The Bible, Homer, and the Search for Meaning in Ancient Myths: Why We Would Be Better Off With Homer’s Gods

431 Pages·2019·1.933 MB·English

by  John Heath

The Bible, Homer, and the Search
for Meaning in Ancient Myths
The Bible, Homer, and the Search for Meaning in Ancient Myths explores and
compares the most influential sets of divine myths in Western culture: the Homeric
pantheon and Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament. Heath argues not only that the
God of the Old Testament bears a striking resemblance to the Olympians, but also that
the Homeric system rejected by the Judeo-Christian tradition offers a better model
for the human condition. The universe depicted by Homer and populated by his gods
is one that creates a unique and powerful responsibility – almost directly counter to
that evoked by the Bible – for humans to discover ethical norms, accept death as a
necessary human limit, develop compassion to mitigate a tragic existence, appreciate
frankly both the glory and dangers of sex, and embrace and respond courageously to
an indifferent universe that was clearly not designed for human dominion.
Heath builds on recent work in biblical and classical studies to examine the
contemporary value of mythical deities. Judeo-Christian theologians over the
millennia have tried to explain away Yahweh’s Olympian nature while dismissing
the Homeric deities for the same reason Greek philosophers abandoned them:
They don’t live up to preconceptions of what a deity should be. In particular, the
Homeric gods are disappointingly plural, anthropomorphic, and amoral (at best).
But Heath argues that Homer’s polytheistic apparatus challenges us to live
meaningfully w ithout any help from the divine . In other words, to live well in
Homer’s tragic world – an insight gleaned by Achilles, the hero of the I liad – o ne
must live as if there were no gods at all .
The Bible, Homer, and the Search for Meaning in Ancient Myths should change
the conversation academics in classics, biblical studies, theology, and philosophy
have – especially between disciplines – about the gods of early Greek epic, while
reframing on a more popular level the discussion of the role of ancient myth in
shaping a thoughtful life.
John Heath is Professor of Classics at Santa Clara University, USA. His previous
books include a study of the literary adaptations of classical myth (A ctaeon, the
Unmannerly Intruder, 1992), a popular defense of the study of classics (W ho Killed
Homer? coauthored with Victor Davis Hanson, 1998), an examination of the links
between speech, animalization, and status in Greek literature and society (T he Talking
Greeks , 2005), and an exploration of the common themes underlying American
bestselling books (W hy We Read What We Read, coauthored with Lisa Adams, 2007).
Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies
Titles include
Rethinking ‘Authority’ in Late Antiquity
Authorship, Law, and Transmission in Jewish and Christian Tradition
Edited by A.J. Berkovitz and Mark Letteney
Thinking the Greeks
A Volume in Honour of James M. Redfield
Edited by Bruce M. King and Lillian Doherty
Pushing the Boundaries of Historia
Edited by Mary C. English and Lee M. Fratantuono
Greek Myth and the Bible
Bruce Louden
Combined Warfare in Ancient Greece
From Homer to Alexander the Great and his Successors
Graham Wrightson
Power Couples in Antiquity
Transversal Perspectives
Edited by Anne Bielman Sánchez
The Extramercantile Economies of Greek and Roman Cities
New Perspectives on the Economic History of Classical Antiquity
Edited by David B. Hollander, Thomas R. Blanton IV, and John T. Fitzgerald
The Bible, Homer, and the Search for Meaning in Ancient Myths
Why We Would Be Better Off With Homer’s Gods
John Heath
F or more information on this series, visit: w ww.routledge.com/classicalstudies/
series/RMCS
The Bible, Homer, and
the Search for Meaning in
Ancient Myths
Why We Would Be Better Off
With Homer’s Gods
John Heath
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 John Heath
The right of John Heath to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
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registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Heath, John, 1955– author.
Title: The Bible, Homer, and the search for meaning in ancient myths :
why we would be better off with Homer’s gods / John Heath.
Description: 1 [edition]. | New York : Routledge, 2019. | Series: Routledge
monographs in classical studies | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018060248 (print) | LCCN 2019011222 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780429022340 (ebook) | ISBN 9780429666469 (web pdf) |
ISBN 9780429661020 (mobi/kindle) | ISBN 9780429663741 (epub) |
ISBN 9780367077204 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: God. | Homer. | Gods, Greek. | God—Biblical teaching. |
Bible. Old Testament—Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Classification: LCC BL473 (ebook) | LCC BL473 .H43 2019 (print) |
DDC 292.2/11—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018060248
ISBN: 978-0-367-07720-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-02234-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For Lisa, without whom, nothing.

