lpetrich

As claimed by Robert Bowie Johnson Jr.; in Call Darwinists 'Slime-Snake-Monkey-People' Author Urges Christians, subtitled "Merited Ridicule May Shame Them into Accepting Evidence in Greek Art for Genesis Events". I learned this from Shalini, who makes her unmistakable style of comments about it.

I wonder what he is referring to -- the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha? Zeus got pissed at humanity and decided to destroy all of humanity with a flood, but Prometheus warned the two of what Zeus was about to do. The two then built an ark and loaded lots of supplies, though in the most detailed versions, they did not try to rescue any animals and they were the only people on board. After that flood, the two repopulated the Earth by throwing stones backward, with Deucalion's stones becoming men and Pyrrha's stones women.

I'm not aware of Socrates believing in euhemerism, though euhemerism was a common belief in later centuries. And that guy must have an overactive imagination, because cosmology according to Greek mythology is VERY different from that of the Bible. There is not a single ruler of the Universe who had created it; there are several rulers, who had overthrown earlier rulers, and who are more-or-less humanity's big brothers and sisters. And those earlier rulers had overthrown even earlier ones.

In the first place, he seems to have been the first to ever claim that, so what is he whining about?

And more generally, he seems like all those crackpots who have compared themselves to Galileo and moaned and groaned about how mainstream scientists are "orthodox oxen", in the words of crackpot George Francis Gillette.

Shalini then showed that two can play that game:

gstafleu

Just a general remark. An ancient Eden-like garden, a tree with a serpent, a first family, a flood: all of these are common mythological themes, so finding them in Greek mythology isn't surprising. You've already mention Deucalion and Pyrrha for the flood. The Sumerians and Babylonians had a flood as well. The tree is the axis mundi, which occurs in multiple places, e.g. as the tree of the Hesperides. The serpent is common throughout as a symbol of the cycle of nature and is often depicted near the axis mundi, e.g. on many Sumerian seals. I suspect that these Christians have done something that is not unusual: assumed that their version of these common mythological themes is somehow unique.

Gerard Stafleu

figuer

They do something more specific: They assume that their mythological tale is the truth and that all other tales derive from it, and verify it.

lpetrich

Where is there an association of some snake and some tree in Greek mythology?

And though one can find similarities, one can also find numerous differences. There is no Greek counterpart of the Tower of Babel story, and likewise, there are no Greek-mythology proscriptions of polytheism or idolatry or working on the Sabbath day.

And consider literal biological divine paternity. It is almost absurdly common in Greek mythology, and it was even extended to various notable historical people. But it is essentially absent from not only Genesis, but also the rest of the Old Testament.

And if anything, the Bible is closer to Mesopotamian mythology than to Greek mythology. The various versions of the Mesopotamian flood story are closer in plotline to the Biblical one than the Greek one is, and the long-lived early kings are a rather obvious parallel to the long-lived early patriarchs.

And since the Mesopotamian stories are older than the Biblical ones, it is clear which way the influence went.

Dean Anderson

Weren't the immortality-bestowing apples of the Hesperides guarded by a serpent of some kind that wrapped itself around the tree?

lpetrich

After reading about the Garden of the Hesperides, I concede; that garden was guarded by the snakelike dragon Ladon (mythology), and it contained either an apple tree or a grove of apple trees that produce immortality-giving golden apples.

Pandora was an Eve figure in Greek mythology, but she never came close to the Garden of the Hesperides, and she was never led astray by a mischievous snake. But I don't know if there is any well-defined Adam figure, or who might qualify as Cain and Abel.

BTW, Pandora's "box" was originally a pithos or a giant jug or jar.

Ladon's name is suspiciously similar to the names of some Levantine legendary reptilian monsters, Ugaritic Lotan and Biblical Leviathan, so the mythical motif of a magic fruit tree with a snake might well be shared.

But unlike Ladon, the snake in the Garden of Eden does not guard that garden's magic fruit tree, but instead acts something like Prometheus, bringing to humanity something that God/Zeus has forbidden.

Deucalion's and Pyrrha's Flood might possibly have Mesopotamian sources, but their flood account is much more different from the Mesopotamian one than the Biblical one is.

