Yes, I’ve been buried in my dissertation, but I’ll take a look at synchroblogging!

Your book sounds superb, and that’s a spot-on amplification and comparison of the two myths. One further nugget, perhaps, for Eve. In a way, Eve’s apple provided escape from the prison of Paradise, which was both blessed and stagnant. Knowledge of good and evil condemned humans to a hopeless, or at least difficult life, having to work to earn a living, yet it also granted Adam and Eve the gift of free will– they were no longer docile, unthinking embodiments of God’s will.

Your interpretation of Pandora’s Box makes sense in a mythic way — which is to say, not a rational way. Maybe that’s the problem. As a child I was inspired and stirred by this myth and never noticed the paradox of evils released, hope withheld. Only as an adult did I start to question the logic.

I should note an intepretation from Hesiod scholar William Verdenius, which I found of all places in a Wikipedia article — the pithos or jar of Pandora is a vessel of preservation. (It’s often used as a symbol on tombstones, like a casket of the soul). I’m intrigued by the idea of evils being released from a preserving-jar, becoming fleeting and transient, while hope, carefully preserved, endures.

Daru-vid — “foretaste” — I like the idea of “tasting” the future! In English we usually say foresight, seeing the future. And that’s a very powerful idea for me. For years I worked on a story where a girl named for the Star of Hope was cursed to see the future, and she was always very careful NOT to tell people what she knew for fear of dashing their hopes. I like your idea of hope meaning “knowing what’s to come.”

There’s an interesting parallel to your idea in the works of J.R.R.Tolkien, most famous for Lord of the Rings. Aragorn’s original name was estel, which meant “hope, trust, faith… belief in the future.” But there was another Elvish word Tolkien used for hope, amdír, which meant literally “looking ahead,” the process of extrapolating the future based on the present. In the movie version, Denethor was a raving lunatic, that nasty old man who tried to burn his son. But in the book, Denethor is using a seeing-stone to see the future, discovers all of Sauron’s forces arrayed against them, and loses hope (he apparently saw Frodo was captured). Denethor accuses Gandalf of dooming them all with his “fool’s hope”. Denethor is limited by rational expectations, amdír, whereas Aragorn and his friends ignore the overwhelming odds and keep on hoping. In your interpretation, what got trapped in Pandora’s jar is amdír.

Amy — oh, I hope you keep writing that! It sounds like a fascinating premise. Greek myth is amazing, isn’t it? After 2500 years, we still haven’t exhausted its jar.

I’m really glad someone else thought about that and I’m really glad I found this blog. It’s very nice.

I heard the Hope was blind. If it is true, can I answer to (a)? Because it couldn’t know what sround itself, it could be there with evil. But I can’t answer to (b). As you say, I wonder about it. By the way, there is another theory: the left was not Hope, but foretaste. Because of foretaste was trapped in the box, there were hope, I heard.

I’m currently writing a book, which touches upon the Pandora myth in comparison with the Hebrew myth of Eve eating the forbidden fruit:

The enmity between the seed and serpent [Genesis 3:15] is clearly more than just an etiological “explanation of the hatred between Humankind and the snake.” It is a dynamic mythological symbol, explicitly linked with a new cosmic-chaotic order of reality. In the verses that follow (16-19) we have a clear and direct depiction of this new order of things, describing the new human condition in a world of perpetual suffering and death. A corresponding Patriarchal myth known to Hesiod (Works and Days 90-105), has Pandora (the first woman) lift the lid of Zeus’ terrible jar (like Eve who ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), thereby unleashing all suffering upon humankind, but whereas hope was said to remain for humankind inside the box, in these verses of Genesis there is only the prophetic message of hopelessness for the whole of humanity.
This is also the continual fate of the seed and the serpent, perpetually engaging each other in battle, with neither combatant inflicting the winning blow

After reading your post, I see that I need to do a little more research on the Pandora myth, as you have raised an interesting point: “but Hope is still trapped in Pandora’s Box, does that mean we have no hope?”

They way I saw it, it was the Hebrew myth that carried a message of hopelessness, whereas the Pandora myth was full of hope.

Perhaps, the fact that hope is ‘trapped’ inside the box (possibly implying that it is inaccessible), wasn’t Hesiod’s intention. But rather, it was a clumsy mythological way of expressing we still have hope. And yeah, who knows how many permutations the Pandora myth has been subject to.

Perhaps, although the box is closed, there is some way we can reopen it and experience hope?

Anyway, it’s good to see you posting. Perhaps you’d be interested in participating in the Mythology Synchroblog 5?