1. “Religious”: Man must submit to God as the absolute authority. God is good, and His actions are beyond human scrutiny.
2. “Humanistic”: Man should judge whether God’s actions are good or wicked. If man determines that God is wicked, he should rebel against him.

I have previously looked at two myths involving characters disobeying divine commands: Satan in Paradise Lost and Iblis in the Qur’an. For each of these stories, we have seen two main lines of interpretation — one approving the disobedient character’s actions and one disapproving them — and explored how these interpretations reflect those two themes. I will now conclude this series by looking at another such story of disobedience, the Aesopic fable of Zeus and the turtle.

This fable exists in many different versions spanning hundreds of years, but the basic plot in each is the same. Zeus invites the animals to his wedding. All the animals attend except the turtle, who either skips the wedding altogether or shows up incredibly late. When Zeus later asks the turtle why she did not attend, she replies with some proverbial expression similar to the English, “There’s no place like home.” Zeus gets angry at the turtle and makes her carry her home with her wherever she goes. This type of fable is called “aetiological” (from Greek aition, “cause”) because it explains the origin or cause of something — in this case, how the turtle got her shell.

Aesopic fables have not received the same volume of literary criticism or commentary as Paradise Lost and the Qur’an. To find interpretations of this fable, I will look at a variety of sources: the morals attached to different versions of the fable, an essay from the seventeenth century, and recent work in Aesopic scholarship.

The oldest written version of the fable exists in a collection most likely dating from the second or third century CE. The author of this collection interprets the fable in a single-sentence moral following the story:

The fable shows that people often prefer to live simply at home than to live lavishly at someone else’s house. (Gibbs 235)

In this interpretation, the turtle is not criticized for judging the divine command and then choosing to disobey it. The moral does not explicitly praise the turtle’s actions, but the lack of criticism reflects in part what I am calling the “humanistic theme.” The turtle confined to her shell could be seen as somewhat analogous to Prometheus unjustly chained to the rocky crags, whom I mentioned in the first article in this series.

This interpretation appears in the oldest written version of the fable, but Aesopic fables existed in oral form for at least five hundred years before this. The aetiological fables originally worked like folktales to explain the world, and morals were most likely attached to them at a later time (Rodríguez Adrados 162). The Latin grammarian Servius, writing near the end of the fourth century CE, tells a version of the fable without a moral. (This comes in his grammatical commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid , referring to line I.505 that contains a form of the word testudo, Latin for “turtle.”) In this version, the turtle begins as a nymph named Khelônê (Greek for “turtle”). She says nothing about the value of her own house but simply mocks the wedding from afar. When Mercury (Jupiter’s wedding coordinator in this version) discovers her absence, he punishes her by turning her into an animal and throwing her house on top of her.

An important difference between this fable and the stories of Satan and Iblis is the lack of a religious context. Zeus’s invitation is not exactly a command, it relates to a social function and not to any form of worship, and the turtle’s punishment does not seem to be a spiritual one. Many interpreters allegorize Aesopic fables with gods to place them in a more secular context. Ancient Greek society was governed by relationships of reciprocity, and some interpreters in antiquity would most likely have understood this fable as a criticism of the turtle for neglecting her social responsibilities (Zafiropoulos 105). Though it does not appear in any surviving ancient texts, this interpretation does appear in a version published in 1604 by Candidus Pantaleon. The turtle arrives at the wedding late, espousing her proverbial expression to Jupiter there. Pantaleon criticizes the turtle on three points in his moral:

[1] There are some who are accustomed to have practically preferred paltry things to the great splendors of palaces. [2] You should be afraid to provoke nobles by delaying. […] [3] You should be quick to placate your wrong actions with speech. (105)

Though these interpretations can hardly be said to reflect the religious theme in full — Zeus is not portrayed as transcendent good beyond all human scrutiny — they do reflect it in part. The turtle has an obligation to respect and obey Zeus; she is criticized for disobeying his command and for doing what she incorrectly thought was right.

