The Greek Orthodox religion differs from the Greek Catholic religion primarily that the former does not believe in the infallibility of the pope. [1] Fate. "A History of the Church", Philip Hughes, Sheed & Ward, rev ed 1949, vol I chapter 6. [36][37] Julian's successor Constantinus reversed some of his reforms, but Jovian,[38] Valentinian I, and Valens continued Julian's policy of religious toleration towards both pagans and Christians in the Empire, and pagan writers applauded both for their policies. 1 decade ago. Watch the video below to find out how another famous Greek hero, Perseus, killed a monster called Medusa. From Hellenism to Roman Catholicism, there are many many different ones out there. In fact many of their competitions included both. The Greeks had no religious texts they regarded as "revealed" scriptures of sacred origin, but very old texts including Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and the Homeric hymns (regarded as later productions today), Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days, and Pindar's Odes were regarded as having authority[7] and perhaps being inspired; they usually begin with an invocation to the Muses for inspiration. While there were few concepts universal to all the Greek peoples, some common beliefs were shared by many. The Greeks believed that gods and goddesses watched over them. And if humans do something against their will they must be appeased by sacrifices. Some sanctuaries offered oracles, people who were believed to receive divine inspiration in answering questions put by pilgrims. Some of these mysteries, like the mysteries of Eleusis and Samothrace, were ancient and local. 1 decade ago. But the doctrines of the Orphics influenced the lyric poet Pindar, the philosopher Empedocles, and, above all, Plato. Some temples could only be viewed from the threshold. The tenemos might include many subsidiary buildings, sacred groves or springs, animals dedicated to the deity, and sometimes people who had taken sanctuary from the law, which some temples offered, for example to runaway slaves. Yet Troy fell, like many another city. This phase of Greek religion is called Homeric, after the author of the Iliad, or Olympian, after Mount Olympus, the Thessalian mountain where the gods dwelled. gorgo or gorgon, “terrible” or, according to some, “loud-roaring” was a vicious female monster with sharp fangs which was a protective deity from early religious concepts. Since they are the mightiest of the dead, heroes receive offerings suitable for chthonic (underworld) deities. In addition, the only public roles that Greek women could perform were priestesses:[23] either hiereiai, meaning "sacred women" or amphipolis, a term for lesser attendants. THE CORRECT MEANING OF "CHURCH" AND "ECCLESIA" Let us make it clear from the very beginning that the established religious system, which manifests itself in the abomination called "church", is NOT of God. You believe in God; believe also in me. Some deities have epithets that express a particular aspect of their activities. That Greek religion was polytheistic is clear, but it also incorporated concepts that could be said to resemble an Ultimate Reality. The dead were permitted to choose lots for their next incarnation. There was a scale of power and excellence on which the position of every mortal and every deity could be plotted. When Achilles fights with the River in the Iliad, the River speaks to Achilles but uses against him only such weapons as are appropriate to a stream of water. A few Greeks, like Achilles, Alcmene, Amphiaraus Ganymede, Ino, Melicertes, Menelaus, Peleus, and a great number of those who fought in the Trojan and Theban wars, were considered to have been physically immortalized and brought to live forever in either Elysium, the Islands of the Blessed, heaven, the ocean, or beneath the ground. Women who voluntarily chose to become priestesses received an increase in social and legal status to the public, and after death, they received a public burial site. Just before the violent Doric invasions, the Achaeans fought the Trojans of Asia Minor. (Yes, it is named after the greek women Hellen of Troy). One rite of passage was the amphidromia, celebrated on the fifth or seventh day after the birth of a child. Other deities were associated with nations outside of Greece; Poseidon was associated with Ethiopia and Troy, and Ares with Thrace. posted zaidi ya mwaka mmoja uliopita Nojida said: I don't think there was a name back then, since it's one of the first religions. In 382 AD, Gratian appropriated the income and property of the remaining orders of pagan priests, removed altars, and confiscated temples. However, there are many fewer followers than Greek Orthodox Christianity. The initial decline of Greco-Roman polytheism was due in part to its syncretic nature, assimilating beliefs and practices from a variety of foreign religious traditions as the Roman Empire expanded. Something must have been falsified somewhere for this Greek religion