The Expulsion from the Garden by Gustave Doré

The Hebrew Bible, and more specifically the Book of Genesis, is made up of many texts from different periods, as well as a variety of sources. Stylistic features and inconsistencies show us that the Bible does not have one single writer but many.

Studying the books of the Hebrew Bible as literature–paying close attention to their narrative techniques, their imagery, characterization, and point of view–is not incompatible with religious faith. Close reading enriches our understanding and appreciation of these texts as supremely important cultural and historical documents, for readers of any religious background or belief.

From the Norton Anthology of World Literature

Genesis, unlike other ancient creation stories, begins not with earth, sky, and sea but with God himself, the originator of everything. Genesis is the Greek word for “origin” or “birth.” In opposition to the Enuma Elish and Theogony, human beings occupy the center of the story about the world’s creation. God himself can be seen as the most vivid and complex character of the book of Genesis.

Creation scene from Aronofsky’s Noah (2014)

THE NINE GREEK MUSES

Kalliope (Epic Poetry)

Kleio (History)

Erato (Love Poetry)

Euterpe (Music)

Melpomene (Tragedy)

Polymnia (Hymns)

Terpsichore (Dance)

Thaleia (Comedy)

Ourania (Astronomy)

“Where Have All the Muses Gone?” is an amusing article written in The Wall Street Journal about the Muses.

From Hesiod’s WORKS AND DAYS

The Ages of Man

The Golden race of mortal men — this race thrives under the reign of Kronos and is made by the Olympian gods (Zeus, et al.). They live like the immortals, without strife or toil.

The Silver race of mortal men — this race is inferior to the Golden one, even though they too were created by the Olympian gods. They remain children for 100 years, and then became petulant and violent adults. They commit crimes against each other and refuse to honor the gods.

The Bronze race of mortal men — this race is also made by Zeus and fashioned from the Ash tree. They are a warring race who live off of meat and use bronze tools and weapons. They are the first race to go to Hades upon their death.

The Divine race of heroes — this is the semi-divine race, the demi-gods and heroes we see in the “Odyssey” and the “Iliad.” This race wars as well, but when they die Zeus lets them dwell in the Isles of the Blessed Ones.

The Iron race of mortal men — this is Hesiod’s race (ours, as well). There is no end to their daily toil and strife because the gods bring about many troubles for them.

 

Some definitions of literary terms we will be using in this class:

Taken from M. H. Abrams and Geoffrey Galt Harpham, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 9^th ed.

Fiction and truth: In an inclusive sense, fiction is any literary narrative, whether in prose or verse, which is invented instead of being an account of events that actually happened. In a narrower sense, however, fiction denotes only narratives that are written in prose (the novel and short story), and sometimes is used simply as a synonym for the novel.

Myth: In classical Greek, “mythos” signified any story or plot, whether true or invented. In its central modern significance, however, a myth is one story in a mythology—a system of hereditary stories of ancient origin which were once believed to be true by a particular cultural group, and which served to explain (in terms of the intentions and actions of deities and other supernatural beings) why the world is as it is and things happen as they do, to provide a rationale for social customs and observances, and to establish the sanctions for the rules by which people conduct their lives. Most myths are related to social rituals—set forms and procedures in sacred ceremonies—but anthropologists disagree as to whether rituals generated myths or myths generated rituals.

Epic: In its strict sense the term epic or heroic poem is applied to a work that meets at least the following criteria: it is a long verse narrative on a serious subject, told in a formal and elevated style, and centered on a heroic or quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, a nation, or the human race.

Vincent Van Gogh The Starry Night (1889)

A cosmogony is a story about how the world began.

Where does the world come from, what is it made of? Does it have an order, a pattern, a purpose? Was it created by some god, or gods, or entity? How did human beings come into existence?

The Greek word cosmos implies order and beauty, as well as universe, and so to compose a cosmogony is to describe how the world came to be a beautiful and well-ordered place.

Some key features of cosmogonies:

• they help people define their place in the universe; specifics of a culture in a broader cosmic pattern
• they provide mythical stories rather than scientific answers
• ancient cosmogonies do not usually begin with creation out of nothing, but with some primeval matter from which the world took shape, i.e.: water, sun, air, etc.
• they often have a political dimension, some great ruler who is connected to the creator god or gods, and is praised by them
• they show the struggles between different generations
• they tend to classify the world in a hierarchical structure: upper world, lower world, middle earth

Some questions the cosmogony tries to answer:

• Where does the world come from?
• What is it made of?
• Is there an order or pattern or purpose in the universe, or do things happen at random?
• Was there a god or gods who created or arranged the world?
• How did life on earth begin?
• How did human beings come into existence?
• Has there always been evil? If not, how did wickedness and conflict first begin?

THE BABYLONIAN CREATION EPIC

Enuma Elish (18th c. BCE)

Marduk and his Dragon

The epic names two primeval gods: Apsû (or Abzu) who represents fresh water and Tiamat representing oceanic waters. Several other gods are created – Ea and his brothers – who reside in Tiamat’s vast body. They make so much noise that the babel or noise annoys Tiamat and Apsû greatly. Apsû wishes to kill the young gods, but Tiamat disagrees. The vizier, Mummu, agrees with Apsû’s plan to destroy them. Tiamat, in order to stop this from occurring, warns Ea (Nudimmud), the most powerful of the gods. Ea uses magic to put Apsû into a coma, then kills him, and shuts Mummu out. Ea then becomes the chief god. Then marries Damkina, he has a son, Marduk, greater still than himself. Marduk is given wind to play with and he uses the wind to make dust storms and tornadoes. This disrupts Tiamat’s great body and causes the gods still residing inside her to be unable to sleep.

