The Divine Rule: Genesis, Theogony, and Metamorphoses
The Divine Rule:
Genesis, Theogony, and
Metamorphoses
J.M. Rogers
. . .
The
literary works of Moses, Hesiod, and Ovid span a period of roughly 1500 years,
beginning with the first writings of The Old Testament in the 15th
century, B.C.E., and closing with Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the eighth
year of the common era. The fact that the book of Genesis predates the
literature of Theogony by approximately 750 years, and Metamorphoses
follows behind Theogony by about 700 years, illuminates the universal,
cultural trend of defining physical and “invisible” forms of reality. The
existence of thousands of origin myths, pantheons, and definitions of reality
that share narrative tropes, such as male-centric societies, as well as
thematic tropes, such as world-destroying cataclysms, between cultures also
illuminates the interconnected nature of these formative groups of humans. The
punitive presence of Zeus, felt by both Titans and mortals, shares a familiar
omniscience with the Judeo-Christian, God, and the mighty Jupiter is simply a
Roman copy of Zeus. By comparing the books of Genesis, Theogony, and Metamorphoses,
it is possible to establish strong connections between the thematic elements of
creation, law, and punishment.
Moses, much like Homer, is a man who is well known but
difficult to verify. However, seven centuries before the Archaic Era of
Greece, he is credited with creating what would become one of the most famous
pieces of literature in human history. As with many mythical origin stories,
the beginning of time in The Bible is characterized as a period of darkness and
chaos that must be set into categorical realms by a divine being. In 1 Genesis,
Moses proclaims that at the beginning, the “earth was formless and empty,
darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering
over the waters.”[1]
Moses then details how God sets to separating the realms into waters, lands, and air and implied that God is not bound to any such realms but that they
are constructs that favor life and humanity. “Let the water teem with living
creatures,” and “let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds.”[2] The assertion that God is
not only powerful but able to determine the behaviors of all living systems is
implicit to God’s being and is echoed through Genesis as well as The Old
Testament.
Insofar as the origin of form and living creatures, the
Greek religion exists independently of Judeo-Christian influence. This is noted
by the prevalence of sexual themes to explain the generation of various floral
and faunal features. The greatest connection between the earthly creation text
of Genesis and Theogony lies within the fundamental origins of both
religions; chaos and disorder. “Chaos was born first, and after her came Gaia the
broad-breasted, the firm seat of all.”[3] This establishes the
presence of an indiscernible period, far back in time, for which mankind simply
cannot account. This universal assessment of ancient chaos, or more aptly
described, confusion, is a unifying feature among all three of the works, and
no doubt, many other foreign religions. However, Hesiod was a peculiar
individual whose works have come under scrutiny in modern times due to their
misogynistic portrayal of females throughout Theogony. The inclusion of
heavily sexualized themes that often involve the rape or forceful impregnation
of various mortals, Titans, and Olympians spans the length of Hesiod’s religious
literature. In his description of the origins of night and day cycles, Hesiod
writes that “Chaos gave birth to Erebos and black Night;
then Erebos mated with Night and made her pregnant, and she, in turn, gave birth
to Ether and Day.”[4] These views represent an
overtly male perspective of creation in which mating is critical to the process and is often initiated by male figures.
Ovid’s view of creation, being simultaneously the most recent illustration of mythic origins among the three, as well as the most
aggregated of the three, is nonetheless the most hollow. Ovid’s writing strikes
a balance between the existence of the gods, which he imported from the Greek
pantheon and renamed, and the existence of a sovereign, unknown God. “Before
there was earth or sea or the sky that covers everything, Nature appeared the
same throughout the whole world: what we call chaos: a raw confused mass,
nothing but inert matter, badly combined discordant atoms of things, confused
in the one place.”[5]
Again, the theme of a disorganized mass is prevalent, as is the presence of a
divine, orderly force. Interestingly, the most striking difference between
Ovid and his literary predecessors can be found within their respective levels of confidence. Ovid refuses to name which
God is the supreme creator god, deferring to vague language as a way of avoiding
the subject. “When whichever god it was had ordered and divided the
mass and collected it into separate parts, he first gathered the earth into a
great ball so that it was uniform on all sides”[6]. While his creator god may
have remained unnamed, he was nonetheless credited with separating the realms
of reality into a functional system. He is described as a “greater order of
nature, since he split off the earth from the sky, and the sea from the land,
and divided the transparent heavens from the dense air,”[7] Ovid’s gods were viewed in
a similar context as The Olympians from Theogony and The Nephilim from Genesis,
being semi-divine and living under the sovereign power that orchestrates
reality.
As well as providing creation myths, the literature of
Moses, Hesiod, and Ovid provided guidelines by which righteous men would live.
In this regard, the works of Moses and Hesiod are more integral, as they are
more elaborate. But it would be incorrect to assume that Ovid and the Romans
did not value virtue or righteousness. After all, by the year 400 B.C.E the
Roman Emperor Constantine had officially declared Christianity as the religion
of the empire. This highlights the fact that eventually, these three religions,
and cultures, would overlap. The judiciary nature of the divine found within Theogony,
Works and Days, and The Bible, establishes the theme of punitive
measures for unvirtuous deeds. The honor-rewarding language of Hesiod’s
literature is replaced by grace-rewarding language within, The Old Testament,
but both states of transcendence, grace, and honor were accomplished through
religiously prescribed patterns of behavioral alignment, family structure,
ritual, and social responsibility. In
Greece, as in Mesopotamia, a society of transcendence-seeking men, provided a
strong framework for societal development.
