Greek Myth and the Bible

Bruce Louden

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367664749
• eBook ISBN: 9780429828041
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Since the nineteenth-century rediscovery of the Gilgamesh epic, we have known that the Bible imports narratives from outside of Israelite culture, refiguring them for its own audience. Only more recently, however, has come the realization that Greek culture is also a prominent source of biblical narratives.

Greek Myth and the Bible argues that classical mythological literature and the biblical texts were composed in a dialogic relationship. Louden examines a variety of Greek myths from a range of sources, analyzing parallels between biblical episodes and Hesiod, Euripides, Argonautic myth, selections from Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Homeric epic.

This fascinating volume offers a starting point for debate and discussion of these cultural and literary exchanges and adaptations in the wider Mediterranean world and will be an invaluable resource to students of the Hebrew Bible and the influence of Greek myth.

Part I

The Hebrew Bible

1Iapetos and Japheth

Hesiod’s Theogony, Iliad 15.187–93, and Genesis 9–10

Though Hesiod’s Theogony and the book of Genesis occupy analogous positions and serve similar functions in their respective ancient cultures, the many ways in which they overlap, and offer alternative versions of some of the same genres of myth, remain curiously understudied. Finkelberg (2005: 162–63) has called attention to one of the most conspicuous examples, the mythic tradition preserved at Genesis 6:2, 4, in which “the sons of the gods” (plural in the original, though often edited out of translations) mate with mortal women and give birth to a race of heroes, which corresponds surprisingly well to Hesiod’s account of the genesis of the Bronze Age (Works 155–69; cf. Pindar Olympian 9, 53–56). Both works display common ground with several ancient Near Eastern mythic traditions. In Hesiod’s case, correspondences with Anatolian myth have long been recognized (see especially West 1966), while more recent analyses (e.g., López-Ruiz 2010; West 1997) suggest Northwest Semitic ties in particular (Ugaritic, Syrian/Phoenician). In the case of Genesis, correspondences with Mesopotamian cultures have long been observed, especially in the myth of the Deluge. But more recent work (e.g., Smith 1990, 2001) has also pursued common ground with the Northwest Semitic group, in Ugaritic myth in particular (= the biblical Canaanites = Phoenicians).

Given their overlapping backgrounds, and that both employ forms of creation myth, we should not be surprised to find areas where Hesiod and Genesis intersect. Genesis includes specific allusions to Greek culture in the prominence it gives the eponymous character Javan (Gen 10:2, 4),¹ the son of Japheth in the Table of Nations (Gen 10:1–32). The same eponym as the Greek “Ion” (from Ἰάων² and earlier Ἰάϝων), according to Roberts, elsewhere in the Old Testament “Javan” can be the country personified, but in Genesis and I Chronicles it signifies the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor and perhaps of Cyprus in particular, one of the likeliest locations for cultural dialogue between the Greeks and Phoenicians.³

But Javan’s father may offer even more intriguing possibilities. Japheth, Noah’s son, in what seems a specific intersection between the Theogony and Genesis, appears to be the same name, and, the corresponding figure, as Hesiod’s Titan, Iapetos. However, both characters retain only a shadowy presence in their respective cultures, and, while they may have once been more fully fleshed out, in the narratives as we have them they barely exist as individuated characters, confined to only a few mysterious episodes. To bring the correspondences between Iapetos’ role in the Theogony and Japheth’s in Genesis into clearer focus, we will adduce that most Hesiodic of Homeric episodes, the Dios Apate, the “Deception of Zeus,” and its aftermath at Iliad 15.187–95, and other cosmogonic myths involving a partitioning of the cosmos, as well as divine succession myths involving castration. These passages provide suggestive contexts for investigating Japheth’s role in Genesis. Taken as a whole, the parallels between the two figures (key differences not withstanding), and the emphasis that Genesis, and other Hebrew Bible narratives, place on Japheth’s son Javan, not only support J. P. Brown’s argument (1995) that they are the same figure (78–83) but also Wadjenbaum’s recent argument (2011: 103–4) that the biblical tradition has adapted both the figure and name of Iapetos, for the Hebrew Bible’s Japheth.

Why would this be? To construct its larger sequence of primordial myth, Genesis appropriated individual myths from various cultures, including the myth of the Deluge from a Mesopotamian tradition. Though modern audiences tend to assume Genesis is of great antiquity, it is rather late in the form in which we have it. I subscribe to Auld’s theory (2004) about the dating of the Hebrew Bible (which we briefly revisit in Chapter 4).⁴ He posits that the earliest composed section of the Bible is 1 Samuel through 2 Kings. Deuteronomy through Judges was then constructed partly to provide anticipations of the royal Davidic story. Last of all, Genesis–Numbers was composed as a carefully intentioned preface to the larger work. In any case, it is clear that Genesis in the form we have it significantly postdates our text of Hesiod.⁵

