Claim CH184:
The Bible is unique in its intellectually honesty. Its characters have
real personalities. It portrays flaws of its writers and details failures
along with successes.
Source:
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1989. The Bible - God's Word or
Man's? Brooklyn, NY, pp. 65-66.
Response:
- The Bible is far from unique in this regard. The Iliad and
Odyssey
depict the heroes as human, and even the gods have personalities and
failures. The Mahabharata depicts failures of its heroes. In the
African Mwindo Epic, a major part of the story is Mwindo's punishment
after he achieved, and then overreached, his power (Biebuyck and
Mateene 1971). Thor's weaknesses are the focus of part of The Prose
Edda. Examples can be multiplied from all parts of the world.
People prefer stories about real people, and real people are fallible,
so that is what people write about.
Links:
Crane, G. (ed.), n.d. The Perseus digital library.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/
References:
- Biebuyck, Daniel and Kahombo C. Manteene, 1971. The Mwindo Epic,
Berkeley: Univeristy of California Press.
Further Reading:
The Epic of Gilgamesh. Translations by Tigay or Gardiner are
recommended.
Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey. (Translations by Robert
Fagles are
excellent.)
Buck, William, 1973 and 1976, Mahabharata and Ramayana,
University of
California Press.
Sturluson, Snorri, The Prose
Edda.
Lonnrot, Elias, Kalevala. A good prose translations is by
Francis
Peabody Magoun, Jr., Harvard U. Press.
Ford, Patrick K., 1977. The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh
Tales,
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Tedlock, Dennis (transl.), 1985. Popol Vuh. New York: Simon &
Schuster.
Miller, Lucien (ed.), 1994. South of the Clouds, Seattle:
University of
Washington Press. (Mythology and folklore of the
minority cultures of Yunnan, China)
de Civrieux, Marc, transl. by David M. Guss, 1980. Watunna, An
Orinoco
Creation Cycle. San Francisco: North Point Press. (a creation cycle from
tropical South America)
created 2003-6-6