The punitive nature of Zeus is seen
in full effect in both Theogony and Works and Days. Those who
broke oaths, were lazy, or were not upstanding citizens, were seen as violators
of a code of behavior. To violate such codes, as in the Judeo-Christian faith,
was to bring doom to oneself. The persistent assertion that Zeus is the justest, most powerful, and most victorious Olympians made him a role
model for men in a highly competitive society. Additionally, it provided vital
information about the dominant rule of this vengeful god. In Hesiod’s
description of Zeus’s overthrow of the Titans, this dominance is on full
display: “The whole earth, the sea, and the sky seethed; a dread quake arose in
the wake of the immortals’ charge, and heaving waves rolled up against the
shores; then Hades, lord of the wasted shades below, and the Titans under
Tartaros and around Kronos shuddered at the unending din and grisly clash.”[8] In a few short lines,
Hesiod not only establishes the global dominion of Zeus, but he also hints at a
cataclysmic capacity that could be turned on mortals at any time. The
correlation between the mightiest of the gods and environmental cataclysms is
indicative of the unpredictable nature of the environment in Greece, but it
also highlights the disciplinary measures that could be incurred by those who
challenge Zeus’ authority.
Similarly,
Moses writes of Noah and The Flood in Genesis, describing the cataclysmic
events inflicted upon the earth by the Almighty. The inclusion of Noah in the
Judeo-Christian mythology is important because it reveals one of the core
differences between religious belief in Archaic Greece and Judeo-Christianism:
salvation through faith. Before the cataclysm, God selects/elects an
individual who he chooses for being “a righteous man, blameless among the
people of his time,”[9] There are no such tales to
be found in the works of Hesiod, who instead portrays the men of this age as
“men of iron” who are wicked and unrighteous. This is not to say that Moses did
not view men of his time in the same light, a view that is cited by God as the
reason for Noah’s election among mortal men. “I am going to put an end to all
people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely
going to destroy both them and the earth.”[10] Despite being displeased
with his earthy creation, God selects a follower of his who possesses the
divine qualities of “blamelessness” and “righteousness.” Based
upon qualities of passivity, trust, and loyalty, this selection bears resemblances to the
Greek preoccupation with personal honor. However, Hesiod’s lessons generally
centered around the follies of men and women who meddle with the gods or the
desires of the gods themselves to meddle with the lives of mortals.
Election among Judeo-Christian
followers is the selection by God of a specific group of followers who will
carry forth his message to the masses. This process of being chosen by God is a
primary goal of the Judeo-Christian faith, and it is made possible through the
establishment of, and complicity with, moral tenets. The result of a life that
is perpetuated in God’s image is the ascension to a separated realm that
mortals cannot access, often referred to as Heaven. Moses defines these tenets
clearly when he provides the ten commandments to the Jewish people, but it is
clear that God had a doctrine of behavior before this, lest he would not
have flooded the world. As he says to Noah before the flood, “whoever sheds
the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has
God made man.”[11]
This points to another trope shared between the religious ideals of
Archaic Greece and Christianity; divine rule. And, while the Greeks could not
ever hope to be elected by Zeus, the fact that they feared the gods aided them
in their adherence to the pre-established, divine code.
To illuminate this universal set of rules, one can look within Prometheus
and Adam's stories, both of which center around mortal men who stole divine knowledge and
were consequently punished for doing so. In Genesis, Chapter 3, the story of
Adam and Eve are told. The familiar story of the devious snake manipulating Eve,
which, in turn, doomed Adam, is widely known. Also well-known is the punishment of
Adam and Eve, by God, via their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. The reason
for this expulsion, as stated by Moses, was that “man has now become like one
of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and also take from the tree of life and eat and live forever.”[12] Prometheus is likewise
doomed for his part in the stealing of divine knowledge from Zeus. By unleashing
Pandora, Zeus punishes Prometheus, and all of Greece, for overreaching the
mortal boundaries.[13] The thematic elements of
the stories are identical, despite existing in different geographical contexts,
and they both touch on the divine rule of society that predates humanity.
Dating to the 15th century, B.C.E., and spanning to the era of the Roman Empire and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the mythical origin stories created by Moses, Hesiod, and Ovid encapsulate the intuitive beginnings of societal thought. The civilizations that arose around these men, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome, grew to become the most dominant forces in the world, respectively. At the heart of each force lay divine rule and punishment. The cultural trend of defining reality via the will of God, Angels, Nephilim, Titans, Olympians and Heroes (demigods) are not unique to these three regions. The plethora of origin myths, pantheons, and definitions of reality that exist the world over often define reality through similar forces, citing these invisible agents as the catalysts for a variety of events, as well as the ultimate Controllers of humankind. But, within the works of Moses, Hesiod, and Ovid, the shared tropes of creation from chaos, divine rule, and the punitive relationship between mankind and the divine are stirringly similar at times. Through comparing the works of Genesis, Theogony, and Metamorphoses, the interweaving themes of these ancient texts reveal a human obsession with the creation and the consequences of human behavior.
Works Cited
Ovid, and Charles Martin. Metamorphoses.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004.
Hesiod,
and A. Athanassakis. Theogony. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1983.
The
Holy Bible
[1] Gen. 1:1-2 NIV.
[2] Gen. 1:20-25 NIV
[4] Hesiod, Theogony,
145-146
[5] Ovid, and Charles
Martin, Metamorphoses, (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2004), 5-8.
[6] Ovid, Metamorphoses,
32.
[7] Ovid, Metamorphoses,
21.
[8] Hesiod, Theogony,
880-885.
[9] Gen. 6:9 NIV
[10] Gen. 6:13 NIV
[11] Gen. 9:6 NIV
[12] Gen. 3:1-24 NIV
[13] Hesiod, Theogony,
560-600.
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