Status Updates From Mimesis: The Representation...

The sublime influence of God here reaches so deeply into the every day that the two realms of the sublime and the everyday are not only actually unseparated, but basically inseparable.

For the great and sublime events in the Homeric poems take place far more exclusively and unmistakably among the members of a ruling class; and these are far more untouched in their heroic elevation than are the Old Testament figures, who can fall much lower in dignity.

“The Scripture stories do not, like Homer's, court our favor, they do not flatter us that they may please us and enchant us-they seek to subject us, and if we refuse to be subjected we are rebels.”

“We are to fit our own life into its world… This becomes increasingly difficult the further our historical environment is removed from that of the Biblical books.”

Homer’s digressions, like the backstory of Odysseus’s scar, create clarity and relaxation rather than suspense. All is perfectly clear and entirely present.

It contrasts starkly with Genesis’s tangled complexity, as seem in the uncomfortable silence during and around Abraham’s three-day journey to sacrifice Isaac.