On the surface it may seem that these two man of the Ancient
World had very little in common. They lived 400 years apart, Moses
in the l3th century before Christ and Homer in the 8th century
BC. One was a prophet and religious leader, the other was a poet
and teller of adventurous tales. Hoses was a Hebrew and Homer
a Greek. Neither one of them erected a great political structure
or embarked on any great military venture.
But on closer examination we find that they both deserve the fame
history has bestowed on them. Their influence on Western Civilization
was greater and more lasting than that of many political statesmen
and military leaders who have long been forgotten. Their influence
was and is in the realm of the spirit, the world of ideas. Moses
and Homer left lasting impressions on two characteristic aspects
of our civilization: the sacred and the secular, western religious
tradition and western secular culture. Moses was the founder of
western Judeo-Christian monotheism and Homer was the father of
classical literature. God and man, faith and reason, religion
and culture, these are the two pillars on which the structure
of Western Civilization was built.
Let us begin with a consideration of Moses and the early history
of the Hebrews. Biblical tradition asserts that Abraham, the ancestor
of the Hebrew people, migrated about 1950 BC from the Sumerian
metropolis of Ur northward to Harran and thence to Palestine.
This story way have a sound basis; and it is possible that the
God of Abraham originated as a family deity, one of the small
gods of ancient Sumer.
The distinctive beginning of Hebrew religion, however, must be
dated from the time of the exodus from Egypt. Only a part, perhaps
a small part, of the Hebrew people had sojourned in Egypt, departing
for the desert sometime in the l3th century BC under the leadership
of Moses. Their sudden change in the way they lived from forced
labor on public works to wandering in the wilderness--a kind of
nomadic life which had characterized their ancestors--regained
explicit law. giving. The years in Egyptian captivity had eroded
the ancient customs.
Moses' followers, like the modern Israelis, came from various
backgrounds. They lacked a single tradition and organization.
So the varied groups of Hebrew people that escaped from Egypt
had to have something that bound them together, that gave them
political and social unity. This unifying force came in the religious
form of the Ten Commandments. There is no reason to doubt the
Biblical story of Moses' ascent to Mount Sinai, his communion
with Yahweh and his return with a simple code of law. The people's
formal acceptance of these T,n Commandments constituted their
covenant with Yahweh, whom they recognized henceforth as their
divine guardian and supreme authority.
Moses may have been in touch with the Atonist religion of Akhenaton
while he was in Egypt. But there is no evidence for this tempting
conclusion than his Egyptian name, Most modern scholars are of
the opinion that the Hebrews who invaded Canaan and occupied the
hill country of Palestine soon after 1200 BC came freshly from
the desert, and that only a few of them had been in Egypt or acknowledged
the religion of Moses. Nevertheless, a codified law and a god
of battles who had proved his power by protecting his people from
the wrath of Egypt were clearly assets to tribesmen who lacked
political or cultural cohesion.
Yahweh had always been a jealous god, requiring the undivided
loyalty of his people and repudiating all rivals. It was therefore
comparatively easy for the Hebrews prophets to develop the worship
of Yahweh into an uncompromising monotheism. No other people of
the Middle East could become monotheists and also remain true
to their traditional faith, for they had all inherited polytheistic
pantheons, yet monotheism seemed the only really satisfactory
explanation of a world in which distant monarchs and unforeseeable
events originating hundreds of miles away profoundly affected
local affairs. In such an age, religious localism no longer accorded
with common sense and everyday experience. Traditional rites rang
hollow: only the Hebrews were able to give full expression to
the widely felt need for religious universalism. Their definition
of ethical monotheism constituted therefore one of the greatest
and most enduring achievements of ancient Middle Eastern civilization.
Martin Buber, the famous Jewish philosopher, has said:''What is
important for us about this God of Moses is the association of
qualities and activities which is peculiar to Him. He is the One
who brings his own out; He is their leader and advance guard;
prince of the people, legislator and the sender of a great message.
He acts at the level of history on the peoples and between the
peoples. What He aims at and cares for is a people. He makes this
demand that the people shall be entirely ''His'' people, a ''holy''
people; that means, a people whose entire life is hallowed by
justice and loyalty, a people for God and for the world. And He
is and does all this as a manifesting, addressing and revealing
God. He is invisible and lets himself be seen. He makes his word
known to men. He lets His spirit possess the one whom He has chosen."
