Greco-Roman paganism
In March of 2007 I went to Greece to trace footsteps of St. Paul, a follower of Jesus in the first century who took the Gospel message from Asia to Europe. (This shows, by the way, that none of the major "western" religions are European in origin. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all arose in what we call the Near East part of Asia. Christianity went to Africa and perhaps India before it arrived in Europe.) We even saw Mount Olympus, the home of Zeus/Jupiter and other gods and goddesses as we flew over Athens en route to Thessaloniki.
When I got back to Athens the guide explained about the construction going on at the Acropolis—the highest point in the city, where the remains of the ancient temple of the goddess Athena towers above the bustling metropolis. Lights play on the temple at night so you see it from the hotel restaurant some three miles away. Impressive.
This temple (one of the Seven Wonders of the World) is being restored to its original glory, with the fifty-foot statue of the golden goddess from whom Athens gets its name, soon to be installed. What stunned me was the news that some modern devotees are planning to restore the cult of Athena as well. That is, they plan to hold worship gatherings—not merely as re-enactments of the pagan rites of long ago, but as sincere attempts to revive the ancient religion. Whether they will conduct animal sacrifices as did the ancients I am not sure.
Now that we have read about the Greek and Roman religions of yore, could this ancient worldview make a comeback in our times?
Could you imagine yourself joining this soon-to-be faith community? Could you believe that there are gods that actually exist such as the Greeks and Romans believed 2000-3000 years ago, from the time of Homer to that of Nero, Claudius, and Domitian? Why or why not?
When I got back to Athens the guide explained about the construction going on at the Acropolis—the highest point in the city, where the remains of the ancient temple of the goddess Athena towers above the bustling metropolis. Lights play on the temple at night so you see it from the hotel restaurant some three miles away. Impressive.
This temple (one of the Seven Wonders of the World) is being restored to its original glory, with the fifty-foot statue of the golden goddess from whom Athens gets its name, soon to be installed. What stunned me was the news that some modern devotees are planning to restore the cult of Athena as well. That is, they plan to hold worship gatherings—not merely as re-enactments of the pagan rites of long ago, but as sincere attempts to revive the ancient religion. Whether they will conduct animal sacrifices as did the ancients I am not sure.
Now that we have read about the Greek and Roman religions of yore, could this ancient worldview make a comeback in our times?
Could you imagine yourself joining this soon-to-be faith community? Could you believe that there are gods that actually exist such as the Greeks and Romans believed 2000-3000 years ago, from the time of Homer to that of Nero, Claudius, and Domitian? Why or why not?
posted by Jim Gustafson | 10:42 AM
9 Comments:
I would totally worship Athena! She to me is the Ultimate priestess!! Wisdom, logic, and goddess of crafts...if Martha Stewart and Hillary Clinton were to procreate, Athena surely be swollowed and be poped out of the head of Mrs Clinton.
I feel that many people today are stating to accpet the fact again that women can hold power in not just politics but in the heavenly world. It is starnge to me that so many prodominant religions in our society today are based on strong male characters and women to support and follow them. It is time to bring back the time of goddess!
HAH! I am up and blogging again.
I suppose if I could actually ask Athena one question it would be "What's a nice Goddess like you doing in a place like this?" But I digress.
Athena is the Godess of wisdom and war (an oxymoron?) and the guardian of Athens who's people named the city as gratitude for her gift of the olive tree.
She was born from the forehead of Zeus the king of the Olympian Pantheons (you won't find that on page 204) after he swallowed his pregnant wife Metis to prevent a son from taking his throne. I am struck by the personality and human emotions given to Greek Gods.
As to the question as to if this cult could make a comeback in our modern era I say -yes- apparently it has already begun to synthesize. And, "little miss sword swinger" may be just the gal for the job - in this era of geo-political terror and climate change. Hey- if you think the world might end and you have a nice place in Athens-who better to turn to than a warring, city protecting Goddess?
The Barna Group found that immidiatly following the 911 attacks, " half of all Americans said their faith helped them cope with the shock and uncertainty. The change most widely reported was a significant spike in church attendance, with some churches experiencing more than double their normal crowd on the Sunday after the shocking event." Perhaps our current status accounts for the reimergenace of the cult.
I could not imagine joing this cult (although she is hot)- I tend to ground my religious life in the historical lessons of the tried and true. however, i could imagine joining this cult if i were an aincent Athenian-living within the great walls -ever mindfull of the threat of that thug King Darius or the Spartan military complex-in that context devotion to "little miss shield spear chucker" would make perfect sense afterall. In fact, it seems to me that fear is a powerful motivator for worship.
I could believe that God's like her exist. Hey-I buy the whole God planted the magic seed in Mary's belly" thing!
