Tag: gods

You Guys, Theseus’s Father-Hunger is Breaking My Heart

On By Jennifer Mugrage1 Comment

I read The King Must Die back in university. My education up to that point had some gaping holes, but I had been privileged to attend a school one time where they spent an entire year getting us thoroughly familiar with Greek myths and history. My point is, I knew the story of Theseus. I knew the labyrinth and the Minotaur were the main event. And I was eager to get to them. So I moved through the first part of the book at a pretty good clip, the part that tells of Theseus’ childhood in Troizen, his coming of age, and his journey across the Peloponnesian Peninsula to find his father, the king of Athens.

I thought then, and still think now, that Theseus is not an especially likeable character to modern eyes. He’s a prince of Heroic Age Greek culture, and he is, as they say, a product of his time. He is proud, ambitious, pious towards the gods, stoic, brave, and clever (those are his virtues), and also snobby, entitled, callous, cruel, sexist, and promiscuous. He has all the virtues of ancient paganism, but none of the virtues a Christian man. You can’t endorse all his actions or even his value system. (By the way, that is exactly what makes this such a fantastic historical novel.) But despite all this, there are moments in his story that ring incredibly poignant. And these are moments that I either forgot since my first reading, or missed entirely.

You want to hear about the Minotaur? Let me tell you about a son and his father.

Theseus’s grandfather is king in Troizen, a small Greek kingdom on the east coast of the Peloponnesian Peninsula (or what they call the Isle of Pelops). His mother, a princess, had him when she was a teenager. She lives, still unmarried, in the palace, and serves as a priestess of the Mother, who is goddess left over from before the Greeks arrived, whom they feel they must give her due.

Theseus’s mother has always told him that he is the son of Poseidon. Theseus takes this seriously as a little child. He views the sacred horse, also called a son of Poseidon, as his brother. He whispers “Are you there, Father?” into the sacred well that sometimes grumbles when Poseidon is stirred up. But as he gets a little older, he sees that other people doubt he has a divine father. He becomes defensive.

Truly “god-got” children are known to be really tall, and Theseus has always been small for his age. He waits and waits to grow (he hopes to be six or seven feet tall). He develops “short man syndrome,” taking daring risks in order to prove himself in front of the other boys. He is the best at every sport except for Hellene-style wrestling, because that requires mass and weight.

Once, he even swims way out into the ocean, figuring either Poseidon will prove he is his father, or Theseus will welcome a death by drowning. The current sweeps him back to the island, and he figures he has his answer.

Then Theseus turns seventeen, and his mother shows him the rock that his father said he should try to raise in order to prove whose son he is. So, it wasn’t Poseidon after all.

Theseus tries and can’t raise it by brute strength. He is broken, furious with his mother who won’t tell him anything.

But eventually, he realizes that he can raise it with a lever. That’s when he finds the sword.

His grandfather tells him the story, which is full of the tragedy, ugliness and beauty of ancient paganism is and basically a mini novel within this novel. There was a plague, a drought. Apollo claimed not to be responsible. Poseidon wasn’t answering. Finally, the priestess said it was the Mother. “A virgin must go and wait in the myrtle-house and give herself to the first man who comes along.” The priestess disliked Theseus’s mother, because she was an attractive young girl. His grandfather couldn’t see a way to get her out of this.

But it happened that Aigeus, the thirtysomething king of Athens, was visiting Troizen. He agreed with Theseus’s grandfather that he would be the man. At least the princess would lose her virginity to someone she had met before, and he would be kind and gentle with her. They could not tell her about this arrangement beforehand, because when a member of the royal family is in some way sacrificing themselves for the people, their willingness to make the sacrifice is a critical element. Only then will the god bless it.

The thunderstorm was already arriving. Aigeus stripped and swam across the channel to the sacred island where the Myrtle House was. A flash of lightning revealed to the princess a dark-haired man rising up out of the water, with a ribbon of seaweed on his shoulder. She thought he was Poseidon. She knelt, and crossed her arms over her chest, as one would do for a god.

Why didn’t he wait for the boat? Why did he jump into unknown waters, in a rainstorm, and swim across? Was Poseidon indeed possessing him? say these pagans. Who knows?

Theseus is disappointed, but intrigued, to find out that he has a human father. He travels over the Isthmus (a dangerous and lawless place), gets entangled with the earth-mother-worshipping people of Eleusis, which is very creepy, and eventually makes it to Athens and reveals himself to his father, narrowly escaping being assassinated first.

On the map above, if you look around the Saronic Gulf, you can see Troezen on the south side, Athens on the north side, and Eleusis just a bit west of Athens. I wish I’d had this map 25 years ago, when I first read the book.

Aigeus has no other sons. He is thunderstruck and delighted to see Theseus.

There’s not exactly hugging and crying, because both of them are proud, aristocratic, cautious men. On the whole, Aigeus probably wears his feelings closer to the surface than Theseus does. Still, they start getting to know each other.

Theseus’s birthday is approaching. Aigeus wants to have a feast for him. Theseus suggests sending to Troizen to bring his mother for the feast, but Aigeus dismisses this plan. If they wait, the time will get too close to “the tribute” (the sending of young men and women to Crete), and he doesn’t want to be celebrating his long-lost son when some of his subjects have just had to give up theirs.

