Similarities:
The genealogies. In the Iliad Aenies before fighting Achilles gives his personal genealogy. There are also some other sections where genealogies of certain people's family lines as well as lists of names of people who do this. The Bible also does this many times including the lineage of Jesus found in the gospels. My favorite part about both of these genealogies is their tendency to mention seemingly random (definitely important) details about the characters within the list.
Differences:
Creation accounts:
As we discussed in class creation according to common Greek myths of the day included destruction and disorder and many different polytheistic gods. We see that trickle down into the lives of our characters as the gods are still disorderly, chaotic, arguing, etc. while interacting with the humans.
Within Genesis, the writers point to a monotheistic God who creates all with a sense of order and purpose. Each day has a plan and all of the elements within in the creation have a purpose. It is interesting to note that the writing of Genesis is an antithesis of Mesopotamian myths such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, in which the polytheistic gods create a world through destruction and chaos similar to the Greek gods.
Humans v. gods
The gods of the Iliad populated, they did not create the human race. They produced humans in the same way humans produce humans. Humans and gods both come from humble beginnings of childhood and adolescence. That makes these gods seems incapable of complete creativity to make something that has never existed before. Furthermore, these gods struggle with the same vices of humankind i.e. lust, pride, jealousy, vengeance etc. Which begs the question what separates the gods from the humans? The gods have "powers" and immortality. Which makes them very similar to our modern day "heros" (I am not saying these are my heros) vampires and super-heros like Batman.
Alternatively, the God of Genesis creates man in His image and the man/woman makes choices which lead them astray and lead to the fall of man. The God here is separated because of His perfection, He creates everything new, and after the humans lose their purity He must separate Himself because He can no longer be in contact with impurity. Which later leads to sacrifices which leads to Jesus and so on.
Fate:
Within the Iliad all the characters including gods and men are controlled by the underlying fate, which as discussed in class begs the question of free will or choice?
While in Genesis, God gives His creation some sort of free will to chose in Gen. 3 when He presents Adam and Eve that they need to stay away from and later they (or she or he, whatever your preference on the fall of man) chose to disobey and partake in eating the fruit when the Devil tempts them. They obviously have some choice in the matter (whether or not God knows or he knows knows or He doesn't know or He could have stopped them without stopping them I leave up to interpretation as this is a touchy subject).
This causes me to see a possible similarity between both accounts. The "fate" is something none of the gods can avoid or control themselves. Therefore, it causes me to wonder who is in charge of the "fate"? Could it be a higher power? And this fate- "higher power" could it be that an unnamed god of gods controls this "fate"? That a god of all gods is really in charge as the gods fight on earth and the people are influenced by the gods. And if there was a higher unnamed god would that not be similar to the Israelites high unnamed god that controls (in whatever extent you chose to believe) the plight of mankind? So in fact could the believes of the Greeks and the Israelites be similar?
PS I commented on Bens.
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