That Moses experiences Him in this fashion and serves Him accordingly
is what has set that man apart as a living and effective force
at all times.''
This religion of Moses has become a basic part of the European
cultural inheritance. In an age when the civilization of the Middle
East was leveling out toward a flimsy cosmopolitanism, and when
dry rot had invaded the two anciently civilized lands of Babylonia
and Egypt, the religion and literature of the Jews exhibited an
extraordinary power and vigor. In its strong hold over human minds
and hearts, uniquely combining religious universalism with individualism
and nationalism, lay Judaism.s strength and the secret of its
future world-transforming career.
Now turning to the secular pillar of Western Civilization we find
that the importance and influence of Homer on our culture was
equally great. The classical literature and tradition of which
he was certainly one of the more important founders, is, so to
speak, the other side of the coin of Western Civilization.
Throughout the classical period of Greek history the long poems,
known to us as the Iliad and the Odyssey, held a position somewhat
analogous to that of the Bible among Jews and Christians. The
Roman poet Virgil borrowed heavily from both when composing his
immortal Aneid and through the Aneid they exercised an indirect
influence upon Dante's Divine Comedy. Today, more than twenty-seven
centuries after their composition, they are still included in
the short list of the world's greatest poems. There is hardly
a course in world literature which does not include the Iliad
and the Odyssey.
The charm of those epics is many-sided. A child may enjoy the
story of Odysseus and the Cyclops, while the most exacting critics
must admire their melodious cadences, firmly drawn characters,
simple pathos, and occasional subtle humor. Thus their appeal
is almost universal.
The Greeks with little hesitation assigned the authorship of the
Iliad and Odyssey to Homer, a blind bard whose life was spent
entirely on the eastern side of :the Aegean Sea. His birthplace
is unknown, and while many legendary accounts of his life survived,
few of them can be trusted. It is however, reasonably certain
that he lived in the ninth century. For a long time hypercritical
scholars subjected the Homeric epics to a ruthless analysis which
led some of them to deny the poet.s existence and to consign the
Trojan war of which he wrote to myth. But more recent archeological
research has proved the story of the war surprisingly accurate.
Neither singly or collectively do these poems tell the whole story
of the Trojan War. The Iliad narrates incidents from the latter
part of the ninth year of the siege: the quarrel between Agamemnon
and Achilles, the latter's refusal to take further part in the
fighting, the death in battle of his friend Patroclus, Achilles
magic suit of armor, and the slaying of the Trojan hero Hector.
It rings throughout with the clash of arms and the din of battle.
This is to be expected since the songs upon which the poet depended
were full of war and slaughter, and his audience enjoyed gory
scenes. Yet there is much in them besides bloodshed. We see the
Achean chiefs in council, at the festive board, dominating an
assembly or mourning the dead. They are not a group of lay figures,
but finely drawn individual characters. Each is given a personal
touch which marks him as a living personality. The quick-tempered
but warmhearted Achilles, the haughty Agamemnon, the wise though
garrulous old Nestor, the weak and kindly Menelaus, and the wily
Odysseus: each is seen as a man of flesh and blood, with human
virtues and failings. On the Trojan side we :meet the noble Hector,
his devoted wife Andromachi, his worthless brother ---, and his
aged parents. Homer is not narrow in either sympathies or understanding.
He can appreciate the heroism of Hector as well as that of Achilles,
both of whom are doomed to die in a quarrel not their own.
There is a gloomy fatalism that overshadows everything. The gods
have determined the lots of Greeks and Trojans alike and these
are often more evil than good. But the Iliad also has its brighter
side. The author was a keen and understanding observer of life
in all its phases. There are scenes shoving the battles of boars
and lions in the forests, or storms which send great trees crashing
to the ground, to reapers at work in the fields, smiths at their
forges, or children playing by the seashore. Homer reveals not
merely the customs of an age, but universal and unchanging human
nature.
