[JSOT 20 (1981) 27-46]

BIOGRAPHICAL PATTERNS IN BIBLICAL NARRATIVE

Joseph Blenkinsopp
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46617
USA
I
It may be true, as Kierkegaard is often quoted as saying, that
the trouble with human life is that while it has to be lived
forward it can only be understood backward. Patterns emerge in
the living of a life, certainly, and insofar as they adumbrate the
end of life (in more than one sense) they participate in the
overall pattern. There is a sense, though, in which the full
significance of a life can be grasped, insofar as it can ever be
grasped, only when it is viewed in its entirety or, in other
words, when it can be told to the end. Herein lies one
difference between biography and autobiography. The latter is
circumscribed not only by the obvious fact that the story has
not reached its terminus at the time of writing but also by the
limitations inherent in telling the story which one is also living
rather like a character in a work of fiction putting himself/
herself in the place of the narrator. Recent emphasis on the
narcissistic elements in contemporary American culture,
reflected in the current vogue for telling one
f
s own story,
suggests this clarification at the outset.
The inadvisability of collapsing biography and autobiography
into each other is also suggested by the distinct histories of the
genres. While there is some point to the clich that auto-
biography came into its own with Augustine's Confessions, this
work can in no sense be taken as an absolute beginning. The
Confessions may perhaps be understood as the interiorization of
the journey-narrative exemplified by the Satyricon of Petro-
nius, which was apparently modelled on the Odyssey, or as a
Christian version of the quest for transformation and salvation
exemplified by the devotee of Isis in Apuleius
1
Golden Ass / l / .
But the travelogue, forerunner of the picaresque novel, is
attested very much earlier than the Roman period. Students of
27
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 20 (1981)
the ancient Near East will recall the story of Sinuhe from the
Middle Kingdom and Wen-Amon's account of his journey from
Egypt
t o
Byblos over eight hundred years later / 2/ . Other
inscriptions and narratives of an autobiographical kind which
have survived from antiquity, like many in our own day, are
informed primarily by an apologetic intent. Here the line runs
from the self-serving and selective records of royal campaigns
and other real or fictitious res gestae - only very few of which
achieve anything like a distinct narrative and autobiographical
quality / 3/ - through memoirs written for a specific and usually
polemical reason like those of Ezra, Nehemiah and the
contemporary Ion of Chios / 4/ , to full-blown autobiographies,
also generally polemical, like that of Josephus - perhaps the
first clear instance of the genre / 5/ .
Insofar as we are able to reconstruct it, the early history of
biography reveals rather different intentionalities and lines of
force. We might, in the most general way, define biography as
the account of a person
f
s life from birth to death. But records
of human lives are of many different kinds of which the fully
developed genre of biography is only one. If we take the broad
view, we can find the essentials of a life epitomized in a name
and a couple of dates on a tombstone, for example. But gene-
rally the commemorative instinct, which has always provided a
powerful stimulus to the writing of biographies, calls for a
somewhat fuller record. We might therefore pass from epitaphs
to memorial brasses and stones of which the following, from
St.Mary's church in Wilton, England, is not untypical:
Edmund the sonn of Edmund Philip alias
Sweeper of Burbridge and farrer to the
Earl of Pembroke hoo died the 19 of
January and buried in this place. Anno
1677 Aetatis 70.
Here are noted: name, parentage, place of residence, occu-
pation, age, date of death and place of burial; not unimportant
data, but not much to go on if we are interested in the person
of this Edmund and the meanings bestowed or imposed on the
biblical span of his life. And while we are looking at such
rudimentary schemata we may as well present the Solomon
Grundy whose cycle from birth to death is so comprehensively
and economically set out in the old nursery rhyme: Solomon
Grundy / born on a Monday / christened on Tuesday / married
on Wednesday / took ill on Thursday / worse on Friday / died on
28
Blenkinsopp: Biographical Patterns
Saturday / buried on Sunday / this is the end of Solomon
Grundy. Here, however, the meaning is not exhausted in the
enumeration of natural events (birth, sickness, death) since
there are also the Christian rites of passage accompanying
birth, mating and return to the earth. Like the creation account
in Genesis the life is also fitted into the liturgical week, and
like the gospels an inordinate proportion deals with how the life
ended. Whatever the "deep structures" may reveal, the surface
of even such a rudimentary biography as this cannot be read off
in purely sequential terms.
It was perhaps unnecessary to adduce these artless examples
to make the point that the purpose of biography is not simply
that of providing biographical data, and few biographies apart
from the Who's Who type have limited themselves to doing that.
We should therefore redefine biography as the attempt to grasp
the meaning of a life by telling it in a certain way. To return to
the early history, or perhaps we should say prehistory of the
genre, biographers of the Peripatetic school like Theophrastus
of Lesbos or Aristoxenus of Tarentum wrote the lives of exemp-
lary individuals in such a way as to illustrate certain virtues; in
other words, as paradigms of the ethical teaching of the school.
Likewise, the memoirs and lives of Socrates, of which those by
Xenophon and Plato are the best known, fall far short of
modern standards of accuracy and comprehensiveness. The
reason is not that the writers in question were incapable of
attaining such standards but rather that this was not at all their
primary concern. For in their view, as Momigliano has well put
it, "he (Socrates) was not a dead man whose life could be re-
counted. He was the guide to territories as yet unexplored" / 6/ .
