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<\/a><\/p>\n“Penelope and the Suitors” by John William Waterhouse (1911-1912). (Aberdeen City Council Archives, Gallery and Museums Collection\/Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
It\u2019s not that the Jewish tradition doesn\u2019t understand realpolitik. Abraham is a great warrior as well as a man of God. They understand it. But the starting point is trust. Odysseus does not trust. Odysseus is a man of disguises, cunning, cleverness \u2014 leveraging every trick.<\/p>\n
Along with the charging-boar business, there\u2019s a famous essay by a scholar named George Dimock called \u201cThe Name of Odysseus.\u201d Dimock\u2019s essential point: There\u2019s a Greek verb, odusasthai, that means to cause pain to oneself and others, and to be willing to do so. Dimock points out that Odysseus does this in many ways \u2014 the Cyclops, whose eye he takes; the suitors, whom he kills; all of it.<\/p>\n
By the end of the story, hasn\u2019t he basically sacrificed his entire entourage?<\/p>\n
This is incredible, if you look at it. Odysseus leaves Troy with 12 ships, which means around a thousand men. One way or another, they all die. So he takes a generation of young men to Troy and comes back with zero.<\/p>\n
Twenty years later, you have the next generation \u2014 the noble cream of the crop, 108 suitors from Ithaca and the outlying islands. He kills all of them. So: Another generation of young people gone. Then the fathers of those suitors want revenge, so they make war against him. He would have killed them all too, except that Zeus had Athena intervene, essentially averting a civil war, with a pact of peace afterward.<\/p>\n
Now, this begins to get at the real difference between the \u201cOdyssey\u201d and the Bible. After the universal history of Genesis 1 through 11, we get to the patriarchs. God is, in effect, saying: All right, I\u2019m going with this guy Abraham \u2014 and remarkably, astonishingly, He says, \u201cCome with me, leave your ways and customs behind, leave your gods, leave your family \u2014 we\u2019re just going to go.\u201d At that point, you\u2019re dealing with God\u2019s desire to form community, starting with a family, and it builds from there. Odysseus, by contrast, wants to get back home, but he\u2019s a loner, a man of pain who must endure the world\u2019s harsh reality to find fulfillment.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s talk about the Cyclops, an episode that reveals a lot about the character of Odysseus. A one-eyed giant imprisons Odysseus\u2019s men in a cave and rolls a stone against the entrance so they can\u2019t get out \u2014 even if they kill him, they\u2019d still be trapped inside.<\/p>\n
Odysseus comes away from the war with Troy into a postwar world, a political crisis, He\u2019s now a grizzled veteran of a bloody, horrible 10-year war. And the first thing he does is sack the city of the Cicones \u2014 an actual historical people \u2014 killing all the men and enslaving the women. He\u2019s in a nasty mood. Very shortly after, they spot the Cyclops\u2019s island \u2014 smoke rising \u2014 and decide to go see. They realize a monster must live there: Everything is enormous, racks of cheese stacked way up high. Odysseus says, \u201cLet\u2019s wait and meet this guy.\u201d His men say, \u201cNo \u2014 let\u2019s just take the stuff and go.\u201d He insists on sitting inside the cave, waiting. It\u2019s insane \u2014 he wants to measure himself.<\/p>\n
The Cyclops episode is really the antithesis of what\u2019s happening with Abraham and the patriarchs, who are building a family, a tribe, a nation, looking forward. Odysseus just wants to test himself. When the Cyclops returns, Odysseus uses his cleverness, blinds him, and they sneak out under the rams. Then he shouts his own name \u2014 which is what gets all his men killed, because the Cyclops is Poseidon\u2019s son, and Poseidon is furious. He identifies himself completely: \u201cI\u2019m Odysseus, I live in Ithaca, here\u2019s my address.\u201d That episode is clearly one in which Odysseus is giving birth to himself \u2014 an act of absolute hubris.<\/p>\n
So Odysseus has two competing desires. One is to make his name \u2014 to achieve glory and fame through his exploits. The other becomes: I have to get home.<\/p>\n
Is there a biblical character who\u2019s a useful compare-and-contrast for this notion of what it means to be a man, or a hero?<\/p>\n
There\u2019s Jacob, but let me start with David. The David and Goliath scene is fantastic, because Goliath is a Philistine, and the Philistines came from the Aegean \u2014 probably Greek speakers, though some think Crete. So Goliath, in effect, is a Greek. He\u2019s described as enormous, fantastic \u2014 and he\u2019s bested by David. David killing Goliath is a version of what scholars of myth call the \u201cwily lad\u201d story \u2014 another version is Odysseus with the Cyclops, another big, bad opponent. Interestingly, David hits Goliath right in the middle of the forehead, which is where, on Greek vases, the Cyclops\u2019 eye is depicted.<\/p>\n
