Prometheus as The Serpent?

[one_raven]

According to an 8th century BCE legend, Prometheus tricked Zeus by stuffing beef into the belly of an Ox and wrapping the bull horns in “glistening fat” to trick him into taking the inedible horns from an offering.
This pissed Zeus off and he hid fire from humans, but Prometheus stole it back and returned it to the humans.
In a later revision (700 BCE), Zeus stole “the means of life” from man and said, “you would easily do work enough in a day to supply you for a full year even without working; soon would you put away your rudder over the smoke, and the fields worked by ox and sturdy mule would run to waste.”
He also created Pandora (the first mortal woman) to punish man. She carried a jar with her which contained “evils, harsh pain and troublesome diseases which give men death”.

So, Zeus, angry with man disobeying him by the prodding of the trickster, punished man by causing man to toil in dry fields, and sent him disease and death.

Zeus also gave the trickster eternal punishment.

This sounds awfully familiar to me.
Is it just me?

 

[one_raven]

Oops.
I wanted this in Comparative Religion.
Can someone please move it?

 

[Existo]

According to an 8th century BCE legend, Prometheus tricked Zeus by stuffing beef into the belly of an Ox and wrapping the bull horns in “glistening fat” to trick him into taking the inedible horns from an offering.
This pissed Zeus off and he hid fire from humans, but Prometheus stole it back and returned it to the humans.
In a later revision (700 BCE), Zeus stole “the means of life” from man and said, “you would easily do work enough in a day to supply you for a full year even without working; soon would you put away your rudder over the smoke, and the fields worked by ox and sturdy mule would run to waste.”
He also created Pandora (the first mortal woman) to punish man. She carried a jar with her which contained “evils, harsh pain and troublesome diseases which give men death”.

So, Zeus, angry with man disobeying him by the prodding of the trickster, punished man by causing man to toil in dry fields, and sent him disease and death.

Zeus also gave the trickster eternal punishment.

This sounds awfully familiar to me.
Is it just me?

You mean the name "Yahweh" comes up? Certainly. Surely the stories in the OT are re hashes of earlier myths?

 

[one_raven]

You mean the name "Yahweh" comes up? Certainly. Surely the stories in the OT are re hashes of earlier myths?

Some, sure.
Was this one?
I would like to find a direct connection - or some evidence.
Correlation does not necessarily imply causation.
It could very well be a case of simple archetypal story-telling.
God is perfect - man is subservient - man breaks free of God to grasp the gauntlet of of self-determination. It's an ages old idea that is reflective of the children leaving the protective bosom of their parents.

 

[madanthonywayne]

Consider also, the name Lucifer means bringer of light. A good name for the god who brought mankind fire. Apparently, there was a book written on this subject back in the fiftees: Lucifer and Prometheus by R.J. Zwi Werblowsky.

 

[one_raven]

Sweet. Thanks for the info, madanthonywayne.

 

[zetetic0void]

Here are some thoughts (you may or may not agree). Religions and mythologies are full of symbolism and I think trying to see them as symbolic is the best way to get anything out of them.
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Prometheus was chained to the mountain where the eagle (offspring of Echidna and Typhon) ate his liver daily ... the liver was known as the organ that regenerated (perhaps known due to observation after injuries from battles).

He was punished this way for bringing fire (knowledge, technology, discrimination between things [being conscious of duality], etc) to humans.


The snake in the garden of Eden was fulfilling a similar role as Prometheus in offering knowledge to humans (although some argue that the tree was "The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" , it may have been more general than that and including knowledge of seeing aspects of duality ... so translated more like "Tree of Knowledge: both good and evil"

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It's interesting to note that in the 12 labours of Hercules (Greek's Heracles), the 11th labour was to get the Apples of Hesperides. They were in a 'blissful garden' (now, I am personally curious if these apples somehow represented some type of symbol for enlightenment, cosmic consciousness, nirvana, or whatever the Greeks would have labeled this experience).

During this 11th labour he killed the eagle tormenting Prometheus and also freed Prometheus.

In this way he becomes equivalent to Christ as the redeemer of the initial 'fall' of taking the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge



perhaps these are the similarities...

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Snake giving fruit of Knowledge = Prometheus giving Fire

Crucifixion of Christ = Prometheus chained to mountain/ eagle eating liver

Resurrection of Christ = Hercules freeing Prometheus
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Both the crucifixion of Christ and the freeing of Prometheus by Hercules are the actions which balance out the initial problem (the problem of gaining knowledge).