The significance of this remark for an appreciation of the
gospels - for which Justin uses the term "memoirs" as Xenophon
does of Socrates / 7/ - will be obvious; and indeed the parallels
between Socrates and Jesus as subjects of biographical writing
have often been noted / 8/ .
The choice of examples so far suggests that the modern
biography, beginning with Johnson's Lives, is perhaps not the
best place to start if we wish to understand in the broadest
terms what is involved in telling life-stories. It might be
different if we had a theory of literature enabling us to view it
as a system or an institution with its own laws rather than a
mere aggregate, so that we could make out more clearly the
connections overt and hidden, the dynamic interrelatedness of
the different genres / 9/ . A further problem is that biography
29
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 20 (1981)
has been drawn into the sphere of historiography, borrowing
from the latter its presuppositions and methods. From the
literary-critical viewpoint the failure of the "quest for the
historical Jesus" exemplifies the failure of the modern genre of
biography to find its own way of expressing the meaning of
human lives. Such an outcome was adumbrated by Aristotle
where he speaks of the plot or myth of tragedy in the Poetics.
He points out that it is inappropriate to propose a person rather
than an action as subject since the events of a person's life, like
the successive events of history in general, cannot be reduced
to a unit. A plot must be a single action, a complete whole
"with all the organic unity of a living creature" (Poetics #23,
cf. 8).
Whatever we may think of Aristotle's denial of the status of
poiesis to historiography, he at least draws our attention to the
need to juxtapose with or superimpose on some kind of a
pattern or grid the nuda facta biographica if they are to render
some kind of meaning. And in fact the earliest examples
identified by those who have investigated the history of the
genre are never of the historiographical kinds / 10/ . This is so,
as noted, with the lives and memoirs of Socrates and the
Peripatetic biographies which illustrate virtues and vices and
delineate good and bad characters after the ethical teaching of
the master / l l / . The encomiastic kind (epainoi) likewise, of
which the earliest examples are those of the Cypriot king
Evagoras and the Spartan king Agesilaus by Isocrates and
Xenophon respectively, are modelled on ancient histories of and
lamentations for gods and divine men / 12/ . In connection with
this last point it might also be suggested that the dirge or
panegyric has played its part in the development of the genre.
One thinks of the biographical content of Anthony's funeral
oration over the dead body of Caesar which, in the original
sources if not in Shakespeare, bears unmistakable traces of
ritual and recitation carried out over the dead god of the
vegetation /13/. In different ways all of these betray the need
to detect structures and patterns of meaning in human lives.
It may be objected at this point that, whatever the patterns
of meaning which shape biographical writing and give it its
specific character, they should be shown to emerge from the
deeds and decisions of the subject; they should therefore not be
spoken of as if somehow they exist independently of the
different ways in which the subject marshals his/her forces in a
particular life-project. Such at least is the general assumption
30
Blenkinsopp: Biographical Patterns
of those ethicists who have begun to mine biography for their
own purposes /14/ One response would be that such a project
necessarily finds its significance only in a context broader than
that of the aims and decisions of the subject. Moreover, writing
a life necessarily involves one in selection, arrangement and
presentation according to presuppositions, value-judgments and
models which the writer brings to the task; that here as
elsewhere, therefore, there is no such thing as an innocent
interpretation. As for the subject, it is simply not the case that
the process of making a whole of one's life implies only
conscious activity and decision. For these have to be seen in
counterpoint to unconscious desires and needs revealed perhaps
through dreams, a sudden revelation of selfknowledge, the
unanticipated tapping of unsuspected sources of energy and
power, abrupt and, at the conscious level, inexplicable changes
of direction / 15/ . The best and deepest life-stories do not
hesitate to introduce a sense of fate, destiny or providence
often pointing in a direction quite different from that along
which the protagonist is driven by conscious goals and purposes.
One thinks of the way the spell functions in the folktale, the
oracles of deities in the Homeric poems, the ominous dreams of
Enkidu in Gilgamesh, the sense of a divinely willed destiny in
the biblical story of Joseph /16/. The same note can of course
be present, though it will be often more difficult to detect, in
modern biographies. "No one goes so far," said Cromwell at one
point of his career, "as he who knows not whither he goes." And
even Hitler spoke of himself moving with the assurance of a
sleepwalker.
What we have been suggesting in the previous remarks is that
in its earliest development biography required the use of a
paradigm, pattern or grid to bring out the meaning in, or bestow
a particular meaning on, the succession of events which provide
the raw data of a human life. By extension this would also
include narrative patterns which can be identified in the great
fund of traditional narrative or folktale which, more than
anything else, gives shape and significance to the experience of
people living in a particular culture. What is decisive for this
kind of narrative is not the personality of an author but the
tradition which shapes the story and perpetuates itself through
the genre and more specifically through the plot or mythos
peculiar to it / 17/ . Hence the strategy in what follows will be
to explore the feasibility of juxtaposing with or superimposing
on biblical narratives which are in some sense biographical or,
31
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 20 (1981)
with apologies to Hans Frei, biography-like narratives, the
structure or plot of one kind of traditional genre, namely, the
folktale. The intent will not necessarily be to show that such
narratives have been consciously shaped by or modelled on
folktale structures (which is generally not the case) but to use
the folktale as a heuristic device for bringing to light patterns
and configurations not immediately apparent - like finding the
hidden animal by coloring numbered sections. Such an
exploration is bound to be preliminary, tentative and more
suggestive than conclusive. Traditional narratives offer more
than one model and there is no doubt more than one way of
analyzing folktales. And there is certainly more than one way
of analyzing biblical narratives biographical or otherwise. But
one has to make a start somewhere.
