tradgedy of the greek religion

[kpreisig]

Does anyone else think that the destruction of Greek Mythology by Religion is a tradgedy?

On that topic, I need information. Was there a specific time when Greeks began to learn about Science that prooved their beliefs wrong? When did this happen? Was it gradual? Did it first happen in a specifid place? How did this all happen?

If anyone knows of any books that have any information on the intrusion of Science in Greek Mythology, PLEASE let me know.

I am beginning to write a screen play about Greek Mythology, and if possibly I would LOVE it to depict the end of Mythological Beliefs in Greece, and how and why this happened.

Any snipit of information will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks to all!

[Postmaster]

On that topic, I need information. Was there a specific time when Greeks began to learn about Science that prooved their beliefs wrong? When did this happen? Was it gradual? Did it first happen in a specifid place? How did this all happen?

In ancient Greece religion and science went hand in hand like today. You can get scientists that believe in God, just like my science teacher did and my biological psychology tutor does.

The way the ancient Greeks lived, only now people are living the same way. Sexuality liberated too. Barbaric tribes destroyed the ancient Greece with rape, general interbreeding and ideas. Ones from north Europe via the Romans and ones from the East Asia Minor. The only original original Greeks left are the ones from the Greek Islands. Republic of Cyprus has the largest degree and masters rate to the population then any other place in the world and also one of the lowest crime rates in the world and there is at least 2 to 5 churches to every village and a very high rate of practising Christians. They also still speak in ancient Greek dialect.

[I, Brian]

Greece and Rome left their gods simply because they were effectively civic forms that cared nothing for the individual. The complete lack of regard for Rome by Rome's own dieties was a big talking point in the empire, and that is one of the things that made Christianity so revolutionary to the disaffected Romano-Greeks - here was a deity who apparently cared about everyone - and cared even for the lowest born and vilest, if only they would accept him.

And as the apparatus of state disappeared, so did care for the old religious figures.

The only real attempt to revert was under the emperir Julian - the so called "Apostate" - after he tried to revive the old Roman gods. But aside from already entrenched Christianity rejecting this "heresy", there was simply nothing that civic gods could offer ordinary people, other than feast days and statues.

Greeks were ridiculing their own gods as early as the 4th centry BC at least - however, the civic apparatus kept them in mind. Even the Romans were very respective of Greek religion - heck, their own pantheon was effectively a remodelling of Greek form, partly from the Etruscans (who had done the same), but also from the string of Greek colonies along the Italian coast, not least Paestrum, which were a massive influence on the formative Latins.

As Greek civic life turned to Christianity under Constantine's dictates, so were the last civic props of living Greek mythology removed.

[Postmaster]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

As Greek civic life turned to Christianity under Constantine's dictates, so were the last civic props of living Greek mythology removed.

Actually Christianity hit Greece before Constantine converted, as a matter of fact the bible was first wrote in Greek. Most of the disciples lay to rest in the Greek Islands after coming out of Israel to spread the word and you can even view some of there tombs. Saint Lazarus was a Greek Cypriot from Larnaca and he left Israel to spread the word back home in Cyprus and the famous salt lake in Larnaca city was one of his miracles, the story goes that when he was travelling to the city he got thirty and he past a lady who owned vine fields and asked if she would be kind enough to give him a grape, when she refused he told her that her fields will turn into salt. The philistines were a Greek race, hence why Jesus is considered a white man. They probably knew how to talk Greek as well and the Greek islands were the first Christianised places in the world then unto mainland Greece. Constantine just made a solid establishment of Christianity in Greece.

[I, Brian]

Indeed - quite true - I simply meant that Constantine was the one to remove the worship from civic events, and that's where the Greek and Roman gods really had their power base.

[Postmaster]

Yeah very true... All I can say is its a good job Constantine did convert because the Romans would have gave Christians a hard time and would have never took off. You can say that it was a miracle that Constantine did convert. Rational thinking is one of the most amazing developments of the western world, but you find that is a step back for explaining the hardest questions of them all Rational thinking will always tell you how... But it will never tell you why. Why atoms? Why exsistence? Science might be coming slightly closer though http://superstringtheory.com/ check out the PR of that site

[kpreisig]

Thank you very much for your information guys. So in short, it was Christianity that ended the Greek religion, not Science. That is very helpful, and just as interesting I believe. Do you know of any texts that cover this specific topic in depth?

Thanks again!

