What would you think if somebody says that the myth of the Greek Titans is also part of the Torah’s and biblical stories? As an absurd idea? Well, you are wrong!
Jan N. Bremmer in his work “Remember the Titans, Greek fallen angels”, says that Hesiod, had derived part of his material on Kronos from the Hurrian-Hittite “Song of Kumarbi”, corroborated by M.P. Nilsson, “Stories of the Greek Religion”, although others, like M.L. West, “Hesiod’s Titans”, connects the origin of the Titans with Delphi. Further investigations, proved that the Hurrian-Hittite myth seems to have also been partly adopted by the Jews, as there are several traces in the Old Testament of a rebellion-in-heaven myth, in Enoch’s Watchers and the Fallen angels, where God fights and defeats his opponents and casts them into the Tartarus. However, the Jews themselves sometimes connected their fallen angels with the Greek myth of the Titans, as the influence of the Greek literature had an important impact upon Torah. Nevertheless, Jan N. Bremmer in “Titans and anthropogony” (ch. 3) concludes with the appropriation of the Titans by the Jews.
In the Old Testament, we encounter such stories, at Ezekiel 28:11-19, 16-17, 26:17-21 and 32:2-8, as well as at Isaiah 15:5-21. In the New Testament, the corresponding passages are at 1 Timothy 3:6, 2 Peter 2:4, Jude 6 and at Revelation 12:7-9, where the dragon-serpent, also identified as “Leviathan”, is paralleled with the Devil.
The Titans in the Greek mythology, although they were gods, like in Enoch’s Watchers story, or the “fallen sons of god(s), were credited with all kinds of evil qualities, as attested by Hesiod, in “Ad versus Haeresies” 5.30.3 by Irenaeus and Hesychius’ lemma: ‘Titan=666 the anti-Christ’.
Further influence of the Greek mythology upon the Jewish Bible, lies in the fall of Satan and the fall of the angels at Isaiah 14:12–13 which the Vulgate translates the Hebrew original name Helel as Lucifer, who in Roman mythology is the son of Aurora. However, the latter corresponds to the Greek mythology where Eos, the goddess of dawn, gives birth to the morning star Phosphorus as we read in Hesiod, Theogony 986f. The figure of Helel in Isa 14:12 has actually nothing to do with Satan whose name etymologically is misspelt, and as many scholars argue, it deals with a song about the downfall of the king of Babylon based upon an old myth that narrated the rise and downfall of a certain Helel. Most scholars still find the closest parallel to Isa 14:12–15 in an episode of the Ugaritic Baal-Cycle (KTU 1.6 I 53–65) which describes the unsuccessful attempt of Athtar (an ancient Semitic deity that is identified with the planet Venus), to take the vacant throne of Baal on the summit of Zaphon.
What do you say?
For further additional information, seek in……
Francis Glasson, “Greek Influence in Jewish Eschatology with Special Reference to the Apocalypses and Pseudepigraphs”, London 1961, 57–73. Theology Library, School of Theology at Claremont California.
Klaas Spronk, “Down with Hêlèl! The Assumed Mythological Background of Isa. 14:12”.
S. Smith and Simon B. Parker, “Ugaritic Narrative Poetry, Writings from the Ancient World” (Atlanta, 1997).
Hermann Lichtenberger, “The Down-Throw of the Dragon in Revelation 12 and the Down-Fall of God’s enemy”.
Approved ~ FS
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Article URL : https://www.amazon.com/Greek-Influence-Jewish-Eschatology-Pseudepigraphs/dp/B0006AYAI2