to have taken on the new name. Other texts were specially composed for religious events, and some have survived within the lyric tradition; although they had a cult function, they were bound to performance and never developed into a common, standard prayer form comparable to the Christian Pater Noster. And Zeus may be restrained, unless he feels that his “excellence,” his ability to perform the action, is being called into question. Instead, religious practices were organized on local levels, with priests normally being magistrates for the city or village, or gaining authority from one of the many sanctuaries. Roman governors and emperors often pilfered famous statues from sanctuaries, sometimes leaving contemporary reproductions in their place. [42] Pagan senators argued that Gratian was ignoring his duty as Pontifex Maximus to ensure that rites to the Graeco-Roman gods continued to be performed, and Gratian responded by abdicating that title. Some of these were new creations, such as Mithras, while others had been practiced for hundreds of years before, like the Egyptian mysteries of Osiris. Hera is of the first type—goddess of marriage but not identified with marriage. The decisions of the synods are infallible. Fragments of two chryselephantine statues from Delphi have been excavated. Themistius Oration 5; Photius, Epitome of the Ecclesiastical History of. [19] Early images seem often to have been dressed in real clothes, and at all periods images might wear real jewelry donated by devotees. Ancient stories about the Gods are called myth. When the Roman Republic conquered Greece in 146 BC, it took much of Greek religion (along with many other aspects of Greek culture such as literary and architectural styles) and incorporated it into its own. Ares 10. In North America, there is an organization known as Hellenion. It consisted largely of stories of the gods and how they interacted with humans. Most ancient Greeks recognized the twelve major Olympian gods and goddesses—Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Ares, Aphrodite, Apollo, Artemis, Hephaestus, Hermes, and either Hestia or Dionysus—although philosophies such as Stoicism and some forms of Platonism used language that seems to assume a single transcendent deity. Other festivals centered on Greek theatre, of which the Dionysia in Athens was the most important. Polytheistic Greek religion encompassed a myriad of gods, each representing a certain facet of the human condition, and even abstract ideas such as justice and wisdom could have their own personification. But generally Greeks, including slaves, had a reasonable expectation of being allowed into the cella. Constantine I became the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity, and the Edict of Milan in 313 AD enacted official tolerance for Christianity within the Empire. In 146 BCE the Hellenistic region became a Protectorate of Rome; it was then that Romans began imitating Hellenic (Greek) clothing, religion, and ideas. Although the grand form of sacrifice called the hecatomb (meaning 100 bulls) might in practice only involve a dozen or so, at large festivals the number of cattle sacrificed could run into the hundreds, and the numbers feasting on them well into the thousands. Before setting out for Troy, this type of animal sacrifice is offered. Greek Mythology: The Olympians . Theist vs. deist. Athena was associated with the city of Athens, Apollo with Delphi and Delos, Zeus with Olympia and Aphrodite with Corinth. Of several competing cosmogonies in Archaic Greece, Hesiod’s Theogony is the only one that has survived in more than fragments. Many rural sanctuaries probably stayed in this style, but the more popular were gradually able to afford a building to house a cult image, especially in cities. Herodotus, the ancient Greek historian, deduced that many in the original Greek pantheon got their nam… A further reason for Olympian disapproval, only marginally present in Homer, was the pollution caused by certain actions and experiences, such as childbirth, death, or having a bad dream. For example, in Homer's Odyssey Eumaeus sacrifices a pig with prayer for his unrecognizable master Odysseus. The people who believed in this at the time won't have called it mythology, it would have been believed as the truth like Christians believe their religion is the truth now. [41] He enacted laws that prohibited worship of pagan gods not only in public, but also within private homes. The ordinary hero hated death, for the dead were regarded as strengthless doubles who had to be revived with drafts of blood, mead, wine, and water in order to enable them to speak. As a priestess, they gained social recognition and access to more luxuries than other Greek women that worked or typically stayed in the home. The altar was outside any temple building, and might not be associated with a temple at all. The end of the Hellenistic Era came in 31 BCE. The Homeric poems here offer an explanation for something that the Greek audience might at any time experience themselves. These served as an essential component in the growth and self-consciousness of Greek nationalism.