In his native Canada, Northrop Frye holds a unique position as the sole humanistic academic guru. [The Great Code: The Bible and Literature] received unprecedented publicity in the year before it appeared, has become a bestseller by local standards, and has been enthusiastically received in the popular press. But that reception has not been related to any close study of what the book has attempted or what it has achieved, concentrating rather on the image of itself the book projects. Among academic readers, whose expectations were high, its reception has not as yet proved enthusiastic. One hears expressions of disappointment, even of dismay. By academic standards it is indeed an appallingly bad book—just as the Bible, as Frye points out, if it is a literary work, is an implausibly bad one.

Expectations were very high because the "big book on the Bible," which rumor had long promised...