It’s at this point that the reader who knows the outline of the story realizes that Theseus and his father are not going to have much more time together.

The day of the feast comes. Aigeus gifts Theseus a chariot, “of dark polished cypress-wood, with ivory inlays and silver-bound wheels, a craftsman’s masterpiece.”

It was a gift beyond my dearest wish. I thank him on one knee, putting his hand to my brow; but he said, “Why this haste, before you have seen the horses?”

They were matched blacks, with white-blazed foreheads; strong and glossy, sons of the north wind. My father said, “Aha, we slipped them up here, as neat as Hermes the Trickster lifting Apollo’s steers. The chariot while you were in Eleusis; and the horses this very morning, while you still slept.”

He rubbed his hands together. I was touched at his taking all this care to surprise me, as if I had been a child. “We must take them out,” I said. “Father, finish your business early, and I will be your charioteer.” We agreed that after the rites, we would drive to Paionia below Hymettos.

pp. 154 – 155

In case you missed it, Aigeus just gave his son a sports car.

After the rites, Theseus goes to the stables and waits and waits for his father. When the king does show up, he seems to have forgotten their plan to take a ride. He is stressed out by something. He urges Theseus to ride by himself, but to leave by the back gate.

The reader realizes, with a sinking feeling, that the representatives from Crete have come early to collect the youths and maidens for the tribute.

Aigeus, almost in tears, is trying to get Theseus away from there. But Theseus, too sharp not to realize something is wrong and too proud to be hustled out the back, quickly finds out what is happening and insists on entering the deadly lottery.

And now, the reader realizes that they are never, ever going to take that chariot ride.

The youths and maidens of Athens are chosen by putting their names on scraps of pottery, which are then drawn at random out of a bowl. Aigeus puts in a lot for his son, on which he has surreptitiously written some other youth’s name. But Theseus, standing among the crowd, realizes what has happened when he sees that his father is not worried. What should he do? Should he let the deception stand? Or should he stride forward and insist on being among those who are sacrificed?

I thought, “What was it? What has my father done? What every father would do if he could. And he is King. He has to think for the kingdom. It is true enough that I am needed here. I ought not to think like a warrior only. Has someone else gone to Crete for me? I have led such lads to war, and never thought I wronged them, though some were sure to die. Why then do I hate my father, and myself still more, and feel I cannot bear my life?”

I looked at my father, and remembered how he had invoked Poseidon, praying him to choose the victims. And I thought, “Yes! That is it! He has mocked the god, the guardian of the house, who brought him to beget me. Well may I be angry! This man has mocked my father.”

p. 163

Theseus begins praying his heart to Poseidon. He senses that the god wants him to go to Crete. It is time to make the sacrifice.

Sorrow fell black upon my eyes and the sun grew cold. I thought of what I had planned to do in Athens: small things I had to hoped to force my father’s hand to, great ones when my own time came. I knelt where I was, with my hair hiding my face, and thought of my life; of hunting with the Guard, of feasts and dances, of my room with the lion walls; of a woman I wanted, and had meant to speak to at the festival; of my beautiful horses, who had scarcely felt my hand; of the war paean, the bright rage of battle, and the triumph song. And I thought, “The god cannot mean it. He sent me here to be king.”

“Father Poseidon,” I whispered, “take something else from me. I will not ask to live long, if I can make a name and be remembered in Athens. Now it will be as if I had never been born.” I heard the name called of some Athenian. It was the last of the seven. “Lord Poseidon, I will give you my horses, the best I ever had. Take anything but this.”

The sea-sound grew fainter in my ears. And I thought, “The god is leaving me.”

p. 164

So off he goes. Rather than lose the unction of the god to rule, Theseus insists on going to Crete, where, he has been told, bull-dancers last six months at the most.

“Don’t grieve, Athenians. The god is sending me. He has called me to the bulls, and I must obey his sign. But don’t weep for me, I will come again.” I did not know these words till I had spoken them; they came to me from the god. “I will go with your children, and take them into my hand. They shall be my people.”

They had left off weeping, and their voices sank to a hush. I turned, and faced my father.

I saw the face of a man who has got his death-wound.

p. 165

I mean!

Till We Have Faces: A Book Review

On By Jennifer Mugrage3 Comments

Friends, I have had a harrowing experience.

I read Till We Have Faces.

Again.

That’s right, this wasn’t even a first-time read, and it destroyed me. Again. Maybe worse this time.

It’s tempting to do a super detailed book review, including an analysis of all the ancient customs, the Bible Easter eggs, and the symbolism. (My God, the symbolism!) But I’m not going to do that, because I really think you should read it if at all possible. And, even though this book is possibly more powerful on re-reads, I still don’t want to ruin your first read with spoilers.

Any analysis I gave, would be less of an immersive experience than the story itself, because that is the power of fiction.

I will just say a few things about the setting and genre, so you can decide whether to subject yourself to it.

I read TWHF as part of my 2026 “Greco-fiction” project, where I read books set in and/or inspired by the Heroic Age of Greece. When I mentioned this project to someone, they suggested Till We Have Faces. They were right, of course, though I hadn’t put it in the same category in my mind as, say, The Song of Achilles.

