scholia - University of Otago

26 Scholia ns Vol. 6 (1997) 19-33 ISSN 1018-9017
disrupting event separating these two conditions is a wilful act of playful
inventiveness on the part of the human. The narrative organizes the contrast
between these two conditions as a sequence of cause and effect which proceeds
from the central act of invention. The contrast is heightened by a decided bias
in the feeling-tone in the narrative: the prior condition is one of happiness and
peace; the di sruptive event attracts the alarmed censure of spectators; the
disruption and division wrought by human inventiveness make the wild animals
angry at man and earn from god his angry condemnation of humans to a
permanent condition of isolation and death. The story represents inventiveness
as the cause of god's anger at and separation from humanity? 1
The Hesiodic account is so well known that a brief summation of the
narrative will suffice for our purposes. Hesiod tells the story of the struggle
between Zeus and Prometheus in the run-up to the larger theme of the struggle
between Zeus and Cronus. Within the large design of the Theogony, the story
about Prometheus is a digression introduced into the genealogy of the Titan
gods (from 512). The digression explains, by way of anticipation, the fate of the
sons of Iapetus, and particularly Prometheus, after Zeus has defeated Cronus
21 In the Yahwist account of the Fall in Genesis (3), the serpent ('the most subtle of all the
wild beasts') represents the faculty of invention, with hjs quibbling gloss of the taboo as an
artifical injunction which may be violated (i.e., he makes woman aware of the difference
between 'may' and ·must': 'You may eat of any tree, but you must not eat of this one tree. If
you do eat of it you will not die'.). This myth in its turn has an interesting African parallel in
the story of the fall current among the Pale or Asu people of Tanzania: Originally Kiumbi the
creator used to mingle among the people he had moulded. But the people were cheated by a
cunning serpent-person named Kiriamagi. Klumbi had forbidden the people to eat eggs, but
Kiriamagi persuaded the people that this injunction was just so many words without effect, so
they ate the eggs. As a result of this violation, Klumbi withdrew to an abode high up in the
sky. Wanting to draw close to their creator as before, the people built a tower to reach the
dwelling of Klumbi. The higher they built, the farther up he receded. Finally, Kiumbi became
angry at the people, and sent a severe famine, which kiJied all but two, a boy and a girl. All
people on eruth arc descended from this pair. Since that time, Klumbi remains remote, and
communications with him may be had only through the ancestors, who are closer to hjm than
to any other. For the full transcription and translation, cf. C. K. Omari, God and Worship in
Asu Traditional Society (PhD diss. East Africa 1970); analysis of the ritual context in L N.
Kimambo and C. K. Omari, 'The Development of Religious Thought and Centres among the
Pale', in T. 0. Ranger and I. N. Klmambo (edd.), The Historical Study of African Religions,
with Special Reference to East and Central Africa (London J 972) 111-21. The invention of
the taboo against edible food (intended to regulate the use of valuable and scarce resources)
and the necessary circumvention of it (the taboo must be observed, but it must also be broken)
are clearly institutions of human culture in both myths: the blame for the guilt felt for
violating the taboo falls upon the serpent, the embodjment of cunning and subtlety. The guilt
is experienced as god's anger and adverse judgement upon the human condition.