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Whenever a fictional story involves a non-Christian mythology, a western adaptation will emphasize the elements most familiar to followers of Christianity. At times, they will be totally rewritten to turn all of the members of the religion into direct analogues of Christian figures.
In mythologies without an " Ultimate Evil", the least likable deity (usually the one in charge of death or fire) will be Flanderized into a God Of Evil who is a direct analogue of Satan. Any depiction of the afterlife will be transformed into either Heaven or Hell. The chief male deity will always be a stand-in for God. Servants of the chief male deity may be turned into angels, or other gods will seem so subserviant they may as well be angels, despite them being at each other's throats in most mythologies.
That is, it takes a real-life religion and turns it into Crystal Dragon Jesus. May either be a form of Viewers Are Morons or Did Not Do The Research, depending on how much the writers understood the original religion.
It should be noted that this has happened a number of times historically. As proselytizing sects spread into new regions, they often incorporate existing beliefs into their canon, in order to make the new religion more palatable to others. For example, the medieval story of the hermit Josaphat (not to be mistaken with the King Jehoshaphat of Judea, or the 17th-century martyr St. Josaphat) was a Christianized version of the life of Gautama Buddha. Religious scholars refer to this process as "syncretism".
See also Nuns Are Mikos, What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic, The Theme Park Version, Sadly Mythtaken, Crystal Dragon Jesus, Messianic Archetype. Contrast Lowest Cosmic Denominator. This will often include a Mythology Upgrade.
Examples:
Comic Book
- The Marvel Universe version of the Norse gods follow suit, with Thor = Jesus, Odin = God, and Loki = Lucifer.
- Kyknos, Ares son, who wanted to build a temple out of skulls for his father and was thrown into Thartharos by Hercules, is depicted as a traditional Satan-figure in the Marvel mini series Dark Avengers: Ares. He has yellow-red skin, hooves and very obvious, big horns on his head. In the traditional texts he isn't described that way (which makes sense, because big horns would indicate a God of Woods and Animals or similar).
Film
- Disney's adaptation of Hercules, featuring Hades as Satan, Zeus as God (and a Bumbling Dad), Hercules as Jesus, and the other Olympians as angels. Especially strange in making the Underworld seem like Hell, since all dead people are still implied to go there. The TV series Hand Waves that while
Heaven the Elysian Fields technically is in Hades's domain, he isn't allowed there.
- And to protect family values, Zeus's "special relationship" with mortal women was ignored, making Hercules a son of Hera, and poisoned (by Hades, of course) with mortality. This moves Hera out of her original Clingy Jealous Girl and Big Bad roles in the original myths.
- Interestingly enough, the movie does nothing to rectify Hera's status as Zeus's sister, however.
- It's especially hijacked because Hades was one of the Greek Gods who didn't routinely screw with mortals, and could even be convinced to help them (Orpheus).
- And the only one who never hurt or cursed any humans out of spite, greed, jealousy, or lust either. Even Athena cursed Arachne to be a spider, and she's probably the second kindest god in the pantheon.
- Granted, kidnapping Persephone wasn't very nice, but that's probably the worst thing he ever did. And he was genuinely in love with her, at least.
- Greece wasn't too happy with the hijacking; Disney had to advertise the film as Beyond the Myth of Heracles to stem controversy.
- Well, to be fair, can you imagine the uproar if a movie was made that implied that Jesus wasn't all-powerful, and, say, Mary Magdalene was his wife? Wait...
- Disney did it again in Aladdin. Despite taking place in a Middle Eastern setting that should have been Islamic all the way (in fact, the sultan mentions Allah in the first movie, albeit as part of a throwaway line about stubborn daughters), in Aladdin and the King of Thieves, the wedding of Aladdin and Jasmine is suspiciously Catholic-looking.
- The original movie contains a number of nods to Islam, actually, with Allah mentioned by name at least twice and a reference in Genie's song to "mid-day prayers," among other things. All these elements are scrubbed away in the two sequels and TV show, with Islam not only never referenced again but more western elements slowly creeping in.
- There's a lot of merchandise depicting various Disney Aladdin characters celebrating Christmas. So... yeah.
- A more minor example is Chernabog from Disney's Fantasia, though named for and based on a Slavic god, he was at least once referenced as Satan by Walt Disney.
