Reading Frye has been really informative for me. I find everything he has to say very compelling, if not always believable. Whether I buy into everything he says is hardly the point, though, as I think that his book (or his half of the book I should say) has been very intellectually stimulating, and he uses a wealth of evidence and simple illustrations to get his point across. On of the points he made that I found interesting was this:

In his chapter on Ecclesiastes, he talks about how the erratic history of Israel was bound to influence the complex nature of wisdom in Biblical tradition. He compares the concept of wisdom in long-established, sturdy civilizations like China, where steady Confucianism held sway over traditional thought for thousands of years. Compared to Chinese history, the history of Israel is, according to Frye, a "manic-depressive chart of ups and downs." He says that reason and wisdom in the Bible, which often seems varying and rounded, is the direct result of the nature of Jewish history. In concept, this seems to hold true.

He then goes on to contrast the idea of wisdom, which he classifies the wisdom of the Bible as, with the idea of superstition. The difference, says Frye, is that the former is flexible, adapting and evolving according to circumstances and conscious of its own effectiveness and truth, while the latter is inflexible, as it is merely the repeating of an act regardless of whether it has lost any power or meaning. Thus, the superstitious do not question why they continue with their acts, they simply mindlessly repeat them.