Invoked in passing by poets and figured as the father of rivers and streams, thus the progenitor of river gods, Oceanus appears only once in myth, as a representative of the archaic world that Heracles constantly threatened and bested.

The gods convened, and figured out who was responsible, which resulted in a unanimous agreement that, along with most trouble, Loki was to blame.

In this temple, entirely decked out in gold, the people worship the statues of three gods in such wise that the mightiest of them, Thor, occupies a throne in the middle of the chamber ; Wotan and Frikko have places on either side.

The gods were afraid of them, except for Artemis who captured a fine deer ( or in another version of the story, she changed herself into a doe ) and jumped out between them.

As a consequence of Solomon's failure to stamp out the worship of gods other than Yahweh, the kingdom of David is split in two in the reign of his own son Rehoboam, who becomes the first to reign over the kingdom of Judah.

The censors had also to superintend the expenses connected with the worship of the gods, even for instance the feeding of the sacred geese in the Capitol ; these various tasks were also let out on contract.

In his 2006 homily for Corpus Christi, Pope Benedict XVI noted the similarity between the Christian story of the resurrection and pagan myths of dead and resurrected gods: " In these myths, the soul of the human person, in a certain way, reached out toward that God made man, who, humiliated unto death on a cross, in this way opened the door of life to all of us.

The gods laughed and cheered loudly and the noise provoked Amaterasu to come out her cave.

However, in 1971 Erik Hornung pointed out that the traits of an apparently supreme being could be attributed to many different gods, even in periods when other gods were preeminent, and further argued that references to an unspecified " god " are meant to refer flexibly to any deity.

In the later Babylonian epic Enûma Eliš, Abzu, the " begetter of the gods ", is inert and sleepy but finds his peace disturbed by the younger gods, so sets out to destroy them.

In the later Legend of Atrahasis, Enlil, the king of the gods, sets out to eliminate humanity, whose noise is disturbing his rest.

Lindow compares Fenrir's role to his father Loki and Fenrir's brother Jörmungandr, in that they all spend time with the gods, are bound or cast out by them, return " at the end of the current mythic order to destroy them, only to be destroyed himself as a younger generation of gods, one of them his slayer, survives into the new world order.

Smaller scale excavations have also been carried out in the immediate surroundings of Hattusa, including the rock sanctuary of Yazılıkaya, which contains numerous rock-cut relief's portraying the Hittite rulers and the gods of the Hittite pantheon.

In response, the gods grab their shields, shrieking at Loki, and chase him out of the hall and to the woods.

" Eldir responds that " if shouting and fighting you pour out on " to the gods, " they'll wipe it off on you.

Loki returns, and the three gods give Hreidmar the money from the gold hoard and flatten out the otter skin, stretch out its legs, and heap gold atop it, covering it.

It concludes that the closest parallels with Isaiah's description of the king of Babylon as a fallen morning star cast down from heaven are to be found not in any lost Canaanite and other myths but in traditional ideas of the Jewish people themselves, echoed in the Biblical account of the fall of Adam and Eve, cast out of God's presence for wishing to be as God, and the picture in of the " gods " and " sons of the Most High " destined to die and fall.

In Alaska the candidate for magical powers has to leave the abodes of men ; the chief of the gods sends an otter to meet him, which he kills by saying " O " four times ; he then cuts out its tongue and thereby secures the powers which he seeks.

Some writers such as Karen Armstrong believe that the concept of monotheism sees a gradual development out of notions of henotheism ( worshiping a single god while accepting the existence or possible existence of other deities ) and monolatrism ( the recognition of the existence of many gods, but with the consistent worship of only one deity ).

After Aaron had received golden earrings from the people, he made a golden calf and said, " These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.

While all the other outcasts lay idly lamenting, one of them, named Moses, advised them not to look for help to gods or men, since both had deserted them, but to trust rather in themselves, and accept as divine the guidance of the first being, by whose aid they should get out of their present plight.

Frazer believed that primitive man starts out with a belief in magical laws ; later, when man begins to lose faith in magic, he invents myths about gods and claims that his formerly magical rituals are religious rituals intended to appease the gods.

the gods who protected the Greek countryside were only now putting on their sharply anthropomorphic dress.

Homer interprets Apollo as a terrible god ( δεινός θεός ) who brings death and disease with his arrows, but who can also heal, possessing a magic art that separates him from the other Greek gods.

In the time of Augustus, who considered himself under the special protection of Apollo and was even said to be his son, his worship developed and he became one of the chief gods of Rome.

