In his 2019 monograph, Greek Myth and the Bible, Bruce Louden argues that:
This study will argue
that Israel’s oral tradition and scribal culture were not only acquainted with
but were also influenced and shaped by ancient Greek culture. . . . I have
argued elsewhere that the Odyssey, with its variety of settings and
episodes, offered instances of several types of myth that proved germane to the
interests of the scribal tradition behind the Hebrew bible. The recognition
scenes in Joseph’s myth (Gen 42-46), which are the same specific subtype of
recognition found elsewhere only in the Odyssey, postponed recognition,
are written in response to those in the Odyssey (See discussion in
Louden, Homer’s Odyssey and the Near East [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2011], 72-96). The Book of Jonah can be seen as a brief
parodic version of key motifs from the Odyssey, those associated with
“the fantastic voyage,” and with the divine council between Zeus and Poseidon
in Book 13 (Ibid.: 164-79). The depictions of theoxeny in Genesis 18 and 19
have so many specific correspondences with those in the Odyssey that
again it appears likely that they have been consulted as a rubric of sorts.
Saul’s consultation with the Witch of End-dor (1 Sam 28) has the same sequence
of motifs as those the Odyssey presents in Odysseus’ encounter with
Circe, and subsequent trip to the Underworld (Books 10-11). When Joshua sends
two spies to consult Rahab in Jericho (Josh 2), the narrative follows the exact
contours of Odysseus’ disguised entrance into Troy and safe reception by Helen
(4.242-58). When Jacob wrestles “the man” at the riverbank (Gen 32.22-32), the
Hebrew Bible turns to a common genre of Greek myth, a hero wrestling a river
god, but especially the subtype presented in Odyssey 4, when Menelaus
wrestles the sea god Proteus and receives a blessing (4.351-586). Perhaps the
most detailed correspondences of all those between the crew’s rebellion against
Odysseus and desecration of Helios’ cattle on Thrinakia in Odyssey 12
and Exodus 32. (Bruce Louden, Greek Myth and the Bible [Routledge
Monographs in Classical Studies; Oxford: Routledge, 2019], 2, 3)
Two examples in support of his thesis are:
Castration of the
father
The only other event
in which Japheth plays a role is the bizarre episode in Genesis 9:20-27 in
which his brother Ham sees Noah’s genitals, when the father is passed out,
drunk, in his tent. The episode, in its present form, is enigmatic and resists
attempts at convincing analysis and interpretation, other than the specific
outcome: a curse placed on the Canaanites because Canaan s Ham’s son. Here is
Alter’s translation (1996),
[Noah] exposed
himself within his tent. And Ham . . . saw his father’s nakedness and told his
two brothers outside. And Shem and Japheth took a cloak and put it over both
their shoulders and walked backward and covered their father’s nakedness, their
faces turned backward so they did not see their father’s nakedness. And Noah
woke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him.
Noah then pronounces
a curse, not on Ham, but on Ham’s son, Canaan, while bestowing blessings on
Japheth and Shem.
Alter (40), noting
some of the episode’s notorious inconsistencies, connects the passage both with
Hesiod and with the rather Hesiodic account of its race of heroes at Genesis
6:1-4,
Like the story of the
Nephilim, this episode alludes cryptically to narrative material that may have
been familiar to the ancient audience but must have seemed to the monotheistic
writer dangerous to spell out . . . Ham, the perpetrator of the act of
violation, is mysteriously displaced in the curse by his son Canaan, and the
whole story is made to justify the . . . subject status of the Canaanites in
relation to the descendants of Shem . . . (Ham figures now as the youngest
son, not the middle one). No one has ever figured out what exactly it is that
Ham does to Noah. Some commentators, as early as the classical Midrash, have
glimpsed here a Zeus Chronos [sic] story in which the son castrates the
father, or, alternatively, penetrates him sexually . . . Lot’s daughters, of
course, take advantage of his drunkenness to have sex with him.
While Alter here
confuses the generations involved in Hesiod’s castration account, other
scholars have nonetheless come to similar conclusions in their attempts to
understand the episode and its aftermath.
From these and other
inconsistencies, many commentators assume Genesis 9:20-27 is an abbreviated
excerpt from a longer tale, which the authors of Genesis have altered and
adapted to make the resultant version verse their own narrative purpose:
providing an etiology for a curse on the Canaanites. Independent of any
possible correspondence with the Theogony, the Talmud (b.
