"and upon every high tower"

"and upon every high tower, and upon every fenced wall" - Isaiah 2, pg 888

Class Notes 9/23

it is hard to live accodingly to the rules of The Bible, there are many conflits

     -  A. J. Jacobs The Year of Living Biblically is a personal account, also the infamous 'letter to Dr. Laura'

                          ^ find humor in The Bible

Frye

    - reinforces the "U" shape theme, claims it will end "on an up note" with the New Jerusalem

            - start at the bottom, gain and lose

            - The Bible = a narrative that 'begins at the beginning and ends at the end'

~ Repititon not neccessarly a bad thing

     - clearly seen in Samuel II, but repitition is used through The Bible - repeated for the benefit of the audience (Shakespeare and Chaucer also utilized repition in their works)

~ The great event of Jewish mythology

     - Their exile in Egypt; slavery, 'a wanderer', then brought back (by Moses)

~ Israel split into: The North Kingdom (Israel)

                           The South Kingdom (Judah)

         721 BC - Assyrians conquer the northern kingdom

         587 BC - destruction of the southern kingdom - should be the end of the story, but they "survived by the skin of their teeth"

~ Psalm 137 - "By the rivers of Babylon..."

     - an example of rememberance (of the seige of Jerusalem and their exile), also reflects hatred and desire for revenge (in which "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.")

      ^ also shows that often only half of the story is told/taught

             - arguments over why expand to the idea that it may set up someone to do those things, others claim that it may discourage others because it has already been done

~ Genealogies

      - narrative is interupted in Genesis 38 by a genealogy

              - last line = why it is there (shows that there would be no David, or Jesus, unless these connections have been made

 - genealogies 'take us to the beginning'