TFBT: A Jealous God

I participated in an excellent presentation by Dr. Keith Stone on Deuteronomy.  Keith made the point that Yahweh is a jealous god (Exodus 34:14) and that the Hebrew people were His portion. (Deu. 32:9) 

The Greek gods were notorious for not trespassing on one another's allotted honors and privileges. As the goddess Artemis tell us at the end of Euripides’ Hippolytus.  But were any of the Greek gods jealous?  I read recently that no god denies another and I cannot think of an example.  But, I have been thinking of Salmoneus lately, for another piece;  

"Salmoneus at first dwelt in Thessaly, but afterwards he came to Elis and there founded a city. And being arrogant and wishful to put himself on an equality with Zeus, he was punished for his impiety; for he said that he was himself Zeus, and he took away the sacrifices of the god and ordered them to be offered to himself; and by dragging dried hides, with bronze kettles, at his chariot, he said that he thundered, and by flinging lighted torches at the sky he said that he lightened. But Zeus struck him with a thunderbolt, and wiped out the city he had founded with all its inhabitants.” (Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.9. 7-8)

Now Salmoneus was an idiot and his story was probably just a cautionary tale.  But it reminded me of another mortal jealous of sacrifices to another god.  The mortal Niobe and her childhood friend the goddess Leto. A seeress foreseeing troubles advices Niobe’s people to sacrifice to Leto, which they do.  Niobe comes upon the scene.

“Madness has prevailed on you to worship some imagined Gods of Heaven, which you have only heard of; but the Gods that truly are on earth, and can be seen, are all neglected! Come, explain to me, why is Latona worshiped and adored, and frankincense not offered unto me?” (Ovid Metamorphoses 6)

That is both denying other gods and obviously jealous. The end result is that Niobe’s children are slain and her subjects turned to stone (Homer, Iliad 24.602). What I find interesting about Niobe's claim to divine honors is her genealogy.  She is a grand-daughter of Zeus via her infamous father Tantalus and claims Zeus a father-in-law.  She is a queen of Thebes a royal family that produced Olympian Dionysus, Thyone, Leukothea, Olympian Heracles and several other gods. 

There is an old theory in classical studies that "heroes" are simply local gods with fading stars unable to compete with the shining pan-Hellenic Olympian.  I don't think I believe that, but is it possible the Salmoneous and Niobe were local monotheistic gods in conflict with the polytheistic Olympians who lost the battle for supremacy and were literally tossed into the pit of Tartarus?[i]

    

 

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[i] Salmoneus (Virgil, Aeneid 6.548)  & Tantalus  (Odyssey 11.582)