Did Ancient Greeks literally believe the salacious stories about their gods?

by BroadToe6748

An obvious example is Zeus and his (sometimes unsuccesfull ) attempts at cheating on Hera.

For background as to why im asking this -I was thinking the other day about how our increasingly secular world makes it possible for modern artists to take creative liberties in reintepreting things like bible stories for dramatic and sometimes even comedic effect. This made me wonder whether some future civilization would unearth the remains of ours and think that The Life of Brian or Jesus Chris Superstar was legitimately part of western religious canon

Is there some possibility that stories like that of Zeus disgusiing himself but getting caught in the act are later addiitons made my bards and playwrights who were trying to excite an almost irreligous audience? I understand that one reason Christianity did so well in the late Roman empire was because it had filled a void where genuine pagan belief had once been so is it possible that our view of Roman and Greek religion was influenced by later, more cynical myths that surrounded them during their twilight, and that some Dorian sheppard from after the Broze Age Collapse or some Iron age farmer in Pre-Roman Italy would have taken some offence at the idea that the Sky-Father at the head of their pantheon was some incompetent oaf who got caught cheating? Am i maybe being too abrahamic in my idea of what older religions were like?

lgmdnss

Not to discourage any further discussion, but this question has been answered (to some extent) on this thread and threads linked in those comments; https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17r7u6/did_the_greeks_really_believe_in_their_gods/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

lgmdnss

Not to discourage any further discussion, but this question has (partially) been answered on this very old thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17r7u6/did_the_greeks_really_believe_in_their_gods/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

There are also some further threads linked in those comments by u/test (placeholder name since the user has since gone inactive and/or deleted their account)