greek v. abrahamic origin of earth and man

We all know the Abrahamic view on how the earth was formed and how Adam and Eve were created, but the ancient Greeks had a view on both that amazingly matches modern views.

In regard to the origin of the world, the ancient Greeks believed that there once existed a confused mass of shapeless elements called Chaos which resolved themselves into two substances -- the lighter of which formed the sky, and the heavier of which formed the earth.

The two substances then became gods -- Uranus ruled the sky and was the protective father, and Gaea ruled the earth and was the nourishing mother.

The ancient Greeks first believed that man had sprung from the earth. They saw how plants forced their way through the earth in spring, and naturally concluded that man must originally have come from the earth in a similar manner. They supposed that original man had no cultivation and was like the beasts of the field, living wild.

It was not exactly evolution -- as Chaos was not exactly the Big Bang -- but considering that the two theories were put forward about four thousand years ago, or earlier, they were pretty smart.

All that changed when the Greeks became civilized and elites emerged to control the city states and the thoughts of everyone within their sphere of influence.

Priests were appointed to offer sacrifices to Uranus and Gaea, and temples were built to worship them. So lucrative was the priestly career that two gods were not enough to employ them. So, they not only invented more gods but also forced upon people the doctrine that man had been created by the gods and did not arise spontaneously from the earth as previously believed.

Uranus and Gaea were joined by two more offspring of Chaos -- Erebus (Darkness) and his sister Nyx (Night) -- and then Uranus, the god of heaven, united himself in marriage with Gaea, the earth goddess, and created various children. Their first-born child was Oceanus, the ocean encircling the earth, then came Aether (Ether), Aer Air), and the sisters Nephelae, representing clouds.

Pontus (the sea) then came along, and Gaea united herself with this son to produce the sea-deities Nereus, Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto, and Eurybia.

Uranus also united with his sister Nyx to produce Eos (Aurora), the Dawn, and Hemera, the Daylight.

In addition, Uranus and Gaea produced two distinctly different races of beings called Giants and Titans. There were three Giants -- Briareus, Cottus, and Gyges --who shook the universe and produced, and twelve Titans -- Oceanus, Ceos, Crios, Hyperion, Iapetus, Cronus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys.

Uranus feared the Giants and hurled them into Tartarus, but Gaea with the help of her Titan son Cronus engineered Uranus to be wounded and from his blood falling on the earth a race of monstrous Giants were created. Cronus succeeded in dethroning his father and was cursed by his father with a similar fate.

The priests also put forward the idea that man went through four ages -- the Golden Age (one of god-fearing peace), the Silver Age (one of ill-health due to lack of service to the gods), the Brazen Age (one of cruelty and evil), and the Iron Age (one of wickedness and sin which was so bad that the gods flooded the world and drowned everyone except the pious son of Prometheus, Deucalion, and his wife, Pyrrha).

Prometheus the god of fire commanded Deucalion to built a ship (reminiscent of Noah's ark) in which he and his wife took refuge during the deluge. From stones they cast over their shoulders, those thrown by Deucalion produced men, and from those thrown by Pyrrha, women.

This theory was overturned by the poet Hesiod -- who lived 850 years before the Christian era, and about 200 years after King David -- who wrote in 'The Theogony' that Prometheus had formed man out of clay, and that Athene had breathed a soul into him. Hephaestus (Vulcan) then formed a beautiful woman out of clay, and determined that through her misery should be brought into the world.

Pandora -- this Greek Eve conceived by the Greek poet Hesiod -- then opened the lid of a jar containing all the blessings reserved by the gods for mankind, and immediately all the blessings disappeared except for hope which remains the only solace for mankind, helping us bear our troubles with courage.

In that Eve was blamed for Adam's fall, and Pandora for mankind's fall, both the Greek world view and the Abrahamic world view are decidedly misogynistic.

If we really need gods, then how about we return to the original Greek theory of Uranus ruling the sky as the protective father, and Gaea ruling the earth as the nourishing mother?