ABSTRACT
Judeo-Christian monotheism declares God to have existed forever, and the Book of Genesis begins with a description of the birth of man and the world in which men live. Hesiod's Theogony, on the other hand, the first compilation of Greek mythology, recounts the genesis of the deities. The sky and the earth thus lost their primordial unity and were violently separated, as is often the case in the myths of origin of many cultures. The sky was male and the seat of the Olympian gods, who received the devotion of the new patriarchal civilization. With a single stroke, the new king of the gods had established his own preeminence, had interiorized the qualities most lacking in the violent, primordial male, had created the sole parent –a father who gives birth without a mother – and had also procured an invincible ally who could also function as an alibi.
