Ante: formerly, at the first.
The account which Ovid gives of the creation, derived from tradition and the writings of the earlier poets, agrees in many respects with the Mosaic account as far as the general conceptualization. He begins the narration with a word similar in meaning to the word at the commencement of Genesis, which means the first in place, time, order or rank. It conveys the meaning of firstfruit or the principle thing.1 The creation is the entrance into the universe of time, space, and matter by the Word of God. The Hebrew word that is translated into English as In the beginning by the King James Authorized Version and is transliterated as reshiyth is
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Genesis 1:1
The very next word in the account of creation in Genesis is the English word God. It is from the Hebrew word transliterated as Elohyim which can mean gods or the God. The translators of the Bible and Hebrew scholars are in agreement upon this usage of the word to refer to the One revealed to us as Yahweh consistently throughout the Torah, unless it is evident from context and syntax that gods are referred to. Translating elohyim as gods consistently ends up not making sense with the testimony of the revelation of God being Yahweh. The work of German theologians in seminaries that adopted the Higher Criticism approach to the Bible paved the way for nonsensical interpretations. One theory based on socio-anthropological theory compartmentalizes humans in such a way as to suggest there was no continuity to history that those who called God Yahweh were viewed as a separate race, where race explains the revelation of the Bible rather than the fact God delivered the witness of who He is to us through Moses. This approach seemingly demands that people could not know from one generation to the next any former knowledge. The approach taken here is that normative conclusions can be arrived at in reading the story in the poem of Ovid through explication and that the Bible is subject to the same normative approach taking into context history.
The account in Genesis says that God created the heaven and the earth. Ovid and other writers are not straightforward in this sense as to the relationship of the genesis of its creation and who is the Creator as well as creator. It may be that it was understood that God created the universe, but more significantly the Bible gives the story from God's point of view, from the relationship of mankind to Him and His interaction with mankind. The story of Ovid and other ancient writers see God as remote oftentimes and the various gods, goddesses, and demigods as being more involved as personifications of the things they also represent. The ancients wrote more about the kosmos in relation to mankind and the various deities. The Biblical view recognizes that there are deities but they are only considered deities by man, they are not gods from Yahweh's point of view as equal to Him.
In the beginning of the creation of all things,
the heavens and the earth had the same form and appearance,
their natures mixed together.
Diodorus Siculus
Tellus: The earth is produced from chaos in all the Cosmogonies of the ancients.
CÏlum: The Latin word for Heaven is from the Greek word meaning to be concave.
Unus vultus: The ancients believed that all of the elements were combined.
Orbe: All of the elements were conceptualized as being in one place according to Ovid, Euripides, and Dionysius Longinus.
Quem dixere Chaos: Which we call Chaos, Ovid uses the word chaos which is the cognate for the Greek word meaning to be open as an abyss, a void.
Ovid therefore sets up the model of creation based on matter that is without a specific internal form having one locus within a void.
The foundation was a confused chaos from whence the four elements were separated, and living creatures made.
Laertius
In that egg the great power sat inactive a whole year of the creation, at the close of which he caused the egg to divide itself. And from its two divisions he framed the heaven above and the earth beneath.
