How to tackle Greek Religion.

My first thoughts when looking at the topic of gods in the Ancient world is to tackle it through one of the major gods.  This leads me to my first problem, what characteristics makes a major god or goddess? Do we only class the Olympian gods as the important ones in Greek mythology? If so why is Hades not considered to be one of the Olympian gods? Hades is known as the god of the underworld, keeper of souls, yet he seems to take a background seat when it comes to looking and studying the gods of the ancient Greek world. Is this because we relegated to the background seat by our own views on religion? Thus I will be looking at aspects of ways to tackle Greek Religion through the considered "minor" god of Hades. When we look at Greek religion we also have to assess the problems of our own religious influences of our current world. There religions such as Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism and Buddhism to name a few; that deal with different ideals of what a god is to them if that may be a transcendent monotheistic system that we see most of modern religions fall into apart from Hinduism which deals with the same ideas and concepts of the Greek polytheism.  Zaidman comments on religion ‘the necessity of cultural estrangement…mental adjustment’ ( 3) each one of the religious view affects how we tackle aspects of Greek religion, Zaidman makes the comment that we need to separate our own religious view being a devoted Christian or an atheist to be able to tackle these factors we need to put our own views to the side. Considering even if the Ancient Greek people see the Greek gods a term of religion these will all be aspects I will be tackling through my blog posts using the example of the god of Hades.

 

Hades:Clash of the Gods

Bibliography

Zaidman,L B and Pantel, PC.(1989)  Religion in the Ancient Greek City. Translated by Paul Cartledge.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.