The action takes place in a fictional country called Glome. Based upon hints in the text, Glome is located somewhere just south or just north of the Caucasus Mountains, between the Black and Caspian seas. Georgia, Azerbaijan, perhaps southern Russia. Glome is not a mountainous kingdom, but it is near mountains. In the distance, they can see “what we call the sea, though it is nowhere nearly as great as the Great Sea of the Greeks.” This would probably be the Caspian. They are far from Greece, but near enough that they occasionally encounter a Greek captive taken in war. They are near enough to “Phars” (Persia) for that country to present a problem. At one point, the narrative makes a passing mention of “the wagon people, who live beyond the Grey Mountain.” These “wagon people” are probably steppe-dwellers related to the Scythians or Kazaks.

The people of Glome worship a fertility goddess called Ungit, who is embodied in a large irregular black stone that is said to have pushed its way up from the earth. Ungit’s “house” is a group of megaliths joined together with walls. Her worship involves temple prostitution, animal sacrifice, and sometimes human sacrifice, all the usual things that you expect with a fertility religion. Her priest wears a large bird mask on his chest, and dangles with amulets and animal bladders.

The narrator, a little girl named Orual, is frightened of the priest and of Ungit. The story will go on to focus on this fear. Orual very much hopes that the gods are, as her Greek tutor has told her, merely “lies of poets, lies of poets, child.” But are they? Or is there a power in Ungit (and in her son, who dwells on the Grey Mountain) that will leave Orual quite outmatched?

C.S. Lewis is an underrated horror writer. In this story he draws back the curtain on the horror of paganism. We also see, I think, hints of how he himself felt when he was an atheist: desperately hoping there is no spiritual world; uneasily worried that there might be. Relieved, but unsatisfied, by the “clear, shallow” Greek explanations.

So, I’ve said enough. Read it if you dare. I doubt that this year will bring me a better book in the category of Greco-Fiction.

Themes in The King Must Die: Hellenes vs. ‘Shore People’

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment

source: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Farthistoryresources.net%2Fgreek-art-archaeology-2016%2Fgreek-art-archaeology-images%2Fmycenaefemalehead.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=7f3ec109d2b5fa5fc8a646dec84f0413e7fff54487f710be3ff027785a877590

As part of my ongoing, yearlong foray into fiction set in the ancient Mediterranean, I am now re-reading Mary Renault’s The King Must Die. There is so much history and speculation packed into this book, that I make free to do a series of posts on different topics from it, en route to the final book review. So, buckle up! I hope you like ancient historical fiction! (And, since you are visiting Out of Babel Books, I assume you at least don’t hate it!) Today’s topic is Renault’s theme of the two conflicting cultures of Hellenes vs. what they call the “Shore People.”

On the timing of the Theseus story

I have always had the impression that the story of Theseus was one of the older historical myths. It happens when Knossos, on Crete, is still a thriving city. So, in my mind, I put it a few generations before the Iliad. Madeline Miller, author of Circe, seems to agree. In her book, Circe hears of Theseus having killed the Minotaur well before Odysseus comes to land on her island.

If you do the math, Theseus living before the Odyssey would also put him living before Agamemnon returns from the war at Troy and is slaughtered in his bath by his wife, Clytemnestra. In the play Agamemnon (written, of course, much later), Clytemnestra kills her husband in revenge for his having sacrificed their thirteen-year-old daughter before he sailed for Troy, in addition to a couple of other grudges. Like most women, I find it hard not to think Clytemnestra has a case.

Renault, however, takes a different tack. She has a teenaged Theseus hear the following story from a bard:

The song he gave us was the Lay of Mycenae: how Agamemnon the first High King took the land from the Shore Folk, and married their Queen. But while he was at war she brought back the old religion, and chose another king; and when her lord came home she sacrificed him, though he had not consented. Their son, who had been hidden by the Hellenes, came back when he was a man, to restore the Sky Gods’ worship and avenge the dead. But in his blood was the old religion, to which nothing is holier than a mother. So, when he had done justice, horror sent him mad, and the Night’s Daughters chased him half over the world.

ibid, p. 40 in my copy

So here we have Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, their son Orestes, and the Furies. At the same time, this passage raises some questions.

The Shore People and Their Appearance

The Shore People make their appearance on the very first page of The King Must Die.

Our house is Hellene, sprung from the seed of Ever-Living Zeus. We worship the Sky Gods before Mother Dia and the gods of the earth. And we have never mixed our blood with the blood of the Shore People, who had the land before us.

-ibid, p. 1

As the story progresses, it rapidly becomes obvious that the Hellenes have, in fact, mixed their blood with the blood of the Shore People. There is the story of Agamemnon, above; Theseus is said to be “blonde and blue-eyed like the Hellenes, but small and wiry like the Shore People,” and Theseus, who is very promiscuous, even has a child who “came out small and dark, but so was [his mother’s] brother.”

So we have two populations, one that is native to the Greek coastlands (or at least has been there a long time), and one that came there from the steppes. Theseus’s grandfather explains to him their ethnic history, which he got from his own grandfather:

“Long ago, he said, our people lived in the northland, beyond Olympos. He said, and he was angry when I doubted it, that they never saw the sea. Instead of water they had a sea of grass, which stretched as far as the swallow flies, from the rising to the setting sun. They lived by the increase of their herds, and built no cities; when the grass was eaten, they moved where there was more. … When they journeyed, the barons in their chariots rode round about, guarding the flocks and the women … [Lord Poseidon] told the King Horse, and the King Horse led them. When they needed new pastures, they let him loose; and he, taking care of the people as the god advised him, would smell the air seeking food and water. The barons followed him, to give battle if his passage was disputed; but only the god told him where to go.”

ibid, pp. 16 – 17

This is a description of the Indo-European lifestyle and homeland. The Indo-Europeans took their reverence for the horse, and their wheeled carts and chariots, with them wherever they went, including to Scandinavia. So the Hellenes are Indo-European, and the Shore People, presumably, Hamitic or Semitic.