- Chernabog also shows up, as a euphemism for Satan, in the legends surrounding Slavic (especially Ukrainian) monasticism; Bald Mountain (Lysa Hora) is where witches' Sabbaths are held—and Slavic legends often depict diabolical power being defeated by holy monks. It's a almost painfully accurate representation of a legend, just not an ancient one. The only inaccuracy is using a Latin Ave Maria rather than one in Slavonic.
- The movie Constantine converts John Constantine of Hellblazer from a shifty, almost amoral magic user into a Catholic exorcist, removing all non-Christian mythical elements. In the comics' canon, John does have a certain "relationship" with Heaven and Hell, namely that they both get up his arse. The fact that Hell in particular wants his soul in a bad way comes up on a constant basis. Of course, all kinds of other entities exist in comic canon as well.
- This is putting it lightly - in the Hellblazer canon, God is distant and (probably) uncaring and Hell is ruled by three deific beings. Rather than sacrificing himself and being cured by Satan, Constantine cures his own lung cancer ON PURPOSE by selling his soul to all three of the kings of hell, for rewards, one after the other, and then killing himself. They can't take him without starting a war and they can't give him to Heaven because of the suicide clause, so they heal him up and start planning revenge.
- This would seem to show a lack of creativity. What was wrong with the Persephone solution? Each king could keep his soul a third of the time for whatever period cycle they agreed upon, no?
- It's implied the byzantine politics of Hell meant they HAD to go to war.
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is based on serials from the 1930's, which commonly reduced various foreign cultures into caricature. In the film, the complex and sophisticated religion of Hinduism is reduced to nice people worshipping Shiva and murderous Thuggees worshipping Kali. The Thuggees behave like stereotypical Satanic cultists.
- Most mummy movies, including those of The Mummy Trilogy, portray gods such as Anubis and Seth as expys of Satan. In reality, Anubis was a protector and judge of the dead and all round Pretty Cool Guy when compared to some of his sibling gods while Seth was originally god of the deserts of lower Egypt, the legends of his scheming and murder of Osiris a later myth. In fact, the statues found next to Tutankhamun, called Shabts, would be more appropriate.
- While it's true that Anubis was considered a kindly protector whose main concern was making sure souls made it safely to the afterlife, he's also the guy who checked if your soul was worthy of the next life and tossed it to Ammut to snack on if it wasn't...
- In this way, he is more like the Christian God than Satan, as on Judgement Day, he is supposed to throw all sinners into the Lake of Fire.
- One Dungeons & Dragons books writes up statistics for the Egyptian pantheon which puts Sekhmet as completely separated from Bast (who is a goddess of pleasure and fertility yet portrayed as a Chaotic Neutral trickster love-goddess) and Hathor. Worse yet, the crocodile god Sobek is portrayed as an evil and destructive flood deity, when in reality the flood season was seen as a blessing because it allowed the harvest to occur, and people wore crocodile amulets to guard against drowning and thirst. Set remained evil, which brings up a question: Why the hell do they need an Ultimate Evil when they have one already?
- Well, Egyptian Mythology had no real canon. In some versions of their religion, which, naturally for something that lasted several millennia changed quite a bit over time, Bast, Hathor, and Sekhmet are separate deities. Likewise, various gods have enjoyed good and bad publicity depending on who was in power. Set, for instance, saw a resurgence of favor under Seti and Rameses. It's hard to actually call anything that inaccurate when it comes to that particular pantheon given how often the Egyptians changed the details.
- Seth really became hated in Egypt after the invasion of the Hyksos people. Seth was the god of foreigners and they were an oppressive people that worshiped him.
- Though Seth appears mostly in fiction as the Egyptian version of Satan due to him being a god of Chaos and Infertility and that he killed his older brother to get the throne, he was also the god of Deserts , Storms and Power and was Ra's (The Sun God) personal bodyguard and personally rode on Ra's sun boat himself being the only god as powerful as he [Ra]. Set was more of a middleman, sometimes depicted as evil, sometimes depicted as good. The closest thing in the Egyptian myths that is their equivilant to Satan is Apep, also know as Apophis, the god of evil, darkness and infertility, a gaint snake the tries to eat Ra when he passes through the underworld. Ra has to kill him with the help of Set if he is to pass.
