| Greek and Hebrew Parallels Hellenic-era Greeks grew up alongside the Hebrews and reveled in the habit of using Greek myth to explain Hebrew myth and discredit their Bible. The Greeks were aware of the growing discord between the ideologies which consisted in one taking myth literally and making a religion out of it and the other in understanding the origin of their mythology enough to explain the origins to their neighbors. (298) In Cyrus Gordon’s book, Before the Bible, the author writes: “Suffice it to say that the prevailing attitude (which is gradually losing its grip) may be described as the tacit assumption that ancient Israel and Greece are two water-tight compartments, totally different from each other. One is said to be sacred; the other, profane; one, Semitic, the other, Indo-European. One Asiatic and Oriental; the other European and Occidental. But the fact is that both flourished during the same centuries, in the same East Mediterranean corner of the globe, with both ethnic groups in contact with the other from the start.” Gordon’s book deals with the relation of Israel and Greece during the period of the 15th through the 10th centuries BC, or what is commonly termed, the “Heroic Age.” (299) One chief parallel between the Hebrew and Greek myths is the “divine staff” which serve as weapon in which the hero gains victory. In the story of Exodus, the defeat of the Amalekites occurred when Moses told Joshua he would hold up his “Staff of God”: “The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. (9) Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands.” (10) So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. (11) As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. (12) When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset. (13) So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.” (Exodus 17:8-13) From the Iliad, we have the story of Apollo holding up the aegis and shaking it and defeating the arrow missiles of the Danaans: “Then the Trojans drove forward in close throng, and Hector led them, advancing with long strides, while before him went Phoebus Apollo, his shoulders wrapped in cloud, bearing the fell aegis, girt with shaggy fringe, awful, gleaming bright, that the smith Hephaestus gave to Zeus to bear for the putting to rout of warriors; this Apollo bare in his hands as he led on the host. [312] And the Argives in close throng abode their coming, and the war-cry rose shrill from either side, and the arrows leapt from the bow-string, and many spears, hurled by bold hands, ere some of them lodged in the flesh of youths swift in battle, and many of them, or ever they reached the white flesh, |
stood fixed midway in the earth, fain to glut themselves with flesh. Now so long as Phoebus Apollo held the aegis moveless in his hands, even so long the missiles of either side reached their mark and the folk kept falling; but when he looked full in the faces of the Danaans of swift horses, and shook the aegis, and himself shouted mightily withal, then made he their hearts to faint within their breasts, and they forgot their furious might.” (300) In the Hebrew myth the rituals of purification by the casting of defilement into the sea occurs in Micah 7, where we read: “(18) Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. (19) You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.” (Micah 7:18-20) In a similar manner, in the Iliad, we have Pleisthenes the (son of Atreus, a king of Mycenaea in the Peloponnese), urging the people to purify themselves before making a sacrifice: “[312] So these embarked and sailed over the watery ways; but the son of Atreus bade the people purify themselves. And they purified themselves, and cast the defilement into the sea, and offered to Apollo perfect hecatombs of bulls and goats by the shore of the barren sea; and the savour thereof went up to heaven, eddying amid the smoke.” (301) There is also a parallel of the burning of the corpse before burial, in Samuel it says: “(11) When the people of Jabesh Gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, (12) all their valiant men marched through the night to Beth Shan. They took down the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall of Beth Shan and went to Jabesh, where they burned them. (13) Then they took their bones and buried them under a tamarisk tree at Jabesh, and they fasted seven days.” (1 Samuel 11-13) In the Iliad, we have a similar theme when they laid Hector on a funeral pyre then collected the bones: “[785] but when the tenth Dawn arose, giving light unto mortals, then bare they forth bold Hector, shedding tears the while, and on the topmost pyre they laid the dead man, and cast fire thereon. [788] But soon as early Dawn appeared, the rosy-fingered, then gathered the folk about the pyre of glorious Hector. And when they were assembled and met together, first they quenched with flaming wine all the pyre, so far as the fire's might had come upon it, and thereafter his brethren and his comrades gathered the white bones, mourning, and big tears flowed ever down their cheeks.” (302) Now that the Greek myths have been thoroughly vetted, we’ll explore the Hebrew speaking world. (298) Before the Bible, p. 10 Footnotes; H.A. Wolfson, "The Philonic God of Revelation and His Latter-Day Deniers," Harvard Theological Review 53, 1960 p. 101-24; see p. 110 (299) ibid, p. 11 Footnotes (300) Before the Bible, p. 12; Iliad 15:318-322 (301) ibid, p. 13-14; Iliad 1:312-317 (302) ibid, p. 18; Iliad 24:785-787 |