I'm writing an assignment on sanctuaries and would like some confirmation of a passing fact that I read here - p.13, mid second paragraph: "...since Greek gods were not omnipresent...".
I don't doubt the author's knowledge, I'm just surprised to have discovered a fact like this so late in the day after spending two years studying Classical Civilisation.
Thanks guys
It honestly depends. In the Iliad the gods are famously not omnipresent--for example in one episodes Hera was able to seduce Zeus and, as he was distracted, Poseidon was able to join in the battle to help the Greeks. We could arguably think of this as some sort of characteristic of Archaic Greek religion that was later phased out, but it is just as likely to have been a convenient bit of literary characterization. Later authors have very different attitudes towards the gods. In Hesiod, for example, Zeus is very much all knowing and all seeing, and this characterization is sen in much "philosophical" discussion of the gods. On the other hand, if you look at Epicurean literature such as De rerum natura by Lucretius, the gods are pretty much entirely not present and have no effect on the world.
Greek gods and goddesses were persons, with bodies, desires, and location. In all my time reading Greek literature I honestly can't recall any depiction of the gods as being omnipresent or anything at all like the god of the Hebrews, EXCEPT in philosophical works. As Walter Burkert points out, "we may say that the experience of a storm is Zeus, or that the experience of sexuality is Aphrodite, but what the Greek says is that Zeus thunders and that Aphrodite bestows her gifts." (183)
At best, gods are personifications of abstract concepts or forces of nature, which aren't omnipresent anyway--a bolt of lighting is an event in space and time; Night is not present at all times; and gaia, earth, is not present in ouranos, the sky.
See Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (Harvard, 1985) for detailed hardcore info.
In Classic Civilisation gods were antropomorphic, both physically and psychologically. They have all of normal human characteristics but were more powerfull and almost immortal (differently than what everybody thinks they were still mortal: think about zeus killing his father, chronos, after he ate zeus' brothers and sisters). Consequently, although having a greater possibility of discovering things, they are still bound to their bodies. However, as seen in Plautus' play Amphytrion, gods can change their appearence and even take that of other humans