Symposium - AIC

Roslyn Weiss
prohibition, and he and the woman defy it. Neither the biblical author nor Aristophanes approves of
human defiance. Aristophanes calls it adikia, injustice (193a); in Genesis, the author expresses no
reservation concerning God’s right to punish; nor do any of those punished lodge a protest. As a
consequence of their improper acts, human beings in the Symposium and in Genesis probably deserve
what they get. In both cases God/s keep human beings in their place: although the human beings in
Genesis attain knowledge of good and evil and in this way become like God, they also become subject
to death and in this way become unlike God; in the Aristophanes myth, mortals are further weakened,
though their numbers initially increase.
The first striking difference between the two myths with respect to relations between gods and
men is the number of gods involved. In Aristophanes’ myth, three gods are prominent: Zeus, Apollo,
and, finally, Eros. There are also the gods who are the parents of the original double-people: Sun of
the double-males; Earth of the double-females; Moon of the mixed double. In Genesis there is but a
single God. In the Aristophanes myth, Zeus hatches the plan to weaken human beings by cutting them
in two, halving their strength and doubling their number, so that the gods would at once have less to
fear and more sacrificial smoke to savor. If this is not enough to reduce them to lives of peace and
quiet, Zeus reckons, the cut can be made again. Once the first cut is made, the heads of the new beings
are turned around by Apollo—as per Zeus’s instructions—so that they face the gash where they were
cut and learn greater restraint as they contemplate their wounds. Apollo then sews them up and
smoothes them out, leaving a few creases around the center (190d). The role Eros plays is to draw
together the severed halves, to make one out of two, to heal the human condition. Eros loves the
human race more than any of the other gods do, supporting us and healing the wounds that prevent
our greatest happiness (189d). He is the god who will help us find the boys who are our true matching
halves. The Aristophanes myth retains the hope that we might return to our original state—if we treat
Love right. Love might heal our wounds and render us blessed, whole, and happy. One wonders,
however, whether Eros doesn’t break at least as many hearts as he mends.
Remarkably in the Genesis myth, by contrast, the God who creates Adam and creates the
woman for his sake, and also endows them with wisdom and power and provides for them by
permitting them the fruit of all the Garden’s trees but one, is the very God who punishes them. The
same God who lovingly gives man life is the one who, perhaps also lovingly, punishes. (Note that the
text does not say that God is angry.) This God is one who is not prepared to pronounce all of Creation
“very good” (1:31) until He fixes the one thing that He acknowledges is “not good.” As he says: “It is
not good for man to be alone; I will make him a helper alongside him” (2:18). It is only once the
woman is created that the creation of the human as summarized in Genesis 1, “male and female He
created them” (1:27), can contribute to God’s assessment of His creation as “very good” (1:31). Of
course, this is not a God who thrives on the gifts of human beings in the form of sacrifices and
worship. He might well have destroyed the human race now as He will soon consider doing in the
days of Noah when human corruption exceeds all bounds. He can go on without them. According to
Aristophanes’ myth, however, the gods do not have the luxury of being able to destroy human beings
whose hand feeds them, so their only viable option is to weaken them. Nevertheless, both the God of
the Bible and Zeus take pity on people. God sews for the man and the woman coats of skin and
clothes them (3:21). Zeus helps to preserve the human race by changing the placement of the sexual
organs; this change not only has the potential to result in conception and birth (in the case of males
and females locked in embrace), but in the temporary satisfaction that enables men to turn their
attention to their basic needs (191c). Since, however, Zeus needs to have human beings exist, one
suspects that something more than pure compassion may be motivating him.
III. Conclusion
In Aristophanes’ myth, Zeus had no hand in creating the bond between the two halves of the original
human beings; yet it is he who breaks it: the broken bond constitutes the human beings’ punishment.
In Genesis, God creates the bond, but the relations between man and woman are complicated; they
even reverse direction as a result of her sin. In the Aristophanes myth, equals search for equals; in
Genesis, unequals yearn unequally for one another: first man for woman, later woman for man. Thus
in Aristophanes, there is no shift in the dependence relation, but in Genesis there is. In Aristophanes,
man was never destined for immortality; in Genesis man could not both be immortal and know good
and evil: one or the other, however, could be tolerated. And this is because man is no threat to God in
the Bible; God does not need men to survive.
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