I was merely posting connections between mythology, idol worship, religious icons, and the present discussion on worshipping Zeus in Greece.
Seems a few people at the beginning of the thread (not you) were using the occasion to show their ignorance regarding pagan influences upon christianity.
~A god/goddess by any other name is a patron saint.~
Yes, I know. I thought the relation of the two topics on both threads would interest you... they are related...
Socrates saw that fallacy in Plato’s Euthyphro, when he asked Euthyphro what was pleasing to the gods, and how could someone be pious to the gods when they all wanted something different from the others. It made no sense to observe the divinity of one god and ignore the demands of another god. How could a person know what it was to be in accordance with the will of the gods in this respect?
The origins of drama come from the esoteric ideals directly related to religion. Religious ritual is psychodrama designed to conjure up images in the mind of the viewers and/or participants. This is illustrated no better than by the Greek traditions of using masks in their plays.
The actor can hide himself behind the illusion of a character’s mask, the audience can focus not on the actor, but on the image of the character represented - - one form of idolatry, among others in pagan Greek polytheism.
The Greeks were idolaters and were pagans. The images in their drama were a representation of something. What did Oedipus represent?
To the pagan Egyptians, the pharaohs were gods. Gods had their own special privileges of divinity. The pagan Egyptians had their own pantheon of gods like the pagan Greeks, several of which the Greeks adopted. (Set and Typhon are convenient examples.)
The pagan Egyptians were also idolaters like the Greeks; their temples, architecture and art are replete with sacred idols. They both practiced human sacrifice. (These practices extended to the pagan Romans as well.) Is Oedipus representative of the pharaoh Akhnaton?
One of Sigmund Freud’s earlier followers, Karl Abraham, contributed an essay to the first volume of Imago, published by Freud in 1912, entitled Amenhotep IV (Akhnaton). This was of interest in that the essay talks about how Akhnaton did not entomb his mother Tiy next to her husband after her death and that Akhnaton’s rivalry with his father for possession of his mother extended beyond death.
Dr. Velikovsky has many critics, but his assertions are most profound. There appears to be a particular level of viciousness directed toward Velikovsky from many Egyptologists. Like Akhnaton, Velikovsky is reviled for tearing down some idolatries of previously accepted thinking. Examinations of reaction concerning his other books (Peoples of the Sea and Ages in Chaos) are ample evidence of this in such historical and literary circles of research. I attribute much of this to the ancient conflict between the pagan and the Judaic that still rages (even from within Judaism itself, see the Steven Plaut article: The Rise Of Tikkun Olam Paganism) although the pagan civilizations of Greece and Egypt are long since dead. This conflict was represented by Othello, Death of a Salesman, and many other places in art, literature and science. Here with Oedipus, it is also represented in the modern arguments over historical chronology, pagan idolatry of the Greeks and Egyptians, along with modern idolatries commonly found in both domestic and international politics.
The Sun and Bacchus are Apollo and Dionysus, two gods, or two aspects of religious experience from the ancient Greeks, and their juxtaposition is of some importance - - a statement of belief in the duality of human nature, symbolized by Apollo as the light of reason, and Dionysus as the underground power of emotion (see Paglia's Sexual Personae).
Egyptians worshipped Harpocrates, the god of silence; for which reason he is always pictured holding a finger on his mouth. Athenians had a statue of brass, which they bowed to; a figure made without a tongue, to declare secrecy thereby. The Romans had a goddess of silence called Angerona, which was pictured like Harpocrates, holding her finger on her mouth, in token of secrecy.
There is an occult nature to certain politics and this progression of culture (ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and the modern iconographic idolatry of Marxist paganism) can easily be illustrated, but is most often ignored or rejected for reasons of political expediency, like the aforementioned pagan idolatries of secrecy and silence. The use of such religion is essential for many aspects of political power over the ignorant, unwashed masses. It is no surprise that Akhnaton's monotheistic approach was completely and abruptly destroyed by the successive generation, restoring the pantheistic idolatries of previous pharaohs. This phenomenon is not historically isolated and is played out in a myriad of instances today.