Greek Religion: Gods, Worship, and the Path to Monotheism

Types of God worship among the Greeks

Despite the common idea of the Greeks being worshipers of a large number of gods, we cannot generalize this idea absolutely and make them worship multiple gods only, and different types of god worship have appeared in varying degrees, perhaps the most common of which is polytheism, and the following are some of these cults.

Polytheism

The Greek religious faith is filled with a very large number of ancient gods, then the twelve gods of Olympus, led by their chief (Zeus) and a number of other minor or local gods, demigods and heroes such as Heracles and Achilles, and many goddesses of meadows and springs.

The Greek gods were not confined to their temples, heavens, or lower kingdoms, but lived in the streets of the city, in people's homes, and in the vineyards and olive groves. They were present in all the paths of ordinary Greek life to witness an oath, to protect them from danger, to heal a serious illness, or to bless an action.

The Greek individual did not strain himself much in the complexity of the laws related to their worship, so he respected them without complexity and sometimes made offerings to them to avoid their dangers or to attract their sympathy, and there are many forms of categorizing these many gods, including

Classifying them into three layers, the first of which is the goddess of the sky, who made her headquarters at the top of Mount Olympus, the second layer is the goddess of the earth, and the third layer is the goddess of the sea.
categorizing them into seven groups: (sky gods - earth gods - fertility gods. Animal gods - underground gods - gods of ancestors or heroes - Olympic gods).

Categorize them into successive generations, starting from the ancient Hellenic gods to the newer gods. We tried to divide them into several generations and found that they consist of a number of generations:

The Goddess of Ylem
Gods of the universe and the four elements (water, air, fire, earth)
The victorious air goddess (Titan)
The generation of Cronus and his children. Among them are the gods of Olympus
The generation of Zeus and his descendants, including the gods of the Olympics.
The descendants of Zeus

The Greek religion arose (mostly) from the fission and multiplicity of the spiritual qualities and qualities of the gods and their accumulation in a stock (which may be full of contradiction), but it is connected between the upper and middle gods that flow with people's lives and relate to their daily existence.

Mount Olympus seen from the WNW, in Greece. Date: 2009 | Source: Own work | Author: Giorgos Kollias | License: Public domain

Did the Greeks worship one God?

Although Zeus was the national god of the Greeks in the Bronze and Iron Ages, we do not find many texts that make this god the sole leader of the gods, but he is the chief of the gods and is described as (the father of humans and gods). The tendency of monotheism did not reach him to make him the only one on the stage of the events of the gods, "he may have been the king of Mount Olympus, where the assembly of the gods, but he was not the absolute god.

We note that the god (Apollo) competed strongly with his father and became practically the national god of the Greeks in the classical period in particular, as he is the god of youth, youth, vitality, strength, power, arts, wisdom and poetry. Zeus became an old god who could not control nature and people

The rise of the goddess Athena

Athena rose to a high position in the classical era due to the rise of the city of Athens politically
and economically, and became the goddess of wisdom, scabies and power, and she was on the same level and power as Apollo, but she did not marry him but remained a virgin forever.

For more details about the goddess Athena and her role in Greek mythology.

Athena The Goddess of Wisdom, War and Civilization in Greek Mythology

The god Asclepius and the attempt to rise up the Greeks

As soon as the Age of Decline began, the god Asclepius, the son of Apollo and the god of medicine, became the hope of the Greeks for salvation, so we see him as one of the gods of the underworld who grant deliverance and salvation, and this coincided with the emergence of the Hellenistic era, which was interested in the doctrines of salvation and the gods of the underworld.

Dionysus, granting eternity and life

The cult of Dionysus, which was the common part of the secret cults
can be considered both a popular and elite religion of individualization, as this god of pleasure and immortality won a position that other gods did not reach. He was the god who controls the eroticism of life and grants immortality and salvation in the afterlife. “He is a comprehensive and unique god in one” and from his worship emerged the arts of theater, worldly doctrines and secret cults, he is truly the most unique god, especially since he combines East and West in one entity that leaps man towards salvation and eternity.