Sir Roger L’Estrange collected and translated a large number of fables into English in 1692, attaching to each fable a short essay inspired by it. In the fable of Zeus and the turtle, he recognizes both interpretations:

We are to learn from hence (says the old Moral) that [1] there’s no trifling, dallying, or delaying with Men in Power: And that [2] Contentment in a mean Condition at Home, is beyond all the luxurious Treats in the World. (198)

L’Estrange prefers the second interpretation, and his essay proceeds to praise the turtle for his sensibility and common sense and to criticize the vanity, pomp, over-indulgence, and wickedness represented by Jupiter and his palace. L’Estrange’s interpretation reflects fully what I have been calling the “humanistic theme,” in which the disobedient character is praised for scrutinizing and disobeying the divine command. Ironically, however, L’Estrange concludes his essay by placing this interpretation in a religious context by introducing Providence over and above Jupiter:

What was the Punishment? [Jupiter] sent [the Tortoise] Home again. That is to say, [Jupiter] remanded [the Tortoise] to […] his [own] Choice. […] Providence turns the very Punishment of a good Man, into an Equivalence to a Reward, by improving that to his Advantage, which was intended for his Ruin. (199)

These two themes summarize well the range of insights found in Western myths concerning man’s relationship to the divine. These myths of disobedience against a divine command, along with their contrary interpretations, demonstrate the importance of these two themes in the Western tradition. Furthermore, these differing interpretations should caution us against presuming that individual myths have “meanings” in any absolute sense. Even stories like Paradise Lost that appear to be overtly religious can inspire in readers a secular or humanistic sentiment. We should not dismiss any of these interpretations as “incorrect” but should seek instead to understand the personal, cultural, and universal human factors that have led to these various interpretations.

References

• Gibbs, Laura. Aesop’s Fables. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco. A History of the Graeco-Latin Fable. Trans. Leslie A. Ray. New York: Brill, 1999.
• Maurus Servius Honoratus. Commentary on the Aeneid of Vergil. (Latin text available online.)
• Zafiropoulos, Christos A. Ethics in Aesop’s Fables: The Augustana Collection. New York: Brill, 2001.
• Candidus Pantaleon. Centum et Quinquaginta Fabulae. 1604. Unpublished translation by Laura Gibbs. (Latin text available online.)

By the time Rumi was composing his massive poem, the Mathnawi, Aesop’s fables had already been circulating throughout the Mediterranean world for two thousand years. The fables were not seen as distinctively Greek, but had been adopted wholeheartedly by Arabic and Persian storytellers, such as Rumi. Like other Sufi teachers, Rumi made use of these secular stories side by side with religious parables and legends in order to reveal esoteric doctrines to his followers.

To give you an example of how Rumi appropriates an Aesop’s fable for mystical religious teaching, let us take Rumi’s version of the famous fable of the “lion’s share.” First, let’s start with a traditional Greek version of the fable, which features a lion who goes hunting with a donkey and a fox:

A lion and a donkey and a fox joined as partners, promising to go hunting together. They made a big catch, and the lion ordered the donkey to divide it among them. Making three equal portions, the donkey asked him to choose, but the lion was infuriated, feasted upon the donkey and then ordered the fox to make the division. The fox put everything into one pile, leaving just a tiny bit for herself, and told the lion to choose. When the lion asked her how she learned to apportion things in this way, the fox replied: “From the donkey’s misfortune.” (Chambry #209)

This Greek story is a typical Aesop’s fable: witty, vicious, and wise. It certainly does not seem to contain profound revelations about the right relations of God and man, but this is precisely what Rumi discovers in the story. As soon as Rumi identifies the lion not with secular authority but with absolute divine authority, the way to a mystical understanding of the fable becomes clear.

Here is how Rumi begins his version: “Melt away your existence, as copper in the elixir, in the being of Him who fosters existence. You have fastened both your hands tight on ‘I’ and ‘we’: all this ruin is caused by dualism.” In the Aesopic tradition, you often find a moralizing preface to the telling of a fable, so it is not unusual to find a moral stated at the beginning of a fable like this. What is unusual is the profoundly religious theme that Rumi wants to illustrate with this fable: somehow the story of the lion and his hunting companions is going to turn into a lesson about the annihilation of dualism and unity with God.

