This question was brought up at the in-person discussion of Homer's Odyssey. What do you think?
Sometimes in Homer's writing, a god will be mentioned in a way that seems purely symbolic. Almost every chapter of The Odyssey opens with the rosy-fingered goddess Dawn lighting up the eastern sky. She never says anything or does anything. It's obviously just a poetic way of saying "and then the sun rose."
But often the gods will be active agents, especially Athena, Zeus, and Poseidon. True, Athena is the goddess of wisdom. When she gives advice, it might simply be a fancy way of saying that someone put their thinking cap on. But the god of the ocean turning a ship into stone, sailors and all? Not in the same category.
But even if the gods are supposed to be genuine characters in Homeric poetry just as their mortal counterparts are -- does that mean that Homer believed in them? Did his later readers (the classical Greeks, for instance) believe in them?
I suppose the Greeks and Romans believed in their gods as much as we believe in our various gods today. Why not? Don't people of our time credit certain events and actions as gifts (or otherwise) from God?
So they say a god was transfigured into a beast, a person, a cloud. I think we've all heard modern day people who believe their deity transfigures itself into something. Some believe heart and soul that a man named Jesus was actually the embodiment of God. Isn't Buddha the embodiment of spirituality? How about the idea of reincarnation?
Just my penny's worth.
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Jen in Orcutt, Calif.
www.BestFamilyAdventures.com
