Reply To: How does the legend of Icarus resonate in the Torah?

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Randomex
Member

(Definitions from Wiktionary)

“resonate”

2. To have an effect or impact; to influence; to engender support.

Greek myths obviously do not have any effect on the Torah.

“cite”

1. To quote; to repeat, as a passage from a book, or the words of another.

2. To list the source(s) from which one took information, words or literary or verbal context.

Torah sources are not about to do this with Greek myths.

Now, it does go the other way: To the extent that a myth’s idea has the element of truth, we should be able to find the idea in the Torah. So, what is the idea of the Icarus myth? It appears to be that human ambition must be restrained, or it may be violently checked by the very nature of the world.

Is this true? I don’t know, but I doubt it. Certainly, the Torah does warn against human arrogance – Oomis gives a good example of that.

(Did you know that Icarus was actually warned to fly neither too high nor too low? The low warning was so that the sea’s dampness not clog his wings. This makes things more complicated.)