Throughout history, religion has played an important role in the development of ancient empires. Every culture had their own religion. Some cultures had one god while others had many gods and goddesses. Religion was used in some cultures as a way of showing who had the power over all the other people. Religion spread quickly to different places and was passed down to the next generations. Religion is needed in a culture so they have some kinds of rules or beliefs that they have to follow. Without religion people would have just done what they wanted and it would have been chaos, and it gave the living gods and goddesses power over the rest of the people. Between 800 and 300 B.C.E., there were four philosophical and religious revolutions that …show more content…
The Greek gods and goddesses lived on Mt. Olympus so they could see and observe humanity and interact if they needed too. The gods held all the power so the people were afraid of them so they followed their every command. The most important gods in were the Olympian gods, which were led by Zeus. They were a big influence on the people. In the fifth century B.C.E., the Thucydides analyzed the behavior of the people in terms of human nature and chance. There was no place for the gods. The Greeks still wanted to think that the laws came from the gods but they understood that the laws were man-made and should still be obeyed because of the consent of the citizens. These ideas were the open discussion of the problems in the history of civilizations and remain concerns in the modern world. In the sixth century B.C.E., the spirit characteristic of Greek culture turned into the examination of the physical world and the place of humankind which is known as philosophy. The Greeks still believed in the things they did before but they no longer believed it was because of the supernatural. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were the three people of philosophy. They were determined to find out how things really came into place. They searched for the answers that know man had yet found. The Greek then went from religion and believing in gods and goddesses to believing in morals created by man-kind. This played an important role in the development of …show more content…
Some of these gods were associated with natural phenomena. These gods and goddesses were amoral beings who were no more affected by the actions of humans than were the natural forces they represented. The more diverse the gods were, the more the religious traditions were in the Ancient Near Eastern world. The monotheistic faith came from the polytheistic and pluralistic world. The Jewish, Christian, and Islamic communities represented the monotheistic faith. This tradition mostly took place in the smaller nations of the Israelites, or Hebrews. Even though they were from a small tribe, their impact on world civilization was much greater than any other. Despite all the glories of the major civilizations of the Fertile Crescent and Nile valley, it was the Israelites, not the Babylonians or Egyptians, who generated a tradition that significantly shaped later history. This tradition was known as ethical monotheism. Unlike polytheism, monotheism is faith in a single, all-powerful God. Human history was based on the Hebrew tribe’s emphasis on the moral demands of the one and only God. This spread to the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions as well. The Hebrews beliefs Spread all over the Israelite nation. At about the beginning of the thirteenth century, it was because of Moses that the Hebrews tread clearly upon the stage of history. Some of Abraham’s
...itional polytheistic creation myths would be how powerful people in the Ancient Near East thought the gods were. The nomads would have greatly depended on rain and weather to be able to keep their sheep and herds alive. By depending on the weather for the survival of their flocks, they would probably believe greatly in the gods. It would be hard to convince a Hebrew nomad to believe in something other than their polytheistic gods if there was a drought or hard time. They would probably still worship the idols and gods of rain and other things that directly affect them. It could be assumed that these nomads would not want to upset the gods who they think control almost every aspect of their lives. It would be hard to abandon gods that you had accepted all your life especially if you believed they had control over the wellbeing of their livestock and families.
Much of the religious practice of the ancient world was polytheistic. The Hebrews embrace of monotheism is noteworthy, because it distinguishes Judaism from the ...
How the Greeks revered their gods. In ancient times, the Greeks had absolute and undeniable respect for their gods. They demonstrated their admiration by putting in place many rituals and celebrations to reverence the gods that they loved and feared in order to ensure harmony with them. In particular, the focus will be on the religious beliefs of the Greeks, including prayer and sacrifice, as well as on festivals and the arts, such as the ancient Olympic games and theatre.
believed in many gods unlike the people of the Jewish fate who believed in one
Religion comes from religare, which means have a reunion. Aneel Baquer says that humans have a need to connect with others, the ability of myths and thoughts of religion is a desire that humans need to bond. In most civilizations, religion is the reason why civilizations are successful. Religion give, people a motive to survive or do what they do. Sometimes the religions actually make their civilization expand and even more successful. not only does religion give us a motive to survive. Still today, religion is one of the biggest factors in modern civilizations. In several religion motives are used for example, christianity. In christianity to meet with god, you must do good. Religion can change a persons personality by aiding from stress, to giving hope. Religion can also reduce the fear of death. In ancient civilizations, egyptians did not fear death. In their religion they believed that living on earth was the beginning of life. Once dead it sends you to the beginning of happiness or horrible. Religion can also expand. If you have a strong connection to your religion, some people spread the word of their religion to other people. It also teaches manners and the difference between the good, and the evil. Vikings were such a significant civilization than any other because of their religion. Religion for the vikings have given them motivation to expand territories, learn between the good and the bad, and not to fear death but to welcome death; reasons why are from being taught was from viking mythology, heroic people and their warlike god.