The mask at the top of this post is Mycenaean. Mycenae is located in the Peloponnesian Peninsula, which is also the location of Troizen, Theseus’s home. The ancient Mycenaean culture, older than classical Greece, took its cues from the Cretan urban culture of the time. In later Greece, you get men wearing himations and women wearing finely woven chitons. This is usually how Helen of Troy, for example, is illustrated. However, she probably looked more like the Mycenaean and Cretan women. Here is someone’s attempt to reconstruct the probable hairstyle and costume of the most beautiful woman in the world:

source: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F7d%2F29%2F38%2F7d293880174568ffd506b49b1f90aefd.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=500d8b11965e5cbdcd1de9286836a9a6b69ab9fcdb46f8991655a2c6648b4ab5

Notice the Egyptian-style, kohl-lined eyes, and the red suns for makeup. Helen might have been blonde, being a Hellene, but her clothing was perhaps more like this.

Here is someone else, reconstructing a traditional Mycenean costume and pose:

source: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2F474x%2Fcf%2F30%2Fde%2Fcf30de47e8298251f9d3ecc2976996ec.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=64a6c835ea102cac25d991e173ec53081fe8af0a6bd70db48b6d80c562988c33

I’m guessing these fashion choices came from the Shore People.

Theseus’s mother is described as wearing this ancient Mycenaean style. She wears a tiered, flounced skirt hung with charms, exposed breasts (what was going on, Crete and Mycenae?) and hair that is curled by the use of “crimping braids” (probably to attain a very curly look for those who do not, like the Shore People, have it naturally). Though a blonde Hellene, she is a priestess of the mother goddess, and so she takes some of her cues from the Shore People, and here is where we find the tension.

The Shore People and Their Religion

Both the Hellenes and the Shore People practice the sacrifice of their kings. However, there is a difference. For the Hellenes, it does not come on a regular schedule. Theseus’s grandfather explains:

“When the work of the King Horse was done, he was given to the god … And in those days, said my great-grandfather, as with the King Horse, so with the King. When the king was dedicated, he knew his moira [i.e. doom]. In three years, or seven, or nine, or whenever the custom was, his term would end and the god would call him. And he went consenting, or else he was no king, and no power would fall on him to lead the people. And the custom changes, Theseus, but the token never. … Later the custom altered. They ceased to offer the King at a set time. They kept him for the extreme sacrifice … And it was no one’s place to say to him, ‘It is time to make the offering.’ He was the nearest to the god, because he had consented to his moira; and he himself received the god’s commandment. And so it is still, Theseus. We know our time. … It is not the sacrifice … it is not the bloodletting that calls down power. It is the consenting, Theseus. The readiness is all.”

ibid. pp. 18 – 19

This might explain why so many kurgan burials are of high-born individuals who seem not to have died of old age.

It also, of course, explains the title of the book.

Meanwhile, it has been established that the Shore People do things a different way: “old laments have come down from the Shore People, of young heroes who love a goddess for a year, and foreknow their deaths” (p. 37). In other words, the Shore People treat their king primarily as the goddess or priestess’s consort, and kill him after just a year.

Marija Gimbutas has tried to make the case that the Shore People practiced a gentle, feminine, goddess-worshipping religion, and that they were cruelly exterminated by the warlike, sky-god worshipping evil Indo-Europeans. Renault is not going to paint with such a broad brush. Realistically, she shows both groups living next to one another and influencing each other. Also, throughout the course of the story, she is going to show by increasingly vivid illustrations that these two cultural systems are absolutely incompatible with each other. And that the mother-worship, in the end, is at least as bloody as the worship of Zeus.

Renault’s take on the story of Agamemnon is a great illustration of this. She interprets the story as a conflict between Clytemnestra’s mother-goddess culture and Agamemnon’s sky-father culture. When Clytemnestra brings back the “old religion,” it means that Agamemnon must die–not in battle, not some day, but now, and actually, yesterday. It means that Orestes is doubly cursed. He has loyalty to both religions, with their incompatible demands, and he is put at the mercy of the furies, the representatives of the goddess-religion. They chase him because he killed his mother, but if we string out the implications, even if he had not, they would probably be chasing him anyway. After all, he is a male heir to the throne, so his days are definitely numbered. Behold, the kindness of the religion of the goddess.

Obviously, there are some universal truths and some redemptive metaphors here, hidden under a thick layer of occultism, war between the sexes, and general pain and suffering for everyone. It is going to take a much greater King than Theseus to cut this difficult knot.

Seasonal Postscript

Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone! Such a romantic post, I realize.

Greco-Fiction: Circe

On By Jennifer Mugrage7 Comments

About the Greco-Fiction

This year, I decided that my fiction focus would be novels inspired by ancient Greek myths. I don’t always pick a fiction focus, but this year, things just coalesced.

