The Homeric Gods
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
"Upon the original publication of The Homeric Gods, Otto Weinreich wrote in the Frankfurter Zeitung that Otto "looks deeper and further" than Georges Méautis and Tadeusz Stefan Zieliński in two recent books that also reassess Greek religion." --Sholem Stein |
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
The Homeric Gods: Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion (Template:Lang-de) is a book about ancient Greek religion, published in 1929 and written by the philologist Walter F. Otto.
Its main thesis is that the Greek religion was focused on the profundity of natural experiences, and therefore used less magical thinking than Asian religions, which tend to focus more on miracles. According to Otto, this reached its greatest expression in the works of Homer, where the Greek gods are portrayed as present in the natural world as particular forms of existence. Otto's ontological approach to polytheism had an impact on a number of scholars and influenced the structuralist study of ancient religions.
