Pantheon (religion)

Look up pantheon in Wiktionary, the

free dictionary.

A pantheon is the particular set of all gods

of any individual polytheistic religion,
mythology, or tradition.[1]
Illustration of various deities associated with polytheistic pantheons from William Cooke's The Pantheon – or, fabulous
history of the heathen gods, goddesses, heroes, &c.

Significance
The word, pantheon derives from Greek
πάνθεον pantheon, literally "(a temple) of
all gods", "of or common to all gods" from
πᾶν pan- "all" and θεός theos "god". A
pantheon of gods is a common element of
polytheistic societies, and the nature of a
society's pantheon can be considered a
reflection of that society:

A pantheon is an overview of a
given culture's gods and
goddesses and reflects not only
the society's values but also its
sense of itself. A pantheon
directed by a thunderbolt
wielding autocrat might suggest
a patriarchy and the valuing of
warrior skills. A pantheon
headed by a great-mother
goddess could suggest a village-
based agricultural society. To
 confront the pantheon of the
Egyptians is to confront a
worldview marked by a sense of
death and resurrection and the
agricultural importance of the
cycles of nature. The Greek
pantheon is a metaphor for a
pragmatic view of life that
values art, beauty, and the
power of the individual, and
that is somewhat skeptical
about human nature.[2]

Some well-known historical polytheistic

pantheons include the Sumerian gods and
the Egyptian gods, and the classical-
attested pantheon which includes the
ancient Greek religion and Roman religion.
Post-classical polytheistic religions
include Norse Æsir and Vanir, the Yoruba
Orisha, the Aztec gods, and many others.
Today, most historical polytheistic
religions are referred to as "mythology".[3]

Evolution of pantheons
Scholars such as Jaan Puhvel, J. P.
Mallory, and Douglas Q. Adams have
reconstructed aspects of the ancient
Proto-Indo-European religion, from which
the religions of the various Indo-European
peoples derive, and that this religion was
an essentially naturalist numenistic
religion. An example of a religious notion
from this shared past is the concept of
*dyēus, which is attested in several distinct
religious systems.

In many civilizations, pantheons tended to

grow over time. Deities first worshipped as
the patrons of cities or places came to be
collected together as empires extended
over larger territories. Conquests could
lead to the subordination of the elder
culture's pantheon to a newer one, as in
the Greek Titanomachy, and possibly also
the case of the Æsir and Vanir in the Norse
mythos. Cultural exchange could lead to
"the same" deity being renowned in two
places under different names, as seen with
the Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans, and
also to the cultural transmission of
elements of an extraneous religion into a
local cult, as with worship of the ancient
Egyptian deity Osiris, which was later
followed in ancient Greece. Max Weber's
1922 opus Economy and Society discusses
a tendency of the ancient Greek
philosophers to interpret gods worshiped
in the pantheons of other cultures as
"equivalent to and so identical with the
deities of the moderately organized Greek
pantheon".[4]
In other instances, however, national
pantheons were consolidated or simplified
into fewer gods, or into a single god with
power over all of the areas originally
assigned to a pantheon. For example, in
the ancient Near East during the first
millennium BCE, Syrian and Palestinian
tribes worshiped much smaller pantheons
than had been developed in Egypt and
Mesopotamia.[5] Weber also identified the
link between a pantheon of gods and the
development of monotheism, proposing
that the domination of a pantheon by a
particular god within that pantheon was a
step towards followers of the pantheon
seeing that god as "an international or
universal deity, a transnational god of the
entire world".[4] The first known instance of
a pantheon being consolidated into a
single god, or discarded in favor of a single
god, was with the development of the
short-lived practice of Atenism in ancient
Egypt, with that role being accorded to the
sun god.[6] A similar process is thought to
have taken place with respect to the
Israelite deity Yahweh, who, "as a typical
West Semitic deity... would have four or
five compatriot gods in attendance as he
became the national high god".[5]

The concept of a pantheon of gods has

been widely imitated in Twentieth-century
fantasy literature and role-playing games
like Dungeons & Dragons. These uses tend
to borrow heavily from historical patterns.
In these contexts, it is considered
important for the writer to construct
pantheon of gods that fits the genre,
where the characteristics of the gods are
in balance so that none of them is able to
overwhelm the story, and so that the
actions of the characters are not
overwhelmed by the machinations of the
gods.[7]

Extension of the concept into

structures and celebrities
A pantheon in its sense as a "temple", this one built in 2nd-century Rome

