Finding Religion in Myth; Returning to Ancient Theology

Byline: Carol Herman, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

In the 1996 "Not Out of Africa," classicist Mary Lefkowitz made an impassioned case that history should not be manipulated to suit modern political constructs such as Afrocentrism. On her way to proving that the Greeks did not steal their philosophy, theology and science from the Eyptians, she showed why myth and history are not one and the same.

With "Greek Gods, Human Lives: What We Can Learn From Myths," the author goes one step further, asserting that modern readers misunderstand the role of ancient myths in history when they pay more attention to the mortal players of these stories than to the deities who govern them. Asserting that "nothing, or virtually nothing, happens without the gods," it is her aim to take readers "back in time so that [they] can see what the myths meant to audiences in the ancient world." She adds that "we do the Greeks an injustice if we assume that their …