Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- About translations and transliterations
- 1 Biblical narrative and the tragic vision
- 2 Saul: the hostility of God
- 3 Jephthah: the absence of God
- 4 The fate of the house of Saul
- 5 David: the judgment of God
- Afterword
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index of authors
- Index of proper names
- Index of citations
Afterword
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- About translations and transliterations
- 1 Biblical narrative and the tragic vision
- 2 Saul: the hostility of God
- 3 Jephthah: the absence of God
- 4 The fate of the house of Saul
- 5 David: the judgment of God
- Afterword
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index of authors
- Index of proper names
- Index of citations
Summary
An den langen Tischen der Zeit
zechen die Krüge Gottes.
Sie sind die gewaltigsten Zecher:
sie führen das Leere zum Mund wie das Volle
und schäumen nicht über wie du oder ich.
[At the long tables of time
the goblets of God are guzzling.
They are the heftiest guzzlers:
they raise both the empty and full to their lips
and do not foam over as you or I do.]
Paul CelanI began this book by saying it would deal with tragedy as we meet it in particular biblical texts and not as we abstract it in theory. I end it with an afterword which is not a conclusion. For to write a conclusion I would need to draw together arguments from previous chapters – perhaps to dispute with those who maintain there is no tragedy in the Bible and to show how my analysis proves that the stories of Saul, of Jephthah, of the members of Saul's house, and of David are tragic – and, finally, to tie my observations up into a neat interpretive package, thus sparing the reader the need to engage what I hope are substantive arguments about the Bible's tragic dimension in the preceding chapters. Because my interest lies in texts, not theory, I have avoided, insofar as possible, generic claims about the Bible's tragic vision in favor of detailed analysis of specific instances of biblical tragedy (using a working definition of tragedy broad enough to include the Greeks, Shakespeare, biblical literature, and modern works).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Tragedy and Biblical NarrativeArrows of the Almighty, pp. 150 - 152Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992