Institutes of Menu
Where eldest Night
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal anarchy
John Milton
In the Serpent Mound in Ohio the serpent is laid out with an egg, the serpent being the archetype of chaos, the abyss, anarchy, and the Sumerian and Biblical Rahab. This symbol is found in many cultures. Today people in some areas of the world associate Satan, or the Evil One with enjoying eating eggs. On a common everyday level, in fact, snakes like to eat eggs. The egg represents the matter created by God from which the universe came and to us more specifically, it can refer to only the earth. The god Loki is a mischief maker, a trickster, and is representative of an archetype in many cultures. Satan is a kind of jokester who appears in the Garden of Eden and is represented as a serpent. The word Loki is from two Sumerian words Lo which means swallow and Ki, the word for earth. The idea that the void, the abyss, Chaos, the Serpent, the Rahab, or Loki could reclaim the earth from which it came is intimated by logic upon considering the plain representation in the Bible. This is declared as a fact in the whole of the Bible from the story of creation to the Parousia and is present in cultures worldwide from the earliest of times. As the Rahab can be thought of in the same sense as a coiled serpent striking the earth so too other beings that could inflict harm were feared. The celestial wonders that include bolide storms that would look like a coiled serpent with comet impact incurring great destruction in an area caused people to consider such occurrences with fear. The Greeks feared to name Pluto directly and mentioned him by one of many descriptive titles, such as `Host of Many', this can be compared to the Christian use of O DIABOLOS or our `Evil One' in seriousness of evil and harm.2 The symbols used to get this idea across express a worldview of the cosmogonies based on early astronomical observations. Ovid relies on tradition and poetry which is in turn based on the stories carried to Europe by migrating people from Mesopotamia. The Hesiod is a series of poems most likely written after migration of peoples to Anatolia and Crete. The Evil One not mentioned by name for fear sprang upon the daughter of Demeter, Persephone, and carried her away. Being that he hung about in places like Hell a lot of the time and was something of a trickster, he seems a terror. The ancients thought the earth was molten in the center, and it turns out that they were right. Pluto has something of chaos and formless harm and for that reason it makes sense that he is a reminder of the kind of eternal death spent in the abyss as he is compatible with it.
Apart from Demeter, lady of the golden sword and glorious fruits, she was playing with the deep-bosomed daughters of Oceanus and gathering flowers over a soft meadow, roses and crocuses and beautiful violets, irises also and hyacinths and the narcissus, which Earth made to grow at the will of Zeus and to please the Host of Many, to be a snare for the bloom-like girl -- a marvellous, radiant flower. It was a thing of awe whether for deathless gods or mortal men to see: from its root grew a hundred blooms and is smelled most sweetly, so that all wide heaven above and the whole earth and the sea's salt swell laughed for joy. And the girl was amazed and reached out with both hands to take the lovely toy; but the wide-pathed earth yawned there in the plain of Nysa, and the lord, Host of Many, with his immortal horses sprang out upon her -- the Son of Cronos, He who has many names...Hesiod
The Greeks were not anxious to even name him and realized he was what we call the Prince of the power of the air and a host of many, demons in other words, those closer to having the characteristics of chaos and eternal death than of mankind. Even Demeter was not crazy about these people. Notice the anti-hero Pluto is the Son of Cronos, the son of time, an evil and at least a very harmful part of creation. Here we see another aspect of the Evil One and relationship of the serpent with the Devil has its roots in chaos, the dissembling of all order and creation. Once in the clutches of the Host of Many the heroine seems lost to the gods.
He caught her up reluctant on his golden car and bare her away lamenting. Then she cried out shrilly with her voice, calling upon her father, the Son of Cronos, who is most high and excellent. But no one, either of the deathless gods or of mortal men, heard her voice, nor yet the olive-trees bearing rich fruit: only tender-hearted Hecate, bright-coiffed, the daughter of Persaeus, heard the girl from her cave, and the lord Helios, Hyperion's bright son, as she cried to her father, the Son of Cronos. But he was sitting aloof, apart from the gods, in his temple where many pray, and receiving sweet offerings from mortal men. So he, that Son of Cronos, of many names, who is Ruler of Many and Host of Many, was bearing her away by leave of Zeus on his immortal chariot -- his own brother's child and all unwilling.
And so long as she, the goddess, yet beheld earth and starry heaven and the strong-flowing sea where fishes shoal, and the rays of the sun, and still hoped to see her dear mother and the tribes of the eternal gods, so long hope calmed her great heart for all her trouble.... ((LACUNA)) ....and the heights of the mountains and the depths of the sea rang with her immortal voice: and her queenly mother heard her.
