How did the Greeks reconcile with Zeus' conduct?

Reconcile?

>>24570415 (OP)
With fear and trembling

>>24570415 (OP)
He's a god, the hubris to question those actions is alone grounds for destruction.

>>24570415 (OP)
We have an extremely distorted view of Zeus' conduct. If you actually read the myths in question, it's a little different. What does he do in the Iliad? Express impatience with everyone else fucking around? Arguably, the worst thing he does is answer the supplication of Thetis and ruin his favorite king - the same thing also testifies to his judicious quality. He's really not selfish, which people don't fucking read the myths astonished to hear.

I'm a woke liberal but I definitely recognize that there's a modern thing going on here. Zeus is an authoritative, womanizing patriarch - this makes him like instinctually condemned, and we aren't going to be able to grasp things like Plato calling him the God of wisdom and patron of philosophy.

>>24570777
He transforms into a goose and rapes a woman

Having an imperfect ruler of creation is a lot easier to comprehend than the idea that there is a perfect and benevolent ruler who allows so much wickedness

Zeus is actually a decent ruler, except in Ovid. He does fuck a lot of women but for Greeks that’s a reasonable failing when you’re all-powerful. He could be a real shit head. Instead he tries to prevent major wars and feuds between the different gods and be fair to everyone. It’s a tough job. Which of the other gods or men would do a better job than Zeus? Who would you trust more with his power?

>>24570791
Yes, compared to other Greek gods he's pretty decent. Athena is a bitch, though. Fucking hate that cunt.

>>24570415 (OP)
Zeus was created in the image of man. The more modern concept of gods being infallible is just that, a modern concept

>>24570790
Sure you can say that all seduction from the Gods is rape if you want. Becomes a different conversation at that point. The whole canon is rape now, Aphrodite is just as bad

>>24570806
I want Aphrodite to rape me

>>24570796
Fight me in the Benihana parking lot

>>24570812
That's what I'm sayin

>>24570415 (OP)
I dunno, how do Christians reconcile God's conduct in the OT?

>>24570791
>Who would you trust more with his power?
The Buddha

>>24570777
>I'm a woke liberal
nigger who the fuck describes himself like that

>>24570924
>instantly removes all of creation from existence to escape samsara
Great job, asshole.

>>24570925
Because I don't take myself that seriously, calm the fuck down lol

>>24570790
He bestows upon her the inestimable gift of divine progeny. What woman wouldn't crave that?

>>24570415 (OP)
I read the Iliad for the first time about a year ago and found his interactions with Hera hilarious. It felt like a honeymooners skit. Every other line was threatening to punch her lights out and her calling him a great big brute.

>>24570927
>Great job, asshole.
You say that like it's a bad thing.

>>24570415 (OP)
How do Christians reconcile with Yahweh ordering the israelites to give him human sacrifices, rape and enslave virgin midianite girls and kill all the rest of the tribe, children included?

>>24571195
God had his slut phase or something.

>>24570796
Hera and Aphrodite are worse

>>24570415 (OP)
Hesiod justifies Zeus' rule by him being the mightiest and wisest in counsels.

>>24570984
I found the funniest line is when he compares all his past affairs with the lust he feels toward her right now.
>"Why hurry, Hera?"-
>Zeus who gathers the breasting clouds replied,
>"that is a journey you can make tomorrow. Now-
>come, let's go to bed, let's lose ourselves in love!
>Never has such a lust for goddess or mortal woman
>flooded my pounding heart and overwhelmed me so.
>Not even then, when I made love to Ixion's wife
>who bore me Pirithous. rival to all the gods in wisdom ...
>not when I loved Acrisius' daughter Danae-s-marvelous ankles-
>and Perseus sprang to life and excelled all men alive ...
>not when I stormed Europa, far-famed Phoenix' daughter
>who bore me Minos and Rhadamanthys grand as gods ...
>not even Semele, not even Alcmena queen of Thebes
>who bore me a son, that lionheart, that Heracles.
>and Semele bore Dionysus, ecstasy, joy to mankind-
>not when I loved Demeter, queen of the lustrous braids-
>not when I bedded Leto ripe for glory-

>>24570415 (OP)
Zeus underwent a gradual transformation over hundreds of years from walking sexual nuclear reactor to a just ruler of all creation. They did not however destroy their older stories nor did they feel the need to justify older stories in the framework of newer ideas. Chances are they simply didn't believe them.

>>24570415 (OP)
They didn't take the myths literally.

>>24572024
how did they take them then?

>>24571985
You have no proof for any of those assertions.

