We do not know if the people of ancient Greece believed the story of Pandora’s Box to be literal history, but the Genesis account is presented as actual history throughout the rest of Scripture. The God of the Bible does not want people to sin the chief god of the Greeks was laying a trap for humanity. In the story of Pandora’s Box, Zeus is a limited and somewhat petty god who gives Pandora the box in order to try to trip up people on earth. In Genesis we have an all-powerful Creator who deals with sin but also provides for forgiveness and deliverance (Genesis 3:15). Perhaps most importantly, the nature of the deity involved is different. In Genesis, the moral aspect is stressed, and the horrors of the curse are God’s righteous response to sin. In the story of Pandora’s Box, Pandora’s moral culpability is not stressed-her act was more of a physical one-she simply let the terrors escape from the box by opening it. Although she is the one who seemed to instigate the problem, her husband is held equally responsible, and in later Scriptures he is held primarily responsible as the head of the family and of the human race (Romans 5:12). In Genesis 3, Eve is not held solely responsible. However there are some differences between Pandora’s Box and the Genesis account of the fall. Out of Pandora’s Box came death, and out of the disobedience in the Garden came death and all kinds of suffering (Genesis 3:16–19).

Finally, in both stories the result of the woman’s action is all the evil and pain in the world. Likewise, it is a woman who is the instigator-Pandora opened the box, and Eve ate the fruit and then gave some to Adam, who also ate. In both cases, what is forbidden is not something that, in and of itself, is a terrible thing-opening a box and eating fruit both appear to be innocuous. In the two stories, the prohibition is similar. It does contain some aspects that are similar to the account of Genesis 3, where God tells us how sin and death entered the world. The story of Pandora’s Box is an attempt to explain why there is trouble in the world. This was his way of bringing trouble upon the world since Prometheus had given fire to mankind. Zeus had given her the box hoping that she would open it, thus releasing trouble into the world. (In the original Greek, the object was a jar, but the two words are similar, and it seems that Erasmus mistranslated it as “box” and that is what stuck.) Inside the box were all the troubles of the world, including death, and, when Pandora opened it, the troubles escaped to plague the world. The god Zeus gave her a box and told her not to open it. Īnd so, apparently, no contemporary politician wants to open the can of worms that would follow any change to the Queen of England’s status as our head of state.In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman on earth. The Fifa decision to expel Zimbabwe from the 2018 World Cup in Russia has opened a Pandora’s Box on whether Fifa should handle such cases at all.

However, a can of worms may simply be annoying or too complicated while Pandora’s box is usually something much worse. She was curious and opened the jar anyway.īoth idioms connote actions that cannot be undone. It comes from a Greek myth about a woman, Pandora, who was given a jar that held all the evil in the world. This phrase, unlike many idioms, has a definite origin.

The word Pandora should be capitalized as it is a name. The inciting action may seem small or inconspicuous. The idiom speaks of an action that sets off a series of events that create more problems and complications. Pandora’s box is an idiom with much the same meaning and usually paired with the same verb open. Also the mass of worms would be quite wiggly and look like a real tangled mess, much like a problem or difficult social issue could be. Once the lid was opened to fish, there wasn’t an easy way of putting it back or containing the worms inside. General consensus puts the term origin in the United States at a time when fisherman bought bait in metal cans, likely with a plastic lid since sealing a can with live worms inside would prove difficult. A can of worms, usually paired with the verb open, is an idiom that describes a problem or situation that has the likelihood of being extremely complicated or full of extra problems.

Meaning of pandoras box