II
First, a word on where we stand. It would be widely agreed
that biblical form critics have paid little attention to the genre
of biography. One might reply that this is for the very good
reason that this genre is not found in the Bible. We have already
seen that it emerged towards the end of the period of the
formation of the Hebrew Bible and in a milieu more congenial
to its development. And even where biographical material of
one kind or another appears in the Bible it seems that the
interest is more in making some theological point - for exam-
ple, demonstrating the power or providence of God - than in
narrating the course of a human life. It is therefore hardly
surprising that form criticism, which we must insist is not co-
extensive with literary criticism, has to a very large extent
neglected the study of biographical or biography-like narrative
as worthy of attention in its own right.
Some attempts have, nevertheless, been made, though in a
quite uncoordinated way. Attention has been drawn to what
have been called "ideal biographies" as exemplified in ancient
Egyptian funerary inscriptions honoring viziers and other public
figures. In these texts, it is claimed, personal characterization,
which is the staple of modern biography, tends to recede before
certain standard topoi dealing with title, family background,
call to public service or commissioning, vindication in the face
of false changes, and the like. The further claim has been made,
but probably not substantiated, that such "ideal biographies"
provide the structural key to understanding the biblical present-
32
Blenkinsopp: Biographical Patterns
ation of the public career of such prophetic figures as Moses,
Elijah and the Isaian Servant. Even if the attempt to argue a
direct relation between the office of vizier and that of prophet
in Israel remains unproven, the perception that much of the
material concerning prophets - and indeed other public figures -
is topical and ideal retains its value and reinforces the
observations about biographical patterns made earlier in this
paper / 18/ .
Attention has also been given to the biographical legend
understood as a story about the activity, and especially
miraculous activity, of a holy man or woman. Comparison
between, for example, the Elijah narrative and the Life of Saint
Antony the Hermit, reveals common features which allow for
the description of the legend as a distinct genre / 19/ . The same
term is also in use by New Testament form critics, though both
Dibelius and Bultmann distinguished between legend and
miracle-story, restricting the former to such episodes as the
finding of the young Jesus in the temple and the temptation in
the wilderness / 20/ . Distinct from the legend is also the
account of the remarkable career of a holy person or teacher,
such as Philo's Life of Moses, Philostratus' Memoirs of
Apollonius and Porphyry's Life of Pythagoras. It is argued that
this kind of biographical writing stands in the same line of
development as the aretalogy, originally the recital of the
deeds of a god or goddess (e.g. Isis), and therefore a kind of
rudimentary divine biography. After a long interval contem-
porary scholarship is once again raising the issue of a possible
connection between this genre and the gospels / 21/ .
Summary as it is, this state of the question highlights the
need for a method of analyzing narratives in the Bible which
have biographical features but which do not readily fall into the
categories determined to date by biblical form criticism. Such a
large part of biblical narrative, from the stories of the
ancestors and ancestresses to the gospels, deals with human
lives that we risk losing entire levels of meaning if we disregard
the biographical dimension simply because we have not yet
elaborated the categories for classifying it. It can perhaps be
said that the Achilles heel of biblical form criticism is its
failure to recognize that morphology must precede typology.
Morphological analysis has, by and large, been left to the
structuralists who are emerging fully armed in our discipline, as
in others, like Athena from the head of Zeus. But apart from
the fact that structuralism has not yet addressed itself to the
33
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 20 (1981)
study of genres, it seems necessary to hold out for a prior
analysis of the more explicit levels of organization in narrative.
To use a metaphor from archeology, one that might well appeal
to Lvi-Strauss /22/, a surface exploration is necessary if only
in order to determine where to dig. One would also expect to
find some relation between what is on the surface and what lies
below it.
Interest in the folktale dates to the early nineteenth century
with the publication of the first collection of Haus marchen by
the brothers Grimm. Under the pervasive influence of
Romanticism, they conceived of their task as preserving the
relics of a peasant culture which was already in the process of
disintegration / 23/ . Remarkable similarities were soon seen to
exist between folktales from widely different areas and various
attempts to explain them were, and continue to be elaborated
/ 24/ . The first generation of form critics, Gunkel and
Gressmann in particular /25/, found traces of the folktale here
and there in the Old Testament. The standard Introduction of
Eissfeldt which epitomized their labors identifies folktale
motifs such as magical objects and helpful creatures (e.g.
Jonah), narratives which borrow from folktale (e.g. Tobit) and
reminiscences of folktales (e.g. the beginning and end of Job
and the book of Ruth) /26/. In view of what is to follow it is
worthy of note that these conclusions are reached on the basis
of the presence or absence in a narrative of motifs which occur
in folktales or, in two instances, of a folktale type attested
elsewhere /27/.
