University of California Publications in Classical Philology, Vol. 9

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Excerpt from University of California Publications in Classical Philology, Vol. 9: 1926-1929 It is the custom, in speaking of the religions of the ancient world, to distinguish between the gods of different peoples. From the standpoint of outsiders, removed by a space of some twenty centuries from that world, we include the gods of each nation among the cultural phenomena of that nation, and speak of Egyptian gods, Assyrian gods, Phoenician gods, Greek gods. Meantime we deny the existence of all these gods without the slightest mental reservation. The distinction which we make, therefore, is not between objective realities, but between subjective concepts, revealed in the ideas and institutions of the several peoples, and we find that the several peoples differ in their conception of the divine quite as much as in all the other aspects of their culture. This is fairly obvious, and is said only to point the contrast between the attitude of the outsider and the actual feelings of the men of the ancient world themselves. If we wish to comprehend their feelings and penetrate their instinctive habits of thought, it is not sufficient to treat them after the manner of a taxonomist. The Greeks of the fifth century B. C. believed in the actual existence of their gods. When they came in contact with other nations, did they distinguish between their own gods and foreign gods? Did they, like us, speak of Egyptian gods, Assyrian gods, Phoenician gods, Greek gods? Did they deny the existence of the foreign gods? Or did they regard them as existent but different from their own? Or did they think that they were identical with their own? And if the last possibility is true, how did they account for the striking differences between the Greek and the foreign conception of them? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.