Mythic Echoes and Disassociation

Mythic Echoes and Disassociation:
The Tower of Babel and the Achaean Wall

“The Deluge and the Golden Age are myth; it is doubtless through an extensive series of modifications that echoes of the myths have become poetry.” Ruth Scodel 50

Opening with this closing remark from Scodel, I hope to highlight the fact that myth is by no means static, but a fluid, ongoing human production still in discourse today. The works of Homer have often been called the “Greek Bible.” Considering the historical importance of these texts, the analogy is not a bad one. However, they are not merely cultural counterparts. Each work has its own unique poise, and while both function as conveyers of myth, they are not identical or wholly equivocal. Through one story of The Iliad, specifically the destruction of the Achaean fortifications, and one of Genesis, the destruction of the tower of Babel. I want to examine this relationship. While these bear thematic relevance to one another, I believe they hint at something crucial to the disparity of the texts. They share a moral impetus: human pride gets no divine favor. They share the perceived result of such pride: their efforts will be scattered. What they do not share, however, is the explanatory impulse more peculiar to, though certainly not isolated to, the Bible. The analogous dialogue of myths with each other is dealt extensively in Laura Slatkin’s The Power of Thetis, a theme highly relevant not only to studies of Homer but also to the Bible: “As with rearrangements of formulas or themes, alternative combinations of the features of a myth are possible and equally legitimate, the choices serving to reveal the framework imposed on its subject matter by traditional genre requirements of heroic epics” (Slatkin 3). Just as myths cognate to Homer within his own culture can be useful to enriching a reading of Homer, Slatkin’s impetus to cross-examine myths thematically can be equally useful when considering mythopoesis across cultures. This premise is a driving factor of the following analysis.

The process of drawing these two bodies of myth together is, of course, already underway. In “The Achaean Wall and the Myth of Destruction,” Ruth Scodel examines the very same place in Homer that I am; that is, the anger of Poseidon at the building of the Achaean fortifications. She argues that “The Trojan War functions as a myth of destruction,” tying this to the deluge in Genesis, but also to other myths, such as the flood alluded to in The Epic of Gilgamesh, and some Babylonian myths (Scodel 39-42). She traces nicely this theme of destruction, discussing how the mythic map of Homer fills out and is supplemented by that of the Bible. Of course, her work is not exhaustive, nor is it meant to be; much like Slatkin’s short book, it merely seeks to flesh out similarities and relations of thought between two mythic bodies, in my opinion to encourage further exploration of both texts. Scodel herself notes that while the story of the Achaean wall resonates with the tale of the flood in Genesis, it is not a perfect correlation because “A war, no matter how long and how bitter, does not seem calamitous enough to have been an original form of the myth of destruction; it is, moreover, a normally human and local activity, to be explained historically, rather than a divine visitation. It therefore seems likely that this mythic aspect of the Trojan War is secondary, and that the theme has actually been borrowed from the Deluge” (Scodel 42-43).

I agree entirely that the Deluge myth reverberates strongly in the background of the story; it is the god of the ocean who threatens the wall, after all, and just as Jehovah threatens his world with destruction for its wickedness, so Poseidon is wrathful over the Achaeans’ shortcomings. However, there is a locality, as Scodel notes, which somewhat diminishes the scene in Homer from that in Genesis, so that while the Achaean wall is an echo of the Deluge myth tradition, it is a descendent myth rather than a contemporary one, in terms of mythological narrative. I think that the story of the Tower of Babel, therefore, is a somewhat more analogous story to the invective against the Achaean wall. It, in an even more explicit way, follows after a Deluge myth (indeed, is only a few pages later) and contains echoes of the myth it follows (a similar theme of destruction and punishment). Yet, like the story in Homer, the Tower of Babel’s recounting is given a locality, circumscribing it to a more specific mythic space, whereas the Deluge in both texts is an overwhelming, almost universal presence. In short, I believe that these two stories are in equal debt to Scodel’s conception of the “myth of destruction.”

There is one other, brief point of departure between my aims here and Scodel’s. Her purpose is more exclusively to trace the way in which Biblical myth resonates and echoes with Homer’s. Of course, that interest is very much a driving force in this discussion. She also briefly discusses a disassociation of Homeric myth from Near Eastern roots near the end of her essay, though she does not take this theme very far. It is my hope, however, to take it a step further. Just as cross-examining the myths for relationships of thoughts and themes is important, comprehending disparities in cultural poise is also important. For this reason, I will be concluding with an analysis of where the myths in question seem to come apart.

