Cyrus H. Gordon Quotes

68 Sourced Quotes

That both the Gilgamesh Epic and the Odyssey deal with the episodic wanderings of a hero, would not be sufficiently specific to establish a genuine relation between them. But when both epics begin with the declaration that the hero gained experience from his wide wanderings, and end with his homecoming, a relationship dimly appears.... when we note that whole episodes are in essential agreement, we are on firmer ground. For instance, both Gilgamesh and Odysseus reject a goddess's proposal for marriage; and each of the heroes interviews his dead companion in Hades.

Cyrus H. Gordon
Aristocrats (among Hebrews and Greeks) often had harems that included women of common or even servile origin, as well as well-born aristocratic ladies. Normally, the successors would be chosen from the sons born by ladies; but on occasion those born by servile or common wives achieved the ascendency. In the latter case, tradition could dwell on the phenomenon as "worthy of saga."

Cyrus H. Gordon
The ancients were not as denominationally minded as we in matters of their clergy. They were more concerned with obtaining services of a bona fide professional member of a priestley guild who was qualified to intercede between mortals and immortals, than with finding a religious leader whose sole qualification was like-mindedness.

Cyrus H. Gordon
The text of Homer about the Mycenaen Age with its memories of the Trojan War, and the Hebrew text covering from the Conquest through David's reign, cover ground with much in common geographically, chronologically and ethnically.

Cyrus H. Gordon
The function of reciting (actually chanting—for Scripture and national epic were sung, not read) Pentateuch and Homer at national reunions is the same in both cases. The narrative knits the segments of the nation together telling how they achieved their place in history in the course of a great event (The Exodus or the Trojan War). All of the tribes and their leaders are heroic. The text brings in each tribe by name.... there must be an honoured place for all.

Cyrus H. Gordon
Babylonian mathematics and astronomy have left an indelible impression on our exact sciences. We still call some of the planets by their Babylonian names in translation.

Cyrus H. Gordon
The excavators cleared out one of the ancient cisterns, and a few of the winter rains sufficed to fill the cistern with enough water to supply the expedition with water for the whole season. This illustrates the possibilities of almost any country, provided the right kind of people are there. With energetic people, the few, but heavy, winter rains and be stretched a long, long way.

Cyrus H. Gordon
If archeology had yielded only the Epic of Kret, we would have enough to bridge the gap between the Iliad and Genesis. But... our new sources are so rich that we have only begun... The years ahead bid fair to be the most fruitful in the annals of Classical and Biblical scholarship. Our debt to the Bible and Classics is so great that this type of research will deepen our understanding of our culture and of ourselves.

Cyrus H. Gordon
The central problem of the Greek tragedies is why we suffer so at the hands of God. The movement that evoked Greek tragedy in the fifth century B. C. was spread over the East Mediterranean evoking a parallel response in Israel.... And as in Greek tragedy, Job deals with the problem of why man suffers so at the had of God.

Cyrus H. Gordon
If the entire aristocracy is of divine descent, Zeus (or El) cannot save the human son without upsetting the order of things.... Hera reminds Zeus that many sons of gods are fighting around Troy, and that if Zeus spares his son, other gods will do the same for their sons, so that the earthly system will cease (Iliad 16: 445-449)

Cyrus H. Gordon
It would be foolhardy to swell the pages of this book with an exhaustive list of Greco-Hebrew differences. Everyone knows that Homer is very different from the Bible.

Cyrus H. Gordon
Mesopotamian merchants spread their commercial institutions far and wide, into Western Asia, Egypt and Europe. The ancient inhabitants of Babylonia used the word qaqqadum, 'head', in the sense of 'principal'... our English word 'capital' (via Latin caput [head]) reflects ancient Mesoptamian usage.... our financial system, that reckons with interest on principal, harks back to the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Cyrus H. Gordon
It seems strange that so many generations of Old Testament scholars, trained in Greek as well as Hebrew literature, have managed to keep their Greek and Hebrew studies rigidly compartmentalised.

Cyrus H. Gordon
It has been said that the Bedouin Arab is a parasite that lives on the camel, and this to a great extent is true. It is the camel that carries him about; it is the camel's hair that supplies him with both his clothes and his tent; the camel's dung is the fuel of the desert; it is the camel's meat that supplies food for his banquets; the camel's milk is his beverage; and I could go on enumerating the basic gifts of the camel to his Arab master.

Cyrus H. Gordon
For centuries scholars have been forced to grapple with the problem of accounting for the parallels between Greek literature and the Bible. Did Greece borrow from Israel? Or did Israel borrow from Greece? Can the parallels be accidental, do they obliterate the uniqueness of both Israel and Greece?

Cyrus H. Gordon
I hope that the reader will not regard the contents of this book as an escape from the present world but rather as a key part of it.

Cyrus H. Gordon
Minos has rightly been compared with Moses. Both are greater-than-life-size figures who received the law from the supreme god on the sacred mountain (see Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 2: 61 concerning Minos).

Cyrus H. Gordon
Solomon was a 'copper king', and all along that Araba, on both sides, we found many copper mines and smelting stations, all attributable to Solomon and his immediate successors.

Cyrus H. Gordon