SUICIDE AND SUICIDE-PREVENTION - GREEK VERSUS BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVES

This article compares suicide in Greek tragedy and the Hebrew Bible. It concentrates not simply on expressed attitudes but on the actual life situations portrayed in the two sets of narratives promoting or preventing suicide. Perhaps the most striking comparison is the sheer frequency of suicides in Greek tragedy and the infrequency of them in the Hebrew Bible. Most of the suicides in Greek tragedy may be classified as egoistic or altruistic with a number falling in the anomic category. The excused suicides in the Hebrew Bible can be described as convenantal with the most criticized ones falling into egoistic or altruistic categories. The stories of Narcissus and Jonah are compared in an attempt to pinpoint what is suicide-promoting in Greek narratives and what is suicide-preventing in Biblical ones. Convenantal regression is suggested as the factor allowing potentially suicidogenic anomic confusion to be worked out.