How Obvious is it that Athena's Great Temple, the Parthenon, is a Temple to the Eve of Genesis?

1. The Judeo-Christian tradition traces the current state of humanity back to a woman, a serpent, and a tree. Athena's idol-image shows us the woman and the serpent, but where is the tree? The very core of the statue is wood—a tree. In both the Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions, a tree is at the core of what happened between a woman and a serpent.

2. Athena’s very name speaks of Eve. In Genesis 3:4, the serpent promised Eve that when she ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil “you shall not surely die.” In the most ancient Greek writing, the name of the goddess first appears as ATHANA. The word THANATOS in ancient Greek means death. A-THANATOS signifies deathlessness. A-thana is the shortened form of A-thanatos meaning the deathless one, or more specifically, the embodiment of the serpent’s promise to Eve that she would never die, but would be as the gods, knowing good and evil. Through Athana(tos), later called Athena, the serpent has made good his promise to Eve (Athena and Eden, Chapter 3).

3. Note that the serpent rises up next to Athena as a friend. In Genesis, Yahweh had condemned the serpent to crawl on its belly as a deceiver of humanity, yet all who entered the Parthenon to worship or admire the great statue were forced to look up to both Athena and the serpent. That is because the Greek religious system, the very opposite of the Judeo-Christian, was based on the notion that the serpent had enlightened humanity in paradise.

4. Athena holds Nike in her right hand, the hand of power. Nike symbolizes Victory—Eve’s victory for humanity when she ate the fruit offered by the serpent. Athena is the only goddess in Greek art who is ever pictured holding Nike.

5. On the front of her aegis, or goatskin, which covered her chest and the top of her back, Athena wore the head of the Gorgon Medusa—the head of serpents. The aegis is a symbol of authority. The source of Athena’s authority is the head of serpents.

6. Meeting the ancient Greeks at eye level as they entered the Parthenon was the statue base of the great idol-image of Athena. In the center of it, surrounded by the gods giving her gifts, stood a sculpted Pandora—the woman who according to Greek myth was responsible for letting evil out into the world. Could not a schoolchild grasp that Athena’s gold and ivory grandeur above Pandora was literally based on this obvious picture of Eve?

7. To view the great idol-image of Athena, the Greeks had to pass under the center of the east pediment. Depicted there was the birth of Athena. Myth described her, and vases depicted her, as being born full-grown out of Zeus, a picture of Eve being born full-grown out of Adam.

The Parthenon in Athens, Greece

Athena’s idol-image, reconstructed in the Parthenon in Nashville by Alan LeQuire.

Eve by Albrecht Dürer