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It is interesting that the eagle sent daily to torment the chained Prometheus was eating his liver.

The spear which was jabbed at the side of Christ on the cross appears in paintings and images I've seen to be piercing the body at around the same spot ... the area of the liver.

I wonder what the liver symbolized to the ancients.

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There is a symbol often seen within Christianity of the snake on the cross. I'm not an expert on this but it surely is a very interesting symbol.

 

[one_raven]

From what I understand (though I am unsure how far this tradition goes back) the liver, not the heart, was believed to be the seat of human emotion.

 

[Michael]

You mean the name "Yahweh" comes up? Certainly. Surely the stories in the OT are re hashes of earlier myths?

where does the name Yahweh come up?

 

[Doreen]

From what I understand (though I am unsure how far this tradition goes back) the liver, not the heart, was believed to be the seat of human emotion.

denends on the culture. The Chinese had what we would call brain functions in the heart. European humour systems attributed different emotions to different organs, the liver often getting anger, for example.

 

[Michael]

From what I understand (though I am unsure how far this tradition goes back) the liver, not the heart, was believed to be the seat of human emotion.

for the most part it was the heart. I've never read the liver.

Egyptians the heart was the seat of consciousness and subsequently so did most Greeks. Albeit, Plato thought the ventricles (holes in the brain) were used to cool the heart (passion) and so in a way the brain cooled the heart. Aristotle thought it was all heart. Hypocrites interestingly enough thought the mind resided in the brain. Galen thought the mind existed in ventricles of the brain. So did Léonard de Vinci. René Descartes spent a good deal of his life propagating dualism, the mind was in the ether (spirit world) and was connected to the body through the pineal gland and the body was a machine/puppet.

It wasn't really until Phrenology (a defunct field) that people solidly accepted the brain as the seat of the mind.

 

[one_raven]

for the most part it was the heart. I've never read the liver.

The Roman physician Galen located the seat of the passions in the liver, the seat of reason in the brain, and considered the heart to be the seat of the emotions.

Goethe uses the word "liver" metaphorically for "anger", e.g. "die Leber befreien", i.e. "to vent one's anger". From this originates the expression "von der Leber weg reden", literally "to speak from the liver".

Burmese, too, emotions (especially love) are attributed to liver. It is very common to say "I love you from my liver" to call someone "my liver" in everyday language. The expression "broken liver" has the same meaning as "broken heart" in Western culture, and it is very commonly used. The "heart shape" is called the "liver shape" in Burmese.

In sixteenth-century England, the liver was regarded as the seat of love. There are many references in Shakespeare to this. For example, in As You Like It, Rosalind offers to cure Oliver of love, describing how she had cured another lover:
"And thus I cured him; and this way will I take upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart, that there shall not be one spot of love in't."
In Korean, a person with a 'big liver' is brave and in common English, “lily livered” means cowardly.

In Chinese there is the expression “wo de gan chang cun duan” which translates to "my liver and intestines are broken into pieces" meaning I am extremely sad. In Chinese if a person has a bad attitude or something, he is said to have a bad liver.


the Hebrew scriptures have. . .
“My eyes do fail with tears,
my bowels are troubled,
my liver is poured upon the earth,
for the destruction of the daughter of my people” Lam 2:11

In Dutch, you also can 'have something on your liver', which means something's bothering you.

Webster’s New World College Dictionary has the fifth definition for liver as:
ARCHAIC the liver thought of as the seat of emotion or desire


The list goes on and on.

 

[Enmos]

In Dutch, you also can 'have something on your liver', which means something's bothering you.

Specifically something that you did wrong and that you're uncomfortable with.

Is it a coincidence that the liver is a cleansing organ?

 

[Doreen]

Specifically something that you did wrong and that you're uncomfortable with.

Is it a coincidence that the liver is a cleansing organ?

Not according to the Chinese who associate a variety of emotional issues with the Liver (and other organs) and have herbal and other remedies to create greater harmony in it - some of these herbs cleanse the liver of toxins.

 

[Pandaemoni]

The notion that the serpent in the Garden of Eden is Satan is a Christian tradition that is not assumed in (say) Judaism, and it is not expressly so stated in the Bible until the New Testament (i.e. Christians only, in a new interpretation of the Old Testament). (Remembering that in Judaism Satan is, to this day, a faithful servant of God, not some countervailing presence that God cast out.)

