This is the last thing I have to do for language arts this year! (updated)

The Character of God in Comparison to the gods of ancient Babylon and Greece.

The gods of the Babylonians and the Greeks differ greatly from the God of the Christian faith. The gods of Babel and Greece remain for the most part out of the lives of their people. The only exception is when the person is especially great-which are the only ones we hear about. While the God of Christianity is very personally involved in the lives of his people to the extent that he laid down his life instead of letting his creation suffer eternal death and punishment.

The gods of Babylon according to the Epic of Gilgamesh are probably the least personal gods of all the ancient cultures I studied this year. They remain out of the lives of the entire common folk; communicating only with Gilgamesh who was two-thirds god and one-third man. Which means they are practically talking with another god. The only major encounter any commoner has with any of the pantheon of Babylonian gods is when the people become so numerous that they create too much noise for the gods to sleep. The gods cause a cataclysmic flood over the whole world destroying the entire human race except for Utnapishtim whom the god Ea took pity on and told him to build a boat in similar proportions to that of Noah’s ark. The gods of Babylon are very human-like in nature needing sleep and food and are capable of breaking their own laws like in the case of Enlil who raped the lesser goddess Ninlil. They were also proud, lustful and capable of great of wrath of epic proportions. The goddess Innana, patron goddess of love, fertility and war, was infuriated by Gilgamesh’s refusal of love made on reasonable grounds, sent for the symbol of the gods wrath, The Bull of Heaven (before Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu slew the Bull of Heaven it killed three hundred men and caused famine for seven years). After the fall of Babylon the gods and goddesses of that culture made little or no difference in society.

The gods and goddesses of ancient Greece were also not very personal-taking a part in someone’s life only when they felt like it. They were also more human-like in their attributes and behavior but also seem to have more control of what they themselves looked like; changing from bull to light or other human beings all to suit their purposes. They were also less capricious than the gods of Babylon though that is not to say they were totally lacking in caprice as in the case of Oedipus on whom the gods sprung a cruel twist of fate The most powerful of the Greek gods was Zeus, he was the king of all the gods and was the creator of storms. Other gods and goddess include Athena goddess of wisdom, Pluto god of the underworld and Aphrodite goddess of love and beauty. The Greek gods were also more tolerant of the human race than the gods of Babylon reflecting the change of the cultures. The people of ancient Greece and their gods for the most part stayed out of each others’ lives unless the person wanted something or it was time for a festival, which was another name for drinking and revelry.
. There is also much more known about the gods of ancient Greece than those of Babylon thanks to the works of people such as Sophocles and Homer. Also more is known about the practices of the worshipers of their idols although the Greeks were not without secret cults and mystical practices. Even after all this is known about the gods of ancient Greece they too had no lasting effect on the face of the earth.

The God of Christianity on the other hand is the only one of the previously mentioned gods with any substantial following in this day and age. Christianity is also the only one of these religions which is monotheistic; requiring whole devotion to one God instead of halfhearted devotion to this deity over here and halfhearted devotion to that deity over there. The God of Christianity is also the only one of these gods that can be reached without sacrifice due to the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. God is all-powerful, not making compromises with peoples desires or demons pleading, following his just nature. In love He expressed mercy for his fallen creation without compromising His justice God is the most multi-faceted God of all. The character of the gods of Greece and Babylon seem very human like since they are the products of people’s imagination while God is outside of complete comprehension because he is the Producer of people’s imaginations.

When the gods of Greece and Babylon when they said love it more often than not meant lust, while when we say, “God is love”, it means something higher than our own understanding of love. While the gods and goddesses of Babylon and Greece just kept changing their minds, God is the same yesterday, today and forever. Christianity is also the only one of these three religions with only one God having created everything. The Greeks had at least one new god for each step of the creation process. The ancient Greeks also had to work for any hope of heaven. Christianity places all hope of salvation on the Creator instead of the created. The gods of Greek mythology also had no moral code regarding sexual ethics; there is a chapter in The Odyssey in which Odysseus is sent to the under-world and is confronted by spirit after spirit of women who said how this god or that god slept with her leading to the birth of many heroes and great men. God abhors sexual immorality of any sort. The children of God also have constant access to contact their heavenly father anytime anywhere unlike the ancients who had to wait to be contacted by an oracle, dream or vision. While the gods of almost all other cultures are human like in nature, God is superhuman in nature and is not physical but a spirit. God need not have any fear of death unlike the Gods of Greece and Babylon, who seem to have a fear of death, God is immortal entirely and not dependent on the imagination of other people.

The character of the gods of the Babylonians and the ancient Greeks differ greatly from the God of the Christian faith. The gods of Ancient Babylon and Greece are plural while the God of Christianity is the one and only God and makes room for no other.

5/4/2005 1:57:08 PM