Ancient Greek Religion There are many topics to be explored in Ancient Greek mythology. This unique polytheistic religion was based upon myths about anthropomorphic gods and goddesses. It impacted every facet of Grecian life, from law and ritual to culture and art. The individual as well as society both influenced the characteristics of the religion and were influenced by the religion itself. The Cambridge Illustrated History of Ancient Greece explains a variety of ways in which the Greeks were influenced by their religion.
The idea of gods and goddesses began as far back as the ancient Egyptians, but the ancient Greeks were the first group to form a religion based on gods and goddesses. They believed that the gods and goddesses were not different from humans. Some of the few ways humans were different from gods were that the gods were stronger and lived forever. Since the Greeks believe in many gods, they are Polytheists.
Religious practices Religious ritual ceremonies among the Athenians consisted of a sequence of words and actions or rites that were spoken or performed in religious worship. Religion and spirituality declaration was a personal issue because individuals could rely on these constructs in many areas of life. Athenians believed that the gods existed and were capable of influencing human affairs. Fundamentally, according to the Athenians culture and beliefs, gods were welcome to assist in responding to various challenges that they encountered. Athenians culture was polytheistic.
Mythology is critical to Greek people’s everyday life, just like how religion is in our modern day age. Everyday events, such as a thunderstorm, can be linked to a god or goddess. For example, when an earthquake would happen, it would be Poseidon crashing his tritan on the ground. People’s lives revolved around the whole ideology and it served as a way to explain the unexplained and to help them in times of need. All of the stories of these great gods and goddesses were passed down generation through generation, each time becoming more extreme and distorted.
Many people would blatantly state that the importance of the gods in Greek society derives from the fact that Gods in any society are usually used to explain phenomenon that people cannot logically comprehend, but in ancient Greece gods were actually entities that took part in the workings of society itself. Even simple aspects of day-to-day life such as sex and disputes between mortals were supposedly influenced by godly workings. Unlike modern religions such as Catholicism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, where an omnipotent force supposedly controls the workings of the world, a hierarchy of Gods characterized religion in ancient Greece. Working as one big family, which they actually were, each one of the Greek gods governed a certain aspect of the world in a way that usually reflected their own humanlike personalities. These unique personalities also contained many human flaws such as envy and greed, and were where the Greek God’s importance lay. Greek religion was more concentrated on the way an individual dealt with situations that popped up in the world around him than on understanding the world itself. In other words the Greeks were more interested in the workings of the mind than in the workings of the environment around them.
In Ancient Greece, the lives of the multi-religious yet cognitive people were structured accordingly to their religious practices. Althought there was no dominant set of religious beliefs or dieties, the Greeks believed in what rather seems to be a pantheon of gods all similar in each definitive culture that seem to come together and reign supreme as the polytheistic religion of the Greek people. These beliefs came about from cultural diffusion between different religions and are reflected majorly in Roman polytheistic beliefs which transpired into the beliefs of many other cultures. It is believed that the Ancient Greek religion was comprised of ideologies from philosphers such as Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, and that it became significant through the poetry of the epic writer Homer. The Greek beliefs influenced the cultures and minds of people in many city states throughout Ancient Greece especially Athens, Sparta, and the Minoan civilization and served as a foundation for the culture of these civilizations.
People of the ancient world often had questions about their existence and how life and people came to be on earth. Most ancient people answered these questions through religion. The Sumerians were the first important group of people to inhabit Mesopotamia and they were known to practice a form of worship called polytheism, which is the worship of several gods. Mesopotamians associated different gods with natural events, emotions, and other occurrences. Their main deities included An (the god of the heavens), Enlil (Lord Storm), Enki (god of wisdom), and Nihursaga (the mother of all living things)(p.22). The Mesopotamians believed that the gods controlled all of the events and occurrences in life. An ancient text called “Creation of Man by the Mother Goddess” (p.34) helps us understand how the M...
Religion is an important part in our everyday lives for people all around the world. We may not all believe in God 100% but we all know that their is a God and he is real as ever. Religion provides mental peace for those who are going through a rough time. Gives us something to believe in of why we are doing the things we do in our everyday life.
While the Hebrews and Egyptians creation theories bear resemblances and differences, the study and comparison of both the Egyptian myths and the biblical account allow us to comprehend the religious views of ancient civilizations in a better light. One may come to the conclusion that the Hebrews were influenced by the cultures of Egyptians by creating similarities in their own beliefs, or by drawing a line of defense of what is in their terms true, by separating from the mass ideals of the Egyptians and establishing distinct
Religion helps establish mankind’s place in the order of the universe. As civilization began to be established through the domestication of animals, the irrigation and cultivation of agricultural crops, and life became more complex (moving from mainly a hunter/gather existence to one that could settle down and have more time to consider advanced ideas) people began to consider questions such as, where life comes from, is there a creator or creators who helped make the world, and what happens after we die. Religion helped answer some of these questions. It gave people purpose, meaning, and perspective. Religion helped establish nations in the case of religious theocratic governments. In many of the ancient civilizations, such as the Egyptians, the Mayans, and even Mesopotamia, the priests and other religious leaders played prominent roles in help shaping the laws and government of these civilizations. As his...