Messiah In the Old Testament Episode 5
Greek Creation Story
Welcome Messiah in The Old Testament. We are continuing our journey today looking at creation stories from around the world. Now, so far, we have looked at the creation story from the Cherokee nation in the US [United States], we looked at the creation story from China and we looked at the creation story from Mesopotamia, from the cradle of civilization. Today we are going to move over to the country of Greece and look at the Greek story.
Now, Greek culture has had a huge influence in the world, not only at the time that they ruled over the world, they are, of course, one of the four major civilizations that ruled the world: the Babylonians, Persians, the Greek and the Romans, but they also influenced even beyond that time into our own culture. For example, look at our architecture.
We have a lot of Greek influence in our architecture, especially go to Washington DC. You'll see it everywhere. And they had influence in our language, many words that are were derived from the Greek. And they have had a huge influence in philosophy and theology. So, the Greeks are still being listened to today. Now, the Greeks told their stories in the form of epic poems and we have two major epic poems, one by Homer and the other one by a guy named Hesiodus. Hesiodus is lived in about 700 BC. He was a shepherd and, in his poem, he describes that he was out tending his flock. And while he was out tending the sheep, he was visited by the nine Muses. And the nine Muses would come to him and they would tell stories about the gods. And that is how he got all the stories and wrote them down. The reality is, most people believe that these were oral tradition and they were finally written down about 700 BC by Hesiodus.
He wrote them in the poem form and he called his poem the Theogony. Theogony, of course if you tear the word apart, theo-gony means literally birth out of the gods or of the offspring of the gods or the genealogy of the gods. Now, this story along with Homer's tale gives us a very complete story about how creation happened. So here it is. In the beginning the Greeks believed that there was chaos. I mean just utter chaos. A vast void of chaos. Not the chaos like the Chinese, who believed it was the ying and the yang fighting against each other. Or the Babylonians that believed that there was a sweet water and the bitter water fighting against each other. It was just chaos. Out of this chaos then five primordial gods arose. And those gods ruled over the kingdom. The creation story focuses on two of those gods, the goddess Nyx who was the goddess of night and the god Erebos who was the god of darkness.
Nyx is described as a very beautiful goddess and she was shadowy, which of course makes sense because she was goddess of the night. And she had these giant dark wings and she is described as a kind of feathery figure. Now, her and Erebos were consorts and they got together and they created this giant golden egg and Nyx was tasked with sitting on the egg. And she sat on the egg waiting for it to hatch.
She sat on it for eons and eons, time untold, until finally the egg hatched. Now when the egg hatched, the God of love, Eros came out of the egg. The egg separated then and the upper half the egg became the heavens and the lower half the egg became the earth.
The God over the heavens his name was Ouranos and the goddess over the earth was named Gaia. Eros, of course, being the god of love caused the two to fall in love with each other. So, Gaia and Ouranos fell in love with each other and they procreated.
And from their offspring we get the 12 Titans. We get the three Cyclops and we get the three 100 handed men. These creatures then were that the 2
next generation of gods. So, you’ve heard the story about the great Titans and how they ruled over the earth at one point in time.
But one of the Titans, his name was Chronos and another one of the Titans her name was Rhea, and they were consorts with each other. And Rhea and Chronos had their own offspring. Now, Chronos was a very mean guy. His actions were always described as being very, very forceful and violent. For example, at one point he rebelled against his father Ouranos and he took his giant sickle and cut his father's genitals off and threw them into the ocean.
When they hit ocean, the ocean frothed up and out of the seafoam a new goddess was created, the goddess Aphrodite. I going to pause here to point out that the Roman story of the gods and creation is very similar to the Greek story. It’s just the names are different.
So, let’s go through, for example, Nyx in Roman theology is Nox. Erebos is Erebus. Eros is Cupid. Ouranos is Uranus and Gaia is Terra Mater or mother Earth. Aphrodite is Venus. The Roman story very similar just the gods have different names. Obviously, the Romans coopted a lot of the Greek stories. So, moving on, Chronos and Rhea have their own children. Now Chronos had a prophecy cited to him that one of his children would rise up and overthrow him. So, he decided the safest thing to do would be to swallow each of his children as they were born.
So, one by one his children were swallowed and he kept them in his belly where they were safe and would never rebel against him. Now Rhea was not too happy about this because she wanted to be with her children, so she decided she would fool Chronos. So, she was pregnant with her child, went to the island of Crete and gave birth in a cave. And her child Zeus was born and then he was taken to Mount Ida and hidden away and he was guarded by these warriors.
And when Chronos came to swallow up Zeus, she handed him a rock that was swaddled in baby clothes, gave him the rock, so Chronos swallowed the rock thinking he was consuming Zeus. Now, over time Zeus grew and matured and became a man. And it was at that point that his mother decided that she wanted all of her children back. So, she taught Zeus how to make this poison potion. So, he fed his potion to his father and it caused his father to vomit. So, when Chronos vomited, all of his children came out and so now Zeus and all of his siblings were free. It was at that point were Zeus created the Olympians, of course, on Mount Olympus. And it was Chronos and the Titans.
And a war broke out with the Olympians versus the Titans. The Olympians won the day and they took all the Titans and they threw them into the abyss. So, then Zeus ruled on Mount Olympus with all of his Olympians. Zeus also had children. He had a wife; her name was Metis and they had children together. And Zeus had the same exact concerns about one of his children taking over. And so, Zeus was just crazy about it, so he decided he would just swallow his wife whole before she could have any children. Unfortunately, she was already pregnant with their first child. It was Athena and so Athena grew and they both lived in Zeus.
