Were the Greek gods ever mortal?

Question

(This is more for Hestia then anyone since she'll know as a Hellenistic pagan LOL) I'm reading the Odyssey and Kalypso is serving ambrosia and I think that's what gave them immortality? We (Heathens) have apples I was curious about the Greek.

And before anyone tells me this should be in mythology, remember that we several Greek pagans. Thier gods are just as valid and as other god.

And, do they have to keep drinking the ambrosia to stay immortal or is just once enough?

Answer 1

The Greek Gods were never born mortal. Chaos was immortal and gave birth to Gaea (Gaia), who is the mother of Cronos and his brothers and sisters the Titans, with her husband Uranus. Both Gaea and Uranus are immortal as her children. Cronos is the father of Zeus and his brothers and sisters, with his wife Rhea, who happened to his sister, both Cronos and Rhea were immortal, as were their children. Zeus is the father of many Gods ands Goddess from relations with other Goddesses, and the father of many mortal heros by having a relationship with mortal woman. One of the most notable of these mortal heros was Heracles, better known by his Roman name Hercules, was an exception to the rule that all Gods and Goddesses were always born immortal. He became a God after his death. There may be more Greek Gods and Goddesses that were once mortal and became immortal after their deaths, but I haven't heard of them yet. And ambrosia and the nector were never the source of there immortality, it was just their susstenance.

Edited to add: Ok, after doing some research I have found out that there are more than God or Goddess in the Greek pantheon who were once mortal, but upon their death they were deified. They were deified because they either (a) greatly benefacted humankind, such as Heracles, and Aristaeus, (b) married a deity such as Ariadne, and Psyche, and finally (c) through pure luck such as Glaucus.

Answer 2

To my knowledge, they are immortal in the sense that they don't get old (due to ambrosia), but they can be hurt or maybe even killed.

I might be wrong though - it's absolute ages since I last studied greek mythology. We'd better wait for Hestia. ;)
Have a star.

Answer 3

The Greek gods were never mortal, ambrosia and nectar doesn't make them immortal, being gods makes them immortal. Being born to immortals makes you immortal.

Greek demigods are not immortal, although there was a definate cult to Heracles that believed in his literal apotheosis.

The old gods alleged to be killed are actually not killed by the Olympians, but severely injured and imprisoned.

Answer 4

I'm not a Hellenistic pagan ( nor do I play one on tv - sorry bad joke), but I think from being a fan of greek mythology, I remember ambrosia just being a one-time thing.........not sure if that's what gave them immortality though........I thought they were "born" of Chronos and his wife

Answer 5

I don't remember ever reading that the Greek gods were mortal . Quite the opposite out of Chaos spawned Gaea . She had Children ( most notably Chronos ) and they had children who were the gods . The only mortal like Gods that were around , were the Norse ( Scandinavian ) Gods . Egypt on the other hand worshiped there Pharaohs and upon their death . They were transfigured into lower Gods

