Greek version of Garden of Eden cmpared to Christian

[left-of-center2012]

Ancient Greek religious art connects in very significant ways with Book of Genesis. While Genesis describes the early events and people in humanity’s past, the Greeks depicted those same events and people – except from the point of view that the serpent enlightened, rather than deluded, the first couple in paradise. The Greeks remembered the original paradise, calling it the Garden of the Hesperides, always depicting it with a serpent-entwined apple tree. The Book of Genesis doesn’t say what kind of fruit it was: It’s from the Greek tradition we get the idea that Eve ate an apple.

Both the ancient commentator Apollodorus and the Greek playwright Euripides describe Zeus and Hera as the original occupants of the Garden of the Hesperides. To the Greeks, they were the first couple, a match for the Adam and Eve of Genesis. The Judeo-Christian tradition considers Adam as the father of all humanity. The term “father Zeus” is a description of the king of the gods that appears over 100 times in the ancient writings of Homer. According to the ancient poet Hesiod, Zeus is “the father of gods and men” – the gods being deified ancestors.

Genesis 3:20 describes Eve as “the mother of all the living.” In a hymn of invocation, the 6th-century BC lyric poet, Alcaeus, refers to Hera as “mother of all.” As the first wife, the Greeks worshipped Hera as the goddess of marriage; as the first mother, the Greeks worshipped her as the goddess of childbirth. Both the Judeo-Christian tradition and the Greek religious tradition insist that their respective first couples came out of an ancient paradise with a serpent-entwined fruit tree. Two opposite spiritual standpoints—the former looking to the Creator as the source of truth, and the latter looking to the serpent for it—share the same factual basis.

The Hesperides, the nymphs who tend to the ancient garden, its tree, its apples, and its serpent, get their name from Hespere in Greek, which means evening, signifying the West where the sun sets. This matches the Genesis account which describes civilization developing to the east of Eden. A return to Eden would mean traveling west. The Greeks put the Garden of the Hesperides in the Far West.

https://www.ancient-origins.net/human-origins-religions/garden-hesperides-021562

[Haggard Celine]

1. Interesting site!

I think I like the Greek story better. The serpent was wise and was a helper to humanity, like Prometheus. The whole Original Sin concept that came from the Garden of Eden story is so harmful, I think.