And finally, Athena, fully grown, burst out of Zeus's head dressed in her warrior garb. So, the offspring of Zeus also included Prometheus and Epimetheus. And these two were tasked with creating man. So, it was Zeus’ offspring that created man, created animals. So, Prometheus was tasked with making man and Epimetheus was tasked with making the animals. So, they both went to work.
Prometheus created man out of clay and then he got his sister Athena to come and blow life into him. And Athena then raised that this clay man and put life into him and that is how man was created. Epimetheus did the same with the animals and brought all the animals to life.
Prometheus thought that man needed a leg up because he was up against the Olympians and was at the whim of the Olympians.
And so, Prometheus snuck up on to Mount Olympus, stole fire and brought fire and gave it to man. And taught man how to use the fire. This caused Zeus to go off. He was infuriated so he wanted to punish his son. So, he took Prometheus and chained to this mountaintop.
And he had a vulture come and peck out his liver every day for eternity. Every night his liver would regenerate and the next day the vulture come back and peck it out again. It was just torture, torture, torture. Eventually, Hercules liberated him from the mountain.
This is one of the works of Hercules, [which is] another story. We will move on. So, the other brother Epimetheus was kind of agrarian and lived out in the in the field with all of all of his animals. So, Zeus decided he would punish him as well and punish man at the same time. So, he [Zeus] created a woman himself and this was a beautiful woman. Her name was Pandora and he gave this beautiful woman to Epimetheus.
And he gave her this very intense curiosity and he presented her, when he gave her to Epimetheus with a box. And told her never, ever, ever open the box. So, he gave her the box and, of course, she was just so curious, it drove her crazy. She just wanted to know what was in the box and finally curiosity overtook her and she opened the box. She screamed because out came pain and murder and fear and all the evils of the world were released. When Epimetheus, who was out in the fields with his animals heard the screams, he came and found that the box was open. So, he slammed the lid shut, but it was too late. All the evils had already gotten out of Pandora's box. Later they heard a voice coming from inside the box, “Let me out. I am hope. Let me out.” So, he opened the box and out came hope. And hope filled the world to balance of all the evils. So that is the story of Greek creation and you can look and see their a few similarities between the other stories. There seems to be this overall theme of chaos in the beginning, man being created from dirt or clay, life being blown into the man, the creative act of the gods creating the animals. I think it is very interesting and fascinating. I hope you do too.
We’re going to continue our journey. We have two more stories to go before we actually get to the Old Testament version of this story. So, I hope you'll continue to join me as we go through all these wonderful stories about creation around the world.
Thank you for watching our show today. We hope that you enjoyed watching it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Now, after watching this episode you might be saying to yourself, “Who is this Messiah that Dr. Smith is talking about?
Is he talking about the Christian Messiah? Is he talking about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born of the Virgin Mary. And then lived a blameless and holy life on the earth, And then was tortured and crucified. And after he died he then was resurrected from the dead after three days. Then after people witnessed this, he was then taken up bodily by Elohim into heaven from the Mount of Olives.
Or is Dr. Smith talking about the Muslim prophet Isa. Isa Ibn Maryam, the messenger, who was sent by Allah to bring a message to the people. The Quran says he that lived a holy and blameless life, was born of the virgin Mary. He fulfilled all the Jewish prophecies in exact accordance. But one difference, instead of being crucified, he then was taken up by Allah into heaven before the Romans laid hands on him. And he awaits there now in the fourth heaven where at the end of days at the day of judgment he will be revealed to all.
Or is Dr. Smith talking about the Jewish Messiah? The Messiah who has not yet been revealed, that the entire Jewish world is waiting for his revelation. Now, the beautiful thing is that you can hold to any of these beliefs. And we can all still learn together about Messiah. We can learn about our Christian Messiah. We can learn about our Jewish Messiah. We can learn about our Muslim prophet Isa who will be revealed. It doesn’t matter what you believe. You can even be an atheist or agnostic and still learn from this program about Messiah. Now, I have to admit I am a Christian so I approach things, obviously, from a Christian point of
view. And I promise you, as we reveal these prophecies, which I believe have all been fulfilled through Jesus Christ. Or will be fulfilled when he comes back, returning in the clouds in the same way he was taken up. I believe that all of this is true, but I promise you I will do my very best to present these prophecies from a neutral point of view. And try to keep my Christian bias to a minimum. Obviously, it will pop up from time to time but I will try to stay only in the Tanakh and try not to get into the New Testament very often. Now, if you want more information about Messiah, we have resources for you.
We have a website which is findingmessiah.org. Now, on that website you are going to find several resources. You will find links to all the videos, all the episodes that we have created so far. You will find links to download the transcripts of any of these episodes. And then you will find a section where you can get more information about Messiah through frequently asked questions. And then there is a section for donation. If you want to come alongside our ministry at Finding Messiah.
Now, there’s going to come a time in this series where you are going to be confronted with the question: What are you going to do with Messiah? Who do you believe Messiah is? Which of these Messiahs do you believe Dr. Smith is talking about? And Messiah will become real to you if you look at all the information presented and come to your conclusions. So, join us as we continue our journey through the Old Testament Scriptures looking for all the Messianic Prophecies. And join us next time as we reveal those to you.
