Creation Moment 2/17/2017 - Q: Who said it was an "Apple"?

"Human history, according to the Judeo-Christian tradition, begins in an ancient paradise with a serpent-entwined tree, and a first couple who partook of its fruit. The Book of Genesis doesn’t say what kind of fruit tree it was. It is from the Greek tradition that we get the idea that Eve ate an apple.
There is no Creator-God in the Greek religious system. Ancient Greek religion is about getting away from the God of Genesis, and exalting man as the measure of all things. You may think to yourself that the Greeks are exalting gods, not man; but haven’t you ever wondered why the Greek gods looked exactly like humans? The answer is the obvious

one: for the most part, the gods represented the Greeks’ (and our) human ancestors. Greek religion was thus a very sophisticated form of ancestor worship. In Plato’s Euthydemus, Sokrates referred to Zeus, Athena, and Apollo as his “gods” and as his “lords and ancestors.”

Greek stories about their origins are varied and sometimes contradictory until their poets and artists present Zeus and Hera as the couple from whom the other Olympian gods and mortal men are descended. This husband/wife pair, the king and queen of the gods, are a match for the Adam and Eve of Genesis. Zeus and Hera are the beginning of the family of man, and the origin of the family of the Greek gods. With no Creator-God in the Greek religious system, the first couple advances to the forefront.

 After they had both eaten the fruit, Adam named his wife Eve (“Living” in Hebrew) and Genesis 3:20 explains why: “… for she becomes the mother of all the living.” In a hymn of invocation, the 6th-century BC lyric poet, Alcaeus, refers to Hera as “mother of all.” As the first wife, the Greeks

worshipped Hera as the goddess of marriage; as the first mother, the Greeks worshipped her as the goddess of childbirth.

 Before she was known as Hera, the wife of Zeus had the name Dione. The name relates to the creation of Eve out of Adam, for Dione is the feminine form of Dios, the genitive form of Zeus. This suggests that the two, like Adam and Eve, were once a single entity.

 The term “father Zeus” is a description of the king of the gods that appears over 100 times in the ancient writings of Homer. As the source of their history, Zeus/Adam and Hera/Eve became the gods of their history. Those without a belief in the Creator have only nature, themselves, and their progenitors to exalt.

From the Judeo-Christian standpoint, the taking of the fruit by Eve and Adam at the serpent’s behest was shameful, a transgression of God’s commandment. From the Greek standpoint, however, the taking of the fruit was a triumphant and liberating act that brought to mankind the serpent’s enlightenment. To the Greeks, the serpent was a friend of mankind who freed them from bondage to an oppressive God, and was

therefore a savior and illuminator of our race. The Greeks worshipped Zeus as both a savior and illuminator; they called him Zeus Phanaios meaning one who appears as light and brings light. The light that Zeus brought to the ancient Greeks was the serpent’s “enlightenment” that he received when he ate the fruit from the serpent’s tree.

Adam and Eve became the gods Zeus and Hera.

If Zeus and Hera are Adam and Eve, then the Greeks ought to have directly connected them to an ancient paradise, a serpent, and a fruit tree. They did, indeed, make such a direct connection. The

Greeks remembered the original paradise. They called it the Garden of the Hesperides, and they associated Zeus and Hera with its enticing ease, and with a serpent-entwined apple tree.

Apollodorus wrote that the apples of the Hesperides “were presented by Gaia [Earth] to Zeus after his marriage with Hera.” This matches the Genesis account: Eve became Adam’s wife right after she was taken out of Adam (Genesis 2:21–25), and the next recorded event is the taking of the fruit by the first couple. The chorus in Euripides’ play Hippolytus speaks of “the apple-bearing shore of the Hesperides” where immortal fountains flow “by the place where Zeus lay, and holy Earth with her gifts of blessedness makes the gods’ prosperity wax great.” Thus Euripides put Zeus in the ancient garden with the serpent-entwined apple tree, and his language affirms that this is where Zeus came from.

The names of the Hesperides describe what the garden is like. It is a land of gold for the taking, soft starlight, perfect health, and wondrous beauty. The Hebrew word for Eden means “to be soft or pleasant,” figuratively “to delight oneself.” The Garden of the Hesperides is the Greek version of the Garden of Eden.

The male figures to our right of the tree are Nimrod/Herakles (seated) and his nephew Iolas. The scene represents the climax of all of Nimrod/Herakles’ exploits. The hero of post-Flood humanity is there for a bite of the serpent’s apple. He has figuratively usurped the authority of Noah/Nereus and his God, returned humanity to the ancient serpent’s enlightenment, and exalted mankind as the measure of all things.

The Greek tradition insists that Zeus and Hera were the first human couple; the Judeo-Christian tradition insists Adam and Eve were the first couple. Both traditions insist that their respective first couples came from an ancient paradise with a serpent-entwined fruit tree. Thus, two opposite spiritual standpoints share the same factual basis.

They depicted Cain and Seth as Hephaistos and Ares, Noah and Ham as Nereus and Chiron, and Naamah (Genesis 4:22) and Cush as Athena and Hermes. Their unique depiction of the Flood

matched the Genesis account in detail.

Modern academia has yet to learn the simple lesson that, without reference to the early events described in the Book of Genesis, it is not possible to make any real sense of ancient Greek religious art. The problem for these academics is that they cannot entertain the obvious Genesis connections without abandoning their blind dedication to atheism and evolutionism. They may be called teachers and professors, but they fail to comprehend the obvious meaning of the symbolic art that our ancestors have left for us, just as they fail to recognize the handiwork of our Creator throughout the earth, and within all the life upon it.  —Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr." CEH