Shafarzek 1 Catherine Shafarzek Paper #1 CORE 151G – Western Traditions Professor Leone Due 03-12-10 God, the Gods, and Fate Ever since the beginning of human consciousness, we, as in humankind, have pondered the possibility of a higher power. Whether this higher power manifested itself in a culture in the form of a singular being, a multitude of beings, or even a hierarchy of beings, depended on the culture and the times in which the culture flourished. Greek myth included a multitude of gods and goddesses and lesser deities with extensive backgrounds, families, conflicts, and personalities situated in a detailed and oftentimes complicated hierarchy that only those who had extensively studied or worshipped could possibly remember fully. Homer’s Odyssey contains many examples of this hierarchy at work. At around the time Ancient Greek society was flourishing, from the fifth century B.C. to the fourth century B.C., an indeterminable number of individuals had probably finished writing the end of the Old Testament. Conversely, the Old Testament’s God is singular, the one and only (according to most often consumed translations) the creator of everything that we see and enjoy in this universe (and maybe every other universe that physicists insist exist as well), answering to no one. These two different structures affect how God and the Greek hierarchy of gods and goddesses relate to each other in the latter’s case and with human beings and the earth. In some ways, the hierarchy (which includes the three fates, or Moirae, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos) makes each god and goddess more accountable for his or her actions. We do not see this with God in the Old Testament. We see him exercising his power without restraint and without remorse, the only exception being with Noah and the great flood. Could this be attributed to his power to create fate for himself and all of humankind?
Shafarzek 2 Before the gods and goddesses that most people brought up in Western culture know about today existed (Zeus, Aphrodite, Ares, Poseidon, and the like), six primeval deities, born from Chaos, ruled the lands. From the initial six came the Titans. The Titans for a time held the positions of the main Greek deities. These twelve separate deities occupied Mount Olympus before Zeus led his uprising and imprisoned them beneath its base—six males and six females in total, each representing a different so-called element. The Titans bore Zeus later and eventually succumbed to him, leaving him with rule over his specific dominion, the sky in general, and lightning. Through Zeus’ many conquests, both directly and indirectly, the latter a result of his children, the whole pantheon of gods and goddesses that we are most familiar with today were born. Within the pantheon, twelve to fourteen gods and goddesses stood above the rest, the Olympians: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Hades, Hestia, Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Dionysus, Hephaestus, and Hermes are the most common deities referenced as part of the Olympians, though Hestia and Hades are sometimes missing, Hades residing most of the time in the Underworld and Hestia retreating to make way for Dionysus. The Greeks considered the Olympians some of the most powerful gods and goddesses, the majority of them lived on Mount Olympus, having stolen the mountain from the Titans. The rest of the gods and goddess existed below the Olympians in ancient Greek mythology including Iris, goddess of rainbows and Hermes female counterpart, and Nike, goddess of victory, for example. The gods were known to appear on earth in the presence of mortals. In the Odyssey, we see that the gods and goddess often walk amongst men. They could and would hold conversations with mortals about matters at hand—their existence was no secret; the knowledge of their existence was so far-reaching and pervasive in the lives in the average Greek that every Greek was supposed to practice xenia, or hospitality, on the off chance that Zeus were to appear
Shafarzek 3 at their doorstep in some sort of disguise. Even the most repulsive of beggars could not be turned away if one acknowledged the gods’ existence. Every god and goddess at the time answered to Zeus, despite his or her own monumental power. Even Hades, god of the dead and the Underworld, answered to his brother when Zeus called for him, no matter the nature of the summons. An instance of this occurs in Book 7 of Homer’s Odyssey: “…The exile must return. But not in the convoy of the gods or mortal men. No, on a lashed, makeshift raft and wrung with pains…” Zeus decrees. He bids his son Hermes to deliver the message to Odysseus’ captor of seven years, Calypso, who is not a goddess, according to the Robert Fagles translation, but rather a sea nymph with some power herself and the gift of immortality. Neither Hermes nor Calypso can defy Zeus’ command, just as Zeus cannot continue with his and Poseidon’s campaign against Odysseus, as his “destiny [is] ordain[ed]” (Book V, line 45) that he would reach home; it was “not his fate to die [there]” (Book V, line 126). Hermes is the unbiased party in the matter, acting only as Zeus’ messenger to Calypso, but both Calypso and Zeus have compelling reasons to defy whatever ultimatum they had been given. We find later, however, that Calypso sends Odysseus off with a boat in the direction of the Phaeacians, just as Zeus directed. She only does this after insulting the rest of the gods, saying that it is their jealousy that prompts Zeus’ order: “You unrivaled lords of jealousy— / scandalized when goddesses sleep with mortals, / openly, even when one has made the man her husband” [Book V, lines 131-133]. She curses Zeus’ name and obeys grudgingly. Similarly, though Poseidon has a vicious grudge against Odysseus for failing to honor him after Greece’s victory in Troy, Poseidon cannot prohibit Odysseus from returning to Ithaca. Poseidon cannot do anything that directly endangers his life—none of the gods can do that, unless it has been pre-