And i can state from experiance that divine providence is a powerful motivater and a cohesive factor in military campaigns. When going off to exact precise,overwhelming violence upon your fellow man it's nice to have God on your side. The following link shows Athena in ink:
http://zhippo.com/IronhorseHOSTED/images/gallery/athena-goddess-tattoo-l.
AND this one a picture of her birth:
http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/imageswomen/papers/stebbinsathena/athena2.html
And finally a painting of her with red hair (maybe I could join today afterall)www.mars.dti.ne.jp/.../athena/misc/athena-p.gif
peace out Ralph
Anything is possible, yet I think that a comeback by Greek and Roman religions would be cliche' to say the least. Just like when a new fad (based on decades ago culture) becomes "in" it is only so for ashort while. Another thing occurs to me that if our prominnent "popular" religions are an evolution of these past religions than why? would we divert back. If you build it they will come, "sound famililar". Wican religion is prominent is Salem, MA, but it doesn't mean its going to make a comeback per say. I do believe it would be nice to eventually have a hybrid religion that involved more "real" stories as told by the greeks and romans, I've read the bible and yes it can be graphic, but like the book says, it has all the grit of modern news, but with more useful endings and comparisons to human nature. Unfortunatly I had an operator error last blog and didn't submit the blog after reading it, but this blog like the last reminds me of the same thing that everything religion has now is a variation or off-shoot of these ancient and tribal religions. I don't necassarily believe there were gods or spirits yet I believe that the emotion that can be evoked by these stories could bring nothing to mind except powerful and wise figures. I was raised Methodist, attended bible school ans so forth until my teenage years. Even in my youth I was drawn to a more natural approach to religion. Another thing I can really appreciate about the greek and roman religon is that the woman also are very powerful and important. I have three daughters and I always try to find the strong woman to point out to them, and its a funny thing that you really only find that pre-christianity and islam.
I am in agreement with Sam that it is funny how a religion has to be in style to get believers, unless there was an enlightenment in Greece I didnt hear about(imagine finding Zuess and his crew hanging around on top of Mt. Olympus).
However, I have no problem with a new religion because I sometimes relate major religious powers to major corporations(Walmart=Christianity) Where the more powerful a single entity the more people suffer, but maybe if there are many smaller religions there would be less fanatics in each group and enough of a ratio for each group to take care of their own crazies and pray in/for peace?(I had this theory written out better and more thought out but I X'ed the window and now it sounds plain stupid.)
As for believing in Athena, of course I would. Shes hot, shes "in,"(as stated by Sam Miller, and I love going with the grain I own a mac lol) and above all reading the Greek Theology is 1,000X more interesting than reading Christianity.(Forgive me god) Also, I wonder what worshipping Athena would be like, Im not really down with animal sacrifice. But if its like a yelling, dancing, and extreme worship, rather than stand, sit, kneel, dont do anything that makes you feel good mass, count me in.
heres a site of some greek mythologyhttp://www.theoi.com/greek-mythology/olympian-gods.html
after that, read one page of the old testament and youll understand my point.
"The Greek goddess Athena was frequently called upon to settle disputes between the gods or various mortals. "Athena Goddess of Wisdom" was known for her superb logic and intellect. Her decisions were usually well-considered, highly ethical, and seldom motivated by self-interest. Not only the goddess Athena's decisions demonstrate her wisdom, but they revealed her great compassion as well".
http://www.goddessgift.com/goddess-myths/greek_goddess_athena.htm
Ok, do we or do we not need this kind of logic and reason in our current state of turmoil with our economy and state. Would I be willing to be a follower of a woman.....certainly as I am one. Do I think the Greek Religion will ever make a HUGE come back absoltuely not. Like the newest FADS of religions in Hollywood with Kabbalah and Scientology....it gets a lot of press and then vanishes to only the few who still worship. Unfortunately religion seems to only be important when it is needed and hip so to speak, but unfortunately not an evryday life occurence. Well not to speak for all because I am sure there are those out there that are devout in whatever religion they practice.
I also think the the Animal Activists would have a HUGE problem with the sacrificing of animals. What do you think?
I did truly enjoy this chapter though. Very interesting.
By Soonmyung Sim
If I was living in the ancient Greek society, I am sure I would worship Greek gods or goddesses for direction on an alternative energy plan. However, it is hard to imagine myself worshiping Greek gods or goddess in a modern society. Believing in gods in modern society is so much different than believing in gods or goddess in ancient Greece. I think the ancient Greeks were different from us in some ways and like us in others. The ancient Greeks believed in many gods. In addition, every little village had its own gods. Religion was important to the ancient Greeks because they believed that it would make their lives better while they were living. They also believed the gods would take care of them when they died. In order to keep local religion in good health, most Greek people sacrificed to their gods (Carmody & Brink, 2006). Most people in Greece also asked the gods to tell them about the future through oracles. The Greeks believed that you could communicate with the gods and that the gods would give you advice and maybe tell you what was going to happen in the future.