Imagine that the serpent were Satan for a second. God curses all serpents so that they will crawl on their bellies and have enmity between them and women. Would it really be fair for God to punish and curse snakes for the actions Satan took while disguised as a snake? If Satan had stayed in his angelic form, would God have punished all angels everywhere?

In the Christian tradition there are two main reasons cited for why Satan was cast out, but neither is the tricking of Eve. One was that he he tried to overthrow God. A second story says that he refused to bow to Adam when God commended it. The Bible is silent on it, so all we have are non-Biblical legends, but none of them that I know of cite the fall of Adam as the reason for Satan's being cast out.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Fire is a keystone technology in the development of our species, arguably as important as the technology of language. Without fire the food value of the protein and starch in grains and most plant tissue is unavailable to us because we can't digest uncooked cellulose. Humans had to survive on the fruits they could gather and the meat they could hunt. And it was raw meat, at that, which is not easy to eat without a metal blade. It's been estimated that it took a Stone Age human four hours to chew up a day's supply of nutrition in raw meat.

Fire also made our nights immeasurably safer by scaring off many predators and then letting us at least spot the brave ones. It allowed us to migrate to colder climates where the prey animals helpfully carry layers of high-calorie fat. It helped us work stone and wood tools. And of course without fire to melt ore, the Bronze Age would have never happened. Our cities would be like the first cities: made of stone and wood.

There was no fire on earth until the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere reached 13%, the minimum level for combustion, thanks to the spread of land-based plants around 500MYA. Our ancestors had learned how to use naturally occurring fire to cook food around 2MYA, but evidence of controlled fire only goes back to 400KYA. Still, regular use of fire only became widespread quite recently, between 50 and 100KYA. For all we know, it may have been a key technology that helped us successfully migrate out of Africa for the first time.

The Agricultural Revolution is almost universally classified as the first Paradigm Shift: a man-made change in our environment that completely revised our lifestyle; a step in our transcendence of nature. But I think the mastery of fire deserves to be in that category as well.

Prometheus, a stylization of the person who figured out how to create and control fire, is one of the most important figures in our history.

 

[madanthonywayne]

Imagine that the serpent were Satan for a second. God curses all serpents so that they will crawl on their bellies and have enmity between them and women. Would it really be fair for God to punish and curse snakes for the actions Satan took while disguised as a snake? If Satan had stayed in his angelic form, would God have punished all angels everywhere?

Perhaps the serpent was a favorite avatar of Satan, one which was (for some reason) particulary appealing to women. By cursing the serpent and creating enmity between it and women, God takes away that tool and turns it into a symbol of evil.

Fire is a keystone technology in the development of our species, arguably as important as the technology of language. Without fire the food value of the protein and starch in grains and most plant tissue is unavailable to us because we can't digest uncooked cellulose. Humans had to survive on the fruits they could gather and the meat they could hunt.

The Agricultural Revolution is almost universally classified as the first Paradigm Shift: a man-made change in our environment that completely revised our lifestyle; a step in our transcendence of nature. But I think the mastery of fire deserves to be in that category as well.

Prometheus, a stylization of the person who figured out how to create and control fire, is one of the most important figures in our history.

I heard an anthropologist on NPR recently saying that we can infer the mastery of fire by the changes in the anatomy of our ancestors. Even though we only find evidence of actual fire being used by humans for a much shorter time period, the fact that our mouths became relatively small and our disgestive tracts short implies that our ancestors were using fire to cook food. Furthermore, it's been argued that it was the cooking of food that allowed the brains of homo erectus to become twice the size of australopithecis. So the mastery of fire may not only have been a paradign shift, it may well be largely responsible for the development of human intelligence.
source

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

I heard an anthropologist on NPR recently saying that we can infer the mastery of fire by the changes in the anatomy of our ancestors. Even though we only find evidence of actual fire being used by humans for a much shorter time period, the fact that our mouths became relatively small and our disgestive tracts short implies that our ancestors were using fire to cook food.

Also, our respiratory tract developed the ability to tolerate smoke in the inhaled air. It puts most animals into distress.