The first serious morphological analysis of the folktale was
that of Vladimir Propp, a member of the Russian Formalist
School / 28/ . Despite criticism, especially from the French
structuralists (who nevertheless took some of their most
important cues from Propp's work) / 29/ , it remains the essential
starting point for further investigation. Propp assumed that by
means of a comparative study of a large enough number of
folktales it should be possible to distinguish between constants
and variables and thus arrive at the essential characteristics of
this kind of narrative. Concentrating on the internal organi-
zation of the folktale, he began by breaking down each sample
into its smallest narrative units. This unit was taken to be not a
motif or theme but what he called a function, namely, an act of
a character defined from the point of view of its significance
for the action as a whole. By this means he was led to the fol-
lowing conclusions: functions serve as constant, stable elements
34
Blenkinsopp: Biographical Patterns
independent of how or by whom they are performed; the number
of functions in a folktale is limited; the sequence of functions is
always identical. On this basis he concluded that all folktales
are of identical type with respect to structure. Building on an
analysis of his sample material - a hundred Russian folktales -
he drew up an outline or grid of thirty-one functions. Not all
are present in all samples but those that are present always
occur in the same sequence.
Rather than commenting in detail on Propp's tabulation -
which is quite well known - it may serve our purpose better to
state the "message" of the folktale according to the structure
which emerges from Propp's linear and syntagmatic analysis.
The initial perspective is that of the protagonist as victim or
sufferer. It begins with the acknowledgement of evil expressed
as absence (I) / 30/ . The victim falls under the power of evil
following on violation of an interdiction (II-III), an act which
implies refusal to acknowledge the limits of freedom. This
comes about through deception (IV) which generally involves
self-deception or complicity (V-VII), which in its turn brings
about a lack (Villa), often through the casting of a spell which
blinds the victim to the true situation. For this situation
(alienation, loss, exile) to be reversed, the evil must be acknow-
ledged and some form of mediation sought (IX). Invariably a
journey must be undertaken, either by the victim himself or by
a donative hero on his behalf, away from the familiar (familial)
everyday world (XI). Tests, interrogations, ordeals must be
faced as the journeyer meets hostile, or only apparently hostile,
powers (XII-XIII). Also necessary is a magical agent -
supernatural help, a miracle, something analogous to grace in
the Christian sense (XIV). With such help the seeker arrives at
the scene of the desired object or in the presence of the desired
person (XV), but never without having to encounter and
overcome the initial evil or villainy (XVI-XVIII). Thus the evil is
removed (XIX) - one returns to life, one is set free, the evil
spell drops away - and it is possible at last to return (XX),
though this too can be a hazardous undertaking (XXI-XXII). The
story-line can end here, though it often continues with the
arrival of the protagonist incognito (XXIII), confrontation with
false claims and the need to establish identity by undergoing
tests (XXIV-XXVI), exposure of the false hero (XXVII-XXVIII),
transformation (e.g. putting on of new clothes), punishment of
the wicked, marriage and ascent to the throne (XXIX-XXXI).
I* is less important to try to show that Propp's analysis is
35
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 20 (1981)
valid for all folktales, or that it reveals the fundamental
organization of traditional narrative rather than one of several,
than it is to demonstrate the existence of paradigms according
to which the raw data of human lives can be structured. The
point may emerge more clearly if we compare Propp's
conclusions with the analysis of drama and narrative (we might
supply the word fiction to cover both) in Aristotle's Poetics.
Aristotle affirms the primacy of plot (mythos) over character
(ethos), he insists that the plot be a unit comparable to an
organism in which the parts function by virtue of the whole,
that it have a beginning, a middle and an end, that it move
through a peripateia (Propp's complication) to a dnouement or
resolution. The protagonist must be like us (homoios) if we are
to experience the purging of the emotions and recognize our
own history in what we see or read. The action, finally, is
triggered by a fatal error (hamartia) of the hero, corresponding
to Propp's violation of interdiction and complicity with evil.
The comparison could be developed further, and would at least
suggest that Propp is not too far off the mark and that his
tabulation is probably transferable to other narrative genres,
e.g., myth, epic, novel, comic strip.
How, to come to the point, may this formalist analysis serve
as a model or grid for the decoding of biblical narrative with
biographical features? Since to be cautious is to be on the side
of the angels, let us begin by saying that it is one essay of
analysis of one traditional genre, indeed, of one set of samples
of one genre. It is also an analysis along one axis of a narrative,
that of plot, which according to the Poetics is only one of six
components of fiction / 31/ . Further, it is an analysis of one
plane, that of the narrative syntax of the folktale. On the other
hand, it holds out the possibility of a serious rather than
hit-or-miss analysis by taking seriously the narrative structure,
while at the same time remaining open to, and indeed inviting,
other forms of analysis, e.g., cross-cultural, depth-psycho-
logical and theological. It should not be used as a tool for
identifying folktales in the Bible (though if Propp is right it
could function in that way) but as a means of displaying
meaning-conferring patterns in biography-like narrative and
therefore, by implication, making a statement about the
conditions necessary for a human life to be lived meaningfully.
At this point one would be expected to go on to offer
extended and detailed examples of Proppian analyses of such
biblical narratives with tabulation of functions broken down
36
Blenkinsopp: Biographical Patterns
into their several "moves" / 32/ , transposition into a kind of
algebra facilitating classification, diagrams laying out the
temporal and spatial axes of the narrative, and so on. Since
more pressing temporal and spatial restrictions make this
impracticable for the moment, it is proposed to make a
preliminary survey of two examples: the first, we might say,
from the periphery of the biblical story, the second from its
mainstream.
