Publisher's Synopsis
In this discerning study of the relationship of the tragic vision to the Hebrew, W. Lee Humphreys suggests various ways in which Israel confronted the power of the tragic vision at certain points in its tradition. Humphreys demonstrates how tragedy, the literary genre, and the tragic vision maintain a delicate but vital balance between fate and law. In conclusion, he contends that the tragic vision finds fullest expression at points of radical dislocation in human history. At these times, the essential questions of existence are reopened, rehearsed, and relived as the tragic vision questions all previous answers and dogmatic claims to the meaning of life.