- In a slight inversion, the film Kingdom of Heaven largely ignores the practice and beliefs of medieval Christianity and Islam during the Crusades, in favour of an extremely simplified us vs. them narrative. They also pushed secular humanism as the way to end conflict and hate. So maybe we've moved beyond translating everything onto Christianity, into translating everything onto secular reasoning.
- Given Ridley Scott's personal views on religion
 and how he made every clergy member (including historical figures such as Patriarch Heraclius) into jerkasses, and made the jerkass secular nobles (Raynald of Chatillon, and Guy of Lusignan) into jerkass church militants, this may be more a result of anvilicious writing of an Author Filibuster than anything else.
- On the other hand, the character of the Hospitaller, King Baldwin (a Real Life saint) and Balian's father all seem to put religion (and their hopes for a real life "Kingdom of Heaven") in a much better light.
- And Saladin mostly ascribes to the belief that "the Lord helps those that help themselves". Otherwise, he and Baldwin come across as a model citizen, which tropers may be misinterpreting as secular humanism given the bad example of the more extreme co-religionists in the movie.
- Saladin tends to get Historical Hero Upgrade in everything—he even got it from contemporary Christians, for whom he just about defined Worthy Opponent.
- While his faults are occasionally whitewashed, he did earn a lot of his praise doing things that not only made him popular with his own people, but even his enemies. According to Christian scribes, when Richard the Lionhearted came down with dysentery as he laid seige to Saladin's fortress, and Saladin heard of his own Worthy Opponent's illness, he sent him a basket of fresh fruit (which was the best thing for dysentery at the time). When he laid seige to an enemy city where the real Raynald De Chattion was hiding, it's said that a resident of the city asked him not to bombard the church where her family was having a wedding out of charity. Saladin asked where the honeymoon was, and ordered that building too to be spared for the night. Upon his death, he then gave away his entire fortune to the poor of his nation.
Literature
- Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain novels, set in a fantastic version of Wales, used Arawn, the Celtic god of the underworld, as an evil force similar to Tolkien's Sauron. The existence of an ultimate force of good, on the other hand, isn't really mentioned.
- Unless you count the Sons of Don. You could make a pretty good parallel between Gwydion and Jesus in The Book of Three.
- On the other hand, the conflicts in most of the later books tended to be overcome by Taran and his friends with Gwydion giving a helping hand but not being as helpful.
- These designated heroes and villains is especially Anvilicious when you take into account that in the actual Mabinogion Gwydion is pretty evil. Justified in that he's a Trickster deity. And that He Got Better.
- He also, at least, acknowledges that Arawn is "considerably more villinous" in his version, so at least he's aware of the situation.
- In Wielding A Red Sword, from Piers Anthony's Incarnations Of Immortality series, the Hindu protagonist equates Satan with Shiva... who is supposed to be a highly positive force of rebirth and renewal.
- Ironically, later books show that Satan is indeed something of a positive force.
- Are we sure it's not as much 'ironically' as 'revealed as foreshadowing'?
- Probably both.
- Michael Chabon's novel Summerland is a real doozy. It takes place largely in a world that cheerily mashes together Native American and Norse Mythology. This leads to the reveal, utterly brain-breaking if you know your mythology, that Coyote Changer is also Loki AND the Devil. Seriously. (And for its next trick, the rules of the Universe are based on those of baseball.)
- Well, to be fair, all three are pretty tricky characters....
- Baseball? You mean the universe only makes sense if you're drunk?
- In fairness, Michael Chabon's focus is weirdness, Summerland is a YA novel, and it's not so much being hijacked by Jesus as by YHWH (Chabon being Jewish and all).
- Believe it or not, the Cthulhu Mythos fell prey to this very early on, as August Derleth, who arguably rescued HP Lovecraft from total obscurity, attempted to shape the Mythos into a coherent Shared Universe, in an essay, framed it as a struggle between good and evil pantheon, the former represented by Nodens, an actual minor deity from real life mythology, who had a cameo in one of Lovecraft's stories. This did not catch on.
- Note, however, that there are still writers who like Derleth's idea of having two factions of gods fight each other, even if they reject the idea of painting those two factions as good and evil.
- Perhaps Older Than Feudalism in Beowulf: the author seems to know little about paganism and usually portrays the characters as Christian. Scholarship, however, disagrees on whether Beowulf (the material, not the poem itself - the latter was composed in the eighth century, after conversion, at the earliest) predates the coming of Christianity.
