The gods are not organized in a clear hierarchy as is true with the gods of the Greeks and Romans. They are more like a large and noisy family with no generally acknowledged patriarch or matriarch to pull them together, an alliance of semi-independent chiefs.…
Trade also heavily influenced the Classical Greek civilization. With a prosperous trading system the Greek government had many activities to adhere to, one of these activities was honoring the gods. The Greek gods were human gods, in the sense that they possessed the same traits and qualities as humans. They had the same struggles of the individual and collective human nature and they helped to explain some of the most pressing questions many people had about life; including fate, human flaws, and a person’s mastery of self and of the physical universe.(10) The temples for the gods help to show the concept of Greek art, in the sense that they are balanced and proportional form all angles and their sculptures portray realistic and graceful…
The stories of Genesis and The Odyssey would be fundamentally different without the presence of God and the gods in their respective narratives. However, how their respective presences manifest themselves are markedly different. The singular God of Genesis plays a passive role in the development of His plan for the mortal realm, acting from a distance, while the plural gods of the Odyssey who walk amongst the mortals and play the role of outright, active manipulators in order to enact their own plans for the mortals. These differences cause God and the gods to be perceived in different ways. While the God in Genesis becomes an ethereal, holy figure through His distance, the gods in The Odyssey are made more human through their interactions…
The first story that I will look at is The Iliad. This story takes place during the final weeks of the Trojan War. The Gods are very present throughout this story…
It seems that both of these gods tend to favor the people that most resemble them. To me this is a tendency to prefer the people that they can best relate to. Relatibility usually connotated as a human characteristic, it is intriguing that the gods are sympathetic in this way. It is almost as if the gods envy the mortals more than the mortals envy their…
* These gods were at the center of Greek mythology- a body of stories about gods and heroes that try to explain how the world works.…
Divine responsibility can be defined as maintaining order of the world and ensure offenders are being punished for their misdeeds. On the other hand, human responsibility is to differentiate between right and wrong and act accordingly, as to please the Gods. However, it is seen in the Odyssey that the Humans do not have complete faith in the Gods and their justice. As a result, the Humans begin to question the meaning of their lives in the grand scheme of things. Moreover, it is seen that the Gods often act according to their whims and fancies, thereby abusing their power and seeking their own end. The Gods do not usually get involved unless the matter concerns them directly. Uncertainty, as to what implications a Human’s actions would have tends to put him in a state of existential crisis.…
In Greek mythology, the gods have many human like qualities. They live their lives as a person would on earth, and having conflicts, doing wrong things such as kill and hurt. Where in the Christian myths, God is made up to be flawless, and perfect. He does not sin or hurt others, he lives in the…
Godly colossal Greek epic, “The Iliad” constituted by the poet named, Homer, articulate the chronicle of the Brobdingnagian Trojan War. It is swarming with the interventions of the gods enchanting their coveted mortals (humans) and altering the heterogeneous scenes of the Trojan War. In this poem, gods have an assortment of relationships with humans which include love, fornication, and mother or father relationships. Gods interact with mortals in human shapes and stimulate them. Also, gods cognize that every human is eventually destined to die and they anticipate humans to pray to them for every obstacle humans encounter. However, for humans gods are omnipotent, authoritative, dominant, and immortals, who they supplicate to if they have any complications and they look forward to their craved gods to comprehend to their prayers. In addition, there are various kinds of gods in this epic who manoeuvre a very significant theatrical role in this war. Each god aid their preferable human and the justification for it could be because he/she could be the responding god’s son or daughter or the god plainly is in love with him/her. They guide humans in their hindrance work when asked for assistance. Moreover, nearly all individuals in this narrative appear to believe that most or all of their actions are already preordained and it is unfeasible to modify them. There are many culminations in this epic where we perceive that the gods are trying to preserve the fate on its destined path by intervening among humans.…
The characterization of individuals through specific and repeated character descriptions are consistent with social norms and create binding values associated each character. In the Iliad, which can be considered the primary religious text of antiquity, godly epithets are used to accompany characters with dominant abilities. The Bible also features consistent divine descriptions throughout the various writings. By regularly featuring characters with “godlike” descriptions, Homer’s language defines the humanity and position of the Greek gods, creating a sharp distinction from the descriptive writing in the Bible that defines the unreachable position of the monotheistic God. Although the gods of the Iliad and the God of Genesis are similar in their interaction with mortals, the usage and nature of divine language in character descriptions, along with the ability for a mortal to attain “godlike” status, are remarkably different.…
The relationship between the gods and humanity in The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey are the same. In each saga, the gods seem to live nearby and are always present. Both epic poems portray humans as simply at the mercy of the gods. The gods feel that it is their duty to intervene if they feel that man is traveling off course from his destiny. However, the gods are not all powerful.…
I feel like a lot of the ideas of Gods in the odyssey matched Plato's ideas of Greek Gods, as in there were more than one, they're immortal, being powerful, and interact with beings. So, I think that Plato backs up the ideas of the Gods inflicting moral code and that they influence humans to be good. Yet, I think that Plato's ideas do clash in an emotional way. The Gods don't feel jealous and are perfectly wise according to Plato. They also don't engage in deceit, don't provoke bad behavior, and only bring good to humans. I feel as if the art works we had discussed don't complicate my cultural reading that I receive from the Odyssey. The art works show the Gods as humans in their art works, but they portray them as bigger and more powerful. So that backs up the "just like us only powerful..etc". They also are shown punishing those who go against their will, showing they can act like brats-always wanting their…
In our assigned story, Father and Son, there are gods that guide the characters. This is often a connecting theme throughout history as shown in many art pieces. Such as the famous painting, ‘Clytia changed into a sunflower’ by Charles de La Fosse. Which depicts the tragic failings of the gods. Some of the examples of gods intervening in Father and Son, was when Athena disguises Odysseus on his return from Ithaca. Another example was Athena also guides Telemachus by giving him the courage to push through hard times. Even though in Father and Son, Athena helps the characters, this is not always the case. It not always clear if the gods favor to help humans or manipulate them.…
In the Iroquois tribe, this is the complete opposite, there is no banishment or cursing of anyone. The Iroquois don’t place value in the gods, instead the importance and value is placed on the woman who falls and the family she had on our world. In the Iroquois myth the gods don’t play a role in create the land at all, the woman with help from the animals creates the land the Iroquois tribe lives on. The Iroquois tribe places importance and value on the humans who created the structures of their lifestyle much higher than the gods. The gods aren’t some untouchable being. In fact, the Iroquois people and the gods are exactly the same: “Far above this unpeopled world, there was a Sky-World. Here lived gods who were like people- like Iroquois” (Iroquois 25). The gods are not some majestic and higher being like God is in the Bible. The gods are people, is establishes an equilibrium between the gods and the Iroquois people. No one group is better than the other group. The Bible hold one God of utmost importance. God is better and greater than the human can ever image. Humans with the Biblical ideology and belief should desire to please and obey God and all his commands. God is in the biblical sense the one and only ruler of all…
One deity in Greek mythology that can be recognized in our lives today is Eris, the goddess of strife and discord. Family conflicts are a common occurrence of Eris in our lives. The Greek deities and ourselves have had to face this variety of discord for millenniums. There is much discord to be found within the family of Zeus, such as the quarreling between Zeus and Hera. One source of discord that comes up often in both Greek mythology and in our own lives would be of a person cheating on their partner or spouse. Zeus often cheated on Hera with other goddesses as well as with other humans. Cheating is an example of something that often creates strife and discord between families. Divorces and breakups very commonly occur in our lives as a…