How did Greek gods come about?

Answer 1

• Most of them were exaggerated tales of prominent people in the society back then. Others were made up as an explanation for natural phenomenon, such as birth, the movement of stars, etc. The same way as belief in any deity to explain the natural world and to conquer the fear of death. Since they cannot explain the occurrence of thunder, lightning, drought, earthquake, tsunami, volcanic eruptions, etc., they invented a supernatural being who they thought were causing these. Most of them were made up to glorify the creations on heaven and earth

• The supreme god of the polytheistic Greeks, corresponding to Jupiter of the Romans. Zeus was a god of the sky and was viewed as having control of the winds, clouds, rain, and thunder, exercising his power over these natural forces for both a destructive and a beneficial purpose.From what source did the Greeks get this strange mythology? An author answers: 'Its ultimate origin seems to have been Sumerian. In these eastern stories we find a succession of gods,...' We have to look to ancient Mesopotamia and Babylon as the source of many myths that permeated other cultures.

• Greek mythology mostly was created by the blind poet Homer. It is poetry like a song. Troy never has been found foolishly being sought all these centuries. Perhaps, we should leave it with American Heritage's definition of myth: A fiction or half-truth, especially one that forms part of an ideology.

• The bulk of Greek mythology as that of their philosophy is Egyptian. All of your great Greek philosophers can attribute their education to Egypt. The gods were already in place before Homer's writings.

AnswerThe earliest recorded prayers to a god or gods are about control and protection. They usually ask for things like rain for the crops, sons to tend and harvest the crops, protection from danger, and the like.

Many people believe that men invented gods because human beings are the only animal that can anticipate problems in the relatively distant future and worry about them. Since humans can't control things like the weather, floods, other natural disasters, sudden military raids, fertility, etc., they made up gods to control these things, then made up ways to control the gods through offerings, contracts, and the like. Most likely, the first prayers were about simply asking the clouds or sky to bring rain, or the wind to stop, or the sun to become warm again. From there, the wind, rain, sun, etc. became gods themselves, and in many cases, were later given anthropomorphic shapes (but not in all cases).

As time progressed, the gods of many pantheons became able to grant favors across a wide spectrum of human endeavor. The issue of asking a god to do a favor, then sacrificing to that god, and not having the favor happen could be attributed to many factors, among them a too-small offering, an incomplete or inaccurate recitation of a ritual, interference from another god whom one has offended, or direct opposition from a different pantheon of gods, for instance, in losing a war.

Monotheism was a brilliant invention that simplified all this into "one-stop shopping." As before, the single, one, true God will protect and provide for his worshipers if the rules are followed, and usually if the rules are followed by all in a given group.

Some wrong information in the answers, above:

1. It is unlikely that Zeus was derived from the Sumerians. He corresponds more closely to other Indo-European sky gods, and was probably brought from whatever land developed proto-Indo-European. It is quite certain that, as societies intermixed, they borrowed myths from each other and attributed those myths to their own gods. It is also quite certain that ancient peoples came to see gods of other cultures as their own gods under different names. But it is not at all certain, or even likely, that all gods originate from Sumer.

2. Homer did not create Greek mythology, though we owe him much for recounting so many myths and gods that would have been lost to us, today, had his poetry not been written down. Homer was clearly working from a much older, oral tradition. Not only does his poetry contain Mnemonic Devices to aid the singer working from memory, but it also contains references to things (like boar's tooth helmets) that didn't exist in his time, but existed earlier. In addition, when Homer breaks strict meter, it is often because the words he is using dropped the "w" at some point, and used to fit the meter, but didn't any longer.

Homer is writing about the Mycenaean period in Greek history, and there are Linear B tablets from that period enumerating some of the gods about which Homer wrote.

3. Troy has quite definitely been found, and it is where Homer said it would be, and his description is remarkably accurate, right down to the location of springs. Troy is at a site called "Hisarlik" in Turkey, on the eastern side of the Dardenelles, just east of the island of Bozcaada.

4. Egypt may have had some influence on very early Greeks, but the Greek gods bear little resemblance to the Egyptian ones, being Indo-European in flavor. Most Greek philosophers did not learn from the Egyptians, who had nothing like the variety of philosophies extant in the Periclean Era and beyond.

5. Every god was and is made up by people. There is no such thing in reality. Get over it already.

Answer 2

Greek Mythology started around 935bc or/and 1000bc

It started by Greeks telling story's about the gods they believed in and then they passed down these story's generations and generations till they reached us.

Answer 3

When men still worshiped ugly idols, there lived in the land of Greece a folk of shepherds and herdsmen who cherished light and beauty. They did nto wordhip dark idols like their neighbors, but created instead their own beautiful, radiant gods.

Answer 4

Well in ancient Greece they had very mysterious acts of nature like lighting or dying so storytellers and priests say it was a man named Zeus throwing lightening or when we die hades gets just for there own peace of mind and they also made gods for things that were popular and great influence on the greek way of life and the story of posedin was made so when sailing the sailor had the act of knowing someone was watching them and for battle the soldiers thought ares was with them so see gods were just things to live by and ease the mind

Answer 5

The first written record of Greece is the Iliad. It begins with Homer and it is believed to be not earlier than a thousand years before Christ.

Answer 6

Like all gods, past and present, they were invented as supernatural forces to explain things which were not understood or to explain why things happened, or why they went right or wrong.

Answer 7

The original Greek Gods were created in ancient Greece by the nomads.They were created to explain the forces of nature and events.Being nomads they had earth gods and sky gods.

Answer 8

it was the Greek and Roman's way of saying how the world worked

Answer 9

How were the Greek Gods invented?