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Greek Religion: Cultures
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Greek religion is a subject of absorbing interest, essential for the understanding of history and culture, but often puzzling and elusive. This collection of essays ranges over many aspects of Greek civil life, looking at the ways in which religion manifested itself in institutions, art and literature, and tracing the attitudes that lay behind the manifold cults and customs. It is not meant as an exhaustive introduction to the subject, but as a series of related approaches which will help students to draw the threads together, on lines suggested by Sir Moses Finley in his introduction to the book.
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One of the most important aspects of Greek society and culture was its religion and its strong belief in the outer space as a reality that was clearly and directly related to human life. In this sense, Greeks believed in many gods, what we call polytheism, and each one of them was seen as an immortal entity that, different to what monotheist religions believe, had virtues and weaknesses, that could fall in love with humans (and even form families with them) or hate them, that could help them or destroy them and that permanently lived in that dichotomy towards humans and what they represented for their ethereal world.
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As early Christians rose to political power, the public aspects of Greek religion and culture were systematically exterminated, plunging Europe into the Dark Ages. The religion survived only in rural areas to be periodically revived.
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After Alexander the Great's conquest Greek culture was changed in many ways( Cary ). Religion was one area that was changed. To truly understand Hellenistic religion, it is important to understand the two religions that combined to form this new one. A closer look at the Greek and Oriental religion's can help give a better understanding of Hellenistic religion. In Greek religion numerous gods and goddesses are found. However, there were not a large number of temples.
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The European renaissance was primarily the rediscovery and reintroduction of the culture and learning of ancient Greek religion and society by western Europe. Many neo-pagan religious paths, such as Wicca, use aspects of ancient Greek religions in their practice; Greek reconstructionism or Hellenismos focuses exclusively thereon.
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Bridget Buchholz is a graduate student in the Department of Greek and Latin at The Ohio State University. She is currently writing her dissertation which deals with the interdependence of myth and cult within religion. Bridget’s dissertation discusses the role of anthropomorphism within Greek Religion. The dissertation addresses not what is found in literature or even how it is portrayed there but instead seeks through an analysis of the texts, the what and how, to answer the larger cultural question of why the gods are portrayed in certain ways.
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