In the classical Christian school where I teach, we follow a 4-year “history cycle.” Ancient World, Medieval World, Exploration/Renaissance, Modern World. This year, we are cycling through Ancient, so I have been immersed in the Flood, the Sumerians, Abraham, Egypt, and the Iliad and Odyssey. (Somewhat immersed, of course. We could always immerse ourselves more.)

Revisiting Mycenae and Crete, I remembered that back in university (in the last millennium!) I read what I thought was a fantastic book that was a re-telling of Theseus. Looked it up, and it turns out it was The King Must Die by Mary Renault. And it turns out that Renault has a bunch of other books that I’ve never read. (Back in the last millennium, the way we found books was we stumbled upon them in the library.) So, onto the list went at least a re-read of The King Must Die and its sequel, The Bull from the Sea. I bought myself copies of these for Christmas using my husband’s money, so technically he bought me the copies for Christmas.

Meanwhile, years ago I had won a copy of Circe, and had been waiting to read it until I was ready to stick my head back in the ancient Mediterranean. I’m also aware that Madeline Miller has at least one more book, The Song of Achilles, which is from Patroclos’s point of view. Gay, of course (and that is historically accurate). I decided I might read that, depending upon how I enjoyed or didn’t enjoy Circe. You can write about ancient Greek events from a hard-core feminist/queer perspective, or you can not. I wanted to know first what approach Miller was taking.

Finally, some of my students have been reading Percy Jackson, with the result that they are already quite familiar with the Greek pantheon. I’d known that the Jackson books were out there, so perhaps now is the year when I read at least a few of them. Jackson went onto the list.

Then there are the rereads. Til We Have Faces is C.S. Lewis’s masterpiece, set probably in Scythia or the Caucasus, near the Greeks but not too near. Moving farther from Greece, we have Taliesin, Merlin, and Arthur by Steven R. Lawhead. I read Taliesin in high school. It’s Celtic, not Greek, except that about half the book takes place on Atlantis, with bull dancing and stuff, so I figure that counts. Now, the Daily Wire has made a TV series based on these books. The events of Taliesin take up about an episode and a half. So, if I have time, I’ll reread/read Steven R. Lawhead.

So, here is the list as it stands …

  • Circe
  • The Song of Achilles?
  • The King Must Die
  • The Bull from the Sea
  • other books by Renault?
  • Til We Have Faces
  • at least a couple of Percy Jackson books
  • Taliesin
  • Merlin?
  • Arthur?

This should fulfill the twelve books that I told Goodreads I’m planning on, this year.

In the course of my teaching year, I have already read The Cat of Bubastes with my students, and am now reading Hittite Warrior, which is also very good. Also on the docket is The Young Carthaginian.

So, how was Circe?

I loved this book. It is exactly the genre I like. Miller did a fantastic job keeping track of all the gods, titans, and nymphs, their little feuds, and their family relations to one another.

Circe, in The Odyssey, is a “witch” whom Odysseus and his men encounter on the island of Aiaia (Corsica or Sardinia … I was imagining Corsica). She turns some of them into pigs, but Odysseus convinces her to change them back. She becomes a sort of ambiguous ally, giving him advice about how to handle the Moving Rocks, the Sirens, and Charybdis and Scylla.

Of course, there is always more detail to the story. Miller has researched this deeply, and I appreciate her portrait of where Circe came from. Circe is the daughter of the sun, Helios, who is a titan, and his one legitimate wife. This makes her the sister of Pasiphaë, wife of King Minos (ahem), and also of Aeetes, father of the witch Madea.

Given that she is divine, Circe gets a front-row seat to nearly all the earliest myths. She meets Prometheus in person. She watches the whole ugly episode with Minotaur go down (this is centuries before Odysseus). Time passes quickly for her. At the same time, she is sort of fascinated by mortals. On the plus side, this means she does not view them as disposable, as most of her relatives do. On the down side, she at first fails to see them as a threat.

Near the end of the book, she has this to say.

I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands.

p. 385

Though a page-turner, Circe was a heavy read emotionally. As you might expect, it really stinks to be an ancient Greek god or Titan. You are likely to have horrible parents, for example. The hardest part for me was finding out what we might have suspected by reading between the lines: that Odysseus was actually a real [censored], and that things did not go happily after he made it home to Ithaka. Thankfully, Miller does not leave us there but introduces at least one good man and gives the book’s ending a faint note of redemption.

Based on this read, I think I will try The Song of Achilles if I come across it. Miller’s writing is not ideological. It is extremely tragic, with heartbreaking near misses and so forth, but that is actually how these ancient stories go.

Why Jupiter is not just another name for Zeus

On By Jennifer Mugrage2 Comments

Among these original national gods Jupiter or Jove was the favorite … In the early centuries of Rome he was still a half-impersonal force–the bright expanse of the sky, the light of the sun and moon, a bolt of thunder, or (as Jupiter Pluvius) a shower of fertilizing rain; even Virgil and Horace occasionally use “Jove” as a synonym for rain or sky. In time of drought the richest ladies of Rome walked in barefoot procession up the Capitoline hill to the Temple of Jupiter Tonans–Jove the Thunderer–to pray for rain. Probably his name was a corruption of Diuspater, or Diespiter, Father of the Sky.

–Caesar and Christ, by Will Durant, p. 61

… and when the Romans encountered Zeus, they said, “Hmm, seems to be Jupiter.”