Answer 6

--IT WOULD SEEM that the mythological gods had no determination & THE carrying out in THEMSELVES as to who would be sacrificed since they did not have any power AND DID not exist! (Psalm 96:5) “. . .For all the gods of the peoples are valueless gods; But as for Jehovah, he has made the very heavens.” --BUT PEOPLE who had fanatical beliefs and conjured up belief systems and the requriements of their impotent gods , deemed the fanatical sacrifices to be made, such as: *** w95 8/15 p. 32 Relief for Innocent Victims *** IT IS one of the most repulsive crimes ever committed by man—ritual sacrifice of children. Some do not believe that such a gross practice could have taken place. But this trademark of Phoenician worship has been confirmed by numerous archaeological discoveries. Children from noble families were offered up in fire to such gods as Tanit and Baal-Hammon. In Carthage young victims were burned in sacrifice to a bronze statue of Kronos. Diodorus Siculus, a historian of the first century B.C.E., says that the child’s relatives were not allowed to cry. Perhaps it was believed that tears of anguish would diminish the value of the sacrifice. For a time a similar ritual was practiced near Jerusalem in ancient Topheth. Worshipers there would dance and strike tambourines to drown out the child’s cries as it was thrown into the furnace-belly of Molech.—Jeremiah 7:31. *** w97 4/1 pp. 17-18 pars. 19-20 Deliverance Into a Righteous New World *** 19 The Bible Handbook, by Henry H. Halley, notes that at Megiddo, archaeologists found the ruins of a temple of Ashtoreth, goddess-wife of Baal. He writes: “Just a few steps from this temple was a cemetery, where many jars were found, containing remains of infants who had been sacrificed in this temple . . . Prophets of Baal and Ashtoreth were official murderers of little children.” “Another horrible practice was [what] they called ‘foundation sacrifices.’ When a house was to be built, a child would be sacrificed, and its body built into the wall.” 20 Halley comments: “The worship of Baal, Ashtoreth, and other Canaanite gods consisted in the most extravagant orgies; their temples were centers of vice. . . . Canaanites worshiped, by immoral indulgence, . . . and then, by murdering their first-born children, as a sacrifice to these same gods. It seems that, in large measure, the land of Canaan had become a sort of Sodom and Gomorrah on a national scale. . . . Did a civilization of such abominable filth and brutality have any right longer to exist? . . . Archaeologists who dig in the ruins of Canaanite cities wonder that God did not destroy them sooner than He did.”—Compare 1 Kings 21:25, 26. “LIFE flowed from death—so believed the Aztecs, who practiced human sacrifice on a scale unprecedented in Mesoamerica,” says the book The Mighty Aztecs. “As the empire grew,” the book continues, “only blood and more blood upheld its fragile confidence.” According to another reference work, the number of human sacrifices by the Aztecs reached 20,000 a year."

Answer 7

Going from a purely logical perspective,mortals need to "sustain" their immortality in a way,because it is against their nature.
(Why am I speaking in the 3rd person I wonder ???)

to dmd :
If that is so,then Jesus Christ was a Nephelem...half human,half angel,right ?
Weren't they demons ???
Was or is Jesus Christ immortal?
If so,how does he sustain his immortality?

Answer 8

Actually they must have been mortal in some way because the myths have them killing the old Gods.

Answer 9

It is my belief when some of the fallen angels came and mated with mortal women and made giants, that some of the offspring became the gods of the pagan mythos.

http://www.kingdom-gospel.com/ufo.html

Gen 6: MKJV
1 And it happened, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and when daughters were born to them,
2 the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were good. And they took wives for themselves from all whom they chose.
3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, in his erring; he is flesh. Yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.
4 There were giants in the earth in those days. And also after that, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore to them, they were mighty men who existed of old, men of renown.

The sons of God mentioned here are demons, or fallen angels. There is a big debate whether this is true. But this is solved in other scripture:

Job 1:6: Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.

In the NIV it calls the "sons of God": 'angels'. Here in the King James they are the "sons of God". The Nephilim are mighty men or giants. These are hybrids of human seed made by fallen angels.

http://www.mystae.com/restricted/streams/scripts/nephilim.html

"The Hebrew word for giants (nephilum) literally means the fallen-down-ones because these tall celestial beings fell from the sky... They were known as the Rephaim [Hebrew for 'phantoms'], Emim, Anakim, Horim, Avim, and Zamzummim. Some scholars speculate that this tradition of giants born from the union of gods and humans formed the basis for the demigod of Greek mythology."
- Raymond E. Fowler, The Watchers

Today if you study UFO's and aliens, you will hear stories of women being impregnated by the aliens, and the fetuses are taken from them. Others tell stories that the aliens have children that they are raising. These accounts are similar to the account in Gen 6. Fallen angels are taking the seed of men, manipulating it and impregnating women. The result is a hybrid of humans. These beings will be of some "superior" quality. Whether it be in size or intellect or both. In Genesis it is said "They were the heroes of old, men of renown.".

I believe that these spawned beings were the origins of many deities from the pagan religions. This was the birth of mythology. They were superior and they made humans worship them. We can read many times in the Bible about giants on the earth. These giants were also enemies of Israel, the people of God.

I had a friend, who was involved in a cult. They had a huge sail ship, and sailed the oceans looking for the place that aliens would land. They thought the aliens would land on some island and they wanted to meet them. They studied Hebrew and these very verses I have shown you, believing the opposite of what I propose here. They think they were not demons or angels but aliens.

Answer 10

I believe they were somewhat (1/2 human 1/2 angel; fallen angel). I think they stem from what was described in the Bible as the Nephelim back in Noah's day and also after that.