The gods persuade Tiamat to take revenge for the death of her husband, Apsû. Her power grows, and some of the gods join her. She creates 11 monsters to help her win the battle and elevates Kingu, her new husband, to “supreme dominion.” A lengthy description of the other gods’ inability to deal with the threat follows. Marduk offers to save the gods if he is appointed as their leader and allowed to remain so even after the threat passes. When the gods agree to Marduk’s conditions he is selected as their champion against Tiamat, and becomes very powerful. Marduk challenges Tiamat to combat and destroys her. He then rips her corpse into two halves with which he fashions the earth and the skies. Marduk then creates the calendar, organises the planets and stars, and regulates the moon, the sun, and weather.

The Gods who have pledged their allegiance to Tiamat are initially forced into labour in the service of the Gods who sided with Marduk. But they are freed from these labors when Marduk then destroys Tiamat’s husband, Kingu, and uses his blood to create humankind to do the work for the Gods.  Most noteworthy is Marduk’s symbolic elevation over Enlil, who was seen by earlier Mesopotamian civilisations as the king of the Gods.

(Taken from Wikipedia’s entry on Enuma Elish)

THE ANCIENT GREEK WORLD

Family Tree of the Greek Gods

Ages of Greece

• Mycenaean Age (1500-1200 BCE)
• Dark Age of Greece (1100-750 BCE) Hesiod and Homer compose
• Archaic Age of Greece (700-500 BCE)
• Classical Age of Greece (490-323 BCE) Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes
• Hellenistic Age (323-31 BCE) from the death of Alexander the Great, who conquered all of Greece and much of the Middle East, to the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra by Octavian. (this is when Greek culture flourishes and reaches the Mediterranean, Near East and Asia)

In Greece it was believed that there was a pantheon of deities—many of questionable moral virtue—who, while they occasionally meddled in human affairs and were keen on seducing mortals, generally remained detached from the everyday workings of the world and were not shown any strict allegiance by humans.

Hesiod’s THEOGONY

Three generations of gods: Ouranos, Kronos (Titans) and Zeus (Olympians).

Problems with further generations:

As Rheia gives birth to her children, Kronos swallows them whole because he heard from his parents that a child of his would overthrow his throne. Rheia gives Kronos a stone wrapped in a cloth instead of Zeus and he swallows the stone. Zeus is secretly raised by Gaia. When Kronos hears of the trick, he spits his children back out and they give their brother Zeus lightning and thunder as a token of thanks.

Akhenaten and his family make an offering to the sun god Aten.

Inscribed prominently at the entrance to the tomb of an important official in the new capital city of el-Amarna, this hymn celebrates the sun as creator and sustainer of the world and emphasizes the close connection between the god and his human counterparts, the king (Amenhotep IV) and queen (Nefertiti). The king initiated a religious and political revolution when he exclusively promoted the cult of the sun god, Aten, built a new capital, and changed his name to Akhenaten, which means “He who is effective for Aten.”

(From the Norton Anthology of World Literature, 29)

The first two stanzas of “The Great Hymn to the Aten” set its tone because the sun’s presence evinces its greatness, but also its absence is felt just as readily. The fear that arises when darkness abounds is a primeval fear, one that civilizations, even as early as this Egyptian era, had encountered. It is interesting to think about the opposites the hymn puts forth, such as light and darkness, good and bad, hot and cold, living and dead. Seeing them laid out in this hymn reminds us of our primordial nature. It brings up the question of morality, or our ethical nature, since we can see that something greater lives within us, leading us toward judgment. Nature, in this case the sun, is the root of all goodness, and therefore its behavior dictates what it is to be good.

I assume that in 1350 BCE people did not know the sun was a ball of fire that would scorch us if it came too close to the earth, and we would go extinct if it disappeared all together. Akhenaten’s worshipping the sun, then, as the “Sole God beside whom there is none” (line 65) is intuitive in ways. To go from darkness to light every morning is still somewhat of a miracle today. When we have a power outage and are forced to live in darkness, we are given the opportunity to know what early civilizations must have experienced. Is the return of light after complete darkness not a miracle? If we lived without light for half of the time, could you imagine worshipping the sun too? Also, there is much truth to the acknowledgment that the sun makes everything grow and brings it to life, so it is no wonder they believed Aten had created the earth as well: “You made the earth as you wished, you alone, / [made] All peoples, herds, and flocks” (lines 66-7).

LITERARY JOURNEYS

When we think about a journey, we think about going from one place to another, a displacement of sorts which initiates loss as much as gain. We often forget about the journey once we arrive, believing that arriving at the destination is the most important reason for taking it in the first place. But what if the journey itself is the thing? What if the destination has nothing to offer, and the travel we take to get there is the prize?

If we think about literature in this way, we do not trouble ourselves with getting to the end. Instead, we enjoy each moment as it passes without care or concern for what happens afterward. Once we close the book, the journey is ended. And once the journey is ended, only memories are left to us. If we think about life this way, we do not trouble ourselves with its end, but focus only on its present, its immediate and now, and all the pleasure the current moment brings us.

I challenge you in this class to embrace the now of the journey, and all that it gives you in the moment. Forget about the fruit it will bear in the future, for the now is about planting the seeds, and without them there is no fruit.