Who wrote the Bible? The people of Israel—such is the impression that the biblical narrative succeeds in creating. Regardless of how the text arrived at its present form, the final product presents itself as a popular work, “of the people, by the people and for the people.” Of the people, because almost the entire biblical corpus, from the tales of the Patriarchs to the Return to Zion, is concerned with the formation, wars, successes and failures of the entire Hebrew nation; by the people, because the impersonal style and author’s anonymity create the effect of a public undertaking, or at least an undertaking of the professional writers from among the citizens; and for the people, because most of the biblical text, especially the Tora and the prophetic writings, is addressed expressly to the people of Israel.

The Bible’s appeal to the people stands in sharp contrast to Western literature, which is directed at the private “reader”—an individual, detaching himself from the world in order to peruse a book in an intimate setting. The Bible was intended to be read aloud in a public setting. “And all the nation saw the thunder and lightning”—the depiction of the revelation at Sinai is reflective of the kind of communication that the entire text is striving to achieve.²⁵ If there is anything in the Bible that is alien to the spirit of Western literature, it is the public nature of its narrative.²⁶ Judaism as a whole is characterized by such a public nature, to a degree that has few parallels in other religions and cultures. It is sufficient to mention, for example, the obligation to pray and read the Tora in a minyan of ten men, an injunction which, like many other obligations, expresses the communal, public nature of Judaism. The Christian idea of “salvation,” the redemption of the individual soul, is far removed from the Jewish concept of “redemption,” which Gershom Scholem described as “the liberation of a nation from exile, the restoration of freedom and a vision of a just society.”²⁷

The national content of the Bible also differs sharply from the individualistic content which Western literature inherited from Greece. The Homeric epics, followed by the Athenian dramas, are not concerned with “the people,” but with heroes whose splendid individualism is the essence of their “greatness.” The individualistic, anthropocentric worldview of the Greeks—as famously expressed by Protagoras’ dictum that “man is the measure of all things”—is diametrically opposed to the call of Isaiah: “Stop glorifying man, who has only breath in his nostrils. For why should he matter?”²⁸ Similarly, the entire story of the Tower of Babel is a thinly veiled attack on anthropocentrism.

The use of characters’ names in the titles of biblical and pagan texts offers a striking illustration of the point. The Epic of Gilgamesh is concerned solely with the exploits of Gilgamesh; the Odyssey tells of an individual named Odysseus; Antigone deals with Antigone; Oedipus Rex with King Oedipus; Electra with Electra. (This theme continues into modern Western literature as well,²⁹ which in the twentieth century focused on the “self” more intently than ever before.³⁰) The book of Samuel, in contrast, is not devoted to the prophet Samuel, who is only one of the characters in it, and not even the most central (David is by far the book’s dominant figure); the book of Joshua is scarcely about Joshua son of Nun, but deals primarily with the conquest of the land by the people of Israel; and the book of Ezra-Nehemiah is not concerned with the personality and individual fate of Ezra and Nehemiah, but with the return from the Babylonian exile and the spiritual and material restoration of the Jewish polity in the land of Israel.

Every character in the Bible, no matter how unique and impressive, is but a link in the long national chain. The biography that is set before the reader throughout Scripture is not of any one person, but of a people.³¹ We are first told of the circumstances that led to the birth of the nation, in the “pre-historic” chapters of the beginning of Genesis, and afterwards of the adolescence of the people, from Abraham to the descent of the sons of Jacob into Egypt, followed by the nation’s coming of age in the exodus from Egypt, the revelation at Sinai and the conquest of Canaan, and then its political maturation in the transition from a tribal confederation to a centralized kingdom. The individual stories of the binding of Isaac, the political success of Joseph, the survival of Yotam, the madness of Saul, the purges of Yehu and the tactical genius of Mordechai are merely chapters in a larger story. The placement of these independent stories in the broader narrative, and the careful timing with which each is introduced, impart to each of them its own significance.³²

The Bible’s consciousness is collective, but not collectivist. Individuals have an important role to play. Collectivism, which has appeared throughout history in the form of despotic regimes from Egypt and Mesopotamia to the Soviet Union and the Third Reich, has no room for individuals. Collectivist systems perceive individuals living under them as part of abstract, monolithic “people”; there is no significance to differences in character, talent or opinions among the components of this faceless “proletariat.” The Bible, on the other hand, portrays a series of individual characters, each of whom is a unique human phenomenon. The striking differences among the three Patriarchs, among the four Matriarchs, among the twelve sons of Jacob, or among Saul, David and Solomon, are a salient feature of the biblical narrative.

At the same time, these individuals are not individualists. They are, rather, fully and heroically devoted to the national collective. The aspiration to fulfill the needs of the nation is what justifies their ambition as individuals. Their consistent, purposeful and intense dedication of resources to this end reflects not egoistic ambition, but a profound sense of duty. The Bible shows us how the individual is supposed to excel in his own way, and to make his unique contribution on behalf of the community: Joseph as a politician, Moses as a lawgiver, Joshua as a commander, Solomon as a monarch.³³ The communal goal of “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” cannot be realized by repressing the individual’s personality, but by fulfilling it through the placement of unique demands upon his unique character. It is the sense of duty, not an isolated “sense of self,” that enables the individual to realize his hidden capacities, to build and to be built in return.

Duty is expressed in doing, in volitional action. The historical-national message of the Bible, which features a set of characters infused with a sense of obligation, may be delivered only by reporting the deeds of these characters. As a result, the prose of the Bible is the prose of deeds.

 

The Bible does not describe; it narrates. It does not perceive reality as a constellation of objects in space, but of deeds in time. Witness, for example, the torrent of activity that begins the narrative of Judah and Tamar in the book of Genesis:

Judah “left,” “camped,” “saw,” “married her,” “went in unto her”; his wife “conceived and bore” a son, and Judah “named him”: The prevalence of verbs throughout the passage is striking. The location, Adulam, is not described at all, nor are the tents among which the story takes place. We do not know whether these events happen during the day or at night, in summer or winter. There is no physical description of the characters, nor are their personalities depicted. The only intrusion by the narrator into the thoughts of a character (“But Onan knew”) is not meant to describe his nature, but rather is a comment necessary for the plot. And when the narrator switches from reporting the action to reporting speech (“Then Judah said to Onan, ‘Go in unto your brother’s wife....’“), the speech itself is simply a command to perform an action: When a biblical character speaks, he does so in a way that advances the plot.