Just as in Aesop, the three animals — in Rumi’s version, a lion, a wolf, and a fox — go hunting together, and when it is time to divide the spoils, the wolf and the fox foolishly expect that the lion will share with them, not realizing just whom they are dealing with. There they are, in the presence of God, and they do not even recognize him. The lion, in fact, finds it a bit embarrassing to consort with these limited beings: “A moon like this is disgraced by the stars: it is amongst the stars for generosity’s sake,” as Rumi explains. “The spirit has now become the body’s fellow-traveller.” For Rumi, the animals’ hunting expedition is a metaphor for the human condition itself, in which the spirit (the lion) is shackled to the body, trapped in this corporeal partnership.

The lion then orders the wolf to divide the spoils. The wolf divides the spoils into three parts, one for each of the partners in the hunt. Outraged, the lion tears off the wolf’s head, just as the lion tore the donkey to pieces in the Aesop’s fable. Yet, unlike the lion in Aesop who simply munches on the donkey in silence, the lion offers an explanation of his actions: “Since the sight of me did not transport thee out of thyself, a spirit like this must needs die miserably.” To die thus at the claws of the lion is actually a blessing for the wolf: “Since thou wert not passing away from thyself in my presence, ’twas an act of grace to behead thee.”

Then, just as in the Aesop’s fable, the lion turns to the fox and orders him to divide up the spoil. The fox does not save even a morsel for himself in this version of the story; he gives everything to the lion. Again as in Aesop, the lion asks the fox where he learned to divide the spoils in this way, and the fox replies: “O king of the world, I learned it from the fate of the wolf.”

But this is not the end of the story. In Rumi’s version, the lion then gives the whole of the spoils to the fox, and  speaks these words of blessing: “Inasmuch as thou hast become pledge to love of me, pick up all of it and take it and depart. O fox, since thou hast become entirely mine, how should I hurt thee when thou hast become myself?” The fox then thanks the lion for giving him the privilege of having gone second, after the wolf; otherwise, he would surely have met the same fate as the wolf. This allows Rumi to conclude that we are lucky to be living now, with the examples of past generations to guide us: “So that we have heard of the chastisements which God inflicted upon the past generations in the preceding time, that we, like the fox may keep better watch over ourselves from considering the fate of those ancient wolves.”

Rumi has thus taken a traditional Aesop’s fable and turned it into a meditation on oneness with God and obedience to divine authority. This approach exemplifies what Randy has called the “religious theme” in myths and legends about the confrontation between the human and the divine.  Rumi’s fox worships at the feet of the lion, addressing him with the words “O king of the world,” and is duly rewarded for this devotion. In Aesop, on the other hand, there is a much more strongly humanistic theme: after seeing what happened to the would-be rebel who defied the lion, the fox concedes the lion’s share, but the words she speaks are not words of worship. Instead, the fox uses her wit to provide a sly critique of the lion, even if she cannot challenge his authority directly. If you were to use just one word to characterize the attitude of Aesop’s fox, it would have to be “cynical.” In my next article, I’ll consider the archetypal Cynic philosopher, Diogenes of Sinope, and the famous legend of “Diogenes and his lamp.” This, too, is a story that shows up both in Aesop’s fables and in the mystical poetry of Rumi, providing us with another opportunity to consider the shifting fortunes of the religious and humanistic themes in the Greek and Muslim traditions.

References

• Chambry, Emile (editor). Fables / Esope. 1926. (The full Greek text of this fable is available online, along with an English version, at Aesopica.net.)
• Nicholson, Reynold A. (editor and translator). The Mathnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi. 1926 (reprinted 1990); The Mathnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi: Commentary. 1937 (reprinted 1985). The fable of the lion is found in Book I, beginning at line 3009.