Bitter pain seized her heart, and she rent the covering upon her divine hair with her dear hands: her dark cloak she cast down from both her shoulders and sped, like a wild-bird, over the firm land and yielding sea, seeking her child. But no one would tell her the truth, neither god nor mortal men; and of the birds of omen none came with true news for her. Then for nine days queenly Deo wandered over the earth with flaming torches in her hands, so grieved that she never tasted ambrosia and the sweet draught of nectar, nor sprinkled her body with water. But when the tenth enlightening dawn had come, Hecate, with a torch in her hands, met her, and spoke to her and told her news:
`Queenly Demeter, bringer of seasons and giver of good gifts, what god of heaven or what mortal man has rapt away Persephone and pierced with sorrow your dear heart? For I heard her voice, yet saw not with my eyes who it was. But I tell you truly and shortly all I know.'
Hesiod
The idea of the occult being hidden knowledge is related to the abduction story of Persephone. The mysteries of the occult are a different matter and relate to Pluto. The mysteries of Paul refers to the revelation to man things God did not reveal until it was the right time. There is a big difference.
It is this kind of thing that caused the Children of Israel to be sent into captivity and it is the exact kind of thing that will result in the Great Destruction. Here again the thesis and anti-thesis of good and evil can find root in the first few line of Genesis are related to chaos.
It appears that the story Ovid relates in his poetry reveals the different worldviews having either more or less aspects of scientifically derived observations and the symbology that later came into written proto-language represented by ideograms, written hybridized ideogrammatic alphabets, and finally written alphabetic language. Ovid's poetry represents written language that no longer carried with it the kind of written language that demanded the person visualize and associate a person or thing with a specific symbol. Language written in petroglyphs were pictures that conveyed a rational idea or explanation represented by a specific figure. The use of words made up of those letter that were once pictures to represent the mental image is different because how we process information matters to how we view reality. A personification of chaos reclaiming the creation by a serpent swallowing an egg represents the same objective reality. The Bible is different in that it conveys the objective reality and is the direct revelation of God, the creation story being presented by Moses by the agency of the Holy Spirit. Satan is the adversary of mankind, the enemy of men's souls and recognized as a being. His role of trickster is introduced as he interacts with Eve and he is called the serpent. We find later in the Bible that he is associated eventually with chaos where no life exists, but chaos or the void is presented in language as objective reality. In the Bible, God brought time, space, and matter from that in which no life exists. Hebrews get across the idea of nothingness associated with the gods of the pagans because of their association with this objective reality, namely their destination. The Bible goes on to reveal that only one-third of the Hosts of Heaven are evil having rebelled with the Light Bearer and being cast out. The Holy Angels are different and do not have the taint of chaos and rebellion. In some way anarchy and chaos in the physical relates to the mental and spiritual state that is harmful.
The biblical story of creation depends on the reader knowing about the previous creation stories and refers to them in the way it is written. The Bible is distinct in that it is the revelation of God, uncovering His viewpoint making distinctions between the spiritual hierarchy of things that are separate from time, space, and matter. Unlike other stories, God is not from that which was created and He is eternal and created all things including the gods (elohyim).
From Chaos both Erebus and black Night were born.
Hesiod
It is remarkable, that Moses, speaking of the division of time before the creation of the sun, "The evening and the morning were the first day," uses the word Ereb for evening, from which evidently is derived the Erebus of Hesiod. In the biblical account of creation God says that each part of creation is good. We know from the Bible and we know from science as well that all things in this creation tend to disorder, corruption, rust, and death of one sort or another. The universe is expanding or the space between matter is getting greater, however you prefer to view it, and it is less like the original egg of matter that it was at the beginning; meat rots, iron rusts to FeO2, and is no longer iron; people age and die. As soon as things were created God took the time to say that they are good, making a point of the difference between creation and chaos. He created the earth and it is good but He does not point out for our benefit that destruction to or the chaos from which destruction will return us to is good because it is not.
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Genesis 1:31
...to be continued
In order to keep myself sane, since I hate footnotes, the primary source of the explication is in black type and my additions are in gray type.
Primary Explication SourceNathan Covington Brooks, The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidius Naso, A. S. Barnes and Burr, New York, 1860
1 James Strong, New Strong’s Dictionary of Hebrew and Greek Words [computer file], electronic ed., Logos Library System, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson) 1997, ©1996.