So Goliath is big and bad, and then there\u2019s Saul, a doofus who says, \u201cYou have to wear my armor.\u201d David says, no, I\u2019m not going to do that. David trusts in the Lord. When Odysseus defeats the Cyclops, he says, in effect, \u201cI did this \u2014 I am Odysseus.\u201d David says, \u201cNo \u2014 I trust in the Lord; the Lord protects me.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Jacob?<\/p>\n
Odysseus is a wrestler, and Jacob is very Odyssean \u2014 fighting with Esau, leveraging Esau\u2019s hunger to steal his birthright, scheming with his mother Rebecca, who is also an Odyssean figure, telling him to dress in skins to deceive Isaac. Then Esau wants to kill him, and we get the scene where Jacob wrestles at the Jabbok [River], the night before he has to confront Esau. He\u2019s worried, he\u2019s wounded, he fights this \u201cish\u201d \u2014 this figure, angel, whatever it is \u2014 and he\u2019s vulnerable. He\u2019s feeling fear, feeling guilt. He\u2019s holding on and fighting because only if Esau blesses him \u2014 which happens the next day \u2014 can Jacob let go. In other words: \u201cI have to make it right with my brother.\u201d Then he\u2019s told his name will be Israel \u2014 because he strives with God.<\/p>\n
So to sum this up: The Jewish hero is vulnerable and trusts in God; the Greek hero can show no vulnerability and can only trust in himself. And yes, there\u2019s Athena and the other gods, but the Greek gods are fickle.<\/p>\n
Are there similar comparisons between a female heroine in the \u201cOdyssey\u201d and a biblical character \u2014 perhaps Penelope and what she represents versus one of the matriarchs?<\/p>\n
Penelope and Rebecca are two strong but very different women. Both are capable, like Odysseus, of enduring deep and lasting pain. Penelope seems more passive, but she has a kind of Odyssean cunning and steely determination. She holds the suitors at bay for three years by delaying marriage until she\u2019s finished weaving the funeral shroud for Odysseus\u2019s father Laertes. Besides her trick of weaving by day and unraveling by night, the shroud is not just for Laertes. It is for the suitors, and it signifies the burial of an entire epoch \u2014 a past slain by the violent passions of the younger generation, no longer constrained by ancestral ways.<\/p>\n
While Penelope patiently awaits Odysseus\u2019s return and prepares to bury a dying epoch, Rebecca looks forward, toward the great nation that God had promised to make of Abraham\u2019s offspring. Isaac, doubtless traumatized by his near sacrifice, is the passive partner in their marriage; he stays put when Abraham sends his servant to find a wife for him, while Rebecca jumps at the chance to leave her home. She is physically vigorous (she endures a breach birth of twins, and carries water for all the servant\u2019s camels) and strong in will, and it is she who is endowed with Odyssean cunning. She perceives that it is Jacob, not Esau, who has the toughness and ambition needed to be the bearer of the covenant. It is she who instructs Jacob how to disguise himself as Esau so that Isaac\u2019s blessing will go to him; who takes on herself whatever curse Isaac may put on Jacob; and who instructs Jacob to flee to Beersheba, knowing that she will probably never see him again.<\/p>\n
Those are really useful comparisons. But it raises a question, which maybe a rabbi would answer differently than a scholar: Is there a temptation, reading the \u201cOdyssey\u201d and the Bible, to conclude that one worldview, not the quality of the literature but the worldview, is simply better than the other? Does Homer have something to teach Jews about how to be a hero, or a lover, or how to be clever?<\/p>\n
I was just teaching Exodus, and we got to the scene where Moses punishes the Israelites for the sin of the Golden Calf \u2014 a very Homeric episode, morally messy. Were any of the Levites who did the killing themselves involved in making the calf? Are they only killing people who deserve it, or will innocent people die too? My students find it extreme \u2014 3,000 men killed. My response is: Read Machiavelli, where he says armed prophets succeed and unarmed prophets fail \u2014 and that 3,000 is about half a percent of the roughly two million Israelites there. If Moses doesn\u2019t get this under control, they\u2019re all going to die. That\u2019s Greek \u2014 that\u2019s realpolitik. But it\u2019s already there in the Jewish tradition too, going back to Abraham.<\/p>\n
So \u2014 is the Jewish tradition superior? I think so, and especially for today, because of our circumstances. The United States was at its height after World War II, and now our institutions are collapsing. What do we need? Trust. We need to rebuild. So if you ask which tradition is better, here\u2019s one criterion: What\u2019s the advantage of trust? It\u2019s a kind of youthfulness, a kind of fertility, a kind of generativity \u2014 the capacity of the Jews to rebuild what\u2019s been broken, to regrow, to reestablish themselves at every civilizational crisis, is unparalleled in history. The Greeks have a parallel of sorts \u2014 there\u2019s a capacity to find a new way forward there too. But it seems to me what we need today is trust \u2014 because people are withdrawing their energy from the task of mending the world, because they don\u2019t want to invest their time, energy and hope in something they believe might fail.<\/p>\n
