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Is this the Book of Numbers?? // Jackson Riddle

 As I read through this "brief" list of how the ancient gods came to be and their lineage, I was immediately reminded of the book of Numbers in the Bible, when God told Moses to get "a census of all the congregation of the people of Israel . . . all in Israel who are able to go to war, you and Aaron shall list them, company by company" (Numbers 1:2-3). While I'm hesitant to say that the Bible can be boring, I think some of you can agree with me that this book of the Bible dragged on quite a bit, not unlike this passage. 

One thing that also caught my attention was Rhea's efforts to hide the birth of Zeus from her husband Kronos, who was busy eating his offspring because of his awareness that he was fated to be brought down by his own child. I mentioned this before in a separate blog post, but how is it that these immortal, supposedly omniscient beings, are able to be deceived? Similarly to how Zeus was seduced by Hera in The Iliad to further her ulterior motives, Kronos is deceived by his wife Rhea so that Zeus can be birthed and can one day fulfill his destiny. I just find it interesting that the ancient Greeks believed that the same gods who could easily be manipulated and tricked were the gods that held the ultimate authority over their world, thus contradicting their supposed "all-power". 


Edit: I commented on Clabo's post and Hailey Morgan's post.


Comments

  1. Micah PowersOctober 20, 2020 at 8:39 AM

    I love this thought process. Ultimately what it comes down to is that any fallible god is not in fact a God. I am reminded of the line from Ivan Vanko in Iron man II, "If you could make god bleed, People will cease to believe in him." We see later on in avengers infinity war Iron man draws a drop of blood. I know that is slightly unrelated but it gave Tony Stark a hope to defeat Thanos. In Christianity we have this picture of our God the father as absolutely infallible and undefeated, which is absolutely true, but we see Jesus submit to death accepting our punishment then rising in defeat of death unlike any man. We saw our God bleed but by his bloodshed we are redeemed. It is an interesting thing to dig into and it would take many books to truly understand. Frankly I don't completely understand the dichotomy of God dying yet being immortal but I think it kind of reflects my other comment on what death truly is; separation from the Father of all.

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