Bible's Contribution to Western Culture
I. Garden of Eden--the image of the garden.
A. a paradise where the familiar anxieties, conflicts, and pains of life as we know it do not exist.
B. a place of plenty, innocence, and harmony (pre-civilized memory?).
C. theme--the garden may represent recaptured innocence.
D. represents a common dream of a pristine, pre-civilized state.
II. The Pastoral Genre.
A. image of the shepherd--occupies a moral position midway between that of the civilized city dweller and the innocent gardener. (Early heroes of Biblical narrative were often shepherds).
B. the Pastoral Genre (pastoral eclogue, idyll, or romance)--this was a staple of
Western lit. for centuries, until well into the 18th cent. (we will read pastoral episodes in Don Quixote ). The pastoral genre also gave writers a chance to comment on the corruption of civilization--think of Western novels or movies.
III. Conception of human history--the Bible was unique in its depiction of history as the handwriting of God and in its conviction that the events of history express a divine plan for the world, with a definite beginning, middle, and end. The "providential history" becomes common in European and American writing. (Augustine's Confessions ; later
American Puritan writings).
IV. The drama of salvation: the theme of the hero who saves his people. Joseph is one example who prefigures the later example of Christ.
V. The concept of sin: from the Hebrew culture we get the idea that man is capable of sin, primarily by defying God's will. We shall see that the Greeks had no concept of sin.