- In Lord Of Light besides the fairly accurate Hindu gods there is also an obvious Jesus metaphor among the cast of deities. However the hint that he's supposed to be playing Jesus is "well there's an evil necromancer to the West".
- Any inacuracies are of course justified in that they are not actually gods, sort of, it's complicated.
Live Action TV
- Although most of the gods being jerks was inherent in the premise, the universe of Hercules The Legendary Journeys and Xena Warrior Princess was strange about this depending on the situation, especially Ares, who tends to waver between being a Jerkass and being pure evil depending on the needs of the plot. Hades was usually treated as just a dark but very overworked and unappreciated ruler of the Underworld.
- Although the producers of Xena seemed intent on making up for lost time, in the last two seasons. The prophet Eli was an exceedingly thinly disguised Crystal Dragon Jesus and Xena was put on a quest to kill all the Pagan gods.
- A darker metaphor occured with Dahak. Early appearances and descriptions to his cult sound like analogue of early Christians, before we found out he was an unrelated evil god. Ironically, the references are kept and added to afterwards to deliberately creep out the audience. Dahak derives from Azhi Dahaka, of course.
- Bacchus. Wine? Check. Drugs? Check. Orgies? Hell yeah, check! He also has some quite violent servants (the Maenads, just ask Orpheus). No wonder he ended up being portrayed as Satan.
- The Doctor Who story "Pyramids of Mars" portrayed the Egyptian god Set/Sutekh as a Satan-type — and a Sufficiently Advanced Alien to boot.
- The Doctor specifically identifies him as the inspiration for Satan. However, the Doctor implied that Sutekh's people might not strictly count as good guys, either.
- At the end of "The Satan Pit", the Doctor says something about all planets having an evil, horned devil, and that perhaps the Beast that they encountered in Krop-Tor was the Ur-example.
- Coincidentally (or not), the same voice actor who did Sutekh's voice-over also did the Beast's. (The story didn't directly mention Sutekh or resolve the seeming contradiction, though The Doctor does mention having met beings who claimed to have been Satan before.)
- The depiction of Hecate in Charmed.
- In an episode of Stargate SG-1, SG-1 come upon a small population of people who had developed from ancient norsemen (vikings, if you will) into what was basically a 17th century society. Instead of retaining their original pantheon, they had developed a cult centering solely on Freyr who, in reality, was of course the sufficiently advanced alien responsible for bringing them there in the first place. Notable features of this cult included gathering in a suspiciously church-like building at regular intervals, branding Freyr their "saviour" and the complete and total resignation to the will of their deity. All in all, it reads more like an atempt by the writers to use an "uncooperative, xenophobic, holier-than-thou, super-religious rural Christian" stereotype without running the risk of offending any Christians.
Mythology
- It has been claimed that the story of the Holy Grail and the Spear of Destiny are likely Christianized versions of older myths. For example, the Fisher King is Bran the Blessed !
- Not to be confused with BRIAN BLESSED.
- One bloodline in Vampire: The Requiem, the Brom, plays off of this; half the bloodline believes it was cursed when its founder drank from the Grail without God's permission, and the other half thinks it is descended from Bran the Blessed, Celtic hero, and cursed by a magic cauldron.
- In one theory (but by far not the most popular one, not that there is a most popular one), King Arthur was originally a Celtic hero-king which doomed the old "England" because he first got the power of the holy vessel (more likely a pot where you COOK in, later grail) and digged up the head of Lug in Lugdunum - that way, he broke the spell protecting his country.
- Christianity/Jesus get accused of this all the time. Jesus is Baldr! Jesus is Horus! Jesus is random god #423 from random religion #457. The truth is probably best left unexplored here.
- This is, at any rate, certainly not a new idea. There have been numerous theories that consider the parallels between Zoroastrianism and the later Abrahamic religions to be proof of a definite relationship between the two. There is also a theory about Judaisms relationship to Akhenaten, who attempted to instate a monotheistic belief in the creator-god Aten in ancient Egypt. Whether you agree with those theories is up to you, of course.
