Facts about Polytheism
Despite these qualified forms of polytheism, the Mimamsa school of Hindu philosophy can be declared to be explicitly polytheistic.
The gods of polytheism have independent and individual personalities with specific skills, needs and desires.
Academics charting the course of religious development in humanity, such as E. B. Tylor, J. G. Frazer, and Max Mьller, put polytheism beneath monotheism and atheism on the evolutionary hierarchy of faith.
Polytheism has often been pitted against monotheism, typically by monotheists and some academics who claim that polytheism is an inferior belief system.
Their belief in Zeus as a father/ruler God meant that the Greek polytheism was perhaps best described as a henotheism.
Some scholars, notably the French historian Alain Daniйlou and the American writer Jonathan Kirsch, are of the opinion that polytheism is superior to monotheism.
According to Kripal, the traditional identification of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute also goes back to the above-mentioned sermon by Pope Gregory.
On the other hand, certain modern scholars prefer polytheism over monotheism for its greater tolerance of diversity.
Perhaps the pre-Socratic philosopher Xenophanes was the first to criticize polytheism.
Regardless, they theorized that polytheism represented an evolutionary phase between "primitive," animistic beliefs and monotheism, in which gods became personalized and hence more complex than earlier stages.
The Greek gods provide the example of polytheism that is most familiar to Western scholarship.
Polytheism has been denigrated by monotheists: for example, Jews and Christians believed the gods of Greece and Rome to be fallen angels and the source of Roman cruelty and oppression.
Pompeii is a ruined city of Roman Empire near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania, in the territory of the commune of Pompeii.