Where The Wild Things Are
Written Aug 4th, 2006 by Josh Rives | Email This
There has long been a belief that many of the themes in Christianity were taken from Greek mythology. Many claim that Samson and Delilah reflect Hercules being betrayed by Deianeira. An even larger similarity is claimed between Dionysus and Jesus. Both born of a mortal woman, both turned water into wine and both returned from the dead. Whether or not this is true, I will leave up to your own investigation. Of course if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on the Jesus.
However you can see one resemblance to mythology if you look in 2 Peter 2:4.
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgement;
In the Greek, the word hell is actually tartaroo or tartarus, but most every translation today just translates it into hell. Peter pulls out this jewel only the one time here and it is found nowhere else in the Bible.
Tartarus of Greek mythology is both a god and the lowest part of the underworld. Although Hades is the generic place for the dead in Greek mythology, Tartarus is reserved for the truly bad. Tartarus is reserved for anyone who might be a threat to the gods of Olympus and the occasional person who just really deserved it. Many prisoners suffered creative sentences in Tartarus. Tantalus, who betrayed the gods, was immersed in water that vanished when he tried to drink and had grapes above him that jumped out of reach when he tried to get them. The Titans, the ruling gods before those of Mount Olympus, were cast into Tartarus after Zeus and friends defeated them. They and other prisoners in Tartarus were guarded by giants called Hecatonchires that had 50 heads and 100 arms.
The mystery remains though that Peter would use tartarus, instead of the more commonly used geenna, also known as Gehenna, which is used 12 times in the New Testament. Many people think that the angels in this verse are the sons of God found in Genesis 6:1-4 that gave us the Nephilim. The thought is that since regular hell wasn’t enough punishment for rebellious angels, Tartarus comes into play as sort of an inner circle of hell. I would say that it is difficult to decide that these are the sons of God from Genesis since there is no real reference to them being that. It is easier to guess that they are angels who rebelled with Satan, yet not working as demons for him now since they have already been “committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgement.”
As for Peter’s choice of words, it may have come about due to his surroundings. Traditionally, Peter is placed in Rome at the end of his life, which is also the time when 2 Peter was written. Being in Rome, Peter would have been surrounded by the slightly plagiarized version of Greek mythology called Roman mythology. The Roman mythology also had a Tartarus which was basically the same as the Greek’s. Considering the fact that he was in Rome and that the people he was writing to were more than likely somewhere in the Roman Empire, the use of Tartarus would have been a good term to symbolize a place of extreme punishment. Then again Peter’s choice of words, being inspired by God and all, is probably accurate…
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