# How similar are polytheistic religions?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-similar-are-polytheistic-religions/478432>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 23, 2008, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-similar-are-polytheistic-religions/478432 "2008-12-23T13:48:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Sapo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ec9cab/32.png) [@Sapo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sapo)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2008, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-similar-are-polytheistic-religions/478432/1 "2008-12-23T13:48:20Z")

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On this thread:

> **[Geographical origins of religion](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=498791)**
>
> Why have virtually all of the world’s great religions originated in Asia (including the Middle East)? What religions elsewhere might have caught on, if they hadn’t been overtaken by Christianity?

I saw this:

> [@Geographical origins of religion](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/geographical-origins-of-religion/478420/2):
>
> … The viking pantheon was pretty similar to the Roman which was pretty similar to the Egyptian…

Instead of hijacking that thread, I will ask here. How similar/different were the pantheons of polytheistic religions?

I can see how some themes would repeat themselves: Sun God, Earth Goddess and all that, but after a certain point, it is all down to author’s imagination and I would be surprised to see things like familial relationships among gods repeated.

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**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2008, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-similar-are-polytheistic-religions/478432/2 "2008-12-23T13:51:28Z")

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I’d have to strongly disagree with **Sage Rat’s** statement from the get go - you have to have a VERY superficial understanding of polytheism to spout that.

The Romans were fond of identifying this or that foreign god with one of their own, that doesn’t mean the comparison was accurate.

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**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2008, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-similar-are-polytheistic-religions/478432/3 "2008-12-23T13:54:41Z")

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There are some similarities between the Norse pantheon and the Greek, which may come down to some basic Indo-European religious set-up that got carried to both areas. Mercury/Odin, Thor/Zeus, Frigg/Hera, Frey/Apollo, Freya/Athena, etc.

The Egyptian pantheon, though, was both earlier and geographically separated from anyplace an Indo-European group would have come from. The reason there are similarities at all between them is that the Greeks identified Egyptian gods with their own (and the reigns of the Ptolemies would have further blended the two).

And what **Broomstick** said about the Romans, too. Although there actually WAS a separate Roman pantheon before they expropriated the Greeks’. But the original Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Minerva, etc., were different from their eventual personalities and characters after they had the Olympians faces pasted on them.