CLA 10 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Ziusudra, Pessimism, Atra-Hasis
Document Summary
Why do we suffer: near eastern myths, humans explicitly created as servants to the gods, babylonian, enuma elish (marduk) (> 1100 bce) I will mash blood together and bones / and make a primeval human: human shall be its name. / their purpose will to be to serve the gods, that they might be at ease! (tablet vi: hebrew account, genesis (400 bce, dust of the earth plus the breath of life from the creator (2. 7) The lord god took the man and put him in the garden of eden to till it and keep it. (2. 15) There is no account of the origin of mortals in hesiod (a striking omission), though there are stories about man: other, later sources generally identify prometheus as the creator of mortals (roman: ovid, metamorphoses) In other accounts, zeus and other gods are responsible. Prometheus ( forethought, thief, trickster) is the son of the titans, and so he is as old as zeus.
