How much did the Greeks or Romans believe in the personification of their gods representing nature? Would they believe there was a god of the sea but that could be seen in actuality as a huge man emerging from the ocean holding a giant trident? Or would they believe in some spirit embodied in the seas but not an anthropomorphic representation?
So, I attended Catholic grade schools. My teacher in 4th grade, Sister Columba, was probably in her 70s or 80s, and a little dotty. (She also clearly felt that all of the boys in the class were dumber than the girls, but that’s another story.)
Anyway, she would read to us, from a children’s book that she had, which was, effectively, “Adventures of Kid Jesus.” It was a completely non-canon set of stories about Jesus as a boy, and how he’d dispense wisdom (and the occasional minor miracle) to the other kids.
I remember that, in the early chapters, there was a Roman boy, Superius, who was a bully – the little Hebrew kids were all afraid of him. But, Kid Jesus got through to Superius, by “killing him with kindness,” and Superius effectively became Kid Jesus’s sidekick and first disciple.
Even at age 9, I realized that these were definitely not stories from the Bible!
I wonder how much of this boils down to: if it is my beliefs then it’s a religion; if it is your beliefs then it’s mythology.
It depends on what you mean by “mythology”—what sense or definition of the term are you using?
The Wikipedia article on “Myth” starts out by saying
As in the difference between Fundamentalist Christians believing The Bible is the unerring Word of God™ vs atheists believing it is a collection of stories made by humans. Or a Muslim believing that Surah 17 The Night Journey is a true story given by Allah and a non-Muslim believing it is a fable.
In 19th-century scholarship? All of it.
Among contemporary scholars of religion and mythology? None of it.
Among the general public? A lot of it.
Aniconic definitely. No worshipping idols. No making images of G-d.
Anti-sacrifice?
You’re kidding right? Anti HUMAN sacrifice certainly. But the Torah is filled with instructions on what animals to sacrifice and just how to sacrifice them. OTTOMH, when Abraham is told to spare Isaac, he sacrifices a ram instead. We’re all ritually impure because you just cannot find a red heifer anymore.
Back To The OP
As has been said, I think you’d find the full range from ardent fundamentalists to atheists that you see today.
RE Coins For Charon- I always thought archeologists had found plenty of skeletons with an oboli in the mouth or two on the eyes.
RE Vikings- I do know we’ve found plenty of warriors buried with armor and weapons. Either, these were displays of wealth by survivors ( I doubt this explanation but am open to being proven wrong) or they were willing to lose valuable possessions in order to be sure that these people were properly prepared for the afterlife.
One More Thing
In the US at least, neo paganism has become a big thing. While modern Odin worshippers know that they are going on archeollogical evidence and (at best) second hand accounts, they do believe in Valhalla.
Something else that modern professionals are extremely aware of is that asking what the Greeks or any other group of people, especially ancients, believed is a question that doesn’t have an answer.
The Grecian cultures (plural) comprised millions of people over a thousand years at a time when a long walk could take someone into a different nation state. (Athens and Corinth are less than 50 miles apart.)
Additionally, records are mostly top-down. For most of archaeology’s history the kings and warriors and writers got studied, because that’s who the written materials mentioned. Current studies finally concentrate more on the average person and their lives, by deeper and cleverer ways of pulling out the information.
What becomes apparent is that their world changed regularly over time, just as ours does. Imagine someone asking 2000 years from now what Americans thought of religion. We know because we’re living through it how difficult it is to make generalizations about our current America, and putting all American history from 1607 to 2022 into a sentence would seem ridiculous. Yet the time squeeze we put on history asks us to do the same compression.
Less is less. And if you’re eating it, “sacrifice” is subjective.
Why do you say it was less? And IIRC one of Prometheus’ ‘crimes’ was teaching humans to burn the inedible parts of animal sacrifice and save the meat to eat. So, that’s not a change.
I suppose one problem we have today is science. A lot of religions, and the myths associated with them, are an attempt to answer the fundamental questions - why did that happen, how does this happen? We don’t need Thor or Zeus throwing thunderbolts to explain the weather any more. The Greeks at least imagined there were capricious being to explain the random nature of some misfortunes. We have a scientific explanation for human evolution and prehistory, we don’t need to believe the Garden of Eden or creation to be the best explanation as literal truth that we have. However, we still all “know” that George Washington chopped down cherry trees but cannot tell a lie.
