The Bible and Greek Mythology
The Goda
Zeus
Athena
Muses
Most Christians or those religions that follow the basic principles of the Bible believe in the stories told in the Bible. In fact, these stories are usually regarded not only as mere stories, but also as actual historical accounts of important people, events, and concepts of the Christian faith. However, stories of Greek and Roman mythology are typically regarded as nothing more than fictional, fantasy stories. The idea that Ancient Greeks viewed these stories to be their religion seems insane to many people of Biblical Faith. This idea seems to cast a stigma of irrationality, almost ignorance, upon the Ancient Greeks. Although placing this stigma on a long-dead culture may seem to be unimportant to much of the contemporary world, it is important because this long-dead culture represents the history of a large portion of the world. The Ancient Greek empire was much more vast than modern-day Greece. Just as many Americans would find it offensive to have their history viewed as irrational and ignorant, it seems logical that Greeks might as well. Therefore, it is necessary to try and understand that both Ancient Greeks and Ancient Christians may have held similar beliefs about the world they were living in. The fact is that Greek myths contain unrealistic and unbelievable characters, events, and other elements, but upon comparison of Greek mythology with different Biblical accounts, it is apparent that some parallels between the two do exist, and that the Ancient Greeks view of the events of the early world are very similar to the views of both ancient and contemporary Christians. The following similarities are by no means a full accounting, but a mere summary of a vastly larger ideal between two religions.
The similarities begin with the creation stories, although these similarities are very minimal. In both the Christian creation story, Genesis, and in many accounts of the Ancient Greek creation story, the earth began with darkness and nothingness- a void, or Chaos, as known to the Greeks (Genesis 1:2; Tripp 159). This Chaos was the bearer meaning that he gave birth to of Ge; earth, Tartarus; underworld, Eros; love and sex, Erebus; darkness, and Nyx; night (Tripp 159). In the Christian creation story, God is the parallel to the Greek Chaos in that he invents the same things with the exception of an underworld; the creation of Adam and Eve and their later reproduction could be comparable to Eros as Chaos bore (Genesis 1:1-18). However, unlike Chaos, God is not a void of nothingness, but the beginning of all things. God also remains the ruler of the entire world in Biblical stories, while the Greek Chaos is displaced by several actual divine beings, the most important and permanent of those being Zeus (Tripp 606; Hesiod 2-3).
There is also a slight similarity in the separation or breakdown in mans relationships with God and Zeus, later chief god of the ancient Greeks. Although the offenses in each case were very different, both falls from grace were the products of trickery, deceit, and temptation. In both cases, the temptation was in the form of food (Genesis 3:1-6; Tyrell and Brown 15). Probably the most important similarity in the two falls, however, is the negative role that Woman plays in each. In the Bible, woman actually leads man to the fall from grace and as the punishment for that is exile from the Garden of Eden, while Greek mythology cites that Woman was the punishment to man from Zeus (Genesis 3:6-24, Hesiod 4). In the ancient Greek culture, Woman was designed to make man miserable (Hesiod 4). Although she plays different roles, Woman eventually bears the blame for all human suffering and sorrow in both stories (Tyrell and Brown 17).
In both the Ancient Greek and Christian accounts of the early world, there exist stories of great floods that destroyed most of humankind (Genesis 7; Tripp 608). In the Bible's version of the flood, God becomes frustrated with the wickedness of the world and decides to destroy the earth with a flood, although it saddens him to do so (Genesis 6:5-7). However, God found Noah to be a good and just man, and he asked Noah to build an ark that would float upon the waters (Genesis 6:9-14). On the ark, Noah was to take his wife, three sons, their wives, and two of every living creature (Genesis 6:18-22). In this way God could be sure that the world would be repopulated. In the Greek flood story, Zeus becomes very angry with men and decides to destroy them as revenge for their impieties (Tripp 608). His intention is to destroy all of mankind. However, Prometheus, who tells his son, Deucalion, to build an ark so Deucalion and his wife could escape Zeus' wrath, thwarts Zeus attempt. In this story, Prometheus assures that mortal life will go on. Although the stories are different in some aspects, the parallels show that both the Ancient Greeks and followers of the Christian faith seem to agree that a great flood was a significant event in the early years of the world. As well, they both believe that someone survived this flood by building an ark and living there until the flood subsided. These people survived in order to continue human life.
