Home Page Home Page


Daniel

Daniel is a new genre in the Hebrew scriptures: apocalyptic.  The Greek word ἀποκαλύπτω (apokaluptō) means to uncover or reveal.  That doesn't really describe what is happening in such literature.  What is new in Daniel compared to the earlier scriptures is the idea of the cosmic war between good and evil.  This was a concept imported into Judaism from Manichaeism; earlier scriptures have God firmly in control of history; now history hangs in the balance in the war between good and evil, and God's people are under attack because of their devotion by his enemies. Daniel presents us with several conflicts between the two sides in this warfare;  equally significant are the various visions that give us insight into the unseen nature of the universe and the battle that rages around us. 

It's hard to overestimate the importance of Daniel's influence since it was written.  Apocalyptic thought has spread from Daniel through strains of Judaism, Christianity (which began as an apocalyptic offshoot of Judaism), Islam, and popular culture.  It pops up almost everywhere in American politics and culture, from the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" to the conflict between the light and dark sides of the Force in Star Wars. A more pernicious influence on American political culture has been identified by theologian and culture critic Robert Jewett: he calls it the American monomyth:

A community in a harmonious paradise is threatened by evil: normal institutions fail to contend with this threat: a selfless superhero emerges to renounce temptations and carry out the redemptive task: aided by fate, his decisive victory restores the community to its paradisal condition: the superhero then recedes into obscurity. (Jewett, The American Monomyth xxii)

This is the basic plot struture underlying the classic cowboy story, as well as pretty much all super-heroes in comic books and movies.   One problem with this system is that is makes us despise our own institutions because we have a pre-set belief that they will always fail. Unfortunately, it is also the basis of much of our foreign policy.  The more blindly we follow the monomyth, the more likely we are to make massive blunders in geopolitics.  Also, our belief that we are somehow by nature the good guys and the other people are the bad guys releases us from any need to behave ourselves in the conflict.  For example, in a thousand movies, the cowboy has a final showdown with the bad guys and then rode off into the sunset.  Under this mythic thinking, we invaded Iraq and took out Sadaam Hussein under the belief we could then ride off into the sunset, Iraq would be a stable Middle Eastern democracy, and we'd all live happily ever after.  So how'd that work out?

fleur de lis

The stories of Susanna and Bel and the Dragon are another new kind of story: the mystery or detective story.  They are in the version of Daniel that is the LXX (Septuagint) but not the MT (Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Scriptures).  These passages and books are called the Old Testament Apocrapha.  Because Christians widely used the LXX as its scriptures (the Old Testament quotes in the New Testament are largely from the LXX), 1st century Judaism rejected it and began using the Hebrew scriptures exclusively.  So you won't find these stories in the Hebrew scriptures.  Later on, Protestants sought to distinguish themselves from Catholics, so they took out the Apocrapha as well. 

The main difference in these stories from the rest of Daniel is that we don't see a direct miraculous intervention to solve the problem, no visions, no dreams -- instead we see a reliance on Daniel to solve it using his mind and and empirical investigative tools; an early use of the scientific method.  Detective stories are quite rare in ancient literature; The Homeric Hymn to Hermes has Apollo solving a theft without relying on his supernatural powers.  The play Oedipus Rex has a mix of natural and supernatural evidence.  But the genre was re-discovered by Edgar Allen Poe in the 19th century when he wrote the three Dupin stories.  It really became popular with Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories.  Now it's reached the point that book stores have whole aisles for detective stories,  and if you have cable, you can pretty much find at least one detective  story on any time of day.

All detective stories share a dual plot structure:

  1. the mystery/crime
  2. the solution. 

The solution part of the plot brings the returning cast -- the detective(s) & helpers -- who give continuity; the crime provides novelty to the audience.

Detective stories also have two other important categories:

  1. Open.  The solution to the crime is revealed to the reader early on.  We know who committed the crime, so the interest is in seeing how the detective will solve it.  The story Susanna is an open crime.
  2. Closed. We do not know how the crime was committed until the detective solves it.  Thus we are interested both in seeing the detective solve the crime and in the solution itself.  The "Bel" story is a closed crime; we don't know the solution until the ashes reveal the foot prints.


The Birth of the Gods


Lecture 4A -- The Birth of the Gods Lecture

  Hesiod wrote two didactic (teaching) poems: The Theogony, meaning the "Birth of the Gods," and Works and Days, loosely cataloging the seasonal work done on farms.  Both of these works deal at times with the system of Greek mythology.

