Abraham and Sarah in Greek Mythology?

by

Damien F. Mackey

“I can’t think of another pair, of ancient stories which are so similar, and yet so seldom compared! Both Abraham and Athamas were divinely commanded to sacrifice, each their own son, with a knife on a mountain top, and each was about to comply when the child was saved, each by the miraculous appearance of a ram”.

John R. Salverda

Can we find traces of Abraham (Abram) and Sarah (Sarai) also in other ancient traditions?

Indeed, it appears that we can. The pair are commonly likened to, for instance, the Hindu pair Brahma and Sarasvati. Thus we read in:

Brahma and Abraham: Divine Covenants of Common Origin

http://www.academia.edu/4540206/Brahma_and_Abraham_Divine_Covenants_of_Common_Origin

Regarding the link between Abraham and Brahma, Steven Rosen writes:

The similarities between the names of Abraham and Brahma have not gone unnoticed. Abraham is said to be the father of the Jews, and Brahma, as the first created being, is often seen as the father of mankind.

Abraham’s name is derived from the two Semitic words ab meaning ‘father’ and

raam/raham meaning ‘of the exalted….’ We might also note that the name of Brahma‘s consort Sarasvati seems to resonate with that of Abraham‘s wife, Sarah [… each one‘s identity as a wife and/or sister]. Also, in India, the Sarasvati River includes a tributary known as the Ghaggar…. According to Jewish tradition, Hagar was Sarah’s maidservant…. Both Brahmins … and Jews see themselves as the ‘chosen people of God’. The Hebrews began their sojourn through history as a ‘kingdom of priests’ (Exodus 19:6). Likewise, Brahmins are also a community of priests. ….

Now, good friend John R. Salverda claims also to have found compelling likenesses between Abraham and the Minyan Athamas (of Greek legend), and between Sarah and Nephele, the wife of Athamas:

Abraham, Athamas and the Minyans

http://www.hope-of-israel.org/minyans.html

Contents:

Minyans, Kurds, Armenians, and UR.

Thessalians.

Abraham and the Ram-Lamb?

The Almost-Consummated Sacrifice of the Son!

Competing Wives and their Allegorical Significance.

Isaac and the Mountain.

Different Hebrew Traditions Coalesced in Greek Mythology.

Minyans, Kurds, Armenians, and UR

Here I shall take what I would consider to be the most compelling comparisons in this article:

Abraham and the Ram-Lamb?

The Minyans, as Hurrians from Armenia, knew well the story of the Hebrew, Abraham, they called him Athamas. The Minyans most likely got their, only slightly tainted, version of the story, brought over by migrants from the area of Carchemish and therefore named its Greek colony at the city of Orchomenus (a plausible transliteration, and supposed by some to have been founded by Athamas himself) after the place. Even a cursory comparison of the two supposedly unrelated stories displays them as remarkably coincidental. Athamas began a movement toward, the abolition of, that age old and wide spread, religious concept, human sacrifice (as well as its companion tradition, cannibalism). Although we praise Abraham for his role in this abolition, it seems that some factions (mainly, the Achaeans) of the ancient Greeks, were of a different opinion. They considered their Abrahamic equivalent Athamas, and his descendants as well, to be cursed for their part in the civilizing of mankind (See Herodotus 7. 197 Athamas the son of Aeolus contrived death for Phrixus, having taken counsel with Ino, and after this how by command of an oracle the Achaeans propose to his descendants the following tasks to be performed: whosoever is the eldest of this race, he is brought forth to the sacrifice. This is done to the descendants of Kytissoros the son of Phrixus, because, he brought the wrath of the gods upon his own descendants.). In both cases, whether Scripture or myth, the abolition of human sacrifice in favor of animal sacrifice (the ram) is the obvious message of the story. Pausanias describes a statue depicting the sacrifice of this ram; "There is also a statue of Phrixus the son of Athamas carried ashore to the Colchians by the ram. Having sacrificed the animal, he has cut out the thighs in accordance with Greek custom and is watching them as they burn." (Pausanias, Description of Greece 1. 24. 2) Take note of the Greek custom of cutting out the thighs as if to make the sacrifice Kosher. There is no doubt in my mind as to where they got such a notion.

The Almost-Consummated Sacrifice of the Son!

