One thing I never understood about dealing with the Devil. When the Devil shows up, it changes the calculus. Now the person knows there is a heaven and hell, etc. What used to be a reasonable decision is now outrageously wrong.
Widespread skepticism of those beliefs didn't start until the Englightment and the discovery of evolution.
Maybe people simply didn't really care too much whether the stories were true or not?
The modern-day equivalent would be meeting a travel agent at a DC Comics convention and asking them to book flights for you to Gotham City. The best-case outcome is that they write some fan-fiction about you.
This was one of the reasons that Christianity was very disruptive, and exploded across the Graeco-Roman world over the following centuries. It provided a common identity with historical grounding -- if you wanted to go to the temple in Jerusalem where Jesus had kicked the merchants out, you could, and there was no ambiguity or vagueness about which one this happened in even after it was destroyed.
What was really so disruptive about christianity was the aspect of proselytization. That was new with christianity that wasn't really an aspect of judaism. And with proselytization came a need for formal organization of the faith, which served as a useful tool for government to maintain a mandate of power and quell divergent beliefs as heathen or even worthy of crusade, in contrast to synecratic greco-roman paganism.
They also had boring little rituals that weren’t really very effective performative signals.
What reason is there to think they didn’t believe in their gods? It is hard to query what’s going on in the heads even of living people, let alone long-dead ones. But I think the null hypothesis should be that people in the past at least believe their religion as much as modern ones do.
"When the city clerk had quieted the crowd, he said: 'Men of Ephesus, what man is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple guardian of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from (Zeus/Jupiter)? Therefore, since these things cannot be denied, you ought to be quiet and do nothing rashly. For you have brought these men here who are neither robbers of temples nor blasphemers of (y)our goddess. Therefore, if Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a case against anyone, the courts are open and there are proconsuls. Let them bring charges against one another. But if you have any other inquiry to make, it shall be determined in the lawful assembly. For we are in danger of being called in question for today’s uproar, there being no reason which we may give to account for this disorderly gathering.' And when he had said these things, he dismissed the assembly."
What are you basing this on? (And note, I think you mean "polytheists", as pantheists are people who don't typically believe in gods, but in the idea that everything in the universe is divine).
Polytheistic people pray to the gods just like monotheistic people do. Some believe in more concrete notions of their gods, some in more poetic ones, and both co-exist in the same societies. Just like many Christians believe Jesus existed, lived, died, and became physically resurrected, so do many modern-day polytheists, and many ancient ones as well.
And beyond the specifics of the stories, people most of all believed and believe that performing or not performing certain rituals will attract the benevolence or ire of their gods. They perform rituals to attract the rain, or to bring good luck in battle, or to bless their crops. They try to put curses on their enemies or competitors. These are all real beliefs that exist today, in both polytheistic and monotheistic religions, and that have existed since the dawn of humanity based on everything we know.
And one clear proof that people truly believed and still believe in the importance of these things is the significant resources they are willing to invest in them. Sometimes they directly perform sacrifices, sometimes they give money for the building of altars, sometimes they sacrifice their time or enjoyment towards these goals.
Something that really stuck with me is that they seemed to believe in their gods in an interesting way: they specifically negotiated their vows, being very explicit about what is promised. Because they really expect the gods to punish them in the corporal world, shortly
We’re a lot more loose with our vows nowadays. Although to be fair, negotiations with all-powerful monotheistic gods don’t make as much sense in the first place, really. Most of these gods are so powerful that you can’t really offer them anything but obedience/loyalty/love.
If as a pre-modern person, you don't believe in a God or Gods, what fills the void? Nowadays the boundary of our knowledge stretches far beyond day to day life in many respects, but if you don't know about a round Earth, or the solar system, or how weather systems work, how else do you explain phenomena that have a material impact on your day to day life as a subsistence farmer?
Pre Christianity, there wasn't really God's law and Man's law, there was just law. Even today, if you ask a highly educated religious person about their faith, you'll often find a concept of truth in some ways broader than the secular, material variety.
It's a bit like defining everyone who isn't Indo-European or Asiatic as "black", even though there's more genetic diversity in Africa than the rest of the world put together.
Bah, not any more that any other category: I have religious friends who are in theory from the same religion: some believe in heaven some don't, some believe in the miracles some don't, etc..
But yes, there can be atheists who believe that the earth is flat or that crystals can heal, etc.
It doesn't seem any less likely to me than Biblical literalists today. I think people forget that what we now consider mythology was more often than not religion to people of the time.
Just like how 90% of people who proclaim they belong to x religion don’t actually believe in stuff the religion proclaims, but it is useful for displaying tribal allegiance.
In some cases, the feigning of belief in obviously false things can even help to serve as a signal for how strong your conviction is to others in a tribe. In the same vein, being a hypocrite can also be seen as a display of “look at the rules I am willing to break, and so I might be willing to break some for you”. Or at least, it shows the belief that some people are above the rules.
This is (unintentionally?) hilarious.
For them, it was the same type of situation.
They did, in the same way we still believe in the horoscope, lucky numbers, miraculous diets or having success by reading the same books CEOs read.
Does it really brings bad luck if 13 people sit at the same table for a dinner?
And what about Friday the 13th?
In many sports competitions the number 17 is removed, because, you know, better safe than sorry.
I’m very confused as to why folks in this thread seem to think that ancient people were any different in their religious beliefs than modern ones.
The term Bayesian derives from Thomas Bayes (1702–1761), who proved a special case of what is now called Bayes' theorem in a paper titled "An Essay Towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances".
[1] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2017.079...