Abrahamic vs Greek Religious Tradition

Zeus wasn’t a good guy. He was powerful and full of gifts, but not altogether good. It got even worse for entities like Artemis or Apollo. In some, Aeschylus, he was generally good but flawed, and Aeschylus treated Zeus like a father. Homer treated Zeus like an entity: real, present, and powerful but as good or bad as a wind.

The various Abrahamic gods were/are all made out to be fairly purely good, without vice.

Now, it’s not accurate to think this is unilateral. Edge Lord Euripides contributed much to our notion of ‘the gods are bad’, while a similar Christian notion, Gnosticism, has largely been lost. This wasn’t accidental, of course, but that happened to other people in other religions too. Care for a drink of hemlock, Socrates?

This notion I see often, that any character, creature, or thing that is written about must be considered ‘good’ by the author, is odd. But you see it everywhere. I want to call attention to that notion, that supposition. ‘Because you’re writing about *****, you must think it’s laudable.’

Why?

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