Hilde’s world has gradually begun to permeate ours.
Jesus was a jew, and the Jews belong to Semitic culture. The Greeks
and the Romans belong to Indo-European culture. European civilization has
its roots in both cultures. But before we take a closer look at the way
Christianity influenced Greco-Roman culture, we must examine these roots.
THE INDO-EUROPEANS
By Indo-European we mean all the nations and cultures that use Indo-
European languages. This covers all European nations except those whose
inhabitants speak one of the Finno-Ugrian languages (Lapp, Finnish,
Estonian, and Hungarian) or Basque. In addition, most Indian and Iranian
languages belong to the Indo-European family of languages.
About 4,000 years ago, the primitive Indo-Europeans lived in areas
bordering on the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. From there, waves of these
Indo-European tribes began to wander southeast into Iran and India,
southwest to Greece, Italy, and Spain, westward through Central Europe to
France and Britain, northwestward to Scandinavia and northward to Eastern
Europe and Russia. Wherever they went, the Indo-Europeans assimilated
with the local culture, although Indo-European languages and Indo-European
religion came to play a dominant role.
The ancient Indian Veda scriptures and Greek philosophy, and for that
matter Snorri Sturluson’s mythology are all written in related languages. But it
is not only the languages that are related. Related languages often lead to
related ideas. This is why we usually speak of an Indo-European “culture.”
The culture of the Indo-Europeans was influenced most of all by their
belief in many gods. This is called polytheism. The names of these gods as
well as much of the religious terminology recur throughout the whole Indo-
European area. I’ll give you a few examples:
The ancient Indians worshipped the celestial god Dyaus, which in
Sanskrit means the sky, day, heaven/ Heaven. In Greek this god is called
Zeus, in Latin, Jupiter (actually iov-pater, or “Father Heaven”), and in Old
Norse, Tyr. So the names Dyaus, Zeus, lov, and Tyr are dialectal variants of
the same word.
You probably learned that the old Vikings believed in gods which they
called Aser. This is another word we find recurring all over the Indo-European
area. In Sanskrit, the ancient classical language of India, the gods are called
asura and in Persian Ahura. Another word for “god” is deva in Sanskrit, claeva
in Persian, deus in Latin and tivurr in Old Norse.
In Viking times, people also believed in a special group of fertility gods
(such as Niord, Freyr, and Freyja). These gods were referred to by a special
collective name, vaner, a word that is related to the Latin name for the
goddess of fertility, Venus. Sanskrit has the related word van/, which means
“desire.”
There is also a clear affinity to be observed in some of the Indo-
European myths. In Snorri’s stories of the Old Norse gods, some of the myths
are similar to the myths of India that were handed down from two to three
thousand years earlier. Although Snorri’s myths reflect the Nordic
environment and the Indian myths reflect the Indian, many of them retain
traces of a common origin. We can see these traces most clearly in myths
about immortal potions and the struggles of the gods against the monsters of
chaos.