For more details about the god Dionysus and her role in Greek mythology

Dionysus (Bacchus): The God of Wine and Fertility in Greek Mythology

The call of the Greeks to monotheism

There appeared among the Greek thinkers who called for monotheism and called for it despite the huge number of Greek gods in various generations.
Perhaps the most important monotheistic thinkers are Xenophanes and Socrates and with them the pantheistic school represented by Parmenides

Xenophanes and the call for monotheism:

He lived in the sixth century BC and contributed to the founding of the philosophical school of Elijah and died in Sicily. He began his monotheistic doctrine in his harsh criticism of the oldest and most famous Greek poets, Homer and Hesiodos, who contributed to attributing shameful and shameful qualities of humans to the gods, such as the fact that they steal, adultery and deceive each other.

The Ethiopians say that their gods are black with snub noses, while the Thracians say that their gods have blue eyes and red hair

He also said:

"Cattle, horses and lions, if they had hands that could
draw and do the things that human beings do, the horses would draw their gods in the form of horses and the cattle would draw their gods from cattle and make the bodies of these gods in their likeness.

Thus, Xenophanes goes back to the origins and shakes them up. He believes that "everything that people have learned has been formulated by Homer from the beginning.
Aristotle mentions that Xenophanes used to argue that saying that the gods are born is as sinful as saying that the gods are dead
because it follows from saying that the gods are born or die that at some time
they do not exist, and Xenophanes reaches the pinnacle of his belief
when he says: "There is one god who is the greatest among the gods and men and has no equal among men. “There is one God who is the greatest among the gods and humans and has no equal among mortal men, neither in body nor in mind.”
Xenophanes is a monotheistic reformer who contemplated the universe with his mind and conscience and found that this universe must have a great creator.
He believed in monotheism and the one Creator and set out to preach among his Greek people about this and belief in the one God.

Was Socrates a prophet?

Socrates says that it started with me since my childhood in the form of a voice that comes to me and when it comes, it always prevents me from doing what I want to do, which is the voice that objects to my participation in political matters.
Socrates believed that he was a person sent by God to the city of Athens and that it was his duty to spread virtue, morality and science among them. Those who tried him had accused him of not believing in any gods at all; he believed that the sun is a stone and the moon is an earth and not a god, but Socrates apparently did not believe in the multiplicity and diversity of gods and believed that there is one God for this universe.
He found religion to be about honoring the pure conscience of divine justice, not offering sacrifices and reciting prayers while staining oneself with sin.
Therefore, he believes that the gods take care of us and that they have assigned each of us a task in this world. He believed in immortality and believed that the soul is distinguished from the body and is not corrupted by its corruption, but is freed from its prison by death, and returns to the purity of its nature.
Socrates was angry at his time, and his life was a series of long dialogues for the upliftment and strength of man.
Socrates may not have been a prophet or a religious prophet, but he was as close to the messages of the prophets as possible. Karl Jaspers says that the church fathers consider Socrates a great name, and they saw him as the icon of Christian martyrs, as he, like them, died martyred for his faith, and he, like them, was accused of betraying the inherited faith in the gods.
Socrates' philosophy was not like any kind of Greek philosophy before or after, it was more like a teaching. He was not a philosopher contemplating the universe or man, but a wise, insightful and influential sage who swept away the corruption he encountered and overturned the tables of vice and delusion in Athens.

Atheism about the Greeks

Many atheistic tendencies appeared in Greek thought, but they were not so explicit and clear that they formed an integrated stream of thought, and we can touch this tendency in a well-known tragic poet, Euripides, and it is possible that Euripides was not sufficiently compatible with the traditional religion that prevailed in his society, but we cannot accuse him of atheism directly, as the poet wondered how humans could trust in gods whose stories announced their existence were the same ones that attributed many crimes and whims that humans did not commit!