War was also a common characteristic of both the Ancient Greek world and of the Biblical world. For example, the Trojan War is a major event in Greek history, and is recorded most famously in Homer's Iliad. The gods always seemed to play important roles in this war, especially Zeus, Ares the god of war, and the other Olympians the gods and goddesses living on Mount Olympus (Homer 404-405). Wars between Greek city-states were also common occurrences, with gods and goddesses almost always involved in them in some way. Similarly, the Bible accounts many stories of wars between different countries and religious groups. One of the most famous examples is the war between the Philistines and the Israelites (Samuel, 1:17). In this war, God interfered and sent the small shepherd boy David to save the Israelites (Samuel, 1:17). David does so by defeating the giant Goliath, a feat he would not have been able to accomplish without God's help (Samuel 17:46-52). These examples show the cross-cultural belief that war was an important event in the ancient world, and the gods God played significant roles in these wars.
Prophecies of the overthrowing of rulers were frequent events in both Greek mythology and in Biblical stories. In both cultures these prophecies usually lead to the attempted suppression, usually murder in Bible stories, of the group that the over thrower will supposedly come from. This suppression rarely worked. For instance, the Greek god Cronus was told that one of his children would conquer and overthrow him (Tripp, 177). In a desperate attempt to prevent this, Cronus swallowed each of his children as they were born (Tripp, 177). However, through deceit and trickery, Cronus' wife Rhea manages to bear and hide the youngest child, who grows and conquers his father (Tripp, 177). This child is Zeus. He frees his brothers and sisters and then seizes his father's power, becoming chief of gods (Tripp 177, 705). The most important example in the Bible of this same type of prophecy is directed at Herod, who was King at the time that Jesus was born (Matthew 2). When three wise men tell Herod that the King of Jews was to be born that night, Herod demands that the three find where the baby was to be born and report back to him (Matthew 2:1-9). When the wise men fail to do so, he orders that all newborn boys in Bethlehem be killed (Matthew 2:16). However, Jesus escaped this fate because God tells Joseph, Jesus' earthly father, to take the baby and its mother to Egypt until the time that Herod dies (Matthew 2:13). Both the Christians and Ancient Greeks found these prophecies to be important parts of their histories.
These are only the big similarities. There are many smaller ones. The previous examples show that Christian and Ancient Greek histories of the origins and events of the ancient world are not as different as many people may think. Both have floods, wars, and prophecies. Both cultures believe in the nothingness that existed before everything else. Most importantly, both cultures have their own beliefs, the most significant of these being their gods or God.
The similarities are so parallel one must wonder as to the actual origin of these stories. They had to come from somewhere. If the Bible holds so many similarities to Greek and Roman mythology, it causes one to question the actual relevance of the Bible. Christians believed and still believe to this day that those who worship other gods are heretical and pagan. Although Christians refuse to accept that these stories are not historical accounts written by God through man, one cannot discount the likeness of both the stories of the Greek Gods and that of the Bible. Christians may have to see that their beliefs may be more similar to Ancient Greek beliefs than what was previously thought. A historian cannot look past the facts, all of which are written in a book cherished by so many. The historian can prove that the fall of Rome was credited partly to the rise of Christianity, and the Christianity that we know today had to start from somewhere. One may even go so far as to say the stories in the bible are stories of Greek mythology changed to suit the belief system of new religion; Christianity.
Authors Note: This by no means defends or discredits any belief. It is merely an observation of history, be it myth or truth. All beliefs are sacred and are to be respected. Please be respectful of each other when discussing topics such as these. Your words are your power. We all have a right to what we believe.
Works Cited
Hesiod. Selections from Hesiod's Theogony. Trans. John Svarlien. 17 Dec. 1999. 11 Nov. 2005. <http:/classics.mit.edu/Browse/browse-Hesiod.html>.
Holy Bible: The Old and New Testaments. King James Version. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1973.
Homer. Iliad: Book Twenty. Classics 135-001: Greek and Roman Mythology, Fall
1998. Ed. James A. Francis. Incentives Creativity, 1998. 62-68.
Tripp, Edward. The Meridian Handbook of Classical Mythology. New York: Penguin
Group, 1974.