Chaos Theory:


Convection graph. Edward Lorenz.


Strange attractor 1: image

Strange attractor 2: movie

Zoom on the graph of the Mandelbrot equation
(zn+1 ⇒ zn2 + c).




The Most Beautiful of the Deathless Gods

The Latin word Amor means love.  It is used to translate the Greek word Ἔρως (Eros), and they both refer to the love God better known as Cupid

  Hesiod claims that the muses first came to him when he was hearding sheep on Mt. Helicon, which a standard setting poets writing in his tradition.  His teaching about Eros describes a dangerous sort of love the wild passion that destroys the likes of Romeo and Juliet.  The idea of love as a tyrant goes back to the earliest Greek literature.  Hesiod is the first to tell us the story of Epimetheus and Pandora, the Greek Adam and Eve. 

In Hesiod's Theogony, for example, we find the following evaluation of Love:

Eros
In truth at first Chaos came to be, but next
wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundation of all the
deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus,
and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth,
and Eros ( Love), fairest among the deathless gods,                     [120]
who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind
and wise counsels of all gods and all men within their hearts.

When Virgil wrote "Omnia vincit Amor" [love conquers all], he did NOT mean that our love will overcome all our obstacles.  He meant that love overwhelms all of US.Love overrules our reason, "blurs sagacity," "overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all god and all men [and women] in their hearts."

Mutterrecht vs Vaterrecht.  Mother right vs father right.  Who is the primary parent who gets to decide what happens to the children?  J. J. Bachofen's theory.

Genealogy of the gods

Olympian Gods


Children of Kronos & Rhea

  1. Zeus was the head god, the god of thunder & lightning. He drew lots with Hades & Poseidon, his brothers, to choose territory. He got heaven & the universe; Poseidon got the sea; and Hades got underworld. They shared dominion over Mt. Olympus and the surface of the world.
  2. Hera was Zeus' sister & wife. She was very jealous of Zeus's affairs. As his wife, she reigned as the queen of heaven. Hera was the patron of marriage.
  3. Poseidon. God of the sea.
  4. Demeter. Zeus' sister. Mother of Persephone. Goddess of agriculture.
  5. Hestia. Zeus' sister. Goddess of family life & city hearth.


Children of Zeus and/or Hera

  1. Athena (= Minerva). The goddess of wisdom & crafts, both women's crafts (sewing) & men's (tool use, war strategy). She was born from Zeus' head after he swallowed Metis (mind). He swallowed Mentis after learning of a prophecy that if she had a son, he would displace Zeus (Hesiod 143-147).
  2. Hephaestus (= Vulcan) was born from Hera alone. He was the god of fire & metallurgy. He was also lame. He made thunderbolts for Zeus, and arms for gods & heroes. He Forged under Mt. Olympus & Mt. Etna, and the Cyclopes worked for him.
  3. Ares (= Mars). son of Zeus & Hera. god of war. His war frenzy contrasts with Athena's rational approach to war.


Children of Zeus & Leto

  1. Apollo. God of prophecy, purification, healing, sunlight, music
  2. Artemis. Sister of Apollo. Goddess of moonlight, hunting, animals. Originally a fertility goddess, she became a virgin goddess in Greece but remained a fertility goddess in Ephesus.
    Son of Zeus & Maia (daughter to Atlas, she was one of the stars in the Pleiades constellation (Hesiod 67, 149, 363)


Child of Zeus and Maia

  1. Hermes (= Mercury). Messenger of the gods. Wings on head & feet. Patron of speed & wits, not strength (Guthrie 91). Currently delivers flowers for FTD.


Child of Ouranos

  1. Aphrodite (= Venus). Goddess of love & beauty. Married to Hephaestus, had affair w/ Ares. Led Paris to take Helen (Hesiod p. 491). Only Artemis, Athena, & Hestia are immune to her (Hesiod xxxviii). Cronus castrated Uranus (heaven) while Uranus was mating with Gaia (earth). Cronus threw down Uranus' testicles; some of which landed in sea, causing foam. Aphrodite emerged from the foam. Predated other Olympic gods. However, in some versions of the myth, she is daughter of Zeus (Odyssey 8. 305).

The Creation of People


Prometheus
Home Page
Home Page