Intricate details of Abrahams life appear as parts of the Greek myth as well, I can’t think of another pair, of ancient stories which are so similar, and yet so seldom compared! Both Abraham and Athamas were divinely commanded to sacrifice, each their own son, with a knife on a mountain top, and each was about to comply when the child was saved, each by the miraculous appearance of a ram. The ram was considered to have been supplied by God, and was said to have been acceptable to Him as a replacement sacrifice instead of the son of man. ... The symbol of the sacrificed lamb of god, appears in the Greek Myth, complete with an association to the Hebrew story of the garden of Eden, for the quest of the Argonauts, like the Biblical quest of all mankind, hangs in (nailed to) a tree, in a sacred grove, there is a serpent, and the way is guarded. Phrixos sacrificed the golden-fleeced ram to Zeus Phyxios, but gave its fleece to Aetes, who nailed it to an oak tree in a grove of Ares." (See Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 80) "The fleece in Colchis and the apples of the Hesperides, since they seemed to be of gold, two serpents that never slept guarded and claimed as their own." (Philostratus the Elder, Imagines 2. 17. 6) This association begs for the conclusion that these Greeks had some knowledge about the Hebrew concept of the original sin as well as the hopeful promise of the Messiah. No doubt they did, for they knew many intricate details of the Hebrew story, including the sophisticated religious symbolism inherent in the parable of

Abraham’s two wives.

Competing Wives and their Allegorical Significance.

Both Abraham, and Athamas, are said to have had a pair of competing wives each of whom were obvious allegories of differing religious concepts. Offspring was gotten from each of the wives, and the quarrel concerned, whose offspring, and their attending religious concept, would be favored, this is true in both stories. Ino is the Greek equivalent of Hagar from the Hebrew story, while Nephele is the counterpart of Sarah. Consider the Ino, Hagar identification first; The Greeks considered Ino to be the loser of the wifely quarrel, she was exiled and had to flee from her family home, with her half dead child in her arms, (Gen. 21:14,15) to the point of her death, when god intervened, granting Ino powerful miraculous abilities over water, thus saving the lives of Ino and her son Melicertes and appointing them to become great religious icons among the People who lived in the land of her exile, which we are told in the myth, was Corinth in Greece. Except for the location and names, all of these motifs are straight from the life of Hagar, who was looked upon as symbolic of earthly Zion, the covenant with slavery and death (Gal. 4 :22-31).

On the other hand, Sarah was symbolic of freedom, the Heavenly Zion, the wife of God (also in Gal. 4:22-31). Now, Consider the identification of Nephele with Sarah; Nephele was created as a duplicate of Hera, the heavenly wife of god, "Zeus formed a figure of Hera out of cloud (Nephele) (Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4. 69. 4) "a Cloud (Nephele)? its form was like the supreme celestial goddess, the daughter of Kronos. The hands of Zeus set it as a trap for him, a beautiful misery (Pindar, Pythian Ode 2. 32 ff). Zeus fashioned a Cloud (Nephele) to look like Hera (Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca E1. 20). Hers were the favored offspring, who were carried off to the Egyptian land, (That Colchis [in the Caucasus] was an Egyptian land we learn from Herodotus who says:

There can be no doubt that the Colchians are an Egyptian race. Before I heard any mention of the fact from others, I had remarked it myself. After the thought had struck me, I made inquiries on the subject both in Colchis and in Egypt, and I found that the Colchians had a more distinct recollection of the Egyptians, than the Egyptians had of them. Still the Egyptians said that they believed the Colchians to be descended from the [Egyptian] army of Sesostris (Herodotus Histories 2.104) from which they eventually had a miraculous epic deliverance (Argonautica). ….

Story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife recalled in later legends

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Joseph story even appears to have its resonance in the most famous of all Mesopotamian myths, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Thus Astour believes that the Combabos

of the Phoenician tale "can easily be recognized as Humbaba… of the Gilgameš epic …”.

 

 

 

 

The story of the encounter between Joseph and the Wife of Potiphar can be read in full in Genesis 39:6-20.

These Genesis stories were written, not by Moses, but by the Patriarchs pre-dating Moses. Moses later compiled them and substantially edited them in the form with which are familiar today. See e.g. my:

 

Tracing the Hand of Moses in Genesis

 

https://www.academia.edu/8175774/Tracing_the_Hand_of_Moses_in_Genesis

 

The wife of Potiphar’s attempted seduction of Joseph apparently became well-known in the ancient world. M. Astour, for instance, taking the standard line that the Old Testament was dependent upon pagan mythology, wrote (in Hellenosemitica, E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1965, p. 259): “It has already been repeatedly demonstrated that most of the motifs in the Joseph story are more or less euphemerized motifs of the Tammuz-Adonis myth”.

And, again, he wrote (p. 258): “In the W-S [West Semitic] world, the motif of the "chaste youth" was very widespread".

