THE HESIOD ISSUE

Ámbrotos Óssa, Aièn Eóntes, Alētheia: The Imperishable Voice, The Eternally Existing, and Truth in Hesiod


It is not actually the case that "Chaos is the first thing of all in Hesiod’s Theogony,” and we should never concede such an uninformed framing.

Chaos is first in the spoken cosmogony.

The Eternally Existant gods, the Imperishable Voice, and Truth itself come first, and are the foundation of the cosmogony.

The spoken cosmogony, by definition, is made of the speech of Hesiod which is dramatically breathed into (enépneusan, ln. 31) him by the divine Muses.

The introductory verses lay out exactly what this means:

The Muse-given voice of Hesiod is an imperishable divine thing (ámbroton óssan, “imperishable voice,” ln. 43), matching the imperishable syllable (akṣara) of the Rig Veda, which is the Eternal as the essence of speech in RV.

This divine voice in Hesiod is unified (homēreusai, ln. 39), as the muses are of one mind (homóphronas, ln. 60), and it can tell of what is true fundamentally (alēthéă, ln. 28, cf. etúmoisin, ln. 27), just as much as of the many (pollá, ln. 27) false things (pseúdea, ln. 27).

The one mind of the Muses may be identifiable with their leader Apollo Musagetes, or their grandfather Cronus, gods of the Divine Mind (nóos, ln. 51) itself, just as the principle of the voice, which repeatedly is said to flow (rhéei, ln. 39), may be identifiable with Cronus’ wife, and their grandmother, Rhea.
Even flow itself is embodied as a deity, the great goddess, who never lacks her Mind-embodying male consort to balance her, and specifically to subdue (dmētheisa, ln. 453) her.
Thus flow is subdued by the power of divine Mind.


This imperishable voice of the Muses, downstream of Cronus and Rhea, with Apollo its conductor, has for its theme the supreme (mégistos, ln. 49), almighty (eristhenéos, ln. 4) godhead centered in Cronian Zeus, who, with the other gods, is called eternally existing (aièn eóntōn, ln. 21, 33), which requires there be an eternal state above the flow of time.
The repeated aièn eóntōn alone debunks the claim that an eternal frame is lacking in Hesiod.

Even besides the divine voice that underlies the cosmogony of Hesiod, Chaos is still merely an Air deity (identified with Respiration in Aristophanes and called the Middle Air in Orphic fragments), and there is still one Chaos.
Chaos is not pure indeterminacy in Hesiod, as some imagine based on modern concepts of chaos.
It is instead well-defined by the imperishable voice that gives it a unified form and distinguishes it from the other gods.

The name and form of this one Air god Chaos then derives from that which is supreme and eternally existing, the voice which utters fundamental truth and cannot perish.

It is this divine voice that, according to the introductory hymn of Theogony, gives humans the power to discern (diakrínonta, ln. 85) the divine laws (thémistas, ln. 85), exactly as the seers discern (ví jajñe) the imperishable syllable that tends the commandments of the gods (vratā devānām) in RV 3.55.1. As in Rig Veda, the human kings of Theogony who discern these divine laws via the imperishable voice derive from this their authoritative commandments, making straight judgments (itheiēis dikēisin, ln. 86) possible. All of this is from the imperishable voice that un-conceals the laws of the eternal gods.

The Hesiodic order of authority arising from an eternally existing divine power is clear, and, without this eternal origin, even Chaos would have no foundation.


Yet it does.


(continued)

@solarcult