In order to avoid the difficulty of giving an

exhaustive list of deities when devoting a
temple or sacred building, a structure
explicitly dedicated to "all deities" also
came to be referred to as a "Pantheon".[8]
The best known of such structures is the
Pantheon of Rome, first built by Marcus
Agrippa as part of a complex created by
him on his own property in the Campus
Martius in 29–19 BCE.[9] The building
standing today was constructed on the
same site around 126 CE. It was dedicated
to "all gods" as a gesture embracing the
religious syncretism in the increasingly
multicultural Roman Empire, with subjects
worshipping gods from many cultures and
traditions. The building was later
renovated for use as a Christian church in
609 under Pope Boniface IV.[10]

[T]he relation between the

building and the primary
reference point of the term
'pantheon', the pantheon of the
gods, has always been a matter
 of the greatest uncertainty. By
the sixteenth century these two
aspects, the building and the
grouping of gods, had become
merged, to the extent that the
building in Rome became the
principal model for subsequent
'pantheons'.[8]

Since the 16th century, "pantheon" has

also been used in a secular sense to refer
to the set of a society's exalted persons—
initially including heroic figures, and later
extending to celebrities, generally.[11] Lord
Byron drew this connection after viewing
the busts of famous historical figures in
the Roman Pantheon, writing in Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage of how he wished to be
at the center of an English Pantheon, and
thereby associated with divinity.[12] The
Pantheon "thus imbues the modern with
the aura of the divine", and "models the
interplay of ancient and modern forms of
fame".[12] This trend continued into
modern times, with the word "pantheon" 'of
or for the gods' being reflected in the
journalistic meme that refers to financial
titans as "Masters of the Universe". For
example: Francis Ford Coppola has been
described as a member of "that revered
pantheon of independent movie directors,
which broke the standard Hollywood
studio mold as the 1960s expired".[13]

See also
Lists of deities
List of pantheons

References
1. "pantheon" (https://oed.com/search?search
Type=dictionary&q=pantheon) . Oxford
English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford
University Press. (Subscription or
participating institution membership (https://
www.oed.com/public/login/loggingin#withyo
urlibrary) required.)
2. Christopher R. Fee, Gods, Heroes, & Kings:
The Battle for Mythic Britain (2004), p. 13.
3. Eugenie C. Scott, Evolution Vs. Creationism:
An Introduction (2009), p. 58.
4. Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion
(1922), p. 23.
5. Robert Karl Gnuse, No Other Gods:
Emergent Monotheism in Israel (1997), p.
200.
6. Robert Karl Gnuse, No Other Gods:
Emergent Monotheism in Israel (1997), p.
167.
7. William Sims Bainbridge, eGods: Faith
versus Fantasy in Computer Gaming
(2013), p. 57.
 8. Edmund Thomas, "From the pantheon of
the gods to the Pantheon of Rome", in
Matthew Craske, ed., Pantheons:
Transformations of a Monumental Idea
(2004), p. 11.
9. Dio, Cassius. "Roman History" (https://pene
lope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/
Cassius_Dio/53*.html) . p. 53.23.3.
10. John the Deacon, Monumenta Germaniae
Historia (1848) 7.8.20, quoted in
MacDonald, William L. (1976). The
Pantheon: Design, Meaning, and Progeny (h
ttps://archive.org/details/pantheondesignm
e0000macd) . Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press. p. 139 (https://archive.or
g/details/pantheondesignme0000macd/pa
ge/139) . ISBN 0674010191.
11. Matthew Craske and Richard Wrigley,
"Introduction", in Matthew Craske, ed.,
Pantheons: Transformations of a
Monumental Idea (2004), pp. 1–2.
12. Clara Tuite, Lord Byron and Scandalous
Celebrity (2015), pp. 140–141.
13. Simon Warner, Text and Drugs and Rock 'n'
Roll: The Beats and Rock Culture (2013), p.
452.

Further reading
Bouwers, Eveline G. (2012), Public
Pantheons in Revolutionary Europe.
Comparing Cultures of Remembrance, c.
1790–1840. PalgraveMacmillan,
ISBN 978-0230294714.
 Wrigley, Richard & Craske, Matthew
(2004), Pantheons: Transformations of a
Monumental Idea. Ashgate Publishing,
Ltd., ISBN 0754608085.

Retrieved from
"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Pantheon_(religion)&oldid=1143568558"

This page was last edited on 8 March 2023, at

15:19 (UTC). •
Content is available under CC BY-SA 3.0 unless
otherwise noted.