Question

The development of the early humanities focusing on the relationship between religion, science, and literature. Begin by explaining ancient Greek views of the gods, including how they influenced culture and how their stories were transmitted. Then identify some of the questions that led the ancients away from these religious stories the philosophical views that emerged from these discussions. Conclude by explaining one topic that we in the 21^st century still wrestle with.

The goal of this assignment is to work with the course materials and your own knowledge to create an understanding of the questions/prompt above

Answer 1

Myths are stories created to teach people about something important and meaningful. They were often used to teach people about events that they could not always understand, such as illness and death, or earthquakes and floods. Legends are like myths, but they are slightly different. While myths are completely made up, legends are based on events that really happened. The Greeks believed in gods and goddesses who, they thought, had control over every part of people's lives. The Ancient Greeks believed that they had to pray to the gods for help and protection, because if the gods were unhappy with someone, then they would punish them. They made special places in their homes and temples where they could pray to statues of the gods and leave presents for them.

The Greeks had a different god for almost everything. They imagined that the gods lived together, as a family, up on the top of Mount Olympus. They did not see them as perfect, but just like people. In the Greek myths the gods argue, fall in love, get jealous of each other and make mistakes.

Ancient Greek religious practice, essentially conservative in nature, was based on time-honored observances, many rooted in the Bronze Age (3000–1050 B.C.), or even earlier. Although the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer, believed to have been composed around the eighth century B.C., were powerful influences on Greek thought, the ancient Greeks had no single guiding work of scripture like the Jewish Torah, the Christian Bible, or the Muslim Qu’ran. Nor did they have a strict priestly caste. The relationship between human beings and deities was based on the concept of exchange: gods and goddesses were expected to give gifts. Votive offerings, which have been excavated from sanctuaries by the thousands, were a physical expression of thanks on the part of individual worshipers.

Ancient Greek society fell over 2000 years ago but despite this, its mythology still continues to influence our western society. References to Greek mythology can be found all through time and in our western culture. The influence of Greek mythology can be found in our science, arts and literature and our language. When Ancient Greece fell to the Roman Empire, Rome adapted its mythologies which still influence us today as they have through history. That is not to say that Greek mythology wasn’t influenced itself – Greek mythology has links with the bible and the early Mycenaean’s. It has also been recognized as one of the earliest forms of paganism.

Asides from the planets, many of the moons orbiting the planets, especially Jupiter (Zeus) have been named according to Greek mythology. Pluto’s moon Charon was named after the boat keeper of the underworld, continuing the link between ancient Greek mythology and western society. The influence of Greek mythology does not stop here, it continues into the stars and galaxies – many of which are named after characters in Greek mythology and this is how Greek mythology has continually influenced western society over time. However, Greek mythologies role in western society is not limited to our science, as it has also played a huge part in developing the English language and phrases that we use. There are two ways in which Greek mythology has affected the English language and that is in words that reference Greek mythology and through phrases that represent the actions of characters in Greek mythology. Words such as an aphrodisiac - something that arouses or intensifies sexual desire, stems from the Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love.

In the twentieth century professional philosophy in the West divided up into two streams, sometimes called ‘Analytic’ and ‘Continental’, and there were periods during which the two schools lost contact with each other. Towards the end of the century, however, there were more philosophers who could speak the languages of both traditions. The beginning of the analytic school is sometimes located with the rejection of a Neo-Hegelian idealism by G.E. Moore (1873-1958). One way to characterize the two schools is that the Continental school continued to read and be influenced by Hegel, and the Analytic school (with some exceptions) did not. Another way to make the distinction is geographical; the analytic school is located primarily in Britain, Scandinavia and N. America, and the continental school in the rest of Europe, in Latin America and in certain schools in N. America.

In the 21^st century, is it time to reconsider how we understand faith, not only for historical or religious reasons but for contemporary political ones? There was nothing intrinsically mysterious about the faith. The phrase ‘the mystery of faith’, which also appears in the New Testament and deeply influenced later Christian thinking, was not intended to mean that pistis was a mystery to community members. It likened the worship of Christ to the Mystery cults which were popular at the time throughout the eastern Mediterranean. What made a cult a Mystery was that only the initiated knew what took place during its main rituals. This was also true of early Christian worship, where only the baptized were allowed to take part in the Eucharist. All societies and cultures, however, evolve, including religious ones, and Augustine’s definition of faith has dominated western thinking for fifteen centuries. Does it matter now what earlier Christians understood by pistis? I think it does.

For the world’s 2.2 billion Christians, hearing, studying, and learning from the New Testament is still fundamental and formative. Understanding what the people who lived closest in time to Jesus Christ were trying to say when they used pistis language about him and their relationship with him therefore has significant implications for Christians’ understanding of their faith today.

In the modern, English-speaking world, we refer to all religious traditions as ‘faiths’. In doing so, we unconsciously impose Augustine’s model on them. We allow ourselves to assume that all religions are intrinsically mysterious; that they always involve supra- rational (or irrational) movements of the mind or heart; that they are based on bodies of doctrine which may at any time be argued or fought over.

We may still be familiar enough with Christianity not (usually) to find this view of it alarming. But when we apply the model to traditions most westerners know less about, we risk creating bogeymen and arousing unnecessary fears. An unfamiliar tradition based on mystery sounds suspicious. One that privileges the non-rational sounds archaic and difficult to negotiate with. One which makes dogmatic truth claims and is willing to fight about them sounds threatening.

Religious traditions understand themselves in many different ways, and, in many, faith in either of Augustine’s senses plays little or no part. (Wisdom, for instance, may be more important than belief, orthopraxy than orthodoxy; the focus may be on this world rather than another or on liberation from self-centredness rather than the service of a divinity.) To understand unfamiliar religious traditions and how they inform practitioners’ private, public, and political lives we need to understand how practitioners themselves understand their tradition.