dinah's rape, this seems odd to me because the Jewish legends clearly do. The Midrash Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer (Chap. 38) records a view that Asenath (the wife of Joseph, and mother of Ephraim and Manasseh,) was actually the daughter of Joseph's sister Dinah, conceived in her rape at Shechem. Ginzberg's "Jewish Legends" also make the same allegation. Furthermore, the Greek renditions, which include not only the Argolian tale known as "the rape of Danae" but also a Corinthian story called "the rape of Aegina," both involve a resultant child. The progeny of Danae include Perseus and Heracles, both highly Messianic characters, Heracles in particular injures his foot while slaying a serpent, the Lernian Hydra. Later Heracles sacrifices himself on his own Golgotha because the Hydra blood had poisoned him (accordingly he was resurrected to immortality on Olympus). The rape of Aegina produced the line that lead to Achilles (another, clearly Messianic hero who could not be killed, accept for a wound in his "heel"). In regards to the allegation that Asenath was the daughter of Dinah, there is perhaps some Scriptural evidence, for the Scriptures clearly enumerate 70 individual children of Israel who had originally sojourned to the land of Egypt; "These are the names of the children of Israel," (Gen. 46:8-27), and there are indeed 70 names which follow, that is there are 70 only if you include that of Asenath, the wife of Joseph (the last line of this catalog does seem to be additional, but clearly states "all the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were threescore and ten."). Thereby indicating that Asenath was indeed thought, by someone once upon a time, to be one of the "souls of the house of Jacob."

An original version of this tale, no doubt included the point that Dinah (as an allegorical representation of the nation of Israel itself) left ancestors as a result of her "rape." As to why there is no mention of this in Genesis I would say; Perhaps the Jewish editors of the Scriptures were well aware of the Allegorical association between Dinah and their national personification, "the Virgin of Israel." They also knew that the Messiah was to be born of "the Virgin" (indicating that He would be an Israelite). However they promoted the Davidic Messiah (as opposed to the Ephraimitic, or otherwise known as the Messiah ben Joseph), and were not inclined to report that a descendant of Dinah through Asenath (as the wife of Joseph) would lend allegorical credibility to the concept of the "Messiah ben Joseph," a parallel, but sometimes thought to be competing, Messianic tradition.

Another, quite revealing, "coincidence" between the Greek and Hebrew stories, concerned the confinement of their respective maidens, and occurs in the Jewish legends as follows; "Jacob ... when he was preparing to meet his brother, he concealed his daughter Dinah in a chest, lest Esau desire to have her for wife, and he be obliged to give her to him." (from Ginzberg "Jewish Legends") Compare this, very rare motif, to the Greek account given by Apollodorus; "Acrisius built a brazen chamber under ground and there guarded Danae. However, she was seduced, as some say, by Proetus, whence arose the quarrel between them" (Apollodorus 2.4.1). Take note that here Apollodorus not only helps us to associate the legendary story of the confinement of Dinah to that of Danae, but also helps to identify Esau with Proetus.

In the Greek myth, Danae was kept in a chamber in order to maintain her virginity. She was despoiled never-the-less, so she and her child were condemned to die. The instrument of their death was also a chest. These Hebrew and Greek references to a "chamber" or "chest" were apparently symbolic, the meaning of the symbol is plausibly the "Ark" of the Covenant as the physical representation of the Law. The idea of "confining the Virgin to the Law (the chest or Ark)" was intended to keep her from corrupting herself (as the nation of Israel) with the practices of the surrounding Canaanite nations. Once defiled she would produce a "tainted" Messiah whom the same Law would be compelled to condemn. However, the prophecy concerning the Messiahship of her child would still have to be fulfilled, and the young hero would be destined to survive his death sentence.

For those who wish to read the legendary version of the Shechem incident, this tradition is outlined in Ginzberg's "Jewish Legends" in a chapter entitled "The Outrage at Shechem" For the legendary story that the daughter of Dinah was also the same person as Joseph's wife Asenath in Egypt, the chapter name is, "The Wives of the Sons of Jacob."

Another parallel exists between the two characters, Jacob and Acrisius. The circumstances of Jacob's birth, "And after that came his brother out, and his hand took hold on Esau's heel; and his name was called Jacob:" (Gen 25:26), and the meaning of his name, as "the supplanter of the heel" would seem to indicate that Jacob held a special relationship to the famous Messianic prophecy that was promised at the Edenic transgression (Genesis 3:15). Indeed, it was certainly part of the inheritance, and blessing of the covenant with God, that he had supplanted from his elder twin brother. This combined with the prophecy given before his birth that "the elder shall serve the younger." (Gen 25:23), is perhaps why the Greek Acrisius is said to have received the prophecy that he so dreaded. This prophecy may have been deemed to await a "double fulfillment" one for the life of Jacob in relation to Esau, but another, macro-fulfillment for the nation of Israel itself, where the "elder" more established dynasty of Israelite kings would be replaced by a "younger," new Messianic king in the form of a child who was yet to be born. Thus giving any ruler of Israel (Acrisius being herein presented as a Greek adaptation of Israel himself) cause to fear the coming child.

