Theism-mysticism annotation

     Hesiod’s Works and Days is traditionally interpreted as bearing out Zeus and his Olympians as the ultimate principles in the world. This view is in accordance with the development related in the earlier Theogony whereby Zeus, although born in time unlike the Judeo-Christian Yahweh/Elohim, eventually overthrows other gods to emerge as the ruler of the universe. This article argues that, on the contrary, the later poem exhibits varying conceptions of deity as its argument develops. First, its view of the Olympians themselves ranges from the Homeric anthropomorphic conception to more impersonal principles responsible for such matters as weather, thus constituting one aspect of the world among others with which the poem’s addressee/protagonist must deal. Second, some of the primordial principles arising in the early stages of the Theogony’s theogony re-emerge in such a way that they underlie portions of the later poem, and are not treated there as if they were under Zeus’s control.

 

Back to writings page.