My son who is taking Greek mythology as a college elective was speaking with the professor after class and happened to engage in a conversation I have often had with my son on - what I thought - was the fact that a not insignificant percentage of the population at the time actually TRULY believed many of these now pagan/historic religions.
His professor was evasive and would not confirm that this was actually true.
So dopers set me straight. I always believed that:
A) Mythology is a modern word used to describe what were actual (pagan) religions of some historic civilizations such as the Greeks, Romans and Germanic peoples (I know this would also extend to other areas of the world like Asia and the Middle East).
B) There were in fact people that really believed Zeus sat in the clouds and threw lightning bolts to explain lightning, that a coin was really needed to ferry the dead across the river Styx and that Valhalla really was once believed a final resting place for honorable warriors in the same way many believe in a Heaven now.
And as interesting side note, I have always found the stories of creation among these pagan religions eerily similar to the modern day tale of Jesus. Hanging from a cross, or world tree, having been speared in the side, dying and resurrection all for the sins of the people.
There are and have always been people who will believe in anything. Storytelling is a fairly universal way of presenting moral lessons and hypothetical ideas, because it engages the listeners. Whether or not the majority of people in an area at any time believed in Zeus throwing lightning bolts is widely discussed. It’s bound to have happened, and it’s bound to have been discarded as legendary window-dressing, later on.
As far as connections between religions, there’s the Masks of God series by Joseph Campbell, or, for something a bit less dense, here’s the Wiki page on roto-Indo-European Religion.
It appears to many who study this that Christianity is a syncretistic amalgam of Messianic Judaism and one or more mystery religions such as the worship of Osiris/Isis/Horus or Demeter/Persephone. The rebirth aspect aligns well between the concepts that are alluded to in the Christian texts.
People certainly were devoutly religious at various times prior to the rise of Christianity, if that is your question.
I understood the OP to be asking something like, did the ancient Greeks believe in Zeus, Hera, etc. and the stories about them the way some people today believe in (for example) Jesus? Or were they more analogous to Santa Claus or Superman or werewolves, that everybody today knows about but hardly anybody claims is real?
I understand that there are people who will believe in nearly anything from Unicorns to Sock Gnomes
My question asks was there ever a time when Odin, Zeus, Ra, et al were the prevailing and at least partially (widely) accepted belief system of that region/culture in much the same way that Allah, Jesus, Jehovah, “God” are believed today?
Okay, there was no one set Greek cosmogony, or creation myth. Different religious groups believed that the world had been created in different ways. Mainstream Greek religion appears to have evolved from the earlier Mycenaean religion from the Mycenaean civilization of Bronze Age Greece. The Mycenaeans, according to archaeological discoveries, seemed to treat Poseidon as the chief deity. It may also have absorbed the beliefs and practices of earlier, nearby cultures, such as Minoan religion. Herodotus traced many Greek religious practices to Egypt. In his time, Xenophanes (circa 500BC) mocked the idea of anthropomorphic games. So, at least for the Greeks, no, not like Jesus, more like Santa.
ETA: much of the above comes from the Wiki article on Ancient Greek Religion.
Only, whether you’re talking about Christianity or Santa, there are many ways people reckon them - and I’m not just talking about little kids, when I talk about people who believe in Santa. And that’s the way it is with any belief system or mythological figure you care to name.
Myths and mythologies change through time. it’s not fair to ask if anyone really be;lieved all of Classical Graeco-roman mythology, because all of it, as we have it, didn’t exist until late Classical Antiquity, and by then most people weren’t taking it seriously. As noted above, by the fifth century BCE philosophers were skeptical, although that doesn’t mean that the farmers were. By around the time of Christ the local cults had merged, bringing their myths and ceremonies with them, and people sort of fit their myths together as best they could. By the time Ovid was writing his poetry, it appears he didn’t revere the old stories as true, and had no problem changing them and adding to them. (But that had happened earlier, as well. Dionysus Skytobrachion took the myths and re-wrote them centuries earlier. I’ve often wondered how his contemporaries felt about that)
Comparing this to werewolves is kind of misleading. Although there’s a kernel of folklore about werewolves, just about everything you think you know about them – right down to the looking-like-hairy-people part, is the creation of the cinema, aided and abetted by popular literature. the same thing goes for vampires, mummies, and Frankensteinian monsters – and that’s all less than 2 centuries old. Modern “fakelore” has a much more accelerated pace of development (You could say the sae about Paul Bunyan and Santa Claus, too. St. nicholas has a centuries-long reputation as a December do-gooder, but Santa as we know him has developed in the last two centuries)
There’s an element of our modern pop culture in the visualization of the myths – certain depictions on pots have, it’s been argued, been influenced by theatrical productiions. But the time scale for changes was much longer.