Shafarzek 4 ordained by the Fates. No god or goddess has the right to take the life a human unless that crucial criterion was met. At the point Greek mythology reached in its evolution during Homer’s lifetime, Zeus reigned supreme above everyone else, man or god, even his fellow Olympians with whom he shared Mount Olympus. However, of all the deities that the Greeks believed existed, three being held more sway over the gods’ and humankind’s affairs, the three weavers of Fate. These three beings had the ability to dictate a being’s birth, events that would occur during a person’s lifetime, and the exact date, time, and nature of a person’s death. Zeus feared them, as he rightly should have. If the Fates had willed his demise, then his demise would have been a certainty, the only variable in the equation—how exactly he arrived there. Certainly, this lingering though in the backs of the gods’ minds influenced how they interacted with humans. Poseidon surely would have killed Odysseus for his transgression, or for at least the blinding of his son Polyphemus, or at least made it so he would have never reached Ithaca in his lifetime. Surely Calypso would have kept Odysseus with her in the middle of the sea for the rest of years or until he agreed to her proposal if she had but the choice. It seems as though God always has a choice in the Old Testament of the Bible, and God does his best to exercise this choice. The Bible’s God was and is a vastly different being than the gods and goddesses in Greek mythology. As described in the book of Genesis, God has all the power he needs to accomplish whatever he wishes to accomplish. He created the entirety of life, the universe, and everything in six days, declaring the seventh His day of rest. God is described as having a tremendous amount of power without having someone to keep it in check. Unlike with the gods and goddesses of Greek myth, all of whom only had dominion over a certain aspect of human life each, God has the power to control everything, the power to demolish
Shafarzek 5 humankind in a flood the likes of which is only fabled to have occurred. He creates his own, and our own, destinies, our fates however he pleases, and he interferes whenever humankind begins to steer away from those destinies. Throughout Genesis and Exodus, we see God’s interactions with his sentient creations. Because God from the Old Testament is a singular being, we do not see a lot of variety in how He deals with humankind both as a whole and on an individual basis. For example, in the second chapter of Genesis, God deliberately and directly puts Adam into a deep sleep in order to take one of his ribs for the creation of Eve, and later on, He initiates the ten plagues that nearly decimate Egypt and its people. God directly interferes with the affairs of humans—He speaks to Joseph, He speaks to Moses, He alters Pharaoh’s disposition, He causes the flood that almost causes human extinction, and He casts Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden and all himself of His own volition. We do not know His motives, but they are not guided by any higher power to which we are privy. I the beginning of Genesis, in Genesis 3:22, God reveals that He may be one of at least two enlightened beings that exist: “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:22). This does not necessarily implicate that these beings are also Gods, especially considering how the sentence is phrased, using the word “that” to make the direct connection, to express that these others know the nature of good and evil but not necessarily gods of the same ilk God is. The only motivation he appears to have for his actions at any is his extreme emotions, especially those of anger and child-like petulance. He ejects Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden for partaking in a fruit they had no idea would incriminate them in such a way before they even acquired the knowledge of with right and wrong, good and evil, deceit, and cause and effect. There is no redemption for them or humankind, and in this damning action, he also
Shafarzek 6 increases the pain of childbirth, the difficulty of tending to the fields, and he subjects women to men for the rest of the foreseeable future in the event that God doesn’t decide to exercise some mercy, and he can do all of this because he has no unbiased party to listen to, to guide him. In this way, God is like a petulant child given too much power at an early age. He allows his emotions, his desire for vengeance, rule him and so damning his own creations, his creations he created in his own likeness. Similar to the lack of a hierarchy present in the Bible, God does not answer to fate either. He creates fate, He weaves it in whatever manner he deems necessary. He manipulates Moses, and his brother Aaron, and the Pharaoh of Egypt in Exodus to the end noble of freeing the Israelites from the Pharaoh’s overbearing rule. He alters the Pharaoh’s very character, however, in order to make this possible. He “harden[ed] Pharaoh’s heart, and though [He multiplied] his miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt, the [Pharaoh] would not listen to [Moses]” (Exodus 7:3). God has the power and the lack of opposition to do whatever he wants whenever he wants and in whatever fashion he wants, but in Genesis chapters five through nine, this aspect of his character damns him. God shows a remarkable capacity to make mistakes in the chapters of Genesis focusing on Noah, his family, and the great flood. After the whole even is over, and God sees just how much damage He inflicted in the earth and its inhabitants, God apologizes to Noah and his family and vows to never decimate humankind again for its problems of which God is arguably the source. Sure, Greek mythology includes mythic floods, but this God set the flood on humankind in order to destroy us and rebuild us from the remains, from Noah, whom he deemed worthy according to some secret criteria. He made a mistake, humans made mistakes, and he sets the flood on humankind. Conversely, at the time that Prometheus steals fire from Mount
Shafarzek 7 Olympus for the benefit of humans, the gods do not punish humans by reclaiming fire, but rather they punish Prometheus for bringing it to them. They can meddle in their own affairs to an extent, but they cannot meddle in the affairs of humans. Like characters in literature then and now, these characters, that is to say, the gods and goddesses of Greek myth and the God we Westerners are most familiar with, possess flaws. In Greek mythology, a hierarchy exists that keeps all the gods and goddesses in line and in check in regards to one another. This keeps one or two gods from becoming too ambitious and making too much of a direct impact on humans. The biblical God has none of those checks, and He often uses His power to disrupt humans’ lives and interfere when the Greek gods and goddesses would have had reservations about doing them same thing. Even if one were to discard the flood, God still killed three men for no apparent reason and commanded Moses and the Israelites to steal from the Egyptians, an act He outlawed in the Ten Commandments within the same book. Fate, or the Fates, influences everything the gods do, especially in relation to humans, whereas with God, God does not have to abide by anything such thing because he creates fate according to whatever direction he wants humankind to next travel in.