Creation and Cosmos Flashcards
Define Cosmogony
stories about how the world began and came to be the place it is today
Early cosmogonies provide mythical stories, involving divine ___________, instead of ___________ theories
personifications, theories
If ancient cosmogonies do not begin with creation ex nihilo (out of nothing), how then do they begin?
They begin be presenting an ancient matter, often personified forms of earth, sky and water, from which the world took shape.
Mythical patterns of the idea of ________ and the idea if__________ are essential to the way that human beings imagine themselves and their place in the world.
Decline, progress
In trying to imagine the whole world, ancient peoples tended to see their own place as the _________.
center
What is theomachy?
Battle of the gods
Cosmogonies tend to classify the world in a _______ structure.
hierarchal
Why is the sun more important in Egyptian cosmogonies whereas water is more important in Mesopotamian cosmogonies?
The sun is closely linked with god in Egypt and the water is where all thing originate and return in Mesopotamia
What does the greek word for poetry, poesis mean?
Making
Who is Aten?
The sun god
Who is Akhenaten?
King Amenhotep IV
How long was Akhenaten successful in promoting the cult of Aten and neglecting the old pantheon with numerous gods?
A decade or two
What does Enuma Elish mean?
“When on high”
Dates for this poem range from the 18th century to the _______ century
12th
Is Enuma Elish based on even earlier cosmogonies
Yes, from Sumerian, Old Akkadian and West Semitic Cultures
Who is Tiamat?
A primeval female sea monster
Who is Marduk?
the Babylonian god
Who is Apsu?
the personification of the fresh water ocean
According to Enuma Elish, the world was fashioned from whose body?
Tiamat’s
From whose blood are the first humans created out of?
Qingu
What does theogony mean?
the birth of the gods
The Theogony tells us of how the Olympian gods, ruled by Zeus, emerged out of the earlier ___________.
Generations
Works and Days is a poem that combines mythical stories with injunctions about how to __________________.
live, work, farm, and sail
The philosophers before Socrates seemed to focus upon the ________ structure of matter whereas philosophers after Socrates seemed to concentrate above all upon _____________
Physical, ethics
Thales suggested that the single underlying substance of all was ______
water
Heraclitus suggested that _______ is the fundamental principle of the universe
change
Empedocles suggested that the world works by a combination of ________ and ________
love, strife
Anaxagoras suggested that the parts of the universe are in a constant process of ________ and _________
separation, mixture
The Greek “atomists” suggested that the basic building blocks of matter are not fire, water, air or earth but __________ and ___________ space.
atoms, empty
The pre-Socratic speculators themselves seem often to have thought their new views were perfectly compatible with the old _________ ideas about how the universe was made.
RELIGOUS
Thales said that the world was made of water; but he also said, “Everything is full of _______.”
gods
The only surviving work of an Epicurean Roman poet is:
“On the Nature of Things” by Lucretius
Epicurean philosophy emphasized what as the primary goal of human life?
Tranquility and peace
According to Epicurean philosophy what are the main sources of human anxiety?
False beliefs about the origins of nature and false fears about the gods
Were the Epicureans atheists?
No, they deny god played a role in creation
What is one of the most challenging aspects of Lucretius’s work?
the interplay between the scientific and the poetic, and the materialistic and mythological
