- Title Pages
- Preface
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Abbreviations
-
Introduction the Greek Gods in the Twentieth Century
-
1 What is A Greek God? -
2 Canonizing the Pantheon: The Dodekatheon in Greek Religion and its Origins -
3 Gods in Greek Inscriptions: Some Methodological Questions -
4 Metamorphoses of Gods into Animals and Humans -
5 Sacrificing to the Gods: Ancient Evidence and Modern Interpretations -
6 Getting in Contact: Concepts of Human—Divine Encounter in Classical Greek Art -
7 New Statues for Old Gods -
8 Zeus at Olympia -
9 Zeus in Aeschylus: The Factor of Monetization -
10 Hephaistos Sweats or How to Construct an Ambivalent God -
11 Transforming Artemis: From the Goddess of the Outdoors to City Goddess -
12 Herakles Between Gods and Heroes -
13 Identities of Gods and Heroes: Athenian Garden Sanctuaries and Gendered Rites of Passage -
14 Early Greek Theology: God as Nature and Natural Gods -
15 Gods in early Greek Historiography -
16 Gods in Apulia -
17 Lucian's Gods: Lucian's Understanding of the Divine -
18 The Gods in the Greek Novel -
19 Reading Pausanias: Cults of the Gods and Representation of the Divine -
20 Kronos and the Titans as Powerful Ancestors: A Case Study of the Greek Gods in Later Magical Spells -
21 Homo Fictor Deorum Est: Envisioning the Divine in Late Antique Divinatory Spells -
22 The Gods in Later Orphism -
23 Christian Apologists and Greek Gods -
24 The Materiality of God's Image: The Olympian Zeus and Ancient Christology -
25 The Greek Gods in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century German and British Scholarship - Epilogue
- Index
Christian Apologists and Greek Gods
Christian Apologists and Greek Gods
- Chapter:
- (p.442) 23 Christian Apologists and Greek Gods
- Source:
- The Gods of Ancient Greece
- Author(s):
Jan N. Bremmer
Andrew Erskine
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
Greek gods and polytheism as a distinctive feature of Graeco-Roman culture and religion was a favourite theme among the Christian Apologists of the second century AD. This chapter analyses both their approaches to Greek deities and the evolution of motifs, which oscillate between the rigid criticism of idolatry based on Jewish lore and a richer rational censure of anthropomorphism originating in Greek philosophy.
Keywords: Apologists, Christianity, Polytheism, Idolatory, Judaism, Anthropomorphism
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- Title Pages
- Preface
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Abbreviations
-
Introduction the Greek Gods in the Twentieth Century
-
1 What is A Greek God? -
2 Canonizing the Pantheon: The Dodekatheon in Greek Religion and its Origins -
3 Gods in Greek Inscriptions: Some Methodological Questions -
4 Metamorphoses of Gods into Animals and Humans -
5 Sacrificing to the Gods: Ancient Evidence and Modern Interpretations -
6 Getting in Contact: Concepts of Human—Divine Encounter in Classical Greek Art -
7 New Statues for Old Gods -
8 Zeus at Olympia -
9 Zeus in Aeschylus: The Factor of Monetization -
10 Hephaistos Sweats or How to Construct an Ambivalent God -
11 Transforming Artemis: From the Goddess of the Outdoors to City Goddess -
12 Herakles Between Gods and Heroes -
13 Identities of Gods and Heroes: Athenian Garden Sanctuaries and Gendered Rites of Passage -
14 Early Greek Theology: God as Nature and Natural Gods -
15 Gods in early Greek Historiography -
16 Gods in Apulia -
17 Lucian's Gods: Lucian's Understanding of the Divine -
18 The Gods in the Greek Novel -
19 Reading Pausanias: Cults of the Gods and Representation of the Divine -
20 Kronos and the Titans as Powerful Ancestors: A Case Study of the Greek Gods in Later Magical Spells -
21 Homo Fictor Deorum Est: Envisioning the Divine in Late Antique Divinatory Spells -
22 The Gods in Later Orphism -
23 Christian Apologists and Greek Gods -
24 The Materiality of God's Image: The Olympian Zeus and Ancient Christology -
25 The Greek Gods in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century German and British Scholarship - Epilogue
- Index