>>24572608
welcome to 4chan.

>>24570777
You're misrepresenting what Plato said. The fact that he regarded Zeus in such terms caused him to reject the myths about Zeus (or the other gods) that he found objectionable. Particularly in books two and three of the Republic, Socrates criticizes the poets' depiction of Zeus, citing specific examples. For, example:

>What would you say again to the tale of Zeus, who, while other gods and men were asleep and he the only person awake, lay devising plans, but forgot them all in a moment through his lust, and was so completely overcome at the sight of Here ([Hera]) that he would not even go into the hut, but wanted to lie with her on the ground, declaring that he had never been in such a state of rapture before, even when they first met one another

Or:

>Then we must not listen to Homer or to any other poet who is guilty of the folly of saying that two casks
>‘Lie at the threshold of Zeus, full of lots, one of good, the other of evil lots,’
>and that he to whom Zeus gives a mixture of the two
>‘Sometimes meets with evil fortune, at other times with good;’
>but that he to whom is given the cup of unmingled ill,
>‘Him wild hunger drives o’er the beauteous earth.’
>And again—
>‘Zeus, who is the dispenser of good and evil to us.’

And about Hesiod:

>First of all, I said, there was that greatest of all lies in high places, which the poet told about Uranus, and which was a bad lie too,—I mean what Hesiod says that Uranus did, and how Cronus retaliated on him. The doings of Cronus, and the sufferings which in turn his son inflicted upon him, even if they were true, ought certainly not to be lightly told to young and thoughtless persons; if possible, they had better be buried in silence. But if there is an absolute necessity for their mention, a chosen few might hear them in a mystery, and they should sacrifice not a common (Eleusinian) pig, but some huge and unprocurable victim; and then the number of the hearers will be very few indeed.
>Why, yes, said he, those stories are extremely objectionable.
>Yes, Adeimantus, they are stories not to be repeated in our State; the young man should not be told that in committing the worst of crimes he is far from doing anything outrageous; and that even if he chastises his father when he does wrong, in whatever manner, he will only be following the example of the first and greatest among the gods.
>I entirely agree with you, he said; in my opinion those stories are quite unfit to be repeated.

(Apologies for the lackluster translation.)
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm

>>24572667
This, consider also the Euthyphro:

>Socrates: Speak, then, what do you say the pious is, and what the impious?
>Euthyphro: I say, then, that the pious is just what I am doing now: to proceed against whoever does injustice regarding murders or thefts of sacred things, or is doing wrong in any other such thing, whether he happens to be a father or mother or anyone else at all; and not to proceed against him is impious. Now contemplate, Socrates, how great a proof I will tell you that the law is so disposed—a proof, which I have already told to others as well, that these things would be correctly done if they take place in this way—that one is not to give way to the impious one, whoever he happens to be. Human beings themselves believe that Zeus is the best and most just of the gods, at the same time that they agree that he bound his own father because he gulped down his sons without justice, and that the latter, in turn, castrated his own father because of other such things. Yet they are angry at me because I am proceeding against my father when he has done injustice, and so they contradict themselves both concerning the gods and concerning me.
>S: Is this, Euthyphro, why I am a defendant against the indictment: that whenever someone says such things about the gods, I receive them somehow with annoyance? Because of this, as is likely, someone will assert that I am a wrongdoer. So now, if these things seem so to you too, who know well about such things, it is certainly necessary, as is likely, for us to concede them as well. For what else shall we say, since we ourselves also agree that we know nothing about them? But tell me, before the god of friendship, do you truly hold that these things have happened in this way?
>E: Yes, and things even more wondrous than these, Socrates, which the many do not know.
>S: And do you hold that there really is war among the gods against one another, and terrible enmities and battles, and many other such things, as are spoken of by the poets and with which our sacred things have been adorned by the good painters, particularly the robe filled with such adornments which is brought up to the Acropolis in the Great Panathenaea? Shall we assert that these things are true, Euthyphro?
5d-6c

>>24570415 (OP)
Abrahamism is a slave religion.

>>24570415 (OP)
Nothing to reconcile, since there was no universal Zeus. Every cult had its own Zeus, who was not the same as other cult's Zeus.

>judging Gods according to some bullshit standard you just made up
Why are moderns like this? You're not even in a position to pronounce judgement on divine actions.

