Criticism of Greek Myths in Early Christian Apologetics as a Way of Religious Delegitimization

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show that the criticism of Greek myths made by the Second-Century Christian Apologists is based on the role that these myths play as source of legitimacy of a religious message that looks for the social hegemony. This criticism is not a simple literary discussion on different ways of understanding the divine confined to intellectual circles, but a way of discrediting the cultural identity on which rests the way of being in the world of the Greek-speaking pagan society. Furthermore, this criticism transcends the framework of apology, in order to become a tool to replace a culture through the delegitimization of religion on which that culture is based. I adopt as a key concept that of “mosaic distinction”, according to which Christianity, as an exclusive monotheism, presents itself to the pagan religion as the only true religion, since it is the result of revelation of the one true God, whereas pagan religion is founded on traditional fictions (myths), which present false gods as role models. Therefore, the Apologists’ arguments against the myth will be mainly based on taking the Greek myths as evidence of the inexistence of gods. If the gods don’t exist, the myths that make them actors of the symbolic universe on which the cosmovision that grounds the cultural identity of the pagan society is founded, are delegitimazed, remaining as alternative that offered by Christianity.