Ill
The story of Tobit may be summarized as follows. Tobit, a
highly placed, wealthy and devout Jew, married to Anne by
whom he had a son named Tobias, lived in Nineveh under
Assyrian rule. His piety led him to ignore a royal edict
prohibiting the burial of executed Jews which, being reported to
the king, resulted in the confiscation of his property and the
threat of execution. On the accession of a new king, however,
he was reinstated through the good offices of his nephew (none
other than the ubiquitous Ahiqar) who had been appointed chief
administrator of the kingdom. During a festal meal celebrating
his reinstatement, his son, who had left the house to bring in
some paupers to share their meal, found outside a Jewish corpse
which Tobit buried that evening. The ensuing state of ritual
impurity obliging him to sleep outside that night, he was blinded
by bird droppings which once again reduced him to poverty
alleviated only by his wife's meager earnings.
About the same time in distant Ecbatana his niece Sarah was
having her own problems. Promised seven times in marriage,
her prospective husbands had all been killed by the demon
Asmodeus, suspicion of multiple homicide naturally resting on
the bride-to-be. About that time Tobit remembered that he had
deposited a large sum of money with a relative in Media, not
far from Ecbatana. He therefore sent Tobias to recover it after
hiring an escort who identified himself as one Azarias but in
reality was the angel Raphael. The two set off accompanied by
the father's blessing and the mother's tears. On arriving at the
Tigris a large fish leaped from the water to devour Tobias but
the latter, guided by his companion, caught it and excised its
heart, liver and gall for future use. After arriving at the house
of Sarah's parents it was agreed that Tobias should marry Sarah;
and indeed, that he was legally required to do so. Though he was
quite naturally somewhat apprehensive as the wedding night
37
Journal f or t he Study of t he Old Testament 20 (1981)
approached, he routed the demon by using the fish's heart and
l i ver as i nst ruct ed by Raphael, and the spouses consummated
t hei r union whi l e the bride's f at her was engaged in digging the
ei ghth grave outsi de. Af t er Raphael had got the money for
Tobias, the travel l ers returned wi t h Sarah t o Ni neveh. By again
f ol l owi ng i nstructi ons Tobias cured his father' s blindness wi t h
the fish's gal l , Raphael revealed his true i dent i t y and
disappeared accompanied by a psalm of praise f r om Tobi t . Tobi t
eventual l y died at the ri pe age of 158 whi l e Tobias and his
f ami l y, warned of the f ut ure destructi on of Ni neveh, settl ed i n
Ecbatana where Tobias died at the almost equally ri pe age of
127.
I f we gentl y lay out thi s l i t t l e story on Propp's gri d we f i nd a
rel at i vel y high degree of overl ap wi t h twenty-one out of
t hi rt y-one functi ons at t est ed. Wi th one exception (XVI I , the
branding of the hero) the missing functions are al l ei ther in the
Preparatory Section (there is no Abst ent i on, Reconnaissance,
Tri ckery and Compl i ci t y) or i n the new compl i cati on at the end,
f ol l owi ng on the Return ( XX) . I t wi l l then be seen t hat the most
charact eri st i cal l y f ol kt al e elements are the medi ati on of
Raphael and the use of a magical agent. The central com-
pl i cati on occasioned by the double l ack - Tobit' s si tuati on at
Nineveh and Sarah's at Ecbatana - is present in i t s ent i ret y. The
st ruct ure cal l s for synchroni ci ty between the events in these
t wo places, wi t h t he double vi l l ai ny/ l ack el egantl y overcome/
l i qui dated by means of a dangerous journey and return (nostos).
But since the dramati s personae are, respecti vel y, Tobi t and
Sarah, the question arises as t o the hero of the narrat i ve.
St ruct ural l y i t has t o be Tobias but, as in many Jewish tal es, i t
is di f f i cul t t o disengage the protagonist f rom the kinship group.
These are only some of the more salient points bri ef l y
sketched out f r om what would const i t ut e, i n ef f ect , a di f f erent
ki nd of commentary on the book. The gain would not be merely
t hat of being in a bet t er position t o cal l in question current
cl assi fi cati on of the narrat i ve as a moral i sti c tal e or pious
Novel l e, based on arguments or procedures which are f ar too
desultory t o inspire confidence / 33/ . I t would also enable us t o
note ways i n whi ch this structure is homologous wi t h those of
other narrati ves in the Bi bl e, and indeed wi t h the narrat i ve-
st ruct ure of the Bible as a whol e. We mi ght then be in a posi -
t i on to ask whether a parti cul ar pattern according t o which
lives are t ol d is charact eri st i c of bi bl i cal narrat i ve and i n some
way const i t ut i ve of i ts meaning. But f i r st we must consider our
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Blenkinsopp: Biographical Patterns
other example.
The story of Jacob in Genesis, as noted earlier, is much more
in the mainstream of the biblical narrative, a mainstream fed
by many tributaries deepening and widening as it flows along.