Sanhedrin 70a) suggests that Ham originally committed a much greater offence,
as Alter hints that he castrated Noah or sexually abused him (partly based on
parallels between the phrase “and he saw,” which at Gen 34:2 is used of Shechem
violating Dinah) . . . In Hesiod, of course, Iapetos’ youngest brother Kronos does
castrate his father Ouranos (Theogony 159-210), while Iapetos has also
committed unspecified offences for which he is punished in Tartaros (Iliad
8.478-81). Chantraine (453) derives the name from ιαπτω, “Iancer
atteindre, blesser, lacérer . . . Seul terme apparenté Ιαπετος ‘celui
qui est projeté.’” If Chantraine is correct, Iapetos’ very name alludes to his
punishment (somewhat as does Pentheus), as in Hesiod’s use of the verb ιαπτω at Catalogue
of Women, frag. 204.118: πολλας Αιδηι κεφαλας απο χαλκον ιαψειν, and in the Iliad’s proem, πολλας δ’ιφθιμους ψυχας Αιδι προιαψεν (1.3).
When Noah wakens, “And
Noah woke from his wine and he knew what his youngest son had done to him,” he
places the curse not on Ham, now the youngest son, but Ham’s son Canaan. This
leads Speiser to wonder (62), “Have two divergent traditions been fused?.” In
the Theogony, Kronos, who castrates his father Ouranos, is the
youngest of his brothers. But Iapetos, as we have seen, is also associated with
some unstipulated kind of wrongdoing, and of the four sons he and his wife
Klymene produce, three of them are also subject to severe punishment: Atlas,
Menoitios (who seems most like Ham: Theog. 514-16: υβριστην . . . ατασθαλιης τε και ηνορεης υπεροπλου), and more famously,
Prometheus, whom Hesiod refers to eight times as “Son of Iapetos.”
Ion and Javan
Japheth’s other main
function, as is also true of Shem and Ham, is to be the father of several sons.
It is at this point that Genesis most explicitly demonstrates awareness of
Greek myth. In the Table of Nations that immediately follows the incident in
Noah’s tent, Genesis lists Japheth’s four sons as Gomer, Magog, Madai, and
Javan (Gen 10:2, 4). As noted, Javan is the same eponym as the Greek Ion (from
*Ιαρων). The name has widespread, international circulation from very early
times. Chantraine cites a Mycenaen form: “iawone.” It is in the Iliad,
Ιαονες, 13.685, as Brown notes (82), and was also current in ancient India,
found frequently as Yavanas, in the Mahabhârata, Speiser, noting the
larger parallels and overlap between the name Japheth and Iapetos, concludes
(65), “It is significant, therefore, that the descendants of Japheth includes
the Ionians.”
Javan, in turn, has
four sons (Gen 10:4): Elishash, Tarshish, Kittim, and Rodanim. Genesis
continues, as explanation (10:5), “From these the peoples of the coasts and
islands separated into their own countries” (Suggs et al. 1992, Oxford Study
Bible). Speiser (66) explains that Elishah corresponds to Alashiya, another
name for Cyprus, Kittim corresponds to Kition, a Greek city also on Cyprus,
whole Rodanim clearly designates the inhabitants of Rhodes. According to
Euripides, and larger Greek traditions (See especially P. J. Rhodes, A Commentary
on the Aristotelian [Athenaion Politeia; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981],
66-70), Ion also has four son. Athena explains near the end of Euripides’ play (1575-78),
“For, from him four sons, born from one root, will bequeath their names to the
land, and the people by tribe.” Ion is a few generations from Iapetos
(Prometheus: Deukalion: Hellen: Xouthos: Ion), according to Apollodorus.
(Ibid., 40-42)
While Louden does stretch at times, the
overall case of his book shows that a knowledge of Greeks and Greek culture was
known in the pre-exilic era. Why is this significant? It is another nail in the
coffin that the presence of purportedly Greek names in the Book of Mormon is an
anachronism. For more, see:
Notes on Greek names in the Book of Mormon
Allegedly Anachronistic Greek Words in the Book of Mormon
Pre-exilic Pottery Fragments from Naukratis
Benjamin J. Noonan on Pre-Exilic Contact between Israelites and Greeks
The Presence of Greek Merchants on the Eastern Mediterranean in Pre-Exilic Times