Aquarius is also sometimes identified with Ganymede, a youth in Greek mythology who was taken to Mount Olympus by Zeus to act as cup-carrier to the gods.

Because of her beauty, other gods feared that jealousy would interrupt the peace among them and lead to war, and so Zeus married her to Hephaestus, who was not viewed as a threat.

Israelites of course abstained from pork, but Ahab was married to a Phoenician / Tyrian princess Jezebel, who was one of the most " powerful and notorious women of monarchic times " yet who died of a similarly seemingly random death like her husband, and his capital of Samaria was said to follow Canaanite gods.

As-gard, he conjectures, is the home of the Æsir ( singular Ás ) in As-ia, making a folk etymological connection between the three " As -"; that is, the Æsir were " men of Asia ", not gods, who moved from Asia to the north and some of which intermarried with the peoples already there.

When Troy was sacked by the Greeks, Aeneas, after being commanded by the gods to flee, gathered a group, collectively known as the Aeneads, who then traveled to Italy and became progenitors of Romans.

She likens Inanna to a great storm bird who swoops down on the lesser gods and sends them fluttering off like surprised bats.

Most notably, Ajax is not wounded in any of the battles described in the Iliad, and he is the only principal character on either side who does not receive personal assistance from any of the gods who take part in the battles.

In Homer's Iliad, when Alcmene was about to give birth to Heracles, Zeus announced to all the gods that on that day a child, descended from Zeus himself, would be born who would rule all those around him.

The counterpart of Ares among the Roman gods is Mars, who as a father of the Roman people held a more important and dignified place in ancient Roman religion for his agricultural and tutelary functions.

Then looking at him darkly Zeus who gathers the clouds spoke to him :' Do not sit beside me and whine, you double-faced liar. To me you are the most hateful of all gods who hold Olympos. Forever quarrelling is dear to your heart, wars and battles .… And yet I will not long endure to see you in pain, sinceyou are my child, and it was to me that your mother bore you. But were you born of some other god and proved so ruinouslong since you would have been dropped beneath the gods of the bright sky.

Goði literally means " speaker for the gods ", and is used to denote the priesthood or those who officiate over rituals in Ásatrú.

Whereas other nations have soothsayers and diviners who attempt to discover the will of their gods, according to Heschel the Hebrew prophets are characterized by their experience of what he calls theotropism — God turning towards humanity.

Loki then gives a greeting to all gods and goddesses who are in the hall save to Bragi.

Another important passage was Isaiah 40: 3 – 5, which imagines the exiled Israel proceeding home to Jerusalem on a newly-constructed road, led by the victorious Yahweh who has conquered the gods of Babylon.

The road leading south along the river was shaded with old trees, and in the moonlight the silvery landscape was like a setting for trolls and wood gods rather than the Hudson River Valley of his boyhood memories.

His power was so great that he even promoted and demoted gods according to whether they had given ear or been deaf to petitions.

He was often equated with Celtic gods of similar character.

For the Greeks, Apollo was all the Gods in one and through the centuries he acquired different functions which could originate from different gods.

When they tried to depict the most abiding qualities of men, it was because men had common roots with the unchanging gods.

Due to her immense beauty, Zeus was frightened that she would be the cause of violence between the other gods.

Death was simply a temporary interruption, rather than complete cessation, of life, and that eternal life could be ensured by means like piety to the gods, preservation of the physical form through mummification, and the provision of statuary and other funerary equipment.

Tartarus was for the people that blasphemed against the gods, or were simply rebellious and consciously evil.

It was brought to the gods in Olympus by doves, so it may have been thought of in the Homeric tradition as a kind of divine exhalation of the Earth.

The two terms may not have originally been distinguished ; though in Homer's poems nectar is usually the drink and ambrosia the food of the gods ; it was with ambrosia Hera " cleansed all defilement from her lovely flesh ", and with ambrosia Athena prepared Penelope in her sleep, so that when she appeared for the final time before her suitors, the effects of years had been stripped away and they were inflamed with passion at the sight of her.

Additionally, some modern ethnomycologists, such as Danny Staples, identify ambrosia with the untameable hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita muscaria: " it was the food of the gods, their ambrosia, and nectar was the pressed sap of its juices ", Staples asserts.

It was supposed to have special healing properties, and, as a symbol of immortality, was used to decorate images of the gods and tombs.

However, Buddha said that the purity of his heart was so great that, " Should Ananda die without being fully liberated ; he would be king of the gods seven times because of the purity of his heart, or be king of the Indian subcontinent seven times.

* In 399 BC Socrates was put on trial and executed for ' corrupting the young and believing in strange gods '.