If we\u2019re going to save Western civilization, which I do think is in crisis, we need to renew ourselves by looking to the Jewish tradition in particular.<\/p>\n
Many people today, especially on the political right, argue that Western civilization is under siege, and the key to its revival is reclaiming its roots in the Ancient Greeks and Christian traditions. I think some Jewish thinkers and think tanks \u2014 including Tikvah, where some of your work has appeared \u2014 have a lot invested in including Judaism and Jewish ideas among the cornerstones of Western civilization. Is that a natural fit, or was Judaism more of a counterculture that was constantly challenging classical and Christian ideas?<\/p>\n
I was a senior fellow at Tikvah, and they brought me on to design Greek and Jewish courses. When I got to the University of Austin [the pro-free inquiry, \u201canti-woke\u201d liberal arts college whose founders include the Jewish journalist Bari Weiss] I designed their intellectual foundations program \u2014 their liberal-education core \u2014 and set it up with Genesis, Exodus and so on. I think what Tikvah is trying to do \u2014 and what UT Austin is doing too, in the School of Civic Leadership, where I\u2019ll be teaching Genesis and Exodus this fall \u2014 and what other universities are trying to do, is give the Jewish tradition its rightful place.<\/p>\n
From the founding fathers onward, there\u2019s this notion that America is a chosen land \u2014 that we are, in some sense, a chosen people, engaged in a moral, spiritual, political mission. Lincoln, I think, brings this to a kind of perfection \u2014 he turns it into a civil religion, speaking to a people who\u2019ve read the Bible, without pushing any particular sectarian version of it. We don\u2019t know which side God is on, but the project isn\u2019t going to work unless we understand ourselves to be on a kind of collective mission, knowing we\u2019ll make mistakes and need to be forgiven.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve written that the Hebrew Bible, like Homer, is one of the \u201ctaproots of the great branching oak of Western civilization.\u201d Do you worry about the Christian nationalists who insist Western civilization is intrinsically tied to the Christian faith, and denotes a specifically Christian civilization?<\/p>\n
For sure, I think it\u2019s a huge problem. As with anything involving the Jews, I\u2019m horrified by the antisemitism I\u2019ve seen building on the left, now mirrored on the right. Young people in particular are being memed into antisemitism.<\/p>\n
It does seem to me that the only way forward is to keep having these conversations \u2014 to say, here\u2019s what we\u2019ve inherited, here\u2019s how these texts have shaped who we are as Americans, how we understand things, even if you\u2019re a staunch atheist, the Bible has shaped your thinking about all of this. Only then can we get to a point where more people than just the Jews might say, \u201cYour Christian nationalism, which imagines Christianity came out of nowhere with no real relationship to the Jews except rejection, is fundamentally ill-informed and destructive.\u201d<\/p>\n
To return to Nolan\u2019s version of the \u201cOdyssey\u201d: What do you hope it gets right \u2014 or, if you\u2019d rather answer the other way, what do you dread it might do to a story of such antiquity and power?<\/p>\n
Odysseus, as I\u2019ve indicated, has some questionable qualities as a leader, but he\u2019s a much more complicated, flexible person, better suited to a new reality. I think that\u2019s part of why Homer centered him. He\u2019s a character who can hold two things together at once \u2014 maybe more than two: \u201cI want to be an outstanding individual, but my duty is to the community; I want to protect my family and make a name for myself, but I\u2019m willing to do what\u2019s necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s true of the Hebraic heroes too \u2014 Abraham surely didn\u2019t think it was a great idea to say his wife Sarah was his sister [when threatened by Pharaoh and King Abimelech] not once but twice, but he had to; otherwise they weren\u2019t getting out of there. You have to hold the necessary and the good together. That requires a complicated person who can juggle both.<\/p>\n
And I think it\u2019s such a primal story, from the point of view of the human soul and human history. On the individual level, it\u2019s the shape of a life \u2014 leaving home and coming back. And it\u2019s the shape of a community too. Biblically, we\u2019re all exiles, all trying to get back to Eden, if you like. The story of human life is trying to make, or recover, or return to a home \u2014 on both the individual and the communal level \u2014 and it\u2019s a never-ending task. I think Homer knew what he was doing: Read the last page of the \u201cOdyssey\u201d, and you sense there\u2019s a lot of work still to be done. Because it doesn\u2019t end. This is what life is about \u2014 and then going forward too, having children, being concerned with their home, helping them make one.<\/p>\n
I hope the film shows that.<\/p>\n
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