The fact that this main body of narrative has been so much
worked over, and that it is cumulative in the sense that each
segment has to fit into an already established context and
pattern / 34/ , creates severe problems for a structural analysis
of any kind / 35/ . Taken in its entirety, the life-story of Jacob
covers about half of Genesis (25:19-50:14); but the fact that a
good part of it deals with his children reinforces a suggestion
made earlier about the importance of the kinship group. This of
course explains why, since Gunkel, the designation saga has
been generally used of these stories of the ancestors and
ancestresses of the people. Even in the central peripateia of
Jacob's life, recording his dealings with his brother Esau and his
uncle Laban (25:19-35:39), there occur sections in which he is
either not mentioned at all (26) or plays a subsidiary role (34). It
is hardly surprising, therefore, if results are not as encouraging
as with Tobit, despite the presence of numerous folktale-motifs
/ 36/ . More specifically, the Initial Situation as tabulated by
Propp is almost exactly replicated: childlessness, prayer for the
birth of a son, extraordinary conception and birth, oracular
predictions, description of the future hero and anti-hero,
argument of brothers over primacy / 37/ . The Preparatory Sec-
tion, however, in which the action is set in motion by violation
of an interdiction, is not attested. The complication appears to
arise directly out of the protagonist's own duplicity. It is he,
prompted by the ever-present mother, who deceives his brother
and the ostensibly dying old father, and it is this deception
which brings on the twenty-year exile.
Before we succumb to the temptation of either giving up or
of stretching out the narrative by main force on Propp's grid,
let us back off a little and look at some of the correspondences
within the story which help to shape it. At birth Jacob is given
a name, "Heel-gripper," on account of the circumstances,
probably unique in the history of obstetrics, under which he saw
the light of day / 38/ . Many years later, as he is on his way home
after the long exile, he will be given a new name, "Wrestler
with God" (Israel), after the encounter with the mysterious and
dangerous assailant at the Jabbok ford (25:26; 32:28). Even
before birth there occurs the oracular prediction of the
ascendancy of the younger brother (25:23). Having listened to
39
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 20 (1981)
many such stories since childhood we know that this will indeed
happen, but we suspect that it must be allowed to happen in its
own time. But the mother-and-son team is determined to make
it happen, and it will take a great deal of pain and absence
before it happens in the way it was meant to happen, after
strife and reconciliation. Then there is the departure for a far
land, marked by the strange dream-vision at Bethel, and the
return, also marked by visions and extraordinary happenings
which serve to reveal the depth-dimension of the story. In
between there is the twenty-year exile during which Laban, who
is assigned the role of Donor among Propp's dramatis personae,
is the occasion of Jacob's servitude, suffering and deception,
even achieving the well-nigh impossible feat of tricking him
into marrying the wrong woman. Then there is the paradox that
Jacob can marry only endogamously (encumbent also on Esau
but neglected by him) by travelling to a distant land and, let us
add, away from the mother. Hence it is only after all but one of
his sons and his only daughter are born - in a cloud of
etiological puns - that he is ready to start back home (30:25).
It would seem, then, that originally quite distinct blocks of
traditional and probably oral narrative, dealing with Jacob's
relations with Esau and Laban - perhaps also with distinct
Cisjordanian and Transjordanian Jacobs / 39/ - have been mani-
pulated to exhibit a pattern comparable to the folk tale grid
organized around the poles of lack and liquidation of lack,
journey away from the familiar world and return. The sequence:
Jacob-Esau, Jacob-Laban, Jacob-Esau implies that it is the
sibling rivalry which generates the plot, with the necessity for
endogamous marriage as a related but subordinate issue. The
central peripaty can then be identified as the sudden and
unanticipated struggle with the mysterious assailant at the
dangerous waters (32:22-32) which decides in advance the
outcome of the reunion with Esau, and from which Jacob
emerges marked for life and bearing a new name. This at least
would provide a provisional basis for "decoding" and tabulating
the entire story with its many subordinate functions.
IV
It will, I hope, be obvious that what is being attempted here
is no more than a rehearsal of one type of analysis which takes
narrative structure seriously as a bearer of meaning and
message. The folktale has been chosen not because it is
40
Blenkinsopp: Biographical Patterns
particularly in evidence in the Bible but on account of the fact
that its plot is paradigmatic and remarkably uniform and its
dramatis personae are typical and representational rather than
realistic. By any reckoning, the Bible contains much traditional
literature orally transmitted as was the folktale. Moreover its
leading characters almost invariably have a representational
function, a characteristic much in evidence in the Jacob story
but apparent elsewhere (e.g. Adam, the Servant, Jesus). It
might also be argued that the shaping of the individual
life-stories in the Bible tends to conform to the structure of the
biblical story taken a s a whole, whether we read it as the story
of Adam or of Israel to which, for at least the Christian, the
life-story of Jesus belongs. Northrop Frye has rightly taken
biblical scholars to task for their failure to highlight and clarify
the shape of the biblical story as a whole. In speaking of it as a
definitive myth with a single archetypal structure he has
focussed on certain structural elements - subjugation to and
overcoming of evil, exile and return - entirely consonant with
Propp's analysis of the folktale. Also interesting in this respect
is his point that it is the myth or plot of the biblical story which
conveys the power to shape the life of the reader thereby
bestowing on the narrative its canonical character / 40/ .
