Scholarship for Greek Religion

John Gould

Homer’s gods “behave for the most part as men, with the civility and also with the crude brashness, the compulsive self-assertion, of human social existence”
“god both is and is not like man”,

James Redfield

The gods are “a chief source of comedy” in the Iliad.

Jasper Griffin

Says that Homer’s epics are full of “really impressive gods” who deserve the worship they receive

William Allan

Argues that the gods are not portrayed as amoral, but instead offer divine justice

Jon Mikalson

Reciprocal relationship based on “the honour which a good subject owes to a good king”

Robert Parker

“The tendency of the Greeks to appeal to a plurality of gods […] appears in this area of life more clearly than any other” (about hero cults)

George Mylonas

Suggests that the upper register of the Ninnion tablet shows Persephone at the Lesser Mysteries in Spring, and the lower register doesn’t have her and so could be the Greater Mysteries in Autumn

Hoffman

Suggests that priests intentionally infested the barley drink with ergot to produce hallucinogenic experiences during the greater mysteries

Robert Garland

The Eleusinian Mysteries were “centrally concerned with the afterlife”

Robert Garland

“Epidaurus was important ... because it enabled the sick to go on hoping”

Jessica Hughes

Argues that the symbolic dismemberment of votive body parts when being dedicated to a god was actually “metaphorically conceived as the reintegration of the dedicant’s broken body”

Jessica Piccinni

Has a theory that the tablets left after a visit to the Oracle of Zeus in Dodona were left as a memory of the consultation + showed the visitor’s wish to be remembered as having been there

Christopher Faraone

Argues that non-animal sacrifice is more characteristic of household than civic religion

Simon Price

Argues that deme religion correlated with polis religion (no deme festivals on date of Panathenaia)
“The Attic demes were thus integrated into the religious life of the Athenian state while preserving their own individuality”

Louise Bruit Zaidman (religion…)

“religion… did more than just put a divine gloss on civic life. It impregnated each and every civic activity”

Louise Bruit Zaidman (…festivals…)

"“inseparability of festivals from the very definition of Greek civic life”,

Kindt

Argues that individuals were motivated by personal belief to join festivals

Detienne and Vernant

Sacrifice was fundamentally killing for eating

Fred Naiden

Stressed that sacrifice served to maintain and stabilise the relationship between the mortals and the gods

Emerson

“there were many facets to the experience, some religious, others athletic or cultural” (festivals)

Kardara

The Parthenon frieze represents the first procession with the dedication of the Panathenaic festival by Erechtheus (shown by Erichthonios as a child presenting the first peplos to him)

Jeffrey Hurwitt

“the Parthenon should perhaps be considered not so much as a temple of Athena as a temple to Athens”

Robert Garland

Delphi made people look for answers in themselves

Simon Price

Delphi fulfilled a function in society; firstly it was a place for city states & individuals to resolve big issues and secondly it was a form of mediation between the gods and mortals

Sally Waite

The Centauronomacy on the pediment at Olympia was a “Greek allegory of victory over barbarians”

Paul Cartledge

Sport was “a display of religious devotion and worship”

Nanno Marinatos

“Sanctuaries were multidimensional institutions which served the needs of their communities and the needs of the Greek city-state as a whole”

Chaniotis

Argues that religious authority lay in the hands of the state alone: “Magistrates sometimes conducted religious activities without the assistance of priests, it was less common for a public priest to perform rituals without the presence of secular authorities” (so, impossible to separate religious + political personnel)
Says that people who aquired preisthoods by lot, election or purchase were not ritual experts, but ritual expertise was to be expected among hereditary priests

Matthew Dillion

““Women tended to serve female deities and male priests male deities”

Connelly

Argues that religious roles served as an “arena in which Greek women assumed roles equal…to those of men”

Jan Bremmer

“Sacrifice was the most central religious act for the Greeks”
“A ritual act that stands in the very centre of the community cannot but have economic, political, social and cultural meanings, in addition to religious significance”

Burket

“Wine libations have a fixed place in the ritual of animal sacrifice”

S. Tor

“Xenophanes rejects traditional concepts of divine disclosure as theologically faulty and supplants them with his own, alternative notion of divine disclosure”
Says that Xenophanes said that the gods have a “manifold wickedness”

Price

A common characteristic of philosophers was the rejection of Homer and Hesiod

Parker

Conservative Athenians were looking for someone to blame for the city's change and suspicious new ideas, and Socrates fitted the bill

Hughes

Socrates was a scapegoat for Athens' disappointment - while they were strong he could be tolerated