Hellenic Polytheism - Vlassis RASSIAS (original) (raw)
What do Hellenes mean when we say "Gods"? What is it that we worship? A very good answer is the one our greatest modern exegetes gives down below. Worth the long read. "1. The need for explanations and definitions. Whoever concerns oneself with such things, can easily understand that as much as those who oppose the Ethnic Hellenic Religion, as well as others who are not but pretend to be active participants in it, avoid systematically to explain what it is afterall that they either oppose or supposedly honor. In other words, they avoid explaining what are the Gods. This avoidance of course can be explained both logically and easily, since neither aforementioned group is fond of clarity which in turn favors only the truthful and those of good intentions.
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This article provides a heuristic model for exploring the ambiguities between three subpatterns of describing the relation of “gods” to “god.” At its root is what Louis Ménard — one of the great nineteenth-century advocates of Hellenic religion — called “cette lutte de la philosophie et de la religion,” that is, the tension between philosophic monotheism and popular religion. Ménard thought that the “natural and inevitable antagonism between philosophy and religion” led to philosophical abstractions responsible for the desacralisation of the pagan cosmos and the degeneracy of polytheism. The position I am arguing is that the Achilles heel of Platonist henotheism lay in precisely what the Hellenes considered to be its strength: inclusivity. Inclusive henotheism was unable to confront the emergence of religious exclusivity without refuting itself. Religious exclusivity remained for pagan intellectuals pure absurdity: it meant an eventuality they could not account for. Defenceless against the actual development of exclusivist theistic tendencies, the Hellenic paradigm was eroded and subverted from within by a rapidly growing Judeao-Christian hegemony of discourse. It was ultimately defeated by the kratountes on the ground level of those changing socio-political parameters that fostered exclusive monotheism and religious orthodoxy — and not on the philosophic level, where this paradigm resurfaces on the eve of modernity.
How about Pantheism in Ancient Greek Religion?
Numen no. 71 , 2024
Ancient Greek religion has been very rarely studied with reference to pantheism. This article proposes that we should introduce pantheism as an additional interpretive strategy to understand Greek religion. This presupposes addressing the relationship between the interpretations of doxa (theology), discussion about the nature of divine unity in antiquity (philosophy), and religious cult praxis. The main conceptual arguments underlined in refutations of pantheism are discussed. This is followed by a brief survey of the more frequently discussed monotheism and henotheism in Greek religion. The main part of the article presents pantheistic trends in Greek religion, including philosophical argumentation, pantheistic expressions in mythology and in cultic life. It is found that Greek religion exhibits views that can be regarded as pantheistic: gods were immanent rather than transcendent, everything could potentially participate in divine reality, and the boundaries between divine, human, and nature were not exclusive but permeable and fluid.
Hellenism and Christianity: Petros Vrailas-Armenis on the Constituents of Modern Greek Identity
Akropolis: Journal of Hellenic Studies, 3, 2019
In this paper I examine how Brailas conceives of Modern-Greek identity. After an introduction, I look at Brailian texts where it is emphasized that Hellenism and Christianity are the two components of Greek national identity. Does this mean, though, that for Brailas these two elements express a similar mode of being? There are passages that can support this claim. Still, Brailas’ reader should not suppose that the Corfiote philosopher uncritically assumes a linear transition from Hellenism to Christianity. But if Christianity denotes the emergence of something new in history, how can it be compatible with Hellenism? Brailas’ answer is that as with the Mosaic Law, Christianity did not come to abolish Hellenism, but to fulfill it. Furthermore, the association of Christianity with Hellenism enabled the latter to survive throughout history both in the West and the East. Besides, for Brailas variety has always constituted the “harmony of Hellenism”.
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in: Chrubasik, Boris and Daniel King (eds.), Hellenism and the Local Communities of the Eastern Mediterranean, 400 BCE–250 CE, Oxford: OUP (2017), 1–11., 2017
The Greek Gods in the Twentieth Century
J.N. Bremmer and A. Erskine (eds), The Gods of Ancient Greece, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010, 1-18 (http://www.euppublishing.com/book/9780748683222?template=toc&), but note that this article has been updated and reprinted in my The World of Greek Religion and Mythology (2019)