Secret_History

Chapter 10: Who Wrote the Bible and Why? 391
man, gives back only that which is dark and filthy. Her name, Pandora, means
both “All Giver” and “All Gifted”. Hesiod tells us that she is called Pandora
because, “all those who dwell on Olympos gave each one to her a gift, a grief for
men who strive and toil”. She has only one reason for her existence: to produce
human misery.
The gifts Pandora receives from the gods - the contents of Pandora’s Jar - are
intended to produce endless torment for man. It is only in later centuries that a
“box” was substituted for a “jar”. This change of imagery was attributed to the
sixteenth century monk Erasmus who mistranslated the original Greek word pithos
with the Latin pyxis. A pithos is a jar that is womb-like in shape and is a symbol
for the earth, the mother of all.
The implications of the pithos to the story of Pandora are obvious. Pandora’s
gifts are released from her own womb. Her fault lies not in her curiosity, but in her
being. She is constitutionally deceptive and lethal because she draws men into her
pithos, and brings new men forth for a life of misery. She further perpetuates the
misery of man by bringing forth female babies.
The image of Woman as a pithos is extremely ancient. In many ancient Helladic
burials, the pithos was used as a coffin. The deceased was placed inside in a fetal
position, covered with honey, and buried in the hope of new life and regeneration.
Hesiod records for us ideas that were, apparently, spreading like wildfire in his
time: the profound estrangement of one half of humanity from the other. We
should like to know why?
In Hesiod’s re-writing of the ancient myths, man has somehow come into being
without being born of woman and contrary to the most ancient depictions, it is
woman who is derivative. Certainly, the emergence of the first human being
presents a challenge to any thinking person; the existence of women before men is
a mystery, but the existence of men before women is absurd.
Hesiod presents the view that woman is a disruption to nature. Because of
woman, man can no longer appear and disappear by his own will. Because of
woman, man must be born in suffering, and then man must die in suffering. What
Hesiod fails to notice is that, if men were suffering in that time, women were
suffering also - and probably a lot more.
Hesiod’s account of woman is a conscious denial and a deliberate misogynistic
propaganda. We see Hesiod’s line of argument reflected in the J Document
account of creation. In Genesis, man is created and lives in a deathless, god-like
existence, and woman is the “second” creation, the “afterthought”. She soon
brings death and destruction on mankind by “eating of the fruit of the tree of good
and evil”.
In these accounts, we perceive a common thread of woman as an “interloper”
into the original scheme of things, bringing sex, strife, misery and death. Hesiod
works with the ancient images of the all-giving mother, twisting and disfiguring
them until they reflect only the shame and degradation of the creatress of life.
Woman, created from clay according to Hesiod, is not only not semi-divine as is
man, she is something less than human.
Zeus, with timely advice from Ouranos and Gaia, appropriates his own wife’s
powers. He marries and swallows Metis and is thus able to give birth to his
daughter, Athena. In swallowing Metis, he reverses the succession and the