In the Qur’an, Iblis is a supernatural being — either a fallen angel or a diabolical fiery creature known as a jinn. In his disobedience against God and his role as tempter of mankind, Iblis resembles Satan in the Christian tradition. The occasion for Iblis’s disobedience comes immediately following God’s creation of Adam. Here’s one version of the story from the Qur’an:

[God] said to the angels: Make obeisance to Adam; they made obeisance, but Iblis did it not. He said: Shall I make obeisance to him whom Thou hast created of dust? … [God] said: Be gone! […] Surely hell is your recompense, a full recompense. (Qur’an 17:61, 63)

This story resembles that of Satan’s rebellion in Paradise Lost: God there issues a command for the angels to worship the Son, Satan refuses, and God casts him out. Milton’s Satan insists that the Son is not worthy of his worship, and Iblis insists the same of Adam in another passage from the Qur’an: “I am better than he: Thou hast created me of fire, while him Thou didst create of dust” (7:12). Why would God want the angels to worship something other than God himself, especially something apparently younger and inferior to them?

The traditional Islamic interpretation sees Iblis as proud and rebellious, justly sentenced to hell by God for his disobedience. This interpretation follows what I am calling the “religious” theme: Man must submit to God as the absolute authority; God’s actions are beyond scrutiny. While adherents of this interpretation may not understand God’s commands, they agree that these commands should be obeyed regardless. Iblis refused to do this, and he was justly punished for it.

Some of the great masters of Sufism (a mystical tradition within Islam) agreed with this traditional interpretation of the story of Iblis’s disobedience, though not all did. Others puzzled over God’s command and concluded that God could not have truly wanted Iblis to worship Adam. To illustrate this point, they told stories depicting conversations with Iblis; the following story comes from Ahmad Ghazali, a Sufi master from the late-eleventh and early-twelfth centuries:

Encountering Eblis on the slopes of Sinai, Moses hailed him and asked, “O Eblis, why did you not prostrate before Adam?” Eblis replied, “Heaven forbid that anyone worship anything but the One. […] This command was a test.” (Nurbakhsh 13)

What could Iblis believe God was testing? Clearly, Iblis did not envision God testing his obedience — for he then would have failed that test. Instead, he saw God testing his love. This test reflects a concern that many Western theologians have raised: if God gives good things to those who obey him, someone might obey God only to get those good things and not out of any love for God. Farid ad-Din Attar, writing in the late-twelfth or early-thirteenth century, described this concern with an analogy:

If you distinguish between a gem and a stone received from the King, you are not a man of the path! If you’re pleased with the gem and disappointed by a stone, you have no interest, then, in the King. (Nurbakhsh 39)

Farid ad-Din Attar used this analogy to depict God’s test of Iblis’s love: Iblis had to choose between remaining true to God (the King) while suffering the curse of disobedience (the stone) and rejecting God by worshiping Adam while receiving the rewards of obedience (the gem). Another twelfth-century master, Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani, expressed the same idea by ascribing these words to Iblis:

O Lord, I do not worship you for the sake of mercy; I maintain no condition for my devotion. I am content with whatever you will and whatever you do. (Nurbakhsh 7)

In such a religious context, the humanistic theme will not be reflected in full. The goodness of God in his test is never questioned in this story. The word islam itself means “submission,” and it would be unthinkable for any Sufi to advocate anything like Satan’s all-out rebellion against God in Paradise Lost. But the theme is nevertheless reflected in part: Iblis is commended for scrutinizing the divine command and praised for his determination to what he believes is a just cause, even in the face of difficulty and suffering.

So far in this series, I have explored some very intense material: the cause of human suffering, the inscrutability of divine commands, and disobedience and rebellion against tyrannous authority. All of the stories I have considered have reflected one of the two contrary themes: some like Job clearly reflect the religious theme, others like Prometheus Bound clearly reflect the humanistic theme, and about others like Paradise Lost interpreters disagree. I will conclude this series in the next issue by looking at another story with differing interpretations related to these two themes, though this one is much more light-hearted: the Aesopic fable explaining how the turtle got its shell.

