Volume OneTHE EAST PEDIMENT

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THE PARTHENON CODEPowerPoint Series

INTRODUCTIONReclaiming What We’ve Lost of Our

Greek Heritage

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Ancient Greece—the city of Athens in particular—created the living cultural basis of our modern world. Here we see Peter Connolly’s painting of the ancient Akropolis, or high place of the city. Athena’s temple, the Parthenon, dominates the landscape, as Greek culture still dominates our age.

Greece bequeathed to Europe her sciences, her philosophies, her letters, and her arts as the living cultural basis of our modern world.

Will Durant, The Life of Greece

Athens was the shining star of the ancient world, dominating almost every field of human endeavor.

Peter Connolly, The Ancient City

Athens is the original home of Western civilization.

John M. Camp, The Athenian Agora

Our universities and other academic institutions are based on the Academy of Plato.

Socrates invented modern philosophy.

Our ideals of individual liberty and democracy originated in ancient Athens.

The architecture of the United States Supreme Court is Greek.

Charles Freeman, author of The Greek Achievement, put it this way: “The Greeks provided the chromosomes of Western civilization.” We can thus relate to almost all aspects of the ancient

Greek world.

Ancient Greek comedy means something to us . . .

Because as Abbott and Costello would tell us, it’s the basis of our own comedy.

We can relate to Greek theater . . .

. . . Because our cinema, and most of our prime-time television shows are based on the elements of ancient Greek drama.

We understand drinking wine and listening to music . . .

We relate very easily to music and dancing . . .

We understand beautifying and adorning ourselves . . .

We understand the need to be prepared for war . . .

Many who have served in the military have heard the

bugler’s call to formation . . .

We can relate to the ancient wrestling that the Greeks called Pankration . . .

. . . Because the World Wrestling Federation’s Smackdowns are nothing more than a modern update of Pankration.

We know that the NASCAR races in Indy and Dover and Daytona find their roots in the chariot races in ancient Olympia. It’s still horsepower that matters.

Our athletes still participate in the Olympics, in events such as the discus throw and

the javelin toss.

We understand writing, and that our scientific terms are based almost exclusively on Greek words. Yes, we can relate to almost every thing in ancient Greek society, except for the one

thing that meant the most to them . . . their religion, what we erroneously refer to as mythology.

The ancient Greeks’ religion found expression in their prayers, their sacrifices, their temples, their sculpture, their paintings, their stories, their coinage, their politics, their festivals, and just about every other aspect of their society. But yet today, we barely understand what their religion meant to them at all.

Many of their religious images seem bizarre and inexplicable. Here we see a worshipper placing a statue of Hermes with an erect phallus near an altar. Why was

he doing this? What did it mean to him?

Who are these half-men, half horses, called Kentaurs? And who is this man they are pounding into the ground with a boulder? Why would Greek artists spend years of

work sculpting such a scene?

Who is this special child, and why is he being presented to Athena by a woman

arising from the earth? Who are the spectators to this event?

The place to find these answers and many more is Athena’s ancient temple, the Parthenon. Scholars have called it the most important building in the history of

Western Civilization. It boasted more sculpture than any other Greek temple, and those sculptures explained exactly what the ancient Greeks believed and why.

Metopes

Frieze

Pediment

Let’s look at where the sculptures were located on the Parthenon. Both of the pediments, one at the east end and one at the west, were filled with sculpture. There were 14 metopes—individual, nearly-square sculpted scenes, under each pediment. 32 metopes ran along the north side of the temple, and 32 more, along the south side, making a total of 92 metopes in all. A continuous frieze, 160 meters long, ran along the outside of the inner temple itself.

For more than 2,000 years, the true meaning of these sculptures has remained hidden beneath baffling myths. The east pediment depicts the birth of Athena where the lame

god, Hephaistos, has cracked open the head of Zeus, and out pops the goddess.

On the west pediment, Athena and Poseidon supposedly compete in a contest for

control of Athens and the surrounding region.

On the 14 metopes, or square sculpted scenes, on the east side, the gods defeat the Giants. But who are these Giants?

On the 14 metopes on the west side, Greeks defeat Amazons. But who are these Amazons?

On the south side, the theme of the 32 metopes, many of the them well-preserved, is

the Kentaurs defeating the Lapiths and taking their women. But who are these Kentaurs, and who are these Lapiths?

The theme of the 32 metopes on the north side is the aftermath of the Trojan war.

Frieze

The theme of the 160-meter wrap-around frieze is a great procession which presents Athena with an embroidered cloak. The Greeks established the living basis of our culture, profoundly influencing the things we do and think every day. And yet we haven’t understood what these

sculptural themes mean, or grasped what, if anything, they have to do with us.

The Parthenon was the Greeks’ primary instrument of communication to future ages. We should comprehend, intuitively even, what the Parthenon sculptures mean. And yet, one of the great scholars of the ancient Greek world, Sir John Boardman has written, “The

Parthenon and is sculptures are the most fully known, if least well understood, of all the monuments of classical antiquity.” Where is the missing key to understanding what our

ancestors were trying to tell us?

The Greek myths tell us much, but the key to their correct interpretations lies elsewhere. Of all places, we find it in the Scriptures, mainly in the early chapters of the Book of Genesis. As we use this invaluable key to open the door of our Greek

past, the great Greek myths, at long last, will begin to make sense to us.

The simple secret is that the Book of Genesis and the Parthenon sculptures tell the same story from opposite view points. The so-called “myth” of Athena being born full-grown out of Zeus, for example, is a picture of Eve being born full-grown out of

Adam.

That’s right, the goddess the Greeks called Athena is the woman the Book of Genesis calls Eve . . .

Greek myth is not subjective metaphor or nonsense; it is history—the history of the human race carved in marble on the Parthenon.

The myths of the Greeks begin in Eden. Their basic beliefs were that the serpent was the enlightener of mankind rather than our deceiver, and that Athena, the deified Eve,

brought that enlightenment back to us after the Flood.

In this presentation, we are going to prove that this is true by reconstructing the east pediment of the Parthenon, the most sacred sculpted space in Greek antiquity. The

east pediment told the story of the serpent’s side of Eden in unmistakable terms. The ancient Greeks understood it. And so should we.