Having watched Troy (2004) staring Brad Pitt last night it occurred to me that current day are blanking out the Greek religion as just myths by calling it a mythology. I also thought why is it called mythology at all and not another religion? If we called Christianity a mythology because they believe and study myths around a book wrote ages ago people would not like it.
Having looked up the word mythology it “sometimes refers to the study of myths and sometimes refers to a body of myths” (Wikipedia). Then the more interesting quote that answered my question of why it is not classed as a religion “whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece. The term ‘myth’ is often used colloquially to refer to a false story; however, the academic use of the term generally does not refer to truth or falsity.” So how I understand that is although mythology it sometimes used to study false or made up myths such as movie mythology. It is used in an academic use as the myths around Greece at that time.
But this still does mean one thing. This was a religion that predates Christianity and talks about a different God and Gods than most religions today. I then thought how did the Greek mythology fed away? I found another Wikipedia quote “The widespread adoption of Christianity did not curb the popularity of the myths. With the rediscovery of classical antiquity in the Renaissance, the poetry of Ovid became a major influence on the imagination of poets, dramatists, musicians and artists”. So when Christianity began it was already classed as myths. The date of Greek mythology again from Wikipedia dates “from c. 900-800 BC onward.” This means if the whole of Christianity did for some reason get wiped out and lost (nuclear war, virus outbreak etc), it could be classed as mythology of old mankind by the year 2800.
Further reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_mythology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythology
Having looked up the word mythology it “sometimes refers to the study of myths and sometimes refers to a body of myths” (Wikipedia). Then the more interesting quote that answered my question of why it is not classed as a religion “whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece. The term ‘myth’ is often used colloquially to refer to a false story; however, the academic use of the term generally does not refer to truth or falsity.” So how I understand that is although mythology it sometimes used to study false or made up myths such as movie mythology. It is used in an academic use as the myths around Greece at that time.
But this still does mean one thing. This was a religion that predates Christianity and talks about a different God and Gods than most religions today. I then thought how did the Greek mythology fed away? I found another Wikipedia quote “The widespread adoption of Christianity did not curb the popularity of the myths. With the rediscovery of classical antiquity in the Renaissance, the poetry of Ovid became a major influence on the imagination of poets, dramatists, musicians and artists”. So when Christianity began it was already classed as myths. The date of Greek mythology again from Wikipedia dates “from c. 900-800 BC onward.” This means if the whole of Christianity did for some reason get wiped out and lost (nuclear war, virus outbreak etc), it could be classed as mythology of old mankind by the year 2800.
Further reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_mythology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythology
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