[Postmaster]

Ancient Greek religion was not taken as seriously as Christianity, in fact some people of Ancient Greece questioned there so called Gods, and this is also shown in Homers Iliad with Achilles but I think this seems to be a universal thing anyway, probably more of a practise in these days. Greek Gods were probably based on real life people, which then turned to myth and elaborated. They say there is truth to all myths, I think some people of Ancient Greece did in fact know this. However these stories and Gods had a lot of importance for social morals and each story had a moral. Christianity actually took over the old temples of worship of the Greek Gods with Churches. Take for instance my name which is Panayiodis. Panayiodis means in Greek Always Saint and that is what they call the Virgin Mary and only the Virgin Mary but because no one is worthy enough to take her full name which PanaYia there is a slight difference to my name and also my is turned Masculine. Can you see the connection with the Greek Gods? Taking over the Greek God Pan. Can you see how Christianity took over Greek mythology? Pan was the Greek God of Panic and also meaning always. Can you see how Europe and the western world took words from the Greeks? Including Peter Pan and Pandemonium. There was truth to the Mythological Gods of the Greeks because there was even reports in them days of people being cured by them and miracles and visions of them. I don't think it is a tragedy that Christianity took over the Greek Mythological Gods because, the mythology was really philosophy, heck that’s what all religions are, but sometimes philosophy and ideas change and humans turn to a new direction. Greek Gods and history will live forever in history books.

[mahogan]

'The Greeks', as I am endlessly arguing with people, is a very tendencious term. Troy was destroyed in about 1300 BCE in what is now Turkey. The Greek world was based aouround the Aegean. The Romans lie on the other side of the peninsula that is modern Greece, then over some water and date from around 600 BCE - with direct influence from the Greeks if you look at Etruscan art. Massive land area, hughe timescale.

I'm exploring the development of Greek Art and science and how it their thinking 'enabled' them to have ideas of art and science. This leads me to an exploration of why the relation of the Greeks to their own gods is so different from anyone elses - what we refer to as the 'genius' of Greece.

After exporting its social, political and theological ideas to Rome, Rome then came back and conquered Greece (centralised Italian state vs city state). The destruction of both Corinth and Carthage in the same year saw the establishment of full Roman might.

So Greece was in fact destroyed by itself, by its child - Rome.

Developing Foucault's work on the 'care of the self' in the Roman period, you could argue that the Romans became obsessed with themselves (rather than just their selves), so the Roman's believed in the human more than the divine but their corrupt form of government left a nast hole in their belief structure - no god, no man, no 'thing' upon which to base their lives (the continuation of the social state in which they lived).

If Christianity had not come along, something else would have been tried - attempts to return to the 'old' religion had already been tried.

What is interesting is that other cultures had already experimented with monotheism and turned it down, so it could be not that Rome was destroyed by Christianity but that the Roman state could only continue by structuing its beliefs around what just happened to be the political expediency of monotheism - (One God replacing One Emperor).

Regards

hogie

[Postmaster]

So

Greece was in fact destroyed by itself, by its child - Rome.

This is very true. This is how it goes.. When the Greeks defeated the Trojans, the ones that fled Troy went and found Rome. Then other Greeks started to settle there, but there government was Trojan Greek and past on by blood line. Greeks used to hate each other as much as they loved each other. Spartans and Athenians were infamous for this it was exactly like a brother relationship. The Greek mainland captured Troy then went on to capture mainland Greeks. Funny isn't it. But Italy today is a mixture or northern Europeans too that made there way down. The only place in the world were real Greeks still exist is in Greece and the GreekIslands. Some people even carry an inherited gene that Alexander the Great had, which causes some rare medical condition. And in Cyprus where I'm from we still speak an ancient Greek dialect. People of northern Italy and South Italy are very different people, to the extent that they even discriminate against each other and is a well known problem in Italy today. The half part of Italy was settled by Greeks and they did as far as Spain and Portugal and all the way through the Mediterranean this is why the Spainish have the symbol of the Bull, this is from the Greek Minoans.

[mahogan]

I'm not sure I would go so far as to claim that the *Trojans* went to Italy. My theory is that the Ilians and Greek attackers were certaily long time trading partners and possibly even allies before the war (on the map, they occupy the crucial region around the Aegean that I mentioned earlier). They are more likely to have headed inland than attempt a sea crossing. Also, I would argue that the Greeks speak a form of ancient Cypriot than the other way around. Mycenean art has more in common with the Mediterranean than mainland Greece. We do have an emplasis on Greece as being our 'cultural home' but it is much more complicated. As you said, Italy is a mixture of East Europeans, Mediterraneans, Africans and North Europeans (culturally at least)

With the raping and pillaging that went on, genetic lineage will be hard to prove - the Balkans have always been a 'crossroads for cultures', to put it politely.

