Gods: Are they really what we think they are

Are the gods described in these myths really gods? That is a question I started asking myself after reading today’s tables. When I read Sphinx right in the beginning it starts the myth by saying that a king found out that his son would kill him if he grew up, so this king ordered for him to be executed. “Laius, king of Thebes, was warned by an oracle that there was danger to his throne and life if his new-born son should be suffered to grow up.” This brought me to wonder if the types of god like characteristics I had in my head included for a god to kill his own son. I realized that no a god should be an honorable being showing the humans an example of how to live through their own lives.

The gods live lives very similar to our human lives. Humans were the ones who created gods and it is interestin that they created them with defects. “he became the husband of his mother” this quote shows clearly how grave the defects of the gods are. That is when I realized that the gods are supposed to have mistakes in order for us to learn from them. The gods are an example to the humans, an example doesn’t have to be good but actually you can learn more from a bad example. “Among other places at which he arrived, following on his father’s footsteps, was Calypso’s isle, and, as in the former case, the goddess tried every art to keep him with her, and offered to share her immortality with him.” This is a perfect example of how temptations are what lure people to do things and that the best way to learn how to control your temptations. So to answer my question (Are the gods described in these myths really gods?) I would say that they are and that some of them show us that through their bad examples we can learn more than what we thought.