Oh, Rats!

On By Jennifer Mugrage1 Comment

You can read the incident that this is a reference to, in I Samuel chapters 4 – 6.

The Philistines were a culturally Aegean/Mycenaean people who had settled along the coast of Canaan. Though culturally Greek, they spoke a Semitic language. Their god, Dagon, was a man/fish god who had antecedents going all the way back to Sumeria.

The genre of these particular chapters of Scripture might be described as dark comedy. It’s a unique story, because it presents the reaction of an Aegean people when confronted with the God of Israel. The story is told in a Hebrew historical record, but the amount of detail means that the Hebrew chronicler must have had spies or eyewitness accounts.

The Philistines, though, or perhaps because, they are pagans, are pretty canny. They start out thinking they have won a victory over the Israelites by capturing their god, but it doesn’t take them too long to figure out that this God is trouble, and to ascertain, by process of elimination, what He wants.

Or you could say that God is very adept at communicating with the Philistines.

Theological Question: Did Paganism do Romans Any Good?

On By Jennifer Mugrage3 Comments

Did this religion help Roman morals? In some ways it was immoral; its stress on ritual suggested that the gods rewarded not goodness but gifts and formulas; and its prayers were nearly always for material goods or martial victory. The gods were, with some exceptions, awesome spirits without moral aspect or nobility.

Nevertheless, the old religion made for morality, for order and strength in the individual, the family, and the state. Before the child could learn to doubt, faith molded its character into discipline, duty and decency. Religion gave divine sanctions and support to the family; it instilled in parents and children a mutual respect and piety never surpassed, it gave sacramental significance and dignity to birth and death, encouraged fidelity to the marriage vow, and promoted fertility by making parentage indispensable to the peace of the dead soul. By ceremonies sedulously performed before each campaign and battle it raised the soldier’s morale, and led him to believe that supernatural powers were fighting on his side. It invested every phase of public life with religious solemnity, prefaced every act of government with ritual and prayer, and fused the state into such intimate union with the gods that piety and patriotism became one, and love of country rose to a passion stronger than in any other society known to history. Religion shared with the family the honor and responsibility of forming that iron character which was the secret of Rome’s mastery of the world.

–Caesar and Christ, by Will Durant, p. 67

… In other words, it wasn’t enough to hold back the tide of human wickedness, but it was a good preparation for the Gospel.

Theology November: A Review of a Book about New Thought

On By Jennifer Mugrage13 Comments

Happy Lies by Melissa Dougherty, Zondervan, 2025

This review was originally posted, in a slightly different form, on Goodreads in June 2025.

This book is a capable history of New Thought in the Christian church, particularly in America. The author first sketches how she grew up around a lot of New Thought and mistook it for Christianity. Then, she sketches how after she realized many of these beliefs were wrong, for some years she was calling them New Age because that’s what everyone else called them. She discusses how she learned of the term New Thought and how it differs from the New Age.

Both belief systems partake of Gnostic/Hermetic cosmology and theory of human nature. However, New Age embraces neopaganism and the occult, whereas New Thought instead tries to cast these Hermetic ideas in “Christianese” and read them back into the New Testament. This is made easier because many New Testament writers were talking directly back to Gnostics, and even re-purposing their terms.

Melissa unpacks the Gnostic/Hermetic assumptions behind such common “Christian” practices as the Prosperity Gospel, visualization, affirmations, “I am” statements, and the like. But instead of just dismissing these practices as “ppf, that’s pagan,” she actually shows where they originated and how they differ from orthodox Christianity.

This book does not dive deeply into the pagan side of Gnosticism and Hermeticism. It doesn’t discuss these philosophies’ relationship to Western mysticism, Eastern mysticism, Kabbalism, or German philosophers like Hegel. It doesn’t discuss the attempts in the early centuries after Christianity to integrate Gnosticism with Christianity. The history of these philosophies is a huge topic that could take up a lifetime of study.

Melissa’s book is not meant to be an intimidating doorstop of a book that covers all of this. She’s zooming in on one little twig on this big, ugly tree: New Thought and its influence on American Christianity. Her book gives well-meaning Christians the tools and vocabulary to recognize this kind of thought and to talk about it. I have bought copies to give to all the women in my family. New Thought can be difficult to talk about because it portrays itself as “what Jesus actually taught.” If you know someone who is into New Thought, you cannot just dismiss it as “No, that’s Gnostic.” Even though you are right, to them it will sound like you’re just brushing them off. This book might be useful in such a situation.

If you want to find out how Hermeticism gave birth to Marxism through Hegel and Marx, there is a fantastic series of lectures about it on YouTube by James Lindsay. I also recommend Melissa’s YouTube channel and the YouTube channel Cultish.

When Did We Stop Marrying Our Siblings?

On By Jennifer Mugrage8 Comments

… and why do I care?

I might be in the process of drafting a book that takes place before the Flood. So that is forcing me to tackle this issue. Besides needing to get it settled in my own mind, this post is meant to test the waters and see how you, my readers, react to this concept. If I even bring it up, will I be kicked out of polite society?

So, this post is a historical survey of sister-marrying. And it starts in Egypt.

