Anthropomorphism In Greek Mythology

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Mythology refers to a collection of myths concerning a certain group of people and their stories explaining nature, history, and customs. Mythology is also the study of myths (Campell 1991). Anthropomorphism Anthropomorphism refers to the interpretation of non-human things or events in terms of human characteristics e.g. when one hears human voices in the wind. In religion and mythology, it refers to the perception of the human form to something that is not human. It includes relating spiritual beliefs with the human form, human traits with fictional non-human animal characters and human motives and emotions with forces of nature such as earthquakes. Anthropomorphism may occur consciously or unconsciously. Anthropomorphism in mythology specifically …show more content…

A statement such as “The raging storm brought howling winds and fierce lightening as the residents of the village looked up at the angry…” anthropomorphism must be applied in order to help humans relate the human characteristics found in words such as raging and fierce. This will help the reader understand the situation being described. Artists also apply anthropomorphism when they depict natural phenomena such as sun and moon having faces and …show more content…

For example when a person sees a threatening figure far away from him but later realizes that the figure was a large piece of polythene paper. In this case, anthropomorphism results from misinterpretation. In modern Christianity, mythologies in anthropomorphism describe God as omnipresent, omnipotent. These features correspond to human attributes.Relating God to human is meant to make average people understand the nature of God by relating the features of God with those of humans e.g. present meaning being in a particular place at a particular time. Although religion tends to argue that it is not logical describing God in relation to humans, it would be difficult to understand God. In Greek gods had different roles pertaining to what people believed to be important. The role of gods was defined according to human characteristics to things such a love, wind and seasons, for example, the god of love was humanized as Aphrodite. If the concept of love and sexuality had not been related to human, then the god of love (Aphrodite) would not have been worshiped (J.F.Bierlein

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