There’s this series on the History Channel, called Clash of the Gods, I watch it, it’s quite fair. You can view some of it online here. The DVDs of season 1 go to Netflix in January.

I’ve watched every episode so far, and it’s renewed my interest in Greek mythology.

In the past, I’ve tried to gain some working knowledge of the myths, only to find the two common approaches to understanding these stories lacking.

You can one, just passively accept the drivel naturally in your own culture about the myths, it’s mostly from children’s storytellers, and you will end up with a version of the myth that is almost completely rewritten to draw attention away from the dirty parts… and it’s mostly dirty parts, as these stories are meant for adults.

Or you can take an academic approach, and you will quickly find that the myths change from place to place and from time period to time period.

This approach kills these myths as a dramatic story, and it becomes hard to see the greatness that they are.

But there’s another way, and I started to understand by watching the show on the History Channel.

Clash of the Gods presents one Greek god per one-hour episode, complete with a retelling of the god’s story. If maybe a little superficial, it at least presents the gods in the arch of a story and …

The best way to see these gods is in flight.

What I’ve learned is that after generations of telling these stories the plot points (turns, twists, whatever) are sharp.

The stories are absolutely complete; the characters are three dimensional, and ironically even the gods are very human.

But in order to see the perfection of these myths, you have to hear it as a story.

And after a good retelling of one of these stories, you will NEVER forget it.

It’s absolutely not a burden to grasp an understanding of Greek mythology.

If you can’t remember it, then you didn’t hear a storyteller tell it.

Drunken, horny, un-bathed fisherman sailing under a Greek sky 2500 years ago perfected these stories, they’re not highbrow, and quite good. I would forget anything with footnotes at first.

Some really great stories…

Zeus, Hades, Hercules, all the stories are phenomenal. Here are a few beats…

Cronus (Saturn, Zeus’ dad) was told that one of his kids would overthrow him, and so imprisoned his own children. Zeus was hidden away as a child by his mother and not subject to his father’s imprisonment. When the kid became a young man he decides to overthrow his dad. Zeus first frees his siblings and uses their combined efforts to defeat the father.

Afterwards, Zeus takes his brothers (two, both older) aside and talks about how the universe is to be split up between them. By rite, the inheritance should be passed on to the older brother, but Zeus has created quite a powerful coalition of different characters to defeat the father and has grown strong, so he asks that the brothers draw lots instead.

Zeus gets the longer straw and claims the heavens, the middle brother gets the middle straw and claims the oceans and the seas, his name is Poseidon.

The oldest brother the one that should have gotten everything draws the short lot, and well… his name is Hades and he gets the underworld.

But my favorite myth so far is Hercules, a man who was cursed by the heavens from birth, never got an even break; he took everything the universe could throw at him, and died undefeated.

The story of Hercules is pure Hemingway. It contains on absent father, a women scorned, a cruel world, and an undefeated man. It has to be in the top ten greatest stories ever created by mankind.

Hercules was Jesus Christ before Jesus Christ was Jesus Christ.

In fact, investigate for your self to see if he really wasn’t. Remember the entire bible, and more specifically the New Testament did an oscillation in Greek before being pushed out into the rest of the world.

Strange things happened at that time.

I shouldn’t get into it but it’s fascinating, in a storytellers’ sense, Paul most likely created (or embellished, give me a break people) the story of Jesus when we was in Greece.

Hercules was the ideal Greek man at the time. Things come together. Look at the story of Hercules and draw your own conclusion.

“Jesus, bro, I want those people back, dude”

– Christopher Walken as Hades

I was surprised to find so much influence of the Greek gods in the Bible; many editions use the words Hades (both name of the Greek underworld and it’s ruling god) and Tartarus (a torturous place in Hades).

In newer editions, for example the King James these words are just changed to “hell.”

But Jesus doesn’t originally go to “hell” to let everyone out, he goes to Hades. It’s significant.

Imagine being Greek and a foreign “god” (Jesus) coming to YOUR underworld and taking everyone to HIS heaven.

And pointblank in the book of Revelation, Jesus is supposed to come back and throw Hades (the god) into the lake of fire. Rev. 20:14

In different ways and for different reasons, later bible thumpers had to change the god Hades to “hell” or “death” in their version of the book.

Johnny Cash Taunts Hades

One ironic line of translation concerning Hades is somewhere in Revelations 6:6, when two words the King James bible counsel people wanted to translate as “hell” show up in the same sentence.

So they translate one as hell, and translate one as death, when one was really hell and the other was Hades as a god.

Hades is very much apart of the New Testament.

The particular line in question (very dramatic) appears in The Man Comes Around, the first song on Johnny Cash’s last album. It’s in the very last line of the song and Cash follows the King James’ translation.

All of this is new to me, and I was like wow, what is Jesus doing in Greek mythology, or what is Greek mythology doing in the Bible?

I’ve never cared before, about versions, or translations, I am not a person of the book, myself, but I enjoy a good story.

Obscuring the Greek

When Christianity got to Greece two thousand years ago, the Greek myths started to die, they began to be told less and less. People apparently preferred Christianity.

As great as the Greek myth stories are, I think Christianity won out because it’s more interactive; with its judgment schema it’s more engaging.

I appreciate Buddhism for the same reason.

What I’ve learned here is the study of storytelling absolutely has a place in religious studies.

And so we’re clear… Johnny Cash is in Heaven.

In the beginning there was the Word and the Word was with God and God was the Word – John 1:1

I don’t like all versions of the Greek myths. There are no definitive versions. There are inscriptions on temples, and there are plays written by playwrights and sometimes poets, but the works are always adapted for each presentation.

Hercules is one of my favorites, but I have found some prominent versions of the tale I think are terrible, including the version Herakles by Euripides from c. 416 BCE.

Euripides plays around with the timeline of the traditional myth and it doesn’t work for me, it loses one of its greater plot points, but it’s good to see that these stories are flexible and no one got upset when someone else spun it a little differently.

The worst version of Hercules I’ve discovered has to be…

In the traditional myth, Hercules is the product of rape, and he cuts his wife and children to pieces.

That can’t be in a Disney movie, so it isn’t. The story Disney created is about a boy separated from a loving family.

It’s awful, but adults don’t object when kids see it, and when you think about it, it really is all about the kids.

The Greeks thought so.

I want to live long enough to see Disney do a version of Hamlet.

That Old Time Religion

I remember reading a book about novel writing in which the author addressed the use of “borrowing” ideas or technique.

He simply said, “Shakespeare stole, are you better than Shakespeare?” It’s a good thought.

I’ve found a lot of good stuff in Greek mythology that I’m picking up with the five finger discount. I would recommend it to anyone, apparently Paul of Tarsus thought so.

And if it was good enough for Paul…

-J Roland Kelly