Royals did it

Marrying one’s sister, or half-sister, was not unheard of in the royal families of Ancient Near Eastern cultures. See the following two links for some hair-raising proof that it happened in ancient Egypt:

https://fount.aucegypt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6097&context=faculty_journal_articles

https://www.historyskills.com/classroom/ancient-history/egypt-brother-sister-marriage/

The practice of royal inbreeding continued so long in Egypt that, by the time we get to Tut-ankh-amen, he has a myriad of health problems and is rather strange-looking.

This was such an established part of married love, at least among royals, in the Ancient Near East that calling someone “my sister” became a conventional endearment. Here, for example, is Solomon:

You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride,

you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes,

with one jewel of your necklace.

Song of Solomon 4:9

And why did they do it? The obvious answer is to keep the royal bloodline pure. Most ANE cultures tended to believe that their royal family was descended from the gods (see my post Genetic Engineering in the Ancient World), and to add another layer to this, their myths about the gods also often featured sibling-marriage. Typically, you’d have gods and goddesses all being descended from the same being (Father Sky and Mother Earth, say), and then reproducing with each other to produce all the typically observed features of the cosmos. (Please, for the love of God, take my word for this and don’t read the Sumerian creation myths. I’m begging you–don’t!)

Speaking of Sumerians, here is an article that argues that Abram married his half-sister Sarai (whose name means princess) for the same reason: because their family was some kind of royalty in Mesopotamia before he left on his journey.

https://biblicalanthropology.blogspot.com/2011/03/sister-wives-and-cousin-wives.html

My question, however, is this. Did this practice of royals marrying their sisters represent breaking an established taboo for a “good” reason, or was it a case of carrying on a common practice a little longer than most people? My contention is that it’s the latter.

Let’s Go to Genesis

Genesis is, as I have often said, my favorite ancient history book. The more I study all of this, the more I realize that it is by far the most accurate written record we have of really ancient history, and of course it’s the only written record we have for some events that are, nevertheless, corroborated indirectly by archaeology, genetics, and historical traditions from around the world.

So, in Genesis, we have humanity starting out with one single couple. If we take this seriously, we have to conclude that the first generation would have had to marry their brothers and sisters, because there was nobody else around.

Nowadays, this would be an impossible genetic problem, besides being taboo. However, clearly it wasn’t taboo at the time. By producing families, people were obeying God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.” (Gen. 1:28) Based on the extremely long lifespans recorded in Genesis, we can infer that the newly created people were much healthier than we are, with a much more varied and robust genetic code. They would have had few diseases as yet, and almost no harmful mutations to inherit. Adam and Eve, who didn’t die until they were into their 900s, could have had literally a hundred or more children in that first generation. Furthermore, these children need not all have looked alike, except in the sense of being human. We have to remember that Adam and Eve had within them the potential to produce every genetic variation we see today (and actually more, since most of the variety was lost during the Flood).

By the time Cain kills Abel, there are enough people in the earth that Cain can complain, “I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” These other people that he is worried about would have been his siblings, nephews and nieces, grandnephews and -nieces, and so forth. If we figure that Seth was born not long after the murder of Abel, then the murder of Abel took place just under 130 years after the Fall. (Genesis 4:25 – 5:3) Apparently, that was enough time for the world to be populated.

In this video, starting at about 20:00, geneticist Nathaniel T. Jeansen discusses how our ancestors had to have been more closely related “than we are usually comfortable with.”

A Detour into Evolutionary Theory

“But wait!” you may say. “All this is nonsense. People didn’t all come from one founding couple, we evolved from several different but related species of hominids.”

Actually, if you think that way, you probably stopped reading this article before you got to this section. But let’s dip a toe into natural selection, just in case there is anyone hate-reading or any readers who are intrigued by what I’m saying about history, but are bothered by the science side of things.

Natural selection, in order to work as a mechanism, has to have a population of creatures already in place, with some genetic variation already in their genome. And–this is critical–they have to be already reproducing. That way, natural selection can operate on the subsequent generations of the population, encouraging variety here, stamping it out there, etc.

This creates a big problem if you want to argue that people evolved from (ultimately) one-celled animals. Now, how one-celled animals reproduce is itself a beautiful, complex mystery, but it’s basically by subdividing, producing clones of themselves. In other words, it’s not sexual reproduction.

How did sexual reproduction come about through natural selection? It would call for a wildly improbable series of (already vanishingly rare) beneficial mutations to the genetic code of two different creatures of the same species, such that one ended up male and one ended up female, with their systems perfectly corresponding to each other for reproduction. And it would have to work perfectly the first time.

If you want several different populations of human species, then you need this miracle to happen not once but several times, in different places. If it only happens once, then you’re back to what Genesis describes, which is just one founding couple.

What I’m saying is that introducing evolutionary theory doesn’t make the believability problem smaller, it makes it bigger.

Stephen Meyer explains why beneficial mutations are mathematically impossible.

Back to Genesis Again

We’ve established that in the pre-Flood world, there was no taboo on marrying one’s sibling (or probably, cousin or niece either), and also no health cost to doing so. Also (probably) it would not necessarily mean marrying someone you had grown up in close proximity with, given the size of the families we are talking about.

Then we get the Flood, in Genesis 6 – 9 and also attested in numerous local histories worldwide. At the Flood, the human population of the earth, previously vast in genetic diversity, gets culled down to just four couples, and the men of these couples are all related to each other. It’s from these four couples (perhaps just three of them?) that all of us today are descended. (We are literally just one big family!)