Tyrell, William Blake and Frieda S. Brown. Hesiod's Myth of the Birth of the
Cosmos. Foundations of the Liberal Arts: Science, Nature, Culture, Spring
1999. Acton: Tapestry Press LTD., 1999. 8-20.
Comments
Yannis on December 18, 2016:
A great book to find similarities is from Mihalis Kalopoulos Biblical Religion the Great Lie
http://booksmyfirst.ru/uncategorized/48929-biblica...
Here is an expert from the introduction
Even from the first verses of the Bible, questions arise spontaneously because of the obvious similarities between the biblical and other surviving Theogonies of the ancient world, which we will examine in detail. Our first striking example comes from the surviving ancient texts attributed to Hermes Trismegistusvi. The comparison of the biblical text of Genesis with the texts attributed to Hermes Trismegistus is just a starting point for our intense quest for truth.
Hermes Trismegistus was a person veiled in myth and the authorship of his works has been contested. Many sources point to him as an author of books of infinite wisdom, safeguarded for centuries in the Egyptian temples in Egyptian hieroglyphs, as the written records of Egyptian wisdom, unsurpassed by anything else written in the antique world. He was credited with many inventions including writing, medicine and with the discovery of basic skills such as agriculture and the creation of organized communities, gifts that were essential for the survival and prosperity of those early human communities.
Hermes’ texts belong to the valuable legacy of Greek scholarship; Manethon, a priest of ancient Heliopolis vii in cooperation with the Greek Timotheos supposedly translated the original Hermetic Books viii written in Egyptian hieroglyphs that were astonishingly old; according to Manethon’s own calculations, they dated from several thousands of years B.C. In one of his books, Manethon wrote to King Ptolemy II:
“According to your order (to translate from the Egyptian Hieroglyphs) you will be handed the sacred books, written by our ancestor Hermes Trismegistus” ix.
Cyril of Alexandria wrote that Hermes measured and divided the land of Egypt into lots, constructed canals along the Nile for irrigation and improved the practice of agriculture with the life-giving waters of the river. His assistance allowed the Egyptians to achieve a high level of social organization with the introduction of law, logic, numbers, geometry and astronomy.
“Worthy of mention and of everlasting fame is our Hermes who was also called Trismegistus... he divided the land of Egypt into lots and irrigated the entire land by means of canals, he issued laws and put down his thoughts in writing, invented geometry and delivered a catalogue of the heavenly stars” x.
Johannes Damascenus refers unambiguously to Hermes’ Greek descent: “To the Greeks were born the wisest of men, not twice but thrice as wise (as other men) like Hermes the so called Trismegistus” xi.
Stobaeus completes our knowledge of the extraordinary abilities of Hermes:
“The secret legislation of God, the sciences and achievements were taught to them (to his pupils) by Hermes, so they became humanity’s instructors and lawmakers” xii.
According to several authorities, it was the religious proposals, ideas and statements of Hermes Trismegistus that supplied the raw material for the great religions of West and East.
The Hermetic texts, despite the controversy concerning their origin and the indisputable presence of later, interpolated elements in them are significant in this respect: when we studied the Hermetic texts, in the form in which they have reached us xiii we were astonished to find in those texts complete sections that were quite similar to the biblical texts. When we assembled these widely dispersed fragments with the biblical text serving as a template, we ended up with a narrative surprisingly parallel to the book of Genesis. This means that whoever compiled the biblical book of Genesis must have borrowed elements from the Hermetic texts to produce his synopsis of Theogony and Anthropogony rather than the opposite.
Had the relevant parallel sections found in Hermes’ texts been copied from the Bible, they would have been kept together or artfully assembled to constitute a meaningful narrative rather than be dispersed in the way that we find them in the Hermetic texts. Here are the relevant sections, assembled from Hermes’s texts with the Bible as a template:
Thus wrote Hermes:
“The beginning of all beings is God, of mind, nature and Matter... All beings were undefined and unformed...
A vast darkness existed over the abyss... Water and spirit, delicate and thoughtful created by divine force roamed the Chaos When a holy light was lit...” Hermes Trismegistus C.H.3.1.2 xiv
Here is the corresponding biblical text:
“In the beginning God created the sky and the Earth. And the Earth was obscured and unformed
darkness reigned over the abyss The spirit of God roamed over the water
and God said: “Let there be light”.
