Zeus in the Prometheia

Extract

The controversy about Zeus in the Prometheus Vinctus started by the late Dr. L. R. Farnell (JHS liii, 40 ff.) is not settled. Answers are wanted to three sharp-sighted questions asked by Dr. R. H. Maiden (ibid. liv, 201). The first is whether any one has considered the relation of the Prometheus Vinctus to the Semitic (Babylonian) myth of the fall of man. Later Dr. Maiden writes: ‘In Genesis the myth is used as the vehicle of a mediation on the origin and nature of sin. … But what was the original form [of the myth] before it had undergone the moralising process? … It is not impossible that … the moral character of God was not beyond criticism … the idea of a deity hostile to mankind presented no difficulty to the Semitic mind.’ Thirdly, he questions the assumption made, in his answer to Dr. Farnell, by Mr. H. D. F. Kitto (ibid. liv, 14 ff.), that the High God must be all-powerful and immortal.

Lately M. Dmitri Merezhkovsky has compared the myth of Prometheus with Babylonian myths (The Secret of the West, translated by J. Cournos, London, 1933, 57 ff., citing Bab. Tab. B.M. VI. 5, Beros. Babyl. ap. Damascen. de prim. princ. 125, Cuneiform Texts, I. c). Similar comparisons had been made before, for example by the late Professor A. H. Sayce in 1884 (The Ancient Empires of the East, 157. Cf. my forthcoming remarks in TAPA, lxvii; and now E. O. Forrer, Mélanges Cumont, 686 ff.) In the Babylonian myths a god must be slain to create man.