References

• The Holy Qur’an. Translated by M.H. Shakir. Published by Tahrike Tarsile Qur’an, Inc.: 1983. (Full text available online: Qur’an 17.)
• Wensinck, A.J. “Iblis.” Encyclopedia of Islam. Ed. B. Lewis, et al. Volume 3. London: Brill 1979.
• Nurbakhsh, Javad. The Great Satan ‘Eblis.’ Minneapolis: Khaniqahi Nimatullahi Publications, 1986.

Image from Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (image)

Satan’s rebellion begins when God calls an assembly of all the angels in Heaven in order to announce that he has appointed his Son to reign over them: “To Him shall bow / All knees in Heav’n” (V.607-608). Satan believes that he and the Son are equal in rank, and he concludes that God in this exaltation of the Son is unjust. Satan refuses to surrender his personal freedom or to submit to what he regards as the illegitimate reign of the Son, and he appeals to the other angels to do the same:

Will ye submit your necks and choose to bend / The supple knee? Ye will not […] if ye know yourselves / Natives and sons of Heav’n possessed before / By none. (V.787-791)

One-third of the angels join Satan, and Satan criticizes those that do not follow him: “I see that most through sloth had rather serve” (V.166). Satan then leads his followers in an attack against Heaven. The battle between the loyal and rebel angels rages for days before the Son comes forth from his throne; the Son defeats Satan and casts the rebellious angels from Heaven to Hell.

Even in Hell, Satan remains committed to the cause which he sees as just. He implores his troops to have the “courage never to submit or yield” (I.108). He describes God’s reign as “the tyranny of Heav’n” (I.122-124). He stands firm in his dedication to freedom and liberty, proclaiming:

Here at last [in Hell] / We shall be free. […] Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven! (I.258-259, 263)

John Milton published the first edition of Paradise Lost in 1667. Literary critics for over a hundred years afterwards interpreted the fall of Satan along the lines of traditional Christian theology. They took Satan to be the villain and Adam the hero. They read the poem as consistent with what I am calling the “religious theme”: Man must submit to God as the absolute authority; God’s actions are beyond scrutiny. For example, John Dryden (the first literary critic to comment on Paradise Lost) in 1697 criticized the poem for having the villain take center stage and defeat the hero (214).

Near the end of the eighteenth century, however, William Blake put forth a new interpretation. Blake believed that Milton portrayed Satan more richly and magnificently than he portrayed God, and he took this as evidence that Milton (perhaps unwittingly) sided with Satan:

The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it. (Plate 6)

Blake took the meaning of the poem to be consistent with what I am calling the “humanistic theme”: Man should judge whether God’s actions are good or wicked; if man determines that God is wicked, he should rebel against him.

Blake’s interpretation, taking Satan as the hero of Paradise Lost, dominated nineteenth century criticism of the poem. These critics saw Satan’s response to God as similar to that of Prometheus’s response to Zeus, both rebelling against wicked tyrants and both regarding their cause as just. Walter Alexander Raleigh, writing at the conclusion of the nineteenth century, clearly took Satan to be the hero of the poem:

Satan unavoidably reminds us of Prometheus. […] His very situation as the fearless antagonist of Omnipotence makes him either a fool or a hero, and Milton is far indeed from permitting us to think him a fool.

In reaction to this humanistic interpretation of the nineteenth century, some twentieth-century scholars began reasserting the religious interpretation. Charles Williams, in his 1940 introduction to an edition of Paradise Lost, contended that Satan is indeed not a hero but a fool. His close fried C.S. Lewis developed the idea further in his 1942 A Preface to Paradise Lost:

A creature revolting against a creator is revolting against the source of his own powers — including even his power to revolt. […] The same rebellion which means misery for the feelings and corruption of the will, means Nonsense for the intellect. (97)