Finally, Hesiod's cosmology goes:

Primordial Chaos
Generation 1: Ouranos and Gaia
Generation 2: Kronos and Rhea
Generation 3: Zeus and Hera

with each generation overthrowing the previous one, which is very unlike the Bible.

The Biblical God is not only always around, but he always stays on top, and he has no female partner.

Lucretius

Why not just flip it around and say that Genesis obviously proves that the Greek Pantheon existed ?
That premise is just as (un)likley
I somehow think that this would not go down well with the "Christians"

gstafleu

You're right, that is what they often do. Not that Christians are unique in this, of course. A little while ago we had a Hindu (I think) here, who thought the same of his religion and therefore posited that Abraham=Brahma.

An interesting question is: to what extent is it possible to belong to a certain religion, and not think in the way sketched above. A possible answer: only to the extent that you reject the religion's teachings?

Gerard Stafleu

Amaleq13

IIRC, archaeological evidence suggests that Asherah was considered the wife of Yahweh until around the 6th century BCE.

gstafleu

First, we should be careful to look for shared themes, and not expect that all details match. Having said this, let's look at Pandora and compare it to Genesis.
In Prometheus we see a kind of "fall of man." He did something (steal fire) that gave humanity something that until then only belonged to the gods. In Genesis this "something" was the knowledge of good and evil. In both cases the gods get mad at the thief and punish him. So in Prometheus we have an Adam equivalent, but of course not an exact one, they just share some important attributes.

Also, Prometheus was not the ancestor of all humanity. His punishment is thus purely individual. In Genesis, the punishment of Adam and Eve extends to all humanity:
In the Greek version, the gods now have to punish all of humanity in addition to Prometheus. They do this via Pandora. The following is from Hesiod's Works and Days:
So Pandora gets all kinds of good stuff--plus "a shameless mind and a deceitful nature"! Well, this is a patriarchal society, just like the Hebrews, so no surprise there. The gods now proceed to make Pandora according to Zeus' specifications. Zeus then "called this woman Pandora, because all they who dwelt on Olympus gave each a gift, a plague to men who eat bread." Pandora thus is created as the punishment. Eve was not created as such, but rather as a companion to Adam. But in both cases punishment for the fall (i.e. for the acquiring of something godly) comes (also) via the woman.

The actual punishment comes in a jar that Pandora carries. It has all kinds of bad things, plus one good thing: hope. Pandora lets out everything bad, but is prevented by Zeus lo let out hope:
So we see some common themes: someone appropriates something godly for humanity, and humanity is punished for it. A created woman plays an important part in both cases. But there are differences as well. In Genesis the appropriation is initiated by the woman, in the Greek version it is a man. In the bible the punishment for humanity is applied via both the man and the woman, in the Greek version the woman is the agent.

Is there a snake in the Greek version? No, not literally: no snake is mentioned. But there is something like it. Let us first look at the snake in Genesis. The snake is, in many mythologies, a symbol of the cycle of nature. In nature, everything lives and dies, the dead plants and animals decompose and are reconstituted into new plants and animals. The snake can shed its skin, and so "dies" only to produce a brand new snake, hence the symbolism.

So the snake stands for the forces of nature in their aspect of the eternal cycle of life and death. When in the garden of Eden the snake hands Eve the apple, it is therefore the old forces of nature that bestow the godly item (in this case the knowledge of good and evil) upon mankind. In the Greek version it is man himself (who is after all the measure of all things) who gets the good stuff all by himself. But we do see the forces of nature putting in an appearance: it is the gods who fashion Pandora.

This connection is remote, but then the two mythologies represent quite different world views. In the bible there is one super transcendent god who is in charge of everything, and stealing from him is the ultimate crime. Hence mankind is innately bad after the event. In the Greek version, there are many gods, and they are not transcendent. They walk the earth and are subject to Moira and the fates. Stealing from them is bad, but it simply results in punishment, not in an eternal moral condemnation of mankind. Plus, together with the bad stuff, hope was included in the jar. It didn't make it out initially, but, given that we have hope, it must have popped out at some point. In the bible, nothing good accompanies the eternal moral corruption of mankind.

Gerard Stafleu