Melville’s Non-Traditional Biblical Criticism

Ilana Pardes’ introduction to Melville’s Bible claims that Moby Dick can be legitimately read as a work of biblical criticism, despite its literary format.  Her argument proves true as the emotive value of Melville’s biblical retellings are both emotionally and exegetically fresh.  Amongst the seemingly endless biblical references contained in Moby Dick, Melville’s prose bring to life “interpretive insights available to no other exegetical mode”.  The depth and multifacitideness of Moby Dick allows for biblical criticism by mere reference and repetition, illuminating Melville’s biblical ponderings in the very process of creating Melville’s great ‘American bible’.

While other critics have studied Melville in relation to the Bible, none, according to Pardes, have assigned him fair praise for his “radical reconsideration of the politics of biblical reception.” Perhaps paralleling Melville’s own indiscriminate nature concerning literary glorification, Pardes aligns Melville with distinguished biblical critics and scholars.  In order to treat Moby Dick as biblical criticism, one must first accept that he is doing so in narrative form and not in the more traditional forms of “Calvin, Herder, or Buber”. By using his prose form, Melville accesses an even more potent style then his contemporary critics, as he is thus able to “rejuvenate the Bible and transform it from a book justified by theology to one justified by culture”.  Truly, Moby Dick is so dually entangled with cultural and theological ponderings that the thought of separating the two would seem to rip apart some hermeneutic code intrinsic to Melville’s masterpiece.