To repeat, we are not trying to persuade anyone that Propp
has provided us with a perfect instrument / 4 1 / or that other
types of analysis of biographical material compare unfavorably
with it. We would simply like to show that it can serve to bring
out the biographical element in biblical narrative as a whole
and exhibit some of the more important ways in which it is
organized. And it goes without saying that at this stage, with
genuine literary and especially morphological analysis of bib-
lical material still in its infancy, any effort is bound to be
tentative.
Without attempting to explain the remarkable uniformity of
plot which Propp has shown to be characteristic of folktales, it
is possible to detect the operation of certain psychological
universals and, at the same time, given the fact that the
folktale is a cultural product, certain analogies with other
cultural phenomena. As Propp and others have noted / 42/ , the
triadic structure of initiation rites - separation, liminality,
incorporation - is replicated in the folktale with its passage
from the familiar world and eventual reincorporation into a
fuller society, its sufferings, purgations and ordeals, its
symbolic transformations, bestowing of a new name and des-
41
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 20 (1981)
tiny etc. / 43/ . It is an intriguing suggestion that the popularity
of the folktale may have something to do with the hearer
experiencing a sort of initiation, as it were at second remove
/ 44/ . It is at any rate true to our experience to affirm that such
initiation plots remain active in the psyche where they continue
to transmit their message / 45/ . Given the role of memory, all
experience has a narrative quality, both at the conscious level
and in the unconscious where, as Freud has led us to believe,
the re-enactment of archaic mythic plots (Oedipus, Elektra)
goes on apace and is detected by a kind of analysis entirely
comparable to the literary analysis of which we have been
speaking. There is, to be sure, much in the Bible which is not
narrative and there is in the narrative, as many still believe, a
level of significance which cannot be expressed without
remainder in terms of psychological realities. But narrative is
the heart of the matter, and much of it consists in the telling of
life-stories the interpretation of which, to date rather
neglected, has an important contribution to make.
NOTES
1 R. Scholes and R. Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), pp.73-81. Use of the
term "confessions" for certain first person passages in Jeremiah
is an implicit acknowledgement of Augustine's debt to biblical
sources.
2 J.B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts
Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1955 ), pp.18-22, 25-29.
3 On the autobiographical inscription see S. Mowinckel,
"Die vorderasiatischen Knigs- und Frsteninschriften," Euchar-
isterion H. Gunkel (1923), pp.278-322; W.Baumgartner, Orient-
alische Literaturzeitung 54 (1924), pp.313-7; H.G. Gterbock,
Zeitschrift fr Assyriologie 8 (1934), pp.1-91; 10 (1938), pp.
45-149; H. Gese, Zeitschrift fr Theologie und Kirche 55 (1958),
pp.127-45. The inscription of king Idrimi of the Syrian Kingdom
of Alalakh (J.B. Pritchard, pp.557-8) is one of the few
autobiographical statements of this kind which has any literary
interest.
4 A. Momigliano, The Development of Greek Biography
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp.35-6.
5 Momigliano, p.18.
42
Blenkinsopp: Biographical Patterns
6 Momigliano, p.46.
7 apomnemoneumata, Apol. I, 66, 3.
8 See the remarks of C.W. Votaw, The Gospels and Con-
temporary Biographies in the Greco-Roman World (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1970), pp.30-62 (first published in 1915).
9 Northrop Frye's "archetypal criticism' envisages the
entire range of literature as "displaced mythology" in the sense
that myth is taken to account for and reveal the basic
structural principles of literature. In addition to the exposition
of this thesis passim in Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1964), pp.37-57, see his Fables of
Identity (New York: Harcourt, Brace <5c World, 1963), pp.7-38.
10 I have relied especially on Momigliano (.4) and D.R.
Stuart, Epochs of Greek and Roman Biography (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1928).
11 This "exemplar type," very different from the
encomiastic, was particularly influential with Plutarch and
Roman biographers, among them Cornelius Nepos; see Edna
Jenkinson in T.A. Dorey, Latin Biography (London: Routledge <5c
Kegan Paul, 1967), pp.1-16.
12 Momigliano, pp.74, 82.
13 Shakespeare followed North's translation of Plutarch's
Lives, but more important are Suetonius, Divus Julius 84 and
Appian, Bellum Civile 2:145ff. E. Stauffer even speaks of a
"passion liturgy" celebrated at the catafalque, elements of
which can be traced back to the Osiris cult; see his Jerusalem
und Rom (Berne: Francke Verlag, 1957), pp.21-22.
14 E.g. Stanley Hauerwas, "The Self as Story: Religion and
Morality from the agent's perspective," Journal of Religious
Ethics 1 (1973), 73-85.
15 See, e.g., the well-known passage from the hymn to Zeus
in Aeschylus' Agamemnon: "In our dreams pain that cannot
forget falls drop by drop upon the heart; and in our own despair,
against our will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God".
C.G. Jung has also spoken of the guiding and compensating
function of the dream: "As a rule, the unconscious content
contrasts strikingly with the conscious material, particularly
when the conscious attitude tends too exclusively in a direction
that would threaten the vital needs of the individual. The more
one-sided his conscious attitude is, and the further it deviates
from the optimum, the greater becomes the possibility that
vivid dreams with a strongly contrasting but purposive content
will appear as an expression of the self-regulation of the
43
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 20 (1981)
psyche," Collected Works, Vol.8, p.237.
