(no subject)

[benlehman]

If I could eliminate one meme from the collective conscious, it would be "god of ______"

It is dumb, ahistorical, amystical, and dumb.

(Okay, fine, I could eliminate hate or racism or homophobia or child rape or some shit. Yeah, I'd probably do that instead. Nonetheless, it is a pretty annoying one.)

Comments

[redcrosse.livejournal.com]

>I mean, unless I and my Classics courses are totally wrong--or, granted, unless they covered it in one of the multifarious sessions I slept through--cultures had gods of stuff.

Yes, but saying that Enki is the "God of Water" totally belittles the significance of the god. It cuts out everything the Sumerian people knew about the character of Enki, all the other things he meant (and by corollary, all the other things that water itself symbolized to that culture,) and generally removes any sort of individual character that god may have. When the Greeks thought about Posiedon, they didn't just think, oh, hey, water. They thought about an entire constellation of stories and attributes that together formed a part of their conception of the world, and apart would mean nothing. The "god of" thing is something people say and teach each other about ancient gods to act like they know what they're talking about at parties without actually having any sense what that god's mythology means. It is, in many ways, disrespectful. Enki does not equal Posiedon, in any way, shape, or form, nor the Greek conception of the waters the sumerian one. But by the "god of" formulation, he does.

Right On.

[aumshantih.livejournal.com]

In many polytheistic faiths, what the Gods are "of" is less important than who they are Mythically and how they interrelate with each other.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Logos.

yrs--
--Ben

[redcrosse.livejournal.com]

>Logos.

Respresent.

If you don't, it will.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

You terrify me in a good way.

yrs--
--Ben

[funwithrage.livejournal.com]

Ah. Point, yes.


I do maintain that there's nothing wrong with convenient shorthand, or with noting that both gods were associated with water as a way to then compare and contrast and so forth, but that's sort of orthagonal. You're right that unconscious reduction a sign of not really being familiar with the mythology. Not one of my pet peeves, but, yeah, erroneous.