>>24570415 (OP)
It's ironic that Greek mythology was more conducive to a healthy mindset than modern Abrahamic religions, as well as being closer to truth.
Abrahamic
>le god requires you sacrifice yourself to satisfy him
>you have to do x amount of rituals and interpretive dances to go to the good afterlife
>else you get infinite punishment for finite "transgressions" like following your natural instincts
>if good thing happens, thank god!
>if bad thing happens, you probably deserve it
>you were born a sinner after all
Greek mythology
>god doesn't give a flying fuck about you
>you got hurt? sucks to suck bitch
>you did something good? good job, fuck you
>don't like it? why don't you try to become god yourself then?
The universe is indifferent. To try and ascertain its motives or meaning behind circumstances is absurd. Greek mythology prescribes no such agenda to Zeus. The pantheon is just a bunch of assholes and shit happens that you can't control. The only way through life is to deal with it; there is no greater purpose.

>>24574506
Not modern, see Xenophanes, Plato, and the Critias fragment.

>>24574608
>The universe is indifferent. To try and ascertain its motives or meaning behind circumstances is absurd. Greek mythology prescribes no such agenda to Zeus. The pantheon is just a bunch of assholes and shit happens that you can't control. The only way through life is to deal with it; there is no greater purpose.
Not really, otherwise there wouldn't have been the desire to consult with oracles, interpret entrails or the flying patterns of birds, or to be concerned with miasma after a crime, not to speak also of prayers for good fortune, good harvests, luck in war, etc. The opening lines of the Iliad speak of Zeus having a plan, fleshed out in the fragments of Hesiod's Catalogue of Women.

>>24574650
Fair. At the very least, it's less poisonous to the soul than modern religions. Having a pantheon of gods that are NOT considered to be the paragon of good creates a dogma that is more congruent with life than the delusion of modern religions.

>Gutenberg
Heh, more like Glutenberg, fatty

>>24570791
Apollo would be fine as well I feel. Honestly even Hera *might* be fine provided she could get over her jealousy which she might be able to if Zeus wasn't the top dog. That's probably a real stretch though. I dunno.

>>24570796
Why do you hate Athena? I like her and appreciate her role in the judgment of Orestes in Aeschylus.

>>24572667
I also recall however in Crito maybe how Socrates states that poets 'ainittontai' i.e they speak in riddles, so that too can be considered almost like an admission that licence ought to be given to poets when they say X about gods

>>24570415 (OP)
If you're asking morally, then there isn't much to reconcile. Greeks didn't view their gods as moral archetypes, they were just beings that happened to have dominion in some way no different than earhly kings.
If you're asking about the various contradictions in the individual stories, it didn't seem to be much of a challenge either because they didn't follow the literal-metaphorical dichotomy that we do. If you read Symposion, you will see a bunch of Greeks sitting in a circle, each telling a different narration and description of a god and they all admire each other's takes.

Seeing gods as moral archetypes is a later development (although it is ultimately traced back to Plato/Socrates and not one step further because uhhhh we don't talk about that).

>>24571195
They don't because this does not happen. Israelites were not asked for human sacrifices. Abraham was asked for it only to make a point that this will not continue. Raping was nowhere "ordered" although the power dynamic of murdering someone's husband and merging his family with your own raises concerns in a modern mind.

>>24574506
In paganism, you are.

>>24574608
>nihilism is healthier than communion
The essence of 4chan dwellers.

>>24570777
>What does he do in the Iliad? Express impatience with everyone else fucking around?
Zeus is the only god to not be a stupid asshole or cunt in the Iliad. I liked it when he called Ares a bloodthirsty mutt who he only lets in Olympus because he is his son. He is consistently the only level headed god throughout Homer's works.

It was the fashion at the time, and it was glorious

>>24576047
I wasn't talking about Abraham, Yahweh demands human sacrifices in other parts of the Bible and those are carried out, and he did command to enslave and rape the midianite virgins and kill everyone else

>Numbers 31:25-40; God commands Moses' officers to kill every Midianite male and non-virgin female, but to keep the virgin females alive for themselves -- except for one in a thousand which were to be given to God. After, um, "examining"... the females, the soldiers found 32,000 virgins, 32 of which were to be sacrificed to God. Numbers 31:40 tells us that: "And the persons were sixteen thousand; of which the LORD's tribute was thirty and two persons."

>Judges 11:29-40 tells us that in tribute for his victory over the Ammonites... "And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering." Bible God's sense of humor (and his pettiness) is such that the first person Jepthah saw coming from his doors... was his beloved daughter. In devotion to, and in obedience to, his vow to God... Jepthah did in fact sacrifice, and burn, his deeply loved daughter to the Lord – who, unlike as He had done with Abraham... did not "cancel" the killing and the burnt offering.