Another point is that very few religions were exclusionary until Yaweh came along. The lords their gods were not jealous gods. It strikes me that the Hindu religion, for example, seems to be a serious evolutionary attempt to roll all the different deities and spirits for the regional groups into a coherent whole over time, much as the Greeks gods were translated and matched up to be the same gods for the Romans. Different areas emphasize different deities as more prominent or resident or favouring their area, but the whole pantheon is accepted.
I found this out to my own dismay when I was talking about Marvel Comics and came to realize the person I was speaking to actually follows the Norse gods.
You can find practicing neo- Graeco-Roman pagans, too. Lots of stuff out there.
I once had a similar dismaying experience when I found that the person I was talking about Madame Blavatsky with was a practicing Theosophist. What were the odds of running into one of those?
It was the opposite. The Hebrews sacrificed more than their contemporaries. While many of the Hebrew sacrifices were given to the priests to support their households, or taken home to eat after giving the blood to God, some were burnt in total (holocaust, in the Greek description of those sacrifices). And the other ancients thought the Hebrews were nuts for burning up the good parts of their sacrifices.
Don’t forget the third possibility: They were buried that way because that’s just what you do. Have you looked at the price of burial caskets nowadays? No modern belief system places any importance on having a fancy, gilt coffin, and a big cardboard box would serve the practical purpose just as well. And yet we continue to spend big money on caskets, because that’s just what you do for a funeral.
If Bob sacrifices:
- chickens
- goats
- rabbits
- squirrels
- cows
And Hiro sacrifices:
- adult humans
- infant humans
- chickens
- goats
- rabbits
- squirrels
- cows
Then Bob sacrifices fewer types of things.
Good point. I also notice that we typically bury people with clothes on (including, sometimes, jewelry, glasses, etc.), even though most of us don’t don’t do so for either of the reasons @DocCathode mentioned.
So color printers must print out more sheets than black ones?
That more kinds of things can be sacrificed does not mean that there are more total sacrifices.
Chronos you have a point.
Certainly true. I believe that you misunderstood what I was saying. I meant fewer types not a lower frequency.
I’m not sure how frequently the Jews sacrificed things relative to their neighbors. I’m reasonably certain that they reduced it over time. When the Christians took off, they wrote against the habit of making sacrifices among Roman Pagans - so we know that they weren’t practicing sacrifices - but the Jewish writers, discussing Christianity, don’t mention it as a notable distinction between the two groups.
In general, Jewish history seems to have had a variety of questionable activities that could only take place at “The Temple”. When the Temple disappeared, and those activities could no longer be undertaken in a textually prescribed way, they seem to have been largely fine and happy with that. That would speak to me of a low interest in the activity.
A relevant quote from Contra Celsius:
As, then, this act of self-restraint, which in appearance is one and the same, is found in fact to be different in different persons, according to the principles and motives which lead to it; so in the same way with those who cannot allow in the worship of the Divine Being altars, or temples, or images. The Scythians, the Nomadic Libyans, the godless Seres, and the Persians, agree in this with the Christians and Jews, but they are actuated by very different principles. For none of these former abhor altars and images on the ground that they are afraid of degrading the worship of God, and reducing it to the worship of material things wrought by the hands of men. Neither do they object to them from a belief that the demons choose certain forms and places, whether because they are detained there by virtue of certain charms, or because for some other possible reason they have selected these haunts, where they may pursue their criminal pleasures, in partaking of the smoke of sacrificial victims. But Christians and Jews have regard to this command, You shall fear the Lord your God, and serve Him alone; and this other, You shall have no other gods before Me: you shall not make unto you any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow down yourself to them, nor serve them; and again, You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve. It is in consideration of these and many other such commands, that they not only avoid temples, altars, and images, but are ready to suffer death when it is necessary, rather than debase by any such impiety the conception which they have of the Most High God.
Celsius - the Jewish writer - doesn’t seem to have mentioned sacrifices at all. The Christian one - talking about Romans - does.