Guilty Expression :: Rants and raves inspired by a passionate, frustrated love for God.

Re: Folklore vs. Biblical God (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Jun 10, 2005 - 12:07 PM

These questions are absolutely brilliant. A few random thoughts:

1) There are examples (in this protestant's humble opinion - you're welcome to think different!) of folklore in the Apocrypha, that you might be interested to read. Bel and the Dragon, for instance.

2) The Bible more-or-less refers to other sources which include or may have included folklore. eg Jude alludes to the Book of Enoch, which is interesting reading. The historical books in the OT refer to a string of sources such as the Book of Jashar, the book of the annals of Solomon, the book of the annals of the kings of Israel, the book of the annals of the kings of Judah, and the book of the annals of King David. These may have been pure history, or not - who knows.

3) A more edgy question. Can we see some of the OT as folklore? This doesn't need to mean that it isn't true - we can see God inspiring authors, in the context of a race and culture, to write down folklore as other cultures do, but in this case it could be genuinely speaking about what is truly the case. At any rate, parts of the OT probably *functioned* in the same way as folklore for that society - being passed on from generation to generation, acting as the stories and wisdom which people listen to and live by.

Examples I'm thinking of for 'true folklore' elements might include: the creation narrative, which I think is a symbolic but trustworthy way of talking about what happened; the story of Job; maybe Noah and Jonah; the book of Esther. Then in a possibly different sense, Jesus' parables might take a folklore role for early Christians.

I'm not quite sure what I think about what I've written, but it's a related approach to the one you were asking about above, and both intrigue me. You're asking, "What folklore influenced the authors?" whereas I'm asking, "To what extent are these inspired writings taking the form and function of folklore themselves?" I guess this is similar to when you ask, "Did God�s involvement with the Israel nation replace for them what every other nation has in folklore, myths, romantic tales, and so on?"

Cheers,
DavidB