- Brushing Jesus himself swiftly aside, it's historical fact that most Christian holidays are hijacked from earlier ones. This isn't to say that the holidays celebrate the same thing - it's undeniable that Christmas is about Jesus' birth for instance; it's just that customs and timing are almost identical to the celebrations that Christianity supplanted. The practice of a Christmas tree, for example, isn't new, and Jesus' birthday was probably sometime in May, not in December. It's not just Christianity that does this though - generally, whenever a new religion moves into an area, it's easier to convert locals by just switching the gods and letting them keep their practices.
- The Greeks themselves did this to a considerable extent. Many Egyptian gods were identified with Greek ones, Odin was identified with Mercury, and the Romans later identified the Greek gods with their own pantheon (although the religions were very, very different). Much of this has to do with the European and Hindu pantheons being descended from an older proto-Indo-European pantheon.
- One of the less-known stories in the Finnish national epic The Kalevala is the story of Marjatta, a virgin who is impregnated by a lingonberry. (No, not that way, she eats it.) She gives birth in a stable to a son who becomes the king of Karelia. Seeing that all the stories in The Kalevala were collected in early 1800s, this just can't be coincidental. Maybe more like an inversion, though, since the biblical story was adapted to fit the local context, not the other way around.
Tabletop Games
- Scion Companion features an organization that are doing this in-world; they find young, inexperienced Scions, and convince them that their powers come from the Abrahamic god instead of one of those nasty pagan ones. Their goal is to drag all of the other gods into the Abrahamic mold, creating a "one true God". The book states they've already done this to a couple of pantheons (the Yoruba are specified). Given the closest we've seen to their ideal is one of the Titan avatars, their possible success is not portrayed as a good thing.
Theater
- The King And I has the Show Within A Show The Small House of Uncle Thomas, in which Buddha is a very obvious stand-in for Jesus. Since it's nothing more than a Siamese adaptation of Uncle Toms Cabin, this is fairly justified.
- Except that that is so not what Buddha does.
- The obvious Crystal Dragon Buddha is part of the joke of her not understanding the Siamese culture.
- Shakespeare's Winter's Tale nominally takes place in pagan countries, where they consult oracles. The veil is thin enough that at one point they have a discussion of the doctrine of original sin. Thus this is Older Than Steam.
- Shakespeare usually avoided this though - especially as it allowed him to present suicide as honorable, so long as it took place in a non-Christian culture.
Videogame
- God Of War both uses and averts this. Hades (the underworld) in the first game is overtly hellish, and Hades (the god) looks demonic; however, he is one of the good guys. Ares is also a rather mixed bag; he's set up as having a Satan-like reputation, but the actual character is largely similar to the actual mythology — a violent and warlike Jerkass with severe sibling rivalry issues. The second game mixes it up by mentioning Tartarus (the underworld that was supposed to be Hellish) and brutally averts the tendency to equate Zeus with the Judeo-Christian God.
- In fact, Zeus is correctly portrayed as the Jerk Ass he actually was (but not the serial rapist).
- Try telling that to Kratos's mother. While not directly calling him out as a rapist, his rampant infidelity is defintely shown.
- The prequel, Chains Of Olympus, further subverts this; you actually do get to go into Tartarus (which is less hell-like than the first game, but still significantly brutal to be considered a good analogy), as well as the Elysian Fields (which are thankfully depicted as actual fields instead of Fluffy Cloud Heaven). Then again, the Big Bad of the game delves into Christian territory upon entering an (almost literal) One Winged Angel form, and Charon is roughly analogous to the Grim Reaper, complete with Sinister Scythe.
- The Valkyrie Profile series is based on Norse myth, featuring Odin, the titular Valkyries, and the rest of the Aesir, but also feature very Christian-looking chapels, crosses, and other such artifacts.
- The game Age Of Mythology (at least in the Titans expansion) also casts Cronos as the Big Bad. However, rather than giving him a human appearance, he instead appears as a giant inhuman monster.
- In the original game's campaign, Cronos is the Sealed Evil In A Can the bad guys are trying to unleash which would cause The End Of The World As We Know It. The original campaign, despite occasionally lapsing into The Theme Park Version of (especially Greek) mythology (Cronos is trapped in "Tartarus" behind several gates in the underworld), portrayed the gods fairly accurately, but the bad guys are always followers of Hades, Set, or Loki... until the end of the campaign, after it's been revealed the bad guys are really working for Poseidon, who's enlisted the mortal Gargarensis to open the gate to Tartarus because the gods can't. The last two missions, when Arkantos and his friends return to Atlantis, have the player following Zeus and the bad guys Poseidon.
