1) Ah, thanks for the correction! I wasn't sure how to parse his full name, so this is useful. I'll go in and fix it and update the post accordingly.
2) Hah! I didn't know that, but I suppose it shouldn't surprise me. I assumed his comments about folks of his day assuming they knew things about the ancients that were wrong were entirely aimed at fellow academics, but I guess not.
3) I'll have to check out Otto's book, it sounds very interesting, though if your hypothesis building on his is correct, I'd be inclined to move it back quite a bit, possibly before the Indo-European speakers split up into groups, for the simple reason that the Olympian Gods have clear parallels in the bodies of other Indo-European myths. A sky father who is king of the Gods, a thunderer who beats up monsters and protects humans, a sexy Goddess of sovereignty, and so forth. Also, burial practices seem to have switched back and forth between inhumation and cremation, with some variation, from a very long time back, which implies that the switch from Mycenaean inhumation to Classical cremation might not have been a dramatic one-time thing for cause. All that being said, one way to maybe reconcile the old, old stuff I'm talking about Otto's more recent proposal is some kind of interaction between the religion of the folks who were already in Greece when the Greeks showed up (the Pelasgians and whoever else, whose names we might not even have). As for Burkert, I haven't read Homo Necans since becoming religious, so it might be worth revisiting. Also, I'd be interested in comparing with a wider range of looks at indigenous practices around killing animals, since the mid to late twentieth century had a lot of well-known and oft-cited literature on things "intrinsic to humans" that haven't held up super well (a nearby example: S.L.A. Marshall's report that most soldiers didn't directly fire their weapons at human targets and the supporting studies for it have all come under a lot of fire for problems with their methods).
4) As for subscribing to comments, yeah, unfortunately, the only way I know how is with a dreamwidth account (free, but you do have to give them your email address), and even then, it's painfully inconsistent. It seems to do alright notifying about direct replies by the post owner, but everything else is hit or miss, even with a paid account.
Re: The spooky side of ancestor worship
Thanks very much for sharing your thoughts!
1) Ah, thanks for the correction! I wasn't sure how to parse his full name, so this is useful. I'll go in and fix it and update the post accordingly.
2) Hah! I didn't know that, but I suppose it shouldn't surprise me. I assumed his comments about folks of his day assuming they knew things about the ancients that were wrong were entirely aimed at fellow academics, but I guess not.
3) I'll have to check out Otto's book, it sounds very interesting, though if your hypothesis building on his is correct, I'd be inclined to move it back quite a bit, possibly before the Indo-European speakers split up into groups, for the simple reason that the Olympian Gods have clear parallels in the bodies of other Indo-European myths. A sky father who is king of the Gods, a thunderer who beats up monsters and protects humans, a sexy Goddess of sovereignty, and so forth. Also, burial practices seem to have switched back and forth between inhumation and cremation, with some variation, from a very long time back, which implies that the switch from Mycenaean inhumation to Classical cremation might not have been a dramatic one-time thing for cause. All that being said, one way to maybe reconcile the old, old stuff I'm talking about Otto's more recent proposal is some kind of interaction between the religion of the folks who were already in Greece when the Greeks showed up (the Pelasgians and whoever else, whose names we might not even have). As for Burkert, I haven't read Homo Necans since becoming religious, so it might be worth revisiting. Also, I'd be interested in comparing with a wider range of looks at indigenous practices around killing animals, since the mid to late twentieth century had a lot of well-known and oft-cited literature on things "intrinsic to humans" that haven't held up super well (a nearby example: S.L.A. Marshall's report that most soldiers didn't directly fire their weapons at human targets and the supporting studies for it have all come under a lot of fire for problems with their methods).
4) As for subscribing to comments, yeah, unfortunately, the only way I know how is with a dreamwidth account (free, but you do have to give them your email address), and even then, it's painfully inconsistent. It seems to do alright notifying about direct replies by the post owner, but everything else is hit or miss, even with a paid account.
Cheers,
Jeff