Bible Genesis 1.1-3
Catherine Giordano from Orlando Florida on November 28, 2015:
Very nicely done. It always amazes me that in modern times the myths of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Norse are laughed at, but the Judeo-Christian myths are considered--by their believers--to be 100% true. They don't see how their sacred stories are so similar to the stories of other cultures.
Samar on February 15, 2015:
Thanks for your interest! At the top menu, click on Products Page. A sbeaidr menu will appear, click on Free Kid's Bible Activities That should tell you which stories and projects are available that week for free download. Some of the booklets are written at a very beginning level while others are more advanced. I haven't been including a reading level designation as the pictures can moderate them down and the teacher's additional commentary can moderate them up as needed. The Bible survey workbook works for upper elementary and some Jr. High.The Prayerfulliving,com site does post some stories each week for anyone to access. The whole archive is available to members only. They also have a couple dozen lesson plans and support material for pre-readers. I hope that helps, Kim
fanashpneszq on September 12, 2014:
Rivelate Anne Hathaway riprese di The Intern a Manhattan, e che
leah on February 23, 2014:
Also heaven = the elesian fields and hell = tarturus, if your bad or if your good, i get why these stories were created perhaps because humans need guidance and disciple.
helene on February 10, 2014:
It needs a lot of looking into though... but religion as you call it is all around us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_SG3Hg2Q8c
helene on February 10, 2014:
I will tell you why: The revelations of the bible are 4000 years old and not 2000 years old. The OT is older and the devil knows how to read... There is so much more to the picture but I will just explain that one is real and the other one is counterfeit in order to discredit the bible. Look at the world and get a glimpse of how it really works. Controlled by the roman empire and roman church (prophecized in the bible), under demonic control, lying spirits, all church and religions are false (all told in the bible) and take a look at false doctrine. Compare biblical doctrine to roman, or any other. They all discredit Jesus, the main point. Take a look around. So it does not discredit the bible, Jesus was predicted 2000 years before he was born, everything about him was predicted, even the pharisees did not understand this and yet they fulfilled the prophecies about him being murdered with a spear going into his flesh etc. It is so accurate it could not be coincidence. The other religions however are full of myths, similar, but just to discredit the real truth. From the devil himself, liar and a thief. Take a closer look, it will help.
stranger on November 10, 2013:
hehe
Richard Zeile from Dearborn, Michigan on September 11, 2013:
Christianity and myth address the same human needs, just as various drugs address the same human body, some in similar ways. Christianity claims to be the true medicine while others may have elements of truth, but will ultimately fail.
Truth Matters on September 11, 2013:
I have also read that all cultures have a flood story. I would like to add that "Christianity" did not invent the biblical flood story. It was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, texts of the Old Testament, which pre-dated Christianity by about 200 years.
Nick from Wv on August 18, 2013:
Here are what I find to be enlightening quotes concerning existence, man-made religion, and censorship from the late Frank Zappa. He was an independent thinker, nondrinker, and definitely not a hoodwinker.
"Well, I believe that those energies and processes exist. I just don't think that they've been adequately described or adequately named yet, because people are too willing to make it all into something that supports a religious theory of one flavor or another. If you start defining these things in nuts-and-bolts scientific terms, people reject it because it's not fun, y'know. It takes some of the romance out of being dead ... because of people's desires to have eternal life and to extend their influence from beyond the grave ..."
"The essence of Christianity is told to us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the Tree of Knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your f__ing mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions."
"The whole foundation of Christianity is based on the idea that intellectualism is the work of the Devil. Remember the apple on the tree? Okay, it was the Tree of Knowledge. "You eat this apple, you're going to be as smart as God. We can't have that.""
"So, when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, if you go for all these fairy tales, that "evil" woman convinced the man to eat the apple, but the apple came from the Tree of Knowledge. And the punishment that was then handed down, the woman gets to bleed and the guy's got to go to work, is the result of a man desiring, because his woman suggested that it would be a good idea, that he get all the knowledge that was supposedly the property and domain of God. So, that right away sets up Christianity as an anti-intellectual religion. You never want to be that smart. If you're a woman, it's going to be running down your leg, and if you're a guy, you're going to be in the salt mines for the rest of your life. So, just be a dumb f__k and you'll all go to heaven. That's the subtext of Christianity."
"My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can."
