The theme of justice in the Odyssey and the BibleJustice is a theme that differs in many different texts, and this is also true in the Odyssey and the Bible. Justice in Homeric texts served to neutralize a situation and bring things back to how they were before, to a moment of stability and respect for authority. The Bible has usually been interpreted, however, as serving justice on a moral basis, as a way to punish those who did not respect each other or behave in God's likeness. In the Odyssey the Greeks viewed justice as coming only by the gods. They believed that the gods punished them because they had fallen from grace and not because they had done anything wrong by human standards. As Socrates later stated in the Euthyphro, that which is holy, and perhaps then right, is that which is “approved of the gods.” Although Socrates proved this to be wrong, it still proves the point of view of most Greeks. Zeus in the opening book of the Odyssey stated: “Upon my word, see how mortal men always blame us gods! We are the source of evil, so they say, when they have only their own folly to thank if their miseries are worse than they should be. This shows that the Greeks feared justice; they felt it was negative and often undeserved. However, every Greek deserved his punishment because he contributed to his reason. For example, when Odysseus' troops killed Helios' cattle, they deserved to have Zeus destroy their ships because he had warned Odysseus in advance not to let the men eat the cattle. When the Greeks disobeyed the gods, they upset the right order of things, and when the gods punished them, they made the other Greeks respect them once again, and thus restored the balance of the world....... middle of paper ......a game. The gods in the Odyssey used justice to be feared and gain respect, and God in the Bible used justice to show love to his faithful disciples and to help his lost sheep stay on the path and learn his love for them. Works Cited and Consulted Bloom, Harold, Homer's Odyssey: edited and with an introduction, NY, Chelsea House 1988 Crane, Gregory, Calypso: Backgrounds and Conventions of the Odyssey, Frankfurt, Athenaeum 1988 Heubeck, Alfred, J.B. Hainsworth, et al. A commentary on Homer's Odyssey. 3 volumes Oxford PA4167 .H4813 1988Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Stanford, William Bedell. Homer's Odyssey. 2 volumes MacmillanTracy, Stephen V., The Story of the Odyssey Princeton UP 1990"Gospel of Matthew". The Holy Bible. New revised standard version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989.