Faith Works 8-21-2026
Jeff Gill
Classic literature and scripture meet current events
___
There’s still much to be said about “The Odyssey” as a literary classic.
The Iliad and the Odyssey, are a pair of Homeric narratives coming down to us from somewhere before 700 BC; they are stories of war. The Trojan War is a long siege and final destruction of a city variously known as Troas or Ilium, but ultimately people came to know the whole city-state simply as Troy. It was undefeated, until it was.
So the story of the conflict, across ten years, is the Iliad, and after the citadel of Ilus and city of Troas fall, the Odyssey is ten more years for Odysseus to make his way back home. If you saw “The Odyssey” the film does what many retellings do: it takes pieces out of both to make the story work for the current audience.
And this is where many of the complaints about Christopher Nolan’s version being “woke” I think miss the point. The Iliad and Odyssey have always been about going to war, and coming home. Each era has its own more immediate history around what it means for a community to send people off to war, how that affects those left behind, and what it means to return (and ask Agamemnon how that went).
We look at the impact and meaning of returning from searing experiences in our own particular way, using terms like PTSD and moral injury which did not exist a century ago, but these stories tell us how the lived experience was quite similar, whether you had bronze or aluminum, Greek fire or white phosphorus.
Written a few centuries later, the playwright Sophocles hearkens back to a Theban War, proposed as events centuries earlier than Troy. In his Theban Plays, a central character is Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, whose brothers die in a civil war. In the play that bears her name, the new ruler Creon decrees that those who fought him and died shall not be buried, on pain of death to any who do the corpses that honor. Antigone defies this command, casting earth on her beloved brother’s body, and will die herself… as will the ruler who set these cruel bonds.
Her story lives on in many forms, including a Twentieth Century opera, all tracing back to Sophocles writing in around 400 BC. In his time, he was trying to communicate, using history as his setting, something of the consequences that result from implacable hostility and lasting un-forgiveness. Sophocles wanted to tell a story about mercy and compassion by showing a world without them.
So it is fascinating to me as a Biblical preacher to look in Second Samuel, chapter 21, at events from around 1000 BC. It is the account of Saul’s concubine Rizpah, whose sons died in the tragic aftermath of the fall of the house of Saul, and the rise of David to the throne of Israel.
As executed lawbreakers, it was customary that after being hanged, the bodies would stay out in the open as a public warning. To bury them was a crime. We are told Rizpah on learning her two sons had been killed, went to their place of execution, “took sackcloth, and spread it on a rock for herself, from the beginning of harvest until rain fell on them from the heavens; she did not allow the birds of the air to come on the bodies by day, or the wild animals by night.”
On hearing of this mother’s act, King David is moved. He not only gives permission to Rizpah for the burial of her sons, he takes steps to see to the respectful committal of Saul and all of his sons and grandsons who had been killed in the recent past. Mercy begetting mercy.
Homer, Sophocles, Samuel: all ask us to put ourselves into these ancient stories, and learn lessons for how we should act today.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s interested in history, but you knew that. Tell him what parts of history intrigue you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
Jeff Gill
Classic literature and scripture meet current events
___
There’s still much to be said about “The Odyssey” as a literary classic.
The Iliad and the Odyssey, are a pair of Homeric narratives coming down to us from somewhere before 700 BC; they are stories of war. The Trojan War is a long siege and final destruction of a city variously known as Troas or Ilium, but ultimately people came to know the whole city-state simply as Troy. It was undefeated, until it was.
So the story of the conflict, across ten years, is the Iliad, and after the citadel of Ilus and city of Troas fall, the Odyssey is ten more years for Odysseus to make his way back home. If you saw “The Odyssey” the film does what many retellings do: it takes pieces out of both to make the story work for the current audience.
And this is where many of the complaints about Christopher Nolan’s version being “woke” I think miss the point. The Iliad and Odyssey have always been about going to war, and coming home. Each era has its own more immediate history around what it means for a community to send people off to war, how that affects those left behind, and what it means to return (and ask Agamemnon how that went).
We look at the impact and meaning of returning from searing experiences in our own particular way, using terms like PTSD and moral injury which did not exist a century ago, but these stories tell us how the lived experience was quite similar, whether you had bronze or aluminum, Greek fire or white phosphorus.
Written a few centuries later, the playwright Sophocles hearkens back to a Theban War, proposed as events centuries earlier than Troy. In his Theban Plays, a central character is Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, whose brothers die in a civil war. In the play that bears her name, the new ruler Creon decrees that those who fought him and died shall not be buried, on pain of death to any who do the corpses that honor. Antigone defies this command, casting earth on her beloved brother’s body, and will die herself… as will the ruler who set these cruel bonds.
Her story lives on in many forms, including a Twentieth Century opera, all tracing back to Sophocles writing in around 400 BC. In his time, he was trying to communicate, using history as his setting, something of the consequences that result from implacable hostility and lasting un-forgiveness. Sophocles wanted to tell a story about mercy and compassion by showing a world without them.
So it is fascinating to me as a Biblical preacher to look in Second Samuel, chapter 21, at events from around 1000 BC. It is the account of Saul’s concubine Rizpah, whose sons died in the tragic aftermath of the fall of the house of Saul, and the rise of David to the throne of Israel.
As executed lawbreakers, it was customary that after being hanged, the bodies would stay out in the open as a public warning. To bury them was a crime. We are told Rizpah on learning her two sons had been killed, went to their place of execution, “took sackcloth, and spread it on a rock for herself, from the beginning of harvest until rain fell on them from the heavens; she did not allow the birds of the air to come on the bodies by day, or the wild animals by night.”
On hearing of this mother’s act, King David is moved. He not only gives permission to Rizpah for the burial of her sons, he takes steps to see to the respectful committal of Saul and all of his sons and grandsons who had been killed in the recent past. Mercy begetting mercy.
Homer, Sophocles, Samuel: all ask us to put ourselves into these ancient stories, and learn lessons for how we should act today.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s interested in history, but you knew that. Tell him what parts of history intrigue you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
