Greek And Current Religion

One must honestly ask him/herself what is history? Is it what defines us, or what makes us come to be? Even a more brooding and heavy subject is what is religious history? America is a very religiously diverse place with many, many different types of religions. It is rare where you find a country that has Muslem, Satanism, Catholicism, Mormonism and Buddhism and many more types of religions in the same country. Comparing and contrasting the main religion in America, Christianity, and ancient Greek religion is interesting.

As far as festivals and rituals go, they are similar. They celebrated/gathered sixty times a year which is pretty close to how many times churches gather which is fifty-two times a year every sunday. They called their local gatherings deme which literally means parish which is the exact same word we use. They also carefully conduced the ceremony with holy water which we also use to this day. They took the blood of the sacrifice (usually a sheep or lamb) and cleansed the alter with it. We use wine as a substitute for blood. The meat was eaten, just as we do with the bread, which represents the body of christ. And they had gatherings on a large scale where people from all over the Greek world, just as we do today, World Youth Day. And even the buildings are somewhat similar. They had arch entrances, just as some do today such as Notre Dome. However, in their ceremonies they actually sacrificed a live creature where we do in only in a metaphorical sense. And the most obvious difference between modern day religion and Greek religion is Christianity's monotheism and Greek's polytheism. They prayed to the gods (Zeus, Poseidon, Hera) for different things such as good weather for crops, good fortune and good fishing. We pray for forgiveness and such matters that have to do with our higher self. They fervently prayed everyday but most people who are religious don't pray daily. They thought of the gods having both human and