Somewhere in her books, Kathleen Norris makes an offhand comment about our generations being the first to conflate truth with fact. She may be overstating the case, but I don’t think that beliefs were analyzed in the past to the extent that they are today.
I’ve often wondered about that myself - well, not so much about the gods part (people have always found a way to make up gods, then believe in them…) but more about the fantastical yet mundane creatures that feature prominently in many Greek myths - satyrs and centaurs were supposed to roam the wilds for example.
It’s not like nobody in Greece ever went into the wilds - many were shepherds or goat herders, and I’d expect if one goat herder came back saying “yo, dudes, I totally saw a centaur today !” the other goat herders in the village would just laugh at them… right ? It’s one thing to say There Be Dragons about some faraway land nobody’s ever seen or could ever go to to check, and another to spin tall tales about the magical creatures that dwell behind Joe’s barn.
Well, let’s ask another question. Ask a modern day Hindu if they believe in Ganesh. Like, does he really ride on a rat, does he really have an elephant head, and so on.
And you’ll get a lot of different answers. There are plenty of Hindus who believe in a literal god Ganesh. Others might believe in Ganesh as a real entity, but think that stories about him and his iconography are invented. Others think of Ganesh as a symbolic representation of a deeper truth. Others think it’s a just a story you tell kids, like we tell kids about Santa Claus and George Washington chopping down a cherry tree. Others think it’s nonsense invented by priests.
And people don’t always fall into the same category of belief at all times. They feel one way about it when they’re talking with their kids, another way when they’re meditating, another way when they’re talking to the American guy in the next cubicle.
Well… let’s start with modern man. Bigfoot. Chupacabra. Loch Ness. Flying rods. Flying saucers. People really believe they have seen these things… and millions more believe in them without having seen anything.
I suspect that many mythological creatures are also backed up by fossils or other bones. It’s likely that the giant-sized cyclops were based on elephant bones rearranged to look like a man, mistaking the giant cavity for the trunk as a giant eye socket. Bones of living and extinct species could then provide a rational basis to expect unusual creatures, priming you to see them where there’s a trick of the light or an odd perspective. For example, maybe dragon mythologies are virtually universal around the globe is because dinosaur fossils are virtually universal around the globe.
I think the answer seems pretty obvious, when you consider the things they built in honor of their gods, e.g.:
I can’t imagine we’d build something requiring that much relative effort in honor of Santa Claus. And I really doubt they spent all of the required resources and labor on those efforts just to be ironic…
Of course, all the same processes, or analogues of them, have happened with Christian and other extant mythologies. This doesn’t in any way prevent a certain number of people from ‘really believing’ them.
Better evidence: all the persecution of Christians in Roman times. You don’t do stuff like that because their allegorical fables are different from your allegorical fables. You do it because they’re heretics and the gods demand that they be punished, or at least because the masses will vote for you if you punish heretics.
Actually, the Romans viewed the issue more like we would look at refusing to say the pledge of allegiance. It was more of a political offense than a religious one. They felt that Christians refusing to participate in public religious rituals was a threat to the social order (and might anger the gods). All you were required to do to avoid any punishment was perform a token ritual in public. The Roman government was fully aware that you might not actually believe in the ritual you were performing and might still be practicing Christianity in private. But as long as you conformed in public to the official social standards that was sufficient. Refusing to perform this ritual however was regarded not only as an insult to the gods but, more importantly, defiance of the government’s authority.
The whole idea of learning from Story or Myth seems largely to have escaped the modern concept of teaching, even as we more and more use fuxtion to show how ideas work out when dealt with by realistic people.
Artorius, War Leader of the British Kingdoms Alliance, becomes King Arthur. Woden, one-eyed petty king of the Saxons, becomes the supreme god. Nicholas, historically attested Bishop of Myra, tuns gradually into Santa Claus. Early Iron Age strongmen become Heracles and Samson. Even Francis of Assisi and Joan of Arc end up with legends accreting to a real person.
How many Americans believe in Lady Liberty as a literal entity? Yet we still have a friggin’ huge statue of her, which most Americans are quite proud of.
