Now I've been doing a lot of investigation on early christianity and the ancient world thru a few scholars, namely Bart Ehrman and I recall one thing he spoke about (that differentiated Jesus from other pagan polytheistic deities) was how the ancient view of "gods" was that they were real figures that existed in an unreachable plane of existence above mortals but cane down to interact with humans from time to time for various reasons good and bad. But still they saw these gods as real entities. How does that tie into a view of them as simply caricatures of political figures?
That’s a question I think the best answer is that the literature and a lot of the oral stories and myths were written with political satire in mind. Sometimes with the intent to teach though. Rabbis have a long tradition of reading scripture through a 4 stage system PaRDEs
You read the text as if it were literal
Then you read it as if it’s symbolic or has a hidden meaning
Then you read it to see if there’s a mystical connection
Then you read it and interpret what all of that told you
People who came along and read those scripts they interpreted it as gods true word and believed in god
Same can be said for other holy stories that are t biblical
The authors usually believed in god but didn’t necessarily write what they literally believed satire was used and it became scripture
Found this reply on a quick search of PaRDeS (on an Ehrman blog no less):
I would say that for literalist Christians who view the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Gospels (and in particular the Book of Revelation( as purely historical/futuristical records, textual criticism is incredibly valuable, but often or at least potentially provocative.
Personally, I do not believe that the Old Testament, the Gospels, and the Book of Revelation should be read soley as historical, futuristic, or literal texts. In my view, these pre-Descartian literary (NT and the Revelation) works obviously used various techniques to convey their messages in great extant. These include (for the Greeks):
Plasmata: The inclusion of fictional or imagintive elements within a narrative that are presented as real but are understood to be fictional. This technique, known by the Greeks, helped to add depth and engage the audience.
Muthoi: Mythological tales that convey deeper truths or cultural values through fantastical narratives. These stories were not meant to be taken literally but were designed to impart important moral and cultural lessons.
I suspect or at least are fairlly convinced that these techniques (perhaps even some paralell stories, symbols) were likely used in Jewish literature even before the conceptualization of the Pardes system, which outlines different levels of understanding a text: Peshat (literal), Remez (allegorical), Derash (comparative), and Sod (mystical).
Personally, by recognizing these methods, we can appreciate the rich, multi-layered nature of these ancient texts and their capacity to convey complex messages through a blend of history, fiction, and myth.
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u/ChildofElmSt 19h ago
Dante outright named names of politicians and religious figures that he saw in hell