Kersey Graves's Sixteen Crucified Saviors: Promethius as Test Case

This essay reevaluates scholarship regarding the myth of Prometheus in Plato's Protagoras and offers a new interpretation that focuses on the potential of Hermes as representative par excellence of the Protagorean, or, more generally, sophistic tradition.

Hebrew University, 2013

Kafka's initial treatment of the story of Prometheus can hardly be classified as myth. His version, 117 words jotted down on January 16 or 17, 1918 in a blue schoolboy's notebook while in Bohemian Zürau, is not closely related to the original versions. In fact, it doesn't exactly distinguish between legend and report, a departure intended to prove the superfluousness of all the other original material: There are four legends concerning Prometheus. According to the first he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men, and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which was perpetually renewed. According to the second Prometheus, goaded by the pain of their tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it. According to the third, his treachery was forgotten in the course of thousands of years, forgotten by the gods, the eagles, forgotten by himself. According to the fourth, everyone grew weary of the meaningless affair-the gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed itself wearily. There remains the inexplicable. The legend tries to explain the inexplicable. As it comes out of the substratum of truth, it has in turn to end in the inexplicable. (After the translation of Willa and Edwin Muir, in The Complete Stories Edited by Nahum N. Glatzer, Schocken Books, New York 1971, p. 432) The number 4 in itself hints at the redundancy of a series, the shrinking of substance. Ironically, although the legends seem to be considered historically exact, they are classified as mythology, which, in fact, challenges the truthfulness of both story and history. At the same time, a particular kind of canonized verity is stated which is beyond evidence and verification. In view of the "inexplicable," everything that can be said appears worth questioning and superfluous. Kafka's narrator doesn't praise Prometheus for his cultural achievements (the inventor of arts and crafts, the creator of moderate sacrificing traditions, the master of cunning); he blames him for betraying the gods as well as for fading from the memory of later generations. There is no need, he says, "no reason at all," to remember him as an allegoric liberator and carrier of light and fire. As a result, Prometheus doesn't seem worthy of legend anymore. That said, the evaporation of the myth implies a state of subliminal, subconscious existence beyond words. The dilution of mythical

The myth of Prometheus is well known for its rich polymorphism, celebrating the Titan’s contest with the Olympian gods and its demythisation in the contemporary era. To Ernst Bloch “Faust and Prometheus are the major figures of the Renaissance”, while Gilbert Durand describes the relationship between myth and history as a backwards “evhemerism” which enables a messianic reading of the Promethean symbol, especially at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the following. From the Renaissance to the 20th century, the Promethean symbol slides transmedially from the verbalized narrative towards visual arts. With the exhaustion of the Promethean momentum, for Durand as well as Maffesoli, the 20th century assumes the decadent myths of Dionysus and, eventually, a vast Hermetic mythology. This paper highlights several moments and works which marked the dynamic history of the mythical hero, as revealed to us by Aeschylus, Shelley, Goethe, Gide, Ridley Scott etc.

in E. Calderón y S. Perea, (ed.), Estudios sobre vocabulario religioso en Grecia, Madrid, Signifer, 2016, pp. 45-57.

49 SIGNIFER LIBROS ESTA PUBLICACION HA SIDO FINANCIADA PARCIALMENTE CON UNA AYUDA DEL PROYECTO DE INVESTIGACION FFI 2014-56124-P. El contenido de este libro no puede ser reproducido ni plagiado, en todo o en parte, conforme a lo dispuesto en el art. 534-bis del Código Penal vigente, ni ser transmitido con fines fraudulentos o de lucro por ningún medio.

Métis 2014

Academia Letters, 2021

American Journal of Philology, 2019

Mary Shelley's is not the first "modern Prometheus": ancient modernities crafted their own "modern Prometheus" figures that likewise exploit this myth's unique mutability. Focusing on Aristophanes (Peace and Birds) and Lucian (The Passing of Peregrinus, Prometheus, You Are a Literary Prometheus, Icaromenippus, Zeus: Tragic Actor, etc.), this article proposes that analyzing their respective periods as (different) "modernities" can shed light on how each uses the figure of Prometheus to grapple speculatively with the contemporary situation of the genos anthrōpōn and, in particular, with its constitutive relationship to technics.

2007

Much influenced by the horrors of the two World Wars, William Golding (1911-93) began his literary career as a novelist during the second half of the 20 century. His novels depict the intricate human psychology and lack of human relationship in an age where men actually have little to live for. In explaining occurrences in the human world Golding went back to myths, just as writers and philosophers before him had used mythical stories to interpret various human situations. Hence, Golding has taken up a number of recurring mythical motifs, and detailed examination shows how these motifs are central to explaining his complex themes. One such motif is the figure of Prometheus, a champion of mankind from Greek mythology who revolted against the immortal gods to free mankind. Classical Greek writers, such as, Aeschylus portrayed him as a rebel who ultimately reconciled himself with the immortals. However, in the Renaissance and Romantic literature Prometheus became a symbol of suffering ...

Postmodern Openings, 2019

The theme of the Adamic Fall, of the loss of the heavenly existential paradigm was one of the major creative reasons for the entire European cultural tradition. The role played by the constant reporting of early theological environments to translations of biblical texts cannot be neglected in this context. The myth of the collapse of the human being in the ephemeral mundane space and time is mainly claimed from the Vetero-testamentary tradition, taken up and conceptually continued by the Christian thinking. The way in which this classic motif was received and assimilated in the sphere of all European spirituality, and not only, indicates a prior propaedeutic background, a pre-primary preparatory framework. This cultural background appears to be the universe of Ancient Greek mythology, the universe given to humanity through the writings of the Great minstrels of Greek antiquity such as Homer or Hesiod. From this universe, the image of a hierarchy of human fall begins with the loss of the Golden Age, which emphasizes the Prometheic gesture of stealing the fire from the gods, as symbol of knowledge and technological advancement. Is this myth that indicates the risk of the defiance of a universal axiomatic by the man, still present nowadays? Or does it find its dramatic confirmation nowadays?