Furthermore, it's been argued that it was the cooking of food that allowed the brains of homo erectus to become twice the size of australopithecis. So the mastery of fire may not only have been a paradign shift, it may well be largely responsible for the development of human intelligence.

Was that due to an increase in protein in the diet, because we can eat cooked meat faster than raw meat?

One of the few true differences between dogs and wolves--two subspecies of the same species--is that dogs have smaller brains, an adaptation from a predator's diet to the lower-protein diet of a camp scavenger.

Perhaps their brains will get larger again over the next couple of thousand years, now that they're eating cooked meat too.

 

[one_raven]

So which story came first?
The Serpent or Prometheus?

The notion that the serpent in the Garden of Eden is Satan is a Christian tradition that is not assumed in (say) Judaism, and it is not expressly so stated in the Bible until the New Testament (i.e. Christians only, in a new interpretation of the Old Testament). (Remembering that in Judaism Satan is, to this day, a faithful servant of God, not some countervailing presence that God cast out.)

Similarly, there is reason to believe that Lucifer and Satan are two entirely separate characters - Lucifer being a human king, whose arrogance led to the fall of Satan due to his rising against God story.


By the way, I once watched a documentary that said there is evidence that the harnessing of fire to cook food seems to have evolved pretty much everywhere in the world at about the same time - at a time when widespread travel did not seem to exist. I found that very interesting.

Was that due to an increase in protein in the diet, because we can eat cooked meat faster than raw meat?

One of the few true differences between dogs and wolves--two subspecies of the same species--is that dogs have smaller brains, an adaptation from a predator's diet to the lower-protein diet of a camp scavenger.

Perhaps their brains will get larger again over the next couple of thousand years, now that they're eating cooked meat too.

Or it could have been readily accessible protein from raw mollusks and bivalves.
Shell middens 125,000 years old have been found in Eritrea indicating the diet of early humans was sea food obtained by beachcombing as he followed the shore of the Red Sea south to Djibouti, where he could see land (present-day Yemen) across the Mandab Strait.

 

[zetetic0void]

"By the way, I once watched a documentary that said there is evidence that the harnessing of fire to cook food seems to have evolved pretty much everywhere in the world at about the same time - at a time when widespread travel did not seem to exist. I found that very interesting."

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This makes me think of the story where monkeys in one location started learning to wash the sand and grit off of potatoes they were given in sources of water.

According to the story, more and more monkeys in that group learned that behavior until apparently after a certain number learned it, those who learned it began to increase dramatically ... and this included monkeys on other islands in in non-connected locations

Hundredth Monkey phenomenon

w w w uhh.hawaii.edu/~ronald/HMP htm

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I am made to think about that physics experiment (I forget the name and exact details) where some particle was split into two particles which flew off in their own directions. They used some force to affect one of the resulting 2 particles and miraculously, the other apparently separated particle also was affected in a mirror fashion (my details may not be exact but the idea is similar).

It does make me wonder if there is some character within Reality we aren't quite aware of which causes some linkage which we at present have no idea exists (something which theoretically may cause such things as peculiar connections seen in many examples of twin humans for example)


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As for this thread ... the serpent can still be similar to Prometheus regardless of whether the serpent was or wasn't Satan or Lucifer (since the initial post was asking about the serpent and Prometheus). From what I've read, at least Lucifer seems to be something that was a late connection to being Satan.


Anyway, I have read from investigating about entheogenic mushrooms and plants old stories suggesting an ancient connection between snakes and useful herbs and plants. I still haven't figured out exactly what this is about. Were snakes seen to go to regions which just happened to be locations where herbs and plants useful to humans were located?

Is there a connection between this and the Greek's healing god Asclepius who had the staff with single snake coiled around it ( 'Rod of Asclepius' is still our medical symbol although more often than should occur, this is mistakenly shown as the double snake Caduceus of Hermes).

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In Indian Yoga, there is the Kundalini serpent visualized amongst the energy centres along the spine to the crown of the head
and in Egyptian symbology, the cobra was located at the forehead (third eye and possibly representing the effects of the pineal gland).


So I wonder about the connection of the snake to an idea of some sort of enlightenment. In my idea, Prometheus chained to the rocks with his liver being eaten every day is a lower stage where Heracles saving Prometheus on his 11th labour to get the Apples of Hesperides (in a 'blissful garden') represents the stages above this towards enlightenment (like nirvana, non-clinging to duality, etc)