- Spoofed brilliantly (this is a Mario game, after all) in Super Paper Mario with the Overthere and the Underwhere. While at first glance they seem to resemble Heaven and Hell, they're both very nice places to spend your eternity, and each is easily accessible from the other. Queen Jaydes and King Grambi actually get along extremely well and have even adopted a child together.
- The main series of Shin Megami Tensei takes this very literally. In it, Astaroth is literally a corrupted and demonized form of Ishtar... while more "acceptable" pagan gods like Thor are lackeys of YHVH who threw in with him to prevent destruction or similar literal demonization.
Western Animation
- Hades (and occasionally Ares) in the Justice League cartoon was also painted as Satan, or a reasonable facsimile.
- Class of the Titans can both avert and succumb to this. While Hades isn't presented as completely evil, his realm still looks like hell. Also, he seems a bit of a... girlish man. Its the voice. The other Gods may have their problems, they do some nasty things to mortals, but they're all still mostly good and Zeus' apparent, um, fooling around with others is never mentioned and his relationship with Hera seems healthy and strong. Kronos, the big bad of the series, is however a close allergory to Satan as he pretty much wants to bring about the apocalypse. Other myths and legends are shifted around and can either be really inaccurate or pretty damn close enough. Of course one must keep in mind, this is a kid's show.
Truth In Television
- An interesting case is that of the lovely Miss Maria Kannon from Japan. During the Tokugawa Shogunate, the government banned foreign religions under pain of death. Japan's small Catholic population coped by venerating statues of the Virgin Mary disguised as Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy (who herself is the Hijacked-By-Amaterasu version of Avalokiteśvara, a male, Indian bodhisattva of compassion). When the Meiji Restoration came around, the restrictive laws regarding religion were relaxed somewhat, but even today you can still find Maria Kannon figures around Japan if you look hard enough.
- Both Greeks and Romans practiced what was known as interpretatio graeca, trying to identify the neighbors' gods with their own. Hence, we get the pairings Mars/Ares, Jupiter/Zeus, Juno/Hera, etc. This often produced some shifts in the gods as their personalities were matched up. A Roman writer would describe the Germans's chief god as Mercury; that was Odin. And among the Egyptian gods, they identified Thoth with Mercury. Having identified Zeus with Set, the Ptolemiac dynasty tried to improve Set's reputation in Egypt.
- The same was true when the Greeks tried to take over Egypt, appropriating and combining Egyptian gods with their own pantheon. One example was their attributing Hermes with Anubis, mutating the two into "Hermanubis".
- Interestingly, they got it quite right. The mythologies of the Greeks, Romans, Germans, Balts, and Slavs were derived from the mythology of their Indo-European-speaking ancestors who lived on the shores of the Black Sea over 6,000 years ago. Hindu mythology is also derived from the same stock (mixed liberally with the native Dravidian tradition), while the Zoroastrian (i.e. Iranian) Spentas and Daevas directly correspond to similar figures of Hinduism...but flipped around so that the "good" gods of Hinduism are evil, and the "evil" gods of Hinduism are good.
- The oddest merging that the Greeks did was by the Selecuids, who ruled over the majority of the old Persian Empire after Alexander's conquest, who tried to link the Greek gods to the Iranian gods. Zeus is equated with Ahura Mazda, which is incredibly odd since Ahura Mazda is the uncreated who created everything else (including the other gods, arguably making those that worship him monotheistic as the other gods are more like angels), is the force of Good in the battle against Angra Manyu, the epitome of Evil, that he is destined to win. Of course Zeus really is only similar to Ahura Mazda in that they are the head gods in their pantheon, as Zeus was created, didn't really create anything himself, and is a total dick. The other Iranian gods were also paired with Greek gods with predictable inconsistencies, though none as bad as the Ahura Mazda/Zeus issue.
- It's not even that simple. The Iranian religion was (and actually still is) monotheistic, and actually considered Ahura Mazda to be THE god and Angra Mainyu to be a sort of Satan figure who torments sinners - making the weird Greek attempt to assimilate their "gods" even more bizarre. The other Zoroastrian "gods" you're referring to were more aptly comparable to angels (the Spenta Mainyu, for example), and they even had a Messiah figure like Jesus, Mithra (who of course became bastardized in the Roman pantheon), a sort of angelic reflection of Ahuramazda. Otherwise, you're essentially correct - Ahura Mazda is a classical "good, omnibenevolent, loving" god and Zeus is more of a Jerk Ass who only really gives a shit about himself.
