God Is Dead #8

[superboyprime]

"In fact, I did a lot of reading of texts like Ovid and Gylfaginnig. The idea, for me at least, was to try and coalesce a reasonable interpretation of what kinds of personalities these Gods would have based on their mythological records and the kind of relationships their worshipers had with them." - Mike Costa

Comments

[majingojira]

It's being written for a largely Christian audience. It makes many writers far to timid to write the God of Abraham as . . . anything but the bestest and most awesomest god ever. Despite the archeology of its origins.

It's rare to have the progenitor Canaanite deities of the concept of Jehovah show up in fiction at all, and even rarer to find research on it.

For the record, it's primarily two from what I've read: The Sky Father El, and the war god Yahweh. From the textual language that I've been able to access as a non-scholar, El is the one who made a covenant with Abraham, while Yahweh was the god to bring the people out of Egypt.

IIRC, Ba'al (Ba'alzebor) and Ashera were also members of that pantheon, and were fully demonized as Beelzebub and Astaroth.

It's because I've done too much research on the subject that I find I can't really enjoy God is Dead at all. That and the "Western Religions are TEH AWESOME" slant is and things like Supernatural take when the Hindu Pantheon has flying saucers, power armor and goddamn nukes makes me laugh. An then fly.

[bruinsfan]

At least to give Supernatural its due, Kali was the the only deity in "Hammer of the Gods" that seemed to put up a decent fight against Lucifer and, more importantly, to survive the experience. Given that non-monotheistic gods are usually presented on that show as something that a single blue-collar thug can kill with a chair leg, that was a comparatively massive show of respect.

[majingojira]

Yeah, not gonna cut it any slack. I was turned off first by the contact lens demons, so I didn't watch. Then I heard about the Angel wank and now I actively avoid it. I know how they represent most Pagan gods and . . . I think it sucks. It's just my opinion on the subject.

[aperturedreams]

It may be written for a mostly Christian audience, but I find that the series is much more "religion sucks" (particularly with Hickman at the helm) than "western religions are teh awesome".