If there had been an internet in the days of the Greeks, I am not sure the ancient Greeks would go to the oracles and ask for an advice rather than researching on line. Although, in modern society, people often look for answers and ask tough questions. Sometimes they ask God during a catastrophic event or natural disaster. For example, during hurricane Katrina many people asked, “Is the destruction of New Orleans the wrath of God?” My personal interpretation, you cannot apply this to these particular events. Carmody and Brink(2006) addressed that the Greeks were among the most religious of ancient peoples by many scholars. They made the transcendental qualities, unity, truth, goodness, and beauty. I think the most interesting approach is to learn some things from the Greeks as well as they learn from other people.
I actually think believing beautiful "things" like the sun and moon are gods is easier than believing some unseen "thing" is a god. When you look at the moon and see the beauty, it is almost natural to speak (pray) and feel a connection to the beauty. When you go inside a church and pray in a pew, it is very abstract. Do you think about anything beautiful at that time? I always had a hard time trying to pray. I felt there was not a connection to the thing I was speaking to.
It is even easier to think something that affects important things in your life has "power". For example, the sun makes crops grow so you can eat. Without the sun, you would starve or freeze. So thinking the sun is a god is very easy.
Now inventing gods that look like men or women is more natural. When we see a picture of Jesus in a church, he is human, or at least we see him as human. Yet the religion says he is the son of God. So God is human? There must be a connection between the modern God and humans. That is Jesus. In older religions, the gods were actually humans. Very different. When I see a human that has done extremely good things, like Gandhi or Martin Luther King, I think of them as more that human, or at least the best that humans can be.
Perhaps the Christian god is simply an "idea". Interesting.
I think that anything is possible in the world we live in today. Like Lisa, I also thought of Scientology and think that there is a religion out there for everyone. I believe that most people want to believe in something, and will search until they find something that appeals to them. A lot of the comments had to do with Athena being a strong women, which would certainly appeal to many women today. I liked Sean's comment about if there were more, smaller groups of different religions, that perhaps there would be less fanatics and less turmoil. "Why can't we all just get along"? However, as is our nature, one religion/group would probably begin to grow, get stronger and more dominant, and so on..... I myself am happy in my own religion, it is a source of strength and comfort. I accept a lot of things on "faith" and do not spend a lot of time questioning it. I was brought up in this religion and have done the same with my children. So, I could not envision myself joining a new faith community. I can understand how other people can believe in their gods; I am quite content in believing in mine. I did also thoroughly enjoy the readings this week. A lot of it was familiar due to my daughter studying greek in high school. I find it all very interesting. I also found interesting the fact that many states here in the US have statues of Athena used in their local government buildings, due to her being the goddess of wisdom. I found that when googling "statues of Athena".
I think it's interesting that some people are trying to bring back the cult of Athena - I would not have expected something like that. I don't think it will become very widespread though, because I think the general mindset of the world has changed enough that not many people will accept a religion like that, or at least they won't follow it devoutly. In any case, it hasn't gotten very big yet, because I couldn't find anything substantial about it after 5 or 10 minutes of searching the internet.
Personally, I wouldn't join this religion first because starting up a religion that has been dead or dormant for thousands of years doesn't make much sense to me. If it were legitimate, I'd think that there would have been a lot of people following it all those years. My main reason though is that I'm a Christian, and I don't believe that there are any other deities than the God of the Bible. I tend to be more of a logical thinker and fact-based, so I don't know what I'd do if the God I believed in acted like a regular person, but with extra powers, like the Greek gods and goddesses. I think I'd be rather scared that one of them would wake up on the wrong side of the bed one morning and blast the living daylights out of the earth just because they were cranky and needed to let off some steam. I'm sure that makes them easier to relate to, but I'll take an all-powerful God that I can't always understand but that I can trust implicitly any day.
I think this ancient world view would not be able to make a come back in today's world. Although religion is still a big part of peoples lives today, religion is not as emphasized nearly as much as it was during ancient times. Religious beliefs are not followed to their completeness. People today pick and choose what they want to believe in, which parts of their faith that they want to follow, while still considering themselves as being religious. This behavior would not work to help assist in the comeback of such an ancient religion.
To make the comeback work, the people who choose to follow would need to be completely devoted to the faith and successful at spreading the word- I honestly do not see it working out in today's world. I myself could not imagine joining such a religion. I believe in one god and would find it very difficult to believe in many gods. I think my life experience would hold me back to the new ideas that this religion would represent, therefore making it difficult for me to discover the religion.
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