- Something very much like the interpretatio graeca mentioned above happens today day with African animist religions. For example, Mami Wata is a modern syncretism of a variety of local female water and love spirits.
- Reversed in the case of many Afro-American religions like Santería, Voudoun and Candomblé, which took various Catholic saints and associated them with various West African spirits, thus St. Peter became Legba, St. Michael Ogoun etc.
- A majority of texts we have from the Aztec faith are filtered through the post-Conquistador Catholic lens. Even worse, it's largely viewed as a Religion Of Evil by the modern world, completely removing all the subtleties. And poor Quetzalcoatl frequently demands sacrifices in media depictions, even though he was one of the few gods who didn't.
- Moreover, people constantly make it look like the Aztec people just grabbed people randomly and killed them, when they actually were rather methodical about it. Prime candidates for sacrifice were people who were already sick and incurable, prisoners, and people who volunteered to be sacrificed (it was considered a great honor). Hell, virgin sacrifice has been overplayed through the years, since the Aztecs actually didn't revere virginity nearly as much as European cultures do.
- At least one god required regular child sacrifices, however.
- Also, those "thousands a year" figures? The Aztecs were the ones who gave them to the Spanish, because they thought it was cooler than their real numbers.
- One source appears to claim that not only did Quetzalcoatl not demand any human sacrifices (or if he did, it was very, very rare), but when he got back from his Wangsting (paraphrasing the myths here), he would also find a way to prevent the need for the Aztecs to perform sacrifices. Unsure about the veracity of this source. Although, it would be interesting to see what would happen if the Vikings and the Aztecs ever met (outside of Everworld), seeing as their religions were rather similar, just with the Aztecs trying to prevent The End Of The World As We Know It in their mind and the Norse saying "Sure, you may kill me at Ragnarok...But I'm taking you with me".
- As mentioned above, gods of death are often made analogues of Satan. This is because in Judaeo-Christian philosophy, death is considered to be unnatural and a product of original sin; in mythologies whose underlying philosophies treat death as part of the natural order, death gods tend to be neither good nor evil.
- The traditional Egyptian holiday celebrating the beginning of spring (Shemu) was quite literally hijacked by Jesus: a traditional, Pharaonic spring festival (which in some accounts involved the Pharaoh ejacluating into the Nile) moved to Easter Monday after Egypt was Christianized in the fourth century CE. The festival survived the Arab conquest, and is still celebrated by both Christian and Muslim Egyptians every year on Easter Monday.
- Actually, Easter is hijacked worldwide. The holiday also hijacked several rites (such as egg painting) from Slavic traditions and the name itself comes from a pagan Saxon festival (which makes sense, you know, since, it's only the English name for the holiday).
- Actually not so much... although that's widely believed - I heard it most recently said by an outspokenly-lesbian very theologically liberal woman priest, on the radio the other day. She really ought to have known better.
- Maybe she did. It has the backing of the Venerable Bede after all, a churchman and historian. Not generally considered very liberal and probably not a lesbian.
- Christmas is also widely accepted to be the result of a Christian take-over - the winter solstice was marked in many pagan religions and cultures, celebrating the triumph of life over winter/death (hence the evergreen tree as a symbol). To the Roman cult of Mithra, it was also the birth of the Unconquered Sun. The early Christians co-opted it as Jesus' birthday, because stamping down on a popular celebration would have made for bad PR.
- Factually accurate, but really only 'widely accepted' amongst intelligentsia and higher levels of the laity. ex. The pope agrees, the Catholic Encyclopedia agrees, but most Catholics would not. There is often even confusion amidst the lower levels of the laity, usually due to DidNotDoTheResearch.
Other
- Man, despite being just about the only nice guy in the Olympian pantheon, Hades just can't seem to get a break. I mean there could be an entire subtrope of this called Everybody Hates Hades. Observe...
- Compare this two his two brothers, one of whom slept with just about everyone and the other whom actually tried to overthrow Zeus. Hades, who only ever got in one messy affair with the gods, and who only had one affair ever, looks like a shining paragon of virtue next to these two.
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