Opposition or Combat? A Reply to H. A. Kelly

Abstract

Apart from saying some very nice things in the introduction and conclusion to his review (JAF 102 (403):107-110), Henry Ansgar Kelly has paid me the compliment of taking my book seriously-and for this I thank him heartily. He has read my book (The Old Enemy, Princeton University Press, 1987) with great care, and his comments show that he has seen the implications: that is why he cannot allow himself to agree with me. Folklorists, he claims, and demonologists in particular, frequently make the mistake with which he charges me: premature or mistaken amalgamation of disparate traditions . . . when positing earlier origins of motifs than warranted by the facts. I am not sure who Kelly has in mind here, since his generalization applies to none of the specific criticisms he makes in his review: motifs are not at issue, at least not in the standard folkloristic sense, nor does my book make claims about the origin of separate motifs. What it does argue for-and Kelly shows that he understands this by quoting the relevant passages early in his review-is that, since Christianity originated as one among many sects with apocalyptic expectations, the narrative pattern of the apocalyptic combat myth is also the informing structure of the Christian belief system. Christianity developed its own highly peculiar variants of the narrative, but what my thesis boils down to, since I use a modified morphological approach, is that Christ and Satan confront each other in the way that Propp's hero and villain confront each other in the basic structure of the folktale. Kelly understands but does not like this: he would rather call it than combat, and opposition only rarely involves combat. He hopes to minimize the disturbing connection between Christian doctrine and common, widespread narratives. But I nowhere insist (following Propp's lead) that actual combat needs to be present for the basic structure to obtain-and indeed my first chapter shows that the Gilgamesh-Huwawa narrative existed in both a dragon-slayer and a stupid ogre variant. Force or guile has always been an alternative for the defeat of the enemy. Both possibilities stayed current through all the various transformations of the plot, until we find Christian theologians choosing one or the other, sometimes both, as explanations of how the crucifixion in fact defeated the devil.