The Seventy's Course in Theology, Third Year / The Doctrine of Deity

by B. H. Roberts

ANCIENT CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.—(Continued.)

ANALYSIS.	REFERENCES.
IX. Origin of the Greek and Roman Deities.	The World's Worship, Ch. xiii. "Mythology of All Nations" (Crabb), Ch. ii. "The World's Worship" (Dobbins), Chs. viii and ix. Burder's "History of All Religions," Part vi., pp. 527-575. Myers' "General History," Chs. xii and xxvi, and Encyclopaedias, and Notes of this Lesson.
X. List and Character of the Chief Greek and Roman Deities.
XI. The Greek and Roman Parthenon.
XII. Greek and Roman Worship.

SPECIAL TEXT: "The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness. But unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God." 1 Cor. i:22-24.

NOTES.

1. The Generation of the Gods: (a) The Greeks: "Chaos (void space) was first: then came into being 'broad-breasted' Earth, the gloomy Tartarus and Love. Chaos produced Erebus and Night, and this last bore to Erebus Day and Ether.

"Earth now produced Uranus (Heaven), of equal extent with herself, to envelop her, and the mountains and Pontos (Sea). She then bore to Uranus a mighty progeny—the Titans; six males and six females. She also bore Hottos, Briareus and Gyges. These children were hated by their father, who, as soon as they were born, thrust them out of sight in a cavern of mother Earth, who, grieved at his conduct, produced the substance of hoary steel, and, forming from it a sickle, roused her children, the Titans, to rebellion against him; but fear seized on them all except Kronos, who, lying in wait with the sickle with which his mother had armed him, mutilated his unsuspecting sire. The drops which fell to the earth from the wounds, gave birth to the Erinnyes, the Giants and the Mehan nymphs; and from what fell into the sea, sprang Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty.

"Earth finally, after the overthrow of the Titans, bore by Tartaros her last offspring, the hundred-headed Typhoeus, the father of storms and whirlwinds, whom Zeus precipitated into Tartarus.

"Rhea was united to Kronos. Kronos, having learned from his parents, Heaven and Earth, that he was fated to be deprived by one of his sons of the kingdom which he had taken from his father, devoured his children as fast as they were born. Rhea, when about to be delivered of Zeus, besought her parents to teach her how she might save him. Instructed by Earth, she concealed him in a cavern of Crete, and gave a stone in his stead to Kronos. This stone he afterward threw up, and with it the children whom he had devoured. When Zeus was grown up, he and the other children of Kronos made war on their father and the Titans. The scene of the conflict was Thessaly; the former fought from Olympus, the latter from Othrys. During ten entire years the conflict was undecided; at length, by the counsel of Earth, the Kronids released the Hundred-handed and called them to their aid. The war was then resumed with renewed vigor, and the Titans were finally vanquished and imprisoned in Tartarus, under the guard of the Hundred-handed. The Kronids then, by the advice of Earth, gave the supreme power to Zeus, who, in return, distributed honors and dominion among the associates of his victory." (The World's Worship—Dobbins—pp. 154-5).

(b) The Romans: "The Romans appear to have borrowed their fictions respecting the creation of the world from the same source as the Greeks. Ovid expressly calls Chaos, rudis indigestaque moles, 'a rude indigested heap'; or, as Moses says, "The earth without form and void;" after which the poet goes on in a strain very similar to what has already been set forth.

"The Etruscans, who were among the original settlers in Italy, gave, according to Suidas, the following account of the creation. 'God,' says a philosopher of that nation, 'created the universe in six thousand years, and appointed the same period of time to be the extent of its duration. In the first period of a thousand years, God created the heavens and the earth; in the second, the visible firmament; in the third, the sea and all the waters that are in the earth; in the fourth, the sun, moon, and stars; in the fifth, every living soul of birds, reptiles, and quadrupeds, which have their abode either on the land, in the air, or the water; and in the sixth, man alone.' Now, when it is considered that in another part of Scripture it is said, that 'one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,' it is easy to explain the origin of this fiction." (Crabb's Mythology, Ch. ii).