Athena—the serpent’s Eve reborn after the Flood
In one way or another, Athena is involved with all of these events. She is the ultimate symbol of the great victory of Zeus-religion. She is the serpent’s Eve, reborn and exalted after the Flood. According to the Greek myth, she was born full-grown out of Zeus, an unmistakable picture of Eve being born full-grown out of Adam.26 And she was born in the presence of Hera, the primal Eve, meaning that she (Athena) is the new representation of Eve in the Greek age. As a sign of this change, Herakles presented the golden apples from the serpent’s tree, which once belonged to Hera, to his patron goddess, Athena.
Now that we understand what Greek religion was about, we are in a position to understand the religious statement the Athenians made to their world and to posterity when they erected Athena’s ivory and gold-plated idol-image in the Parthenon (Figure 8).
Figure 8. Athena Parthenos, full-size reproduction
in the Nashville
Parthenon by Alan LeQuire <www.Parthenon.org>.
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
in paradise.
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.
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. Athena’s very name speaks of Eve. In Genesis 3:4, the serpent promised Eve that when she ate the fruit of the tree she would not die. In the most ancient Greek writing (Linear B), 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 Athanatos 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.
On the front of her aegis, or goatskin, which covered the top of her chest, Athena wore the head of the Gorgon Medusa—the head of serpents. The aegis is a symbol of authority. The symbolism is straightforward: the source of Athena’s authority is the head of serpents.
Atop Athena’s helmet, between winged griffins, crouched an inscrutable sphinx. As we know from the story of Oedipus, Hera originally controlled this riddle-uttering winged monster with the head of a woman and the body of a lion. But it is now after the Flood. Athena’s possession of the sphinx shows that her authority supersedes that of Hera in the new Greek Age. The wings of the sphinx symbolize power in the heavens; the body of the lion, power on Earth; and the woman’s head represents the mysterious Eve, mother of all living. As we have seen, Hera, the primal Eve, carried the sceptre of rule by birth. Athena, the new Eve of the Greek Age, carries a deadly spear, a sign that she led the great spiritual battle to defeat the Yahweh-believing sons of Noah and re-establish the way of Kain after the Flood.
There is even a more obvious demonstration of Athena’s identity as the reborn serpent’s Eve. 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 centre 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?
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