"Children are naïve -- they trust everyone. School is bad enough, but, if you put a child anywhere in the vicinity of a church, you're asking for trouble."
"The establishment of a rating system, voluntary or otherwise, opens the door to an endless parade of moral quality control programs based on things certain Christians do not like. What if the next bunch of Washington wives demands a large yellow "J" on all material written or performed by Jews, in order to save helpless children from exposure to concealed Zionist doctrine?"
"There is no such thing as a dirty word. Nor is there a word so powerful, that it's going to send the listener to the lake of fire upon hearing it."
"There's also no medical proof that if you hear any collection of vowels and consonants, that the hearing of that collection is going to send you to Hell."
"Information doesn't kill you."
"If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest or some guy on TV telling you how to do your sh_t, then YOU DESERVE IT."
"I never set out to be weird. It was always the other people who called me weird."
"It has never mattered to me that thirty million people might think I'm wrong. The number of people who thought Hitler was right did not make him right...
Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are?"
"The whole Universe is a large joke.
Everything in the Universe are just subdivisions of this joke.
So why take anything too serious."
"So long as somebody gets a laugh out of it, what the f__k?"
....and, the last quote below I include, not because it has anything to do with the above, but because I find it amusing and quite correct.
"People make a lot of fuss about my kids having such supposedly 'strange names', but the fact is that no matter what first names I might have given them, it is the last name that is going to get them in trouble."
Michael on August 01, 2013:
Zeus, Hercules?....Equals the fallen ones, Nephilim...that the bible speaks of with amazing strength and power. They will be back in the form of UFO's with some amazing technology and what was before will be again as Soloman had mentioned in Ecclesiastes. Just as we see the mixing of DNA as was done in the past...Sphinx... (modern day human ear on mouses back) These are the end times and what was before the flood will be again....just as the wickedness in the days of NOAH...so here we are again....to a greater degree
Juan on July 14, 2013:
Really to speak of Mythology, it seems that we are talking about a fantasy. However, we forget that the Iliad tells of Mycenae, Troy,... and there they are, they were reality. Not only the Bible.
desiree on June 21, 2013:
i think this is awesome and every thing Ive been thinking for awhile... it makes you think that people are so naive and so easy to trust the word of something they really have no idea about. I think it is no that the bible and Greek gods are so intertwined I think that its one in the same. Just beliefs from different time periods. As well as the any other religion for that matter.. Buddhism, Christianity, Greek mythology they all have an hierarchy that is very similar which is very fascinating and intriguing
Nathan on May 03, 2013:
^SMH
-Misspellings and bad grammar also cause wars. Sorry.
Nathan on May 03, 2013:
^reviewed what I wrote, and, really, I didn't mean a couple things in the manner that I said them.
The end point is... Have Faith in whatever you want, as Long as you don't put down a different Faith from your own. Beleive in the Ctkulu if you want, just don't say that it's a better religion than someine else's. That makes you a Bigot. ...and, well, that's what causes relgious wars.
Guns don't kill people, and neither does Religion.
-Bigots and dumbasses do, though.
---People who hate bigots and dumbasses,
---also get to kill people sometimes, but
---would usually rather pass on going to prison,
Nathan on May 03, 2013:
The comments on this page make me lose faith in the human race. ANYONE with a preconceived and unchangeable view of the world is ignorant. The only way to gain knowledge in this life, is to have the ability to realize that what you knew before was incorrect, and what you know now is a little bit more correct.
The written Torah (Old Testament) predates written Hellenic Polytheism. Yes. Mostly, HOWEVER, because anything outside of household (polytheistic) deity worship for the Greeks was not fully recorded other than through oral tradition until Hesiod wrote down in -summary- about a thousand years of Oral tradition in his work "The Theogony", circa 700 B.C. (That work was also said to be divinely inspired, by the way, by the Muses... just saying, keep reading:)
Neither the origin of the Old Testament nor the oral tradition of Hellenic Polytheism predate the other. Judaism was the basis for both Islam and Christianity.
(To use a slightly more correct language, the Tanakh/Torah predates what you understand as the 'Bible' and the Quran... was getting annoyed at the individuals misusing their language before me.)
However, both the faiths of Monotheism of Judaism and Hellenic Polytheism stem from other faith traditions.