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
1 Introduction 1
PART ONE
Brothers (and sisters) from a different mother 29
Section I: Texts with a history 31
2 Assembling resemblances 33
Section II: Yahweh and the other Olympians 61
3 Homer’s gods 63
4 Biblical polytheism I: Yahweh’s divine competition 80
5 Biblical polytheism II: Yahweh’s little helpers 96
6 Biblical anthropomorphism: Yahweh’s da man 113
PART TWO
Diverging deities: Where Homer got it right 137
Section I: Theological (dis)honesty 139
7 Cleaning up Yahweh 141
8 Homer’s perfectly fallible gods 157
viii Contents
Section II: Creating meaning 177
9 Homeric creation 179
10 The failure of Genesis, the Genesis of failure 195
Section III: The demands of finitude 215
11 Cheating death, squandering life 217
12 We all have it coming 232
Section IV: Finding justice 257
13 Waiting for God. Oh. The myth of Iliadic justice 259
14 Living without the gods: The myth of theistic justice 283
Section V: Heavenly sex 311
15 Divine eros , biblical celibacy, and God’s little punching bag 313
16 Conclusion 335
Appendices 341
Appendix 1: Short summaries of the I liad and
Odyssey 343
Appendix 2: Who are the Homeric gods? 348
Appendix 3: Iliadic justice: Making sense of the Trojan
War 357
Appendix 4: Divine justice in the O dyssey ? 368
Bibliography 376
Index 410
Preface
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
— Stephen Crane
My mother was a failed Episcopalian, and my father a successful agnostic, so
I had the good fortune to be raised a “none,” as the pollsters would now label
it. If we had a “higher power” to venerate, it was perhaps the ocean. We spent
hours contemplating the grand indifference of the Pacific from the cliffs behind
the southern California beach where we spent my childhood summers. It wasn’t
reverence, but more a deference to the inscrutable expanse of the water and tire-
less variety of the waves. (My father, an amateur astronomer, felt the same way
about outer space, his study plastered with photos from the Hubble telescope.)
But as for belief in a divine being of some sort, most of my family seems to have
missed out on the “god” gene. (Yes, I know there is no literal “god” gene. Settle
down.) So while my professional life has often focused on the very secular task of
analyzing ancient literary depictions of the gods, it has always puzzled me person-
ally why so many Americans put so much value in one particular textual divinity
over another. They all looked pretty much alike to me, and where they differed, it
seemed obvious (but to me alone?) that the Homeric gods had far more to offer.
This book is my effort to suggest that my perplexity was well-founded.
Just a couple notes here on choices I have made in writing T he Bible, Homer,
and the Search for Meaning in Ancient Myths. I hope this book will change the
conversation academics (classicists, Homerists, biblical scholars, theologians,
philosophers) have – especially between disciplines – about the gods of early
Greek epic while reframing on a more popular level the discussion of the role
of ancient myth in shaping a thoughtful life. It is aimed at readers interested in
comparative religion, Greek mythology, Homer’s epics, the Bible, or a human-
istic approach to living. I have explained concepts and terms and supplied the
necessary background as we go along and have included appendices that out-
line the epics and the characteristics of the Homeric gods. I provide translations