Essay On Oedipus The King

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to give that fate a name or series of names, that is, to provide some way of talking about or picturing such fatal forces. Hence arises (according to many scholars of myth) the entire concept of divinity or a divine family—superhuman personalities (who may or may not have human forms and attributes) who control the rules and the events of our lives according to their own principles, which may or may not be intelligible to us (more about that later).
For instance, it's clear that the visions of life in Gilgamesh and the Old Testament, for all their differences, are fatalistic in the sense I have described. Ultimate control over human life is exercised by non-human forces or personalities. The human beings who believe these fatalistic visions have names for such controlling figures. In the Old Testament there is only one such fatal figure; in Gilgamesh, as in the Greek epics, there are numerous controlling figures. But the principle is the same: our lives are not in our own hands.
Giving fate a name or series of names is a necessary imaginat...