Reconciling Cronos & Zeus with Noah & Ham

Introduction:
My wife got me the most wonderful present for Christmas this year; a copy of Robert Alter's Five Books of Moses which I've been simply devouring. Alter's translation is pretty decent, but it's the translation notes that I'm really interested in. The main focus of this book is not only the scripture itself, but rather Alter's explanation of the nuance in the Hebrew language and the anthropological background of the text. Since I have no interest in actually learning ancient Hebrew, this is the next best thing- a scholar who's willing to share his insight.

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The other day, I came across something brilliant in Alter's Five Books of Moses. Over the course of Beginnings (or Genesis as we call it in English) Alter points out that in many parts of the text the author is trying to reconcile polytheistic myths and legends with the monotheism of the Jewish Heritage. Because many of the stories in Genesis seem to be laden with poetic inference to other ancient texts, it's concluded by Alter and other historians that the original author was writing these origin stories with the understanding that his readers were familiar with the other legends and origin stories of the gods.

Thus, Genesis is a sort of a reimagining and retelling of those tales. The difference is that with this telling, the author is giving a more accurate representation of the truth. It's sort of like when Jesus says to His disciples in the New Testament- "You have heard it said ________ but I say to you ________." In other words, you've heard these stories and proverbs a certain way for all these years, but I'm going to tell you what the real story is and what it really means.

One of these stories is possibly the retelling of the Cronos/Zeus myth.

According to the story, after Cronos the Sky God usurps his father's throne by castrating him, he became certain that one of his offspring would dethrone him as well and usurp his place as Father of the Gods. He was so sure this would happen, that each time his wife gave birth, he would swallow his children whole seconds after they were born, thereby retaining his throne and his rule as god. But Cronos' wife tricked him and when Zeus was being born she replaced Zeus' infant body with a rock dressed in swaddling clothes. Later, when Zeus had grown, he poisoned his father Cronos, causing him to throw up all the children he had eaten. Then Zeus castrates Cronos, physically ending his reign as Father King, and thus the prophecy his father had predicted came true. Zeus replaces his father Cronos as Sky God and Father of the Gods and the story ends.

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And this brings us to Noah.

It's possibly that to the Hebrew author, Noah was the second father of all mankind- sort of like Cronos. Noah is the second father in the sense that after escaping The Great Flood by building an ark, his seed alone would be used to repopulate the planet in the same way that Adam's seed was used to populate the planet at the beginning of the story.

So after The Great Flood story ends, establishing Noah as second father of all mankind, he proceeds to plant a vineyard and then gets drunk one day from the wine of his labor (one might correspond this wine with the poison from Cronos' story). While he is recovering in his tent, his son Ham walks in on him, "sees his nakedness," and runs off to tell his brothers about it. His brothers respond by tenderly recovering their father, but when Noah awakes and realizes what had happened, he curses Ham and Ham's son Canaan for all generations to come.

Alter speculates that there is a bit more to this story than what is written because it seems rather odd that a father would awake from a drunken stupor and respond in such anger to a fuzzy recollection that one of his sons had seen him naked. It just doesn't seem rational that Noah would be so enraged by his nudity that he would curse his son because of it.

But what if the Hebrew writer knows that his audience will understand the Cronos / Zeus story and fill in the blanks, understanding that Ham must have done something rather cruel to his father within the chambers of the tent. Some Rabbi's are certain that the author of Genesis intended for us to understand that some act of violence occurred.

Two acts are possible: Castration, or Sexual Penetration.

Castration because of the inference to the Cronos/Zeus mythology, and sexual penetration because the phrase "see the nakedness" meant something a little deeper than literally seeing nakedness. This is apparent because later on in Genesis, Joseph uses the same phrase to accuse his brothers when they come to Egypt to buy food during a famine. He tells them that they have come to "see the nakedness" of the land, in other words they are looking for weaknesses in order to come with violent force and overthrow the Egyptians. Castration and penetration seem to fit into the category of Ham overcoming his father with violent force, but since the taboo against homosexuality was so strong in the ancient world, it seems that since the author omits the details, he was probably using a tactful ephamism for rape.

Another reason that this penetration explanation makes sense is that Genesis was probably recorded from community stories (and God's inspiration, of course) during the 40 year exile of Israel in the Desert of Sinai. With the Hebrews about to enter Canaanite territory and practically commit ethnic genocide- hearing that the Canaanites were from the lineage of Ham the Father Rapist probably made it a little easier on the Israeli conscience when it came time to burn cities to the ground and kill everyone residing in them.

But regardless of whether Ham was the perpetrator of castration or sexual penetration- the rage that Noah feels toward his son seems a bit more justified in either case. A wakeful Noah would have physical reminders of either encounter rather than merely a drunken memory of someone coming in and then leaving after seeing him in the nude. And so the curse of Ham and Ham's son Canaan make much more sense in this context.

Thus, just as the story of Zeus and Cronos came to an end, so Noah's story ends as well; with Noah's son Ham cast as the villan for all time and his other two sons established as the blessed ones of God.