by
Damien F. Mackey
“Much has been attributed to the Greeks that did not belong to them … e.g.
[professor] Breasted … made the point that Hatshepsut’s marvellous temple
structure was a witness to the fact that the Egyptians had developed
architectural styles for which the later Greeks would be credited as
originators”.
Is Aeschylus, the so-called “Father of Tragedy”, yet another of such Greek
appropriations, in his case of the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel with whom he is so
frequently compared?
The
Pulpit Commentary, considering Ezekiel 18:1-4:
The word of the Lord came
to me:
“What do you people mean by quoting this proverb about the land of
Israel:
“‘The parents eat sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge’?
and the children’s teeth are set on edge’?
“As surely as I live, declares
the Sovereign Lord, you will no
longer quote this proverb in Israel. For everyone belongs to me, the parent as
well as the child—both alike belong to me. The one who sins is the one who will
die.
interestingly
likens the prophet Ezekiel to “the Greek poet who was likest to him”, to Aeschylus http://biblehub.com/commentaries/pulpit/ezekiel/18.htm
Ezekiel
was led, however, to feel that there was a latent falsehood in the plea. In the
depth of his consciousness there was the witness that every man was personally
responsible for the things that he did, that the eternal righteousness of God
would not ultimately punish the innocent for the guilty, he had to work out,
according to the light given him, his vindication of the ways of God to man, to
sketch at least the outlines of a theodicy. Did he, in doing this, come forward
as a prophet, correcting and setting aside the teaching of the Law? At first,
and on a surface view, he might seem to do so. But it was with him as it was
afterwards with St. Paul He "established the Law" in the very teaching
which seemed to contradict it. He does not deny (it would have been idle to do
so) that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, i.e. affect those children for evil. What he does is to
define the limits of that law. And he may have found his starting point in that
very book which, for him and his generation, was the great embodiment of the
Law as a whole. If men were forbidden, as in Deuteronomy 24:16, to put the
children to death for the sins of the fathers; if that was to be the rule of
human justice, - the justice of God could not be less equitable than the rule
which he prescribed for his creatures. It is not without interest to note the
parallelism between Ezekiel and the Greek poet who was likest to him, as in his
genius, so also in the courage with which he faced the problems of the
universe. Aeschylus also recognizes ('Agam.,' 727-756) that there is a
righteous order in the seeming anomalies of history. Men might say, in their
proverbs, that prosperity as such provoked the wrath of the gods, and brought
on the downfall of a "woe insatiable;" and then he adds –
"But I, apart from all,
Hold this my creed alone."
And
that creed is that punishment comes only when the children reproduce the
impious recklessness of their fathers. "Justice shines brightly in the
dwellings of those who love the right, and rule their life by law." Into
the deeper problem raised by the modern thought of inherited tendencies
developed by the environment, which itself originates in the past, it was not
given to Ezekiel or Aeschylus to enter.
[End of quote]
Aeschylus
is thought to have been born around 525 BC, which was also the approximate era
of the prophet Ezekiel.
The
name “Aeschylus” I would consider to be simply a Grecised version of the Hebrew
name, “Ezekiel” of the same phonetics.
And, as
we have already found with certain supposed Greek notables (statesmen,
philosophers), such as Thales, Empedocles, Pythagoras, Solon - who I have
argued were actually ghostly representations of real Hebrew geniuses, Joseph,
Moses, Solomon - ‘little is known’ about them. To give some examples:
Thales: “Not much is known about the philosopher’s early life, not even
his exact dates of birth and death”.
Heraclitus: “Little is known about his early life and education, but he
regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom”.
Empedocles: “Very little is known about his life”.
And so
we read once again, now regarding Aeschylus (my emphasis)
There are few reliable sources for the life of Aeschylus. He was
said to have been born in about 525 or 524 BCE in Eleusis, a small town just
northwest of Athens. As a youth, he worked at a vineyard until, according to
tradition, the god Dionysus visited him
in his sleep and commanded him to turn his attention to the nascent art of
tragedy.
[End of quote]
That is hardly encouraging!
It is probably, I think, a late recollection of
the call of the Hebrew prophet, Ezekiel, who certainly lived though a time of
great tragedy for Judah, culminating
in that greatest of all catastrophes, the Fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians
and the destruction of the Temple.
Not surprising that we read of Aeschylus
as being “like a Hebrew prophet”. Thus, for instance (Seneca
and Elizabethan Tragedy, pp. 8-9): “Aeschylus
the prophet, the soldier
of the Great War who found Athens [read Jerusalem] becoming estranged, as
a generation grew up that knew neither him nor it, wrestling with the
problem of World-governance alone like a Hebrew prophet ...”.
And, according to James Orr (The International Standard Bible
Encyclopedia): “Herder, with
his undeniable and undenied fine appreciation of the poetry of
many nations,
calls
Ezekiel “the Aeschylus and the Shakespeare of the Hebrews”
(compare Lange's Commentary on Ezk, 519).
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