The Titan god, Prometheus, was the son of Iapetus and Asia. He is one of the most sublime creations of the human imagination. When Zeus, like Jehovah, became enraged at mankind and sought to destroy it, Prometheus, like Christ, came on earth to intercede and suffer for the race. Hurled to Tartarus by the thunderbolts of Zeus he came again to endure, if need be, eternal agony for man.
For centuries Greeks and Romans believed the story of this vicarious god to be historical. Grote, the historian, says: “So long and so firmly did this belief continue, that the Roman general Pompey, when in command of an army in Kolchis, made with his companion, the literary Greek Theophanes, a special march to view the spot in Caucasus where Prometheus had been transfixed” (Greek Mythology, pp. 92, 93).
Referring to the Greeks and their great tragedy, “Prometheus Bound,” A. L. Rawson says: “Its hero was their friend, benefactor, creator, and savior, whose wrongs were incurred in their behalf, and whose sorrows were endured for their salvation. He was wounded for their transgressions, and bruised for their iniquities; the chastisement of their peace was upon him, and by his stripes they were healed” ([Isaiah liii, 5]), (Evolution of Israel’s God, p. 30). Alluding to this subject, Dr. Westbrook writes: “The New Testament description of the crucifixion and the attending circumstances, even to the earthquake and darkness, was thus anticipated by five centuries” (Bible: Whence and What?).
The dying Christ shares with the dying Prometheus the sympathies of men. But how trivial the crucifixion, how light the suffering, and how weak the courage of the Christian god appear compared with the cruel crucifixion, the infinite suffering, and the deathless courage of the immortal Pagan! Transfixed to the rock on Caucasus, the Golgotha of Greek mythology, with the devouring eagle feeding forever on his vitals, there falls from his lips no murmur of pain, no Sabachthani of despair. What lofty heroism, what enduring patience, what unselfish love, this tragic story has inspired!
“To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy power which seems omnipotent;
To love and bear; to hope till hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, to falter, nor repent;