Bart Ehrman's Six Differences Between Ancient Paganism and Monotheism Today
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The following is a transcription of a segment of lecture 2 (“The Greco-Roman Context”) of Bart Ehrman’s Great Courses series on the New Testament: One way to understand the religious cults scattered throughout the Roman Empire is to contrast them with what we might think of as religion today. For most people today, it only makes sense to say that there's one God. If there's any God, there's one God. For most ancient people, that common sense, in fact, was nonsense. Most ancient people couldn't understand at all the idea that there would be only one God. Most people throughout antiquity, in fact, virtually everybody throughout antiquity except for the Jews and then the Christians, were polytheists, believing in many gods. There were, of course, the great gods known to us today through ancient mythology, Greek gods like Zeus and Ares and Aphrodite, or the Roman equivalents, Jupiter and Mars and Venus. But there were lots of other gods, gods who were local deities, who protected and cared for cities or towns and villages, even less powerful gods who were in charge of even smaller places, gods who were in charge of a forest or of a river or of a road. Families had their own gods, gods who oversaw every human function and activity, the crops, the cupboard, the hearth, the personal health of a family member, childbirth. Gods in charge of virtually every function. These ancient religions then, first of all, differed from ours in that they subscribed to polytheistic views.
Bart Ehrman's Six Differences Between Ancient Paganism and Monotheism Today
Bart Ehrman's Six Differences Between Ancient…
Bart Ehrman's Six Differences Between Ancient Paganism and Monotheism Today
The following is a transcription of a segment of lecture 2 (“The Greco-Roman Context”) of Bart Ehrman’s Great Courses series on the New Testament: One way to understand the religious cults scattered throughout the Roman Empire is to contrast them with what we might think of as religion today. For most people today, it only makes sense to say that there's one God. If there's any God, there's one God. For most ancient people, that common sense, in fact, was nonsense. Most ancient people couldn't understand at all the idea that there would be only one God. Most people throughout antiquity, in fact, virtually everybody throughout antiquity except for the Jews and then the Christians, were polytheists, believing in many gods. There were, of course, the great gods known to us today through ancient mythology, Greek gods like Zeus and Ares and Aphrodite, or the Roman equivalents, Jupiter and Mars and Venus. But there were lots of other gods, gods who were local deities, who protected and cared for cities or towns and villages, even less powerful gods who were in charge of even smaller places, gods who were in charge of a forest or of a river or of a road. Families had their own gods, gods who oversaw every human function and activity, the crops, the cupboard, the hearth, the personal health of a family member, childbirth. Gods in charge of virtually every function. These ancient religions then, first of all, differed from ours in that they subscribed to polytheistic views.