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The sphinx is associated with riddles. It asked the questions; people were to answer. Someone or something who is "sphinx-like," is puzzling, baffling or enigmatic. In some Greek myths, the sphinx killed anyone who failed to answer her riddles correctly! In other myths, she symbolized justice and was much more benevolent.
The marble sphinx pictured here comes from a funerary monument in Corinth. Traces of painted decoration are still on her body and wings. The artifact dates from the middle of the 6th century B.C. and therefore would have been in the city when Paul arrived.
In Greek mythology, the sphinx was a winged creature with the head of a woman and the body of a lion. In Egyptian mythology, where the story of the sphinx originated, the creature was male but became female in Near Eastern mythology and then in Greek mythology, although there are a few male sphinxes from the archaic period.
At first, sphinxes in Greek mythology were portrayed as ghost-like monsters that carried off children and who were present at fatal fights. A number of stories related to Thebes in Greece (see map below) describe the sphinx as one with a riddle about the three ages of men. Those who did not answer correctly were eaten. Oedipus solved the riddle and that was the end of the sphinx, either by suicide or the hand of Oedipus. In yet another account of the sphinx by the poet Theognis (6th century B.C.E.), she is "the wise, enigmatic, and musical messenger of divine justice."1
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Notes and Credits
1"Sphinx," The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd ed., ed. N. G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 1009.
The photograph(s) by Allan R. Brockway are used with his permission. Please credit him and the web page on Corinth, which Thomas Price has written. For many years, Allan Brockway was "specialist" in Jewish Christian Relations with the World Council of Churches in Geneva and an educator in Judaism and Christianity at the Selly Oak Colleges and the University of Birmingham (England). Thomas Price earned his Ph.D. in theology from Boston University and worked for the General Board of Church and Society for 10 years. He works for the Social Security Administration and teaches adult Bible classes in Paul and the historical Jesus at St. Matthew's UMC, Bowie, Maryland. The web site grew out of his research on Paul before and after a tour of Greece and Turkey in the "footsteps of Paul."
Disclaimer: Some links jump to outside sites for further information on Corinthians, the Bible, Paul, and other resources. Links do not constitute an endorsement by the Women's Division of the information on other web sites. External web sites offer us diverse perspectives; afford us an opportunity to compare them to United Methodist positions; and, encourage us to critically analyze the issues raised by the Corinthians web pages.