The theme so saying that the king would be overthrown by a child who would be born, was widely attested to in both Hebrew and Greek cultures. It was told of Nimrod in regard to Abraham, Pharaoh in regard to Moses, and Herod in regard to Jesus, among the Hebrews; and among the Greeks there was, Kronos regarding Zeus, Zeus regarding the son of Thetis, Pelias had his Jason, and the subject of the present article Acrisius, was also a king of this type. The theme of the wounded heel is so often referred to, as to defy any argument that it is the result of mere coincidence. Heracles, destroying the hydra, was wounded on the foot as he stepped on and crushed the hydra's ally, Cancer the crab. This episode was to spell the doom of Hercules, for he was eventually to die from the poison of the hydra. Eurydice stepped upon a snake, was bitten in the foot, and died. And let us not forget Achilles, who was immortal accept for his heel, in which he received his mortal wound. But, perhaps the earliest use among the Greeks, of the ancient Hebrew "bruising of the heel" motif, occurs in the story of Acrisius, our Greek parallel to Jacob/Israel. For just as was the dynasty of Israel, so was the dynasty of Acrisius, plagued by an impending prophetic doom. A prophecy had proclaimed that the King of Argolis would be killed, and the fulfillment of it came just as the old Hebrew messianic promise had foretold. The predicted death of Acrisius came as the result of a wound in the foot. "Teutamides, king of Larissa, was holding athletic games in honor of his dead father, and Perseus came to compete. He engaged in the pentathlon, but in throwing the quoit he struck Acrisius on the foot and killed him instantly." (Apollodorus 2.4.4).

The supposition that the story of Jacob was brought by Danite colonists to Greece where it appears as the myth of Acrisius, leads me to suppose that the Edenic promise could have accompanied it in the same way. However, the notion that this promise should be applied by the Greeks to Acrisius is not satisfying. Acrisius does not seem very Messianic. Unlike the fate of Acrisius, the wound in the heel is thought to imply only a temporary death with a resurrection and/or apotheosis attached. It is the wound in the head that has the more permanent outcome. Accordingly some mythographers such as Hyginus, with deference to the previous quote by Apollodorus, claim that the wound of Acrisius was in the head; "Perseus swore an oath to his grandfather that he would never kill him. When Acrisius was detained there by a storm, Polydectes died, and at his funeral games the wind blew a discus from Perseus' hand at Acrisius' head which killed him. Thus what he did not do of his own will was accomplished by the gods." (Hyginus, fabulae 63). At any rate, the death of Jacob is not like either version of the death of Acrisius, and the oracle employed in the Greek myth has more to do with the birth of the heroic man-child who would be born to the virgin, than it has to do with the death of his grandfather. It is more likely that the origin of the oracle against Acrisius stems from the identification of his grandson Perseus with Moses, for Moses, raised by the daughter of Pharaoh, did bring about the death of, not his natural grandfather, but his foster grandfather, the Pharaoh.

As the book of Genesis comes to it's end, we learn that the Hebrew patriarch Israel, and Dinah as well, had to leave his inherited kingdom after all. Driven by a famine he left the promised land and he went into Egypt, leaving his brother Esau behind in the kingdom uncontested. The scriptural account then goes on at this point to tell the story of the Exodus. Returning to the Greek myths, we find from Ovid (Met. v. 238) that ultimately Proetus drove his twin Acrisius from the throne and out of Argolis, Hyginus says that Acrisius followed his daughter Danae and grandson Perseus to the land of their exile (Hyginus, fabulae 63), leaving his brother Proetus behind in the kingdom uncontested. This is the point in the Greek myth, where the story of the dynastic struggles over Argolis ends, and the story of Perseus begins. As we shall demonstrate later, the myth of Perseus can indeed be shown to be a Greek variant of the Hebrew story of the Exodus.

In conclusion, it may be stated succinctly; These Argolian Greeks (Danaans who, by their own account, came to Greece from Joppa only a few generations after their ancestors had come up out of the land of Egypt,) had a story so saying that they were descended from a great "father" figure (Genesis 17:4,5) of a pair of competing twins who quarreled even in the womb over their birthright (Genesis 25:22,23). The twins grew up to war over the Kingdom (Genesis 27:41,42). The brother who was supplanted went off to marry into a "Hittite" nation (Genesis 26:34), amongst whom he raised up an army with the intent to smite his twin who had supplanted him (Genesis 32:6-11). The armies met, but the brothers decided to split the Kingdom between them (Genesis 33:16). The supplanting twin had a virgin daughter who was raped (Genesis 34:1,2), and he eventually went to join his family, exiled in a foreign land (Genesis 46:6-8), from which they were, by an heroic descendant with divine assistance, brought back home through an epic deliverance (see the Exodus and compare it to the story of Perseus).

-John R. Salverda


Taken from: http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?app=blog&blogid=2697&showentry=23278

Posted 07 March 2011