The Odyssey relates the adventures of Odysseus on his homeward
journey from Troy, his slaying of the suitors who were devouring
his substance, while they sought the hand of his wife, and his
restoration to wife and kingdom. It belongs to a more peaceful
environment than the Iliad;, and from it the student of social
and cultural history can obtain a convincing picture of the domestic
life of the age with which the epics were concerned. The adventures
of Odysseus were drawn from a store of folk-tales and legends,
which had no doubt been attached to the names of many other heroes
before him. Examples of this tendency are his encounters with
nymphs, goddesses, and the one-eyed, cannibal giant whose .eye
he bores out, or his meeting with the departed spirits at the
gates of Hades. Through these and many other vicissitudes of shipwreck
and peril he wins his goal by indomitable resolution, crafty guile
and divine favor.
Through these fantastic stories Homer gives us a colorful picture
of the early heroic age of Greek civilization. Homer's heroes
lived in a profoundly aristocratic society. Noble families claimed
descent from gods who had gone to bed with mortal women. They
supplemented their incomes from agriculture by raiding their neighbor's
possessions and by the entirely honorable calling of piracy. Family
life was a mixture of barbaric splendor and rude simplicity. The
entire household, including the master and mistress worked. Some
crops were produced but stock-raising was the chief source of
wealth.
The lot of slaves was not especially hard. The lot of the freeman
was sometime less desirable than that of the slave. Minstrels
were treated with marked respect. A class of small landholders
existed who were often in need. Homeless wanderers alternately
begged their bread and found odd jobs as laborers. In the homes
of the great an open-hearted hospitality reigned. A stranger of
respectable appearance might be entertained for a long period
without the host.s taking the trouble to inquire about his name.
Plentiful feasts of roast meat, bread, and wine were served, and
as the wine cup passed from hand to hand a minstrel would chant
ballads commemorating the great deeds of the heroes of old or
the adventures of the gods.
To Homer, the number of gods seemed infinite. They all lived on
Mount Olympus in northern Thessaly. Homer thought of them as a
family with mutual relationships and clear-cut personalities.
Zeus was the father of gods and men, Hera his wife a virtuous
but jealous matron who tried to get even with her husband for
playing around with other female gods. Hermes was the messenger
of the gods, Apollo the god of music, Aphrodite the goddess of
love and heroic sexual playmate of gods and men, Athena the virgin
goddess, patroness of those arts which promote civilization. And
so on. Religion to the Homeric Greeks was a means of solving the
problems of this world whereby one avoided calamity and gained
prosperity.
Moses and Homer thus give us a fairly good picture of two types
of cultures, one based on God, the other on man: two traditions
which later coalesced to form Western Civilization. There are
two systems of value in our ancient heritage. The Mosaic tradition
places supreme value on worship of God as sovereign and all-powerful.
The Homeric tradition puts ultimate faith in man and his ability
to control and overcome natural obstacles. Christian ethics and
morality are based on a god-given system of laws, a concept of
right and wrong, divine retribution for evildoing and divine salvation
for the contrite and humble. Humanistic ethics are based on man-made
laws, utilitarian cooperation and mutual respect, salvation being
the result of human efforts to improve the conditions of life.
Mosaic religion emphasizes the temporary nature of human life
and the glories of the hereafter. Homer's conception places emphasis
on the here and now, the hereafter being only of minor importance.
Homer's heroes enjoy life with all of its adventures, pleasures
and problems. Man is the master of his own fate. Moses said man
was made in the image of God. To Homer the gods are anthropomorphic,
made in the image of man.
Throughout western history these two traditions have been in conflict.
In the classical world this struggle led frequently to open combat.
Both Jews and Christians were persecuted by the secular state--Jews
were crucified, Christians were fed to the lions. After Rome's
fall the Church as the guardian of the sacred tradition triumphed
and dominated society for a few centuries. But in the Renaissance
man resurrected the secular, classical tradition and man as individual
was once more put on the pedestal. All his abilities and virtues
were expressed in secular art and architecture. Even the popes
and bishops engaged in these activities. During the Reformation
and Counter-Reformation the sacred tradition of the early Mosaic
and Christian times were revived. Then the pendulum swung the
other way again during the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution.
In more modern times a kind of flimsy compromise was finally reached
when the separation of Church and state became an acceptable principle
which was eventually written into law.
Today, all of us have to make our own private compromise between
the claims of God and the claims of man, between Moses and Homer.