Oedipus the King: Expansion of Human Consciousness

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It has been a fascinating process to read Sophoclesís play, Oedipus the King , with fresh eyes, mentally carving away the things I "know" about the story, in particular Freudís application of it to human psychology and my own spiritual take on it (in part derived from the popular show "The Gospel at Colonus").

As my preconceptions dropped away, several dramatic ways in which this extraordinary drama moves away from the early Akkadian cosmgony, "Enuma Elish" and Hesiodís "Theogony" revealed themselves. These pivotal stories illustrated clear ways in which the peoples of Babylon, early Greece and classical Greece differed from one another, especially with regard to their relationships to their deities. In the earlier writings the gods are the only players in the story ? they are clearly central to the lives of the Akkadians and the early Greeks. Oedipus the King, on the other hand, features human beings as the central figures - the players of greatest interest. While Sophocl...

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