Posted: Mar 21, 2016 1:40 am
lpetrich wrote:
Euhemerus - His Thoughts on Cosmology, Religion, and Myth
But Euhemerus (~ 330 - 260 BCE) was much more successful. He proposed that while some deities are indeed cosmic and immortal, other deities were originally human heroes. Euhemerism, as it is called, became a very popular theory.
There is a lot of confusion & argument around the terms 'euhemerism and 'euhemerization'. Euhemerus only proposed that some deities had originally been human - nobody knew if the had been. The terms 'euhemerism and 'euhemerization' have come apply to giving human attributes to deities that had been previously perceived to be celestial or heavenly - essentially anhropomorphising those deities.
Early Christians used the concept to disparage Greek & Roman gods as only having been perceived to be human cf. their Jesus being God 'incarnate'.