 

The Egyptian woman who had attempted to seduce the handsome young Joseph was the un-named (in Genesis) wife of one Potiphar, pharaoh's captain of the guard, who had bought Joseph from the Ishmaelites (var. Midianites?), to whom Joseph's brothers had sold him for twenty pieces of silver (Genesis 37:28; 39:1).

For a possible historical identification of Potiphar and his wife, see my:

 

Potiphera a priest of On

 

https://www.academia.edu/31014927/Potiphera_a_priest_of_On

 

Potiphera a priest of On. Part Two: Potiphar and his wife

 

https://www.academia.edu/31015448/Potiphera_a_priest_of_On._Part_Two_Potiphar_and_his_wife

 

Potiphera a priest of On. Part Three: An Egyptian variant tale

 

https://www.academia.edu/31015986/Potiphera_a_priest_of_On._Part_Three_An_Egyptian_variant_tale

 

According to the Genesis story, Joseph, though innocent, was sent to prison based on the accusation of the woman (who became Venus/Astarte in some of the later pagan legends).

 

Astour again has, like others, recognized that the story has its resonance in a famous Egyptian tale: “After the discovery of the papyrus d'Orbiney, a quite similar plot was revealed in the Egyptian story of the two brothers … Bata, its hero, slandered by his sister-in-law and pursued by his angry brother, emasculated himself to prove his innocence”.

 

The Egyptian story, in turn, Astour believed to have been based upon Phoenician tales.

 

For example, the young healer-god Ešmun, pursued by the love of the goddess Astronoë or Astronome (='Aštart-na'amã); and in Syrian Hierapolis, of Combabos, the builder of the Atargatis temple, with whom Queen Stratonice, the wife of the Assyrian king, fell in love. Notice in these Phoenician accounts the Joseph-like elements also of the young hero as a ‘healer’ and a ‘builder’. For the biblical Joseph was historically, as we have determined, the brilliant Third Dynasty architect and inventor, Imhotep:

 

Giza Pyramids: The How, When and Why of Them. Part Two: Imhotep (Joseph) introduces polished stone

 

https://www.academia.edu/34950313/Giza_Pyramids_The_How_When_and_Why_of_Them._Part_Two_Imhotep_Joseph_introduces_polished_stone

 

The Joseph story even appears to have its resonance in the most famous of all Mesopotamian myths, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Thus Astour believes that the Combabos of the Phoenician tale "can easily be recognized as Humbaba… of the Gilgameš epic … [whilst] the same [Joseph] motif also appears in the Gilgameš epic, tabl. VI, where Ištar [Venus] fell in love with Gilgameš and, after having been rudely rejected by him, turned herself to the supreme god Anu with a request to punish the hero" (Hellenosemitica, pp. 258-259.; S.N. Kramer, “The death of Gilgamesh” in BASOR, Apr 1944, pp. 2-12).

 

Later Homer would give his own colourful account of the famous story in his conflict between Bellerophon(tes) and Anteia, King Proitos' wife.

Before recounting that tale, however, the important fact needs to be noted that Astour has rigorously identified the supposedly Greek name Bellerophonas equivalent to the western Semitic Ba'al-rãph'ôn, "Lord Physician" (pp. 225-228). The name is equivalent in meaning to that of the Sumerian god, Ninazu.

Most appropriate again for Joseph, who became deified in antiquity as a god of medicine and healing.

Now here is the account of Bellerophon as told by Homer in The Iliad (VI: 156-170, as quoted by Astour, p. 257):

 

To Bellerophontes the gods granted beauty and desirable manhood; but Proitos in anger devised evil things against him, and drove him out of his own domain, since he was far greater … Beautiful Anteia the wife of Proitos was stricken with passion to lie in love with him, and yet she could not beguile valiant Bellerophontes, whose will was virtuous. So she went to Proitos the king and uttered her falsehood. "Would you be killed, O Proitos? Then murder Bellerophontes who tried to lie with me in love, though I was unwilling". So she spoke, and anger took hold of the king at her story. He shrank from killing him, since his heart was awed by such action, but sent him away to Lykia, and handed him murderous symbols, which he inscribed in a folding tablet, enough to destroy life, and told him to show it to his wife's father, that he might perish.

 

Many Greek stories in fact carry this basic motif. For example, according to Astour (pp. 257-258):

 

The Greeks told myths with the same plot about Hippolytus and his stepmother Phaedra, and about Peleus and Astydamia (or Cretheïs), wife of king Acastos. Bethe was perfectly right when, despite all his antipathy to Semitizing Bellerophon, he nevertheless declared that [the story-motif] … of the shy youth slandered by the rejected woman … had an Asiatic origin. ....