In 1967, Stanley Fish brought the religious interpretation back to prominence. Unlike Williams and Lewis were, Fish is not religious person; the irony of him arguing for a religious interpretation may have added to the persuasiveness of his argument. He claimed that the poem tempts the reader in the same way that Satan tempted Adam and Eve, but that the reader must overcome the temptation and see Satan as the villain:

The reader who falls before the lures of Satanic rhetoric displays […] the weakness of Adam and … [fails] to avoid repeating [Adam's] fall. (Surprised By Sin 38)

Both interpretations of Satan’s fall have their adherents today. Philip Pullman’s award-winning His Dark Materials fantasy trilogy was heavily influenced by the humanistic interpretation of Paradise Lost. He tells a story he heard of a country squire from the time of Blake whose reaction to hearing the poem read aloud mirrors Pullman’s own reaction:

Suddenly he bangs the arm of his chair, and exclaims, ‘By God! I know not what the outcome may be, but this [Satan's a] fine fellow, and I hope he may win!’ (1)

Stanley Fish continues to be influential, developing and refining this religious interpretation of Paradise Lost over the last thirty years. In a collection of essays published in 2001, he wrote:

[Satan] is trying to bootstrap himself […] to deity. […] His failure is [the failure] to understand [that] deity is an order of being that is fundamentally different from, and infinitely superior to, one’s own — a source not a rival. (How Milton Works 99)

The two interpretations found among literary critics of this poem reflect the two themes we saw reflected in Western myths concerning man’s proper response to the divine — Job on the one hand, Prometheus Bound on the other. In the next article in this series, I will look at how these two themes appear in interpretations of a story about Iblis (a character in the Qur’an with striking similarities to Milton’s Satan) among Islamic theologians.

References

• Milton, John. Paradise Lost: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Gordon Tesky. W. W. Norton, 2004.
• Dryden, John. “Virgil and the Aeneid.” Dramatic Essays. Ed. William Henry Hudson. E.P. Dutton, 1921.
• Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. (Full text available online.)
• Raleigh, Sir Walter Alexander. Milton. E. Arnold, 1900.
• Lewis, C. S. A Preface to Paradise Lost. 1942. Oxford University Press, 1961.
• Fish, Stanley. Surprised By Sin. St. Martin’s Press, 1967.
• Pullman, Philip. “Introduction.” Paradise Lost. Oxford University Press, 2005. 1-10. (Full text available online.)
• Fish, Stanley. How Milton Works. Harvard University Press, 2001.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

1. Man must submit to God as the absolute authority. God is good, and His actions are beyond human scrutiny.
2. Man should judge whether God’s actions are good or wicked. If man determines that God is wicked, he should rebel against him.

For simplicity, I will refer to the first theme as “religious” theme and the second as “humanistic.” While these themes and particularly these labels are admittedly broad generalizations, I think they summarize well the range of insights concerning man’s relationship to the divine that have influenced Western mythology. With this disclaimer behind us, let’s now take a look at some Western myths expressing these two themes.

Religious Theme

We find the first theme in the religious texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Consider the story of Job, a pious man who experiences great suffering. He loses his property, his family, and his health. He believes God has treated him unfairly, and he wishes for a court in which he could bring God to trial. God appears to him and responds, but only with questions like the following:

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (Job 38:4)

“Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook?” (Job 41:1).

Job’s response is repentance and humble submission:

Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you?
I lay my hand on my mouth. (Job 40:4)

I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. […]
I despise myself,
and repent in dust and ashes. (Job 42:3, 6)

Job at first interprets his suffering as evidence that God is not just, but he repents after he experiences God’s presence. God does not even defend his actions to Job; God’s questioning convinces Job that such scrutiny of God is not proper for man.

