This was one of the sources of the curse that destroyed his family: two of his sons, Atreus and Thyestes, killed a third, Chrysippus, who was his favorite son and was meant to inherit the kingdom ; Atreus and Thyestes were banished by him together with Hippodamia, their mother, who then hanged herself ; each successive generation of descendants suffered greatly by atrocious crimes and compounded the curse by committing more crimes, as the curse weighed upon Pelops ' children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren including Atreus, Thyestes, Agamemnon, Aegisthus, Menelaus, and finally Orestes, who was acquitted by a court of law convened by the gods Athena and Apollo.

In this version of the myth, the gods convened in darkness to choose a new sun, who was to sacrifice himself by jumping into a gigantic bonfire.

Discovering this, Odin convened the Council to discuss Demogorge's threat, and they decided to send a team of gods from different pantheons ( Thor, Indra, Shango, Tawa, Horus, Quetzalcoatl, and Apollo ) to fight Demogorge.

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

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.

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.