Think about the implications of this. The most distant relationship that any of Noah’s grandchildren would have had to each other would have been cousin during that first generation. Perhaps they married their cousins, and then their second cousins and so forth, but there is nothing to indicate that the possibility of marrying siblings had been closed to them. In Gen. 9:1 -17, God makes a new covenant with Noah and his sons. He reiterates the command to increase in number and fill the earth. He gives them the animals to eat, institutes the death penalty for murder of humans, and promises never to send another worldwide flood. He does not mention any new rules about not marrying your sister.

Next, in Genesis 11 and 10 respectively, we get the Tower of Babel and the Table of Nations. Though the Table of Nations comes before the account of Babel, the fact that we are told which geographical areas these nations settled in hints that the Table of Nations is at least a partial elaboration of where people went when “the LORD scattered them over the face of the earth.”

In the Table of Nations, the peoples are sorted by father. We see the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japeth listed by a paternal line, and we see them scattering to found cities, kingdoms, and peoples. This implies, though it does not directly say, that they were having a lot of children per family, and that they were practicing in-group marriage.

Now we get to Abram, who was a Sumerian basically, or was living in that region of the world and in that culture area. As has been covered, he married his half-sister Sarai, whether because theirs was an aristocratic family or because it was still common practice in Mesopotamia at the time. Later, on two separate occasions (Gen. 12:10 – 20 and 20:1 – 18), he “lies” by telling a local ruler that Sarai is his sister. On both occasions, the local king understands this to mean that Sarai is not Abram’s wife and is fair game for his harem. This shows that, probably, most wives were not sisters at the time, at least in Egypt (Gen. 12) and southern Palestine (Gen. 20).

This would be about 2,000 B.C.

In Genesis 24, Abraham asks his servant to get a wife for Isaac from among “my own relatives.” The servant, guided by the LORD (!), finds Rebekah, the daughter of Abraham’s niece (Gen. 24:15). One generation later, Rebekah herself encourages Jacob to marry one of his cousins, daughters of her brother Laban. So by this time, we are practicing in-group marriage, but with cousins, not siblings.

Some groups still do this. See my post on The Iroquois Kinship System.

Finally, A Taboo in Leviticus 18!

Finally, in Leviticus 18, we get an explicit prohibition on marrying your sister.

Leviticus comprises the details of the giving of the Law, right after the exodus from Egypt, so about 1400 B.C. If you plop your finger onto Leviticus, it looks really early in the Bible. However, it’s 600 years after Abraham and a couple of thousand years after the Flood, so it is coming rather late from this blog’s perspective on ancient history.

The intended recipients of Leviticus are a large population of tribes who have just spent 400 years becoming culturally Egyptian. Since Moses’ parents were both from the tribe of Levi (Exodus 2:1), we can infer that they are still practicing in-group marriage.

Leviticus chapter 18 begins this way:

The LORD said to Moses: “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘I am the LORD your God. You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices. You must obey my laws and be careful to follow my decrees. I am the LORD your God. Keep my decrees and laws, for the man who obeys them will live [i.e. find life] by them. I am the LORD.

“No one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations. I am the LORD.”

Lev. 18:1 – 6

There follows a very comprehensive list of close relatives who are off-limits. This list includes everything you can think of, and some things that you perhaps haven’t. It ranges from very sick perversions, to this:

“‘Do not have sexual relations with your sister, either your father’s daughter or your mother’s daughter, whether she was born in the same home or elsewhere. (v. 9)

“‘Do not take your wife’s sister as a rival wife and have sexual relations with her while your wife is living.'” (v. 17)

Verse 9 gives us a clue of what types of family arrangements were possible among the Israelites of 1400 B.C. You might have a half-sister who was raised in a separate household. Verse 17 describes a behavior that Jacob famously engaged in with Rachael and Leah (additionally, both women were his cousins). In fact, the two women’s rivalry was how we got the twelve tribes of Israel. Marrying two sisters at the same time (not to mention their respective maidservants) was apparently something that was normal in the age of the patriarchs, but now, giving the Law 600 years later, God forbids it.

Leviticus 18:24 – 29 makes it clear that “all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you,” but God considers them to be things that defile a land. I gather that this means the wide variety of disordered sexual relationships described in Leviticus 18 were not unheard-of, probably not just among the Egyptians and Canaanites, but among many or all of the many tribes in the surrounding areas.

We have God to thank for this taboo

So, now we know approximately when marrying your sister became taboo. 1400 B.C. And people didn’t come up with this on their own; God had to enforce it.

The overall picture is one where we start off with marriages taking place among close family, in sort of a wholesome way, before and immediately after the Flood. Then, instead of branching out and marrying more and more distantly related people as the earth’s population increases, we see cultures in the Ancient Near East curving back in on themselves and coming up with more and more perverse ways to approach this. I gather from Lev. 18 that, once an ANE man had bagged a wife, he seemed to feel entitled, or at least have an eye out for the opportunity, for sexual rights to everyone related to her.

The time of the Israelite patriarchs, enslavement in Egypt, and Exodus also overlaps with the Minoan civilization on Crete, which gave us the legend (?) of the Minotaur, the offspring (allegedly) of Queen Pasiphae and a white bull. That gives us a clue that such horrifying practices were not confined to the Levant. “Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled.”