quaker wrote:Just out of curiosity, how do you look at mythology? What definition or understanding do you have?
What I suggest is not simply that we look for places in Greek mythology that echo stories in the standard works and thinking of those stories alone as scripture. What I propose is more radical; that we consider as prophets Homer and Hesiod; Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides; and view their writings as scripture.
Their stories speak to the human experience in profound ways. Doing good is often repayed with evil. The Gods are capricious and often contradictory. As Stephen King put it, “God is cruel. Sometimes he lets you live.”
A number of things coalesced to lead me to this idea, not the least of which was reading Edith Hamilton’s book, “Mythology.” At the same time, I was thinking hard about Nephi’s slaying of Laban, and how this could be viewed as sewing the seed at the inception of the Book of Mormon that led to the destruction of the Nephites at the end. That just doesn’t make sense from a Judeo-Christian point of view. But it fits beautifully within the ambit of Greek mythology.
Then I considered how strange it is that Nephi should be cursed by God with a vision of the destruction of his people. Granted this has probably never been called a “curse” by a Mormon before, but what else would you call it? It is said the Cyclops was the most miserable of all creatures because he had been given the gift of seeing with his one eye the day of his death. What, then, can we say of Nephi who saw not his own death, but the death of all his descendants? How would this make Nephi feel, who had sacrificed everything in being obedient to God, leaving his homeland and voluntarily exiling himself to a distant land? What is the purpose of all his sacrifice if his descendants will all be destroyed?
Nephi can be viewed as a hero who follows God’s command in killing Laban, and for his trouble is cursed with a vision of the destruction of his descendants, a destruction brought about by his killing of Laban. Once again, this makes no sense from a traditional point of view. But Nephi’s story makes him fit like a glove within the Greek idea of a hero, such as Theseus or Hercules.
I had long heard of the twelve (there’s that number again) labors of Hercules, but it was only last night I discovered Hercules voluntarily submitted himself to these labors in an attempt to expiate his sin of killing his wife and three sons during a fit of madness—a madness sent on him by one of the Gods. (I believe it was Hera who had it out for Hercules because he was one of a myriad of children sired by her husband, Zeus, with a mortal woman. And is it just coincidence that Greek mythology is rife with such demi-gods, sired by a God and a mortal woman?)
As it turns out, Hera had it out for Hercules since he was a baby, sending two huge serpents to kill him in his cradle. His mother heard a noise in the nursery and went running in to find Hercules giggling and cooing, holding a strangled serpent in each hand. Hercules has power not only to crush the serpent’s head, but to strangle them in his cradle.
Though a rank amateur in Greek mythology, I find my study of it to open my eyes to connections in the Book of Mormon I would never have considered otherwise.
There is also the famous rash vow in Greek mythology—whenever a God swears the unbreakable vow by the River Styx, you know something bad is going to happen; like when Apollo is delighted to find his (illegitimate) son, Phaeton, has climbed to Apollo’s glorious residence and in his joy, swore he would give Phaeton whatever he wanted. Phaeton wanted to drive Apollo’s chariot of fire across the sky. Apollo knew Phaeton could not handle the horses, as Apollo himself was the only one who could do so and even then just barely, but try as he might, Apollo could not dissuade Phaeton from his wish. And so Phaeton drove the chariot, the horses went out of control, set fire to the world, were on the verge of destroying everything, and ultimately he had to be killed by an arrow from Zeus.
But this idea is not so foreign to the Old Testament, where we find Jepthah, judge of Israel, make a rash vow to God that if he wins a military engagement, Jepthah will sacrifice to God the first thing he sees coming out of his home upon his return—and that something ends up being his daughter. But Jepthah has sworn and must fulfill, and sacrifices his own daughter to God. This story makes Christians squeamish. The New Testament has pretty much wiped out this kind of story from its pages. But the Greeks would understand it completely.
We often hear Mormons pining for the sealed two-thirds of the Book of Mormon, or yearning for the scriptures of the lost ten tribes; only to be met with the standard response that once we learn and live by what we have will the rest be revealed. Well, what if a large portion of additional scripture has already been revealed in Greek mythology and lies in libraries, largely as unread as the standard works. Might such Greek scripture be considered both old and new? Old in that they have existed for thousands of years and new in that they are just now being recognized for what they have been all along—the scripture God revealed to the Greeks.
All the Best!
--Consiglieri