if he wanted to revive paganism, why were his descriptions of Zeus identical to monotheistic descriptions of God?
>>18402132The term “pagan” was coined by Christian writers to refer to anyone who didn’t follow Christianity or Judaism and by this original definition, nearly every religion that has ever existed is “pagan.” It comes from the Latin word paganus meaning “rural” or “country-dweller” because even after Christianity was declared the state religion of the Roman Empire, rural areas still remained majority “pagan” well into the early Middle Ages. The modern equivalent of this would be calling rural conservative Christians in America “rednecks.”But to answer your question, I wouldn’t say Plethon’s theology was monotheistic since he still believed in the other Greek gods and that although lesser they were still worthy of worship. His belief regarding the supremacy of Zeus wasn’t anything new since the Ancient Greeks already believed he could overpower the other gods with little effort and that they all served or at least respected/feared him.
>>18402132The Platonism of late antiquity and the early middle ages vaguely ressembled monotheism.
>>18402132Platonism is essentially monotheistic, although calling the One God might even be to put it too lightly it in a sense, Monistic is a better Term.>Buh muh worship of multiple GodsThe Henads ultimately eminate from the One so worshipping them is just worshipping God anyways.>>18402206Monism properly understood is ancient, existing in Pharonic Egypt, Vedic India, and probably elsewhere long before Judaism or Greek philosophy. The Greeks just cut away the symbolism and myth... mostly.
>>18402229>The Greeks just cut away the symbolism and myth... mostlyNot really, Greco-Roman philosophers like Porphyry of Tyre, Iamblichus, Cicero, and even those who hated traditional myths like Plato and Aristotle still defended traditional religious practices and believed they were a valid way for the masses to access the divine, Porphyry of Tyre in particular even defended oracles and divination.
>>18402229Monism isn’t monotheism nor is is incompatible with polytheism. The ancient Egyptian religion was monist but I don’t see people saying they were monotheistic.
>>18402132Judaism (and its Christian derivative) was in fact polytheistic until it reformed under the influence of late antique Platonism and got rid of all of the angelic divine beings and "two powers in Heaven" stuff that Second Temple Jews believed in. This is where the Christian doctrine of the trinity comes from, it wasn't at all shocking to the earliest Christians that Jesus could be a "theos" alongside Yahweh. They only came up with the trinitarian formulation in later centuries, copying Aristotelian philosophical terminology, when Neoplatonists pushed them on being insufficiently monotheistic.
>>18402229Paganism was monistic in all of its intellectual expressions. The caricatured version of ancient polytheism as people believing a family of Gods lived on Olympus or whatever never really existed.
>>18402132>if he wanted to revive paganismhe didn't. you fuckers have no ideawhat living under a theocratic government is like. he'd have been executed if he tried proposing that even once.
>>18402132Because the Christian vision of God is juat Zeus but renamed.
>>18402132Because Satan's whole shtick is impersonating God.
>>18402632https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemistos_Plethon>As revealed in his last literary work, the Nomoi or Book of Laws, which he circulated only among close friends, he rejected Christianity in favour of a return to the worship of the classical Hellenic gods, mixed with ancient wisdom based on Zoroaster and the Magi.[4]Idk, I think advocating to worship the Greco-Roman gods is a pagan thing to do.
>>18402638You are Mexican