Doubtlessly, the action of these scenes is easily drawn together. In book seven of The Iliad, the Achaeans build a funeral pyre, and then construct fortifications around it. Poseidon is angered by this, and goes to Zeus demanding to know, “is there any mortal left on the wide earth who will still declare to the immortals his mind and his purpose?” (180). Zeus partially rebukes him for being so concerned about his station as a god, but agrees that the wall must go. And indeed, later in the story this happens. Similarly, in chapter 11 of Genesis we are told that people of Shinar began constructing a wall together. Their rationale for this tower partially has its roots in defense; they build it for fear that “we may be scattered over all the surface of the earth,” but interestingly the primary one they voice is not pragmatic at all: “Let us build ourselves a city and also a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a celebrated name for ourselves” (New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, Gen. 11:4). The degree to which this echoes the words of Poseidon is astounding: “Now the fame of this will last as long as dawnlight is scattered” (Iliad 180). It is the fame of their tower that eggs on the people of Shinar, and the potential fame of the Achaeans’ wall which angers Poseidon. Indeed, it is not mere vanity which invokes divine wrath, but the forgetting of one’s place on the part of the humans. The Achaians have not sacrificed to Poseidon, and their work rivals that of the sea god and Apollo. The people of Shinar wish to “reach the heavens,” and as Jehovah says, they think there “is nothing that they may have in mind to do that will be unattainable for them” (Genesis 11:6).

The punishment for this transgression of hubris is very similar. Zeus tells Poseidon to “break their wall to pieces and scatter it into the salt sea and pile again the beach deep under the sands and cover it; so let the great wall of the Achaeans go down to destruction” (Iliad 180). Jehovah does not scatter the Tower in the passage in Genesis, but scatters its builders. And his scattering is far deeper: he scatters their ideas by causing their language to become mixed up. It may seem that the Biblical punishment is more severe than the Homeric one, but we must remember too that the people of Shinar were transgressing on a much grander scale, and intentionally, while the act of the Achaians could very well have been mere oversight. Indeed, if we doubt that Zeus would not respond with equal ferocity to mortal transgressions into divine jurisdiction to Jehovah’s, we need only remember his words to the gods during the Trojan battle:
“And anyone I perceive against the gods’ will attempting to go among the Trojans and help them, or among the Danaans, he shall go whipped against his dignity back to Olympos; or I shall take him and dash him down to the murk of Tartaros, far below, where the uttermost depth of the pit lies under earth, where there are gates of iron and a brazen doorstone, as far beneath the house of Hades as from earth the sky lies. Then he will see how far I am the strongest of all the immortals.” (Iliad 182) Certainly, Zeus does not take kindly to insubordination, and in fact this aggressive assertion of his will follows directly after the transgression of the Achaeans and the supplication of Poseidon.

The similarities and contrasts of these scenes could likely fill many volumes, but I wish to focus on only one disparity. This is the fact that the two gods are in dialogue with each other, whereas Jehovah speaks in dialogue, but seems alone in the text. He uses words like “Look!” and “us”! That the writer chose to use God’s words as dialogue implies a listener: but who is that listener? Angels? Himself? It cannot be another “god” in the Homeric sense. Now, scholars have dealt with this theologically, but in terms of literary analysis, the effect is singular. It brings the reader into the text: God is, in fact, talking to us. The action of the text becomes, therefore, present. And indeed, we get explanations from the story which are pertinent to the present: how we came to be a race of many languages, and the name of the place where it happened, ‘Babel.’ The action of Homer’s tale does not do this. We are told nothing about what effect Zeus’ decree against the wall did to change our lives. The action of Homer’s story, therefore, at least in this moment, serves to further only the action of Homer’s story. This is not to say that his story is not pertinent to the audience; certainly, the moral content could be of great interest either to his contemporaries or to us. And yet, the moral concerns are cast as specific to the moment. Their present-day value is left for the reader or listener to consider, if they do so at all. But for readers of Genesis, the connection of the text to their present day is unavoidable.

Works Cited
Homer. The Iliad. Trans. Richard Lattimoore. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1951.
New World Bible Translation Committee. New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures. Pennsylvania: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1984.
Slatkin, Laura. The Power of Thetis. California: University of California Press, 1994.
Scodel, Ruth. “The Achaean Wall and the Myth of Destruction.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. Vol. 86, pp. 33-50. Massachusetts: Harvard University, 1982.