Epilogue to Athena and Eden
[Myth] is a scrupulously chosen pictorial device designed to evoke an idea or concept in its entirety. It is a means of bypassing the intellect and talking straight to the intelligence of the heart, the understanding.
John Anthony West in Serpent in the Sky: The High
Wisdom of Ancient Egypt
Greek myth is history. Essentially, it tells us the same story as the Book of Genesis, but from the standpoint that the serpent is the enlightener of mankind rather than its deceiver. More to the point of this book: it is not possible to comprehend the meaning of the east façade of the Parthenon—a sculpted expression of the very heart of Greek religion itself—unless one sees the direct connection between Athena and Eden.
Many more profound messages await us in the other sculpted scenes on the Parthenon, messages that have eluded academia since the early 1800’s when their efforts to decipher them began in earnest. Nigel Spivey, in his Understanding Greek Sculpture, greatly understates the situation in academia today when he writes of the “limited success of scholars in clarifying the iconographic components of the [Parthenon’s] pedimental ensembles.” Outside the context of the Book of Genesis, the “iconographic components” have no real meaning at all. Only when one sees that Athena is Eve, do the sculptures and the myths come alive and make sense to us, as they made sense to our cultured, literate, and thoughtful ancestors, the ancient Greeks.
It is a sad fact that, with rare exception, the mythologists and Classical scholars of today do not take the Book of Genesis seriously. One of the most widely-read (and mistaken) mythologists, the late Joseph Campbell, stated categorically that there was no Eden. He further denigrated Genesis and those who do take it seriously by writing, “No one of adult mind today would turn to the Book of Genesis to learn of the origins of the earth, the plants, the beasts, and man.” How could Mr. Campbell look at a vase depiction of the Hesperides with the fruit tree and serpent without thinking of Eden? How could any scholar examine a vase picturing Athena coming out of Zeus full-grown without thinking of the way Eve came out of Adam? Or look at a marble sculpture showing a giant bearded snake being worshipped as Zeus without thinking of the ancient serpent? Or view a metope of Herakles presenting the sacred apples to Athena without thinking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Or see a vase picture of the halfman, half-serpent Kekrops without thinking: “The serpent’s man!”?
There is a more basic question. 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?
A huge amount of evidence from Greek myth, in both art and literature, points to an Eden, and yet the scholars have been unable to make the connection. Even as they meticulously assemble fact after valuable fact, they continue to shun the only context into which these facts fit.
If they wish to move on from knowledge to understanding, and pass on wisdom to their students, that has to change. Wisdom is that faculty which makes the highest and best application of knowledge. Demeaning or ignoring the Book of Genesis is not wisdom. Genesis, in the original Hebrew (and translated concordantly), is a valid historical document. The stone sculptures of the Parthenon cry out that this is so.
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