[33]. In the Hellenistic period between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece (146 BC) Greek religion developed in various ways, including expanding over at least some of Alexander's conquests. In Homer only the gods were by nature immortal, but Elysium was reserved for their favoured sons-in-law, whom they exempted from death. As it fell, all of the women present "[cried] out in high, shrill tones". The Olympians kept aloof from the underworld gods and from those who should be in their realm: Creon is punished in Sophocles’ Antigone by the Olympians for burying Antigone alive, for she is still “theirs,” and for failing to bury the dead Polyneices, gobbets of whose flesh are polluting their altars; and Artemis abandons Hippolytus, her most ardent worshipper, as his death approaches, for all corpses pollute. They had to obey fate, known to Greek mythology as the Moirai,[2] which overrode any of their divine powers or wills. Heracles alone gained a place on Olympus by his own efforts. It records the generations of the gods from Chaos (literally, “Yawning Gap”) through Zeus and his contemporaries to the gods who had two divine parents (e.g., Apollo and Artemis, born of Zeus and Leto) and the mortals who had one divine parent (e.g., Heracles, born of Zeus and Alcmene). The first citizens of Rome also believed they were watched over by the spirits of their ancestors. Struck, P.T. Aphrodite and Eros, gilt bronze mirror with incised design, Greek, 4th century, Achilles slaying Penthesilea, the queen of the Amazons, Attic black-figure amphora signed by Exekias, c. 530–525, Electra and Orestes killing Aegisthus in the presence of their mother, Clytemnestra; detail of a Greek vase, 5th century, Hippolytus in his quadriga, detail from a Greek vase; in the British Museum. Romans founded their religion on the basis of the Greek religion. Some Greeks, such as the philosophers Pythagoras and Plato, also embraced the idea of reincarnation, though this was only accepted by a few. Across this, Charon ferried all who had received at least token burial, and coins were placed in the mouths of corpses to pay the fare. Lesser species included the half-man-half-horse centaurs, the nature based nymphs (tree nymphs were dryads, sea nymphs were Nereids) and the half man, half goat satyrs. There were also many deities that existed in the Roman religion before its interaction with Greece that were not associated with a Greek deity, including Janus and Quirinus. One of the most important moral concepts to the Greeks was the fear of committing hubris. In general, though, the Greeks left the Jews alone; adopting Cyrus’s policy, they allowed the Jews to run their own country, declared that the law of Judah was the Torah , and attempted to preserve Jewish religion . In Athens the festivals honoring Demeter were included in the calendar and promoted by Athens, they constructed temples and shrines like the Thesmophorion, where women could perform their rites and worship.[27]. Modern Hellenism reflects Neoplatonic and Platonic speculation (which is represented in Porphyry, Libanius, Proclus, and Julian), as well as classical cult practice. It is contested whether there were gendered divisions when it came to serving a particular god or goddess, who was devoted to what god, gods and/or goddesses could have both priests and priestesses to serve them. The Survival of Paganism in Christian Greece: A Critical Essay. [20], It was typically necessary to make a sacrifice or gift, and some temples restricted access either to certain days of the year, or by class, race, gender (with either men or women forbidden), or even more tightly. Its blood was collected and poured over the altar. More recently, a revival has begun with the contemporary Hellenism, as it is often called (a term first used by the last pagan Roman emperor Julian). These were typically devoted to one or a few gods, and supported a statue of the particular deity. While being immortal, the gods were certainly not all-good or even all-powerful. Ancient Greek religion encompasses the collection of beliefs, rituals, and mythology originating in ancient Greece in the form of both popular public religion and cult practices. [34] Hellenistic astrology developed late in the period, as another distraction from the traditional practices. It's just a religion like every other. Some temples are said never to be opened at all. These groups varied enough for it to be possible to speak of Greek religions or "cults" in the plural, though most of them shared similarities. To behave in accordance with one’s share is to behave in accordance with one’s status; even a beggar may go beyond his share, though he is likely to be punished for it. Pollution was not a moral concept, and it further complicated relationships between the Greeks and their gods. 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