Biblical Views: Yahweh as Achilles

Sing “Wrath!” O Goddess; the wrath of Achilles, Peleus’ son,

and its devastation, which laid anguish a thousandfold upon the Achaians.

So begins Homer’s Iliad. But can one draw parallels between Homer and the Bible? I agree with Susan Niditch who, in War in the Hebrew Bible, notes that in the Bible, “heroic warrior material is part of larger narrative patterns that are typical of a cross-cultural range of epic stories about heroes.”¹ For example, David’s encounter with Goliath in 1 Samuel 17 follows a story pattern similar to Homeric warrior epic. (In fact, given Goliath’s Philistine ethnicity, he probably could claim an ancestor or two among the Greeks at Troy,^a and he might have sung a Philistine variant of the Iliad!) Similarly, the bloody mélée at Gibeon (2 Samuel2) between the soldiers of rival generals Joab and Abner recalls Iliadic skirmishes.