Pre-Midterm Answers to Greek Mythology (Question #1- #3)

By: Jezreel Madsa, Mark Javellana, Victor Gorosin, Ariel Limosnero, & Glenn Geraldez

Question #1: Creation & Flood stories are found in several ancient narratives of world literature. Discuss some examples. Explain why you believe these creation stories were written?

These creation stories were written in order to answer man’s ultimate question with regard to the origin of the world. For example, Plato, in his book, The Republic asserted that “nothing comes from nothing”.  Aristotle, on the other hand, formulates the Law of Causality wherein it states that every effect must relatively have a cause, and since the earth is not eternal in itself, it must have therefore an agent by whom is the cause of its existence. Other literary works, before the dawn of the medieval period, were that of St. Aurelius Augustine’s De Trinitatae, St. Anselm, and the great Father of medieval scholasticism, Thomas Aquinas in his book, Summa Theologica ch.5, espoused the thought of a transcendental creator. 

More importantly, Hesiod, in his book, The Theogony (ch.1 & ch.2), provides an exhaustive account of how the universe including the world and the gods of the Greek came to exist. 

Lastly, along those lines of evidence, is Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. Just like Christians, the Greeks according to Edith Hamilton, the world started off in chaos shrouded by immense darkness:

“Long before the gods appeared, in the dim past, uncounted ages ago, there was only the formless confusion of Chaos brooded over by unbroken darkness.”(p.48)

Edith Hamilton further elaborated that the “chaos” she mentioned was surprisingly a personal being:

“Night was the child of Chaos and so was Erebus, which is the unfathomable depth where death dwells in the whole universe there was nothing else; all was black, empty, silent, endless.” (p.48)

Edith Hamilton, continues to explain that the Greeks believed that it was Zeus who was responsible for the existence of the many things in earth.

“…men, animals, this or that tree or flower, the sun, the moon, the stars, storms, eruptions, earthquakes, all that is and all that happens. Thunder and lightning are caused when Zeus hurls his thunderbolt.” p.11

And finally, the Bible in Genesis 1:1 and Genesis ch.6, provides a detailed exposition of the Flood including the creation of the world. 

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

In light of the accounts of these literary works, although they have nuances and major differences in terms of details; however, they altogether share the same view that the world is created by a transcendental, supernatural being. God, then, is the ultimate answer man has sought to dispel their deep pursuit of meaning, purpose and existence.

REFERENCES:

(1) Plato, ., Grube, G. M. A., & Reeve, C. D. C. (1992). Republic. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co. Chicago (Author-Date, 15th ed.)

(2) Hesiod. Theogony, Works and days, Testimonia. Hesiod - Glenn W.Most – 2006

.(3) Hamilton, Edith. Foreword. Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes. By Hamilton. New York, NY: Warner Books, 1942.

(4) Moses. The Holy Bible, “Genesis 1:1, Genesis 6” (New Internationation Version: 2011).

Question #2: What science has to do with mythology according to Edith Hamilton?

For Edith Hamilton, those early accounts of mythologies coming from Greeks and Roman literatures reflect the birth of science. 

“The stories are early literature as well as early science.” (p.11)

However, those primitive people did not have the scientific equipment and tools back then which are needed to validate their observations and explanations of nature. As such, in light of the demarcation line being built by contemporary philosopher of science, as the likes of Karl Popper and others, that early account of mythology could not be considered as “scientific” in a modern sense of the word, but can only be relegated under the domain of “pseudo-science”. This is so, inasmuch as, it lacks conformity to the standards of contemporary science as we have it today.

Edith Hamilton, furthermore, elaborates and gives us a transparent description of the people’s hermeneutics or interpretation of natures.

“Men, animals, this or that tree or flower, the sun, the moon, the stars, storms, eruptions, earthquakes, all that is and all that happens. Thunder and lightning are caused when Zeus hurls his thunderbolt.” (p.11)   

So there goes, the early scientific explanation of certain natural phenomena that happen. Early mythologies had us to understand that those ancient people used to make their gods and goddesses as solely the cause for whatever happened, be it a natural phenomenon or natural disaster. 

REFERENCES:

(1) Hamilton, Edith. Foreword. Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes. By Hamilton. New York, NY: Warner Books, 1942.
(2) Gattei, Stefano. 2010. Karl Popper’s Philosophy of Science: Rationality without Foundations. London; New York: Routledge.

3.) Describe the general Pre-Greek perception of the gods.

As far as the earliest historical account of Mythology is concerned, the perception of gods by the earliest people prior to the historical prominence of Greeks, Edith Hamilton notes that:

“In Egypt, a towering colossus, immobile, beyond the power of the imagination to endow with movement, as fixed in the stone as the tremendous temple columns, a representation of the human shape deliberately made unhuman. Or a rigid figure, a woman with a cat’s head suggesting inflexible, inhuman cruelty. Or a monstrous mysterious sphinx, aloof from all that lives.”(p.9)

As shown in the excerpt above, the Egyptian conception of gods was something that represents greatness and was a mixture of human and animal characteristics—it seems to suggest that for them the gods have the totality of attributes which all living creatures possessed. 

“In Mesopotamia, bas-reliefs of bestial shapes unlike any beast ever known, men with birds’ heads and lions with bulls’ heads and both with eagles’ wings, creations of artists who were intent upon producing something never seen except in their own minds, the very consummation of unreality.” (p.9) 

As far as it goes, it becomes even more clear that the Pre-Greeks conception of gods were altogether bestial, hence placing a focally prominent emphasis on animal creatures rather than humanity. It was centuries after during the rise and influx of Greek literature where the emphasis on the nature of gods were transferred to humanity inasmuch as the Greeks believed that they were made or created after the image of the gods. Thus you have Zeus, Athena, and Aphrodite and all the others along those lines which relatively similar to that of the humans.  

In a word, the Pre-Greeks characterized God more in an animalistic attribution, while the Greeks conceived of God as resembling the fullness of the essence of humanity.

REFERENCE:

Hamilton, Edith. Foreword. Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes. By Hamilton. New York, NY: Warner Books, 1942.