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Ancient Boeotian bell-krater showing Zeus impregnating Danaë in the form of a shower of gold (c. 450-425 BC), a story which has been compared to the Christian account of the virgin birth of Jesus [180] [181] [182] Another comparable story from Greek mythology describes the conception of the hero Perseus.
As Christianity spread throughout the Hellenic world, an increasing number of church leaders were educated in Greek philosophy. The dominant philosophical traditions of the Greco-Roman world then were Stoicism , Platonism , Epicureanism , and, to a lesser extent, the skeptic traditions of Pyrrhonism and Academic Skepticism .
The theft of fire for the benefit of humanity is a theme that recurs in many world mythologies. A few examples include: in Greek mythology, according to Hesiod, the Titan Prometheus steals the heavenly fire for humanity, enabling the progress of civilization. In the Book of Enoch, the fallen angels and Azazel teach early humanity use of tools ...
A given mythology is almost always associated with a certain religion such as Greek mythology with Ancient Greek religion. Disconnected from its religious system, a myth may lose its immediate relevance to the community and evolve—away from sacred importance—into a legend or folktale .
The remainder of Christian stories – what now makes up the Christian Bible – Celsus found very insipid and unappealing compared to Greek and Roman legends of powerful and colorful gods. Celsus also found Christian philosophy lacking when compared to secular philosophy, and declared that "things are stated much better among the Greeks". [8]
Some creatures in Greek mythology were monstrous, such as the one-eyed giant Cyclopes, the sea beast Scylla, whirlpool Charybdis, Gorgons, and the half-man, half-bull Minotaur. There was no set Greek cosmogony, or creation myth. Different religious groups believed that the world had been created in different ways.
Greek mythology has changed over time to accommodate the evolution of their culture, of which mythology, both overtly and in its unspoken assumptions, is an index of the changes. In Greek mythology's surviving literary forms, as found mostly at the end of the progressive changes, it is inherently political, as Gilbert Cuthbertson (1975) has argued.
The genesis of modern understanding of Greek mythology is regarded by some scholars as a double reaction at the end of the 18th century against "the traditional attitude of Christian animosity mixed with disdain, which had prevailed for centuries", in which the Christian reinterpretation of myth as a "lie" or fable had been retained. [1]