Pure Power vs. Justifications

In both Genesis and Theogony, the storyline revolves around gods that rule over their realm. A major part of their everyday lives consist of the gods settling quarrels, trying to win a power struggle, or other adventures. It is during these experiences that the gods true dispositions comes out in the form of how they wield however much power they possess and how it affects those under them. Judging by their nature of power and authority, and the state of social order around them, God from Genesis is a more just leader than the gods from Theogony. The highest ranking gods in Theogony, at first Kronos then Zeus, use their power and authority in unjust ways, dismantling the social order around them. Kronos, the first god at the head of Mount Olympus was continuously insecure about the safety of his throne. His primary concern was that one of his children would overthrow him and succeed him. “He had in mind that no proud son of Heaven Should hold the royal rank among the gods Except himself... Therefore he never dropped His guard, but lay in wait and swallowed his children” (Hesiod 38). Kronos possessed the power to eliminate any possible inheritor to the throne by simply eating them. Kronos avoids a clash between gods for power by perpetrating in a unjust actions solely for his own benefit. As a result, the gods around him became disloyal to him as Rhea, the god who bore the children that Kronos ate asks her parents Earth and Heaven to “bring the Fury down on Kronos, for His treatment of his father and his sons” (Hesiod 38). Kronos’s unjust actions leads to corruption amongst the immortals into where they gave Kronos “a giant stone. He seized it in his hands and thrust it down Into his belly, fool! He did not know that his son, no stone, was left behind, unhurt” (Hesiod 39). The son that was saved from Kronos’s stomach would be