The Gospel of Hellas - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

the twilight of the gods
father of all gods. Odysseus had to join Heracles to come to know the task of
Hellas. When Alexander the Great, at the end of his conquest of the world,
reached the two columns in the North that Heracles had built on the boundary
of Atlantis, and then led his army to India, he felt within himself the power of
the demigod, and the meaning of his wanderings and his labors became clear
to him.
Heracles was the archetype of the life experience of the Hellenic man.
Every Hellene who strove for immortality was considered an offspring of
Heracles. Odysseus was the first on the records of written history, Alexander
the last of world importance. Yet all the Greeks considered themselves children
of Heracles; and the Dorians who, through their migration ushered in the
history of Hellas, were called the returning Heraclidae.
Whence came Heracles? Wherein lies his universal importance for the life
of Hellas? He is the hero par excellence among such heroes or demigods as
Orpheus, Perseus, Theseus, Minos, Tantalus, Kekrops, Orion and Sisyphus, all
Promethean leaders of mankind.
The problem of modern research in theology and mythology is that it is
inclined to look at the myths either from the point of view of the skepticism of
materialism as mere creations of fantasy or from an anthropological standpoint
as symbols of tribal, ethnological and sexual associations. There is an interesting
study 49 about Heracles and Christ which points out parallels between these two
lives in regard to their birth, temptation, passion and death. The comparison
is surprising. Just as Joseph goes with Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem,
after Mary is overshadowed by the Holy Ghost, so Amphitryon wanders with
Alkmene from Mykenae to Thebes, and Zeus, in the absence of Amphitryon,
visits Alkmene. Herod’s hatred which led to his order to kill the children
may be compared with Hera’s jealousy which sent the serpent to the infant
Heracles. As Jesus receives his divine message in the synagogue, so Heracles, in
communion with the god of Delphi, receives the command to perfect his labor
in order to attain immortality. The story of Heracles at the crossroad when he
had to choose between a life of ease and self-indulgence and one of arduous
endeavor and suffering bears a certain similarity to the New Testament story of
the temptation, passion, death and glorification of Jesus Christ.