>In 2 Samuel 21:1, 8-14; God sent a famine on David's kingdom for three years. When David asked God why, God answered: "It is for Saul, and his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites." To appease God and end the famine that was caused by his predecessor (Saul), David agreed to have two of Saul's sons and five of his grandsons killed and hung up "unto the Lord." God stopped the famine after they were killed and hung up for Him.

>>24571195
Yahweh is not Zeus

>>24576084
>keep the virgin females alive for themselves
This is neither slavery nor rape. Again, the power dynamic is obviously off the charts, but to pretend that a woman had to be forcibly made to survive with a victor rather than die in the wilderness alone is not an argument.
>Lord's tribute
The Old Law forbid sacrificing of people so this is likely meaning monasticism.
>Jephthah
The Lord never ordered Jephthah to do it and again, the verses likely mean monasticism because they stress that she never knew a man.
>2 Samuel
The Lord never asks for this either.

>>24570777
Are you fucking stupid? The Gods in the iliad act like little spoiled children just fucking around while men are embroiled in battles of great tragedy and significance. I literally thought the iliad was making fun of the gods and saying men are superior because our mortality makes our lives tragic whereas the gods are basically like little faggy spoiled brats

>>24576072
Iliad Zeus has no motivation, he just decides how things will be. "Zeus wills it" is synonymous with "it's fate" because nothing that happens can be in discord with his will. It's why he's called the cruelest of the gods in the Odyssey.

>>24576109
You sound delusional, why would he tell the Israelites to kill all of the midianites, including the babies and non virgin women, but keep the virgin women for themselves? Same reason ISIS kept the yazidi women for themselves after murdering the men. It's unbelievable the lengths people will go to delude themselves in order to believe in this iron age barbarism from the desert.
And ''Lord's tribute'' meant human sacrifices = burnt offerings, so not only they enslaved thousands of virgin women, 32 of them were also sacrificed to Yahweh

>>24576124
he doesn't even really decide at times, one touching moment for me was when Zeus himself shed tears for his son Sarpedon, fated to die, whom he couldn't rescue even with all its might(or at least it's how it comes off)

>>24576478
>I don't have any insight or context
>But I'm offended due to being vaguely humanist
>You'd have to go to "unbelievable lengths" to dismiss this judgement

>>24576121
Because Homer was a faggot who set out to mock the Greeks and their religion. The ancient equivalent of a kike who writes "deconstructive" fiction.

>>24576559
>NOO YOU MUST BE A CLOSED MINDED PEASANT VILLAGER WHO WONT QUESTION ANYTNING AND DOES WHAT HES TOLD

>>24576559
they just didn't imagine gods as just qua gods, why would they, it was a brutal world, you can't retroactively teach the people from whom we get words like god, deus, theos, etc.... what they ought to have conceived them as

>>24573088
Zeus was an aspect of the Heavenly Father archetype, who is absolutely universal.

There is nothing to reconcile.
Modern people anthropomorphise the gods and then condemn them as mere humans. The human forms of the gods are there to indicate an intelligent nature, not to indicate that they are humans.
Zeus' immense virility and fertility are there to demonstrate the creative power of God and Intellect, capable of impregnating any substance with meaning and divine beauty.

>>24576693
>Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods all things that are blameworthy and disgraceful for men: stealing, committing adultery, deceiving each other.
>But mortals think gods are begotten, and have the clothing, voice, and body of mortals.
>Now if cattle, horses or lions had hands and were able to draw with their hands and perform works like men, horses like horses and cattle like cattle would draw the forms of gods, and make their bodies just like the body each of them had.
>Africans say their gods are snub-nosed and black, Thracians blue-eyed and red-haired.
From Xenophanes.

>>24576714
Yes, there are many people with many different opinions.
Greek myth is full of meaning. Sometimes its human interpreters also made mistakes. And its human analysts also made brilliant observations and mistaken judgements, too.

>>24576047
>nihilism is healthier than communion
>the only alternative to religion is nihilism
Lmao chr*stcucks not even once

They didn't, they just didn't care and were retarded

>>24576756
Okay, but let's be clear that this isn't some dumb "only moderns think this" situation, Xenophanes wrote that criticism in the 6th-5th century because literalist anthropomorphism was frequent and pervasive, and that criticism is echoed down to Plato's day and Aristotle's day and beyond because it was more pervasive than intellectualist allegorical understandings of the myths.

Can any Christcucks give me a single reason why I should pray to Yahweh instead of Zeus or Odin that isn't "because it's heckin popular goy!"