Actually, in fact, Judaism was originally a polytheistic religion, having a complementary 'Mother' deity to accompany the one true God. The monotheistic branch of Judaism won in the end, and took over recording the history of their religion, so of course most uneducated people couldn't comprehend this fact. Continuing on...
Somebody had it correct when they stated that both the Jewish and Hellenic faiths came from the civilization of Sumer; whose religion predates all and nullifies All of your fucking arguements. Not saying that either the Jewish or Hellenic faiths are incorrext, however!
A personal ancedote; I personally have Faith in God. However, there's alot missing in the Old Testament, such as the Nephillim, and why did Luscifer not just mate with Eve to create a race of beings superior to Humans, the sons of Adam? Don't come at me with anatomically corrext depictions of Angels, either. You've never seen an Angel that I haven't also seen. I digress. The Hellenic faith, the stories of demi-gods, and ESPECIALLY the greek Hesoid's round-about summary of the five Ages of Man make ALOT of sense. Especially makes sense to anyone approaching religious history (which, is really our only source of ancient history, btw!) from a rational perspective.
When it comes to understanding things that we can't see, precisely calculate, or measure with our hands... Faith and Science begin to have much more in common, by the way.
Facts:
Humans of ancient civilizations were physically superior to us. They had to be in order to survive. Did they live longer? No. Did they have modern medicine or technology? No. Therefore, as survivalists, the average ancient man was physically superior than our average.
They obviously were more intelligent. As far as critical thinking goes. Our scientists cannot fathom building Stonehenge or the Pyramids, let alone a true Tower of Babel or something mentioned in the Old Testament. They did not have technology, or machinery, or modern science. And yet, they could solve problems in ways thatnwe cannot comprehend.
Pretend that you were taken away at birth and placed on an isolated island with others from our society at birth... who the hell on that island is going to be smart enough to INVENT LANGUAGE without even knowing what language is, in a timely manner before everyone kills eachother for food? I couldn't. You couldn't either. Could include a thousand other examples, but that one is good enough, think about it. The average person in ancient civilization was more intelligent than we are, or depending on your definition of that, had atleast a higher ability in critical thinking and problem solving.
Therefore... who is to say that some of those stories weren't absolutely true? Both Biblical and Greek? A 'heroic age' of Man... (as described by Hesoid... and also during the unrecorded history of the reign of the Nephillim)... where some men were revered as demigods, with skills that far surpass our own modern and limited comprehension? Who is to say that real individuals such as Zeus or Hermes or Aphrodite didn't really exist?! Granted, not as gods, and way less dramatic, but far more Athletic and Intelligent than our modern understanding of how we view ourselves as humanity? If you met the real-life person that the story of Odysseus was based on, for example, would you not view him as a *little* more god-like than you or I? How many men did he kill with his bare hands? Haha.
Just saying. Judeo-Christian-Islamic Monotheism and Hellenic Polytheism can both fit in with each other, just fine. Zeus got really pissed off at the start of the Iron Age (as defined by Hesoid... look up his five ages of man, and read about his book!) because of how defiant the men of the Heroic Age were... decided to banish the other gods to Tartarus, and declared himself the All-Mightly Lord. Then began to change, slowly, and eventually allow us to be forgiven through Jesus Christ. Adam and Eve were the first peoples of the Silver or Bronze age, or something.
Honestly, with how well the two styles of faith fit together (polytheism and monotheism)... you can't honestly believe in just one of them without being ignorant, or a bigot - either way, not wanting to accept what I've said, in one way or another, is just blind.
As I said at the beginning... the only way to gain knowledge in this life, is to have the ability to realize that what you knew before was incorrect, and what you know now is a little bit more correct.
Sure, there is one true God... but you can't deny the possibility that he might have had humans rewrite history a little bit later on to cover up the fact that he killed (or banished) off quite a few other divine beings along the way in his rise to being The All-Mighty. It's even kinda funny, thinking about how much the JudeoChristianIslamic writing states that he is the One True God.
Absolutely! The Torah, Bible, and Quran were written after people were visited by God's angels. Absolutely, let's go with that. Who is to say that he only said communicated that to us because he doesn't want to lose his throne? Or perhaps, because it's easier for us to understand and have faith in just Him, and he did that to help us out as a Humanity? or perhaps because it's better for us as a Humanity? (we still kill each other over who's God's name is the one true God though, so His plan kinda mighta not worked out as planned.) :(