Editing Theogony (section)

==Christian views of the Theogony==
[[John Milton]], a [[Calvinist]], viewed the Theogony as inspired by [[Satan]].  Milton's view, as articulated in [[Paradise Lost]], was that once Satan was cast out from heaven, he became the muse that inspired Hesiod.  What Hesiod wrote, therefore, was a corruption of the "actual" events that happened in the cosmological struggle of Satan against God. In particular, Milton asserted that the triumph of Zeus (i.e., the supreme deity) through guile, negotiation and alliances, was a corruption of God's omnipotence which did not require any ally.<ref name="Gallagher"/>

Milton's view echoes the views of early Christian [[patristics|patristic]] writers.  [[Justin Martyr]] and [[Athenagoras of Athens]], for example, asserted that heathen mythologies in general are demonic distortions of the "true" cosmological history.<ref name="Gallagher">{{cite journal|url= https://www.jstor.org/stable/43446941|title=Paradise Lost and the Greek Theogony|author=Philip J. Gallagher|journal=English Literary Renaissance|volume=9|number=1|date=Winter 1979|pages=121–148|publisher=The University of Chicago Press|doi=10.1111/j.1475-6757.1979.tb01404.x |jstor=43446941 }}</ref>