The political differences in Italy still hold to the pattern set by the Romans, showing a divide between the Carthathage/African (south) and the Greco-Roman (north), where the Etruscan's were wiped out.

The symbol of the bull is common but again, I would have placed this as Cretan, then exported to Italy and Spain (see the paintings at Knossons, wich pre-date its known appearance in Greece).

The Greeks and Romans took a lot of other peoples ideas and oriented them around the human (humanised gods etc..); we have come to accept this 'noise' as true of the cultures when in fact it is a corruption of other cultures.

As the Greco-Roman system aged, it's internally reflective attitude towards its own Gods and its Self in fact made the entire culture unstable (the Emperor *was* a god), when something went right or wrong, they could do nothing other than stare at themselves. I believe this creates a climate of hysterical paranoia, so eventually, the Romans had to find another religion, a God, something in which to believe, so they ended up with one they pulled out of the Middle East. It had to be monotheistic because that was the only way to supplant the Emperor (a God in name, if not in fact).

After the Roman Empire and in the early period of Christianity, remember that Europe was in a 'Dark Age' and it was not until the Renaissance and the end of the wars against the Muslims that Greek philosophy was translated from Arabic to Latin - most of Euope remained relatively ignorant of the details of Greece and Rome for ove a thousand years, often not deeply touched even by the remnants of Rome that was the Papal dynasty.

[Sacredstar]

Fascinating thread...

And is it not so that the great Greek philosophers were teaching at the great Alexandria Library destroyed by the Christian fathers due to holding all the information relating to the ancient mystery religions and the divine feminine.

It is written that one of the greatest jewels of neo-platonists was Hypatia who was murdered in the most terrible taste. Stripped naked and hacked to death with oyster shells, after torn to pieces and her limbs burned to ashes (415AD) by a mob organised by Bishop Cyril of Alexandria.

Philosophy as yet in the time of Pythagoras still had a Mystery initiation element to it.

The Greek Sun-GOD Helios was identified with Christ in the early Church. There is a mosaic in the necropolis under St Peters in Rome, dating from the 3rd century, which is known as Christos-Helios. In it Christ is depicted as the GOD Helios, driving his sun-chariot across the sky.

In the East due to them not knowing what Buddha looked like theologian Martin Palmer claims that they used figures of Apollo to represent Buddha.

Dear PM

The name Pansophia was also coined in the 17th century by one of this period's most enlightening minds, Comenius. Pansophia joins both the male GOD of nature, Pan, with the essentially feminine soul-wisdom of the natural world, giving us the more inclusive and 'Europeanized' Pansophia.

Many spiritually people claim to have had experiences with the Greek GODs and GODDESS's and so for some they are still very important energies that continue to help mankind.

Blessings in abundance

Sacredstar

[I, Brian]

Originally Posted by Sacredstar

And is it not so that the great Greek philosophers were teaching at the great Alexandria Library destroyed by the Christian fathers due to holding all the information relating to the ancient mystery religions and the divine feminine.

I'm very much under the opinion that the library was burned no less than three times. I'd have to revisit the causes, though. Did we have a thread here somewhere about it?

[Postmaster]

Also, I would argue that the Greeks speak a form of ancient Cypriot than the other way around. Mycenean art has more in common with the Mediterranean than mainland Greece.

The Mycenaean's, actually destroyed Minoan civilisation, they invaded there lands and establish there own culture, historians are unsure if the Mycenaean's were once from the same origin as the Minoan's that split? Many things I'm unsure of in regards to this, would be thankful if you can tell me The earliest Minoan civilisations were found in Create and Cyprus, the Minoan civilisations were extremely ahead of there time in fact if you go to Crete you can see Minoan buildings and paintings of culture, including boxing matches. Do you think that the Minoans were ancestors of the Neolithic people? Because 7000 year old Neolithic civilisations have been found in Cyprus too which are very advanced and sophisticated, which means they must have developed much earlier.

[Bandit]

What gets me is the thought process of greece and rome with these gods. makes me wonder how people will be thinking about our day and about us in 500 years. statues speak and hear no evil, but people believed some of that.

where did all those giants and the shoulders we stand on go.