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Many old stories turn on a quarrel among gods or heavenly beings over how far to involve themselves with people. One side helps or teaches humanity, and the other holds back, punishes or wipes the slate clean. The examples below show how that pattern plays out in each tradition, and how much of it the texts themselves support.
Prometheus and Zeus
The earliest written version of the Prometheus myth comes from the Greek poet Hesiod, in his Theogony of the late eighth century BC. Prometheus, son of the Titan Iapetus, challenges the power of Zeus. He steals fire from Olympus and hands it to humans. Zeus sentences him to be chained to a rock while an eagle eats his liver, which grows back each night so the torment never ends.
In Works and Days, Hesiod adds Pandora. Curiosity leads her to open a container left with her husband, and out come the evils that plague people, among them hard toil and terrible sickness.
Enki and Enlil
Mesopotamian flood stories split the gods along similar lines. In the Babylonian Atrahasis epic and in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the god Enlil sends the flood because a swarming humanity makes so much noise that he cannot sleep. In the Gilgamesh version, Ea, the Babylonian name for Enki, warns the hero Utnapishtim ahead of time so that he can survive.
The Sumerian version is broken at the start, so the cause of its flood is lost. Its hero is Ziusudra of Shuruppak, who likely survives with Enki’s help, and afterwards Enlil grants him eternal life. Utnapishtim is the Akkadian rendering of that Sumerian name.
The Watchers
1 Enoch, whose Book of the Watchers is usually dated to the third century BC, gives most of its attention to the fall of the Watchers. In chapters 6 to 10 of the R. H. Charles translation, these angels, called the children of heaven, see the beautiful daughters of men and desire them as wives. Led by Semjaza, two hundred of them bind themselves by an oath and come down on the summit of Mount Hermon in the days of Jared. Their wives bear them giants, who consume all that people have and then turn on people themselves. The angels also pass on forbidden arts. Azazel shows how to make swords, knives, shields and breastplates, how to work metals, and how to make bracelets, ornaments and cosmetics, while others teach enchantments and the signs of the stars. God then sends Uriel to warn Noah that a deluge will cover the whole earth, sets the giants against one another, and has the fallen Watchers bound for seventy generations in the valleys of the earth until the day of judgment.
Bali and Vamana
Hindu tradition offers a softer case. Mahabali, or Bali, is a daitya king, grandson of Prahlada, whom Kerala remembers as its noblest and most prosperous ruler. While Bali was holding a great horse sacrifice and handing out gifts, Vamana asked him for three steps of land. Bali agreed despite a warning from Shukra. Vamana then grew into the giant form of Vishnu, covered heaven with one step and the earth with the next, and Bali offered his own head for the third. The festival of Onam in Kerala still celebrates him.
Sun Wukong and Heaven
In the Chinese novel Journey to the West (chs. 1 to 7, Havoc in Heaven), the Monkey King Sun Wukong rebels against Heaven. Left off the guest list for the Queen Mother of the West’s peach banquet, he eats heavenly food and causes havoc in Heaven. The Buddha imprisons him under a mountain, and five hundred years later he travels with the monk Tang Sanzang as one of his disciples. His revolt is for his own sake, not for humanity’s.
Atlantis
In Plato’s Critias, the island of Atlantis falls to Poseidon. He has children with a mortal woman, Cleito, and their firstborn, Atlas, founds the royal line. For generations the kings stay virtuous and obey the laws.
The kings decline as their godly inheritance weakens over the generations.
when the divine portion began to fade away, and became diluted too often and too much with the mortal admixture, and the human nature got the upper hand
Plato, Critias
Greed and unjust power take over, and Zeus resolves to punish them. The dialogue breaks off as he begins to speak, so his sentence is never told.
