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The Presence Of God And The Gods In Homer's Odyssey

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The Presence Of God And The Gods In Homer's Odyssey
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 …show more content…
While free will is still fully in play in the Odyssey and the choice is placed firmly in the hands of the mortals, the gods have no qualms about trying to influence mortal decisions through any means necessary. Whether it be going down to earth and giving characters advice while disguised as a mortal, like Athena did in the first book of the Odyssey towards Telemachus, or sending down messengers and sending people prophecies. In the first book, after Homer’s invocation of the Muses, it opens with a scene in Olympus wherein the gods hold a council discussing a mortal who went against all the warnings the gods gave him. Athena manipulated the conversation towards her interests in helping Odysseus make his journey back home to …show more content…
He does not have to be actively involved in the carrying out of his plans. He says “Let there be light” and light appears and light is created. His passivity creates distance, making Him otherworldly and ethereal, making him divine whereas the actions of the gods in The Odyssey causes them to take on more human characteristics, creating an emotional or psychological closeness to humans in addition to the physical closeness that the gods and humans share due to the gods being free to walk upon the earth and interact with
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