The Bible

"Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law" by Rembrandt

There is something biblical about almost everything. It rains and it’s Noah. You’re swallowed up like Jonah. Turning the other cheek is the other side of the coin from an eye for an eye. Athens and Rome the Hebraic and the Hellenic. Spontaneity of consciousness versus obedience is the way Matthew Arnold put it in Culture and Anarchy (1869). Even The pre-Christian Odyssey is biblical as Joyce illustrates  in his description of Leopold Bloom's wanderings. The notion of the angry God is the fabric of existence in almost all cultures. The compassionate Buddha is also Janus faced in its impassively. Cosmic indifference, in the existential sense, is, when you look at it. the stuff of faith. It’s what made the Israelites worship idols—as they waited impatiently for direction.