For the classicist E. R. Dodds, “Oedipus is a kind of symbol of the human intelligence which cannot rest until it has solved all the riddles—even the last riddle, to which the answer is that human happiness is built on an illusion.”50 Life is without inherent purpose. To the Greek thinker, life itself was a riddle, but not a pleasant one. One could not have real knowledge, nor is there any stability nor security.
In a sense, the world remains the chaos which Hesiod says it was at its beginning. No matter what one accomplished or gained in life, he could never let himself be happy, because tomorrow it might all be gone. This contrasts notably with the Bible’s description of Abraham at the end of his life as being “satisfied with days.” Life is a journey, a great parable. Man does not need to search for meaning in grand activities. Living purposively is sufficient.
How strongly the parable-riddle distinction characterizes the difference in Greek and biblical thought! The implications for contemporary education are significant. Consider the different conceptions of time presented in biblical and Greek writings in regard to two objective time events: 1) people age, and 2) there is day and night. These facts can be expressed in a boring rote manner, or they can be expressed poetically.
The two alternate versions of the sphinx’s question to Oedipus express these realities in riddle form. The first question goes as follows: “Which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?” Oedipus is reported to have answered: “Man, who crawls on all four as an infant, walks on two legs as an adult, and with the help of a cane as an elder.” This “correct” answer to the riddle represents a cyclical curvilinear view of aging, and life itself; the old is like the young. Oedipus subdues the sphinx through answering its riddle but is “rewarded” for this by being wedded unknowingly to his mother, Jocasta, this incestuous coupling violating and indeed obliterating the line of demarcation between one generation and the next.
This view is dramatically different from that expressed in the Hebrew Bible, where the passage of time is not feared. The passing of the matriarch Sarah illustrates that each phase of life is appreciated on its own terms and is also expressed poetically and more in parable form. “And the life of Sarah was a hundred and seven and twenty years; these were the years of the life of Sarah.”51 Rather than simply stating that Sarah died at the age of 127, Genesis says that Sarah lived 100 years and 20 years and 7 years. The famous commentator Rashi states that she was as free from sin at 100 as she was at 20 (there is no liability for divine punishment until 20) and she was as beautiful at age 20 as at age 7.52
Consider now the second objective reality. Both day and night occur, and they alternate. This second version of the sphinx’s riddle to Oedipus clearly expresses this view. “There are two sisters. One gives birth to the other, and she in turn gives birth to the first. Who are the two sisters?” Here Oedipus is reported to have answered: “Day and night, day giving birth to night, and then night giving birth to day.”53 Day and night are sisters, each replacing the other in an endless repetitive cycle. Although more poetic and creative, the message is that no growth or development occurs. It is the same story, day after day, night after night. It is the same old “same old.”
Compare this to the description of the separation of evening and morning in Genesis 1: “And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness, he called Night. And there was evening, and there was morning, one day.”54
Let us raise three questions. 1) What is the relationship of evening and morning? 2) Why not speak of night and day instead of evening and morning? 3) Why does the biblical day begin and end with evening? The sentence “And there was evening, and there was morning” appears at the end of each of the first six days of creation and is as poetic as the Greek riddle above. However, it provides a very different message. Life is not a cycle; day and night are not sisters. Rather, each day begins unformed and in darkness and emerges into light. Evening can be seen as the parent of morning, which then grows into evening. That evening then becomes parent to a new morning, not a recycling back to the first morning. This is not simply a rote recitation of a boring fact,55 but instead represents a parable of growth, and is radically different than the cyclical riddle that the sphinx poses to Oedipus. The book of Genesis begins with an account of God’s creation of the world in six days. The first day ends with “And there was evening, and it was morning, one day.”
Although the biblical account portrays the sun and moon as only created on the fourth day, God established an order of time and calendar from the very first day. The world he was creating would be harmonious and orderly, not chaotic. Day and night are not adversaries but are both parts of God’s creation. Life represents not a meaningless cycle but purposeful development.
46. Heiden, Eavesdropping on Apollo, 236–37.
47. Baltuck, Apples from Heaven, 71.
48. From Pullman, Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm, 221–25.
49. Andersen, Emperor’s New Clothes.
50. Dodds, On Misunderstanding Oedipus.
51. Gen 23:1.
52. Rashi on Gen 24:1.
53. Theodectes frag. 4, in Snell and Kannicht, eds., Tragocorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol. 1.
54. Gen 1:4–5.
55. Again see Heiden, Eavesdropping on Apollo, 236–37.
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