Two recent studies argue that parts of Genesis are composed in response to, or in dialogue with, the Odyssey.⁶ For the sons of the survivor of the Flood, and one’s rebellion against his father, I argue that the Genesis tradition appropriates a version of the Titans’ rebellion against Ouranos, euhemerized and reshaped to fit an Israelite agenda and conception.⁷ Iapetos’ status as a god in Hesiod and Homer, but Japheth’s mortal status in Genesis, should be understood as an instance of monotheistic myth’s tendency to euhemerize divine characters from other traditions. Elsewhere the Bible several times transfers other cultures’ divine names to human characters (Nimrod: Ninurta; Esther: Ishtar; Mordecai: Marduk). As Carr notes (1996: 162), there is no evidence outside the Bible for the names of Noah’s sons, and recent scholarship has considerably moved the dates up for much of the book of Genesis (Carr 1996: passim).⁸ Though several of the motifs we will analyze also occur in Hittite and West Semitic narratives, which may well be where Hesiod encountered them,⁹ the larger concatenation, and a few specifics, reveal unique correspondences between Hesiod and Genesis. I will argue, therefore, that Genesis 9–10 evolved in a dialogue with some form of Hesiod’s Theogony.¹⁰

The names Iapetos and Japheth, and the sequence of the Sons

Neither Iapetós nor Japeth has a speaking part in our surviving texts. Both characters serve primarily as genealogical agents, connectors, sons of parents, and fathers of sons who are themselves more significant agents in their respective mythologies. Both are set in the primeval period of their respective mythologies and take part in several of the same genres of myth (or are sons or fathers of those who do). The first two mentions of Japheth (Gen 5:32, 6:10), phrases listing the three sons of Noah (Shem, Ham, and Japheth), both frame Genesis’ brief but very Hesiodic reference, noted previously, to the Sons of the Gods mating with women and giving birth to a race of heroes (Gen 6:2–4): “they were the heroes of old, men of renown.” From the perspective of source criticism, Speiser (1962: 41, 51) regards both these first mentions of Japheth as from the priestly source, the most recent layer. Iapetos and Kronos are the only Titans that are also named in Homer (Iliad, 8.478–81), as West (1966: 157) observes. West further explains their prominence (158),

Iapetos and Kronos are the only two of the Titans who stand out later in the Theogony as constituting a serious individual danger to Zeus: Kronos who nearly swallows him, and Iapetos who rears a brood of dangerous sons against whom measures have to be taken individually.

The two are well known, then, but in terms of their notoriety, both with respect to interfamilial relations and their relations with the chief god.

The Theogony and Genesis both confuse the sequence of the two characters among their fathers’ several children. Genesis establishes a canonical order of the three sons of Noah as Shem, Ham, Japheth, occurring five times (5:32, 6:10, 7:13, 9:18, 10:1), implying an eldest-to-youngest sequence, as Speiser (62), and many others, note, “the explicit order of the sons of Noah, which indicates age, is invariably Shem-Ham-Japheth.” But when Noah wakens from his drunken sleep (discussed in the following text), and realizes what his “youngest son” has done to him (9:24; the Septuagint has νεώτερος), the culprit, on this most important occasion, is Ham, not Japheth. We further consider this violation of the expected sequence in the following text.

When Hesiod enumerates the Titans’ offspring (133–38), Iapetos is fifth and Kronos is last, clearly designated as the youngest. In a later section, however, Hesiod alters the sequence, detailing Kronos’ offspring (453–506) before Iapetos’ (507–616). Caldwell (1987) offers a possible motive for the change (53),

We would expect the family of Kronos to come last, since Kronos is the youngest of the Titans, but Hesiod puts Kronos before Iapetos so that Zeus’ victory can be mentioned before telling the story of Iapetos’ son Prometheus (a story in which Zeus is already king of the gods).

The resulting order in this lengthy, well-known section of the Theogony, with Iapetos last, after Kronos, thus ends up corresponding to the usual sequence in Genesis of Ham, then Japheth. Is there a connection, then, in both myths having a prominent violation of their usual sequence for the sons? Genesis’ Ham, as we will argue, corresponds in many ways to Hesiod’s Kronos: each is the son who most directly challenges his primordial father. The correspondences will prove unexpectedly close.

In keeping with their primeval status, Iapetos and Japheth are both associated with, but not the central actors in, their respective versions of the Flood myth.¹¹ Iapetos is grandfather of Deukalion, the Greek character corresponding to Noah (and the earlier Utnapishtim). Pindar, at a fairly early date (roughly 470), knows a complete version of the myth (Olympian 9, 40–56), and makes prominent mention of Ἰαπετιονίδος φύτλας (“of Iapetos’ race”). Japheth, as we have seen, is a son of Noah, and is on the Ark, a survivor of the Deluge.

Castration of the father

The only other event in which Japheth plays a role is the bizarre episode in Genesis 9:20–27 in which his brother Ham sees Noah’s genitals, when their father is passed out, drunk, in his tent. The episode, in its present form, is enigmatic and resists attempts at convincing analysis and interpretation, other than the specific outcome: a curse placed on the Canaanites because Canaan is Ham’s son. Here is Alter’s translation (1996),

[Noah] exposed himself within his tent. And Ham … saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers outside. And Shem and Japheth took a cloak and put it over both their shoulders and walked backward and covered their father’s nakedness, their faces turned backward so they did not see their father’s nakedness. And Noah woke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him.

Noah then pronounces a curse, not on Ham but on Ham’s son, Canaan, while bestowing blessings on Japheth and Shem.

Alter (40), noting some of the episode’s notorious inconsistencies, connects the passage both with Hesiod and with the rather Hesiodic account of the race of heroes at Genesis 6:1–4,

Like the story of the Nephilim, this episode alludes cryptically to narrative material that may have been familiar to the ancient audience but must have seemed to the monotheistic writer dangerous to spell out … Ham, the perpetrator of the act of violation, is mysteriously d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I The Hebrew Bible
• Part II New Testament
• Bibliography
• Index