16 "As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it
for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept
alive, as they are today," Gen. 50:20.
17 Scholes and Kellogg, p.53.
18 Klaus Baltzer, Die Biographie der Propheten (Neu-
kirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1975).
19 The classical study of the legendum is that of A. Jolies,
Einfache Formen (Tbingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1965^),
pp.23-61.
20 Martin Dibelius, From Tradition to Gospel (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934), pp.104-9; Rudolph Bultmann,
History of the Synoptic Tradition (New York: Harper <5c Row,
1963), pp.209-274.
21 C.H. Talbert, What is a Gospel? (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1977) provides an up-to-date state of the question with
respect to Hellenistic biographies and aretalogies and the genre
of gospel. See also L.R. Farnell, Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of
Immortality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921) and M. Hadas and
M. Smith, Heroes and Gods. Spiritual Biographies in Antiquity
(New York: Harper <5c Row, 1965).
22 One recalls his remarks about geology and psychoanalysis
in Tristes Tropiques (New York: Atheneum, 1974), pp.56-58.
23 The Kinder- und Hausmrchen of Jakob and Wilhelm
Grimm first appeared in 1812; see F.P. Magoun, Jr. and A.H.
Krappe, The Grimms' German Folk Tales (Carbondale <5c
Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960).
24 It is fortunately unnecessary for our purpose to provide
bibliographical references for diffusionist theories, myth and
ritual hypotheses, psychoanalytic approaches, etc. Some aspects
are dealt with in Alan Dundes (ed.), The Study of Folklore
(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965), especially pp.53-126.
25 H. Gunkel, Das Mrchen im Alten Testament (Tbingen:
J.C.B. Mohr, 1917). The opening section of his commentary on
Genesis, published in 1901, appeared in English as The Legends
of Genesis. The Biblical Saga and History (New York: Schocken
Books, 1964). The translator caused some confusion by trans-
lating Sage as "legend" in the title of the book; H. Gressmann,
"Sage und Geschichte in den Patriarchenerzhlungen," ZAW 30
(1910), pp.1-34.
26 O. Eissfeldt, The Old Testament. An Introduction
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1966), pp.37-8.
2? Tobit reproduces the "grateful dead" folktale type and
44
Blenkinsopp: Biographical Patterns
the judgment of Solomon (1 Kings 3:16-28) seems to derive from
a folktale of Indian origin.
28 V. Propp, Morphology of the Folktale (Austin and London:
University of Texas Press, 1968
z
).
29 C.Lvi-Strauss, "L'Analyse morphologique des contes
russes," International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics
III (1960), pp.141-3; "La Structure et la Forme: Reflexions sur un
ouvrage de Vladimir Propp," Cahiers de l'Institut des Sciences
Economiques appliques 99 (1960), pp.3-36.
30 This first function (Absentation) can also include old age
and death of parents; Propp, Morphology, p.26.
31 The most important being mythos (plot) and ethos
(character); Poetics 6:5.
32 A "move" (xody) is a complete series of functions from
the beginning of the complication to its resolution; a new move
begins with a new villainy, hence functions I-XXII (down to the
rescue of the hero from pursuit) really constitute one move and
XXIII-XXXIII another.
33 E.g. J. Alberto Soggin, Introduction to the Old Testa-
ment (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), pp.431-2.
34 See the remarks of James Barr, "Story and History in
Biblical Theology," Journal of Religion 56 (1976), pp.1-17.
35 On the ambiguity of Lvi-Strauss' position vis--vis
heavily edited ancient Greek and Old Testament myths see G.S.
Kirk, Myth. Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other
Cultures (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1970), pp.49-50.
36 E.g. the barren mother-to-be, the ascendancy of the
younger son, deathbed blessings, fateful meeting at a well,
serving time for a woman, attack of a demonic agent at a
dangerous water-crossing, the spirit which must leave before
dawn (cf. the ghost of Hamlet's father, Dracula).
37 Propp, Morphology, pp.119-120.
38 Stephen Crites gives him this name in a genial paper
entitled "Angels we have heard" in James B. Wiggins (ed.),
Religion as Story (New York: Harper <5c Row, 1975), pp.38-9.
39 Martin Noth, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions
(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1972), pp.87-101.
40 Anatomy of Criticism, pp.141-6, 188-9, 315-20; The Edu-
cated Imagination, pp.13-19.
41 It remains to be shown, however, that more ambitious
and comprehensive attempts to construct grids taking in the
different modalities of being and action, inspired by the work of
45
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 20 (1981)
Alexander Greimas, will prove more enlightening when applied
to biblical narrative; see A.J. Greimas, Du Sens (Paris: Seuil,
1970) and Smantique structurale (Paris: Larousse, 1966).
42 Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, pp.106-7, 115; M.
Eliade, Myth and Reality (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1963),
pp.195-202.
43 A. van Gennup, The Rites of Passage (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1960); M. Eliade, Rites and Symbols
of Initiation (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965); V. Turner,
The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-structure (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1969).
44 As suggested by Norman J. Girardot, "Initiation and
Meaning in the Tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,"
Journal of American Folklore 90 (1977).
45 Eliade, Myth and Reality, pp.201-2.
46
^ s
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