Odysseus's Relationship with Athena - Admission/Application Essay Example

Odysseus's Relationship with Athena Prompt 1: Compare and contrast Odysseus's relationship with Athena to Job's relationship with God in an effort to define each respective culture's conception of a model relationship with the godhead. Athena was the patron goddess of Odysseus, which in some cases have been viewed as Penelope’s rival when it comes to his attention. While the notion that the gods, goddesses and demigods in Greek mythology coexists without insomuch as a dispute regarding their judgment, for the divinities have set the destiny of everyone—a destiny which they cannot run away from—the Christian relationship of the God and of mortals is a different case. Even from the setting that the two civilizations root from, there are quite many differences that can be noted. First, the Greeks believed in a variety of gods. In fact, they have a god and a goddess for every aspect of life known to them. These divinities were the ones they call to for help when they are in trouble and which they thank when they prosper. Odysseus was a man who has been blessed by the gods with strength and good looks, yet not all of the gods were in his favor. There was one whom he had offended, and had led to him being tried against obstacles which kept him from his family, and particularly his loved ones. He was one who has finished a large number of adventures before he was finally able to come home and was welcomed by everyone. It can be said that Odysseus had an inkling of luck, which had stemmed from his good natured spirit. He was guided by Athena and was blessed with her powers to complete each task righteously given to him. Of course he finished the challenges of his own will, but still he was guided. Some argue that the interference of Athena was a perception of the personal relationship of a divine being to a mortal, while some regard it as a mere adaptation of the selfless and unconditional guidance that the mortals are given because of the action they show. In the Christian world, God was the Supreme Being who made everything within seven days, including the saints we all know now. While in Greek mythology the gods and goddesses give birth to other divinities and some half mortals, in the Christian world there is a thick divide between the world of the mortals and the world of the gods—or God, for that matter. Christians have the Ultimate Creator, which have experienced mortality and have ascended to heaven after being betrayed by His disciples. While He was on earth he taught people about the world that was to come and had made friends and enemies. One notable friend that God had was Job, whose account had been included in the Holy Bible. Job’s personal encounter with God was essentially the same as each individual who had opened the door for Him did. When someone welcomed Him, He repaid them; when others contemplated on His absence of Godly qualifications, he forgave. The god of the Christians was a god who was capable of only the good, and who repaid good and evil alike with good. Job received favors from God on certain occasions, but like all His disciples, they were the ones who suffered more to understand that they need to sacrifice in order to accommodate the needs of others. Job was one whom God has chosen to give sufferings to because He wanted him to be a better man and to carry His words throughout the earth. God wanted every mortal to learn how to think of their brothers before they think of themselves, the only way of administering this lecture was by making them forget about the material things that bind them to greed and selfishness. Meanwhile, the Greek gods themselves have the capacity of the mortals to demand justice in mundane ways, by giving trials that would try the limits of the people they have offended. While God was equally capable of this, He chose not to. Prompt 2: As you have learned through studying some representative examples of the literature of ancient cultures, you have hopefully come to realize that the concept of the afterlife varies wildly from culture to culture. Using specific examples from our reading, explain how a culture's concept of an after life dictates or modifies character motivation. (Best approach would be to compare/contrast two distinct cultures.) Afterlife is indeed viewed differently in different religions depending on how it has been presented to them. There are numerous ways that afterlife is presented, one of the most influential of which is the Greeks’. There are many great philosophical thinkers who have contributed to the knowledge we know today that has devoted a part of their time in debating whether there is an afterlife or not. More specifically, they wondered where people go after they die, or as they call it, ‘cease to exist’. Plato used a very adaptable example, the allegory of the cave, wherein humans can be likened to cave dwellers who only see the light reflected to the caves and the shadows the creatures outside produce without actually knowing what is going on. He concluded that if people would work towards the realization of their soul, then there is a way to untie themselves of the shackles that bind them inside the cave so that they will be able to go outside and know what the actual surroundings look like, experience the sun, and interact with others who have attempted as they did. For Plato, the soul is something that is financed by the knowledge that people feed their minds. He believed that for people to be inline with the spiritual world, they need to understand the mortal world, and in doing so seek answers to questions that none of them could fathom. It has been the custom of the Greeks to attribute to nature that which they cannot explain, and where the soul went after the life has been consumed from it was a wonder that nobody could fathom. Because of this, the notion of the afterlife had evolved, which they agreed was where people who had passed away went to, for they understood the answers and were not obligated to come back to the world they once belonged to, the world the blinded them. However, the Hindi people believed otherwise. These people have believed in the idea of reincarnation for so long that bending it would be nearly impossible. The Hindi culture believes in the idea of reincarnation, wherein souls actually do not leave the earth. Instead, these souls are given new vessels, the body, which is proportional to what goodness the person has shown in his past life. Followers of Hinduism believe that people who deject their souls and consume it by doing untoward evilness as means of survival will be reborn as low-life creatures while those who have proven to be capable of being a good person were reincarnated as a member of the higher class. Because of the idea of reincarnation, the Hindi people are inclined to avoid damaging their souls, thus expecting a better life in their reincarnation. The souls of the dead are not really dead, but are only waiting to be reborn into a vessel that it is worthy of. Hindi people know that wellbeing is the only way that they can preserve their soul and thus works towards sacrificial acts that enable them to gain a positive karma, that which they will be gratified for in their next life. Obviously, the Greek and the Hindi culture differ in the concept of afterlife. However, there is one salient characteristic that binds them together. This is the concept of betterment, in the essence that people need to be better in their own way to attain achievement, in the case of the Greeks is the spiritual world where all the answers are laid in, and in the case of the Hindi a better life in the next generation they will live in. What this means is that for people to attain a better position in life, for their inquiries to be answered, or their dreams to be fulfilled, they need to exert an effort that will be repaid soon. Meanwhile, for those who corrupt their minds and prefer to do evil, a cycle of negative punishment awaits them either in the form of continued ignorance or a worse life than what they have been given. Simply said, the concept of the afterlife is associated with being productive and being better. Read More