A story from Qur’an 18:65-82 expresses this same theme. Moses encounters a servant of God, who allows Moses to accompany him on his journey — as long as Moses does not question his actions. This servant of God then proceeds to vandalize a ship in the harbor, to murder a boy who crosses their path, and to repair a wall in a city that shows them no hospitality. These acts shock Moses, who breaks his oath and questions the man:

Have you made a hole in [the ship] to drown its inmates? Certainly you have done a grievous thing. […] Have you slain an innocent person otherwise than for manslaughter? Certainly you have done an evil thing. […] If you had pleased, you might certainly have taken a recompense for [repairing the wall]. (Qur’an 18:71, 74, 77)

The servant of God explains how each of these three actions are expressions of God’s kindness and mercy, even though they appeared evil to Moses. (For example, the king was about to seize all seaworthy vessels for war; the vandalism of the ship saved it from being confiscated.) He rebukes Moses for questioning his actions and then continues on his journey alone. Moses’s scrutiny of God fails because he lacks the knowledge that God possesses. This story communicates the same message as the Job story: such questioning of God is not proper for man.

Humanistic Theme

We find the second, humanistic theme in a wide range of European cultural traditions, such as Greek and Norse mythology. The character of Prometheus has become paradigmatic of this theme, particularly in the version of his story told in the fifth-century BCE Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound (historically attributed to the playwright Aeschylus). Prometheus first aids Zeus in overthrowing Zeus’s father, Kronos. When Zeus later attempts to destroy mankind, Prometheus frustrates his plan. Against Zeus’s wish, Prometheus steals fire to benefit mankind. The play begins and ends with Prometheus, chained to the rocky crags, recounting his deeds and condemning Zeus:

Chorus
Zeus governs with lawless customs. (144-151)

Prometheus
Does it not seem to you that the tyrant of the gods is violent in all his ways? (736-741)

In one word, I hate all the gods that received good at my hand and with ill requite me wrongfully. (975-976)

Because Zeus’s plan to destroy mankind is violent and unjust, Prometheus claims the right and even the obligation to rebel against him.

This same theme of rebellion against a tyrannical God drives much of the plot of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials fantasy trilogy, the final book of which was published in 2000. An army of angels and men has formed to rebel against God. Two members of this army describe God (“the Authority”) and explain their rebellion against him in these words:

[The Authority] was never the creator. He was an angel. […] He told those that came after him that he had created them, but it was a lie. (Amber Spyglass 28)

At some point the Authority took charge. […] The Kingdom of Heaven has been known by that name since the Authority first set himself above the rest of the angels. And we want no part of it. […] We intend to be free citizens of the Republic of Heaven. (Amber Spyglass 188)

God justifies his oppressive dictatorship with lies, and he keeps his subjects submissive through a reign of terror. The members of this rebellious army take upon themselves the responsibility to set up a new form of government, a republic instead of a monarchy, in which all citizens will be free from the illegitimate tyranny of the Authority.

The literary critic William Empson made the following statement that well summarizes this second, humanistic theme:

To worship a wicked God is morally bad for a man, so that he ought to be free to question whether his God is wicked. (Empson 440)

Myths expressing the religious theme might support the first part of Empson’s statement, but they do not support the second part: God is good, and when men think God is bad, as Job and Moses learned, the problem lies not with God’s goodness but with man’s limited understanding.

The myths I have presented in this article clearly express one of these themes or the other, but many other Western myths are less clear-cut. In the next few issues, I will look at some of these ambiguous myths and show how different interpreters read each of these contradictory themes into the same myth — starting with the rebellion of Satan in Paradise Lost.

References

• Campbell, Joseph. Occidental Mythology. 1964. New York: Penguin Compass, 1991.
• Job. The Holy Bible. English Standard Version. (Full text available online: Job 38:4, 40:4, 41:1, 42:3-6.)
  
• The Holy Qur’an. Translated by M.H. Shakir. Published by Tahrike Tarsile Qur’an, Inc.: 1983. (Full text available online: Qur’an 18.)
• “Prometheus Bound.” Aeschylus. Translated by Herbert Weir Smyth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926. (Full text available online.)
• Pullman, Philip. The Amber Spyglass. 2000. New York: Del Rey, 2001.
• Empson, William. “Critics.” Paradise Lost (Norton Critical Edition). Edited by Gordon Teskey. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia