Talking About Religion and Culture
A Divine Model
Educating ourselves about religion is an important step toward achieving civil peace in a theologically diverse world. But do religious texts themselves provide a model for a harmonious society? In his current research, Stephen Scully, an associate professor in the Department of Classical Studies, finds just such a paradigm in the Theogony of the ancient Greek poet Hesiod. The Theogony, written around 700 b.c.e., is believed to be the oldest of the Greeks' origin myths. Its story traces the birth of the gods from their beginnings in Chaos and Earth to the ascendancy of Zeus, the king of the gods, and his many children. But in an upcoming book, Hesiod's “Theogony”: From Babylonian Creation Myths to Milton's “Paradise Lost,” Scully presents the argument that within the mythological story of the origin of Olympus can be found a paradigm for the human polis—the city or society. Zeus creates, in Olympus, a civic space free from the elements of conflict, as represented by Night and Discord (Eris) and their children, who include Quarrels (Neikea), Lies (Pseudea), and Bad Governance (Dysnomia).
Scully's earliest academic interest was urban studies—as an undergraduate at New York University, he intended to become a civic planner—and his fascination with cities is evident in his current work. “The Theogony is a city-state creation myth,” he says. “These stories both map out and explain, in their mythic form, the necessity of separating the human and the divine from the biological and nature, of taming and socializing anarchic eros to create places of harmony.”
Humans themselves are all but absent from the Theogony, but readers do learn that the Muses give a sacred gift to the Zeus-nurtured human kings: “honeyed voices” to quell quarrels and dispense justice, bringing social harmony to a discordant civic sphere. “That's the divine gift: this new capacity for harmony in the civic structure, the agora,” Scully says.
“A polytheistic religion looks to questions of harmony among the gods.... And of course that's human beings' concern, too: How do we share power?”
Polytheism, he argues, is an excellent model for the building of a city-state, because the main concern of a polytheistic theology is the distribution of authority. In monotheism, the relationship between God and man is primary; it is a hierarchical domain in which questions of obedience are all-important. But central to a polytheistic world are the potentially conflicting relations among power-hungry beings. “Each of the gods and goddesses of the earth and sky, and all the realms in between, wants to know how his or her share of power will be realized,” Scully explains. “So a polytheistic religion looks to questions of harmony among the gods—that is, of the integration of power.”
In his book, Scully examines the Theogony in the context of such texts as the Babylonian creation poem Enuma Elish, the Book of Genesis, Plato's Republic, and Milton's Paradise Lost. In doing so, he seeks to open readers' eyes to how the study of a polytheistic culture can give us new ways of thinking about our own societies. “The Greeks don't provide the answers, but they can reorient us; they can sharpen our questions,” he says. “Hesiod's Zeus creates a generous and inclusive, though problematic, way of sharing governance. And of course that's human beings' concern, too: How do we share power?”
For more information, see www.bu.edu/classics/faculty/profiles/scully.html.
